Reflections on being a Cubs fan and a former Republican and this year’s pivotal midterms (Revised Format)

I learned today that the link to my op-ed in the Chicago Tribune did not work for some readers. Since it is still timely, I am providing the complete text below (lacking only the Trib’s illustration).

The first Midterm election I recall came in the early days of my interest in politics. I became a Republican about the time I became a Chicago Cubs fan, just at the end of World War II, when we lived in a suburb of Chicago. As I eagerly scanned the Chicago Tribune for news about the Cubs, I think I must have also absorbed some of the paper’s conservative views along the way. So it happened that I was thrilled by both the Cubs winning the National League pennant in 1945 and Republicans capturing both Houses of Congress in the Midterm elections of 1946. Those seminal events became the foundation of loyalties that would last for decades.

In 1945, I was at Wrigley Field for one of the games in a World Series that the Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers. Thereafter, their fortunes declined precipitously and at length, but my support for the team survived re-locations to the East, and ultimately West, coast. In 2003, I flew from Cape Cod to be rewarded with the disaster of the Bartman game. By the time the Cubs finally won a pennant in 2016, I was living in California, and my daughter Heather and I flew to Chicago for a World Series game against Cleveland. They lost the game we saw before going on to win the Series—after our return to California. Nevertheless, I suspect I am one of very few who can claim to have attended Cubs games in two World Series.

For their part, Republicans’ success in 1946 was followed by the crushing loss of Tom Dewey to Harry Truman in 1948. Throughout the succeeding years of political victories and defeats, I remained a Republican and eventually served in the Nixon and Ford administrations. I do not recall much about the many Midterm elections in that period with one exception: 1966.

In 1966, I was among a small group who gathered with Richard Nixon at the St. Francis Hotel in New York to watch the returns from the Midterm elections. Nixon had campaigned vigorously for Republican candidates across the country for one reason: he saw the 1966 elections as a path to revival of his political career, after his losses for the presidency in 1960 and the California governorship in1962. My presence at the hotel was not as a member of Nixon’s political team, but as a kind of reward for the work that I had done on the case that Nixon had recently argued in the Supreme Court. Still, I was as excited as anyone else.

As the returns came in that night in 1966, and Republicans were doing well across the country, it seemed that Nixon’s judgment had been vindicated. Enjoying the television news on CBS, Nixon decided spontaneously to call the program’s host, Walter Cronkite, to take some credit for the Republicans’ success. We watched with delight as Cronkite suddenly disappeared and, after a few minutes, reappeared. When he returned, Cronkite reported to viewers on the “most unusual” phone conversation he had just had with the former vice president—and proceeded to give Nixon the credit he sought for the Republican gains. The 1966 Midterms became a major factor in Nixon’s winning the nomination in 1968, and then, his election that year. The rest, as they say, is history, but whatever one makes of that history, it’s hard to deny that the 1966 Midterms played a pivotal part in causing it to unfold the way it did.

Will the 2022 Midterms be comparably important? They may well be. And I write that as one who, after a lifetime as a Republican, has been a registered Democrat since November 2020. At that point, it became sadly apparent to me that, although Trump had been defeated, his toxic grip on the Republican Party would remain. The results of the 2022 Midterms may be felt in one or more of three ways. First, if Republicans take one or both Houses of Congress, the remaining two years of the Biden administration are likely to be a form of political hell: little or no significant legislation will pass and Republicans will spend their waking hours attempting to investigate the life out of the administration.

Second, the results may determine the political future of Donald Trump, who is doing his best to make the elections a referendum on the Big Lie that he was really reelected in 2020. If that claim is broadly rejected, by defeating candidates who have embraced it, the wound could be politically fatal for Trump.

Third, and potentially most important, is the fate of the Republican “election deniers” who are candidates for offices, such as Governor or Secretary of State, where they would be in a position in 2024 to control or influence vote tabulations and certifications. Such candidates have asserted—against all evidence—that the 2020 election was stolen; they clearly intend to steal it back, if necessary, to elect Trump or, for that matter, any other Republican. Their potential capacity to do so constitutes the gravest danger to American democracy in the history of our republic. The 2022 elections are a gateway that must be firmly shut.