This is about five years too late to serve as a timely book review, but lately I've been losing sleep reading Master of the Senate, the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson.
Point #1: Johnson invented power where none existed before. Inventing anything new is such a difficult, rare skill. Inventing power is difficult even to imagine. We don't usually think of it as fluid - you either have it or you don't. But like an alchemist, Johnson created it. He pulled it out of nowhere. As far as everyone else was concerned, one day he was that nice new kid who always asked them for advice, and then all of a sudden, there he was, in charge.
Point #2: He was bad. Leaving aside his bad family values, which were basically par for the course, he stole his Senate election, funneled cash to his cronies, gained the trust of anti-Communists by destroying a guy who he knew perfectly well wasn't a Communist, gained segregationist trust by kissing segregationist butt, wheedled the powerful, threatened the kindly, and hoodwinked everybody.
Yet over the course of the book, at the same time Lyndon is rising, we see again and again how nice guys go down in flames or get locked into little corners of ineffectiveness.
Voters are four times as likely to prefer a presidential candidate who they perceive to uphold the values of America's civil religion -- regardless of whether those voters are religious themselves.
Definition of civil religion:
It's the idea that the United States bows to a higher authority. Or, as Wimberley explained it: "There's an authority above all of us and by this authority we seek our independence"... It's a notion that can be found in the "one nation under God," phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the "In God We Trust" motto on U.S. currency.
This finding was based on data from a 1984 voter survey that someone finally got around to analyzing. It would be interesting to know if the results would be different today.
Are you an adherent of American civil religion? Would you only vote for a fellow believer?
There is a humorous maxim that states that Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans. This quip is made all the more poignant as a report just recently was published declaring Jewish Americans to be the most successful minority in the nation. And yet, with all the monetary success and the siren song of lucre, the Jewish people has been able to retain a reputation for passionate idealism that translates into political action. However, with the rise of identity politics
As a twenty-one year old college student, one who has voted in but one presidential election in previous years but has had preferences and passions for the political process going all the way back to fifth grade, I must admit that it is this election which has gotten me the most excited, the most active, and the most engaged. As a nation, we find ourselves at a critical juncture in history. We are embroiled in a war with seemingly no endgame as economic conditions becoming more and more worrying, situated in a rapidly shifting and increasingly unsure world. 1% of the citizenry are imprisoned in the Land of the Free. The winds of change, they say, are blowing, with all candidates from both parties seeking to take the mantle of change and the future upon their shoulders.
It is not the purpose of this meditation to advocate for any specific candidate or policy positions (though I would be glad to do that off the record, rest assured). Rather, it is a declaration of intent; a manifesto of sorts.
In the Saturday NYTimes, Gail Collins - in a bit of an aside - points to what has to be my biggest pet peeve about voters:
The candidates have already resigned themselves to wooing people with political attention deficit disorder. They know that if they embark on a 12-week tour of the nation to publicize their signature issue of dropout prevention, on the day it's over they will turn on the TV and see an undecided voter in sweat pants saying: "I'm waiting to hear what they say about dropouts."
You hear this over and over again, mostly during man-on-the-street type interviews, or follow-ups to polls. "I want to know how candidate so-and-so is going to fix our health care system." Uh huh - they want to know, but not enough to actually make any effort whatsoever to find out, say by listening to a speech or reading a page or two on the candidate's website.
I don't mind voters disagreeing with candidates, or wanting more specifics when they actually know what specifics have been offered, but most of the time people are damning candidates and elected officials uniformly and blindly. Dare I say it gives one some appreciation for Alexander Hamilton...
A generation ago, young people noted that they were being drafted into the U.S. armed forces to fight in Vietnam, yet did not have the right to choose their own elected leaders. In 1971, President Nixon certified the 26th Amendment, which President Johnson had asked Congress to propose in 1968. Since then, 18 year olds have had the right to vote.
Of course, there are many people under the age of 18 who take more seriously the electoral process than people over the age of 18. But if a line has be drawn somewhere, 18 is a defensible number; for many Americans it is the year they finish high school and begin college and/or full-time employment, sometimes moving away from home. Others have argued (persuasively, in my opinion) for lowering the age yet again, but without a motivating force serving the role of that the military draft did in the 1960s, the age will stay at 18 for the indefinite future.
