Literary Vices, with Rudolph Delson: Edmund Muskie's 'Journeys'

To while away the days until the publication of Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue' memoir on November 17th, Rudolph Delson is reviewing the American vice presidential literary canon.

Here is the quintessence of vice-presidential literature.

It is 1972. It was four years ago that President Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek re-election. It was four years ago that Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy dead. It was four years ago that the sitting Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey, became the Democratic Party's nominee, and it was four years ago that Humphrey chose as his Vice President a dove, an intellectual, a liberal, a native from the distant northern state of Maine: Edmund Sixtus Muskie. And?

And it was four years ago that Muskie and Humphrey lost. But that was four years ago! That was 1968! This, as we can all agree, is 1972! And now Ed Muskie is running for President himself. He has returned to avenge Lyndon Johnson, to avenge Bobby Kennedy, to avenge Hubert H. Humphrey, to avenge the entire Democratic Party-and Muskie's vengeance begins with a memoir.

And from the first page of that memoir, you realize the poor man stands no chance. Muskie begins his book by quoting an adage: "When you have nothing to say, don't try to improve on silence." And then, heartbreakingly, he writes:

I don't know whether this little book will be an improvement on silence, but at the time it is being written, there is some curiosity about who I am, where I'm from, and what I am for.

What ill-timed meekness, what misplaced modesty! Does Muskie even know what it means to run for office against filthy Dick Nixon? (Apparently not: however Muskie's vengeance may have begun, it ended in humiliation, in a snow storm, in New Hampshire, on the steps of the Manchester Union-Leader, with Muskie in tears.) So it is melancholy to read Muskie explain "who I am" and "where I'm from." Here is Muskie on the winters of his youth:

We lived across the road from a hill of fir trees. On a certain Sunday afternoon in December, my father would trudge up and over that hill with his ax. "I'm going to get us a Christmas tree," he'd say. He would come back by late afternoon with a beautiful tree and set it up. When lit, those trees of our would have a hundred candles on them.

And the summers:

We headed for an area called Four Ponds. We went by caboose on a freight train to a station called The Summit and we took along a week's supply of groceries and clothing. Then it was a four-and-a-half-mile hike uphill. We had to carry all our stuff on our backs. But once there, we found paradise.

And the high school sports:

I wandered over to where the high jumpers were practicing and joined them. I seemed to do as well as they were doing. The next day, I ran my event, the half mile, and lost, and then went over to the high jump and won the event. Few other events have come that easily for me.

The poor man wants to be President! And the poor man thinks he can do it by spinning clichés, by telling old yarns!

Muskie picks up his pace when he gets beyond "who I am, where I'm from" and tells us "what I am for." (He is for peace and for ecology-facts that make his memoir even more melancholy). But no artist can fake brilliance, no memoirist can fake insight, and Muskie can be embarrassing when he aims to be profound.

He attempts to describe the plight of black America, but does so in a way that reveals that Muskie presumes his readership to be white. (In this memoir, blacks are "they.") He attempts to show off his foreign policy credentials and sounds like an innocent abroad. ("Much of the travel through Israel was, for me, like a journey through the Bible.") There are sophomoric efforts at reasoning from first principles. ("Let us assume a society in which every person is free to seek and find his or her own level of creativity, attainment, achievement, or prosperity."). There are stunning misjudgments. ("Africa will be one of the most important factors in our foreign policy concerns in the next fifty years.") There are puns. ("Much of our Gross National Product is truly gross.") This, then, is Edmund Muskie: half wise, half foolish, and irredeemably platitudinous.

But in 2009, platitudes may be what is needed. And so, for the newest entrant into the annuls of vice presidential literature, Sarah Palin, from one of the greats, Edmund Muskie, here are some platitudes:

Americans in every section of the country are frustrated by the number and complexity of our problems … the backlog in educational needs, persistent unemployment, inflation and housing shortages, unfair taxes, pollution, inadequate health care, poverty, and racial tensions. They wonder if there is any real way to make a change. In such a climate the way of the demagogue is easy. He…

…or she…

can play on fears, exacerbate frictions, exaggerate difficulties and differences. There is in the successful demagogue a touch of genius, but such candidates make effective speeches and poor Presidents.

Sweet Muskie! Rest in peace!

Previously: 'Standing Firm: A Vice Presidential Memoir' by Dan Quayle

Rudolph Delson lives in Brooklyn. He has won no awards and earned no distinctions. His novel "Maynard & Jennica" is now available in paperback.