It's always prudent and politic to seek unconventional sources for insight and perspective, especially when it comes to the politics of our time.
Fresh eyes, fresh ears, you know, the whole fresh look/listen thing.
This time around, I'm availing myself of the wit, wisdom and wherewithal of an uncommon combination of consultants.
Conservative columnist George Will. Iconic author and playwright George Bernard Shaw. And 70's pop legend Meat Loaf.
One can only imagine what these three cultural contributors have in common.
One need not imagine for long.
The common thread weaves its way into our conversation shortly.
802 days ago, at this writing, America ran out of luck.
In fairness, it might be more appropriate to put it this way. America's winning streak was over.
And the irony of that observation isn't lost on anyone paying attention, given that two years ago an election turned out to be heavily influenced by the whole idea of winning.
One of the few influences on that election, by the way, that we can actually be assured were homegrown, as opposed to imported from any one of a number of nations, but, well, okay...Russia.
But as all winning streaks must, the particular winning streak I'm talking about came to a screaming, screeching, sorry excuse of an end the moment the Electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin went that-a-way and not the this-a-way that every poll, pundit and prognosticator from Pasadena to Pittsburgh had been projecting repeatedly.
107,000 votes in those three states. That's all it took to tip the Electoral College outcome in favor of the candidate from the Republican Party.
The Republican Party. Whom I'm sure you'll all remember from your history books, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, Reagan and assorted and sundry Bushes. Due respect to Margaret Mitchell, a political party....gone with the wind.
In a nation of 327.16 million people and 156 million eligible voters, 107,000 people sealed the deal.
Yeah. Those who want to board up the windows and doors of the Electoral College are just sore loser, rabble rousers, you know.
But the whole Electoral College bicker and bitchfest is a bicker and bitchfest for another time.
Let's get back to luck.
The dictionary defines luck as "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions." As a verb, it is to "achieve success or advantage by good luck", 'I lucked out and found a great job'. Not in coal, of course, or government work involving any agency or department subject to being shut down at any time or tantrum, but a great job, a terrific job, just terrific.
And with luck, it's an easy hop over to talking a little about the odds.
Again, dictionary def: the ratio between the amounts staked by the parties to a bet, based on the expected probability either way.
Yeah. BORED. We all know what the odds are. The "odds" in our usual usage, are the chance or chances we have of anything happening the way we want or need them to happen as opposed to it all going south when we least need that to happen.
The odds that your bank deposit will be credited to your account before those six checks you wrote clear.
The odds that it will snow knee deep when they're only forecasting flurries. And vice versa.
The odds that, before your life on this Earth comes to its end, you'll be able to get Baby Shark out of your head once you've heard it.
The odds that despite every , with one notable exception, presidential candidate vowing to bring us all together, we will ever actually, under any imaginable circumstances, come together.
America likes to take chances. They like to go up against the odds.
Just do a quick You Tube search of videos featuring people driving their cars around while wearing a blindfold like Sandra Bullock in that movie.
Hey, I said America likes to go up against the odds. Intelligence is never a given at any time.
America also likes winners. And, of course, winning. Again, I would refer you to the millions of Americans who put the fate of this nation in incompetent, amateur hour hands solely on the promise that there would be lots and lots...and lots of winning.
At the same time, America, if only subliminally, identifies with losers. Just ask George Will.
Besides his credentials as a political analyst and cultural commentator, Will is a life long fan of, and author of a couple of books about, baseball. The once upon a time great American pastime.
I only say once upon a time because, from all indications, more time is now officially spent staring at smartphones than watching intentional walks.
Will has an interesting theory about why baseball has been, for so long, so universally appealing to so many.
The foundation of his theory is failure.
For those not hip to the jargon, when a baseball player hits, say, .333 for the season, he is considered very successful as a batter for that particular season.
Yay.
The .333, of course, being the percentage of times he got a hit in relation to the number of times he went to the plate. They throw in an extra digit for their own nefarious purposes, but, for the simpler math lovers in the cheap seats today, let's put it this way:
A batter hitting .333 is getting a hit 1/3 of the time.
And again. Yay.
Will, meanwhile, correctly, and not just a little sardonically, points out that 1/3 means that the batter is failing 66.6666666% of the time.
66.67% rounding up.
67% if you're not a fan of the team.
