Seventh Sunday after Easter
First Presbyterian Church
Saint Helena, California
The scriptures today [texts below] focus on the appointment of another apostle to replace Judas and, in the Gospel, a prayer by Jesus to the Father on behalf of those left behind to do his work, namely his disciples then and all the disciples to come. These are appropriate scriptures for Memorial Day, a day set aside in this country to remember those who served in time of war. They are also appropriate scriptures to help us remember and give thanks for all those who came before us, all the saints of our by now extremely long Christian history, those people who have made our gathering this morning possible.
2,000 years ago Jesus, the carpenter from Galilee, the son of Mary, the son of God, commissioned his first disciples and sent them into the world. Of course he did many other things. He healed the sick, he preached, he told little stories, he multiplied loaves and fishes, he was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again. Etc.
We all know this story, know it so well that we can recite it. Oftentimes in church we do, in the form of the Nicene Creed or something like it. If it were not for the witnesses, we would not know this story; we would know nothing of Jesus of Nazareth. We are here this morning because our parents, probably, taught us to pray, brought us to church or Sunday School or both. There is probably more to it than that. We probably received some instruction or inspiration as young adults and adults, from a teacher, from a chaplain, from an inspiring minister and congregation, whether early in life or later, and so here we are.
In an even wider picture, long before we were here and well beyond the relatively small circle of our families, other witnesses have made us possible, literally some 2,000 years and hundreds of millions of people worth of Christian experience and in the US of A, roughly 200 years of national experience. We are Christians and we are Americans – most of us, I presume – if there is a foreign national among us this morning, I hope you feel welcome on this Memorial Day Weekend, which we began to celebrate a few years after our Civil War, which officially ended exactly 144 years ago. It effectively ended with the surrender of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in early April, but it took a few weeks more to wrap things up. President Andrew Johnson declared hostilities at end on May 10th, whereupon planning began for the Grand Review of the Armies, which turned out to be the biggest parade that has ever taken place in Washington. It took two whole days to parade roughly 150,000 soldiers from the Capitol to the White House reviewing stand; one day for the armies of the eastern theater and another whole day for the westerners, and that parade took place on May 23rd and 24th, 1865. My great grandfather, Hiram Young of the 88th Indiana Infantry, was part of General Sherman’s Army and took part in that parade.
Likewise World War II came to a conclusion in May of 1945, 64 years ago; at least fighting stopped in the European Theater in early May after Hitler shot himself on April 30. Various German commanders tried to surrender to the British or the Americans and not to the Russians. Cease-fires were agreed to but General Eisenhower insisted that the surrender be unconditional and complete to all allied armed services simultaneously (as had been agreed by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) and this finally happened on May 8th. There were victory parades of course, in Moscow, in Berlin, in London shortly thereafter. The official American parade took place in New York in January of 1946.
This shows you how much the world had changed in a mere 80 years. In May of 1865, the soldiers marched to Washington. It took a week or two, they camped along the banks of the Potomac, had their parade and went home. That was that. In May of 1945, soldiers still had to disarm millions of enemy soldiers, occupy and police hostile territory, set up a government, feed millions of hungry people and by the way, get ready to invade Japan. The war in the Pacific continued. I’m wearing a little replica of my Dad’s theater ribbon today, the Chine-Burma-India Theater, where the war continued and where my Dad continued to serve, in Calcutta, India, until 1946.
Memorial Day took place officially first on May 30, 1868 to honor the Civil War dead. It had its beginnings of course all over the United States – some time in May around the anniversary of the end of the war, and has evolved into a day to honor all of those who died in all of our nation’s wars. How could we not set aside some time to remember our great Civil War and the great, in effect World Civil War and those who brought these wars to a conclusion? And further, to think about the causes of wars and what we the living must do to avoid them in the future? Thus I placed the quotations from two great Americans in the bulletin this morning [texts below]. More on those quotations in a minute, but first let me add a contemporary quotation to our meditations this morning.
We are all aware that President Obama journeyed to Northern Indiana exactly a week ago to receive an honorary degree and give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. I followed this story with great interest for any number of reasons, not the least of which are the facts that my father graduated from the University of Notre Dame du Lac in 1935 and I spent part of a summer there in 1997 as a Pew Evangelical Younger Scholar. I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, maintain great affection for it and am proud to be part of the extended family of Notre Dame. President Obama’s speech has received much attention, deservedly so, but let me quote from the other President on the platform that day, the President of Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins, who introduced the President of the US. He directly addressed the core issue raised by a celebration of Memorial Day or any national celebration:
More than any problem in the arts or sciences - engineering or medicine – easing the hateful divisions between human beings is the supreme challenge of this age. If we can solve this problem, we have a chance to come together and solve all the others.
A Catholic university – and its graduates – are specially called, and I believe specially equipped, to help meet this challenge.
As a Catholic university, we are part of the Church – members of the “mystical body of Christ” animated by our faith in the Gospel. Yet we are also – most of us – citizens of the United States – this extraordinary evolving expression of human freedom. We are called to serve each community of which we’re a part, and this call is captured in the motto over the door of the east nave of the Basilica: “God, Country, Notre Dame.”
There are some extraordinary phrases in these three paragraphs:
“As a Catholic university, we are part of the Church - members of the “mystical body of Christ” animated by our faith in the Gospel.”
He did not say “As a Catholic University, we are part of the Roman Catholic Church,” which of course is a true statement; he said “As a Catholic university, we are part of the Church – members of the “mystical body of Christ.”
In other words, there is one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. They were part of it at commencement at Notre Dame. We are in it now. The Episcopalians down the street – they’re in it, too. The Catholics one street over, they, too are in it. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, we’re all in it. All of us: we’re the church. That’s what Father Jenkins said. God bless him.
“Yet we are also – most of us – citizens of the United States – this extraordinary evolving expression of human freedom.
This young President of ND has catapulted himself into the very thick of a very important and longstanding conversation about the meaning of America. The poetic phrase, this brilliant use of assonance, three initial e’s - in characterizing the United States, “this extraordinary evolving expression of human freedom” puts him in the company of Abraham Lincoln, of George Marshall, of Thomas Jefferson – he’s with the immortals.
Then he clinchesd it:
“We are called to serve each community of which we’re a part, and this call is captured in the motto over the door of the east nave of the Basilica: ‘God, Country, Notre Dame.’”
With this introduction, President Jenkins challenged members of the ND community, members of the Roman Catholic Church, members of The Church, citizens of the United States and, in effect, citizens of the world, to respect one another despite our differences., not by ignoring our differences but by celebrating them:
God, country, Notre Dame. God, country, whatever your tertiary institution, California, Saint Helena, the Presbyterian Church, your neighborhood mosque or temple.
Our ability to listen respectfully to one another as Christians, as citizens of the United States, as citizens of the world, to be free, yet responsible people – that is the issue. As W. H. Auden put it in his poem at the beginning of World War II, “we must love one another or die.”
At only one time in our national history did we experience the breakdown of civility and we rightly call it the Civil War. A mere 80 year later the Second World War broke out, a war that threatened the existence of civility everywhere. Bearing in mind the words of President Father Jenkins, let us
ponder the quotations by Lincoln and Marshall in the bulletin, what Lincoln said in the midst of the Civil War and what General of the Army George C. Marshall said in the middle of the Second World War.
Upon the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg in November of 1863, several months after the battle, Lincoln reassured the American people, despite the carnage of this war
“ . . . that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
He could have promised better economic times or greater power upon the world stage; these things indeed came. But he promised a new birth of freedom for all Americans, and, by implication, all people on earth.
George Marshall expanded on this theme some 80 years later:
“We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”
Thus 425 years after Martin Luther propounded his views on Christian freedom, which sowed the seeds of the American Revolution, the American Army liberated Luther’s homeland from anti-Christian Nazism. Shortly thereafter the United States of America issued billions of dollars worth of loans and aid to ensure that the new Germany would not fall under the sway of another tyranny. After World War II, we did not create a desert and call it peace. This is what Marshall meant by saying that our flag would be recognized as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.
This marked the entrance of America on to the stage of world power; and there we have been, for better or worse, ever since. To still say today that our flag is a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other . . . well, that is audacious to say the least, but that is a good characterization of what we are attempting.
Now if we are to have any hope of effectively wielding power throughout the world, we have to model the civil exercise of freedom at home. Not that we agree about everything, but that we can decently agree to disagree. A week ago, the Notre Dame community modeled this behavior. I don’t see how any university could have done any better. I assume that there were a few arrests of a few rumbustious souls, but acts of incivility were minimal. Those who disagreed with Presidents Jenkins and/or Obama were allowed their say. Some 2,000 people held their own exercises in one of the university’s quadrangles. Alumni threatened to withdraw their contributions. Bishops wrote him nasty letters. Well, such is the life of a university president.
The way President Jenkins endured the heat for extending his invitation and the way the student and alumni body at the Commencement responded to both Presidents made the University of Notre Dame an example for all of us to admire this Memorial Day Weekend.
Has this sort of thing happened before? One other example of surprising hospitality occurred a while ago when Jerry Falwell, the sort of clergyman we liberal Protestants love to hate, invited Ted Kennedy to the campus of Liberty University.
When have we liberals exercised this sort of hospitality? Well, yes, but I think we all could do this sort of thing more often. Yale, of course, invited alumnus George Bush to campus a few years ago, early in his presidency, igniting some sort of uproar. For my favorite case of liberal magnanimity I have to reach back in my memory to over forty years ago when the Harvard Lampoon invited John Wayne to Harvard at the height of the Vietnam War. The editor of the Lampoon drove John Wayne into Harvard Square on top of an army vehicle, where he was pelted with snow balls. He laughingly threw them back; gave a speech, took questions and made clever and funny responses. I don’t think anyone had any idea that the Duke had this sort of skill set in him. It did not affect the war, but comic relief in the gray February of 1967 was most welcome.
I am open to further education on the matter, but I fear that we theological liberals have not been as magnanimous as we could be and we have not had much sense of humor.
This memorial Day we ponder being Christian and being American. We ponder remarks by the now famous President Jenkins of Notre Dame, Abraham Lincoln, George Marshall, and, of course the words and example of Jesus. What can we conclude?
Whenever I am at a loss for a conclusion when the topic is the meaning of America, I usually turn to our own Walt Saint Paul Whitman. Listen to the following words from Leaves of Grass in the context of everything we have thought about this morning having to do with presidents and Americans and how we behave towards one another and how we act in the world:
“Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- . . . the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech. . . their good temper and open-handedness -- the terrible significance of their elections -- the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.”
This memorial Day we remember with thanksgiving those who have come before us; we particularly remember those whose sacrifice has made this nation possible; we celebrate that we the people are the body of Christ and the greatest poem ever written; and it’s not fully written yet.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Washington Journal
The Torch Has Been Passed
President Barack Hussein Obama has now taken the oath of office, concluding with the words, “So help me God.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts, the first Roman Catholic chief justice, administered the oath. Forty-eight years have passed since John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president, concluded the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution, as have all presidents since Franklin Roosevelt and most before, with the words “So help me God.” President Kennedy began his remarks immediately thereafter with a specific reference to this oath, thereby reassuring Protestant America that he was no different from those who came before:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-- symbolizing an end as well as a beginning--signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.
Religion was on everyone’s mind during the election of 1960, but race was also a decisive factor. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. had intended to vote for Richard Nixon because, like many other Protestant clergymen of that day, he did not think that a Roman Catholic should be president. Then his son, Martin Jr., was arrested in Atlanta on October 26, 1960 at a lunch counter sit-in. After several days, the merchants involved dropped the charges and everyone, some 280 students plus Dr. King, were released.
Except that it was discovered that Dr. King had violated his parole from a previous arrest, for driving in Georgia with an Alabama license. So he was taken, in chains, to a state prison. Many feared for his life under such circumstances. This obviously came at a critical time in a close election. While Vice-President Nixon chose not to mention the matter, Senator Kennedy made a phone call to Mrs. King and brother Robert made some lawyerly inquiries of the authorities. King was released. Then Martin Senior spoke to the press:
“Because this man was willing to wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law’s eyes, I’ve got a suitcase of votes, and I’m going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap.”
Forty-eight years later, that suitcase has grown to immense proportions.
