What's in a Name?

Donald Trump's grandfather, Frederick

"What’s in a name?” Juliet asks. “That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.” Well let’s take Trump. Trump of course sounds like Trump card. To trump is to beat or trumpet which is to herald. Everything about Trump conjures the notion of overpowering. A three no trump bid in bridge, beats three spades, three diamonds or three clubs. You don’t monkey around with a name like Trump and Trumps don’t march to the beat of a different drummer. They’re majorettes. Donald’s grandfather Frederick immigrated from Germany and the name exudes an earthy almost Anglo-Saxon feel compared to Clinton which has English overtones, Cruz, which is Hispanic and Kasich which is Czech.  Sanders is another ball of wax. When you thinking of Sanders your mind goes to The Larry Sanders Show which starred the recently deceased standup comedian Gary Shandling. Bernie may have had to live down his initials BS but when you hear the Brooklyn accent and the urgency of which infects literally every sentence of his speech, you think of other standup of a similar vintage like Larry David. Will Sanders end up being the Larry David of politics, that is to say a big hit, but not as big as Seinfeld, the comedian with whom he was once associated? Lest Ted Cruz be given short shrift it can definitely be said that the name Ted Cruz does not conjure images of J. Crew, whose metrosexual style is a trifle too New York for someone who is unlikely to wear a rust colored belt. And what about those other names. When you  hear Kennedy you're most likely to think “dead,” like the punk rock group (Dead Kennedys), Johnson may bring up The Great Society, but not until you’ve thought of Johnson and Johnson. And then there are Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, whose egg shaped head, is an example of the pathetic fallacy and Nixon who got nixed. Eisenhower rhymes with power and Washington was a person before being a city or state which is something that Omaha residents are reminded of on a daily basis when they cede to the fact that Lincoln is the capital of their state. Harry Truman earned points for the connotation of his name when in a stunning upset he beat the Republican, Thomas Dewey, for the presidency.

All the King's Men

In Roman times Julius Caesar was famously murdered when he wouldn’t play ball with the powers that be. Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men found a modern equivalent for Caesar in the story of the rise and fall of Huey Long, the legendary governor of Louisiana. In Robert Rossen’s l949 Academy Award winning film, Broderick Crawford plays the character. But who today will act out the myth of the populist hero who becomes corrupted by power? Though probably more political than idealistic, Lyndon Johnson was, for example, a perfect example of the New Deal politician who became a major power broker—to quote the title of another book written by the prominent biographer of Johnson’s life, Robert Caro. Treachery and behind the scenes deal making is, of course, the nether side of our democratic process and what unfortunately makes it interesting. Who wouldn’t rather read a book about Huey Long than one say about a pleasantly equanimitous governor like Mario Cuomo? "As a governor, that is my job every day is to turn the aspirational into the operational," Chris Christie recently told CNN--which might have been fodder, but the governor of New Jersey seems to be in no danger of attaining mythic status. Ted Cruz is cracking up to be a good candidate not for president, but for a book about behind the scenes hardball playing. Prematurely announcing Ben Carson’s retirement from the race to voters attending the Iowa caucuses was the epitome of cut throat politics. And now we learn that he’s pulled one his own ads because a fetching actress in it turned out to have had a career in soft core. Add to that the impugning of his opponents faith ("The Devil in Ted Cruz," NYT, 2/23/16). Donald Trump has famously written his own book Trump: The Art of the Deal but he needs his Jack Burden, the journalist narrator of All the King’s Men. Who will be his Boswell? The story has color and glamour, but somehow lacks the gravity of either the Robert Penn Warren novel, or Caro’s non-fiction work. Trump’s legacy will probably result in the creation of many books, but what's lacking in this tale is the presence of a truly great figure. Trump is the rare example of a larger than life character with, to decontextualize the title of Eldridge Cleaver’s autobiography, a Soul on Ice.

Liar Liar Pants Are On Fire!

"Street Scene" by Giorgio Conrad

Here is what the on-line Urban Dictionary says “"Liar Liar Pants Are On Fire' is a phrase that children like to scream at each other whenever they think the other is lying. They also like to scream it at adults who tell them stories about fairies. It is an overall stupid thing to say, since if your pants actually caught on fire when you lied, more politicians would be dead.” If there was any truth behind the maxim then Ted Cruz would certainly be dead since he was  called a liar by both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. But there would probably be a lot more casualties both in an out of politics since when you tell a person that their perception of reality is wrong, you may be telling them they're liars. What disguises lying from misperception is intention. If you're saying that George W. Bush intentionally knew there were no WMD’s you're saying he was lying whether you explicitly use the word lie or not. If on the other hand you disagree with someone’s perception of events--let’s take for example Hillary Clinton’s chronology of Benghazi--but don’t think they're being intentionally misleading then you're simply accusing them of not being correctly informed. There's a huge difference from being misinformed and lying about something. Let’s go back to the WMD’s. Let’s naturally assume George W. Bush received intelligence reports about WMDs. Intelligence reports are complicated items since they need to be interpreted; if one is looking for a reason to do something one may have a skewed attitude about the reports. Subjectivity is involved and it could be argued that a report is just a rationalization for a policy that's the chrysalis of the butterfly that has yet to be born. Still, the fact that one might be easily swayed because of one’s inclinations does not make one a liar. This however is a very crucial point, particularly in the criminal context when you're dealing with murder. Either the murder is self-defense, is wrongful homicide that is the result of an impulsive action or premeditated in which case it's murder #1. Who's lying and who's telling the truth and what's in between? In the case of the Bladerunner, Oscar Pistorius, the ruling was “culpable homicide" which is the equivalent of manslaughter and the one time Olympic champ was sentenced to a mere 5 year term for the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Though the judge Thokozile Masipa obviously decided that the defendant was not out and out lying when he claimed he thought an intruder came into the house, she concluded he bore some responsibility for his so called misperception. That verdict was subsequently overturned by South Africa's supreme court, which convicted Pistorius of murder ("Oscar Pistorius convicted of murder: key questions answered," The Guardian, 12/3/15). Ted Cruz was obviously lying when he initially denied doing nothing wrong in the Iowa primary ("Ted Cruz Apologizes After Ben Carson Accuses Campaign of Dirty Tricks," Time, 2/1/16), but what is Trump guilty of when he claims to be able to restore 5.5 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost to other countries or when he claims he will build a wall between Mexico and the United States which the Mexicans will pay for, or when he claims that by lowering taxes and streamlining government he will bring about prosperity? Are these statements lies are merely the ignorant, grandiose and deluded posturings of somebody who equates dealing with tenants to leading a country.