Something happenin' here

I'm nervous about Cleveland.

I'm nervous that events might overtake this column, which had to be finished and turned in before the Republican National Convention opened at 1 p.m. Monday. There are a lot of bad feelings floating around now, and I'm old enough to remember the police riots in Chicago in 1968.

I'm old enough to remember how the Tet Offensive rocked America's faith in its military invincibility. I remember President Lyndon B. Johnson just basically giving up on live TV, saying that we could take his job and shove it. I remember the assassinations and the burning cities; intimations of race wars and Black Panthers open-carrying in the streets of Oakland. I remember the nightmare dread and the Beatles' "Revolution" blaring--dirty electric guitars plugged straight into the mixing boards. I remember Hubert Humphrey, the Happy Warrior who became the sacrificial lamb. I remember the Manson family killings, the dread creepy-crawling in from the high desert.

And Richard Nixon, the "law and order" candidate, the embodiment of rising American paranoia. If you lived through it you know--it really felt like it could fly apart. To paraphrase one old hippie, it was possible to imagine the sweet dream of our democracy, broken on the ground.

It feels that way again, at least a little. There's a lot of ugliness out there, and a lot of people talking past each other, a lot of disrespect and bullying coming from all angles. And we're in a strange moment, for the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is a man most mainstream Republican leaders are distancing themselves from, a man that Paul Ryan says has engaged in "textbook racist" rhetoric. And yet party loyalty being what it is, only a few of them have said they won't vote for him, only a few have overtly discouraged others from supporting him. Because, I guess, there is a chance he can win.

I'm with Barbara Bush--I don't see how any woman could support Trump, simply based on the way he's treated and talked about women over the years. And I don't know how people of color could support him based on the overt and subtle ways he has played to the base prejudices of what he imagines his core constituency of white Christian conservatives.

I don't see how Christians could support him given the way he conducts his personal life and his business, given his mendacity and lack of faithfulness. I don't see how gay and lesbian voters could support him based on his choice of running mate.

I don't think he can be elected. But then I didn't think he could be nominated. I don't think he did either. But here we are.

The backlash against Trump isn't overblown. It's not irrational. And it's not hate, not exactly. It's a fear that we're in a Weimar America and that a lying, bigoted demagogue who isn't even a billionaire has convinced 30 percent of the country that a fascist America is preferable to the status quo. It's wonder at the gullibility and depth of the anti-intellectualism present in the culture. It's the realization that we mightn't be a great country after all. That we might fall for this. History will not be kind to Trump supporters and apologists.Even if we stipulate that both major candidates are monsters--and maybe you have to be a monster to make a serious run at the presidency--I'll take the grown-up reality-based monster over the dangerous, petulant child.

Actually, neither candidate is a monster. Trump is in over his head; he's winging it in a feedback loop with an angry and disaffected part of the country that is simply fed up with politics as usual. He's an ahistorical man, too self-absorbed to grasp the implications of his own rhetoric. He doesn't quite understand the subtle differences between a chief executive and a boss, and he thinks he knows how to be a boss. At least he knows how to fire those who displease him.

And Hillary Clinton is politics as usual -- she's a moderate Republican by historical standards. She's to the right of Richard Nixon, which at least some Republicans have noticed and decided isn't such a terrible thing. A lot of the criticisms of her are wildly hyperbolic.

While she's highly competent and has the best interests of her country at heart, I don't think it's wrong to wish we could do better. The problems with her candidacy are deeper than her lack of political instincts; she might care about the problems regular people face but there's little evidence that she really cares much for regular people.

(She's supposedly a great friend and one-on-one listener. But as Dave Barry says, someone who is nice to you and rude to the waiter is not a nice person. And while few presidents have ever been genuinely nice people, the fact is our society is sexist. She will be held to a higher standard.)

In a sense, Trump's ascendancy is the absolute best situation she could face, and I don't have complete confidence that she won't blow it.

But she can't blow it. History is thrusting greatness at her, she has to step up.

Or not. We don't always get the leaders we need, we always seem to make do with those we have. If the unthinkable happens and Trump is sworn in as president, the people most likely to be most disappointed are his most vociferous supporters who will quickly realize that no president--no matter how he blusters on the stump--can be a dictator. Presidents are imminently frustratable, their powers limited by courts and legislative bodies. There is no reason to think that Donald Trump will be any more effective dealing with a hostile Congress than Barack Obama was. There are reasons to think that America could survive a Trump presidency.

Yet a country that would elect a man who says the things that Trump has said isn't a healthy country. It's a fearful country, an unworthy, fearful country.

I know. I'm scared to death about Cleveland.

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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.

Editorial on 07/19/2016

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