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Wednesday
I flashed on a passage from Death of a Salesman recently after encountering an account of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham getting booed at a Donald Trump rally. Now, I sympathize with Willy Loman and not at all with Graham so the parallel doesn’t go very far. Still, it provides some insight into those politicians who have sold their souls to ride on the Trump train.
Graham was once regarded as a relatively principled senator who would work across the aisle on Supreme Court nominations and who would speak his mind in memorable ways. I enjoyed his remark about the execrable Ted Cruz, that if you killed him “on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” In 2015 he once described Trump as “a race baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” while at the same time calling Biden “as good a man as God ever created.”
Then he became a Trump groveller. To be sure, he briefly reclaimed his previous principles after the January 6 insurrection, announcing to his fellow senators, “Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. I hate it being this way. All I can say is count me out.” Since then, however, he has returned to his previous sycophancy.
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat observed recently, however, that there is no room for waffling in a fascist movement. One response and one response only is allowed: “You say whatever benefits the leader and increases his glory.”
And that’s why Graham faced hostility in Trump’s recent rally. Those present knew their senator’s uneven history. According to commentator Dean Obeidallah, “Lindsey Graham getting booed, called a “traitor”—and worse–for six minutes while trying to speak at Donald Trump’s rally Saturday is the worst reaction I’ve ever seen from an audience.”
It’s how Graham responded to that booing that makes me think of Willy Loman. Here’s Willy’s longtime friend Charley reflecting on his life at the funeral:
BIFF: He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong…
CHARLEY: Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
What Obeidallah witnessed was a politician, who is a kind of salesman, panicking when the audience stopped smiling back. Here’s his account:
The booing and jeering began as soon as Graham was introduced to the Trump faithful. At first, Graham appeared amused by the crowd’s boos—even laughing about it. However, Graham soon began to grasp that a large segment of this Trump crowd was not kidding around. That is when Graham went into grovel mode as he tried to win over the audience with lines like, “Just calm down for a second. I think you’ll like this.” Graham then told the audience, “I was born in this county,” adding, “I live 15 miles down the road. This is a place where people pay the taxes, fight the wars, and tell you what they believe.”
Graham even tried a joke to get the crowd on his side, stating “I found common ground with President Trump…it took a while to get there, folks.” He then quipped, “I come to like President Trump and he likes himself…and we go that in common.” (Pro tip: If you are bombing with an audience don’t mock the person the crowd loves!) After six minutes of boos that effectively drowned Graham out, he slinked off the stage.
I learned something important about Trump politicians from applying the Miller passage. They are so hungry for the adulation that comes from high office that they will do anything to get it, including attaching themselves to someone as corrupt as the former president. It doesn’t matter if they must compromise their integrity to get it. Like an addict, they’ll do anything to achieve that high. Correspondingly, they feel as if they are nobody if the electorate rejects them.
Not all politicians are like this. I remember some Democrats who voted through Obamacare, even though it cost them their seats in Congress, figuring that they had done something so important that it was worth the cost to themselves. And there are those principled Republicans who lost elections because they refused to join the Trump cult. What they saved was their dignity.
One of George Orwell’s most important insights in 1984 is that authoritarian leaders lie, not because they expect to be believed, but because they are testing the loyalty of their followers. The more outrageous the lie, the greater the test and the more opportunity their followers have for demonstrating their loyalty. Republicans these days must either demonstrate blind loyalty or they will get the Graham treatment. They’re riding on a smile and a shoeshine, with the constant fear that an earthquake will rock their world and the bottom will drop out.
Dast we blame them? Given that they are supposed to be public servants rather than fascist enablers, hell yes!
