Monday, November 14, 2016

Drinking Sand

In an attempt to sort out what happened [last] Tuesday, I did what I’m sure many have done. In this era of the internet search, it’s easy.  So I reached out to a writer who would explain it in terms far better than I ever could.  David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, wrote what I found to be a most helpful article on Wednesday. Along with a careful dissection of the root causes for the result of the election, he reminded me of a dialogue from one of my favorite movies about politics:

“A scene from The American President, the 1995 Aaron Sorkin film about a widower in the White House running against a right-wing demagogue is instructive. Michael J. Fox played an aide who told the president, played by Michael Douglas, that ‘in the absence of genuine leadership’ the people will ‘listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.’
Before long, yesterday’s voters will realize that they just drank sand.”

I realize that quoting from a movie could appear to be suspect, but as I wrote back in April, another celebrity politician was known to have done the same:

“Ronald Reagan has become a mythical figure in American politics. Numerous examinations of his time in office have surfaced, which serve to remind us of easily (or readily) forgotten facts about his performance. I found this recent article in Salon to be especially revealing. An excerpt:
‘In all fields of public affairs—from diplomacy to the economy—the president stunned Washington policymakers by how little basic information he commanded. His mind, said the well-disposed Peggy Noonan, was ‘barren terrain’. Speaking of one far-ranging discussion on the MX missile, the Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, an authority on national defense, reported, ‘Reagan’s only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from War Games’. The president ‘cut ribbons and made speeches. He did these things beautifully’, Congressman Jim Wright of Texas acknowledged. ‘But he never knew frijoles from pralines about the substantive facts of issues.’”

My point in writing about the folly of considering an ill-prepared celebrity for the high office of President of the United States?  It was that promises would be made that may never be kept.  Donald Trump promised his supporters much.  What will happen in the next four years if his followers don’t see them come to pass?  

His opponent was experienced and knowledgeable and fully aware of the realities of politics.  Quoting again from Johnston’s piece:

“These Americans were so fed up with politicians growing rich while worsening their plight that they embraced an erratic personality with no history of public service. They rejected a thoroughly prepared candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, who fought for poor children for four decades, but could never escape a perception that she was manipulative and dishonest, characteristics that facts show apply fully to Trump.
“These voters decided to entrust our future to a man with little knowledge of world affairs and no political philosophy, other than self-glorification, because he said he would make things better.”

I wonder what future presidential campaigns will look like? Will there be more than the two traditional political parties in play? Will we witness the candidates in the primaries making more and more outlandish promises, hoping to end up as the one who fools the most people to win the nomination of their party? Will much of the electorate continue to devalue knowledge and experience?  

The incoming president and his party have complete control, and have at least the next two years to make his promises come to fruition. The mid-term elections always seem to be the vehicle for grading performance.

D. Norman