A Trump Party in the Reagan Library
“Every time I hear you, I feel a little dumber.” It might have been Jerry Seinfeld, after one of his mouth-agape pauses, responding to George Constanza’s latest theory of life. Better yet, accompanied by a lonesome guitar and rhymed, perhaps, with “plumber” or “warm beer”, the line might have made for a fine country-and-western lyric.
They were in fact the words of Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, speaking during the second Republican debate, on September 27th. And though she was once again squashing Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech entrepreneur, after gritting her teeth through another of his peppy paeans to himself, she might well have been speaking for the viewers at home as they thought back on their whole dismal evening in front of the tube.
The debate was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and so, inevitably, one of the moderators opened it by invoking Reagan’s cherished description of America as a “shining city on a hill”. Equally inevitably, given the state of the Republican field and possibly of the city itself, from there things went downhill. Time may have softened Reagan’s edges and blurred his flaws, bathing him in a rosy glow as it lengthened his shadow across the land. Yet even at his most peevish and least coherent, it is impossible to imagine him degrading himself to participate in the bickerfest that the seven serious Republican candidates not named Donald Trump chose to conduct, insulting and talking over each other in the hilltop shrine dedicated to Reagan’s loftiest conception of his party and country.
2023-09-28 04:53:00
Link from www.economist.com