Years ago, in her novel Speedboat, Renata Adler commented on the reversibility of everyday life. The Nixon tapes, of course (Adler was writing in the early 1970s). Divorce. Abortion. I was in a period of my life when I did not trust my own choices - who was I and what were the decisions that would stick? I was too young to have learned that life is not an orderly progression (from high school to college, from college to grad school and career and success), that even the straight-A student can falter and fail.
(I learned another lesson later, that the straight-C student, the one who worked his way through school, social chair of his fraternity, son of a single mother, might have advantages I had not know existed in my orderly world. But I digress.)
But there are no do-overs in political campaigns. There are attempts - if they work, they're called reframing, and if they don't, they're tagged as flip-flopping - but one can't rerun the past six months - or even take back a single dumb remark.
Campaign critics are in full analytical cry: what went wrong, tarnished legacy, etc. But what really are the lessons learned?
I went to a Jewish funeral a few months ago. This is Alvin Fine's version of the traditional prayer:
From defeat to defeat to defeat-
Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
But life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage-
To life everlasting.
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