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Wednesday, December 19, 2018
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The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Commentary:
Finding the heart
of Christmas at a
nursing home
BY SILVIO LACCETTI
Tribune News Service
At this time of year, many Americans
become deeply conscious of essential living:
love of family, enjoyment of friends, the value
of “quality time” and the joys of simply being
alive. Especially in these trying political times,
many people of all faiths now fervently attempt
to gain deeper sustenance and satisfaction from
religious holidays. To appreciate life’s bless
ings in the midst of turmoil, we will all just try
harder.
Maybe we should try less.
Often, and ironically, less can be more.
Miraculously more. With only a little oil, the
lamps of the Maccabees burned brightly for
eight days, the miracle of Hanukkah. On Christ
mas, a Divine Child was born in a manger — of
all places — surrounded by farm animals and
worried refugee parents. In these instances,
less proved to be more.
Simply trying harder to celebrate life and its
meaning can produce incongruities. This year
we may stretch our budgets buying Phones,
or AirPods or VR headsets as gifts. But trying
harder can lead to excess. It can obscure the
heart of the matter.
The heart of Christmas is complicated; it is
also amazing in its simplicity. Remember the
old phrase, “Peace on Earth, good will toward
men”? (Nowadays it has been translated and
re-translated away.) Implicit in this phrase
is the hope that humanity can live within the
boundaries of its better nature. Accepting our
better natures juxtaposes uncertainty, frailty
and fear alongside the hope, the strength and
the sustenance that we humans can and do give
to each other daily.
It is certainly possible to find the heart of
Christmas in various unexpected places. I found
it in a seemingly most unlikely place, and I rec
ommend that place to you.
I speak of a nursing home. According to all
the statistics I receive from insurance compa
nies and groups like AARP, it is a virtual cer
tainty that, at some time in the future, we will
either ourselves be confined there for several
years or we will be visiting a loved one there.
In our world, nursing home residents are
the most marginal of all the living — almost
ignored, almost forgotten, except on the
holidays.
In the nursing home the great themes of
life and death, decline and sustenance are
played out every day. Here is where essential
unadorned humanity reposes. Here every min
ute can be an eternity of quality time. Every
occasion can be a celebration of life in the val
ley of the shadows. In a nursing home, every
day can be the day before or the day after a
personal tragedy.
Odd isn’t it, that in a place whence almost no
residents ever return, there should be so much
potential for life, living and giving. Every day is
Christmas when tomorrow may never come.
A personal lesson
I learned all of this firsthand a few years ago.
This discovery was dramatically embodied in a
Christmas Eve visit to my mother who had been
confined in a nursing home for several years.
It being the time of visitation, my mother and
I journeyed to the top floor for our usual private
visit in the social room that was decorated for
the season. Now at this time there were gath
ered six or seven people, (patients and their
older relatives, not a young person to be found)
engaged in their own Christmas visits. We all
acknowledged one another, but did not conjoin
our visits.
It being Christmas, I decided to play the
piano, a few of the traditional religious carols.
But instead of my playing the piano, I took my
mother’s hand and began playing “Silent Night”
with her frail index finger. We sang. It was soft,
not very tuneful.
Surprisingly we were joined by the voices of
all the others from various parts of the large
room. Softly we sang our songs united in our
desire to celebrate the season and the good
news of Christ’s birth. Eight or nine frail wor
ried people joined together in a harmony of the
soul.
Upon hearing this out-of-tune, out-of-phase
impromptu concert, the activities director
emerged from her office and asked if we’d like
to have some real music played on tapes to lis
ten to and sing along with.
Amazingly, everyone said no. We were all
satisfied with our own performance, our own
offering to the season.
A poor thing it may have been, but ours it
was, original, authentic, communal and alive.
This “little” was, for all of us, much preferred
to the “more,” which records, tapes or brass
bands could have brought.
For me, that night remains one of my bright
est Christmas memories and the most unex
pected one.
