More on Wes Moore

My post on “Wes Moore for President” didn’t go over well on DailyKos. Most commenters treated me like an idiot apostate. They taught me how hard it is to change the direction of a train rushing down the tracks, let alone one carrying anxious and terrified Democrats.

Some of it was my own fault. I didn’t make clear that I’m not looking for a strongman, just a candidate who can defeat a strongman. More precisely, I want a candidate who can exploit, if not overpower, our species’ evolutionary longing for a strongman in tough times.

I suppose I also didn’t dispel some natural suspicions about me. I’m 79. So am I just an old white geezer looking for a Black Messiah, the second coming of Barack Obama? That’s a legitimate question to ask, and I asked it of myself, too.

After due consideration, I think the answer is “no.” And the best explanation I can give is something I neglected to say in my first essay. Les Moore is not just smart; he sees the holes in basic values that threaten to gut our democracy.

Not only that. He laid them out, in simple, easy-to-understand terms, in his victory speech on the night he won the governorship of Maryland. (Click here for the speech, and set the timer 16:08, after the obligatory thanks to others.)

Here they are, in the order in which he introduced them:

1. Women’s bodily autonomy in reproduction;

2. The overweening importance of our children and their education, especially early-childhood education;

3. The importance of following science, especially in number (2) (Actually Moore laid this out, as a basis for pre-K, in another, later speech.); and

4. The Enlightenment value of the greatest good for the greatest number, which Moore described, in different words, in defining “patriotism.”

By inference, I would add a point 5, as follows:

5. Long-term planning for societal safety, improvement and perfection. (This follows from points 2 and 3, because early-childhood education won’t show big results for a generation.)

Tribal issues and hopes aside, I honestly believe that, if we could follow these five basic values religiously in our politics and government—especially in the near future—we could fix most or all of what ails us, plus take a big bite out of planetary heating. Yet never before, in my 79 years, had I heard a politician lay them out in a single speech, let alone in the heady atmosphere on the very night of his or her electoral win. (Most pols focus on the pandering and tricks that helped them win.)

This speech is what brought Moore to my attention like a supernova. I can’t help but think that he planned this part of his speech well in advance, and that his Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford had something to do with it.

JFK excelled in rhetoric. Nearly everyone my age, and many a lot younger, recall his “Ask not . . .” line in his inaugural and its call to national service. RFK, MLK and Obama excelled in rhetoric, too. But the first two were cut down in the primes, just like JFK, and Obama was stymied in his prime by Mitch McConnell (may his name be damned) and a racist backlash. Yet here, right before our eyes, is a possible successor who may not be quite as soaring in his rhetoric, but who knows the substance of what ails us and can lead us to fix it.

Many Democrats are smart. Some of them—Buttigieg, Harris, Raimondo, Newsom and Whitmer—have more political experience than Moore. Buttigieg even beats Moore in length of military service, which I see as essential for our next president to face the threat of (and clandestine planning for) a second insurrection. But none of them, and no pol I’ve seen in my long life, has so succinctly laid out the key lapses in our basic values, let alone in an inaugural speech.

Without those values, and a citizenry that holds them dear, our Constitution and laws are just pieces of paper. With the aid of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, Evangelical fundamentalists, our ideologically skewed Supreme Court, Project 2025, and the theory of the “Unitary Executive,” that’s precisely what Trump and his Cult are hell bent on showing us.

We desperately need an effective antidote, and Moore may be one.


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