How long until the Truman:Pendergast::Obama:Blagojevich analogy shows up in the major media? Never mind if the person making the analogy does a good job with differences and historical specifics. I’d just be amazed if it’s not made at all.
Category: the political
activism and web 0.2
It seems that Obama has been reading Lincoln; this is encouraging. Some of Obama’s reading about Lincoln may be less encouraging. I am not getting ready to lead a nation or form a cabinet; I have been reading Wendell Phillips. Phillips, you may recall, is the only non-politician profiled in Hofstadter’s American Political Tradition: his type is the “agitator” (something Obama once was, not so incidentally).
I’m reading Phillips mostly because I’ve meant to do so ever since I was a TA in a course on the nineteenth century U.S. whose instructor confessed admiration for him, and I saw a reference to Phillips in something else I read just recently. Many of his speeches are now online, but unfortunately not in easily copy-and-pastable form. I’ve only read a few so far, but I can already say that Phillips is worth a look for anyone interested not just in his history, but in political and social movements and agitation in general.
Here’s Phillips in “Public Opinion” (1851) on the theory of change:
We are apt to feel ourselves overshadowed in the presence of colossal institutions. We are apt, in coming up to a meeting of this kind, to ask what a few hundred or a few thousand persons can do against the weight of government, the mountainous odds of majorities, the influence of the press, the power of the pulpit, the organization of parties, the omnipotence of wealth. At times, to carry a favorite purpose, leading statesmen have endeavored to cajole the people into the idea that this age was like the past, and that a “rub-a-dub agitation,” as ours is contemptuously styled, was only to be despised.
The time has been when, as our friend observed, from the steps of the Revere House — yes, and from the depots of New York railroads — Mr. Webster has described this Antislavery Movement as a succession of lectures in school houses, — the mere efforts of a few hundred men and women to talk together, excite each other, arouse the public, and its only result a little noise. He knew better. He knew better the times in which he lived. No matter where you meet a dozen earnest men pledged to a new idea — wherever you have met them, you have met the beginning of a Revolution.
Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. The child feels; he grows into a man, and thinks; another, perhaps, speaks, and the world acts out the thought. And this is the history of modern society. Men undervalue the Antislavery Movement, because they imagine you can always put your finger on some illustrious moment in history, and say, here commenced the great change which has come over the nation. Not so. The beginning of great changes is like the rise of the Mississippi. A child must stoop and gather away the pebbles to find it. But soon it swells broader and broader, bears on its ample bosom the navies of a mighty republic, fills the Gulf, and divides a Continent.
“Rub-a-dub agitation” might be sort of a mid-nineteenth century version of “bloggers in their pajamas.” Later in that same speech Phillips takes up the subject of technology and organization:
In working these great changes, in such an age as ours, the so-called statesman has far less influence than the many little men who, at various points, are silently maturing a regeneration of public opinion. This is a reading and thinking age, and great interests at stake quicken the general intellect. Stagnant times have been when a great mind, anchored in error, might snag the slow-moving current of society. Such is not our era. Nothing but Freedom, Justice and Truth is of any permanent advantage to the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is always tending.
In our day, great questions about them have called forth all the energies of the common mind. Error suffers sad treatment in the shock of eager intellects. “Everybody,” said Talleyrand, “is cleverer than anybody”; and any name, however illustrious, which links itself to abuses, is sure to be overwhelmed by the impetuous current of that society which, (thanks to the press and a reading public) is potent, always, to clear its own channel. Thanks to the Printing–Press, the people now do their own thinking, and statesmen, as they are styled — men in office, — have ceased to be either the leaders or the clogs of society.
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Note: I have broken up the speech text into more readable paragraph lengths. The hyperlinks, of course, are in the original – that’s just how far ahead of his times Phillips was.
only in America a democracy
With the talk of Obama’s election being something that could only happen in America, it’s no surprise to find people pointing out that, well, not only could “it” – meaning a similar electoral victory, of course – happen elsewhere, but “it” has in some cases already happened elsewhere. But this piece in Slate is a bit confused about what “it” is.
