President Matt Douglas (James Garner): Come on (moving a large desk in front of a doorway)!
President Russell Kramer (Jack Lemmon): That desk belonged to Jefferson! The Declaration of Independence could have been written on it!
Douglas: Tom isn't here to help me pick it up...
My Fellow Americans, (1996).
And now, we wait. For cooler heads to prevail, for the persuasive influence of higher minds? No. We await the overnights... How is it polling? Is this the Schumer Shutdown or the result of a petulant president? On Facebook, we will all argue authoritatively, favorably quoting our hero and sharing disdainful memes about our villain. None of that matters. What matters, in the end, are the polls, the numbers - some of which are cooked more thoroughly than cheap meat. (Sigh). Buy a book, immerse yourself.
A friend, a good man in a storm who served this country with distinction, invited me to consider the situation from the Founders' perspective. Accepted.
Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison in September, 1789, suggested: I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society.
We made this mess, you and I. Tom, Jim and George aren't here to help us sort it out. Missing, also, are the individuals charged with our safety and security. So, maybe it's time to amend the Constitution. You get two terms, ladies and gents. After that, you have to go back home and try to make an honest living again.
It has been pointed out in the past that the institutional understanding of how to make government work is lost when the seats turn over due to term limitations.
Oh?
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