Of all the reasons that Maine residents were given to vote for Graham Platner in his race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate — and many of them boiled down to beating Donald Trump and Republicans — the most disturbing one came from Bill Maher.
After telling his HBO audience ahead of the primary that “we need to restore balance in our government, and a Democratic Senate would help a lot with that,” the talk-show host explained that, actually, we are all Graham Platner.
“Get used to it,” he said. “America is a country filled with a lot of broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted, sort of nutty people. And as long as we live in a representative democracy, we are always electing our reflection in the mirror.”
I don’t know that I would call Maher a serious thinker, but a lot of people I respect have gone on his show. And he is someone who encourages free speech and open debate more than the typical talking head. So I wonder whether this view is more common among the American populace than I’d like to think.
Is America a country filled with broken, horribly educated, phone addicted, nutty people? Without getting theological, there is no doubt that Americans (like all human beings) are not perfect and most of us are struggling in one way or another. If we are to believe the latest reports from the U.S. Department of Education, 1 in 4 young adults are functionally illiterate. So horribly educated? Check. We’re averaging more than five hours a day on our phones, too. Are we nutty? Let’s say the headlines are not encouraging.
Are we Graham Platner though? Is the man with the Nazi tattoo representative of America? Are most of us sending sexually suggestive messages to people besides our spouses? Do most veterans denigrate their fellow soldiers? Are most boyfriends locking women in bedrooms or twisting their arms behind their backs? I sure hope not.
Even Maher acknowledges that he finds Platner’s behavior frightening. “I wish the tattoo was the scariest thing about Platner. It’s not. That would be his solution to a home invasion, which is to rape the home invader.”
But the question is whether to simply accept awful behavior from our politicians because we are awful people. Are we electing a mirror image of ourselves? That is, as Maher no doubt knows, not what representative democracy means. Which is not to say it’s a new justification.
When the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was released during the 2016 presidential campaign, it was not uncommon to hear Donald Trump’s defenders say that his thoughts on “grabbing women” were just “locker room” talk, as if men all over the country regularly say such things behind closed doors. Maybe some do, but does that mean we want them to be said by the president of the United States? Or any prominent figure in public? Is it hypocritical to expect people to behave a different way in public than they do in locker rooms? Yes, and that’s fine.
Reading the recent obituary of Bob Packwood — the senator from Oregon who was forced to resign after allegations of years of sexual misconduct with more than 20 women surfaced — is a reminder that this is not a new struggle. How should voters weigh the possibility of “winning” against a record of disgusting behavior? Even many feminist groups were torn about whether to push for Packwood’s ouster because he was a liberal Republican and a staunch ally of abortion rights.
Americans have long been attracted to the idea that our politicians should be relatable. As the saying goes, is this a person you would want to have a beer with? There is a populist impulse too that our politicians should not think they are better than us. Heaven forbid a lawmaker gets tagged as an elitist. It is not that Americans demand a politician who is perfect. And maybe our standards for behavior (as well as education and general nuttiness) have declined in recent years. But many of us haven’t given up hope that it is still possible to elect decent human beings to political office.