October 4, 2008: Social Darwinism, Selfishness as the Highest Charity, The Right to Starve

A Polish rose by any other name is still a dandelion” ---Quotations of Chairman Joe

In the American political tradition, both modern American liberalism and modern American conservatism trace their roots back to the nineteenth century European liberalism rooted in the economic philosophies of Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Stuart and Mill. Indeed so great was the influence of Smith that Darwin “confessed that his model for natural selection had been Smith's concept of Market competition; so men were just retracing Darwin's steps when they brought biological 'laws' back into the world of economics to create 'Social Darwinism'”. (1)(2)

Social Darwinism had become the rage by the late nineteenth century. Writers like William Graham Sumner took lessons from Smith but more importantly Malthus and Darwin to lay the basis for economic theory that John Kenneth Galbraith would later refer to as the “grim science”. If evolution was the law of nature then, they reasoned, “automatic progress was to be expected in man's economic activity” as well. (1) Garry Wills' summarized it this way: “If one progresses by survival of the fittest, then, as a consequence, the less fit do not survive. If the race is never finally won, at least some competitors are forever eliminated. Malthus made this clear when he said that, since the Invisible Hand (3) provides the maximum food intended by Nature and Nature's God (Malthus was a clergyman), it was the will of nature that population in excess of this divine provender should starve (if it were allowed to come into the world)”. (4) “This cruel consistency” led by degrees to the belief that the worst thing you could do was help your fellow man. Charity becomes, to these 'enlightened' souls, an abject form of evil. To feed the huddled masses would lead to further overpopulation and suffering, better—more humane—in the mind of Malthus was to let them starve. It isn't simply that the race goes to the strongest but that the survival of the 'less fit' threatens progress itself. The very concept of Charity as it had been passed through the ages by our religious institutions was stood on its head. Grown men of property and standing were known to publicly proclaim that selfishness was the highest form of charity.

The toxic mix of nineteenth century economics, biology and sociology served to give a 'scientific' veneer to greed translating itself into what Mark Twain labeled the “Guilded Age” dominated by what Ida Tarbell called the “Robber Barons”. It took over a half century of reform to right the ship.

The modern ear has no tolerance for the din of such nonsense. What is left of Social Darwinism still reverberates down through the twentieth century in the writings of Ayn Rand and in the bedrock assumptions of Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley but rarely do they give it open expression. Instead new forms must be assumed, a more progressive pose must be struck in order to appeal to modern man. To that end modern conservatives use 'liberation' terminology in order to mask the true nature of their creed. To 'liberate' the markets from harmful regulation that is, to these lights, both inefficient because it restricts the free movement of the market but also immoral because it empowers the 'less fit'. Empowering the 'less fit' means threatening progress itself. To threaten progress is to threaten the 'social good' or, in the words of the founders, the 'general welfare'. In the pretzel logic of moder conservatism the welfare state thereby threatens the general welfare. This logic extends beyond the commodities markets to embrace the labor markets, investment markets as well as the markets of political and social ideas and beliefs. It is through such mental gymnastics that conservatives can draw distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor but cannot bring the same standards to the rich. The rich, you see, are by definition deserving. It is a modern mutation of “Social Darwinism” that drives the conservative to reduce all human interaction to market functions and to resist any subsequent regulation on any such market. To introduce fetters on intercourse is said to deny freedom. What they mean of course is that to impose restraints—civility if you will—is to deny the victor his presumed right to rape not only his fellow man but mother nature in the bargain. It is also to deny the vanquished his right to starve.

ootnotes:

1.Wills, Garry. “Nixon Agonistes, The Crisis of the Self-Made Man”
Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston 1970. page 548.

2.For an enlightening discussion of the origins of modern conservative and
liberal thought as it pertains to nineteenth century liberalism see Garry Wills'
“Nixon Agonistes” a deeply penetrating analysis of Richard Nixon and his time

3.The operation of the market at which a purchase price is reached through the
impersonal forces of supply and demand is held by Smith and others to be
the most rational and efficient means to allocate resources in a given society.
Smith held that these forces acted as like an “invisible hand” in the marketplace.
Later wits confused the Invisible Hand with Providence forever transforming classical Liberalism, that is modern conservatism, into a theology.

October 3, 2008: Every Man a King, The Stalking Horse, Making Democracy Aristocratic

“Not only the poorest mechanic, but the man who lives upon common charity, nay the common beggars in the streets...court a set of admirers, and plume themselves on that superiority which they have, or fancy they have, over some others...When a wretch could no longer attract the notice of a man, woman or child, he must be respectable in the eyes of his dog. 'Who will love me then?' was the pathetic reply of one, who starved himself to feed his mastiff, to a charitable passenger who advised him to kill or sell the animal.”----John Adams. (1)

Every man, John Adams claimed, needs to be held in esteem and, by extension, to lord over someone else. “Even the American democrat, Adams reasoned, would rather rule over an inferior than dispossess a superior. His passion is for supremacy, not equality, and so long as he is assured an audience of lessors, he will be content with his lowly status”. Indeed as Corey Robin has pointed out the promise of American life, the American Dream if you will, was not an egalitarian society nor, necessarily, a meritocracy. Rather the promise of the American dream was “to rule over another person” or in Huey Long's memorable turn of phrase, “Every Man a King”. (1)

The problem for American conservatives is how, in a democratic society, does one make privilege palatable? The solution, answers Robin, is not to “defend the ancien regime of king, priest and lord. Nor have they appealed to antimodern arguments of tradition and history.(2) Instead, they have surrounded an array of old regimes—in the family, the factory, and the field—with fences and gates as they descant on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future. More importantly, they moved to give it a veneer of democracy.

