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Category: American Politics

  • Running Against Hooverville–The Presidential Blame Game

    In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. Even though the whole initiative had been first devised and planned by the Eisenhower administration.

    JFK’s poll numbers moved dramatically—up. There is something refreshing—though sadly rare—about a political leader saying “My bad.”

    In the 19th century, a British politician stood in Parliament and remarked that trying to get his particular point across was akin to flogging a dead horse to make it pull a load. We call this beating a dead horse today. And every time President Obama or a member of his administration plays the blame Bush card, he is beating that proverbial dead horse. It is also getting really old.

    Everyone on Facebook has an information page and there is an entry labeled “relationship status.” Some mark “married” or “in a relationship,” others say “single.” Then there are those who put: “It’s complicated.” When it comes to Presidents and those who come before or after, it’s really complicated. Some chief executives have managed to rise above the propensity for personal paltriness—others, not so much.

    And it goes way back.

    Thomas Jefferson, who ran a particularly aggressive campaign against former-and-would-be-again-much-later friend, John Adams, in the 1800 race, continued the attack on his predecessor well into his own presidency. He regularly smeared Mr. Adams for maladministration of presidential powers, though apparently willing to benefit from things Adams had done that he had opposed at the time. The anti-military, anti-big government Jefferson, had no qualms about using navy Adams had built (opposed by TJ) to deal with the Barbary Pirates; nor did he hesitate to use broad executive powers in the whole matter of the Louisiana Purchase—the kind of action candidate Jefferson would have likely decried as tyrannical.

    Democrat Andrew Jackson wouldn’t even pay a courtesy call on outgoing President John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams then refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. Jackson spent significant time in office tearing down his predecessor—blaming Adams and the whole fierce campaign for his wife’s death after the election. That one was very complicated.

    Speaking of Presidents and courtesy calls, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, sat famously in the car under the White House portico, snubbing the Trumans. But when it came to blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited, he chose the path of just ignoring and dismissing Mr. Truman like the junior military officer he saw him to be.

    Abraham Lincoln had great reasons and resonant issues to use to place blame for the country on the verge of disintegration he inherited in 1861 because his predecessor, James Buchanan, did virtually nothing to deal with the brewing national disaster. But Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a capacity to rise above cheap politics—dealings with his own Cabinet-made-of-would-be-rivals also demonstrated the 16th President’s ego tempering skills.

    Of course, many times Presidents have succeeded men from the same party and, though they might have wanted to really make the guy before look bad, they realized that it was political suicide. Martin Van Buren could certainly have blamed the panic of 1837 on Andrew Jackson, who destroyed the National Bank, but party realities forbade it.

    Warren Harding didn’t spend a lot of time or energy blaming Woodrow Wilson for the nation’s woes in the early 1920s. Ronald Reagan used Jimmy Carter as a punching bag for a short while, but quickly moved on. Even Richard Nixon didn’t waste time passing the buck back to LBJ. In fact, their relationship was remarkably good, considering their history.

    Now, Franklin Roosevelt—well that’s another story. He used predecessor Herbert Hoover as his whipping boy for at least a decade—and one wonders if this example is the one that resonates with the current administration.

    FDR ran a skillful campaign against Hoover in 1932, allied with the forces of economics and history in play at the time. Hoover was an unpopular president as a result of the onset of the Great Depression. Once hailed for his genius at organization and engineering, his name was even part of the vocabulary signifying good economy, as in the popular 1920 Valentine’s Day card:

    “I’ll Hooverize on dinner,
    On fuel and tires too,
    But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
    When it comes to loving you.”

    By 1932, however, his star had fallen and shantytowns across America were dubbed, “Hoovervilles.” However, today’s prevalent narrative that Hoover was a do-nothing president and then the great activist Roosevelt rode to the White House on a white horse, is at best an apocryphal exaggeration—at worst, it’s a lie.

    In fact, Mr. Roosevelt, famous smile and all, was simply an effective and cynical politician who knew how to practice demagoguery with the best of them. He was also a very petty man. One example is in the naming—better, renaming—of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It had been named for Herbert Hoover in 1931 not just because he was the President at the time (there were already dams named for Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt extant), but also because he had been a major driving force in the project since the early 1920s during his highly successful tenure as Secretary of Commerce. He, being an engineer by training and trade, even played a crucial role in how it would work and be constructed—effectuating something called the Hoover Compromise allowing the project to go forward at a critical juncture.

    After his humiliating defeat by the Roosevelt juggernaut in November of 1932, Mr. Hoover stopped at the construction site of the dam and remarked for the press:

    “It does give me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have so long held taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. It is now ten years since I became chairman of the Colorado River Commission—This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man—I hope to be present at its final completion as a bystander. Even so, I shall feel a special personal satisfaction.”

    But by the time the project was completed in 1936, it had been renamed by the Roosevelt administration as the Boulder Dam and Hoover was never invited to be part of any festivities. Of course, by that time Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection against Republican nominee Alf Landon of Kansas.

    But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.

    The other day, during that good-for-nothing White House meeting on health care, there was a telling exchange between President Obama and Senator John McCain. He told McCain that the campaign was over. He meant their campaign.

    The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. And most likely this will continue through the 2012 campaign. After all, if you can’t run on a record of accomplishment—find a dead horse to beat and hope the people are dumb enough not to notice the abuse and absurdity.

    The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover—or better yet—is Barack Obama as arrogant, cynically petty, or politically cunning as was Franklin D. Roosevelt?

  • A Joke Too Far

    A tasteless joke – one that saw earlier popularity during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – has resurfaced across America. It is being told in whispers, emails, and even bumper stickers. During Mr. Clinton’s administration it even found its way into some Sunday church bulletins. And it is really beneath contempt in its lack of respect for the president, the presidency, not to mention the Bible itself.

    It goes something like this: “Pray for President Obama. Psalm 109:8.”

    At first glance it appears innocuous, even pious. But when time is taken to look up the reference, well, then it’s chortle, chortle time for buffoons:

    “Let his days be few, and let another take his office.” – Psalm 109:8 (NKJV)

    And the verse following continues the thought:

    “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” – Psalm 109:9 (NJKV)

    Of course, the point of the joke is to show disaffection with President Obama. But the real result is to use scripture in a twisted way and to find somehow funny the idea that our president should, well, come to an ignominious end leaving his family to grieve.

    Funny stuff. Real Jackie Gleason belly laugh stuff: Har har hardy har har.

    It should be clear to decent, reasonable, reflective, and compassionate people that some things simply aren’t funny. One just has to look back at what happened 46 years ago this weekend to see that. I have no clue if that same joke was around in the days of the Kennedy administration, but I know that the feelings of too-casual contempt it reveals were very much around.

    I am a conservative when it comes to politics – a conservative with strong libertarian leanings. I am no fan of much of the political agenda of President Obama and his administration. Sometimes I get annoyed. Occasionally (okay, more than occasionally) I talk back to the T.V. when I hear or see something that, to me, does not pass the test of constitutionality or common sense.

    I would probably only vote for Mr. Obama’s reelection if the choice was between him and, say, Harry Reid – or Boss Tweed. I very much believe that the president and his advisors have a socialist bent and that what they are trying to accomplish through Health-Care Reform and Cap-and-Trade machinations amounts to the kind of change Americans really didn’t envision when he was elected last year.

    But it needs to be said that a president can be opposed and criticized – even in an animated way – without resorting to the kind of meanness that crosses the line of civility.

    I have no problem with partisanship – even a little fiery rhetoric here and there. America is better when our politics are feisty. But, come on – using the Bible to make a joke about the man dying before his term is up?

    Seriously?