Less was certainly more that Christmas and
we didn’t have to try hard to find it. This season,
I hope others will find, unexpectedly, in some
unlikely way, the heart of Christmas.
Silvio Laccetti is a retired professor of history
at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken,
N.J. This essay is revised and updated from an
essay published in his last book, “An American
Commentary (2014),” a collection of his editorial
essays.
Trump sabotaging himself (and
his party) by pandering to base
Remember the old saw
about the salesman who
loses money on every sale
but thinks he can make up
the shortfall by selling in
volume?
That’s what comes to mind
every time I hear people
say that President Trump is
being shrewd by pandering
to his base.
Consider last week’s
remarkable Oval Office
meeting between Rep. Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
and Trump. (There is photo evidence,
but no audio, to suggest that Vice Presi
dent Mike Pence was also in the room.)
What was supposed to be a brief photo
op turned into a dramatic confrontation
when the president invited television
cameras to stay for the conversation.
As always happens after one of these
political reality-show spectacles, the
chattering classes set out to score the
bout. According to conventional rules,
Pelosi and Schumer came out the win
ners. They got Trump to admit that if
there’s a government shutdown over
border wall funding, it will be all his
doing. (Just before the meeting, congres
sional Republicans were pre-spinning a
“Schumer shutdown.”) Pelosi solidified
her claim to the House leadership while
Trump made future bipartisan deals
with the Democrats — something he
reportedly wants — less likely.
According to The Los Angeles Times’
Eli Stokols, even Trump realized he was
taken when it was over: He “stormed
out” of the meeting and threw a folder
of briefing papers across the room.
Yet there was a loud contrarian
analysis that said Trump came out a
winner. Why? Because his
base loves this stuff.
“If you are a supporter
of the president’s policies,”
wrote the Daily Beast’s Matt
Lewis (no Trump booster
himself), “this was an espe
cially welcome display — a
rare example of a president
publicly fighting for his pol
icy goal: a border wall.”
Across Fox News opinion
shows and right-wing talk
radio, the view that Trump won was
nearly unanimous.
Even Yahoo News’ Matt Bai, a decid
edly left-leaning observer, excoriated
liberals for not understanding that
“Trump knows that every time he
flouts the staid convention of the office,
every time he does the thing that seems
inappropriate among the political set,
he’s winning with the chunk of the elec
torate he still has.”
Sure. The problem is that chunk is
not a majority.
Bai’s larger observation — that
Trump is so embattled he can’t afford
to lose his hard-core supporters — is a
good one in the context of gaming out
how Trump can survive impeachment.
When looking at what advances this
administration’s agenda or is good for
the Republican Party, however, “his
base loves it” doesn’t score any points.
Worse, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.
As he sheds the mostly suburban voters
who gave him his margin of victory in
2016, of course he clings more tightly
to those who celebrate the behaviors
that are bleeding the GOP of support.
They’re the only ones left. Proclaiming
that “his base loves it” may be an expla
nation, but it’s no excuse. And it misses
the point if you care about the GOP’s
long-term viability or even Trump’s re-
election prospects. He’s going to need
more voters than his amen chorus.
Last month’s midterms showed what
a national election looks like when
only Trump enablers feel highly moti
vated to vote Republican. The GOP lost
Orange County, California, the ances
tral home of the conservative move
ment. New England now has more GOP
governors than Republican members
of Congress. In Iowa, the GOP lost all of
its House races save for uber-Trumpy
Steve King’s. A party in which only big
oted goons like King can thrive by fuel
ing white resentment is destined for the
dustbin of history.
The irony here is that Trump’s base
will forgive him for nearly anything.
He easily could have used the wall as
leverage to gain Democratic support
for mandating that all employers use
E-Verify to confirm a prospective
employee has legal immigration sta
tus. This is what serious immigration
hawks have implored him to do — and
he’d get credit for being the great deal-
maker he claims to be.
But the larger irony is that his base-
service has led him to this very predic
ament: shutdown or back down.
Most presidents try to expand their
coalition while holding onto their base.
