Divas?

The surgeon wields his scalpel artfully but deliberately and therapeutically. The lawyer studies his brief from all sides and then argues it quietly but persuasively. The farmer toils hard and employs all that agricultural college and often generations of farming have taught him to get the greatest yield from his fields. But the politician increasingly does not exercise the arts of his trade and is downright afraid and/or unwilling to do so.

Our politicians in all parts of the West increasingly resemble what would be a strange display, indeed, of another profession - the opera singer, divo and diva. It is as if a grand opera's cast sprinkled the air with mutterings, grumblings and mumblings and stoutly refused to deliver the climactic arias, recitatives and ensembles that the libretto demands and the conductor, in increasing desperation, tries to elicit from them in vain. Right now, there are apparently three types of politician opera performers. 

First, there is the least numerous, the truly talented, bold and fearless artists who make you cry via their brilliant and moving voices. These are the divos and divas who make you ecstatic you are an opera fan or sad that you are not. In our World there are but a few pols like this - Trump, Kenney or Johnson, perhaps, on the Right. There are even fewer from the Left. Although, Bill Clinton and Obama are two of them. It feels like we had an inordinate number of them in the not so far off past - Lincoln, MacDonald, Laurier, Churchill, the Kennedy's, Reagan, the Roosevelt's, Levesque, Trudeau, Dief, Mulroney and Chretien. (No wonder LBJ used to ask of a speech being written for him,"Has it got music?") Even Nixon had an ear for the right notes (after all, he was an accomplished pianist) and relished a good fight in what he once called,"The Arena".

Then there are the second, most numerous group - the mutterers. They, again, refuse to sing openly and vigorously. They stutter and mutter, do not really like opera themselves and are perpetually suffering from stage fright. They are the men and woman we saw tonight. They are the vast majority of our "statesmen" today. If it was possible to be such, Davis, Clark, Harper and Martin were masters at it. Theresa May, Carter, Pelosi, Romney, Brown, Dole, Mondale or Ford come to mind. They resemble a young singer who is unsure of his pitch and tone in that they often do not know what the Hell they really stand for or believe in, if at all.

The third type are becoming increasingly numerous - they are the tone deaf. They have no fear in sharing with us their cacaphony. They do not realize they are bad and are assured by their adoring fans in the Press that they are great and it is only the petty, jealous or evil that do not see how truly wondrous and indispensable they are. Think the Diva in Phantom of the Opera, the Wannabes in Waiting for Guffman or Citizen Kane's second wife. They are often from the Left and grow more in their din with the hour it seems. Think Hillary, AOC, Corbyn or E. May. On the Right, Farage and Le Pen may be the bipartisan manifestation of this fell group. They know what they stand for and passionately fight for it but they send you running out of the Opera House with their often frightful noise.

The scary thing is...the Democratic Presidential hopefuls don't seem to be sure whether they want to be tone deaf screamers or revert to their more customary and natural guise as fearful mutterers. But there's not a Diva or Divo amongst the lot of them.