“It took the American slaveholder to grasp the power of this insight. The best way to protect their class, the masters, realized, was to democratize it...to that end, Southern politicians attempted to pass legislation and provide tax breaks to ensure that every white man owned at least one slave ...so invested would he be in his mastery that he'd work to keep all others in their place”. (1)

But such dynamics were not novel to the South. The Virginian George Fitzhugh (1806-1881) argued in 1857 that all men desired to live without work, and that America was witnessing a form of wage slavery emerging in the capitalist North much more inhumane that what existed in the Antebellum South,(3) in effect reiterating from yet another perspective Adams' thesis. A man must be about the business of distinguishing himself; a man “on the make” to become in time a king (by living without work) of his own domain. The acquisition of wealth whether by slaveholder or tycoon became the ultimate act of self-definition “through which the 'uncommon' man—who could be anybody—distinguished himself from the 'undifferentiated mass'. To amass wealth was not only to exercise freedom through material means but also a way of lording oneself over others.” (1)

Whether under the ancient regime of slavery or the emerging new world order of capitalist 'free' enterprise, Americans and westerners generally have consistently embraced political philosophies that have rooted themselves, whatever their stated ideals, upon assumed inequality. The problem, for the modern democratic state, is how do you accommodate a form of vassalage (wage slaves in Fitzhugh's memorable definition), in a free society? After all if the purpose of a 'free' society is to allow—indeed encourage—exaggerated concentrations of wealth and power then there must follow a society of relatively few lords and many vassals. Again let us return to Robin for some insight: “In 'Conservative Thought,' an unjustly neglected essay from 1927, Karl Mannheim argued that conservatives have never been wild about the idea of freedom. It threatens the submission of subordinate to inferior. Because freedom in the lingua franca of modern politics, however, they have had 'a sound enough instinct not to attack' it. Instead they have made freedom the stalking horse of inequality, and inequality the stalking horse of submission. Men are naturally unequal, they argue. Freedom requires that they be allowed to develop their unequal gifts. A free society must be an unequal society, composed of radically distinct and hierarchical particulars.” (1) This leads, by short steps, to the war of 'liberation' against trade unionism in order to free the worker to negotiate alone with his 'lord' as one would confront the almighty on judgment day. It liberates consumers of protection to negotiate alone with his banker over interest rates on his home, auto, or credit card. It 'liberates' the community of protection so that the individual is left to sue the corporate conglomerate to stop the pumping of poisons into his water supply or the ground he stands on. It 'liberates' one to be free to become an 'associate' instead of an employee; it liberates 'privilege' by making democracy aristocratic.
Footnotes:

1.As quoted by Corey Robin, “Out of Place” The Nation June 23, 2008 pg 26.

2.Earlier in the history of the republic, John C. Calhoun, U.S. Senator from South
Carolina and Vice President under Andrew Jackson, would defend slavery using
ancient historical precedents and tradition in an effort to found a republic on blatant principles of political inequality. Such arguments are foreign to the
modern ear and are not used in polite political discourse. Accordingly the conservative must be about the business of constructing a 'populist' veneer
with which to cover his defense of privilege

3. Fitzhugh, George. “Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters”, in Baritz, Loren “Sources of the American Mind” Vol. 1. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, New York. 1966. pp 373-378.

October 2, 2008: A Question of Will, Exile on Main Street, Victims of Property and Standing

Once, when writing about his youth, political columnist George F. Will described growing up in the plains of central Illinois. His friends, he said sadly, were St. Louis Cardinals fans, and grew up to be happy and liberal. Will tells us that he became an ardent Chicago Cubs fan and grew to be, in his words, “bitter and conservative”. Baseball can do that to a man.

There are two subjects about which George F. Will writes passionately and convincingly. The first is poverty in the South Side of Chicago and the second is the Cubs. While his remedies about the insufferable conditions that plague both his major interests remain suspect, his description of their plight is deeply moving. No one in America writes as lucidly as Will about what it is to grow up in Chicago's tenements. No one in America writes as lucidly as Will about the “lovable losers” who have not been champions of baseball since well before they took up residence at Wrigley Field. Over a quarter century ago Will wrote about the hapless Cubs sounding very much like a boy writing about a drunken or absent father; a boy bonded with his 'hero' but nevertheless brought to the awful reality that Dad had not accepted the responsibilities of adulthood. There is something about naming a team after an immature animal, he opined. Think about it: Bronco's, strong, fast; Boilermakers, huge manly biceps; Lions and Bears, fast, strong, ferocious: Cubs, warm, friendly, playful. Chicagoans regularly and lovingly refer to the Cubs as the “Baby Bears” and they have lived up to that moniker.