On one side, there are some good examples*:
The truth is that Obama-style chiefs of state—people who came out of stigmatized ethnic minorities or “foreign” enclaves to lead their governments—are an uncommon but regularly recurring part of history. Alberto Fujimori, who held both Peruvian and Japanese citizenship, was elected president of Peru in 1990. Sonia Gandhi, born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino in northern Italy, led her Congress Party to a resounding victory in India’s 2004 elections. Daniel arap Moi is from the Kalenjin people, not the Luo or Kikuyu who are the nation’s largest ethnic groups and its centers of political gravity. But this did not bar him being president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002.
To them you could probably add Evo Morales in Bolivia. And going back to the 19th century, there’s Benjamin Disraeli’s selection as Prime Minister of the UK.
But on the other side are the poor examples:
Last week, the New York Times told us Europe would not soon—indeed might never—see a political triumph like Obama’s. It described British politics as though Disraeli had never existed and painted a similar picture of mono-ethnic France.
Desolé, cher collegues, but one year after the far-off, sunny isle of Corsica was acquired by France in 1768, there was born there one Napoleon Bonaparte, whose heavy Italian accent made him seem even more exotic to la France profonde than his strange name.
I guess Napoleon did win a lot of campaigns.
Next up:
And speaking of German accents, the Times thumb-sucker also foresaw that there would be no German Obama any time soon. Bad timing for them: Three days later, Germany’s Greens elected Cem Ozdemir, an ethnic Turk, as their new leader.
And the Greens, being the ruling party of Germany, must make their leader the Chancellor, right? At least that example is still within the realm of electoral politics. Unlike, say,
Stalin, of course, wasn’t Russian.
Stalin vetted his advisers very thoroughly, it should be noted. And he rose from being just a humble secretary too.
Meanwhile,
It’s a matter of some debate whether Alexander the Great was ethnically Greek.
Some said he was too Greek; others, not Greek enough. And Greece was the birthplace of democracy, so he must have been elected.
That not enough for you? The path of liberty soon turned west from Greece. And what do we find?
Quite a few rulers of the Roman Empire came from underprivileged, barbarian families in North Africa, Syria, and the Balkans. The Times‘ portrait of ethnically blinkered European politics would have surprised not only Disraeli and Napoleon, but also, inter alios, such second- and third-century Roman emperors as Philippus (known as Philip the Arab for his ethnicity), Septimius Severus (father Roman, mother North African), and Diocletian (humble stock from Dalmatia, present-day Croatia).
Hey, did you know that the Mongols weren’t Chinese, and yet they ruled China for a while? And the Qing ruled China for even longer, and they weren’t Chinese either! And yet we call their emperors emperors of China.
But why stop there? What about Carl XIV Johan, King of Sweden and Norway, born Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and once Marshal of France (more French than Napoleon, who appointed him)? And the 19th century Greek monarchy had not just the House of Wittelsbach but the House of Glücksburg (in fairness, the later monarchs seem to have been Greece-born).
Or maybe it would be a good idea to just stop with the good examples, give a bit more depth to the comparisons, and acknowledge that Obama’s victory was not unique, but still quite rare.
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*Unfortunately, many of these leaders were more successful in elections than in governing.
premonition
Cornelius Cole was not nearly the diarist his wife was – I was more interested in his correspondence – but that doesn’t mean my research did not turn up something incidentally interesting. Again from my old notes, again something not relevant to my research topic, here’s Cole, then a member of the House of Representatives, on Lincoln (from an entry dated 8 Jul 1864):
Mr. Lincoln takes no care of himself + I fear he may be assassinated by some rebel who could easily make his escape. I call upon the President often + once with Hon John H Rice of Me when I expressed my fears to the President that they might assassinate him in order to throw matters into confusion + make an assault. I before or afterward stated the same fears to Mr. Stanton. To the suggestion Mr. Lincoln replied that when he first came to Washington he determined that he would not be dying all the while.
