James Lileks' postmortem:
Walking around downtown that afternoon, I listened to Kerry’s concession speech. Human, genuine, not a touch of Senatitus . . . well, then there’s the odd riff about the kids who gave him money for his campaign. I never understood the appeal of this meme. Kids don’t know anything about politics; they’re just reflections of their parents’ desires, and the idea of little kids handing piggy banks to a guy who’s married to a billion dollars seems unseemly. I’m relieved for Kerry, and wish him well. For heaven’s sake, he should be relieved, too. In his case the consolation prize is a life of unimaginable wealth and leisure, with plenty of time and resources to do good works. He could easily assume the Dole mantle, and become the guy we all like to like, in a way, after all, ‘cause, whatever. And I think that’s how he’ll turn out. Not that I know anything. But. I think the narrative of John Kerry’s life as he understood it pointed him at the White House; it was <vaderbreathing> his destiny. He made his bid at the worst possible moment, for him. Not the man for a time of war. He had to run as Janus - the anti-war warrior, the guy who voted for it before he voted against it, the guy who supported deposing Saddam but deplored the fashion of his deposition, the man who had to assure his supporters he would end the war as soon as he had finished continuing it. And so on. I think he understood the contradictions he had to make, and his peevish insistence on his unerring clarity was a way of dealing with the myriad of positions he had to take. All of that would have been compartmentalized and forgotten had he won, of course. A few months of psychic annoyance would be a small price to pay for such a large role in history.
But it didn’t happen. Imagine how you might feel if the script of your life, the plot, the storyline suddenly gets rewritten; imagine if you suddenly feel like a successful soap-opera hunk in his trailer reading the script and discovering you’re going to be shot on Friday. How do you react? I don’t think this defeat will reduce him to a muttering husk who stares in the mirror and sees The Cruel Injustice of Heartless Fate. Even though I think he’s a bit of fabulist inclined towards casual self-aggrandizement on an elemental level, I also think he’s fairly well-grounded when it comes down to the things that matter. I think he’ll shrug, laugh, go windsurfing, and maybe yell his head off for the sheer pleasure of it. F. Scott said a lot of smart things, but “There are no second acts” in American lives wasn’t one of them. Kerry is about to get his third act, the one with no audience except seagulls and servants, and I hope it’s his favorite one so far.
And what now for the rest of us? That’s another Bleat, I suppose; it’s late and I would like to rest. My Newhouse column this week was written the day before the election, and said that one election isn’t a mandate. We’re still all over the map on a great many issues, as ever, and the desire for compromise is still a desire to settle the issue OUR way. At the end of the day the Line will be moved; it’s just a question of where it ends up. The “progressive” impulse questions everything; the conservative impulse wonders why we question what has worked for us before. What emerges from this dynamic satisfies neither, and fuels the next round of debate. I’d rather have that than 30 years of a static society that ends up so ossified and brittle it shatters into a thousand pieces. Because there’s always someone there with a dustpan, a broom, and a long loud speech about how the Jews wanted it to turn out this way because they control the Hefty Bag industry.
You want comity? You want progress? Enough with the catastrophe rhetoric, then. Enough with the nonsense. Enough with the gasbag fantasies. Reading the Klemperer diaries make me realize again what real true perfidy looks like, and how those who view a Bush victory as “four more years of evil” are parading their petulant variety of moral idiocy for the approval of the claque. They’re the modern Rumpelstiltskins, ripping themselves in half in anger to protest the price of pants.
It’s a great & rare idea: one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. I think we can hammer out the particulars in a spirit of good will, eh? Or not. Our choice.
“Who is the father of George W. Bush?” Gnat asked on the way to school today. Oh boy.
“You’re not going to believe this, but his name is George Bush, too.”
“Oh, daddee.”
“True.” Pause. Should I? Might as well. “And he was the president once, too.”
“George Bush’s daddy was president too? You’re joking me. That’s silly.”
And so it begins. But if all goes as it usually does, in 14 years she’ll vote for someone I don’t like; he’ll win, and she’ll and remind me: you taught me to respect the President.
If I can give her that much, I’ve done my job. |