It has now been a century since the Cubs were last champions of their sport. A lot has come and gone in the interregnum. Many years later Will would write bitterly by counting the number of Presidential administrations since the last Cubs' championship and pointing out that there have been two world wars, a Great Depression, and numberless other events marking the intervening years, finally proposing a one game season so that the Cubs would never finish any more than one game out of first place.

To be a Chicago sports fan in general, and a Cubs' fan in particular, carries with it a weight of significance transcending sports. The word “Fan” is, of course, a contraction of the word “fanatic”. To be a true fanatic one must hold that the object in question—be that his beloved Cubs or conservative political philosophy—embodies untarnished “goodness”. It follows then that one's opponents therefore represent the forces of “evil”, all that is bad and sullied about the world. To be, therefore, a Chicago sports fan one must at a tender age come to grips with the awful reality that the forces of “Evil” almost always prevail. A persecution complex emerges hardening over time into a bedrock conservatism. George Will became, in his own words, “conservative and bitter.”

You're out of time my baby
my poor discarded baby
'cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time” -- The Rolling Stones “Out of Time” (1)

Corey Robin in an essay entitled “Out of Place” quotes the opening statement of Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie's “The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000” that 'the central story of American politics since World War II is the emergence of the conservative movement'. “Yet”, writes Robin, “for some reason Will still feels that the travails of his political kinsmen are insufficiently appreciated and recognized”. Robin continues: “Will is not the first conservative to believe himself an exile in his own country. A sense of exclusion has haunted conservatism from the beginning when emegres fled the French Revolution and Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre took up their cause. Born in the shadow of loss—of property, standing, memory, inheritance, a place in the sun—conservatism remains a gathering of fugitives. (2) Buckley and his cohorts saw themselves at “out of place” with their badge of exclusion making them just about the “hottest thing in town” (2)

“Plato's guardians were wise”, writes Robin, “Aquinas's king was good; Hobbes's sovereign was, well, sovereign. But the best defense of monarchy that Maistre could muster in “Considerations on France” (1787) was that his aspiring king had attended the 'terrible school of adversity”. Similarly Edmund Burke in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) would describe Marie Antoinette “dragged 'almost naked' by 'the furies of hell' from her bedroom in Versailles and marched to 'a Bastille for kings' in Paris'. “Marie Antoinette”, Robin continues, “ was a particular kind of loser, a person with everything who finds herself utterly and at once dispossessed. Burke saw in her fall an archetype of classical tragedy, the great person laid low by fortune. But in tragedy, the most any hero can achieve is an understanding of his fate: the wheel of time cannot be reversed; suffering cannot be undone. Conservatives, however, are not content with illumination or wisdom. They want restoration.” (2)

What we have here, according to Robin, is the truly “bizarre” nature of modern Conservatism: a ruling class that for the first time rests its claim to power upon its sense of victimhood asking “us not to obey them but to feel sorry for them—or to obey them because we feel sorry for them.” Whereas other political movements must persuade “the disenfranchised that they have rights and power”, the modern conservative poses a novel justification: “they are aggrieved and entitled—aggrieved because entitled—and already convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the inevitability of its triumph. They can play victim and victor with a conviction and dexterity the subaltern can only imagine, making them formidable claimants on our allegiance and affection.” (2)

This, in large measure, explains the tone of our national political conventions. For the most part, red meat to the party faithful aside, the Democratic conventions offer visions of hope with Obama leading his convention into a packed outdoor arena and an audience of 85,000 telling the country that we are in this together. The Republicans echoing the pattern of Goldwater and Buchanan gathered in the confines of a Minneapolis arena to grouse about what has been taken and what they fear is about to be taken from them. It was an exercise in the politics of bitterness, the politics of victimhood. At no time did they speak to the economic crises facing the working and middle classes; instead embracing novel ways to continue the business of unraveling the New Deal. No the conservative conscience knows neither intelligence nor compassion; to embrace either would simply impede the restoration.

There are many roads that lead to the miserable place called the Republican Party. Some have been laid low by fortune and find themselves backsliding into the indistinguishable masses and are embittered by the experience. Victims of property and standing. Others, with far less pretensions, simply embraced the wrong team.

Footnotes:

1.http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/rolling_stones_lyrics_278/flowers_lyrics_1416/out_of_time_lyrics_62959.html

2. Robin, Corey. “Out of Place” The Nation June 23, 2008 pages 25-33

June 7, 2008: The Taming of the Shrew, Referendum on the Swine, Winning on Points

With the results of last week’s primaries, the long contest has now come to an end with Obama emerging with a clear majority of duly elected delegates. With the votes having been counted in South Dakota and Montana, a rush of Super Delegates pressured by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began to climb onto the Obama train as it was leaving the station. By mid-week, Obama had clinched the nomination. Today Hillary scheduled a speech before her staff and supporters in which she announced the suspension of her campaign and, albeit belatedly, congratulated Barack on his historical victory.

