Presidential Primary Candidates and Reduction Sauces
Have you had the
experience of going to a restaurant and as the waiter or the waitress describes
the special they say something like: “And this is cooked in a white wine
reduction sauce?” Or…some sort of
reduction sauce.
I looked up
“reduction sauce” on the internet and here’s what Wikipedia says: “Reduction
is performed by simmering or boiling a liquid such as stock,
fruit or vegetable juices, wine, vinegar, or a sauce until the desired volume
is reached by evaporation. This is done without a lid, enabling the vapor to
escape from the mixture. Different components of the liquid will evaporate at
slightly different temperatures, and the goal of reduction is to drive away
those with lowest points of evaporation. It thus can be seen as a form of distillation,
capturing those components that have the highest boiling point.”[1]
That is sort of what I figured. A reduction sauce is the essence of the
sauce, the distillation of it.
Now…I have a question for you. Is it possible that Donald Trump is the
“reduction sauce” of the Republican Party and that Bernie Sanders is the “reduction
sauce” of the Democratic Party? Are they
the distillation of their respective parties?
After one boils off all the elements with a low evaporation point are
they what is left?
Sanders and Trump are both on high heat…
drawing enthusiastic crowds –though Trump’s are a lot larger than those of
Senator Sanders. They are both
challenging the status quo and are outsiders. Trump has never been in
politics. And though Sanders is a US
Senator, he is a socialist for heaven’s sake.
How much more “outside” can you be, how much more a challenger of the
status quo?
And yes, I know that Hilary Clinton is the
“presumptive” nominee (that is what a democratic fundraiser said to me last May
when I balked on giving money to her). But
to me she is, the “same old, same old”. She is the invasion of Iraq, all over
again. (She supported it.) She is a heavy, old, unreduced sauce. She is the boring meat and potatoes with controversy
after controversy after controversy on the side. She is the establishment. And
that may or may not be a good thing, but is this not a fair call to say that
she is not a reduction sauce?
Let me
set these observations in a personal context. My questions about the Republican Party stem
from living in North Carolina during the Senator Helms years. The first
election I ever had the privilege of voting in was when he was first elected to
the Senate in 1972. Helms ran against a
man of Greek heritage named Nick Galifiankis.
Galifianakis went to public schools and then to Duke undergrad and law
school. He served in the US Marines.
I understand that it was hard to be a
Democrat in North Carolina with McGovern as the presidential nominee. I understand that some conservative Democrats
defected to Helms. But what I remember most is Helm’s slogan: “Vote for Helms: He’s One of Us.” It was a not so subtle suggestion that
Galifianakis’ Greek heritage made him somehow less “American.” He was a Marine, for heaven’s sake. It was offensive. Nor was it a “one off” for Helms. [2]
My experience of Helms was that he divided us
over and over and over again, often on issues of race. And he represents the Republican Party to me
in many ways. Republicans have been able to take divisive social issues and use
those to build winning coalitions. It is
not always about race, of course. For
instance, for a while Republicans were able to exploit voters' dislike of
homosexuals to win elections. At any
rate, for me, Trump is a bit like Helms, with bad hair. An amazing politician and amazingly divisive.
Here's what I am thinking. Put the Republican Party into a pot, boil it
down from 1972 until 2016 and…voila…Donald Trump! Peter Wehner, a lifelong Republican who has
served in a number of Republican White Houses and on a number of Republican campaigns
says, “Over the years we have seen the antecedents of today’s Trumpism on both
issues and in style –for example, in Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaigns in
the 1990s, in Sarah Palin’s rise in the party, in the reckless rhetoric of some
on the right like Ann Coulter. The
sentiments animated these individuals have had influence in the party…Mr. Trump
is precisely the kind of man our system of government was designed to avoid,
the type of leader our founders feared –a demagogue figure who does not view
himself as part of our constitutional system but rather has an alternative to
it.” [3]
It may
be possible to see a trajectory from Helms in 1972 to Trump in 2016. But one thing is for sure, Helms was not
nearly as entertaining. Now
understand…when one is boiling down the Republican Party, a lot of stuff, stuff
that I like, is boiled out. I am just
wondering, when you boil it down…the way it seems to be boiling down this
election cycle and others like say…Jeb Bush evaporate …is this not the essence
of the Republican Party today?