That he did not believe that he was to die in that way. That no one could do such a deed without expecting to lose his own life, and the life of each man was equally dear to himself. That if any body wanted to kill him it was easy to do it from a window any day while he was riding out 7th street. He did not think such was to be his fate.”
not for granted
I don’t have anything to say about Grant’s status as an intellectual, never having read his memoirs, but this discussion reminds me that I have in some old research notes an impression of Grant set down shortly after his first inaugural in the diary of Olive Cole, whose husband was then a Senator from California, and whose papers can be found in this collection. The entry is dated 5 March 1869 (words in brackets followed by a question mark indicate I had trouble making out what was written):
Genl Grant converses easily and, barring a peculiar Western pronunciation, quite elegantly. His language is simple – clear and forcible. He always asks many questions, and is quite as willing to answer general ones, tho’ is sometimes “reticent” – when leading questions are addressed to him, or special favors are asked. He wants time to decide important questions and to consider the propriety of granting favors to others. He [hears?] urging very patiently, I hear. Time will reveal to us the extent of his great patience. He told me a few evenings ago at the house of the Ex – [Mayor? Major?] Hallack that he was too lazy to perform the duties of President and he looked forward to them with dread. Then I [sallied? sullied?] him upon his duty to the people at this great crisis of all the good he might do etc – he coldly remarked he was not ambitious to do what another could do better and he presumed the people would be as happy to have him leave the White House at the end of four years as they are now to see him go there.
[Here my notes indicate that the following section is crossed out in the diary]
My only fear is he is not in sympathy with the great “people” and does not realize the necessity of establishing our government upon the principles of freedom. He is a good judge of a General, of a cigar, of a horse, but is he of men in general? He has not made human nature a study – and his ignorance of somethings national and political astonished even me.
[end crossed out section]
He is fond of his wife and children – and well he may be, for they are gentle + lovely.
I believe he will do as nearly right as any man we could have chosen for President, tho’ he may not do as much. My greatest fear is that he will forgive the Rebels too freely – and trust them too far.
His gentleness of heart will lead him to great charity + forbearance that is better in excess – than excess of tyranny.
I would caution against taking this as a sort of definitive judgment on Grant, especially given that he had barely been President when it was written, and that some of it had been crossed out sometime after it was written. But neither do I have reason to believe that Cole misrepresented their conversation.
Cole’s diaries, incidentally, were among the most engrossing documents I read during my history grad student days. Too bad it was information about her husband’s work in Congress and his relations with business that I was really looking for in their papers. Also too bad is that I’ve never worked up that research into publishable form (blogging doesn’t really count, I don’t think).
civilian leadership
Timothy Noah wonders why, since 1964, presidential candidates who were war heroes have been so unsuccessful:
With the sole exception of George H.W. Bush in 1988—who won by waging the dirtiest presidential campaign of the modern era and then served only one term—no war hero has won the presidency since John F. Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960. Before Kennedy, there was Dwight Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Before Eisenhower came a century and a half of American history during which war heroes and battlefield commanders routinely won the presidency, starting with George Washington and continuing through Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. Between TR and Truman came a dry spell of 36 years during which no sitting president had served in the military. But that anomaly can be explained partly by the fact that for nearly half that time the president was a single person—Franklin D. Roosevelt. Moreover, both Roosevelt and his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, had performed enormously significant civilian duties in World War I, Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the Navy and Hoover as a highly enterprising organizer of famine relief, first as a private citizen and later as an appointee of President Woodrow Wilson. The Oval Office’s current drought of military leaders, then, would seem historically unique.
Noah then runs through a few possible explanations, which I don’t find particularly satisfying, even when I agree with them. Part of the problem is that I’m not sure if this is the right question.
Noah suggests that it was historically the norm for presidents to have been war heroes, but he’s only able to name 14 who fit his description (which he never really defines); add Hoover and FDR – and I think he has a better case for Hoover than for FDR – and you still have just 16.* That’s a substantial number, to be sure, enough to say that presidents who were war heroes have been a recurring feature in American politics, but hardly enough to say it’s also unusual for presidents not to be war heroes.
Now take a look at the wars involved:
- Revolutionary War: 1 (Washington)
- War of 1812 and related Indian wars: 2 (Jackson, Harrison grand-pere)
- Mexican-American War: 1 (Taylor)
- Civil War: 5 (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison (petit-fils), McKinley)
- Spanish-American War: 1 (TR)
- World War I: 2 or 3 (Truman, Hoover, maybe FDR)
- World War II: 3 (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Bush pere)
Notice any pattern here? The Civil War accounts for at least one third of all war heroes; it plus the two world wars account for two thirds. So the supposed norm largely comes down to the effects of three wars, each of which involved unusually large mobilizations – and you still have to stretch to get more than one president out of the first World War.** Moreover, each of the remaining wars were not just significant victories for the United States but seen as turning points in the country’s history and development. Given that the United States hasn’t been involved in a war on the scale of the Civil or the two World Wars since 1945, and that the main candidate for a smaller, turning point war is Vietnam, it’s hardly surprising that there haven’t been more war hero presidents in recent times.
