I voted for Howard Phillips of the Constitutional Party (previously known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party) in the 2000 presidential election, as I had in 1996 and 1992.
I remember when Charley Reese wrote an impassioned column sometime in 2000 saying we MUST vote for George Bush to avoid getting that greater evil, Al Gore. I didn't think that was the way to go. I have long felt that if you vote at all – and that has certainly become a dubious duty – you should vote for whomever in your own honest opinion is the best man.
Since then, of course, Reese has publicly admitted to having made a mistake. Bush has proved not to be any sort of "lesser evil." Reese held back, as I recall his column recanting his mistake, from saying we should have elected Gore as the "lesser of the two evils" (and of course one can never really know about history that didn't happen), but I am now prepared to take that step, not that it will do the least bit of good.
I had just today an email exchange with a close relative, who is a more seasoned campaigner by far than I am: he's spent his adult life inside the Beltway and is older than me, which might seem an impossibility to those who know me. He had emailed me, re the current Bush rhetoric vis vis Iraq and the Congressional vote supporting it: "I think we need some new leaders. Alas, are there any?"
To which I replied:
"My assessment of this weird situation, based on extensive web reading, especially along libertarian lines, is that we have an incredible number of intelligent, highly literate people in this country fully capable of running (and patiently explaining) a decent, peaceful government, but they can’t ever get to first base because the system is rigged against any honest expression of opinion about what’s wrong. Pat Buchanan is a good case in point. Demonized as a radical and anti-Semite – all pure BS. The Dem-Repub thing is nothing any longer but a power racket, and the latest campaign reform underlines that: u2018Incumbent Protection, Inc.' I think now that the whole thing has to u2018burn down,' sort of like Rome – collapse and then be rebuilt from a foundation of whatever finds itself able to survive. I’m not gloomy about the human capacity for survival, but I am gloomy about the capacity of a nation to survive that elects a stupid and corrupt zealot like GW to the presidency. I never expected to live long enough to say this, but the real issue in the last election was the need to get Gore elected as the “lesser of two evils.”
I was thinking as I wrote this admittedly highly rhetorical philippic about Charlie Reese and his mea culpa for having so strenuously backed Bush, and finally I realized how much I now wish Gore had won in 2000 (or been elected by the Supreme Court, however you want to phrase the point).
And I say this knowing full well that Gore has his own "oil connection" through Hammer and Occidental Petroleum, which bought the Gore family's meal tickets for many a year, and that his links with the Reds-of-old (Armand Hammer again, Gore's daddy's employer) were first rate. But I'm guessing he simply could not have dared be as dippy as GW in this Iraq business if for no other reason than that the Republicans would not have let him get away with what they are (in my view criminally) seconding their own man in doing.
And, yes, I also know that Gore versus Bush was just another amusing "Team A versus Team B" ploy as far as the Council of Foreign Relations and all the masterminds of our internationalist elites were concerned.
But still I dream of relief from this nightmare. How long, Oh Lord, how long.
P.S. I owe an apology to LRC readers who may have read my last appearance on this site, "Percents Are Difficult To Do But Kinda Fun," which ran on or about the 16th of August. (It is not in the LRC archives.) It contained a serious error in arithmetic, which a number of readers, far better at "figgerin" than I am, caught and amiably emailed me about. If anyone remembers the column and wants to know what the error is, I'd be glad to supply it by email. I have now given up doing calculations in public.
October 12, 2002
