December 29, 2024
The Capital is Like Brigadoon
By Clarice Feldman
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the musical Brigadoon. It was about a Scottish village that disappears in the mists and only reappears once every hundred years. The District of Columbia and its federal components often remind me of that. On a local level (perhaps a tradition from pre-air conditioning days) the place is somnolent for all practical purposes in the summer and even through much of the spring. Then, just before Thanksgiving, the courts suddenly schedule hearings on cases that have been moldering for months in the clerks’ offices and Congress starts to hustle to get a continuing resolution -- to cover what should have been resolved months earlier -- before the Christmas recess. Past the miasma of the damp hot weather, the city once again is animated.
One hundred years ago Republican Calvin Coolidge was serving out his first term in office. He was known for being anti-corruption, a proponent of small government and racial equality, and held office during the “Roaring Twenties,” a period of vast economic growth.
One hundred years later, the nation overwhelmingly elected Donald J. Trump for a second term of office -- broken only by a suspicious election of Joe Biden who has proved a disaster in every conceivable sense. Biden’s running mate sought the presidency upon Biden’s decision (was it really his?) not to seek a second term, and she was roundly beaten at the polls.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/the_capital_is_like_em_brigadoon_em.html