What Would the Sage of Fair Lane Think?

November 20, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Obama administration, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

As the big boys from the big three pressed their case this week for a taxpayer funded bridge or bailout (pick your metaphor), the role of big labor in Mr. Obama’s coming administration is being seriously tested even before the guy gets to say “so help me God.”

Of course, at issue is the fact that he promised the proverbial moon to an interest group not really known in recent years for its capacity to pack too much of an electoral punch. Whether or not he will be able – or inclined – to actually keep his pledges is quite another thing.

It is likely that many months ago, when Barack Obama was assuring various union dense audiences of his support for them, he never anticipated having to really do anything about it so soon. But it will be on his plate on day one and the issue may just keep him up some nights until 3:00 a.m. – in case the phone rings in the wee hours.

The problems with the American automobile industry are legion, but likely the most glaring is the cost of labor and management. Bloated salaries in the boardroom and borderline outrageous wages on the assembly lines have pretty much brought the entire U.S. auto industry, once the envy of the world, to its knees - if not the brink of disaster.

Workers at a Toyota plant in Kentucky, a non-union shop, receive about $47.00 per hour in wages and benefits. That translates to about $98,000.00 per year (not counting overtime). Those doing essentially the same job at GM, Ford, or Chrysler – whose assembly line workers are members of the United Auto Workers union – receive roughly $71.00 per hour – or about $150,000.00 annually (again, minus any overtime).

Public school teachers across the country make, on the average, no more than a third of that.

Detroit has been losing money on every car sold for quite some time. The easy criticism is that they have been building “gas guzzlers.” But that dog won’t hunt because one of the reasons they have had difficulty shifting gears (so to speak) to smaller, cheaper, and more fuel efficient models is that they would lose more money per unit on them. They have not been competitive for a long time and there isn’t a bailout number big enough to fix the problem without changing management (getting rid of the guys who ran the place into the ground) and renegotiating labor contracts downward.

And there’s the rub. The United Auto Workers is a formidable foe with a new best friend moving into the White House.

The irony is that this union looks and acts these days more like the guys they fought against back in the 1930s and 1940s. It began as an advocate for hard working people who had been getting the shaft. Who’s holding said shaft now?

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit hearing the legendary stories about “sit down” strikes and an epic encounter called “the battle of the overpass” - where Ford Motor Company “muscle” beat up Walter Reuther, his brother, and other union organizers who were passing out leaflets.

My father was a long time member of the Teamsters (same local as Mr. James Riddle Hoffa) and all the kids on the block had dads who loved and depended on the unions. I know that back in the day the UAW did some good stuff for those who had no real influence or voice. The union effectively helped its members “to free them from the tyranny of arbitrary decision or discriminatory action in the work place,” as Neil Chamberlain wrote nearly half century ago. I get that.

But we have come along way since those days. This is an age of change – remember?

Ford Motor Company was the last of the big three to agree to let its employees organize after a lengthy and brutal battle. Led by Harry Bennett, a close confidante of old Mr. Ford (who later wrote a book about his boss entitled, We Never Called Him Henry), a “goon squad” spied on and intimidated workers for years, keeping them in line and out of the UAW.

In the spring of 1941, as the nation was reluctantly preparing for inevitable involvement in the growing global war, Bennett fired several employees unwittingly creating the catalyst for the first real strike (exclusive of episodic “wild cat” actions) the company ever experienced. For ten days, work at the massive River Rouge Plant was at a standstill and tension was in the air.

Through surrogates like Bennett, Henry Ford insisted that the strike was the work of communist agitators. He had been working closely on the sly with a key, though out of favor, labor leader - Homer Martin. The first president of the UAW, Martin was, in fact, on Ford’s payroll, retained ostensibly as an in-house liaison to the increasingly restless workers.

Homer Martin is now little more than a footnote in the story of the rise of the UAW, having been outmaneuvered by the Reuther brothers and largely written out of the “official” history of the movement. A former Baptist minister, he had been fired by his rural Missouri congregation for outspoken support of workers who were pro-union. He then went to work in a Kansas City automobile plant and soon rose to the top of the fledgling labor movement. Known as “an orator of the evangelical, stem-winding school,” he could “draw fire from an audience.”

Under Homer Martin’s leadership, union membership experienced exponential growth in its early years. A strong anti-communist in a movement rife with socialists, Martin is largely characterized today as an incompetent leader and erratic personality. The truth may actually be that he was bitterly opposed by the Reuther brothers because of his religious faith and the strong support he had from southern workers who connected with his “preacher” persona. Whatever the case, though out of power he continued to spend significant time and energy on the labor cause in the auto industry. And he played an ironic role in the Rouge Plant strike.

As the walkout continued during the first week of April in 1941, Martin – at the urging of Harry Bennett - used his rhetorical skills to try to persuade strikers to quit and get back to work. Meanwhile, the Reverend J. Frank Norris, a fiery fundamentalist Texas preacher who was also pastor of a mammoth Detroit congregation, preached a sermon that was broadcast on WJR radio and printed word for word in the Detroit Times. Norris called the Rouge Plant strike the work of “revolutionaries” and “Bolsheviks,” and suggested that anyone participating in it was not being patriotic in light of the war clouds looming on the international horizon.

But on April 10th, Michigan Governor Murray Van Wagoner intervened and the strike was suspended. Mr. Ford was beat. For a brief time he pouted and moped around his 1,300-acre Fair Lane Estate in Dearborn - even threatening to shut his whole company down. But his wife Clara disabused him of the notion. And in a secret ballot – emphasis on that word secret – Ford workers elected to go into the UAW by a 97 percent vote.

