WRITE OF CENTER
If you’ll recall my last column about the new president and his administration, the concluding point was, manage your expectations.
Now, do you recall the Bubba Handbook? It seems like a century ago, but it was popular when the Clintons hit D.C. The writers suggested some pretty wise thinking. They suggested there are two ways to construct an accurate forecast of how the new administration will manage the country.
One is to read all of the president’s speeches and policy statements (yes, including all of those executive orders). Then, analyze the new Cabinet selections until you’re blue in the face and subject them and the new president to a battery of personality tests at some institute in Switzerland.
The other way is to monitor the behavior of the nearest Bubba in your neighborhood and do some simple extrapolation: — Bubba’s wife goes to the shopping mall for “just two minutes.” Even though we and Bubba know it’s going to take “the wife” an hour, old Bubba parks at the loading zone ... with the truck running.
Conclusion: President Trump will be overly optimistic when sending legislation to Congress. But then we also know that’s a key tactic of his — act like you’re going to throw down a “full house” in order to bluff your way to a win, then make sure everybody knows it’s a really big win.
— Your neighbor Bubba is feeling under his seat in the truck for that pork rind that he dropped yesterday. He finds a copy of “The Beer Maker’s Guide to God” that he borrowed from the Patrick Heath Public Library. But it’s two months overdue and owes the library, what, say $12. Bubba’s conscience is overwhelming, so he decides to return the manual and pay the debt.
Conclusion: President Trump will tackle the federal deficit.
— The Donald endears himself to the waitress at Las Guitarras Mexican restaurant with the three phrases he remembers from ninth grade Spanish class.
Conclusion: President Trump will achieve an easy rapport with foreign dignitaries.
— Bubba stays home because of the blistering, drippy heat that we all so enjoy in the middle of August in Hill Country Texas. So, he watches all three days of a PGA tournament to see Jason Day win at Whistling Straits. Bubba jumps up and cheers Day’s finish of 20-under for the week – the lowest 72-hole score (in relation to par) in the PGA championship history.
Conclusion: 45&47 will actually enjoy monitoring (if not attending) those 16-hour budget sessions.
Analogies aside, one point in all of this is that Donald J. Trump’s cause for America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Obviously, by his win, he has truly touched the hearts and minds of the American majority. Many circumstances have and will arise for him and his administration which are not local but universal; and many that are focused first on our United States of America — Bubbas to billionaires.
Every election cycle sees its own set of challenges, especially in that so many Americans are fed up with the status quo of top-down dictates from bureaucrats in D.C. that truly limit our freedoms. As witnessed in the latest election, a majority of Americans are hungering for answers that respect their autonomy, freedoms and creativity; answers and solutions that civil society, not a sprawling government, can provide. We now have an opportunity to turn exasperation into action.
I suggest that we all unite with pride and joy in the promises of the new administration to inject much needed common sense in the national conversation, cutting through the abject noise from the naysayers with pointed solutions thoughtfully developed from insightful analysis and unwavering advocacy for liberty.
Seventy-five years ago, the economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in “The Intellectuals and Socialism”: “We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.” If you were to read it, you’d see that the more things change, the more they stay the same; and you would also see just how relevant Hayek’s words are to our situation today. Let’s accept Hayek’s challenge and may God bless America!
Art Humphries is a Kendall County Republican Precinct Chair.
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