President Obama’s entire life, from conception and birth to the present, has taken place in those forty-eight years since John F. Kennedy brought the nation to its feet with his remarkable address on a similarly cold and sunny winter day. The Cold War was at its utmost intensity. Only one sentence of that remarkable address dealt with domestic policy. The rest focussed on our struggle with the Soviet Union, with Marxism, international communism, the specter that had been haunting Europe for over a century. Yet remarkable changes soon swept the country unleashed by the energetic and charismatic young president.
On that January 20, 1961, I was in the fourth grade at Sanford E. Merrill Elementary School in Park Ridge, Illinois. I walked home for lunch that winter day, as did all the kids in the school. We all lived within a mile of this red-brick school with a classical portico for a front door and a framed photograph of Sanford E. Merrill, who I believe was superintendent of schools in some distant decade, in the entryway. There were two classrooms for each grade, K through Six. Mom had the television on when I walked in the door and we, along with my brother, who was in the sixth grade, watched the inaugural parade as we ate lunch. I remember images of the President’s motorcade leaving the Capitol and PT-109 on a float parading down Pennsylvania Avenue accompanied by crew members and sailors in uniform.
A child of nine today is as far removed from that event as I was then from the inauguration of President Wilson in 1913. In the following forty-eight years, the United States went from being a potential world power to being a superpower that had twice landed expeditionary forces on the continent of Europe and welcomed them home victorious. The United States had put Europe back on its feet and was unquestionably the leader of the free world yet faced a powerful and belligerent coalition of opponents led by the Soviet Union, whose massive army had crushed Nazi Germany only fifteen years before.
From 1961 until today, we have seen our old adversary, the Soviet Union disappear and Red China join the practitioners of capitalism. A new adversary, terrorist Islam, has arisen. We also find ourselves in the midst of an almost unimaginable and barely explicable economic crisis. We have made extraordinary changes in our society and culture, probably greater than those made in the previous forty-eight years. Women are working in greater numbers and higher pay scales. African-Americans are accepted at levels of society and government. The sexual revolution took off in the 1960s, and proceeds apace.
Along with the giddying pace of social change, there is great concern for the survival of local customs and institutions in the age of the internet, much argument over the role of religious figures, institutions and ideas in public life, much concern about the ability of government and education to accommodate the unceasing and vertiginous waves of technological and cultural change. At the local level, people are as concerned as ever about schools, how to prepare children for the future while giving them a sense of the nation’s past, how to achieve the appropriate ethnic, cultural, racial, linguistic and economic mix, and at what price of transporting kids to and fro, and whose decision this is, what role the courts play in deciding who decides and what.
How many children today walk home from school to eat a lunch prepared by their mothers? Is this good or bad?
At this time, along with much soul-searching, finger-pointing and trepidation over said economic crisis, and other crises, and after a seemingly interminable election campaign, the American people have entrusted their leadership to this tall, handsome man from Kansas, Hawaii, Indonesia, southern California, New York City, Cambridge and Chicago, a man as close to being the American Everyman as anyone could imagine. How will a child of nine today look back on this presidency in 2056?
I have not written much about this new president because I am still having trouble believing all that has happened since he announced his campaign some two years ago. Just witnessing the transition that began in November has been unbelievable enough. Suddenly, when his eight years were almost up, here was a gracious and communicative President Bush. Where had this man been all these years? I could not help wondering about a presidency that might have been. He promised to be a uniter, not a divider, way back when, remember?
Now, several weeks after the inauguration, the focus is on the presidency that is and will be. Barack Obama looks like a president, talks like a president and walks like a president. He seems supremely comfortable in his new role, as does his family. William Kristol, a sharp-tongued conservative commentator, has written admiringly of Obama’s political talent. I do not know the story behind his departure from the editorial page of the New York Times, but he seems to be signaling that he will find other things to do for a while and wishes this president well.
There will, of course, be plenty of opposition to his policies. There already is. One cannot be successful without creating some opposition and one cannot expect a president to change the attitude and behavior of the opposition party. But by sounding a consistent theme and maintaining a consistent public persona, a president can accomplish much. There is every reason to believe that Obama is embarking on a presidency of the scale of Eisenhower’s, Reagan’s or Clinton’s in terms of consistent personal popularity.
Comparisons to President Kennedy are inevitable at this point, with Obama’s youth, athleticism, oratory, Ivy-League education and Ivy-League retainers. Back in 1993, when another very smart Democrat took office, many commentators noted the Vietnam disaster that followed the Kennedy presidency, brought on by the best and brightest of the Kennedy brain trust, the very advisers who had so admirably managed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet no major national disaster occurred on Clinton’s watch. He was a popular president and his economic policies worked so well that they helped him to weather the self-inflicted wounds of his personal life.
Sixteen years later similar concerns have been raised by that school of thought that presumes minimalism to be safer than bold attempts at sweeping change. It is worth noting then, that the Vietnam debacle really unfolded after Kennedy was dead and that his advisers and President Johnson were following the conventional wisdom of the day that Communism had to be met and defeated wherever it reared its ugly head. America’s entire foreign policy establishment initially supported sending combat troops to Vietnam, as did most newspaper editorials, Time magazine and many others.
As an adult now of fifty-seven, I would not trade those thousand wonderful, giddy days of the Kennedy presidency for any other time in my life, whatever came afterward. If the Obama presidency is only half as inspiring, it will be a success.
Now President Obama faces the most severe combination of foreign and domestic crises since Franklin Roosevelt. He has a faltering economy and two shooting wars on his hands and there is no consensus about how to proceed. His greatest challenges lie in countries that no one thought particularly important back in 1961. He will need all the help he can get.
Which brings me back to where I began.
Much has been made of the fact that a conservative white Christian clergyman and a liberal black Christian clergyman, both Protestants, offered invocation and benediction on January 20th, 2009. I thought they each spoke well, but could have said more by saying less. Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Jews have been offering prayer and benediction at inaugurations since President Roosevelt instituted the practice in 1937. Perhaps he decided that the nation could use all the help it could get in the middle of the Depression. His choice for the first invocation: The Rev. ZeBarney Phillips, Chaplain of the Senate; for the benediction, Father John A. Ryan of Catholic University.
President Eisenhower began his inaugural address in 1953 by asking everyone to bow their heads while he prayed aloud. He did this, astoundingly, when he was technically not a Christian. He was baptized several days later, on February 1, at National Presbyterian Church, then on Connecticut Avenue. President Kennedy’s inauguration featured no less than three invocations, led by Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, followed by Iakovos, Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America, followed by John Barclay, Pastor of Central Christian Church, Austin, Texas. A benediction by Rabbi Nelson Glueck, President of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, concluded the proceedings. Remember it was even colder that day.
Everything that happens on inauguration day (except for the taking of the oath, which must happen) is the prerogative of the President. The President is free to say “So help me God,” or not; place his hand on a Bible, or not; pray, or not; hold a parade, or not; patronize inaugural balls, or not. Should an atheist gain the highest office of the land, (s)he is free to affirm the oath and leave the rest out. If a strict Baptist is elected president, he does not have to dance.
This first African-American president has chosen to reassure the approximately 90% of Americans who profess a belief in God or identify with a religion that he shares their faith and respects their observance.
It’s a free country.
The Torch Has Been Passed
President Barack Hussein Obama has now taken the oath of office, concluding with the words, “So help me God.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts, the first Roman Catholic chief justice, administered the oath. Forty-eight years have passed since John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president, concluded the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution, as have all presidents since Franklin Roosevelt and most before, with the words “So help me God.” President Kennedy began his remarks immediately thereafter with a specific reference to this oath, thereby reassuring Protestant America that he was no different from those who came before:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-- symbolizing an end as well as a beginning--signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.
Religion was on everyone’s mind during the election of 1960, but race was also a decisive factor. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. had intended to vote for Richard Nixon because, like many other Protestant clergymen of that day, he did not think that a Roman Catholic should be president. Then his son, Martin Jr., was arrested in Atlanta on October 26, 1960 at a lunch counter sit-in. After several days, the merchants involved dropped the charges and everyone, some 280 students plus Dr. King, were released.
Except that it was discovered that Dr. King had violated his parole from a previous arrest, for driving in Georgia with an Alabama license. So he was taken, in chains, to a state prison. Many feared for his life under such circumstances. This obviously came at a critical time in a close election. While Vice-President Nixon chose not to mention the matter, Senator Kennedy made a phone call to Mrs. King and brother Robert made some lawyerly inquiries of the authorities. King was released. Then Martin Senior spoke to the press:
“Because this man was willing to wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law’s eyes, I’ve got a suitcase of votes, and I’m going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap.”
Forty-eight years later, that suitcase has grown to immense proportions.
President Obama’s entire life, from conception and birth to the present, has taken place in those forty-eight years since John F. Kennedy brought the nation to its feet with his remarkable address on a similarly cold and sunny winter day. The Cold War was at its utmost intensity. Only one sentence of that remarkable address dealt with domestic policy. The rest focussed on our struggle with the Soviet Union, with Marxism, international communism, the specter that had been haunting Europe for over a century. Yet remarkable changes soon swept the country unleashed by the energetic and charismatic young president.
On that January 20, 1961, I was in the fourth grade at Sanford E. Merrill Elementary School in Park Ridge, Illinois. I walked home for lunch that winter day, as did all the kids in the school. We all lived within a mile of this red-brick school with a classical portico for a front door and a framed photograph of Sanford E. Merrill, who I believe was superintendent of schools in some distant decade, in the entryway. There were two classrooms for each grade, K through Six. Mom had the television on when I walked in the door and we, along with my brother, who was in the sixth grade, watched the inaugural parade as we ate lunch. I remember images of the President’s motorcade leaving the Capitol and PT-109 on a float parading down Pennsylvania Avenue accompanied by crew members and sailors in uniform.
A child of nine today is as far removed from that event as I was then from the inauguration of President Wilson in 1913. In the following forty-eight years, the United States went from being a potential world power to being a superpower that had twice landed expeditionary forces on the continent of Europe and welcomed them home victorious. The United States had put Europe back on its feet and was unquestionably the leader of the free world yet faced a powerful and belligerent coalition of opponents led by the Soviet Union, whose massive army had crushed Nazi Germany only fifteen years before.
From 1961 until today, we have seen our old adversary, the Soviet Union disappear and Red China join the practitioners of capitalism. A new adversary, terrorist Islam, has arisen. We also find ourselves in the midst of an almost unimaginable and barely explicable economic crisis. We have made extraordinary changes in our society and culture, probably greater than those made in the previous forty-eight years. Women are working in greater numbers and higher pay scales. African-Americans are accepted at levels of society and government. The sexual revolution took off in the 1960s, and proceeds apace.
Along with the giddying pace of social change, there is great concern for the survival of local customs and institutions in the age of the internet, much argument over the role of religious figures, institutions and ideas in public life, much concern about the ability of government and education to accommodate the unceasing and vertiginous waves of technological and cultural change. At the local level, people are as concerned as ever about schools, how to prepare children for the future while giving them a sense of the nation’s past, how to achieve the appropriate ethnic, cultural, racial, linguistic and economic mix, and at what price of transporting kids to and fro, and whose decision this is, what role the courts play in deciding who decides and what.
How many children today walk home from school to eat a lunch prepared by their mothers? Is this good or bad?
At this time, along with much soul-searching, finger-pointing and trepidation over said economic crisis, and other crises, and after a seemingly interminable election campaign, the American people have entrusted their leadership to this tall, handsome man from Kansas, Hawaii, Indonesia, southern California, New York City, Cambridge and Chicago, a man as close to being the American Everyman as anyone could imagine. How will a child of nine today look back on this presidency in 2056?
I have not written much about this new president because I am still having trouble believing all that has happened since he announced his campaign some two years ago. Just witnessing the transition that began in November has been unbelievable enough. Suddenly, when his eight years were almost up, here was a gracious and communicative President Bush. Where had this man been all these years? I could not help wondering about a presidency that might have been. He promised to be a uniter, not a divider, way back when, remember?
Now, several weeks after the inauguration, the focus is on the presidency that is and will be. Barack Obama looks like a president, talks like a president and walks like a president. He seems supremely comfortable in his new role, as does his family. William Kristol, a sharp-tongued conservative commentator, has written admiringly of Obama’s political talent. I do not know the story behind his departure from the editorial page of the New York Times, but he seems to be signaling that he will find other things to do for a while and wishes this president well.
