President Trump, you're no Harold Hill - or Professor Marvel

It's pretty clear that the Very Stable Genius is not up to what the moment needs from him

I’ve been watching a lot of TCM during this lockdown. I was a huge fan beforehand, and since sports and a number of other types of freshly concocted content are no longer available, when I’m looking for gratification that can broadly be classified as entertainment, I’ve been gravitating to that channel.

A couple of weeks ago, it presented The Wizard of Oz, about which I really don’t need to say much at this late date. We all know the lineage beginning with L. Frank Baum’s stories, the 1902 Broadway production, and, of course, the 1939 MGM film version, with its marvelous score by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg - and all those timeless performances by the cast.

And then this evening that channel showed The Music Man, the storyline, the score and the lyrics of which were largely the brainchild of the singularly creative Meredith Willson.

The two movies share a common theme.

A clearly phony huckster - in the case of Wizard, the Frank Morgan character who is a patent-medicine guy - Professor Marvel - in Kansas (brought home toward the end of the film when he says, “I’m an old Kansas man myself”) and later on the Wizard of Oz, who gets exposed, by Toto, of all the characters, as being just a guy frantically manipulating a multimedia board, but then has to come up with something to make these desperate sojourners’ trek worthwhile, so he digs deep inside himself and comes up with these medals that he pins on each of them, addressing what they see themselves as lacking. Similarly, in Music Man, at the end, Harold Hill is shown to be a complete phony, but when he has to conduct the boys’ band before the entire town of River City, Iowa, he rises to the task and the band is thereby transformed into a a resplendent marching ensemble - with nothing less than 76 trombones!

The inflection point for those characters was when the people who were depending on them turned to them and said, “Okay, you, us, everybody knows you’re an utter phony. But we need for you to be the real deal now.”

What hit me between the eyes when considering the parallels between the themes of those movies was what that has to say to our present moment.

Donald Trump is in that kind of role. And it’s clear he has no idea what he’s doing.

The boys’ band concert / medal-conferring / balloon-launching moment is fast approaching. The pertinent characters in those stories are faced with the fact that they do indeed not have what it takes to deliver. So they are faced with the stark realization that something bigger than themselves is going to have to take the wheel.

And that’s where the Very Stable Genius fails the test. For all his cozying up to the evangelical community, it’s fearfully clear to the nation in general that he doesn’t know how to draw upon the wellspring of support that would be available to him were he not the end-all-and-be-all of his world.

It’s a shame. Because it reinforces everyone’s sense of what is possible in terms of mustering human nobility when we see someone practice that kind of humility.

It seems pretty late in the day with respect to having any kind of expectation of that in the present circumstances.

But prayer is still recommended.