I know the “establishment” Republicans are
all against Trump. But their protests
ring hollow to me. They were willing to exploit the folks flocking to Trump for
years, cynically never intending to follow through on what those folks really
wanted (thank heavens), so now…those exploited folks are having their day and I
say, “What did you expect?”
Now…on
to the Democrats. It is likely that the pot will not reach full boil and we’ll
have a half cooked candidate - Hillary
Clinton. But what if…what if…the pot
just keeps right on boiling down….and we have Bernie Sanders?
I am not a socialist, not by a long shot. I deeply distrust big government which is
what socialism means to me. I think
this comes, once again, from when I was growing up and reaching young
adulthood.
When I was young there was a draft and I had
a low draft number. A war was raging in
Vietnam and I was against that war. It
was appalling to me that a bunch of old men in Washington (and they were men
and they were all older than me) could make me, against my will, go over to
another country and kill people. Until
1971, while this war was going on, you couldn’t vote until you were 21. So it was fine for you to kill and die for
the politicians’ policies, but you couldn’t vote.
In Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir, “The
Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” he
admits that he waged the war in error.
He was the chief architect of that war so it turns out I was right not
to trust the government. The 2003
documentary, “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S.
McNamara” shows how McNamara tried to make amends for his mistakes. He opposed the war in Iraq and was a vocal
critic of that war, for all the good his protests did.[4]
(Full disclosure, I was and am appalled by
the Iraq war. Not by the people who
fought valiantly in it, but by the policy.
It was wrong. It has destabilized
the Middle East. We have sown the wind
and we are reaping the whirlwind, in my opinion. The two candidates in the race for president
this year who were against the Iraq War…Trump and Sanders.)
So…back to big government. I don’t trust it. Yes…I am a fan of NASA and think getting to
the moon was an amazing thing, and NASA was and is a government
institution. Yes…I understand that our
military is a government institution and has kept this country safe, in so many
ways. My father was a World War II
veteran. My grandfather served in the
First World War. (My extended family was
shooting at each other in the Civil War, so let’s not talk about that.)
Point is, there are some things that
government does well… like interstate highways and roads. But I also know that power corrupts and
absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, I
fear that the more power and control the government has, the more possibility
there is for corruption.
Where Sanders is concerned, I think I have
much more faith in free markets than he does. I have money in the stock market. I am one of those people who really believes,
over the long haul, American business will come out on top…make profits, employ
people, put money in my bank account.
I know there are tremendous problems, as the Great Recession has shown. I do suspect there was a lot of criminal
activity in the financial sector that has gone unpunished. There need to be
better laws to protect the economy as a whole from those who would drive it
into oblivion for personal gain.
But ultimately, I have faith in the
capitalist system. I like the way personal initiative and
(Full disclosure: I hate filling out forms. I am not good at it. My main interaction with
government is filing taxes and it is incomprehensible and hateful. I have to hire someone to make any sense of
it. At any rate, socialism to me sounds
like endless forms…endless permission slips.)
But
here’s the question. Does Sanders
represent the inclination the Democratic Party has to think the government can
solve all problems? For instance,
Sanders thinks the government can run the health care system better than the
private/public partnership we have with ObamaCare. I am not so sure. Regardless, I wonder, even though he is a
registered independent, is Bernie Sanders the reduction sauce of the Democratic
Party?
There are lots of flaws in these arguments. But what if…we are dealing with
reduction sauces… boiled down political stews…and we have reached the essence
of the two main parties where Trump is a nationalistic, opportunistic, demagogue
and Sanders is an isolationist, anti-business, government-knows-best socialist? What if?
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