The view from 90

Guest post by Robert Stein

Ed. note: A couple of months ago, my friend and fellow blogger Bob Stein turned 90. I meant to publish this wonderful post at the time, but, well, time got away from me and it's been a sporadic couple of months of blogging for me anyway.

It is, in any event, a timeless post, and I'm very happy to publish it today, belatedly. Bob has led an incredibly interesting life and he's seen some incredibly interesting things. What is truly encouraging (and amazing) is that as he looks not just back at America's and the world's messy history but out at the crazy world around him now, he retains a sense of hope and optimism that overrides doubt and despair. He sees the good, that is, even when it is hard to find.

I wish him all the best, and a (belated) happy birthday, from all of us here.

This is Bob's third guest post here at The Reaction, and the first since his reflections on the anniversary of JFK's assassination last November. (His first post for us was "A life in black and white: Personal reflections on race in America.") -- MJWS

Robert Stein has had a long career as an editor, publisher, media critic, and journalism teacher. A former chair of the American Society of Magazine Editors, he currently blogs at Connecting the Dots. 

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On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. It was my ninth birthday.

In April 1945, I was a 21-year-old foot soldier on the floor of a German farmhouse when someone shook me awake to whisper that FDR had died. 

Now, at 90, I am inevitably shaped by those years after a working lifetime as writer, editor and publisher trying to explain the world to others -- and myself.

The scenes around me today are filled with human folly, selfishness and shameless behavior, but that’s far from the whole story. My so-called Greatest Generation, which survived a Depression and World War, does not in retrospect seem so morally superior to those that succeeded it but only more limited in education, experience of the world and outlook.

Many of our virtues were rooted in ignorance: no TV, cable, computers, Internet, no electronics of any kind, only radios with music, soap operas and swatches of evening news lifted from newspapers (as a teenage copy boy, I wrote some of them.)

As a nation we were united, but in an innocence that also had its dark side -- racial ghettos, religious prejudice, rural isolation -- where only unseen white men, all Protestant, held power over our lives in government and business.

Women then lived no fuller a life than those in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Our mothers patrolled homes in house dresses, with only one exception.

Although we knew her as Mrs. Goldstein, nothing went with that matronly name, not the shimmer of clothes clinging to her trim body, or the beauty-parlor hair, the high-heeled shoes and face painted with makeup even in daytime, or the sweet perfume cloud that came into the living room in late afternoons when she kissed her son goodnight and dazzled the rest of us playing there with a cupid's bow smile on her way out.

She always seemed on the move to someplace exciting or, if my mother's mutterings could be believed, sinful. I had no idea what nafka meant, but Mrs. Goldstein gave our pre-teen senses a whiff of hope that the night life on movie screens existed somewhere in the real world.

Jump cut through decades: a World War; prosperous but Man-in-the-Grey-Flannel-Suit Fifties; JFK, the Youthquake, Civil Rights awakening and Women's Lib of the televised Sixties; a backlash of the Silent Majority and Watergate in the Nixon years; Reagan's "Morning in America" to paper over growing economic and political gulfs followed by Clinton's centrism and self-centeredness barely surviving Gingrich's loopy Contract with America; and then almost a decade of W's preemptive war and mindless tax cuts to bring us into the Obama years of almost total Tea Party collapse of the civility that held us together all that time, with racism showing its naked face.

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The failure of Mitt Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At The New York Review of Books, Garry Wills makes the case that Mitt Romney didn't just lose an election, he lost his very honor in the process-- and that unlike most previous presidential election losers he doesn't really have anything to give back, so dramatically did he sell his soul to try to win:

What public service do we expect from Mitt Romney? He will no doubt return to augmenting his vast and hidden wealth, with no more pesky questions about where around the world it is stashed, or what taxes (if any) he paid, carefully sheltered from the rules his fellow citizens follow.

*****

What vestige of a backbone is Romney left with? Things he was once proud of -- health-care guarantees, opposition to noxious emissions, support of gay rights and women's rights, he had the shamelessness to treat as matters of shame all through his years-long crawl to the Republican nomination.