Now, fast-forward sixty-seven years to current day. There is a curious and ominous piece of legislation floating around Washington, D.C. called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which has been nicknamed the “card check” bill. In effect, it would eliminate the idea of using the sanctity of the secret ballot for elections when employees of a company vote on the issue of whether or not to join a union.

So imagine you are working one day – and a guy comes along and says, “sign this.” Would you feel the pressure and the potential for intimidation?

Sadly, the UAW has in some ways become what they used to fight against – autocratic, coercive, intimidating, and manipulative. If such a bill passes and is signed by our 44th president, Harry Bennett wannabes will be back on the job, only this time they will twist arms for the unions. Even someone whose liberal bona fides are as unimpeachable as George McGovern thinks this is a terrible idea.

President –Elect Obama supports the EFCA. I would hate to think that democracy in America might one day find itself on a slippery slope toward becoming a “thugocracy.”

We are now at a crossroads. Labor unions grew during the Great Depression and peaked just after the Second World War. They have been in decline for years, but now as the economy tanks they seem to be getting another lease on life. The current scenario with the auto companies asking for money in Washington with one hand, while in the grip of the UAW with other, is going to yield powerful and revealing clues as to what the future will look like for American businesses.

The corporatism that came out of the New Deal, and took decades to even begin to undo, is knocking at the American door once again. And the man who, after January 20th, will be in a position to let labor back into the economic living room has already given every indication that he has a pro-union welcome mat in the moving van.

Be prepared to hear much more talk about “fair” competition than “free” competition. They are both four-letter words, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Long after the 1941 strike was settled (by the way, the company offered more generous terms than those the union was seeking), Henry Ford met with UAW leader Walter Reuther to congratulate the man now representing his workers. During an odd exchange, he told Reuther, “It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got UAW into this plant.” Caught by surprise by the comment, he asked, “How do you figure it?”

Henry Ford then told the man who became for a generation - Mr. UAW: “Well, you’ve been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you are here, and we have given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn’t it? We fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?”

His analysis may have been flawed – but then again, maybe the old man was on to something. I wonder what Henry Ford would think about company executives jetting privately to Washington to beg for money to “save” an industry he invented in his little backyard shop?

“Team Of Rivals” And The Clinton Chase

November 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, History, Obama administration, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

From Andrew Sullivan to TNN’s own Robert Nedelkoff, pundits and bloggers have been team-of-rivaling ever since the spring’s struggle between Sens. Clinton and Obama. The idea (”meme” is the word for it these days) comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s epic Team Of Rivals, which showed how Abraham Lincoln co-opted most of his opponents for the 1860 Republican nomination by bringing them into his administration, especially William Seward, the New Yorker who’d thought the nomination was his and yet ended up as Lincoln’s Secretary of State and most reliable, creative, and indeed loving colleague.

That might be the way it would go with powerful, thwarted New Yorker Clinton as Secretary of State, but it might not. The fly in the mustard sauce was the ruthlessly ambitious Salmon Chase. Lincoln made him Treasury secretary, from which post he did everything he could to undermine Lincoln’s Civil War leadership as he prepared to challenge him for the nomination in 1864. For instance, as Goodwin writes,

Lincoln told [his] worried [personal secretary John] Hay that he had “all along clearly seen [Chase's] plan of strengthening himself. Whenever he [sees] that an important matter is troubling me, if I am compelled to decide it in a way to give offense to a man of some influence he always ranges himself in opposition to me and persuades the victim that he has been hardly dealt by and that he (C.) would have arranged it very differently.

It was one thing for Chase to make trouble for Lincoln with generals and politicians. It would be another thing for Clinton to do it with world leaders. I’m not saying she would, though Dr. Gannon’s post is highly instructive about her unquenched thirsts. Team Of Rivals is a great book, not a foolproof Tony Robbins plan for unlimited political success. Obama may well have the temperament to make it work. But to paraphrase St. Paul, a team takes two or more.

Obama’s Cabinet of “Rivals”?

November 15, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Economic issues, History, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

The Associated Press today has an article by Calvin Woodward discussing the current speculation that President-elect Obama, known to have read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling study of Lincoln’s Cabinet Team Of Rivals, may follow the Great Emancipator’s example and bring in a number of his competitors for the White House into his inner circle.  Ah, anyone up for Chris Dodd as Attorney General, Dennis Kucinich at Health and Human Services, John Edwards at Education? I thought not.  But these aren’t the people that pundits have in mind, and not even Bill Richardson is the one who’s really got the pundits chatting.  The one “rival” everyone is thinking about is Sen. Hillary Clinton.   Will she serve as Secretary of State if asked?

The truth is that it’s hard to understand why Hillary would take the job, assuming she still has a run in mind for 2012.  Until the Civil War, the State Department was a major stepping-stone to the Presidency.  Jefferson, Madison, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren all moved on to be Chief Executive after serving as Secretary of State.

Then James Buchanan, who’d been Secretary of State a decade before, was elected President in 1856, and his performance during his term made the credential somewhat less appealing. No former Secretary of State has reached the Presidency since.  During the last century, only one former head of Foggy Bottom has made a serious run for the White House - Gen. Alexander M. Haig, when he undertook his short-lived bid in 1988.  And just one Cabinet member during that time has gone on to be President - Herbert Hoover, who was elected in 1928 after serving as Commerce Secretary. (Although one could argue that, as UN Ambassador under President Nixon, the elder George Bush held Cabinet rank.)