    Think back. Remember John “John-John” Kennedy Jr. saluting his daddy’s casket on that cold November Monday in 1963? Is there anything funny about that? Nope, it was all just very sad. And it bears noting that Mr. Kennedy evoked opinions and opposition from conservative Americans in much the same way Mr. Obama does now.

    On the last morning of his life, JFK woke up in the Presidential Suite of the Hotel Texas in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. As he made his way down to the facility’s Crystal Ballroom to speak to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast gathering of about 2,000 people, he encountered a maid by the name of Jan White, who asked him to sign her newspaper. He did – probably the last autograph of his life – writing his name near his picture on the front page of that day’s Dallas Morning News. The headline on November 22, 1963 was: “Storm of Political Controversy Swirls Around Kennedy On Visit.”

    The next morning that same paper bore the message: “Kennedy Slain On Dallas Street.”

    People mourned. Americans who had not voted for Mr. Kennedy – and never would have – were deeply impacted by the violent tragedy. And, in fact, his days were made few, and another was allowed to take his office. His wife also became a widow and his children were suddenly fatherless.

    I’m sorry, but there is nothing funny about that. Nor is there anything funny about using a passage of scripture as a punch line, one that finds sadistic humor in such depraved darkness as to be at all amused at the potential demise of a national leader.

    Of course, I recognize that when George W. Bush was in office, the same things were circulated about him by a few on the other side of the political spectrum. But some things are simply not funny. It was wrong when liberals did it – and it is wrong for conservatives to do it.

    Shortly before November 22, 1963 – when I was about seven years old – I came home from school one day armed with a joke about President Kennedy. I cannot for the life of me remember the punch line – or the straight line for that matter. But I do remember the moment I decided to let ‘er rip at the dinner table that night. I was sure that I was on safe ground, after all, my parents were Nixon people in 1960 (later Goldwater people in 1964, then back to RN again in ’68) and not big fans of Mr. Kennedy. I know I had heard my dad criticize the president for this or that, though never in a mean way. So I thought he would just love my hilarious joke.

    I told it with all the skills of a 2nd grade class clown. Then I waited for the howls of laughter from my parents. And I waited. Then after a moment or two – and I can still see and hear this in my mind – came a powerful rebuke from the head of the table, ending with the unambiguous: “Son, don’t ever talk about the President of the United States like that!”

    Tough room.

    I learned something about respect that day. It’s something I think about now and again when things heat up politically and I find myself invariably frustrated with politics du jour. And though I sometimes fly admittedly close to the flame of the kind of disrespect that crosses the line between honest disagreement and just plain malice, I am never comfortable with that kind of indignation – righteous or otherwise.

    Anger is toxic, often subtly so. Certainly there are times when animosity can give way to constructive change. But while such antipathy can occasionally be the catalyst for ultimate good, it must never be the default fuel. It is ferociously destructive.

    By the way, the use of Psalm 109:8 as a joke applied to President Obama is not only a beneath-contempt expression of ugliness, it is also a profoundly ignorant use of the Bible. For when you read further in the good book, all the way through the gospels and into The Acts of the Apostles, you find Simon Peter, the recently redeemed Jesus-denier, quoting that very passage in reference to another Apostle who did something abhorrent – Judas Iscariot.

    Peter applied it as an epitaph for Christ’s infamous betrayer, though he must have done so with the humility to think, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

    All praying people should fervently pray for President Obama and all those in authority – and not tongue-in-cheek petitions. As yet another Apostle, this one named Paul wrote:

    “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” – I Timothy 2:1-2 (NIV)

  • Mass Appeal

    Unguided Missal? Mass composer Leonard Bernstein in 1971.

    Last week on The New Yorker’s website, music critic Alex Ross wrote three articles based on newly released Freedom of Information Act-obtained government documents regarding inquiries into composer-conductor-polymath Leonard Bernstein’s politics. They include an 800-page FBI file, memos from the Nixon White House Special Investigation Unit (aka Plumbers), and several taped conversations between RN and Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman regarding the impending premiere of Bernstein’s Mass at the opening of the Kennedy Center in September 1971.

    Alex Ross is to music what Pauline Kael was to movies. Both New Yorker critics share a commuunicable enthusiasm for their subject, an unintimidating expertise, and a ravishing prose style. In his New Yorker columns, on his blog, and in The Rest Is Noise, his recent best selling history of modern music, Mr. Ross renders the uncompromisingly unlistenable relentlessly readable.

    And the Bernstein material he has uncovered is fascinating enough in itself.

    The inquiries into the young conductor’s politics began with the Truman White House’s request to the FBI for an ideological vetting:

    Although Hoover’s operatives began tracking Bernstein’s left-wing activities as early as the mid-nineteen-forties, the first serious inquiry came in March, 1949, when David Niles, President Truman’s administrative assistant, asked the Bureau to look into the young musician’s background. Niles wanted the information because Truman and Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, were scheduled to attend an event at which Bernstein was slated to perform. A memo from D. M. Ladd to Hoover states that Bernstein was “connected, affiliated, or in some manner associated” with various organizations described as Communist fronts…

    Director Hoover found the file’s contents insufficient to merit his endorsement (“This phraseology means nothing + most certainly I can’t send to W. H. [the White House] such ambiguous + sweeping statements.”), so Mr. Niles was back at square one.  In the event, Bernstein conducted and Truman sent his regrets.

    In 1951, Bernstein’s name turned up on the Prominent Individuals Section of the Security Index — apparently a list of people who would be rounded up in the event of war with the USSR. In 1953, in order for the State Department to renew his passport, Bernstein had to submit an 11-page affidavit swearing that he had never been a member of the Communist Party or knowingly engaged in any communist-friendly activities.

     

    From the Ross Bernstein documents: Leonard Bernstein’s Truman era Security Index Card.

    A thorough FBI investigation, in 1954-55, yielded no hard evidence to contradict Bernstein’s affidavit—only “hearsay,” according to a memo dated August, 1955. Yet the FBI continued to collect accusations and insinuations. In 1958, one informant stated: “I know that Bernstein is a card-carrying Communist but I have no proof of it but I can tell by the way he talks.”

    The thin record —ranging from soulless bureaucratese to squirrely handwritten denunciations— was typical of the times; today it makes dispiriting, albeit fascinating, reading. Looking back at his long life, nineteen years after the Maestro’s death, it’s easy to see that the prodigiously talented Bernstein, when it came to politics, was an enthusiastic idealist; and, for all his great sophistication, an idealistic naïf.

    After flying under the FBI’s radar for several years, Bernstein re-emerged in 1968 —with LBJ now in the White House— as a result of his ardent flirtation with the Black Panthers.

    Although at first only those on the FBI’s need-to-know distribution list were kept abreast of the Bernsteins’ Panthermania, before long —on 8 June 1970 to be exact— the world would read about it in Tom Wolfe’s devastating New York Magazine piece “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s.”  Thanks to Wolfe’s kandy-kolored prose, the Bernsteins’ unironic earnestness was soon common knowledge and the subject of national mockery.

     

    The Kennedy Center: The Wall Street Journal’s review of its 1971 opening said: “Unfortunately, a perfect opening may be one of the few things the Kennedy Center will have going for it.  Its monumental building which has been described by one well-known critic as “gemutlich Speer,” is, not to put too fine a point on it, awesome but cold.  It is in the style of the Soviet palaces of science and culture, and the dizzying halls of states and nations convey a distinct feeling of the Moscow underground.”

    After the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy decided that the only monument in Washington to her late husband’s memory would be the cultural center —the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts— to be built on the banks of the Potomac.

    She commissioned Bernstein —a longtime Kennedy friend and unquestionably the nation’s preeminent conductor and composer— to write a major original work, to be paid for by the late President’s family, for the opening of the Center.   His initial idea was to compose a traditional Requiem mass in the tradition of Mozart, Verdi, and Faure.