“She came this close,” wrote Katha Pollit in Nation. “Love her or loathe her, the big story here is Americans saw a woman who was a serious, popular, major-party candidate. Clinton showed herself to be tough, tireless, supersmart and definitely ready to lead on that famous Day One. She raised a ton of money and won 17.5 million votes from men and women. She was exciting, too: she and Obama galvanized voters for six long months—in some early contests, each of them racked up more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. Once the bitterness of the present moment has faded, that’s what people will remember. Because she normalized the concept of a woman running for President, she made it easier for women to run for every office, including the White House. That is one reason women and men of every party and candidate preference, and every ethnicity too, owe Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, even if they can’t stand her.” (1)


Amen. Let us take a moment here and tip our hat to Hillary, and to Barack, for accomplishing what no one thought was possible only a short time ago, making this election cycle, whatever its outcome, truly a transformative political experience.

A year ago, Hillary Clinton stood before America as the once and future Queen; the heir apparent representing a government in waiting. The nomination, if not the Presidency, was hers for the taking. With the backing of Big Bubba and his much feared political machine, with the support of thousands and the ability to raise over 100 million dollars before the first votes were cast in Iowa, with her name recognition, and facing a field of perceived political lightweights, Clinton appeared a lead pipe cinch to capture the nomination. No one expected the contest to go past Super Tuesday. By early February, the common wisdom had it, this race would be over.

No one, it appears, except the young upstart, Barack Obama of Illinois. Blinded perhaps by hubris and, in the end, believing their own press releases, the Clintons quite simply didn’t see Obama coming. It is a cardinal sin in politics to underestimate one’s opponent. As in baseball, where anyone with a bat in their hands is dangerous, events can change suddenly. Many a would-be, odds-on favorite to be President of the United States can attest to that. The history of this republic is littered with the shattered remains of such ambition. Ask President Aaron Burr, Stephen Douglas, George McClellan, Samuel Tilden, William Jennings Bryan, Al Smith, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Bob Dole, or Al Gore, not to mention many lesser lights. Barack Obama proved to be a formidable opponent with prodigious powers to inspire crowds, build a first-class political organization, and unparalleled ability to raise money. By the end of last year, the Obama camp began to match the Clintons dollar for dollar, and by early in the primary season began to outstrip the Clinton fund raising ability, outspending her in some states by multiples of 3 and 4 to one. It was a serious mistake compounded by many, many, others.

First was her inability to apologize for voting to give Bush war powers. Instead, we were presented with a long series of rationalizations, in which Hillary justified her vote saying that she wanted to give the President authority in order to make it possible for weapons inspectors to go into Iraq and in order to build a coalition in the United Nations in the event war broke out. While critical of Bush for both his leading the nation into war and his subsequent conduct of the conflict, she always stopped short of admitting mistake. This was, in the wake of a president who famously remarked in 2004 that he couldn’t think of anything — despite the failure to create a single net job in four years, or leading us into the greatest quagmire since Vietnam — that he would do differently. America had seen enough of leadership that cannot bend, cannot change, and cannot admit mistakes. Robert Kennedy, in his time, admitted such mistakes over Vietnam and apologized to the country for his part in leading us into the morass, Hillary couldn’t quite find the words. This gave Barack, as Chris Matthews pointed out on “Hardball,” a huge opening to become the ‘change agent’; to become the vehicle through which disgust with the current state of affairs would best find voice. Openly questioning the value of experience if such experience is leading us unto quagmires, Barack made the most of the Clinton misstep and positioned himself as the more ‘transformative’ candidate in the race.

Secondly, the Clinton campaign, after having lost the mantle of change, failed to develop an adequate campaign theme. The second rule in politics, after never underestimating one’s opponent, is to identify what makes the voting public most anxious and address those concerns. The election is, or rather should be after all, about the ‘people’. So while the country fretted about the emerging debacle in the Middle East, as we watched our standing in the international community dwindle to near nothing, as we witnessed the skyrocketing rise in energy and food prices and the near collapse of the housing market, the fears of the republic were addressed by the Clinton campaign with the slogan “Ready on Day One”. This merely served to beg the question: “Ready to do what?”

Hillary came off the blocks, stressing what her campaign thought to be two salient points: that her gender would automatically make her a ‘transformative’ political figure, breaking through heretofore impenetrable political barriers by definition as she progressed through the primaries. The problem with this strategy was two-fold. First, against a normal field of white males this might have worked, except when confronted with the person of Barack Obama, a man of mixed race. He, too, brought with him such transformative potential by so participating. Secondly, this strategy betrayed a campaign that, thematically at least, told the nation that it wasn’t about America but instead was all about Hillary. It was the perfect ‘Boomer’ gaffe, a genuine reflection of the ‘me’ generation — the Generation of Swine — that had by this election cycle all but worn out its relevance and its welcome. Obama, demonstrating superb political instincts quickly made the election a referendum on the swine, openly calling for an end to the endless food fights which are the products of, “conflicts hatched on college campuses forty years ago.” The result was that by the end of January, Hillary’s campaign had lost its majority black support, and was increasingly forced to rely on older white women — boomers — for both the money and the votes to keep her in the race. Obama had stolen the change issue and become the ‘transformative’ candidate in the race, eclipsing Clinton to such a degree that both Hillary and Bill were out on the hustling, mocking the young Jedi and openly campaigning against the very idea of change itself.

