By Bob Gaydos

Democrats’ shopping list for coming elections. Unsolicited.

    Back two or three lifetimes ago, being between newspaper jobs and hobbling around downtown Annapolis on crutches as the result of a touch football accident, I spent some time answering phones and making phone calls for the Democratic Party. It was primary season and someone whose name I can’t recall thought it would be a good way to spend some time and use my journalist’s familiarity with politics. Drinking may have been involved.

     It was 1976. Joe Tydings, scion of a prominent Maryland family, was trying to get back to the Senate and Governor Moonbeam — Jerry Brown of California — was running for president. Or dating Linda Ronstadt. Or both.

   Tydings lost the primary to Rep. Paul Sarbanes, who went on to serve five terms. Brown carried Maryland, but lost nationally to a peanut farmer from Georgia. That farmer, Jimmy Carter, then beat the accidental president, Gerald Ford, in the general election, but later ran into Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages crisis, serving only one term.

    I reminisce about this history and these less than happy days in reaction to a mailing from the Democratic National Committee (one of many I have received) asking me, as a Democrat, to fill out a survey to help them prepare an agenda to fight Donald Trump and the Republicans. 

   While it’s good to know that someone is thinking about these things, let me be clear: I am not now and have never been a member of the Democratic, or for that matter, Republican, Socialist, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or Communist Party. Being registered in a political party doesn’t mesh with writing about politics for newspapers. My time answering phones in Annapolis may have filled a void, but I never joined the party.

    So DNC, I won’t be returning the survey or making any donation. I get it that it takes a lot of money to run political campaigns, but I will limit my contribution to giving (since you asked) my two cents on what Democrats should do to rid this country of Trump and the brain dead Republican Party.

    In essence, all of the above on your survey. That is, virtually everything suggested makes sense to some extent. Except for one.

    Under ranking of priorities, one item states: “Persuading voters who did not vote for Democrats in 2022 and 2024.”

     Save your breath, folks. These people knew Trump-the-terrible from the first time, enjoyed the rewards of Joe Biden’s economic agenda and still didn’t vote for Democrats. Ten years and counting of Trump Republicanism.

   If they were alive and breathing in 2022 and 2024 and voted for the party of anything Trump says is Ok, they are either too dumb to figure it out or they agree with the feed-the-rich, starve the non-white, non-Christian agenda of the Republican Party.

    Look, there are MAGA Trumpers who don’t even care that their leader raped young girls with Jeffrey Epstein, stole money from a phony kids cancer charity, sexually asssulted a woman in a clothing store dressing room on Fifth Avenue, promised a wall to stop the flow of immigrants from Mexico but delivered roaming bands of violent, masked kidnappers instead, and pardoned all those who followed his direction and laid waste to the U.S. Capitol when he told them the 2020 election was stolen from him.

    I could go on, but you get the idea. If they didn’t see or care about the difference between Democrats and Republicans two years ago, they likely still feel the same today or they are too embarrassed to admit they were wrong. Too iffy.

    Better to “engage,” as you say, those who didn’t bother to vote in 2022 and 2024. The ones who say all politicians are the same, so they don’t pay attention to politics. Or vote. They may be sorry they ignored their privilege and their duty.

    If the cost of groceries today, disappearance of jobs, violent ICE raids locally, illegal destruction of the East Wing of the White House and the total humiliation of the U.S. on the international stage with a president who “ends” dozens of wars except for the real one in Ukraine (“Day One”, remember?), rambles incoherently, insults longtime allies and falls asleep at meetings don’t persuade them that not all politicians are the same, nothing probably will. But it’s definitely worth a shot.

    So, yes, by all means work to win back the Congress this year and the presidency in 2028. Talk about the Epstein files every day. Go to court. And talk about Republicans’ shameful duplicity and cowardice with regard to Trump at every level of government. Every day.

    An unknown peanut farmer from Georgia beat the guy who inherited the Watergate mess from Richard Nixon in 1976. That mess pales by comparison with the grift Trump has been performing on Americans for a decade. Clean it up, please.

