I skipped last Thursday’s Republican “debate”, instead
watching a DVD of Up, my all-time
favorite animated film.
A quick plug: If you
haven’t seen Up, please do. The first ten minutes tell, perhaps, the sweetest love story in all of film – animated, and almost without dialogue.
What follows is the story of a crusty, curmudgeonly widower
(voiced by Ed Asner) who finds a way to reconnect with the love of his life by
going on the adventure they had always promised each other.
There’s also a talking dog who is… well, you just have to meet
“Dug”.
But back to the Republican “debate”.
I’ll probably watch if the networks ever figure out how to
manage an actual debate. Which they
could, if they’d ask their sports divisions.
The truth is, a candidate can’t be measured in a ten-man joint
press conference. One-on-one debates
would tell us a lot more.
If I were in charge, I’d host a series of one-on-one debates, using
a double-elimination bracket system like, say, the NCAA College World Series.
Seed the candidates, put them into brackets, and conduct a
series of two-candidate debates – using viewer polls to pick the winners.
After the first round, both would candidates go on – one to
the “winner’s bracket”, the other to the “loser’s bracket”. After the each subsequent round, two-time
losers would drop out.
If they ran the tournament between now and the New Hampshire
primary, it would give each candidate – even those not well-known at present – two
chances to show his or her stuff against a single opponent.
And that would tell us something.
And if you think that’s a lot of debates, remember that there
were twenty Republican debates in 2012, most using the present absurd format –
and they produced *sigh* Mitt Romney.
A double-elimination tournament would help voters choose – and
once the actual primaries started, the networks could stage a second series of debates
featuring still-viable candidates.
Thursday’s ten-candidate format would only have made sense if
we lived in an age of greatness.
Imagine a debate in 1789, with George Washington appearing on-stage
with nine other candidates. The nine would
probably have fallen silent to let the Great Man speak – or, if he preferred
(as he probably would) say a few words and just stand there.
But then, Washington was a certifiably Great Man. Foreign travelers familiar with the courts of
Europe wrote privately that Washington was vastly more impressive than any ruling
European monarch.
Today, as we audition people for Washington’s job, we have
nothing resembling a Great Man. Most of
the Republicans – and several of the Democrats – resemble nothing so much as a
convention of funeral directors.
Which might, indeed, be appropriate.
Because the present election – like most elections since I reached
voting age – seems to represent another step towards the death of the Republic.
Apparently, our democratic process can no longer produce
leaders able to do the hard work of governing in complex times. Such men and women are probably out there,
but we don’t vote for them.
As citizens and voters, we lack the conviction, intelligence,
and – let’s face it – patriotism to vote for people with the wisdom to see what
needs to be done; do it; and not care very much if we don’t agree.
We prefer politicians who agree with us – which is curious,
since most of us will freely admit that we don’t understand the complexities of
today’s world.
Nonetheless, we prefer candidates who make us feel smart – which,
of course, means they are lying to us.
In recent weeks, I’ve been reading a first-rate biography of
Julius Caesar by Christian Meier, a German scholar of the post-War
generation. It’s not a book I’d
recommend to everyone. Like many German
scholars, Meier takes a philosophical approach to history, seeking great
patterns rather than simply telling a story.
Meier’s prose – at least in English translation – can be opaque. Occasionally, I find myself wandering in the
fog. But the book’s overall impact is to
confirm impressions I gained from earlier, more accessible, reading.
Some years ago, Colleen McCullough – the Australian novelist –
wrote a fascinating, well-researched series of novels about the last hundred
years of the Roman Republic. The opening
volume, The First Man in Rome, deals with
Julius Caesar’s uncle, Gaius Marius, a military man who gained great power in the
Republic. Subsequent novels explore the
careers of the dictator Sulla, Pompey the Great, and Julius Caesar.
All in all, McCullough – like Meier – explores the factors
which transformed Rome from a free, self-governing city-state to a vast,
despotic empire.
I’m increasingly fascinated by the history of the late
Republic – not because I believe America will follow its exact path, but
because there are sufficient parallels to set off alarm bells.
One of the consistent themes is the smallness of the men –
mostly patrician Senators – who claimed the right to govern Rome.
And the silliness of the ordinary people who voted in Rome’s
elections.
Those parallels,
at least, are much in evidence in 2015.