It is obvious that putting Hillary in charge of State would leave Vice President-elect Biden, with his vaunted foreign-policy credentials, out in the cold; he’d be lucky to get a meeting with the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan.  So I’m inclined to think that Obama, after he gives the matter some more thought, will go for someone with more hands-on diplomatic experience.

Woodward’s article, incidentally, contrasts Lincoln’s cabinet with Nixon’s; he describes the 37th President as being surrounded by “sycophants.”  To buttress that point he quotes Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel, who was obliged to leave the Cabinet after openly criticizing Administration policies.  It’s hard to believe the journalist has read extensively in the history of the Nixon White House.  In economic policy, there were substantial differences in the positions of such advisors as George Shultz, Herb Stein, John Connolly and Arthur Burns, and abundant evidence that consensus was reached only after careful discussion and, as they say, a vigorous exchange of views.  John Ehrlichman and Pat Buchanan, to name just two examples, didn’t agree with each other or the President on everything.  In the 1973-74 period, there were differences on how to approach the energy crisis.  The atmosphere of Nixon’s White House was hardly as filled with factionalism and disagreement as many of Lincoln’s cabinet meetings, but the range of opinion was certainly greater than in some other recent administrations.

An Unexpected “Nixonland” Review

November 13, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, History, National Security, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixonland Nitpicks, Richard Nixon, Terrorism, U.S. History, Watergate | 6 Comments 

It has now been about a half-year since Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland was published, and some time back I noticed that no review had appeared in The American Spectator, a magazine avidly read by the 37th President and usually not a place where major books about him go unnoticed.

Well, Perlstein’s book is finally discussed in TAS’s November issue, which you’ll have to buy or browse at a store, for it’s not online. The author of the review is none other than Tom Charles Huston - one of the most important figures in Young Americans For Freedom in the mid-1960s, associate counsel at the Nixon White House during the administration’s first two years, and, of course, author of the 1970 “Huston Plan” which presented a comprehensive proposal for coordination of the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and local law enforcement to combat the threat to the United States posed by violent antiwar and anti-government radicals, such as the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground.

This plan was never implemented primarily because of objections from the aging J. Edgar Hoover, who viewed it as a threat to the FBI’s autonomy, and Huston left government service in 1971 to become an attorney in his native Indianapolis, where he has practiced ever since. During the last 37 years he has been prominent in efforts to preserve the Hoosier State’s historical sites, but has not been heard from concerning the years in which he was an up-and-coming figure on the political stage. Possibly as a result of this silence, he has tended to be among the figures most demonized in the vast anti-Nixon literature, especially after 1973 when his “plan” came to public notice during the Senate Watergate hearings.

But it now appears that Huston is ready to come out of the cold, so to speak. Earlier this year I was surprised to find his name among the list of interviewees in James Rosen’s fine biography of John Mitchell, The Strong Man, and even more surprised when Rosen told me that Huston had spoken at considerable length about his White House years, though little from this talk appeared in the finished volume, which focused on the period after Huston left Washington. And, to judge from the TAS review of Nixonland, Huston has much more to say.

The review vigorously pans Perlstein’s book, to such a degree that it makes Conrad Black’s scathing New York Sun notice almost look like a Harriet Klausner five-star puff from Amazon. After listing such descriptions in the book as Strom Thurmond being called a “dirty-neck” and Robert Kennedy referred to as “Senator Love Beads,” Huston remarks: “This sort of language may be pitch-perfect for a duet with Keith Olbermann on Countdown but is hardly appropriate for an allegedly serious work of history.”

“There is a point at which the frequency of factual errors raises the legitimate question of whether the author is a scholar or transcriber,” the reviewer continues, and then cites a half-dozen examples, including several that even escaped Jack Pitney’s watchful eye. Huston also takes issue with Perlstein’s beloved Orthogonians-vs-Franklins dichotomy, noting that the historian uses the terms as “trap doors through which the author conveniently disposes of men and ideas he is unwilling to confront on their own terms.”

Toward the end of the review Huston takes strong exception to Perlstein’s argument that the Nixon years represented a battle between two equally sized, equally bloody-minded factions for the soul of the Republic:

The decade of the 1960s was the most turbulent in America since that which began with John Brown’s Kansas raids and ended at Appomattox Courthouse. There was a lot of anger, a lot of goofiness, and an indecent amount of violence. It commenced on Lyndon Johnson’s watch, during the high tide of liberalism. Richard Nixon didn’t cause it; he inherited it. The deranged landscape of the 1960s was the product of a liberalism untethered from common sense and good judgment, which elicited a reaction that was often ill considered and ill advised but was hardly homicidal. There were, of course, extremists who resorted to violence and haters who, while less lethal, were nonetheless menacing, but these were outriders, not mainstreamers. The very notion that the mass of Americans were prepared to kill each other over their political and cultural differences is more than nonsense; it is a calumny.