There will, of course, be plenty of opposition to his policies. There already is. One cannot be successful without creating some opposition and one cannot expect a president to change the attitude and behavior of the opposition party. But by sounding a consistent theme and maintaining a consistent public persona, a president can accomplish much. There is every reason to believe that Obama is embarking on a presidency of the scale of Eisenhower’s, Reagan’s or Clinton’s in terms of consistent personal popularity.
Comparisons to President Kennedy are inevitable at this point, with Obama’s youth, athleticism, oratory, Ivy-League education and Ivy-League retainers. Back in 1993, when another very smart Democrat took office, many commentators noted the Vietnam disaster that followed the Kennedy presidency, brought on by the best and brightest of the Kennedy brain trust, the very advisers who had so admirably managed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet no major national disaster occurred on Clinton’s watch. He was a popular president and his economic policies worked so well that they helped him to weather the self-inflicted wounds of his personal life.
Sixteen years later similar concerns have been raised by that school of thought that presumes minimalism to be safer than bold attempts at sweeping change. It is worth noting then, that the Vietnam debacle really unfolded after Kennedy was dead and that his advisers and President Johnson were following the conventional wisdom of the day that Communism had to be met and defeated wherever it reared its ugly head. America’s entire foreign policy establishment initially supported sending combat troops to Vietnam, as did most newspaper editorials, Time magazine and many others.
As an adult now of fifty-seven, I would not trade those thousand wonderful, giddy days of the Kennedy presidency for any other time in my life, whatever came afterward. If the Obama presidency is only half as inspiring, it will be a success.
Now President Obama faces the most severe combination of foreign and domestic crises since Franklin Roosevelt. He has a faltering economy and two shooting wars on his hands and there is no consensus about how to proceed. His greatest challenges lie in countries that no one thought particularly important back in 1961. He will need all the help he can get.
Which brings me back to where I began.
Much has been made of the fact that a conservative white Christian clergyman and a liberal black Christian clergyman, both Protestants, offered invocation and benediction on January 20th, 2009. I thought they each spoke well, but could have said more by saying less. Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Jews have been offering prayer and benediction at inaugurations since President Roosevelt instituted the practice in 1937. Perhaps he decided that the nation could use all the help it could get in the middle of the Depression. His choice for the first invocation: The Rev. ZeBarney Phillips, Chaplain of the Senate; for the benediction, Father John A. Ryan of Catholic University.
President Eisenhower began his inaugural address in 1953 by asking everyone to bow their heads while he prayed aloud. He did this, astoundingly, when he was technically not a Christian. He was baptized several days later, on February 1, at National Presbyterian Church, then on Connecticut Avenue. President Kennedy’s inauguration featured no less than three invocations, led by Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, followed by Iakovos, Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America, followed by John Barclay, Pastor of Central Christian Church, Austin, Texas. A benediction by Rabbi Nelson Glueck, President of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, concluded the proceedings. Remember it was even colder that day.
Everything that happens on inauguration day (except for the taking of the oath, which must happen) is the prerogative of the President. The President is free to say “So help me God,” or not; place his hand on a Bible, or not; pray, or not; hold a parade, or not; patronize inaugural balls, or not. Should an atheist gain the highest office of the land, (s)he is free to affirm the oath and leave the rest out. If a strict Baptist is elected president, he does not have to dance.
This first African-American president has chosen to reassure the approximately 90% of Americans who profess a belief in God or identify with a religion that he shares their faith and respects their observance.
It’s a free country.
Friday, January 2, 2009
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
I flew to the Midwest in October for the burial and memorial service for my mother’s last surviving sister. Aunt Virginia died at 93 and had been quite active until recently. She bought a new car just four years ago, using it to drive to the Central Christian Church and to the grocery store in Seymour, a town in southern Indiana spawned by the crossing of the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania Railroads in the mid-19th Century. I remember a thriving downtown from family visits when Eisenhower was president, but Seymour is now flanked by Interstate 65 and shopping centers and the downtown looks deserted. Nonetheless, the rest of this small city seems healthy enough with a new high school and rows of wood frame houses with front porches shaded by towering archways of trees. For me, my brother and my two cousins, it is a town full of good memories.
Virginia Green Otto was born in 1915, the second of three daughters to David Green and Nellie Humes Green. My mother was the first, born in 1911 and my Aunt LaDonna was born in 1917. David and Nellie died in the flu epidemic in 1919 or shortly thereafter. None of the girls could remember exactly. What they all remembered was their grandmother, Carrie Berkeley Humes, taking them into her house just down the road on East Third Street in Seymour and various aunts and uncles, of which there were seven, plus a great uncle or two, sending money periodically to keep the girls out of the orphanage.
Virginia married Donald Otto, also of Seymour, in the early 1930s. They had no children because Donald, whom everyone called Beanie, did not want any, or so Mom said. So my brother Steven and LaDonna’s two children, Dick and Donna, were the closest kinfolk who gathered with spouses and a couple of now grown children for the brief burial service at the cemetery, which we had all visited many times. It was a gorgeous afternoon, sunny and warm, not just sort of warm but eighty-plus degrees warm, Indian summer with the leaves turning and the fields a golden yellow.
There is something about a burial, as opposed to the increasingly popular cremation that imparts the unmistakable sense of a life’s trajectory. For Virginia, as for her sisters, life began at a small house on East Third Street. She went away to Franklin College and for a few years to Cincinnati, but for most of her adult years she lived at 215 Johnson Street. She played golf and tennis when younger and remained active in her church throughout her life. She and Beanie loved to go to the horse races. Whenever they visited us in the Chicago area, they would go to Arlington Park. By one of life’s happier coincidences, I walked in the door of her new duplex at the Lutheran Home several years ago a few minutes before the start of the Kentucky Derby. We each had a beer and watched on her little television in the kitchen.
When Uncle Don died over twenty years ago, she stayed in that little white clapboard house on Johnson Street until recently, when she moved into a duplex at the Lutheran Home on the other side of town. On family occasions she still had so much stamina that we took to referring to her as the “energizer bunny.” Immediately upon my arrival on another occasion, we set out for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. It was close to 90 degrees and humid.
She died there on October 4, and now lies here, next to her husband in Riverside Cemetery. Not scattered somewhere, but here, on this piece of land, under this stone, next to her husband, among her ancestors, where the leaves now turn and birds and insects sing. Here.
The cousins went to dinner afterward at the Story Inn, some twenty miles north and east of Seymour in Brown County. The Inn advertises itself as being “in one inconvenient location since 1851.” It appears that the inn and restaurant actually opened for business in the old general store some thirty years ago, but who can quibble with great advertising? The restaurant consisted of two large rooms set with white table cloths and fine crystal amidst assorted junk still on the shelves from the old general store. Three college kids performed classical music inside on the flute, violin and keyboard, while outside a bar served up beer in bottles to a couple dozen bikers. Thus all generations and social classes come to the Story Inn.
After everyone else had left I sat in the foyer for at least an hour listening to the music and taking in the atmosphere. The place intensely reminded me of Vermont and New Hampshire, where I lived for about a decade. After a while I found some paper and took note of the following:
A hornet’s nest next to the door (no hornets)
Working Coke machine that delivered Coke in the old hour-glass bottles
A huge glass jar full of corks
Blackboard with dessert menu
Antique baby buggy suspended from the ceiling, below which sat two kids playing checkers with bottle caps
Working dial pay phone with slots for nickels, dimes and quarters
Cast iron letter box
Magazines in old wooden ammunition boxes
Photograph of the children of the one room Storey school, ca 1910
Old Standard Oil pumps out front, with illuminated glass crowns on top, meter reading 40.9¢ per gallon
Shelves full of old bottles, brown beer and cough syrup bottles, blue Vicks Vapo-Rub jars with faded wrappers, various indistinct green bottles; cigar boxes, more ammunition boxes; various tools and implements, more jars, gadgets, gewgaws, krimkrams, whatsits, flooglemeisers, whatchacallits, thingamajigs . . .
In addition to grief for the passing of Virginia and for the knowledge of life’s fragility and brevity, I was swept by a powerful sense of peace and gratitude for the beauty of this land, for my family, for their stories, for us the living standing under the trees, where the sunshine felt warm on dark slacks and coats, amidst rows of stones marked with family names: Green, Humes, Burkley, Schneck, Martin, Otto.
I flew back to California the next day, taking the bus from San Francisco Airport up to the Napa Valley, which became my home in the spring. I picked up the battered old Toyota pickup – 300,000 miles on it, a beaut -- I had been driving all summer and stopped at Peet’s Coffee, where a deep, dark, creamy, complex triple espresso brought me back to life, then drove up Highway 29 to Saint Helena, stopping at the health spa where I work for a swim and a hot soak. There is not a lot to do in the Napa Valley besides eat and drink, hike and bike, and drop into one of numerous of spas and health clubs that dot the valley floor along with wineries and restaurants. But one does all of these things extremely well and I have grown to love the place.
I spent much of last winter in Washington working on applications for various fellowships, networking, getting around town to attend the literally dozens of panels, lectures and presentations that take place in the nation’s capital. When it became clear in May that none of these applications was likely to yield anything soon, I departed for Napa and settled in for a good six months. It was summer when I arrived in May and still essentially summer in November when the anticipation of a new administration pulled me back to Washington for another try.
(That’s right. Those columns I wrote this summer “from Washington” were written in California. Heh-heh-heh.)
I got to know the local restaurants and some of the bartenders, who were often happy to offer a taste of whatever wine was open, and grew accustomed to a glass of red wine after work. I met a lot of people through my landlord, who became a good friend, the sort of guy whom people spontaneously call “Dude!” The dude even lent me his truck, above. I also met a lot of people through the spa, the Rotary Club, and two churches in town, where I was invited to preach a couple of times.
Most days it was more than fun to practice massage in Saint Helena. It was warm enough to be outside in an enclosed garden. The setting is not as spectacular as at Esalen, where one works on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, but it was very peaceful and allowed for deep and meditative work. Sometimes I describe this work as making the world a better place one body at a time, or use the Biblical concept of “tikkun olam,” – repairing the world.
Here in Washington it has been unusually cold, but the severe storms all passed to the north of us, as usual. The latest one is just giving us a dusting of snow and some freezing rain. My favorite liturgical experience of the Christmas season remains the service of lessons and carols broadcast live from King’s College, Cambridge. This year I was particularly struck by one of the prayers:
Lastly let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.
I flew to the Midwest in October for the burial and memorial service for my mother’s last surviving sister. Aunt Virginia died at 93 and had been quite active until recently. She bought a new car just four years ago, using it to drive to the Central Christian Church and to the grocery store in Seymour, a town in southern Indiana spawned by the crossing of the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania Railroads in the mid-19th Century. I remember a thriving downtown from family visits when Eisenhower was president, but Seymour is now flanked by Interstate 65 and shopping centers and the downtown looks deserted. Nonetheless, the rest of this small city seems healthy enough with a new high school and rows of wood frame houses with front porches shaded by towering archways of trees. For me, my brother and my two cousins, it is a town full of good memories.
Virginia Green Otto was born in 1915, the second of three daughters to David Green and Nellie Humes Green. My mother was the first, born in 1911 and my Aunt LaDonna was born in 1917. David and Nellie died in the flu epidemic in 1919 or shortly thereafter. None of the girls could remember exactly. What they all remembered was their grandmother, Carrie Berkeley Humes, taking them into her house just down the road on East Third Street in Seymour and various aunts and uncles, of which there were seven, plus a great uncle or two, sending money periodically to keep the girls out of the orphanage.
Virginia married Donald Otto, also of Seymour, in the early 1930s. They had no children because Donald, whom everyone called Beanie, did not want any, or so Mom said. So my brother Steven and LaDonna’s two children, Dick and Donna, were the closest kinfolk who gathered with spouses and a couple of now grown children for the brief burial service at the cemetery, which we had all visited many times. It was a gorgeous afternoon, sunny and warm, not just sort of warm but eighty-plus degrees warm, Indian summer with the leaves turning and the fields a golden yellow.
There is something about a burial, as opposed to the increasingly popular cremation that imparts the unmistakable sense of a life’s trajectory. For Virginia, as for her sisters, life began at a small house on East Third Street. She went away to Franklin College and for a few years to Cincinnati, but for most of her adult years she lived at 215 Johnson Street. She played golf and tennis when younger and remained active in her church throughout her life. She and Beanie loved to go to the horse races. Whenever they visited us in the Chicago area, they would go to Arlington Park. By one of life’s happier coincidences, I walked in the door of her new duplex at the Lutheran Home several years ago a few minutes before the start of the Kentucky Derby. We each had a beer and watched on her little television in the kitchen.
