Going to the dogs – Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Some people think of politicians as no better than dogs.

But not people who own dogs. They generally recognize that dogs are an advanced species and should never be compared to politicians, anymore than dolphins should be compared to catfish or lions to house cats.

More than other creatures, dogs can humanize people, even civilize them, requiring their owners to resist self-absorption and narcissism. And not just by providing them proper nutrition and exercise. Dogs also ask people to share attentive, affectionate warmth, the kind that comes, like a dog’s, without judgment.

Such people inevitably take counsel from dogs, and except for the newly elected Argentinian president, a right-wing populist named Javier Milei, that may be a good thing.

Milei, however, has said he knew one of his dogs, the late Conan, in a previous life as a gladiator, when Conan was a lion in the Roman coliseum and the two refused to fight knowing they would team up about 2,000 years later to ruin Argentina, or something like that.

Conan died in 2017, press reports indicate, but he still joins Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas as the lead member of a canine circle of inside advisors for Mr. Milei, the president acknowledges.

Meanwhile in the Sunshine State, as Florida’s eight-week legislative session got underway Tuesday and the presidential election approaches in November, this becomes an important question: Who among our elected leaders or presidential contenders has a dog in the fight?

In these confusing and divisive times, my vote is probably just going to the dogs. I’ll vote for the candidate with the best one. In every race.

In Tallahassee, 160 men and women elected by voters to the Senate (40) or House (120) have already begun making decisions about how to spend our tax money. No small part of it has to come from the sales tax on our purchases of pet food. Pets inhabit more than 56% of Florida households, state records show, and as anybody who has them knows, they eat a great deal.

The proposed budget for this year: $114.4 billion, probably close to the sum more than 22 million Floridians spend on pet food every year.

That budget figure comes from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who apparently doesn’t have a dog. Which worries me deeply. Fortunately, the governor does have three children who no doubt want a dog, so I think hope remains for him.

Apparently the governor recently told his children — along with the good people of Iowa — that he would consider getting a dog when he gets a new job.

A new job? Could the governor be using that phrase as a euphemism for moving into a nice little home on 18 acres in the District of Columbia, freshly painted white, complete with 132 rooms including 16 family or guest rooms, three kitchens, and 35 bathrooms, all in a tidy 55,000 square feet?

Why yes, he could be. After all, there’s a lot more room for a dog or two (or 10 or 20) there than he has in that comparatively impoverished little shack where he lives now in Tallahassee, with only 30 rooms and 15,000 square feet cramped into a little postage stamp of 1.5 acres.

Harry Truman once famously said that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Most presidents have had pets, usually dogs, sometimes cats. Only James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump kept the White House petless, and you see what happened with their presidencies.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always worked out for the rest of them.

Joe Biden, for example, brought in a couple of German shepherds who went around biting people they didn’t like, including Secret Service agents, staff members, reporters and God knows who else, probably all of them deserving. But that’s not how politics works.

Those dogs live in Delaware now, but they don’t hold top billing as canine troublemakers in Washington.

That honor may go to Theodore Roosevelt’s bulldog-terrier mix, Pete, who killed four squirrels and bit any number of hapless visitors to the president, White House historians recall.

One day, Pete chased the French ambassador down a hallway, caught him, and ripped out the seat of his pants. It was an international scandal, especially when the French government filed a formal complaint, so Pete had to go far away, eventually to New York.

Politicians of each or any party probably recognize the intrinsic vote-getting value of having a good-looking dog with some — not too much — personality. But presidents themselves can seem clumsy in taking advantage of it.

Lyndon Johnson picked up his beagle by the ears and a photographer captured it. The millions who saw the image couldn’t decide if the dog was howling in pain or grinning in delight.

Presidential contender Mitt Romney once thoughtlessly strapped his dog, Seamus, to the roof of his car when going on vacation.

And Ronald Reagan’s first White House dog, a Bouvier des Flandres anointed with the decidedly inaccurate name, Lucky, was unceremoniously shipped out to the Reagans’ California estate after repeatedly yanking both Reagans around at will on the end of a leash. The last straw came with photographers and reporters watching, when Reagan went for a walk on the White House lawn in the company of a purse-carrying Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, and Lucky.

But Lucky suddenly took off — maybe he saw a squirrel or a liberal Democrat or a Commie invasion, no one knows — jerking the president all over the lawn.

He made the president look weak in front of the world.

That could never happen, theoretically, to a President DeSantis.

Could it?

Maybe he could just get a little dog. ¦