I remember the first time I ever sat in this particular bar in New York City. I found myself listening in to someone’s conversation. As it so happened, I was sitting next to Satan and he was on his cell phone. He seemed upset and was repeating what he heard. Apparently, there was a train full of politicians, managed care and health insurance executives, lawyers and doctors all on their way to Washington D.C. for congressional hearings on healthcare reform and the deficit when there was a terrible accident. Many on the train were killed, especially the politicians, as most of the other passengers attempted to use anything they could, including seat cushions, dinner trays and—- the politicians—as shields. Now their souls were on their way “down” for processing. Satan dropped the phone on the bar, threw his hands up in disgust, and cried out: “What did I do to deserve this?!”
I can remember it like it was yesterday, but that happened almost 6 years ago, and after asking him if he was all right, we started to talk — and well — Satan and I have had a cordial relationship ever since. Thanks to election season, we have been meeting regularly to talk about our single favorite topic ——– politics. Satan has often remarked how lucky he is that I am a writer and don’t have a real job or else it would be very difficult for us to spend as much time together. Earlier today he called and asked if we could meet, and here we are….
“Look, I know it seems like I’ve been procrastinating but really I have been trying to give each and every candidate for president (of which there are many including the incumbent) the benefit of the doubt and I’ve been trying to concentrate on policy. However, the majority of candidates have made the mistake of speaking audibly in public and made it difficult to focus on policy when the things they say make much better fodder. So in order to try to focus on what’s relevant I was awaiting candidates to start dropping out. But this current crop of candidates clearly doesn’t know when to quit though in the first display of clarity and good sense we have seen from Herman Cain this entire time—he just pulled out of the race.” Usually I don’t find myself sitting in a bar with Satan defending myself. The defending myself part is new. Otherwise I guess I do find myself sitting in a bar with Satan, and the closer it gets to election season the more regularly I find I’m doing it. But usually I’m attacking candidates and incumbents not defending myself. But I had promised Satan that I was working on the piece that would try and sum up each candidate and do my best to find the strength for each as well. “Okay. Okay. You can help me put the final nails in this article’s coffin!” I said to Satan.
“Go on. I am intrigued by your appealing imagery.”
“Speaking to you always optimizes my political focus and creative flow. Let’s sum up the current Republican field and see what we have to say about Obama, and maybe I can come up with something.” Hearing this Satan handed me a clipped Padron 1964 Aniversario Torpedo Maduro and said to the bartender; “Two Aberlour 18, each with two ice cubes.”
“Nice choices. Are they incentives or solace?” I asked.
“I told you I’m not omniscient. We will have to see if you screw this up royally…or just a little bit?.”
“Thanks. You know, I don’t want to say the Republican national committee is concerned about its weak field of candidates, but I heard they recently brought a voodoo priestess to Ronald Regan’s grave. Apparently, the only actual policy the Republicans can agree on is to continue to espouse trickle-down economics despite the fact that it didn’t work throughout the entire George W. Bush presidency. Given that, they figure their best chance at success might be to raise from the dead the popular president that started it all!”
“There you go again. Attacking policies just because they’re unfair and don’t work. You know, the Republicans could attack the fact that Democrats kept pushing for healthcare reform to placate a small and selfish fringe group of uninsured working Americans.” Satan noted.
“47 million hard working middle class Americans are not a fringe group and I don’t think wanting access to adequate and affordable health care, just like our members of congress enjoy, is selfish. Only people who already have health insurance complain about providing it to those that don’t. By the way, if we just sit here and rip apart everything ridiculous that all the politicians believe we could be here for days. We should try for a higher purpose—well, this time anyway: To figure out the positive aspects as well as the weaknesses of the candidates.” I remarked.
“You want to start with Obama?” Satan asked.
“No. I am saving the incumbent for last.”
“So what you’re saying is Obama should step to the back of your analysis? That seems politically incorrect.” Satan stated.
Ignoring Satan, I continued, “We can start with the Republican front runner. Who would have ever thought it would be Newt Gingrich, well, besides Newt Gingrich?”
“It sure surprised me! You know he asked me for some help.”
“Really? I’m intrigued.” I was.
“Well, he saw how I’d helped out Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain, giving them all front runner status at one time or another. That’s the only deal they were willing to make. I guess they believed once they were front-runners they could take care of it themselves and it came at a much cheaper price than the full presidency.”
