My beer with the president problem

 I have been getting grief from McDevite and Logan and others for my recent Republican love. So let me say. First, some of my best friends are Republicans. Second, my cousin Larry Maurer is a Republican, and I love him. I ripped him a new one when he said “I don’t have a President” and he apologized. Which is more than his uncle did regarding George W. Bush. 

Second, when I get the grief, it is because of Chris Christie and Marco Rubio. So let me be clear: I believe that Chris Christie and Marco Rubio would make terrible presidents. But let me also be clear: I like both of them. Christie I have never met, but the dude could be a member of my family. He is totally New York, and f--k you if you bring up the whole Hudson River thing. It is a geographic barrier, but not a cultural one, and did I say f--k alla youse who say otherwise?

Marco Rubio is sadly in the pocket of Big Energy, and he has decided to walk back his innovative reformist policies to stay in the good graces of similar big donors. But he is a smart man and I have been impressed with his political abilities. Reformacon? Nope. But close. And somebody my kids could respect no matter how much I disagree.

Allow me to put this in another context. The American presidency combines the position of head of state and head of government. I am implacably opposed to Chris Christie and Marco Rubio as head of government. I am okay with either as head of state. Got it?

My problem, however, goes deeper than merely needing to defend conservative candidates from my liberal friends and family. I can do that, easy. My problem is that I have hypocrisy as well. Scott Walker has dropped out of the race, but I could not have put his face on my wall as the head of state of my state. The same applies to Donald Trump. He may talk like a Chinese-American in a Starbucks in Fresh Meadows (he knows who he is) and have the body language of a Puerto Rican woman in Fort Lauderdale (who also knows who she is).

But one of my neighbors on 42nd Place has a seven-year-old daughter (of Guatemalan descent) who came over to watch the second GOP debate. She was ... unhappy about the idea of President Trump. And I cannot imagine myself going against her wishes, not least because I share them. (As does Uncle Guy and Cousin Larry!) 

But why am I okay with Christie or Rubio representing my nation but not Trump? 

I have an answer, but I do not know if it makes sense. I am going to get emails but please could you post here instead? I am curious as to whether my ability to sustain the separation between a head of state representing me and my children as the representative of my state and a head of government with whom I disagree about pretty much everything on the table is logically defensible. 

Comments

[JKR]

One imagines a head of state to be a person generally appreciated by all for his or her career of good works, not a foul-mouthed oaf like Christie.

[Noel Maurer]

Generally, yes. But Christie is foul-mouthed in the sense of most of my folks. Should I reject that, LT? Honest question.

[McDevite]

Leaving aside Rubio's empty headed hawkishness, Rubio's longstanding homophobia, personal, professional, and exploitative, is a bridge too far.

Upping the ante and making Obergefell into a Roe-style litmus test may be dog whistle garbage, but the GOP has long acted as an existential threat to my personal interests, so I take such claims to do harm and injury to real people as a real threat to my interests and my prospects as a citizen. In Jeffersonian parlance, it is a type of lawmaking that breaks my legs and picks my pockets.

Similarly, Mitt Romney, with whom I more strongly share cultural/class ties, was aggressively homophobic, so while I could imagine getting along with Romney personally, the fact that he harassed individual gay men as a point of privilege as governor (both in their marriage certificates and in adoption of children), is a weird fact that makes breaking bread with him seem pointless.

To me, Christie just seems like a boorish lout but a great Judith Butler study of gender as a performance, but one that probably bores me.

My objection to your Republican love was not individual politicians, but the fact that "you dance with the one that brought you," that the party has gone rabid and strange--it has not read out the warmongers and tortures from the last decade, and regularly refers to my friends, family, and colleagues as un-American traitors--and it can fucking fuck off from respectable politics until it gets its shit together. (this leaves aside their manifest inability to manage the government for the common good.)

Of course, I say this with an equal amount of Republican friends, many of whom have been chased out of the party for having too strong a contact with facts (Lugar's people; Bob Dole's people), but some remain (Hatch's people.)

This leaves the question as to whether or not there's a plausible top tier GOP candidate who won't send cultural signals that set my teeth on edge or have policy goals aimed at me personally. And I'd think probably not for a while. And I don't feel all that bad about that.

[Noel Maurer]

Point taken. The GOP is looking at you sideways, McDevite, and as your friend that means they're looking at me.

I could tell you that Rubio et al are winking at the rubes, but it wouldn't make things any better. My father and brother saw that happen with those of the Jewish persuasion, and it made them Democrats for life.

It is amazing how little hay has been made about the recent Supreme Court decision, though, no? And this despite the decision's very shaky legal grounds. It's amazing that Obergefell v. Hodges has disappeared from the discourse while the clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment remains up for "debate" among GOP front-runners.

You must have friends doing the equivalent of William Safire. What do you tell them?

[McDevite]

Whether or not a man wants to punch you in the nose because it will impress his girlfriend, his friends, or because he's a drunk sailor.

I know the issue has disappeared for you, but one of the interesting things about the online gay community is how carefully they track the gay-bashing dogwhistles and homophobic policy promises, which continue at a duller roar than before, but continue all the same.

Circling back to the Junior Senator from Florida, what annoys me most about him is this: he wants the benefit of gay bashing politics (in FL, despite having grown up in Miami, having worked for Ilena) but resents being called a bigot, and has a labored, obtuse reasoning as to why he's a good man, not a bigot.

What a coward. What a pussy.