One hesitates to try to make light of a situation that so many serious and substantial people quite seriously view as an unprecedented national crisis, but I at least would make a plea. Eartha Kitt, an inventive popular singer of my college years, at one point had a hit song that went “If I can’t take it with me when I go, I just ain’t going to go.” Perhaps even some of those who enjoyed her song were not aware that Ms. Kitt’s theme, which she pushed with a kind of edgy irreverence, plays off the common doctrine of many of our most solemn religious and secular moral traditions. The theme is summarized in the title of one of Dr. Johnson’s poems, itself an imitation of the Latin satirist Juvenal, “The Vanity of Human Wishes”. According to Aristotle the fall from power, prestige, authority, and material sufficiency, allowed or encouraged by some moral blemish or transgression, is the very pattern of tragedy. According to Boethius, supposed happiness dependent on the possession or enjoyment of what can be taken away, cannot be true happiness. Returning to the realm of catchy popular music the Beach Boys reminded us that among such items are Thunderbirds. Just at the moment we seem to have a problem with our President, Donald Trump. Because Daddy—in the form of the American electorate—really has taken the T-bird away.
Though by the end it seemed to me likely that Trump would lose, that was by no means an easily foreseeable certain outcome, the pre-election polls being mainly expressions of wishful thinking on the part of the liberal press. What was perfectly foreseeable was that if he were a loser, he’d be a sore one. How can anyone have been shocked, shocked by the President’s tantrum, which was perfectly predictable and had in effect been predicted by Mr. Trump himself? I was more surprised by the number of sore winners. It is no doubt always discouraging to feel that one is voting against something rather than for something, and a very large number of Mr. Biden’s votes must have been in that category. It is much easier to strike back indignantly at the flamboyant mendacities of the aged impresario of “The Apprentice” than to burst with enthusiasm for the long-practiced mediocrity of an aged career politician who has been running for the presidency for forty years. But the Democrats did win the presidency, and while the nature of the victory was not of the sort that can sustain arrogance, it was clear and decisive and should encourage all of us to get on with the job. Our press could help by concentrating on this aspect of the situation rather than on endless whining about the latest episode of presidential petulance. Why should the loser’s losing be a greater story than the winner’s winning?
Many wise commentators whose political wisdom far exceeds my own say that the reason is that Trump’s current posture is an actual existential threat to American democracy. It is perhaps presumptuous to disagree with a whole college of experts, but I think they are selling America and Americans short. It is true that political rancor and division within the land are acute. A rancorous atmosphere has been spreading, and poisonous attitudes cultivated, for many years. The President has been no small part of this, but he is not alone. I am also prepared to believe that my personal innocence of Facebook and Twitter leave me ignorant of the dimensions of the “social media” aspect of all this. One of my own sons, whom I would rank among wise men, tells me, gently, that I simply don’t know the half of what has been going on. But I still think that if we are susceptible to being swept up in a Q-Anon plot, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings
Having reached this point in my essay, the Tuesday newspaper arrived with a banner headline: TRANSITION TO BIDEN ADMINISTRATION BEGINS. As I am unlikely to get another chance to be prophetic, I’ll have to be satisfied with claiming this prophecy retrospectively. Mr. Trump has shown no hint of graciousness, but in this context a mere whiff of realism may be satisfactory. Perhaps he can view the results of the election as he has viewed his previous string of bankruptcies, as evidences not of personal failure but of the reluctance or actual inability of the common mind to appreciate great ideas and true genius. And then there was the fortuitous and malign intervention of the “Chinese virus”. As for the President-elect, the entire nation owes him best wishes and moral support as he addresses major challenges affecting all of us, but who would envy him his job? Apart from one well-known person, that is.
Invitations to a universal and nonpartisan comity may seem preposterous under the circumstances, but if Lincoln could issue one in the middle of the Civil War we should not be shy of trying now. And as a matter of fact certain important issues of general interest, free of the most obvious contaminations of partisan interest, did emerge from this mess. Would it not be a good idea, for example, at least with regard to the offices of president and vice-president, if we had clearly articulated uniform national voting regulations and procedures worthy of a first-world country? Specific aspects of the arrangements are less important than their impartiality, uniformity, and practicality. For efficiency’s sake one would hope that state and local elections could fall under the same governance. Next concern: income taxes. This arises from the peripheral issue of the drama of Donald Trump’s tax records. I am enough of a libertarian to doubt that anyone should be compelled to make public such private information, but also sufficiently intelligent to find the President’s stated reasons for refusing to do so laughably contrived. But some records did become public, and the subject of wide public discussion. I do not accuse the President of any illegality. On the contrary, my fear is that his preposterous calculations might be entirely legal. Legality would demonstrate the gross unfairness of a system rigged in favor of very wealthy people. The architecture of this system—the moral equivalent of geographical gerrymandering--can only be the result of the effective intervention by special lobbies working on pliable legislators. I hope that its prominent exposure might lead to some obviously desirable reforms, though if good sense will not move our congressmen, I doubt that embarrassment can. What would embarrass many of them would shame a hog to death.
