The Bosque Boys

While traveling through Nashville we stopped to see the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's plantation home. Old Hickory built himself quite a house; a two-story mansion furnished Philadelphia furniture and French wallpaper.

On one level, Jackson's life is a classic American rags-to-riches story. Born poor in the Carolina's, moved West to seek his fortune, practiced law and traded and rose in local society until he became a planter; serving in the militia then the Regular Army, he became a national folk-hero for his courage and success. As a political leader he championed the ordinary man against the elites. Ironic, some might say, given that he had risen into elite status himself. Opportunistic, some more cynical might assert, using common-man rhetoric to further his own ambitions. I think, though, Jackson believed his own words, and truly wanted to keep America the land of opportunity.

When Andrew Jackson championed the rights and liberty of the common man, he meant, of course, the common white man. He owned slaves; their labor made his lifestyle possible. Field hands lived near the fields they tilled, and household slaves lived near the big house, ready to answer the bells from the back-porch summoning them to meet the needs of their masters. Champion of Liberty and Owner of Slaves: was he a hypocrite? Not in the context of his time. His generation, and those before, understood Liberty to mean different kinds of liberty for different kinds of folks, depending on their ability for self-government. White men with full liberty followed by white women then children with blacks below. Does that make Jackson a racist. Sure, by modern standards. Although I would call his racism a "soft" racism: that is, I know of no evidence that he hated blacks and practiced cruelty toward slaves because they were black. Indeed, the slaves at the Hermitage lived better than most slaves in the area, and probably not below the conditions of many poor whites. This is not to condone slavery, but to attempt to understand our past.

Jackson, the Indian fighter, also was the man who adopted an orphaned Indian boy. He and Rachel raised him like a natural-born son. Contradictory? Seemingly so. Jackson believed in American expansion, and forced the powerful southern tribes west of the Mississippi. Yet he himself seemed to believe that he was doing them a favor as well as gaining opportunity for whites; that the only way the tribes could be preserved was to remove them from contact with whites.

The irony that strikes me today is that Jackson, a hero in his home state of Tennessee and admired throughout the South, gave one of the mortal wounds to the idea that America was a nation of states rather than a nation-state. When South Carolina rebelled during his presidency over taxation, Jackson forced her to remain in the Union with believable threats of violence. "Our Federal Union, it must be preserved."

This summer I have been teaching an American Government course for the first time in my life. The book, ordered by the university for all adjunct classes, is Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy, brief 8th edition, by Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, published by Pearson Longman. By and large I think it is a good text.

Every so often the authors will write something that surprises me. That is, it surprises me to find it in an academic textbook. Take these two paragraphs from the chapter on the presidency.

We learned in Chapter 6 that the news is fundamentally superficial, oversimplified, and often overblown, all of which provides the public with a distorted view of, among other things, presidential activities, statements, policies, and options. We have also seen that the press prefers to frame the news in themes, which both simplifies complex issues and events and provides continuity of persons, institutions, and issues. Once these themes are established, the press tends to maintain them in subsequent stories. Of necessity, themes emphasize some information at the expense of other data, often determining what information is most relevant to news coverage and the context in which it is presented.
. . .
News coverage of the presidency often tends to emphasize the negative (even if the negative stories are presented in a seemingly neutral manner), a trend that has increased over the past 20 years. In the 1980 election campaign, the press portrayed President Carter as mean and Ronald Reagan as imprecise rather than Carter as precise and Reagan as pleasant. The emphasis, in other words, was on the candidates' negative qualities. George Bush received extraordinarily negative press coverage during the 1992 election campaign, and the television networks' portrayal of the economy, for which Bush was blamed, got worse as the economy actually improved to a robust rate of growth!

So, the next time you are arguing media bias with liberal friends, you need not quote Rush. Instead quote these political scientists.

A friend and colleague forwarded this email to me this morning, and I agree with his endorsement:

"Regardless of your political affiliation, this is a beautiful tribute to Lady Bird Johnson."

Although some might quibble with the political assumptions or the attempt to rally partisans around the death of an important Texan, on this day I will not.

