In this great piece, Lepore puts American politics to a reality test of her own devising. The results are dismaying. But first she plunges into the cauldrons of the 2016 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. She divides her piece into two sections: the first on the Republican Convention in Cleveland; the second on the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. Here’s her opening paragraph:
They perched on bar stools, their bodies long and lean, like eels, the women in sleeveless dresses the color of flowers or fruit (marigold, tangerine), the men in fitted suits the color of embers (charcoal, ash). Makeshift television studios lined the floor and the balcony of the convention hall: CNN, Fox, CBS, Univision, PBS. MSNBC built a pop-up studio on East Fourth Street, a square stage raised above the street, like an outdoor boxing ring. “Who won today? Who will win tomorrow?” the networks asked. The guests slumped against the ropes and sagged in their seats, or straightened their backs and slammed their fists. The hosts narrowed their eyes, the osprey to the fish: “Is America over?”
That “osprey to the fish” is very fine. Lepore is herself osprey to the fish of American politicians, particularly those who throw around the phrase “the people,” which is almost all of them. “Hope comes from the people”; “Donald Trump is for the people!”; “the American people are not falling for it”; and so on. Lepore is deeply skeptical of politicians’ use of that phrase. She says, “Every tyrant from Mao to Perón rules in the name of the people; his claim does not lessen their suffering.” She quotes the historian Edmund S. Morgan: “Government requires make-believe.... Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people.”
Lepore uses everything – water bottles, T-shirts, placards, banners, monuments, ponchos, a jumbo teleprompter, even “a ten-foot-tall American bald eagle, made entirely out of red-white-and-blue Duck Brand duct tape” – to evoke the scene. Nothing escapes her osprey eye.
And then she makes an extraordinary journalistic move. She steps outside the convention hall. She leaves the turmoil behind. She goes to a beautiful city park. In stream-of-consciousness mode, she writes,
The rule inside the Convention was: Incite fear and division in order to call for safety and union. I decided that the rule outside the Convention was: No kidding, it’s really awfully nice out here, in a beautiful city park, on a sunny day in July, where a bunch of people are arguing about politics and nothing could possibly be more interesting, and the Elect Jesus people are giving out free water, icy cold, and the police are playing Ping-Pong with the protesters, and you can take a nap in the grass if you want, and you will dream that you are on a farm because the grass smells kind of horsy, and like manure, because of all the mounted police from Texas, wearing those strangely sexy cowboy hats; and, yes, there are police from all over the country here, and if you ask for directions one of them will say to you, “Girl, I’m from Atlanta!” and you have to know that, if they weren’t here, who knows what would happen; there are horrible people shouting murderous things and tussling, that’s what they came here for, and anything can blow up in an instant; and, yes, there are civilians carrying military-style weapons, but, weirdly, they are less scary here than they are online; they look ridiculous, honestly, and this one lefty guy is a particular creep, don’t get cornered; but, also, there’s a little black girl in the fountain rolling around, getting soaked, next to some white guy who’s sitting there, just sitting there, in the water, his legs kicked out in front of him, holding a cardboard sign that reads “Tired of the Violence.”
I vote that one of the most memorable passages in all of political journalism. Real life is not in the convention hall; it’s out here on the grass of this beautiful park. That’s my take-away from this remarkable piece.
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