newyorker--2020-11-14--Democracy Depends on Good Losers

Democracy Depends on Good Losers

“ Show me a good loser and I ’ ll show you a loser , ” Vince Lombardi , a New Yorker ( coaching at Fordham and with the Giants ) before he went on to Green Bay and immortality , once said .
Though the American form of good sportsmanship was almost invented in this city—the peerless Christy Mathewson of the early-twentieth-century baseball Giants was so honest that umpires were said to have consulted him on close plays—we can ’ t deny our own special traditions of sore losers .
Leo ( “ Nice guys finish last ” ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , but George Steinbrenner ’ s outrages and absurdities as the owner of the Yankees , in the nineteen-seventies and eighties , presented Trump with a model for taking over an American institution and trashing it at the same time .
Steinbrenner , whom Trump called “ a great friend , ” routinely pioneered new frontiers in poor sportsmanship , even berating his own best players .
He sneered at his Hall of Fame outfielder Dave Winfield— “ I got rid of Mr. October and got Mr. May ” —though Mr. October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pacific relationship with him , either .
Steinbrenner ’ s quintessential sore-loser moment came in 1981 when , after the Dodgers beat the Yankees for a third straight game in the World Series , he claimed to have injured his hand beating up two much younger Dodger fans who had taunted him in an elevator—something that basically no one believed , assuming , instead , that he had punched a wall in a rage and hurt himself .
( The Yankees went on to lose the Series , in New York .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ working model for what Trump has done this month : lose , have a tantrum , and blame the opposition for his bruises .
The difference is that New York sportswriters were skeptical of Steinbrenner ’ s stories , but Republican leaders are not , or pretend not to be , skeptical of Trump ’ s lies .
So sore losing is a subject unto itself , to be placed alongside the gracious kind .
It is no accident , after all , that the ideal of good sportsmanship—unknown to the ancient Greeks—arose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grew up with parliamentary democracy , as a kind of mimic liberal institution ; learning to lose graciously is part of living in an equal-opportunity political world .
Good sportsmanship implies the enduring legitimacy of the other side and the natural oscillation of winning and losing as something normal—not something fatal , to be feared .
The idea of shaking hands with the other side after a loss is so fundamental to our democratic morality that , at the height of the pandemic lockdown , when that Michael Jordan documentary was everywhere , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Pistons , for failing to congratulate the Bulls after the Pistons lost a series all the way back in 1991 .
A handshake is expected because it demonstrates your commitment to the rules of the game .
And so , the columns and pixels this week have been filled with examples , meant to be tutelary , or shaming—but there ’ s no shaming Trump—of concession speeches past by gracious Presidential losers .
John McCain ’ s concession , from 2008 , is rightly replayed again and again , as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admirable in its lasering in on the historic magnificence of the moment and its “ special significance ” for African-Americans .
( “ Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this , the greatest nation on earth.
” ) And , just from recent vintages , one can add to McCain ’ s speech gracious concessions from Jimmy Carter ( “ I urge all of you to join in with me in a sincere and fruitful effort to support my successor when he undertakes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , George H. W. Bush ( “ There is important work to be done , and America must always come first .
So we will get behind this new President and wish him well ” ) , and , yes , Al Gore ( “ Now the political struggle is over , and we turn again to the unending struggle for the common good of all Americans and for those multitudes around the world who look to us for leadership in the cause of freedom ” ) .
But there is also an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one need only look at McCain ’ s running mate , Sarah Palin , standing silent by his side as he conceded but obviously rarin ’ to speak , to recall that she had to be prevented from saying the wrong thing .
And then there is what , until this week , had been seen as the lowest moment in American political bad sportsmanship : Richard Nixon ’ s press conference after he lost the race for the California governorship , in 1962 .
His famous statement— “ You won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —still resonates and reminds us that right-wing fantasies about every rejection being the result of a hostile media did not begin this year .
Digging further back into history , there is also the fascinatingly ambivalent concession speech of one of the few American Presidential losers who had at least some right to be sore .
That ’ s Samuel Tilden , Democrat of New York , who , after the notorious election of 1876 , got shafted .
He won the popular vote but then lost the electoral vote at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commission , ” which—in ways that make one uneasy about any potential contemporary appeal to the Supreme Court—ended up voting on straight partisan lines .
Tilden , speaking in this city , when the election was finally settled , in 1877 , said , “ In the world ’ s history , changes in the succession of governments have usually been the result of fraud or force .
It has been our faith and our pride that we had established a mode of peaceful change to be worked out by the agency of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is whether our elective system , in its substance as well as its form , is to be maintained.
” But he ended on a surprisingly positive note : “ If my voice could reach throughout our country and be heard in its remotest hamlet , I would say , ‘ Be of good cheer .
The Republic will live .
The institutions of our fathers are not to expire in shame .
The sovereignty of the people shall be rescued from this peril and be reëstablished.
’ ” ( The sovereignty of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tilden was also a tacit party to the Compromise of 1877 , the understanding by which Republicans agreed , as a sop to the Democrats for losing the Presidency , to remove federal troops from the South and abandon the Black population there to its persecutors for most of the next century—the most fateful , and fatal , outcome of that election . )
What all these concessions remind us is that being a good loser , in sports and politics alike , is not merely an ornamental curlicue on the surface of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s bad grace was not just that he made a fool of himself but that he made a fool of the game of baseball , whose pleasure depends on the whole idea of a contest with an unknown outcome .
We can ’ t take pleasure in a Yankee victory if only Yankee victories are regarded as acceptable outcomes .
Graciously accepting the outcome , however painful , is not a norm of baseball ; it is a premise of baseball—without it , the point of playing becomes lost .
We hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violating norms ” —which gives the impression that they are mere standards of behavior or decorum .
In truth , rules that are not written down are often the most essential .
It does not say , on the rules on the back of the Monopoly box , that you can not use a machine gun to force the banker to sell you Boardwalk .
But anyone who came to a Monopoly game armed with a machine gun would not be playing Monopoly .
What Trump is doing is not violating norms but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible , which comes down to a higher form of sportsmanship , all turning on accepting the legitimacy of the other side .
It is not a norm of Presidential elections to concede when you have lost .
It is a premise of having Presidential elections that you concede when you have lost .
Joe Biden ’ s campaign is obviously proceeding on the assumption that the dumbest thing you can do with Trump is take the bait ; blithely rising above his bad faith seems like the shrewd play .
But don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this ongoing four-year emergency .
It is real and scary .
Being a good loser isn ’ t a norm or a nicety of democracy .
It ’ s a premise and a principle .
People who ignore the handshake are usually also the same people who go on to try and fix the game .
Bad sportsmanship is a warning of worse .
Read More About the 2020 Election • William Barr is the one Administration official with the power to stop Donald Trump and his attempted coup .
• Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden has been elected the next President .
• With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election , Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court .
• We have to talk about what happened under the Trump Presidency and how we can prevent it from happening again .
• If 2020 has demonstrated anything , it is the need to rebalance the economy to benefit the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden Administration can start .
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser,” Vince Lombardi, a New Yorker (coaching at Fordham and with the Giants) before he went on to Green Bay and immortality, once said. Though the American form of good sportsmanship was almost invented in this city—the peerless Christy Mathewson of the early-twentieth-century baseball Giants was so honest that umpires were said to have consulted him on close plays—we can’t deny our own special traditions of sore losers. Leo (“Nice guys finish last”) Durocher was before Donald Trump’s time, but George Steinbrenner’s outrages and absurdities as the owner of the Yankees, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, presented Trump with a model for taking over an American institution and trashing it at the same time. Steinbrenner, whom Trump called “a great friend,” routinely pioneered new frontiers in poor sportsmanship, even berating his own best players. He sneered at his Hall of Fame outfielder Dave Winfield—“I got rid of Mr. October and got Mr. May”—though Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson, hardly had a pacific relationship with him, either. Steinbrenner’s quintessential sore-loser moment came in 1981 when, after the Dodgers beat the Yankees for a third straight game in the World Series, he claimed to have injured his hand beating up two much younger Dodger fans who had taunted him in an elevator—something that basically no one believed, assuming, instead, that he had punched a wall in a rage and hurt himself. (The Yankees went on to lose the Series, in New York.) That’s pretty much the working model for what Trump has done this month: lose, have a tantrum, and blame the opposition for his bruises. The difference is that New York sportswriters were skeptical of Steinbrenner’s stories, but Republican leaders are not, or pretend not to be, skeptical of Trump’s lies.
So sore losing is a subject unto itself, to be placed alongside the gracious kind. It is no accident, after all, that the ideal of good sportsmanship—unknown to the ancient Greeks—arose in the nineteenth century. Good sportsmanship grew up with parliamentary democracy, as a kind of mimic liberal institution; learning to lose graciously is part of living in an equal-opportunity political world. Good sportsmanship implies the enduring legitimacy of the other side and the natural oscillation of winning and losing as something normal—not something fatal, to be feared. The idea of shaking hands with the other side after a loss is so fundamental to our democratic morality that, at the height of the pandemic lockdown, when that Michael Jordan documentary was everywhere, we were still upbraiding Isiah Thomas, of the Pistons, for failing to congratulate the Bulls after the Pistons lost a series all the way back in 1991. A handshake is expected because it demonstrates your commitment to the rules of the game.
And so, the columns and pixels this week have been filled with examples, meant to be tutelary, or shaming—but there’s no shaming Trump—of concession speeches past by gracious Presidential losers. John McCain’s concession, from 2008, is rightly replayed again and again, as a speech not merely grudgingly correct but actively admirable in its lasering in on the historic magnificence of the moment and its “special significance” for African-Americans. (“Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on earth.”)
And, just from recent vintages, one can add to McCain’s speech gracious concessions from Jimmy Carter (“I urge all of you to join in with me in a sincere and fruitful effort to support my successor when he undertakes this great responsibility as President”), George H. W. Bush (“There is important work to be done, and America must always come first. So we will get behind this new President and wish him well”), and, yes, Al Gore (“Now the political struggle is over, and we turn again to the unending struggle for the common good of all Americans and for those multitudes around the world who look to us for leadership in the cause of freedom”).
But there is also an American tradition of sore Presidential-ticket losers; one need only look at McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, standing silent by his side as he conceded but obviously rarin’ to speak, to recall that she had to be prevented from saying the wrong thing. And then there is what, until this week, had been seen as the lowest moment in American political bad sportsmanship: Richard Nixon’s press conference after he lost the race for the California governorship, in 1962. His famous statement—“You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore”—still resonates and reminds us that right-wing fantasies about every rejection being the result of a hostile media did not begin this year.
Digging further back into history, there is also the fascinatingly ambivalent concession speech of one of the few American Presidential losers who had at least some right to be sore. That’s Samuel Tilden, Democrat of New York, who, after the notorious election of 1876, got shafted. He won the popular vote but then lost the electoral vote at the hands of a supposedly bipartisan “electoral commission,” which—in ways that make one uneasy about any potential contemporary appeal to the Supreme Court—ended up voting on straight partisan lines. Tilden, speaking in this city, when the election was finally settled, in 1877, said, “In the world’s history, changes in the succession of governments have usually been the result of fraud or force. It has been our faith and our pride that we had established a mode of peaceful change to be worked out by the agency of the ballot box. The question now is whether our elective system, in its substance as well as its form, is to be maintained.” But he ended on a surprisingly positive note: “If my voice could reach throughout our country and be heard in its remotest hamlet, I would say, ‘Be of good cheer. The Republic will live. The institutions of our fathers are not to expire in shame. The sovereignty of the people shall be rescued from this peril and be reëstablished.’ ” (The sovereignty of some of the people, anyway: Tilden was also a tacit party to the Compromise of 1877, the understanding by which Republicans agreed, as a sop to the Democrats for losing the Presidency, to remove federal troops from the South and abandon the Black population there to its persecutors for most of the next century—the most fateful, and fatal, outcome of that election.)
What all these concessions remind us is that being a good loser, in sports and politics alike, is not merely an ornamental curlicue on the surface of things. What was wrong with Steinbrenner’s bad grace was not just that he made a fool of himself but that he made a fool of the game of baseball, whose pleasure depends on the whole idea of a contest with an unknown outcome. We can’t take pleasure in a Yankee victory if only Yankee victories are regarded as acceptable outcomes. Graciously accepting the outcome, however painful, is not a norm of baseball; it is a premise of baseball—without it, the point of playing becomes lost.
We hear again and again that Trump is “violating norms”—which gives the impression that they are mere standards of behavior or decorum. In truth, rules that are not written down are often the most essential. It does not say, on the rules on the back of the Monopoly box, that you cannot use a machine gun to force the banker to sell you Boardwalk. But anyone who came to a Monopoly game armed with a machine gun would not be playing Monopoly. What Trump is doing is not violating norms but assaulting premises—the very premises that make democracy possible, which comes down to a higher form of sportsmanship, all turning on accepting the legitimacy of the other side.
It is not a norm of Presidential elections to concede when you have lost. It is a premise of having Presidential elections that you concede when you have lost. Joe Biden’s campaign is obviously proceeding on the assumption that the dumbest thing you can do with Trump is take the bait; blithely rising above his bad faith seems like the shrewd play. But don’t underestimate the final existential threat in this ongoing four-year emergency. It is real and scary. Being a good loser isn’t a norm or a nicety of democracy. It’s a premise and a principle. People who ignore the handshake are usually also the same people who go on to try and fix the game. Bad sportsmanship is a warning of worse.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-11-15--Dear Pepper: Interruptions, Hostess Gifts, and Toilet Clogs

