Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
The Okie Gardener wrote today:
"I see [Hillary] conceding and withdrawing from the race only if she is convinced that Obama will lose to McCain, that McCain because of age will serve only one term, and that she then will be well-placed for 2012."
Some revised and extended comments in response to that assertion, which strikes me as plausible but uncharitable.
Hillary is, in fact, laboring under two reasonable assumptions:
1. It ain't over until the Fat Lady sings (nothing is more American than that). If you are not in it, you cannot win it. One thing we can say for sure: Barack Obama will NOT arrive in Denver with a sewn-up nomination--unless Mrs. Clinton steps aside (or the superdelegates come together earlier to preempt the "impending crisis"). Hillary is hoping for a late-round knock-out, which is not unfathomable. Do we really think we have heard the last Obama revelation? The bottom could drop out of the Obama market between now and mid-summer. Not likely, but certainly not impossible.
2. Mrs. Clinton honestly believes (and I agree) that she is a much more formidable general election candidate than Obama. Are we not more and more persuaded with each passing week that her primary opponent has some seriously inviting weak spots? We are increasingly optimistic about running against this "young man in a hurry." Bring him on. As I have said repeatedly, this is a bad year to run as a Republican--but Barack Obama's dedication to liberal orthodoxy, and his tin ear for Red-State culture, gives me some hope for victory.
And, one more factor, Mrs. Clinton is also laboring under the not so reasonable (but, nevertheless, absolutely essential) delusion of all presidential aspirants: "I am the very best candidate for the job."
In other words, Mrs. Clinton believes with all her soul that she is exactly what America needs right now, and she must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and go the distance to save us. For this reason she should not quit, just as Ronald Reagan did not quit in 1976.
In that vein, the Gardener asserts that she is attempting to secure the defeat of her opponent to position herself for the next campaign. While I concede that thought may be a variable, I tend to believe it is way down the list of important considerations. And, if that is her plan, it is awfully risky and probably too clever by half.
I am more inclined to believe that she sees this present opportunity as her one and only chance--which strikes me as a much more compelling explanation for her refusal to throw in the towel. She is fighting like there is no tomorrow--and she is most likely correct.
There is no doubt that she does damage to Obama by staying in. Of the three remaining candidates, he is the most vulnerable to extended close scrutiny. What more are we going to learn about Hillary or John McCain? On the other hand, each day brings another facet to our perception of Barack Obama.
Why would she do that?
Who knows, she may actually favor McCain over Obama (and for reasons wholly apart from her electoral chances in 2012). Not that I am predicting that she will endorse McCain in any way. Hill and Bill will line up behind Barack like good soldiers (Joe Lieberman supported John Kerry in 2004). But I think Hillary might see a McCain win over Barack Obama as more than just good politics for her personally, and even more than merely just desserts for a disloyal party. I think she might actually believe in her heart of hearts (or even sub-consciously) that Barack Obama is too much of a "dice roll."
One last thought: why my sympathetic conjecture in defense of Hillary's motives?
I suspect Hillary is no more evil-minded and selfish than Andrew Jackson or Henry Clay. Politics tends to make us see the worst in our opponents. Certainly, Jackson and Clay partisans saw the other side as unscrupulous, diabolical, and traitorous. We tend to see the opposition in the same light today.
This fits a basic pattern in American politics in which we tend to lionize their current party champions, demonize their contemporary political foes, and then canonize them all in a non-partisan burst of patriotic ardor once they have been dead long enough.
Clay and Jackson were fallible men with great qualities and serious faults. Their greatness was partly the product of ambition, self delusion, and an ability and willingness to deliver and suffer vicious blows in the public arena. Their darker sides drew from the same pool of personal traits. Bill Clinton has it right: politics is not for the faint of heart. Hillary is in the tradition of those multi-faceted characters from the past.
"I see [Hillary] conceding and withdrawing from the race only if she is convinced that Obama will lose to McCain, that McCain because of age will serve only one term, and that she then will be well-placed for 2012."
Some revised and extended comments in response to that assertion, which strikes me as plausible but uncharitable.
Hillary is, in fact, laboring under two reasonable assumptions:
1. It ain't over until the Fat Lady sings (nothing is more American than that). If you are not in it, you cannot win it. One thing we can say for sure: Barack Obama will NOT arrive in Denver with a sewn-up nomination--unless Mrs. Clinton steps aside (or the superdelegates come together earlier to preempt the "impending crisis"). Hillary is hoping for a late-round knock-out, which is not unfathomable. Do we really think we have heard the last Obama revelation? The bottom could drop out of the Obama market between now and mid-summer. Not likely, but certainly not impossible.
2. Mrs. Clinton honestly believes (and I agree) that she is a much more formidable general election candidate than Obama. Are we not more and more persuaded with each passing week that her primary opponent has some seriously inviting weak spots? We are increasingly optimistic about running against this "young man in a hurry." Bring him on. As I have said repeatedly, this is a bad year to run as a Republican--but Barack Obama's dedication to liberal orthodoxy, and his tin ear for Red-State culture, gives me some hope for victory.
And, one more factor, Mrs. Clinton is also laboring under the not so reasonable (but, nevertheless, absolutely essential) delusion of all presidential aspirants: "I am the very best candidate for the job."
In other words, Mrs. Clinton believes with all her soul that she is exactly what America needs right now, and she must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and go the distance to save us. For this reason she should not quit, just as Ronald Reagan did not quit in 1976.
In that vein, the Gardener asserts that she is attempting to secure the defeat of her opponent to position herself for the next campaign. While I concede that thought may be a variable, I tend to believe it is way down the list of important considerations. And, if that is her plan, it is awfully risky and probably too clever by half.
I am more inclined to believe that she sees this present opportunity as her one and only chance--which strikes me as a much more compelling explanation for her refusal to throw in the towel. She is fighting like there is no tomorrow--and she is most likely correct.
There is no doubt that she does damage to Obama by staying in. Of the three remaining candidates, he is the most vulnerable to extended close scrutiny. What more are we going to learn about Hillary or John McCain? On the other hand, each day brings another facet to our perception of Barack Obama.
Why would she do that?
Who knows, she may actually favor McCain over Obama (and for reasons wholly apart from her electoral chances in 2012). Not that I am predicting that she will endorse McCain in any way. Hill and Bill will line up behind Barack like good soldiers (Joe Lieberman supported John Kerry in 2004). But I think Hillary might see a McCain win over Barack Obama as more than just good politics for her personally, and even more than merely just desserts for a disloyal party. I think she might actually believe in her heart of hearts (or even sub-consciously) that Barack Obama is too much of a "dice roll."
