I couldn’t help but think of a man I used to know way back when.
The late Bill Brooks was sheriff of Clackamas County, Ore. He got appointed to the job in 1983 after Paul McAllister resigned. Almost immediately after being appointed, Brooks announced he would seek election the next year.
I asked him about the swift announcement of his election campaign, to which Brooks responded: “If I didn’t run for election, I’d be bulldozed … and I don’t bulldoze worth a s***.”
Brooks was elected in 1984 and re-elected in 1988.
Why think of Sheriff Brooks today? Because I read an essay by another crusty fellow, Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, who penned a piece in the Washington Post in which he declared that he doesn’t work for Donald J. Trump.
McCain’s essay calls for a return to “regular order” on Capitol Hill and he has an answer for Trump’s effort to bully Congress to do his bidding. McCain writes:
We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.
Do you know what I read in that passage? It is that McCain is about to be “bulldozed” by the president of the United States.
McCain goes on to point out the obvious, which is that Trump became president with zero government experience, or even exposure to government operations.
He is highly critical of Trump, who he calls “impulsive” and often ignorant of the details of policy. He said Congress must step up and do its job as set forth in the Constitution. He writes: That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.
I believe the former sheriff who I covered as a reporter and editor in Oregon — and with whom I became a friend — would be proud of Sen. McCain standing up to the threat of a presidential bulldozer.