My husband and I have a wonderful marriage .
He is kind , funny , and generous to me .
My one problem is that he ’ s always interrupti— ( Sorry , I couldn ’ t help myself . )
That ’ s a big one—although I think a common one—and a hard one to solve .
Existence , as well as being recognized by your partner as existing , is a fundamental right of all dense matter .
Do I sound like I ’ m joking ?
I ’ m not joking .
You mention in your e-mail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that your husband rarely asks you questions and often talks at length about his own life and issues but makes no effort to listen when you try to tell him about yourself .
I believe that listening is a quality that ’ s learned , rather than innate .
And , if your husband hasn ’ t learned it by now , he might not be motivated to do so at this point .
You also say in your e-mail that you ’ ve talked to him about this but that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he doesn ’ t listen when you bring things like this up .
It ’ s hard to make anything work perfectly when there isn ’ t coöperation , but I do have some partial measures I can recommend : train yourself to speak more loudly and to not stop speaking when interrupted .
Do as Kamala Harris did repeatedly during the Vice-Presidential debate and firmly say , “ I ’ m speaking.
” So-and-so said to bring nothing to her party .
Should I actually bring nothing ?
This is actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m sure you ’ re aware .
“ Nothing ” —nada in Spanish , niente in Italian , rien in French , shum davar in Hebrew—can mean many things , depending on the circumstances of the person who has asked you to bring nothing to her party .
It could mean that she does very much want you to bring something but knows that she ’ s not allowed to ask , because she has a kind and selfless persona .
It could mean that she ’ s prepared a very specific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want you messing it up with some random carrot-and-raisins dish that she ’ d have to serve if you brought it .
The reality is that there is no way to tell what is in the heart of a host .
Wine is usually safe .
It ’ s something that hosts can keep rather than serving , if they so choose .
How much the wine should cost and what color and type it should be is for a wiser dog than I to help you figure out .
In case you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t miss dinner parties very much .
Or socializing in general .
I clogged a public toilet in the building where I rent an art studio .
There is no plunger in the bathroom .
Is it my duty to go out and buy one ?
It would probably take an hour or so .
I can ’ t remember what the social norms are anymore .
I want to do the right thing .
But I know that I can ’ t do everything .
Can ’ t Help But Mess @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line between being a good person and being an obsessively correct person .
My rule of thumb is that if some form of kindness takes less than , say , ten minutes and costs less than , say , ten dollars ( this is a sliding scale—choose numbers that are right for you ) , you should go the extra mile .
Otherwise , be bad .
I speak as a dog who has always had her poop picked up for her .
Please direct all hate mail to dearpepperquestions @ gmail.com .

