On the Similarities of a Football Game and a Presidential Election

              Someone a lot smarter than me made an apt, if light-hearted, comparison after the New England Patriots improbably came back from a near-dead state in the Super Bowl on Sunday.  He pointed out more than a few similarities between the Pats miraculous victory and the similarly miraculous (if not similarly heralded) victory Donald Trump scored last November in defeating Hillary Clinton.  The comparison isn’t worth devoting a whole column to, but it might be a good way to discuss the two otherwise seemingly unrelated big news events of the last week, so let’s give it a try.

              To start with, both Trump and the Patriots were not fan favorites.  Trump’s opposition flowed from his boorish attitude towards just about anyone who didn’t acknowledge his greatness.  It peaked in his attack on the gold-star parents and his mockery of the disabled reporter, but it is so endemic to his personality that he has managed to besmirch, if not defame, just about anyone and any group that aren’t “rich white men.”

              The Patriots are disliked by legions of sports fans because, first of all, they are smug, kind of like the Yankees at their decades-long peak, but without the class that team always showed.  And then, of course, there is Deflategate, which, depending on whom you believe, was either a major scam to cheat their way to victory in a football game or a phony charge that only stuck because it was so comforting to think all their greatness was due to cheating.

              As to the similarities between the election and the game, the comparison is fairly obvious.  Trump came back from way behind in the polls.  As late as early October, the Nate Silvers of the tea-leaf-reading profession were envisioning a Clinton landslide and the literal destruction of the Republican Party.  And in last Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Patriots had scrambled just to put a field goal on the scoreboard as the first half ended, trailing 28-3 (instead of 28-0) as a result.  Blowout was the talk at many a Super Bowl party while Lady Gaga was doing her thing at halftime.

              But Trump came back, primarily by taking advantage of a big break (FBI Director Comey’s flat-footed announcement eleven days before the election that resurrected the scandal around Hillary Clinton’s email server), and hammered away at his opponent, while she ignored pleas from local party workers to get serious in the Rust Belt states that were supposed to be her firewall.  And the Patriots also took advantage of some breaks provided by their opponent, the Atlanta Falcons, who got lazy on defense (does “prevent defense” ever work?) and foolish on offense (why push for a TD when a FG would ice the game?). 

              And so the much despised candidate (Trump) and the much despised football team (the Patriots) both won their big contests, narrowly to be sure, but decisively, nonetheless.  The recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin went nowhere, because the down-trodden white working class voters (male and female) did vote for Trump (notwithstanding their prior allegiance to the Democrats); and the instant replay review of the miracle catch by Julian Edelman showed it was a catch, not a trap, but a clean, albeit unbelievable, catch. 

              And if it’s true that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are avid Trump supporters, then the comparison of the victories Trump and the Patriots achieved suggests something magical in their linkage.  The season is in full bloom, and the rogues are in control.

              So, okay, maybe the poetry of the comparison can get a little excessive.  Trump won the election and will be the nation’s president (barring a premature termination) for four years.  The Patriots won the Super Bowl and will be the reigning champs for just one year.  Trump will run for re-election (at least that’s the assumption) in 2020.  The Patriots will start their campaign to repeat as Super Bowl champs in just four or five months.  Trump will (again assuming nothing prevents his being nominated by the Republicans) do battle with just one opponent (the Democrats’ nominee).  The Patriots will face challenges every week of the sixteen-week season, and then, if they get that far, for every week of the NFL playoffs, in order to get back to the big dance.  Whether Tom Brady will again guide them remains to be seen (although at this point, the betting line would be in his favor).  Ditto Belichick. 

              Trump can crash and burn, of course, and the way his administration has looked to this point, that possibility might not be a bad bet.  But there’s a method to the Trump madness, and it has worked pretty well for him so far.  Brady got caught with deflated footballs and was suspended for four games.  Trump got caught (literally) with his pants down, and still got a majority of white women to vote for him (instead of his opponent, who would have been the first female president in the nation’s history).  Go figure.

              And then there’s one last comparison that just doesn’t work at all.  Brady and Belichick and the rest of the Patriots are, essentially, entertainers who play a rough and tumble sport that happens to be all the craze in the United States just now (as it has been for the last 50 or so years).  Trump is, essentially, an entertainer who just happens to have more destructive power than any other human being alive today.  Here is a short list (the full list would be significantly longer) of the many destructive things Trump can do (and has so far shown—or at least has hinted—he wants to do): 

              o He can start another world war; indeed, he can start a nuclear war to end civilization entirely. 

              o He can also destroy the planet through the promotion of environmental degradation as he claims that climate change is a Chinese-promoted hoax. 

              o He can create greater poverty by denying the poor lifelines of government support. 

              o He can diminish the quality of public education by turning the Department of Education over to a person who has no understanding of the cherished history of free, public schools in the country.

              o He can enhance the hatred of the U.S. through ill-conceived immigration policies that restrict travel by non-citizens while he builds a wall across the Mexican border and demands that Mexico pay for it. 

              o He can reduce access to health care through legislation to roll back Obamacare. 

              o He can raise the risk of corporate malfeasance that puts consumers at greater risk by eliminating regulatory protections. 

              o He can increase racial tension by supporting stop-and-frisk tactics by local police departments. 

              o He can diminish women’s rights and LGBT rights and voting rights by his Supreme Court nominations. 

              o He can denigrate the legitimacy of an independent judiciary by attacking “so-called” judges.

              o He can so reduce the impact of a free press and the media through the promotion of “fake news” and “alternative facts” that the cherished First Amendment freedom will lose all meaning and all impact. 

              o He can, simply stated, destroy everything that has made America the beacon of democracy for the entire world.

              He can, in other words, do a lot of things that Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the New England Patriots cannot do and would never think of doing.  And, unlike Brady, et al., who will probably never again even think of deflating their footballs or otherwise besmirching the integrity of the game they play, Donald Trump has shown in his short time in office, a strong desire (and ability!) to do most, if not all, of the horrifically destructive things I have just mentioned.

              So much for the comparisons.