Other defeated candidates compiled stellar records after they lost. Two of them later won the Nobel Prize -- Jimmy Carter for international diplomacy, Al Gore for his environmental advocacy. John Kerry is still an important voice for the principles he has always believed in as a Democrat. Michael Dukakis carries on as the college professor he always was, with no need to reject or rediscover any of the policies he championed. Robert Dole joined with McGovern in international nutritional projects.

None of these men engineered a wholesale repudiation of their former principles. Romney, on the contrary, did not let earlier positions grow -- enriching, say, his experience of health care legislation to give his approach greater refinement or focus. He just tried to erase the whole matter from his record.

*****

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future? It is said that he will write a book. Really? Does he want to relive a five-year-long experience of degradation? What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it? His friends can only hope he is too morally obtuse to realize that crushing truth. Losing elections is one thing. But the greater loss, the real loss, is the loss of honor. 

This is pretty harsh analysis, but it's hard to find fault with it. Romney is essentially a plutocrat (or a wannabe plutocrat), a successful vulture capitalist who build on the wealth his father made and then decided he wanted to be in politics. It made sense, initially, for him to be a moderate Republican in a liberal state like Massachusetts, and really he was just a throwback to business-oriented moderates of the past, business-oriented pragmatism having a long history in the Republican Party. And, further, it was perhaps admirable of him to turn to public service, not just in Massachusetts but before that for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Sure, public service meant advancing his pro-business outlook, building up his political arsenal, and continuing to profit from his former business associations (Bain, etc.), but at least there was consistency there.

But the Republican Party was changing, and the Republican he needed to be both in 2008 and even more so in 2012 was vastly different than the one he needed to be in Massachusetts in 2002, or that other pro-business types had had to be previously. That's when Romney changed, when he decided that winning meant selling out. Sure, the pro-business orientation remained, but everything else went crazy -- as Wills writes, it was "a five-year long experience of degradation."

I'm really not sure what will become of Romney now. Maybe Wills is right and he'll just go back to "augmenting his vast and hidden wealth." He may maintain a small profile in Republican circules, but it's not like Republicans like him all that much. Furthermore, it's not like he has much actual political experience to draw on, and it's not like he really seems to believe in anything other than his business interests.

Balloon Juice's mistermix wonders about Romney's legacy, finding Thomas Dewey, who lost in both 1944 and 1948, to be the best parallel: "Dewey pretty much stayed on the sidelines, turning down a nomination from LBJ for the Supreme Court, and concentrating on making money as a corporate lawyer. I imagine Mitt will follow a similar path."

Yes, perhaps so. Back in October 2011, Mustang Bobby wrote a post in which he called Romney "the perfect GOP establishment candidate; he's the 21st century Thomas E. Dewey, but without his charm or conviction." 

Which reminds me of a question I raised back in September:

Romney is the worst major-party presidential candidate since _______ ?

Forget Dukakis, Mondale, or McGovern. I went all the way back to the '30s:

So how far back do we have to go?

After all, the only thing keeping this race even somewhat close is the struggling economy, and that has nothing to do with Romney. Imagine how far ahead Obama would be if the economy were even just a tiny bit stronger at the moment.

So maybe Willkie in 1940, a business-oriented moderate who had to secure the support of right-wing isolationists in the GOP (yup, sounds a bit like Romney). But no. He, at least, was respectable out on the campaign trail, even if he stood little chance against FDR.

I'll go with Landon in 1936, another business-oriented type and by all accounts a terrible campaigner and generally inept politician. But even then, he didn't constantly embarrass himself, unlike Romney. He just didn't campaign for long stretches at a time, including for two months after he won the Republican nomination, and FDR crushed him in the election. He won only Maine and Vermont, losing the Electoral College vote 523 to 8.

Perhaps he was worse than Romney. Perhaps. 