Trump has shrunk his coalition and laid
the foundation for future shrinkage by
forcing his party to endorse this behav
ior. Trump will be gone soon enough,
but at this rate the party of Trump will
be a rump party.
Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of
National Review Online and a visiting
fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute.
JONAH GOLDBERG
goldbergcolumn@
gmail.com
"No matter how hectic the holidays,
there's still time to make a difference."
JIM POWELL I For The Times
Early voting, Super Tuesday changing 2020 campaign
In recent weeks, Sen. Cory
Booker and Reps. Tulsi Gab
bard and Eric Swalwell have
visited New Hampshire.
Booker and his Senate col
leagues Kamala Harris and
Amy Klobuchar have turned
up in Iowa, and a local Demo
cratic official there said the
reaction to rumors that Rep.
Beto O’Rourke had been spot
ted was “like Beto-mania.”
We know what this means.
With the midterm elections
over, the 2020 presidential election cam
paign has begun, and Democrats inter
ested in winning their party’s nomination
— which, this time, is a lot of Democrats
— are making the trek to Des Moines
and Manchester to get in touch with the
voters who’ll have the first say two years
from now.
That’s the way it has been since
Jimmy Carter put Iowa on the map in
1976, elevating its party caucus to the sta
tus already enjoyed by the New Hamp
shire primary, as “early states” with a
key role on the nomination process. The
Nevada caucus and South Carolina pri
mary have since been added to this short
list of states allowed by the two parties to
hold their contests in February.
Over time, the logic of candidates stak
ing so much on a few small states at the
beginning of the line has eroded, as other
states have moved their primary and
caucus calendars up closer and closer
to the February no-go zone. There have
been a series of Super Tuesdays over
the past several cycles — big
combinations of states vot
ing early to increase their
impact. But there’s been noth
ing to compare with the Super
Tuesday coming in 2020.
On March 3,2020, nine
states including California
and Texas plan to hold pri
maries. It’s not a national
primary, but in terms of raw
numbers of voters it’s a huge
cross-section, with two super
states in the mix.
But that’s not all that makes the 2020
campaign a threat to the old norms of
presidential campaigning. California
mails out ballots for voters who prefer to
vote early on Feb. 3, the same day as the
Iowa caucuses.
Texas may also allow early voting that
begins in February. So campaign manag
ers trying to figure out where to spend
their last resources are going to face
some stark choices.
California had early March primaries
in 1996,2000 and 2004, but the legislature
moved it back to June because the early
primary had made their own general
election races longer and more expen
sive. California’s early vote was a big
help to George W. Bush in 2000 and John
Kerry in 2004.
In 2020, California’s early primary
could give Harris a boost, while Texas
could be a great launch for O’Rourke.
It will be a while before those things
become clear. What we know already is
that only those who have won the com
petition for money over the coming year
will be able to compete in these huge
media markets. For the Democrats,
winning the battle for $25 internet con
tributions may be tantamount to winning
Super Tuesday.
In stories up to now, these develop
ments have been treated as if they mat
tered only to the Democrats, the assump
tion being that Donald Trump has a solid
lock on his party’s base and is assured
the nomination. But suppose Trump
decides not to run for a second term
after all, or that his current problems
multiply to the point that they generate
a serious challenge within the GOP?
Then the calendar matters a lot, and the
battle for Texas becomes particularly
interesting.
Iowa and New Hampshire won’t be
entirely overshadowed in this process,
but not for the old reasons. They are no
longer going to be states where candi
dates go to spend lots of “retail time”
with voters, trailed by camera crews.
There just won’t be as much time for
that on the 2020 calendar. But every
campaign needs a place to begin, and
the nationally televised debates in these
early states will still get a lot of attention.
Georgia hasn’t officially designated
a date for its presidential primaries in
2020, a matter the new governor and the
legislature will presumably take up in
the upcoming session.
Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist
who writes for The Saporta Report.
TOM BAXTER
tom@saporta
report.com
She Stines
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