12 9.13.
During a special
congressional
election in 2017,
both candidates
released ads in
which they took
up arms against
electronic
devices.Illustration by R. O. Blechmanagencies. In a diff erent politics, this expe-
rience — closely related to the one issue
pollsters are sure Montanans care about
— would be the focus of her campaign. In
2020, though, the false image of the real
Montanan is too powerful.
Folks around here do things a little dif-
ferently, except when pandering season
hits and folks start acting eerily the same.
During a special congressional election in
2017, for example, both candidates released
ads in which they took up arms against
electronic devices. The Republican, Greg
Gianforte, shot a computer dramatizing
his opponent’s putative plan for a national
gun registry. His opponent, the country
musician Rob Quist, shot a TV playing
one of Gianforte’s ads. ‘‘For generations,
this old rifl e has protected my family’s
ranch,’’ Quist said before throwing down
on the appliance, which was sitting on a
ridge alongside some cans. This contest,
which ended with Gianforte’s attacking
the reporter Ben Jacobs the night before
the election and then disappearing until he
was declared the winner, might be remem-
bered as the dumbest in Montana’s history.
But there is still time. Williams’s oppo-
nent in the 2020 race is the Republican
Matt Rosendale, who made national news
in 2014 when he fi red a gun at a drone in
a campaign spot he produced during the
Republican congressional primary. It was
a rare display of multi-issue pandering,
but he pronounced the word ‘‘drone’’
with such a thick Maryland accent that it
became the subject of an entire article on
Slate. Oddly, the Wild West image of Mon-
tana tends to be sold by local consultants
to campaigns whose candidates mostly
come from somewhere else. Williams was
born in California; so were Gianforte and
Senator Steve Daines. Since Montana’s two
congressional districts were consolidated
into one at-large seat in 1992, half of its
six representatives were born outside the
state. Clearly, the voters of Montana are
open to foreign governance, but the belief
that they want a caricature of themselves
prevails. And so Williams is on her sec-
ond campaign to be sent to Washington,
a place she says she cannot abide.
This situation would seem peculiar
were it not happening at scale everywhere
else. The Montana experience — in which
cultural signifi ers and put-on grievances
eclipse policy — is one we have all been
going through, steadily, for the past few
decades and violently in the last few years.
Th ough many like to say that poems begin with ‘‘ordinary’’ things, creatures and
experiences, there could never be anything ordinary about a hedgehog. Th e way it looks,
the way it looks back at you, surely the way it feels — astonishing. Lola Haskins’s
endearing poem from ‘‘Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare’’ is possibly as straightforward
as a poem could be: We’re on a walk with her, then stumble upon an unexpected rustle.
What makes this poem sing is the quick instant that the hedgehog image widens to contain
us all — our curiosity, our fear, whatever we’re each keeping contained. In that ‘‘rush’’
of empathy is our unexpected lift.American politics has become more aes-
thetically sophisticated even as it grows
frustrated by its inability to identify shared
values or solve collective problems. There
are historical precedents for what hap-
pens to a democracy when it gets more
invested in its own mythology and lesspatient with its own political process, and
those precedents are not good. Perhaps
soon, we will reach the terminal stage of
lifestyle politics and discover what lies
beyond it. Or maybe folks around here
will learn to do things a little diff erently
— whether we’re ready to or not.Screenland
Poem Selected by Naomi Shihab NyeThe Hedgehog
By Lola HaskinsYesterday, along a walled track
I came upon a dark-brown brush
just the size of my hand. From
under it poked a narrow snout
which, when it sensed my boot,
pulled back as fast as it could.
I know that rush, that fl ight.
Real fear, imagined fear, it
makes no never mind. There
is something huddled in us all.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her latest
book is ‘‘Cast Away,’’ from Greenwillow Books. Lola Haskins lives in Gainesville, Fla. She has published 13
collections of poetry, most recently ‘‘Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare’’ (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).