It's easy to forget this now, but Romney really was a terrible candidate. Other than his performance in the first debate, where his shameless "Etch-A-Sketch" lying combined with Obama's disengagement to make it seem as if he was a credible candidate, what else was there?

Yes, this could mean that a stronger candidate would have won, but who was that candidate? Because one can make the case that Romney was really the only viable Republican choice in 2012, the only one who could pull the party together by saying whatever each of its constituent parts wanted to hear, and who would be prepared to sell that good 'ol Republican snake oil with a smile on his face. And yet with a still-struggling (if improving) economy he still lost badly.

Regardless, Romney's weakness as a candidate, and as a political actor generally, likely means that his post-election political career, such as he has one, will be pathetic and self-serving.

And as for any legacy, well, consider that a failure as well. 

Morning Joe on yet another embarrassing Romney moment: "Sweet Jesus."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mustang Bobby put this up at his place yesterday. If you missed it, it's well worth watching, not just for the pathetic Romney embarrassing himself yet again but for Joe Scarborough's telling reaction of incredulity and resignation.

Which raises the question: Romney is the worst major-party presidential candidate since _______ ?

Is it Dukakis? (I think Romney's worse, but it's close.) Mondale? (At least he had some gravitas.) McGovern? (Maybe, but at least he had a ton of progressive credibility.)

So how far back do we have to go?

After all, the only thing keeping this race even somewhat close is the struggling economy, and that has nothing to do with Romney. Imagine how far ahead Obama would be if the economy were even just a tiny bit stronger at the moment.

So maybe Willkie in 1940, a business-oriented moderate who had to secure the support of right-wing isolationists in the GOP (yup, sounds a bit like Romney). But no. He, at least, was respectable out on the campaign trail, even if he stood little chance against FDR.

I'll go with Landon in 1936, another business-oriented type and by all accounts a terrible campaigner and generally inept politician. But even then, he didn't constantly embarrass himself, unlike Romney. He just didn't campaign for long stretches at a time, including for two months after he won the Republican nomination, and FDR crushed him in the election. He won only Maine and Vermont, losing the Electoral College vote 523 to 8.

Perhaps he was worse than Romney. Perhaps.

Keeping down with the Joneses was never going to work anyway

By Ramona

Months before the Republican and Democratic Conventions in the summer of 2012, when politicians fell all over each other trying to out-Poor-Me-Before-the-Bootstrap-Thing, Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate, had already had enough of pretending he was one of the little people. (Did you notice it was Ann and not Mitt who told the tale about having to live in a cement basement when they were in college, poor as church-mice except for those stocks they could cash in whenever they ran out of ramen noodles?)

In the merry month of May, Mitt went for the gold at a $50,000-a-plate dinner, raising a haughty middle finger to the riff-raff, the losers, the leeches -- the only Americans so useless they would actually vote for Barack Obama.

He laid it all out there, and -- you have to give it to him -- he seemed pretty comfortable up there. He hardly stuttered at all:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what... These are people who pay no income tax.

Ouch! You talking 'bout me? (Water off my back, pal, water off my back.) But did you see how the Republicans took it? Man, you would think they didn't actually believe any of it themselves. The thing is, you never, ever say such things out loud! (Rove Playbook, page 3, paragraph 1, or thereabouts.)

You almost have to feel sorry for Mitt. He was born rich and got even richer, which should be the American Dream, shouldn't it? So why is everybody making fun of his richness? Haven't we had rich presidents before?

Well, yes we have. Almost every president came from backgrounds most of us couldn't even begin to hope for. At least two of them, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, were so whopping wealthy it was almost otherworldly. The thing is -- Mitt, I'm talking to you -- it didn't matter. Once they became public servants -- yes, Mitt, I said public servants -- they took their obligations seriously.

FDR and JFK didn't exploit their wealth; neither did they hide it. They came from families whose wealth was unimaginable to the rest of us, but it didn't matter because they were both presidents who didn't talk down to the middle-class and the poor, who didn't propose cutting social programs in times of need, who didn't cater to the rich simply because the rich expected it from them.