One wonders if Huston, when he speaks of an “ill-considered and ill-advised” reaction to rampant New Leftism, is thinking in retrospect about his “plan” which provided, on the assumption that extraconstitutional measures were needed to combat violent radicals, for the opening of mail, wiretaps, and an increased use of campus informants. (It is a little-remembered fact that some of the Libertarian Party’s founders-to-be were among Huston’s closest associates in the YAF, which would suggest that his 1970 proposals were intended to be a response to a wartime crisis and applicable only for the duration such a threat existed.) It may be that, as his professional career winds down, we’ll be hearing more from him in the future. Which is all for the best, since he was among the genuine intellectuals in the Nixon White House and, as his review makes clear, has read extensively and carefully in American history and can take the long view regarding the era in which he played a brief but significant part.

The Republican Wilderness: Four Years - or Forty?

November 13, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Culture, Election 2008, Election 2012, History, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, & Ronald Reagan, has entered the proverbial wilderness. It moves from the box seats to the cheap seats, or better - to mix the metaphor a bit – the backbenches.

How Republicans handle this exile, and just how long the era lasts, will depend largely on what is done with and in the wilderness.

The idea of a wilderness period as a picture of exile is actually much older than American politics, or even anything from our ancestors across the pond. It is a concept dating back to Biblical history and the frustrations and wanderings of the ancient children of Israel. Poised to enter the “Promised Land” of abundance and fulfillment following centuries of bondage and privation, and in the wake of the clearly providential exodus led by Moses, that generation fell tragically short.

They missed their rendezvous with destiny.

Entering the wilderness – a place, but also a process - they lived out a forty-year reminder of what had left been behind, while also grieving the loss of a compelling future. They had allowed short-term frustration to short-circuit long-held principles and dreams.

And the Lord told them in the book of Deuteronomy that the reason for the wilderness was, “to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart.” In other words, the wilderness for them was a divinely ordained “time out” – the kind of thing my dad would do when he sent me to my room to “think about” what I had done (when it was really all my brother’s fault).

The wilderness was a time for purging and preparing. Attitudes, habits, and ambitions had to be dealt with, and priorities revisited and clarified. The duration of the wilderness depended on how well the lessons were learned. In that ancient case, a journey that should have taken no more than a year became a forty-year generational failure.

And something that was lost, forgotten, or just misplaced, desperately needed to be found.

As the Republican Party moves into its own desert of exile for a while, it is time for reflection. It needs to figure out what it really stands for and what it can offer the nation the next time it is called upon to lead. How it manages in the wilderness will determine whether it will come back in four years, or forty - if at all.

That another such time will come is, of course, almost inevitable – not just because of very real concerns about the capacity of recent victors to translate historically flawed policies into real success, but because of the inherent cycles of politics. What happened on November 4th was due nearly as much to the tendency of politics and history to repeat themselves and the public’s tendency to soon tire of anyone on center stage, as it was a mandate for real “yes, we can” change.

Writing in the book, In the Arena: A Memoir of Defeat and Renewal, the late and former president Richard Nixon dedicated a chapter to the phenomenon of the wilderness. He knew a thing or two about the ups and downs and ins and outs of political life. The period between his loss in the governor’s race in 1962 and the winning of the White House in 1968, is a textbook case of how to come back from the kind of defeat that tempts opponents to write someone off permanently.

Nixon mentioned something described by Arnold Toynbee in his, Study of History, described as “the phenomenon of withdrawal…a disengagement and temporary withdrawal of the creative personality from his social milieu and his subsequent return to the same milieu transfigured in a new capacity with new powers.” Throughout history, great leaders demonstrated this. Certainly Nixon did and clearly identified with others who went through deep valleys.

In the 1991 movie, City Slickers, Billy Crystal and his best friends head out west looking for adventure. Crystal’s wife in the film wanted him to, while moving cattle from point A to B, along the way find something. Something he had lost. Something he needed to recover. His smile. The movie ended happily with said smile finding its way back to Billy’s face.

For the Republicans, they do not need to find something as insignificant as a group smile. Rather, they should be looking for something much more vital if they are to have a real shot at coming back from this wilderness.

The key to this is found in another place where the ancient scriptures mention a wilderness. We learn about this from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, when in the 40th chapter of his book we come across the vital phrase, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

No doubt Winston Churchill, another frequent wilderness wanderer, identified with this little phrase during his years as a political has-been in the 1930s. He had no power, no position, and no prospects.

But he found his “voice” – and began to warn his countrymen about Hitler and dangers to come. Later, when he once again found himself in forced exile, having been voted out of office in the Labor sweep just a couple of months after the victory had been won in Europe, he found his “voice” again. This time he did not speak in the House of Commons, but rather in the gymnasium of a small college in the American mid-west. From that unlikely pulpit in the wilderness he cried out about an “iron curtain.”

The Republicans have clearly found the wilderness. Now they need to find their voice.

The GOP needs to figure out what it wants to be if and when it grows back up. Are ideas like limited government, the free market, and at least an interest in understanding the relationship between the morality of personal responsibility and self-discipline and the ills of the larger culture – now officially gone forever?

The word paradigm comes from the Greek language and the word paradeigma. It basically means a perception, or frame of reference – a lens through which to interpret reality. Author Steven Covey in his book, The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (hint: the eighth habit is “finding your voice”), insists that “if you want to make minor incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvements, work on paradigms.”

The time for tweaking is past. As the nation readies itself to enter a new era of “bold experimentation” under an activist Obama administration, it is time for the party now finding itself in the political wilderness to find what it has lost. By definition, something lost is not something new – it is something once possessed.

Republicans can find their voice during the wilderness period, but to do so will require a willingness to have the wisdom and humility to make a paradigm shift, one that surely involves a quantum journey back to the future. The must find what once worked – and has been lost.