   As a lifetime independent voter, that’s what I think you Democrats should do.

By Bob Gaydos

Susie Wiles
… the enabler

     Donald Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.”

      Who says so? The woman who should know. The woman who runs his household, makes sure he looks ready for the day ahead and structures her own life around his anger, insecurities and alcoholic unpredictability.  The one who manages the unmanageability.

      Susie Wiles. His enabler.

      When I read that Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, had given a Vanity Fair writer 11 months of remarkably honest conversations about what Trump is like, how he thinks and operates, warts and all, I was stunned. What the heck is she doing? I wondered. She knows Trump. You can’t tell the truth about him without paying the price. And she knows Vanity Fair is going to report the truth. This is political suicide.

      After sleeping on it, I came up with another explanation. She knows better. She’s not Rudy Giuliani (who also has an alcoholic’s personality), standing in front of Four Seasons Landscaping garage instead of The Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, arguing that Trump was robbed in the 2020 presidential election.

      It’s not political suicide. It’s a warning shot and the first stage of an escape. The enabler went to Al Anon.

      Now, I don’t know if Wiles actually ever attended meetings of Al-Anon, a 12-step group for people whose lives have been significantly impacted by the drinking and alcoholic behavior of someone close to them. But, as Wiles disclosed, her father was Pat Summerall, who played football for the New York Giants, was a popular sportscaster and, by the way, was an alcoholic who eventually managed to have 20 years of recovery.

     She was certainly a candidate for Al Anon. If she went to meetings, she would’ve learned that she didn’t cause the alcoholic’s behavior, can’t control it and certainly can’t cure it. What she can do is focus on herself and her own well-being, set boundaries and support the alcoholic — without enabling him.

       Wiles may have gotten to the point where, knowing that Trump is not about to change – in fact, appears to be getting worse – that her own self-interest would be best served by getting out of Dodge. Honey, I’m outta here.

       And honey, by the way, I know a bunch of your secrets and a bunch of good lawyers, so please don’t try to stop me or hurt me.

      Of course, in Wiles’ case, she has not been an innocent victim, along for the ride because she had no choice. She had a choice. She said yes to Trump. She knows where the bodies are buried. Like Haldeman for Nixon, she’s seen the enemies list. She bears responsibility, as a primary enabler, for much of the pain Trump has caused other people

      She knows what he’s been doing and has helped him each step of the way, one day at a time. Her  charge that the article was a hit job and claims of trying to persuade Trump away from exacting political revenge ring hollow.

      But spilling the beans and your guts on Trump without having an exit plan makes no sense. If you can’t detach with love, then do it with confidence and a landing pad. Having “White House chief of staff” on your résumé doesn’t hurt.

    So, it doesn’t look like Trump‘s going to rehab. Actually, he doesn’t even drink. That leaves assisted living at Mar-a-Lago or prison. Maybe Wiles sees this happening sooner rather than later and is packing her bags.  She’ll probably write a book. 

    In any event, if my guess is correct and Wiles is planning her escape from the unmanageability of Trump’s “alcoholic” behavior, she might do well to take a look at some of the other steps in the Al Anon program. The ones about taking a fearless personal inventory of her shortcomings, making amends to people she has harmed, promptly admitting when she is wrong and, having had a “spiritual awakening,“ practicing these principles in all her affairs.

      Her father, who went to the Betty Ford Clinic and then attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, spoke openly about practicing those principles.

      Honesty is the first principle of all 12-step programs. I applaud anyone in Trump‘s inner circle being publicly honest about him. It’s rare these days. But it sure would be nice if one of them also took responsibility for their part in enabling the insanity.

      That would be Step Four, Susie.

***

(Bob Gaydos has written a column on addiction and recovery for nearly 20 years.)     

By Bob Gaydos

  I have always looked at my function as an editorial writer/columnist to not simply subject readers to my opinions on a variety of topics, but rather, to try to help them connect the dots: A plus B equals C. Or maybe it doesn’t. Here’s why.

