Ted Cruz and Me

Ted Cruz and Me

As Ted Cruz’ mournful face fills the screen again and again, I ponder our differences and resemblances.  You see, Ted and I had the same education but the result was very different.  So I wonder what difference education makes.Cruz

Ted and I both went to Princeton and both graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  It’s a program designed for people interested in government which I was and am.  So is Ted.  But how can two people study the same subject at the same school and come out with such different notions of how government ought to work?  I notice that Ted’s resume on his web site doesn’t mention the Woodrow Wilson School, so maybe that tells you something.

One thing I remember learning in college was that a two party system tends to draw people toward the center.  The closer to the center you are, the more votes you are likely to get because you will get most of the folk to your left or right (whichever side you tend to) anyway, but you can only get the vast number in the middle by standing as close to the middle as you can.

Maybe Ted didn’t take that course – or didn’t believe it.  Or maybe his theory is that if he gets far enough to the right, he’ll begin to draw folk around from the far left.

Maybe so.  But I think what’s really happening is that he and his cohorts are pulling the Democratic Party further and further to the right. After all, folk on the left have nowhere else to go (unless they see Ted sneaking up on the outside), so Democrats might as well move over to the right and pick up all those center-right people that can’t go as far out as Ted.

There’s another thing Ted doesn’t seem to remember from college.  It’s a slogan they still use there: “Princeton in the nation’s service.”   Ted seems to have a different agenda: “The nation in Ted Cruz’s service.”  Its sort of amusing/pathetic/sad (check one or more) to see even his fellow right wing radicals wondering how to get Ted to think in terms other than self-promotion.  Is there, they wonder, a way to get him to think cooperatively, to think in terms of at least the party if not the nation.

I don’t have any answers.  It sometimes does make me wonder whether education makes a difference.  How can someone with such credentials pursue a path so destructive – of the people and country he ought to be serving.  Yes, and of himself.

1 Comment

Hardy GeerSeptember 27th, 2013 at 2:29 pm

Maybe the difference is that you are a christian.

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