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The praise heaped on the late Senator Teddy Kennedy this week reminded me of another man lost to history for most of us. Kennedy, despite his faults, was loved and respected by his conservative, moderate and liberal peers. By his constituency he was known not only for his unbridled compassion but, also as a man who could get things done. How could someone so apparently liberal stay on good speaking terms with conservatives and actually pass legislation?
Ole Teddy stole a page from someone’s playbook whose name I’ll bet you have never heard.
The man’s name was George Mason. Mason was one of the five most frequent speakers at a little gathering held to write a constitution for a new nation. This constitution would be cut from whole cloth. There had been nations and nation-states which were governed with similar values but, this convention would end up constructing a government never before seen. Mason however would not sign the new Constitution of the United States of America.
Mason believed the Constitution gave the government too much power. He lobbied for a Bill of Rights but, was overruled by the federalist including the future president James Madison. Civility, in the face of bitter disagreement was the mark of our founding fathers and especially Mason. Madison was quoted as saying, “was chiefly on occasional visits to Gunston (Mason’s home on the road between Williamsburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) when journeying to & fro from the North, in which his conversations were always a feast to me.” This was apparently true because in one of his first acts as an inaugural congressman, Madison introduced the Bill of Rights which was very similar to the Bill of Rights Mason penned for the State of Virginia and championed at the Constitutional Convention.
Convention, to be sure, was never Teddy Kennedy’s trademark. He befriended his political foes, took his political lemons and made the best lemonade bill possible. In general, Kennedy was the master of civility and believed fully in the art of compromise. To truly compromise as our founding fathers did, Kennedy understood the value of giving his political foes the benefit of the doubt. He was honest about his dreams for America and expected the same from people like Senator Orrin Hatch who said:
“…And he had more control over the Democrat Party base than anybody else. He’s the only one who could bring them along on issues that were — you know, that were down the middle and really bipartisan, but he could bring them along. They would have to listen to him. And part of that was because he led so many purely liberal battles on the floor, lost a lot of them, but he also won on a lot of them, too.”
Kennedy was much like Mason. He had the conviction of his ideas. He thought he could actually bring even Hatch around. On many occasions Hatch and others did lend their support. He was patient and never missed the chance to make even a rival a friend.
The moderate in me celebrates the life of Teddy Kennedy. Not because I completely agree with his vision of America but, because he practiced the best in the art of the compromise. It worked for Mason on perhaps one of most divisive and important documents ever drafted. I hope, for the sake of our country, Senator Kennedy’s spirit will bless our next generation of leaders. I hope those leaders regardless of political ideology will practice the fine art of compromise.
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Tonight I listened to NPR’s Daniel Schorr wondering if there was “any light at the end of this darkening tunnel.” His function for NPR is “news analysis.” After his analysis, I needed some psycho-analysis. Before I jump off the bridge, however, I will attempt to go a little bit farther toward the answer he seeks. His only consolation was to hope President-Elect, Barack Obama could lead as well as we had all hoped.
I submit Obama can’t cure our ills without our help. What we need is a river of Ritalin and some focus. Americans have the attention span of a kitten in a room full of catnip filled balls. Most of the time, this phenomena is a cute distraction. An example of this distraction is our kids who would rather send a text message because it saves time. It becomes sad and dangerous when our national ADHD affects policy. Our abandonment of Afghanistan after the Soviet Union withdrew in the eighties is an excellent example of how we as a people can jerk a mandate away from our leaders in a heartbeat. Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those left-wingers who believe we were partially responsible for 911. I think, however, had we not ignored Afghanistan, our lives would be much easier today. Afghanistan is just one more in a long line of examples of our inability to focus on something long enough to finish the job. Ironically, another of those examples, energy policy, faces us today.
Faced with dollar and a half gas, we have an opportunity to reduce our dependence on oil. Reducing dependence will take money just as it takes money to dry out an alcoholic. You can bet we will get amnesia about four dollar gas when there is an attempt to tax gas to the three dollar level. There will be those refuse to pay another cent. They would rather give it to petroleum exporting countries than spend the money trying to break our addiction. Americans were focused completely on energy policy when gas was four dollars a gallon. Now that gas is back to 2003 levels, we want our Hummers back. When a tax is mentioned, we will listen to anyone who will justify the status quo and ignore all arguments to the contrary.
Contrary to how it looks today, Wall Street and the banking system will rise from its ashes. When that day comes, it will be time to revamp our regulation of the financial system. Our collective amnesia will again make us susceptible to free market worshiping interests. They will tell us how well the free market works and we will forget all about the two trillion dollars* it took to fix the last free market orgy. Again, while the house is on fire, we are totally focused on the problem and are willing to give our leaders a mandate for action. Once the house is rebuilt, we could care less about keeping it from burning down again.
