Actions, Words, and Rule Number Five

 

2016

"I want you to use my words against me.  If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make the nomination. And you could use my words against me, and you'd be absolutely right." 

2018

"If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term and the primary process has started, we will wait to the next election." 

2020

"I therefore think it is important that we proceed expeditiously to process any nomination made by President Trump to fill this vacancy." 

It is painfully obvious to me (as it certainly is to you if you are one of the couple of dozen people who actually have read Pop Pop Rules:  A how-to manual for the little girl who saved me simply by showing up) that among the things Lindsey Graham reflexively disregards is Rule Number Five.  He does so at his peril, given that a very smart (albeit occasionally horribly immodest) man deemed it worthy of inclusion as one of only thirteen Pop Pop Rules: 

Rule Number Five

Always look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. 

The sooner you do it after you wake up, the better. 

This is not done for vanity's sake. 

It is done for accountability. If a day arrives when you wake up and you cannot 

stand the thought of looking at yourself in the mirror, 

then you need to immediately start rethinking your life decisions. 

Each of us plays the movie of our life in our mind's eye. 

It is on all the time so you can watch it whenever you want. 

You will not notice it most of the time because 

it is on in the background as you go about your day-to-day.  

In our life's movie, we inevitably see ourselves in the best possible light. 

It is human nature. It is nothing of which to be ashamed. 

The level of disconnect between the fictionalized version of ourselves 

and the real-life model can be quite humorous. 

If you need proof of that proposition, then use "the Google" 

to find Defending Your Life, a movie starring Albert Brooks. 

Allowing that level of disconnect to wide beyond the point of humor

can be dangerous. Each day, before you go out into the world, look

long and hard at yourself. If you cannot look your own reflection in the eye, 

then chances are you have permitted the gap between who you are and you want

to be to widen to an unsafe distance. 

You cannot look another in the eye if you cannot return the gaze of your reflection

in the bathroom mirror. And if you cannot look another in the eye, 

then you have become a person you do not really want to be. 

-AK