Although I wrote a political column in 2008 from the Democratic viewpoint, my current political affiliation is simply “American.”
Like most people, I suffered through the debt ceiling debacle, and I’m fearful. I’m fearful when a New York Times cover pictures a woman shopping recklessly for a pair of $1,600 shoes while far too many unemployed parents shop sparingly just to put food on the table.
History tells us this emerging economic disparity was the climate d’jour just before the Great Depression. It took World War II for the U.S. to fully recover, yet we are in this mess in part because of endless wars, our refusal to prosecute Wall Street thugs, and our cowardly reluctance to require that woman wearing those $1,600 shoes to pay taxes.
Does that view make me a Democrat? A liberal — or a socialist?
A few years back, in a one-man play, Ken Howard portrayed former House Speaker Tip O’Neill. My favorite anecdote about O’Neill and President Reagan (notorious drinking buddies) would/could duel and disagree all day long — but at 5 o’clock, all that came to an end.
O’Neill would occasionally get a call mid-afternoon, and an voice would whisper anonymously, ” Is it 5 o’clock yet?”
This was, of course, long before Reagan’s sad and debilitating slide into Alzheimer’s and long before America’s sad and debilitating slide into gridlock, incompetence and confusion as we try to remember who we once were, and what it was we stood for.
Buddy Doyle
Gardiner
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