Normal Wins
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was a strong candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President for many months and through several multi-participant debates. She did not stand out much as a candidate but always comported herself well and with aplomb. Her strongest attribute was her moderate posture on many of the more controversial issues of the election. In a word, where others were flamboyant or charismatic, still others were fiery and strong-minded, and others yet were policy wonks with great depths of study and thought, but Senator Klobucher was…normal. Normal appeals to many people. People feel comforted by normal, it is predictable and easy to handle. In early March, Klobuchar dropped out of the Presidential candidacy race and immediately endorsed Joe Biden for President. She then entered the unofficial race for consideration as Biden’s Vice Presidential choice. Her qualifications were her Midwestern roots, her thirteen years as a Senator of reasonably high impact, her tough, but compromising reputation, her world-class educational background and the fact that she was viewed as normal. On May 25th, with the death of George Floyd at the hands of a group of Minneapolis Police officers, the very city where Senator Klobuchar was from (give or take a few suburban miles) and which she represented in the Senate, the tide turned towards the Black Lives Matter Movement and the need to place the calming and addressing of disrupted racial relations across the country as a priority. Klobuchar had been a County Attorney before she went into public service, which made her more or less a part of the Law & Order establishment which was being chastised by the protestors in the judicious handling of the legal matters surrounding the minority communities of the United States. Accordingly, and presumably on the sensible assumption that the Vice Presidential role need go to not just a woman (as Joe Biden had already committed), but also a woman of color (of which there was a growing list of “qualified” candidates), Senator Klobuchar politely withdrew her name from consideration about three weeks after the Floyd tragedy. That is exactly what an even-keeled, rational and normal person would do.
Today I heard an interview on MSNBC where Rachel Maddow questioned Senator Klobuchar about the recent shenanigans of President Trump and his misguided campaign. There was so very much to discuss of late. He had just had his first Coronavirus briefing in several months, a briefing where his medical experts and even Vice President Pence (is he still the head of the Coronavirus Task Force?) were absent so that Donald himself could be center stage with no competition. He has, of course, pivoted of the Coronavirus dangers like a star basketball point guard, having undoubtedly been convinced by his campaign advisors that he was on a losing track and needed to reverse course. There was also the Fox News interview with Chris Wallace where he shocked us once again with his unique and distorted version of reality as to his prospects and his responsibilities. And then there are the shocking and generally despicable acts of authoritarianism in sending in unconstitutional Federal troops (unwanted, unidentifiable, uncredentialed and ill-mannered) to Portland, as the first of the “radical leftist-controlled” cities that President Trump so dislikes almost as much as he dislikes constitutional Freedom-of-Speech protests on maters like BLM. These Gestapo tactics are bad enough in their own right, but to recognize that they are politically motivated by the Trump Campaign shift to a renewed Law & Order thrust reminiscent of what succeeded in 2016 makes them horrendous. So much to discuss.
Rachel is nothing if not an educated and informed political interviewer. Her credentials are impeccable (unlike someone like Sean Hannity, who has no degree or Tucker Carlson, who does have a degree but was turned-down for employment by the CIA) with a BA in Public Policy from Stanford, a recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship (she turned down the equally prestigious Marshall Scholarship) and a Doctorate in political science from Oxford. She asked Senator Klobuchar about all of the recent jaw-dropping events generated by Donald Trump and Amy did her usual balanced, but clearly partisan and progressive best to put the Trumpian antics into a fair, but undeniably negative light. When asked to sum up how she perceived Trump’s chances in the quickly approaching election in 100 days, she chose to quote George Will, one of the Deacons of Republican conservative journalism and generally acknowledged to be an astute judge of political horseflesh. Will had recently said that the country wants and needs a President that is more “normal” than Trump and that Biden is known for nothing quite so much as he is for being such a normal and caring person. In his best moments, Trump could never claim (nor would he probably want to claim) to be “normal”. He has made his life and career by being extra-normal (notice how I avoided saying that he is abnormal, which would be the expected reply from most people of my liberal continence).
To paraphrase Sally Fields as Forrest Gump’s mother, “normal is as normal does” and nothing that Trump does is even remotely normal. When asked recently about changing the name of army bases named after Confederate Generals like Fort Bragg in North Carolina, named after a relatively obscure General of the Confederacy, Braxton Bragg, Trump said we shouldn’t do so since our men trained for two “beautiful world wars” at that base and under that name. Who in their right mind says things like that? Certainly not a normal person. Who asks their politically appointed Ambassador to England, Woody Johnson, to request of the British government that they move the British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry Resort in Scotland? Not any normal person who understands the emoluments clause of the Constitution and would never dream of leveraging a scion of an old and respected industrial family that started Johnson & Johnson for personal gain , placing him potentially in legal jeopardy.
We have had enough of the Trump drama to last an eternity. It has succeeding in traumatizing the country and the world, pleasing no one other than Vladimir Putin with his Doomsday visions for American Democracy. We have endured the shattering of the rule of law in so many ways and have understood that we will suffer under the tilted judicial system of Trump/McConnell/Barr for years to come. We have an entire Federal regulatory system to rebuild (hopefully better this time). To do that as well as restore the people’s trust in the true and egalitarian American way of life and liberty (including a public healthcare system that is prepared to defend human life at all costs), America needs an abrupt and rapid return to normal that Joe Biden epitomizes.