When Uncle Don died over twenty years ago, she stayed in that little white clapboard house on Johnson Street until recently, when she moved into a duplex at the Lutheran Home on the other side of town. On family occasions she still had so much stamina that we took to referring to her as the “energizer bunny.” Immediately upon my arrival on another occasion, we set out for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. It was close to 90 degrees and humid.
She died there on October 4, and now lies here, next to her husband in Riverside Cemetery. Not scattered somewhere, but here, on this piece of land, under this stone, next to her husband, among her ancestors, where the leaves now turn and birds and insects sing. Here.
The cousins went to dinner afterward at the Story Inn, some twenty miles north and east of Seymour in Brown County. The Inn advertises itself as being “in one inconvenient location since 1851.” It appears that the inn and restaurant actually opened for business in the old general store some thirty years ago, but who can quibble with great advertising? The restaurant consisted of two large rooms set with white table cloths and fine crystal amidst assorted junk still on the shelves from the old general store. Three college kids performed classical music inside on the flute, violin and keyboard, while outside a bar served up beer in bottles to a couple dozen bikers. Thus all generations and social classes come to the Story Inn.
After everyone else had left I sat in the foyer for at least an hour listening to the music and taking in the atmosphere. The place intensely reminded me of Vermont and New Hampshire, where I lived for about a decade. After a while I found some paper and took note of the following:
A hornet’s nest next to the door (no hornets)
Working Coke machine that delivered Coke in the old hour-glass bottles
A huge glass jar full of corks
Blackboard with dessert menu
Antique baby buggy suspended from the ceiling, below which sat two kids playing checkers with bottle caps
Working dial pay phone with slots for nickels, dimes and quarters
Cast iron letter box
Magazines in old wooden ammunition boxes
Photograph of the children of the one room Storey school, ca 1910
Old Standard Oil pumps out front, with illuminated glass crowns on top, meter reading 40.9¢ per gallon
Shelves full of old bottles, brown beer and cough syrup bottles, blue Vicks Vapo-Rub jars with faded wrappers, various indistinct green bottles; cigar boxes, more ammunition boxes; various tools and implements, more jars, gadgets, gewgaws, krimkrams, whatsits, flooglemeisers, whatchacallits, thingamajigs . . .
In addition to grief for the passing of Virginia and for the knowledge of life’s fragility and brevity, I was swept by a powerful sense of peace and gratitude for the beauty of this land, for my family, for their stories, for us the living standing under the trees, where the sunshine felt warm on dark slacks and coats, amidst rows of stones marked with family names: Green, Humes, Burkley, Schneck, Martin, Otto.
I flew back to California the next day, taking the bus from San Francisco Airport up to the Napa Valley, which became my home in the spring. I picked up the battered old Toyota pickup – 300,000 miles on it, a beaut -- I had been driving all summer and stopped at Peet’s Coffee, where a deep, dark, creamy, complex triple espresso brought me back to life, then drove up Highway 29 to Saint Helena, stopping at the health spa where I work for a swim and a hot soak. There is not a lot to do in the Napa Valley besides eat and drink, hike and bike, and drop into one of numerous of spas and health clubs that dot the valley floor along with wineries and restaurants. But one does all of these things extremely well and I have grown to love the place.
I spent much of last winter in Washington working on applications for various fellowships, networking, getting around town to attend the literally dozens of panels, lectures and presentations that take place in the nation’s capital. When it became clear in May that none of these applications was likely to yield anything soon, I departed for Napa and settled in for a good six months. It was summer when I arrived in May and still essentially summer in November when the anticipation of a new administration pulled me back to Washington for another try.
(That’s right. Those columns I wrote this summer “from Washington” were written in California. Heh-heh-heh.)
I got to know the local restaurants and some of the bartenders, who were often happy to offer a taste of whatever wine was open, and grew accustomed to a glass of red wine after work. I met a lot of people through my landlord, who became a good friend, the sort of guy whom people spontaneously call “Dude!” The dude even lent me his truck, above. I also met a lot of people through the spa, the Rotary Club, and two churches in town, where I was invited to preach a couple of times.
Most days it was more than fun to practice massage in Saint Helena. It was warm enough to be outside in an enclosed garden. The setting is not as spectacular as at Esalen, where one works on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, but it was very peaceful and allowed for deep and meditative work. Sometimes I describe this work as making the world a better place one body at a time, or use the Biblical concept of “tikkun olam,” – repairing the world.
Here in Washington it has been unusually cold, but the severe storms all passed to the north of us, as usual. The latest one is just giving us a dusting of snow and some freezing rain. My favorite liturgical experience of the Christmas season remains the service of lessons and carols broadcast live from King’s College, Cambridge. This year I was particularly struck by one of the prayers:
Lastly let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Washington Journal
November 2, 2008
It is inspiring, surprising and quite sobering to read T.H. White’s The Making of the President 1964 as the current election campaign draws to a close.
How powerful, nay unassailable Johnson appeared on November 4th, the day after the election. He had won 61% of the popular vote and carried at least a dozen states not carried by a Democrat since: Nebraska, Kansas, Utah, Idaho, Virginia, Montana . . .
It was a tsunami of an election, the likes of which we have not seen since. Although both Nixon and Reagan, in 1972 and 1984, won personal victories as sweeping, they carried few people into office with them. The 1964 election was the real tidal wave, sweeping the Democratic Party to 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress, making LBJ the only president besides Roosevelt ever to have the will and the votes to pass a massive legislative program. The only time the Republican Party had anything close to such a mandate was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s personal victory was so shocking that a Democratic Congress generally went along with his proposals. In 2002, the Republicans had another window of opportunity, winning both houses of Congress while George W. Bush occupied the White House, but all by slender margins.
In January of 1965, LBJ bestrode the United States like a colossus. Ted White, and every other political reporter, expected him to be president until 1972. All political reporters were certainly aware of the trouble in Vietnam, but none predicted that it would come to such a nation-shaking boil within two years.
All of this came about because of the enormous popularity of John F. Kennedy, the grief upon his death, the obvious ability of Johnson, who firmly took control of the government when we desperately needed it, and, of course, the amazingly inept campaign of Barry Goldwater, who just about destroyed his own party before the campaign against the incumbent had begun.
Ted White portrays him as full of outraged certainty, a prophet out of the desert given to philippics and denunciations. Yet he and his lieutenants brilliantly seized control of a majority of Republican delegates while the other candidates dithered, did not become candidates at all (Lodge and Romney); won a key primary, Oregon, but lost the big one, California (Rockefeller); or became candidates far too late (Scranton). By the time of the convention in San Francisco - can anyone imagine the Republicans ever meeting again in San Francisco? – it was all over but the shouting, and there was plenty of that.
When Nelson Rockefeller gave his speech in favor of modifications to Goldwater’s platform, the conservative revolution, boiling in the Republican Party since the days of Bob Taft, boiled over. T. H. White describes the scene:
“It was as if Rockefeller were poking with a long lance and prodding a den of lions – they roared back at him. This was the face of the enemy . . . the man who had savaged Barry from New Hampshire to California all through the spring. This was the man who called them kooks, and now, like kooks, they responded to prove his point. This reporter was sitting in the Goldwater galleries to savor the moment , but suddenly found two men peering over his shoulder, noting every word written in the notebook – and commenting angrily as they read. As Rockefeller progressed and the roars grew, his tone alternated between defiance and mockery; he smiled; the audience yelled and roared, and the bass drum thumped; and Rockefeller taunted them all. In a passion that he had rarely achieved in his entire spring campaign, he was reaching emotion – and delighting in it. As he taunted them, they raged. Nor did they, apparently, know what they were raging at: the East; or New York; or Communists; or liberals . . . As Rockefeller, enjoying the spectacle and combat, a lock of his full hair tumbling over his forehead, taunted them (“This is a free country , ladies and gentlemen”), they yelled even louder. . . . as the TV cameras translated their wrath and fury to the national audience, they pressed on the viewers that indelible impression of savagery which no Goldwater leader or wordsmith could later erase.”
The election of 1964 was all but decided then and there. Who could have imagined that the Democratic Party would similarly cripple itself a short four years later in 1968, then nominate its own prophet of the desert in 1972?
The following months were the halcyon days of the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson masterfully and mercilessly took advantage of Barry Goldwater’s weaknesses and coasted to victory. All he really had to do was look and act presidential. He did that and infinitely more, as White wrote:
“. . . President Johnson’s personal campaign was more than efficient; it was entrancing. To travel with him was to climb one of the rare heights of American political and dramatic art. It was like watching a great perfumer , at the height of his power, moving through a repertory and range that could not be topped – and yet seeing him top them again and again.
Not for years had a campaigner – not even Mr. Harry Truman in 1948 – brought so finished a style of country oratory to a national audience.”
The Democrats had lost a great president, but had not lost their cause, their sense of direction or their leadership.
Then in just two short years, events spiraled out of control. For most of 1965, LBJ could do what he wanted: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, money for cities, money for schools, the list could go on and on. One of his acts, not much noticed at the time in the flurry of legislation, was to authorize the sending of troops to Vietnam with orders to engage the enemy. He was so confident that he thought he could end poverty and racism at home and defeat communism in Vietnam, probably in time for re-election in 1968.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Within a few years, the whole nation was mad. George Wallace was happy to tap into the rage the nation saw in the Republican convention galleries beyond the control of Goldwater’s lieutenants. Within a few years many people my age and a little older vowed to stop at nothing that would stop the Vietnam War. Soon there developed a left-wing rage and resentment coalition, composed of angry young people, angry blacks, angry women, angry gays, angry minorities. They did not like each other very much; all they had in common was anger at the current order. Meanwhile, the right-wing rage and resentment coalition did not stop operating with Goldwater’s resounding defeat; indeed many a right-wing pundit today looks back lovingly to that 1964 campaign as the founding moment of the modern conservative movement that has flowered into the rage and resentment echo chamber of conservative think-tanks and talk shows.
The Republican Party went back to basics: defend America, cut taxes, put bad people in jail, distrust minorities and their angry demands. The result is the familiar sea of red in electoral college maps, a wide L-shaped swath from the Canadian border down through the plains and western prairie states to Texas and east through the south to the ocean. All Republicans had to do to win these states was repeat the above mantra. Add Indiana and Ohio and you’ve won the presidency yet again, by a slender majority of the popular vote, or, as in 2000, no majority at all.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party could not manage a majority either. Al Gore got more votes than Bush in 2000, but not 50%. Thanks to Ross Perot, Bill Clinton never got a majority of the popular vote. Jimmy Carter was the last, at a razor-thin majority of 50.08%. Gerald Ford got about 48% that year, and Gene McCarthy, by then a Harold Stassen of the left, got .91%.
Now, finally, if you are a Democrat, it looks like the nightmare is about to end. Barack Obama has run a steady, competent race from start to finish. Most importantly, he has steadfastly refused to play the rage and resentment card or let the rage and resentment card play him. Jeremiah Wright briefly emerged from the wilderness to issue his prophecies; Obama threw him under a bus. Jesse Jackson was upset that Obama did not sound enough like, well, Jesse Jackson. By that time, Obama was racking up primary victories and nobody cared what Jesse Jackson said. Many of Obama’s young supporters yawned and wondered who Jesse Jackson was.
Nothing focuses the mind like defeat. Members of the left-wing rage and resentment coalition, sobered by all these years of Republican presidents, especially the last eight, have quietly decided to vote for Obama and do nothing to imperil his election. Feminist organizations are backing Obama. Most of Hillary Clinton’s supporters will vote for him. Gay organizations are waging some local campaigns but have not said much, if anything, about Obama’s support of civil unions but not gay marriage. No one besides Jeremiah Wright and James Cone is upset that Obama may not be black or angry enough. No one wants to bear the blame for four more years of Republican leadership, especially not since the economy imploded a few weeks ago.
Throughout all these years of Republican White Houses thanks to a majority of the white majority, that majority has been slowly shrinking. T.H. White asked in his 1964 book if the Republican Party could simply ignore the 10% or more of the electorate that black voters represented. The answer turned out to be that it could and it has. This year, with the nomination of Sarah Palin, the Republican Party has gone as far as it could go towards becoming exclusively the party of White Folks; it probably went beyond the point of caricature. She may have revved up the Republican base, but I cannot imagine she has any appeal to Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, independent voters or anyone who is not a Republican to start with.
