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Just when a Pat Robertson presidency began to look enticing, he had to go and lose the South to George Bush.
All candidates talk about economy in government, but only Pat Robertson could save substantial amounts of tax money.
Robertson doesn't mention it much these days, but not long ago, he frequently claimed that he had good connections on high -- such good connections that his prayers kept a hurricane from striking Virginia.
Any man that could compel a hurricane to depart could certainly send one wherever he pleased. A typical hurricane is a tremendous force -- every second, it expends as much energy as in six Nagasaki-sized atomic bombs. One day equals a destructive force of 11,400 megatons; the total U.S.-Soviet arsenal comes to only 10,239 megatons. Every day of a hurricane is the equivalent, and more, of an all-out World War III.
But with Robertson in the White House, we wouldn't need a $290-billion-a-year Defense Department with its puny thermonuclear warheads. When it's time to teach some little country a lesson, any other president has to send in those expensive and vulnerable Marines. President Robertson could dispatch a much cheaper, but vastly more powerful, hurricane.
In his earlier career, Robertson also healed the sick. This year, Americans will spend $517 billion on healing the sick, of which about $155 billion comes from federal coffers. Obviously, none of that expense would be necessary under President Robertson.
If he were doing his prayerful best to provide for
the common defense
and to promote the general
welfare,
the federal government could save the $445
billion now spent on health and defense. The federal
treasury would run a $300 billion surplus -- an improvement
in the national economy that only Pat Robertson could
provide.
Maybe if Robertson had pointed that out down South, he would have done better. The South may lie in the Bible Belt, but it is also part of the United States, where the sound of money generally overpowers any voices from on high.
For further confirmation of the power of money, note the recent successes of George Bush.
Everybody gets down on Richard Gephardt for changing his mind from time to time, say every 10 or 15 minutes; that's one reason his candidacy is as dead as Gary Hart's.
But over on the Republican side, Bush now leads the pack, and he changes directions more often than a weather vane in a tornado. What does he really think of the Reagan economic policies, the religious right, the Iran-contra scandal? Who knows? Who dares to ask him?
Maybe he's doing well because he recently said Give
peace a chance,
which represents something of a change
in attitude for a man that was once director of the
CIA.
Or it could be that the South is showing a sense of
justice. After almost eight years of Reaganomics,
a
major depression is almost inevitable. We can't keep
spending more than we make without some painful and sharp
adjustment.
George Bush knew better in 1980 when he said the Reagan
economic plan was voodoo.
But for almost eight
years, Bush has been the head cheerleader for Reaganomics.
If he's our next president, he'll be there when the
chickens come home to roost -- and he has it coming.
In that respect, a vote for Bush is a vote for the eventual triumph of justice. When the Reaganomics collapse arrives, it will be George Bush who deservedly replaces Herbert Hoover as the insensitive and incapable dolt in American folklore. Justice is thereby served. It also shows that there's a silver lining in every cloud, even those clouds that Pat Robertson hasn't been able to pray away.
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