THE LAST WORD
BY MARCUS FISK
Much Ado About Nothing One can only imagine what those zany, crazy Founding Fathers of ours would have made of the country they started after the past three months’ shenanigans. After the decades of pain, suffering, misery, treachery, savagery, penury, and war they endured, those heralded visionaries, were they alive today, would be shaking their collective heads at just how far off the mark the political farce we call a country has evolved since they all took the big dirt bath. A leading member of the Photos: Library of Congress Founding Fathers—our own Aaron Burr General James Wilkerson George Washington—had a few choice words about political parties (see above). It is striking just how prescient they were, based on “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular events from the 2020 election. The “party” is now the great, omnipo- ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become tent determinator. It “selects” the potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled candidates and then rallies the “par- men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to ty” around their chosen one. You must admit, the 2019 Trump usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterImpeachment, the 2020 election wards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominmarathon, the post-election legal ion.” maneuvering, the insurrection at —George Washington’s Farewell Address – the Capitol, and subsequent 2021 Trump Impeachment (the sequel), 17 September 1796 would stagger the imagination of even the most ardent political historian. And the hits just keep coming. America has always had a penchant for forgiveness. We love fallen angels who swim in the muck and mire and then, because of a “mistake,” we open the door of forgiveness to second and sometimes even third chances. We have countless examples of allowing elected officials to continue to serve in office while at-the-same-time serving time in prison.1 Americans, because we have no royal family of our own, have had a love affair with celebrity. We frequently give our celebrities wide berth, often waving off the transgressions of our sports, entertainment, and underworld icons and we are rapidly becoming the “land of perpetual forgiveness.” Before going to federal prison for income tax evasion, Alfonso “Scarface” Capone, when asked by numerous newspapers about his alleged ties to various murders, prostitution, and other felonies, frequently replied, “I’m just a businessman.” During the impeachment of thenPresident Bill Clinton, our American appetite for the ever-expanding lurid details of his amorous trysts and turns didn’t wane. Then, when cornered for lying under oath, Clinton apologized, we accepted his apology, and we did the truly American thing that has marked us for nearly two centuries — we “put it behind us and got back to the vital work for the American people.”2 Photo: National Archives The intent of those great FoundThe conspiracy trial of Aaron Burr rocked the nation but ultimately was much ado ing Fathers to protect us from a tyabout nothing. I guess we Americans haven’t paid enough attention to our own rannical or corrupt Chief Executive history to pick up the hints. by including Article II Section 4 of
MARCH 2021
the Constitution, resulted in the impeachment of three Presidents.3 But thankfully, the U.S. has never had to face the indignation or embarrassment of booting a President as has been the case in many other countries. Elsewhere in the world if you lie, cheat, assault someone, take bribes, cheat on your spouse, stage a coup, order a “hit”, or stomp opposition into brutal submission, people tend to remember that and the instigator is shown to the door, a cell, is exiled, or “meets with an unfortunate accident.”4 Our penchant for forgiveness even goes so far as to include those who conspired to violently overthrow the government. Aaron Burr, Vice President to Thomas Jefferson, was alleged to have even amassed a private army to attack Mexico and annex a section of the Louisiana Purchase (AKA “Texas”) and set himself up as “El Jefe.”5 When all the dust settled, his partner-in-crime General James Wilkinson, tried to wiggle out of his involvement in the coup attempt by producing a letter showing Burr’s intentions. The letter in Wilkinson’s own handwriting proved to be less-than-convincing to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, so Burr lit out to England. The recent Capitol attack gave me pause to reflect on how far (or notso-far) we had come as a republic and how sketchy our leadership is about “the Constitution”.6 During the Impeachment Trial there was much harrumphing, tons and tons of Senators and members of Congress invoking the “Constitution” in many of their statements. It made me wonder about just how poor an understanding we have of the document and how frightening it is to see the leadership of our country who don’t have a clue as to its contents or what they mean. An example of just how weak our leaders are about the government they represent was in an Alabama Daily News interview after the 2020 Senate election in Alabama. Former football coach, now Senator Tommy Tuberville, stated that the three branches of government were, “the House, the Senate, and the executive.” My wife used to work at George Washington’s Mount Vernon as a historic interpreter. One evening she came home from Mount Vernon with a classic story. That evening she led a freshman Congressman and his family through the house explaining the details of the life of the Washington family. Towards the end of the tour the Congressman asked, “How did Washington get to the White House every day to go to work? Did he ride a horse or go over the Potomac by boat?” 7 I am no Constitutional scholar. I
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