It’s one thing to disparage Donald Trump. It’s quite another to throw your body between him and his efforts to steal the presidency. Mike Pence, God love him, did the latter, and that sealed his doom. To the hard-core MAGA corps, tyranny is the meaty breakfast of champions. Virtue and democracy are a wimp’s veggie canapés.
But that’s not the only moral of Pence’s miserable polling and early exit from the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, which is, incredibly, even less appetizing for his departure. He did something else that was just as dissonant with the mood of his party — with the mood of America, really. He talked about goodness. He privileged upbeat over downbeat. While others maniacally fanned the flames of anger, Pence mellowly stoked the embers of hope.
That’s not going to cut it in 2024. Pence’s fate validated that.
I’m braced for the campaign season from hell, for a race for the White House that’s a rhetorically violent duel of dystopias, a test of who can sound the shriller death knell for America. It could be all Armageddon all the time.
An exchange involving Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican presidential debate last August in Milwaukee foreshadowed that. Pence took aim at his much younger rival’s perversely exuberant negativity, schooling him: “We’re not looking for a new national identity. The American people are the most faith-filled, freedom-loving, idealistic, hard-working people the world has ever known.” They just needed better leaders and a more responsive and responsible government.
Ramaswamy practically snorted in performative disbelief. “It is not morning in America,” he countered, summoning the ghost of Ronald Reagan only to flog it. “We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war.”
Well, the “dark moment” purveyor has crossed the polling and fund-raising thresholds to appear on the stage of the next debate, which is in Miami next week. He rolls on. The pitchman for “freedom-loving, idealistic” Americans doesn’t. His bid for the presidency is history, much as good old-fashioned American optimism sometimes seems to be.
That’s the context for the intensifying presidential campaign, in which the smartest strategy for spiteful times may be convincing voters that your opponent’s victory won’t merely jeopardize the health of the country. It will endanger the future of civilization. It will turn a “dark moment” pitch black. With a new war in the Middle East, a grinding war in Ukraine and China eyeing Taiwan like a great white sizing up a baby seal, that’s not a tough sell.
And if President Biden, 80, is the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump, 77, is the Republican one, the conditions for extreme ugliness are optimal. (Or is that pessimal?) Assuming no major swerves from the present, each of these men would stagger agedly into the general election amid questions about his cognitive zest — and with anemic favorability ratings — that all but compel him to savage his opponent as the direr of two evils. That’s what wounded politicians do. They make the other candidate bleed.
Biden, I feel certain, would prefer to play the happy warrior — it’s a better fit for his earnestness and goofiness. But those aren’t the cards he has been dealt. That’s not the casino he’s in.
The world roils, and here at home, to his and his aides’ understandable bafflement and frustration, voters seem to be much more focused on the bad in the economy than the good (low unemployment, increased wages, annualized G.D.P. growth of 4.9 percent for the most recent quarter). In polls, Americans express more confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy than in Biden’s.
On top of which, a majority of Democrats say that they’d prefer someone other (and younger) than Biden to be the party’s nominee, and the war between Israel and Hamas is sharpening intraparty divisions that have largely been avoided over the past few years.
One solution is obvious: Divert attention to the MAGA menace. That tactic is as warranted as the menace is real. And Biden has practice at it, having given a big speech about a country “at an inflection point” before the midterms last year and having since issued stern warnings about “MAGA extremists.”
Trump and other Republicans have even more thoroughly rehearsed their lines about America’s descent under Democrats into a lawless, borderless, “woke” abyss. Watch almost any hour of Fox News for florid depictions of this lurid hellscape, or listen to Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, a merchant of vengeance who defines himself almost entirely in terms of whom (and what) he’s against and how mercilessly he’ll punish them.
“Much of the rhetoric from the declared and potential Republican candidates so far is remarkable for its dystopian tone,” Ashley Parker wrote in The Washington Post in March, noting the “apocalyptic themes” as prominent Republicans “portray the nation as locked in an existential battle, where the stark combat lines denote not just policy disagreements but warring camps of saviors vs. villains, and where political opponents are regularly demonized.”
That was before Trump’s four indictments on 91 felony counts and the extra rage into which they whipped him. Before he mused publicly about whether Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for treason. If Trump was apocalyptic in March, he’s in an even more desperate realm now. I don’t think there’s a word — or, in presidential politics, a precedent — for it.
What that bodes for the next year, and especially for the months just before Election Day, is a furious effort to fill Americans with even more fear and more anger than they already feel. Tell me how our country is governable on the far side of that.
And say goodbye to Pence, not just as a candidate but as an emblem and ambassador of an attitude and era that are long gone.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Times, Jason Horowitz and Elisabetta Povoledo appraised the art collection of Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant former prime minister of Italy, who died earlier this year: “The paintings are now stashed in an enormous hangar that critics have characterized as a sort of Raiders of the Lousy Art warehouse.” (Thanks to Rob Hisnay of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Miriam Bulmer of Mercer Island, Wash., for nominating this.)
Also in The Times, Erin Thompson reflected on the fate of statues memorializing the Confederacy: “We never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical context or placed in private hands, but many simply disappeared into storage. I like to think of them as America’s strategic racism reserve.” (Susan Davy, Kingwood, Texas, and Mike Stirniman, Fremont, Calif.)
And Patti Davis, in a tribute to the actor Matthew Perry’s candor about addiction, wrote: “That’s the best we can do in life — be truthful and hope those truths become lanterns for others as they wander through the dark.” (Eric Sharps, Campbell, Calif.)