One last thought: why my sympathetic conjecture in defense of Hillary's motives?
I suspect Hillary is no more evil-minded and selfish than Andrew Jackson or Henry Clay. Politics tends to make us see the worst in our opponents. Certainly, Jackson and Clay partisans saw the other side as unscrupulous, diabolical, and traitorous. We tend to see the opposition in the same light today.
This fits a basic pattern in American politics in which we tend to lionize their current party champions, demonize their contemporary political foes, and then canonize them all in a non-partisan burst of patriotic ardor once they have been dead long enough.
Clay and Jackson were fallible men with great qualities and serious faults. Their greatness was partly the product of ambition, self delusion, and an ability and willingness to deliver and suffer vicious blows in the public arena. Their darker sides drew from the same pool of personal traits. Bill Clinton has it right: politics is not for the faint of heart. Hillary is in the tradition of those multi-faceted characters from the past.
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Last week, Kenneth T. Walsh reported in the US News & World Report, "98 percent of 109 professional historians, recently surveyed by the History News Network, believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure." In fact, according to the new poll, 61 percent of the historians judge Bush the worst president in American history.
Presidential rankings fluctuate over time. Each generation struggles to understand themselves and find consensus and community by reinterpreting their collective past, which is a productive function of history. On the downside, our historical figures ascend or diminish as a result of how we view their actions through the lens of our experience and culture rather than viewing their actions in their own time and place. Taken to an extreme, this is the trap of presentism.
If all presidential rankings are slightly deceptive and self indulgent, then attempting to rank contemporary presidents is pure folly. For example, see the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. poll (circa 1996), which ranked Ronald Reagan in the thirties, which apparently rested on the political views of Schlesinger and his cronies much more than sober historical judgment. Although I greatly admire Schlesinger's legacy as a scholar, his dismissal of Reagan as an "average" president of little note was petty, embarrassing, and tended to reinforce his reputation as a partisan.
Other “conservative” polls have come along since then that tried to place Reagan much closer to the top of the list, but many of them have suffered from the same disease in reverse. The inherent problem with rating presidents on whom we voted (for or against) is that we seek to push our objectivity beyond normal human limits. History is best understood and cataloged and interpreted by dispassionate and disinterested practitioners of the art.
An Aside: Gordon Wood noted recently that any new history of the American distant past that mentions the current Bush administration in the preface automatically merits suspicion, suggesting that politically driven historians are too likely to allow contemporary partisanship to overwhelm training and academic integrity.
Having said all that (and mindful of my hypocrisy), let me indulge in some speculation in terms of ranking President George W. Bush.
Back in the spring of 2006, I asserted:
"All observers agree that Bush will rise or fall on the success of Iraq. Obviously, Iraq today [2006] is not what the Bush brain trust was hoping for in the spring of 2003. Notwithstanding, the manifest fact that the Bushies were naïve and sanguine about the Iraq aftermath does not necessarily preclude ultimate success. Being there has a momentum and imperative all its own."
Back then I believed that "Iraq remain[ed] an open question, a 50-50 proposition." Success meant a modicum of vindication. Regional instability equaled "a gigantic error with myriad horrific ramifications."
Today, the Iraq question remains extremely tenuous--and likely not to be resolved (or even put on a steady path to positive resolution) during Bush's watch. Things got much worse after the spring of 2006--and then they got a lot better. But Iraq continues to hang in the balance, draining the collective reservoir of optimism, resources, and will necessary for eventual victory.
Bush backers, who have their own reputations to think about, hope against all evidence to the contrary that the current 30-something approval ratings are Truman-like. We see the myriad mistakes. But we also cling to the hope that Bush's tough and unpopular foreign policy choices will prove ultimately correct and successful in the larger scheme. In the Truman mold, Bush is setting forth a bold, courageous, and transformative American policy that, like containment, will emerge triumphant at some point in the decades to come.
The President’s opponents see him more like Nixon, tangled in a web of secrecy and paranoia and shady dealings. Or like Johnson, fecklessly and tragically prosecuting an ill-conceived war that is draining the life blood out of his presidency and his credibility. Or like Warren G. Harding, who woke up one day to the realization that his clear-cut view of the world and his simple notions were not sophisticated enough to combat the problems of the modern presidency.
Time will tell.
Back then I also said: "[W]hile presidential legacies are generally not built on economic success, an economic collapse on Bush’s watch or immediately following would certainly injure his historical standing."
The President is still trying to dodge an economic meltdown. If Bush can avert economic catastrophe during his tenure, we will remember very little about Bush and taxes, mortgages, or even Katrina. If the Great Crash comes before January 20, 2009, the public consciousness will remember him as a latter-day Herbert Hoover.
An encouraging thought for the President: when he completes his second full term, he will join an exclusive club of eleven reelected-full-term presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). For the most part, history has been kind to these elite eleven.
Moreover, Bush is one of only twenty presidents to win election after serving as president. In addition to those listed above, four presidents won election while finishing the unexpired terms of their predecessors (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson). Grover Cleveland won back the presidency four years after having lost it as an incumbent. Richard Nixon won reelection after a full term but resigned before completion of his second term. Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley won reelection after a full term but fell to assassins in the second.
There are notable exceptions--but, once passions cooled, mostly historians came around eventually to confirming the wisdom of the voters in first nineteen cases. Bush retains a good chance of eventually climbng much higher than many highly partisan current historians expect.
Will he rise as high as Harry Truman? Tough to say. But, undoubtedly, he will not out-distance Franklin Pearce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the worst president ever.
Presidential rankings fluctuate over time. Each generation struggles to understand themselves and find consensus and community by reinterpreting their collective past, which is a productive function of history. On the downside, our historical figures ascend or diminish as a result of how we view their actions through the lens of our experience and culture rather than viewing their actions in their own time and place. Taken to an extreme, this is the trap of presentism.
If all presidential rankings are slightly deceptive and self indulgent, then attempting to rank contemporary presidents is pure folly. For example, see the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. poll (circa 1996), which ranked Ronald Reagan in the thirties, which apparently rested on the political views of Schlesinger and his cronies much more than sober historical judgment. Although I greatly admire Schlesinger's legacy as a scholar, his dismissal of Reagan as an "average" president of little note was petty, embarrassing, and tended to reinforce his reputation as a partisan.