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*If you expand the category to include all Presidents with any prior military service you get to about 30 – depending on how you treat those who served in the militia/national guard but did not serve in active combat. But Noah specifically rules out that kind of expansion when he writes
Presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan were all World War II veterans, but their service records were unexceptional.
Most of the increase comes from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and World War II. All of the Civil War vets are already on the hero list. And no, Fillmore’s Civil War service doesn’t count towards his presidential electability.
**And it’s only by stretching that you break up the 36 years between TR and Truman without a war hero president. By the way, does Noah really expect us to go along with his math when he claims that FDR’s 12 years took up “nearly half” of that period?
the dial turns spur the worm; the worm turns, spurns
This is a good background piece on those “squiggly lines” that showed up on CNN during the debates, but I would have liked to have learned more about previous uses of so-called “dial testing” in election coverage. The feature is novel to most of us Americans – unlike after-the-fact focus groups, which have been around a while – but the worldly commenters at Crooked Timber* point out that Australian television has been using a similar feature for some time.
Over there it’s called “the worm”; it even has a wikipedia entry. And in October 2007 it was involved in a bit of controversy:
Australian PM John Howard has denied involvement in a decision to ban a graphic that tracks audience opinion during a live TV election debate.
Critics accused Mr Howard of coercing the host, the National Press Club, to ban the use of the “worm”.
Channel Nine’s feed was cut 25 minutes into the debate between Mr Howard and the opposition leader Kevin Rudd.
The controversy has eclipsed the issues under discussion, which included the economy and Australia’s role in Iraq.
Glad to see the US is not the only country with the proper sense of priorities. So how did the debate turn out?
Channel Nine switched first to an ABC and then a Sky News feed, and superimposed the worm without any disruption to its coverage.
According to the worm, Mr Rudd was the overall winner of the debate. Opinion in Australia is divided on whether the worm really has any impact on voters.
Of course, it’s not just a question of whether the worm has an impact on voters; there’s also the question of how well it represents voters. Howard went on to lose the election. Maybe it was a coincidence.
*I endorse the suggestion that the networks keep up the squiggly lines for the post-debate coverage. And for other programming.
change you can mimeograph
I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.
Zachary Hicks is a delegate to the state’s Progressive Party Convention and his feet hurt. The convention has been trying to nominate a candidate for governor, but no one has enough votes. While the party bosses gather in their factions to discuss strategy for the next ballot, Hicks turns to one of his fellow delegates in the convention hall and complains about his shoes. When the delegate asks him why he doesn’t take them off, Hicks replies that he can’t – they’re too tight. When the delegate suggests that he cut them off, Hicks thinks it’s a great idea, and to the surprise of his fellow delegate, he takes out a knife and does just that.
Meanwhile, one of the party factions has decided that the only way to prevent their rivals’ candidate from winning and still break the deadlock is to nominate a dark horse. They arrive at the name of the hitherto obscure Zachary Hicks, about whom even they know very little. Hicks is asleep when his nomination is announced.
I wrote that intro from memory, having seen The Dark Horse – which unfortunately does not seem to be available online or on DVD (but you can see the original trailer) – about a month ago on television, so I might not have the details exactly right. But the premise is clear: Zachary Hicks – described at one point as “so dumb that every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge” – is running for Governor and it’s going to take a clever campaign to get him elected.
Kay Russell (played by Bette Davis) knows just the man for the job: Hal S. Blake (played by Warren William), who’s proven himself in the past to be an able campaign manager. There’s only one problem: Blake is currently in jail for failing to pay alimony. Russell convinces the party leaders to take a chance on Blake, and when they arrive at the prison, Blake is giving a speech to the other inmates. The campaign has already started.