Dear Pepper,
My husband and I have a wonderful marriage. He is kind, funny, and generous to me. My one problem is that he’s always interrupti—
Dear Interrupted,
(Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) That’s a big one—although I think a common one—and a hard one to solve. Existence, as well as being recognized by your partner as existing, is a fundamental right of all dense matter. Do I sound like I’m joking? I’m not joking.
You mention in your e-mail, which I so rudely cut off, that your husband rarely asks you questions and often talks at length about his own life and issues but makes no effort to listen when you try to tell him about yourself.
I believe that listening is a quality that’s learned, rather than innate. And, if your husband hasn’t learned it by now, he might not be motivated to do so at this point.
You also say in your e-mail that you’ve talked to him about this but that it doesn’t help. You mentioned that he doesn’t listen when you bring things like this up.
It’s hard to make anything work perfectly when there isn’t coöperation, but I do have some partial measures I can recommend: train yourself to speak more loudly and to not stop speaking when interrupted.
Do as Kamala Harris did repeatedly during the Vice-Presidential debate and firmly say, “I’m speaking.”
Good luck,
Pepper
Dear Pepper,
So-and-so said to bring nothing to her party. Should I actually bring nothing?
Kaneís
Dear Kaneís,
This is actually a very tricky problem, as I’m sure you’re aware.
“Nothing”—nada in Spanish, niente in Italian, rien in French, shum davar in Hebrew—can mean many things, depending on the circumstances of the person who has asked you to bring nothing to her party. It could mean that she does very much want you to bring something but knows that she’s not allowed to ask, because she has a kind and selfless persona. It could mean that she’s prepared a very specific and fancy meal and doesn’t want you messing it up with some random carrot-and-raisins dish that she’d have to serve if you brought it. The reality is that there is no way to tell what is in the heart of a host.
Wine is usually safe. It’s something that hosts can keep rather than serving, if they so choose. How much the wine should cost and what color and type it should be is for a wiser dog than I to help you figure out.
In case you can’t tell, I don’t miss dinner parties very much. Or socializing in general.
Sincerely,
Pepper
Dear Pepper,
I clogged a public toilet in the building where I rent an art studio. There is no plunger in the bathroom. Is it my duty to go out and buy one? It would probably take an hour or so. I can’t remember what the social norms are anymore. I want to do the right thing. But I know that I can’t do everything.
Sincerely,
Can’t Help But Mess Everything Up
Dear Can’t Help,
There’s a fine line between being a good person and being an obsessively correct person. My rule of thumb is that if some form of kindness takes less than, say, ten minutes and costs less than, say, ten dollars (this is a sliding scale—choose numbers that are right for you), you should go the extra mile. Otherwise, be bad. I speak as a dog who has always had her poop picked up for her. Please direct all hate mail to dearpepperquestions@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Your Pepper


newyorker--2020-11-15--What Does Trump Get Out of Contesting Biden’s Win?

For much of Donald Trump ’ s reëlection campaign , he spread the calumny that voting by mail would be used for large-scale fraud in November , and he made clear that if he lost he would say that he was robbed and would seek victory in the courts .
Trump ’ s gambit was a variant of election-manipulation schemes familiar in countries like Pakistan and Belarus .
His plan had holes , such as an absence of evidence , yet he seemed to think that he had a plausible chance , if the election was narrowly decided and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the election wasn ’ t close : Joe Biden won the national popular vote by more than five million votes , and he seems likely , once the last ballots are counted and recounted , to win the Electoral College by nearly the same margin that Trump had over Hillary Clinton in 2016 .
Trump has doubled down on his fraud ploy anyway .
On November 7th , after the Associated Press and major television networks declared Biden the country ’ s forty-sixth President , Trump tweeted , “ i won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things happened.
” Since then , he has mainly sequestered himself in the White House while unleashing dozens of tweets and retweets containing false allegations , which Twitter has continually flagged as unreliable .
Last week , Biden offered a measured take on the President ’ s refusal to concede : “ I just think it ’ s an embarrassment , quite frankly.
” He seemed to accept that it might require some time for Trump to come to terms with reality , and for Republican leaders to stop enabling him .
Mitch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was among the many elected Republicans who declared that the President had every right to pursue his grievances in the courts .
Yet Trump ’ s accusations have not gained credibility since Rudy Giuliani delivered a Borat-worthy press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping , that new Philadelphia landmark , on the day Biden became President-elect .
Times reporters surveyed election administrators in all fifty states and reported that the officials had found no evidence of significant voting issues .
At least ten lawsuits filed by Trump ’ s campaign or allies have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This past Wednesday , after promising “ shocking ” evidence of wrongdoing in Michigan , Trump ’ s campaign released affidavits by poll watchers who had complained , as the Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold wrote , about such violations as “ loud noises ” and “ mean stares.
” Trump , according to the Times , has asked White House advisers about using Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Pennsylvania to hijack the Electoral College , by appointing electors who would ignore official vote counts and return him to power .
Even loose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unscrupulous Trump remains as he contemplates his loss of office .
Nor is he the only one to muse recklessly about antidemocratic outcomes in the weeks ahead .
Asked if the Administration was jeopardizing national security by refusing to coöperate with Biden ’ s transition , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo smiled and said , “ There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration.
” He gave the impression that he was pranking liberals about their fears of a Trump coup d ’ état , even as he and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decide whether to accept his obvious defeat .
“ I think that the whole Republican Party has been put in a position , with a few notable exceptions , of being mildly intimidated by the sitting President , ” Biden noted .
Typically , the best way to understand Trump ’ s actions is to ask what ’ s in it for him .
Four more years in the White House would extend his immunity from New York prosecutors conducting active investigations into possible criminal activity , ease pressure from bank creditors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a win-win-win .
Assuming that the President fails to rig a second term , he is fashioning a story about how corrupt Democrats foiled his reëlection , which might galvanize followers and donors after he leaves office .
According to the Post , the President told advisers last week , “ I ’ m just going to run in 2024 .
I ’ m just going to run again.
” His campaign has formed a political-action committee , called Save America , which appears designed as a means for him to raise money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Presidency ends .
The pac is eligible to receive funds now for Trump ’ s “ election defense , ” but much of that money would likely be spent on other causes and candidates .
Leave it to Trump to manufacture a constitutional crisis that also incorporates a fund-raising con .
The sheer theatricality of Trump ’ s refusal to concede is a distraction from his failure , once again , to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously .
Last week , the country set a new daily record for infections—more than a hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new high , after doubling during the past month .
As this crisis unfolded , the President retweeted Sean Hannity , Jon Voight , and other acolytes backing his election-fraud claims .
He did pause to communicate about the pandemic , but only to complain , without evidence , that Pfizer ’ s announcement of progress on an effective vaccine—a revelation made two days after Biden ’ s victory—was timed intentionally to hurt his reëlection campaign .
Biden , in his first action as President-elect , appointed a panel of doctors and public-health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but they won ’ t have real power for another two months , and , in the meantime , the Administration ’ s refusal to authorize briefings and funding for Biden ’ s transition means that his pandemic advisers will be deprived of vital information .
Trump and his allies are “ engaged in an absurd circus right now , ” Nancy Pelosi , the Speaker of the House , said on Thursday , which is “ making it even harder ” to combat the coronavirus .
The pandemic has claimed more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives , yet Trump has failed to see that his duty as President requires him to prioritize the safety of all citizens , even when this may not advantage him politically .
During the campaign , he tried to delegitimize the form of voting most likely to protect people from the disease that his Administration had failed to contain .
He did this because , as he said in April , voting by mail “ doesn ’ t work out well for Republicans.
” Now the President seems determined to put the pursuit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his responsibility to address the economic and health impacts of what may be the most difficult surge of the pandemic yet .
Trump ’ s presumptive last act in the White House is shaping up to be as bankrupt as all that came before .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
For much of Donald Trump’s reëlection campaign, he spread the calumny that voting by mail would be used for large-scale fraud in November, and he made clear that if he lost he would say that he was robbed and would seek victory in the courts. Trump’s gambit was a variant of election-manipulation schemes familiar in countries like Pakistan and Belarus. His plan had holes, such as an absence of evidence, yet he seemed to think that he had a plausible chance, if the election was narrowly decided and he brought a case before the Supreme Court.
But the election wasn’t close: Joe Biden won the national popular vote by more than five million votes, and he seems likely, once the last ballots are counted and recounted, to win the Electoral College by nearly the same margin that Trump had over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump has doubled down on his fraud ploy anyway. On November 7th, after the Associated Press and major television networks declared Biden the country’s forty-sixth President, Trump tweeted, “i won the election. . . . bad things happened.” Since then, he has mainly sequestered himself in the White House while unleashing dozens of tweets and retweets containing false allegations, which Twitter has continually flagged as unreliable.
Last week, Biden offered a measured take on the President’s refusal to concede: “I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly.” He seemed to accept that it might require some time for Trump to come to terms with reality, and for Republican leaders to stop enabling him. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, was among the many elected Republicans who declared that the President had every right to pursue his grievances in the courts. Yet Trump’s accusations have not gained credibility since Rudy Giuliani delivered a Borat-worthy press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, that new Philadelphia landmark, on the day Biden became President-elect. Times reporters surveyed election administrators in all fifty states and reported that the officials had found no evidence of significant voting issues. At least ten lawsuits filed by Trump’s campaign or allies have been dismissed by the courts already. This past Wednesday, after promising “shocking” evidence of wrongdoing in Michigan, Trump’s campaign released affidavits by poll watchers who had complained, as the Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold wrote, about such violations as “loud noises” and “mean stares.”
Trump, according to the Times, has asked White House advisers about using Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Pennsylvania to hijack the Electoral College, by appointing electors who would ignore official vote counts and return him to power. Even loose talk about such a maneuver suggests how unscrupulous Trump remains as he contemplates his loss of office. Nor is he the only one to muse recklessly about antidemocratic outcomes in the weeks ahead. Asked if the Administration was jeopardizing national security by refusing to coöperate with Biden’s transition, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo smiled and said, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration.” He gave the impression that he was pranking liberals about their fears of a Trump coup d’état, even as he and other loyalists wait obediently for the President to decide whether to accept his obvious defeat. “I think that the whole Republican Party has been put in a position, with a few notable exceptions, of being mildly intimidated by the sitting President,” Biden noted.
Typically, the best way to understand Trump’s actions is to ask what’s in it for him. Four more years in the White House would extend his immunity from New York prosecutors conducting active investigations into possible criminal activity, ease pressure from bank creditors, and further enrich his family businesses: a win-win-win. Assuming that the President fails to rig a second term, he is fashioning a story about how corrupt Democrats foiled his reëlection, which might galvanize followers and donors after he leaves office. According to the Post, the President told advisers last week, “I’m just going to run in 2024. I’m just going to run again.” His campaign has formed a political-action committee, called Save America, which appears designed as a means for him to raise money to influence the Republican Party after his Presidency ends. The pac is eligible to receive funds now for Trump’s “election defense,” but much of that money would likely be spent on other causes and candidates. Leave it to Trump to manufacture a constitutional crisis that also incorporates a fund-raising con.
The sheer theatricality of Trump’s refusal to concede is a distraction from his failure, once again, to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously. Last week, the country set a new daily record for infections—more than a hundred and sixty thousand—and hospitalizations also reached a new high, after doubling during the past month. As this crisis unfolded, the President retweeted Sean Hannity, Jon Voight, and other acolytes backing his election-fraud claims. He did pause to communicate about the pandemic, but only to complain, without evidence, that Pfizer’s announcement of progress on an effective vaccine—a revelation made two days after Biden’s victory—was timed intentionally to hurt his reëlection campaign. Biden, in his first action as President-elect, appointed a panel of doctors and public-health specialists to advise him on the pandemic, but they won’t have real power for another two months, and, in the meantime, the Administration’s refusal to authorize briefings and funding for Biden’s transition means that his pandemic advisers will be deprived of vital information. Trump and his allies are “engaged in an absurd circus right now,” Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, said on Thursday, which is “making it even harder” to combat the coronavirus.
The pandemic has claimed more than two hundred and forty thousand American lives, yet Trump has failed to see that his duty as President requires him to prioritize the safety of all citizens, even when this may not advantage him politically. During the campaign, he tried to delegitimize the form of voting most likely to protect people from the disease that his Administration had failed to contain. He did this because, as he said in April, voting by mail “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” Now the President seems determined to put the pursuit of his invented claims of vote-rigging before his responsibility to address the economic and health impacts of what may be the most difficult surge of the pandemic yet. Trump’s presumptive last act in the White House is shaping up to be as bankrupt as all that came before. ♦
Read More About the 2020 Election


