Djelloul Marbrook

Hey, you want to hear something poets know that politicians don’t know? (Hell, I’m not sure the press, those prolix word meisters, know this either.) You know all the talk we’ve heard about George Bush and Sarah Palin and John McCain not being able to parse a sentence, right? Well, what poets know is that it’s not about not being able to parse a sentence, it’s about not being able to parse a thought.

In other words, not being able to parse a sentence—or even finish it—strongly suggests an inability to think something through to its logical end. So we’re not just talking about a speech defect here, some failure to maintain an oratorical Plimsoll, we’re talking about minds that don’t know how to get where they’re going and may not even know where they’re going. We’re talking about not being able to navigate from A to Z.

Ask any poet about this. I can’t count the times I’ve hurriedly written something down whose sound I like only to decide it didn’t get where I intended it to go. Sounded pretty but didn’t make sense or opened itself to too many interpretations or misunderstandings. So I’ve had to retool the sentence. And more often than not I’ve junked the would-be poem. A poet has that luxury, but politicians find it difficult to junk their public statements, so they blame the press for twisting their words. Usually it’s more often the case of the press not being able to untwist the pretzel.

Admittedly, in the case of Governor Palin, President Bush and Senator McCain we’d rather they not try to retool. It would be like a colonoscopy.

I often harbored the suspicion that the White House press corps nursed a grudge against Bill Clinton because he understood what he was talking about even if they didn’t. Nobody likes a know-it-all, even though he sure could sugar-coat his smarts. I think Bill Clinton reminded reporters of all those professors who could make everything sound simple, and it just plain ticked them off. It was like watching Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and having to slap yourself upside the head because you had forgotten that Hitler was the bad guy.

But the American people in their always-surprising wisdom have elected somebody who finishes his sentences, and this ability didn’t even put them off. We know Barack Obama finishes his thoughts, too. They get to where they’re going. Let’s hope his policies follow suit. Let’s hope he’s not thwarted by politicians who can’t finish their sentences and don’t know where their thoughts are going.

The press has now let John McCain off the hook. Seemingly he’ll never have to explain what victory in Iraq meant. He has good company. President Bush never knew either, and he’s going back to Crawford proud of not knowing, proud of not changing his mind about what he never knew in the first place.

And we’re stuck with a man heading for our White House who finishes his thoughts and seems to arrive at fathomable conclusions. How will the press deal with that? Probably with as much sulk as they dealt with Bill Clinton. They’re uncomfortable with people who think faster than they do. It’s going to be fun. Attention teachers of English: watch this carefully, you can’t teach any better than this.—DM