America Without Heroes

By David K. Shipler

                There is a vacuum in America. Where leaders of virtue should reside, citizens find only a void, which echoes with yearning.

                So we have to invent heroes, and we rely on myth-making. These days, whenever a decent Republican dies, bringing that endangered species nearer to extinction, the firmament is flooded with rhapsodies of adoration: first, John McCain, now George H.W. Bush, their reputations amplified as counterpoints to Donald Trump. As the outpouring for Bush has shown this week, we love them more after they’re gone. They are never as pure in life as in death.

The hunger for heroes is one reason for Trump’s popularity among a core of supporters whose cheers cannot be dampened by his insults, his lies, his corruption, his racism, his misogyny, his impulsiveness, his ignorance, his hatreds, or his damage to the prized institutions of democracy. We are a needy people, and a large minority of us, it turns out, are excited by a large, brash personality who crashes through convention and waves his fist in the faces of more than half of his compatriots, plus most of the globe.

This infatuation with Trump’s autocratic bullying reveals a deep fault in American society. Coming when the country faces neither war, depression, rising crime, nor widespread terrorism, the readiness to be afraid is remarkable. Bedraggled families seeking refuge are “invaders.” Democrats threaten “mob rule.” Whites and men are victims. The world’s biggest economy is at the mercy of foreign countries. Imagine if the United States confronted actual risk, how vulnerable we would be to demagoguery—which can be a real danger in itself.

The search for heroes, then, can imperil security. It can let loose toxic impulses. It can undermine the constitutional system, which regards traditional institutions and venerable procedures, not individuals, as the protectors of the country’s freedoms. It can flit from one character to another, conferring Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame on the person of the moment.

Unfit Running Mates

By David K. Shipler

Only once since Ronald Reagan chose George H. W. Bush as his running mate in 1980 have Republicans picked a vice presidential candidate who was qualified to step into the Oval Office if necessary. He was Jack Kemp, former Housing Secretary, who ran with Bob Dole in 1996, a smart and solid man who could have been a decent president.

With all the rest, the Republicans have exposed the country to a high-stakes gamble with very bad odds. In 1988, Bush selected Dan Quayle, an inexperienced senator whose perpetual deer-caught-in-the-headlights look made him seem less than intellectually capable. He was a lightweight vice president who only recently, in cogent criticism of his party’s swing to the hard right, has shown the good sense he would have needed as president.

Dick Cheney, Vice President under George W. Bush, displayed such contempt for the Constitution’s protections of individual rights after 9/11 that, as a president unrestrained, he would have damaged the country’s structure of liberty even more extensively than Bush allowed him to do. (One Cheney gambit, which Bush rejected, was to knock down a pillar of American freedom by sending the Army in pursuit of a hapless so-called “sleeper cell” of wannabe terrorists in upstate New York. They were duly prosecuted by the civilian system.) Much of Cheney’s legacy has persisted under Obama.