From the Texas Democratic Party:

Moving Texas Forward

"Dear Fellow Democrat,

"All Texas Democrats are deeply saddened today by the death of Lady Bird Johnson, a revered public figure in Texas politics. A proud daughter of East Texas, she represented the highest ideals of our state, our country and our Party. One of the most effective leaders and campaigners the Democratic Party has ever seen, she worked tirelessly to support her husband, President Lyndon Johnson, and promote the Democratic message. Robert Kennedy proudly stated that "Lady Bird carried Texas" for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, an electoral victory that paved the way for monumental changes in American government from Medicare to Civil Rights.

"For decades, she stood by her husband's side and played a critical role in promoting Democratic initiatives like Head Start and the War on Poverty. Upon assuming her duties as First Lady, she helped comfort Americans during a time of national tragedy. And through her beautification and preservation efforts, she helped bring environmentalism to the forefront of America's consciousness.

"Her legacy can be seen across the Lone Star State, from her beloved wildflowers along Texas highways to her beautification projects in Austin to the University of Texas, which she attended and later served as a member of the Board of Regents. Both our state and nation are fairer and more beautiful because of her leadership and commitment, and she will be deeply missed.

"I ask you to remember Mrs. Johnson and her family in your thoughts and prayers and join me in rededicating our Party to the ideals of justice, progress and beauty for which she stood.

"Your friend and fellow Democrat,

"Boyd Richie
Paid for by the Texas Democratic Party"

End Quote.

God Bless Lady Bird Johnson. Good luck to the Democratic Party in living up to the ideals stated above.

A man who was a significant evangelical force in the pro-life movement from its early days died recently. This article from Christianity Today highlights his accomplishments.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the opposite corner of the state from me, is a small-sized city with a lot of tension over illegal immigration. This article from MSNBC captures the current mood of the town.

This has been around for a few days--but it is worth noting belatedly:

Put away the flags!

"On this July 4," says Howard Zinn, "we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed."

The gist?

A false belief in American exceptionalism leads us into all manner of self deceptions--many of which are dangerous to ourselves and others.

What is American exceptionalism?

The belief the United States of America as a "nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history."

Zinn asserts that America is not "uniquely moral." But we are adept at framing our self-interested forays "into other lands" as noble crusades to "bring civilization, liberty, democracy" to the less fortunate.

Zinn asserts that this view is dead wrong. The peace-seeking brotherhood of man all over the world, as well as the naive in America, are "victims," casualties of our "government's lies."

Zinn's prescription:

We need to refute the idea that our nation is unique and disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are a force for good in the world.

"We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation."

The full essay in the Progressive here.

Although Zinn was a World War II bombardier--he makes no mention of any of the folks to whom we are not morally superior: the Axis powers he fought against, the Soviet Empire that filled the vacuum of power in Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Nazis or the current threat: Islamism.

In the crudest sense, Howard Zinn embodies the moral equivalency of the "blame America" crowd. Noting flaws and egregious mistakes in American history, which Zinn has done so expertly and lucratively over his career, is not tantamount to saying our system and ethos is fraudulent and malevolent.

For this week dedicated to celebrating American independence, I prefer to think of the myriad heroes who understood the uniqueness of our nation in their souls.

I prefer Lincoln over Zinn:

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The Good News: Please take note of the excellent Richard Brookhiser historical perspective piece on New York politicians and American presidential races. With great skill and perceptive analysis, Brookhiser covers Jefferson's "botanizing" trip up the Hudson, which sowed the seeds for the first two-party system in American political history, to the Mario Cuomo candidacy that never materialized and everything in between. It is first rate. Read the TIME story here.

The Bad News: And this may be too petty--but TIME is on my list right now--you will need to look hard for this very fine history, as it appears sandwiched in between teen-aged girls and their woes at the mall, trash-talking wine salesmen, wedding gifts and extreme vacations in the "LIFE" section.

Come on, TIME mag. History just don't get no respect over there in Rockefeller Plaza at the Time-Life Building.

Last week, the CIA declassified and released a large chunk of 1970s-era documents gathered as part of an internal review designed to assess and prepare for possible public embarrassments in the midst of the Watergate investigation. In response to an order from then-chief James R. Schlesinger, as the Washington Post wrote last week, "the agency combed its files for what it called delicate information with flap potential. The result was a collection of documents [at least some CIA analysts] called the family jewels" (read the Post story in full here).

