Out of Left Field: Don’t stop thinking about 2020

Michael Dinnocenzo

Think about Mitch Landrieu for President with Julian Castro as his running mate. Those names are probably not yet familiar to many Americans. Yet, both men can be transformative leaders.
Landrieu and Castro, because of who they are, because of their range of experiences, and because of their honorable values can help our nation in much-needed healing from extreme partisan discord and disrespect for truth.
Because Landrieu is from Louisiana and Castro from Texas, these “bridge” men can connect the more liberal Democratic masses on both coasts.

Bear in mind that Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016. She failed by small margins in the interior and southern states to gain sufficient support for an Electoral College victory.
Also bear in mind that Clinton and Trump were the most disliked presidential candidates since polls measured voters’ responses. Both teetered near 70 percent disapproval, and just before Election Day Clinton’s negatives passed Trump’s.
What a sorry reflection on the candidates, the parties and our politics.
Looking to 2020, the affirmatives of team Landrieu and Castro will be striking, not only to Democrats, but to all Americans who cherish our nation’s highest principles.
Unlike so many tainted candidates recently, Landrieu and Castro are distinguished by their integrity and by noble public service.

Each man has published his own book during 2018, and as the public learns about their lives, citizens will find much to admire.
Julian Castro’s book is appropriately titled, “An Unlikely Journey: Waking up from My American Dream.” Readers will deeply appreciate Julian’s journey because it reflects the best of our nation.
His grandmother came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1922 as a 17-year old orphan. His own mother was abandoned by her husband after she gave birth to twins, Julian and Joaquin. She set an example for her boys by supporting them and her aging mother while she earned a master’s degree in urban studies and worked for the city of San Antonio.
She emphasized civic responsibility and commitment to academic achievement, and both the twins excelled in high school, then at Stanford, and then at Harvard Law School.

Along the way, Julian made a special commitment to teach in a high school in a working class Mexican-American neighborhood, like his own youth community.
This is an American Dream achievement to inspire anyone. Julian then served as Mayor of San Antonio and in President Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

He just reached age 44. He has the ability to connect with people of all ages because of his speaking skills, and he will be particularly adept in appealing to rising millennials (who in 2020 will be the largest voting cohort in the nations, superseding the “Boomer” generation (born 1946-1964).
Hillary Clinton often lamented that people did not warm to her and that she felt she was not an effective campaigner. Trump is a master showman, but even his most ardent supporters find his blatant dishonesty and hucksterism offensive.
As the former mayor of New Orleans and with 30 years of public service, Mitch Landrieu will effectively head the ticket as a most articulate and impressive person. He is proud of having been a theater major in college. That shows in his style of engaged communication, and, unlike Trump, in his extensive cultural and historical knowledge.
Landrieu looks like Eisenhower (great hairline) and is compared with Obama in his speeches, and, often with John and Robert Kennedy, especially when he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the Kennedy Library in May 2018.
In that speech and in his book, “In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History,” Landrieu shares with Castro a deep commitment to the affirmatives of diversity in American society.
We have endured Trump playing the fear card relentlessly and being admired by white extremists like David Duke and those Charleston Nazis who chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

This is not to say that Trump shares their values, but his language and conduct has enabled haters in our nation (look at the Trump decorated van of the pipe bomber).
Landrieu and Castro see American diversity as a strength, not a weakness. Landrieu says when he aspired to be an actor, he never forgot the song from “South Paci

fic” that “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” He freely recites key lines:
“You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late/Before you are 6 or 7 or 8/To hate all the people your relatives hate/You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
By 2020, the United States will be in a welcoming mood for Landrieu and Castro as they call our citizens back to our “civil religion” of fairness, equality, liberty and inclusion. Robert Bellah celebrated that approach to community building in his book, appropriately titled, “Habits of the Heart.”
Mitch Landrieu and Julian Castro can rekindle deeply caring hearts.

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