And if anyone thinks that the idea of going to the past to find something that will resonate in the future is not politically feasible, please remember this: America just elected a guy who advocates policies and programs that failed 75 years ago.

Oswald Had 11 Seconds

November 12, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under History, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

It had already begun.

Vitally important insights about President Kennedy’s assassination from scholar Max Holland, on his Washington Decoded website. Holland ellaborates a breathtaking finding he first announced last year: That the President’s assassination had begin before Abraham Zapruder began making his chilling home movie. Thanks to Holland’s findings, which he today bolsters with additional evidence, we know that lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had more time to fire his three shots than experts had once believed.

A gift to history. A rebuke of Oliver Stone and conspiracy peddlers everywhere.

Armistice Day Plus 90

November 11, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under History, Military, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Orange High School Concert Choir at Veteran’s Day ceremonies at the Nixon Library

Today, Veterans Day, was originally established as a holiday to mark the day that World War I ended and, until 1954, went by the name Armistice Day.

Ninety years have passed since hostilities ceased at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eighteenth year of the twentieth century.  At the moment of ceasefire, over 50 million men and women were living that had served in the armed forces of the nations involved in the conflict; around 10 million, on both sides, had died between 1914 and 1918.

Today, seven men from that number are known to be alive.  (The last woman who took part in the war died in August - Gladys Powers, who served as a nurse for Great Britain.)  Three of these are British (including 112-year-old Henry Allingham, the last founding member of the Royal Air Force); one served in the Australian army; another served in the British army and emigrated to Australia; and another served in the Canadian army and emigrated to the United States.

The seventh, Frank Buckles, who served as an ambulance driver at the age of 17 in the Allied Expeditionary Force, is the last American veteran of “the war to end all wars,” living in Charles Town, West Virginia - less than an hour’s drive from Arlington National Cemetery, to which he traveled today to lay a wreath at the grave of Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of American forces on the Western front.  In a recent interview he noted that his family tended toward longevity - two of his aunts living to be over 100 - and commented, “I knew that I was going to be one of the last veterans of the war, but I never expected that I would be the last one.”

On his trip to Arlington, the old soldier was accompanied by David DeJonge, a photographer who has been capturing the images of the last veterans of the war in recent years.

Art Imitates Life

November 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In honor of Veterans Day, New York Times film critic A. O. Scott devotes this week’s “Critic’s Choice” to Franklin N. Schaffner’s 1970 masterpiece Patton.

The film won seven Academy Awards — including the Best Actor Oscar for George C. Scott.

The canard widespread at the time —and which still exists in benighted quarters today— was that RN saw the film a few, dozens, or scores of times (depending on the credulity, superficiality, and/or bias of the author) and then, puffed up with macho vainglory, invaded Cambodia.

Of course, that reflected, and reflects, the easy and comfortable and totally inaccurate notion that RN was an unsophisticated man of a kind whose simplistic jingoism could be triggered by a movie.

It is true that RN saw the film shortly after it was released at the beginning of April; that he was deeply impressed and moved by it; and that he watched it several times at the White House and Camp David during and after the Cambodian campaign, which began on the 29th (and planning for which had begun long before the film arrived).

And it’s true that Patton, the film and the man, glorified and gloried in some of the aspects and elements of war.  

But the overall tone of the film was one of frustration and melancholy. Indeed, its conclusion is far more likely to lead a viewer to book a spiritual retreat than to order an invasion.   

Patton does, in fact, have some things (not that many, but some) to reveal about RN. But they are, typically, complex and contrary to the conventional wisdom.

I have long suggested to people who say that they want to understand Richard Nixon, that they might start with three things: read Charles DeGaulle’s The Edge of the Sword; listen to the music from the multi-episode award-winning 1952 about the Second World War, Victory at Sea; and watch Patton.

The good news is that The Edge of the Sword is available from Amazon; the bad news is that the prices currently start at $599.94.  So, at least until a new edition is published or you get very lucky in a used book store, you’ll just have to take my word on that one.

A. O. Scott’s video review of Patton in today’s Times online is a good introduction to a really great movie.

RN listened —often late at night in the Lincoln Sitting Room— to the first suite Robert Russell Bennet arranged (from his own arrangements)  Richard Rodgers’ score.

There are fourteen themes that roughly outline the history of the war — from “The Pacific Boils Over” to “Victory at Sea”.  The music is alternately sad, stirring, and inspiring.

Here’s the opening of the series.  The theme under the credits is “The Song of the High Seas.”

Featured Articles — November 10, 2008

November 10, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles, History | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

G.O.P. Dog Days? By William Kristol
Sure, the election results had been bad — but they weren’t devastating. Obama wasn’t winning the popular vote by double-digit margins, as some polls had suggested he might. Republican losses in the Senate and House were substantial but not catastrophic.

Hugo Chávez Spreads the Loot By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Venezuelan businessman Franklin Durán sat perfectly still last week, staring straight ahead, as a Miami jury pronounced him guilty of acting illegally as an agent for Venezuela on U.S. soil. He could be sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Bold Is Good By E. J. Dionne Jr.
What Obama Could Learn From Reagan.

Don’t Repeat Errors of New Deal By Amity Shlaes
THE historical model that the Democrats are choosing to hold up as they ponder our financial crisis isn’t Harry Truman’s Fair Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. It is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. At least three economic reforms under discussion now were also central in the New Deal package. Trouble is, these reforms didn’t necessarily work well when they were first tried - and some failed outright.

