Rembrandt or Monet: Let's choose a masterpiece

Yes, we're all up to here in politics, trying to keep our heads above all the ... well, you know.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, in the last week, the following phrase: "lesser of two evils."

Really, folks, is that what we want in the Oval Office? Can we really hope that having evil, even if it's not the worse of two evils, is right for our country? Surely not, on both counts.

I didn't know until just a few weeks before my mother died several years ago that she had what folks over yonder in the Ozarks would call "a right mean streak." She never showed it to her family. But others would wither under her wrath. She once referred to a woman I know as having a "bony little a**." That was, of course, not a compliment. My mother said that when she thought I couldn't hear. I was shocked.

Then came the day when I was well into my 60s when my mother confessed to me that she cheated on an assignment when she was attending Flat River Junior College back in the 1950s while she taught in one-room schools over yonder. It seems she had to take an art course to fulfill the requirements for a teaching certificate. She was supposed to draw a picture of a horse. My mother was not the drawing type, if you know what I mean, and she knew it.

So she appealed to one of my cousins who was in grade school at the time. My cousin had a natural talent for art and could draw a good-looking equine masterpiece without breaking a sweat. He drew the horse, and my mother signed her name to the drawing. She got an A.

I learned about all this when my cousin showed me the drawing, which he had carefully preserved all these years. I didn't believe him when he told me the story. My mother showed no remorse for having participated in an outright lie. She had a lot on her plate at the time, being a farm wife, a schoolteacher and a parent while getting enough college credits to be a teacher. Those are not excuses, just facts.

And remember, as I've told you before, my mother was in all other respects a nobly honest woman. She's the one who would park the car on Main Street in my favorite hometown, which had just installed parking meters. She would not put any money in the meter until she was ready to go home. She never failed to feed the meter, but it was strictly on her own terms.

Now, I ask you. Let's say the day arrived when my mother announced she wanted to be president of the United States. No, forget that. My mother knew better than to get involved in such an enterprise. She might, however, run for school board, which she did, and didn't knock on one door or put up one campaign poster. All her friends voted for her anyway. As it turned out, another candidate had more friends.

During the campaign, what if my mother's opponent had learned, probably at the beauty shop, that she had put her name on the drawing of a horse created by her nephew? What if the opponent decided to make a big deal of it? What if she called my mother evil? Would that have been fair, or right?

Well, she's my mother, so I'm prejudiced on this matter. But anyone who knew my mother would defend her to the end, and gladly voted for her. People who knew my mother knew the real person and were content with knowing how good she was.

Except when her mean streak showed of course. But, still, would she have been an "evil" member of the school board, had she won the election?

And, I can tell you, her opponent was a nice person, too -- no, a very nice person. But I'll bet she had a few secrets of her own. Some folks who knew her could tell stories.

So, did voters, in that long-ago school board election, have to choose between the lesser of two evils? No. They made their choices based on a much bigger picture that took into account the pairs of shoes my mother bought for her students when the first frost arrived in the fall. Or the eye exam for the little girl with severe vision problems. Or -- and this is the one that gets me the most -- the funeral she paid for when an infant sibling died in a family whose children attended the one-room school where she taught that year.

My mother never, ever sought accolades for these deeds. She thought they were the right things to do. But what if the voters only heard about the forged drawing?

I don't know Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But a lot of people who know them well have good things to say about them. They can tell stories of compassion and largesse in times of need.

Sure, I'm pretty sure both Hillary and Donald have forged a drawing or two along the way. But is that what we call substance these days?

I'm beginning to lean to one of the candidates in the wake of the two political conventions. I may change my mind more than once before the November election. But I am confident that when I mark my ballot it will be for the person I think will make a good president. Not the lesser of two evils.

If we keep bad-mouthing our presidential-election system, we can't help but wind up with a bad taste in our mouths.

So choose a candidate, and do it for good reasons. If, come Election Day, most Americans want Donald Trump to be president, then he will become the president of every American. And if most Americans choose Hillary Clinton, she will become the president of every American. That's the way our system works.

Spend less time looking for forgeries. Search for the masterpiece that's in all of us.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.