Daniel Schorr hopes for the hero of hope. I say the hero is or memory. Let’s resurrect our collective memories and give support to those who would help us fix our problems. In the coming days, right wingers will ask us to abdicate our personal responsibility which they regularly champion. They will ask us to let the lobbyist and other financial interest write legislation which will effectively allow the fox to guard the hen house. Left wingers will take the opportunity to make us feel guilty for our success as a nation. They will ask us to redistribute oil money and regulate the market engine into oblivion. We should resist these impulses however good it may make us feel. We should help the new President build a consensus and stick with it. When our pocketbooks feel the pinch of three dollar gas and higher mortgage rates due to common sense regulation, we should stick with the program.
* My guess of the final tally of economic stimulus and bank welfare it will take to recover from this mess.
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It has been funny seeing Eric Holder labeled as a partisan hack for his apparent involvement in the pardon of Marc Rich. Holder is President-Elect Barack Obama’s nominee for Attorney General. The media attention only serves to remind some Democrats about another truly partisan AG, Mr. Alberto Gonzales.
Gonzales represented the beginning of a new cynical chapter in American politics. Some Democrats believe President Bush allowed (instructed) Karl Rove to use the Justice Department as a sort of political Gestapo. There are really three incidents those Democrats point to when they level this charge. The first is the federal prosecution of former Alabama Governor, Don Siegelman. Some Republican operatives have made sworn statements saying Rove directly instructed one of Alabama’s United States Attorneys to “take care of” Siegelman. The firing of eight other U.S. Attorneys is the second thing mentioned by many Democrats. They believe those attorneys were fired because they were not partisan enough to pursue other Democrat witch hunts in other states. Finally, those Democrats point to a recruitment policy which clearly had a partisan and ideological litmus test as condition of employment. They say the Bush Administration dreamed of a day when the permanent career officers of the Justice Department would all be conservative ideologues.
Liberal ideologues have been disappointed in the President-Elect’s cabinet choices so far. They cover their disappointment by saying Obama was the candidate of change and his appointments didn’t look a lot like Obama planned to change anything. Many of these liberal thinkers refuse to give Obama points for pragmatism in the face of extraordinary times. They want a voice in a government they feel has been too right too long.
So, is the nomination of Holder just another pragmatic appointment of a person with the experience to do the job in very trying times or is Obama sending the liberals a message? What is that message? Should Karl Rove find a nice home in a country with no extradition treaty? Is Holder considered partisan enough to do the job? If the democrats who want to continue a war they feel the Bush Administration started they might feel Rove’s involvement is Blood in the water.
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If you have ever wondered why we, as the American Silent Majority, are under-represented, you need to look no further than this presidential election. Although this website is devoted to solutions and not personalities or parties, the political evolution of Senator John McCain has become an irresistible cautionary tale. It is cautionary because his evolution illustrates nicely what is wrong with the American Silent Majority.
John McCain, for most of his political career, might have been considered a friend of the American Silent Majority. He was a solutions man. He tended to be less interested in ideology or party and more interested in how to fix a problem. In his 2000 campaign he talked about “building a bigger Republican Party”. That was code for dragging the wingers kicking and screaming toward the moderate middle. He backed his dream of a more inclusive Republican Party with his rhetoric. McCain called Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “the agents of intolerance.” With Russ Feingold, a Democrat, he wrote sweeping campaign finance reform legislation. In 2001 and 2003 McCain voted against his party and George W. Bush on tax cuts that our grandkids would have to pay off. Being one of the two Republicans who voted against the cuts he said, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of the middle-class Americans who need tax relief.” He ran a principled campaign in 2000 that made him sleep really well at night. But, George W. Bush and his right wingers beat the crap out of him. However good or noble he felt, he lost.
John McCain learned a lesson in 2000. We did not see the results until Bush’s 2004 campaign. But, McCain heard the right wing of the Republican Party loud and clear. He has flip-flopped to the right on everything from social security to oil drilling and immigration to gun control. But, perhaps the most shocking of all, McCain changed his stand on torture. In order to solidify his “heir to W” status, he used semantics to appear to support the George Bush doctrine regarding detainees. He decided the military should not torture. But, the CIA could torture all they wanted. I wonder if his interrogators in Hanoi were military or intelligence officers.
Intelligence should be the hallmark of the American Silent Majority. We saw what the right wing was up to in the 2000 election. We stood by while the wingers called McCain unpatriotic and ran ads which made their grandmothers blush. Most of us didn’t call them a liar at the water cooler. We didn’t put up a sign in the yard or even give a few bucks to his campaign. Finally, some of us didn’t vote. Now, we have turned a perfectly good candidate into a right-wing hack. McCain found he can’t rely on the moderate middle to put him in office. So today, we are stuck. We can either vote for a man who owes the right wing or a man who stands for some kind of nebulous change.
We are to blame for this crappy choice.