    But, being Bernstein, he soon fastened on a less conventional approach. The result, very accurately titled Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, was a hybrid of the concert hall and the Broadway stage, with a thick gloss of ‘60s Greening of America schmalz.

    As the Alex Ross New Yorker articles show, there was some concern in the Nixon White House about the advisability of RN’s attending the Kennedy Center’s opening.

    The press and TV, not surprisingly, were obsessed with the long-anticipated event.   Although Mrs. Kennedy had become Mrs. Onassis in the meantime, this would represent the refurling of Camelot’s flag in the heart of Nixonian Washington.  There was serious speculation devoted to whether Mrs. Onassis and/or President Nixon would attend; and, if they both did, about how that would be choreographed. There was also considerable grousing in the predictable circles that RN, by attending, would be intruding where he certainly wasn’t wanted and arguably didn’t belong.

    Further, Bernstein and “sources close to Mass” had been hinting and leaking stories about the work in progress (which continued to be in progress right up to the premiere) that the event would be as much political as artistic.  There was speculation that the composer would use this Mass —with its likely captive audience of national leaders— as his means of speaking antiwar truth to power.

     

    “Nixon + Jackie and Joe Blow”:  Bernstein made notes about Mass at the McDowell Colony in 1970.  Regarding The Communion (the Kiss of Peace) he wrote: “Something should happen that turns the militancy to love.  For me the Communion and the Kiss of Peace are not two things, but one: the kiss is the communion and should pass through the whole company in a ritual way, + be somehow transmitted on through the house, to Nixon + Jackie and Joe Blow — What music?  Quiet chorale, or big gay sound?”

    The upshot was an FBI memo —dated 16 August 1971, roughly three weeks before opening night— on the subject: “PROPOSED PLANS OF ANTIWAR ELEMENTS TO EMBARRASS THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.”  The memo’s purpose was set out in the first paragraph:

    To advise that information regarding a previously reported plot by Leonard Bernstein, conductor and composer, to embarrass the President and other Government official through an antiwar and anti-Government musical composition to be played at the dedication of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been reported by the press.

    The report in question was from Human Events that “rumors are sweeping Washington” that Bernstein would embarrass RN with an anti-administration bombshell.  It was noted that he had met in jail with the anti-war Jesuit Daniel Berrigan, who was serving a three year sentence for destroying draft files, and who was rumored to be a collaborator on the Mass’s Latin libretto.

    As Bernstein’s working notes show, he had, indeed, received advice from Fr. Berrigan, and had originally considered writing “4 Lullabies for Martyrs” (JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X).  The “Epistle” —the produced Mass’s most explicitly political section— intersperses quotations from Second Timothy with letters from an imprisoned draft resister.

    So the fact that this highly public and potentially politically sensitive event was the subject of discussion among RN and his staff isn’t surprising.

    Robert Mardian, then head of the DOJ’s Internal Security Division, wrote a memo summarizing the situation as the premiere approached.  He paid particular attention to the Bernstein-Berrigan visit at the Danbury Correctional Institution on 25 May 1971.

    One could surmise that this visit by Bernstein was in connection with his “Mass,” particularly when considered in the light of information circulation within the pro-Berrigan camp to the effect that Bernstein has requested Father Berrigan to compose words for the “Mass” in Latin and it would follow an antiwar theme.  If this is true, consider the implications and the publicity which would accrue to the antiwar movement if this “Mass” were to be politely applauded by high ranking Government officials who undoubtedly will attend the dedication ceremonies at the Kennedy Center and who probably are not conversant in Latin.

    Mardian concluded:

    The fact that two such controversial figures as Bernstein and Father Berrigan are collaborating on the dedication program should appear to offer sufficient reason for inquiries as to just what mischief they are up to.  It would also be interesting to know just how Father Berrigan’s contribution to this “Mass” is to be furnished to Bernstein — openly through regular channels, or clandestinely.

    The Mardian memo reached Pat Buchanan, who sent it to the Domestic Council’s Bud Krogh.  Buchanan wrote: “My view is that we ought to find someone who can definitely translate that Latin Mass Bernstein is working on — to make sure this is accurate.”  And he had someone in mind: “”get us a good Jesuit to translate, maybe Father McLaughlin…”  This was John McLaughlin, a friend of Buchanan’s, who had recently joined the White House speechwriting staff.

    Coincidentally, two weeks before, Krogh had been tasked with tracking down information regarding the leak of the Pentagon Papers (which had first appeared on the front page of The New York Times on 13 June).  Mr. Ross, understandably but incorrectly, assumes that this was common knowledge and explains why Krogh was given this assignment — an assumption supported by the fact that Krogh in turn tasked his new aide G. Gordon Liddy with obtaining a copy of the Mass’s libretto.  What Buchanan more likely had in mind when he wrote “we should be able to get a copy of what he is preparing — there will have to be rehearsals,” was Krogh’s Domestic Council responsibility for matters involving the District of Columbia.

    Mr. Ross writes —correctly— that “Several personalities involved in this exchange of memos had ties to the White House’s Special Investigations Unit, better known as the Plumbers, and later to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP, which” —incorrectly— “organized the Watergate break-in of 1972.”  (The break-in emerged full-blown from the pervervid brain of G. Gordon Liddy, under the patronage of John Dean, and with the acquiescence of Jeb Magruder and, alas at least temporarily, John Mitchell; its only —tangential— CREEP connection was the presence of CRP employee James McCord among the burglars.)

    Liddy, on 6 August, reported that he had met with White House Counsel John Dean —the spider at the center of so many webs—who “stated that his office had had the matter for more than a week and obtained a copy of the Mass.  Dean stated that it is definitely anti-war and anti-establishment, etc.”

    On 9 August Haldeman told RN that Fr. McLaughlin’s opinion, rather than reflecting Dean’s dire judgment, was simply that Mass would be “very depressing.”   Reporting on a preview performance of Mass on 7 September, Haldeman answered RN’s question “Is it an opera?” by simply saying that it was “weird.”  The next day Haldeman reported that, while some passages were spectacular, others were “atonal-type music.”

    As is clear from the several tapes Mr. Ross excerpts in his third post (”Bernstein in the Nixon Tapes“), RN’s conversations with Haldeman have mostly to do with the media minefields involved in attending —and thereby imposing Presidential protocol on— what would clearly otherwise be a Kennedy celebration.  (As it turned out to be.  Following the performance, Rose Kennedy presented Bernstein with a commemorative medal.)

    The Solomonic solution they worked out was that RN would give the Presidential Box to Mrs. Onassis for Wednesday night’s opening of the Opera House with the Mass she had commissioned for the occasion.

    And on the following, Thursday, night, RN would attend the National Symphony’s opening of the Center’s Concert Hall.

    On 9 September, Haldeman informed RN that The New York Times’ review of Mass, by the paper’s chief music critic Harold Schonberg, would apparently “kick it around,” calling the work superficial and overplayed.  In fact, Schoenberg —who had been no friend of Bernstein’s for some time— pulled out all the stops when it came to Mass.  In the Sunday paper he called it “A combination of superficiality and pretentiousness, and the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce.”

    Haldeman reported Len Garment’s opinion that it is “quite spectacular theater” but, as a combination of West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Hair, “it’s got a lot of lousy stuff in it.”

    Most of Mass’s reviews ranged from lukewarm to underwhelmed; many were downright hostile.  Among the major national publications, the only glowing review appeared in The Wall Street Journal. And that review was written by, of all people, a new member of the Nixon White House staff —only on board since 2 August— who was working in the small room he shared with Dick Cheney in Don Rumsfeld’s second floor West Wing suite.

    On the night of Wednesday, 8 September, this newly-minted aide was in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House for the premiere of Mass.  And on the 10th, his fulsome review appeared in the Journal.

    And that fellow was…..me.