Holding Pattern By John Barry
Relax, Obama—foreign policy’s stalled at the moment.

The Shadow President by Michael Crowley
How John Podesta invented the Obama administration.

What Obama’s Victory Means for Racial Politics By Juan Williams
Barack Obama’s election is both an astounding political victory — and the end of an era for black politics.

The Polls Show That Reaganism Is Not Dead By Scott Rasmussen
Barack Obama won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates.

Introducing Karl Polanyi By Adrian Pabst
Step aside, Keynes: the only economist to grasp the real limitations of capitalism and socialism was Hungarian.

20 Years Ago: The Wind Of Change

November 9, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Music | Leave a Comment 

Twenty years ago today —9 November 1989— the German Democratic Republic finally read the writing on the wall (literally and figuratively) and announced that open travel would be permitted between East and West Berlin and East and West Germany.

This was the beginning of the end — the implosion/disintegration/collapse of communism. Depending on how you look at it, this was either an apotheosis of freedom or “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.

The move to commemorate November 9th by making it a national holiday was bolstered by the fact that the first German —Weimar— Republic had been declared on 9 November 1918.  However, 9 November was also shared by Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and the 1938 Kristallnacht.  And that’s why Unity Day is now celebrated on October 3rd — when the formal union was declared in 1990.

It was November 9th, however, that inspired Klaus Meine, lead singer of Scorpions —a Hanover-based heavy metal band— to write “Wind of Change.”   Considered to be the song of national unification, it was recently chosen by German TV viewers as the song of the century.  It’s the biggest selling song in German history.  The Number One hit in Germany and much of Europe, it reached #4 here in the USA.

The band had performed in Moscow a few months earlier when it was already clear that something big could be about to happen.  The lyrics describe what they saw as they walked through the evil imperial capital that night: “I follow the Moskva/down to Gorky Park/listening to the wind of change.”

  

Of course the Scorpions weren’t alone in commemorating the November 9th moment.  A few weeks later, on Christmas Day,  Leonard Bernstein conducted an orchestra of musicians from East and West Germany in an Ode to Freedom– a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony  (in honor of the occasion the Maestro modestly redirected Schiller’s classic Ode from Freude to Freiheit).

 

1968: Lyndon, Dick, and Billy

November 7, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Faith, History, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Religion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Forty years ago, in the wake of the hard-fought 1968 presidential election, the nation faced what many assumed would be a turbulent transition. But it did not turn out that way. Whatever happened later, the country moved from what had been the one of the most divisive campaigns in our history, to a comparatively calm and remarkably orderly (considering the times) transfer of power.

This was due, in large part, to the combined and concerted efforts of two savvy politicians and a preacher.

President’s Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon have long since passed to their rewards, but the preacher is still alive and kicking. His name is Billy Graham, and he was born 90 years ago today on November 7, 1918, just four days before the guns fell silent ending what was then optimistically called the War to End All Wars.

In their book, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy chronicle the evangelist’s journey from White House visitor, to presidential confidant. Beginning with a somewhat embarrassing Oval Office meeting with Harry Truman - one that brought out the president’s profane side - he went on to learn the ropes during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. By the time LBJ was in charge, Billy was a regular over-night guest at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Presidents loved to pick his brain. Eisenhower once asked him, “How do I know if I’ll go to heaven?” Jack Kennedy inquired about the second coming of Christ and wondered, “Why doesn’t my church teach it.” When Graham indicated that the doctrine was written in Roman Catholic creeds, JFK complained, “They don’t tell us much about it, I’d like to know what you think.” Johnson wanted to know if he would see his parents in heaven.

It was well into the morning of Wednesday, November 6, 1968 before ABC projected Richard Nixon as the winner over Hubert Humphrey (and George Wallace). The president-elect watched the returns at New York’s Waldorf Hotel. He had invited Graham to spend the evening with him, but the evangelist declined, adding: “If you lose, I will be ready to come over and have prayer with you.”

He did not lose, but he called Billy anyway and asked him to come over and pray before he went downstairs to meet with the press and talk to the nation. Entering the suite on the hotel’s thirty-fifth floor, the preacher met the president-elect, his wife Pat, and their daughters. They all joined hands as Graham prayed. The preacher specifically offered thanks for the vital spiritual influence of Nixon’s mother, who had passed away a little more than a year before. Hannah Nixon was the first to tell her son about Billy Graham after hearing him speak in Los Angeles in 1949. The evangelist had conducted her funeral.

The 1968 morning-after scene was very different from the one six years earlier when, after losing the race for governor in California, Nixon gave what he called his “last press conference.” There is no evidence that there was a hotel-suite prayer meeting that morning.

Soon after Graham’s prayer, Richard M. Nixon faced the nation for the first time as president-elect. Most memorable, and appropriate for the moment, was his reference to a sign he saw “at the end of a long day of whistle-stopping” in diminutive Deshler, Ohio. It said: “Bring us together.” He then indicated that this would be the great goal of his administration.

I am sure some reading this now may find such words to be cynical, ironic, - even sappy. But they were words “fitly spoken” and uttered in good faith. The American political reflex is to run from rancor to graciousness after a fierce battle – like weary boxers managing the arm-strength to embrace each other following the final bell.

This is something the country needs. Sure, it all eventually gives way to our default position of partisanship, but such “warm fuzzy” moments should be seized, whether “our” candidate won or lost. They are good for us – and for our children.

