I never thought losing would be so much fun but you can't imagine the joy I take in watching Trump betray his most ardent supporters.
I understand but don't share the impulse. In a lifetime of watching politics I've seen only too often
the despair among those so ardently supporting false idols such as political candidates as a whole
and presidential aspirants or office holders in particular. It happens, sadly enough, when we
continue to regard presidents as elected monarchs and senators and representatives as demigods.
I reject what Gene Healy calls the cult of the presidency---the dangerous, if not suicidal devotion
too many of us have toward executive power and the man (or woman, in due course) who wields
it, regardless of who holds the office. I reject it not merely because of those who make the
president such an elected monarch but because of those presidents in my lifetime who were
guilty of behaving as such.
And it comes as part of a piece when I remember a remark Murray Kempton made introducing
a section of his 1962 anthology
America Comes of Middle Age: "It is difficult for one who
has enjoyed both the taste of our beer and the flavour of our politics to determine which has
gone more sour in his lifetime."
