We could do just fine without a president
By Carl Heintze
It's occurred to me that we might well get along without any president. Of course, by the time you read this we probably will have one--or the other, but does it really make any difference?
This heretical thought came to me last week after watching George W. Bush for several days getting in and out of his car and saying he really won and Al Gore holding daily press conferences to ask for yet another vote recount.
I tried to drum up some enthusiasm among my friends for this spectacle of non-presidents seeking to be presidential, but I didn't get very far.
Neither my normally passionate Republican friend (who even managed to get up enthusiasm for Bob Dole) and my liberal Democratic crony, who considers all Republicans to be Newt Gingrich, didn't want to talk about it.
"It's just a mess," the Republican said.
The Democrat said about the same thing, although in words not suitable for a family newspaper.
The truth is, it seems to me, that we have been pretty much doing without a president for the past year. Oh, I know, Bill Clinton has been about.
In fact, he has been all over the world from Vietnam to maybe North Korea. But he hasn't been home much and it doesn't seem to have made much difference.
In between, he has been sparring continuously with a Republican-ruled Congress, most of whose members can't wait for him to go back to Arkansas or New York, whichever he elects as a resting place. Meantime, without a budget, without inspiration from the Oval Office, without much of anything, the country has chugged along pretty much on its own. It seems likely to do the same, at least for the first quarter of 2001, no matter who is in the White House.
In the interim the civil servants who run things in Washington will keep on running them, no matter who thinks he is in charge, and Alan Greenspan will remain the real power in the establishment. If things get really bad, he may consent to lower the interest rate a point or two. But he's not likely to do anything drastic.
The president, no matter who he is, can't either and he also can't really make old Alan do anything. The chairman of the Federal Reserve System has a term which overlaps that of the president--perhaps fortunately.
No matter who becomes the landlord in the executive mansion, he's going to have to deal with a Congress, which is about as confused about things as the country as a whole. Neither country nor Congress cares much about who is president. The Republicans barely have a majority in the House and nobody has a majority in the Senate.
It probably is going to take a man smarter than either Al Gore or George W. to lead the Congressional horse to water. Instead, the House and the Senate are likely to go riding off on their horses in all directions, thus essentially going nowhere.
But maybe we don't need to go anywhere.
Barring a major international catastrophe of some sort, what is there to get excited about? The dot-com companies are going down the tubes, taking their venture capital with them.
But the old line "brick" members of the New York Stock Exchange are still around and still making money, not as much money as they did for a while, but most of them are financially solvent.
It's only the nebulous Internet crowd, which existed pretty much in cyperspace for most of their short lifetimes, that we are missing, and there are those who think they were never existent, anyway.
Besides, despite Al Gore's contention that he invented it, the Internet, like Topsy of Uncle Tom's Cabin didn't get born, it just sort of "growed" and it's been growing ever since it appeared. No one is really sure how large, powerful or important to the world's future it is and it is going to be a while before we find out for sure.
So, it is my theory, that we have what everyone wanted, a non-election.
Certainly it was as close to a national tie as one could want, and it is only by chance that the tie made itself manifest in Florida. It's my belief that most American voters, including my eternal Republican friend and my militant Democratic crony couldn't decide which candidate was the less likely to succeed and voted accordingly.
It is as if in division we are united, as if in uncertainty we are certain. We want things to go on being as they were. We want Washington to leave us alone. We really don't want a president at all.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