“Wait. You have discounts?” I asked this with a mixture of surprise and confusion.
“The machinations of the contract with the devil are very complex. I can only give the details to those who are ready to make an offer. I have the ability to know when someone is really ready to make a deal. That’s how I got so interested in politics. A lot of people believe that it’s the poor and the greedy most likely to make a deal with the devil. That’s not the case. The poor and the greedy often have enough of a moral core to fear working with me. Politicians, by the very nature of their avocation are bereft of any of the qualities that would give them pause. However, there are limits to what they’re willing to commit to especially if they know they’ve led lives that might put them a little lower down on the ladder, so to speak.”
“I wonder if it is the multiple infidelities, the government shutdowns or the revelations about his work at Freddie Mac that would give Newt pause?” I considered.
“That’s privileged information. It’s on a need to know basis and only if you were willing to become one of Hell’s minions would I be able to share that. Think about it—lots of inside information, job security, and it’s a dry heat which is very good for allergies.” Satan offered.
“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
So a positive and the negative for Newt? AND—and—I know you have a lot to say. Let us try for longer than a soundbite, but shorter than a Tolstoy novel, okay?” Satan asked.
“Okay–Positive– he’s got a nice head of hair. Negative— he’s Newt Gingrich.”
“Wow.” Satan noted, “You’ve really honed your analytical skills.”
“I have more to say. Though we could stop right here and save some time.” Satan just looked at me and I could tell he was in no mood to ignore the rich material that Gingrich offered. “You know it’s a funny thing about Newt Gingrich, he looks good on paper. The problem is when you knock him down onto a big sheet of it he keeps getting back up. I think his current popularity stems from the fact Gingrich actually reminds people of the great times the country experienced in the 1990s. We had a great recovery like we did in the 80s but instead of all the debt we accumulated in the 80s we had a thriving economy that brought us a budget surplus. The 1990’s were a Golden age for America. I think people are forgetting that while he was involved in the politics of the 1990’s he was also an obstructionist to progress much of that time. He stood in the way of health care reform when it could have started bringing costs under control 15 years ago. We could have covered 45 million uninsured hard working Americans by now…but we didn’t. Now we have 47 million uninsured hard working Americans. I guess if it was Gingrich’s plan to keep the uninsured—uninsured—he should get an A for effort because his policies helped to add 2 million more to the roles since!
If you examine the Clinton years you might think from looking at the historical record that Newt Gingrich actually sought compromise some of the time and has a legacy of sometimes working with President Clinton to accomplish some important things. This is not completely inaccurate which to some degree is a positive for Newt, but if you look closely at the record you see that there were also two government shutdowns so rather than compromise it was an attempt to bully the president and it was a failure.
The Newt of today though, he’s not even that good. For instance, his ideas on child labor are, wait, I want to be respectful, what is a respectful way to say ridiculous? I know I’ll speak in ‘politician-ese’—his ideas on child labor are misguided. The example he gave was to fire the unionized school janitors and put the poor kids at the school to work outside class hours doing the janitor jobs under the supervision of a master janitor, but of course for much lower pay—which would still be good pay for them, right?! Since a lot of Republicans don’t like the minimum wage I would like to see what they actually propose to pay these kids (presumably under this plan America will keep producing small coinage like the penny). This is quite a plan to help the employment situation in this country, you know—firing people who have decent jobs! Not to mention—though I guess we are mentioning—that some of those newly working kids could still end up with less money because some of their parents might be the laid off janitors! It’s not that this idea is ludicrous though that makes Newt such a poor presidential candidate. It’s what this illuminates about him and also the thought process of the Republican Party that shows why so many of the candidates are not good for this country.”
“What do you mean by that?” Satan asked, the glassy look he gets whenever I talk at length about these things started to clear up.
“The Republicans blame the unions for a lot of problems in this country and it is quite clear from his idea about firing unionized janitors that Gingrich agrees with that premise. It’s funny how Republicans, and clearly Gingrich is one of them, believe that in this country you should be able to make as much money as you want, you should pay very little in taxes, and you shouldn’t have to worry about anybody but yourself, yet they think that there are a whole range of jobs that other people should do and they should make as low pay as we can get away with. “I’m a CEO, I deserve millions, even when my company has a bad year! You’re a school janitor, keeping the schools clean and safe for our children and you want to make a decent standard of living?—for shame!-and you want to join with other janitors and bargain collectively?—Oh why oh why isn’t stoning of the peasants legal in this country???”
