The late Lloyd Millard Bentsen was a very accomplished individual,
starting at an early age. At age 15, he graduated from Sharlyland High School
in Mission Texas, roughly about the time that he became a recipient of the
Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.
After graduating from the University of Texas Law School om
1942, he trained to become a pilot. In 1944, he began flying combat missions in
B-24’s, and was promoted to the tank of major at the age of 23. Almost
immediately, he was given command of a squadron of 600 men, and he was promoted
to lieutenant colonel before being discharged in 1947.
In 1948, he was elected to the first of his three terms in the
United States House of Representatives. In 1970, he was elected to the United
States Senate, and was re-elected in 1976, 1982, and 1988.
In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts chose him to
be his running mate in that year’s presidential race, and THAT was when his
words became some of the most memorable in the history of politics.
Bentsen
was responsible for one of the most widely discussed moments of the campaign
during the vice presidential
televised debate with fellow Senator Dan Quayle. In answering a question about his experience, Quayle stated
that he had as much political experience as John F. Kennedy had when he
ran for the presidency. Bentsen, at the age of 67, retorted, "Senator, I
served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of
mine. Senator, you're no
Jack Kennedy.
The Dukakis/Bentsen ticket lost to the Bush/Quayle ticket, but
Bentsen still left an impressive legacy, as detailed in the link below:
Lloyd Bentsen came to mind this morning after I saw Steve Benson’s
latest political cartoon:
After the Bush/Quayle ticket lost to the Clinton/Gore ticket
in 1992, he largely faded from public life, but has done very well financially
due to his involvement with Cerberus Capital Management, where he currently
serves as Chairman of Global Investments. However, his accomplishments pale when compared to the legacy
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Donald Trump has never been a fan of John McCain, a man who
most Americans (including most Democrats) still hold in high esteem. Trump
derided him during the 2016 campaign as “not being a hero”, and McCain’s vote
on the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act further drew Trump’s ire.
Shortly after Trump got elected, McCain was attending an annual
security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a retired a British diplomat
approached him.
In his last book, “Restless Wave”, McCain
discussed an incident that will eventually have profound consequences for Trump.
According to McCain, he didn't recall ever
having a previous conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, but may have met him
before in passing. Chris Brose, a staff member on the Senate Armed Services
Committee, and David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state with Russian
expertise, joined McCain and Wood in a room off the main conference hall.
After discussing Russian election interference
for a few minutes, Wood explained why he'd approached McCain in the first
place.
"He told me he knew a former MI6 officer
by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate
connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as
potentially compromising information about the President-elect that [Russian
President Vladimir] Putin allegedly possessed," McCain wrote.
Wood told McCain that Steele had compiled a
report, while careful to note the information was unverified, which the former
British spy "strongly believed merited a thorough examination by
counterintelligence experts."
"Our impromptu meeting felt charged with
a strange intensity," McCain wrote. "No one wise-cracked to lighten
the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the
atmosphere was eerie."
It all seemed "too strange a scenario to
believe" at first, he wrote, but the six-term senator felt that "even
a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to
Russian extortion had to be investigated."
After further discussion, the group agreed to
send Kramer to London to meet Steele. When Kramer returned from the meeting and
told McCain that Steele seemed to be a reputable source, the Republican senator
agreed to receive a copy of the dossier.
"The allegations were disturbing, but I
had no idea which if any were true," McCain said. "I could not
independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about
our nation's security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe,
called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a
meeting."
Now that Trump is getting increasing pressure from a variety
of sources, he does what he always does – he lashes out at those who he feels
have wronged him.
Even though McCain has been dead since last August Trump has recently
started to attack him again on Twitter. (Some of his supporters have also gone
down the same path. If you don’t know who Tiffany Nicole is, consider yourself
lucky.)
The Steele dossier may not be the final coffin
in the nail of Trump’s presidency, but it will be part of the mounting evidence
that will do irreparable harm to Trump, both personally and politically.
It’s hard to say what the final outcome of the
Mueller investigation will be, but one thing is DEFINITELY undisputed, and that
is this:
Donald Trump is no John McCain.
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