T. H. White wrote in his first book that every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future. While speaking to the nation as a whole of its national future, the candidate can never forget that he speaks to the dozens of American voting blocs in terms of its past. The successful candidate then urges Americans to move forward with him to a common future. Obama appears to have done this. The key may well be the 20 – 30 age group, much talked about as people on the other side of the culture wars and enjoying the diversity of America, people dating and marrying across racial and cultural lines, relaxed about gender differences and sexual preferences. The mid-1960s, when the culture wars exploded and America’s cities burned, are ancient history to them. These folks are living and partying in the very neighborhoods that burned. If they turn out in force for Obama, we just might feel the tsunami.
It is inspiring, surprising and quite sobering to read T.H. White’s The Making of the President 1964 as the current election campaign draws to a close.
How powerful, nay unassailable Johnson appeared on November 4th, the day after the election. He had won 61% of the popular vote and carried at least a dozen states not carried by a Democrat since: Nebraska, Kansas, Utah, Idaho, Virginia, Montana . . .
It was a tsunami of an election, the likes of which we have not seen since. Although both Nixon and Reagan, in 1972 and 1984, won personal victories as sweeping, they carried few people into office with them. The 1964 election was the real tidal wave, sweeping the Democratic Party to 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress, making LBJ the only president besides Roosevelt ever to have the will and the votes to pass a massive legislative program. The only time the Republican Party had anything close to such a mandate was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s personal victory was so shocking that a Democratic Congress generally went along with his proposals. In 2002, the Republicans had another window of opportunity, winning both houses of Congress while George W. Bush occupied the White House, but all by slender margins.
In January of 1965, LBJ bestrode the United States like a colossus. Ted White, and every other political reporter, expected him to be president until 1972. All political reporters were certainly aware of the trouble in Vietnam, but none predicted that it would come to such a nation-shaking boil within two years.
All of this came about because of the enormous popularity of John F. Kennedy, the grief upon his death, the obvious ability of Johnson, who firmly took control of the government when we desperately needed it, and, of course, the amazingly inept campaign of Barry Goldwater, who just about destroyed his own party before the campaign against the incumbent had begun.
Ted White portrays him as full of outraged certainty, a prophet out of the desert given to philippics and denunciations. Yet he and his lieutenants brilliantly seized control of a majority of Republican delegates while the other candidates dithered, did not become candidates at all (Lodge and Romney); won a key primary, Oregon, but lost the big one, California (Rockefeller); or became candidates far too late (Scranton). By the time of the convention in San Francisco - can anyone imagine the Republicans ever meeting again in San Francisco? – it was all over but the shouting, and there was plenty of that.
When Nelson Rockefeller gave his speech in favor of modifications to Goldwater’s platform, the conservative revolution, boiling in the Republican Party since the days of Bob Taft, boiled over. T. H. White describes the scene:
“It was as if Rockefeller were poking with a long lance and prodding a den of lions – they roared back at him. This was the face of the enemy . . . the man who had savaged Barry from New Hampshire to California all through the spring. This was the man who called them kooks, and now, like kooks, they responded to prove his point. This reporter was sitting in the Goldwater galleries to savor the moment , but suddenly found two men peering over his shoulder, noting every word written in the notebook – and commenting angrily as they read. As Rockefeller progressed and the roars grew, his tone alternated between defiance and mockery; he smiled; the audience yelled and roared, and the bass drum thumped; and Rockefeller taunted them all. In a passion that he had rarely achieved in his entire spring campaign, he was reaching emotion – and delighting in it. As he taunted them, they raged. Nor did they, apparently, know what they were raging at: the East; or New York; or Communists; or liberals . . . As Rockefeller, enjoying the spectacle and combat, a lock of his full hair tumbling over his forehead, taunted them (“This is a free country , ladies and gentlemen”), they yelled even louder. . . . as the TV cameras translated their wrath and fury to the national audience, they pressed on the viewers that indelible impression of savagery which no Goldwater leader or wordsmith could later erase.”
The election of 1964 was all but decided then and there. Who could have imagined that the Democratic Party would similarly cripple itself a short four years later in 1968, then nominate its own prophet of the desert in 1972?
The following months were the halcyon days of the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson masterfully and mercilessly took advantage of Barry Goldwater’s weaknesses and coasted to victory. All he really had to do was look and act presidential. He did that and infinitely more, as White wrote:
“. . . President Johnson’s personal campaign was more than efficient; it was entrancing. To travel with him was to climb one of the rare heights of American political and dramatic art. It was like watching a great perfumer , at the height of his power, moving through a repertory and range that could not be topped – and yet seeing him top them again and again.
Not for years had a campaigner – not even Mr. Harry Truman in 1948 – brought so finished a style of country oratory to a national audience.”
The Democrats had lost a great president, but had not lost their cause, their sense of direction or their leadership.
Then in just two short years, events spiraled out of control. For most of 1965, LBJ could do what he wanted: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, money for cities, money for schools, the list could go on and on. One of his acts, not much noticed at the time in the flurry of legislation, was to authorize the sending of troops to Vietnam with orders to engage the enemy. He was so confident that he thought he could end poverty and racism at home and defeat communism in Vietnam, probably in time for re-election in 1968.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Within a few years, the whole nation was mad. George Wallace was happy to tap into the rage the nation saw in the Republican convention galleries beyond the control of Goldwater’s lieutenants. Within a few years many people my age and a little older vowed to stop at nothing that would stop the Vietnam War. Soon there developed a left-wing rage and resentment coalition, composed of angry young people, angry blacks, angry women, angry gays, angry minorities. They did not like each other very much; all they had in common was anger at the current order. Meanwhile, the right-wing rage and resentment coalition did not stop operating with Goldwater’s resounding defeat; indeed many a right-wing pundit today looks back lovingly to that 1964 campaign as the founding moment of the modern conservative movement that has flowered into the rage and resentment echo chamber of conservative think-tanks and talk shows.
The Republican Party went back to basics: defend America, cut taxes, put bad people in jail, distrust minorities and their angry demands. The result is the familiar sea of red in electoral college maps, a wide L-shaped swath from the Canadian border down through the plains and western prairie states to Texas and east through the south to the ocean. All Republicans had to do to win these states was repeat the above mantra. Add Indiana and Ohio and you’ve won the presidency yet again, by a slender majority of the popular vote, or, as in 2000, no majority at all.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party could not manage a majority either. Al Gore got more votes than Bush in 2000, but not 50%. Thanks to Ross Perot, Bill Clinton never got a majority of the popular vote. Jimmy Carter was the last, at a razor-thin majority of 50.08%. Gerald Ford got about 48% that year, and Gene McCarthy, by then a Harold Stassen of the left, got .91%.
Now, finally, if you are a Democrat, it looks like the nightmare is about to end. Barack Obama has run a steady, competent race from start to finish. Most importantly, he has steadfastly refused to play the rage and resentment card or let the rage and resentment card play him. Jeremiah Wright briefly emerged from the wilderness to issue his prophecies; Obama threw him under a bus. Jesse Jackson was upset that Obama did not sound enough like, well, Jesse Jackson. By that time, Obama was racking up primary victories and nobody cared what Jesse Jackson said. Many of Obama’s young supporters yawned and wondered who Jesse Jackson was.
Nothing focuses the mind like defeat. Members of the left-wing rage and resentment coalition, sobered by all these years of Republican presidents, especially the last eight, have quietly decided to vote for Obama and do nothing to imperil his election. Feminist organizations are backing Obama. Most of Hillary Clinton’s supporters will vote for him. Gay organizations are waging some local campaigns but have not said much, if anything, about Obama’s support of civil unions but not gay marriage. No one besides Jeremiah Wright and James Cone is upset that Obama may not be black or angry enough. No one wants to bear the blame for four more years of Republican leadership, especially not since the economy imploded a few weeks ago.
Throughout all these years of Republican White Houses thanks to a majority of the white majority, that majority has been slowly shrinking. T.H. White asked in his 1964 book if the Republican Party could simply ignore the 10% or more of the electorate that black voters represented. The answer turned out to be that it could and it has. This year, with the nomination of Sarah Palin, the Republican Party has gone as far as it could go towards becoming exclusively the party of White Folks; it probably went beyond the point of caricature. She may have revved up the Republican base, but I cannot imagine she has any appeal to Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, independent voters or anyone who is not a Republican to start with.
T. H. White wrote in his first book that every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future. While speaking to the nation as a whole of its national future, the candidate can never forget that he speaks to the dozens of American voting blocs in terms of its past. The successful candidate then urges Americans to move forward with him to a common future. Obama appears to have done this. The key may well be the 20 – 30 age group, much talked about as people on the other side of the culture wars and enjoying the diversity of America, people dating and marrying across racial and cultural lines, relaxed about gender differences and sexual preferences. The mid-1960s, when the culture wars exploded and America’s cities burned, are ancient history to them. These folks are living and partying in the very neighborhoods that burned. If they turn out in force for Obama, we just might feel the tsunami.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Washington Journal
August 29, 2008
The Campaign of John F. Kennedy, Forty-Eight Years Later
It is inspiring, surprising and more than a little heartbreaking to read T.H. White’s Making of the President 1960 now that forty-eight years have passed and another presidential election proceeds on its frantic pace, as summer nears its end and the election itself is still over two months away.
The electorate is deeply divided as then. The economy is not doing particularly well. Likewise America’s reputation abroad. A two-term president is about to leave.
But as Dwight David Eisenhower was enormously popular throughout his presidency, President Bush is now so unpopular that it is doubtful he will campaign at all. Appearances by the aging but ever-ebullient Eisenhower in the last ten days of campaigning coupled with a powerful burst of television almost surged then Vice-President Nixon to victory. Yet the young Senator from Massachusetts, illuminated by his stellar performance in the first televised debates, drew even larger and more enthusiastic crowds than the President, including a crowd of over one million in New York City, and held on to win.
T. H. White wrote this book when John F. Kennedy was just finding his feet in the White House. Robert Kennedy was Attorney General and Ted Kennedy was just beginning to think of running for Jack’s seat in the Senate. Martin Luther King was hitting his stride as public orator and conscience of the nation. The Peace Corps had just begun.
I first read it in the summer of my first year in college, during lunch breaks while working at E.J. Korvette’s, an early big-box discount store, long since gone out of business. It was 1970, perhaps the dreariest year ever to be alive in America; except for the year before, and the year after. The campus protests over the Kent State killings in May were supposed to transform America. It was clear even a week afterward that they had accomplished little, if anything. It was as if Richard Nixon were the President of a United States in which the battle between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd had finally ended, with Fudd winning.
I had come to consciousness of American politics ten years earlier. While most households in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge were dark with disappointment on election eve of 1960, including the Rodham household on the other side of town, my Irish Catholic family was dancing for joy. Aunt Caroline came over for dinner that evening, which always made for a party; that night the party began early and continued late. The adults drank and told stories and laughed: how Mom became a Democrat and voted for FDR in 1932; how Dad’s parents welcomed her, a Protestant, to the family because she was a good Democrat. Dad and Caroline talked about being Democrats and Catholic in Iowa in 1928, in public high school, wearing Al Smith buttons.
My brother and I even enjoyed the unprecedented of privilege of listening to the radio after we were sent to bed and lifted a cheer when NBC News awarded New York’s forty-five electoral votes to John F. Kennedy. In the morning I walked into my fourth-grade classroom in the Sanford E. Merrill Primary School to celebrate with the only other Democrat in the class, Mike Udolph: the only Catholic and the only Jew, a proud alliance.
T.H. White may have been the best political reporter ever, writing history with a novelist’s flair. He began the book with election eve in Hyannisport, then told the whole long story beginning in 1959 before ending dramatically in the wee hours of the following morning:
“At 5:35 Am, Easter Standard Time, Chief of the Secret Service Urbanus E. Baughman noted that television had given Michigan’s 20 votes to Kennedy, to make a tentative 285 and a tentative majority. It was now too late to wonder or doubt any longer, for his responsibility was clear, and at 5:45 Baughman telephoned Inspector Burrell Petersen in Hyannisport at the Holiday Heath Inn and instructed him to establish security at the Kennedy compound. . . . The candidate and his staff still slept as the sixteen agents in their borrowed cars set out in the night for the compound by the beach; by seven in the morning, security had been established and the President-elect was walled off, as he would be for four or eight years to come, from all other citizens and ordinary mortals.”