Third, Hillary had failed to surround herself with competent and professional campaign staff and advisers. Millions were paid to consultants who clearly had no idea how to fashion a viable message. In addition, she hired people like Mark Penn who erroneously thought that California was a winner-take-all primary and that winning it would sew up the nomination. Penn is a seedy aging boomer who, when not delving in Democratic Party politics, works as a lobbyist representing foreign governments. He is old enough to know better. One simply has to recall the Democratic Convention of 1972 in which the McGovern forces — which had won California — needed all the votes in order to win the nomination. McGovern had spent the best part of the previous four years reworking party rules eliminating the winner-take-all formula in favor of proportional representation. But California, in 1972, was one of the last states to still have the old rule in effect. The McGovern campaign was compelled to violate the candidate’s own stated position in order to garner all the delegates from the state, but it was made clear that California would have to abandon the way it awarded its delegates and bring their process in line with the national party rules by 1976. California has, therefore, apportioned delegates accordingly for over 30 years now. Mark Penn should have known that and, in the absence of the knowledge of such details, someone on the staff should have questioned him.

This debacle, born by an incomplete understanding of the process, proved to be the ‘Merkle Boner’ of this campaign, for it ended up costing Clinton the nomination. By not understanding the rules and acting accordingly, the campaign was forced to extend itself beyond Super Tuesday, an event — incredibly — for which there were no plans. The Obama camp, acting on the rules and planning for a long war of attrition, out organized the Clintons in caucus states and smaller states with open primaries. By winning enough of the vote in the larger states to stay competitive, Obama, even on Super Tuesday, was able to win more delegates despite losing the big states of New York and California. As the campaign then went through the Midwest and into the heartland, the Clintons discovered, to their dismay, that with each upcoming contest they would be confronted with a massively funded, well-organized opponent who stood waiting for them.

The Clintons were then forced into retreat in what became a long ‘scorched earth’ campaign to increase Obama’s negatives by relentless attack thereby attempting to salvage what diminishing hope remained by demonstrating that he could not win. In the process Hillary discovered her voice and became a formidable campaigner in her own right. But the tone of the campaign only served to further raise her already historically high personal negatives as well. In the end, both candidates staggered to the finish line with Obama outlasting her and winning on points.

In the end, the campaign went, more or less, precisely the way the Obama strategists had hoped and predicted. They knew that they could not take out the Empire with one blow, but that to successfully challenge they would have to win a long, drawn-out war of attrition. Obama demonstrated in the process to not only be an effective speaker, but a man capable of building a first-class professional organization that proved sensitive to addressing the concerns of his audience, as well as utilizing the latest technologies and medium of communications. The Clintons, on the contrary, presented the country with a much more amateurish, tone-deaf, and sluggish enterprise, at times wholly out of step with the nation. She was, perhaps, not the best vessel in which to launch this quest to sail on new political water, but she proved herself more than adequate. Despite entering this contest with the highest personal negatives on record, Hillary nevertheless inspired the nation with her grit and determination, her passion for health care, and her ability to inspire; winning by her count more votes in the primaries than anyone in American history. Obama, recognizing her contribution, said that through her efforts, the lives of his two little daughters have been given greater promise and hope. The life of our daughter as well.

Footnotes:

1. Pollit, Katha. “Iron My Skirt’ The Nation June 23, 2008 pg 10

June 6, 2008: Time it Was, Long Ago, Preserve Your Memories

“Time it was
And what a time it was
It was…
A time of innocence
A time of confidences.
Long ago…it must be…
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories;
They’re all that’s left you. –Paul Simon, from the album “Bookends” (1)

On this date forty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy died in Los Angeles. He was 42.

Footnotes:
1. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/9754/lyrics_bookends.htm
2. http://www.paulsimon/node/37

June 5: A Bright Sunny Morning, The Fatality of A Greek Tragedy, Ultimate Irony

It was a bright sunny morning on this date 40 years ago. It was early, a bit after 7 as I remember it. My mother came up into my room and awakened me. I had been up watching the election returns the previous night, somehow finding time between school and two jobs to check in on the progress of the campaign. As RFK spoke his final words, I turned off the television and, reinvigorated after the disappointing loss a week before in Oregon, went off to bed much encouraged. I remember her shaking me and saying, “Joe, Bobby’s been shot.” I tried to wake up but it was difficult; long weeks of living on three to four hours sleep a day were taking their toll. She repeated herself, “Bobby’s been shot.” Having seen her son go off and join the campaign she said, “It’s on the news now, I hate to wake you, but I know you’d want to know.” She then left my room and I got up, put on a few things, and came down the stairs. On television was Frank Blair of NBC’s morning, “Today Show” covering the story as it came from Los Angeles. It didn’t look good. A head wound, rushed to the hospital, critical condition. I watched, like the nation, the drama of the day, like the fatality of a Greek tragedy, play itself out.

Shortly after 8 that morning, I walked out into the bright morning sun. The temperature was already rising and warm for this climate at this time of the year. Everything seemed so bright on this dark morning; perhaps the ultimate irony as the fates played with our soul.

“Those were the days my friend,
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live a live we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young
And sure to have our way” --Mary Hopkin, “Those Were the Days”

Later that morning, my aunt called to express her condolences. She told me that if he survived, he would win, but we both knew otherwise. The campaign lasted a mere 82 days; days of hope and inspiration, days of challenge and days that transformed both the Democratic Party and the nation. Today, when people speak of the “Kennedy wing” of the Democratic Party, they are not referring to Teddy, who now 40 years later finds himself battling brain cancer and fighting for his own life, nor are they referring to Jack, but Bobby. His is the voice that speaks from the soul of the Democracy to the nation. After all these years, we can still hear that voice in our ears.

June 4, 2008: Enter the Wrangler, Nearing the End, Into That Long Night

Enter the Wrangler. Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), one of those who early-on urged Hillary to run for the Senate in New York and a mentor of sorts, had seen enough. Staring down the barrel of an open floor-fight, first to challenge the delegate apportionment of the Michigan and Florida delegations as decided over the Memorial Day weekend by the party, and then a full-fledged contest for the nomination itself, Rangel would have no more of it. With two months of pressuring Super Delegates to overturn the results of the long nominating process, and all the political intrigue and ‘horse-trading’ that would entail, the Congressman called together several of his colleagues for a conference call which, in effect, was the Democratic equivalent of that meeting Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott had with Nixon advising him to step down. Rangel, despite pressure from the black community to support Obama, had been a steadfast Clinton supporter, remaining loyal throughout what had become a bitter, hostile, and sometimes openly racist campaign. Today, he was on the phone with is protégé informing her that the end had come. Accordingly rumors began to circulate that the Clinton camp was beginning to negotiate the terms of capitulation.

On this date 40 years ago, Robert Kennedy won the California primary, besting Gene McCarthy. The New York Primary had yet to be held, but it was becoming clear that Kennedy was emerging from the primaries with a great deal of momentum. Chicago’s Richard Daley was about to jump ship and switch from support of the administration, now represented by Hubert Humphrey, to Robert Kennedy. Kennedy, speaking at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, made references to healing the divisions between black and white, rich and poor, young and old; of the need to end the war. Finally with the words, “And it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there,” he walked off into the long night.

June 3, 2008: End of the Slugfest, Unheralded Achievements, Opportunities Lost

The long slugfest between Barack and Hillary ended last night with the country being presented with yet another set of ‘bookends’, this time Hillary winning in South Dakota and Barack prevailing by similar margins in Montana. South Dakota went for Hillary 55-45%, 54,000-43,000 votes respectively; Montana reversed the tables voting for Obama 56-41%, 102-74,000 votes respectively. The long slog through the primaries presented the nation with Barack Obama winning the majority of pledged delegates chosen by primary election or caucus becoming in the process the putative Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

On this night, Hillary and John McCain would have none of it. Hillary, in her ‘victory’ speech in South Dakota, did not even pause to acknowledge her opponent’s triumph in Montana, much less his historic achievement. Instead, focusing on her victory here and in Puerto Rico last weekend and falsely claiming victory in the contest for most votes cast, which includes the muddled contests in Florida and Michigan, she touted herself as the real winner. Ignoring the only votes that matter — the delegate count —s he pledged to carry her fight all the way to the convention. McCain, for his part, said nothing concerning the historical achievement of his fellow Senators, but instead focused on the mundane.

This campaign has been beset by a series of lost opportunities. As noted earlier in this narrative, the victory by Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, marking the first victory by a woman in a contest for President in an open primary, went unheralded, not only by Obama, but the mainstream press. Many more victories were to follow, but since the opening bell at Iowa, Hillary has never led in the delegate count. For all intents and purposes, this race has been over since Super Tuesday when the Empire proved unable to dispatch the young Jedi — a verdict confirmed by a string of victories throughout March. As the campaign progressed, or rather regressed, each Clinton victory served only to buoy the hopes of those who sought to reach a different political milestone by breaking through a different set of barriers. The truth is that both candidates succeeded, and in their success, were blinded to the achievement of the other. As a result, the emergence last night of Barack Obama as the nominal nominee of his party, a milestone in the history of this republic, went uncelebrated by at least half of his own party. Such are the politics of this Generation of Swine.

May 21, 2008: Bookends, We Rarely Speak with One Voice, The Class Ceiling

The primary election returns last night from Kentucky and Oregon were almost like looking at the returns from two different countries. Hillary crushed Obama in Kentucky, winning 65% of the vote to Obama’s mere 30%. With 459,000 votes to Obama’s 209,000, Clinton took every major demographic except the black vote. But the news out of Oregon was exactly opposite, with Obama besting Clinton 59-41% 361,000 to Hillary’s 252,000. On the night, Clinton outpolled Obama, but the Jedi inched ever closer to the finish line. Time is running out for the Clinton campaign.

