For thirty-two years, my wife, Jo, and I have welcomed in the New Year with the same friends. Our celebrations have been modified some to accommodate our age. We used to stay up wining and dining until the ball dropped in Times Square and then continuing the party into the wee hours. Now we have dinner early, talk some, take naps, get up to see the ball drop and then go back to bed. Party time is exhausting.
2016 is party time.
I’m not talking party as in cocktails and hors oeuvres. It’s an election year, party time for presidential candidates. For most of the New Year they will pitch the party line to us in newspapers, radio and television ads, while sending us huge post cards that dominate our mailboxes demanding our attention. When it’s over, we’ll all be exhausted. In politics, the partying seems interminable.
Covering candidates has changed over the years. In 1960 Kennedy and Nixon squared off in what was the first televised presidential candidate debate. It changed the nature of politics. Candidates, whose task it had been to be informed and effective, learned how creating images worked much better in getting votes. Nixon, who was seasoned and politically effective, looked stiff and uncomfortable, while Kennedy, relatively inexperienced, appeared young and energetic. I think today, these debates have little to do with substance and more to do with image. Commentators frequently point out how the candidates look; whether it’s their hair (toupee or ruffled), their clothes, and posture as if they were judging a Miss America pageant or a dog show. In politics, showmanship has become the name of the game.
We Americans are guided more by impressions than informed judgments. Looking good is as American as apple pie and mom. We greet each other with, “You’re looking good” or reporting bad news as, “having a bad hair day.” It seems to me that we are obsessed with appearances. Presentation is a huge factor in how we assess others and ourselves. My hope is that being attractive and wise might somewhere coexist in the same candidate.
At the end of the day, however, it is not the showy candidates who are the problem. We Americans are the problem. Like children, we like being entertained.
Donald Trump is, admittedly, colorful. He entertains. He gets our attention with flamboyant rhetoric and mindless statements. He pouts and rants, coos and growls. He’s full of a lot more than just himself, but he attracts thousands to hear him speak. If we are not frightened about this we should be. There are Americans among us who think this kind of bravado is equipped to guide America’s future through the dangerous and nuanced issues we will need to face as the world changes. Bluster can be entertaining, but in a nuclear age, it’s lethal. As nation states become ensnared in complex tribal and religious wars it’s critical to have someone in office that can think outside the box, or at the very least, think sanely while still inside the box.
Some years ago I was talking with an old African American man, a native of the Shore and a resident of Bellevue all his life. At the time he was over ninety, the town’s oldest man. He’d been on the Bay most of his life, sailing boats from the Shore to Baltimore to deliver produce and oysters.
He was a consummate storyteller with the hint of preacher.
He loved talking about religion. “The Lord only do I serve.” he’d always assure me. Although we were discussing the plight of the fishing industry, that day, we somehow landed on the subject of sin. With an open bible on the arm of his well-worn easy chair, he raised his finger in the air authoritatively and with eyes gently glowing with inner light he said: “It’s sin, that’s what it is, it’s sin.”
We’d been talking about the disappearing oyster harvests through disease and over fishing. “It ain’t MSX or Dermo like they talkin’. No sir. We can’t keep treatin’ the water the way we been; pollutin’, harvestin’ more than we oughta. That’s what’s happenin’. ” Then he began reflecting on good and evil.
“You know how folks picture the devil – being all red and fiery-like, steamin’ from the fires of hell, carrying a pitchfork and draggin’ a long forked tail?” His eyes squinted with mirth as he said: “You know, that’s not it at all. The devil is as pretty as you please, smooth talkin’ and slick. Yes sir, that’s the problem, not that he’s scary and ugly, but that he looks so good.”
“Yes sir, that’s the problem,” as my friend once said, “not that (the candidate) is scary and ugly, but he (she) looks so good.”
When the party’s over, we’ll make choices. I hope amidst all the passionate rhetoric, the spirit of wisdom will guide us, and not the power of spin. Otherwise when the party ends, we’ll have the mother of all hangovers. Being hung over for Four years is a long time.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
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Maureen B. Bushey says
This is just lovely. Well balanced, comfortable for all readers, one would hope, and interesting to read. There is so much vitriol on both sides of politics, how does one talk to the other anymore. As a pastoral therapist, I also try to balance the conversation in hopes of getting a somewhat thoughtful response. I think most people response to their own triggers. Well done and Happy New Year….MB