Later that day, as White told the story, the newly-arrived agents looked on in horror as the Kennedys indulged in an all-afternoon game of touch football that often left the President-Elect of the United States at the bottom of a pile of laughing, tangled bodies.
If nothing else, this president was fun.
White concluded with a section “The View from the White House,” surveying the state of the nation in the winter of 1960-61. He was extraordinarily prescient:
“In the sixties, the office of the Presidency, which John F. Kennedy held, was above all an intellectual exercise. For the courage and skill required in the sixties in war and peace was no longer the simple manly courage and skill that dominated war from the days of the caveman to the last screaming combat of American P-51 and Japanese Zero over Okinawa. Of this old courage and skill, this new President of the United States had much. . . . But such courage and nerve is, in modern war, all but obsolete. This old kind of courage may possibly be reflected in an ultimate decision over the telephone console to trade the death of New York for the death of Moscow, the death of Los Angeles for the death of Leningrad, the death of Washington for the death of Peking. But it would require greater courage and exertion of mind to decide to change the rules of the new chess game, and greater skill to persuade his adversaries and friends, at home and abroad, to abandon dogma and meet him on the plains of reality.”
Less than two years later, Kennedy survived just such a test. With authority from his handling of the missile crisis, his speech in Berlin and his relationship with Khrushchev and Congressional leaders, he signed the Limited Test-Ban Treaty in the summer of 1963 and was riding the waves of public opinion and world affairs like very few before him and none since.
Though only nine years old, I loved this president. This smiling, confident, radiant, Roman Catholic man was my President. He is my President still. It is his flag and the flag of his clan that I have followed.
I only saw Robert Kennedy once, in the parking lot of a shopping center in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. It was a dreary overcast day in October of 1966. He appeared with Senator Paul Douglas who was to lose a few weeks later to Charles Percy. Both men spoke briefly. Robert Kennedy, although suntanned and fit, seemed short, shy and almost infinitely sad, even when smiling. We had to strain to hear him. Only when Senator Kennedy of New York reached out to shake hands did the crowd come alive, surging forward, women squealing, hands reaching over hands like one writhing organism striving to touch him.
I saw Edward Kennedy speak at Harvard in the mid-nineties. He was warmly welcomed by a capacity crowd in the Kennedy School of Government. What I remember most from that now distant afternoon, aside from how proud I was just to be there, was the apparent absence of security other than one Harvard University policeman. There must have been a plain-clothesman somewhere. But the courage of Ted Kennedy to get up in front of a crowd year after year touched me then as it touches me know.
Then there was his voice. The most Irish-looking of them all, large and ruddy-faced, looking more like a Daley of Chicago than a Kennedy, he sounded like a Kennedy. Watching any of the Kennedys on old videotapes often gives me a lump in the throat, but it is the voice that does it, that wonderful tenor, eloquent, plaintive, inspiring. I will never forget how Ted Kennedy’s voice broke during his eulogy of brother Robert in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in June of 1968.
I find it hard to imagine a world without him, one of the last living links to the thousand days; those days when we were touched by fire.
For years to come shall their names be familiar in our mouths as household words:
Jack the President, Bobby and Ted
Sorensen and Salinger, O’Donnell and O’Brien -
Be in our flowing cups freshly remembered
These few, these happy few, this band of brothers.
The Campaign of John F. Kennedy, Forty-Eight Years Later
It is inspiring, surprising and more than a little heartbreaking to read T.H. White’s Making of the President 1960 now that forty-eight years have passed and another presidential election proceeds on its frantic pace, as summer nears its end and the election itself is still over two months away.
The electorate is deeply divided as then. The economy is not doing particularly well. Likewise America’s reputation abroad. A two-term president is about to leave.
But as Dwight David Eisenhower was enormously popular throughout his presidency, President Bush is now so unpopular that it is doubtful he will campaign at all. Appearances by the aging but ever-ebullient Eisenhower in the last ten days of campaigning coupled with a powerful burst of television almost surged then Vice-President Nixon to victory. Yet the young Senator from Massachusetts, illuminated by his stellar performance in the first televised debates, drew even larger and more enthusiastic crowds than the President, including a crowd of over one million in New York City, and held on to win.
T. H. White wrote this book when John F. Kennedy was just finding his feet in the White House. Robert Kennedy was Attorney General and Ted Kennedy was just beginning to think of running for Jack’s seat in the Senate. Martin Luther King was hitting his stride as public orator and conscience of the nation. The Peace Corps had just begun.
I first read it in the summer of my first year in college, during lunch breaks while working at E.J. Korvette’s, an early big-box discount store, long since gone out of business. It was 1970, perhaps the dreariest year ever to be alive in America; except for the year before, and the year after. The campus protests over the Kent State killings in May were supposed to transform America. It was clear even a week afterward that they had accomplished little, if anything. It was as if Richard Nixon were the President of a United States in which the battle between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd had finally ended, with Fudd winning.
I had come to consciousness of American politics ten years earlier. While most households in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge were dark with disappointment on election eve of 1960, including the Rodham household on the other side of town, my Irish Catholic family was dancing for joy. Aunt Caroline came over for dinner that evening, which always made for a party; that night the party began early and continued late. The adults drank and told stories and laughed: how Mom became a Democrat and voted for FDR in 1932; how Dad’s parents welcomed her, a Protestant, to the family because she was a good Democrat. Dad and Caroline talked about being Democrats and Catholic in Iowa in 1928, in public high school, wearing Al Smith buttons.
My brother and I even enjoyed the unprecedented of privilege of listening to the radio after we were sent to bed and lifted a cheer when NBC News awarded New York’s forty-five electoral votes to John F. Kennedy. In the morning I walked into my fourth-grade classroom in the Sanford E. Merrill Primary School to celebrate with the only other Democrat in the class, Mike Udolph: the only Catholic and the only Jew, a proud alliance.
T.H. White may have been the best political reporter ever, writing history with a novelist’s flair. He began the book with election eve in Hyannisport, then told the whole long story beginning in 1959 before ending dramatically in the wee hours of the following morning:
“At 5:35 Am, Easter Standard Time, Chief of the Secret Service Urbanus E. Baughman noted that television had given Michigan’s 20 votes to Kennedy, to make a tentative 285 and a tentative majority. It was now too late to wonder or doubt any longer, for his responsibility was clear, and at 5:45 Baughman telephoned Inspector Burrell Petersen in Hyannisport at the Holiday Heath Inn and instructed him to establish security at the Kennedy compound. . . . The candidate and his staff still slept as the sixteen agents in their borrowed cars set out in the night for the compound by the beach; by seven in the morning, security had been established and the President-elect was walled off, as he would be for four or eight years to come, from all other citizens and ordinary mortals.”
Later that day, as White told the story, the newly-arrived agents looked on in horror as the Kennedys indulged in an all-afternoon game of touch football that often left the President-Elect of the United States at the bottom of a pile of laughing, tangled bodies.
If nothing else, this president was fun.
White concluded with a section “The View from the White House,” surveying the state of the nation in the winter of 1960-61. He was extraordinarily prescient:
“In the sixties, the office of the Presidency, which John F. Kennedy held, was above all an intellectual exercise. For the courage and skill required in the sixties in war and peace was no longer the simple manly courage and skill that dominated war from the days of the caveman to the last screaming combat of American P-51 and Japanese Zero over Okinawa. Of this old courage and skill, this new President of the United States had much. . . . But such courage and nerve is, in modern war, all but obsolete. This old kind of courage may possibly be reflected in an ultimate decision over the telephone console to trade the death of New York for the death of Moscow, the death of Los Angeles for the death of Leningrad, the death of Washington for the death of Peking. But it would require greater courage and exertion of mind to decide to change the rules of the new chess game, and greater skill to persuade his adversaries and friends, at home and abroad, to abandon dogma and meet him on the plains of reality.”
Less than two years later, Kennedy survived just such a test. With authority from his handling of the missile crisis, his speech in Berlin and his relationship with Khrushchev and Congressional leaders, he signed the Limited Test-Ban Treaty in the summer of 1963 and was riding the waves of public opinion and world affairs like very few before him and none since.
Though only nine years old, I loved this president. This smiling, confident, radiant, Roman Catholic man was my President. He is my President still. It is his flag and the flag of his clan that I have followed.
I only saw Robert Kennedy once, in the parking lot of a shopping center in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. It was a dreary overcast day in October of 1966. He appeared with Senator Paul Douglas who was to lose a few weeks later to Charles Percy. Both men spoke briefly. Robert Kennedy, although suntanned and fit, seemed short, shy and almost infinitely sad, even when smiling. We had to strain to hear him. Only when Senator Kennedy of New York reached out to shake hands did the crowd come alive, surging forward, women squealing, hands reaching over hands like one writhing organism striving to touch him.
I saw Edward Kennedy speak at Harvard in the mid-nineties. He was warmly welcomed by a capacity crowd in the Kennedy School of Government. What I remember most from that now distant afternoon, aside from how proud I was just to be there, was the apparent absence of security other than one Harvard University policeman. There must have been a plain-clothesman somewhere. But the courage of Ted Kennedy to get up in front of a crowd year after year touched me then as it touches me know.
Then there was his voice. The most Irish-looking of them all, large and ruddy-faced, looking more like a Daley of Chicago than a Kennedy, he sounded like a Kennedy. Watching any of the Kennedys on old videotapes often gives me a lump in the throat, but it is the voice that does it, that wonderful tenor, eloquent, plaintive, inspiring. I will never forget how Ted Kennedy’s voice broke during his eulogy of brother Robert in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in June of 1968.
I find it hard to imagine a world without him, one of the last living links to the thousand days; those days when we were touched by fire.
For years to come shall their names be familiar in our mouths as household words:
Jack the President, Bobby and Ted
Sorensen and Salinger, O’Donnell and O’Brien -
Be in our flowing cups freshly remembered
These few, these happy few, this band of brothers.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Washington Journal
A Nocturnal Visitation
All roads once led to Rome. Now, sooner or later, every one comes to Washington. I experienced this fact anew a couple of nights ago when I was at home, minding my own business.
There came a distinct whirring sound from outside, as if a high performance automobile were going by, which was impossible, because Wisconsin Avenue is eight stories below my apartment here in the nation’s capital. Perhaps, I thought, a small helicopter was getting ready to land on the roof.
The noise soon ceased entirely and it was again quiet, so I returned to my reading.
Then there was a knock at the window and I looked up to see my old friends, Gidney and Cloyd, the Moonmen, hanging upside down, smiling as broadly as ever.
I opened a window and exclaimed:
- Hey guys -- how did you ever find me here?
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, they said, in unison.
- Very funny. And the saucer? Where’d you park the saucer?
- It’s up there, said Gidney, pointing.
I stuck my head further out the window, looked up and saw just the stars in the sky.
- We set it on ‘hover’ and turned on the cloaking device, continued Cloyd.
- May we come in?, they asked in unison.
- Yeah, like, how long do you think we can hang out here upside down? Do you think we’re bats or something?, added Gidney.
- Oh. Uh, uh, of course.
I cranked open another window, removed the screen and they swung in like acrobats. Flipping in mid-air, they landed on their feet with aplomb and a little bow.
- Well, gosh, guys it’s been a long time. May I put on a pot of the usual . . .
- Green tea! They shouted. Conversation is always like this with the Moonmen. They complete each other’s sentences, and mine. After a few minutes the tea had steeped and the moonmen’s faces took on a contented, dreamy expression as they took their first sips.
- Ahh, they sighed. Just like old times.
- It’s great to see you again. I never expected -- I mean, I thought you had been permanently reassigned to another sector of the galaxy.
- Nothing is permanent, in this galaxy or any other. We were recalled from our previous assignment because of our expertise and experience in Earthling Affairs, said Gidney.
Assuming a suddenly serious tone of voice, he continued:
- We’re on a mission from the Supreme All-Lunar Council to study Earthling scientists since the end of the Cold War and the rise of terrorism. We want to find out if Earthlings are any closer to the spiritual insights they will need in order to become members of the Inter-Galactic Council.
- The smartest people on earth in terms of technological sophistication have developed a puzzling, and, in our opinion, self-limiting materialism that prevents them from the spiritual and emotional growth necessary to become good citizens of the universe.
- Until we are satisfied that such growth has taken place . . .
- We will continue to cloak all of our activities from Earthling view and carry on conversation with only selected Earthling intellectuals, such as you.
- Aren’t you concerned about being discovered?, I asked as I poured more tea. You know, don’t you, that our physicists have figured out that some 95% of the matter in the universe is invisible?
