The quarantine can wipe away the guilt. Going on for years now, annually, I binge-watch all eight seasons of The West Wing, a popular TV series back in the late ‘80s and early ’90s; eight seasons of twenty or more episodes each. The title pretty much gives away the plot. That much time devoted to something so trivial would surely heighten my French-Canadian-Catholic guilt. It didn’t. Some said I had too much time on my hands. I didn’t, but now I do. The guilt is gone; during the last three and a half years I think I have watched it twice each year, and why not.
Although it is about a fictitious president, a
fictitious staff, a fictitious family, and the constant battle of ideas between
political parties, it paints a picture of how it could be, how grace and
knowledge could rule the day, how competing ideas could, for the common good,
come together to form a more perfect union. We could be like that again!
The last episode of the last season dramatizes the
last day in the office for one president and the first for a new one. The
inauguration itself pictures the new president taking the oath of office. It is
an oath taken by everyone upon ascending to Head of State, “… faithfully execute the Office of President …
and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States.”
Wishing for a life that once was is a fool’s errand,
when it seems national leaders, by commission or omission, try to be more
faithful to their party, to their donors, or to the super-Pacs that try to
control the country. They don’t take an oath to do that. They don’t take an oath to defend religion.
They don’t take an oath to defend “a way of life!” They don’t take an oath to
defend a language. They take an oath to defend the Constitution. America is the
Constitution. Would that more could hit the mark. The blame lies not just at
the feet of a President, but also to members of Congress, state governors and
legislators and local leaders as well.
A Washington Post columnist suggested recently that
a lot of the blame rests with us. We elect those who don’t work for the common good.
We elect those who trivialize the words of the document that defines our exceptionalism.
We listen to the blistering campaign rhetoric, the shouting, the taunting, the
demagoguery, and then we vote if they let us.
The West Wing is fiction, based on the mores of a
different time, a time when there was more civility in our discourse, less
harshness in our disagreements about strongly held beliefs. There is a yen for
the days of President Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neil, who could fulminate about
policy and politics all day, and then enjoy a good scotch together with an occasional game of poker.
Sometime a while back, when we weren’t paying
attention, disagreement turned to dislike, and then dislike to hate, then
hating to outright derision for our fellow citizens who walk the same soil with
us. Politics should not be a zero-sum game, but a quest for the best solutions,
a willingness to hear out the other side, to resist letting perfection be the
enemy of good.
Robert Conquest a noted historian, poet, and
specialist in 1930s Russia observed, “The behavior of any bureaucratic
organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a
secret cabal of its enemies.” One party
is on a daily mission to wipe out the “deep state” in the Executive branch, and
the other party is on a daily quest to identify those who try to expunge the
professionals in our government. Both sides believe they are the true patriots,
those called to preserve the national ethos. Neither is doing us any favors
when they aren’t willing to do the common good, to bind the wounds, to make us
better.
Our nation has seen less than adequate presidents,
many who were not so smart, some who just didn’t get it, but in the end, they
and the legislators came together to improve the union. We only have to look
back at the Civil Rights Act to see how groups at extreme distances from the
center can become one when necessity calls. And they did it with dignity, they
did it through well thought out discourse, they did it with the practical
pressure of protest applied as needed.
It was a far cry from today’s approach. Belittling
is the weapon of choice against political rivals. Neither side chooses to
govern anymore because they are unwilling to give in on even the most minuscule
of issues. It’s all or nothing.
We are led by a group of older people beyond their
expected usefulness, each trying to etch their legacy into the tablets of
history before it is too late, unwilling to give an inch, even for the sake of
the country. We are not who we were seventy years ago and we won't be who we are now in fifty years. The younger crowd coming up is unwilling to cower before these
elders and is moving the country in a new direction. They do it, not always
with style, but with sincere discourse, with serious questioning of the status
quo, and with a willingness to express ideas in a way that is meaningful to
their age cohorts. They will bring change, it will be uncomfortable for many
but if they do it with civility it can be for the better.
The binge-watch is finished for the first half of
the year, the script of each episode mostly memorized, so we face the question
of what to do now. Start over with Season 1, Episode one? Maybe not for a
while, but surely before the end of the year, maybe to coincide with the
November elections, because the state of the state could use an exposition of
civility, of good thinking, maybe even some good speech-writing, and some
compassion for those on the edges.
While The West Wing plies a different time to which
we can’t return, and shouldn’t, we must expect and hope to change in big ways,
to progress, to become more perfect, to polish the shinning
light on a hill. But we can ask the changers, the chargers, the makers of
tomorrow to do it with some class, some sophistication, and with some civility.
