CANDIDATES: Two candidates continue their fall!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

But what about Candidate Harris? Yesterday morning, deep in despair, we listed the names of the four candidates in the presidential election which took place at the dawn of the modern political era. 

Our call of the roll was flawless. As you may recall, the hopefuls in question were these:

The candidates in 1960:
John F. Kennedy: United States Senator from Massachusetts
Richard M. Nixon: Vice President of the United States 

Lyndon B. Johnson: Senate majority leader; "Master of the Senate"
Henry Cabot Lodge: Former United States Senator from Massachusetts; United States Ambassador to the United Nations, 1953-1960

Three of the four ended up in the White House. Only Lodge, the Republican vice presidential nominee, managed to escape that high honor, though even he gave it a try.

Lodge was a genuine Boston Brahmin. A quick overview goes like this:

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. 

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902 – 1985) was an American diplomat and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate and served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1960, he was the Republican nominee for Vice President on a ticket with Richard Nixon, who had served two terms as Eisenhower's vice president. The Republican ticket narrowly lost to Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson...

Born in Nahant, Massachusetts, Lodge was the grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and the great-grandson of Secretary of State Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen. After graduating from Harvard University, Lodge won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He defeated Democratic governor James Michael Curley in 1936 to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate. He resigned from the Senate in 1944 to serve in Italy and France during World War II.  In 1946, Lodge defeated incumbent Democratic Senator David I. Walsh to return to the Senate.

He led the Draft Eisenhower movement before the 1952 election and managed Eisenhower's successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination at the 1952 Republican National Convention. Eisenhower defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II in the general election, but Lodge lost his own re-election campaign to then-Congressman Kennedy. Lodge was named as ambassador to the United Nations in 1953 and became a member of Eisenhower's Cabinet. Vice President Nixon chose Lodge as his running mate in the 1960 presidential election, but the Republican ticket lost the close election.

In 1963, the now-President Kennedy appointed Lodge to the position of Ambassador to South Vietnam, where Lodge supported the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. In 1964, Lodge won by a plurality a number of that year's party presidential primaries and caucuses on the strength of his name, reputation, and respect among many voters, though the nomination went to Barry Goldwater...

Within the demographics of Massachusetts politics, Lodge defeated We Irish in 1936. He then lost to us (indeed, to Rep. Kennedy himself!) in 1952. 

As for the three who did reach the White House, none of the three left that position of his own full free will. 

President Kennedy was murdered in 1963. His successor, President Johnson, decided not to seek re-election in 1968 as the society was collapsing around him. 

President Nixon resigned from office in 1974. He wanted to spend more time with his family at the San Clemente residence he so loved.

Yesterday, lost in despair about the quality of this year's hopefuls, we glanced back through Theodore White's portrait of another candidate from 1960—his portrait of another candidate who almost reached the White House.

This candidate was defeated by Candidate Kennedy in the 1960 primaries. Plainly, White admired his vast intelligence and his devotion to the regular American people:

WHITE (page 88): What is amazing about [Hubert] Humphrey is the wealth, the diversity, the detail of his knowledge, which runs from internal labor-union politics to the price of milk to the support price on peanuts to the tonnage on the St. Lawrence Seaway to his favorite Food for Peace plan to nuclear disarmament. Name a subject and somewhere, from his reading, Humphrey has picked up an expertise that he has digested and can now deliver, fused with intensity and passion within the frame of his own philosophy: that this is a nation of individuals, of yeoman and country merchants, and government’s job is to keep the big man from crushing the little man. 

[...]

What spoiled the Humphrey campaign—apart from the underlying fact that this country, Democrats and Republicans alike, was unwilling to be evangelized in 1960—was the very simplicity, the clarity, the homely sparkle he could bring to any issue. He could talk on almost any subject under the sun—to farmers, to workers, to university intellectuals. And when he finished there were no mysteries left; nor was he a mystery either. He was someone just like the listeners. There was no distance about him, no separation of intrigue, none of the majesty that must surround a king. Humphrey in a druggist’s jacket explaining the problems of druggists in small towns and their inventories (which he could, spectacularly), or Humphrey, joining a picket line to sing “Solidarity Forever,” was just like everyone else; and a President, unfortunately for Humphrey, must be different from everyone else. Humphrey yearned for the attention of the national press; yet the national press, which bore him so deep an affection, considered him almost too easy a friend...

There's much more in White's book about Humphrey's early progressive career, which started in 1945 with his election as the mayor of Minneapolis at the age of 34. 