Other “conservative” polls have come along since then that tried to place Reagan much closer to the top of the list, but many of them have suffered from the same disease in reverse. The inherent problem with rating presidents on whom we voted (for or against) is that we seek to push our objectivity beyond normal human limits. History is best understood and cataloged and interpreted by dispassionate and disinterested practitioners of the art.
An Aside: Gordon Wood noted recently that any new history of the American distant past that mentions the current Bush administration in the preface automatically merits suspicion, suggesting that politically driven historians are too likely to allow contemporary partisanship to overwhelm training and academic integrity.
Having said all that (and mindful of my hypocrisy), let me indulge in some speculation in terms of ranking President George W. Bush.
Back in the spring of 2006, I asserted:
"All observers agree that Bush will rise or fall on the success of Iraq. Obviously, Iraq today [2006] is not what the Bush brain trust was hoping for in the spring of 2003. Notwithstanding, the manifest fact that the Bushies were naïve and sanguine about the Iraq aftermath does not necessarily preclude ultimate success. Being there has a momentum and imperative all its own."
Back then I believed that "Iraq remain[ed] an open question, a 50-50 proposition." Success meant a modicum of vindication. Regional instability equaled "a gigantic error with myriad horrific ramifications."
Today, the Iraq question remains extremely tenuous--and likely not to be resolved (or even put on a steady path to positive resolution) during Bush's watch. Things got much worse after the spring of 2006--and then they got a lot better. But Iraq continues to hang in the balance, draining the collective reservoir of optimism, resources, and will necessary for eventual victory.
Bush backers, who have their own reputations to think about, hope against all evidence to the contrary that the current 30-something approval ratings are Truman-like. We see the myriad mistakes. But we also cling to the hope that Bush's tough and unpopular foreign policy choices will prove ultimately correct and successful in the larger scheme. In the Truman mold, Bush is setting forth a bold, courageous, and transformative American policy that, like containment, will emerge triumphant at some point in the decades to come.
The President’s opponents see him more like Nixon, tangled in a web of secrecy and paranoia and shady dealings. Or like Johnson, fecklessly and tragically prosecuting an ill-conceived war that is draining the life blood out of his presidency and his credibility. Or like Warren G. Harding, who woke up one day to the realization that his clear-cut view of the world and his simple notions were not sophisticated enough to combat the problems of the modern presidency.
Time will tell.
Back then I also said: "[W]hile presidential legacies are generally not built on economic success, an economic collapse on Bush’s watch or immediately following would certainly injure his historical standing."
The President is still trying to dodge an economic meltdown. If Bush can avert economic catastrophe during his tenure, we will remember very little about Bush and taxes, mortgages, or even Katrina. If the Great Crash comes before January 20, 2009, the public consciousness will remember him as a latter-day Herbert Hoover.
An encouraging thought for the President: when he completes his second full term, he will join an exclusive club of eleven reelected-full-term presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). For the most part, history has been kind to these elite eleven.
Moreover, Bush is one of only twenty presidents to win election after serving as president. In addition to those listed above, four presidents won election while finishing the unexpired terms of their predecessors (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson). Grover Cleveland won back the presidency four years after having lost it as an incumbent. Richard Nixon won reelection after a full term but resigned before completion of his second term. Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley won reelection after a full term but fell to assassins in the second.
There are notable exceptions--but, once passions cooled, mostly historians came around eventually to confirming the wisdom of the voters in first nineteen cases. Bush retains a good chance of eventually climbng much higher than many highly partisan current historians expect.
Will he rise as high as Harry Truman? Tough to say. But, undoubtedly, he will not out-distance Franklin Pearce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the worst president ever.
The story is making the rounds of the blogosphere that Hillary was fired from her position on the Watergate Hearings. Or, in another variation, that she was not fired, but when the procedures ended her boss would not give her a letter of recommendation. Only one of the blogs I've read this information on linked to the actual source. The source is Jerry Zeifman, Former Counsel, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, who would have been Hillary's boss during the Watergate Hearings.
Here is his article in Accuracy in Media.
The essay opens:
I have just seen Hillary Clinton and her former Yale law professor both in tears at a campaign rally here in my home state of Connecticut. Her tearful professor said how proud he was that his former student was likely to become our next President. Hillary responded in tears.
My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.
Hillary as I knew her in 1974
At the time of Watergate I had overall supervisory authority over the House Judiciary Committee's Impeachment Inquiry staff that included Hillary Rodham-who was later to become First Lady in the Clinton White House.
Here is his website,
The article of interest is most of the way down the page and entitled
HILLARY'S WATERGATE SCANDAL
The opening paragraph reads:
In December 1974, as general counsel and chief of staff of the House
Judiciary Committee, I made a personal evaluation of Hillary Rodham
(now Senator Clinton), a member of the staff we had gathered for our
impeachment inquiry on President Richard Nixon. I decided that I could
not recommend her for any future position of public or private trust.
We'll see if this story develops further.
Here is his article in Accuracy in Media.
The essay opens:
I have just seen Hillary Clinton and her former Yale law professor both in tears at a campaign rally here in my home state of Connecticut. Her tearful professor said how proud he was that his former student was likely to become our next President. Hillary responded in tears.
My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.
Hillary as I knew her in 1974
At the time of Watergate I had overall supervisory authority over the House Judiciary Committee's Impeachment Inquiry staff that included Hillary Rodham-who was later to become First Lady in the Clinton White House.
Here is his website,
The article of interest is most of the way down the page and entitled
HILLARY'S WATERGATE SCANDAL
The opening paragraph reads:
In December 1974, as general counsel and chief of staff of the House
Judiciary Committee, I made a personal evaluation of Hillary Rodham
(now Senator Clinton), a member of the staff we had gathered for our
impeachment inquiry on President Richard Nixon. I decided that I could
not recommend her for any future position of public or private trust.
We'll see if this story develops further.
Sources today (4/1/08) are telling the AP that behind the scenes former president Jimmy Carter is offering himself to the Democratic Party as the presidential candidate for 2008. Carter operatives, reportedly are trying to convice Howard Dean and other party leaders that Obama and Clinton have polarized Democrats so badly that neither can unify the party in November. Carter is reported to have said that if he could bring Arabs and Israelis together at Camp David for an agreement, he can bring warring Democrats together.
