Anne Waldron Neumann
We live in an academic town surrounded by a great liberal-arts university. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the liberal arts have some bearing on daily life?
They do! For example, the great English novelist Jane Austen could have predicted that Bernie Sanders’ support would come especially from younger voters; Hillary Clinton’s, from older ones.
How could Austen have predicted this? In her novel “Persuasion,” Austen explored how natural it is for young people with less real-world experience to be romantic or idealistic. It’s equally natural for older people, who’ve witnessed many disasters in life and politics, to be more realistic or prudent.
And in Iowa, according to The New York Times, “Only 14 percent of caucus-goers 17 to 29 supported Clinton, while 84 percent supported Sanders.” In New Hampshire, it was virtually identical: 16 versus 83 percent for Clinton versus Sanders.
Now I refuse to quote Georges Clemenceau here, that “Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.”
No, I won’t imply that 74-year-old Democratic socialists from Vermont must lack judgment, however much they may offer in compassion or righteous indignation. But, if YOU had some such quotation in the back of your mind just now, this is one version you may have been remembering.
I will, however, quote Lyndon Johnson, whom, despite Vietnam, I believe to have been a most compassionate man. Johnson famously agreed with Bismarck that “politics is the art of the possible.” But, Johnson also said,
“Frequently in life I have had to settle for progress short of perfection. I have done so because — despite cynics — I believe that half a loaf is better than none. But my acceptance has always been conditioned upon the premise that the half-loaf is a step toward the full loaf and that if I go on working, the day of the full loaf will come.”
“Democrats are a glandular party,” Mark Shields said on a recent PBS “Newshour:” “They like to fall in love.” That is, Shields implied, ALL Democrats lean toward romance or idealism, not just the young ones. Nevertheless, young Democrats — many Democrats — may act in 2016 as they often have in Democratic primary campaigns before 2008. Like many a Jane Austen heroine, Democrats may well fall in love with Bernie but end up marrying Hillary. “You campaign in poetry,” said Mario Cuomo. “You govern in prose.”
What then of Donald Trump? Google defines politics in two senses, as “the activities associated with the governance of a country” but “especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”
Democrats among The Packet’s readers will agree that the Democratic primary campaign has been more about “governance” or issues, the first part of Google’s definition. Republican candidates, on the other hand, have been arguing about politics in that lesser sense of “hoping to achieve power.”
Even Jane Austen would therefore have had little to say about the Republican primary campaign. When people discuss politics in this less exalted sense, Austen knew, they usually end up bored or appalled. Or both. Indeed, as she wrote in “Northanger Abbey,” “From politics, it [is] an easy step to silence.”
Anne Waldron Neumann teaches creative writing in Princeton and is working on a fiction-writing handbook, “Reading and Writing with Jane Austen.”