Despite the glazed look spreading through Satan’s eyes I had started on a roll and could not stop the momentum. “In reality, when the Republicans talk about class warfare they might be correct, but not in blaming it on Obama. It is they, the wealthy that are engaging in class warfare. They seem to be the only people whose work they value. There should be no limits on executive pay and no minimum standards for anyone else. The people that attack health care reform, attack unions and attack other institutions created to ensure a basic level of income and benefits for every hard working lower American rarely are in desperate need of these things themselves. Only people who have health insurance attack plans to get it to the 47 million uninsured. High paid executives seem to find the idea of unions offensive. It seems that the wealthy in this country are finding the lower and middle classes are actually undesirable. Really?, you may ask. No, not really! It isn’t the wealthy. It’s the Republican politicians courting the wealthy. In fact, many wealthy people have gotten together and said they accept that a certain level of taxes are a fair exchange for the value they get being a part of this great nation. We have seen famous Billionaires call for fair tax policy, higher taxes on the top 1% and the continuance of estate taxes. We have seen many millionaires joint together and form groups accepting that fair tax rates may mean higher tax rates for them. It is the Republican politicians that are engaging in class warfare fighting for lower tax rates than many of their constituents believe are necessary. That is how you know these politicians are out of step with America, because they are out of synch with their own base.”
“It seems these politicians think our soldiers should fight and die for their rights; people who talk a good game about war but don’t send their kids into battle, who don’t think that security of the nation, the infrastructure of the nation, the bulk of people who work in this nation and the ill and challenged of this nation should have decent minimum standards of security, income, comfort and care. They should be able to become millionaires selling or doing whatever, but people who build cars or clean up after their kids, or who teach their children in school shouldn’t have the ability to bargain collectively to make sure that they’re treated fairly and get a decent standard of living. They seem to believe it’s okay if the CEO of a corporation that may get fired for doing a lousy job can get a golden parachute of say $5-$50 million, but somehow unionized school janitors have it too easy and are destroying America. Obviously, these “Gingrich conservatives” value a CEO who does a bad job at thousands of times more than the people who teach our children or clean up after our children. Those are all negatives for Gingrich by the way.” Satan shook his head like he already knew that.
“As for what else is positive about Gingrich? From what we know about his life so far at least it seems he hasn’t cheated on his third wife. Now, should his cheating on the first two disqualify him for running for president? I don’t know because I don;t consider the president our moral leader. I think families and their religious institutions are responsible for teaching our youth values. So I wouldn’t tell a kid to run their personal affairs like Bill Clinton did, but I would tell any child that they would be a great world leader and leave a lasting legacy of great accomplishment if they governed like Clinton! Nevertheless, the way Gingrich discussed his infidelity is should give a voter pause, and a case of nausea. Some men choose to lie about it and some are apologetic. Newt tries, as with his work with Freddie Mac, to spin everything and in this case he tries to make it some kind of honorable failing. He actually said: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” Things happened? I guess he means like, “Oh my, I got a flat tire, oh goodness, the refrigerator broke, oh gosh, this is the third time this week I am in this girl’s bed!” Blaming it on hard work and his love for his country is just an insult to hard working patriotic Americans everywhere. Every soldier out in the field, every executive toiling at his desk, every social worker, police officer and firemen, just to name a few—you should let Newt Gingrich know his ‘excuse’ is an insult. If things really worked the way Newt says, if all hard working and patriotic Americans are prone to infidelity—well, we would have even bigger problems than we already do—but we don’t—because that’s a smokescreen and it’s nonsense. “
“I believe you went a little long on Gingrich—a few articles too long! Are we there yet?” Satan moaned exasperated.
“Sure. You know, I think I went a little long because as I was speaking I just could not believe what I heard myself saying. These candidates are not like everyone else. Normal people just trying to get by and enjoy their lives have to confront voting for politicians who are out of touch. It’s like voters are—from Earth. But politicians, they are from somewhere totally different.”
“Uranus!” Satan chimed in.
“I know you have heard just about enough but you don’t have to insult me!” I was offended.
“No, I think you are on to something and I was helping.” Satan replied. “Voters are from Earth. Politicians are from Uranus!”
“You know—that’s perfect!”
Next…more from Uranus!