I hesitate to call this huge event an under-reported story (the news was everywhere last week; below you will find extensive treatment from the NYT). On the other hand, for historians this is a coup of great significance. Some of these "Freedom of Information" requests went back three decades. More than that, cataloguing newly released documents is the essence of "doing history." As the old guys say: "no document; no history." This is the exhilarating part of the business. In a word: poring over newly released primary sources is fun.

You would think that the news media would feel the same way. But I sense an awkwardness in regard to reporting this story. Although it is hard for me to put my finger on exactly, the coverage is less than fully engaged or even highly interested. In other words, the reporting lacks the joy you might expect in uncovering this treasure trove.

Why the lack of enthusiasm? Some speculation in brief:

1. The story goes against the template that the Bush administration is the most secretive White House ever. It is hard to reconcile this essential core assumption with the unprecedented access to secrets that four previous administrations (two of which were Democratic) denied.

2. The documents themselves also play against the template that all dirty tricks began with Richard Nixon. This assumption is perhaps even more sacred (although eminently less defensible) than the first.

Examples:

--Although a gunman assassinated Martin Luther King the spring before Richard Nixon won election as president, we see in our mind's eye the Nixon White House harassing and surveilling the civil rights icon.

--John Kerry famously remembered spending Christmas Eve 1968 on a gunboat in Cambodia while the President of the United States [presumably Nixon] was telling people we were not in Cambodia. Again, Nixon did not take office until the next month.

Lies and deception are Nixonian and Republican. We do not enjoy hearing reports that Bobby Kennedy oversaw the project to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Having said all that, here are some nuts and bolts on where to start in terms of engaging this new information:

The New York Times offered an interesting series of commentary and expert analysis on their NYT blog, which you can access here (membership required).

The Actual Repository: The agency actually released the documents to the "National Security Archive," a self-described "independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University." You may access the archive here.

More notes on the "6th Annual Making of America Issue" of TIME Magazine, which features a "new take on JFK."

The special issue asserts that we have much to "learn from JFK." In addition to understanding "how to lead in a dangerous world," and "what candidates should say about faith," we can also come to understand, through a careful study of the 35th president, exactly "why civil rights can't be compromised."

I am critical of TIME and this project in terms of editorial judgment, methodology and objectivity. You may read those introductory comments and a skeptical appraisal of TIME's hagiographic depiction of Kennedy as a foreign policy visionary in my previous post here.

Part II (from the TIME headline): A Slow Road to Civil Rights:

"As President, Kennedy initially moved cautiously on segregation. But by the spring of 1963, he knew that more was needed."

Read the article (by Robert Dallek) in its entirety here.

Dallek's thesis:

"[The] Kennedys—John and [Bobby]—have been given too little credit for progress on resolving America's oldest and greatest social divide. Even if J.F.K.'s passion for the cause came late, it made it possible for his successor, Lyndon Johnson, a white Texan, to become the architect of desegregation."

Dallek, a noted public intellectual and celebrated biographer of JFK and LBJ, seems in a good position to offer special insight and perspective on this topic.

However, Dallek's account omits events absolutely essential to a full understanding of the story (events, unfortunately, that conflict with his thesis). His negligence is so egregious, in fact, that the narrative comes very near to historical malpractice.

Dallek rightly prefaces his reappraisal with the admission that "historians have tended to believe that little more than political cynicism ever animated John Kennedy's response to civil rights."

Dallek further acknowledges:

Kennedy was reluctant to support civil rights legislation before his election (Civil Rights Act of 1957) and afterwards.

Kennedy ignored civil rights in his famously idealistic stirring Inaugural Address.

Kennedy broke a campaign promise to civil rights leaders to sign an Executive Order to desegregate federally financed housing.

Kennedy pleased segregationists with his judicial appointments, most of whom were likely to maintain the racial status quo in the South.

In 1962, Kennedy offered only tepid support for a crucial demonstration in Albany, Georgia, and he tarried too long before intervening to protect James Meredith at Ole Miss. Then 1963 began with the President's flat refusal to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill.

