Floyd B Anderson decided to run for president as he was walking up the steps of the statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. Floyd was Lt-Gov of Iowa, a position he had held for nine years and three months. Floyd was moderate Republican and 63 years old. He was single, his wife having passed away seven years after a divorce some dozen years ago. He had a son in California and a daughter in NH, neither of them very political. He stopped at the landing atop the steps, took off his tie and descended, heading for the nearest coffee shop. He thought that he would announce informally to the first person with whom he might share coffee.
When he arrived, however, the place was nearly empty; so he sat down alone and sketched out a strategy to succeed James Madison, Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. When had finished, he called his friend Ralph Jenkins in California and told him the news. Ralph didn’t take him very seriously but he did promise his support.
The plan that Floyd outlined was as follows :
1) Write a series of essays to be published in small town newspapers in Tennessee and Kentucky. The essays would be a sort of modern day Federalist Papers on the purpose functions and limits of government.
2) Secondly, they would set the tone for a new political culture in the USA: a new patriotism. He would call for presidential libraries devoted to the earliest presidents. Washington/Jefferson at UV; Madison/Monroe at Geo Mason; the Adams family at U Mass; and Jackson/Polk . He really couldn’t decide whether it would be feasible to include van Buren in the Jackson/Polk library. Of course, van Buren was a Jacksonian and Jackson’s Sec of State, then his v-p but he was also a New Yorker. Floyd knew that van Buren’s papers were at the University of Rochester and that they wouldn’t give them up easily. What he did believe is that the idea of a library of Washington and Jefferson and the Adams family rather than another library to yet another mediocre president would appeal to the American people. 3) He would advocate another Mt Rushmore type memorial to 4 more presidents, this time on a granite mountain either in Colorado or Utah---somewhere near I-80 on land already owned by the federal government. These four faces? Madison, father of the constitution; J Q Adams, the most successful Sec of State in Am history and probably the American who lived the most historic life of any since 1600E, even being ambassador to Russia when Napoleon invaded in 1812.
4) The Lt-Gov would advocate the building of a new canal in Central America.
5) A manned mission to Mars.
6) He would strongly support biotechnology, recognizing its two basic divisions : agriculture and medicine. The government would have to face up to its role in two ways : clarifying the law in patents and copyrights, as well as its role in research.
7) He would run a very aggressive war against terrorism.
8) He would rebuild America’s image in the world, explicitly defending America’s role in defending freedom and fighting hunger, poverty, exploitation and genocide. He would be a president who would not be too modest to remind the world to which nation the oppressed fled whether in the 18th century, the 19th, the 20th or the 21st.
9) He would do something very controversial : in foreign policy he would encourage Europe to take responsibility for its own defense; he would ally with Russia against terrorism and he would turn toward a long neglected area of US foreign policy and assistance : Latin America.
The stategy would be to publish in weekly newspapers in Tennessee and Kentucky in order to get the attention of the press and then move to a few larger markets to raise money. The press would probably pay him more heed if he were publishing in out-of-the-way places then if he were competing for attention in NYC and DC. The donors, however, would have to be approached where they were : in the suburbs of Chgo, NYC, LA, and DC. He learned later that they were everywhere; their address e-America.
Once Ralph Jenkins began to receive e-mail from Floyd, he began to see that Floyd had some serious possibilities, that Floyd had done something most men do not : he had grown substantially after age 50. Floyd began his essays with the vitality of America. He quoted Gen Howe who had commanded British forces in the colonies during the Revolutionary War and who probably composed the best sentence ever constructed on America “Had the British realized the vast resources and great potential of America in its origins, it might have done more to bind America to its empire.” Floyd’s essay compared American trade to that of the Spanish colonies which until the 1770s were limited to trading with a single port in Spain : Seville. When they finally gained trading privileges at the port of Barcelona, they thought they had been blessed. He informed the reader that while the port of Havana, Cuba was occupied for only 11 months during the Napoleonic wars its received some 165 ships compared to only 12 ships the previous year.
Floyd Anderson knew, of course, that the economy was always the number one issue of any presidential contest. He therefore set out in his 5th and 6th weekly publications to outline his economic reforms : a lower corporate tax and a corporate flat tax. Gone would be the numerous, complex and verbose tax credits for business. In Lt-Gov Anderson’s mind, tax credits were the act of a government reaching into control what was left of an income after they had taken 35 to 50%. Anderson believed in laissez faire, especially at the lower level---and among those especially in the early phases.
