BATUHAN: SHINING THEIR BOOTS
This week marked the passing of possibly one of America’s last remaining statesmen. Sen. John McCain, the American Vietnam War veteran who went on to represent his home state of Arizona in the United States Senate – he who was captured and severely tortured by his captors for refusing early release to be with his POW countrymen – finally lost his battle to brain cancer.
A Republican, but also a fierce critic of the current president, he represented a rare breed of American politician. One who had friends on both sides of the aisle, who could look past party affiliations when it came to putting the interests of the American people to heart.
Today, his kind is no more, swept under the tide of weird populist American politics, whose very representation in Donald Trump represents the worst possible scenario for US politics. It is a reality that makes even the likes of Venezuela and Zimbabwe feel superior to the United States, and not without good reason.
When I was a young boy growing up, I hear stories from my elders about “stupid” politicians doing quite silly things. One famous story about a former Philippine president supposedly recounts a conversation between the leader and his economic advisers, who informed him that the price of rice had gone up in the country, due to the law of supply and demand. To which, without even batting an eyelash, the president supposedly ordered them to “repeal” the law of supply and demand.
I used to laugh heartily at those stories, though I always found it hard to imagine that leaders of any country could be that “stupid.” They were, after all, the face of their nations, whose very best and brightest they represented.
When one, for example, thought of America, the images that spring to mind are those of Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan. Mahatma Gandhi was the first to mind when India was mentioned, and Churchill when Britain entered the conversation. They were persons to be held in highest esteem, whose characters were beyond reproach, and whose intellects were greatly admired even beyond their borders.
Today, one may just as well give up trying, rather than go around looking for those who resemble their kind. For in place of the John McCains of this world, we now have the Trumps who are lording it over their countries, imposing their ignorance, misinformation, misogynism and every other bad attribute over their people.
Think about the former US vice president Dan Quayle, for example. I remember a story about him that went around, about how he supposedly corrected a student about the spelling of potato, and suggested it should be P-O-T-A-TO-E instead. This was just one gaffe, but Quayle was never looked at quite the same way by the American people after that. He became the laughing stock of the world, the stupid US leader who could not even spell potato properly.
But what of Trump, and his “all kinds of stupid” persona? From fake news, to the size of inauguration crowds, to Russian collusion and the Mexico border wall, his pronouncements just smack of ignorance and – let’s face it – absolute stupidity. To characterize him as something else, but allowing the word to remain in the English dictionary is being unfair to “stupid.” Because if he isn’t, then the word does not apply to anybody else.
Which is what makes the passing of Sen. John McCain even more regrettable from a political standpoint. For it isn’t just that the world is losing its most statesmenlike leaders, but in their stead are men who are not even good enough – in intellect and character – to be shining their boots.
Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.