Picture this: FDR with a pince nez and a mile-long cigarette holder -- not often seen in most neighborhoods. His speech patterns were decidedly (and sometimes hilariously) patrician. He was elected in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, by voters who often didn't know where their next meal was coming from. It should have been a squeaker of an election, considering how he must have looked to the masses, but he won in a landslide. It wasn't how he spoke but what he said. He built up their hopes without ever talking down to them. They trusted him. He understood that the depression they were suffering through wasn't their fault, and when he talked about "victims," it wasn't to blame them but to assure them that he was there to do something about it.

The Kennedys played football on lawns the size of small states at the family compound. They sailed the blue waters off Hyannis Port in yachts fit for potentates. Jackie wore gorgeous clothes designed by Adrian and was often seen at Paris runways rooting for high fashion couturiers. And American manufacturing output was the envy of the world, the majority of the country counted themselves as middle class, health costs were reasonable, and children were being educated without fear of failure or budget cuts. We woke up to the need for civil rights, we established the Peace Corps, and we took giant steps toward space travel.

FDR and JFK didn't exactly become one of us, and they didn't even try, but we all knew they were our champions. That's the difference.
 
Mitt? You listening? That's the difference.

Kevin Siers - Charlotte Observer

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Happy birthday, Social Security. And many, many more.

By Ramona

Tuesday marked the 77th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act, and even though it's not one of those anniversaries we might consider A Big One, it's important. For this reason: it may well be the last time any of us will be able to celebrate this landmark law without also being reminded of its untimely death.

Two years ago, when we celebrated Social Security's Diamond Anniversary (well, some of us did) the usual rumblings against the best and brightest of our safety net programs could be heard, but since they were far off and not unlike anything we had heard before (and since the Democrats were still in the majority), we did the usual and just ignored them.

Two years later, they're not just rumblings, they're lightning strikes. Even the folks who have the most to gain from the continuance of Social Security are getting ready to cast their ballots for the very politicians who are not just promising but itching to kill it dead. Mitt Romney and his cohort, the Social Security-hating Paul Ryan, would like nothing better than to get the chance in November to kill off all such safety nets once and for all. If they win the presidency, we can kiss goodbye any hope of saving Social Security and its offspring, Medicare and Medicaid. The only reform we'll see is a slow elimination or corruption or privatization of the social programs many more addled Americans have now been lulled into associating with "Big Bad Government."

The creation of the Social Security program was nothing short of a miracle. Days after FDR was sworn in for his first term, in March 1933, he appointed a committee to come up with a plan to help the people who had become victims of a devastating depression by giving them money. Cash in their pockets. Money that the oldest, the ones who couldn't work, would never have to pay back. And they did it without judgment because they knew the people in this nation were poverty-stricken because they, the government, hadn't been governing with the best interests of the citizens in mind. In effect, they owed them. (Well, no, they didn't say that, but they didn't have to.)

Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law -- August 14, 1935

 

Roosevelt envisioned creating a long-term safety net that would eventually be self-sustained by payroll deductions when everyone got back to work, but he was adamant about the need for the federal government to start these payments before the coffers were filled. His idea was that the normal safety nets had long since disappeared, the country was in trouble, and the government had a moral duty to help out.

President Roosevelt appealed his case for Social Security to Congress this way:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

The amount necessary at this time for the initiation of unemployment compensation, old-age security, children's aid, and the promotion of public health, as outlined in the report of the Committee on Economic Security, is approximately one hundred million dollars.

(Roosevelt's message to Congress on Social Security -- January 17, 1935)

For all intents, remember, the treasury was empty, and such a request must have sounded plain loony to some. Of course it did. The Republicans fought him all the way, but they were in the minority and they lost. (Interesting to note, though, that 81 Republicans in the House and 16 in the Senate voted for the Social Security Act.) 