    I had been reviewing books for the Journal for a couple of years, and had contributed a few theater reviews before moving to Washington to begin a White House Fellowship.  I had suggested the Mass reviewing gig, and the paper, which hadn’t planned to  note the occasion, had been able to make last minute arrangements for a single ticket.

    I opened my review noting that Mrs. Onassis, by deciding not to turn up for the opening, had succeeded in making herself the center of attention.

    The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts should have achieved its apotheosis at its opening on Wednesday night.

    Everything was right for a unique and moving moment in American history.  The opening piece was Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” which was commissioned by Mrs. Kennedy soon after the President’s death.  It was the right choice of music from the right composer.

    So for the opening of this center, the late President’s memorial in Washington, the sole, but crucial, missing element was Mrs. Onassis herself.  By suddenly deciding not to attend, she did exactly what she said she was trying to avoid, and for many people turned the opening night into yet another Jackie-watch.  Would she or wouldn’t she?  She didn’t, and “Mass” was thus robbed of the real presence it needed to consecrate the hall.

    Because for all its musical interest and worth, “Mass” was of necessity a piece d’occasion.  This center is the memorial by which John F. Kennedy will be remembered.  Now, short years later, when historians are already placing him in a troubled and critical perspective is the time to recall and commemorate that vision and spirit which he represented and embodied.

    Then I plunged right in praising Mass:

    Mr. Bernstein’s work…is a complex, convoluted, striking, rollicking, stunning work of art.  It is also very beautiful, both to hear and to look at.  The concept itself is not perhaps as original as it must have been when he first began work on it.  Indeed, it is now almost a genre piece, and as such it will undoubtedly be weighed and found wanting by many.  Hard rockers will find it inferior to the Electric Prune’s “Mass in F Minor”; the general public will find it less appealing and catchy than “Jesus Christ Superstar”; and theater-goers will find it far less stimulating than “Hair.”

    And yet it is the mixed-media masterpiece toward which Mr. Bernstein’s theatrical and musical careers have been pointing.  Echoes of all the best that have gone before are here fulfilled; his broad and deep theological vision, already indicated in his first (Jeremiah) and third (Kaddish) symphonies; his exquisite solo settings in the lamentation and kaddish of the symphonies and in the stunning “Chichester Psalms”; his popular melodic and rhythmic command in “West Side Story.”

    Mass opens simply, with the Celebrant strumming a guitar and singing “A Simple Song.”  This clip is from a staged concert performance in August 2007 in Riga, Latvia.  The Celebrant is Douglas Webster; the conductor is Maris Sirmais.

    At least to my ears, the Latin text turned out to be mostly in Broadway ballad-friendly English.

    The texts of the “Mass” are from the Roman liturgy with additions by the composer and the young author of “Godspell,” Stephen Schwartz.  But Mr. Bernstein’s hand is the most heavily present; the same kind of almost embarrassingly naïve and obvious lyrics which marked his opera “Trouble in Tahiti” are here, but here they are serving a vision so grand and towering that they seem to give it both an impetus of sincerity and a comforting human touch.

    Gordon Davidson impressively and theatrically marshaled the cast of two hundred — including Alvin Ailey’s dancers, a brass band, and a massed choir — and kept the almost two hour intermissionless production from ever being “depressing.”  But there was no doubt that it was —as befits a requiem— serious bordering on sombre.

    This “Mass” is in fact an anguished cry about our loss of faith.  The Gloria is a quiet little song regretting that the girl doesn’t ever seem to say Gloria any more; and the Credo is a driving lament that the man can no longer say “I believe.”  The Agnus Dei becomes a fierce, almost revolutionary red-lit surging, stopping demand for the peace promised: dona nobis pacem.  At the end a Mahleresque flute birdsong and the plainsung voice of a child restore the hope if not the faith for the final whispered Pax Tecum and the moving choral communion.  The text is full of word-plays in Latin, English, Greek and Hebrew.  “Accidents Do Happen,” sung during the consecration after the host and wine have been dropped, is perhaps the most obvious if not the best.

    There are, to be sure, moments of excess and even a few of pure hoke, but in a work of this size and scale these are inevitable and piddling.  The insight Mr. Bernstein has shown into the mass and our times is uncanny and overwhelming; it is also very sophisticated and can hardly be justly judged on the basis of one viewing of this really razzmatazz theater show.

    My review appeared on Friday, so I was able to include the Thursday night Concert Hall opening (which I hadn’t attended):

    In the concert hall, which opened last night, President and Mrs. Nixon were treated to a program that would have been solid midweek subscription concert series fare for a good municipal orchestra.  Like “La Grande Scene,” the center’s expensive restaurant, whose menu is entirely in French, the National Symphony under Antal Dorati chose a wholly non-American program.  Is it parochial or foolish patriotic to have preferred hearing Leontyne Price singing Samuel Barber, Gershwin’s “Concerto in F”, and, say, and Ives symphony, to hearing “the Rite of Spring” for the Nth time, however well played?  Some of the center’s future fare is similarly prosaic or unaccountably exotic, and whether the center will be a viable economic proposition at the box-office will remain, anxiously, to be seen.  Be that as it may, it is now well and truly opened.

     

    Before the kissing had to start: Leonard Bernstein, flanked (left) by director Gordon Davidson and co-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, takes a curtain call following the premiere of Mass at the Kennedy Center on 8 September 1971.

    Bernstein’s notes for Mass reflect some of the advice given by Daniel Berrigan: “Father Dan said today: Leave them with the militant mood. You yell at them and turn off the lights.”  In fact, the ending Bernstein chose for Mass was exactly the opposite: a serenely moving, all but unaccompanied, choral hymn.

    Almighty Father, incline thine ear.
    Bless us and all those who have gathered here.
    They angels send us,
    Who shall defend us all:
    And fill with grace
    All who dwell in this place.
    Amen.

    A dozen years later —in 1984— the overture had already begun at a preview of a Broadway musical when three people arrived, late, to take the adjacent seats.  As I stood to let them pass I summoned up my best “if looks could kill” look — and found that I was bestowing it upon Adolph Comden, Betty Green, and Leonard Bernstein, who took the seat next to me.

    At the intermission I introduced myself to him as a long-time admirer.  To set myself apart in that vast category, I said that, although I doubted he would remember it, I had written The Wall Street Journal’s review of Mass.  He smiled warmly, claimed to remember it, and said “Let me buy you a drink.”  (Reading my review last week, a friend said, “For that review he should have bought you a car.”)

    Despite its critical drubbing —with the one noted notable exception— Mass found an immediate popular audience; in fact, it remains the best-selling multi-disc classical recording of all time.  Of the three currently available recordings, my favorite is the contemporaneous studio recording conducted by the composer and featuring the original cast. In 2004 Kent Nagano, and earlier this year Kristjan Jarvi released their versions.  On 25 August, Marin Alsop’s much-awaited Baltimore Symphony recording will be available; she prepared it as part of her 2008 Bernstein season celebrating what would have been her mentor’s 90th birthday.

    There is also a DVD of a 1999 performance at Vatican City.

  • Palin, Nixon, And The “Secret Plan”

    At CQ Politics, Jonathan Allen contrasts Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  “Palin doesn’t have Nixon’s interest in, or knowledge of, foreign affairs,” he writes. “Imagine the reaction if Palin suggested she had a “secret plan” to win the war in Afghanistan.”  He is undoubtedly right on his major point, but I must nitpick the second sentence. As Frank Gannon and yours truly have noted on this site, RN never said that he had a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam.  That urban legend started with a wire report that inaccurately paraphrased his comments at a town meeting.

