The President’s Body

I know a lot about the President’s body. How the tops of his hands are discolored by blotches that may or may not imply dread disease. How his ankles are swollen from veinous insufficiency, which his doctors pooh-pooh as one of the infirmities of older age. How he taps his right leg overlooking the tarmac before descending the steps that lead from Air Force One (or Two, depending on the security issues of the day). It would appear that he has to reactivate that leg to keep himself from face-planting on the asphalt. It would also appear that he struggles at his desk. Given the number of times he dozes, it’s a matter of days before he face-plants on the Resolute. We worried about Biden, but Trump may be worse.

Or maybe we’re paying too much attention. No one seems genuinely interested in his health, as if it were a matter of tender concern. This is rather a kind of Shakespearean parlor game, where the body of the monarch is a proxy for the kingdom. When it is healthy, the realm is healthy. When it is out of joint, the matter must be put to rights, usually by the replacement of the king.

There is now an endless list of political infirmities that Donald Trump has inflicted on the nation, from intractable wars that have assumed the feel of permanence to the excited pursuit of law-abiding immigrants who are no threat at all but serve as a useful wedge issue. Each of these debilities is now matched to a failing body part, from the loss of his hari to the aphasic speech patterns.

But part of this phenomenon is also a political fantasy, that no political exertion will be required of our party and that nature, itself, will sweep Trump from our midst. It is a version of the hope we placed in Robert Mueller or, later in the game, in former prosecutor Jack Smith. Neither succeeded in moving the needle. The same with Merrick Garland who did not a whit better. All of these men may have been heroes, but their efforts at justice came to nothing at all and should have cured us of our appetite for fantasy.

Removing Trump and what he represents will take much more than wishful thinking. Schadenfreude has its place in the human psyche, but as a focus for an electorate it is merely a distraction. We have to disengage from the narrative about Donald Trump’s body to focus cleanly on what’s really wrong with his tenure: cataclysmic corruption, cruelty beyond measure, blindness to consequences, and catastrophic miscalculation. If his presidency is cut short by declining health, there will still be trouble emanating from those he leaves behind. This band of miscreants must be defeated at the polls. No other “solution” promises a return to health.