Dressing for the Role: Zelensky, Polonius, and the Theater of Politics Zelensky’s refusal to wear a suit in the Oval Office wasn’t just a fashion choice—it was theater, signaling defiance, playing to his audience, and raising questions about respect and diplomacy. By Roger Kimball
I believe that most students, when first reading Hamlet, are inclined to regard Polonius as a sententious fool, present mostly for comic relief.
Sententious he may be. But it strikes me that most of his advice is wise and to the point.
Consider, to take one example, his famous speech to his son Laertes as the young man prepares to sail for France.
Is there a single item among Polonius’s “few precepts” that rings false?
I think that the speech, though pitched a bit high rhetorically, is full of good advice, from the bits at the beginning about holding one’s tongue to the concluding “to thine own self be true” admonition at the end.
Thinking about Volodymyr Zelensky’s performance in the Oval Office on Friday, it occurred to me that the Ukrainian president might profit by emulating certain of Polonius’s strictures. I am not thinking of Dane’s advice that one should “Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act.” Nor am I thinking of Polonius’s sage advice, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Both, to be sure, are sound prescriptions that the President of Ukraine might practice to his advantage.
But no: what impressed me as I digested the theater of the Zelensky Oval Office outing was something apparently more trivial. It revolved around what Polonius said about clothes, especially his observation that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” Before the fireworks really started, at about minute 40 of the 50-minute Oval Office press conference when Zelensky and J.D. Vance got into it, someone asked why the President of Ukraine was not wearing a suit.
I thought that was a good question. President Trump, when he greeted Zelensky at the White House that morning, joked that he was “all dressed up today.” In fact, Zelensky was wearing some variation on his signature black bohemian fatigues.
Gents, if you were to go to the White House to meet with the President on a matter of supreme urgency, would you show up accoutered as did Volodymyr Zelensky? Or would you wear a suit?
In answer to a question posed in the Oval Office, we know that Zelensky does own a suit. He wore one not so long ago when he met with Klaus Schwab.
Why, then, would he choose to forgo that elementary sartorial mark of respect when going to meet with the President of the United States? Was it a calculated act of disrespect or contempt?
Maybe in part. But I think it had a positive goal. In brief, I think that it was calculated to appeal to the nascent Jane Fonda that dwells in the breast of every would-be liberal supporter of the putatively downtrodden. Zelensky, I suspect, dresses the way he does for the same reason that Fidel Castro always dressed in olive green military fatigues. He thought it burnished his reputation as an OK revolutionary™, and it did.
Zelensky, who began his career as a sort of performance artist, is clearly very conscious of the theatrical dimension of politics. It’s not so much that he has dressed for success as that he dresses to make an impression. Which makes his behavior in the Oval Office all the more curious. The meeting had barely concluded before the Babylon Bee posted a story quipping that Zelensky “tries bold new strategy of insulting people he is begging money from.”
Satire? Or the simple truth?
A couple of points. One, I suspect that Zelensky was improperly briefed. There have been many reports that he had been advised to be tough in his meeting with Trump. If so, he was being given bad advice. The journalist Scott Jennings cut to the chase when he observed that Zelensky’s task in that meeting was actually quite simple. “All he had to do,” Jennings said, “was walk in and say, thank you. I’m really grateful to be here. We want to be partners with the United States. We’re grateful for your leadership. Where are the papers and what are we having for lunch? That’s all he had to do.”
But behind the exigencies that bore upon this one episode is the complex history of Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the equally complex history of the character of Volodymyr Zelensky.
We are encouraged by many people to see the former as a simple morality play in which Russia, or at least Vladimir Putin, is the irredeemable bad guy while Ukraine is the noble victim.
I won’t open that fraught story except to say, even if Putin’s behavior will not bear scrutiny, what has been happening in Ukraine these past few years is not exactly edifying, as anyone who asks about elections, freedom of the press, censorship, and anti-Semitism will know.
About Zelensky himself, The Spectator recently published an eye-opening reflection by a former senior aide to Zelensky. Entitled “Only Trump—not Zelensky—can save Ukraine,” the column, published under a pseudonym, is a chronicle of disillusionment. “I cannot,” the unnamed author writes, “remain silent about how Zelensky is weakening Ukraine under the guise of war. As a result of this new climate of fear, I must write these words under the veil of anonymity—a necessary precaution against retaliation from the very regime I once served.”
Ukraine has become a paradox: a nation fighting for its sovereignty while dismantling its own democratic foundations. For years, the West has indulged in the illusion of Zelensky as the “face of democracy.” In reality, he has undermined our democracy, institutions, and economy, making Ukraine much weaker in the face of an existential threat—and in the process, destroying our nation’s motivation to fight the Russian aggressor. . . . Today, Zelensky and his circle have consolidated nearly total control over the state. They can manipulate elections, suppress dissent, and imprison whomever they choose. Independent media are officially banned from television and radio airwaves, while opposition and anti-corruption activists active online have been threatened with arrest.
This runs deeply counter to the approved narrative. Vladimir Putin has been pre-selected for the role of villain. Introducing another without ceremony only confuses people.
Many hundreds of thousands of people have died in the Ukraine war. Donald Trump wants to end the slaughter by bringing Russia and Ukraine to the bargaining table. Zelensky says that without “security guarantees” from the United States, any deal is hollow. I thought Trump himself countered that argument effectively in his exchanges with Zelensky in the Oval Office. And Marco Rubio, speaking with Caitlin Collins later that day, patiently laid out the president’s strategy.
It is an open question, I think, whether Zelensky is primarily after peace or a continued place holding the reins of power under the gratifying klieg lights of media celebrity. His cavalier neglect of Polonius’s sound advice about haberdashery is not encouraging.
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