    The CQ article links to a piece that acknowledges this point, while suggesting that RN let the myth stand during the 1968 campaign because it worked to his advantage.  Actually, as Nixon speechwriter Raymond Price has written:  “We on the Nixon staff immediately pointed out, to all who would listen, that he had not claimed a `plan.’ Nixon himself told reporters that if he had one, he would have given it to President Johnson.”  Nelson Rockefeller kept the canard alive as a way of attacking Nixon.  Richard Reeves reported in the New York Times on March 19, 1968:

    When he has been alone with friends, Mr. Rockefeller has scornfully mocked Mr. Nixon by patting his suit pocket and saying that he keeps a peace plan there while hundreds of Americans die each week in Vietnam. The Governor has said that he will ‘pound away’ at Mr. Nixon’s secret plan during the Oregon campaign.

  • Of Mice, Pumpkins, And Former Presidents

    Sometime after the transition in January of 1969, President Richard Nixon asked his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, how it felt the moment he knew he wasn’t president anymore. LBJ replied:

    I don’t know whether you’ll understand this now or not, but you certainly will later. I sat there on that platform and waited for you to stand up and raise your right hand and take the oath of office, and the most pleasant words that I ever – that ever came to my ears were ‘So help me God’ that you repeated after that oath. Because at that time I no longer had the fear that I was the man that could make the mistake of involving the country in war, that I was no longer the man that would have to carry the terrifying responsibility of protecting the lives of this country and maybe the entire world, unleashing the horrors of some of our great power if I felt that was required.

    As the nation watches the high and historic drama unfold on January 20th, all eyes will be on Barack Obama and his beautiful family. While he assumes the awesome responsibilities that come with being America’s 44th president, there will be another – much quieter – drama unfolding.

    George W. Bush will fade into the political sunset and take his first steps as a former leader of the free world. And as he takes a final lap during these waning moments of his administration, complete with exit interviews, a press conference, and address to the nation, he has the look of someone who is very much looking forward to some of what Lyndon Johnson was talking about.

    Harry Truman remarked at the moment he inherited the presidency that he felt as if a “load of hay” had fallen on him. Well, hay or whatever, the day he left office he felt relief. As he sat on the platform listening to Dwight D. Eisenhower deliver his inaugural address, Truman found his mind wandering. A short while later, he was in a limousine for a ride to a farewell luncheon. Suddenly, the driver stopped for a red light – the first such traffic observance for Truman since April of 1945.

    Those first hours as a former president must be interesting indeed.

    In 1921, Woodrow Wilson was a shell of the man who had heard cheering in so many languages just a year or so earlier. There was a moment when he had been seen as an almost Messiah-like figure. But then, virtually wheelchair bound due to the debilitating effects of several strokes, his health prevented him from sitting outdoors to observe Warren Harding’s inauguration. Instead, as he heard cheers for his successor in the distance, he was driven along the quiet streets of Washington, D.C. to his home on S Street.

    But Wilson was still in the vicinity of the Capitol as his presidency expired, not so with Richard Nixon who relinquished the burdens of his presidency 39,000 feet over Jefferson City, Missouri on August 9, 1974, as Gerald R. Ford was taking the presidential oath in the White House East Room. The moment was marked by the singularly simple act of Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, the pilot of the presidential plane carrying Nixon to California. He changed the aircraft’s call sign from Air Force One to SAM 27000.

    The most dramatic inauguration day in recent memory was in 1981. At the very moment Ronald Reagan was succeeding Jimmy Carter, 52 hostages held by the Iranians for 444 days were boarding a plane at Tehran’s airport en route to freedom. Carter had spent a sleepless night monitoring the situation. The next day, the 39th president flew to Germany on behalf of the 40th to meet the freed Americans. Mr. Carter’s defeat in the recent election was due, in part, to his inability to obtain their release. The timing of the plane’s departure from Iran was delayed. This was one final act of insult by the captors. They didn’t let the captives go until the new president was sworn in.

    As the now-former president met with the hostages, one aid, Hamilton Jordan, noted that Jimmy Carter “looked as old and tired as I had ever seen him.”

    Years before he was elected to the nation’s highest office, William Howard Taft – who had a well-known aversion to overt politics – said: “It will be a cold day when I go to the White House.” He was right. That inauguration 100 years ago (though then still taking place on the 4th of March) was conducted against the backdrop of frigid temperatures and freezing rain that formed an arctic crust over the Capitol grounds. But the weather wasn’t the only frosty element that day – outgoing president Theodore Roosevelt, already less-than-enamored of his hand-picked successor’s moves away from “continuity,” watched the proceedings with “a stony expression and balled up fists.” This body language seemed to telegraph coming problems between Teddy and Taft.

    John F. Kennedy’s celebrated inauguration was also tempered by hard and bitter weather, in the wake of a blizzard in Washington. As he spoke that day, vapor surrounded his words. The contrast between the youthful new leader and his aged predecessor was stark.

    Following the ceremony, Eisenhower and his wife Mamie slipped out a side exit and went to the F Street Club for a luncheon with close friends. They then got in their car – just the two of them – and drove to their farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The drive should have taken a couple of hours, but because of the weather it turned into a ten-hour ordeal.

    Eisenhower, by the way, was the first former president to retain the services of a personal Secret Service bodyguard after leaving the White House – but only for two weeks.

    On March 4, 1933, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt rode together from the White House to the Capitol to transfer power at a critical moment in our nation’s history. But any eavesdropping fly on the car window would have been disappointed at the dialogue. Breaking a long and awkward silence, the generally loquacious Roosevelt noted the new Commerce building under construction. Hoover had been Secretary of Commerce before becoming president, so FDR likely thought this would be a good icebreaker. The man who would soon take the oath of office remarked: “Lovely steel.”

    Hoover had no response. It was the last time they would ever “speak.”

    Whatever warm fraternity exists these days between former presidents – as was demonstrated last week at the ultimate White House power lunch – no such feelings were anywhere to be found 76 years ago as administrations changed during that time of severe economic crisis.

    By the way, one of the first things Harry Truman did after becoming president was to invite Herbert Hoover back to the White for the first time since March 4, 1933. Truman correctly sensed that only former presidents truly understand what the office personally means.

    The journey from power to lack thereof is a short one. It passes as quickly as the flip of a switch as the clock marks the moment and solemn words are uttered. In this unique split-second, one person assumes an awesome burden, while another gives it away.

    As you watch the events unfold on Tuesday, look closely at the faces of George Bush and Barack Obama and you’ll see two men smiling – one out of relief, the other out of excitement. And both men will likely be thinking “Now what?”

    Long after nightfall on January 20, 1969, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived at their 330-acre Texas ranch. LBJ had been an ex-President for just a few hours. Throughout the day friends had gathered – first at Andrews Air Force Base, then at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas. They showed up to say thank you to the man who had ascended to the presidency in those chaotic Dallas moments more than five years before – and who less than a year before had pulled himself out of the race for a final term in the White House.

    One of the first tell-tale signs that life was going to be comparatively perk-free was when they came upon their massive collection of luggage that had been left in the carport that evening, with no one around to carry the bags. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson laughed. Ladybird then uttered a phrase that captures what all former presidents probably come to understand as they take their first steps as former presidents:

    “The coach has turned back into the pumpkin and all the mice have run away.”

  • OK — My Bad — But I Get To Keep My Job

    “I really don’t believe making mistakes means you have to give up your career,” Representative Charles B. Rangel said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.

    Already dealing with the backdraft from several other scandals, eternal Harlem Congressman and immensely powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Charles Rangel has now acknowledged that he failed to pay tax on rental income from a Dominican Republic resort condo (the acquisition of which is already under separate scrutiny). That’s a long sentence, I know, but it’s carrying a lot of information; just as the jaunty, dapper, gravelly-voiced Chairman appears to be carrying a lot of baggage.