The Bridge Dog

“ Merle and I arrive together at one end of the bridge .
I take her off leash and tell her to sit and stay .
Then I walk all the way to the other end and shout , “ O.K.
, Merle !
” and she takes off like a shot and runs to meet me .
She doesn ’ t take off until I say she can.
” My friend said it sounded really cool , but perhaps not like a trick .
“ I wish you could have seen her in her prime , ” I said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ although he had seen at least fifty Instagram posts of Merle running fast when she was younger , it was sad he would not see the not-really-a-bridge-trick .
Merle looked anxious .
To anthropomorphize is a stupid practice , but , still , allow me to indulge in the feeling that her eyes , at that moment , were saying , “ I am sad that I am going to die soon.
” Her health had recently taken a sharp downward turn .
Arthritis was the most noticeable sign .
For a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and her old-cowboy gait .
“ You need a bridge dog , ” he finally said .
“ Oh , Merle is still a bridge dog , I assure you.
” I said .
“ She still loves to walk over the bridge , even if she can ’ t run.
” “ That ’ s not what I mean by ‘ bridge dog , ’ ” he said , gingerly .
“ What I mean is a dog that you get—well , not necessarily soon , but also not not soon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dog that will be around when Merle—when she is—you know !
No longer with us.
” It was Merle ’ s turn to watch my friend .
She sniffed the air around him , then looked at me as if to say , “ Who is this joker ?
” “ ‘ Bridge dog , ’ ” I said .
“ I ’ ve never heard that term before.
” “ I don ’ t think I made it up , ” my friend said .
“ I wish I had , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I did.
” I Googled “ bridge dog.
” I didn ’ t find anything about it as a saying , but I found quite a lot about some bridge in Scotland that dogs leap from to commit suicide .
I didn ’ t click .
How had my life amounted to so little , I often wondered , when I wasn ’ t freaking out about how it was too late and I was too old to fix it .
All of my friends lived somewhere else .
Sometimes I would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night wondering what would become of me ; sometimes , out of nowhere , my face would start burning with shame .
I didn ’ t have the courage to go full-on Scotland-bridge dog , but I was toying with the idea , and if it hadn ’ t been for my parents , I might have done it .
The school where I worked was adjacent to a forest .
Once a month , a stooped , white-haired , hard-of-hearing tree expert named Don took the kids into this forest and talked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hissed homophobic slurs at one another .
Don was a blowhard , and about one in ten of his crass jokes were funny .
His best feature was his beautiful blue heeler , a compact , pleasantly aloof , short-haired dog .
( They ’ re sometimes called Australian cattle dogs , or Queenslands , because they came into being when ranchers bred collies with dingoes for greater stamina . )
Don ’ s dog was trim and agile , with a sweet , short-snouted face ; she moved only at Don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sense of joy and gratitude in being of service .
“ Get ’ em , girl , ” Don would say if the kids wandered away , and she would bound off , barking when she found them .
If Don wanted the dog to come back , he only had to whistle ; seconds later , she would be at his side .
One afternoon , when the kids weren ’ t around , I caught her in a moment like this , still as a statue but for her black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said to Don , “ I am going to have a dog just like her someday.
” Don regarded me with rare kind interest .
“ I sure do wonder , ” he said , “ what you ’ d look like with your clothes off.
” The dog looked at me apologetically .
I went to join the kids .
The “ our ” part is important to clarify .
Merle did not belong to anyone .
She belonged to herself .
She loved to be in motion , to walk with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ P. , to stand at the edge of a river and bark at the water while the rest of us swam .
She would go anywhere , with anyone .
She just liked to hang out .
If she ’ d been a man at a party , Merle would have been in the corner playing Hacky Sack , pretending not to hear questions about why he never had a girlfriend .
P. had an eight-to-five job , so Merle was with me every day , all day .
After a few years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my boyfriend and P. , and so it was the three of us , and Merle .
I could not believe how much happier I was now that I had Merle in my life .
Merely by agreeing to feed her and dispose of her waste , I had opened a portal to a pure , white-light joy that cut through all miseries , personal and structural .
We walked and walked , mostly at night , over the bridge , around the town , over the other bridge , in the cool @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because she was with me .
“ We are together , ” I liked to exclaim to her reflection in my rearview mirror .
“ We are alive , and we are together !
” My life was no longer a disaster .
It was instead the miracle that had landed this creature in my back seat .
I don ’ t want to say that Merle made me happy , but she made me stop wishing I was dead .
Merle had barely trotted at all for weeks when I saw my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Merle was .
“ Good , mostly , ” I lied .
“ What about your cat ?
” His cat was also getting old , though not as fast as Merle .
“ Are you going to get a bridge cat ?
” “ Of course not , ” he said .
He waved me away , as if he hadn ’ t introduced me to the very concept .
“ My cat would know something was up.
” I stewed silently on the implication here , that Merle would be too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bridge dog .
Merle started to drink lots of water .
The vet said her kidneys were bad .
She ate ravenously , but nothing stuck .
She dropped five pounds , then five more , then ten more .
She went blind in one eye .
One day , she threw up everything , even water .
In the car , on the way to the vet , she let me hold her for once .
She peed all over me , and I whispered to her , “ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not get a bridge dog .
It would be an insult to Merle and to our relationship .
She survived , but continued to decline .
Then P. moved out to live with his girlfriend , and Merle had to go back and forth between their house and ours .
When people asked how it was , only having Merle half the time , I said it was hard , that I missed her .
I was lying .
It wasn ’ t that I no longer loved her .
But there was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Merle was at P. ’ s house , when we didn ’ t have to watch her panting , or struggling to walk up and down stairs , or stand up .
Once you have stopped stupidly hoping that it will never happen , watching a dog die isn ’ t stressful so much as it is simply depressing .
Privately , I had started to scheme .
I entered “ HEELER 200-mile radius ” into Petfinder .
Beautiful heelers from across the state—from Stockton to Sausalito , from Roseville to Richmond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Fremont to Fresno , from Dublin to Downieville , five or ten e-mails a week—arrived in my in-box .
In one photo , a heeler named Ruthie was half sitting and half lying down , and looking off camera imploringly , as if she hoped someone would tell her which one to do .
It was glaringly obvious that she needed me .
I still thought that getting a bridge dog would be weak and callous .
I told myself that I wasn ’ t getting a bridge dog at all , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived with us—not full time , at least .
Ruthie was scared by the noise and activity of the pound , so she was staying with a shelter volunteer , who told us that they had found her living in the street .
“ Living in the street next to a bakery ?
” I asked .
She was terrified , but so fat—glossy and golden .
Her adoption form listed her as “ purebred heeler , ” which isn ’ t even a thing .
She looked like a corgi-heeler mix , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with an egg bagel .
The volunteer told me that Ruthie walked on a leash , which , in a sense , was true .
Ruthie ran in a circle around me one way and then the other , wrapping me up , unwrapping me , then making a mad dash in one direction , then the other .
Everyone could agree that Ruthie was cute but clearly not O.K .
“ What do you want to do ?
” my boyfriend asked .
“ I have to play D. & D. in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just get her , ” I said .
“ If it doesn ’ t work out , we can bring her back.
” The next day , a guest who had found us through the Couchsurfing app left our gate open .
He ’ d broken the single rule that I ’ d made for his stay : “ Do whatever you want , just please , for the love of God , don ’ t leave the gate open.
” I cursed myself as I ran after Ruthie across one busy street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrangle her , only for her to slip out of her collar and run away again .
I finally tackled her on a neighbor ’ s lawn .
She snarled and whipped around , her top teeth scraping my scalp , but I would n't let her go .
“ I ’ m your mom , ” I said , panting into her fur .
“ I love you already , Ruthie .
Whatever we go through , we ’ re going to go through it together .
I will never let anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ struggling underneath me , as if she had heard me , but she was probably just tuckered out .
From that moment , Ruthie always seemed to be pressed against me , whether waking or sleeping—jumping on me and pleading to be petted , making little baby noises and snuggling in tighter .
As our love grew , Merle continued to decline .
Ruthie made that decline bearable , exactly as a bridge dog is supposed to .
“ You love Ruthie more than you love Merle , ” people said to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course I didn ’ t , but they were right .
No , she was not a good dog at all .
But she was cuddly and desperately in love with me , and that can make up for a lot .
This past June , Merle had a terrible night of vomiting .
P. and I agreed that we ’ d meet at the vet at eight-thirty in the morning , when the clinic opened .
At eight-fifteen , I finished reading an article weighing the question of whether Awkwafina ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was racist , stood up , and said , “ Come on , Merle , let ’ s go to the vet !
” Merle ’ s eyes were open , but she didn ’ t move .
P. wrapped her in a flannel sheet that he had in his car .
We put her on ice and took her out to the San Juan Ridge , where she ’ d grown up with Don , the tree expert/sexual harasser .
P. and my boyfriend dug a hole , and we all lowered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dirt over her , I looked hard at the distinctive outline of her short snout under the sheet , for the last time .
I cried , but my pain was not bone-wrenching , because Ruthie was running around us in circles .
I complimented myself on this skillful avoidance of the bad feelings typically brought on by loss .
Bridge dogs : 1 .
Death : 0 .

