US president Donald Trump’s announced visit to Pittsburgh in the wake of America’s latest mass shooting — eleven synagogue congregants dead at the hand of an antisemite fanatic — received a cool reception.

The mayor didn’t want him to come. The county executive didn’t want to meet with him. Local Jewish leaders didn’t want him there. Congressional leaders of both parties declined to join him.

On the other hand, I suspect that if Trump HADN’T scheduled a visit to the city, many of the same people would have publicly demanded to know why not.

It’s not just Pittsburgh, it’s not just Trump, and it’s not just mass shootings or other terror attacks.

Presidents who don’t show up to publicly mumble prayers, hug victims, and sign emergency aid proclamations after hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes are uncaring heels. They’re ignoring heartbreak in the heartland — too busy playing politics to acknowledge tragedy.

Presidents who DO show up after such events are uncaring heels. They’re impeding relief efforts with their motorcades and distracting police and public officials with their security requirements — playing politics with tragedy.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Can’t win for losing. Flip a coin. Or at least coolly calculate how to put on the show your most valued constituency wants to see

These days, the president is a combination golfer, rock star, Ron Popeil style TV pitchman, and Jesus surrogate.

It wasn’t always that way.

The presidency described in the US Constitution is a boring, tedious job for the most part: Sign or veto bills. Appoint officials. Negotiate treaties. Tell Congress how things are going every so often (until the 20th century, that was done in a written report, not a “State of the Union” speech). Serve as commander in chief, but only when there’s actually a war on (the army was a tiny organization in peacetime until after World War Two).

Abraham Lincoln didn’t even get top billing at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in 1863. His “Gettysburg Address” came to about two minutes, wedged between band performances, prayers, and a two-hour stem-winder from semi-retired politician Edward Everett.

And after the presidency came relative obscurity, at least compared to today. My mother fondly remembers encountering an elderly man out on his daily walks in Independence, Missouri in the early 1960s. His name was Harry S. Truman. No motorcade. No entourage. No adoring mob. Just another retired guy.

From television to Twitter, American culture has turned the presidency into something else entirely over the last century — something unhealthy and idolatrous.

If we’re going to have a president, why not keep him or her in Washington — at a desk with a stack of paperwork, away from television cameras and smart phones — instead of centering every aspect of public life around his or her actions and utterances?

Sure, that would mean he or she couldn’t campaign for re-election. No problem. Limit the presidency to one term.  Problem solved, with the fringe benefit of some peace and quiet for the rest of us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the stock market crash of October 1929.

It’s closing in on a week before an American election. For some people this means that everything absolutely must be about nothing but that election, with hyperbole.

The president of the United States is fear-mongering over the approach of a convoy of Latin American immigrants to get his “base” to the polls.

His Democratic opponents are  pretending that every Republican voter is a potential mail-bomber, for the same purpose.

As I write this, a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania doesn’t seem to lend itself well to the election narrative yet. Democrats are already trying to make it about guns. Republicans note that the shooter apparently disliked Trump for being “too pro-Israel.” I’m sure the competing election-related talking points will jell before Election Day.

Things seem pretty bad, don’t they? In fact, in a Facebook political conversation the other day a loved one somberly informed me that “things have never been this bad.”

Whoa. Just one  minute there. Never?

Even focusing on the three aforementioned items, that’s not the case. Migrant caravans have been running since at least 2010, “suspicious packages” have been a weekly occurrence since the 2001 anthrax scare, and mass shootings at churches (and schools, and workplaces, etc.) have been above-the-fold news items since Columbine.

But let’s look back a little and remember how bad it’s been before.

Does the date September 11, 2001 ring any bells?

How about the Los Angeles riots of 1992  (or the Watts Rebellion of 1965)?

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, followed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 and preceded by the assassinations of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965 and John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963?

Remember Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)?

Or Black Friday (October 29, 1929)?

Or the whole period from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 (and after)?

It’s a long, long way downhill from where we’re at, and we’ve been much, much further down that slope before. More violent.  More fearful. More bigoted. Definitely poorer.

The  November 6 election won’t likely be remembered as any kind of major turning point in history.  It’s not “the most important election” of the last two, let alone of our lifetimes or our country’s.

Yes, things will almost certainly get a little worse, whichever party “wins” and no matter how resoundingly, because that’s the direction we were already headed in and not many Americans seem inclined to change direction back toward freedom (if they were, Libertarians would run the election table; the polls indicate no such trend).

Yes, the future looks pretty grim in general. Economic depression, rampant political violence, even open civil war aren’t something we’re magically immune to.

But neither are those things lurking right around the corner because you vote “wrong” (or don’t vote at all) on November 6.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Antes estuvimos mucho peor ¿las cosas pueden cambiar por una elección?” by Thomas L. Knapp, La Tribuna Hispana USA, 10/31/18

In the US, “Election Day 2018” falls on November 6 this year. But Election Day isn’t what it used to be.

The New York Times reports that “millions have voted early” — nearly a million of them by mail in the Sunshine State alone, even before that state’s early voting locations opened on October 22, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.  I cast my ballot during what I expected to be an “off” time (after the pre-work rush and before the lunch rush), and still spent a few minutes in line.

More than 1/3 of the 2016 vote came in early according to the United States Election Project. This may be the first US election in which a majority of votes are cast before Election Day.  And the results may be set in stone before then, too.

Politicians and pollsters seem obsessed with the putatively “undecided” vote, but let’s be honest: The guy who doesn’t know who he’s voting for two days before the election hasn’t been paying attention and probably isn’t going to bother standing in line just to register what amounts to a coin flip.

The real political goal is getting one’s “base” voters — the people who are firmly “decided” and probably were before the parties even nominated their candidates — off their butts and to the polls.  Early voting makes that a lot easier.

When I was younger, you either got in line — sometimes for hours — on Election Day, or certified in writing (under penalty of perjury) that you planned to be out of the county on Election Day as a condition of casting an absentee ballot.

On Election Day itself, the party organizations busted out phone banks to call voters they perceived as part of their “bases.” Have you voted yet? Why haven’t you voted yet? Do you need a ride to the polling place? Go vote!

These days, such efforts can be spread over weeks rather than hours, reducing the number of volunteers needed. Voters can cast their ballots when they find it convenient instead of wasting their lunch hours standing in line on one, and only one, day.

Early voting magnifies the incidence and effect of the “base” vote by getting the “decided, but kinda lazy” in on the action. The “undecideds” aren’t the ones casting their votes early. They’re undecided, remember?

Early voting also probably reduces the parties’ ability to leverage “October surprises” into changed minds. How many Americans had already voted before Donald Trump could menace them with migrant caravans or his Democratic opponents had time to wave the bloody shirt over the “suspected explosive devices” mailed to prominent members of their party?

Finally, early voting will hopefully continue to increase the share of the vote commanded by “third party” and independent candidates, whose followings are smaller but presumably more likely to vote anyway,  especially if it’s easier.

Is America really more “polarized” than it used to be, or is early voting just making it easier to separate out the “undecided” statistical chaff? Inquiring minds want to know.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY