Mr. Sanders Leaves Washington
My flight to L.A. with Bernie Sanders.
I had not been to D.C. in years. The only reason I was going at all was to screen a film of mine at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital – one of the more interesting environmental film festivals in North America.
On the flight home my wife and I chose our economy seats according to our own personal preferences. I am a window guy. Doreen prefers aisles. Usually, this leaves a vacant seat in the middle, our customary strategy for claiming a little more personal space in the cramped cabins of economy class. The gambit usually works. Not many travelers opt for middle seats and relatively few travel alone.
As fewer and fewer people filed down the aisle, we began to fill the middle seat with our books and electronic devices when a spry, familiar-looking man in his early seventies looked at his ticket, checked the seat designation overhead and indicated that his was the middle seat. As Doreen and I conversed about what would go where, the gentleman realized that we were together and offered to switch seats so we could sit together. Doreen immediately declined. Aisles are sacrosanct for her as windows are for me. The gentleman smiled politely as if he understood and slipped into the middle seat without comment or complaint. Our territorial battle won, I finally looked more carefully at our new seatmate and realized that this was none other than the “democratic-socialist” senator from Vermont, the restless and quixotic Bernie Sanders.
Almost immediately, the Senator went to work, pulling out a yellow legal pad, jotting a few lines and then transferring them to his iPad. Still not quite believing that an influential, sitting US Senator and at the time undeclared presidential candidate was sitting in the economy cabin of a crowded plane, I tried to catch a glimpse of what kind of notes he was taking. “Bankers… Wall Street… shrinking middle-class” was all the convincing I needed. A million conversation topics began racing through my mind: climate change, Medicare, corporate welfare, congressional gerrymandering, Citizens United and on and on. The Senator then exchanged a few words with a younger man in the middle seat across the aisle from us whom I assumed was a staff member, perhaps even his chief of staff, but very quickly returned to his yellow legal pad.
I was just about to speak to my unexpected neighbor when it suddenly occurred to me that this was probably one of the few opportunities he gets to work free from distraction and interruption, and I resolved to keep my fatuous political observations and opinions to myself. We agree on the vast majority of issues anyway, so what’s the point? But surely, I had to say something.
“Senator,” I interrupted; “I promise that I am not going to bother you on this flight, but I have been receiving your email blogs for years now and I really appreciate everything you’ve been doing.” He said, “Well, you’re about to get another one. I’m just finishing it up now.” I then asked him if he was going to L.A. on business; not that it was any business of mine, but it’s just one of those things you say. “Las Vegas actually, then on to Northern California, a meeting and a couple of speeches. Are you from L.A.?” Now he’s asking me questions. “Just north of L.A., a small town near Santa Barbara called Ojai.” And it continued. “What were you doing in D.C.?” Seriously, he’s interested? “I was screening a film of mine about snow leopards at the Environmental Film Festival.” He seemed impressed, or interested, or at least aware of what I was talking about and said something about attending the festival in the past. A few more trivialities as the plane took off and I returned to my book and left the soon to be presidential candidate in peace.
As the flight progressed Senator Sanders worked. And worked. And then worked some more. Tirelessly. Relentlessly. Resolutely. After finishing the blog, he began working on a speech. I know this because after scribbling out a page of material he began silently rehearsing his speech to the seat in front of him – replete with all the familiar hand and facial gestures he uses to punctuate his points. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Bernie Sanders is either the most disarmingly unpretentious person I have ever met, or he is just the hardest working guy in Congress. Probably both.
The coda to my flight with the Senator came as the plane began its long descent into LAX. As the “fasten seat belt” lights prompted, he put his legal pad back into his valise, then reached to the inside breast pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a pocket US Constitution. Seriously. I was completely flummoxed. He read through various articles, underlined certain phrases and took more notes. It was like watching a montage from a Frank Capra movie where Capra’s hero comes up with the plan that saves the Boy Scouts, or his hometown, or the entire country.
As the plane touched down and we filed out onto the concourse, he initiated a friendly conversation. Not a big gesture, but he didn’t have to do it. I said something plaintive about the long flight. He smiled as if he sympathized, but for him I believe the flight was pure heaven. As he said goodbye, I wished him luck. He smiled, waved a salutation and joined his chief of staff as I met my wife at the end of the terminal.
If my five hours in coach with the Democratic candidate convinced me of anything it is that Bernie Sanders is a democrat with a small “d” whose presence exudes humility, industry and purpose - all the more remarkable given the slate of entitled, reality-show hucksters clamoring for the right to be our next chief executive.
However the presidential race ends and whomever I end up supporting, I will never be able to complain again about being stuck in a middle seat. If it’s good enough for Bernie, it’s good enough for me.
Author’s Note: My encounter with Bernie Sanders came in early 2015, a few weeks before he announced his presidential candidacy for 2016. As much as I like and respect him, I was not and am not a Bernie supporter for the presidency. I still stand behind what I wrote of my encounter with him in the middle seat of a cross-country flight. He is a gentleman and entirely authentic. Clearly, he is also the leader of a political movement, but as history has shown over and over again, leaders of political movements often make terrible candidates for political office and worse statesmen. Democracy, when it works, is about horse trading, arm-twisting and compromise. The last of these is the most important; compromise. Ideologues, whatever their political persuasion are not good at this. To their way of thinking, the “good” is forever the enemy of what they see as the “perfect”. This is at odds with the reality of democratic rule. Governance in a functioning democracy is not a pretty sight for anyone. It is ugly. It is inefficient. The only good thing you can say about democracy is that no one individual governs by fiat as Mr. Trump seems to believe. That has another name. It is called fascism. So, as much as I admire and respect Senator Sanders as a man and as the leader of an aspirational political movement, and as much as I would like to see someone I had an hours long genial conversation with elected to the highest office in the land, I am not a supporter of his presidential candidacy.