     This past week, five prominent figures in American society died, one after another, and it seemed, at least to me, that the dots were literally screaming to be connected: Charles T. Munger, 99; Rosalynn Carter, 99; Henry Kissinger, 100; Sandra Day O’Connor, 93, and Norman Lear, 101.

     At first glance, the only obvious dots were their ages. All had lived past 90, two had reached 100 and two just missed. Good living? Good genes? Coincidence?

     Not being a big believer in coincidence, I had to take a closer look.

     Charlie Munger was the lesser-known half of the founding partners of the Berkshire-Hathaway investment conglomerate, headed by Warren Buffett. Munger was vice chairman.

       On Wall Street, everyone is always interested when Berkshire-Hathaway takes a financial stake in some company, or sells one, because of the company’s phenomenal success. Buffett usually gets the public credit, but he attributes Berkshire- Hathaway’s success to a piece of basic investment advice he got a long time ago from Munger: “Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices.”

     Buffett has always preached that same philosophy, irrespective of all the bells and whistles and charts and algorithms others use to try to game the market. Munger would have been 100 years old on New Year’s Day.

     Plains, Ga., is as far from Wall Street philosophically as one can get, but Rosalynn Carter and former President Jimmy Carter made it their home base through all 77 years of their marriage, dedicating their lives to promoting peace, social justice, mental health advocacy, caregiving and also, long after their years in the White House, helping to build homes for those of limited means. Humanitarian is a word Rosalynn Carter did proud, as First Lady and even more so later. 

   “I was more of a political partner than a political wife,” she once wrote. Jimmy agreed. Indeed, she was a major factor in his 1976 election to the presidency. Yet it would be hard, even in these times of political anarchy, to find anyone to utter a negative word about Rosalynn, the world-traveling humanitarian from Plains.

    Of course, when it came to being known and influential around the world, few could outdo Henry Kissinger, secretary of state for both President Nixon and President Ford. Unlike Carter, however, there are plenty of negative opinions to hear about Kissinger to go with the positives.

     He was a constant presence on the world diplomatic scene during the unpopular Vietnam War. Some of his policies, including carpet-bombing of nearby Cambodia, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, to this day bringing anger and scorn from many. But his efforts regarding Vietnam also brought him a Nobel Peace prize.

    Kissinger is also known for his “shuttle diplomacy” in the Mideast and is credited with helping Nixon renew diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China, a major diplomatic accomplishment. Indeed, he had still been quietly active in recent years in trying to revitalize tense U.S.-China relations.

    Diplomacy of another sort was a trademark of Sandra Day O’Connor, who, of course, will always be known as the first woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. President Ronald Reagan chose a fellow California politician in making the historic nomination and that political background was evident throughout her tenure on the court, not in a partisan political way, but in her recognition of the place of public opinion in the court’s decision-making process and her willingness to set aside her moderate/conservative views when she felt it proper to agree with the more liberal justices. It made her the quintessential swing vote in her 25 years on the court. Since her retirement from the court in 2006, for better or worse, every new justice has been a judge, not a political figure.

    When it came to acknowledging public opinions, though, Norman Lear was without peer. The creator of TV sitcom classics All in the Family and Maude, as well as Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons and Good Times, he introduced social and political commentary into popular TV shows, often going where other producers feared to go and letting people actually laugh at their own behavior.

   He received many awards for his shows, but he didn’t confine his outspoken tendencies to TV shows.  

    Lear was also an outspoken activist, supporting liberal and progressive causes and founding People for the American Way, an advocacy group that countered the growth of the Christian right in political debate. A strong supporter of the First Amendment, he also purchased, for $8 million,  one of 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence published on July 4, 1776, and took a road trip around the country with it so that Americans could see it firsthand. He was a proud American.

    And maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe that’s where the dots connect. Each, in his or her own way, was not only a proud American, but someone who contributed significantly to the American experiment. Some may have disagreed with them from time to time, but these five, with nearly 500 years of life among them, used their years to the fullest. Each lived a life worth remembering.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in/residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

A national marijuana policy is needed.

