A High-Stakes Dilemma; the 2024 Election

 

It’s come to this: choose between an “only I can save you” candidate and an “only I can beat him” incumbent president.  It is a choice between two self-serving candidates, one who Christian evangelicals think was sent by God and one who says “only the Lord Almighty himself” can stop him from running.  Score: God 2, America 0.

 

Don’t we, the electorate, deserve better than this?

 

On the one hand we have the twice impeached Trump (both times acquitted by his Senate acolytes).  He is also subject to a ruling that he committed fraud (by NY State, Trump appealing the case), a hush money felony conviction (by the Manhattan D.A., sentencing delayed courtesy of SCOTUS) and a conviction as a defamer and a sexual abuser of E. Jean Carroll (cases now out on appeal).  Then there is the Department of Justice’s charge that he committed felonies removing White House documents to Mar-a-Lago (the Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon is indefinitely postponing the trial).  Add to this the indictment by Fulton County, GA of his participation in a conspiracy to commit Election Subversion (naturally, the case is not expected to begin before the November election).  And, finally, perhaps the most serious of all, the Department of Justice’s grand jury indictment of Trump for Election Subversion, his actions culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot (?), insurrection (?) peaceful tourist exploration of the U.S. Capitol building (?) (please fill in one of the choices depending on your political persuasion).  This case is now knee-capped by the recent conservative leaning Supreme Court, three of whom were Trump appointed.  Those are the challenger’s credentials.

 

On the other hand, we have President Biden, whose old man shuffle looks very bad but, worse, shows signs of cognitive decline during his presidency culminating in his own suggestion of an early debate (“make my day, man”).  Sad. The President essentially is a good man, having moral values that we, who have lived long enough, have seen erode over our lifetimes.  Although politics has always been a rough and tumble arena, the old guardrails of acceptable social mores and civility are failing in an iPhone-social-media-consumed world where 240 characters and the Internet equivalent of chain letters pass as thinking.

 

He has, as his family and handlers insist, done many good things.  Bringing us back into the world of nations with some shred of respect might be among the most significant.  But Dr. Jill, his wife, is both right and wrong that a poor 90 minute performance should not erase the accomplishments of 3-1/2 years.  The legitimate concern is the next 4-1/2 years.  And beating the cult of Trump is not an easy task even for a younger, more vigorous candidate as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, decides such elections.  The next five months must be filled with intensive campaigning in those swing states.  This is going to be an election season which will be ground out, yard by yard. And as the Presidency goes, the makeup of the House and Senate could follow: high stakes, indeed.

 

That 90 minute debate presented so many opportunities for a more-in-the-moment candidate to simply respond to Trump’s avalanche of invectives, lies, non sequiturs, and his vision of an apocalyptic America. Just a “will you listen to what this man just said?” would have been sufficient.  It is a well known rhetorical device to overwhelm the opponent with so much garbage in a short period of time that it is impossible to respond to all.  But Biden failed to capitalize on those opportunities and robotically went onto his own bullet points, poorly presented, trailing off into mumbling, painfully allowing Trump, an expert in reality TV to use his logorrhea and body language to eviscerate Biden.

 

The point is, we all saw the so called “debate” and once seen it can’t be unseen.  The same point should be made about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  We all saw Trump urging the crowd on, and, once seen, it can’t be explained away.

 

To make matters worse, on Friday July 5, Biden agreed to an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.  Presumably this was supposed to show us the new and improved Joe.  It only brought out more issues.  Early on he was asked the pointed question: “Did you watch the debate afterwards?”  First he had that deer in the headlights look, until finally responding “I don’t think I did, no.” Oh, Joe, is the answer really “no” or you already don’t remember?  Most chilling though was his insistence that only God could make him drop out of the race, and then to the question of how he would react to losing to Trump he said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest [sic] job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” In other words, if we give it the ‘ole college try, that’s good enough?  In an election which may decide if the American experiment is over?

 

He frequently turns to his wife for advice but publicly she is proving not to be objective.  Given the high, high stakes, perhaps we need a much more forceful intervention by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

 

To the repeated question of whether he would take a cognitive or neurological test, Biden implied every day was such a test (given his responsibilities), dodging the answer.  Both candidates should take two tests, a cognitive test and one to determine an Antisocial Personality Disorder.  Publish the results so, as Mitch McConnell infamously exclaimed blocking Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination, “the American people can decide.”

