Whose Turn Is It to Lead?

There is that great line about while Fred Astaire was a fantastic dancer, we should all remember that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, but backwards while wearing high heels.  

It’s a famous quote, but contrary to popular opinion, neither Astaire nor Rogers originated the line—that honor belongs to Bob Thaves, the artist of the 1982 Frank and Ernest comic strip.  In a later interview, Rogers even admitted that the quote belonged to Thaves.

Note.  To those readers born after the sixties, those white things on the top of Fred Astaire’s shoes are called ‘spats’, short for spatterdashes.  The sole purpose of these things was to make it look like you were AWOL from the French Army.

Fred and Ginger came to mind this week after I was channel hopping during the evening news.  The difference in how one story was reported (and misreported) by the various flavors of journalism would almost have you believe that the talking heads on television were reporting about completely different countries.  Of particular note were the stories that repeated every few years and how the two political parties reacted to them.  Within a very few years, both parties seem to completely reverse their reactions depending upon who occupies the White House.

Obviously, it is the other party’s time to lead and the other, other party’s time to wear high heels and dance backwards.

Here are a few examples:

Since it is that time of year, let’s start with the Christmas Trees.  Back in 2018, Melania Trump lined the White House Halls with 40 dark red Christmas Trees, which the Washington Post immediately labeled as hideous blood-red atrocities.  The Republican party, predictably, adored the decorations. This year, Jill Biden lined those halls with green trees heavily festooned with white decorations.  Immediately, the Washington Post praised Jill’s style while the Republicans called the decorations ugly.

Ignoring the fact that even during a pandemic with the worst inflation the country has seen in thirty years, the country can still focus on how a set of halls that almost none of us will actually see is still important enough to show up on the editorial pages of the most important newspapers in the country, actually the two sets of decorations had more commonalities than differences.  Something almost no one reported was that neither Melania’s red trees nor Jill’s green and white trees were what the official indoor Christmas tree actually looked like.  In both cases, their trees on the second floor, in the family’s residence were traditionally decorated, and Melania’s and Jill’s looked almost identical.  (For what it’s worth, I thought both decorations were okay.)

When Donald Trump was president, everything he did to lessen the impact of the Covid pandemic was deemed by his own party as inspired genius.  The Democrats, of course, viewed every action as pure evil.  As a candidate, Joe Biden promised swift, decisive action and tactical moves that would all but eliminate the pandemic from our shores, as opposed to the inaction of President Trump.

Now that Joe Biden is president, however, I’m hard pressed to think of anything he has done to fight Covid that is substantially different than what we were doing last year.  That, of course, hasn’t kept the Republican Party from denouncing everything Biden has done.  I’m not, mind you, saying that either is necessarily wrong—I can’t think of anything different to do, either.

When President Trump withdrew troops from Syria, candidate Biden was aghast.  How could America American abandon its allies?  Just twelve months later, former president Trump was horrified when Biden pulled our troops out of Afghanistan and protested vehemently.  Trump’s protests, however, never included the fact that he had been talked out of doing the same thing by his own military advisors.  

Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few goods.  Our current inflation is caused by many factors: the government pumping out stimulus checks, the supply lines backing up because of Covid, the shortage of workers forcing employers to raise salary offerings…but it is easy to see that most of these factors started in early 2020.  If you listen to the two political parties, however…if you listen to either of the political parties…inflation was caused by the evil, intentional, and diabolical plot of the wicked opposition.  

On January 31, 2020, President Donald Trump issued a Level 4 travel ban on non-Americans coming into the country from China.  Almost immediately, several Democrats, including then-candidate Joe Biden, denounced the move as both xenophobic and racist.  Last week, when President Biden banned travel from Africa…well, the best part of it was watching Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, trying to explain the difference while she talked herself around three sides of the barn, looking for the horse whose reins were in her hand.  

All of us should be extremely angry at this performance.  The dancers are clumsy and out of step with the music.  The act is old and desperately needs to be brought in line with something the viewers could appreciate.  The chief problem with virtue signaling is that it doesn’t take long before the signaling is more important than the virtue.

Obviously, it doesn’t really matter who is leading and who is loudly denouncing each and every move: if we just wait a few years, the two dancers will switch places and do it all over again.  Backwards and in high heels.