    The 19-term Congressman was first elected in 1970, replacing the legendary Adam Clayton Powell; his first assignment was to the Judiciary Committee, and in 1974 he was part of the Impeachment Inquiry.  He has been re-elected with scarcely even token opposition ever since.

    The rental income-tax story is reported in today’s New York Times:

    Representative Charles B. Rangel paid no interest for more than a decade on a mortgage extended to him to buy a villa at a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic, according to Mr. Rangel’s lawyer and records from the resort.

    The loan was given to him by the resort development company, in which Theodore Kheel, a prominent New York labor lawyer, was a principal investor. Mr. Kheel, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to Mr. Rangel’s campaigns over the past decade, had encouraged the congressman to be one of the initial investors in the project.

    In fact, it was the New York Post that broke the story — and that has been on “Tricky Charlie’s” (as they style him) finances and living arrangements like a Weimaraner on a pork chop for the last several months.

    Chairman Rangel is far and away the biggest recipient of contributions from lobbyists in the New York delegation (and that sets a very high standard indeed.)  In the first half of this year he took in almost three quarters of a million dollars in this manner.

     

    The DNC returned a $100,000 check he gave from the money raised at his 77th birthday party  fundraiser.  (The party, held at The Tavern on the Green in August 2007, raised more than $1 million.)  The technicality was that it went against the Obama campaign’s decision not to accept any PAC-related money, but it was widely seen as a serious slap at the formerly sacrosanct Chairman.

    Its namesake’s way of supporting the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York doesn’t, in the words of the Washington Post, “pass the smell test”.  The paper editorialized about “Rep. Rangel’s Tin Cup”:

    In the corridors of money and power in New York City, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), is called simply “Mr. Chairman.” Everyone knows that he’s chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. With his sway over tax and trade policy, captains of industry around the country are eager to have his ear. So when a letter from Mr. Rangel, especially if it’s on his congressional stationary, arrives, the 19-term Harlem congressman receives close attention.

    As Post staff writer Christopher Lee reported Tuesday, Mr. Rangel has been requesting meetings with business and philanthropic leaders since 2005 to discuss the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. It’s a $30 million facility Mr. Rangel says is dedicated to ensuring that the next generation of public servants reflects America’s diversity and “will allow me to locate the inspirational aspects of my legacy in my home Harlem community.” So far, $12.2 million has been raised. That includes a $1.9 million earmark, $690,500 in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $100,000 from the New York City Council, $7.1 million from foundations and $2.3 million from individuals. The largest single gift ($5 million) came from the C.V. Starr Foundation, which is chaired by Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg, a former head of insurance and financial services giant AIG. Mr. Rangel and college officials had a separate meeting with AIG this year, and another gift is under consideration.

    Mr. Rangel’s actions raise a couple of red flags. First, House rules forbid solicitations on official letterhead, even for nonprofits. At a minimum, he should stop this practice. Next, Mr. Rangel says that congressional business never comes up at his meetings. We’ll take him at his word. But those with business before Mr. Rangel’s committee could try to curry favor with him by donating to the Rangel Center. The appearance problem here is huge.

    Charlie Rangel is a colorful and engaging figure.  He’s the first to admit that “modesty is not really my best trait.” Before the 2004 he joked to voters that, if he became a powerful Committee Chair, “I don’t want to be treated differently than any other world leader.”  You can get an example of his winning ways on this interview given just as he was poised to assume his Chairmanship back in 2007.

    Last July it was revealed —again by the New York Post— that Mr. Rangel, whose declared net worth was in the high six figures, was living in four apartments in Manhattan that were rent-stabilized in order to help low income tenants find decent housing.  I wrote about this story here at the time.

    Even The Times’ usually restrained prose (especially where powerful Manhattan Democratic Committee Chairs are involved) showed some righteous indignation at the patent unfairness (and political foolhardiness) of Mr. Rangel’s living arrangements:

    While aggressive evictions are reducing the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent units on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in a building owned by one of New York’s premier real estate developers.

    The Olnick Organization and other real estate firms have been accused of overzealous tactics as they move to evict tenants from their rent-stabilized apartments and convert the units into market-rate housing.

    The current market-rate rent for similar apartments in Mr. Rangel’s building would total $7,465 to $8,125 a month, according to the Web site of the owner, the Olnick Organization.

    Mr. Rangel, the powerful Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, uses his fourth apartment, six floors below, as a campaign office, despite state and city regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence.

    Mr. Rangel, who has a net worth of $566,000 to $1.2 million, according to Congressional disclosure records, paid a total rent of $3,894 monthly in 2007 for the four apartments at Lenox Terrace, a 1,700-unit luxury development of six towers, with doormen, that is described in real estate publications as Harlem’s most prestigious address.

    It’s one thing to to have a sweetheart deal of a questionable nature.  It’s quite another thing to flaunt it in a lavish rich-and-famous lifestyles coffeetable book.  What could have been the thought processes behind inviting the photographer over for that gig?

    Me?  I’m of two minds about all this.  At least I think I am; and, if I am, then it’s at least two.  As a New Yorker, I’m long-accustomed to Mr. Rangel’s colorful ways and means and have developed what amounts to an affection for him.  He can be bombastic and he can be outrageous.  He’s one of the last lions left over from the old days when outsize personalities were not uncommon; and, if you had the right stuff to back them up, they were widely admired.  He is known as a prodigiously hard worker; a good boss; an excellent constituent services provider; and as the kind of all around good guy that is sadly missing and sorely missed around Washington these days.

    He is a heart-on-sleeve liberal partisan, many (if not most) of whose positions I couldn’t disagree with more.   But whether you agree with him or not, you know where he stands and you can depend on him to stand up for what he believes in.

    Given the unbelievable extent to which all Congresspersons —much less senior Democrats and powerful Committee Chairmen— are isolated from the realities of ordinary daily life while their asses are kissed six ways til Sunday 24/7/365, he has remained refreshingly accessible and good-natured.  And, at least based on what has surfaced so far, he is probably still only in the mid single digits on a ten point run-of-the-mill congressional corruption scale.

    He has a very compelling personal story that he set down in an autobiography published earlier this year: And I Haven’t Had A Bad Day Since.  It got such good reviews and word of mouth that I actually bought a copy.  Although I ended up skimming a lot of the political boilerplate towards the end, the earlier sections were vivid and candid.  They include the tales of a somewhat misspent youth, a spell in the Army in Korea where he won a Purple Heart (his reaction to that incident gave the book its title), and the beginnings of a hugely successful career in politics.

    But what about his current arguments that he didn’t know about his tax obligations and that he thought his accountants and lawyers were handling everything.  I suppose they’re OK as far as they go.  The question is: how far do they go?   After all, the man is generally acknowledged to be brilliant; he’s a graduate of NYU’s School of Commerce and St. John’s Law School; and he’s surrounded by very large and capable staffs entirely devoted to his continuance in office.  And he hasn’t got to where he is by being inattentive to details.

    This ignorance defense is very popular on Capitol Hill these days.  In the last few months it has been invoked by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad to explain the highly favorable non-competitive rates they got on mortgages for second homes from a lender who had business with their Committees.

    What level of responsibility —and accountability— should attach to legislators who are in charge of regulating the nation’s banks and writing the nation’s tax laws and who claim ignorance as their defense when serious questions are raised about their financial and tax affairs?

    The tide seems to be turning against Mr. Rangel these days.  Slowly now, to be sure; but perceptively gaining speed. His fund-raising prowess, formerly admired, is under investigation.  Ethics Committee involvement is under way.  His ardent support for Senator Clinton’s presidential bid has left him naked to his enemies at the Obamaized DNC.  And it can never be a good sign when you hire Lanny Davis as your defense attorney.

    The admirable philosophy that has brought him so far for so long is about to be sorely tested: Charlie Rangel is about to have some very bad days.