In The New Yorker, David Remnick analyzed the raw, warring interpretations of the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7: “There were, of course, facts — many of them unknown — but the narratives came first, all infused with histories and counter-histories, grievances and fifty varieties of fury, all rushing in at the speed of social media. People were going to believe what they needed to believe.” (Anne Palmer, Oberlin, Ohio)
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Emma Pettit experienced cognitive dissonance as she examined the academic bona fides of a “Real Housewives of Potomac” cast member: “It’s unusual for any professor to star on any reality show, let alone for a Johns Hopkins professor to star on a Bravo series. The university’s image is closely aligned with world-class research, public health, and Covid-19 tracking. The Real Housewives’ image is closely aligned with promotional alcohol, plastic surgery, and sequins.” (Mitch Gerber, Rockville, Md.)
In Grub Street, Mark Byrne took issue with a friend’s comment that the Greenwich Village restaurant Cafe Cluny is “too expensive for what it is.” “This is Manhattan: ‘Too expensive for what it is’ is written in rat’s blood on the stoops of our walk-ups,” he riffed. (Todd P. Lowe, Louisville, Ky.)
In The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri responded to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that “the human heart,” not easy access to deadly firearms, is the problem behind mass shootings: “Why don’t we have alien hearts with extra ventricles, splendidly green and impervious to pain; or efficient, 3D-printed e-hearts; or anatomically inaccurate paper hearts? So many better kinds of hearts to have! It isn’t the guns. The problem is the human heart. Weak, feeble, pitiful heart. Put it up against a gun, and it loses every time.” (David Sherman, Arlington, Va.)
Also in The Post, Rick Reilly put Mike McDaniel, the sunny head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and Bill Belichick, the gloomy head coach of the New England Patriots, side by side: “One is as open as a new Safeway, and the other is as closed up as an old submarine. One will tell you anything you want; the other will hand out information on a need-to-go-screw-yourself basis. One looks like a nerd who got lost on a stadium tour and wound up as head coach. The other looks like an Easter Island statue nursing a grudge.” (Mary Fran McShea, Frederick, Md.)
And in The Athletic, Jason Lloyd described how Kevin Stefanski, the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, almost — but not quite — continued that pro football team’s magic streak of improbable victories in a game last weekend against the Seattle Seahawks: “He nearly had the lady sawed in half when he hit an artery.” (Jason Keesecker, Durham, N.C.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Reading, Listening to and Doing
Count me among those people who are terrified that third-party candidates might throw the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump, and consider me horrified, in that context, at the selfishness of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West and the recklessness of the No Labels folks. The stakes of — and case against — what they’re doing are beautifully illustrated by Matt Bennett, one of the leaders of the group Third Way, in an especially fine episode of the podcast of the CNN political director, David Chalian, that was released Friday.
The feedback that I received about my assertion in last week’s newsletter that college students should be challenged, not coddled, included recommendations for other writing on the topic, some of it from a decade or more ago, showing that the problem is hardly new. I found this eloquent, 21-year-old speech by P. F. Kluge about Kenyon College especially fascinating.
My Times colleague Adam Nagourney did an impressive amount of research and got extraordinary access to key players to produce his recently published book “The Times,” which chronicles this news organization’s challenges, changes, resilience and growth over much of the past half century. If you’re an admirer of The Times and curious about its inner workings, you’ll find much to savor.
Speaking of Times colleagues, David Leonhardt, a Pulitzer winner whose superb reflections and analysis in the Times newsletter The Morning are probably familiar to you, has just released an important new book, “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.” It’s on the top of my night table stack, metaphorically speaking, and might well appeal to you as well.
On the evening of Mon., Nov. 20, I’ll be talking with the brilliant Times critic and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Morris at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Wesley is a delight to listen to, so if you’re in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, please join us. Details about the event, which is open to the public, are here.
On a Personal Note
The view of the midtown Manhattan skyscrapers from the north curve of the Great Lawn last weekend was as breathtaking as ever, but something wasn’t right.
My amble through the Ramble was richly scored with bird song — and the trees wore their best autumn finery — but the magic wasn’t complete. I felt an absence.
Regan wasn’t by my side. She and her dog sitter were back at our new home in North Carolina. And Central Park without her wasn’t Central Park at all.
Since she and I moved away from New York City in the summer of 2021, my return trips to our former stamping grounds have been rare. I’ve been busy. I prefer looking forward to looking back. My new home is so easy, and the city is so tough. I have reasons aplenty and excuses galore.
But I did return on Saturday, ever so briefly, for two friends’ big joint birthday party, and I found time for a two-hour walk though Central Park, which Regan and I used to visit multiple times daily. She’s how I know it so well. She’s why I love it so much.
She tugged me into it, motivated me to explore it and forced me to look at it in fresh and more expansive ways, as I described extensively in my most recent book, “The Beauty of Dusk.” That’s part of what dogs do for us — they widen our worlds, in terms of both our movements and perceptions.
Watching her romp across and rummage through Central Park’s lawns, arbors and woods, I imagined all of that through her eyes, ears and nose, and I tuned into details that I wouldn’t have spotted and savored otherwise.
Being in the park without her was like being there with my gait impeded, my senses dulled, my emotions muffled. The park’s grandeur was intact. But my heart felt a little smaller.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