Full story here.
Full story here.
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: an okie gardener
I never really appreciated the Checkers Speech given by Richard Nixon in 1952 until I read this.
Everyman Nixon.
Everyman Nixon.
28/03: Political History 101
History Pop Quiz. True or false.
The 2008 nomination contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is unprecedented in its length and ferocity. We have never had a race go this far into March before.
The above statements are positively erroneous. This is what happens when we turn history over to journalists and partisans.
Not so long ago.
A review of some recent political history:
Remember Bobby Kennedy's final public utterance before tragically falling to an assassin's bullet back in 1968?
"It's on to Chicago and let's win there."
Where was he? What was in Chicago? What was the date?
RFK spoke from a ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, celebrating a crucial victory in the just-concluded California primary, emerging with momentum in the midst of a tight three-way race for his party's nomination. He was alluding to the convention in Chicago (to be held later that year in August).
The Date?
Kennedy addressed his temporarily ecstatic supporters in the wee hours of June 5, 1968.
JUNE 5!!!
When was the last time a nomination campaign raged into June?
1976.
Eventual Democratic nominee and eventual general election winner, Jimmy Carter, faced fierce competition from serious (albeit late-entering) candidates Frank Church and Jerry Brown during May and June.
For the Republicans that year, incumbent president Jerry Ford did not secure his nomination until the GOP National Convention in Kansas City in AUGUST.
Were the above examples merely aberrations? Throughout the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth, candidates fought tenaciously to secure their party's nominations, more often than not hammering away at one another during the dog days of August.
This idea that contested races for nomination are without precedent is convincing only as long as your grasp of history does not extend past last week.
A better question: is extended and vicious intra-party squabbling a precursor to disaster in the fall?
Short Answer: oftentimes--but not always. More on that in our next session...
The 2008 nomination contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is unprecedented in its length and ferocity. We have never had a race go this far into March before.
The above statements are positively erroneous. This is what happens when we turn history over to journalists and partisans.
Not so long ago.
A review of some recent political history:
Remember Bobby Kennedy's final public utterance before tragically falling to an assassin's bullet back in 1968?
"It's on to Chicago and let's win there."
Where was he? What was in Chicago? What was the date?
RFK spoke from a ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, celebrating a crucial victory in the just-concluded California primary, emerging with momentum in the midst of a tight three-way race for his party's nomination. He was alluding to the convention in Chicago (to be held later that year in August).
The Date?
Kennedy addressed his temporarily ecstatic supporters in the wee hours of June 5, 1968.
JUNE 5!!!
When was the last time a nomination campaign raged into June?
1976.
Eventual Democratic nominee and eventual general election winner, Jimmy Carter, faced fierce competition from serious (albeit late-entering) candidates Frank Church and Jerry Brown during May and June.
For the Republicans that year, incumbent president Jerry Ford did not secure his nomination until the GOP National Convention in Kansas City in AUGUST.
Were the above examples merely aberrations? Throughout the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth, candidates fought tenaciously to secure their party's nominations, more often than not hammering away at one another during the dog days of August.
This idea that contested races for nomination are without precedent is convincing only as long as your grasp of history does not extend past last week.
A better question: is extended and vicious intra-party squabbling a precursor to disaster in the fall?
Short Answer: oftentimes--but not always. More on that in our next session...
Friday I attended the 61st Annual Convention of the Texas Community College Teachers Association. As I have written in the past, I love these convocations. They are almost always moments of great fellowship among colleagues and very often remarkable for the memorable encounters with visiting scholars.
I intend to blog on several of the sessions I attended, but let us begin with a discussion of "It's the 60's Stupid," which featured Professor Steve Gillon, "resident historian for The History Channel and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma."
Adding to his many titles, Professor Gillon is the author of an upcoming study of modern political history, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. Based on his thinking, interviewing, and writing for The Pact, he arrived at this important conclusion:
The 1960s, or, more precisely, the battle over the meaning of the 1960s, more than any other single element, has come to define the battle lines in American politics. Gillon offers this succinct and cogent Bill Clinton quote to illustrate his point:
"If you believed the 1960s were good, you are a liberal; if you believed the 1960s were bad, you are most likely a conservative."
Gillon asserts that the 1960s produced a "culture of choice." The 1960s blurred the clear lines of morality based on tradition. We once lived in an America in which we shared a common sense of right and wrong. We live today in a society in which we can choose our own values--not that there is anything wrong with that.
The political debate today, says Gillon, revolves around proponents of this new "culture of choice" and the adherents of the traditional "culture of authority."
Why did conservatives hate Bill Clinton so much? Ostensibly, Clinton offered much for them to like: he was a Southern Baptist, "New Democrat" speaking the language of small government, individual responsibility, and law and order. Why the enormous antipathy for Bill Clinton from the very beginning of his national career?
The first "child of the sixties" to be elected president, Clinton represented the triumph of this alternative culture of choice. While there were less obvious signals from the earliest days of his public life, the Lewinsky episode placed the cultural conflict in plain view. What was the transcendent argument beneath the tawdry surface of L'affaire Lewinsky? The culture of choice created a "realm of privacy" in which consensual sex among adults must never be subject to moral authority or corporate scrutiny. As Clinton defended himself with exegeses concerning the "meaning of is," nonplussed conservatives wondered: "Where is the Outrage?"
Who is winning this war over competing cultures?
Certainly, the Republicans made great strides harnessing the conservative backlash following the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. The GOP embraced the mantle of traditional values to great success, winning the presidency seven out of ten times from 1968 to 2004, and establishing itself as the majority party from 1994 through 2006. The secret to their success? Professor Gillon offers this absolutely brilliant observation: conservatives created a language of "cultural populism."
The Democratic Party realignment achieved under Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal era (which lasted for forty years) rested upon the language of "economic populism." The Democrats became the party of the little man, beating back "economic royalists" intent on crushing powerless working people. But the turmoil of the 1960s allowed the Republican Party to craft a message that also appealed to the working man (albeit in a different key), as so many Americans saw the moral foundations of the world they understood crashing down around them.