Not to mention our blood pressure.

I find myself sad that President-Elect Obama’s grandmother did not live to see him win. I also enjoy the “cute” moments as the Obama family begins to find a place in all of our hearts and prayers. I even like the whole “new puppy” thing. And I know that the young African-Americans in my congregation have a new reference point for achievement and success. I know also that their parents and grandparents are very proud that we have come so far as a nation. A dream has come true. This is historic and important. Let us all stop and smell the roses – it is definitely quite something to behold. I really like this stuff.

I am a conservative, just not a grinch about it.

I am sure there will be issues and policies that prompt me to speak out – but that does not take anything away from how fascinating this political moment is. Mr. Obama has my support – but more importantly – he has my prayers. I may be part of an eventual loyal opposition, but the accent will be on loyal.

But back to 1968, interestingly - though Billy Graham was a friend of the president-elect forty years ago, the man who was still president did not seem to mind sharing the preacher. In fact, Lyndon Johnson invited Billy Graham to spend his last weekend in the White House with him January 18-19, 1969. One evening he watched a movie with LBJ and his family, The Shoes of the Fisherman, starring Anthony Quinn. When the president dozed off mid-film, Billy quietly went to the projectionist and asked him to keep the reels around, thinking Nixon would like it.

The president and the evangelist went to church together on Sunday, January 19th. The next day, during the inauguration of the 37th president, Billy Graham delivered the invocation. Then, following Nixon’s address – as the Johnson’s quietly left the stage – the now ex-president’s daughters kissed the preacher. And Billy went back to the White House and spent the night with the Nixons on January 20th – completing a sleepover hat trick.

The following Sunday, President Nixon began a custom of holding worship services in the White House. The first clergyman to officiate was, of course, Billy Graham.

It seems to me that Billy Graham found the balance. He managed to stay faithful to the simple gospel message, even when surrounded by the seductive trappings of power. The man of God found a way to connect with politicians in a way that earned their respect and opened doors for personal ministry.

Maybe, just maybe, this is something Christian leaders should reflect on right now. The so-called Religious Right is a thing of the past. It was once a well-defined movement. Now it appears to be dissipating like a weakening storm somewhere over America’s heartland.

Some are sad about this. Some are very discouraged. I am not. My views have not changed. I am ardently pro-life, fiercely pro-American, and passionate about limited government. And I will stand for what I believe and work for causes I consider worthwhile and just.

I have never been comfortable with the politicization of church. In fact, some who read my columns might find it hard to believe, but I actually do not preach politics at church. The closest I come is to talk about the pro-life issue – which I do with passion, but not as a partisan thing. I never endorse candidates. I vote for Jesus every Sunday.

I think this election is a wake up call to many Christians – one that reminds us that, in the final analysis, our mandate is not to reform society via the ballot box, state house, or White House, but rather to proclaim the ultimate narrative, the one that really changes lives. In other words: “It’s the gospel, stupid.” We can’t get everything we want, all the time, at the ballot box, but we can always find comfort in the fact that the mercy and grace of God are sufficient.

Billy Graham has been a faithful servant of God and citizen of America. In a very Kipling-esque sense, he has walked with presidents, but he has never lost his “common touch.”

Happy Birthday, Billy!

Revolutionary Church at Midday

November 1, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Episcopal Church, Faith, History | 1 Comment 

Bruton Parish Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, Va, November 1, 2008

Built in 1715, the Bruton Parish served as a sanctuary to legendary revolutionaries including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson , Richard Henry Lee, George Wythe, Patrick Henry, and George Mason.
 

Charisma and Promises to Keep

October 31, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, National Security, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

I voted early this week - but just the once. We are being told that one of the unique things about the election this year is the fact that about one third of all ballots cast are via various forms of early voting. This is certainly unprecedented. The Commonwealth of Virginia, where I live in Fairfax County, requires someone desiring to vote early to affirm a reason for not being able to do so on Tuesday, November 4th. They range from being responsible for the care of another, to travel. It is a travel issue with us. My wife and I head to Ohio to watch all the fun there this Tuesday.

The trend toward such significant early voting is also uncharted territory for the integrity of elections themselves. It remains to be seen if this development will lead to greater voter confidence in the process, or further confusion, conflict, and potential destabilization. All indications are that early Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans. Part of this is due to a determined effort on the part of the Obama-Biden campaign to get out the early vote.

By definition, early voters are not undecided. We have not only decided, we have expressed that decision through the sanctity of the secret ballot. It follows, therefore, that those still undecided have not yet voted. Therefore, with more than 30 percent of decided voters already finished with the only poll that really matters, the portion of undecided voters may actually be statistically significant.

It also means that both campaigns still have an opportunity to win converts.

I suggest that one important question every voter – especially those yet undecided – should ask is: “Will John McCain or Barack Obama be better at keeping promises made during the campaign?” It has been a year of promises. “Ask not what your country can do for you – demand it!”

We have been promised tax cuts, spending cuts, new programs, war plans, and much more. Every American needs to remember that it is a very rare thing for a politician to keep every promise. Sometime next year, no matter who wins on Tuesday, our new president will have to face the American people with the news that it can’t all be done.

Sorry folks. Forget how we will be doing four years from now. How will the new occupant of the White House be doing in four months? Will Obama stay closer to campaign message or will McCain?