So, in baseball, it can accurately be offered that three out of ten ain't bad.
Our other George, today, Mr. Bernard Shaw, puts his own fun p.o.v. on the whole percentage perspective.
"...when I was a young man, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work..."
Glass half full is always a tasty treat. Even when it leaves just a little Hallmark Card aftertaste.
Finally, wrapping up this homily reflecting on how we can't always get what we want, we turn to who put the ground beef back in rock and roll, Meat Loaf. And, again, in the interest of accuracy, we're obliged to include the name Jim Steinman, the composer/lyricist who put Loaf's lips around the six word phrase used to comfort the having fallen short amongst us.
Two out of three ain't bad.
All of this is by way of illustrating that nothing in life is guaranteed, all good things must come to an end and just like patience, excuses, gas and your brand of cigarettes wherever you stop for cigarettes,luck....runs out.
802 days ago, at this writing, America's luck ran out.
The concept of choosing one person to be the leader of an entire nation has always been risky business.
After all, we're talking about choosing a human being. That biological enigma chock a block full of contradictions, virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses, skills and lack thereof.
And in the 230 year history of the Presidency of the United States, America has, let's just cut the crap and to the chase...lucked out.
Those history books are filled with mountains of minutiae about the idiosyncracies, quirks, eccentricities, even flaws and failings of the 43 men who held the office beginning in 1789. (yes, 44 presidents through 2016, but Cleveland was elected twice, non consecutively, so, 43 men)
Here's a few fun facts to share at the espresso machine.
Washington's teeth weren't wood, they were made of animal teeth, brass screws and even some bone.
John Quincy Adams was a daily skinny dipper in the Potomac River.
Jackson killed a man in a duel for insulting his wife.
Buchanan bought slaves, so he could free the slaves, so as to enhance his reputation.
Cleveland's wife...was his adopted daughter.
Harding had an illegitimate daughter.
Coolidge liked having his head rubbed with petroleum jelly.
Eisenhower ordered squirrels be shot because they messed up his putting green.
Kennedy hit on everything that wore a skirt.
Johnson was vain, petty and, arguably, clinically narcissistic.
Carter reported a UFO sighting.
And that's just the greatest hits.
Humanness on outrageous, even offensive, display notwithstanding, though, through 230 years and 43 men (... again...43 men...Cleveland), not one man who stood with a hand on the Bible and swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States...
...ever publicly and bluntly denigrated and undermined the authority and reputations of the FBI, the Department of Justice and the American Justice System, including but not limited to judges and their courts.
...publicly insulted and ridiculed generations long allies of the United States
...publicly incited hatred, and possible retribution, on the free press by declaring them "the enemy of the people".
...held private meetings with leaders of American adversaries, refused to testify as to the content of those meetings and oversaw the destruction of any and all records of those conversations.
...directly caused drastic economic downturns by careless, reckless public commentary, primarily through social media...
...publicly mocked, denigrated and ridiculed anyone who expressed any opinion, suggestion or fair and reasonable criticism of his actions for any reason...ever.
...mocked and/or made a mockery of essentially every inch of the foundation upon which America has been built...
...endorsed, by failure to condemn, white supremacist groups, hate groups and neo-Nazis.
...pandered obviously, and disgracefully, only to a specific group of hate filled, racist deplorables.
...inspired the creation of new hate groups and lynch mobs that wear the red cap of MAGA as proudly as did hate groups and lynch mobs 80 years ago wearing the twisted cross known as swastika.
America, for 230 years, lucked out.
Those with overwhelmingly outrageous failings as a human being were weeded out of the process before the process took them all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania.
And those flawed souls who managed to move into the Oval had, at least, a fail safe sense of dignity, integrity and a love of and respect for this country, its values and its traditions, that served as their saving grace during their time in office.
That our America went 230 years without the worst of us slipping through the cracks was, undeniably, a certified lucky streak.
802 days ago, at this writing, America ran out of luck.
We measure a lot of our success in life by percentages.
Three out of ten in baseball....one out of ten in business and the arts....two out of three in matters of the heart.
And it can be argued that 44 successes out of 45 attempts is a spectacular batting average.
But to say, knowing what we know and seeing what we've seen in the last 802 days, that only 1 out of 45 is something of which we can be proud?
No such luck.
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