As the 2020 presidential election neared, Style Weekly kindly offered me another and, I hoped at the time, final swipe at The Mad King. I seized it. Beyond that, this opinion concedes that Jonathan Freedland’s diagnosis of the rot in American political life was uncomfortably accurate.
“A New American Syllabus,” Style Weekly, 14 October 2020, 15 (www.styleweekly.com/richmond/opinion-a-new-american-syllabus/Content?oid=16616782).
This letter was written in particular circumstances. The first anniversary of the “American Carnage” inaugural address approached. The GOP’s surrender to the “America first” onslaught and to President Small Hands’ faux populism was apparent, transactionalism stripped to its purest essence. For the Republicans, demolition of the constitutional edifice and open, nearly gleeful corruption and self-dealing were acceptable so long as the Federalist Society’s judicial nominees were jammed onto the courts and the affluent could stuff more money into their pockets through ill-conceived tax cuts. Grover Norquist’s infamous quip – that all the GOP required in a president is “enough working digits to handle a pen” – had proven too prophetic to amuse.
Personal context too is relevant. She Who Must Be Revered and I spent an extended Christmas holiday in California. My father-in-law’s death was a year past and my mother-in-law needed to be moved into an assisted-living apartment and to have her former residence emptied of belongings. It was decided – by whom I’m not certain – that The Better Half and I needed a vacation after this. Cancellation of a professional engagement had left The Beloved One with an unused hotel reservation in Earl’s Court, so a week in London was planned. Subsequent events told us that we might have contemplated before our departure the potential for the sunk cost fallacy being in play. The vagaries of travel soon intervened. Just as we cleared airport security in San Francisco, My Happiness began to feel unwell. We departed anyway, but she was ailing throughout our time in the United Kingdom.
We, whatever the circumstance, were in London. A good deal of time was passed in our postage-stamp sized room but, whenever The Better Half rallied, we ventured out and took in the sights. I maintained a longstanding custom: a copy of The Guardian on weekdays and The Observer on Sundays. On the eve of New Year’s Eve, The Guardian ran an opinion by Jonathan Freedland, a favorite of mine among British commentators. Mr. Freedland has worked in the American Empire as a reporter and he offers a view of the United States from an outsider, a well-informed and mostly sympathetic one. He doesn’t engage in kneejerk anti-Americanism. This undergirds his credibility when he takes America to task. Nearly two decades earlier I had read his delightful polemic, Bring Home the Revolution (1998), in which he argued that the American Revolution snatched away an Enlightenment political movement that belonged by right to the British. In short, Jonathan Freedland “gets” us. His understanding of the American project surpasses that of many citizens, a shameful reality. He realizes that for all its messiness, contradictions, and hypocrisies, much in the American constitutional system remains admirable and worthy of emulation.
Mr. Freedland was disillusioned as 2017 waned. President Big Mac had pressure tested the Constitution and exposed its inherent shortcomings. The opinion emphasized the system’s reliance on honoring of political and constitutional norms. There too is a tacit assumption that American political leaders will conduct themselves with moral integrity and devotion to constitutional principles, not moral turpitude and civic ignorance. The Bridge and Tunnel President’s yearlong tenure had been a practicum in the capacity of an unscrupulous actor to subvert American governance.
Mr. Freedland’s credibility made the editorial a painful read. The Guardian’s guidelines for submissions resemble The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s, so, availing myself of a hotel notepad, I drafted a letter and sent it. Its thrust was that the game was not over; cards remained to be played. The constitutional system had undergone assaults more existential than that posed by a former host of a reality show. There were also glimmers of hope: The Special Counsel’s investigation proceeded, resistance continued, the elections in Virginia signaled a repudiation of The Donald, and the ballot box remained a potent weapon in the arsenal.
The letter appeared online on New Year’s Day 2018 and in print the day after, a speedy turnaround. My Better Half was unwell, so I hiked to a Marks and Spencer Simply Food on Kensington High Street to feed us and found the paper there. It’s satisfying to call He Who Must Be Ridiculed a fascist in print. The photo attached to the letter’s online version is a classic.
The verdict on the letter after passage of time is mixed. Much of Mr. Freedland’s diagnosis of America’s political ills is valid; more will be said about that later. Nonetheless, the ballot box was a bulwark against the worst abuses. There was legitimate fear of authoritarianism had President Yeti Pubes been reelected and this threat remains plausible so long as the GOP continues its canoodling with Trumpism.
Jonathan Freedland, “The Year of Trump Has Laid Bare the US Constitution’s Serious Flaws,” The Guardian, 30 December 2017, 31 (www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/30/trump-us-constitution-weakness-founding-fathers).
“Trump’s ‘Clown Fascism” and the US Constitution,” The Guardian, 2 January 2018, 29 (www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jan/01/trumps-clown-fascism-and-the-us-constitution).
Jonathan Freedland mentioned the musical Hamilton, which he’d seen upon its London opening, as an example of American creative verve. One would be hard pressed to disagree. Because of The Most Excellent Spouse, I saw the original cast in the Manhattan in October 2015, then a touring production in Richmond, then the streaming version last summer. It was inevitable that it would reach London’s West End. I wondered, when I first saw it, how a British audience would respond because of the wicked comic portrayal of George III and because Alexander Hamilton was perhaps the most obscure of the principal founders for non-Americans.
I needn’t have been concerned. Jonathan Freedland’s was the prevailing critical and popular assessment. One afternoon, while in a queue at the Marks and Spencer Simply Food on Earl’s Court Road, I overheard the locals extolling the show’s virtues. Excitement for it was genuine and unqualified. It was the performance to see. To have a ticket was to be envied. Its graceful Atlantic crossing is a tribute to Lin Manuel Miranda.
A final fact about Jonathan Freedland. During a subsequent journey to the United Kingdom (September 2018), I was browsing in a bookstore on Tottenham Court Road and my eyes alit on a paperback entitled To Kill the President. Its cover image was a stars-and-stripes festooned pistol. It seemed like something for the moment, so I examined a copy. The author was Sam Bourne, a nom de plume of Jonathan Freedland, who in his other life cranks out thrillers. The novel has an alternative title – The Plot Against the President – and cover – the White House instead of a firearm – doubtless a concession to American sensibilities. I am curious to know the chronology of the book’s genesis and completion. The president under threat is a barely disguised version of The Mendacious One. The book reached print in June 2017, barely five months after the inauguration. Was Mr. Freedland inspired by The Perambulating Eructation’s candidacy but considered his election an implausibility and devised the plot as a flight of fancy? Or did he think that Mr. Crude Imposition might pull it off and consider his storyline quasi-plausible? Or was the novel mostly written speedily after the 8 November debacle? The paperback traveled to the US in checked luggage. It’s an airport novel no American should read in an airport.