15 September 2016
In Sickness and Aleppo
Stressful campaigning.
by J.R.Thomas
The late Professor Hugh Berrington, a distinguished figure in political science and especially in the psychology of political leadership, had a favourite opening theme for his public lectures. It was to the effect that his audience should be very alarmed; their political leaders were undoubtedly mad. “You have to be mad to give up your entire life for a job that is likely to end in failure or disgrace or both.”
None of the current contenders for the office of President of the United States is certifiably mad, though they sometimes behave as though they could become so. They certainly all have had a maddening couple of weeks. Jill Stein, for the Green Party, has been charged, along with her running mate Ajuma Baraka, with criminal damage and trespass on a construction site in North Dakota. She said she would return to deal with the charges if she could find space in her schedule. Gary Johnson spent last week with a world atlas studying the Middle East and apologising for misunderstanding a question about Aleppo. Mrs Clinton fainted at a rally in New York on Sunday and had to be half carried to a security van. And Mr Trump, having made a friend of the President of Mexico, and then converted him to an enemy, has been ignoring questions about newly released photographs showing the Trumps and the Clintons socialising closely at various events.
Ms Stein and Mr Johnson, having rather floundered initially with their difficulties, then remembered an old adage. All publicity is good publicity, and so it does seem – both got front page coverage for their little problems, and Ms Stein made some good points about the rights of minorities – the construction site is linked to a highly controversial pipeline that crosses Native American sacred lands. Mr Johnson said that he was thinking about other things and that he presumed that “Aleppo” was an acronym for something. Now he knows what it is and has familiarised himself with Syrian issues in so far as they concern the USA. Oh, and funding contributions have gone up since his gaffe.
Mr Trump has to deal with perhaps yet another example of the issue which potentially could derail his whole campaign. How does he stand as the anti-establishment anti-Clinton pro-American outsider candidate when he is a rich real estate developer and a former close friend of both Hillary and Bill? It is a weakness that did not really come up in the primaries and is not going to be raised by Mrs C, although the media is starting to pick at it. But Donald is closer than ever to catching Hillary in the polls – now just a couple of points between them, though Hillary is ahead in most of the swing states, where of course she is concentrating most of her campaign resources (and she has a much better campaign machine than Mr Trump). But Donald’s new team does seem to be having a (positive) effect on the candidate; he is starting to look much more “presidential” and calm; he maintained silence after Hillary’s public illness on Sunday, surely the absolutely best tactic. There is no need to point out the implications of that hole, the lady is still digging.
We will come back to that shortly, but will divert to the issue flagged by Professor Berrington. Not sanity (he was been funny) but sacrifice. Ambitious politicians do give up what the rest of us would regard as normal life to seek and to hold high office. It is, when you think about it, an odd way to live life. All must be given up in pursuit of what can so soon end in disaster (ask David Cameron or Gordon Brown) or even in hatred and vituperation (Mr Blair and Mr Bush, step forward). At least all those are young enough to spend time with families, make a new career, learn how to fish or embroider. But consider the current candidates for November 2016. Mr Trump will be 70 if he takes office, Mrs Clinton will be 69, Mr Johnson will be 64 on the 1st January 2017, and Ms Stein is 66. These are all people who in the normal way of Western twenty first century life would probably be retired from their main profession, spending time with children and grandchildren, golf clubs or lawn mowers, relaxing and reflecting, writing their memoirs maybe.
These candidates have been on the campaign trail since late last year and it has hardly let up for any of them since then. And even if you love politics, even if it is your life, even if you have a mission to make a better world, running for the highest office in the land is very hard work. Much harder, one suspects, than actually doing the job. Each day is meeting new people, relentless exposure to analysis and comment, outwitting tricky and aggressive journalists, watching for pitfalls and gopher traps, trying to spot and evade those tricky issues which may be blowing up in the distance. Each day is spent in some new place, on and off airplanes, in and out of limos, on and off platforms. Trying to make the same speech sound fresh and exciting so many times, to manage emotions, sometimes pumping them up, more often cooling them down. And hardly ever having a day at home, never reading a novel or watching TV, or having a walk at dusk, or pottering in the garden. How can anybody do that for a year and remain healthy and sane?
Politicians love politics, of course they do, much more than most of us love golf or fishing or gardening or travel or tinkering with machinery. But that does not make it easy for them, especially in what is the ultimate campaign, where the big prize is so tantalising close. And these are all senior citizens (sorry Gary, almost).
Do you wonder Mr Trump gets cross, or Mr Johnson can’t place what Aleppo is, or that Mrs Clinton is so exhausted that she has pneumonia? Painting graffiti on construction sites, well, maybe that is tiredness too.
A modern election campaign is about stamina, as much as anything else. And maybe it should be, if you aim to run the free world. Seventy years ago presidential candidates travelled on trains into which they could retreat, they had Sundays off, media appearances were relatively seldom and carefully managed. Indeed all appearances were carefully managed; not much chance of being surprised by that left field question and having your pulse taken live on TV. Most Americans did not even know that Franklin D. Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair. Imagine that now.
So, maybe not much should be made of Hillary’s semi-collapse on Sunday. She has been ill before, she must be exhausted, it was a stiflingly hot day in New York. But Hillary once again mishandled it. First she denied anything was wrong when she appeared a few hours later looking a bit too bright-eyed and flushed, batting aside questions as to her health. Now, it is not unreasonable to expect questions about your health if you have just gone onto your knees in public. The normal way would be to say “I didn’t sleep much last night and my goodness that humidity!”, not to ignore the issue. Then within hours release your doctor’s advice, a couple of days before, that you have pneumonia. Why not release that at the time, have a few days in bed, and come storming back on the trail, making jokes and high fiving the crowd as the lady does so well?
Mrs Clinton’s greatest public issue is trust; lack of. Should not her crew tell her that the way to overcome this is by telling the truth (whole and nothing but)? And if the truth is that your health actually is not very good, and maybe you are really not up to the stresses and strains of the Presidency, maybe you just should be satisfied with having spent eight years a heartbeat away from the job?
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