Another nail-biter election. This isn’t the first time a presidential race has raised the sales of tranquilizers.
The baseball guru, Yogi Berra said it best, “it’s deja vu all over again.”
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are continuing a long-time American tradition of close ones. Races are always close when both sides believe their guy is going to save the country from the other guy who is going to destroy it.
Each side thinks they are the good guys on a mission to save the world from certain doom.
Democrats think that Trump is Darth Vader trying to control the country with his iron grip. Republicans think Biden is a sniveling liberal dead set on turning America into an evil, communist country.
Worse than that, Republicans think Biden is a party pooper that will force them to wear those darn masks. Demos think Trump is a reckless party animal out to spread the plague throughout the countryside.
It’s the only situation where both sides are right and both are wrong at the same time. If either side looked closely at their opponent they might see why people like him.
I am a hardcore liberal but last night, for a moment, I had a feeling that will have me going to therapy for years. For a fleeting second I admired Trump. Here’s this guy in John Wayne style, that caught the COVID-19, brushed it off and went out and campaigned through five states. There’s a hero. Forgive me mom and dad, and John F. Kennedy for a moment of weakness.
And if the Republicans saw for a second a poor kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, with integrity leading him on rising to vice president. Then see how he lost a wife and daughter and a son, and kept going with a hidden tear in his eye. If they could see his heart wanting to help the lowest of the low get a chance at life, they’d see another hero.
So understandably it’s a flat-out tie. It’s happened before, like with Al Gore and George W. Bush — that was a shock.
Before the election, I went camping in the mountains. I came back to town three days after the election all ready to find out who won. I asked the first person I saw, “So who’s the president?” He said, “No one knows.” I thought he was crazy, but that huhu went on for weeks.
I was there for the famous one with Richard Nixon and Kennedy, another squeaker election. The old-timer, favorite son Nixon versus an upstart U.S. Senator with a funny accent. At the debates it didn’t hurt Kennedy that he looked like a movie star, and Nixon was unshaven looking like he just stumbled out of the drunk tank. It was still close — out of millions of votes, Kennedy won by about 50,000 votes.
They can’t all be George Washington who ran unopposed, and won every single vote.
So now it’s Trump and Biden. How we wish it was all over. I have a saying for you, “Let America Relax Again.” May the best man win, but make it happen fast please, I’m running out of tranquilizers.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-weekly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com
