Monday 18 February 2019

executive overreach

On this day in 1856, among many other things both great and good, the American Party—isolationists and xenophobic who proudly styled themselves as the “Know-Nothings”—as our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, informs, had their first political convention in Philadelphia and nominated their first campaigner for high office, former president Milliard Fillmore. Discreet to the point of secretive about affiliation and wanting nothing more than to stoke culture wars much like today’s fraught political landscape, it’s worth taking a moment indeed on this of all days to note the similarity between the person of candidate Fillmore and the actor, Alec Baldwin, who portrays (and apparently under threat for doing so) the current national emergency and pretender to the throne with such polish and acumen.