The election would be held in 2008 and it would be the greatest presidential contest since 1824, when J Q Adams triumphed, via the US House, over Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William Crawford. The end of Bush 43’s term would signal the first also since 1824 that 2 consecutive presidents had served two full consecutive terms. OK, Truman/Eisenhower together came within one month of the four full terms, but then the reality was that Truman was boosted into presidential orbit not by his own popularity but by that FDR.
There would be no shortage of presidential aspirants. Hillary Clinton was the favorite to win the Dem nomination. But the whole crowd was colorful and colored with paradox. Clinton was a US Senator from NY the wife of an ex-president who had only stayed with her philandering spouse out personal ambition. There was a Mormon, but from Massachusetts not from Idaho or Utah. There were other aspirants out of the US Senate : ex-Sen John Edwards, who had been the v-p nominee of his party in 2004. Edwards was a trial lawyer, but from NC not from California. There was Sen Joe Biden of Dl a new comer by social standards; then there was Sen Dodd of Ct who as the son of a former senator had been around since before he was born. There was Bill Richardson, former Sec of Energy under Sen Clinton’s husband. Richardson was a new England aristocrat masquerading as a Mexican. (Floyd supposed that if there were a real Mexican running, he would be masquerading as a New England aristocrat.) There was Sen Barrack Obama who, because he was black via a father from Kenya was an African-American, not and Afro-American (those who trace their ancestry through slavery to Africa). Of course, there was Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of NYC and mayor during that city’s most horrific moment. During the crisis the mayor acted like a true hero and in the aftermath of the attack the mayor acted like a true Italian, full of sentiment and ceremony. No mayor of NYC, however, had been elected to higher office in slightly more than 150 years. There was John McCain a military hero who had spent five years in POW camp in Viet Nam. There would later be Fred Thompson of Tennessee, also a former US Senator , who joined former govs Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and James Gilmore of Va. From the US House came Duncan Hunter of Ca and Tom Tancredo of Co, also as Republicans. Finally, there was three more colorful candidates : D. Kucinich also from the US House selling class struggle , very former Mike Gravel of Alaska, and Mike Huckabee former gov of Arkansas.
THEN Floyd Anderson did something no one expected and few were able to do : he introduced a sense of art into the campaign. As he explained to Austin Jenkins, whose prosperity allowed him to leave California for Iowa and a few other political destinations, “if Huckabee can baffle them with morality, I can baffle them with art. Art and a little patriotism.” The Lt-Gov did this by treating the map as his canvas and making his itinerary a sojourn of meaning. He did just what only a mind relative insulated from the din of the metropolis could do. He became a little original:
Floyd struck out on a tour every city or hamlet in the USA named Springfield. At each Springfield he spoke of their differences and their commonality. In Springfield, Mass, he spoke about the history of industrialism in America. In Springfield, Mo, he spoke about values and loyalty. In Springfield, W Va, he reviewed the history of John Brown. In Springfield, Or , he addressed hi-tech and future of the world. In Springfield, SD, he spoke about small towns and good government. In Springfield, Ohio, he spoke about commerce and education. But everywhere he spoke of unity : “We all live in Springfield,” he said. “Even Manhattan is Springfield.” At every stop he used the line “Even Bart Simpson lives in Springfield.” By calculation, the Springfield segment of his tour ended in Springfield, Ill, because his next stop was Lincoln, Neb.
Floyd’s second segment was to visit the four state capitol’s named for presidents :Lincoln, Madison, Jefferson City and Jackson, where naturally he spoke about those four distinguished persoanalities. For him Madison was the most fun; it allowed him to make a few points about the fourth president that are often missed : a few months after Mr Madison’s constitution went into effect revolution broke out in France, the most influential country in Europe and in Brazil, the largest country in South America. But he enjoyed speaking about Jackson, Jefferson and Lincoln as well.
He extended his state capitol tour by adding several others : in Atlanta he spoke about myth; in Olympia he spoke about ideals; in Sacramento, of the sacred; in Salem, about peace; in Columbus, of history. His best speech in this segment was not surprisingly in Phoenix, where he spoke of a city rising from its ashes : lower Manhattan or New Orleans. Even went to Bismark, where he made the 19th century German chancellor look like more than an iron curmudgeon. Bismark had a sense of humor and a sense of history. Floyd Anderson had both as well; so he made it work. He even went to St Paul and spoke there about the visions and courage required to build a new culture, admitting that Mike Huckabee could probably do a better job with St Paul than he. When he got back to Des Moines, he assured his friends that that city’s name meant “the center”. And indeed, for him, it did.
It was Dec-19-2007, the preseason/cactus league was over and his daughter was flying in from NH with his grandsons Aaron, Devon, an Trevor.
A new year stood before Iowa’s smartest man.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
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