I have previously referred to this mass appeal as a general feeling that the GOP was the "party of common sense":
The Republican Party has become the party of common sense. We have approximately 12 million undocumented (illegal) immigrants in our country. We should do something to stop that. Common Sense. Terrorists are trying to kill us. We should try to kill them first. We should treat them roughly and follow them around and listen to what they are saying on their cell phones. Common Sense. America is a good place. That is why so many people are trying to come here. Common Sense. Men should marry women. Common sense. Lower taxes and smaller government good; an intrusive and bloated federal government that sees our collective pocketbook as a blank check is bad. Common Sense. Peace through strength. Common Sense. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Common Sense. Put criminals in jail, and they will commit fewer crimes. Common Sense. And I could go on.
Sometimes the simplest answer really is the best answer.
Of course, "common sense" is not always right: the Earth really does revolve around the sun--regardless of the way things look. Sometimes the world really is "complicated" and "common sense" solutions are only manifestly obvious from a certain perspective--often the majority perspective.
An Aside: another way to articulate this divide might be "common sense" versus "complexity." Ronald Reagan saw the USSR as an "evil empire," while others in the "party of complexity" seemed paralyzed by the ambiguity in the communist experiment.
Gillon sees two fundamental challenges to continued Republican success through cultural populism (at least in the short term):
The GOP runs the risk of becoming the party of nostalgia and ridiculous hypocrisy.
The old moral values are more and more anachronistic. Most Americans do not really understand the old value system--and almost no one wants to hold themselves to those old more rigorous and confining standards. That is, even the proponents of a culture of authority for greater society seem to prefer a culture of choice for themselves. Gillon: "We have accepted the culture of choice for ourselves, even as we cling to the authority rhetoric of the past."
Example: Larry Craig. The great danger for the moral party is that they will consistently fail to live out the values they preach. As the gap between rhetoric ("moral virtue") and reality ("wide stance') becomes a chasm, the risk is great that the morality play will become farce.
My thoughts: Perhaps Professor Gillon places too much emphasis on highly charged words such as "morality" and "choice." The party of "authority" is at an increasing disadvantage in the modern world. However, if you tweak the language some, the party of "common sense" will always be viable. We are a people who believe in revival and renewal. We are a nation of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We are a species that often comes back to basics in our perpetual search for meaning. My prediction: the party of tradition will survive.
Final Thought: Professor Gillon offers a provocative framework for the present political predicament through a provocative understanding of our recent past. I look forward to reading his book.
I intend to blog on several of the sessions I attended, but let us begin with a discussion of "It's the 60's Stupid," which featured Professor Steve Gillon, "resident historian for The History Channel and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma."
Adding to his many titles, Professor Gillon is the author of an upcoming study of modern political history, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. Based on his thinking, interviewing, and writing for The Pact, he arrived at this important conclusion:
The 1960s, or, more precisely, the battle over the meaning of the 1960s, more than any other single element, has come to define the battle lines in American politics. Gillon offers this succinct and cogent Bill Clinton quote to illustrate his point:
"If you believed the 1960s were good, you are a liberal; if you believed the 1960s were bad, you are most likely a conservative."
Gillon asserts that the 1960s produced a "culture of choice." The 1960s blurred the clear lines of morality based on tradition. We once lived in an America in which we shared a common sense of right and wrong. We live today in a society in which we can choose our own values--not that there is anything wrong with that.
The political debate today, says Gillon, revolves around proponents of this new "culture of choice" and the adherents of the traditional "culture of authority."
Why did conservatives hate Bill Clinton so much? Ostensibly, Clinton offered much for them to like: he was a Southern Baptist, "New Democrat" speaking the language of small government, individual responsibility, and law and order. Why the enormous antipathy for Bill Clinton from the very beginning of his national career?
The first "child of the sixties" to be elected president, Clinton represented the triumph of this alternative culture of choice. While there were less obvious signals from the earliest days of his public life, the Lewinsky episode placed the cultural conflict in plain view. What was the transcendent argument beneath the tawdry surface of L'affaire Lewinsky? The culture of choice created a "realm of privacy" in which consensual sex among adults must never be subject to moral authority or corporate scrutiny. As Clinton defended himself with exegeses concerning the "meaning of is," nonplussed conservatives wondered: "Where is the Outrage?"
Who is winning this war over competing cultures?
Certainly, the Republicans made great strides harnessing the conservative backlash following the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. The GOP embraced the mantle of traditional values to great success, winning the presidency seven out of ten times from 1968 to 2004, and establishing itself as the majority party from 1994 through 2006. The secret to their success? Professor Gillon offers this absolutely brilliant observation: conservatives created a language of "cultural populism."
The Democratic Party realignment achieved under Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal era (which lasted for forty years) rested upon the language of "economic populism." The Democrats became the party of the little man, beating back "economic royalists" intent on crushing powerless working people. But the turmoil of the 1960s allowed the Republican Party to craft a message that also appealed to the working man (albeit in a different key), as so many Americans saw the moral foundations of the world they understood crashing down around them.
I have previously referred to this mass appeal as a general feeling that the GOP was the "party of common sense":
The Republican Party has become the party of common sense. We have approximately 12 million undocumented (illegal) immigrants in our country. We should do something to stop that. Common Sense. Terrorists are trying to kill us. We should try to kill them first. We should treat them roughly and follow them around and listen to what they are saying on their cell phones. Common Sense. America is a good place. That is why so many people are trying to come here. Common Sense. Men should marry women. Common sense. Lower taxes and smaller government good; an intrusive and bloated federal government that sees our collective pocketbook as a blank check is bad. Common Sense. Peace through strength. Common Sense. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Common Sense. Put criminals in jail, and they will commit fewer crimes. Common Sense. And I could go on.
Sometimes the simplest answer really is the best answer.
Of course, "common sense" is not always right: the Earth really does revolve around the sun--regardless of the way things look. Sometimes the world really is "complicated" and "common sense" solutions are only manifestly obvious from a certain perspective--often the majority perspective.
An Aside: another way to articulate this divide might be "common sense" versus "complexity." Ronald Reagan saw the USSR as an "evil empire," while others in the "party of complexity" seemed paralyzed by the ambiguity in the communist experiment.
Gillon sees two fundamental challenges to continued Republican success through cultural populism (at least in the short term):
The GOP runs the risk of becoming the party of nostalgia and ridiculous hypocrisy.
The old moral values are more and more anachronistic. Most Americans do not really understand the old value system--and almost no one wants to hold themselves to those old more rigorous and confining standards. That is, even the proponents of a culture of authority for greater society seem to prefer a culture of choice for themselves. Gillon: "We have accepted the culture of choice for ourselves, even as we cling to the authority rhetoric of the past."
