I get to go to a lot of overseas places, like Canada.”
Britney Spears
By the time the next edition of this column appears in print for public consumption (or for lighting a fire with the advent of winter), cataclysmic, life-altering, “stream of consciousness” events will have occurred or will be soon occurring. For example, a new series of “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” the American Reality Series depicting the privileged Kardashian-Jenner-blended family lives, famous for its poor reviews and complete lack of intelligence, simply “famous for being famous,” according to one critic, will once again be featured on E! Cable Network. Having spent a good portion of my time on the trails of Glacier National Park, in the glaciated valleys of the Cabinet Wilderness, hiking favorite haunts in my beloved Yaak Valley, and evenings spent with kids in the gymnasiums of Libby High School and Troy, I must admit to a serious Social Media defect in thinking the Kardashians were some kind of a brand, like a Las Vegas Hotel chain, a luxury clothing line, or perhaps even a rock band. Come to find out, they are a “band” of sorts-a band of over-publicized narcissists who contribute considerably to the polluted Los Angeles air and not a whole lot to humanity.
Of greater significance, the daily apparel of Meghan Markle will garner front page news, as it did throughout her recent tour of Fiji and Australia. And of course she and Harry are expecting a new little “Royal,” an event the world will follow with breathless anticipation. Now, let me make clear that I think much more highly of England’s generally benign Constitutional Monarchy (despite their murderous ancestry) than did the Sex Pistols, the English Punk Band who, in 1977, produced the highly critical, wickedly sarcastic “God Save the Queen” single during Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, a number featured on their album, “Never Mind the Bullocks.” Or the December 9, 2010 incident when Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla (a stuffy couple if there ever was one, and well-suited for each other-how Princess Diana must have suffered) came under fire by student rioters while on their way to London’s Palladium for a Royal Variety Performance. As the rioters “rocked” their Rolls Royce, they chanted “off with their heads,” a chilling reminder of the French Revolution when the gutters of Paris were running red with the blood of French nobility. However, polls consistently show that England’s royal family has the support of 70-80% of the public-perhaps to perpetuate the fantasy that England remains an Empire of sorts-rather, more likely because of Diana’s legacy, and the fact that Prince William and Prince Harry had the sense to buck “tradition” and marry “Commoners,” both of them extraordinarily classy and glamorous. If one remains oblivious to the Kardashian saga, or even repulsed by it, the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle wedding was worthy of our rapture, even for a Social Media-challenged person like myself.
I loved the sermon delivered by Bishop Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and an African-American, and even more so loved the arrangement of “Stand By Me,” performed by the Kingdom Gospel Choir under the direction of Karen Gibson. The setting, in Windsor Castle’s beautiful St. George’s Chapel, was largely attended by English “Bluebloods,” who, I delighted in watching, nearly choked on their Porridge, Beans on Toast with an Egg, and Stewed Prunes during Bishop Curry’s sermon and “Stand By Me.”
All in all, the wedding was so incredibly inspirational, and besides applauding Prince Harry, my thinking throughout the service was, “Meghan Markle, you go Girl!”
“The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter; they are an entire banquet.”
Mark Twain
Sarcasm aside, yesterday, Nov. 6, the mid-term elections took place where all 435 seats in the House of Representatives were up for grabs as was one-third of the Senate. The “Founding Fathers” required all Representatives to run for reelection every two years in order to “throw the rascals out” if necessary, although I’ve been unable to find the word “rascal” in the Constitution. I guarantee however, that the language directed at each other during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was much worse than “rascal.”
A 1911, public law entitled Law 62-5, determined that the House would not exceed 435 despite inevitable population gains throughout the country (with the admission of Hawaii in 1959, the House temporarily expanded to 437 seats, but after the 1960 census, reverted back to 435). How then, to keep the House at 435 given an expanded population? Simply by reapportioning House Districts after each census (taken every ten years), leading to considerable political “Gerrymandering” in urban districts where political hacks of both parties often draw House Districts lines to either include or exclude population groups to the advantage of one political party or the other (House Districts are, by law, supposed to be drawn according to “Contiguous Territory, i.e., based on geographic boundaries). Thus, at one time Montana had two Representatives, one for Western Montana, the other representing Eastern Montana with the Continental Divide separating the two Districts. However, since much of the population expansion took place into the American Southwest and Southeast, Montana, with a population expansion taking place certainly but at a much slower pace, lost one of our two Representative Districts to a hurricane-stricken, crocodile and snake- infested state with a large retirement constituency. Montana then, has the distinction of being the most populated single-House District in the United States.
The same “Founders,” creating the Senate ( the Upper Chamber), one dealing with matters of greater import than the House (approving treaties, Supreme Court Justices, etc.), were disinclined to have the potential turnover one might experience in the House, and thus gave each Senator a six-year term, with one-third up for reelection every two years. The state’s two Senators are never up for reelection in the same year. Accordingly, Jon Tester, a Democrat who has served two terms (12 years) in the Senate, was up for reelection in Montana this year.
Political history provides a less than stellar picture in the mid-terms for a president’s party. In twenty-one mid-term elections since 1934, only twice has the president’s party gained seats in both the Senate and the House, and significant losses usually occur in the mid-term of a president’s first two years in office. For example, in the 2010 mid-term election (Obama’s first term), the Democrats lost 69 seats, six in the Senate, and 63 in the House. In the current House races, Democrats had a decided advantage in that Republicans were defending 25 seats in Districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 (Democrats needed to win at least 23 seats to “flip” the House). It appears, as of this writing, that suburban, college-educated young women were circling their opponents, to use a Montana analogy, like vultures over a road-kill carcass, and would determine the makeup of the next House of Representatives in the 116th Congress. The Senate race, however, should not have generated an educated conversation. Republicans were defending just nine seats, compared with the Democrats’ 24. And ten seats held by Democrats seeking re-election were in states President Trump won in 2016, half of them by double digits (and that of course includes Jon Tester’s seat). It was highly unlikely that the Republicans would lose the Senate, but could have, in fact, gained several more seats.
However, given the science of polling these days (Harry Truman delighted for the rest of his life holding up a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s Nov. 4, 1948, front page story entitled “Dewey Defeats Truman!”), and with so many polling “experts” operating in a partisan manner, nothing should have surprised us at this point in the mid-terms.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
James Madison, 1788, Federalist Papers, No. 51
On March 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appealed to the “Better Angels of our Nature” in his first Inaugural Address, and yet approximately 620,000 lives were lost in the agony of America’s greatest conflict, the Civil War. Joseph J. Ellis, author of “The Revolutionary Generation” (winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for History), suggests that “trusting in the “Better Angels of our Nature” is a bad bet.” Ellis claims that the Founders didn’t believe in “better angels.” They created a Constitution designed to deal with imperfect human beings.
However, it has been my personal belief that a groundswell of decency in the American people of all faiths and ethnicities, would, on Nov. 6, reaffirm Lincoln’s belief in our “better angels.”