Operatic times

Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of an astonishing performance of "Boris Godunov", I realized that this was the second opera this season that concerned an illegitimate ruler and his fate. In the earlier part of the season in "Simon Bocanegra" the ruler was a tragic figure and the end of his reign and life led to renewal through a rediscovered daughter.

But Russian opera is not, in general, optimistic. So Boris Godunov ended with a tableau: the young son of Boris, who was elected when the previous Tsar's 10-year-old son was murdered, sits on the throne, his father dead in front of him, and the menacing figure of one of the senior lords approaching. What happens next?

In this political season, of course, everything seems to resonate. So I was left wondering, "What happens next?" not just in the safety of the stage, but in our own places? I particularly wonder how whoever we elect can possibly govern, given the ways that political campaigns seek, not just to offer clear alternatives, but to delegitimate the opposition. Electoral systems actually rest on the trust that people have that those elected have majority support, and the last two presidential elections here damaged that, if not destroyed it. Beyond that, those elected have to be seen as competent and capable of governing even if policy differences mean we would like a different set of actors. Where legitimacy is lost, globally, violence is a common reaction to the election of those with whom you do not agree. In my worst moments, I worry whether the exceptionalism of the United States-- which is not, pace Sarah Palin, that God loves the US more than other countries-- can survive.

The friend who accompanied us to the opera, also an anthropologist, observed that when Barack Obama made his famous comments in Marin County about some people in the US clinging to guns and religion, she thought "you can see he is the son of an anthropologist". What she meant is that this was not a judgement or even a negative characterization-- quite the contrary, it was the product of the kind of empathy ethnographers develop from familiarity, while ideally retaining enough distance to comment on the people they want to understand. His comment was analytic, perhaps subject to the critique of being too "professorial" (I wince every time being "professorial" is offered as a clear liability in public life). Even at the time, I thought it was in fact correct: when people are not offered the support they need by their government, they hold firmly to the things of value in their life that they can control.

There are many dimensions of this election that are historic, that already have been historic: the first serious female candidate for the presidency; the first candidate of diverse racial background (and can we have that conversation about race, sometime? why is Barack Obama black? what does happen in this country as it moves more toward what I already see here commonly in California, which is an uncategorizable mixture of social, ethnic, and racial positioning?).

I do not accept the argument that the nomination of Sarah Palin is a first-- we already had the first token nomination of a woman as Vice President, and so it should have been an avoidable error this campaign season, and if the Republican party was serious about women in politics, they had an amazing group of qualified and experienced Republican women politicians to nominate. But it is worth noting that, after two or three weeks of silliness --is it sexist to question the qualifications of a woman with less than two years of relevant experience? no-- nor, in my opinion, would it be sexist to hold her and her party accountable for the contradiction between their policies on sex education and the outcomes in their own families, or between their policies towards working mothers and the exceptional support given this one working mother-- it became possible to discuss Palin's unbelievable lack of basic knowledge, naive understandings of global politics, and total ideological commitment untempered by any evidence of policy expertise or interest.

So, there are many historic dimensions to this election. But I wonder if the most historic may be what happens after the election, regardless of who wins: have we reached a point where our national government has been so damaged that it no longer seems able to exercise legitimate leadership?