Joe HonickJoe Honick
I can still hear the reverberations of the Vermont Senator and Presidential campaigner Bernie Sanders as he took on the American defense industries on the floor of the Senate a couple of years ago. So stirring and passionate were his remarks that I wanted immediately to see if I could gain an interview while both he and that subject were hot. You can imagine my surprise when his office told me the Senator was “moving on to other things.”

Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. I am hardly a newbie in the political field and have witnessed all sorts of policy changes by office seekers that were obviously influenced by powerful financial supporters or other organizational elements. But Sanders was always supposed to be different. Whether one agreed with him or not, there was nothing in the shadows to raise any suspicion. Most opponents would avoid any personal hits on Senator Sanders, mostly suggesting he was and is the sole socialist in the campaign mix, and that was enough for their concern.

Sadly, in this most vulgar of campaigns — in which we pretend to put forth several candidates, one of whom the nation’s voters will elect to the most powerful position of national leadership in the world — we find Sanders’ descent to ordinary politician the most discouraging.

Sanders has proceeded in the last few days — especially in what passed for a New York debate last night — only to further diminish his standing as a “different” public figure, an idealist whose thinking was, well, “different.”

His charges against opponent Hillary Clinton have been that she has accepted money from powerful and wealthy elements. A little fast research, however, has revealed there is little spread between him and Clinton with respect to defense industry “investment,” for just one example. More crucial has been how deeply the personalized rhetoric between the two has become, as both parties get closer to nominating conventions. His opening gambits in the New York debate, not only slamming Secretary Clinton’s credibility but asserting questions not previously phrased as to her ability to assume the presidency, plunged the final nail into his previous standing as someone committed to “good things” above mere politics.

Again, that brand of political “hits” hardly surprises, had it not included Sanders.

It all boils down to what conservatives from either party cannot abide: a liberal woman President.

If Hillary is in fact the candidate for the Democratic party, Senator Bernie will have a new role to play: his real self, the person partisans of both parties have known for years, the person who could not be attacked on ethics but only on sincerely held beliefs.

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Joe Honick is President of GMA International.