Our Town: Mike Balboni on presidential election

With Election Day coming up I thought it would be wise to speak to an experienced politician about  this year’s Presidential election. 
Who better to chat with then former state Sen. Michael Balboni.  
Mike is a local resident (East Williston) and as luck would have it he’s also a member of my gym.
As I thought about the interview questions I kept going back to my graduate school days at SUNY Stony Brook when I was invited by my advisor Dr. Herb Kaye to join him for dinner with George Hochbrueckner who was then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  
I was nothing but a naïve Ph.D. student and during dinner I asked him what I thought was a harmless enough question about something.  
Hochbrueckner responded with a carefully crafted answer which contained two opposing views so as not to offend anyone at the table. This was my first and most lasting impression of the political personality in action and was therefore worried that Mr. Balboni would be the same.  
What is of gravest concern to a journalist is when we are faced with cautious, bland, innocuous or scripted answers designed to induce sleep. This is what I usually encounter when interviewing well known athletes. 
Jocks may be reckless on the field but rarely show heroics when facing the microphone. I am pleased to announce that Mike was anything but guarded. 
I discovered that Mike Balboni was born and raised in Garden City, that his dad was a pediatric cardiologist and his mom was a nurse.  
He attended Adelphi University where he took pre-med and then St. John’s University where he studied law. And as is always the case with young talent he was quickly noticed and  shortly after graduating with his law degree he found himself working for  Sen. John Dunne up Albany. Thus began Mike Balboni’s career in politics. 
He eventually was a state senator from 1998 to 2007. 
I asked Mike to explain the sudden emergence of Donald Trump onto the political scene and his answer impressed me. 
He said “Americans no longer want to be governed. They want to be entertained. At this point the Republican Party is fractured into pieces. It has lost its message and its discipline. It seems to have been split apart under the forces of the evangelical movement, the Tea Party movement and various  forces from the south and out of all that chaos comes Donald Trump.” 
Listening to Balboni speak with such ease, confidence and depth about the nation’s current issues I wondered aloud about his future desires and ambitions in politics.  
He told me that he now ran Redland Strategies, which was an emergency management company at the nexus between business development, government relations and public safety.  
In fact he told me he was off to London this week as the keynote speaker at the BCI World Conference where he will talk to business leaders about crisis management. 
Mike Balboni reminded me of my friend Vincent Albanese who runs one of the  most respected law firms on Long Island.  
Early in his career Vincent  and his buddy Mario Cuomo were headed towards a career in politics but Vince decided that he would be better off turning to the practice of law. 
I think this is often what happens.  
The good guys, those with brains and heart and work ethic veer away from politics. And the nation in turn misses out.
And who could blame them. 
Balboni remarked that the media’s need for entertainment value and the bloodthirsty nature of the prosecutors make politics a most unattractive job.   
Of course he is right.   
The rise to power of the media started with Watergate and impact of investigative journalism. This process brought down President Nixon.  
Then came the Iran contra scandal under President Reagan and then the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. 
It is no surprise that anyone with good sense, some options and a self-protective instinct will shy away from politics and see it as the plague that it has become. And alternately, it ought be no surprise that Donald Trump, one of the few that has figured out how to deal with the media has emerged as one of the most powerful men on earth. 
And his opponent Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified, brightest and certainly most thick skinned politicians alive today. 
Recall that she is the one that suffered the indignities of her husband impeachment trial where his infidelities were put on public display.
As  I drive my car I laugh to myself when I see all those despairing bumper stickers like “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo 2016,” “None of the Above 2016” or “Neither One, 2016”. 
This election cycle has two savvy politicians that somehow are disliked by everyone.   
We live in a polarized time in a polarized nation so let’s not forget that the two folks still standing are both very smart and very decent and very hardworking.  
It is our loss that natural-born leaders like Michael Balboni opt out of the political process in the name of self-preservation and good sense. 
The prospect of having to cope with the media and its needs is enough to scare anyone. That’s why we ought to pause for a moment and pay our respects to both Trump and Clinton for fighting the good fight despite the media’s and the nation’s apparent disdain.  
God bless America and God bless them both.