Beto O’Rourke is running for president. The ex-Democratic congressman failed in his bid last November to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Sorry, Beto, but I cannot conceive of choosing a candidate for the nation’s highest office if he could not win the support of his own state. We’ve been there before. We muddled through eight years of George W. Bush because Al Gore couldn’t carry his home state of Tennessee. Sure, Beto has more charisma than Al, but I still want a winner, not a close second, as my candidate.
I learned the other day reading a Gail Collins column on Beto that he is so enraptured with the Odyssey that he named his first child Ulysses. Which made me wonder, why didn’t he name his son Odysseus, the Greek name of the heroic character of the epic poem by Homer who spends 20 years away from home, 10 fighting the Trojan War and another 10 on an action-packed journey back to his wife, the ever faithful Penelope? Why did he choose the Roman counterpart name, Ulysses? Was he already playing identity politics because he knew there are more Italian-American voters than those of Greek ancestry? Why didn’t he just call the kid Homer? That way he’d also get the Simpsons crowd behind his candidacy.
For the record, I’m also against Stacey Abrams thinking that coming in second in a tight Georgia gubernatorial race entitles her to think she is the best choice to be the Democratic presidential nominee able to send Donald Trump and his family packing from the White House.
Ditto for Andrew Gillum, former mayor of Tallahassee and near-winner of the governorship of Florida.
Where do these people get their hubris? Hubris is another one of those Greek words we should all pay attention to.
Yes, as Gillum pointed out to Bill Maher last Friday night, Abraham Lincoln failed to beat Stephen Douglas in their Senate race from Illinois back in 1857, but let’s not equate Beto or Stacey or Andrew with our 16th president.
To Impeach or Not? People who advocate for Trump’s impeachment argue he is unqualified for the job of president. They might be right, check that, they are right, but being unqualified is not an impeachable offense.
So let’s stop using that argument. Qualified or not, Trump received sufficient votes in states with enough Electoral College votes to win the election.
The task now is to pick a candidate who can carry states with more than 270 electoral votes. Beto, Stacey and Andrew may excite enough voters to win some primaries but could they win a general election? I’m not convinced.
How Do I Feel? My friend Mark, who will be turning 70 in a few months, asked me the other day if I felt any difference physically now that I am into my eighth decade. Not really, I replied. As a reputed hypochondriac to friends and relatives I told Mark it was all a matter of mind over matter.
But last night as I was waiting for sleep to overwhelm my too active brain near midnight I cataloged what had transpired since my March 6th birthday:
My dentist told me I needed two replacement crowns and a filling repair. Within a week a temporary crown he installed cracked during breakfast, necessitating a frantic dash to his office;
A prolonged head cold left me with inflamed ear canals; ear drops prescribed by an ENT specialist;
And, most troubling, for the third March in four years I am experiencing back pain near my right kidney. Four years ago I suffered with a kidney stone throughout a most unpleasant flight from London. Fortunately, the pain subsided once I showed up in the emergency room of White Plains Hospital. Exactly a year later what I thought was another kidney stone turned out to be a bladder stone. That ailment required what doctor’s call a bladder blaster procedure and an overnight hookup to a catheter. I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking of that predicament. I don’t know how this new pain will be resolved but I do marvel at its timing, always slightly past the Ides of March.
Was this ache like the mysterious hip pain that afflicted me for about 10 minutes on my 35th birthday, or could it be traced to a muscle strained Monday morning while chopping some lingering ice along the pathway to our yard? As I lay in bed in the middle of Monday night it hurt if I faced left but not if I faced right or remained on my back. By morning the pain was mostly gone, hopefully never to return, at least for another 12 months.
