Tomorrow if it come
I (if I’m around)
will barricade our home
from the hullabalooing town
corking the walls of my room
unless I decide to go out…
“Friends and foes ask: Is Charlie Crist for real?” This question kicked off the Tampa Bay Times’s titillating tell-all article, “Knowing Charlie.” Of course, only his foes ask this, a natural segue into an attack on his metamorphosis from creeping, devouring Republican caterpillar to a fluttering, nectar-sipping Democrat butterfly. The thrust of the Times piece was that Crist will say anything to get elected. Like Captain Renault, we were shocked, shocked…
But no one knows what’s inside Crist, or any politician — or even any person. He really did seem to grow uncomfortable as Republicans hardened their stances on all fronts. A born moderate, Crist wants everyone to like him, even the poor. He naturally flowed into the old Republican party, like the younger Mitt Romney, who brought Romneycare to Massachusetts before metamorphosing in reverse to Romney the Disdainer of Lazy Whiners.
As to flips, the Tea Party-driven GOP has veered so far right even President Reagan wouldn’t recognize it. If you doubt this, Google Reagan on “health care,” “assault rifles,” “taxes,” “immigration reform” or “climate change.”
Crist, the opposite of Scott, is Mr. Accessible. We’ve seen him in our Publix in St. Pete, walking by Midtown Sundries talking animatedly with companions, chatting quietly with a friend at the Oyster Bar. He seems to be everywhere at once. Perhaps there are smiling doubles involved, nodding their heads and taking any hand that comes within shaking distance. How else fight the avalanche of Scott’s TV attacks?
This election should be about specific policies, getting the right ones enacted. Forget the Why, or even the Who, and concentrate on the What. The Times is generally clear on this (i.e. “Scott gets an F on Education,” etc.) but Adam Smith’s “balanced” discussion replayed Republican ads like “Crist represents everything you hate about politics,” whereas what we’re really against is ideological rigidity resulting in policies that harm us: against minimum wage, equal pay, affordable health care, environmental control. As for the economy, Scott’s trumpeted “strength,” Tampa Bay and Miami rank the lowest in median household income of all comparable cities in the country. Water is lapping at our eroding shoreline.
Many believe Crist has done the right thing for the wrong reason — like a child getting a good report card for money — so instead of gaining credit for changing his stance on, say, gay marriage, he gets attacked for it. But instead of focusing on murky “motives,” we have to decide who’ll cast the votes on education, women’s rights, immigration, and climate change to move Florida forward before we become a stock joke, as real and metaphorical waters rise around us. Think of it this way: President Obama has steered us through precarious waters toward becoming a smarter and more tolerant country. Who — Rick Scott or Charlie Crist — is better suited to help our state follow that direction?
When I was a boy we’d lie down on the living room rug to listen to The Shadow on the radio. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” the deep voice would announce, as I’d peer guiltily around at my sisters, wondering if they had an idea. But only the Shadow seemed to know, and we learned we should leave that up to him.
At the end of the show, the Godlike voice (Orson Welles’s was the first) affirmed that “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.” So far Scott, supported by the Koch Brothers and Duke Energy, has already bought our state once, and has escaped tasting that fruit. It’s about time that he does, and it’s up to Florida voters to see that he swallows it.
I suffer gladly
This foolish uncertainty
For which we’ve found no cure
I’m confused therefore I’m alive:
Still lie the dead sure
—Both quotes from “Certitude,” by Peter Meinke (in Zinc Fingers, U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2000)
Peter Meinke will read from and discuss his latest book of poetry, Lucky Bones, at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading, on Saturday Oct. 25, at 10 a.m., at USF St. Pete, STG Bldg, Room 123.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2014.