The long and the short of the 2024 Presidential Election cycle and what it tells us about where we are as a country. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn gives his take.
Rob Artigo: It’s been another long and exhaust… It’s weird, it’s been an election cycle that was both very long as it tends to be, two, three, four years of people running, and then we had this switch up with President Biden stepping out of the race and Kamala Harris coming in. And so, we had this short race head-to-head between Harris and Trump. It’s been very expensive, but also truncated in a very unusual way, that I don’t think any of us ever experienced before in our lifetime.
So, I know you’ve seen a lot of big changes in presidential politics in your years, and every four years we see something and sometimes we don’t see change, but we see the end of an election cycle. So let me ask you, since we have a situation where, as is always the case, one side wins and one side loses. So, some people are happy and some people are unhappy. Some people are nervous. When people think about a change in president, it can cause some anxiety depending on your point of view. What do you think about this? Are we in a situation where we should be concerned or should we just be diligent?
Ray Zinn: Well, it’s like a football game. You have two opposing teams. There’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser, or it wouldn’t be a game. I hate to call the election a game, but basically it is. And so, if your football team loses, you’re going to be very unhappy. I’ve seen some very nasty riots occur after a particular football game, and I’ve seen some that went very smoothly. Most of us know when we have a contest, whether it be baseball, basketball, football, whatever, soccer, that we all know, at least we should know, that there’s going to be a team that’s going to win, and there’s going to be a team that’s going to lose, and that’s just the way it is. If your team wins, you’re going to be very happy. You’ll be jubilant. If your team loses, you’re going to be disgusted and unhappy.
Just recently, if I can recall, the coach of the Chicago Bears was terminated because he’s now at the bottom of the league and he lost against the Detroit Lions. And there was some nasty things said. And they accused him of not running the team properly and making bad decisions on certain plays and so forth, and it was very nasty. It was a very nasty thing. Of course, if you’re the coach and you get terminated, you’re not going to be happy about that. And there are people second guessing about that. Should he have been terminated or should he not have, and so forth. So, that’s a recent thing that’s happened, and just been on the news in the last day.
Rob Artigo: That was a bit of a surprise too.
Ray Zinn: Pardon me?
Rob Artigo: That was a bit of a surprise too. For me it was a surprise. I hadn’t been following it that closely, but this is the time of the season where you don’t usually see the firings. Usually you see them at the end of the season.
Ray Zinn: No, not always. You get terminated right in the middle. We had, when John Kennedy was assassinated, you had Lyndon Johnson take over. You could say that was a surprise. So, I was a young married person at the time when President Kennedy was assassinated, and I didn’t think much about who the vice president was at the time, because you don’t think much about the vice president, you’re really voting for the president. All of a sudden, we no longer had John Kennedy, we had Lyndon Johnson. And [inaudible 00:04:10] be very concerned because we didn’t really know much about him, didn’t know what he could do, what he couldn’t do. It happens. It can happen in the middle of a term, when a political leader either quits or dies, or has something happen, and then somebody else takes over, that’s always an unknown.
And so, that happened in this election, is that effectively Joe Biden was convinced not to run. They were deciding to go with the vice president, let’s say if Joe Biden was unable to run for some physical reason, I guess that’s one of the thoughts. He was not physically able, but then you have the vice president who takes over. And so, that’s the way they ran it was, since the current president can’t run for reelection, then the vice president runs for reelection in his stead. And so, that started the whole mismatch about, there’s no primary, and we didn’t get a chance to vote on who was going to get to represent the party. And so, a lot of that happens. And a lot of-
Rob Artigo: And it’s a lot of money too involved in that short campaign. Obviously, both sides spent a lot of money.
Ray Zinn: I’m not surprised, Rob. Given the short time they had, and they had to make their point, that I wasn’t surprised that they spent a ton of money. There’s a lot of over that. You could say, “Oh gee, spent it wrong.” Second football game again, “Oh, you called the wrong play. You shouldn’t have done the kick-“
Rob Artigo: Monday morning quarterbacking.