Three years after the law was enacted he went before the American people and talked about what it meant for the country: 

Five years ago the term "social security" was new to American ears. Today it has significance for more than forty million men and women workers whose applications for old-age insurance accounts have been received; this system is designed to assure them an income for life after old age retires them from their jobs.

It has significance for the needy men, women and children receiving assistance and for their families -- at least two million three hundred thousand all told; with this cash assistance one million seven hundred thousand old folks are spending their last years in surroundings they know and with people they love; more than six hundred thousand dependent children are being taken care of by their own families; and about forty thousand blind people are assured of peace and security among familiar voices.

It has significance for the families and communities to whom expanded public health and child welfare services have brought added protection. And it has significance for all of us who, as citizens, have at heart the Security and the well-being of this great democracy.

These accomplishments of three years are impressive, yet we should not be unduly proud of them. Our Government in fulfilling an obvious obligation to the citizens of the country has been doing so only because the citizens require action from their Representatives. If the people, during these years, had chosen a reactionary Administration or a "do nothing" Congress, Social Security would still be in the conversational stage -- a beautiful dream which might come true in the dim distant future...

Now this is interesting to consider. The first to turn to Government, the first to receive protection from Government, were not the poor and the lowly--those who had no resources other than their daily earnings -- but the rich and the strong. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the United States passed protective laws designed, in the main, to give security to property owners, to industrialists, to merchants and to bankers. True, the little man often profited by this type of legislation; but that was a by-product rather than a motive. 

Taking a generous view of the situation, I think it was not that Government deliberately ignored the working man but that the working man was not sufficiently articulate to make his needs and his problems known. The powerful in industry and commerce had powerful voices, both individually and as a group. And whenever they saw their possessions threatened, they raised their voices in appeals for government protection. 

It was not until workers became more articulate through organization that protective labor legislation was passed. While such laws raised the standards of life, they still gave no assurance of economic security. Strength or skill of arm or brain did not guarantee a man a job; it did not guarantee him a roof; it did not guarantee him the ability to provide for those dependent upon him or to take care of himself when he was too old to work.

Long before the economic blight of the depression descended on the Nation, millions of our people were living in wastelands of want and fear. Men and women too old and infirm to work either depended on those who had but little to share, or spent their remaining years within the walls of a poorhouse. Fatherless children early learned the meaning of being a burden to relatives or to the community. Men and women, still strong, still young, but discarded as gainful workers, were drained of self-confidence and self-respect.

The millions of today want, and have a right to, the same security their forefathers sought--the assurance that with health and the willingness to work they will find a place for themselves in the social and economic system of the time. 

("A Social Security Program Must Include All Those Who Need Its Protection," radio address on the third anniversary of the Social Security Act -- August 15, 1938)

This is what we're fighting to save. The moral code of this country, as spelled out by the founders, has always dictated that government is there to serve the needs of the people. Sometimes that's ignored, as Roosevelt himself infers in his radio address, but it's never forgotten.

Even now, it's not forgotten. Not by us. Reading through Roosevelt's statements on Social Security, it's clear that he intended to work tirelessly to do what was right for the people still suffering from the effects of a man-made, wholly unnecessary depression. We need to remind our leaders today -- also to blame for a wholly unnecessary depression -- that social safety nets are an obligation they've inherited, and are, in fact, an obligation they agreed to when they took their oaths of office and vowed to uphold the constitution.

So let's get to the meat of it: President Obama is no Roosevelt. Not even close. But in my heart of hearts I believe he knows in his heart of hearts what he should do. So far he hasn't done it well, but there's no denying baby steps have been taken. He dropped the ball early on and hasn't recovered it yet, but there's hope. With President Obama, there's hope.

If Mitt Romney is elected president, either because of or in spite of his running mate, in all likelihood the Republicans will take both the House and the Senate, and that will be the end of Obamacare, of Social Security, of Medicare and Medicaid, of any chance at easing the conditions of the poor and middle class and rebuilding a country nearly devastated by a man-made economic crisis not of our choosing and not of our making.

