In January of this year, in an LRC article titled “Who Have They Chosen For Us?,” I suggested that the owners of the political establishment might decide to substitute Jeb Bush for the front-running GOP candidate Donald Trump. Whether “Trump can really be counted on to adhere to establishment directives” – instead of pursuing his own policies – might lead the corporate-state owners to turn to the trusted Bush name.
At the same time, I wrote, the Democratic branch of the one-party system might have to scuttle Hillary’s run for the White House because, “in addition to the potential criminal charges awaiting her . . . [she] is disliked and distrusted by so many people who see her as little more than one willing to do anything to obtain and exercise power.” She would likely be replaced by “a more reliable person, perhaps Joe Biden.”
Since I penned that blog, Hillary’s apparent health problems have added an additional negative to her candidacy, with opinion polls showing a shift in favor of Trump. It comes as no great surprise to me, then, to discover on today’s Internet that efforts may now be underway among the Democratic Party managers to bring Biden in as a substitute for Hillary. Nothing so terrifies the political classes as “uncertainty” and “change,” the avoidance of which provides the meaning for national “security.” A Trump victory would be too disquieting to the forces that feed on the status quo. Entrusting the keys to the White House to a more trusted Joe Biden might reassure the absentee owners.
That both of these possible establishment-serving substitutes share the same initials – J.B. – is, itself, an interesting coincidence. The Archibald MacLeish play, J.B., features a prominent New York banker, J.B., in events centered on the biblical Job. That these modern politicians might bring with their respective candidacies the promise of exploring some transcendent principles would clearly be a stretch of the wildest of imaginations. But that such politically-prominent names were kept offstage for so long, as untold numbers of lesser-knowns entered stage-left or stage-right to ad lib their irrelevancies, suggests that they may have been long-regarded understudies for lead characters in a play that the producers insisted go on, and faithful to the script.
3:39 pm on September 12, 2016