 

Peggy Noonan accurately framed the Democratic Party’s dilemma in the July, 6/7 Wall Street Journal: “It makes no sense to say, ‘Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.’ Unpredictable is better than doomed.”

 

Exactly 248 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence a new British Prime Minister was elected, Keir Starmer, who told Britons the following day “Country first, party second.”  Might it be time for both the Democratic and Republican parties to adopt the same priorities? 

 

Assault on Reason – Our Ongoing Gun Nightmare

 

News items this past week include the graduation of schoolmates of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting victims, from the area’s Newtown CT high school.  That massacre was 12 years ago.  What has our society done since then to address the ownership of military-style weapons?  Nothing.  It’s worse than nothing: the prior week’s Wall Street Journal had a related article:  “How School Shootings Are Changing the Design of American Classrooms; Architects are focusing on safety features to keep perpetrators out and create a sense of community for students.”  There is a direct correlation.  We are normalizing gun violence, accepting it as a part of everyday life.  What kind of a deranged society addresses such a problem that way?

 

And from the Associated Press: “Demolition of the Parkland classroom building where 17 died in 2018 shooting begins.”  Presumably the great State of Florida will be hiring those clever architects to rebuild the school.  From that same article: “Broward County is not alone in taking down a school building after a mass shooting. In Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the 2012 shooting and replaced. In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish it. Colorado’s Columbine High had its library demolished after the 1999 shooting.”

 

So apparently, that is that is the “solution.”  After the slaughtering of children in our schools, tear the buildings down and build ones hardened against such shootings (after the requisite “thoughts and prayers” and brief puffery by politicians saying they’re going to do something about it).  Logically speaking if we continue on the present path to perdition, over time we will eventually replace all schools rather than addressing gun control head on.

 

Hey, it’s an American right to shoot ‘em up!

 

It would be bad enough if that was the only recent gun news.  But, no, there is more! Those wonderful new conservative members of SCOTUS have reversed the ban on bump stocks.  Again, from AP June 14: “The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a ban on bump stocks, the gun accessory used in the deadliest shooting in modern American history — a Las Vegas massacre that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

 

The court’s conservative majority said Friday that then-President Donald Trump’s administration overstepped its authority with the 2019 ban on the firearm attachment, which allows semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns.”  (BTW, now Mr. Trump defends the SCOTUS decision.)

 

We’ve become a one step forward, two steps backward gun addicted society.  If only the NRA was solely to blame, but it is ingrained in our “culture.” How many more innocent people will have to die before we have ANY leadership to ban military style weapons and implementing a registration system for gun ownership?

 

‘Trying’ - A Tonic for Today’s Times at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

This exceptionally well-crafted two-handed dramedy, Trying by Joanna McClelland Glass, is the first revival Palm Beach Dramaworks ever has presented as it gears up for its 25^th anniversary next season. This new production brings the play’s emotional and humorous characteristics into sharp focus.

 

The plot is straightforward and is based mostly on fact when the playwright served as secretary in the late 1960’s to the retired statesman, Judge Francis Biddle, who was Roosevelt’s U.S. Attorney General and then the chief American judge at the Nuremberg war-crime trials.  This is not a literal documentary of their relationship, but one that is heightened by the playwright’s imagination, clearly showing two opposites, a well-read but plain spoken Canadian prairie girl Sarah Schorr, and the Ivy League educated patrician Biddle, during the last year of his life (a fact he does not allow to be in doubt).

 

The two acts encapsulate their negotiating a working relationship, one that begins abrasively and grows to trust and respect and even a kind of love.  It is the young and the exuberant vs. the aged and experienced.  When Sarah reassures Biddle that she “understands” something, Biddle dismissively comments: “No, I don’t think you can.  You’re at a disadvantage, in that I have been young, but you have never been old.”

 

William Hayes, PBD Producing Artistic Director, as well as the Director of this production, ably assisted by David A. Hyland, said “though it didn’t consciously dawn on me when I put together the 2023-24 season, in retrospect I believe I was drawn to Trying because it’s about something that seems to be a lost skill these days: the art of communication.”  Hayes’ directs this play with a soulfulness so fitting for his choice.

 

Dennis Creaghan and Kelly McCready Photo by Tim Stepien

Dennis Creaghan, the veteran of many PBD productions, portrays the superannuated Judge Francis Biddle, who is “trying” to keep up with his correspondence while writing a memoir, perpetually frustrated by a world that seems to be passing him by.  His nuanced performance reveals a vulnerability that gradually emerges from a gruff shell of stubbornness and insufferable crankiness.  Creaghan underscores his character’s impatience with the minor day to day foibles, such as those “tune-ups” with his wife who we never see but hear on his phone or his constant complaints about former secretaries.