History tells us that voters do not always take unfulfilled promises in stride. George Herbert Walker Bush never recovered from the outcry after he broke his “read my lips” pledge and, in fact, raised taxes. Lyndon Johnson promised not to send American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. The Vietnam War broke him. They even came up with a name for the breaking of a presidential promise back then – “credibility gap.”

Mr. Johnson might have preferred the more benign: “I uttered a terminological inexactitude.”

The granddaddy of all promise breakers to become president was Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. When he ran against Herbert Hoover in 1932, much of his rhetoric and emphasis had to do with things that never actually happened in his administration. Just a few weeks before his election, he was calling government spending “reckless and extravagant.” He told Americans: “I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign.” He also promised to “reduce the cost of current federal government operations by 25 percent.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

When FDR took office in March of 1933, he raced to the left and stayed there. He sold the people on it because circumstances had gotten worse. He was prepared to ask for broad “executive” powers to lead the nation out of the crisis. And he sacrificed his promises of fiscal responsibility on the altar of populism.

By doing so, he ensured that times would not get better. But he got away with it. The man who became president during our nation’s greatest economic crisis did not at all resemble the man who asked for votes in the prior election. Will the same thing happen if a man who talks about current problems as being the worst since The Great Depression is elected this time around?

Once elected, leaders tend to default to their real selves and comfort zones. There is a certain hubris, a “we won” or “it’s our turn” kind of spirit. It happens to Democrats and Republicans. Remember when George W. Bush spoke out against “nation building” in the 2000 campaign? How about his promise for “compassionate conservatism” and the disappearance of “partisanship” in Washington?

What does this all mean for us right now? Well, again – we must choose a person who can be trusted to keep as many of his promises as possible. We also need someone who, when having to make the tough choices about what promises to keep and the ones to discard during difficult times, will have the courage to resist the clamor from core constituencies.

Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama, when faced with a push-to-shove kind of choice, will opt to do anything that would risk his image as a populist hero of the downtrodden? He will move, with lightening-speed, to the left if given the chance.

He will be the kind of president Huey Long would have been, but instead of the Kingfish’s “Share the Wealth” mantra, it will be “Spread the Wealth.” And he will have another thing going for him that both FDR and Long had.

Barack’s got charisma. It is that magic something that gets people to want to believe on the way to believing. It is fascinating to watch, but whenever it has emerged in chaotic times, it has been ultimately ugly.

A discussion of charisma, as part of the study of sociology, was first introduced by Max Weber early in the 20th century. He identified it as “an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed.” He indicated that it implied “a relationship between the great man and the followers.” In a charismatic environment, “whatever the leader says, whatever he asks, is right, even if it is self-contradictory. It is right, because the leader has said it.” The follower develops “a devotion born of distress and enthusiasm.”

He also suggested that charismatic leadership tends to rise up against the backdrop of a chaotic “social milieu.” In other words, bad times, confusing times, chaotic times are fertile moments for this kind of leadership.

During the Great Depression the nation was ripe for demagogues. They always turn up when leading cultural and economic indicators trail down. Huey Long was one such man. In his excellent book, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and The Great Depression, historian Alan Brinkley describes the man from Louisiana as someone “evoking an almost religious adulation from many of the poor and struggling.” He quotes one reporter at the time as saying: “They do not merely vote for him, they worship the ground he walks on. He is part of their religion.”

Of course, it remains to be seen what will happen, but if Barack Obama is elected and the economy has not improved by the time he takes the oath of office, watch for him to move left and stay there. He will keep the promises that tend to enhance his charismatic stature as a champion of the frustrated. He will sacrifice promises he made about tax cuts as irrelevant to the new reality he will inherit.

Mr. Obama’s meteoric rise to the threshold of political power should give Americans pause. A man who would likely not be able to get a security clearance if he tried to get a job with the CIA or FBI, may very well be elected president on Tuesday.

We live in “interesting times,” as Robert Kennedy used to say. But, of course, he was quoting an old Chinese curse.

Curatorial Bipartisanship

October 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under History, Nixon Library, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The Nixon’s Library’s new exhibition, Called Upon By The Voice Of My Country: Inaugurations As History, Ritual, And Celebration, opened tonight. Above: RN sworn in by Earl Warren, 1969; and Bill Clinton by William Rehnquist, 1997.

“If The President Does It, That Means It’s Legal”

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under History, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Andrew P. Napolitano on Presidents’ extra-Constitutional instincts.

Teaching, Not Preaching

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, History | Leave a Comment 

From Ann Fisher, a fascinating account of how a teacher brought history and politics to life in the classroom. Key to the magic: The teacher grasping that his personal opinions didn’t matter.

Ed Nixon, Please Call The RNC

October 22, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Whoa:

1928.

The last time the Republicans won an election for the White House without a George Bush or Richard Nixon on the party’s ticket.

The Speech

October 22, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, History, Media, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Words matter. It was said that Lyndon Johnson had little regard for “the integrity of words.” Sadly, that is how it is with many politicians. But at the end of the day, though we have many ways to examine a particular candidate, it comes back much of the time to words.

The spoken word, as in “speech-making,” is still relevant. Would, for example, Barack Obama be running for the presidency if he had not been tapped to give that keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004?

We really have not changed that much in our history. For all of our technology, and the gadgetry of the Internet age – we are still moved by a good speech. Like the one Sarah Palin gave at the Republican National Convention in September.

So, here we are in late October – going through our quadrennial ritual. We are tracking polls. We are listening to talking heads. And we are bracing ourselves for th