THE PRESIDENTIAL “DEBATE”
Tuesday night’s debacle was an excruciating waste of ninety minutes of TV prime time that in no way, shape, or form qualified as a debate. Trump stayed in character throughout as an incorrigible schoolyard bully. Biden lived up to his reputation of not being very quick on his feet and having moments of incoherence. Fox News anchor, Chris Wallace, was the only one who distinguished himself. Unfortunately for him, it was as the most inept moderator in the history of televised debates.
A lot of hand wringing and soul searching is going on trying to figure out how to silence Trump during Biden’s allotted time in the next debate, if there is one. The problem is that it’s probably impossible to shut him up. What might work is to give the moderator the power to completely shut down the debate after two warnings; Trump might care about losing what he loves most: TV exposure.
TALK ABOUT IRONY!
People often have difficulty distinguishing between irony and coincidence. Given President Trump’s long-held, flippant, and reckless disdain about wearing masks and physical distancing, that he, his wife, a member of his staff, and at least two Republican senators probably contracted their Covid-19 at a foolhardy Rose Garden event a week ago, where almost nobody wore masks and distancing was non-existent, is ironic in the extreme. (It’ll be interesting to see how many more cases are traced to this event.)
And then, in the unlikely, but possible, event that both President Trump and Vice-president Pence become incapacitated to the point where they’re unable to serve, Trump’s archenemy, Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, would become President.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN/JOHN F. KENNEDY COMPARISONS
Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are the two most-admired U.S. presidents. A truly astonishing number of similarities between their presidencies surfaced after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. As the presidency is the top news story right now, and the U.S. election is a month from today, I thought it appropriate to revisit the Lincoln/Kennedy comparisons.
Both last names have seven letters.
Both were elected to Congress in in the year ’46; Lincoln in 1846 and Kennedy in 1946. Both were elected president in the year ’60; Lincoln in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960.
Both got married in their 30s to women in their 20s.
Both had a child die during their presidency.
Both were assassinated while in office and in the presence of their wives.
Both were shot in the head.
Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, shot him in a theatre and fled to a warehouse. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot him from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.
Both were shot on a Friday.
Both their successors were named Johnson and were both were born in the year ’08; Andrew in 1808 and Lyndon in 1908.
Both assassins were themselves shot dead before standing trial.
Both assassins are always referred to using all three of their names.
Lincoln was shot while watching a play in the Ford theatre and Kennedy while riding in a Lincoln limousine. (Okay, I admit that’s a bit of a stretch)
It’s often been reported that Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and Kennedy a secretary named Lincoln. Although Kennedy did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, there doesn’t seem to be any credible record that Lincoln ever had a secretary named Kennedy.
IT WAS A COMMENT, NOT A PREDICTION
On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I was an accounting student at the firm H. R. Doane & Co. (now Grant Thornton) in Charlottetown, P.E.I. About mid-afternoon our receptionist-secretary, Blanche Walsh, called me to the phone. The caller was a student of a Dale Carnegie course that I was teaching at the time. He asked me if the FBI had called me yet. When I asked why they should, he told me that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas, and then added, “Do you remember what you said last night?” Indeed I did.
At the Carnegie class the night before, while talking about the importance of keeping an open mind, I had said “What hasn’t happened in the last twenty years can happen in the next twenty seconds.” A class member queried, “Like what?” I replied, “The president of the United States might get shot.”