Run Bill Moyers For President, Seriously

In this her essay, Run Bill Moyers For President, Seriously, Molly Ivins is for once not cracking wise but she just might have hit on the solution for creating a crack in the hard, cynical nut which the Democratic Party has become through which integrity and wisdom can be injected.

The point isn't whether he could win but rather to get him into the primary debates where he could stand as a role model for the other contenders, showing them how to take a stand with intact spines; how to speak truth with grace but without waffling for fear of offending; and most importantly how to foreswear their addiction to their crack PR teams whose emphasis on appearence over content has created the party's current contengent of waffle-footed, sinuous-spined candidates.

Bill Moyers has been on my wish-list of potential candidates for several years--ever since I started following his op-ed pieces and transcripts of his speeches in the year or two preceeding the last presidential election. Of course I was familiar with his journalism for decades prior to that. I credit Moyers with introducing me to Joseph Campbell, Houston Smith and Karen Armstrong--three of those whose writings helped me make the transition out of fundamentalism--through the interviews he conducted with them.

I contemplated several times over the last two years mentioning Moyers here as a potential presidential candidate that progressives could get behind. I don't know whether I just lacked the courage of my convictions or was simply unable to articulate why. But now that Molly Ivins has done such a cracking good job of it, I want to be one of the many (though miniscule) ripples her suggestion makes in the Progressive's pond. For, like Molly, I dread another primary in which the primary consideration is about who has the best chance of winning instead of who will stand most solidly with and unapologetically for our progressive values--primary among them, integrity.