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Saturday, November 16, 2019

Conventional Wisdom

Big Dope still has me studying politics for punishment. Don't ask. He's made me go over elections for nearly three-quarters of a century. Plus, he made me shape-shift into Joseph McCarthy and interview some Walmart shoppers. That made for some real fun times. I never know how much people missed him. More on that later.

For now, I'm to write an essay on why an openly gay man can't be elected President of the United States. Big Dope calls that "the conventional wisdom," a phrase that doesn't translated directly into Falloonian. We have wisdom, and non-wisdom, That's all, but hear me out. The pundits ask why the gay candidate even stays in the race.

Why indeed? Let's look a some factual data involving this rather odd form of wisdom, in chronological order.

1948: A former shop owner who became president accidentally cannot be re-elected. It was so obvious that "conventional wisdom" could call it in advance.

1968: A washed up politician with questionable ethics who, by his own admission, was finished in politics, couldn't be elected. No way.

1976: A peanut farmer from a southern state couldn't beat an incumbent.

1980: A movie actor? You might as well run a reality TV star.

1992: A philanderer from a small, backward, southern state could never beat an incumbent. That was what passed for conventional wisdom back then.

2000: A spoiled rich kid with a history of alcohol abuse couldn't make the jump (and, it is argued, didn't) to the White House.

2004: A man with a dubious military record who had illegally thrust the country into a tragic war could never beat a respected senator and Vietnam War hero.

2008: An African American man against a certified POW survivor? As you earthlings say, "Get of of town.

And, the most predictable of all:

2016: A multiple divorcee, bankruptcy artist, philanderer, with a total lack of internal decency, who gleefully mocked a person with disabilities, demeaned the female population, openly bore false witnesses about his neighbors, and worshiped riches above all elected to the most important office in the world? Are you crazy? Churchgoing folks would never allow it.

I wouldn't tell the gay guy to go home. My analysis of your elections reveals a mockery of conventional wisdom at times.

The pundits just know these things at times.

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