February is always short in days, but this month was long in news – more than I could cover.
Antonin Scalia’s death, which came as a surprise and disappointment, showed the partisan divide in Washington. As well, it highlighted the functions and responsibilities of our three branches of government. The President has the right, and indeed the obligation, to nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement. The Senate has the right, and indeed the obligation, to advise the President and to consent to the nomination, table it or deny it. Our system was not designed to be efficient – to “get stuff done” – but to be true to the principles of representative government. Justice Scalia felt personal preferences should play no role in a justice’s interpretation of the Constitution. His greatest contribution was his sense that contentious social issues, like abortion and gay marriage, are better resolved at the ballot box than determined by nine unelected individuals who are in no way representative of the people. As Justice Scalia often reminded us, four of the justices grew up in New York City and all nine received their law degrees from either Harvard or Yale.
Justice Scalia’s death was not the only one in February. The reclusive Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird died at age 89, less than a year after her second novel Go Set a Watchman was published, a book unlikely to enhance her reputation. Umberto Eco, author, philosopher, essayist and semiotician – best known for his mystery The Name of the Rose – died at age eighty-four. The world lost two wonderful women, both friends: Betsy LeGard, who with her husband Ed have been friends for forty-five years, and Barbara Perkins, who with her husband Ned have been friends in Old Lyme for the past twenty years. Jerry Gold, a friend for over forty years and the OM (oldest member) of the Drones of New York – a swarm of P.G. Wodehouse fans – died last week. Thank God for memories.
As it has been for most of the past eight months (and will for the next eight!), the endless election process dominated domestic news. On the Democrat side, while the popular vote has been fairly close between Clinton and Sanders, the delegate count (502-70) has not, because of the undemocratic way Democrats assign Super Delegates. On the Republican side, Trump (who at the end of the month gained the endorsement of Chris Christie) has taken about a third of the popular vote and about two thirds of delegates. In terms of delegates, Republicans are more democratic than Democrats. The outlook may change with today’s “super Tuesday” primaries, but at this point the leading candidates are a demagogic man who has nothing nice to say about anyone (apart from himself and his family) and who has, unsurprisingly, the most negative poll numbers of any candidate, and an ethically-challenged, demagogic woman who was Secretary of State when $6 billion went missing and who lied about Benghazi. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would put it, in the first instance we have a known unknown and in the second, a known known. Neither’s appealing.