    UPDATE 9/13/08: In today’s Wall Street Journal, Eileen Norcross has an interesting column about rent control and stabilization in the New York City housing market.

  • Gen ‘08

    In the July 30 “New Republic,” Michael Crowley has a thoughtful profile of McCain right-hand man, co-author, and speechwriter Mark Salter. Here’s the 53-year-old Iowan’s challenge as he heads to to his cottage in Maine to work on Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention:

    Salter hints the speech will spotlight McCain’s moments of self-sacrifice, as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform. The contrast, he says, will be the “selfishness” of “self-interested” political partisans–i.e. Obama–who, he argues, have risked nothing of substance in their lives.

    …[T]he challenge Salter’s convention speech encapsulates is the generational showdown this election has become. The baby-boomer speechwriter must come up with an address that explains why voters should choose the elderly McCain’s experience and grounding in traditional values over the youthful Gen-X audacity of Obama. In the Salter narrative, the self-sacrificing war hero could not meet a better foil than the Obamamaniacs’ narcissistic world of Facebook and YouTube and Scarlett Johansson. But voters aren’t likely to base their decision on the past. With the economy on fire, gas prices soaring, and the Bush presidency a disaster, voters are feeling the fierce urgency of now. Even many Republicans concede John McCain may be waging an unwinnable fight.

    A funny thing happens in that second paragraph. After reprising Salter’s somewhat overwrought argument that McCain’s narrative is redolent with self-sacrifice compared to that of the untested Sen. Obama and his self-obsessed, youthful hordes, Crowley doesn’t bother sticking up for the younger cohort. It wouldn’t be a tough argument. After all, aren’t Salter’s own boomers supposed to be the most narcissistic generation in history? Instead, Crowley nods in the direction of Salter’s world view but then suggests that voters will be so distracted by their troubles and worries that they…well, I guess he’s saying that they’ll vote for whomever more persuasively promises instant relief.

    That sounds like a voters-are-dumb argument. Since voters definitely aren’t dumb, perhaps Republicans shouldn’t be so discouraged. Obama is brazenly reaching for the Kennedy mantle, especially with his coming star turn in Berlin. Not much of a Kennedy person, even I’m offended. Obama’s no Kennedy. A 13-year veteran of the House and Senate, the son of a U.S. ambassador, Kennedy’s World War II and Cold War bona fides (together with his fictional missile gap and deft manipulation of state secrets about Cuba) even enabled him to edge to Richard Nixon’s right on foreign policy in the 1960 election. He didn’t shift a whole range of positions within weeks of winning primaries with them, and he never said blithely that he’d be President “eight to ten years.” He earned his aura by his easy style and humor in office as well as his martyrdom. Obama pretends to it as a national figure for under two years. If Europeans go nuts over him, what does that prove? That they’re as easily fooled as Americans and their lapdog network anchors?

    Sure, Obama may be the real thing. Inexperienced leaders have sometimes risen to historic, wrenching challenges. But nobody really knows if Obama is such a leader, because nothing in his record demonstrates it. Supporting him urgently is by and large an act of faith. Meanwhile, there’re ample grounds for Obamagnosticism. Ryan Lizza, who studied him carefully for “The New Yorker,” wasn’t even willing to say for sure that Obama puts the public’s interests ahead of his own political advancement. His policy shifts, even if some are in the right direction, add credence to the view that he’ll do whatever is necessary to win. I think voters will notice that and begin to hold him to a higher standard than either they or the media have so far. In the months to come, for the very reason that they’re worried about their future, as Crowley notes, voters in key states will look for a substantive debate about issues that matter to them, and they’ll know when they’re being spun and manipulated. In anxious times, authenticity counts. McCain’s “experience and grounding in traditional values” may yet come in handy.

  • The Big Anti-Semitic Lie that Won’t Go Away

    While fires were still smoldering at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvanian pasture, malicious people conjured up an evil myth. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many in the Arab world believed that the vicious attack on America was not the work of Islamists, but rather was an Israeli-driven Mossad operation. This legend soon developed muscular legs and is now widely regarded by millions of Muslims as the truth.

    And why not? For decades school children in Muslim nations (not to mention their parents at home) have been baptized in anti-Semitic narratives. The opinions in their world about Jews in general, and Israel in particular, are concrete – thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

    And the most persistent and pernicious ideas that have been accepted by millions as factual truth flowed from the poisonous pen of a guy named Mathieu Golovinski.

    The spurious publication called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an Islamist must-read. The work tells a story that fits the pattern of long-standing prejudices. The words reinforce the visceral hatred Islamists have toward Jews.

    Islamist anti-Semitism is not a new thing. It didn’t begin with the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, or the Six-Day War in 1967. It was around long before there was a Hitler – in fact, it grew up alongside Islam from the beginning. It’s an enmity that can be traced back to Muhammad and what he said, wrote, and did. And to those looking for ammunition to use against people they have been historically conditioned to hate, the often denounced and repeatedly refuted forgery is just what the evil doctor ordered.

    In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, it is true that non-Muslims and non-Nazis have at times bought into the notions set forth by the Protocols – some even in the name of Christianity. This is sad. But it is also statistically rare these days. Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan types apparently still peddle the book, but these people are the proverbial skunks at our national picnic. And eighty years ago, there were a few prominent Americans (automobile magnate Henry Ford notable among them) who endorsed the writings. But that was a passing, though very regrettable, thing.

    The Protocols of the Elders of Zion purports to be written evidence of a vast and secret Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. It’s presented as a factual and detailed description of a late-nineteenth century meeting to plot international Hebrew hegemony through manipulation and treachery. These ideas are at the root of the mother of all conspiracy theories for those who live in the bizarre world of alternative historical reality.

    In fact, the publication is a forgery – probably the most sinister and infamous fake in literary history.

    The year is 1898, and Nicholas II rules a Russia that’s beginning to experience the revolutionary stirrings of modernism. The Tsar is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and tends to be easily led by strong people around him. He tries to take incremental steps toward leading the nation away from its feudal past, but some in his court are alarmed. Thus, evil men began to seek a way to short-circuit these liberalizing influences.

    If only they could convince the Tsar that the voices of change he’s listening to are motivated by something other than the best interests of Russia – but how? It was in this environment that the greatest of all anti-Semitic lies was born. A threatening conspiracy would be manufactured – one that would bring Nicholas to his senses – and the Jews to their knees.

    Mathieu Golovinski was living in Parisian exile at the time. Though he was Russian, having been born in the Simbirsk region in 1865, he was forced to flee after repeated clashes with Russian authorities, usually having to do with his tendency to fabricate documents and evidence in legal matters. He was a master of spin, innuendo, and dirty tricks. He was also very skilled in the arts of forgery and plagiarism.

    And he worked for the Okhrana – the Tsar’s secret police.

    He was approached by agents’ provocateur from the Tsar’s inner circle about creating a convincing anti-Jewish legend. They needed a narrative, one that would be seen as proof of a sinister plot behind the winds of change beginning to blow in Russia. Golovinski was commissioned to fabricate the evidence.

    He came across an old book, written in 1864 by an anti-monarchist activist named Maurice Joly. It was entitled, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquie and was written as a thinly disguised attack on Napoleon III’s rule in France. The book was suppressed by the French government and the writer was imprisoned. He committed suicide in 1878.

    A plan was hatched to borrow from this obscure book, changing some of its cosmetics and phrasing. It would be recast, using Joly’s fictional dialogue for a model, as the actual deliberations of a secret cabal of Jews bent on taking over the world. When the fake was finished, it was spirited back to St. Petersburg, and all that would be needed was a way to get it before the ruler of the realm.

    Enter the other religious zealot in and around the court of the Tsar.

