Republicans and Masculinity – The Boston Globe

One afternoon in the early 1980s, I was a college dropout drinking a beer on the deck of a restaurant in Aspen when I noticed a small group of people standing around one person. It was the famous golfer Arnold Palmer. I sipped my beer and watched him sign autographs, smile and talk to fans.

Finally the fans disappeared and Palmer had time to himself. He looked up and looked straight at me. I smiled, nodded. He smiled with his mouth and eyes, and nodded as if to say, “I appreciate the private moment.”

I never said a word to him, nor he to me, but it’s a moment that still lives on forty years later. Some people have a transcendent magnetism. My father had that. Palmer had that. When I met him many years later and shook his hand at a campaign event in Montana, while he was running for his wife against Barack Obama, so did Bill Clinton.

A direct focus: you are the only person in the room. Fleeting, sure, but still electric. I’ve never met Trump, but I suspect he has too. Palmer, of course, is back in the news in a way that I bet would deeply embarrass him at the ranch. Singled out of the grave by Trump for his literal masculinity, called “all man” because of a physical characteristic, when men of his generation – my father’s – measured their masculinity by gentle, quiet acts without fuss.

This new paradigm, loudly bragging about a dead man’s genitals and shooting Bud Light cans with AR-15s, has become the Republican Party’s way of trying to define what it means to be a man. Ridiculous figures like Roger Stone belittle the supposed feminine qualities of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. What I have seen of Walz makes me believe that he is a kind, internally tough, tolerant man who cares about people. That’s quite a damn man. Was for Dad and Palmer’s generation and still is.

My dad was a Korean War vet and he didn’t talk about it or pound his chest or rip off his T-shirt; a Nixon-Ford-Reagan Republican who turned to Obama after the ruinous economy and endless wars under George W. Bush.

Another famous man who smiles with his eyes, Willie Nelson, recently showed up in his home state of Texas in support of Kamala Harris. A line from Nelson’s famous song “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” sums up the attitude of many men who are comfortable with their masculinity: “His pride won’t let him do things that make you think that he’s right.” In other words: no bluster. Or loud condescension. Listen, sure. Then do what you think is right. What you think is your business. But if the political polls are to be believed, the the way Republicans try to police what masculinity is may work with some men. This is not the case with others.

As a hunter for most of my life, I have been fortunate to belong to a wilderness elk hunting camp. Four or five of us, all men from the West, ride horses deep into the heart of elk and grizzly country in the Wyoming mountains, where we set up camp and hunt for more than a week. Collectively we own enough firearms to take over a small country. We reload our own ammunition, raise and train our own horses, wear worn cowboy hats, eat elk meat, drink beer. Trump voters, right? Wrong. Each and every one of us is voting for Kamala Harris. One or two of us even fly the flag, but we don’t spend a lot of time doing things that make you think we’re right. I think we’re all a little tired of the trumpeting, the loud talking, the interrupting, the in-your-face anger, and the tearing down of our country and other people just living their lives, like Trump and his sycophants. Try to tell us they’re right about what it means to be a man.

For a man, we vote for a woman.

Thomas Reed is the author of several books, including “Give Me Mountains for My Horses.”