Deadlock
Americans wake up on January 20, after a bitter presidential election, to inaugurate as the next President of the United States…no one! The nation’s creaky electoral machinery has produced a deadlock; public debate is poisoned, compromise out of reach. One man thinks he can break the impasse, but he’s a washed-up reporter running out of second chances……Mike Maloney has just been told it’s time to retire. The bad news comes from his cigar-chomping boss, Edna FitzGerald, an ebullient Irishwoman and one of the most demanding editors in New York. But Maloney wants one last scoop. It’s an election year. He thinks there’s something phony about one of the candidates, and he’s the one to find out what it is. He has help from a new assistant; she wants a second chance; he wants a last one. FitzGerald, editor of The New Epoch magazine, gives in: “one last chance, Mike; your deadline is January 20.”….. Twice in the last 20 years—2000 and 2016—American presidential elections suffered damaging distortions because of the antiquated institution known as the Electoral College. What Americans don’t know is that the system reserves even worse outcomes, including an electoral deadlock, a situation in which no one is elected president. The Constitution provides no sure remedy in such a case. There is no deadline for decision, no mechanism, apart from good-faith bargaining and compromise, for averting crisis. And we live in an age when good faith is in short supply! All of the electoral aberrations and crises described in Deadlock have already occurred, at one time or another, in American history…just not at the same time…but they will.
Full text of Deadlock is available on Amazon.com. Click on the link https://www.amazon.com/Deadlock-What-happens-elected-president-ebook/dp/B086R6PJSB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=deadlock+by+thomas+murphy&qid=1595363580&sr=8-1
Photo credits: Jefferson Memorial and Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Murphy)