Thomas Molitor
I voted for Susana Martinez.
But I did not vote for all Republicans on the ticket. Never have and never will. I vote for the person, not the party.
The first thing I noticed at the top of the ballot given to me by an elderly gentleman at my early voting place was a simplified modern version of binary voting: two choices – and if I picked one I could be on my way out the booth in less than a minute. I could fill in the bubble marked “Republican” or fill in the bubble marked “Democrat.” Like writing software code – as easy as writing a one or a zero.
So simple. But I have never voted a straight party ticket. I have always taken each candidate, running for each office, and voted for the person I felt good about.
I was born into a Republican family. Which meant at five o’clock in the evening my parents ritualistically conducted “cocktail hour,” typically consisting of two preprandial Manhattans. I was told that the Republican party was the “business party” and that the Democrat party consisted mainly of “shanty Irish” slugging back beer all night, advocating for union issues.
The first time I was eligible to vote was the 1976 Ford-Carter election. This was a no-brainer for me, as Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer from Georgia with a brother who drank beer all day (just as my parents said Democrats did), and he managed to relieve himself on an airport runway wall in full view of a group of foreign dignitaries. “Billy Beer” – remember that? Still quite a collector’s item on eBay I understand.
Voltaire said that “the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.”
I was too young to go anarchic on politics so I soldiered on in defending the Republican party. The 1980 election brought me Ronald Reagan. I grew up in California so I was very familiar with him, having gone through eight years of him as governor.
I liked Ronald Reagan back then. They say men vote for the candidate whom they feel they could have a beer with. I felt I’d rather sit down and have a beer with Ronald Reagan than Jimmy Carter. Reagan had a sense of humor. Even joking about the two bullets John Hinckley Jr. put in his ribcage barely two months into his administration.
I voted for Reagan in 1980, as did a lot of people. Reagan carried 44 out of 50 states in that election. No surprise. Why, Carter even called for the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (Yeah, they were there before us.) This marked the only time since the founding of the modern Olympics in 1896 that the United States has ever failed to participate in a Summer or Winter Olympics. Even Hitler held the Olympics!
1984 was another no-brainer. I voted for Reagan, and so did 49 of our 50 states. Reagan said in his inaugural speech that “Government was not the answer; government was the problem.” Reagan read The Freeman, cited Milton Freedman and Ludwig Von Mises as his heroes, and then promptly doubled the size of government under his watch. He raised tariffs and imposed import quotas left and right, increased farm subsidies and quotas, and ramped up international entanglements, conveniently forgetting to inform Congress of his Constitution-shredding, Ollie North shenanigans.
This was about the time that I began thinking voting the straight-party line may not be such a good idea. Even if it meant giving up my family.
The “Tank Moment”
I held on for one more Republican go at towing the family edict when I voted for George Bush, the Elder, in 1988. I kind of liked Dukakis. I thought he was smart and articulate. And then he had his “tank moment” – that publicity shot of him wearing an ill-fitted combat helmet barely peeking above the open hatch of a M1 Abrams tank.
The syntax-challenged G. H. Bush was a preview of his even more syntax-challenged son, George W. The Elder sort of cruised his four years not accomplishing much other than a 1991 tough-guy stance on Saddam Hussein, his former buddy against Iran when he was head of the CIA.
1992 was wide open. I definitely decided to branch off from my family political-tree, and vote for anyone but Bush. Clinton was smart, charismatic, but had a dozen women lined up selling their sexual dalliance story with him to the National Enquirer.
I fell for Ross Perot. Maybe it was because he gave me the option to not vote for a Republican for the first time and still avoid voting for the dark-side Democrat. Truth be told, I was a sucker for Perot’s charts, in which he explained the state of the economy a second-grader could comprehend. I’m a sucker for simple white-board explanations.
Running the country is not like running a business
Perot, as we all well know, proved nuttier than a pecan orchard – and promptly self destructed under the glare of the media. I voted for him anyway. In 1996, I was doing pretty well in my career and the country seemed to be doing well too. I voted for Clinton’s re-election.
In 2000, I wasn’t wild about Al Gore but the best thing he had going for him is that he wasn’t George W. Reluctantly, I voted for Gore, but I wasn’t juiced about it. When W. was named the president in a decision by the Supreme Court, I wasn’t crestfallen. Maybe, I thought, he would do okay.
Not only did he double the size of our budget deficit and get us bogged-down in foreign entanglements we are still bogged-down in, his frat-boy manner was not my cup of tea. Or beer. Moreover, between 2000 and 2008 the U.S. dollar was debased 50 percent. And then, his exit bow in front of a disgruntled American audience that accorded him the lowest popularity figures in presidential history was not unlike a character who would throw a rattlesnake into a baby carriage.
Okay, now it’s 2008. Obama was magnetic, charismatic, and articulate. Quite simply, after eight years of wincing each time Bush the Younger spoke, elocution counted a lot for who I was to vote for next. I voted for Obama in spite of Joe Biden, the professional gas-bag.
All of which brings me back to New Mexico and the governor’s race. I met Susana Martinez on the “meet-and-greet” circuit when I was running for state representative in District 23. I liked Susana Martinez. I think she will end up being a very good governor for New Mexico. I really do.
In fact, I would rather sit down and have a beer with Susana than Diane Denish any day of the week. But only one. After all, Susana is a district attorney and she is tough on DUIs – even on those who voted for her.
Molitor is a regular columnist for this site. You can reach him at tgmolitor@comcast.net.
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