Actors are so
fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in
comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But
in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform
parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play
Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is
a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Oscar Wilde
Election 2016. We are off to the races.
Which person who has yet to serve a single day in office as dogcatcher is
contemplating a Presidential bid? Which
Democrat will maim her opponent during a friendly game of jai alai? Which
Republican loves Jesus and guns and hates sex and immigrants more? Who lost weight? Who had a facelift?
Who landed a billionaire sugar daddy? Who is cloaking his book tour
as a presidential campaign?
Debate season soon will be upon us. Time to
dust off the brain cells and recall that freshman year seminar about Prisoner’s
Dilemma. Two prisoners have committed a crime and they are in custody,
sitting in separate rooms. If they say nothing, they will serve no more
than 1 month in prison. If one rats and the other stays mum, the rat goes
free and the quiet man serves 1 year. If both rat, each serves 3 months.
The mutually advantageous strategy is to say nothing, but that requires
the prisoners to trust each other. What will they do? Zany antics
ensue. The rules of Prisoner’s Dilemma differ from the rules of Presidential
Debates on a crucial point: the prisoners and the jailers know the rules.
In our case, the candidates make their own rules, but they do not share
those rules with us. I leave it to you
to decide who is the jailer and who is the prisoner.
When I watch presidential debates, I begin with
good intentions. I settle down with a whiskey and prepare to do my bit as
a good citizen and inform myself of the quality and caliber of the candidates.
No more than ten minutes into the fracas, I am pacing around the room,
shouting at Himself that I would not invite these people into our house, so why
for the love of Pete, are we asked to choose one of these quasi-religious,
sex-obsessed sociopaths to run the country? The candidate who is the
lesser rhetorician complains that other is breaking the rules. In the
post-game, the media pundits wail that the moderator failed to enforce the
rules. I shout some more. What are these rules? I ask.
What are they talking about? Have you ever received the official
rule book for debates? They’re not shy about banging me for a campaign donation,
you would think they would slip a rules pamphlet in one of their mailings, so
the folks at home can play along. Do the rules require that they
speak to us like five year olds, or is it just a mad coincidence? Himself
shrugs. I mutter something about certain doom and wander off to sulk.
This happens every four years.
The format and rules for presidential debates are
negotiated by the candidates’s advisors with the Commission on Presidential
Debates. In 2012, I looked for the debate rules on the website for
Commission on Presidential Debates. It is a nonpartisan nonprofit
501(c)(3) corporation. It disclosed its corporate sponsors, but they made
it difficult to find the rules of the debates. I found the rules only by
asking a friend who is a media expert and follows this stuff as his job.
You don’t need to consult the Official Rules to
know that the debates are structured to permit the candidates speak in
platitudes and banalities and to prevent us from evaluating them honestly.
They labor under no dilemma because they trust each other to say nothing. This compact is never broken. There is no
point asking the candidates questions about the economy, foreign countries, or
global warming. We know how they will answer. Economy: good.
Foreign countries: foreign. Global warming: gosh, is that the time?
And, opinions change, whether for the good or the ill, but the
candidates fear looking weak for allowing facts and logic and retrospection to
affect them.
During a prolonged sulk, I recalled past campaigns.
The memorable events of a presidential campaign are the moments when the
candidate is off balance, when the mask slips -- the moment of candor.
“Stop lying about my record.” Bob Dole, 1988.
“Binders full of women.” Mitt Romney, 2012.
“And when they ask me who is the president of
Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you
know?” Herman Cain, 2012.
“BLLLEEEAAAAHHH! Howard Dean, 2004.
If we are to learn what these people are made of,
we must throw their constructed personae off balance and make them revert to
their unscripted selves.
Here are my suggestions for Presidential Debates
2016 and to the end of recorded time.
1. Scrap the Debate Stage
You can see it now. The matching blond wood
podia, or the dark wood desk, the red carpet, the medium blue background, the
dark blue suit with the red tie, the dark blue suit with the blue tie, yawn.
2. Scrap the Commission on Presidential
Elections
We will form a new body: the Commission to
Coordinate Moments of Candor in Candidates (“COCMOCC”). Like ancient
Athens, COCMOCC will be a democratic assembly and its membership will be drawn
by lottery from all registered voters. The COCMOCCers shall serve a term
of one year, the year in which the election is held, and they will receive the
same salary and benefits as the members of the United States Congress.
They will also receive a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax.™
3. Create games designed to trigger
moments of candor
We have all been children, yes? And as
children, we all devised games. The COCMOCCers will devise social
experiments -- I mean games -- that will require the players to move naturally,
speak extemporaneously and react spontaneously. They will be encouraged to be creative, within the confines of the Geneva Conventions.
When a game gets played and the players ignore the
rules, what results is usually more fun than the game would have been had the
players obeyed the rules. Games devolve into chaos, name-calling and
physical violence. Sometimes, this is mildly insightful; oftentimes, it
is entertaining.
Here are some ideas.
Darts (Cricket)
Cricket is the preferred darts game for this
experiment, as it can be played by 2, 3, 4 or more players. This would permit
third party candidates from the fun, wacky parties to join the experiment to
enrich the viewer’s experience.
I don’t know about you, but in my house, darts is
serious business. By serious, we get seriously drunk and then decide that
is the optimal time to play darts, a game requiring an attention span and
hand-eye coordination. Our reasoning is absolutely sound: When the senses
are dulled and inhibitions loosened, that is the time to repair to the basement
and throw sharp, pointy things at my freshly painted wall.
