A Sunday Tale told previously but...

I believe it Bears Repeating.

Many years ago I treated the number one Democratic political fund raiser in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an unusual individual who had basically won the “political lottery”. He had been the only significant political person in the Philadelphia and surrounding four county area who supported a virtually unknown-outside-Georgia peanut farmer for President. The rest is history as we all know. This gentleman rose to the pinnacle of fund-raising heights, and no Democratic politician came through Pennsylvania without paying homage to him for over thirty years.

He was fairly neurotic and dentally hypochondriacal so I saw him a lot: his secretary had me on speed dial and the answer was always “Yes” when he wanted to see me, because you do not say “No” to these people who are infinitely more powerful than politicians because they answer to no one. One day, when Rick Santorum was running for reelection to the Senate, I was treating the fellow in question and asked him the following almost verbatim: “This Congressman Klink is only trailing by a few points, why hasn’t there been a widespread campaign in the eastern part of the State to unseat this slimy creep Santorum?”

The response was, and I’m quoting EXACTLY, “Because it’s not our time yet.” He went on to intimate that a deal had been struck and we were to lose this election in return for something else.” I asked him deferentially if he had ever read Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He replied that he had not. I simply stated to him that an officer in the American Army, in this fictitious story, made a deal with the Nazis to bomb his own airfield in return for whatever. The fundraiser laughed and replied, “Yeah, something like that.”

I wonder what deals have been made in this era.