The Great American Column
Rosenblatt, Roger
The Great American Column The People's Choice By now we take it as a national truism, that nobody ever knows anything about politics. We hear disclaimers voiced loud and clear by our various...
...Sleepy-eyed and minded before the tube, we see these figures of our creation try to get through to us...
...We, meanwhile, sit back and watch the nonsense multiply...
...Therefore, no one is...
...Think of the ways we have conceived of our presidents in the theater and movies...
...As for the candidates in this melodrama, Mr...
...Us, whom they do not know...
...The source of their need to prove amateurism is, as usual, ourselves...
...Humphrey the Folksy vs...
...It is we who have decided at a very early stage in our history that politics is a dirty business, indeed anti-democratic in the American Romantic sense, and that no self-respecting individual, certainly no individual coveting our respect, should be soiled by it...
...If Mr...
...Only just plain folks and statesmen, drafted by popular craving, translated by dint of their willingness to serve to a loftier sphere...
...When Raymond Massey or Henry Fonda played Lincoln, they were impressionists on tour, "doing" Lincoln the way Hal Holbrook "does" Mark Twain, with gestures and anecdotes...
...Because we would hoist a man's estimation of himself out of proportion in order to watch him fail...
...For while he has what he wants in his nomination, we also have him where we seem to want him-a disembodied public smile floating, like a great Thanksgiving Day balloon, into the blue distance...
...We discover, particularly in the years of presidential elections, that there are no politicians in the country whatsoever...
...Us, who blew them out of reach in the first place...
...All the same, it's a remarkable delusion: politicians, the governors of much of our lives, continually averring that they know nothing of their craft, winding up at the seats of power purely by accident of their own perfection...
...Heart loses, then he must take on the character of Mr...
...Nixon the Resilient...
...Nixon the Strategic vs...
...On a more practical level, no candidate ever wants to appear to be seeking public approval professionally, because that would deny him the divinity he seeks once he gets it...
...In the past twenty years, we, out of our lazy and convenient imaginations, have set up and witnessed the following allegorical battles: Stevenson the Witty vs...
...We chuckle at him...
...Kennedy the Dynamic vs...
...Richard Widmark, Lew Ayres, and Frederick March, our more recent movie presidents, have all played fictional characters, but they too, like their forebears, have merely filled the simple image set before them-look glum, look powerful, look manipulative, look serenely amused...
...Prevented by cultural convention from appearing before us as he is, a fallible human being seeking mass affection, admiration, authority, and work, he must instead become a symbol, specifically a Virtue...
...scrubbed, polished, wigs in place, and eager for that old approbation...
...We deny it to the less appealing contender, and send him slouching towards reappraisal...
...Because we have a traditional contempt for leadership...
...Courage or Unity First...
...What we have done is to exaggerate the designations, to turn these men into caricatures, and the question is why...
...Nixon the Crafty...
...They do whatever candidates have to do in their real or apocryphal back rooms, and then unveil themselves like Bette Davis in Mrs...
...The same for Ralph Bellamy as Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello, who assumed the role as if his model had consisted only of teeth and winks...
...Fixed to their images or Humors as if fixed to stars, aided and coached in their roles by newsmen and ad men and party pros, they begin to develop absurd consistencies...
...The only theater president who has survived is Wintergreen of Of Thee I Sing, and the reason is that Wintergreen is a (continued on page 25)on page 25...
...Stevenson the Critical vs...
...What he must satisfy is "image," the one we have given him...
...Vigor and Mr...
...Not a single presidential portrayal stands out in our minds for its sensitivity or complexity...
...He is an amateur, after all, not to be judged by low things like competence and experience...
...We have said we like his "guts," or his Heart," or his "savvy," or "vigor...
...We have shaped his candidacy by saying so, and likewise would shape his presidency...
...We award it to the nominee, and launch him upwards, equipped with the knowledge that if he wants to win the whole election, all he has to do is stay out of politics...
...We have not pulled the associations out of the air...
...I suppose this happens because on one level politics is still considered to be a Renaissance activity, beneath the professional devotion of one's whole mind...
...The candidates themselves have suggested them...
...we watch millionaire party doners shy away from television cameras like Munchkins...
...If Mr...
...Ike the Strong...
...Johnson the Professional vs...
...and observe everybody else who makes a living out of politics protest passionately that he is merely an amateur, a dilettante, a humble man...
...Vigor, had he lost, would have had to become Mr...
...Broken (and Brave) Heart, just as Mr...
...Goldwater the Patriotic...
...McGovern the Moral...
...Eisenhower the Dignified...
...Heart, they inevitably become more ridiculous as their campaigns progress...
...We hear disclaimers voiced loud and clear by our various candidates...
...Our candidates, on the other hand, believe that it is we who are deluded, or that we are willing to be deluded, which amounts to the same thing...
...It is there that we have put them, and there we have them, high, ripe, and vulnerable...
...Vigor wins the election, then once in office it is Vigor, the quality, which wins and which must persist...
...Minnever...
...we listen to campaign managers swear they're only country boys themselves...
...He chuckles to himself...
Vol. 6 • December 1972 • No. 3