About a year ago, a friend of mine came to visit me in Nevada City, California. We were at the height of our short, colorful autumn, and we went walking with my dog, Merle, among the blazing oaks and aspens. As we crossed Deer Creek on the Pine Street Bridge, moving from the quieter part of town to the more bustling, touristy section, I said, “It’s too bad Merle isn’t younger because otherwise she could show you the trick where she runs over the bridge.”
“What’s the trick?” my friend asked.
“Merle and I arrive together at one end of the bridge. I take her off leash and tell her to sit and stay. Then I walk all the way to the other end and shout, “O.K., Merle!” and she takes off like a shot and runs to meet me. She doesn’t take off until I say she can.”
My friend said it sounded really cool, but perhaps not like a trick.
“I wish you could have seen her in her prime,” I said. My friend said that yes, although he had seen at least fifty Instagram posts of Merle running fast when she was younger, it was sad he would not see the not-really-a-bridge-trick.
Merle looked anxious. To anthropomorphize is a stupid practice, but, still, allow me to indulge in the feeling that her eyes, at that moment, were saying, “I am sad that I am going to die soon.” Her health had recently taken a sharp downward turn. Arthritis was the most noticeable sign.
For a few quiet moments, my friend watched Merle and her old-cowboy gait. “You need a bridge dog,” he finally said.
“Oh, Merle is still a bridge dog, I assure you.” I said. “She still loves to walk over the bridge, even if she can’t run.”
“That’s not what I mean by ‘bridge dog,’ ” he said, gingerly. “What I mean is a dog that you get—well, not necessarily soon, but also not not soon, I guess? A bridge dog is a dog that will be around when Merle—when she is—you know! No longer with us.”
It was Merle’s turn to watch my friend. She sniffed the air around him, then looked at me as if to say, “Who is this joker?”
“ ‘Bridge dog,’ ” I said. “I’ve never heard that term before.”
“I don’t think I made it up,” my friend said. “I wish I had, but I can’t really imagine that I did.”
I Googled “bridge dog.” I didn’t find anything about it as a saying, but I found quite a lot about some bridge in Scotland that dogs leap from to commit suicide. I didn’t click.
About ten years ago, the relationship I was in fell apart, partly because my boyfriend cheated on me, but mostly because he had never liked me in the first place. My career had dead-ended. I was forty-one and making minimum wage working as a teaching assistant at a middle school where the students often shouted at me, “Why should we listen to you? You drive a Yaris!”
How had my life amounted to so little, I often wondered, when I wasn’t freaking out about how it was too late and I was too old to fix it. All of my friends lived somewhere else. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night wondering what would become of me; sometimes, out of nowhere, my face would start burning with shame. I didn’t have the courage to go full-on Scotland-bridge dog, but I was toying with the idea, and if it hadn’t been for my parents, I might have done it.
The school where I worked was adjacent to a forest. Once a month, a stooped, white-haired, hard-of-hearing tree expert named Don took the kids into this forest and talked about it with passionate abstraction while they hissed homophobic slurs at one another. Don was a blowhard, and about one in ten of his crass jokes were funny. His best feature was his beautiful blue heeler, a compact, pleasantly aloof, short-haired dog. (They’re sometimes called Australian cattle dogs, or Queenslands, because they came into being when ranchers bred collies with dingoes for greater stamina.) Don’s dog was trim and agile, with a sweet, short-snouted face; she moved only at Don’s command, every step infused with a sense of joy and gratitude in being of service. “Get ’em, girl,” Don would say if the kids wandered away, and she would bound off, barking when she found them. If Don wanted the dog to come back, he only had to whistle; seconds later, she would be at his side.
One afternoon, when the kids weren’t around, I caught her in a moment like this, still as a statue but for her black nose, testing the wind. I said to Don, “I am going to have a dog just like her someday.”
Don regarded me with rare kind interest. “I sure do wonder,” he said, “what you’d look like with your clothes off.”
The dog looked at me apologetically. I went to join the kids.
Years passed. I left the school. I was getting paid to write again. I had a boyfriend who could actually stand me. One day, I got a text from him: “Hey, that dude Don died. My dad knew him. Didn’t you like that dog? It needs someone to adopt it.” Weirdly, my boyfriend’s housemate, P., was at this very moment on his way to adopt the dog, because his dad had also known Don. (Everyone’s Dad Knew You—R.I.P., Don.) When I told P. that I also wanted to adopt the dog, we decided that we’d share her. This dog was our Merle.
The “our” part is important to clarify. Merle did not belong to anyone. She belonged to herself. She loved to be in motion, to walk with me, to play disc golf with P., to stand at the edge of a river and bark at the water while the rest of us swam. She would go anywhere, with anyone. She just liked to hang out. If she’d been a man at a party, Merle would have been in the corner playing Hacky Sack, pretending not to hear questions about why he never had a girlfriend.
P. had an eight-to-five job, so Merle was with me every day, all day. After a few years of dating, I moved in with my boyfriend and P., and so it was the three of us, and Merle.
I could not believe how much happier I was now that I had Merle in my life. Merely by agreeing to feed her and dispose of her waste, I had opened a portal to a pure, white-light joy that cut through all miseries, personal and structural. We walked and walked, mostly at night, over the bridge, around the town, over the other bridge, in the cool dark. Mere errands became ecstatic experiences because she was with me. “We are together,” I liked to exclaim to her reflection in my rearview mirror. “We are alive, and we are together!” My life was no longer a disaster. It was instead the miracle that had landed this creature in my back seat. I don’t want to say that Merle made me happy, but she made me stop wishing I was dead.
Merle was nine or ten when we got her. For three or so years, she was the dog we had known from the beginning. Then she started to slow down. I used to love to watch her from the window when P. took her out in the mornings—how she would start out walking and then, as they rounded the corner to the park, break into a trot. But there started to be days when she didn’t speed up. There came a heart-in-the-throat moment of suspense every morning of whether or not she would quicken her pace.
Merle had barely trotted at all for weeks when I saw my bridge-dog friend again. He asked how Merle was.
“Good, mostly,” I lied. “What about your cat?” His cat was also getting old, though not as fast as Merle. “Are you going to get a bridge cat?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t you?” I demanded.
He waved me away, as if he hadn’t introduced me to the very concept. “My cat would know something was up.”
I stewed silently on the implication here, that Merle would be too dumb to register the significance of a bridge dog.
Merle started to drink lots of water. The vet said her kidneys were bad. She ate ravenously, but nothing stuck. She dropped five pounds, then five more, then ten more. She went blind in one eye. One day, she threw up everything, even water. In the car, on the way to the vet, she let me hold her for once. She peed all over me, and I whispered to her, “It’s an honor.”
I decided I would not get a bridge dog. It would be an insult to Merle and to our relationship.
She survived, but continued to decline. Then P. moved out to live with his girlfriend, and Merle had to go back and forth between their house and ours. When people asked how it was, only having Merle half the time, I said it was hard, that I missed her. I was lying. It wasn’t that I no longer loved her. But there was something restful and uplifting about the days when Merle was at P.’s house, when we didn’t have to watch her panting, or struggling to walk up and down stairs, or stand up. Once you have stopped stupidly hoping that it will never happen, watching a dog die isn’t stressful so much as it is simply depressing. Privately, I had started to scheme.
I entered “HEELER 200-mile radius” into Petfinder. Beautiful heelers from across the state—from Stockton to Sausalito, from Roseville to Richmond, from Winters to West Portal, from Fremont to Fresno, from Dublin to Downieville, five or ten e-mails a week—arrived in my in-box.
In one photo, a heeler named Ruthie was half sitting and half lying down, and looking off camera imploringly, as if she hoped someone would tell her which one to do. It was glaringly obvious that she needed me. I still thought that getting a bridge dog would be weak and callous. I told myself that I wasn’t getting a bridge dog at all, since, technically, Merle no longer lived with us—not full time, at least.
Ruthie was scared by the noise and activity of the pound, so she was staying with a shelter volunteer, who told us that they had found her living in the street. “Living in the street next to a bakery?” I asked. She was terrified, but so fat—glossy and golden. Her adoption form listed her as “purebred heeler,” which isn’t even a thing. She looked like a corgi-heeler mix, or as if a pig had mated with an egg bagel. The volunteer told me that Ruthie walked on a leash, which, in a sense, was true. Ruthie ran in a circle around me one way and then the other, wrapping me up, unwrapping me, then making a mad dash in one direction, then the other.
Everyone could agree that Ruthie was cute but clearly not O.K.
“What do you want to do?” my boyfriend asked. “I have to play D. & D. in two hours.”
“Let’s just get her,” I said. “If it doesn’t work out, we can bring her back.”
The next day, a guest who had found us through the Couchsurfing app left our gate open. He’d broken the single rule that I’d made for his stay: “Do whatever you want, just please, for the love of God, don’t leave the gate open.” I cursed myself as I ran after Ruthie across one busy street, then another. I managed to wrangle her, only for her to slip out of her collar and run away again. I finally tackled her on a neighbor’s lawn. She snarled and whipped around, her top teeth scraping my scalp, but I wouldn't let her go. “I’m your mom,” I said, panting into her fur. “I love you already, Ruthie. Whatever we go through, we’re going to go through it together. I will never let anyone hurt you.” I felt her stop struggling underneath me, as if she had heard me, but she was probably just tuckered out.