Dallek rightly characterizes Kennedy as less than a "moral crusader" on the issue of civil rights, more interested in counting Southern votes than righting racial injustices. Dallek characterizes him, "more of a civil rights opportunist than a passionate convert to the cause."

But all that changed, according to Dallek, as a result of the "crisis in Birmingham, [which] changed his mind about the imperative of civil rights, and thus was born Kennedy's real legacy on this front." According to Dallek, the barbarity of the white power structure in Birmingham unleashed on the black demonstrators (attack dogs, fire hoses, cattle prods, etc.) precipitated a Kennedy epiphany. The South will never reform itself, Kennedy decided. "The only solution Kennedy saw," reports Dallek, "was a major federal civil rights statute that outlawed segregation in...public accommodations."

Kennedy then rushed to make a national speech addressing the crisis on 11 June 1963 in which he called civil rights a "moral issue" and proposed a bill, the essence of which would, indeed, become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy's heart, Dallek asserts, now "trumped any self-serving political calculations."

Dallek's glorious conclusion:

"Although Kennedy's assassination five months later deprived him of the chance to sign the civil rights bill into law, he had finally done the right thing. That its passage in 1964 came under Johnson's Administration should not exclude Kennedy from the credit for a landmark measure that decisively improved American society forever. Although J.F.K. had been slow to rise to the challenge, he did ultimately meet it. That gives him a place in the pantheon of American Presidents who, in his own words, were profiles in courage."

Wow! That is high praise worthy of Ted Sorenson.

What does this article neglect to mention?

1. Kennedy's "political calculations" were not wholly absent from these deliberations. Convinced that Barry Goldwater would gain the Republican nomination in 1964, the Kennedy brain trust was already writing off the Deep South. A civil rights bill was not political suicide for a campaign looking to win moderates in the heartland and cognizant that the formerly "Solid South" was increasingly hostile.

2. Kennedy's epiphany was less than complete. By the summer of 1963, Kennedy was convinced that nothing greater than a watered-down version of his bill had any chance in Congress. Moreover, the President used all his powers of persuasion (unsuccessfully) to convince civil rights leaders that a March on Washington in support of the legislation that summer was a horrible idea.

3. By the fall of 1963, the bill was dead. The March on Washington had been a monumental success (contrary to the President's pessimistic predictions)--but Kennedy had failed to bring Congress to a legislative consensus--not even the "watered-down" variety. With the election coming in 1964, a civil rights bill looked extremely unlikely for a long time to come.

The truth is that full honors rightly belong to Lyndon Johnson for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. True, Johnson employed the ultra-emotional moment of national mourning to leverage Congress into finishing the work of the "martyred President," but credit LBJ, the former majority leader, for his legislative genius and commitment to securing these monumental steps toward equality.

Why did Dallek allow himself to be a party to this egregious mischaracterization of events? Good question. The events omitted in the TIME encomium are covered in Dallek's 2003 much-acclaimed Kennedy biography, An Unfinished Life.

A bad edit? I can only hope.

My worst fear is that Robert Dallek would be willing to pervert his sacred responsibilities as an historian to get along with the in-crowd.

As for TIME, my contempt grows stronger with each article. Next: "The Catholic Conundrum: Kennedy's 1960 campaign as a master class in how a candidate of any faith should address questions about religious belief."

Read my earlier critique (Part I) here.

I received the "6th Annual Making of America Issue" of TIME this week, which features a strikingly handsome portrait of John F. Kennedy.

An aside: please note the absence of any computer generated tears a la the Ronald Reagan cover from a while back.

The Cover Text reads:

What We Can Learn from JFK:

How to lead in a dangerous world;

What candidates should say about faith;

Why civil rights can't be compromised.

Quick Thoughts:

1. Before reading one word of the coverage, I was disturbed that TIME has now published six special issues celebrating essential Americans in this series, and they have not yet featured George Washington. All five of the previous choices have been respectable (Ben Franklin, 2nd year, and Abe Lincoln, 4th year, were stellar), but Jefferson before GW--and now JFK? Come on. Does anybody over there have any respect for American history?

