I asked how one writes about not one but two unfathomable traumas while still rocked by each. Instead, we did it online and recorded the chat. We could have done this while walking our dogs (our regular paths overlap). This is an elegantly crafted and painfully honest book.Ī few days ago, Raskin and I discussed Unthinkable, Tommy, and the impeachment. And with erudition, grace, and disquiet, he examines the present danger to democracy. He examines the connections between his family’s tragedy and that which befell the nation days later. He writes with gut-wrenching frankness about the depression that Tommy could not escape and his own grief and guilt. (His father and I are friends and neighbors.) Raskin’s depiction of his remarkable son is both inspiring and almost unbearably heartbreaking, given the far-too-soon ending to his story. I knew him and can attest that he was an unusually excellent human being. Tommy, a Harvard law student at the time of his death, was brilliant, creative, empathetic, perceptive, and passionate. It is a stunning work: a biography of Tommy, an account of one of the worst days in the life of America, and a behind-the-scenes recounting of the effort to hold Trump accountable for his assault on the republic. Raskin has written a poignant, sad, insightful, and compelling memoir of those weeks: Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. Quite an accomplishment for a former constitutional law professor, especially under the horrific personal circumstances. That was 10 votes shy of the 67 votes required for a conviction but the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction in US history.
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How to do that with the burden of immense suffering? The trial ended in a majority vote for conviction, 57 to 43, with seven Republicans finding Trump guilty, and the other members of the minority party essentially accepting Trump’s betrayal. That entailed devising the legal arguments and strategies for the trial in the Senate-and assuming the high-profile role as chief prosecutor. Yet Raskin, amid the deepest grief, took on a weighty assignment: leading the House managers for the second impeachment of Donald Trump. Yet for Raskin, his wife, Sarah, and their daughters, these different nightmares were intertwined, each striking at and undermining core assumptions about life and their world. These two traumas were distinct, one personal and intimate, the other with ramifications for an entire nation. The three lived through the harrowing hours, as Trump-inspired insurrectionists attacked Congress and tried to stop the transfer of power. Days later, Raskin was at the Capitol on January 6, with his daughter Hannah and the husband of his other daughter, Tabitha, for the certification of the electoral vote. On the last day of 2020, Tommy Raskin, the 25-year-old son of Rep.
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Subscribing costs just $5 a month-but right now you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Our Land is written by David twice a week and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media his unvarnished take on the events of the day film, books, television, and music recommendations interactive audience features and more. “I would report to him about our work on the Hill to try to address the pandemic, always providing positive a spin as possible.Editor’s note: This interview first appeared in Our Land, David Corn’s new newsletter. “In the fall of 2020, I was many times conscious, while at dinner with Sarah and Tommy, of censoring stories on the tip of my tongue about the ordeals of immigrants or refugees that we had heard in the Judiciary Committee, because I knew how much they would upset and pain Tommy,” he writes. This in turn led to Mr Raskin not speaking of his work as a congressman lest he upset his son. Mr Raskin notes how many young people like his son also dealt with depression and suicide has spiked in people in his son’s age group. The two Raskins marched in a Black Lives Matter rally, which was the last protest the two would attend together. I tried to comfort him, and we talked about what to do in response.” “Tommy looked heartbroken and astonished, as though his mind and heart could not assimilate the reality of so much viciousness and cruelty being densely concentrated in one man, a lawless agent of the state. “He was in our kitchen when he handed me his phone,” Mr Raskin writes. “Relationships were strained, forced into a premature or awkward intimacy, or more likely, into a melancholy virtual oblivion.”Īt the same time, Mr Raskin writes how his son was despondent at the death of George Floyd. “With in-person school closed, social life was reduced to a fragile and masked minimum,” the elder Raskin writes.
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