I know I may be lonely in this opinion, but I’d like to raise my glass to Anthony Weiner. And Eliot Spitzer, for what it’s worth. But not to Mark Sanford. No, Mr. Sanford can go celebrate elsewhere.
I’d like to raise my glass in honor of these (not-so) fine men, who so willingly made us laugh time and time again this summer. These men, who showed us that given even when the spotlight one more time, they could still fail so profoundly. A special thanks should go to Weiner as well, for showing us how close we can all get to real, tangible political power despite our proclivity for provocative picture taking.
As a young kid, I sincerely wanted to believe in politics. And even as a starry-eyed young high-schooler, I still tried to take the good with the bad, to see the virtue in even the greatest failure. I desperately wanted to not cringe at seemingly every other story coming out of the Capitol. And then John Boehner flipped off Harry Reid, and I realized how absurdly comical it all was.
In fact, to everyone currently arguing over Syria or gay rights, pause and take a breather. Because only a few days ago, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, penned a New York Times editorial reminding Americans how “we must not forget that God created us equal.” I can only imagine he meant this actually applied to just American soil, and not his startlingly homophobic and autocratic façade of democracy in Russia.
This is not to say that we should disregard Putin, Weiner or any other ironically and depressingly hilarious political injustice—we shouldn’t. And most of us actually don’t, which I applaud and admire. But we’re still faced with a question: What can we do?
After much meditation, I’ve come to the grim conclusion we’ve all been avoiding for so long—sometimes, you need to just sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
For many of us here at Bowdoin, this feels antithetical to our very existence. We’ve been brought up as political crusaders, handpicked by God above in our journey for political righteousness.
And we’ve come right here to Brunswick, Maine, to hone our skills as master debaters with the brightest young minds from every corner of the American political spectrum.
Just kidding.
But seriously, how can we not feel the urge to try and fix such a clearly broken system? From the kids who still proudly sport Reagan-Bush ’84 shirts to the folks who decry Obama as way too conservative, we can agree that something must be done.
I’m here to say otherwise. I’m here—in my infinite freshman wisdom—to tell you that I’ve read a whole lot of opinion pieces in the past couple years calling for Congress to cut the immaturity. And I’ve seen a whole lot of powerful people go on TV and tell me that real change would come, only to see everything break down in a matter of minutes.
So I’m advocating a deep breath. Because until our nation becomes legitimately threatened by some overzealous demagogue advocating a departure from our outrageously restrictive Constitution, it doesn’t have to all be so grim. In fact, a lot of it can be pretty entertaining when you take a step back.
It’s a little bit like life that way. It’s easy to come back to my room, find my roommate’s dirty laundry and old food piled up beneath my desk and get frustrated. It’s easy to complain when I catch another roommate trying to pee out of the window at 3:30 a.m. on a Friday night.
But it’s also kind of funny.
Take the issue of the moment, Syria. Now, trying to balance the specter of war against the strong possibility of unconscionable crimes against humanity should not be taken lightly. The use of chemical weapons in Syria qualifies as an incredibly complex and delicate situation, worthy of serious contemplation by those in power. But unfortunately, liking a Facebook picture comparing President Obama with historically evil dictators adds little to the debate.
At the same time, President Obama recently joined forces with Eric Cantor, John Boehner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham to try to convince Elizabeth Warren, Marco Rubio and Rush Holt to authorize a military strike. It’s straight out of a sitcom from the 1980’s: previous mortal enemies join together to galvanize a country to do the ethical thing, and John McCain joins along because he just wants to attack everyone.
At the end of the day, I hope we can all have some levity when it comes to the hilarious disappointments in our Capitol.