If you met my friends, you would think them to be a
civilized lot. You would not think twice
about lending them your car. It would not occur to you to hide the
prescriptions drugs from them. They are Nice People, the sort who yield
to drivers making a left turn, give to Heifer International, rescue animals,
and floss daily. Three gins in, put them
in front of a dart board, and they revert to the state of nature. Evenings
start off Noel Coward and end Sun Tzu. The congenial talk of the dinner
table is abandoned to speculations about the gamer’s patrilineal ancestry and
prognostications about his reproductive prowess.
We attempt to keep score on the cricket chalk
board, and someone pockets the chalk. The piece of tape on the floor to
mark the International Darts Federation Standard Distance from the Dartboard is
an invitation for a toe to creep over the line. Accusations follow. Cricket devolves to pushing, shoving, drinking
bouts, trash-talking and thumb wars. Players
are struck with a sudden urge to waltz. When the two fiercest competitors
are facing off in the rubber game, someone finds Apocalypse Now or Blade
Runner on television, and we sink into a meditative stupor.
The morning after is a solemn time. Texts are
exchanged which are part thanks for a great evening, part cry for help, and
part furtive inquiry as to last known whereabouts of one’s socks.
Great
drink. Send recipe.
WTF?
Two shots per?
I had
#?
How #
shots is that?
(A gin hangover will suspend your ability to do
basic arithmetic. Not to worry. Your math skills will return when you
regain your sense of taste and smell.)
YOU
BASTARDS!
Frozen
waffles? Good idea? Bad idea?
Socks,
basement?
I have learned all sorts of things about people I
thought I knew well from watching and on occasion, yes, hearkening back to my
homo erectus roots and joining the scrum.
Under the rules devised by COCMOCC, the candidates
will enjoy a social drink or six and repair to the darts room for best of 27
cricket. They can even play in teams with their vice presidential running
mates.
What purpose would this serve? It will be
interesting to see if the candidate can remember his running mate’s name when
he is in his cups. My guess is: No. Moreover, if we are
going to entrust the launch codes for nuclear weapons to you, you should
demonstrate an above average ability to hit your desired target. If you
buckshot every dart you throw, you have no business ordering drone strikes.
Home renovation, painting compulsory
For the second challenge, the candidates should
plan and execute a home renovation project. There should be at least
three or four different jobs to do: Remove thirty year old wallpaper, prime and
paint walls, do a bit of unpermitted demolition, carry large things up and down
narrow flights of stairs and cram them through doorways, etc. There should be fewer tools than people, it
should be 90 degrees with no air conditioning, and there should be a
misunderstanding as to who was responsible for bringing the beer. This
game is partly inspired by the Stanford Prison Experiment.
This is the stuff of serious negotiation, patience,
strategy, resolution and design sense. This game tests the candidate’s
ability to conceive of and to complete a project on time and within budget in a
satisfactory manner. I do not think our crop of hopefuls will do well
with this test. Also, we should know something about their aesthetic
tastes before we let them loose in the White House. The People have the
right to know if Dwell is your design bible, or if you plan to turn the
Lincoln Bedroom into the Jungle Room.
IKEA: the final challenge
Walk through IKEA without descending into madness.
It can’t be done. IKEA is a live action Rorshach test, operating under
the guise of a cheap Swedish furniture store.
I went to IKEA in Stoughton, Massachusetts when I
was jet-lagged from a trip to someplace far from Stoughton. There were
four in our party when we set off: Himself, myself, the Commodore, and a Southern Belle Lesbian. (This will be important later.) At this moment in our
lives, you would have been hard pressed to find four people who got along as
famously as we. I forget who wanted what, but don’t blame the jet lag for
my memory loss. IKEA’s floor plan is inspired by the River Lethe.
After we passed through the fourth circle of IKEA, we were prepared to
abandon our god, our creed, and our sexuality. We would have sold each
other into sex slavery, or ordinary slavery, for that matter, if someone would
lead us to the exit. The SBL announced in a silky drawl her readiness to service a
male employee in the manner of his choosing in exchange for a map marking all
of the exits and gave a description of the joys concealed within her clothes.
The Commodore hinted darkly and loudly at the fascist subtext of IKEA’s
aesthetic and the likely eugenical sympathies of its customers. Himself
threatened all who hindered his path, reserving the worst invectives for the
smallest of the children. I recall powerful feelings of nausea, hostility
and panic. I wanted to crawl into the Tarva bed and weep for a mercy that
I knew I would be denied. Miraculously, we all survived, but we were
never the same people again. When you pass the Sjrofruck bol thingey the
third time, your party’s jovial references to Winnie-the-Pooh will be silenced,
and your mind will open to you like a flower, exposing the deep primordial
memory of that simpler age before you had a brain stem, when you were an oozy
slime in the ocean and had yet to contemplate the long struggle to shore.
Good times. (I do not propose that the candidates assemble the furniture. I am not a monster. That test we will reserve for Supreme Court nominees. There is another test for those folks. Boulders and hills are involved.)
This challenge will show us how the candidate
responds to sanity corroding stress and if he can keep his head when all about
him are losing theirs and blaming it on him, etc. Candidly, I would not
perform well in these scenarios, but I don’t want to command the Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
No doubt you question my sincerity. The
Office of President of the United States deserves more respect, you say.
Measuring the candidate’s qualifications with bar sports and trips to hardware
stores is glib, you say. The debates are glib, sez I. What do you learn
about a candidate during a town hall meeting of select participants and
screened questions? What do you learn from watching two waxen figures on
a split screen? They don’t take the debates seriously, so why should we?
Maybe we need to rename this whole enterprise.
Instead of the Presidential Debate, let’s call it the Presidential
Audition. You don’t get to choose your script; we give you the script and then you dance for us. Do
you want this part? You are going to have to jump through a hoop or two
to get it. Before we give it to you, we need to know: Are you
Guildenstern, Hamlet or Prince Hal?
Life is a cabaret, Old Chum.