Much has been made of the regional or sectional divides that make up the matrix of the American landscape. One of the interesting things about studying American politics and history is the rich panorama one confronts as the country slowly reveals itself. As a child, I remember those long journeys down highway 66 through Illinois on our way to Missouri then Arkansas. What struck me then, and still occasionally catches one off-guard, is how short a distance one needs to travel to hear the changes in local accent and dialect. But not far beneath the surface, other variations and divisions present themselves, differences over industry and trade, religion, politics. Occasionally these divisions have manifested themselves in deep sectional divides, producing, in time, conflict and even civil war. One is immediately impressed by the country’s many voices and a close study of our history reveals that however persuasive our leaders we rarely speak with one voice.

Last night, the two primary elections presented us with a set of bookends. Kentucky, a slave state that remained nominally in the Union during the Civil War, had, and still has, deep economic and cultural connections to the South. Oregon is part of the cluster of North Western states, like Washington with a very different historical experience, today trending much more toward high-tech industry and at the vanguard of environmental concerns. Reflecting the growing divide between the Clinton and Obama camps, as the Democratic Party threatens to split into its constituent parts, Kentucky — responding overwhelmingly to the ‘gas tax holiday’ scheme stolen by Hillary from John McCain and reflecting her strength among the less educated “white” voters - rallied overwhelmingly to Hillary’s cause. Oregon, like Obama, seeing the ‘gas tax holiday’ as a shell game and a sham, and more concerned with long-term environmental issues and the reduction of the use of fossil fuels rallied to the Jedi. The Obama-Clinton breakdown in Oregon also reflected a significant contrast from Kentucky.

Forty years ago Bobby Kennedy lost his only election to Gene McCarthy in Oregon, demonstrating that Oregon is not fertile ground for a tribune of the underclass. Oregonians are better educated and more upper-middle class. Here, along the shores of the Pacific, Hillary encountered the upper limits of her campaign; not a ‘glass’, but a ‘class’ ceiling.

May 17, 2008: Generation of Swine: Tale of Two Narratives, Tombstone Meets Rock Ridge.

As befitting a man who does not know, in his heart, who he really is, ‘Ol Two-Cows is always playing the part. He is constantly in costume, constantly assuming an identity. He has been seen variously as a firefighter in New York, a fighter pilot landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the Rancher of Crawford, and the race-car driver at Daytona. He is a frustrated thespian playing, it seems, nearly every role, occasionally even President of the United States.

Ever since the Gipper crossed that line between acting and politics to becoming, in Bob Schieffer’s (1) words, “The Acting President,”(2) it has become increasingly possible to ‘suspend disbelief’ and by so doing, confuse fact from fiction; real from surreal. It isn’t simply that we have witnessed, in our lifetime, the likes of George Murphy, Ronald Reagan and Sonny Bono move from the stage to the political arena but, more recently, in the personages of Fred Thompson and, most notably, ‘Ol Two-Cows, the easy movement back and forth between acting and politics; between the stage and the political arena. In Thompson’s case moving from politics (minority counsel to the Senate Watergate committee) to acting, back into politics (Senator from Kentucky), then back again to acting, then again into politics (2008 Presidential campaign), then back again to acting. In the case of ‘Ol Two-Cows, we have a complete blurring of the line in which the present incumbent has become the penultimate “acting president”; the political arena has become a stage with the president ‘stage managed’. He appears only at carefully planned events before friendly audiences gathered by invitation only, a veritable house of mirrors and a perfect echo-chamber. Everything is reduced to a ‘photo-op’, and political life has become a serial presentation in which random events are eliminated, and issues are reduced to a set of ‘canned’ images orchestrated around the talking points of the day. Reality, political reality at least, is thereby reduced to a series of stage-props reflecting no greater depth than the movie sets on the back lots of Paramount, MGM or Warner Brothers. All of this befits the first generation of Americans raised on television, those self-same, “Boomers,” whose tender young minds were molded by the old ‘morality plays’ that were the “Westerns” of 1950s network television.

The circle has now been closed, wherein the republic stands transfixed as its own narcissistic images reflect back on themselves as in a house of mirrors; two dimensional forms endlessly replicating themselves, creating an illusion of infinity when, in fact, there is no depth at all. The real becomes surreal; so unreal as to be real. Fact and fiction become hopelessly confused, the political landscape becoming a kaleidoscope in which each twist produces wholly novel but seemingly symmetrical configurations.

Enter the Swine. In its endless quest to, “lead us now into the nineteenth century and deliver us from liberalism,” the swine have reduced our political discourse to a mere ‘morality play’ in which everything is reduced to black and white -- two-dimensional characters -- wherein eternal good battles eternal evil for the soul of the nation. To this end, every issue is subject to a reducio ad absurdum in which figures are drawn in high contrast; everything reduced to mere black and white with no chromatic spectrum, no whiter shades of pale. Only in a reality so transmogrified can it now be possible to hopelessly confuse Saddam Hussein with Hitler, or more incredibly, ‘Ol Two-Cows with Winston Churchill. In this context, our political discourse is to the real issues of the day what the modern cowboy movie is to the real history of the ‘wild’ west; mere form and no substance; all hat and no cows. The ‘Generation of Swine’ has been presented — at least, since that grand ‘ol cowboy John Wayne went to war in the movies — with the complete confusion of modern foreign and military policy with the western morality play.

