As the American political system continues to meld with our media and entertainment infrastructure, we are bound to see a number of modern officials suddenly elected as they begin leaning more heavily on showmanship than substance.
There is no better example of this than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman congresswoman from New York, who has spent a vast majority of her short career baiting the media into covering her antics.
This week, AOC even went so far as to insult another lawmaker’s dog in order to elicit a reaction.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., poked fun at Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Monday after he revealed he named his dog after former President Theodore Roosevelt, the onetime founder of the Progressive Party.
Ocasio-Cortez responded to a photo of Tillis holding his dog, Theo, while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill. The North Carolina senator said he chose the name because he names all of his dogs “after conservatives.”
Then came the angst…
“He should name his next one Bull Moose,” Ocasio-Cortez quipped in response.
Roosevelt spent most of his political career as a Republican and was a member of the party during his two terms in the White House from 1901 to 1909. But he formed the Bull Moose Party, also known as the Progressive Party, following an unsuccessful bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 1912.
Roosevelt championed many policies embraced by modern progressives, including expanded federal regulations, environmental conservation, antitrust action and increased labor rights.
Regardless of the potential validity of the complaint, having attempted to publicly embarrass another elected official over the name of their family pet says a whole lot more about Ocasio-Cortez than it says about Roosevelt – the dog or the president.
