Middle America Knows the Score : Critics Smirk, but Millions See Their Own Values in the Norths

During the congressional hearings featuring Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and Adm. John M. Poindexter, I have sat in certain homes doing my research interviews with children and then finding myself, like the parents of those boys and girls, being drawn into the political and emotional drama offered every day by the television sets.

It has been astonishing enough to hear the Marine lieutenant colonel and the rear admiral make their confessions, offer their alibis, plead their cause; or hear their interrogators rally to their side eagerly, or stand up to them vigorously. Equally interesting, I have begun to realize, are the responses to those televised hearings by many of the children and the parents I have been visiting.

As I try to boil down the remarks of these ordinary people, most of them belonging to what sometimes gets called “the working class,” I keep noticing the presence of words and phrases such as “big shots” or “top dogs”--as against “the ordinary guy,” or “the underdog.”

All in all, I began to hear certain themes, certain conclusions, certain ways of seeing things constantly repeated. Yes, there was a “cover up,” everyone agreed, though some justified it and others criticized it strenuously. But the truth of the matter, for these men and women speaking with me, is that those who lied and violated the law on the bottom of the political ladder will be accused, and maybe prosecuted; those perched way up on the top will go scot- free.

Some of the men and women (and their occasionally outspoken and shrewd children) are not beyond further cultural and ethical analysis. They can make penetrating, sometimes devastating observations with respect to the ambiguities and inconsistencies of our national life. “Listen,” I’d be told one minute, “the average guy has no choice; he has to obey, he has to follow orders or out he goes.” But later on I’d hear that “you can’t just let people lead you around by the collar, you’ve got to stand up for what’s right, and if it costs you plenty, then it does--and it usually does, and that’s why a lot of us will hesitate to pay the price, especially if we’re not rich, and with lots of debts, and just getting by.”

In less than a minute, in that last, single sentence the complexity, if not the contrariness of our American character, our values, comes across. We ought to respect authority, obey the law. On the other hand, there are different standards for those with money and power, as against that oft-mentioned “little guy,” who merged with Col. North’s “fall guy” in the minds of many of us.

Often as I heard people talking about North or his bosses or accusers or would-be protectors, I began to realize that I was also hearing about those speaking with me--about their own ongoing lives.

Like the colonel, these blue-collar or white-collar people feel that in the clutch, they are vulnerable, and will be readily sacrificed (lose their jobs) if need be, while those “on top” do their “corporate restructuring.”

Like the colonel, they feel deeply religious and loyal to this country--though they also worry about all sorts of perceived flaws or inadequacies in our society. They worry about their jobs, their debts, their children’s future and, not least, the prospects for stable family life in the coming decades.

Much has been made of North’s ability as an actor, his resemblance to various Hollywood performers, his suitability for a remake of the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” but such clever interpretations, patronizing and belittling, may also reveal how far removed, yet again, a relatively privileged cadre of cosmopolitan critics and the world which they address are from millions of other Americans who responded with different eyes and ears to Col. North.

I was, I have to admit, stunned at what I kept on hearing in certain homes about North and his wife and their children--how refreshing, for example, it was for viewer after viewer to see (so they told me) a two-parent family, “a solid and normal one,” as one mother said, commenting not only on the colonel, but his wife, too--her appearance, her choice of clothes, her manner of response to her husband. It was as if Norman Rockwell’s 1940s gauzy American romanticism had suddenly found an incarnation, hence a moment of redemption. Someone, someplace still lives the old-fashioned virtuous life--fights in a war bravely, comes home with medals, is a good husband and father, is religious, takes it on the chin and suffers with dignity while others walk away discreetly, someone who has regrets for not being with his family more, yet is an adventurer, even a bit of a rogue, but all for the beloved nation.

Col. North has reminded us, yet again, how deeply Americans yearn for the expression of, the realization of certain moral and social values, as conservatives well know, and all too many liberals have a hard time understanding.

Some of us who have been quick to snicker, to spot the hokum in a marine’s testimony, might do well to take a close look at our own secular world, at our moments of smugness, arrogance and self-centeredness, at some of the personal habits and cultural postures that we’re quite willing to tolerate or accept, as embodied in those very television soap operas that were banished for a few days of the congressional hearings.