An aside: The team at Newsweek seems to have a much better handle on the essence of our national story.

While I agree with TIME managing editor Richard Stengel's assertion that the study of history is a two-way conversation between the past and the present, I am always suspicious of persons who manipulate history as a cudgel to achieve current political goals. Without having read all of this issue, the exercise seems more concerned with exposing the faults of figures, policies and philosophies currently out of favor with TIME rather than offering a critical retelling of the Kennedy years.

2. I like JFK. I always rank him as an extremely talented president. However, he was only in office for 1,000 days. Yes. I understand his afterlife is more important than his life span. However, the list of untapped monumental figures who cast a shadow over the American political landscape is long and much more distinguished than JFK. FDR? Andrew Jackson? Ronald Reagan?

3. Even more disturbing, looking at the table of contents, the editors seem to be checking their healthy historical skepticism at the door.

First TIME Article: A Warrior for Peace:
"His Presidency included some of the tensest moments of the cold war, but he was convinced that our true power came from democratic ideals, not military might" (story here).

According to TIME, the 1960 Campaign forced Kennedy to play the role of a hawk on the Cold War, although he and his family had long since come to understand that war was unnecessary and "stupid." But facing Richard Nixon in 1960, who TIME calls "one of the dirtiest fighters in the American political arena," JFK decided to fight fire with fire. "Kennedy had no interest in becoming another Adlai Stevenson," TIME reports, "the high-minded liberal who was easily defeated in back-to-back elections by [a] war hero. JFK was determined not to be turned into...a punching bag for two-fisted GOP rhetoric."

So, according to TIME, Kennedy lied. Inventing a "missile gap" and disingenuously "championing the cause of the Cuban 'freedom fighters,'" Kennedy secured election, which TIME implicitly condones (a justifiable means to a necessary end). Once in office, the "Warrior for Peace" assiduously battled his hardliner generals to bring sanity to relations with our noble but misunderstood Soviet adversaries.

Embattled, the President leaned on his only two friends in the administration: his brother Robert and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, who, like him, sought "non-military solutions" to the "most dangerous moment in human history," the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the Washington hardliners pushed for a nuclear showdown, Kennedy courageously resisted the intense pressure from his military advisors. TIME blithely accepts the speculation that only Kennedy's steady hand averted a catastrophe which would have reduced "a vast swath of the urban U.S. within missile range...to radioactive rubble."

Of course, all of this is very much in dispute, and it also begs the question: would the humane Soviets leaders, who only wanted to do the right thing, really have brought down nuclear cataclysm on American cities and innocent civilians?

What of Vietnam? Again, JFK was caught in a vise between his insane military leaders and politics. With every intention of withdrawing from South East Asia after his reelection in 1964, the President let us get a little bit pregnant in Vietnam--but always fully understanding, according to TIME, that the war was unwinnable, and unalterably determined to get us out.

Later, according to TIME, "Lyndon Johnson was able to [disingenuously] portray his own deeper Vietnam intervention as a logical progression of JFK's policies." But TIME and Robert "McNamara know the truth: Kennedy would have withdrawn."

As proof of Kennedy's overall sincerity, TIME reports that his Soviet adversary, Nikita Khrushchev "broke down and sobbed [upon hearing] the news from Dallas in November 1963." TIME relays that Khrushchev saw JFK as "a real statesman" and together, Khrushchev believed, "the two men could have brought peace to the world."

Again, TIME feeds all their reportage through the assumption that Khrushchev was our friend and only Kennedy et al were wise enough to understand this now apparent fact of history. It is the same logic that credits Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War while Ronald Reagan looked on red-faced in his befuddlement and early-onset Alzheimer’s.

In a single declaratory sentence: This is bad history. SHAME on TIME.

The other pieces:

"A Slow Road to Civil Rights: As President, Kennedy initially moved cautiously on segregation. But by the spring of 1963, he knew that more was needed."

This also looks like a ridiculously facile and convenient reading of history--but it will have to wait until I have another moment to engage. As will the story on Kennedy's Catholicism, which also strikes me as overblown and too finely engineered to speak authoritatively to present politics. Until next time.