By Michael P. Riccards

Right now we are in a presidential campaign.

The Republicans are going to make America great again, but they are preoccupied with depreciating unmarried women, forgetting about the child support system, and promising to not tax Social Security. We all know what Trump’s  promises are worth. His Yale educated pseudo-hillbilly has gone off the deep end already. What will he believe once in power?

As for the Democrats, they are so confused that even Trump doesn’t know whom to attack. Harris has thrown him off his stride as he admitted at the Black journalists’ meeting. For some reason, Trump wants to resurrect his failed anti-Obama strategy that challenges if any Black person is really Black and really a citizen. The problem he has had is that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii and that Harris is indeed part Black and part Asian. So what?

No one is talking about Biden’s foreign policy, which is woefully stretching our very nation to satisfy the ambitions of Ukrainian politicians and the Israel war cabinet. In  both cases, his agents have tried to tone down his foreign policy ambitions to be Franklin Roosevelt in visiting the world battlefields.

Does anyone not see that a truce in the Ukraine is possible? The Russians must withdraw, the border needs a neutral zone on both sides and NATO needs to forego its expanding  membership. On both sides of that border, people should encounter productive farms and churches, and we all should recognize that they want is peace and quiet.

In the Gaza strip, Israel ‘s dream of whipping enemies totally before a peace is declared makes no sense. The war has made every Palestinian an enemy and every Arab a potential  opponent. Their war government could no more win total victory than the Palestinians could drive them into the sea. Under the Israelis, the only peace involves almost a total cleaning of Hamas sympathizers, which now include everyone with the huge number of civilian casualties. This is really bordering on genocide of the rebels and their families for the next two generations .   

At home, we are also ignoring the importance of keeping the childhood support policies of the pandemic years, which ended in one stroke poverty for about half of our young. The Republicans in Congress are holding that up since they want in January to give their president leverage to give another tax cut for the rich. Such a policy is immortal and cynical. 

We talk about the need to raise our kids up to educational levels of achievement, but they are still a year or so back where they should be, even in our modest yardsticks, and we now know that their problems are not just academic but are social and emotional as well. When are we going to reach out and help? 

And lastly. the pandemic has shown us the hazards of having a patchwork system of health care agencies and bureaus. The Republicans have denounced Medicare for all, and even candidate Harris has said she does not favor such universal heath care. I want to propose a simple compromise: All the American people should have the same array of plans as members of Congress, which are publicly funded, for surely members of Congress would not accept programs and benefits that are at variance with our traditions.

Michael P. Riccards, a former college president, is the author of Party Politics in the Age of Roosevelt. 

Categories: hybrid journalism, Michael Riccards, Politics