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THE GREAT MANLINESS FLIP-FLOP  
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Tom Nichols
July 24, 2024
The Atlantic
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_ When it comes to masculinity, Republicans have become everything
they once accused Democrats of being. _

, norman_786

 

America after World War II celebrated traditional masculinity. It
venerated images of the strong, silent types in popular culture,
characters who exuded confidence without being braggarts and who sent
the message that being an honorable man meant doing your job, being
good to your family, and keeping your feelings to yourself. Heroes in
that postwar culture were cowboys, soldiers, cops, and other tough
guys.

Republicans, in particular, admired the actors who played these role
models, including Clint Eastwood, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, and, of
course, Ronald Reagan, who turned art into reality after he was shot:
He apologized
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his wife for forgetting to duck and kidded with his surgeons about
whether they were all Republicans before they dug a bullet out of him.

After the 1960s, the GOP defined itself as a guardian of this stoic
manliness in opposition to the putative femininity of Democratic men.
(Remember, by this point, Democrats such as Reagan had already
defected to the Republicans.) Democrats were guys who, in Republican
eyes, looked like John Lennon
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with ponytails and glasses and wrinkled linen shirts. To them,
Democratic men weren’t men; they were boys who tore up their draft
cards and cried and shouted and marched and shared their inner
feelings—all of that icky stuff that real men don’t do.

These liberal men were ostensibly letting down their family and their
country. This prospect was especially shameful during the Cold War
against the Soviets, who were known to be virile, 10-foot-tall giants.
(The Commies were so tough that they drank liquid nitrogen and smoked
cigarettes made from plutonium.)

Most of this was pure hooey, of course. Anyone who grew up around the
working class knew plenty of tough Democratic men; likewise, plenty of
country-club Republicans never lifted anything heavier than a martini
glass weighted down with cocktail onions. But when the educational
divide between the right and the left grew larger, Republican men
adhered even more strongly to old cultural stereotypes while
Democratic men, more urbanized and educated, identified less and less
with images of their fathers and grandfathers in the fields and
factories.

In the age of Donald Trump, however, Republicans have become much of
what they once claimed to see in Democrats. The reality is that
elected Democratic leaders are now (to borrow from the title of a
classic John Wayne movie [[link removed]]) the
quiet men, and Republicans have become full-on hysterics, screaming
about voting machines and Hunter Biden and drag queens while trying
to impeach
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Harris for … being female while on duty, or something.

Consider each candidate’s shortlist for vice president. Trump was
choosing from a shallow and disappointing barrel that included perhaps
one person—Doug Burgum
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fell into the traditional Republican-male stereotype: a calm,
soft-spoken businessman in his late 60s from the Great Plains. The
rest—including Byron Donalds, Marco Rubio, J. D. Vance, and Tim
Scott, a man who once made his virginity a campaign issue—were like
a casting sheet for a political opéra bouffe.

As I have written, Trump is hands down America’s unmanliest
president
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despite the weird pseudo-macho culture
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his fans have created around him—and despite his moment of defiance
after a bullet grazed his ear. I give him all the credit in the world
for those few minutes; I have no idea if I’d have that much presence
of mind with a few gallons of adrenaline barreling through my veins.
But true to form, he then wallowed in the assassination attempt like
the narcissist he is, regaling
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faithful at the Republican National Convention about how much human
ears can bleed. As it turns out, one moment of brave fist-pumping
could not overcome a lifetime of unmanly behavior.

And so, Trump’s choice of Vance made sense. Vance, who honorably
served four years in the Marines, is now a plutocrat who ran for
Senate with artless griping
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how childless cat ladies are going to destroy American civilization.
It was a pick that probably seemed safe
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even funny, when the Biden campaign was fading, especially if Trump
thought he had found someone next to whom he could appear mature and
tough.

Now consider the men on Kamala Harris’s shortlist, including
Governors Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and
Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. All
of them are men of substance who have achieved political success as
Democrats in states with heavy GOP representation. They have made
reputations as guys who do their job and don’t whine about it. You
may take issue with some of their politics—I do—but these are
serious people, unlike the performative clowns who abased themselves
for a man whose values they once claimed to reject.

I do not lean in particular toward any of these shortlisters, and I
have no special insight or information here that would lead me to
speculate about outcomes in the veepstakes. Presidential
ticket-balancing is often an ugly and unpredictable business, but I
assume that Harris is not going to run on a ballot that is all female
or all Black or, for that matter, all West Coast or all anything else.
(The late, great P. J. O’Rourke captured the unloveliness of this
process when he once snarked
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in 1988, the Democratic candidate, Governor Michael Dukakis of
Massachusetts, “went with the high-concept ticket-balancing choice
of [Texas Senator] Lloyd Bentsen, who was two hundred fifty years old
and a little to the right of Albert Speer.”)

Kelly, in particular, stands in stark contrast to the pitiable men of
the national GOP. An Irish American born and raised in New Jersey, he
became a pilot in the Navy after attending the United States Merchant
Marine Academy. He flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm
and then became an astronaut—just like his twin brother, Scott, who
commanded the International Space Station.

On January 8, 2011, his wife, then-Representative Gabby Giffords of
Arizona, was shot in the head by a deranged attacker while she was
meeting with her constituents outside a supermarket. Kelly proceeded
to fulfill one of the most important obligations for any man or woman:
He took care of his injured family member. He retired from the
military and left NASA shortly after Giffords was shot, and eight
years later—after supporting Giffords through the grueling early
stages of her recovery—he ran for Senate.

Kelly is not an electrifying speaker (nor is Cooper), but neither is
Vance. Trump thought he was buying some sort of life story about
hillbilly toughness
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Vance, but he may find that his submissive running mate does not
compare well with someone like the imposing Kelly, his years of
military service, and his history of devotion to a wife nearly killed
by an assassin.

One other thing I notice about Kelly, Shapiro, and Cooper: I hardly
know what their voices sound like. John Adams once said
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George Washington that he had “the gift of silence.” I wish some
Republican men had it. My ears have had to endure GOP officials who
cannot stop talking—the streams of gibberish
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Trump, the self-contradicting sophism of Lindsey Graham, the babbling
of the insufferable Vivek Ramaswamy. It is a relief to hear men who
talk like normal human beings instead of like a raging street preacher
or the Guy Everyone Hated in Their Graduate Seminar
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More than 40 years ago, the British singer Joe Jackson wrote a song
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changing roles, and sexual identity. “But now and then,” he sang,
“we wonder who the real men are.” I don’t know the answer; like
most men, I have tried to find my own way as a man, as a husband, and
as a father. I’ve tried to learn from my own father’s mistakes
while emulating his better qualities. I know that, like many men,
I’ve failed more often than I’ve succeeded. But I keep trying.

I also know this: The real men are not the ones who have to keep
crowing about manliness and putting down women. Real men serve their
nation, their community, and their family, and unlike Trump and his
elected Republican coterie, they do it without whining or demanding
credit.

_Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and an author of
the Atlantic Daily newsletter
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is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval
War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the
Harvard Extension School._

* Waiting for Superman
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