To rally the troops, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered on stage at a fundraiser with President Joseph Biden in some kind of show of unity. The purpose of this strange theater was not entirely clear to me (beyond raising $26M) but this much stood out. They had all agreed in advance not to wear ties.
So there they stood on stage, basking in applause, all three in dark blue, single-breasted, two-button suits, with open-collar white shirts.
Why were they not wearing ties? Probably some fool consultant told them that this makes them more relatable or something. Maybe someone also said it makes them look young.
Actually, it just made them all look like they had not completed the task of getting dressed.
Everyone once knew that the older a man becomes, the more dressed up he should be. It’s the way to preserve dignity. The retired-in-Florida look with shorts, sneakers, and golf shirts is nothing but a humiliation to the wearer and everyone around him.
Regardless, that outfit is otherwise made to go with a tie. The tie provides the visual center, the artistic core. Otherwise nothing about the suit and shirt makes any sense. It’s like making chicken marsala and forgetting the chicken or listening to Beethoven’s violin concerto without the violin.
The missing part messes up the rest. The end result is just embarrassing.
I’m more than aware of the attacks on the tie over the decades. They are said to be stodgy, stuffy, uncomfortable, pretentious, ostentatious, and phony. None of these claims have eaten away at underlying reality, which is that a man without a tie is simply not dressed up. He is not, in any sense, truly presentable in any dignified public setting. Culturally, we give it a pass but it is not respectable.
I will preach again my constant refrain: dressing well is not about you; it’s about what you are saying about the occasion, the venue, and others there. Do you want to show respect or show disrespect? That’s the issue. The gathered president and former presidents simply showed childish disrespect for the people at the occasion.
