(To my conservative pals: That people change or modulate their speaking style depending on the audience and occasion is something you learn in Toastmasters 101, as it’s one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book. “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.” That’s Paul of Tarsus, a man I suspect most conservatives think was an OK dude.)
Believe me, all sorts of things irritate me about President Obama, especially after his snoretastic debate performance last week, but when I imagine him as a young stoner in Hawaii, pining for a father he didn’t know--a father, no less, who appears to have been a notably crummy human being--struggling with his racial identity, struggling with his ambition, struggling with the weirdness that is growing up Hawaiian, struggling his entire sense of self, I see that his careful adulthood modulations and infuriatingly cool temper are the arc of something recognizable and even something grand: the first black American doing his best to survive within the incomparably severe pressure cooker of the modern presidency. Even if you don’t agree with his policies or politics, looking at President Obama as a hateful creature fished from the ponds of a global Islamist-Marxist conspiracy probably suggests more about your basic goodness and humanity than his.
In light of that, I’ll tell you what I’ll be thinking about on the day of our vice-presidential debate: the tragic and cruelly shaping backdrop looming behind both candidates.
One day, a 16-year-old Paul Ryan walked upstairs in his Janesville, Wis., bedroom to tell his father he was late for work. But Ryan’s still-young father was dead of a heart attack. Looking at Congressman Ryan, I’ve often thought about the dreadful moments that followed his 911 call. Did he sit at his father’s bedside? Did he pray? Did he run outside and weep? In thinking about that, I feel closer to him, and less willing to dislike him, and I actually get a little amazed by how clearly I imagine I can trace that heartbroken teenage boy to the fiercely assured and rugged-individualist Midwestern conservative he became.
As for Vice President Joe Biden, in 1972 he suffered what I think we would all accept as one of the most nightmarish turns of fate imaginable. His wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in Delaware only weeks after he was elected to the Senate. And from here, too, I imagine I can trace the growth of Biden’s strange fusion of goofball serious-mindedness, his tendencies toward grandiosity (and carelessness), his apparently sincere concern for the down and out, the lost, and the broken.
It may or may not be true that people are stronger at the broken places, but the broken places are absolutely where people are most compelling. This is true for your accountant, your spouse, your children, and your presidential candidates.
I’m almost 40 years old, and one life truism I’ve discovered is that it’s virtually impossible to hate someone you bother to get to know well. Our national discourse would be far better off if we made an honest effort to think of our politicians as men and women with verifiable histories and complicated humanness rather than as phantasms of ideologies we hate. Doing so might also make us more willing to see the best in one another, which would be nice, seeing that habitually assuming the worst in others remains a fine way to ruin what’s best in oneself.
(To my conservative pals: That people change or modulate their speaking style depending on the audience and occasion is something you learn in Toastmasters 101, as it’s one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book. “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.” That’s Paul of Tarsus, a man I suspect most conservatives think was an OK dude.)
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, all sorts of things irritate me about President Obama, especially after his snoretastic debate performance last week, but when I imagine him as a young stoner in Hawaii, pining for a father he didn’t know--a father, no less, who appears to have been a notably crummy human being--struggling with his racial identity, struggling with his ambition, struggling with the weirdness that is growing up Hawaiian, struggling his entire sense of self, I see that his careful adulthood modulations and infuriatingly cool temper are the arc of something recognizable and even something grand: the first black American doing his best to survive within the incomparably severe pressure cooker of the modern presidency. Even if you don’t agree with his policies or politics, looking at President Obama as a hateful creature fished from the ponds of a global Islamist-Marxist conspiracy probably suggests more about your basic goodness and humanity than his.
In light of that, I’ll tell you what I’ll be thinking about on the day of our vice-presidential debate: the tragic and cruelly shaping backdrop looming behind both candidates.
One day, a 16-year-old Paul Ryan walked upstairs in his Janesville, Wis., bedroom to tell his father he was late for work. But Ryan’s still-young father was dead of a heart attack. Looking at Congressman Ryan, I’ve often thought about the dreadful moments that followed his 911 call. Did he sit at his father’s bedside? Did he pray? Did he run outside and weep? In thinking about that, I feel closer to him, and less willing to dislike him, and I actually get a little amazed by how clearly I imagine I can trace that heartbroken teenage boy to the fiercely assured and rugged-individualist Midwestern conservative he became.
As for Vice President Joe Biden, in 1972 he suffered what I think we would all accept as one of the most nightmarish turns of fate imaginable. His wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in Delaware only weeks after he was elected to the Senate. And from here, too, I imagine I can trace the growth of Biden’s strange fusion of goofball serious-mindedness, his tendencies toward grandiosity (and carelessness), his apparently sincere concern for the down and out, the lost, and the broken.
It may or may not be true that people are stronger at the broken places, but the broken places are absolutely where people are most compelling. This is true for your accountant, your spouse, your children, and your presidential candidates.
I’m almost 40 years old, and one life truism I’ve discovered is that it’s virtually impossible to hate someone you bother to get to know well. Our national discourse would be far better off if we made an honest effort to think of our politicians as men and women with verifiable histories and complicated humanness rather than as phantasms of ideologies we hate. Doing so might also make us more willing to see the best in one another, which would be nice, seeing that habitually assuming the worst in others remains a fine way to ruin what’s best in oneself.
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