Ray Zinn: Yeah, exactly. So, we can argue that until the cows come home. Did they spend too much money? Yeah, if you lost, you spent too much money. It’s like, yeah, if you decide to go for a field goal and you missed, you can say, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. Should have gone for the first down.” We’re always second guessing what we should have done, would’ve, could’ve, should have, we always say that. And so, this whole thing about blame doesn’t do any good. Just like if you got in a car accident, you said, “Gosh, if I’d have only been five minutes later, I wouldn’t have gotten in the accident.” There’s always the what ifs, what if this, if that, what if. It is what it is and we have to deal with it. Okay?
Rob Artigo: We have Kamala Harris’s campaign went for 15 weeks, but like I said when I did the intro, these campaigns can go very long. They can go two years, three years. They’re already talking about congress person from Northern New York, or I think she’s from the Bronx, whatever, but that she’s considered a contender for 2028. And you go, we haven’t even inaugurated the new president yet, and we’re already talking about contenders four years down the road. Is it helpful that we have campaigns that start right when the other one is over?
Ray Zinn: Well, every football team has two or three quarterbacks. They back up for each other. And so there’s the first string, second string, third string. And so, obviously the first string is supposed to be the better than the third string. We always get into that. Oh gosh, should we have better follow-up quarterbacks, backup quarterbacks, or should we just have a quarterback? So, if you say that you’re only going to play one quarterback the whole game and no backup, then what if the quarterback gets hurt? Then what do you do? So, this debate can go on and on. It doesn’t do any good. Until you’re faced with that eventuality, you’re arguing over a molehill as you would.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, right. A game that’s already been played.
Ray Zinn: Right. So anyway-
Rob Artigo: Before we go, any thoughts off the top of your head that reflecting on the election?
Ray Zinn: Well, our elections are based on what they call commons consent. And so, we all agree that if the majority want to go a certain way, then we have to go along with that. I happen to be opposed to marijuana, but when they legalize it, I have to go along with it. I’m not going to smoke it myself because they’ve legalized it, but I’m still unhappy that they legalized… And not in all states, but in several states, they’ve legalized it. And even though I’m not the common consent says, it’s been okay.
Now, there’s going to be some downsides with doing that, but measured with the upsides. But I live in a country where we abide by what we call common consent. We vote, the one that gets the most votes is the one that wins. And then, we have to sustain that. We have to uphold the common consent decree that comes about as a result of it. So, it is like as we mentioned earlier, it’s like a football game. If your team loses, you’re going to be very unhappy, but you’ll get over it because you’ll be hoping for the next game and then hoping the next game you win.
But not everything goes with the way we want them to go. They talk about… And I wrote amusing about this recently, about despair. The first aspect of despair is denial. And we’ve seen that in this particular election process, is that the opposing team that is in denial in saying, “Oh, this is not really true, that somehow the vote counts wrong,” or whatever. We’re in denial. Then after we get over denial, then we go into what we call anger. We’re upset and we yell and scream and pout and shout and whatever. Don’t invite our family over for Thanksgiving or blah, blah, blah. We’re go on, and they’re not happy. People see happiness and despair cannot coexist. So if you’re in despair, you’re not happy. And so if you’re grateful, you’re happy. And so, you need to be grateful that you live in this great country and that we have a great constitution and a great government system, and you have to accept the outcome.
The outcome is not always going to be in your favor. It’s going to be in what we call common consent. Whoever has the majority in that vote is the one that’s going to succeed, and we’re going to have to abide by it for all of us. We are all Americans, and we have to pull together and we have to survive together, and we have to deal with what we have. If you’re a Democrat and you fell angry and had despair and upset and whatever over this, just grin and bear it. Just make lemonade out of the lemons. And if you’re a Republican, be kind and gentle and understanding for those who aren’t happy about the outcome, and be accepting with that and put your arm around them and love them. So my advice is we live in a great country. Let’s be grateful. Let’s be happy. Let’s just make lemonade out of lemons wherever it happens.
Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. All the questions are welcomed. I know that you get them and you read them, and they can follow on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Of course, some people-
Ray Zinn: X.
Rob Artigo: Yeah, some people just call it by its real name now, so they can pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things first, flagship book of Tough Things First podcast and the website. And you can also check out the Zen of Zen, one, two, and three. You won’t regret it. Thanks, Ray.