If this were a different kind of film, Blake’s cleverness and political skill might have been portrayed as vaguely sinister, but it’s a comedy (with a bit of romance between Russell and Blake) – and a screwball one at that. Blake might be able to convince opposing constituencies like the wets and the drys (this is a film from 1932*, after all) that Hicks supports both sides, but it is his opponents in the Conservative party who stoop to truly dirty politics when they come up with a plan to frame Hicks as having an affair on the eve of the election. It’s hard to watch this movie today without thinking of certain modern strategists**, but Blake – who has his faults, particularly when it comes to relationships – remains generally likable throughout.
When it quickly becomes clear that Hicks isn’t very bright, Blake is undaunted: that just means they’ll present him as a common man of the people (“Hicks from the sticks”). Since Hicks doesn’t know the issues very well – at one point he says he’s against capital punishment, which would great if the state had not already abolished it – Blake instructs him to answer all reporters’ questions by saying “Yes,” then pausing, then saying, “and again, no.”
A bigger challenge is preparing Hicks for a debate. Blake has him memorize the lines quoted at the top of this post. They’re actually Lincoln’s. Hicks has only two problems with this: first, he has a well-off (but politically irrelevant) aunt elsewhere in the state who could be considered a “wealthy relation” – Blake instructs him to ignore that; and second, he struggles to remember to change the word “county”*** to “state.”
There may be a longstanding tradition of politicians incorporating other politicians’ speeches into their own, but this is a fairly clear case of plagiarism. And when the time comes for the debate, it turns out that Hicks’ Conservative opponent, Underwood****, who is first to give an opening statement, arrived with the exact same idea. Recognizing the speech his candidate was supposed to deliver, Blake jumps on to the stage and exposes Underwood as a plagiarist. Underwood is laughed out of the building and Hicks is saved from having to speak at all.
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*It’s so old that it’s pre-code, and compared to movies made just a few years later, there’s a surprising amount of suggestiveness.
**It’s true, as TCM’s overview article says, that the decision to “sell” Hicks as a common man is “a round of spin-doctoring that remains depressingly resonant today” but it’s still funny. Just don’t think about the implications for governance.*****
***I believe in the film they actually say “country,” perhaps under the impression that Lincoln said this in a speech while running for President. But a footnote to the text I looked up says that it is actually from a printed message from a campaign for local office from very early in Lincoln’s career – and that he lost.
****I don’t think the movie ever gives his first name.
*****I suppose it’s only appropriate that Guy Kibbee, who plays Hicks, would later play the beleagured Governor of a machine-controlled state in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
the limits of détente
I get the impression that Marshall McLuhan was not impressed with the first Ford-Carter debate (in Philadelphia) (via):
The rebellion of the medium against the message he refers to was the breakdown of the audio part of the broadcast near the end of the debate. When the candidates learned that they could not be heard on tv, they apparently just stood there and waited for the problem to be fixed. For 27 minutes.
Years later, Carter and Ford talked about the experience for a PBS documentary (video here, starting at 3:52):
JIM LEHRER: Everyone in America who was watching, you know, was very – couldn’t figure out – this was unreal. What was it like standing there?
PRESIDENT CARTER: I watched that tape afterwards and it was embarrassing to me that both President Ford and I stood there almost like robots. We didn’t move around, we didn’t walk over and shake hands with each other. We just stood there.
PRESIDENT FORD: I suspect both of us would have liked to sit down and relax while the technicians were fixing the system, but I think both of us were hesitant to make any gesture that might look like we weren’t physically or mentally able to handle a problem like this.
JIM LEHRER: The delay continued for 27 minutes before the technicians were able to trace the problem to a blown transformer and replace it.
PRESIDENT CARTER: So I don’t know who was more ill at ease, me or President Ford.
JIM LEHRER: It looked like a tie to me.
PRESIDENT CARTER: It was a tie. Neither one of us was at ease, there’s no doubt about that. Those events, I think, to some degree let the American public size up the candidates, and I don’t think either one of us made any points on that deal.
If they could not have stood up to the audio, could they have stood up to the Soviets?
small town (numerical) values
It’s really sort of remarkable, the lengths some people will go to in order to hide the metropolitan reality of this country. And that’s assuming that Wasilla and all other similarly-sized cities are small towns that are not, as surely some of them are, actually suburbs just on the edge of urbanized areas.