Her fantasies often skewered Madame Realism, threw her for a loop, but at times they fashioned her as the host of a late-night talk show, when, like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, she held the best hand. Madame Realism imagined questioning presidential also-rans, who had sacrificed themselves on the altar of glory and ambition — Al Gore, John Kerry, the ghost of Adlai Stevenson. Suddenly Adlai stated, out of nowhere, “JFK never forgave me, you know, for not supporting him at the Democratic convention.” Then a familiar, haunted look darkened his brown eyes, and pathos quickly soured their banter. Pathos didn’t fly on late-night TV.
Anyone but an action hero understood that even a rational decision or intelligent tactic might awaken unforeseen forces equipped with their own anarchic armies, and some presidents agonized under mighty power’s heft. In portraits of him, Abraham Lincoln morphed from eager Young Abe, saucy, wry candidate for Congress from Illinois, to a father overwhelmed with sadness at his young son’s death, to a gravely depressed man, the president who took the nation to its only civil war. Madame Realism treasured soulful Abraham Lincoln, because he appeared available to her contemporary comprehension, a candidate ripe for psychoanalysis. She pictured speaking kindly to him, late at night, after Mary had gone to sleep, the White House dead and dark, when words streamed from him, and, as he talked about his early days, his ravaged face lit up, remembering life’s promise.
What do you call Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell in the front seat of a car?
Two airbags.
In the nineteenth century, even Thomas Carlyle believed “all that a man does is physiognomical of him.” A face revealed a person’s character and disposition, and, if skilled in reading it, like physiognomists who were its natural science proponents, why human beings acted the way they did could be discerned. Also, their future behavior might be predicted. Criminals and the insane, especially, were analyzed, because the aberrant worried the normal, and, consequently, deranged minds had to be isolated from so-called sane ones. The sane felt crazy around the insane.
Though face-reading as a science had gone the way of believing the world was flat — poor Galileo! — facial expressions dominated human beings’ reactions; each instinctively examined the other for evidence of treachery, doubt, love, fear, and anger. Defeat and success etched an ever-changing portrait of the aging face that, unlike Dorian Gray’s, mutated in plain sight. Animals relied on their senses for survival, but beauty made all fools, democratically. And though it is constantly asserted that character is revealed by facial structure and skin, plastic surgery’s triumphal march through society must designate new standards. For instance, Madame Realism asked herself, how do you immediately judge, on what basis, a person’s character after five facelifts?
“Images are the brood of desire.”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
Before appearing on TV, politicians were commanded: Don’t move around too much in your chair, don’t be too animated, you’ll look crazy, don’t touch your face or hair, don’t flail your arms, don’t point your finger. Their handlers advised them: keep to your agenda, make your point, not theirs. The talking heads tried to maintain their pose and composure, but these anointed figures faltered in public, and, with the ubiquity of cameras, their every wink, smirk, awkwardness, or mistake was recorded and broadcast on the Internet, the worse the better.
At a political leadership forum led by his son, Jeb Bush, former President Bush wept when he spoke about Jeb losing the 1994 governorship of Florida. Madame Realism took a seat next to him after he returned to the table, still choked up. “Did you cry,” she asked, “because you wish Jeb were president, not your namesake?” President Bush ignored her for the rest of the evening.
Why are presidents so short?
So senators can remember them.
A happy few were born to be poker-faced. A rare minority suffered from a disease called prosopagnosis, or face blindness; the Greek prosopon means face, and agnosia is the medical term for the loss of recognition. An impairment destroys the brain’s ability to recognize faces, which usually happens after a trauma to it; but if the disease is developmental or genetic, and occurs before a person develops an awareness that faces can be differentiated, sufferers never know that it is ordinary to distinguish them. They see no noses, eyes, lips, but a blur, a cloudy, murky space above the neck. What is their life like? Their world? How do they manage? But she couldn’t embody their experience, not even in fantasy.
He wants power
He has power
He wants more
And his country will break in his hands,
Is breaking now.
— Alkaios, ca. 600 BC, from Pure Pagan, translated by Burton Raffel
Those who ran for president, presumably, hungered for power, to rule over others, like others might want sex, a Jaguar, or a baby. Winning drives winners, and maybe losers, too, Madame Realism considered. Power, that’s what it’s all about, everyone always remarked. But why did some want to lead armies and others want to lead a Girl Scout troop, or nothing much at all? With power, you get your way all the time.
She wanted her way, she knew she couldn’t get it all the time, but how far would Madame Realism go to achieve her ends? She wasn’t sure. And, why were her ends modest, compared, say, with Hadrian’s? Like other children, she’d been trained not to be a sore loser, to share, not to hit, but probably Hadrian hadn’t. And, what a joke, she laughed to herself, the power of toilet training.
“Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Thought bubbles gathered over her head, and she attempted, as if in a battle, to thrust into those airy-fairy daydreams fates that she didn’t crave, like serving as a counselor in a drug clinic or checking microchips for flaws. In fantasy only, Madame Realism ruled her realm, and she could go anywhere, anytime. She would be lavished with awards for peace and physics and keep hundreds of thousands of stray animals on her vast properties. Fearlessly and boldly, she would poke holes in others’ arguments, and sometimes she did influence a president. She did not imagine having coffee with the owner of the local laundromat, she didn’t make beds or sweep floors. Though she believed she didn’t care about having great power, her wishes, like jokes, claimed their own special truths.
“The King of Kings is also the Chief of Thieves. To whom may I complain?”
— The Bauls
There was a story standup comic Mort Sahl told about JFK and him. Mort Sahl was flying on Air Force One with Kennedy, when they hit a patch of rough turbulence. JFK said to Sahl, “If this plane crashed, we would probably all be killed, wouldn’t we?” Sahl answered, “Yes, Mr. President.” Then JFK said, “And it occurs to me that your name would be in very small print.” The comic was put in his place, power did that. Madame Realism wondered how wanting power or wanting to be near it was different, if it was. Maybe, she told herself, she would give up some of her fantasies and replace them with others. But could she?
Save Me from the Pious and the Vengeful
for Joe Wood 1965-1999
Out of nothing comes language and out of language comes nothing and everything. Everything challenges the tenuous world order. Every emotion derails every other one. One rut is disrupted by the emergence of another. I like red wine, but began drinking white, with a sudden thirst, and now demand it at 6 P.M. exactly, as if my life depended upon it. That was a while ago.