To this end we now have, in its most recent manifestations, the tale of two narratives: The first is the Republican or Conservative narrative of Dodge City or, more appropriately for our present purposes, Tombstone. The latest Marshall of Tombstone, John McCain, is about to take over from ‘Ol Two-Cows after the townsmen have grown suspicious of rumors of collusion with the forces of evil and occasional cowardice in the face of danger. To combat the threat to ‘law and order’ posed by the liberals, and the ‘open-banditry’ of the Clantons (make that the Clintons), the Tombstone Chamber of Commerce has pressured the city council to replace the ‘acting’ sheriff with the genuine article. Here is a narrative cast in stark black and white. The forces of good (Republican, here represented by the good Marshall McCain) confront the devious forces of lawlessness and banditry who, if they take over, will Quayle before our enemies and, by ‘appeasing’ them, invite future acts of terrorism against the good people of the city.

The second is the Democratic or Liberal narrative in which the play parodies the Republican proposition. Here, Tombstone becomes Rock Ridge and the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (3) becomes an updated version of “Blazing Saddles” (4). In this narrative, Barack Obama emerges as a modern sheriff Bart who, through cool aloofness and a demonstrable wit and courage, wins the hearts and minds of a town heretofore awash in bigotry. It is difficult not to see some amusing parallels, as in William J. Clinton parroting the fictional Governor William J. Lepetomane (played by Mel Brooks). Confronted with the man he is about to make sheriff of Rock Ridge, the governor in that famous scene takes his Attorney General Hedy Lamarr (played by Harvey Korman) aside and says to him — as Clinton figuratively spoke to the Super Delegates — “Are you crazy? Can’t you see this man’s a n….”? But in the end, as in all morality plays Good triumphs over evil, and all is well with the world.

The differences in the narratives and how they reflect the mindset of each political party are telling. The Republican narrative, parroting the stark contrasts of western lore, presents us with a simple, albeit oversimplified, morality play. What is interesting here is that be it the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” or “High Noon” (5), one is confronted with tales that reflect conflicts that could, and should, have readily been avoided. What has been lost to our collective understanding by these oversimplifications is that the Earps, while wearing the badge, were always dancing on both sides of the law, often seeing law enforcement as a means of waging personal vendettas. The Clantons, too, emerge as two dimensional villains but were actually seen by their contemporaries much more favorably. Likewise in “High Noon” Gary Cooper, here playing Marshal Will Kane had retired and was leaving town when he learns that Frank Miller (played by Ian MacDonald) is returning to town. Miller had been sent up to the big house by the Marshal and was on his way back to Hadleyville seeking revenge. This too was a fight, like modern Iraq, that could and should have been avoided. Kane could have simply kept going, got a court order restraining the criminal from contacting him but instead, significantly, decided to put his badge back on and fight, without the support of the townsmen, in the open streets.

The Democratic narrative is much more nuanced. Being a parody, the Democratic morality play gives us a chance to see conflict — especially conflict as it has come to be understood by a generation raised on ‘western’ morality plays — for what it is: mere two-dimensional cardboard cut-out figures battling over exaggerated claims. When I was a young man managing drive-in theatres, I asked the booking agent to send me “Blazing Saddles,” the subtitle of which was, “Or Never Give a Saga and Even Break.” Since that time, back in 1974, I have watched the film many times, and through the years many of my peers have asked the simple question: “What was the point of that movie”?


The point that Mel Brooks made in his classic comedy is the point that I am making here. That is our understanding of our collective history — in this case, the settlement of the Western frontier — is no deeper than the card-board cut-out figures that the townspeople made of themselves to create their fake “Rock Ridge”, in order to bamboozle the villains. Our understanding of the settlement of the west is no deeper than a back-lot set on the Warner Brothers studio lot. And, as in the old “Roy Rogers” television western, wherein Pat Brady would appear at the end of each episode with his Jeep, thereby transporting us back into the twentieth century, the fight that erupts in the fake “Rock Ridge” quickly pours out into other sets and through the Warner Brothers studios, out into the open streets, ending up at a theatre showing “Blazing Saddles” a perfect parody in which a parody becomes a parody of itself, as in those famous house of mirrors which have so much mesmerized the Generation of Swine.

The contrast in these two narratives is instructive in that it explains a great deal concerning the disconnect between the two political parties and why the respective political discourse passes by, like the ‘Flying Dutchman,’ unnoticed in the night. As Bill Maher once said, the Republicans accuse the Democrats of not loving their country. It’s not true. The difference is that the Republicans love their country like a four year old loves its mother. The Democrats love their country like an adult loves another adult, understanding and sometimes overlooking its faults, correcting it when it is wrong, but nevertheless loving its beauty and its character. Democratic love, Liberal love if you will, is much more nuance and much more mature, trying its best to become multi-dimensional in a two-dimensional world.

In the meantime, Barack Obama, by playing his best sheriff Bart, is slowly winning over the hearts and minds of main street America leading us, perhaps in time, to a more mature understanding of ourselves.

Footnotes:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Schieffer
2. Schieffer, Bob and Gates, Gary Paul The Acting President, 1989 E.P. Dutton, New York. 397 pages
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazing_Saddles
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon