Exploring the Political Landscape Through Personal Insights

I am a 77 year old retired professor who lives in the midwest in a blue state, but in a red county that is surrounded by other red counties.  My expertise is in IT, specifically networking and management information systems.  I also have an undergraduate degree in history and have significant military experience (Air National Guard).  I have written a number of books and many academic articles.  Basically, I’m just a regular person who pays attention to national politics and government.

One thing my life in academia has taught me is that most any issue or topic that seems simple on the surface is really very complex when you look under the hood.  I am bothered when the media simplifies (dumbs down) complex topics to a 30 second sound byte so that listeners are led to the erroneous belief that they have a good grasp on the subject when they clearly do not.  I am even more bothered by the rampant disinformation that is out there on social media, where there is no filter, no fact checking, and gross oversimplification of most issues.

What is here are my reflections on the current state of affairs in our country.  These opinions are mine and mine alone, but I’m sure there are others who might identify with some or all of them.

I am an independent, and have been for the past 40 years.  I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats over the years.  I look at the person, not the party.  Character is my number one criterion for earning my vote.

My first interest in politics probably came when Nixon was running against Kennedy in the 1960 election.  Both my immediate and extended families were staunch Republicans back then.  I think my grandfather was a Democrat until he got sick of FDR and switched to Republican.  But that was before my time.

I was a junior in high school when JFK was assassinated and remember it well.  In the next election, I favored Goldwater, but I couldn’t vote yet (back then the age was 21).

So 1968 was the first election in which I could vote, as I had just turned 21.  I was in Central America at the time, but voted absentee for Nixon.  He won and I paid close attention to what he was doing.  During the next years I finished college and went into the military (this was still during the war in Vietnam).  In 1973, the war ended and I was released from active duty.  I became a high school teacher, teaching social studies (U.S. history, world history, and Civics).

While I was teaching, Watergate happened and Nixon resigned.  Ford became president and the next election (1976) was Carter vs. Ford.  Being a good Republican, I voted for Ford, but he lost.

I tend to look first at the character of a candidate.  Although I didn’t vote for Carter, and didn’t agree with many of his policies, I did feel that he was probably the president of the greatest character during my lifetime.

In 1980 and 1984 I voted for Reagan.  I liked the fact that Reagan was good on the interenational stage, was a great communicator, and shared many of my policy preferences (smaller government, free trade, lower taxes, etc.).  From my perspective, he did well.

While all of that was going on, there were also local and state elections, and I found myself voting for both some Democrats and some Republicans during that time.  The 80s is probably when I began to develop more of an independent mindset.

I voted for Bush Sr. in 1988 and again in 1992, but he lost that election to Clinton.  I never could abide either Bill Clinton or Hillary, so I just made my way through the next 8 years focusing on state and local politics.

In the election of 2000, I voted for Bush, even though I didn’t like him much.  I did think he actually lost and thought Gore was robbed.  I was impressed that Gore took the defeat with acceptance.  I can only imagine what Trump would have done if that had been him.

I could not abide the Bush II administration.  His administration was afflicted by groupthink, which was really obvious in many of the poor decisions that were made.  I felt like many rights, especially of privacy, were trampled on in response to 9-11.  I voted for my first Democrat for president in John Kerry in 2004.  I was tired of Bush and felt like the Republican party was moving far to the right of where I was comfortable, even as a Goldwater Republican.  Today, most of what Goldwater stood for would not pass muster in Republican circles.

2008 was an interesting election.  I loved John McCain and knew him personally.  I think he would have made a good president, but he lost my vote when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.  I suspect he was pressured into that, but, knowing John, I knew he had health issues and couldn’t abide the thought of her taking over if something happened to him.  So I voted for Obama.

In the next election, I liked Romney as a candidate, voted for him, and was disappointed when he lost.  I think he would have made a good president.

That brings us to the election of 2016.  I’ve lived with the spectre of Donald Trump for many years (he’s only 1 year older than me, so we are peers).  In all that time, he was constantly in the news as a playboy grifter who ran projects into the ground, wouldn’t pay his contractors, and had many bankruptcies.  He was the stereotypical playboy.

Trump always was interested in politics, mostly because he thought it would gain him contacts and influence and line his pockets.  He appeared in the presidential race in 2008 and 2012, but was basically laughed off both times, garnering very little support.

When he appeared on the scene again in 2016, the Republican party was in disarray.  Even with that in mind, nobody thought he was really serious, as he seemed to turn up every 4 years on a lark.  But this time he won the nomination, I think to his great surprise.

The thing he had going for him was his opponent.  Hillary Clinton was a polarizing figure and people either loved her or hated her.  I would never have voted for her.  Then again, I couldn’t vote for the grifter and carnival barker Trump either.  Since I’m not inclined to sit out presidential elections, I voted in 2016 for a third party candidate that had no chance of winning.  This was the first time I had done that, but I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for either of the major candidates.

When Trump won, I figured he would be a disaster, but thought that maybe enough guardrails were in place that he would be guided in the right direction.  I was wrong on that.  I consider his first administration a disaster.  His love of tariffs was the antithesis of everything I believed in with regard to free trade.  I didn’t think he was smart enough for the job either.  The only thing he had ever managed was a company of less than 50 people.  He had no sense of history and had a narcisistic personality.  Until covid hit, I had thought that we were fortunate that we hadn’t had a real crisis during his term.  He completely botched handling covid and cost the lives of many thousands of people, including some personal friends of mine.

In the next election, 2020, I voted for Biden, whom I thought and hoped would bring back some normalcy to the office.  I think I was correct there, although I didn’t agree with everything he did.

After January 6th, I was very upset when the senate refused to convict Trump in the impeachment, which would have barred him from holding future office.  If a few more Republican senators had had any guts, that would have happened (and should have happened).  I mostly blame Mitch McConnell for that travesty.

I think Joe Biden should have declared, about halfway through his term, that he was not going to run again.  Trump had 4 years to campaign while Harris ended up with only a couple of months.  Not exactly an even playing field.

I consider Trump to be one of the worst presidents in American history, and I still cannot believe that he was elected twice.  Fool me once …