Blog: Who will Take the Next Presidential Oath of Office?

It should be stated at the outset that my leapfrogging over the primaries to January 2013 was prompted by two reasons.

First, because 2012 is also Leap Year, which occurs nearly every 4 years as a concept that has existed for more than 2000 years. And it is still associated with modern folklore and superstition and it is a popular day for women to propose marriage to men.

But those years are long gone when I could turn a young woman’s head in my direction, and refraining from answering the phone and venturing outdoors, for fear of being entrapped by some scheming female waiting in hiding.

And secondly, because I can see absolutely no sense in waiting until the nomination process in both parties are concluded to know who’ll emerge victorious and square off in the General Election held on Tuesday, November 6.

For barring a third-party appearing on the scene between now and then, that would work more to the detriment of the GOP nominee than to the president’s reelection prospects, it will be that plutocrat-usually a pompous person in higher income and social prominence-Mitt Romney, who’ll be debating President Obama on the world’s stage.

The only question is, whether he’ll be able to hold his own in the substantive and rhetorical exchanges, or be outclassed to the degree that Nixon was by Kennedy in their 1960 debates.

But they will never match the excitement and hoopla that surrounded the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, where crowds of 10,000 or more would attend  as they crisscrossed Illinois.

Will the 2012 election results be as lopsided in either candidate’s favor as, say, Grant winning all 286 electoral votes vs Horace Greely in 1872, and FDR winning all but 8 electoral votes in the 1936 race against Governor Al Landon?

Or will it be a squeaker, as most polls and pundits indicate it’ll be? And perhaps be the squeakest and most disputed election since the one in 2000, which was decided by the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Bush in Bush vs Gore on December 12th?

And among other very close elections in the 20th century were in 1960, with Kennedy beating Nixon by less than 100,000 votes (or 0.1 percent) in the popular vote and by 303 to 219 in the Electoral College; and with Carter prevailing over Ford  in 1976 by the slimest margin in the Electoral College, and Carter leading by 200,000 votes in the popular votes.

But we can safely eliminate the possibility of this election resulting in a tie vote in the Electoral College-such as occurred in the election of 1800, when the Federalists nominated John Adams to be President and Charles Pinckney to be Vice President, and with the Democratic-Republicans nominating Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, and then making the mistake of assigning both of them the same number of electoral votes.

Thus, since neither had the majority, the election was turned over to the House of Representatives (as the Constitution then provided for), where the House voted 36 times before selecting Jefferson over Burr.

What a blessing that turned out to be for our young nation, when what that became known as the Burr Conspiracy, where he conspired with others to carve out his own empire, by attempting to detach the Western States and Louisiana Territory from the Union, came to light. For which, he was arrested by Jefferson and tried for treason, but not convicted for lack of direct evidence. 

His being exposed for his treasonable conduct must have brought a smile to Alexander Hamiliton’s face as he laid in his grave, who he’d killed in a dual in 1804, after Hamilton shot his gun in the air.

Quote of the Day: “We get who we deserve.”  Ben Franklin’s comment on elections.