The Cruz Cancun Conundrum

T ed Cruz wasn’t going to shovel your driveway.

Senator Cruz (R., Texas) is the subject of this week’s ritual denunciation for the grievous sin of taking his daughters to Cancun, rather than stay in Texas and endure the snow and blackouts with the shivering little people.

Cruz’s stock is not trading at an all-time high on my personal exchange these days, but the senator’s critics are, in this case, off-base. People who can take care of themselves and their families in an emergency should take care of themselves and their families in an emergency, if only to remove the possibility of their having to be taken care of by the public. Of course, Senator Cruz probably will be more comfortable in Cancun than he would be in River Oaks, but it is no less the case that by absenting himself from the scene, he has given Houston — including its utility providers and its emergency services — one fewer person to worry about. From that point of view, Senator Cruz has a positive moral obligation to be in Cancun.

It was his unnecessary return (in the face of shrill criticism) that was a poor decision.

I sympathize. When Hurricane Sandy flooded Manhattan in 2012, I was living in a very tall building downtown, near the waterfront. The floodwater wasn’t going to rise as high as my windows, but it was certain that the electricity, water, and elevators would be out of commission, and it was likely that the ground-level entrance and exit to the building would be practically impassable. Sushi deliveries were out of the question. I could have holed up in my apartment — but, why? I rode out the flood at an inexpensive hotel in Palm Springs, where the wifi was working and so was I. Nobody had to worry about me. If it weren’t for the travel complications caused by the epidemic, I wouldn’t have been in Texas for this wintry goat rodeo, either.

If the world is mad at Senator Cruz, it is not because he has done anything that hurt anybody. What he has done is judged to be something else: unseemly. The democratic religion in the United States holds, for reasons of pure superstition, that there must be a radical identification between political leaders and the people they represent, which is why Senator Cruz of Princeton and Harvard Law sometimes does that ridiculous good-ol’-boy shtick of his. If the people of Houston are going to suffer — and they are suffering — then Senator Cruz is expected to stay and suffer alongside them, even if he need not do so, and even if prudence would recommend his not doing so.

Would his staying make anybody in Texas better off? No. If anything, it might make them worse off: Suppose Senator Cruz and a neighbor three houses down both have an emergency and dial 911 at the same moment — does anybody think that a senator is going to the end of the line, even if he doesn’t ask for or desire special treatment? If it were necessary to evacuate people, does anybody think that a senator would not have a seat on the bus, even if that meant someone else losing one?

As Senator Cruz is subjected to two minutes’ hate for his democratic unseemliness, the great American musical genius Dolly Parton is being praised for her republican seemliness. Her home state of Tennessee is thickly planted with statues of Confederate figures and recently has become embarrassed by that. And so its political leaders are engaged in the all-important project of replacing old statues of embarrassing Tennesseans with new statues of pride-inspiring ones, with the songstress of Sevierville naturally high on the list. Parton has very wisely demurred, asking the legislature to table any such action for now, perhaps until after her death, at which point they might reconsider.

“Somewhere down the road several years from now or perhaps after I’m gone, if you still feel I deserve it, then I’m certain I will stand proud in our great state capitol as a grateful Tennessean,” she said.

That it is unseemly in a republic to erect statues or other monuments to living people, or to memorialize them in the names of public buildings and the like, was, until very recently, a point of general consensus. Many agencies and institutions forbid it, with good reason.

When Julius Caesar received divine honors during his living years, it was a bad sign for the Roman republic, and the statue that was later erected in his honor was an item of religious devotion rather than a mere work of public art. Cicero denounced the proposal to conduct a ceremony of divine thanksgiving to Caesar as a “sacrilege beyond expiation.” We Americans build temples to our Caesars, too, notably the presidential libraries that began with the one dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt, whose devotees maintain an active political cult to this day.

Dolly Parton is no Julius Caesar. (Thank goodness — I am in the camp of Brutus.) But the principle behind her objection rests on the same foundation as the bias against memorializing living politicians. Though she is a national treasure and no doubt will be remembered as one, she also is an ordinary, fallen human being who ought to be treated as such in life. The strictures of democratic equality may be loosened a bit in death.

We fail to defend that principle all too often. Houston’s George Bush International Airport was so named in 1997, not long after the man left office and 20 years before he died. Down the road, the ghost of Governor William P. Hobby is probably safe from having his airport renamed for Senator Cruz, who would be much better memorialized at a seaport, if ever it comes to that.

A cruise to Cancun? There is precedent.