When I watch the Super Bowl, I do it with an eye toward what I love.
If the Steelers are playing, my allegiances are easy. If the Patriots are playing, yeah, that’s easy too, although in a year like 2018 when New England faced off against Philadelphia? There’s just no good ending.
But in a year like 2020, I dig deeper. It ended up a total draw for me, with San Francisco’s five Super Bowl rings — and not wanting them to breathe the rarefied air of six-time champs — balanced against a Penn State kicker and the fact that my hometown boy Jon Condo started the season in a Niners uniform before retiring.
Because Pittsburgh can’t play in the big show every year, I have learned to celebrate the biggest night in pro football through other measures of success, the same way a sportsbook offers a myriad of betting opportunities other than the team that gets the trophy at the end of the night.
Politics should be the same. Not that we should bet heavily on it, or that the 116th Congress should be sponsored by Frito-Lay, but we need to find ways to celebrate a good play for the sake of being a good play, regardless of who caught the ball. By the same token, we have to acknowledge a penalty no matter who was caught roughing.
That doesn’t happen anymore. Not in Washington or Harrisburg, and not in our own living rooms.
Democrats cannot concede the incomplete passes of the impeachment process any more than Republicans can admit to missteps by the Trump administration, when really, in our red or blue or independent hearts, we know we would not be where we are today without major problems on all sides. No, better to blame the ref than the quarterback.
And so we can be unprepared for a move like Mitt Romney’s. On Wednesday he did something remarkable. He acknowledged both fault and responsibility, damage and duty. He cast one vote for one count of the impeachment of President Trump.
It will not help his team or himself. He did not vote for the count he didn’t accept (obstruction of Congress) — just the one he believed (abuse of power). He did a shocking thing in today’s political gridiron. He played by the rules, citing God as his ultimate umpire.
And in the end, it will probably hurt him like the last in a series of concussions that ends a player’s career. While he is the Democrat’s darling today, as soon as he votes for another Trump-backed bill, that will be over. Some Republicans are already calling for him to abandon his new post as a senator for Utah.
Politicians have to stop making every move lockstep and every position all or nothing.
Maybe more importantly, so do those of us who are watching from the outside. We have to relearn the fine art of appreciating people who don’t believe what we do.
We also have to remember that sometimes we all win when the rules are followed, regardless of the scoreboard.
Unless, of course, New England is playing.