newyorker--2020-11-15--Sunday Reading: Transformational Presidents

In 2012 , Robert A. Caro published a piece in The New Yorker about the dramatic Presidential transition period after the Kennedy assassination , in November , 1963 .
Caro portrays Lyndon Johnson as a Vice-President who missed his powerful previous role as the Senate Majority Leader and felt overlooked , at best , by John and Robert Kennedy .
Yet , in the hours and days after J.F.K.
’ s assassination , Johnson came to embody the resolve of the nation to persevere despite an incalculable loss .
( “ As he stood in front of that blank wall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there was a stillness about him , an immobility , a composure that hadn ’ t been seen very much during the previous three years.
” ) It was during this period , Caro writes , that Johnson took on the mantle of the Presidency and began to demonstrate the leadership that would enable him to enact his most ambitious domestic program , known as the Great Society .
This week , as President-elect Joseph R. Biden navigates President Trump ’ s unfounded claims of voter fraud and his refusal to concede @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a selection of pieces about transformational Presidencies .
In “ A President Looks Back on His Toughest Fight , ” Barack Obama writes about the long struggle to achieve health-care reform .
( The piece is an excerpt from “ A Promised Land , ” Obama ’ s first post-White House memoir , which will be released on Tuesday . )
In “ Angels and Ages , ” Adam Gopnik explores how Abraham Lincoln used his exceptional rhetorical skills to inspire a divided nation .
In “ Pure Act , ” Nicholas Lemann @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s tough exterior and supple diplomacy , for which he received the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American .
In “ Confessions of a Presidential Candidate , ” Jill Lepore examines the importance of Presidential memoirs and delves into the candidates ’ origin stories .
Finally , in “ How the Deal Went Down , ” Louis Menand chronicles how Franklin D. Roosevelt harnessed the power of the government to implement the New Deal and help extricate the nation from the Great Depression .
As we enter a new political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these pieces as illuminating as we do .
Lyndon Johnson and the events in Dallas .
The story behind the Obama Administration ’ s most enduring—and most contested—legacy : reforming American health care .
Teddy Roosevelt talked tough , but as President he was a peacemaker .

In 2012, Robert A. Caro published a piece in The New Yorker about the dramatic Presidential transition period after the Kennedy assassination, in November, 1963. Caro portrays Lyndon Johnson as a Vice-President who missed his powerful previous role as the Senate Majority Leader and felt overlooked, at best, by John and Robert Kennedy. Yet, in the hours and days after J.F.K.’s assassination, Johnson came to embody the resolve of the nation to persevere despite an incalculable loss. (“As he stood in front of that blank wall, the carnation still in his buttonhole, there was a stillness about him, an immobility, a composure that hadn’t been seen very much during the previous three years.”) It was during this period, Caro writes, that Johnson took on the mantle of the Presidency and began to demonstrate the leadership that would enable him to enact his most ambitious domestic program, known as the Great Society.
This week, as President-elect Joseph R. Biden navigates President Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud and his refusal to concede defeat, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about transformational Presidencies. In “A President Looks Back on His Toughest Fight,” Barack Obama writes about the long struggle to achieve health-care reform. (The piece is an excerpt from “A Promised Land,” Obama’s first post-White House memoir, which will be released on Tuesday.) In “Angels and Ages,” Adam Gopnik explores how Abraham Lincoln used his exceptional rhetorical skills to inspire a divided nation. In “Pure Act,” Nicholas Lemann writes about the contradiction between Theodore Roosevelt’s tough exterior and supple diplomacy, for which he received the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American. In “Confessions of a Presidential Candidate,” Jill Lepore examines the importance of Presidential memoirs and delves into the candidates’ origin stories. Finally, in “How the Deal Went Down,” Louis Menand chronicles how Franklin D. Roosevelt harnessed the power of the government to implement the New Deal and help extricate the nation from the Great Depression. As we enter a new political era, we hope that you find these pieces as illuminating as we do.
— David Remnick
Lyndon Johnson and the events in Dallas.
Photograph by Pete Souza
The story behind the Obama Administration’s most enduring—and most contested—legacy: reforming American health care.
Illustration by David Hughes
Lincoln’s language and its legacy.
Illustration by Edward Sorel
Teddy Roosevelt talked tough, but as President he was a peacemaker.
How the political memoir evolved.
Saving democracy in the Depression.


newyorker--2020-11-15--The Cryptic Crossword: No. 72

The Cryptic Crossword: No. 72

Some clues have been edited for clarity .
Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle ’ s answers in @ @ @

Some clues have been edited for clarity. Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle’s answers in our archive.


newyorker--2020-11-15--Royal Competition in “The Crown”

Royal Competition in “The Crown”