Example: Larry Craig. The great danger for the moral party is that they will consistently fail to live out the values they preach. As the gap between rhetoric ("moral virtue") and reality ("wide stance') becomes a chasm, the risk is great that the morality play will become farce.
My thoughts: Perhaps Professor Gillon places too much emphasis on highly charged words such as "morality" and "choice." The party of "authority" is at an increasing disadvantage in the modern world. However, if you tweak the language some, the party of "common sense" will always be viable. We are a people who believe in revival and renewal. We are a nation of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We are a species that often comes back to basics in our perpetual search for meaning. My prediction: the party of tradition will survive.
Final Thought: Professor Gillon offers a provocative framework for the present political predicament through a provocative understanding of our recent past. I look forward to reading his book.
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Tying up a loose end from a week ago. Joseph Ellis is a marvelous historian. His numerous studies of the framers generally offer compelling and insightful analysis buttressed by careful research and tightly wound logic.
Having said that, Professor Ellis advanced a breathtakingly shaky argument in a brief op-ed piece that appeared in the troubled Los Angeles Times last Saturday morning.
His thesis: When it comes to Barack Obama, the candidate's message of hope and togetherness is rooted in our sacred past.
Ellis begins with a summary of the negative:
"Critics of Obama...have described his vision [of unity and bipartisanship] as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president."
"From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system."
Not so, says Ellis. Obama skeptics fail to consider our early history as a nation. Employing extensive quotes from our first four American presidents, he sets out to prove "all the prominent founders regarded the bipartisan ideal as the essence of political virtue" and "would regard [partisan battles] as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become."
True enough. Ellis accurately conveys the words of these "founding brothers," but his argument ignores the obvious discrepancy between their words and deeds. Incredibly, Ellis seems to accept reams of tragically self-deluded and self-serving pieces of self-analysis from the pens of these eighteenth-century luminaries. Even more curious, he ignores his own findings over time, which tell a much richer story of practical reality so often overcoming the ideals and prevailing political theory of the day.
"Adams carried the ideal to such a length that he regarded his defeat in the presidential election of 1800," writes Ellis, "as evidence that he had so eschewed partisanship that he never abandoned the public interest for his own political gain."
Of course, Adams thought himself an innocent victim of partisanship. Rather pathetically, he assured himself that he had lost a national election as a result of his integrity and principles, preserving the above-quoted defense for posterity. But this is the same Adams who saw the Election of 1800 as an historic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. He viewed Jefferson and Madison as traitors to the true republican ideals of the Revolution (and Jefferson himself as a faithless former friend). Moreover, Adams allowed himself to be convinced that the two Republican Party collaborators were, indeed, dangerous Jacobins (radicals who would murder the opposition, burn churches, and cast the nation into the chaos of mob rule).
Ellis also quotes from Washington's foundational "Farewell Address" in which the Father of our Country rails against "the spirit of party." It is quite true that Washington thoroughly hated the evils of partisanship, and the verbiage of the document (mostly written by Alexander Hamilton with some previous aid from James Madison) reflects that vehemence. However, Washington's ire is directed against one party in particular: the aforementioned inchoate party of Jefferson and Madison. Ironically, even as Washington voiced his righteous indignation, he was tacitly protecting and supporting the party of Hamilton and Adams and the Washington administration, the loose political organization we refer to today as the Federalist Party. All the while, of course, Jefferson was busy denying that his organization was a party and maintaining that factional politics was anathema to him and his loyalists. All of it was quite hypocritical (or, perhaps, more charitably, completely lacking in self awareness).
Amazingly, while admitting he "is somewhat tricky on this score," Ellis even tries to shoehorn Thomas Jefferson into his thesis:
"In fact, Jefferson made two of the most eloquent statements against party politics. 'If I must go to heaven in a party,' he claimed, "I prefer not to go at all.' And in his first inaugural address, he stunned his partisan supporters by observing that 'we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.'"
Those ought to be good laugh lines, really. Jefferson and Madison came to the Federal City in 1801 intent on taking no prisoners. Elegant words be damned, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were devastating practitioners of partisan warfare. In fact, they were so expert that they put the other side out of business--which eventually led to the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" (which it was not).
An alternate interpretation of the evidence Ellis presents? The pols of the eighteenth century took great care that their public personae (and perhaps their own self-perceptions) conformed to the demands of the political culture of their time. However, without exception, the reality of governing the evolving early republic drove its leaders to pound one another relentlessly in a fashion modern-day practitioners of hardball politics might find startling.
Politicians promising a kinder, gentler, and more bipartisan approach have been with us from the beginning. Some of these prophets of non-partisanship may have actually believed their own rhetoric (John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush come to mind), but not one has succeeded in "changing the tone in Washington."
Having said that, Professor Ellis advanced a breathtakingly shaky argument in a brief op-ed piece that appeared in the troubled Los Angeles Times last Saturday morning.
His thesis: When it comes to Barack Obama, the candidate's message of hope and togetherness is rooted in our sacred past.
Ellis begins with a summary of the negative:
"Critics of Obama...have described his vision [of unity and bipartisanship] as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president."
"From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system."
Not so, says Ellis. Obama skeptics fail to consider our early history as a nation. Employing extensive quotes from our first four American presidents, he sets out to prove "all the prominent founders regarded the bipartisan ideal as the essence of political virtue" and "would regard [partisan battles] as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become."
True enough. Ellis accurately conveys the words of these "founding brothers," but his argument ignores the obvious discrepancy between their words and deeds. Incredibly, Ellis seems to accept reams of tragically self-deluded and self-serving pieces of self-analysis from the pens of these eighteenth-century luminaries. Even more curious, he ignores his own findings over time, which tell a much richer story of practical reality so often overcoming the ideals and prevailing political theory of the day.
"Adams carried the ideal to such a length that he regarded his defeat in the presidential election of 1800," writes Ellis, "as evidence that he had so eschewed partisanship that he never abandoned the public interest for his own political gain."
Of course, Adams thought himself an innocent victim of partisanship. Rather pathetically, he assured himself that he had lost a national election as a result of his integrity and principles, preserving the above-quoted defense for posterity. But this is the same Adams who saw the Election of 1800 as an historic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. He viewed Jefferson and Madison as traitors to the true republican ideals of the Revolution (and Jefferson himself as a faithless former friend). Moreover, Adams allowed himself to be convinced that the two Republican Party collaborators were, indeed, dangerous Jacobins (radicals who would murder the opposition, burn churches, and cast the nation into the chaos of mob rule).
