Opinion: To dissect debate, take cues from literature

Let’s start with the awful (but stimulating), consider how to measure it and work towards what’s notable and encouraging — at least, in Virginia.

In another context, Marshall Frady once recorded “an uncanny instance of life imitating art imitating life.” He was talking about Alabama Gov. George Wallace and his resemblance to the fictional character of Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men.”

Frady’s observation came to mind watching Tuesday night’s presidential debate. My goodness.

Yes, my goodness, but it was sort of fascinating, too — perhaps in the same way Frady found Wallace’s life to be alluring. There are these things that blow through American politics which beg for better understanding.

Sure, many debate watchers were shocked and appalled — including most everyone on MSNBC, though it doesn’t take much to goad that crowd into gasping.

But it was pretty good TV, too. An exercise in democracy (raw version) and definitely not the 1976 presidential debate in Williamsburg.

That one took place 44 years ago this month between President Ford and Jimmy Carter in William & Mary’s Phi Beta Kappa Hall. It included a pledge by both candidates to keep the campaign “clean and high-toned.”

The UPI wire service reported that “only on the last question did the two start to get abrasive.”

“Carter said that Ford should be ‘ashamed’ of his record on the economy and Ford claimed Democratic presidents held unemployment down only because the nation was often at war.”

Ah, the good ol' days — when abrasive was little more than tedious.

These days, based on the Tuesday show, we do abrasive up right. What to make of it?

Frady had an approach that remains useful. Consider the human, he argued, and he took a moment in his book on Wallace to salute Joseph B. Cumming, Jr, the Atlanta bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, “under whom I learned that the highest journalism is informed by the insights of the poet and the artist.”

Such types, Frady said, instinctively bring “to the hectic combustions of events, a most delicate sense of the dynamics of life …. [and] a Dickensian relish for character.”

Would Trump fit into Dickens? Sure. As some combination of Ebenezer Scrooge and Bill Sikes (“a stoutly-built fellow … a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves … [and] two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow”).

Exaggerated? Compare Dickens' description of Sikes to the take on Trump by Thursday’s Tablet, an entertaining “daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.”

“The president of the United States appears to be mad. He was never sane in the past, but now, in any case, he raves. … the hue of the cheeks has taken on a sickly quality, like the fallen leaves in late autumn, after the color of vigor has passed into rot.”

Yes, a more literary approach gets closer to what we need and, on that score, few manage the magic of Marshall Frady, an Augusta, Georgia native, who penned essays for Newsweek, Life, Harper’s and other outlets.

Frady left this world too early in 2004, but if you can find a copy of his 1980 book “Southerners,” grab it. You owe it to yourself. Lots of literary characters in there, too — a Southern political specialty.

And that may partly explain why the Trump character — this is a character, you understand, a thing the president has created for himself — may be unsettling but not altogether alarming. These wild-eyed, self-invented types have passed our way before, though they mostly operated in the deeper Southern realms.

Which brings us to Virginia’s ever-reassuring habits, as shown in a just-released AP/Hampton University poll. You can find it on the university’s website and it’s worth examining.

Biden has better judgement than Trump, more registered Virginia voters say, but the president stands up for what he believes.

Police violence against the public is a serious national concern, but only 15% of the respondents thought it to be a problem in their own community. (Virginia Democrats, please take note.)

Confederate flags? Not on government property, thank you. But an almost even split exists on removing Confederate statues and renaming public spaces. Take it easy, in other words.

Attitudes toward guns were likewise divided, favoring instruction and background checks, but with less voter enthusiasm for banning specific guns.

There you go. The Old Dominion being true to itself and charting a decorous, if less literary, path forward.

After writing editorials for the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot in the 1980s, Gordon C. Morse wrote speeches for Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, then spent nearly three decades working on behalf of corporate and philanthropic organizations, including PepsiCo, CSX, Tribune Co. and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Dominion Energy. His email address is gordonmorse@msn.com.

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