This is the last column I’ll be doing before what the media have been calling, with their usual hyperbole, “the most consequential election of our lifetimes, perhaps in the history of our nation.” They may be right, I suppose; but the creation of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln has to bid for that distinction. Not to mention Jackson/Adams or Roosevelt/Hoover.
(Looking back, I’m reminded that Roosevelt, in one election cycle, carried every state except Vermont and Maine. What a sea change! — in Vermont, at least. Remember the two old Vermont solons who were tallying paper ballots the morning after — “Republican, Republican, Republican … Democrat!” They sniffed it, set it aside, and continued. A couple of minutes later they hit on a second Democratic ballot. “Huh! Sumbitch voted twice!”)
There’s no doubt this’ll be a big one, though. It’s essentially a choice between an endorsement or a rejection of the personal politics as practiced by the current executive, and the return of representative government. Also, watching former President Barack Obama speaking the other evening to a packed rally, I remembered with deep nostalgia the sense of humor that once lent perspective to the business.
I sense two major factors in the pickle in which we currently find ourselves. One is the internet, which has become the national gossip venue. All of us read the news, and most of us the editorial and subscriber commentary. All of us have reactions, informed and otherwise, to what we read and hear; some of us recognize how much easier it is to read comments with which we agree, and how difficult to plow through that which we find wrongheaded. We dip into the internet — going down the rabbit hole, some of us call it — and are bombarded with little but opinions. We read the agreeable ones with gusto, and reject not just the opinions of the disagreeing writers, but the writers themselves. (Now and then a rejection is hard to avoid. An interviewer the other day, talking with a salt-of-the-earth old fellow at some event like a county fair, asked whether he connected the high price of fuel with the start of the attacks on Iran, since they were coincidental. Nope, replied the old fellow with absolute certainty; it was caused by President Joe Biden. Nothing could shake his belief; it was all the fault of the previous administration. I couldn’t help but wonder what magic of oratory this president had discovered to create that depth of certitude.)
The second influencer is the ubiquity of the various media. The enthusiasm with which they compare this probably consequential vote to a game or a horse race is depressing in the extreme. Years ago, when I was the announcer at the Lake Placid Olympic bobsled run, it was a part of my job to keep the paying visitors interested in the activities on the run. So, as each sled descended, I gave a running description of its location and progress (observers along the run kept me informed by headphones). Most sleds were fast enough to make it easy to gin up interest. But the occasional “training sled,” driven by a trainee, to whom the run felt almost suicidally fast, came past the finish line so slowly as to be laughable. So I described each such run over the PA system as if I were a hockey game announcer — and now they’re approaching Zig Zag! They’re zigging! And zagging! — ’til I had the big windows of the cafeteria across from my booth full of eager watchers. When at last the sled lumbered past, I got a lot of very rude hand gestures from disappointed fans.
A lot of the so-called “senior reporters” and “analysts” are just kids in their twenties with insufficient history to appreciate the gravity of this situation. They might as well be using video controllers as they read the news, from scripts likely written by similarly clueless reporters. These are the folks bringing us our nightly news. If ever we needed Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley, it’s now.
So, prepared for the worst by the clarions of the media, who speak of a coup as if it were part of a chess game, and ready for the apocalypse if the oligarchs and patriots are displeased with undeniably negative results (see Serbia’s student revolution; that one’s working so far), we await the results of Election Day with a mixture of fear, anxiety, and hope. We’re expecting all kinds of horrible reactions should the president find himself facing the end of a career of keeping just ahead of breaking waves. Will next Wednesday morning be the usual experience of turning on the news to be alternately delighted, disappointed, or dismayed? And will we then be able to just pull up our socks and deal, each in their own way, with the new situation created by the day before? Old Ben was right; “A republic, if you can keep it.”
