Walz-worriers should read this Maugham short story, ahead of Vance debate
Ahead of the October 1 US vice-presidential debate – the only face-off, literally – between Tim Walz and J D Vance, there have been a bunch of reports about Democrats’ private worry that their man will somehow come off as a rough diamond.
Mr Walz, governor of Minnesota, with a down home Mid-western vibe – and plaid shirts to match – will appear less polished, they fear.
Against Mr Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and Ohio senator for the past two years, Mr Walz may seem too bumbling and awkward, according to several anonymous quotes in a Politico piece on the subject.
But more damning than those quotes is the description appended to the shadowy speakers. They are variously said to be an “ally” of Mr Walz, “a Minnesota Democratic operative”, “a Minnesota state lawmaker from Walz’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party” and “half a dozen other Democratic state legislators”.
These people, who claim to worry about Mr Walz, are therefore also heard – loud and clear – on what they haven’t said: they’re profoundly unsure he has it in him to succeed. They aren’t sure he can prevail.
Please note: they are unsure he can prevail, not whether he will prevail. In other words, those Walz-worriers seem to suspect their man is a hopeless case.
Obviously, no one can be sure how something as unpredictable as a live political debate will go. And Mr Vance is undoubtedly a sharp debater, with the ability to speak glibly and smilingly as he wields sharp words like knives, thrusting them deep into supposedly gaping cultural wounds, then twisting…turning and pulling the weapon out, only to plunge it in again. As one analyst has said, Mr Vance is a confident and sharp-edged man and he is set to face an avuncular but cautious governor.
And yet, and yet…for some reason, Tim Walz’s policy positions, the way he speaks and that of which he speaks reminds me of Salvatore, a short story by Somerset Maugham. Click here for a link to the story. Just a few hundred words long, the piece starts with Maugham musing, “I wonder if I can do it”.
And it ends as follows: “I started by saying that I wondered if I could do it and now I must tell you what it is that I have tried to do. I wanted to see whether I could hold your attention for a few pages while I drew for you the portrait of a man, just an ordinary fisherman who possessed nothing in the world except a quality which is the rarest, the most precious and the loveliest that anyone can have. Heaven only knows why he should so strangely and unexpectedly have possessed it. All I know is that it shone in him with a radiance that, if it had not been unconscious and so humble, would have been to the common run of men hardly bearable. And in case you have not guessed what the quality was, I will tell you. Goodness, just goodness”.
For some reason, Tim Walz reminds me just a bit of that ordinary Italian fisherman described by Maugham. Why else would he take inordinate pride in feeding every schoolchild in Minnesota?
