CXXXVII. The Darkhorse Candidate for President

Editor's Note: The World Cup has shown the strength of diversity in the world, and a moment to pause from the purposeful chaos of the current regime.

Last month, I stayed up late with my daughter to watch the final episode of the Late Show. After ten years in the chair, and thirty three years of the show running, Stephen Colbert and the Late Show were put out to pasture. The network called it a financial decision. Maybe it was. I strongly doubt it. But more than the show, it is worth noticing what kind of man they cancelled, because the country is starving for exactly what he represents.

We say we want authenticity. We use the word on everything, including in our taste, personality, and belongings.

But we tend to reward the opposite at every turn in buying cheap goods, following extravagant individuals with shallow beliefs, and handing the microphone to whoever performs the loudest, then we act surprised or dumb when the performance turns out to be all there ever was.

Colbert is that rare public figure who has never asked you to guess who he is. Twenty years in the public and he is the same man who walked off the stage. That sounds small but in this era of appearance masquerading as intelligence, it is nearly extinct.

Look at what he is, and then look at the list of things we claim to admire in a leader.

We say we honor people who keep their vows. He has been married to the same woman for more than thirty years.

We say we respect those who survive loss and come out whole instead of cruel. He was ten years old when his father and two of his brothers boarded a plane and never came home, and he has spent his life turning that grief into something close to grace. He told Anderson Cooper that he has learned to love the thing he most wishes had not happened. That is extraordinary.

We say we want a work ethic that shows decency toward the people who work with you and for you. Ask the two hundred people whose jobs ended with his show and how he treated them across the decade on air.

For many Christians, some of whom have been the loudest of all in supporting the current regime, they say they want faith that looks like the Gospel and not a charlatan.

Colbert taught Sunday school and can quote you scripture and Tolkien in the same breath. He is a man who has actually wrestled with belief, much different from the ones who wave it like a flag and have never once read the bible or sensed the spiritual message.

Here is the part that may intrigue you.

He has not ruled out running for president.

Asked on Seth Meyers whether he might run for office, Colbert said he would have to discuss it with his faith leader and his family, and that if there were a way to serve the country greater than a television show, he would consider it. That’s not a joke.

We have been trained to treat public service or running for office as cynical or naive. I know. I’ve done both. People assume everyone has an angle, and that cynicism is really what the con men are counting on. The moment you decide there is nobody honest, no one authentic, that is a win for those who rely on you to give up and not really look at who is running.

He would not be the first entertainer to cross into politics. Ronald Reagan spent decades in front of a camera and the political class of his day scoffed that an actor could be trusted with an office. The job has never required a résumé in government, but it should require character, judgment, and the ability to use words to call people toward their better selves instead of their worst fears.

We have spent several years now watching what happens when you elect an entertainer who has none of those qualities. We learned that the camera does not make the man. So no, it is not far fetched. A decent, funny, grieving, faithful man who has told the truth in public for twenty years, and never needed a focus group to tell him his own convictions, is not a strange candidate for high office. He is the kind we keep saying we want and then keep declining to choose. There have been far worse tickets than one with Colbert's name on it, and unfortunately, we have voted for many of them.

The end of the Late Show does not have to be the end of the story. Sometimes the man who loses is the man who ends up winning. There is really no question on whether he is qualified. He has years of proof of being able to string original thought together and do it in a manner both entertaining and enlightening.

If we truly value honesty, faith, family, and decency we ought to have the conviction to vote for such individuals when they finally show up wearing a face we can recognize.

I miss the Mississippi Kites that used to nest in the tree across the street. The tree came down in a storm and I still wonder where they ended up. More than that, I am staggered by the fact that they came back at all, year after year, to the same tree, the same branch, in the same neighborhood. Something in their biology holds an address the world did not give them a map to read. We have the black-capped chickadees in the tangerine tree now, low enough to feel exposed, hidden enough that they returned a second year. The same family, a new one, I cannot tell. What I know is that birds were built for exactly the life they live, and we were not. So we built our own wings, conquered every sphere, and still I find myself stopping to look for a hawk when I hear the mockingbirds scolding. Robert Macfarlane's new book captures what I mean. Anytime you need a rest, look and listen for the birds.

Stewart Brand is eighty-seven, and he has not stopped giving back to the world. He and his wife Ryan Phelan have spent more than forty years together and now they are building a home in Petaluma designed so they can grow old in it. I am at the age where that stops being an afterthought. You start walking through your own rooms asking whether they are ready for the person you are becoming. What I took from this Wired profile is not morbid. It is the opposite. You prepare a place as honestly as you can, and then you refuse to spend the years you have left bracing for the end. You keep planting things. You keep loving the person across the table. You keep living! Brand spent his life telling a generation it had the tools to build a world that was sustainable, and he appears to be doing it all the way to the end.

Shades

From black to white and in between
A range of contrasts, varied tints
Rarely pure color to the eyes
A blend of changing shapes, and dyes.

No straight path or defined order
A start does not predict an end
Just a drift through experience
Many the unclear impressions.

An accidental growth at best
Chance then influences the mindset
Attitudes carried by the winds
Character a fault of fortune.

Free choice the desired delusion
Random building blocks shape the way
So many colors and mixtures
Project the twists ahead that lay.

Keep up your reading habit. We’ve got a long holiday weekend coming up. Take a moment to say anything to your kids about patriotism and the history of our country. It is absolutely essential that they know and appreciate our true record. Always strive to be a good human.