Brennan: Don’t vote for my dog

The last time I endorsed a Democrat I was still looking forward to puberty.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to do that now, though I might be somewhat tempted if the Democrats nominated Joe Biden for president and Mayor Pete Buttigieg for vice president. My hand would be shaking all the way to the voting lever, but I might be able to do it. They both look like level-headed people at least by the standards of the Democratic Party.

I have friends who are Democrats and don’t consider those who believe in the party’s doctrines to be nuts necessarily, but I am not drawn to the liberal way of thinking. And that’s putting it mildly.

My problem with the upcoming federal election is that President Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. If the House Democrats vote to impeach Trump, the Republican majority in the Senate will surely vote against convicting him. Impeachment is the government equivalent of indictment in criminal law. If impeached by the House the president remains in office unless the Senate votes for the heave ho. And that’s very unlikely because Republicans are a majority in the Senate.

The Democrats might be able to make the case that Trump’s phone call last April with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was illegal, though to millions of Americans it just looks like shady politics as usual. If you or I made a deal like that in an official capacity it could conceivably bring legal charges or a boot in the butt from our employer. But when such a call is made from the White House what seems called for is a shake of the head rather than removal.

If Trump were successfully convicted and dumped, which is unlikely in the extreme, Mike Pence would become president and the Republican Party would be looking to him as its candidate next year. He has a lot of good qualities and could be a popular president. As his vice presidential candidate, Pence would almost certainly pick a likable high-profile Republican. As I have mentioned before, one good choice would be former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

A lot of good people support President Trump and both the nation and the world are in pretty good condition during his term — at least in part because of what he has accomplished. The United States economy is in good shape, the employment rate is high, people are working and putting money in the bank. Things are looking pretty good right now.

My problem with Trump is that he often behaves, as my mother would say, like a jerk. Much of that behavior relates to his constant abusive comments on the Twitter social network, a problem that would justify having a team of his aides or the first lady take his tweeter away. He would just get another one, but whoever took the first one away would be a national hero just for trying.

In several recent elections where I couldn’t bring myself to voting for one of the two leading candidates, I have written in the name of my dog Bonnie — as a protest. The most notable of those instances was on November 8, 2016 when the two choices were Democrat Hillary Clinton and the man who won the job, Donald Trump. I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for either one of them.

But don’t you get any funny ideas about voting for my dog on election day. Let me say on her behalf that, as Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman put it when the Republican Party was looking at him as president in 1884, if nominated she will not run, if elected she will not serve.

I wouldn’t let her go to Washington even if they sent the Secret Service to get her. It would ruin her reputation.