Presidential Campaign Delusions

A presidential candidate on the right keeps talking about “making America great again.” When exactly was America greater than it is now? Before the Civil War, when we had slaves? Before 1920, when women got the vote? During the 1930s depression? The 40s and WWII? Maybe the 1950s, when polio still paralyzed and killed children, Jim Crow segregation ruled, and the House Un-American Activities Committee ruined innocent lives?

How about the 1960s? Rioting and marching, Vietnam, beating demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention? Watching that, one of my friends said, “For God’s sake, let’s never remember these as the good old days.” Even then, we felt the seductive danger of romanticizing our youth.

Maybe the 1970s, with Watergate, leaving Vietnam in defeat, Middle East conflicts? The 1980s, when we had a new epidemic called AIDS and Reagan ignored it? When Reagan gave tax cuts and then raided the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for them, two actions whose consequences still cripple us?

The 1990s? The Gulf War—each decade has its wars—Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine: our own homegrown shooters, mostly male and white, are the ones to really fear. And remember dialup? Don’t use the phone: I’m on the Internet!

The 2000s? From Y2K panic to the worst economic downturn in decades. Now in the 2010s, we have increased jobs, a booming housing market, progress in equal treatment of gays, and a multitude of unsolved problems: failing infrastructure, including those lead water pipes; increasing concentration of money in the hands of a few people and corporations, climate change, the endless Middle East quagmire…

Nothing is constant but change. Some you like, some you don’t. Así es la vida. Stop with the “make America great AGAIN” stuff. I have no desire to go back to the white only water fountains of my youth. I’ll take America from here on, warts and all.

On the left, young idealists keep asking me to join the Bernie revolution. They remind me of when we were going to free love and end the War, and then everything would come up daisies or maybe weed. I took peripheral part in that failed revolution, joined a massive demonstration in Sacramento, where newly elected Governor Reagan had slashed funding for higher education, perhaps his first attack on the middle class. (My antipathy to Reagan goes back a long ways.)

Bernie fans also remind me of the young idealists—eight years older now—who helped put Obama in office. Those young people also thought they were joining a revolution, that Obama would end the wars, create universal health care, rebuild our crumbling bridges and be a symbol of the end of racism. When it turned out he was not able to do and be all that, they got disillusioned and failed to vote in the midterms.

During presidential campaigns, we forget about democracy’s checks and balances and the fact that presidential power is limited, especially if the opposing party controls Congress and has resolved to reject everything this president wants. It’s a miracle we got any boost to employment or health care in the last eight years.

We start believing candidates can leap (or build) walls, snuff out terrorists like so many candles or create universal health care with a snap of their fingers. We forget that walls and snuffing and health care all require advice and consent and increased taxes. Candidates are careful not to remind us of that. Since we’re on that topic: Mexico is not a part of the United States of America, but a sovereign country over which we have no jurisdiction and, as former Mexican president Vicente Fox recently said, is not paying for any pinche wall.

Every era has its ups and downs, but we’ve managed to mostly muddle our way forward over the years. Each decade, even if it takes two steps forward and one back, is still a little better than the last. People are angry about a lot of things, but don’t seem to know where to direct that anger. It’s not our government that has shipped jobs overseas, for example. And our delicious diversity? Too late, mis amores, multi-ethnicity is here to stay.

Dispel the fantasy that a presidential candidate is the only one who can fix stuff. The president is important, but not as important as we are. We need to get informed, vote in midterms and local elections. We need to vote, dammit. We need to embrace compromise: that’s how democracy works; no one gets everything they want. We need to serve in our communities and committees, the true engines of progress. As Margaret Mead famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”