Porta

When I was six or seven years of age, I stood in front of my uncle’s general store outside Cambridge, Maryland, stroking Prince, the collie, while standing at rigid attention, singing “America the Beautiful” as Old Glory flapped in a summer breeze. I was intensely proud of being an American, albeit a very innocent one.

I eventually went to high school in New York City and since virtually no one on the lower West Side went to college, I enlisted in the navy, did a long tour, got the G.I. Bill, entered, and eventually graduated from, New York University.

As part of that pro patria bent, I became the head of the Government Club and the “Young Democrats” at N.Y.U. I took courses in Russian history and was amazed at their capacity to endure and eventually prevail. But we were locked in a cold war and, much as I admired these extraordinary people, they had become an enemy.

As a reporter I’ve covered many, extraordinary events including assassination attempts on heads of state, every conceivable political campaign, the Vietnam War and political battles and dogfights of every stripe and hue. I marveled at the workings of this fragile democracy, with its truly remarkable guarantees, but became increasingly aware that somehow our political leaders were not so much great men, but creations of slick campaigns, America to the highest bidder.

The public relations men, the advertising campaigns, were slicker than hell and they elected everyone from city councilmen to presidents. I had managed several major campaigns and was campaign press secretary to Mayor Abraham D. Beame during his second run for Mayor of New York City. Later, I managed a senatorial bid. I totally understood the workings of the spin doctors and leeches and eventually walked away, saturated with deceit and ego, totally fed up.

Admittedly there has probably never been a major political campaign in this country where there weren’t shenanigans and skullduggery, but it seemed to me that we were on a luge ride to a new level of self-contempt as a nation. I keep hearing that we need heroes, but they aren’t graduating from the great schools these days and public service is synonymous with power, nepotism and an “Up yours Jack, I’ve got mine,” self-serving attitude.

I live in the Florida Keys now and watch the pathetic power dances on a much lower level. One of our myriad problems the politicos play with is sewage seepage from exhausted septic systems. Many of our older residents can’t afford new facilities so I came up with a simple, wonderful, straight forward solution to our problem, “Time Share Porta Potties.”

This is how it would work. Starting at the Monroe-Dade county line there would literally be hundreds of these portable johns and it would cost the locals approximately fifty bucks a year for an eight minute daily stay. Eight minutes precisely. If you remain over that time constraint a video of Nixon’s “I’m Not a Crook” speech followed by George Bush’s memorable “Read my Lips” promise and finally, with greatly increased volume, Clinton’s less than abject apologize to the American people for his incredibly stupid dalliances, are broadcast at increasingly louder levels. See, there are answers.