    When most think of religious influences around Nicholas II, attention is usually given to Grigori Rasputin, the mad monk who haunted that scene beginning about 1905. But often overlooked, and certainly more ominous as far as long-term impact on the world is concerned, is the influence of his cultic contemporary, Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus. He was a writer on religious matters and a self-styled spiritual mystic.

    And he is also the man who first published Golovinski’s sinister forgery.

    Initially placing the Protocols as a chapter in one of his books, Dr. Nilus saw to it that the potentate was fully briefed and convinced about the purported Jewish threat. And like Rasputin, he also had the ear of ruler’s wife – so the Tsar, never a man to have his own firm opinions, fell prey to the lie. And in the days following his nation’s defeat at the hands of the Japanese at a loss of several hundred thousand men, not to mention overwhelming financial expense, circumstances were ripe for the rotten fruit of a compelling scapegoat story.

    On January 9, 1905, the Tsar’s troops opened fire on protesters who peacefully marched near the palace in St. Petersburg. This would become known as Bloody Sunday. The Tsar and his inner circle saw in the Protocols the real reason for the unrest – it was a big Jewish plot to overthrow the monarchy.

    So it began – the gargantuan conspiratorial lie that has reared its hideous head time and time again over the past one hundred years. Jewish plotters were blamed for The Great War (1914-1918). Then in its aftermath, when Germany was struggling to recover from defeat, the big lie was discovered by the greatest demagogue of the day, Adolf Hitler. By the time the future German dictator was sent to prison in 1923, he was well versed in the Protocols and drew significantly from the forgery as he wrote his own hate-filled and delusional tome, Mein Kampf.

    The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became, to men already filled with anti-Semitic ideas, proof positive of a sinister Jewish agenda. To those who believed the lie, the writings were sufficient evidence for the indictment, condemnation, and eventual execution of these conspiratorial people. The Protocols in many ways fueled the Holocaust.

    Yet all along, reasonable people – scholars, journalists, and statesmen – have gone to great lengths to expose the fraudulent nature of the Protocols. Beginning with a lengthy analysis in the Times of London in 1921, to a celebrated trial in Switzerland in 1935, to a report by the United States Senate in 1964, good people have said again and again: “the book’s a fake.” Good people still do.

    It’s the bad people who are the problem.

    The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the biggest publishing hoax of the past one hundred years, is not going away. This is largely because Islamists are using it, with great effectiveness, to fan contemporary flames of hatred. In fact, it’s arguable that there are more copies of this lie-laden text extant, than ever before. The forgery is used by politicians and clerics in the Muslim world to justify their distorted and destructive world-view.

    Gamal Abdel Nassar, the late president of Egypt, recommended the book to his countrymen. His Saudi contemporary, King Faisal, had the forgery put in hotels in his nation, like Gideon Bibles (he once gave a copy to Henry Kissinger). The Ayatollah Khomeini, who took over in Iran in 1979, made the Protocols a national bestseller. An entire generation of Islamic thinkers and scholars now aggressively promotes the forgery as literal fact.

    Hamas owes Article 32 of its charter to these long-ago-discredited writings when it says things like: “Zionist scheming has no end…Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of Zion.” And it’s, of course, a perennial favorite with Holocaust deniers such as that wacky Iranian, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    Islamist anti-Semitism is at the root of the so-called War on Terror. The bad guys use the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as their proof-text. It would make sense that if we really want to eradicate the symptom we must deal frankly with the cause. Islamism isn’t an aberration. It’s an ideology based on prejudices rooted in the distant past and old lies that won’t seem to go away.

    Shortly before his death in early 2005, the legendary pioneer of twentieth-century graphic art, Will Eisner, a man who spent much of his life debunking the infamous forgery, called the Protocols a “terrifying vampire-like fraud.”

    Indeed. – DRS

  • The Great Pennsylvania Debate – in McKeesport

    Presidential debates, especially the intra-party variety we are witnessing these days, are frequent to the point of becoming common place, if not benign. They seem to prove what Marshall McLuhan said about medium equaling message. The recent gotcha-fest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could make even the wildest political animal long for the days when debates were fewer and farther between.

    Or at least interesting.

    I’ve found myself longing a bit for those sixteen silent years between 1960 and 1976, when debates weren’t part of presidential campaigns. In fact, they were rarely mentioned at all. Maybe Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were on to something.

    In spite of abundant current evidence of forensic mediocrity, there does seem to be renewed interest these days in the gold standard for political debate – those serious and cerebral verbal exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas one hundred and fifty years ago. And, even though their experience was part of a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat, and not the White House itself, comparing that historic dialogue with what political debating has become in our age tempts one to switch the television channel to something with more depth.

    Like a rerun of The Price is Right on The Game Show Network.

    It actually took ninety years for what Abe and Steve did so well to even begin to impact modern American presidential politics. In 1948, Republican hopeful Harold Stassen debated Thomas Dewey before the Oregon Republican Primary. In 1956, Estes Kefauver debated Adlai Stevenson before the Florida Democratic Primary. And, of course, all modern day discussion of presidential debates inevitably includes a reference to the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

    The first of those now legendary debates took place in Chicago on September 26, 1960. It was moderated by Howard K. Smith and watched on television by more than 70 million Americans. But, in fact, it really wasn’t their first debate.

    With this year’s Pennsylvania primary now on center stage, it’s interesting to note that Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy had their very own Keystone state debate moment many years before – back in 1947.

    The two young Navy war veterans were elected to Congress in 1946 – Kennedy from Massachusetts and Nixon from California. During their first days in congress, they were appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee and were, as Nixon later recalled, “like a pair of unmatched bookends.”

    In April of 1947, they traveled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a coal mining and steel industry town of around 50,000 citizens at the time, located about fifteen miles from Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers. They had been asked to debate before a Junto Forum (this kind of discussion-based group dated back to the days of Benjamin Franklin) and to argue the merits, or lack thereof, of a piece of legislation informally known as the Taft-Hartley bill (officially, it was “The Labor-Management Relations Act”).

    This legislation had already passed the House and was at that time before the Senate. It was designed to rein in what was referred to at the time as Big Labor, and was the most successful of more than 200 similar bills proposed in the immediate aftermath of the war, as the country faced significant labor unrest. It would eventually clear the Senate and be vetoed by President Truman, who referred to it as a “slave labor” bill. His veto was then overridden and he actually found himself using the act a dozen or so times during his presidency.

    The debate took place at the Penn McKee Hotel, with about one hundred and fifty people in the audience. Nixon spoke in strong support of the bill. Kennedy was opposed – but not without commending certain aspects of the legislation. Chris Matthews in his 1996 book – “Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America”- suggested that the crowd clearly favored Kennedy (being a largely blue-collar and pro-labor district) and that the catcalls from some had been so fierce that “a local business leader felt called upon to apologize to the Republican congressman in writing.”

    But Kennedy saw it differently. In October of 1962, just three days before he would see the first photographic evidence of the Soviet missile build up in Cuba, President Kennedy returned to McKeesport. In his speech that day at their City Hall, he recalled: “The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Richard Nixon and I engaged in our first debate. He won that one, and we went on to other things.”

    Indeed.

    It’s a fascinating little bit of history in preview – a joint appearance of these two young men with such compelling and interrelated futures ahead of them.

    Following their debate that evening long ago, the two future fierce opponents made their way to the town’s Star Diner to eat hamburgers and talk about baseball. They were killing time before heading to the train station to catch the midnight Capital Unlimited back to Washington.

    Sharing a compartment on the train, they drew straws to see who got the lower berth. Nixon won that one too.

    By all accounts, Mr. 35 and Mr. 37 talked long into the wee hours of the morning about the issue that most resonated with them – foreign policy. The Cold War was underway, and these two men who would play such vital roles during its most critical moments, contemplated their world.

    If only we had a transcript of THAT debate. — DRS