As the presidential primary season marches on around the country, the nasty political ads and robo calls are taking their toll. Many people are, to paraphrase former Vice President Al Gore, getting snippy about their political differences. If we’re going to make it till Election Day, commentator Gwen Thompkins thinks we’d better all learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.
I had the most invigorating political discussion the other day with a man who didn’t believe a word I said. I didn’t believe anything he said, either, but that made the conversation all the more fun.
We had met years ago when I was a newspaper reporter and needed somebody to teach me — fast — about Louisiana politics. He was a political consultant — a Cambridge-educated man, no less — and when others recommended him to me, they consistently used the word “brilliant.”
We had lunch recently at one of the best restaurants in New Orleans. And somewhere between my crabmeat beignets and his breast of roasted chicken, he announced that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a better president than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that if Nelson Rockefeller had won the White House in 1960, Rockefeller would have made more inroads on civil rights than John Kennedy.
Now, the technical term, I believe, for these kinds of comparisons is “pish tosh.” It’s impossible to say who was a better chief executive when each president faced a different world and a wholly different political landscape. Nor is it fair to suppose what someone might have done as president. For example, if James Brown had been president, he might have gotten rid of “Hail to the Chief” and instead used his own song, “Papa Don’t Take No Mess.”
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