In an episode based on an incident that took place in 1982—the season covers the years 1979 to 1990—a young man named Michael Fagan ( exceptionally well played by Tom Brooke ) breaks into Buckingham Palace and holds the Queen ( Olivia Colman ) hostage in her bedchamber for about ten minutes .
Unhinged , lonely , poor , and desperate for an audience , Fagan wants someone to hear his side of things : Margaret Thatcher ( Gillian Anderson ) has made life worse for men like him—out-of-work blokes who can ’ t get a leg up , can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let alone mental-health care .
Added to all that frustration , there is his disappointment with the palace itself .
How could a world we associate with power and glamour be so worn and chipped , so frowsy ?
“ The Crown ” is replete with letdowns .
Long-held beliefs and hopes crash and burn , then crash and burn again , as reality intrudes .
The ten-episode season opens with well-edited shots of the Queen in full military regalia , sitting straight-backed on a horse , saluting her troops .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of her immediate family are present .
The scene is crosscut with period documentary footage of crowds in Northern Ireland protesting British rule—which makes clear Morgan ’ s interest in what happens when you juxtapose an interpretation of fact with the facts themselves , when you plop your imagination down into the middle of the real .
It ’ s rare that this sort of juxtaposing is as good as it is in “ The Crown ” —I ’ m thinking of recent disappointments such as Hulu ’ s “ The Great , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Netflix ’ s “ Self-Made , ” about the Black American businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker .
While “ The Great ” and “ Self-Made ” play with history , or make a play of history , their conceits are postmodern and glib ( especially when it comes to character ) , allergic to both sentiment and depth .
Morgan ’ s characters , by contrast , live with history , and it ’ s a shock sometimes , while watching “ The Crown , ” to realize the extent to which we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as vulnerable to its whims as we are to those of family .
Still , the Troubles seem far away , in another place altogether , when we find the aging Lord Louis Mountbatten ( Charles Dance ) in his summer residence , Classiebawn Castle , in northwest Ireland .
It ’ s 1979 .
A cousin of the Queen ’ s , Mountbatten ( nicknamed Dickie ) was also something of a surrogate father to Prince Philip ( Tobias Menzies ) , who was essentially orphaned as a child , and whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 .
Now Mountbatten—a military strategist who was much admired by Winston Churchill , and who served as India ’ s pre-independence viceroy—is turning his attention to Prince Charles ( Josh O ’ Connor ) .
Dickie is pissed off .
Charles , instead of finding a wife who will supply him with an heir , has fallen in love with a married woman , Camilla Parker Bowles ( the wonderfully suggestive Emerald Fennell ) .
Charles and Camilla first met around 1971 , and sometime after that began their on-again , off-again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the go-go eighties , made up Charles ’ s entire erotic and emotional universe .
The royal heart wants what it wants , but none of this sits well with Mountbatten , and he writes Charles a note to say so : Doesn ’ t the Prince realize the grave moral responsibility of being the future King ?
He must grow up and assume the duty he was born into—upholding and preserving the monarchy .
These directives , of course , don ’ t acknowledge how society has progressed or how a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
He ’ s caught between Empire Dying and Empire Dead .
No sooner does Mountbatten fire off the note than he , in the way of serials , gets blown up by the I.R.A.
, while out in his boat trapping lobsters .
Of the younger actors , O ’ Connor is especially adept at conveying physical discomfort and rage .
With his shoulders hunched and his hands buried in his jacket pockets , O ’ Connor ’ s Prince Charles seems to have been made smug by martyrdom ; it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shrill and anguished after he meets Lady Diana Spencer ( Emma Corrin ) and , eventually , marries her .
Charles does so out of duty , rather than love ; like a closeted gay man who marries a woman for social acceptability and advancement , Charles turns Diana into his beard .
Diana , however , who fantasizes about a perfect romantic union with a fairy-tale prince , wants more , dreams of more , as she roller-skates around desolate Kensington Palace , boogying to Duran Duran .
( This is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you might see on “ The Windsors , ” a hilarious parody of life as a royal , also on Netflix . )
Inevitably , the more Charles withholds love and attention , the more desperate Diana becomes for his approval , for control over her marriage .
Her loneliness is a wound that Charles finds distasteful and longs to separate himself from , but he can ’ t : he must live in service to the crown .
Their scenes together in enclosed spaces—in a car , on a plane—work particularly well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limited and they must depend on their faces and their voices to convey the odd moments of joy or dismay .
( It ’ s important to remember that both Charles and Diana had an interest in amateur theatrics ; as a young man , the Prince wanted to be an actor , while Diana loved to dance . )
I don ’ t envy any actress trying to impersonate Diana , who , in some ways , remains the most relatable , and thus the most popular , English royal .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , especially when it comes to Diana ’ s bulimia and her struggle to be seen , she can ’ t quite find a center to the role .
She seems disembodied somehow .
She doesn ’ t so much convey Diana ’ s fears as express her fear of playing Diana .
Corrin ’ s Princess stands over there , while the actress stands over here , and we have to bridge the distance with our own feelings and memories .
Tom Burke , who plays Dazzle Jennings , a friend of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have the weight of all that history to contend with , but his acting is so far superior to that of some of the other players that he raises the bar on truthfulness in performance .
By the time he appears—it ’ s the mid-eighties—Margaret ( Helena Bonham Carter ) has been made puffy by booze , indolence , and willfulness .
She ’ s an inconsolable royal who , like Charles and Diana , loves to perform .
Gumming up her potty mouth with red lipstick , Margaret waits for Dazzle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s in medium long shot , and from Margaret ’ s point of view ; without saying a word , he fills the frame with vibrancy and perversion , snaking his way toward Margaret as David Bowie ’ s “ Let ’ s Dance ” plays in her sitting room .
Dazzle and Margaret , as they prance around , look like babies in evening dress ; champagne is their milk .
They ’ re a couple who don ’ t want the party to end .
What would they do if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Princess leans over to kiss Dazzle , who raises his hand to block her from doing so .
The camera pauses on Burke ’ s face , and you can see what his character feels in that moment : a mixture of sadness , pity , and curiosity .
It ’ s this quality—this ability to physically manifest imagination—that makes Burke , to my mind , one of the finest actors of his generation .
( He exercised a similar precision and perverse understanding of discomfort in Joanna Hogg ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Watching Burke—who ups Bonham Carter ’ s game , too—can break your heart , because this is not acting ; it is being .
Colman ’ s characterization of the Queen is also less a performance than a refraction of reality .
Each character in “ The Crown ” has a history , and Colman drapes herself in the Queen ’ s , as if in an ermine cape , and revels in it .
There is a shattering scene in the fourth episode when the Queen is talking to Prince Philip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she wanted to be .
She says that when her children were young she vowed that she would not have the nanny bathe them .
And yet , when the time came and she tried to do it , she couldn ’ t .
She can love only at a distance because she has been loved only at a distance .
It ’ s in moments like this one that Morgan ’ s writing rises to the level of Colman ’ s performance , and his words support her vision of the Queen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world she didn ’ t make but has sworn to uphold , even if that means remaining silent , at least for a time , on the horror of colonialism , the horror of apartheid in South Africa , the horror of Britain ’ s oppression of Ireland , the horror of the recession under Thatcher ’ s conservative watch .
It takes a great actress to make us feel that these horrors—very real ones that have scarred and disfigured many over the years—are part of Queen Elizabeth ’ s largely unspoken backstory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as subtly as she steers Morgan ’ s script away from the girl-fight clichés of Elizabeth butting heads with Thatcher or Diana .
She deals with these scenes with reason and , sometimes , controlled passion , but never melodrama , because that is not the person she is playing .
Colman wants us to know that her interpretation of the Queen is hers , and also not hers : she is there to embody a living myth , and it is her job to show how that body responds when distressed or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way the next generation wrestles with the problems of being in love and in trouble .
Honest and unhampered by affectation , Colman , the most humble of stars , shows us how little Elizabeth knows and how much she needs to know in her changing world .
At one of the family gatherings , Thatcher , the daughter of a greengrocer , is clearly uncomfortable as the royals try to convince her to join in the drinking game Ibble Dibble , which involves blackening one ’ s face with a burned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marion Bailey , who plays the Queen Mother , as they attempt to jolly Thatcher along , their faces striped with soot , I was stunned by what the royals didn ’ t see in their game , blinded myself by the truth of their blindness .
♦