- Of course, they chimed.
- Perhaps they’ll figure out that a lot of this matter is part of the vast inter-galactic civilization . . . . ?, I queried.
- We’re not concerned about that. Remember our comments about the self-limiting materialism of Earthling science. They’ll never get it at the rate they are going. But they might do some damage to earth’s delicate ecology . . .
- and perhaps the galaxy’s . . .
- if present trends continue, they concluded.
- By the way, your tea-making abilities are undiminished. Where’d you get this stuff?, asked Cloyd.
- Oh, it’s grown organically out in California and harvested under the full moon, as you suggested at your last visit.
- See, Gidney, some Earthlings are capable of learning.
They both smiled dreamily and drank long drafts of steaming tea.
- Well, aren’t you concerned that I might mention this visit in one of my columns and blow your cover?
They burst out laughing.
- No one would believe you, said Gidney, shaking his head.
- Remember our comment about self-limiting Earthling materialism, above, continued Cloyd with a knowing grin. Further, nobody important reads your essays . . .
- And still further, they all know that you are an inveterate jokester and would just assume that you were putting them on again, like in your essay on arugula. Remember? You claimed that the original name was Ur-oogla, used by the south seas oogle bird to make its nest more comfortable, or some such. Oogle birds, Moonmen – haha. Obvious nonsense, added Gidney.
- Anyway, getting serious again, can you enlighten us as to how Earthling science has stuck itself in such a cul-de-sac?
- Uh, um, why are you asking me?
- Well, we have asked others . . .
- While disguised of course as Earthling college students and occasionally news reporters.
- We have attended lectures . . .
- queried learned professors in their offices . . .
- but all we get, they continued in unison, is the usual blather about science, rationality, the evils of religion. Scientific materialism, which everyone else in the universe got over millennia ago, somehow remains the only philosophy. They are so dedicated to eliminating irrationality that they have become spiritually dead. And they have no idea how irrational they remain.
- It got so tiresome that we decided to conduct a little experiment, said Cloyd with a wicked twinkle in his eye. So we . . .
- Guys, you didn’t . . .
- . . . scrootched them! They shouted and tried to suppress their giggling.
- But guys, you’re not supposed to experiment on human subjects.
- but . . . but . . . but . . . . no one could tell the difference!
- Guys. Come on. You mean no one could tell that they were immobilized, frozen in place?
- No, no, no. There’s a special setting on the gun to scrootch the mind while leaving the body intact. We wanted to see if any other Earthlings could tell the difference between pre- and post-scrootching.
- So which ones have you scrootched – Dawkins? Hutchins? . . . . . ?
They kept nodding. I went on and on, naming every materialist scientist and polemicist I could think of. The Moonmen just shouted “Yes!” after every one. They were gasping for breath and pounding the floor. I checked the teapot to make sure they hadn’t slipped something into it.
- And, and, and . . . nobody noticed! We scrootched them and nobody noticed!, they repeated.
They were rolling on the floor now, their little green bellies showing under their shirts, which they always wear untucked.
- Guys – keep it down. The neighbors might notice if you carry on like this . . .
I noted with relief that Cloyd was not wearing his shoulder holster. At least I’m not getting scrootched this evening, I thought.
- Now when are you going to un-scrootch them?
- Why bother?
- It doesn’t make any difference, they said, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.
- Somehow this still doesn’t seem ethical . . .
- Well, if you’re a thorough-going materialist, you can’t get from is to ought, said Gidney with a naughty smirk.
- Don’t worry, continued Cloyd, the scrootching gradually wears off and there are no ill effects.
- Now can you explain the appeal of this desiccated world-view?, asked Gidney as they finally composed themselves. That’s the purpose of our visit tonight. From our vantage point and with our powerful observational devices, we can see that Earthling religion is thriving. Earthlings gather in great numbers to worship a variety of deities in vast outdoor temple-stadii, although you prefer to call this activity “sports.” Traditional religious figures like Pope Benedict occasionally use these facilities as well. Earthlings continue to gather in sites of long historical usage, according to our historians, such as Mecca, the banks of the Ganges, Lourdes. Rites of homage to Reproduction take place all over the planet, in underground “clubs,” “concert halls” and so on. A wide variety of traditional deities receive their due in churches, mosques and temples.
- Yet, said Cloyd, Earthling intellectuals and scientists like to tell themselves that they live in secular societies, under secular governments and that secularization (somehow not a religious movement) proceeds apace. You might as well try to explain. No one else can.
I let out a long sigh.
- No one can understand now how Calvin’s predestination appealed to people in the 16th and 17th Centuries. It no longer appeals to us. The so-called objectivity of the so-called scientific world view somehow appeals to a certain sort of person. Because of their know-how, these are very powerful people, whose opinions strongly influence others. William Blake and a host of other poets have been sharply critical of scientific myopia, but, as you know, not that many people read poetry, or take it seriously if they do. Science is knowledge – the only knowledge.
- Some people hoped, I continued, some years ago, during the 1960s, that LSD might liberate the scientific mind from its cage, but the genuine psychic exploration got lost in the political shuffle, as it were. It’s not at all clear that the behavior loosed by that chemical attaining wide circulation was at all to the good. Now the materialists endorse better living through the chemistry of anti-depressants of limited efficacy and disturbing side effects, but easy to use. Doctors and scientists generally do not want to do anything else because spiritual practices, meditation, breathing, moving to music, and so on, strike them as somehow un-serious, something a witch doctor would prescribe instead of a serious scientist.
- Yes, that is precisely the problem we have noticed. Is it truly hopeless?, they asked.
- No. It’s never hopeless. There are a few people you might talk to: Bryan Appleyard over in England, Charles Townes in Berkeley, Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest, also in England. But they are truly exceptional. The cultural divide between materialist science and religion, not to mention culture in general is wide and getting wider. Contemporary scientists spend so much time just keeping up with their own field and have little time for philosophy. They often have had no training either. I might add that while they are very smart people with a lot of education, they act as if they had flunked kindergarten: they don’t play well with others.
There was a long pause, one of those silences that descend on conversations from time to time.
- Perhaps you could write something, suggested Gidney.
- Like what? A play? A novel? Reinhold Niebuhr has already written about the propensity of the intelligent to self-deceive . . . .
- Yes, we know. He is required reading at the Lunar Service Academy.
- Perhaps you could run for office. The Lunar Council might be able to funnel some precious metals to your campaign. No one would ever know where it came from.
- We’ll advise you, they chorused.
- Could you, uh, scrootch my opponents?
- No need to! They giggled.
- Just go for the gold, suggested Cloyd, with a wide grin.
- Well, I’ll think about it.
Then they nodded towards in each other in the unspoken communication of a long partnership and said:
- Well, it’s time for us to go. Do think about it.
I walked them over to the windows. Their tiny, three-fingered hands shook mine and they grabbed the ropes that still dangled from above, as if suspended from sky-hooks, whereupon they curled into the sky.
- How do you do that? I asked, incredulously, looking up into the darkness.
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, came the chorus from above.
A low mechanical sound followed, a flash of light, and they were off.
All roads once led to Rome. Now, sooner or later, every one comes to Washington. I experienced this fact anew a couple of nights ago when I was at home, minding my own business.
There came a distinct whirring sound from outside, as if a high performance automobile were going by, which was impossible, because Wisconsin Avenue is eight stories below my apartment here in the nation’s capital. Perhaps, I thought, a small helicopter was getting ready to land on the roof.
The noise soon ceased entirely and it was again quiet, so I returned to my reading.
Then there was a knock at the window and I looked up to see my old friends, Gidney and Cloyd, the Moonmen, hanging upside down, smiling as broadly as ever.
I opened a window and exclaimed:
- Hey guys -- how did you ever find me here?
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, they said, in unison.
- Very funny. And the saucer? Where’d you park the saucer?
- It’s up there, said Gidney, pointing.
I stuck my head further out the window, looked up and saw just the stars in the sky.
- We set it on ‘hover’ and turned on the cloaking device, continued Cloyd.
- May we come in?, they asked in unison.
- Yeah, like, how long do you think we can hang out here upside down? Do you think we’re bats or something?, added Gidney.
- Oh. Uh, uh, of course.
I cranked open another window, removed the screen and they swung in like acrobats. Flipping in mid-air, they landed on their feet with aplomb and a little bow.
- Well, gosh, guys it’s been a long time. May I put on a pot of the usual . . .
- Green tea! They shouted. Conversation is always like this with the Moonmen. They complete each other’s sentences, and mine. After a few minutes the tea had steeped and the moonmen’s faces took on a contented, dreamy expression as they took their first sips.
- Ahh, they sighed. Just like old times.
- It’s great to see you again. I never expected -- I mean, I thought you had been permanently reassigned to another sector of the galaxy.
- Nothing is permanent, in this galaxy or any other. We were recalled from our previous assignment because of our expertise and experience in Earthling Affairs, said Gidney.
Assuming a suddenly serious tone of voice, he continued:
- We’re on a mission from the Supreme All-Lunar Council to study Earthling scientists since the end of the Cold War and the rise of terrorism. We want to find out if Earthlings are any closer to the spiritual insights they will need in order to become members of the Inter-Galactic Council.
- The smartest people on earth in terms of technological sophistication have developed a puzzling, and, in our opinion, self-limiting materialism that prevents them from the spiritual and emotional growth necessary to become good citizens of the universe.
- Until we are satisfied that such growth has taken place . . .
- We will continue to cloak all of our activities from Earthling view and carry on conversation with only selected Earthling intellectuals, such as you.
- Aren’t you concerned about being discovered?, I asked as I poured more tea. You know, don’t you, that our physicists have figured out that some 95% of the matter in the universe is invisible?
- Of course, they chimed.
- Perhaps they’ll figure out that a lot of this matter is part of the vast inter-galactic civilization . . . . ?, I queried.
- We’re not concerned about that. Remember our comments about the self-limiting materialism of Earthling science. They’ll never get it at the rate they are going. But they might do some damage to earth’s delicate ecology . . .
- and perhaps the galaxy’s . . .
- if present trends continue, they concluded.
- By the way, your tea-making abilities are undiminished. Where’d you get this stuff?, asked Cloyd.
- Oh, it’s grown organically out in California and harvested under the full moon, as you suggested at your last visit.
- See, Gidney, some Earthlings are capable of learning.
They both smiled dreamily and drank long drafts of steaming tea.
- Well, aren’t you concerned that I might mention this visit in one of my columns and blow your cover?
They burst out laughing.
- No one would believe you, said Gidney, shaking his head.
- Remember our comment about self-limiting Earthling materialism, above, continued Cloyd with a knowing grin. Further, nobody important reads your essays . . .
- And still further, they all know that you are an inveterate jokester and would just assume that you were putting them on again, like in your essay on arugula. Remember? You claimed that the original name was Ur-oogla, used by the south seas oogle bird to make its nest more comfortable, or some such. Oogle birds, Moonmen – haha. Obvious nonsense, added Gidney.
- Anyway, getting serious again, can you enlighten us as to how Earthling science has stuck itself in such a cul-de-sac?
- Uh, um, why are you asking me?
- Well, we have asked others . . .
- While disguised of course as Earthling college students and occasionally news reporters.
- We have attended lectures . . .
- queried learned professors in their offices . . .
- but all we get, they continued in unison, is the usual blather about science, rationality, the evils of religion. Scientific materialism, which everyone else in the universe got over millennia ago, somehow remains the only philosophy. They are so dedicated to eliminating irrationality that they have become spiritually dead. And they have no idea how irrational they remain.
- It got so tiresome that we decided to conduct a little experiment, said Cloyd with a wicked twinkle in his eye. So we . . .
- Guys, you didn’t . . .
- . . . scrootched them! They shouted and tried to suppress their giggling.
- But guys, you’re not supposed to experiment on human subjects.
- but . . . but . . . but . . . . no one could tell the difference!
- Guys. Come on. You mean no one could tell that they were immobilized, frozen in place?
- No, no, no. There’s a special setting on the gun to scrootch the mind while leaving the body intact. We wanted to see if any other Earthlings could tell the difference between pre- and post-scrootching.
- So which ones have you scrootched – Dawkins? Hutchins? . . . . . ?
They kept nodding. I went on and on, naming every materialist scientist and polemicist I could think of. The Moonmen just shouted “Yes!” after every one. They were gasping for breath and pounding the floor. I checked the teapot to make sure they hadn’t slipped something into it.
