We use everyday garments to announce our identities in lieu of the more awkward task of trying to explain them.
The Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle was not the first to notice that clothing makes its own rhetorical statements. But he was clear in noting that “coverings” can be material and well as verbal. Just as we sometimes clothe our motives in language that conceals less admirable impulses, so we use everyday garments to announce our identities in lieu of the more awkward task of trying to spell them out. For Carlyle, “the first spiritual want of man is decoration.” How we choose to appear before others is perhaps the straightest line to identity. It’s little wonder that teens grappling with an awkward transformation to a more personal self would be so particular about how they appear to each other.
Concerns with clothing can offer some odd twists. The New York Times recently reported that no one was surprised to find an apparently expensive Christian Louboutin stiletto stuck in an escalator near the new editorial offices of Vogue at One World Trade Center. Obviously, some maven of high fashion had to limp along without it.
The principle of clothing as a “statement” is only more exaggerated in the fashion world. In reality, nearly all of us trade in the imagery of personal presentation.
Ralph Lauren
Consider four cases that exemplify the power of selected external skins to announce what we want to believe about ourselves. Designer and fashion mogul Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx 75 years ago. Today the Lauren empire often features the short and photogenic President in clothing that has become one of his signature styles: a leather or wool-lined jacket, a western hat that looks like its been kicked around a corral a few times, and hand-tooled boots and jeans. Even as a teen in the Colorado mountains I never succeeded in looking so ranch-hand cool.
In his early career, Steve Martin used clothes in a different way. Early in his career as a stand up comic he dressed more or less like men in his audience, with many sporting beards, long hair, and technicolor shirts with a calculated flamboyance. But he found added humor when he shaved, changed into a business suit, and trimmed his hair to look like the guy who does your taxes: the perfect vessel for crazy behavior. Comedy feeds on all kinds of crazy misalignments.
And there’s the case of the iconic tamer of the West, John Wayne, born Marion Morrison in Winterset Iowa. Wayne apparently disliked horses. But nothing in his Midwestern past would deter him from becoming Director John Ford’s favorite trailblazer. The Duke achieved on film what Theodore Roosevelt constructed in his own larger-than-life legacy. Roosevelt transformed himself from a sickly son of a Manhattan socialite into the “Rough Rider” who relished the possibilities of any test of his masculine prowess.
Donald Trump from Queens offers a related case that is more firmly anchored in the urban jungles of America’s biggest cities. Trump grew up into a comfortable family thriving on the business of building modest apartments and single-family homes in the Jamaica Estates area in Queens. He obviously expanded the base of the Fred Trump organization, creating his own Manhattan-centered version of a real estate juggernaut. Though he would have us believe that he is a master-builder, a closer reading of his career suggests a better aptitude for real estate marketing and self-promotion. Trump wears aggressive entrepreneurship as a badge of honor.
Trump’s Name on his Chicago Building
This mix of material accomplishment and relentless hype can be seen in a soaring Skidmore-designed building along the Chicago River. Its 20-foot tall TRUMP nameplate spanning the 16th and 17th floors is so large that one can imagine the structure listing toward the river under its weight. To be sure, the handsome 98-story structure—officially the Trump International Hotel and Tower–was his project from the start. But the outsized sign mars its sleekness and feeds stories among locals of the New Yorker who somehow managed to settle in even against the stiff prairie winds from the West. His buildings have always been more interesting than his uniform of a loose-fitting blue suit. It seems that few of us are immune from the urge to calibrate our identity to express our aspirations.
Crowds of the last President could seem like supplicants. He and they relished the traveling spectacle. But Biden’s audiences are less interested in his celebrity than his management of national problems. That’s as it should be.
Joe Biden has done a useful service to the nation by restoring the Presidency as a place that fosters inclusive and upbeat messages. The sneers and put-downs of the former occupant that irreparably scarred the nation are gone, replaced by consistently optimistic and forward-looking messages asking citizens to be their better selves. That is the legacy of hope that is a presidential norm, and it is a relief to have it reinstated. The Biden Presidency is—like its namesake—may appear to be ‘old-school,’ mostly without Twitter asides and harsh snap judgments that are beneath the presidency. We no longer hear vacuous presidential pronouncements about the low tv ratings of political enemies, or windy statements of self-congratulation. Given the resources of the United States, an administration should be an institution that tries to lift the hopes of all Americans, leaving the villain-making apparatus of social media and the political margins to others. Gone for the time being are the disrupters, some of whom are finally seeing their grifts and seditious acts replayed in court.
In the last few years the nation has suffered through some bleak times. A few cases, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan or launching COVID relief efforts, have included moments of White House fumbling. But the President’s accomplishments are substantial and attributable to his tenacious style to embrace the needs of as many Americans as possible. Accomplishments are supported by frequent public statements to explain their significance. This President acts like he holds a public office and accountable for his actions. These include various programs to help low-income children and their parents, the passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, progress on climate change, and reenergizing of NATO alliance. Our long-suffering allies again feel like they have a reliable partner. Although the full story has yet to be written, most are pleased with White House leadership through the Ukraine crisis. In spite of empty ageist grumbling, Biden’s leadership has been ambitious and aggressively engaged.
Will 2024 coincide with a national mood when many Americans are again prepared to trash the institution’s norms?
The essence of the rhetorical presidency involves the ability to articulate core national values when they are needed. Most recently, President Biden went to both Buffalo New York and Uvalde Texas in May to console families and the nation after these massacres. On this issue and others he frequently addresses the nation. Interestingly, while Biden was in Texas pleading with the nation to do better in regulating guns, Donald Trump was rallying gun owners and manufacturers at the NRA’s annual meeting in Houston. He still relishes being a traveling spectacle, lacing his sloppy rhetoric and endless trolling with references to “hoaxes,” “the blacks,” “bad hombres,” and the like. Biden’s audiences are hearing a more formal style firmly set on using political leadership to tame national problems. The “bully pulpit” of the Presidency is back.
A legitimate fear for many of us that have a degree of regard for the institutional presidency and its rhetorical forms is that we are in an interregnum. Will 2024 coincide with a national mood when many Americans are again prepared to trash the institution’s norms? Biden or others can work to help Americans see “the better angels of our nature.” But, given America’s chronic disunity, there’s no guarantee anyone will heed that guidance.
Concerns with clothing can offer some odd twists. The New York Times recently reported that no one was surprised to find an apparently expensive Christian Louboutin stiletto stuck in an escalator near the new editorial offices of Vogue at One World Trade Center. Obviously, some maven of high fashion had to limp along without it.
