One has to wonder if the people who pushed very hard some
time ago to get the Republican Party to hold its 2016 national convention in
Cleveland are having buyer’s remorse, much like the initiators of the ‘Leave’
campaign for the BREXIT referendum in England.
In a small town like Cleveland, holding an event like a
national convention, during a work week in the city center, imposes
unreasonable burdens on people and businesses that want to go about their life
and business without additional stress. As if the stress of daily life and work
in the city in a hot July is not enough! Between the delegates, the security
people, the media, the protesters and their entourage, center city Cleveland
will be totally taken over, occupied, by the invasion of conventioneers and the
people who normally live and work there will be deprived of their normal
ingress and egress, their parking spots, their cafes and restaurants and their
freedom of movement. No surprise then that a number of businesses, those that can afford to do so, have chosen to move
their offices out to the suburbs for the duration of the GOP convention. Of
course, there are beneficiaries too, like the hotels and restaurants that will
be fully booked all week and be able to charge top price for their services.
And the owners of mansions and condominiums that can rent their real estate out
for the week and demand exorbitant prices for doing so.
It looks like the GOP convention in Cleveland is going to be
the perfect metaphor for what ails this country and for what drives the anger
that is brewing at or just below the surface in this election year: All the
burden is going to be on the ordinary citizens and all the spoils go to the select
few.
I am a greater Cleveland resident but I have long ago
decided that I don’t want to be anywhere near this scene. My family will spend
the last two weeks of July at an Atlantic coast beach to escape the madness and
the inconvenience.
So far, this year 2016 has been an exceptionally good year
for Cleveland. LeBron James has delivered on his promise to bring an NBA
championship to the Cleveland Cavaliers and, at the brink of the All Star Game,
the Cleveland Indians are overwhelming the competition for the leadership in
the central division of the American League. The city, that has worked hard to
shed its image of a corrupt and bankrupt place where even the river could catch
fire, has justifiably taken pride in being chosen as the site for the GOP
convention, that is, until the primaries had played themselves out and it had
become clear that what was supposed to be a festive convention would turn into
either a coronation of a fraudulent demagogue or an unprecedented last minute
power grab by the party establishment. Either way, with all the other protests
already alive on America’s streets, it is hard to see how the Cleveland convention
can be spared the ignominy of turning into a street fight.
What happens in Cleveland between July 18 and 21 transcends
the interest of the Republican Party and its adherents. It poses a dilemma of
constitutional significance. It will put the question to the nation: ‘When will
the interest in a competent, trustworthy and responsible person in charge of
the highest office in the free world trump the expressed will of primary voters?’
I will not go as far as comparing Trump to Hitler or
Mussolini, but I will use their names to illustrate a point. And the point of
analogy is that Hitler and Mussolini too were sanctioned by the constitutional
rules in place at the time in their respective countries. It was only after the
constitutional process had placed these misfits in a position of power that
they systematically abused that power with disastrous consequences for their
nations and the world.
By my book there is a legitimate question: ‘When will good
governance require that the expressed will of the voting public be overruled on
the grounds that the chosen candidate is morally, emotionally and
intellectually unfit to ascend to the highest office in the land?’ Think about
all the death and demise the world would have been spared if Hitler and
Mussolini had not been allowed to rise to power!
In the case at hand it is important to establish that even
though Trump got more votes and won more delegates than any of his GOP
contenders only a small fraction of the American voting public gave him a vote
of confidence (that is the nature of primary elections).
Our constitution does not offer a ‘work-around’ for
situations like this. This is somewhat remarkable given the fact that our
founding fathers loudly and repeatedly warned against the rule by the mob. But,
of course, in their time only the economically and intellectually privileged
men had voting rights, which addressed that threat. In this day and age, under
normal circumstances, the general election should expose the flaws in the
nominee of either party and lead to the election of the nominee of the other
party. But this year is anything but normal with the presumptive nominee of the
opposing party despised by many, representative of an un-American dynasty
mentality, and narrowly escaping prosecution for mishandling sensitive and secret
information. If there ever was a choice between the lesser of two evils, this
is it! Our nation, desperately in need of getting things done, would not be
well served with such choice.
That’s why maybe, in this case, Republican leaders need to
step in at or before the Cleveland convention and prevent a Trump ascendency. You
may not want to be in the streets of Cleveland when that happens. But you may
not want to live in America when it does not.
