If there is one thing President George
Bush has figured out, it’s the importance of a 10-gallon hat to the
American electorate. We adore the cowboy politician, no matter if
it’s a pose. No one cares that he was educated at Phillips
and Yale, is the grandson of a patrician senator from Connecticut,
and summered in Maine. It’s all cancelled out by carefully arranged
“photo ops” at the Crawford, Texas, ranch, where he hacks at
invading brush and drives a big truck.
Political
communication is a complex dance of symbols and code words, each
having different resonance with different groups. Cowboy imagery is
particularly useful because it’s so culturally loaded, and yet so
flexible. The man in the hat could be the new sheriff–read
“tough.” He could be a rancher– read “independent.” Or he could be
an ordinary cowpoke — regular folk like you and me, whittling away
at his problems with the unthreatening genius of common sense.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the West
or cowboys as they actually were or are. With the possible
exception of Will Rogers, can you think of a single working cowboy
with national name recognition? Ever? Most of our famous cowpoke
icons are fakes. Among them are Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifshitz,
in New York), John Wayne (born Marion Morrison, in Iowa), and, of
course, Ronald Reagan (Hollywood actor and son of an Illinois shoe
salesman).
Americans understand that it’s all
showmanship, just one more riff in our sometimes shallow but
frequently entertaining political culture. Outsiders, though, are
apt to read it differently. Western imagery doesn’t play as well in
the foreign press, where our leaders are often perceived as violent
and heedless roughnecks who think they’re the only law in town. In
Europe — perhaps only the “old” Europe — politicians playing
cowboy are regarded with the alarm and suspicion we reserve for
suburban teenagers in gangsta’ gear. In less stable regions
of the globe, the reaction to such posturing can be fear and rage.
And of course, they’re right, too. The dignity and
independence of the cowboy are all excellent qualities in the
American character. Yet he also can convey less savory values that
lead us to being misunderstood. The cowboy myth can include an
antagonistic view of the world in which freedom and dignity are
threatened on all sides.
Alone on the range, he is
surrounded by hostile forces. He is threatened from one side by
encroaching settlement and from another by the attendant
restrictions of government and big business. Thus the Western hero
shifts easily from sole defender of civilization to outcast from
civilization, and the flip side of the cowboy is the outlaw
anti-hero.
The West seems at times to represent the
nation’s violent id, in opposition to the staid superego of
the Eastern establishment. Just look at the degeneration in the
character of the Western movie protagonist, from Gary Cooper’s
heroic loner in High Noon to John Wayne’s tormented vigilante in
The Searchers to William Holden’s cursed killer in The Wild Bunch.
In movies, it’s sometimes only a short hop from desperado to
sociopath.
As in movies, so in life. In politics, there
is a point at which symbolism — that cloudy collection of illusion
and swagger — becomes destructive delusion. Just think of the
influence of machismo on Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous Vietnam
policy.
That real-politicker and tenderfoot Henry
Kissinger was not immune. In a well-known 1972 interview with
reporter Oriana Fallaci, which he probably regretted, he said, “The
Americans love the cowboy who comes into town all alone on his
horse, and nothing else. He acts and that is enough, being in the
right place at the right time, in sum a Western.” The
quintessential power-broker added, “This romantic and surprising
character suits me because being alone has always been part of my
style.”
Sensibly, Ronald Reagan did his cow-punching on
backlot nations that couldn’t cause much trouble — Panama,
Grenada. These days, the stakes are much higher. In his “axis of
evil” speech, George Bush’s attempt to capture Reagan’s rough-rider
magic at its “evil empire” peak exacerbated a delicate situation.
This is what happens when a leader starts acting on a mythic stage
without consideration of the real one.
Cowboys, both
mythic and real, rode into the West having little understanding of
the complicated cultural, political, and environmental realities
ahead. Perhaps we should consider that before we go a-riding full
tilt into foreign lands. The native people there often seem to have
self-fulfilling symbolic constructs of their own.
Mary Greenfield is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She
recently received her master’s degree in Western history from
the University of Montana in Missoula. Newly married, she
freelances from Brooklyn, New York.
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