November 5, 1940. That was the day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a third term, much to the dismay of my staunchly Republican father. It was also the day his only son was born, triggering multiple telegrams from his pals suggesting that the child should be named Franklin Roosevelt Hazlehurst. He chose to name the kid after his paternal grandfather, John Gill – and I’ve happily borne that name since.
Politics! Fascinating, delightful, terrifying, boring, crooked, sublime, irrelevant, the foundation of Democracy, the path to perdition … can’t we just go to sleep and forget about it? Nope.
My present political Rosetta Stone: what’s in it for Colorado Springs, the perpetually changing city of my birth? Colorado and Colorado Springs have done pretty well under the Biden/Harris administration. Our tech sector has expanded and flourished, our military installations have remained manned and relevant, and our visitor economy has regained its pre-pandemic strength. We’re back to whining about the excesses of developers (they’re blocking off the views of Pikes Peak, they’re building dozens of lookalike apartment buildings, and the traffic is insane!) instead of worrying about our jobs.
So what can we expect after 11/05/2024? Here are some predictions:
If Harris wins, there will be little change in domestic or foreign policy. We’ll support Ukraine, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, NATO and our European friends and allies. Immigration will be curtailed, as it has been for the last several months. Hopefully, we’ll be able to stem the further collapse of Venezuela, and deal intelligently with the problems of Africa and the Middle East. We’ll need our powerful and resilient military, and Colorado Springs will remain a key player.
As a former prosecutor, Harris well understands the complexities and necessities of the criminal justice system, as well as the need to deal effectively with rogue, criminal and collapsing nations. Think of Sudan, North Korea, Iran and a dozen others. Think also of our two unfriendly rivals, China and Russia.
What’s in it for Colorado Springs, the perpetually changing city of my birth?
And what about the felonious former President Trump? If he wins, he may well turn foreign policy inside out – abandoning Ukraine, establishing more friendly relations with Putin and his government and drawing away from NATO and our historic alliances. If he wants to reward his friends and punish those whom he perceives as enemies, there’s an easy opportunity available right here in Colorado Springs: Move the Space Force from bright blue Colorado to bright red Alabama! Never mind that the Springs has been reliably Republican for decades – we’re still in Colorado.
Trump’s not much of a reader, so I doubt whether he has ever read Karl von Clausewitz’s 1832 masterpiece “On War,” which has guided military strategy since then. Clausewitz’s first principle of warfare: secure your base. Yet Trump is a master strategist, one so gifted that he has transformed a major political party into a de facto cult of which he is the supreme leader.
And who knows what his strategy will be upon assuming office. He’s remarkably canny, and he may not want to burn the bridges with newly elected Colorado House Republicans, likely including district-switching Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank and Jeff Hurd. Crank and Hurd are smart and amiable, while Boebert is a one-woman firestorm. Trump should know better than to mess with her.
Yet Colorado will be a disfavored state under Trump, along with California, New York and all the rest of the blue rascals.
So what will he do? I don’t know and neither does he. Always flighty and restless, DJT is now a forgetful and easily misled old man. Alas, I know the landscape of old age only too well. Your cognition slowly diminishes, your memory becomes uncertain, you wake up in the morning hoping that nothing new hurts. Trump is 78 and, like many oldsters, fond of denial. He thinks he’s just as smart as he always has been – a guy who tells it like it is, who knows the country he inhabits and is ready for another four years as President. We’ll see, but it may be that the White House is no country for old men. Just ask Joe Biden …