A Little More About that Senate Dress Code

I voted for Mehmet Oz, not John Fetterman, in last year's race for the US Senate. I voted by mail, before the fateful debate in which Fetterman stumbled badly. But it was after I watched an interview with NBC. His cognitive ability and his extreme views bothered me. Not his attire. I frankly don't pay much attention to what's on the outside. It's what's inside that matters. Several of you are embracing this dress code as just another way to bash Fetterman. But I can tell you about two previous Pa politicians who preferred ordinary clothing to the required uniform of elitists. 

It's hard to drive through any county without stumbling across at least one school named after the 15th President of the United States. That's James Buchanan, a Franklin County native. He preferred the simple clothing worn in his agrarian community, and rejected what he called a "peacock parade" in which the United States had started to adorn its foreign ministers with military coats adorned with gold lace, a chapeau and a small sword. They called it the "livery of the American people." He  called it "ridiculous." 

When he himself was sent to the court of St. James, he refused to deck himself out with all the frills that elitists were wearing at the time. He offended many English bastard by dressing in the "simple, unpretending garb of the American citizen."  

I'll bet he even though those little American flag pins that everyone inside the Beltway wants to show off these days was never once worn by Buchanan. 

In addition to James Buchanan, we can look to one of our founding fathers who lived most of his life in Pennsylvania. Instead of decking himself in a powdered wig and frilly jacket, Benjamin Franklin preferred a simple dark purple jacket with a fur hat. His goal was to show American self-sufficiency and it actually caught on. 

So when you mock Fetterman's simple attire, you should know he is just following the lead of fellow Pennsylvanians James Buchanan and Ben Franklin.