I’ve spent the last three or four months totally engrossed by the continuing Republican Presidential Debates. Now that they seem to be over, at least for the time being, I find myself reminiscing for some unexplained reason about the Tijuana Bull Fight I attended over 40 years ago.
The debates have gotten pretty mundane of late. Each candidate has staked out his own territory and is now dancing with the girl he brought to the dance.
I don’t know why I keep watching them except to say it’s just so much fun. Bless their hearts the candidates are doing everything in their power to put on a good show, which is why, I think, they remind me so much of the trip I took to Tijuana to watch the bullfights back when I was stationed in San Pedro.
I was with my buddy Cecil and his wife Peggy. We knew we weren’t going to see a real bullfight just as we always knew we would never see anything real in Tijuana. I’m recalling here the man standing on the corner offering to take our picture with his donkey painted up as a zebra.
Back in those days, Tijuana served one purpose and one purpose only. Like any good theme park, Tijuana was the Mexican city that Californians would travel to when they wanted to see what a Mexican city was like. It wasn’t a real Mexican city but rather a composite of everything Californians expected to see in a Mexican city.
In the same vein, the Republican debates aren’t real debates—not the way most of us have been led to believe real debates are like. The onstage antics of Romney, Perry, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann, Cain, Huntsman (Am I leaving anyone out?) will never replace the Lincoln and Douglas debates in the annals of history.
One of the first things we noticed at the bullfight was that the bulls appeared to be very tired and didn’t seem the least bit interested in fighting. They had to be poked and goaded into every move they made, which tending to make the bravado displayed by the matador seem a little bit much.
He would get right in the face of the bull, which was good but then he would have to wait for the picadors and banderilleros to prod and poke and coax the bull forward, which was very bad.
“So, Governor Perry,” the moderator would coax, “what is it that you don’t like about Governor Romney’s job plan?”
As if just poked with a lance, Governor Perry perks up when goaded into making a move, any move, and he responds the way he had been conditioned to respond—charging headfirst into what is a worn out, no-win repetition of the same question given to him or another candidate in this or another city on this or another stage just moments ago or possibly last week or last month.
No matter what he says, his people—and they all have their people somewhere in the audience, will roar in approval, not so much because he says anything the least bit remarkable but more because they had come to roar in approval, and damnit, they were going to roar. We behaved the same way 40 years ago in Tijuana.
In the course of the debates we have witnessed these outbursts of approval for a homeless man being turned away at a hospital, an illegal immigrant being electrocuted on a fence, a governor bragging about his state leading the nation in executions.
In the end the bull was killed and dragged out of the arena and another bull was let in—against his will and some new picadors and banderilleros came in the way the debates keep bringing in new moderators to ask the same, tired old questions.
We ordered some more beers and some snacks, but eventually we left the arena and returned to San Pedro—but not before taking some pictures of the zebra.
I can tell by your writing you type with your left hand. I remember the democratic debates of 2008, there was also a donkey dressed as a zebra. The zebra actually won the debates and went on to become president. Would love to see if anyone can pull the stripes off this donkey.
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