By MARSHA MERCER
The first Democrat out of the gate to formally explore
a 2020 presidential bid is traipsing around Iowa this weekend.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a foe of big
banks and big business, promises to end the corruption in Washington and be a
champion for the middle class.
She has called President Donald Trump a “thin-skinned
racist bully.” He calls her Pocahontas.
Warren is the first of thousands of earnest Democratic
presidential hopefuls who soon will be out campaigning. OK, it’ll only be dozens, but it will feel like
thousands.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and 2016 Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are among those weighing bids.
Meanwhile, Trump never stopped campaigning, as his
every appearance demonstrates.
Some state Republican officials say they might
cancel GOP primaries to keep Trump from facing a challenge from within his own
party.
Democrats are determined to send Trump back to New
York after one term, but with no clear front-runner, party leader or unifying
message, at this point anyone could become the Democrats’ nominee.
The Democratic National Committee will sponsor six
candidate debates this year, starting in June.
We’re facing countless breakfasts, lunches, dinners,
tweets, emails and untold Russian influences before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential
caucuses in February 2020.
Candidates will try to outdo each other with campaign
resolutions aplenty. So, we need to pace ourselves.
What we need is W.C. Fields. Really.
I ran across a parody the comedian wrote that can
lighten and enlighten our long campaign season. In “Fields for President,” he
announces his candidacy and puts forth his thoughts about resolutions –
campaign and New Year’s.
The year was 1940, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had just
been elected to an unprecedented third term. A book nearly 80 years old,
“Fields for President” is silly, often sexist and surprisingly on point. It was
republished in 2016 with a forward by TV talk show host Dick Cavett.
Fields, whose comedic persona was as a hard-drinking
misanthrope, writes:
“Campaign resolutions are nothing more than overgrown New
Year’s resolutions: They are thrown together hastily at the last minute, with
never a thought as to how they may be gracefully broken.
“Now, I am a candidate with years of experience in the
making and breaking of New Year’s resolutions, and what I can accomplish with
those, I can certainly accomplish with campaign resolutions.”
That’s as good an explanation as I’ve seen why
campaign promises vanish into thin air.
This is the time of year for making New Year’s
resolutions, and of course reporters ask presidents for theirs. When Fox News
asked Trump his personal resolution for 2019, he replied: “Success, prosperity
and the health of our country.”
You wouldn’t expect Trump to admit he needs to change
anything, would you?
Few presidents are like Jimmy Carter who conceded
after his first year in office he’d underestimated Congress and would try
harder in the New Year.
President George W. Bush said at the end of 2001, after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “All in all, it’s been a fabulous year for
Laura and me.” He also said he didn’t regret even one of the decisions he’d
made.
To be fair, Bush enjoyed an approval rating of nearly 90
percent at the time.
But Bush also came forth with a personal resolution: “Eat
fewer cheeseburgers.”
Fields says: “Ninety-three percent of New Year’s
resolutions fail because they are based on frustration. Tell a person he must
no longer eat pomegranates, and he’ll be a nervous wreck until he does eat
them.”
What he called the Fields Plan takes the opposite
approach. “Instead of prohibiting a person from doing what he’d like to do, force him to do what he’d like to do,”
he
writes.
We’re about to see each candidate develop and pitch a
plan he or she hopes will match what voters would like to happen. But, as boxer
Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
So we’d best take all these resolutions with a healthy
dose of skepticism and a grain of salt – just not on our pomegranates.
©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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