In 1968, he became the latest sitting vice president to be caught in the vortex surrounding the president under whom he had served. After finally breaking with Johnson late in that year's general election, he narrowly lost to Candidate Nixon, who eventually abandoned the Oval under personal stress of some undisclosed kind.

At any rate, three of The 1960 Four eventually reached the White House. That said, they weren't perfect people. 

President Kennedy conducted an affair with a 19-year-old intern who actually was 19 years old and who actually was an intern. The extremely unattractive story has been cleaned up a bit in this Wikipedia profile. 

(Because President Kennedy is also Dear Jack, our contemporary press corps has rarely mentioned this matter, even as they've endlessly worked to embellish the facts in another.)

Later, Presidents Johnson and Nixon had to abandon their posts. In each case, inevitable human imperfections are believed to have been involved.

With his devotion to ordinary people and with his vast array of knowledge, Candidate Humphrey may have been the most admirable candidate of them all in that watershed year. For ourselves, we've been thinking of those candidates in a state of mild despair as we consider the state of play within "our [flailing] democracy" in this presidential year.

Yesterday, we also listed this year's four candidates. In any perspicacious reckoning of this year's campaign, former candidate Joseph R. Biden plainly makes it five. 

Over on the Republican side, the moral and intellectual squalor seem quite apparent this year. We've long assumed that there's "something wrong" with the presidential nominee. 

Tribunes of the upper-end press have agreed, right down to the end, that this apparent state of affairs must not be reported or discussed, except through the use of high euphemism. Everyone knows that "something is wrong," but our tribunes continue to be shocked, shocked with each new manifestation which appears.

In yesterday's report, we described the GOP's young vice presidential pick reaching the bottom of the moral barrel. Later yesterday, he managed to take things even further, as reported at Mediate:

Vance Lays Into the Media for ‘Debunking’ Springfield Migrant Claims Instead of Listening to ‘People Speak Their Truth’

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance laid into the media for “debunking a story that comes from the residents of Springfield” on Monday, and urged journalists to listen “to people speak their truth" after he was criticized for promoting unfounded allegations about Haitian migrants eating pets in Ohio.

“I wish the American media was half as interested in the stress on the local schools, the stress on the hospitals, and unaffordable housing as they are in debunking a story that comes from the residents of Springfield,” said Vance at a campaign rally in North Carolina, Monday.

He then questioned, “Did you ever think about listening to people speak their truth instead of listening to some bureaucrat and assuming that everything they tell you is true?”

Sad! Adopting a braindead formulation which largely comes from within Blue America's tribe, the candidate said that the people of Springfield have been "stating their truth" about the eating of their city's cats and dogs. Even Pilate didn't stoop to that level when he posed his famous question, "What is truth?"

The people of Springfield have been "stating their truth" about the eating of cats and dogs! So said this apparently damaged young man, formerly a vastly mistreated child.

In fact, as the two people who triggered this frenzy have continued to speak their truth, they've apologized for misstating "the" truth in their original claims. But it seems that nothing is going to stop the very young man who was apparently damaged by the highly disordered upbringing he described in a best-selling book. 

Meanwhile, Candidate Trump explained himself further yesterday. It isn't just the Jews, he has now said. Catholics also have to be crazy to vote for "Comrade Kamala," this unusual hopeful has now declared.

Say what you will about Candidates Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson—none of the three was capable of this sort of gong-show, end-days campaign conduct. As for us the regular people in whom Candidate Humphrey had such faith, we the people are proving ourselves to be capable of believing almost anything during such highly fraught times as these—and we'd say that there are signs of this human proclivity among Red and Blue tribunes alike.

Inevitably, there are also the two Democratic candidates—Candidates Harris and Vance. At present, they're being slimed as obvious Commies and China symps all over the Fox News Channel.

As this happens, Blue America's great news orgs avert their gaze, choosing instead to focus all day on the latest largely useless polls.

In the last two days, Joe Scarborough has turned from Morning Joe into Shouting Joe as he has ranted about the fact that some people don't precisely agree with his every stance concerning the current race. In truth, there are shortcomings on display with our candidates too, and some people have noticed this fact. 

As we've noted, we're going to vote for Candidate Harris, who has been sensational in some aspects of this campaign. As with the previous Candidate Humphrey, she is significantly hobbled by her association with the horrors of the previous Candidate Biden. 

That strikes us as largely dumb and unfair. But that is the expected norm in all human reasoning.

That said, she too seems to be a limited person, as has always been true of everyone else. 

No candidate was ever perfect. As these end days glide along, we'll review our own hopefuls tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Jonathan plays the card