Ellis also quotes from Washington's foundational "Farewell Address" in which the Father of our Country rails against "the spirit of party." It is quite true that Washington thoroughly hated the evils of partisanship, and the verbiage of the document (mostly written by Alexander Hamilton with some previous aid from James Madison) reflects that vehemence. However, Washington's ire is directed against one party in particular: the aforementioned inchoate party of Jefferson and Madison. Ironically, even as Washington voiced his righteous indignation, he was tacitly protecting and supporting the party of Hamilton and Adams and the Washington administration, the loose political organization we refer to today as the Federalist Party. All the while, of course, Jefferson was busy denying that his organization was a party and maintaining that factional politics was anathema to him and his loyalists. All of it was quite hypocritical (or, perhaps, more charitably, completely lacking in self awareness).
Amazingly, while admitting he "is somewhat tricky on this score," Ellis even tries to shoehorn Thomas Jefferson into his thesis:
"In fact, Jefferson made two of the most eloquent statements against party politics. 'If I must go to heaven in a party,' he claimed, "I prefer not to go at all.' And in his first inaugural address, he stunned his partisan supporters by observing that 'we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.'"
Those ought to be good laugh lines, really. Jefferson and Madison came to the Federal City in 1801 intent on taking no prisoners. Elegant words be damned, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were devastating practitioners of partisan warfare. In fact, they were so expert that they put the other side out of business--which eventually led to the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" (which it was not).
An alternate interpretation of the evidence Ellis presents? The pols of the eighteenth century took great care that their public personae (and perhaps their own self-perceptions) conformed to the demands of the political culture of their time. However, without exception, the reality of governing the evolving early republic drove its leaders to pound one another relentlessly in a fashion modern-day practitioners of hardball politics might find startling.
Politicians promising a kinder, gentler, and more bipartisan approach have been with us from the beginning. Some of these prophets of non-partisanship may have actually believed their own rhetoric (John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush come to mind), but not one has succeeded in "changing the tone in Washington."
In my last post, I asserted that Lyndon Johnson brilliantly seized a fleeting moment in American history and used his unique skills to accomplish what few others could have or would have: the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. It is not racist to admit this obvious truth. If you love civil rights, three cheers for Lyndon Johnson!
Lyndon Johnson struck many observers as an unlikely champion of civil rights in that he was a Democrat, a Southerner (Texan), and a famously adroit legislative deal maker, known for his ability to count votes and bend opponents to his interests. While he had articulated the southern orthodoxy of racial segregation early in his career, he famously proclaimed that his later actions sprang from a "change of heart."
Johnson's authentic sensitivity toward the plight of African Americans was sincere, organic, and a lifetime in the making. However, a legend has grown up around this historic legislative accomplishment.
According to the tradition, after signing the landmark legislation in 1964, Johnson purportedly turned to a young aide and proclaimed: "We have lost the South for a generation." This jewel of political prescience is a favorite for pundits and academics, illustrating for many LBJ's courage, integrity, and dedication to racial justice in the face of certain electoral disaster.
Did Johnson really say it?
Perhaps. The source for the quote is Bill Moyers, Johnson's youthful press secretary at the time. Is Moyers a credible historical source? His access and proximity to the President certainly makes him worth considering. On the other hand, I sometimes have difficulty determining when Moyers is preaching, reporting, or opining; more troubling, I am not sure that even he is always readily capable of such distinctions.
Even if the quote is accurate, was Johnson really conceding the South to his arch rivals, the Republicans?
Not likely. No matter how convicted the Texan president found himself on civil rights, he was no political martyr. As vice president, pitching a civil rights bill to President Kennedy, Ted Sorenson remembers Johnson arguing that the losses in the South (if they occurred) would come from states that were already in transition. In effect, Johnson made the case that much of the South was lost anyway. In fact, the Republicans had already made giant strides in the region during the Eisenhower administration.
Could Johnson actually have envisioned the inclusion of African American voters as a curative for an emerging realignment?
And this is where the unabashed speculation begins...
Johnson came of age politically on the edge of South Texas where Democratic Party bosses had "voted Mexicans" en masse with regularity and success; that is, truckloads of brown-skinned voters would be carted to polling places on election day and instructed for whom to vote, for a price. For that time and place, using Latino votes as a blunt instrument was merely politics as usual.
Moreover, Johnson came of age in an era in which the Huey Long Machine in Louisiana, his neighboring state to the east, voted African Americans in massive numbers. Long had proved himself a visionary in this regard. While every other southern state took great pains to bar black voting in any significant numbers during the Jim-Crow Era, Long boldly combined the black vote with poor whites to achieve a populist coalition and a personal fiefdom in the Bayou State.
Was Johnson influenced by these examples of successfully manipulating minority votes? Frankly, I am not nearly enough of a Johnson scholar to make that case with any specificity or certainty.
However, this alternative explanation makes at least as much sense as the more popular legend. While sincerely believing in civil rights, Johnson was also inclined to pursue the transformational legislation with a hope of wresting a more secure political future for his party. In many ways, this scenario is a better fit with the LBJ we think we know than a political suicide mission to achieve justice no matter the cost.
Lyndon Johnson struck many observers as an unlikely champion of civil rights in that he was a Democrat, a Southerner (Texan), and a famously adroit legislative deal maker, known for his ability to count votes and bend opponents to his interests. While he had articulated the southern orthodoxy of racial segregation early in his career, he famously proclaimed that his later actions sprang from a "change of heart."
Johnson's authentic sensitivity toward the plight of African Americans was sincere, organic, and a lifetime in the making. However, a legend has grown up around this historic legislative accomplishment.
According to the tradition, after signing the landmark legislation in 1964, Johnson purportedly turned to a young aide and proclaimed: "We have lost the South for a generation." This jewel of political prescience is a favorite for pundits and academics, illustrating for many LBJ's courage, integrity, and dedication to racial justice in the face of certain electoral disaster.
Did Johnson really say it?
Perhaps. The source for the quote is Bill Moyers, Johnson's youthful press secretary at the time. Is Moyers a credible historical source? His access and proximity to the President certainly makes him worth considering. On the other hand, I sometimes have difficulty determining when Moyers is preaching, reporting, or opining; more troubling, I am not sure that even he is always readily capable of such distinctions.
