It’s become a cliche (and kind of unhelpful) to observe that our relationship with government is like that of a child to a parent. What might be a better way to think about it is, in the post-Watergate era, as a child’s relationship with a divorced parent or an absentee parent.
Carter was the single mom, generally happier and better-off than before but unable to provide for us in the same style since he had to work two low-level jobs just to put us through school, and we grew to resent that. Sure, the things that were going on in secret before the divorce were awful, but we didn’t know about them at the time, and this new kind of openness was more noble but also more banal, more depressing.
So we moved in with divorced dad in Malibu (Reagan) and he was able to provide for us, even if he was also kind of emotionally distant. And even though we got glimpses of awful things going on in secret again, and even though we had to know that all the nice gifts he was buying for us couldn’t be sustainable in the long run, we loved him more than mommy.
But then he went on vacation for a while, and so we stayed with grandpa (George H.W.) and were kind of unhappy about that (grandpa kept talking about the war which was exciting sometimes but then got boring) so we decided to move in with our Uncle Bill instead (mom’s brother), who was lots of fun. He gave us a lot of valuable life lessons but he worked in the tech industry and didn’t really seem to know what he was doing, and tried to act like dad or grandpa every once in a while to try to impress us, and while we sorta thought he was awesome we sorta thought he was trying too hard, too.
So then we moved in with dad’s brother George W., who seemed to be doing for real what Uncle Bill would try and do to impress us. And we really liked that. We loved him more than anyone since dad. But then grandpa and grandma got shot by a mugger in an alley outside the movie theater, and Uncle George got real serious and grim and tried to hunt down the killers. And this made us love him even more at first, but then it turned out he couldn’t really do it well. And while he was off playing detective we couldn’t help but notice that our meals weren’t getting cooked and the basement flooded and he didn’t send a plumber and the bills weren’t getting paid.
So when mom married a new husband, we decided to move back in with her. But even though he seemed like exactly what we wanted in a dad and made mom really happy, we didn’t want to seem like we would give our love too easily. And even though he had been pretty clear about what our relationship would be, we had been burned so many times that we saw the serious glint in his eyes and knew he would make everything right forever. But we didn’t want to tell him that. So he kept buying us these perfect presents that were really useful, and we complained that he didn’t do it quickly enough. We resented him giving us useful life lessons, because he wasn’t our dad, even if he seemed to know a lot better than dad. We knew that this relationship was better for everyone, and we wanted it to work, but also we secretly felt like we should sabotage it, like families weren’t meant to be happy. We would demand impossible things and then cry out at anything short of perfection, and we knew this was childish, but it would work: he would give us the attention we wanted, always in that kind of calm, reasonable way we loved. It’s not clear yet if we’re going to be able to become a family again, or if our brattiness is going to get in the way.