How do we get that message out? I don't know, but it can't hurt to keep reminding voters that once upon a time, in conditions much like these, something happened in this country that changed us forever. Our government took charge and did, not just what they were elected to do, but what they were morally obligated to do. They took care of a nation in mortal pain. And the country survived. It thrived. So much so that, until this latest man-made fiasco, we were still seen as the greatest nation in the world.

We could keep reminding them of that. 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Some things never change

By Mustang Bobby

Digby found a clip of FDR having fun at the expense of conservatives who opposed his programs in 1936:

For those of you who can't see clips on-line, President Roosevelt is having a great time mocking his critics who promised to repeal and replace Social Security and other programs with something better and it won't cost anything, just like what we're hearing from the GOP today about the health-care law.

Mr. Roosevelt died seven years before I was born, so I only know him from history books and film -- much the same way people under 40 know about JFK today -- but when you talk about transformational presidents, as in those who left the country fundamentally different after they left office, Mr. Roosevelt was pretty much the gold standard for modern America. A lot of the things we take for granted, from Social Security to electricity in the rural parts of the country, came from his administration and his attempts to rescue the nation and the world from economic collapse. Not all of it worked, and he overreached on some things. And a lot of what he did was blatantly political.

FDR was probably one of the most coldly calculating politicians to hold the office. He knew exactly how to frame his message and his programs to gain maximum support from the voters, and he had the added advantage of knowing how to drive his opponents crazy by taunting and tweaking them. It had the desired result; his opponents -- the rabid right wingers and isolationists -- came off as bloviating ninnies and crackpots, and Mr. Roosevelt got in a good laugh.

On a larger point, Mr. Roosevelt cemented the idea that the President of the United States could be the leader of his political party without compromising his duties as the president of all the people. Sure, presidents had done that before; some more effectively than others, but it was always behind the scenes and the fiction that the president was above all the petty politics was maintained. FDR broke down that barrier by making it seem as if what was good for him politically was good for the nation and vice versa. His opponents called it demagoguery, but they were strangely silent when Richard Nixon, a Republican, did it (and with criminal intent) or when Ronald Reagan, who once worshiped Mr. Roosevelt, did it as well.

Now we're hearing that Barack Obama is shamelessly using his office for political and partisan purposes by changing his administration's application of certain laws regarding the children of undocumented immigrants. Oh, the horror of a president doing something in an election year that has a political as well as a practical and humanitarian angle to it. The denials by the White House are cute -- "Oh no there's no political motive at all, mi fiel amigo" -- but you can tell by the delicious over-reaction from the right wing that this was a very deft move and that if they were presented with such an opportunity, they would do it in a heartbeat and crow about it on Fox News.

It also happens to be the right thing to do, which these days seems almost beside the point.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

This day in music - March 8, 1930: "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Ben Selvin and His Orchestra is at No. 1 on the charts

By Richard K. Barry

"Happy Days Are Here Again" is likely best remembered as the campaign song for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's successful 1932 presidential campaign and has, ever since, been associated with the Democratic Party.

It was copyrighted in 1929 by Milton Ager (music) and Jack Yellen (lyrics). The song seems first to have been recorded by Leo Reisman and his Orchestra in 1929, with Lou Levin on vocals, and featured in a 1930 film called Chasing Rainbows.

Someone by the name of Ben Selvin recorded it in 1930 and had a number one hit with it. Although I am not sure, my guess is that these rankings would have been based on sheet music sales. If anyone has better information than that, let me know.

The interesting thing about Ben Selvin is that, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, he recorded more musical sides on 78-rpm discs that any another person. As the Wikipedia entry reports:

One reason for this prolific output is that he recorded for dozens of different labels during this high-growth time in the industry, using a different name (or slightly different name) for each label. Selvin's output has been estimated at 13,000 to 20,000 song titles.

Mr. Selvin lived from 1898 to 1980 and was a musician, bandleader, record producer, and innovator in recorded music. He was known as "The Dean of Recorded Music."

