Old Warhorses

 

February 24, 2019

 You know Robert S. Mueller III.  Perhaps not personally, but you know him and you trust him.  You’ve known and trusted men like him your whole life; they were ever present during your childhood: quiet, steady, serious in demeanor and sober in manner.  Community leaders and professionals clad in perpetually dark suits, ushers on Sundays, Scout leaders on Mondays, honing and shaping the characters of young men.  They lived unassumingly, in pleasant neighborhoods with fine families, predictably mowing their well-kept lawns on Saturday mornings.  They were almost always veterans, calm under fire, now somber pilots of Buicks in unremarkable colors.  They were honorable, benevolent, and never bragged nor beat their chests.  Not once.  And never, ever, did they mock nor belittle others.  Such men had no time for those who did.  You trusted them, and you knew they were made of a hardened metal as dependable as time itself.

So when the findings of the Special Counsel’s Office are finally released, you’ll reflect on the quiet character of Mr. Mueller, recalling the steady old warhorses of your childhood, and you’ll trust them, whether or not you want to believe, and whatever they may reveal – be it more, or less, than anticipated.  It is, however, quite likely that many will not enjoy what they read nor what they hear.  Indeed, after everything we have witnessed it may already be too painful for some to acknowledge the gravity of error in judgement for elevating this indignity to such commanding heights, and the natural, human inclination is to rant and rail against the uncomfortable but obvious conclusions piling up like cars in a multi-vehicle accident on a treacherous highway.  But the accident has happened, and nothing will change that now.

The folly of our present national course has been hiding in plain sight for so very long.  We may not have preferred many of the choices arrayed before us in 2016, but most were competent if uninspiring, and offered serious and steady leadership, however disinclined they might be toward appreciably moving the needle.  Instead, we lobbed a grenade into the room.  No one should therefore be surprised by any of what is happening, as many millions saw the danger tumbling toward us from the moment this unfit, despot-loving showman descended his brassy escalator under so little power of his own.

The cruel buffoonery on almost hourly display in the Oval Office is beneath the dignity of our nation and of its people.  It must end; and whatever our initial hopes or justifications during the fall of 2016, it is now up to us all to bravely face it, to openly acknowledge it, and to work together to fix it.  It is now up to us all to return the old warhorses to the historically revered halls of our legislatures and administrations - the type of serious men and women we once trusted and admired when, it seems, America was great. 

It is time to return to the serious and steady work of the United States.