Ordinary Joes

HST, Attlee and Mackenzie-King

Yesterday, I noted Jess’s article on St. Joseph had a follow up? This is it, fom 2012. shortly after Romney had (deservedly) been defeated by Obama. I clearly remember John Charmley asking if that was the best we could do? The answer was a rueful “Yes, it was.” then but that changed in 2015. Jess spoke to us thirteen years ago about acoule of men, whose ideas had there flaws but who were indeed representatives of their people. Let’s have look at what she said.

On my own blog yesterday I wrote a post on St. Joseph – ‘an ordinary Joe’. I hope no one finds it in poor taste to call a Saint that, but for me that’s the point of him for us other ordinary folk. Neo here speaks, like so many of those who post here, as one of ‘we the people’. From where I sit a long a way aways, the problem I see is the one you guys have – no one is listening to Ordinary Joes.  We, like you, have a bunch of Fancy Dans, guys and gals for whom politics is everything and who get a good living from it; but like you, we don’t think they understand us – or even want to.

The politicians aren’t like us – they are obsessed with politics for a start. Through my co-author I know a few professional politicians, and when they come home they are full of who is ‘in and who is ‘out’ and what job x is getting, or who y is sleeping with; they are fixated on the process. Perhaps they weren’t all like this, and of course we know they are not and that there are some, like Rebecca Hamilton, who set the most marvellous example; but do these politician prosper in their profession? How many of them get to ‘the top’?

When that smooth-talking guy Tony Blair wooed us UK voters, I was in my teens, and because I am not easily impressed by such guys, I kept a tight hand on my virtue; I wish others had, as he thoroughly debauched the economy and political life. He rode the great tide of easy money and he made the sorts of promises which seducers maake to innocent young ladies; but when she woke up and found herself pregnant, where was he to be found? Why, nowhere, he’d found another mistress – money.

There was a time when politicians paid to be politicians because they were wealthy enough to spend their own money on public life. Men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not plutocrats or millionaires, but they had enough and they lived off it and served the Republic. Even very recently, someone like Harry S Truman could leave public office no wealthier than he entered it. Over here the other successful Labour leader, Clement Attlee, had his wife drive him round when he campaigned against the great Winston Churchill in 1945. They used to stop by the side of the road and have a picnic, and then she’d drive Clem off to give a speech somewhere. He, too, left office no richer than he had entered it.

Ordinary Joes could relate to Harry S or Attlee. No one had to agree with their politics, and they could be nasty ‘sobs’ when they wanted, but they were like us – they lived in the world we lived in. Attlee looked like a provincial bank manager, Truman like he ran a drapers store or sold dry goods. When Attlee was pictured smoking a pipe it was because he smoked a pipe; when his later successor, Harold Wilson was so pictured, it was because it was a good ‘image’; made him look down to earth and one of the people, even when he wasn’t.

But hey, at least back then they wanted to look like us. Now they don’t care, they flaunt their wealthy connections and their jets and their privilege. Nothing is too good for the representatives of the people. Shame about the people themselves – where’d it all go wrong?

That’s about as good a description of the grifters all of us in the west are infested with as I’ve read. One thing she missed though; George Washington was one of the richest men in the American Colonies, yer he volunteered to put his neck in the noose, and to live almost eight years in a tent, then serve eight years as President. Then he gave it all up, even though the country didn’t want him too. When King George heard this he commented to John Adams, then Minister to the Court of St. James (England) and the kings friend, “Then he shall be the greatest man of the age”.

But Jess is right, the aristocratic Virginian, and the Labour politician, whose policies nearly bankrupted the United Kingdom, were authentic, and they were men you understood and reflected their people.

But for us something changed after the ‘Reign of Error’, quite suddenly in 2015, an orange man came down a golden escalator. My how he scared and still scares the grifters in both parties. I was slow to see it, I liked and still like Ted Cruz, but the people, the Demos, the Populi, saw more clearly.

You can take this too far, easily in fact, President Trump acts more like Andy Jackson or maybe his favorite, Theodore Roosefelt, but are also echoes of Washington there, in the willingness to spend his own wealth on the country, and strict adherence to the law. Don’t forget Washington took the field as Commander in Chief,  when whiskey distillers in western Pennsylvania refused to pay the excise tax on their product. Wonder what he would have done with our illegals? They’re probably lucky Trump is President. Even to ordering the six frigates (including USS Constitution) to protect our commerce from the French, and the Barbary pirates.

By the way, after Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess got in their personal car and drove home to Missouri.