Anyway, back to the song: With the economy perhaps, hopefully, turning the corner, it's as good a time as any to dust off "Happy Days Are Here Again," much as the thought would pain our friends in the Republican Party, who dream of economic apocalypse, at least leading up to November.

Here it is by Ben Selvin & His Orchestra, expressing the hope of any sane person:

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Family jewels

By Mustang Bobby

Not to pick a fight with Jane Hamsher, for whom my respect knows no limit, but I don't think she's giving Caroline Kennedy a fair shake on her possible appointment to fill out Hillary Clinton's Senate term.

The woman has never run for office in her life. We have no idea how she'd fare on the campaign trail, or how well she could stand up to the electoral process. She simply picks up the phone and lets it be known that she just might be up for having one of the highest offices in the land handed to her because -- well, because why? Because her uncle once held the seat? Because she's a Kennedy? Because she took part as a child in the public's romantic dreams of Camelot? I'm not quite sure.

I recall that the same arguments were made in 2000 when Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate. True, Ms. Clinton is an attorney and she had worked in the Senate before becoming First Lady, but she had never run for office before, either, and she was basically anointed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan to take his seat. And if her name had been simply Hillary Rodham and she hadn't been married to the President of the United States, and had just bought a nice place in Westchester County and decided to pick up the phone and call people, what would her chances have been?

Caroline Kennedy does have one thing going for her that Hillary Clinton didn't have, and it's not just her name or her family connections. She has spent most of her life in New York and she has been involved in, among other things, education reform. She is also an attorney, and her resume is as impressive as anyone out there being seriously considered for the position. I think it's unfair to gloss over her accomplishments and disqualify her just because she is the daughter of a president and the niece of two senators. That may have opened some doors for her, but she's been the one who proved herself, and it's not her that is carrying the baggage of memories of Camelot. I also don't think she's naive enough to think that she will be above it all and not be able to take on the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics in New York or in the United States Senate.

As for the entitlement issue raised by having a slew of family connections in positions of power, I think that it sounds a lot worse than it actually is. After all, we've seen it throughout the history of the country and it pretty much balances out good versus bad (the Roosevelts vs. the Adamses; not to mention rafts of Tafts), and denigrating a potential candidate purely because of pedigree is, I think, a shallow argument. In some ways it can be a curse to be a member of a political family; for example, Jeb Bush's chances for winning the White House are pretty much shot to hell, even if he does become the next senator from Florida. On the whole we have found that family connections don't necessarily mean a lockstep continuation of policy or even political alignments; Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican and FDR was a Democrat.

I don't know if Caroline Kennedy is up to the job of Senator from New York. Then again, no one knows if anyone is, and certainly the names being bandied about (including -- are you ready -- Fran Drescher) are enough to make you wonder what the qualifications are. But she shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because of a pedigree she had no control over.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Doing something

By Mustang Bobby

What I don't know about economics and monetary theory could fill several large volumes, and if someone asked me what we should do about the current financial crisis, I'd probably stare at them like a Shropshire sheep, then come up with something along the lines of "homina-homina." Fine; my reaction -- or lack of it -- doesn't mean anything to the global economy. But when people we've entrusted with running the country and the economy display the same kind of indecisiveness and incoherence, it can lead to all sorts of unpleasantness. It's not that they don't have the answers; economists will argue about the granular stuff, but it's the appearance of confidence and having a solution at hand that matter.

Stock markets are like herds of cattle or flocks of pigeons; they respond to input -- either positive or negative -- without really thinking; they just take off in a flurry before processing the news. But they also pay attention to the attitude, and when the leaders -- or the presumptive leaders -- actually do something that indicates they will take charge and do something, the markets respond positively, even if the ideas and stimulus come from President-elect Obama, who has no power whatsoever. Action brings confidence and relief.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not this financial situation is comparable to 1932 when Herbert Hoover did too little too late to try to bring the nation out of the Depression. The nation and the world waited on the verge of panic for the new administration to come into office in March 1933, and when Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office and declared that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, it was almost cathartic. It wasn't his solutions that worked -- many of them put in place in the first 100 days and the years after didn't do all that much. It was just his attitude of confidence and belief that Americans would be able to get through it, and he was the leader to get us going again. As Will Rogers noted at the time, "If he burned down the Capitol, we would cheer and say, 'Well, we at least got a fire started somehow.'"

