The Senate of Lesser Sons

By Vincent R. Pozon

My mother once told me that a hankering of parents is that children and grandchildren be "improvements on the original." That's how she phrased it. In other words, they want us to be better than they were.

This explains parents' constant worrying, their preference that children "marry well," for stronger genes and brighter offspring, and "marry rich," to afford better education for future generations.

There is something in the direction of the hope. The mother's wish points forward; she imagines her child becoming someone she herself could not be, going somewhere she could not reach.

The hope of political dynasties points backward; it asks only that the child hold what the parent held.

Someone said, with nary an ounce of malice, that among those bearing longstanding political names, none are improvements on the original; few are anywhere near the calibre of their forebears.

I did not want to name names, but the point requires examples. I do not see a Ninoy Aquino in Bam Aquino—not the same voltage, danger, or tragic eloquence, only somebody cosplaying the martyr. I do not see in Ralph Recto the constitutional fire, nationalist intellect, or polemical force of Claro M. Recto. They may dispute the judgment, as they are entitled to do, but comparison is the burden of inheritance. And advertising taught me long ago that perception is reality. The public man is not made only by record, résumé, or bloodline, but by the figure he cuts in the public mind.

Nor is the sorrow only genealogical. The Senate no longer seems able to summon the Miriam Defensor Santiagos, the Joker Arroyos, the Jovito Salongas—the figures who left behind only the more difficult inheritance of example.

Some heirs, though, may have improved on their predecessors in slyness, contrivance, and malice. I leave it to the reader to name them.