I Hope They Never Ask About 2016

Hillary Clinton ended her second debate with Donald Trump with a lie, probably the worst one she’s ever told:

QUESTION: Good evening. My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?

CLINTON: Well, I certainly will, because I think that’s a very fair and important question. Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don’t agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that. And I think that is something that as a mother and a grandmother is very important to me.

I watched her say that with my two sons asleep in the next room. The next morning I made them waffles, changed their diapers, and cleaned up the ridiculous messes they made. You know, the sort of stuff Trump routinely brags that he never does, that no man should do.

Hillary is a great politician, one of the greatest of my lifetime. So she didn’t show any of the pain she surely felt to tell that necessary lie. Everyone says family to that question, even when it’s wrong. Especially when it’s wrong. We’ve all tacitly agreed that family are off limits so that’s the perfect way to falsely compliment your opponent.

So she said it. Hillary, whose motherhood was heckled for years, and still is, because she make a joke about baking cookies. Whose only daughter was ridiculed for her looks from the time she was ten years old, because of her parents. Who has been insulted for decisions only she knows about her family, for making them and not making them and all of the rest of a thousand tons of garbage we’ve heaped on her for being a woman while running for office.

And she smiled while saying it, because that’s what we demand from her. And she was called a liar by people on the television, for saying the only thing anyone would even accept.

I used to turn on Morning Joe sometimes when the kids were up early. I’d point out various politicians and reporters to them, whispering “look at that knucklehead. It’s always okay to call politicians knuckleheads. Ask daddy why. He always knows.”

I don’t do that anymore.

I don’t remember what I thought about Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis. I’m pretty sure they were okay, though. They didn’t do things like laugh when their children were called a “piece of ass,” or say they don’t care for their children, or say they’d like to date their kids.

I wanted to be a historian once. So when I see the ugliness I’ve encountered for ten years in politics bursting out into the open, “horrifying” people who had previously ignored it, I know it’s good. Better to be seen than hidden. Better that it’s excruciating than tolerated.

But you can’t say that to toddlers. There’s no way to tell them to look at this powerful woman but not that powerful man, to learn from this thing but not that thing. We struggle to accept that evil people exist in adulthood. Kids in diapers don’t have a chance.

One day my sons will ask me what happened this year. I don’t have any idea what I’ll say.