10 9.13.
Above: Source photographs (Reagan, fishing, sky): Getty Images; screen grabs from YouTube. Opening page: Screen grab from YouTube.Screenland
Photo illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadbanself-awareness. I have never lived in a
place where so many people’s shirts
said what state we were in. Montanans
live within a kind of paradox by which
they regard their own home as exotic.
Nicknamed the Treasure State, it is
more commonly called the Last Best
Place or Big Sky Country. Both epithets
are constructed in the negative: ‘‘Big
Sky’’ refers to the general absence of
tall buildings, and the ‘‘Last Best Place’’
implies a fallen world outside its borders.
It is tempting to dismiss this attitude as
provincial, but it seems most popular
among the many coastal expatriates
who experience Montana as a respite
from the lives they left behind. To native
and transplant alike, Montana is the only
place that isn’t everywhere else.
This dubious conviction becomes most
powerful during campaign season, when
politicians across the state fall over one
another to show how intensely Montanan
they are. Kathleen Williams, the Demo-
cratic candidate for our single seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives, recently
hit the trifecta when she released a cam-
paign ad that has her fi shing, expressing
admiration for Ronald Reagan and fi ring
a shotgun within the fi rst 12 seconds.‘‘The Washington playbook says I
shouldn’t tell you I voted for Reagan
when I’m running as a Democrat,’’ she
says, wading a stream. Before the viewer
can process this claim, the camera cuts
to a shot of her loading a 20-gauge in
front of a barn. The same playbook, she
says, insists ‘‘that I can’t be a proud gun
owner and support background checks
on gun sales.’’ After a quick clip of her
shooting a clay pigeon, we’re in an offi ce,
where she literally rolls up her sleeves
to deliver the line, ‘‘They say I talk too
much about working with people of all
political stripes in Helena to reduceFolks around
here do things
a little
differently,
except when
pandering
season hits
and folks start
acting eerily
the same.