- And, and, and . . . nobody noticed! We scrootched them and nobody noticed!, they repeated.
They were rolling on the floor now, their little green bellies showing under their shirts, which they always wear untucked.
- Guys – keep it down. The neighbors might notice if you carry on like this . . .
I noted with relief that Cloyd was not wearing his shoulder holster. At least I’m not getting scrootched this evening, I thought.
- Now when are you going to un-scrootch them?
- Why bother?
- It doesn’t make any difference, they said, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.
- Somehow this still doesn’t seem ethical . . .
- Well, if you’re a thorough-going materialist, you can’t get from is to ought, said Gidney with a naughty smirk.
- Don’t worry, continued Cloyd, the scrootching gradually wears off and there are no ill effects.
- Now can you explain the appeal of this desiccated world-view?, asked Gidney as they finally composed themselves. That’s the purpose of our visit tonight. From our vantage point and with our powerful observational devices, we can see that Earthling religion is thriving. Earthlings gather in great numbers to worship a variety of deities in vast outdoor temple-stadii, although you prefer to call this activity “sports.” Traditional religious figures like Pope Benedict occasionally use these facilities as well. Earthlings continue to gather in sites of long historical usage, according to our historians, such as Mecca, the banks of the Ganges, Lourdes. Rites of homage to Reproduction take place all over the planet, in underground “clubs,” “concert halls” and so on. A wide variety of traditional deities receive their due in churches, mosques and temples.
- Yet, said Cloyd, Earthling intellectuals and scientists like to tell themselves that they live in secular societies, under secular governments and that secularization (somehow not a religious movement) proceeds apace. You might as well try to explain. No one else can.
I let out a long sigh.
- No one can understand now how Calvin’s predestination appealed to people in the 16th and 17th Centuries. It no longer appeals to us. The so-called objectivity of the so-called scientific world view somehow appeals to a certain sort of person. Because of their know-how, these are very powerful people, whose opinions strongly influence others. William Blake and a host of other poets have been sharply critical of scientific myopia, but, as you know, not that many people read poetry, or take it seriously if they do. Science is knowledge – the only knowledge.
- Some people hoped, I continued, some years ago, during the 1960s, that LSD might liberate the scientific mind from its cage, but the genuine psychic exploration got lost in the political shuffle, as it were. It’s not at all clear that the behavior loosed by that chemical attaining wide circulation was at all to the good. Now the materialists endorse better living through the chemistry of anti-depressants of limited efficacy and disturbing side effects, but easy to use. Doctors and scientists generally do not want to do anything else because spiritual practices, meditation, breathing, moving to music, and so on, strike them as somehow un-serious, something a witch doctor would prescribe instead of a serious scientist.
- Yes, that is precisely the problem we have noticed. Is it truly hopeless?, they asked.
- No. It’s never hopeless. There are a few people you might talk to: Bryan Appleyard over in England, Charles Townes in Berkeley, Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest, also in England. But they are truly exceptional. The cultural divide between materialist science and religion, not to mention culture in general is wide and getting wider. Contemporary scientists spend so much time just keeping up with their own field and have little time for philosophy. They often have had no training either. I might add that while they are very smart people with a lot of education, they act as if they had flunked kindergarten: they don’t play well with others.
There was a long pause, one of those silences that descend on conversations from time to time.
- Perhaps you could write something, suggested Gidney.
- Like what? A play? A novel? Reinhold Niebuhr has already written about the propensity of the intelligent to self-deceive . . . .
- Yes, we know. He is required reading at the Lunar Service Academy.
- Perhaps you could run for office. The Lunar Council might be able to funnel some precious metals to your campaign. No one would ever know where it came from.
- We’ll advise you, they chorused.
- Could you, uh, scrootch my opponents?
- No need to! They giggled.
- Just go for the gold, suggested Cloyd, with a wide grin.
- Well, I’ll think about it.
Then they nodded towards in each other in the unspoken communication of a long partnership and said:
- Well, it’s time for us to go. Do think about it.
I walked them over to the windows. Their tiny, three-fingered hands shook mine and they grabbed the ropes that still dangled from above, as if suspended from sky-hooks, whereupon they curled into the sky.
- How do you do that? I asked, incredulously, looking up into the darkness.
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, came the chorus from above.
A low mechanical sound followed, a flash of light, and they were off.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
June 17, 2008
How can one live in the nation’s capital and not pay attention to the presidential election process? Why bother to live here if one does not care about such things?
It is like living in the eye of the hurricane. While the actual campaigning and the deluge of television advertising usually take place elsewhere, the analysis and strategizing take place here. The thousands of commentators, newscasters, news analysts, pollsters, mavens, pundits and their attendant publications or broadcasts are usually based here. This year, somewhat unusually, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had their national headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington County. Living in Washington gives you a ring-side seat to watch the fight.
Finally, in early June, we know for certain who the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. Hillary Clinton started out as the presumed front-runner, soon fell behind as Obama, Edwards and Clinton finished 1-2-3, separated by a single percentage point, in Iowa. She made a quick recovery in New Hampshire, won Nevada, lost South Carolina and emerged from Super Tuesday in early February with a slight lead in delegates.
Then came her nightmare: ten straight losses in caucuses and primaries, all by substantial margins, which put her behind in delegates and stopped the superdelegates, as long had been expected by this point, from declaring for her. Obama suddenly had the momentum and the money. He had out-organized and out-hustled what should have been the smarter campaign, a campaign run by two of the smartest politicians in the country and a host of experienced, battle-tested advisers.
She shook up her campaign, focussed her message, found Obama’s weak points, caught some lucky breaks and essentially re-launched her campaign. For all that Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and her other spokespersons have said about how her campaign has made a better candidate out of Obama, perhaps they could return the compliment, for it is certainly the Obama campaign that has made Hillary Clinton the focussed, energetic campaigner that she has been for the past couple of months.
But the last primary has taken place and it is clear that Obama has the delegates. As President-elect Richard Nixon said in 1968, after perhaps the bitterest year ever in American politics, and after an extremely close election, “I have won some and I have lost some. Winning is a lot more fun.”
Yes, winning is fun and defeat is a foretaste of hell. Yet defeat is the ultimate test of character. Only those who lose gracefully deserve ultimately to win. Usually they are the only ones who do. It is a rare politician who has not tasted defeat and tasted it rather often. Likewise athletes. The vast majority of them never win a championship. As the Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, put it, “Even the best hitter in baseball walks back to the dugout looking foolish more than half of the time.”
There is some debate about the role of sports, particularly team sports, in American life. Perhaps these sports are over-valued in high school and college. Professional sports are awash in money and who knows, drugs and cheating. Nonetheless high performance athletes model for the rest of how to win and how to lose. In a highly competitive society, this is valuable behavior.
Generally, athletes don’t complain much. Their coaches do not allow it. They know that if you complain while being a loser, you will never be a winner. After the New York Knicks lost another heartbreaker to the Chicago Bulls several years ago, the New York papers showed photographs of what looked like fouls in the closing seconds. One member of the Knicks, I forget whom, responded with something like: “OK. There may have been fouls. But we still needed to put the ball in the basket, and we didn’t.” That was the end of it.
Richard Nixon did not lose particularly gracefully, but he did nothing to make it difficult for President Kennedy or Pat Brown to govern. He directed his bitterness toward the press, not towards the victors and eventually won his party’s nomination in 1968 because he simply did not give up. He toured the country giving speeches at every Republican Party gathering he could find. After a few years, almost every important Republican in the country owed him a favor. He was essentially unopposed in the Republican primaries in 1968.
This is a good lesson for Hillary Clinton, not to mention everyone else who is jostling for power in Washington, or wherever, which is just about everyone, sooner or later. She is in good health and can expect to live another twenty years. Compared to other Senators, she is not old and still will not be old in 2012 or 2016. In 2020 she will be as old as John McCain and younger than President Reagan when he ran for re-election. If Obama wins the coming election, she will be in good position to run in 2016, or 2012 if he loses.
Despite some disturbing signs from her and some supporters that they wanted to fight all the way to the convention, she stepped up to the microphones and klieg lights on Saturday to tell everyone to accept the verdict of the party, however it was determined, and support the nominee. If she and her supporters ever want to win in the future, they have to do this. How well they all do this will determine whether she will ever become an older and perhaps wiser president than she so ardently wants to be seven months from now.
- Richard Allen Hyde
June 17, 2008
How can one live in the nation’s capital and not pay attention to the presidential election process? Why bother to live here if one does not care about such things?
It is like living in the eye of the hurricane. While the actual campaigning and the deluge of television advertising usually take place elsewhere, the analysis and strategizing take place here. The thousands of commentators, newscasters, news analysts, pollsters, mavens, pundits and their attendant publications or broadcasts are usually based here. This year, somewhat unusually, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had their national headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington County. Living in Washington gives you a ring-side seat to watch the fight.
Finally, in early June, we know for certain who the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. Hillary Clinton started out as the presumed front-runner, soon fell behind as Obama, Edwards and Clinton finished 1-2-3, separated by a single percentage point, in Iowa. She made a quick recovery in New Hampshire, won Nevada, lost South Carolina and emerged from Super Tuesday in early February with a slight lead in delegates.
Then came her nightmare: ten straight losses in caucuses and primaries, all by substantial margins, which put her behind in delegates and stopped the superdelegates, as long had been expected by this point, from declaring for her. Obama suddenly had the momentum and the money. He had out-organized and out-hustled what should have been the smarter campaign, a campaign run by two of the smartest politicians in the country and a host of experienced, battle-tested advisers.
She shook up her campaign, focussed her message, found Obama’s weak points, caught some lucky breaks and essentially re-launched her campaign. For all that Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and her other spokespersons have said about how her campaign has made a better candidate out of Obama, perhaps they could return the compliment, for it is certainly the Obama campaign that has made Hillary Clinton the focussed, energetic campaigner that she has been for the past couple of months.
But the last primary has taken place and it is clear that Obama has the delegates. As President-elect Richard Nixon said in 1968, after perhaps the bitterest year ever in American politics, and after an extremely close election, “I have won some and I have lost some. Winning is a lot more fun.”
Yes, winning is fun and defeat is a foretaste of hell. Yet defeat is the ultimate test of character. Only those who lose gracefully deserve ultimately to win. Usually they are the only ones who do. It is a rare politician who has not tasted defeat and tasted it rather often. Likewise athletes. The vast majority of them never win a championship. As the Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, put it, “Even the best hitter in baseball walks back to the dugout looking foolish more than half of the time.”
There is some debate about the role of sports, particularly team sports, in American life. Perhaps these sports are over-valued in high school and college. Professional sports are awash in money and who knows, drugs and cheating. Nonetheless high performance athletes model for the rest of how to win and how to lose. In a highly competitive society, this is valuable behavior.
Generally, athletes don’t complain much. Their coaches do not allow it. They know that if you complain while being a loser, you will never be a winner. After the New York Knicks lost another heartbreaker to the Chicago Bulls several years ago, the New York papers showed photographs of what looked like fouls in the closing seconds. One member of the Knicks, I forget whom, responded with something like: “OK. There may have been fouls. But we still needed to put the ball in the basket, and we didn’t.” That was the end of it.
Richard Nixon did not lose particularly gracefully, but he did nothing to make it difficult for President Kennedy or Pat Brown to govern. He directed his bitterness toward the press, not towards the victors and eventually won his party’s nomination in 1968 because he simply did not give up. He toured the country giving speeches at every Republican Party gathering he could find. After a few years, almost every important Republican in the country owed him a favor. He was essentially unopposed in the Republican primaries in 1968.
This is a good lesson for Hillary Clinton, not to mention everyone else who is jostling for power in Washington, or wherever, which is just about everyone, sooner or later. She is in good health and can expect to live another twenty years. Compared to other Senators, she is not old and still will not be old in 2012 or 2016. In 2020 she will be as old as John McCain and younger than President Reagan when he ran for re-election. If Obama wins the coming election, she will be in good position to run in 2016, or 2012 if he loses.
Despite some disturbing signs from her and some supporters that they wanted to fight all the way to the convention, she stepped up to the microphones and klieg lights on Saturday to tell everyone to accept the verdict of the party, however it was determined, and support the nominee. If she and her supporters ever want to win in the future, they have to do this. How well they all do this will determine whether she will ever become an older and perhaps wiser president than she so ardently wants to be seven months from now.
- Richard Allen Hyde
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