Even if the quote is accurate, was Johnson really conceding the South to his arch rivals, the Republicans?
Not likely. No matter how convicted the Texan president found himself on civil rights, he was no political martyr. As vice president, pitching a civil rights bill to President Kennedy, Ted Sorenson remembers Johnson arguing that the losses in the South (if they occurred) would come from states that were already in transition. In effect, Johnson made the case that much of the South was lost anyway. In fact, the Republicans had already made giant strides in the region during the Eisenhower administration.
Could Johnson actually have envisioned the inclusion of African American voters as a curative for an emerging realignment?
And this is where the unabashed speculation begins...
Johnson came of age politically on the edge of South Texas where Democratic Party bosses had "voted Mexicans" en masse with regularity and success; that is, truckloads of brown-skinned voters would be carted to polling places on election day and instructed for whom to vote, for a price. For that time and place, using Latino votes as a blunt instrument was merely politics as usual.
Moreover, Johnson came of age in an era in which the Huey Long Machine in Louisiana, his neighboring state to the east, voted African Americans in massive numbers. Long had proved himself a visionary in this regard. While every other southern state took great pains to bar black voting in any significant numbers during the Jim-Crow Era, Long boldly combined the black vote with poor whites to achieve a populist coalition and a personal fiefdom in the Bayou State.
Was Johnson influenced by these examples of successfully manipulating minority votes? Frankly, I am not nearly enough of a Johnson scholar to make that case with any specificity or certainty.
However, this alternative explanation makes at least as much sense as the more popular legend. While sincerely believing in civil rights, Johnson was also inclined to pursue the transformational legislation with a hope of wresting a more secure political future for his party. In many ways, this scenario is a better fit with the LBJ we think we know than a political suicide mission to achieve justice no matter the cost.
14/01: For the Record
Lyndon Johnson was essential to the Civil Rights Moment of 1964 and 1965.
I love King--and I believe he was the indispensable man in the civil rights breakthrough of mid-century--but there is no racism in giving poor old Lyndon Johnson his due.
Some inside-baseball (history shop talk) background information in a nutshell:
Historians have long argued over whether great men make history or exceptional (but not necessarily indispensable) people sit atop gigantic popular waves that break across the cultural landscape. Is history essentially biography? Or, is the graveyard full of "indispensable" men?
In truth, historical events are complicated webs of contingency. The Civil Rights Moment is a giant river full of diverse currents. We have a tendency to simplistically credit King and Rosa Parks for bringing about a social revolution--but things are much more complicated than that. The story goes back at least a century. The platform on which King stood was built by a legion of greats: Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, A. Philip Randolph, Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Bayard Rustin, and a whole host of others.
Moreover, the landmark legislation arrived as the product of a collective change of racial sensibilities in the USA, which occurred as a result of a transformed post-war international political reality, a changing economy, a newly activated federal judiciary, the advent of television, the negative example of Nazi Germany, the hard work of civil rights organizations, and much, much more.
Having said that, just as it is hard to imagine a successful American Revolution without the exceptional leadership and personal force of George Washington, the progress of the 1960s would not have transpired as it did without the person of Martin Luther King. We are right to honor King and Washington as national heroes and role models.
Just the same, there are some silly questions out there that we need not answer. Who was responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Lyndon Johnson or Martin Luther King?
Yes.
While it is true that the re-emergence of King in the tumultuous spring of 1963 and the violent images of Birmingham pushed President Kennedy to endorse a sweeping civil rights bill that June, even after the dramatic pep rally in the nation's capital (the March on Washington) that summer, in which MLK shared his dream with a massive American audience, the legislation was a dead letter by fall. What saved the bill? The assassination of JFK in November, which allowed the new president, Lyndon Johnson, the legislative genius and former "master of the Senate," to leverage the "martyrdom" of the slain president to achieve "racial justice" as a "monument" to a fallen American hero.
Did Lyndon Johnson play a vital role in this event? You bet. LBJ seized the moment and used his unique skills to accomplish what few others could have or would have. It is not racist to admit this obvious truth. If you love civil rights, three cheers for Lyndon Johnson!
I love King--and I believe he was the indispensable man in the civil rights breakthrough of mid-century--but there is no racism in giving poor old Lyndon Johnson his due.
Some inside-baseball (history shop talk) background information in a nutshell:
Historians have long argued over whether great men make history or exceptional (but not necessarily indispensable) people sit atop gigantic popular waves that break across the cultural landscape. Is history essentially biography? Or, is the graveyard full of "indispensable" men?
In truth, historical events are complicated webs of contingency. The Civil Rights Moment is a giant river full of diverse currents. We have a tendency to simplistically credit King and Rosa Parks for bringing about a social revolution--but things are much more complicated than that. The story goes back at least a century. The platform on which King stood was built by a legion of greats: Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, A. Philip Randolph, Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Bayard Rustin, and a whole host of others.
Moreover, the landmark legislation arrived as the product of a collective change of racial sensibilities in the USA, which occurred as a result of a transformed post-war international political reality, a changing economy, a newly activated federal judiciary, the advent of television, the negative example of Nazi Germany, the hard work of civil rights organizations, and much, much more.
Having said that, just as it is hard to imagine a successful American Revolution without the exceptional leadership and personal force of George Washington, the progress of the 1960s would not have transpired as it did without the person of Martin Luther King. We are right to honor King and Washington as national heroes and role models.
Just the same, there are some silly questions out there that we need not answer. Who was responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Lyndon Johnson or Martin Luther King?
Yes.
While it is true that the re-emergence of King in the tumultuous spring of 1963 and the violent images of Birmingham pushed President Kennedy to endorse a sweeping civil rights bill that June, even after the dramatic pep rally in the nation's capital (the March on Washington) that summer, in which MLK shared his dream with a massive American audience, the legislation was a dead letter by fall. What saved the bill? The assassination of JFK in November, which allowed the new president, Lyndon Johnson, the legislative genius and former "master of the Senate," to leverage the "martyrdom" of the slain president to achieve "racial justice" as a "monument" to a fallen American hero.
Did Lyndon Johnson play a vital role in this event? You bet. LBJ seized the moment and used his unique skills to accomplish what few others could have or would have. It is not racist to admit this obvious truth. If you love civil rights, three cheers for Lyndon Johnson!
