What if?

 

After posting how much I enjoyed Nina Totenberg’s memoir, Dinners with Ruth, I was taken back a bit to read a critical review that maintained Totenberg should have put her obligations as a journalist above her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In other words, as a reporter assigned to the Supreme Court, she should have reported on RBG’s obviously failing health. Instead, she shielded RBG, fed her the bouillabaisse she loved (one of the few things her failing body would tolerate), and turned a blind eye to justice. There’s certainly a lot of merit to that argument. I am among the many who think, dedicated as she was, RBG should have stepped down when Obama suggested it, so that he could appoint a liberal justice. No one knows for sure how the court would have played out—there would still be the sudden death of Justice Scalia and the suspicious sudden retirement of Justice Kennedy (we may never know that full story)—but we would have had one less extremist conservative on the court.

When a friend supported the criticism of Totenberg, I countered with the idea that life is a series of “What if?” moments. If Comey hadn’t brought up those emails at the last minute, Hilary probably would have won in 2016, and we would have been spared the tragedies and depravity of four years of trump. But Comey thought he was doing his job. And if McConnell had followed precedent, Merrick Garland would be on the court—we can’t excuse McConnell on the grounds he was doing his job. He knew better but was more interested in using his enormous power to the betterment of his party and the detriment of his country.

I’m not being fatalistic when I say I accept the uncertainty about life, the fact the “ought” doesn’t win. I think things happen the way they were meant to happen, but I also believe that karma will out. Perhaps it’s my faith as a member of a mainstream Protestant church—I will not ever try to give you an evangelistic argument that God is testing us, because I don’t believe in a cruel God. But I do believe that faith gives us strength when the “what if” moment goes awry. And, like Joe Biden, I believe in America and democracy and right now, I’m hopeful the pendulum is swinging back from an extreme edge.

That said, I am baffled by much of what is going on in this country. “The former guy” while not indicted has been clearly exposed as a criminal on several fronts, from tax fraud to tampering with elections to stealing national security documents. Governors Abbott and DeSantis have shown themselves to be heartless despots who use innocent and helpless people as political pawns and then abandon them. Congresspersons Boebbert and Marjorie Taylor Greene spout conspiracy theories, defend an extreme “Christian” nation, and are beyond comprehension. Herschel Walker produces word salad every time he opens his mouth. No sense even talking about poor, befuddled Louie Gohmert. They are willing pawns of people like trump, and what’s scary is that they promote his possible run in 2024. Why are these people anywhere near political power in this country?

Columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., offers a solid—and familiar—theory in an essay titled, “We believe Herschel Walker.” Contending Walker has shown us clearly who he is, Pitts suggests that his popularity is part of America’s historic tendency to equate ignorance with authenticity. We distrust leaders who seem “too smart.” Politicians spend a lot of time in shirtsleeves, eating hot dogs they don’t want, and saying things they clearly don’t believe, just to be one of the regular people. Instead, Pitts says, we should want our leaders to be a bit better, a bit smarter than we are. Not arrogant, but with knowledge and understanding of policy and international law.

On the positive side, President Biden has quietly been achieving a better life for most American workers—the infrastructure package, relief from the covid pandemic, improved health care for veterans, averting a catastrophic railroad strike, restoring our international standing, working to control climate change and save our environment, reduced unemployment. How would Boebbert, Greene, Walker, and Gohmert handle these issues? Do we want to give the indecisive and weak Kevin McCarthy power over the House? Why did things go south under trump? Don’t we need educated men and women, with some grasp of government, to lead us in these times?

I know I’m prejudiced. I see life—and politics—through a blue lens these days. But there are so many good candidates for Senate seats and governorships, good people running for the House to free us from all the conspiracy theorists. Can’t we have a little common sense?

What if we voted for the good of all the people rather than those who would force their will on us? What if we restored a unified America, a Congress that worked across the aisle? What if we elected people who, like Biden, want to make life better for Americans, rather than those who would wipe out a century of progress?

Rant over.

 

Learning about the past

 

When I first saw the title, Dinners with Ruth, I was all excited because I thought it would be a book about fabulous menus at dinners with Ruth Reichl. Alas, the Ruth of the title is not Reichl but Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They say perseverance is the key, and I persevered—and was hooked.

This is mostly a memoir by award-winning NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg, and her life is interesting enough to keep me reading without RBG. I’m halfway through the book as of this evening, and RBG is there like a thread woven into the text. One of the things that has always stymied me about memoir is that I think it needs a peg to hang it on. You can’t just write, “This is my life” and expect to attract readers, no matter how thrilling, adventuresome, exotic your life has been. There needs to be that theme, that idea that holds it all together. For Totenberg, it was her friendship with RBG through many professional ups and downs, marriage, widowhood, the whole gambit of life. It might well have been Cokie Roberts, whose comforting, efficient presence hovers over this book like the housemother/big sister/aunt every woman wishes for.

But it is RBG who holds Totenberg’s attention. They connected by telephone in the sixties and became friends in the seventies. Those were still the days when women could not own property, open a bank account, apply for a credit card. The general opinion was that a woman needed a man to care for her, and her job was to keep the home fires, raise the children, cook the meals. None of that appealed to Totenberg, who was single, and RBG who was married and had a child. They fought their way, almost literally, into careers in journalism and the judiciary—places where women were not welcome.

I remember those days because, on a much smaller scale, I fought that battle. I was working on a Ph.D. in English in the late sixties and held an NDEA (National Defense Education Act) fellowship by which my tuition and fees were paid plus a stipend for living expenses. In return, I taught one class of freshman English each semester. There was a hue and cry in the department that another girl and I should not have fellowships because we had husbands to support us. Her husband was a fellow graduate student, also on a fellowship if I remember correctly, and they had two daughters. My then-husband was a surgical resident, and I brought home $30 a month more than he did. Our combined monthly income was something like $730, and I remember yet his indignation when he had to pay his first income taxes--$7.77.

So far, Totenberg’s story plays out against the background of politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century, particularly the politics of judicial appointments. I’m learning a lot about events that I remember but didn’t understand at the time. For instance, I remember the hearings about the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, a nomination which ultimately failed. I knew there were people aligned against him, but I didn’t understand what an arch conservative he was in a time of legislative cordiality nor how smugly confident he was.

Totenberg is a good writer who pulls her audience into the story and makes us feel that we are there with her—in the courtroom at Timothy McVeigh’s trial, in the hospital room with her dying husband, at the opera with RBG who is distracting her from tragedy. She makes me think of the power of good writing, and the ability of words to sway, persuade, inform. Totenberg is pretty straightforward.

The other thing she makes me realize is how complicated political life in D.C. is, what a complex understructure holds it together, how politicians, the judiciary, and associated personnel can call in a debt or pull a string or ferret out a bit of needed information. I can’t decide if I am reassured or frightened by that, but I think Totenberg has a good grasp of what goes on and is a honest journalist, striving for distance from her subjects and yet making them come alive.

Much to my surprise I am enjoying this book. I suspect the last half will have more about RBG.