Ode to Charlie Crist

The campaign team of Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running in the U.S. Senate election, posted a poem written by James Tokley, the poet laureate of Tampa, entitled The Peoples Independent.

What Party is Democracy
And by what other name
May the Friends of this Republic
Reconstruct the name they claim?
What politic shall we ascribe
To the words of F. Scott Key,
When he awoke to find that our
new nation was still free?

When Jefferson said, We do believe
Mankind is born the same,
What Democrat or Republican stood
to receive it in their name?
When Washington crossed the Delaware,
what Party might he be?
Had Lincoln been a Democrat,
Might he still have set Black folks free?
Would all the progress we have made,
in the name of Human Rights,
Now be recalled, to be renamed,
by political oversight?

The Peoples Independent!
Beyond color!
Beyond race!
Beyond gender or religion,
Yet, it wears a humane face!
And when it speaks, it thunders
For, its words are clear and strong
Neither leaning to the Right nor Left,
But to what is Right or Wrong!

But it leans toward Democracy and
That we shall always stay
A strong and free Republic,
In an Independent way!

For, the Peoples Independent
Was revered in Days-of-Old;
It predated the words of Moses,
And of Hammurabis Code
Upon its name, a dream was born
That Humanity would be free! and
that the sacred name of citizenship
Would be bathed in Liberty!

So, give to me, that one who seeks
to see, quite on his own,
Fair-mindedness of government
And a truth, which stands alone!
Like Lincoln, Independent, FDR and JFK
Who understands that leadership is a narrow-but-collective
way
Who knows full-well that Liberty can only wear the name
Of an Independent Thinker who sees Black and White the
same!
Of an Independent Speaker who is not afraid to say
What branded voices yet, would speak, if they only had their
way!

For, the Peoples Independent,
When all is said and done,
Will be that voice
The Peoples Choice
Who freely speaks,
as
One!

Its been fashionable for centuries to beat up on whichever poet accepts governmental positions. Byrons jabs at Robert Southey are still funny almost 200 years after they were first published. There is more than a bit of truth to Swinburnes line that Tennysons Idylls of the King should have been called Le Morte dAlbert after the death of Queen Victorias husband. The best poets in power are the ones who do not always praise the politicians who put them there -- an excellent example being John Drydens Absalom and Achitophel which is not above taking shots at his patron, Charles II.

One can only hope that Mr. Tokleys skills (and the works of his I have read are much better than this poem) will find better use than offering lavish praise on a politician.

The history seems a bit off.

When Jefferson said, We do believe
Mankind is born the same,
What Democrat or Republican stood
to receive it in their name?
When Washington crossed the Delaware,
what Party might he be?

They were supporters of the Whigs. They were opposed by the Tories. And are we really using Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, as the model for independent voters?

Had Lincoln been a Democrat,
Might he still have set Black folks free?

No. The Democrats would not have nominated him at either of their three conventions in 1860. Look at his contemporaries who were Democrats. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce (who had his own literary man as biographer -- his old college chum, Nathaniel Hawthorne), John C. Breckinridge, Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas, George McClellan, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Horatio Seymour, the Blairs -- none of them were as anti-slavery as Lincoln was. The simple truth is, Lincoln would have remained far down the ladder in Illinois if he was a Democrat -- far behind Douglas, John Alexander McClernand, John Logan and other contemporary Democrats from the Prairie State. There was a reason Democrats opposed to the expansion of slavery left that party to form the Republicans -- good examples being Salmon P. Chase and Gideon Welles who both served in Lincolns Cabinet.

So, give to me, that one who seeks
to see, quite on his own,
Fair-mindedness of government
And a truth, which stands alone!
Like Lincoln, Independent, FDR and JFK
Who understands that leadership is a narrow-but-collective
way
Who knows full-well that Liberty can only wear the name
Of an Independent Thinker who sees Black and White the
Same!

Which of those leaders was independent? They certainly brought in members of the other party when they had to. FDR, who once said when asked about his philosophy that he was a Christian and a Democrat, bowed to the partys wishes several times -- for example, dumping Henry Wallace in 1944 and replacing him with Harry Truman. JFK brought in Republicans in his administration (Bob McNamara, for example) but he was a partisan -- just like almost every man who sat in the White House.

The only real independent we ever had sit in the Oval Office was John Tyler, a Virginian who drifted back and forth between the Jacksonian Democrats and the Henry Clay Whigs. Tyler, who reached the presidency when Whig President William Henry Harrison died, turned off the leaders of both parties and helped secure the annexation of Texas to help spread slavery. Despite attempts to build a third party, Tyler did not seek a term of his own and, when he passed away in 1862, was a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. Not exactly, Im sure, what Tokley had in mind.