Maggie Hassan won a bipartisanship award. Please hold your applause.

In ways too numerous to count, the political events of the past two years have been tragic for this country. But because despair isn’t an option, my survival technique is to view much of it as comedy.

Granted the violence, cruelty, and callousness of this moment make that difficult, but hopelessness is a trap that I want no part of and which none of us can afford.

And so I watch the absurdity of this president fussing about the Kennedy Center, his ballroom, and reporters who hurt his feelings all while a new quagmire of his own making opens up in the Middle East, rising consumer prices put added pressures on American families, and one existential crisis (climate change) worsens while another (artificial intelligence) emerges.

Et cetera.

And then, amid so much calculated death and destruction, comes the dark hilarity of watching the 1980s teen movie villainy of Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, among countless others. (Hegseth is perfect as Chet in “Weird Science,” of course, but how about Vance as Kent in “Real Genius”?)

There is no doubt in my mind that history will not be kind to these people, and you can bet that they’re going to dedicate a lot of time and resources into rehabilitating what’s left of their images once the “stable genius” is out of the picture. It’s already begun for some of them — Marjorie Taylor Greene is one and Tucker Carlson another. But then there are the quieter examples of attempted repentance and rebirth, like former Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

I’m singling out Portman only because on Monday, New Hampshire’s junior U.S. senator, Maggie Hassan, gleefully sent out a press release celebrating a “Bipartisan Public Service Award” she was given by the University of Cincinnati’s Portman Center for Policy Solutions.

“Granite Staters have always prioritized solutions over partisanship,” Hassan said in the release. “That’s why I am dedicated to working with anyone to get things done for New Hampshire.”

Portman happily seconded the boast.

“I know firsthand that to get things done in Congress you need to work across the aisle,” he said. “Maggie Hassan and Todd Young (Republican of Indiana) are two of the best bipartisan legislators, and our new ranking system verifies that.”

Before New Hampshire Democrats crack open the champagne for their aisle-crossing U.S. senator, it’s important to understand a little more about the guy bestowing the award.

Portman endorsed President Donald Trump in 2016, withdrew the endorsement after the “Access Hollywood” tape, and then endorsed him again in 2020. (If this reminds you of Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s unprincipled flip-flop on Trump, well, it should.) 

“I’m going to vote for him, and I’m helping him, and I’m endorsing him,” Portman told CNBC in February 2020. “I cannot believe the change we have seen in terms of our economic growth, in terms of restoring our military strength. He’s done a lot of great things.”

When Trump was defeated in that election (sorry, Republicans, but he really did lose) and instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Portman took a stand. Well, it was more of a pose.

“On the night it happened, I took to the Senate floor and gave an impassioned speech about democracy and the need to protect it. So that’s who I am,” he told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in 2022.

“But,” Goldberg wrote in his 2024 piece, “this is incorrect. This is not who he is. Portman showed the people of Ohio who he is five weeks later, on February 13, when he voted to acquit Trump, the man he knew to have fomented a violent, antidemocratic insurrection meant to overturn the results of a fair election.”

The title of Goldberg’s piece is “A study in Senate cowardice: Republicans like Rob Portman could have ended Donald Trump’s political career. They chose not to.”

And this — this! – is what Hassan and the rest of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation don’t seem to understand. While a lot of their constituents (myself included) are grateful they are not among the politicians throwing gasoline on the vast dumpster fire that is this American moment, now is not exactly the time to be taking a bipartisan victory lap. It’s great that they’re trying to douse the inferno with their chilled bottles of spring water and everything, but it would be a whole lot better, for everybody, if they tried a little harder to wrest the gas cans away from the arsonists.

How does a minority party accomplish that? I’m not sure, but I’ll let you know when I see it.

I do know, however, that it’s not enough for the state’s delegation to take occasional aim at the easy, neon-clad targets like Trump, Hegseth, and gravel-chewing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Portmans of the world — the “compassionate conservative” enablers of so much dark comedy, horror, and tragedy — bear much of the responsibility for lending the far right enough cover to take, hold, and exert power. The center-right, which apparently exists solely to reduce the complexity of the world to matters of deregulation and privatization, may not have fully joined the cult but they seem to enjoy wearing the uniform. I suspect that’s because it pays so well, and not just for them but also their benefactors at the top of the wealth ladder who move members of Congress around like chess pieces.

And you know, it occurs to me now that as much as I despised the bullies in those ’80s teen movies, it was always their pals just standing around smirking while it all went down who bothered me the most. Portman may not be bad guy Hardy Jenns (with two N’s) in “Some Kind of Wonderful,” but he absolutely appears as “Hardy’s friend” in the closing credits.

So forgive me for not joining the bipartisanship parade that New Hampshire’s Democratic congressional delegation takes so much pride in leading. I guess I’m still working through my ‘80s issues.