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4th election defeat a sad end for Arpaio
Trump raid signals ‘Mourning in America’
BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ
Tribune Columnist
Unable to leave the fanfare behind, the great ones inevitably hang on too long. There’s a sadness watching them fade in plain sight.
Think Muhammad Ali out on his feet against Trevor Berbick; Willie Mays batting a feeble .211 in his last year with the Mets; Elizabeth Taylor picking up a paycheck in the TV flick, “These Old Broads.”
Then there’s former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Once a political juggernaut, a lawman sought out by presidents seeking to kiss his ring and parts further south, Arpaio, now 90, lost his fourth consecutive election last week – for the lofty title of Mayor of Fountain Hills.
To someone named Ginny Dickey. Who beat Arpaio, once America’s Toughest Sheriff, by 213 votes. This despite Arpaio spending $161,000, or about 31 bucks for each of his 5,207 votes.
The great ones never know when to bid us goodbye.
I met Arpaio in 1995, a few weeks after I moved to Arizona. He was two years into his 24-year run as sheriff, a law enforcement sideshow full of bombast and bull.
The gimmicks seemed endless: pink underwear so jail inmates wouldn’t steal undergarments, Tent City tours on 117-degree days, meals of donated fruit and green baloney to save the taxpayers money. There was a roguish charm to Arpaio then, like he was in on the joke, a hound for headlines who reveled in being despised by reporters and liberals alike.
During my early days as a columnist for the Tribune, I went to Arpaio with an insane idea: Put me undercover on the chain gang. He couldn’t say “yes” fast enough. MCSO deputies sneaked me into the jail at 3 a.m., gave me a sweat-stained uniform and chained me to a crew of convicts. To a man, my fellow inmates confided that chain gang duty was better than sitting in the tents all day. We gathered trash from roadsides in the sweltering summer heat, passers-by constantly honking and giving us the finger.
I got a column and a bunch of TV interviews out of the deal. Arpaio got to read his name in bold news type yet again.
In the early days, Arpaio’s mantra I thought would serve him for eternity: You will never live better in jail than you live on the street. Eventually he lost sight of what made him a political rock star, instead using the sheriff’s office to target political opponents.
Arpaio failed to investigate serious crimes and he misused the people’s money like a drunken lottery winner. As American politics got meaner after the turn of the century, tough Old Joe moved his crosshairs from criminals to anyone with brown skin.
In 2016, Arpaio lost to Paul Penzone, a retired Phoenix cop who has returned law enforcement focus and decorum back to the Sheriff’s Office. Two years later, Arpaio lost in a GOP Senate primary. In 2020, he lost in the Republican primary for sheriff.
Last year, announcing his candidacy for mayor of Fountain Hills, he told Fox News, “What do you want me to do? Go fishing? Go golfing? I don’t do anything. My hobby is work. I’ve done that my whole life. I’m not stopping now.”
Arpaio in his prime fooled me totally. Back in 2001, “60 Minutes” did a bio piece headlined “Joe the Jailer.”
How does it end for Arpaio?
“It’s gonna wear out when this guy passes away giving his speech in Sun City at 9 at night and he slumps forward into his rubber chicken,” was my assessment. “That’s when it wears out and not a moment before.”
We were younger then. The moment seemed eternal. It always does with the great ones, until it does no longer.
BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist
The “Reagan Renaissance” is seldom heralded by today’s history scholars – and that’s a shame.
A one-liner is usually all they can spare from their considerable labors to revise the past so that they may pacify the woke among us.
And predictably, their minimalist assessment goes something like this: “Ronald Reagan’s boundless optimism induced his fellow countrymen into believing it was ‘Morning in America’ again.”
That’s it.
But for the vast majority of Americans who were of voting age in the 1980’s, and experienced the “Age of Reagan” first-hand, they know it was much more. The end of “stagflation.” The restoration of a strong national defense as well as a strong economy. And yes, a consensus that “America was back.”
No wonder the 40th president won a second term in a landslide of historic proportions, carrying 49 states and the District of Columbia. The television ad that typified the successful 1984 campaign proclaimed that “It’s ‘Morning in America’ again.”
That line so resonated within the national consciousness that even contemporary critics employ it in a quick dismissal of the Reagan years.
While conservative historian and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich describes Reagan’s distinguishing characteristic as “cheerful persistence,” the fact is that the former radio sportscaster and Hollywood actor was likewise persistent in warning Americans about a fate considerably less cheerful.
“Freedom,” Reagan said, “is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
Reagan concluded that thought in a way that sounded both presidential and prophetic: “Or one day, we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Sadly, it now appears that “one day” is fast approaching.
Welcome to “Mourning in America.”
Thoughtful Americans, regardless of partisan label or political philosophy, find themselves mourning the unprecedented FBI raid on the home of a former President.
No less a liberal than Alan Dershowitz, lifelong Democrat and Harvard Law professor emeritus, wrote that the “fullscale morning raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home does not seem justified…If it is true that the basis of the raid was the former President’s alleged removal of classified material from the White House, that would constitute a double standard of justice.”
In a column for “The Hill,” Dershowitz goes on to explain that two figures who have enjoyed his political support—2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger—were spared raids of their homes “for comparable allegations of mishandling official records in the recent past.”
Dershowitz has repeatedly warned against the criminalization of political differences, but that appears to be precisely what the Department of “Just Us” is doing
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Simply stated, the Biden Administration authorized a raid of the home of a former President, who could very well face Joe Biden as the Republican presidential nominee again in 2024.
Gingrich put the sordid episode into context: “If they can do this to a former and potentially future president, what can they do to you…or your cousin, or your friends, or your neighbors? And I think it’s a very scary step towards a police state.”
Newt’s concern is compounded by the Left’s goal of adding 87,000 new IRS agents.
Rest assured, when they show up at your door, they won’t be there for tea and crumpets…they’ll go for your “cookie jar” instead. What else will crumble? The cornerstone of American jurisprudence—the presumption of innocence to which the accused is entitled.
An earlier Congress (in which this columnist served) enacted the “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights” to assure that the burden of proof remained on the IRS during an audit, but like the original Bill of Rights, certain individual freedoms appear headed for permanent misplacement in the “lost and found” of a newly-founded “enforcement state.”
Listen again to President Reagan: “The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.” Your vote can turn the current “Mourning” into “Morning” once again.
That’s a promise.
Share Your Thoughts: Send your letters on local issues to: pmaryniak@ timespublications.com
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