 

There is a comic physicality to Creaghan’s performance that deeply connects with the audience.  He not only knows how to deliver a comic line effectively, but with just a look can evoke laughter when Sarah speaks.

 

His labored movements and stuttering breaths convey his declining health, his ascendance up the stairs growing more difficult, scene by scene.  He amusingly emphasizes Biddle’s displeasure with the decline of the English language (split infinitives are his bête noire) and the decline of civility over the years, and finally his deep concern about his legacy.  

 

The playwright’s alter ego, Sarah Schorr, is poignantly played by Kelly McCready making her PBD debut.  She instills a down to earth sincerity in her performance as she navigates the right balance of firmness and humor in dealing with such an irascible but august personage.  And it is with humor and resilience that Sarah works her way past the armor guarding his persona. 

 

Dennis Creaghan and Kelly McCready Photo by Tim Stepien

She also finally reveals a personal life and even solicits understanding and sympathy from Biddle.  They slowly change roles as Sarah is the one urging him on, to keep his nose to the grindstone of getting his tasks done as he slows down. (“Lace up your skates and get out on the ice!”).  Symbolically she takes over his desk finally, Biddle saying “Woe is me.  You’re a hard-hearted Hannah.  And may I say, now that you’ve taken control of my desk, you needn’t relish the victory quite so much….You should see yourself.  You look downright territorial,”  “Bosh and bunkum” is Sarah’s reply.

 

Hayes’ direction emphasizes McCready’s youthful eagerness, “a bugger for work” and her interplay with Creaghan’s resignation to seeing “the exit sign flashing; the door ajar.”  It is touching when they find common ground in the poetry of e.e. cummings.  But that does not end their squabbles as Biddle notes “Truly, I don’t always have to have the last word, but not only did cummings go to Harvard, St. Vincent Millay went to Vassar.”  Sarah replies “Sir, the schools they attended aren’t really relevant.  Literature can be taught.  Physics can be taught, talent can’t be taught” to which he replies “Touché, my dear, touché.”  The exchange of their favorite books towards the end of the play marks an intimacy of equals.

 

The play is a memorable diorama of a time and place of civility and seriousness of purpose so seemingly lacking in the contemporary world.  Hayes’ direction creates a cohesive, engaging production, wisely emphasizing the comic elements, the audience caught up in laughter.  He creatively focuses on the details between scenes, particularly the more lengthy ones that involve a costume change, to engage the audience with a simple spot on a bookshelf with a radio which briefly broadcasts news of the day, establishing time intervals.  This is conjoined to a lick of music of the era, a reminder that the outside world is still turning.

 

Scenic design by Bert Scott takes full advantage of the height of the PBD stage, displaying rafters above the stage, ones that would have been typical for a converted old horse stable.  The traditional stage setting is a welcome change from the increasing use of projections and other scenic technology.  It is breathtakingly inviting, the set seeming like a third character in such an intimate play.  Down stage right is more attention to details, signs of the fire which almost consumed the office.

 

And such attention certainly pertains to the period costumes produced by Brian O’Keefe the creative resident costume designer.  Many clothing changes are required by both Biddle and Sarah and O’Keefe coordinates the designs to the weather and the tone of the scene employing hats, sweaters, and overcoats while utilizing solid muted tones of fabric for the dresses and skirts worn by Sarah, appropriate suits and vests and bow ties for Biddle as well as fabricating a clever undergarment to show Sarah’s increasing pregnancy.

 

Lighting design by Addie Pawlick illuminates the windows to display the time of day and weather as well.  Snow can drift by the window or a blue sky.  Although the play takes place in one indoor space, Pawlick’s lighting captures the mood with various lamps scattered about the office as well as projecting warmth from the two floor space heaters.

 

 Sound design is by Roger Arnold bringing in the transitional music, the radio bulletins and the playback of the Dictaphone, which records a cathartic emotional conclusion.

 

Trying will be appreciated by all, so well acted, directed, moving, funny, tearful, truthful.  Palm Beach Dramaworks has laced its skates and produced a memorable revival.  Opening night was attended by the youthful eighty seven year old playwright, Joanna McClelland Glass, whose writing has stood the test of time, especially with this production.