After a five-day binge of all things Trump and Comey, along comes this story about bad teeth to poignantly capture the essence of our current quagmire. Don’t get me wrong. The coverage of the White House’s latest cataclysmic adventure in governance has been compellingly entertaining. It’s not every day you get to watch the president’s aides frantically scramble to assemble a cover story for firing the FBI director, only to be upstaged by their boss’s declaration that he canned the guy because of the Russia investigation.
But a cracked molar brought it all home, a dental narrative that sadly and succinctly depicted a leaderless America that has lost its way. The Sunday Washington Post ran a front page story on the chronic tooth decay facing millions of the working poor who have neither the necessary insurance nor disposable income to maintain their dental health. The piece described a scene on a cold March morning on Maryland’s eastern shore. More than 1,000 people had huddled in blankets for up to 12 hours, waiting for a chance to get free dental care.
Dee Matello was in that line. She’s a small business owner, but has neither insurance nor budget for dentist bills. She told Post reporters that she’s had a cracked tooth for years. It causes constant pain, forcing her to chew on only one side of her mouth. She also said she was a strong Trump supporter because politicians stopped caring about people who work hard but can’t afford to take care of themselves.
“The country is way too divided between well-off people and people struggling for everything – even to see the dentist,” Matello told the Post. “And the worst part is, I don’t see a bridge to cross over to be one of those rich people.”
Trump, she said, was the only person talking about “the forgotten men and women of our country, people who work hard but don’t have a voice.” It was Trump, Matello recalled, who repeatedly said that he was running to be a voice for those people. She was particularly taken with his assurance that he would create a “wonderful” health care plan that would cost less and provide far more services than Obamacare.
As she shivered in line, waiting to get her tooth fixed, Matello shared her deep political disappointment with the Post. “I am hearing about a number of people who will lose their coverage under the new plan,” she said. “Is Trump the wolf in grandma’s clothes? My husband and I are now saying to each other, ‘Did we really vote for him?’”
More than any story since Trump’s inauguration, this rotting teeth article captures the depth and breadth of last fall’s electoral catastrophe. The daily headlines inundate us with the president’s buffoonery, his never-disappointing adeptness at accessing his ignorance. When I started writing this post, the Comey fiasco was on center stage. It was replaced two paragraphs ago with breaking news about Trump revealing top secret intelligence to Russian officials. But the dental care piece takes us beyond the purview of chaotic stage management, and gives us a direct view into the marrow of a critically wounded American life.
Working adults can’t afford to fix their teeth, and nobody in Washington is doing anything to help them. Those in the investor class, buoyed by a Trump-induced bull market, think nothing of spending thousands a year on cosmetic tooth whitening, while millions of hard-working Americans don’t make enough to pay for basic dentistry. These are the forgotten people, the downtrodden and heartbroken masses left behind by politicians beholden to the moneyed interests that put them in office.
Donald J. Trump was their last hope, an unlikely billionaire hero who took up their cause, spoke their language and promised to drain the swamp of the bought-and-paid-for Washington functionaries catering to the rich and powerful. They voted for him because their anger was his anger. They voted for him because he was wholly different than every slick, smooth-talking, glad-handing politician who came before him. They voted for him because he was going to blow Washington up and get them fantastic jobs and absolutely wonderful health insurance. The forgotten people would never be forgotten again.
Sadly, Trump has only delivered on half the promise. He has, indeed, blown up Washington. He shocked and stunned the FBI, pushed the intelligence community into a state of suspended animation and invoked paralysis on a Republican Congress totally transfixed on the most chaotic White House since Richard Nixon spent long alcoholic nights talking to the portraits of dead presidents.
As for the forgotten people, well, they were promptly forgotten by a president who had something far more important to consider: himself. Donald Trump was absolutely right when he promised never to be tied to special interests and outside influences. This is a man with absolutely no interests outside of himself. He can’t stop talking about his election, how many counties he carried, how remarkable his campaign was, how he got cheated out of the popular vote, how the whole Russian scandal seeks to delegitimize his humungous accomplishment.
The forgotten people? They are still waiting in line to have their teeth fixed. Some 24 million of them will lose health insurance under the House Republican bill that Trump supports but doesn’t understand. Millions more stand to lose job retraining opportunities under his proposed budget. Did he sell them out to special interests? No, not really. It’s just that his whole campaign was about him, not them. It was about his need to be loved and admired, to be seen as a truly remarkable person. He didn’t drain a swamp; he created a new one, a swamp filled with his own insatiable and grandiose ego needs. There is no room there for the forgotten people. Even if there was, this guy doesn’t have the skill or the chops to help them. He is far too busy pretending to be remarkable.