by W. D. Ehrhart
I stopped watching major political speeches fifty-two years ago in the wake of Richard Nixon’s televised announcement in the spring of 1972 that he was mining Hai Phong harbor in North Vietnam. It made me so angry that I pulled off my boot and threw it at the president.
This was back when televisions were boxlike things with all sorts of vacuum tubes and stuff like that inside. The television exploded. Glass all over my college dorm room, and the television’s insides popping and sparking. I’m lucky I didn’t start a fire. And the television wasn’t even mine. I’d borrowed it from a friend just for this occasion.
As an ex-Marine who had fought in Vietnam, I had long since come to hate that war. And back when I was still in the Marines, Nixon had gotten himself elected president by telling the American people that he was going to end that war. But I had learned over the previous four years that Nixon actually had no desire at all to end the war, but had merely shifted the blood price from Americans to Vietnamese.
And so I’d come to hate Richard Nixon, too. And when he went on national television and said, essentially, “Yo, Ehrhart, I’m gonna mine Hai Phong harbor and maybe bomb the dikes on the Red River, too, and you can’t do a damn thing to stop me,” I lost it.
But as I sat there alone in my darkened room with the remains of the television sparking and smoking, I realized, “Well, that wasn’t a very good idea.”
I’ve never watched a live speech by a president, or a presidential candidate, or a presidential debate in all the years since. I don’t trust myself. Seeing it in real time isn’t really necessary, anyway, because you can always read about it the next day. And with the advent of the digital age, you can actually watch it later, especially if you’ve read or heard enough about it that you know you’re not going to be surprised by what you hear.
So I didn’t really miss out on Governor Ronald Reagan’s folksy rebuke of President Jimmy Carter, “There you go again.” Or Senator Walter Mondale asking Senator Gary Hart, “Where’s the beef?” Or Senator Lloyd Bentsen telling Senator Dan Quayle, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Or Admiral James Stockdale’s, “Who am I? Why am I here?” Or Senator Barack Obama telling Senator Hillary Clinton, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.”
I’ve never missed out on the good parts by learning about them only the next morning. And now these days I can actually call up entire speeches online if I feel like it. I did exactly that with President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address. I heard it was really very good, and I almost regretted missing it, so I decided I could get through the whole spiel without throwing any boots, and called it up on YouTube the next day. And it was in fact pretty good. Uncle Joe was feisty and sharp, and seemed to have all his marbles.
Conversely, six months later, his performance against his predecessor was dismal. Heart-breaking. Tragic. I am really, really glad I didn’t see that one. I read and heard enough about it that I couldn’t bear to watch any of the actual footage, even after the fact. I probably wouldn’t have thrown a boot at the television, but I may have had to fight the urge to hang myself.
So there was no way I was going to watch the Once-and-Possibly-Future President debating Vice President Kamala Harris. Whatever happened could wait until morning. And in the morning, I watched the previous night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which I’d recorded. I figured Stewart would be the gentlest way to find out if it had gone well or badly for Harris.
And I learned that the evening had gone very well for Harris, that she had managed to keep her composure while goading Trump into being his typical blowhard and often incoherent self. So a few days later, I decided to check out the actual debate, which my wife had recorded.
Well, I managed to sit through 57 minutes of it, but finally could take no more. Trump was in fact his usual blowhard incoherent self. No surprises there. The lies fell out of his mouth like water going over Niagara Falls: inflation under Biden is the worst in U.S. history; babies are being executed after they are born; people can’t buy bacon or eggs or milk; crime is down all over the world because Biden and Harris are letting all the world’s criminals come to the U.S.
It was just too depressing. Trump himself is not what got to me. Trump is really very entertaining. A clown. A buffoon. A parody of decency. A satire of the human species. What is so terribly depressing is that this election is going to be close, that Donald Trump is actually a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, indeed a candidate who—against all common sense and reason and decency—may win.
What is so terribly depressing is that millions and millions and millions of American voters are going to vote for this criminal, bigoted, narcissistic, racist, misogynistic, irresponsible disgrace who has left a trail of chaos and divisiveness behind him as he careens through life, and who, if re-elected, has been granted immunity by his handpicked Supreme Court from prosecution for anything and everything he chooses to do as president in a future term.
My decision not to watch the debate live was the right decision. My decision to try to watch the debate after the fact was the wrong decision. At my age, it was not hard to resist the urge to throw my footwear at the television, though bedroom slippers wouldn’t have had much impact on a flatscreen tv in any case. But I would have been much happier if I had been content with only the best parts of the debate, which I had already gotten without watching any of it, live or after the fact.
There were two: Trump declaring that Harris “is a Marxist; everybody knows she’s a Marxist,” and Trump insisting that criminal illegal immigrants invading Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and “eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” of decent American citizens. Those bits are memorable. They’re absurd. They’re funny. They make me laugh. They will take their place in history beside “You’re no Jack Kennedy” and “Where’s the beef?”
I should have left well enough alone. I won’t make that mistake again.
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W. D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.