Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I Like Ike

People tend to look back, not in anger, but in wistfulness. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and it filters out the bad times and highlights the good. Our high-school years tend to be more sweet than bitter, because those were the years of early discovery, of awakening to life’s possibilities.

But a reading of history, when you are older, often throws a bucket of cold water on those memories. The sixties, no matter what your personal experiences, must be counted as a bad time in America (and, for that matter, in Europe). It was a decade of assassinations and pointless wars and social unrest. The forties, romanticized today by the strains of Vera Lynn singing “We’ll Meet Again,” saw unspeakable horror. The decade of the thirties was also elevated by its music. Depression? Not if you listen to the score of 42d Street. We’re in the money, ready to shuffle off to Buffalo.

But the fifties – ah, there was a time to savor. With Dwight Eisenhower looking over us, the Soviet Union a threat that had yet to materialize, Japan devastated and China still in its dark ages, we had nothing to do but enjoy life and a monopoly of economic power. The colleges were full of students (the GI bill), television offered Playhouse 90 and Sid Caesar (nothing that would offend your wife or mother), and Ted Williams and Warren Spahn delighted Boston baseball fans. There was a war in Korea, but our cause was unambiguous (the North invaded the South), and there were no protests. The fifties were not unalloyed bliss (what is?), but looking back over the sweep of the last seven-plus decades, the fifties stand out as a sort of golden age in the United States.

If you’ve been reading these blogs for a while, you know that one of my passions centers on the American musical theater, and so it must be mentioned that most aficionados believe that the fifties constituted the golden age of musicals. Guys and Dolls led the parade, followed down Broadway by The King and I, The Pajama Game, Fanny, Silk Stockings, Damn Yankees, My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella, West Side Story, The Music Man, The Sound of Music, and so many other evergreen shows.

Could we have another decade like it? No; it was sui generis, bookcased by a unique set of circumstances – a world war behind, Vietnam to come. But I keep coming back to the reassuring presence of Dwight Eisenhower in the White House. He is usually not numbered among the great presidents, but maybe he should be. Is there such a reassuring presence waiting in the wings today? The only person I can think of is Colin Powell. He alone has the temperament, the gravitas, the presence to be another Eisenhower, but he has declined to run.

It will be interesting to see how the country shakes out after the elections. The atmosphere is so toxic as to make national unity difficult, and a deepening recession may make it impossible. The new president will have to reach across party lines in the composition of his cabinet and in the formation of his policies – immediately and dramatically. Anything less will guarantee four years of the kind of hate-filled politics we never knew back in the good old days.