You don’t have to be a royal watcher—I’m not—to find the fourth season of “The Crown” (on Netflix) compelling. It’s not that it isn’t fun to watch royal infidelity, sibling rivalry, emotional breakdowns, political friction, misbegotten romances, and dog mania play out against backgrounds that include Buckingham Palace and various grand country estates. But the point here is that, just as you begin to luxuriate in the lurid gossip behind the façade of tradition, wealth, and fading glory, Peter Morgan, the show’s creator and writer, pulls back the brocade curtain and introduces a reality that feels more like yours than not. These wrinkles of truth—a mouse trotting unnoticed across the Queen Mother’s floor while she waits for a call, guards fucking around and ignoring the security cameras during shift changes, a princess vomiting into a toilet again and again—are blemishes on a vast and decaying body; Morgan wants to show not only how the Empire has crumbled but its descent into a kind of domestic crumminess.
In an episode based on an incident that took place in 1982—the season covers the years 1979 to 1990—a young man named Michael Fagan (exceptionally well played by Tom Brooke) breaks into Buckingham Palace and holds the Queen (Olivia Colman) hostage in her bedchamber for about ten minutes. Unhinged, lonely, poor, and desperate for an audience, Fagan wants someone to hear his side of things: Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) has made life worse for men like him—out-of-work blokes who can’t get a leg up, can’t get a decent wage, let alone mental-health care. Added to all that frustration, there is his disappointment with the palace itself. How could a world we associate with power and glamour be so worn and chipped, so frowsy? “The Crown” is replete with letdowns. Long-held beliefs and hopes crash and burn, then crash and burn again, as reality intrudes.
The ten-episode season opens with well-edited shots of the Queen in full military regalia, sitting straight-backed on a horse, saluting her troops. It’s an official occasion, and members of her immediate family are present. The scene is crosscut with period documentary footage of crowds in Northern Ireland protesting British rule—which makes clear Morgan’s interest in what happens when you juxtapose an interpretation of fact with the facts themselves, when you plop your imagination down into the middle of the real. It’s rare that this sort of juxtaposing is as good as it is in “The Crown”—I’m thinking of recent disappointments such as Hulu’s “The Great,” about Catherine the Great, and Netflix’s “Self-Made,” about the Black American businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker. While “The Great” and “Self-Made” play with history, or make a play of history, their conceits are postmodern and glib (especially when it comes to character), allergic to both sentiment and depth. Morgan’s characters, by contrast, live with history, and it’s a shock sometimes, while watching “The Crown,” to realize the extent to which we are all history’s subjects, as vulnerable to its whims as we are to those of family.
Still, the Troubles seem far away, in another place altogether, when we find the aging Lord Louis Mountbatten (Charles Dance) in his summer residence, Classiebawn Castle, in northwest Ireland. It’s 1979. A cousin of the Queen’s, Mountbatten (nicknamed Dickie) was also something of a surrogate father to Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies), who was essentially orphaned as a child, and whose background Morgan featured in Seasons 2 and 3. Now Mountbatten—a military strategist who was much admired by Winston Churchill, and who served as India’s pre-independence viceroy—is turning his attention to Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor). Dickie is pissed off. Charles, instead of finding a wife who will supply him with an heir, has fallen in love with a married woman, Camilla Parker Bowles (the wonderfully suggestive Emerald Fennell). Charles and Camilla first met around 1971, and sometime after that began their on-again, off-again relationship, which, by the dawn of the go-go eighties, made up Charles’s entire erotic and emotional universe. The royal heart wants what it wants, but none of this sits well with Mountbatten, and he writes Charles a note to say so: Doesn’t the Prince realize the grave moral responsibility of being the future King? He must grow up and assume the duty he was born into—upholding and preserving the monarchy. These directives, of course, don’t acknowledge how society has progressed or how a young man like Charles has progressed with it. He’s caught between Empire Dying and Empire Dead. No sooner does Mountbatten fire off the note than he, in the way of serials, gets blown up by the I.R.A., while out in his boat trapping lobsters.
A lot of “The Crown” is shot in closeup, or medium closeup, and it’s a canny choice, given that everything takes place in a closed-off world of closed-off emotions. You feel the grief when the Queen and her family receive the news of Mountbatten’s death, but it’s because of what they don’t or can’t articulate during a brutal time. You have to read their thoughts—the flickering hurt, the mirth, the dull incomprehension, the anger—because rarely does their spoken language approximate what you can see them experiencing. Morgan takes the Windsors’ collective repression and makes it a style.
Of the younger actors, O’Connor is especially adept at conveying physical discomfort and rage. With his shoulders hunched and his hands buried in his jacket pockets, O’Connor’s Prince Charles seems to have been made smug by martyrdom; it’s a martyrdom that grows more shrill and anguished after he meets Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) and, eventually, marries her. Charles does so out of duty, rather than love; like a closeted gay man who marries a woman for social acceptability and advancement, Charles turns Diana into his beard. Diana, however, who fantasizes about a perfect romantic union with a fairy-tale prince, wants more, dreams of more, as she roller-skates around desolate Kensington Palace, boogying to Duran Duran. (This is a great touch, the kind of thing you might see on “The Windsors,” a hilarious parody of life as a royal, also on Netflix.) Inevitably, the more Charles withholds love and attention, the more desperate Diana becomes for his approval, for control over her marriage. Her loneliness is a wound that Charles finds distasteful and longs to separate himself from, but he can’t: he must live in service to the crown. Their scenes together in enclosed spaces—in a car, on a plane—work particularly well, because the actors’ movement is limited and they must depend on their faces and their voices to convey the odd moments of joy or dismay. (It’s important to remember that both Charles and Diana had an interest in amateur theatrics; as a young man, the Prince wanted to be an actor, while Diana loved to dance.)
I don’t envy any actress trying to impersonate Diana, who, in some ways, remains the most relatable, and thus the most popular, English royal. Even with the enormous sympathy that Corrin evinces, especially when it comes to Diana’s bulimia and her struggle to be seen, she can’t quite find a center to the role. She seems disembodied somehow. She doesn’t so much convey Diana’s fears as express her fear of playing Diana. Corrin’s Princess stands over there, while the actress stands over here, and we have to bridge the distance with our own feelings and memories.
Tom Burke, who plays Dazzle Jennings, a friend of Princess Margaret’s, doesn’t have the weight of all that history to contend with, but his acting is so far superior to that of some of the other players that he raises the bar on truthfulness in performance. By the time he appears—it’s the mid-eighties—Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) has been made puffy by booze, indolence, and willfulness. She’s an inconsolable royal who, like Charles and Diana, loves to perform. Gumming up her potty mouth with red lipstick, Margaret waits for Dazzle. When we see him, it’s in medium long shot, and from Margaret’s point of view; without saying a word, he fills the frame with vibrancy and perversion, snaking his way toward Margaret as David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” plays in her sitting room. Dazzle and Margaret, as they prance around, look like babies in evening dress; champagne is their milk. They’re a couple who don’t want the party to end. What would they do if it did? When the music stops, the Princess leans over to kiss Dazzle, who raises his hand to block her from doing so. The camera pauses on Burke’s face, and you can see what his character feels in that moment: a mixture of sadness, pity, and curiosity. It’s this quality—this ability to physically manifest imagination—that makes Burke, to my mind, one of the finest actors of his generation. (He exercised a similar precision and perverse understanding of discomfort in Joanna Hogg’s 2019 film, “The Souvenir.”) Watching Burke—who ups Bonham Carter’s game, too—can break your heart, because this is not acting; it is being.
Colman’s characterization of the Queen is also less a performance than a refraction of reality. Each character in “The Crown” has a history, and Colman drapes herself in the Queen’s, as if in an ermine cape, and revels in it. There is a shattering scene in the fourth episode when the Queen is talking to Prince Philip about her failure to become the mother she wanted to be. She says that when her children were young she vowed that she would not have the nanny bathe them. And yet, when the time came and she tried to do it, she couldn’t. She can love only at a distance because she has been loved only at a distance. It’s in moments like this one that Morgan’s writing rises to the level of Colman’s performance, and his words support her vision of the Queen as a woman who lives in a world she didn’t make but has sworn to uphold, even if that means remaining silent, at least for a time, on the horror of colonialism, the horror of apartheid in South Africa, the horror of Britain’s oppression of Ireland, the horror of the recession under Thatcher’s conservative watch. It takes a great actress to make us feel that these horrors—very real ones that have scarred and disfigured many over the years—are part of Queen Elizabeth’s largely unspoken backstory. Colman brings them to the surface as subtly as she steers Morgan’s script away from the girl-fight clichés of Elizabeth butting heads with Thatcher or Diana. She deals with these scenes with reason and, sometimes, controlled passion, but never melodrama, because that is not the person she is playing. Colman wants us to know that her interpretation of the Queen is hers, and also not hers: she is there to embody a living myth, and it is her job to show how that body responds when distressed or trying to express affection or disconcerted by the way the next generation wrestles with the problems of being in love and in trouble.
Honest and unhampered by affectation, Colman, the most humble of stars, shows us how little Elizabeth knows and how much she needs to know in her changing world. At one of the family gatherings, Thatcher, the daughter of a greengrocer, is clearly uncomfortable as the royals try to convince her to join in the drinking game Ibble Dibble, which involves blackening one’s face with a burned cork. Watching Colman and the brilliant Marion Bailey, who plays the Queen Mother, as they attempt to jolly Thatcher along, their faces striped with soot, I was stunned by what the royals didn’t see in their game, blinded myself by the truth of their blindness. ♦