One trait of a good leader is the ability to identify an injustice and take action to rectify it.

With one stroke of his pen, President Joe Biden recently demonstrated how to use the power of his office to do just that. In the process, he also reminded Americans that a president’s primary duty is to act for the greater good of all the people rather than to constantly seek personal benefit. (A welcome reminder.)

   Biden’s pardon of more than 6,500 Americans convicted on federal marijuana possession charges was a dramatic statement of policy change and a welcome redress of past bias in enforcing drug laws. Coming out of the blue, as it did, it could also be a factor in the coming midterm elections.

    It’s a big deal.

    Even though none of those pardoned was still in prison, Biden’s pardon sent a message: It is well past time to revamp the nation’s laws regarding marijuana use on a national level and to redress the long-standing racial bias in enforcement of the laws. At a time when many states are taking action individually to legalize the use of marijuana, for recreational as well as medicinal purposes, the president’s action brought a welcome national focus to the issue. 

    “While white and black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted at disproportionate rates,” Biden said. “Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”

    Of course, presidents don’t write laws; Congress and state legislatures do. Biden’s message was meant as a wakeup call to those bodies that a cohesive, national policy on marijuana is long overdue and makes much more sense than our current hodge-podge of state laws.

    Biden was unambiguous in what he thinks should be done. His words:

     “First: I’m pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. There are thousands of people who were previously convicted of simple marijuana possession who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My pardon will remove this burden.

     “Second: I’m calling on governors to pardon simple state marijuana offenses. Just as no one should be in federal prison solely for possessing marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.

    “Third: We classify marijuana at the same level as heroin — and more seriously than fentanyl. It makes no sense. I’m asking Secretary (Xavier) Becerra (Health and Human Services) and the attorney general to initiate the process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.”

    Clear and concise.

    The so-called “war on drugs,” begun by President Richard Nixon in 1969, was, among other things, theoretically supposed to focus on “prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted.” For the most part, that health-oriented focus has been ignored for half a century as the federal government fought a losing battle focused primarily on getting rid of drugs and locking up users (especially non-white marijuana users) as well as sellers.

    As Nixon’s henchman, John Ehrlichman, subsequently revealed, the real purpose of Nixon’s “war on drugs” was to criminalize blacks and hippies and their leaders. It was political.

    Now, more than a trillion dollars later, another president has issued a sensible call for a review of one of the more glaring failures of that misbegotten war. 

      Biden has done what he can do. It’s up to lawmakers  to write fair and honest laws regarding marijuana. A majority of Americans support this. While the lawmakers are at it, it’s also well past time to recognize drug addiction as a health issue, not a crime issue. Reducing the demand for drugs might prove to be a more effective strategy than simply trying to reduce the supply.

    Of course, this approach might put a crimp in some politicians’ campaign messages, but it would clearly be for the greater good of all the people.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

Why does this man scare so many Republicans? Hint: It may not be his economic policies.

By Bob Gaydos

Stay with me here. I’m going to try to connect the dots between the Supreme Court’s absurd decision on Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and the on-the-face-of-it foolish view of many poor to middle-class white Americans that the Republican Party represents the best hope for their future and the future of America, which is why they intend to vote for Mitt Romney.

The journey will visit the wild frontier of the birthers, the loony world of Jeremiah Wright, the penthouses of the billionaire super PACS, the righteous kingdom of Rick Santorum, the go-back-where-you-came-from land of Mitt Romney, W’s fantasy factory, the Civil War, Montana, the Occupy Movement and “welfare queens.”

Yes, racism is bound to come up.

Citizens United, of course, is the 5-4 ruling that gave corporations the same rights as individuals in donating to political action committees. They can give as much as they want and the super PACs created by this free-flowing stream of wealth can mount massive media campaigns, not so much to promote their candidate as to steamroller the opponents. This was evident in the street fight that recently passed for a Republican presidential primary. It amounted to dueling super PAC campaigns in various states. Romney won because he had the most money, not because more Republican voters liked him. They still can’t stand him. They just fear Barack Obama more.