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Krazy Bill Kristol

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just for being himself. Oh, and for saying this about Sarah Palin:

She reminds me a lot of FDR.

He may have been joking, sort of, just to annoy "the left-wing blogs," but he's still a Palin-happy nutjob.

The "cut" of personality

By Carl

This whole mystique that surrounds Barack Obama is no secret to me. I've felt it several times in the past forty years of political awareness, as recently as 2004, when John Edwards ran the first time.

What amuses me is the staunch defense O-Bombers will put up for any criticism of the Senator's policies, legislative achievements (if you can find any), or positions (basically, he's as much a Democratic progressive as Hillary Clinton, who has thirty years of progressive action to show for it).

There is much to be said about the cult of personality that has grown up around this tyro. Let's look at another politician who could inspire:

On March 4, Roosevelt gave his now famous inaugural address, promising that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Within days he had secured legislation guaranteeing the banks, and on March 12, he took to the radio for the first of his fireside chats. “When the people find out that they can get their money — that they can get it when they want it — the phantom of fear will soon be laid,” he soothed an anxious nation. “I can assure you, it is safer to keep your money in a re-opened bank than under your mattress.”

When banks re-opened the next morning, the lines were gone, as Robert A. Caro recounted in the first volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson, “The Path to Power.” People put money back in, so much that on the first day after the chat, deposits outweighed withdrawals by $10 million.

It was the legislation, but mostly, Mr. Caro writes: “Their confidence was restored by his confidence. When he smiled on the crisis, it seemed to vanish.”

So, you see, it was the legislation that backed up the sunny disposition. In other words, there was steak behind the sizzle.

We face a similar crisis today in this country. The last President to truly inspire us was Bill Clinton. Before that, it was Ronald Reagan. Both were charismatic, true, and both had a plan, dug into the dirt and came up with solutions.

Clinton's, of course, worked for everyone. Reagan's stole from the poor to give to the rich. We can see that policy does not necessarily preclude incompetence.

But what about the cult of personality? What about the charisma?

“Today, attacks on the cult of personality seem really to mean attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire,” Mr. Caro said in an interview. “But you only have to look at crucial moments in the history of our time to see how crucial it was to have a leader who could inspire, who could rally a nation to a standard, who could infuse a country with confidence, to remind people of the justice of a cause.”

Still, Mr. Caro adds a caveat: “That doesn’t always translate into a great presidency.”

Adolf Hitler springs to mind as a charismatic leader who had nothing in his heart or mind but hatred for his people, yet inspired them at one of Germany's most difficult times.

Why is this trait so troubling to me about Obama?

“What is troubling about the campaign is that it’s gone beyond hope and change to redemption,” said Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton (and a longtime friend of the Clintons). “It’s posing as a figure who is the one person who will redeem our politics. And what I fear is, that ends up promising more from politics than politics can deliver.”[...]

Accounts of the campaign’s “Camp Obama” sessions, to train volunteers, have a revivalist flavor. Volunteers are urged to avoid talking about policy to potential voters, and instead tell of how they “came” to Mr. Obama.

“If you don’t talk about issues in great detail, if you do it in a way that is not the centerpiece of your campaign, of your rhetoric, then you become a blank screen,” Mr. Wilentz said. “Everybody thinks you are the vehicle of their hopes.”

That can only end up in disappointment. The coalescence of my fear comes down to this sentence:

If you had the policies ready and in place and were confident they were the right policies, you'd talk about them endlessly.

Anything else and you're just selling me a used car.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)