The Just Desserts of Marshmallow Democracy

By Chris Saxman

People used to ask me what it was like on Christmas morning with four young children.

I kind of knew where they were heading with the question, but I long ago learned to not assume. (Yes, I still assume way too much.)

“How do you mean?”

They would reply something like, “All those kids must come running down to see if Santa Claus had left presents under the tree and then rip them all open!”

“Oh that part. Yeah. We don’t do that. Our tradition is to first bake cinnamon rolls and then eat them together while the rest of the family arrives. More recently, we wait for the kids to wake up.”

“Really? The kids wait?”

”If they want fresh baked cinnamon rolls … yeah.”

“How long y’all been doing that?”

“No idea. But the cinnamon rolls date back to when Grandma Brown would send them to my Uncle Phil in Vietnam during the war.”

“Oh. Wow. Those cinnamon rolls must be a big deal.”

“Yeah, it goes back over 50 years. My sisters and I have a competition to see which one Dad likes best. (The cinnamon rolls, I mean) After the cinnamon rolls, we all take turns opening the presents.”

“What time do the presents get opened up?”

“One year, I got the kids to 11:45. They were fit to be tied….”

“YA THINK?”

I learned a lot about the power of delayed gratification from my Dad. You see, before we got into the bottled water business (talk about delayed gratification – 30-year overnight success story that one), Dad ran a beer distributorship.

If you grew up in a beer warehouse, you really didn’t think about just how much beer that actually is. But you knew how many cases in a pallet and how many pallets in a row and how high you can stack pallets. A lot of beer. But never really thought about it.

Until I would take my high school friends to go see the beer warehouse.

I always described it as Bugs Bunny running into the Giant Carrots. Their jaws would drop and their ears would pin back.

But to us, it was just beer.

Delayed gratification is lost in a society where everything is at our fingertips – thousands of “friends,”  just about every imaginable product or service, food delivery, drug delivery (legal or not), plane tickets, rides to just about anywhere, and all within a set time frame. Folks now get testy and feel the need to instantly grade the companies if they fail to deliver perfectly.

Please recall the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment on Delayed Gratification.

It really is extraordinary the level of instant feedback we get these days.

Thursday night driving home from the radio studio, I got a panicked call from a long time friend whose political views I don’t share. What we do have in common is a willingness to listen to each other over a glass of wine and listen to each other’s political experiences. We share intel of course, but mainly we just reassure each other that we’re not going nuts. We can also call each other up and say safely, “Can you believe how bat sh*t crazy this or that is on my or your side?”

Well, here’s how Thursday night’s call basically went. She went straight in right after I said, answering via Bluetooth, “Hey there….”

“Can you believe they signed onto that thing?”

“Who? What? Signed onto what?”

“Cline and Wittman! They signed onto the Texas lawsuit!”

“Oh. Ok.”

“It’s not okay!”

“Well, I haven’t read it.”

“It’s crazy! They are trying to overturn the election!”

“Oh. Yeah, that won’t happen.”

“You’re not concerned?”

“Not really. Why?”

“How can you not be concerned? You’re not worried?’

“About a lawsuit? No. That’s not the goal here.”

“What IS the goal then?”

“The goal is to have Congress challenge the electoral votes in enough states on January 6th when the Joint Session has to validate each state’s electors.”

“Oh my GOD! What?”

I then explained the process and how it takes only one member of the House and one member of the Senate – in writing – to challenge a state’s electors. The Joint Session then goes into their respective chambers to debate and vote on the electors.

“The goal is get Biden below 270 and then go to a contingency election in which Trump would win a majority of the state delegations. That’s what this is about – getting a handle on how many votes the president has and raising support for the idea that certain states’ elections should be invalidated. That’s how I see it….”

“THE COUNTRY WILL BURN!!!!”

“Probably.”

“AND YOU’RE NOT CONCERNED.”

“Not really. No. I mean, yeah, there’s a possibility and we should pay attention, but in the end … no. I don’t think the votes will be there.”

“HOW? How are you not upset?”

“Well, I trust the process. This is what we do. I mean look at all that has to happen in order for a national election to be overturned. How many lawsuits have already been filed? It’s not going to happen. He’s just raising money and disrupting the news cycles like he has for the last five and a half years. Sure, Trump will fight to the last … but his supporters love that about him.”

“Ok. If you’re this calm about it … okaayyyy….”

“I am. We’ll, be alright…”

“Ok … ok … how’s everything else?”

“Could be better. Tough year. We’re blessed. You?”

<end scene>

The next day on the way to the radio station I called a member of Congress and asked what were his thoughts on the amicus brief. I had yet to read it.

We talked off the record (which is weird with friends but … hey … these are those days, right?) and he walked me through his thoughts. He finished by saying basically, “I think it’s an interesting argument.”

“And that’s why we have a Supreme Court.”

“Exactly.”

Checks and balances and all that….

About an hour and a half later, the Supreme Court decided it was not an interesting argument. At all. Not one of Donald Trump’s appointments – Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Coney Barrett – agreed to even hear the case. Two other conservatives – Alito and Thomas – said they would hear it, but that’s about it.

As a former U.S. History and Government teacher, I lament how much of civics lesson we’re missing out on during the 78 day interregnum between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

We’re a bit distracted these days, aren’t we?

Sidebar – Is it me or is the fact that the vaccines are starting to be delivered on the day the Electoral College casts the ACTUAL votes for president is just a bit ironic?

If you’re feeling a sense of relief because I think everything is okay, I may have misguided you.

I am worried. I always worry. Ask my kids.

I’m more worried about how we come out of this. How do we pay for it all? We were in bad fiscal shape before this happened.

We were in bad cultural shape before this happened or did the summer protests not display that clearly enough?

Once the vaccines are distributed and we – hopefully – are past the pandemic, things will be better, right?

Probably. And YES, we should all celebrate when this thing is finally over.

Maybe even a whole year’s worth of celebrating.

But as the scene below from Charlie Wilson’s War shows, we need to prepare for that new life just as the U.S. DID NOT do in Afghanistan after the Soviets left. Just as the U.S. DID NOT do in the South after the election of 1876 with the compromise of 1877. Just as we DID NOT do when we left a vacuum in Iraq for domestic political expediency. Just as we DID NOT do when we had the chance to learn from how Woodrow Wilson did not deal with the last pandemic we faced.

The story of the Zen master and the Little Boy.

We will be dramatically changed after all this and we will still have a serious structural domestic and geopolitical issue with which to contend.

They are deep, complex, and could very well lead to the end of the Republic.

That’s what I am looking at and THAT dear reader is what I am actually concerned about.

As Churchill said about us, “Americans will always do the right thing – after exhausting all alternatives.”

While we are in the middle of “exhausting all alternatives,” one cannot help also wondering how good the presents will be when we finally open them.

Are these “the good ol’ days….”?

“We’ll see.…” said the Zen Master.

Some day in the not so distant we will look back and wonder what we could have done better for our future.

Or at least for the future of our kids and grandkids.

Problems do not solve themselves.

Maybe this was part of the grand plan to slow us down and get us to focus on what really matters.

Like baking cinnamon rolls for your family as they gather to open presents.

For me, that’s all I have ever wanted for Christmas.

Chris Saxman represented the 20th District in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2002-10. A businessman and active member of the community, he is Executive Director of Virginia FREE, a non-partisan, non-profit that informs the business community in order to advance free enterprise and responsible, pro-business government. He and his wife Michele live in Richmond. Email [email protected] to receive his free newsletter.