Which is Dot Number One. This was made clear when the first thing conservative Republicans in Congress said upon Obama’s election was that they would dedicate the next four years to making sure he served only one term. Instead of, you know, we’ll try to work with him in governing the country so that maybe he’ll understand where we differ, etc.

So we have had a string of “no” votes on anything Obama proposed, public officials (and the ridiculous Donald Trump) questioning whether the president was really born in the United States even after being shown a copy of his birth certificate, innuendo that he was a Muslim (because of his name) and, just recently again, efforts to link him with his freaky former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The Wright red herring was eliminated, or so we thought, four years ago, but one of those super-rich PACs recently tried to launch a TV campaign making the false link again. This time the behind-the-scenes directors were going to hire a well-spoken conservative black conservative to attack Obama, a well-spoken black non-conservative. You know, to prove that it was not a racially motivated effort. Romney got shamed into sort of denouncing this plan.

The Trump birther campaign was dug up in Arizona, naturally, when the secretary of state of that forlorn place said he might keep the president off the ballot this year if he did not get proof he was born in this country. The fact that he’s been running it for three-and-a-half years apparently didn’t matter, not when you can stir up resentments among some white voters.

Make no mistake, fear and resentment are at the crux of much of the Republican campaign against Obama. As much as they may argue that the campaign is about the economy and even though working class whites reportedly favor Romney over Obama by nearly two to one when asked who would be best for their financial interests, common sense says that many of those people understand that lowering taxes on the rich, making college loans more expensive and making affordable health care harder to get is not a plan that helps their interests.

So something else is influencing their vote.

It was not a fluke that Rick Santorum’s campaign gathered momentum when he started speaking out against gay marriage, against women’s contraceptive rights, against welfare for blacks. That’s right. Of course, this was only done in safely white enclaves, like Sioux City, Iowa. As reported in The Guardian, Santorum told a mostly white campaign rally there: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” He got cheers.

Now, the population of Sioux City is 2.9 percent black. Food stamp use in the area is up more than 25 percent in the last five years, with white recipients outnumbering blacks nine to one. So, what was his message, hope or resentment?

Romney, of course, has tried to portray Obama as responsible for encouraging a free flow of undocumented people across the border with Mexico. But Obama has supported strong enforcement along the border and deportation of undesirable illegals. He does support a plan to allow millions already in this country and contributing to the community to follow a path to citizenship, but so did George W. Bush. He just never had the guts to stick with his instincts in this matter.

This kind of color-coded campaigning began for Republicans in the South under President Richard Nixon and has steadily drawn older, white, poor and middle class voters away from Democrats, who have tended to disparage and dismiss the defectors rather than acknowledging their religious and cultural differences and trying to come to some agreement on economic issues. In the end, that might well be a losing effort. More to the point, it may be an unnecessary one.

Republicans, who came to power in this country leading the fight to end slavery, appear to have come down on the wrong side of history in several areas in their simple-minded effort to regain control of the government and the rewards that entails. Gay marriage is an obvious one example. In the near future, the whole white vs. black scare strategy will also be outdated. Latest census figures revealed that, for the first time in U.S. history, nonwhite babies outnumbered white babies. If the minorities abide by the conservatives’ pro-life, no-contraceptives philosophy so ardently espoused by Romney, Santorum et al, minorities will soon be a majority in America. Mixed race marriages will join same-gender marriages as routine. Immigrants of every stripe will continue to become part of the fabric of America and gain more positions of influence. Younger voters — like those leading the Occupy movement — will recognize what the super PACs and super banks have tried to do by throwing tons of money at politicians who will spread whatever message they want, whether it makes sense or not, as long as it keeps government out of their affairs.

And, oh yes, the Montana Supreme Court recently rejected the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United, saying that longstanding Montana law supersedes it. Other states are joining the legal fight. Even some conservative Republicans are beginning to doubt the wisdom of giving all that power to unregulated rich people. Which sort of describes Mitt Romney.

bob@zestoforange.com