So until the vote is extended to high school students, the website My Two Cents for Change may be the next best thing. The site is incredibly well designed, both the aesthetics and the navigability. MarketNet Blog provides a great summary of its features:
A fond farewell, finally, to a past Piggy recipient, Sen. Larry Craig, who resigned, "unresigned," and finally, on Friday, missed the deadline to file for re-election. His legacy, and his leg stand, will be forever united in the annals of American hypocrisy.
A young woman, with no parents in the picture, conceals her identity and sleeps with a powerful man in the hopes of moving up in the world, or at least of saving herself from ruin.
Must be almost Purim.
In the midst of the inescapable (at least in NY) 24/7 Spitzer coverage, I was most struck by the pictures of "Kristen" published in yesterday's New York Times--in one picture, she's the sweet girl next door; in another, she's a heavily-made-up call girl. If I didn't know otherwise, I'd think these two pictures were of two different women.
I'm also struck by how little distance we've traveled in the past three thousand years. Famously, biblical women use sex--the only power at their disposal--to get what they want. Esther seduces the king in order to save the Jewish people; Tamar dresses as a prostitute to trick her father-in-law into sleeping with her and continuing the family line; Yael uses her sexual wiles to kill Sisera and win a battle for the Jews. And today, a young girl from New Jersey finds that selling sex is the easiest means of escaping an abusive family, financing her budding singing career, and avoiding homelessness. Like Ahasueros, powerful men can just order up sex (just as Ahasueros calls all of the kingdom's virgins to his service, one imagines Spitzer and others ordering up three brunettes and a blond as easily as they'd order a turkey sandwich). And, of course, women still conceal their identities through make-up, sexy clothes, and fake names.
Who wins in the end? For the biblical women, sexual power can be a means of saving lives (Esther), winning battles (Yael), and even birthing the messianic line (Tamar)-- these women take the power available to them and use it to change the world. Kristen's ambitions were a bit less grand (though perhaps these might have changed if she had known she was sleeping with the governor)
In any case, a reminder during Women's History Month, that perhaps we haven't come as far as we'd like.
Since it seems like the Jewish conversation this election season has been a little too obsessed with the Obama = Muslim mishegas, it seems worth noting that this week in Indiana, an important moment occurred, the election of America's 2nd muslim member of Congress. From Reuters:
Andre Carson, grandson of the late Democrat Rep. Julia Carson, was elected to serve the balance of her term in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election.
She died in December 2007, after serving 11 years in the heavily Democratic district.
The younger Carson, 33, a member of the Indianapolis City Council who converted to Islam about a decade ago, will serve out the remainder of his grandmother's term through calendar 2008. He beat Republican Jon Elrod and a third party candidate with 52 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Elrod.
The first and only other Muslim member of the U.S. Congress is Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, also a Democrat, who is in his first term.
Unless you're under a rock, you know that NY Governor Eliot Spitzer has gotten himself caught up in a high-end prostitution scandal today. Insiders tell me that better than even money says he'll be gone by morning, inasmuch as the evidence would indicate that he's exposed himself (no pun intended) to an interstate commerce trafficking charge (she's from NY, he brought her to DC for a tryst).
For those keeping count, Spitzer would be the second Jewish Democrat on NY's 2006 ticket to depart in disgrace over the past 15 months (after Comptroller Alan Hevesi). He would also leave us with our first African-American governor, current Lt. David Patterson (he would also be our 1st disabled gov since FDR given that he's functionally blind, but thats about as far a comparison as we'll make).
All of this leaves an ugly hometown mess amongst the allies of Sen. Clinton, another member of that now infamous ticket in 2006. While certainly none of this has anything to do with her (other than these are her close allies and home state party leaders), she can't be too pleased that the story tonight out of NY is that the way a black man gets to the top of the ticket is through the main man's sex scandal - but I'm just saying.
But when all is said and done, our attention lies with Eliot. The man ran as a reformer, making ethics in Albany the centerpiece of his campaign. In his first year he went after the state Republican leader like a rabid dog, pounding Joe Bruno (rightly) for ethics violations and he himself was the one to give Hevesi that last solid shove only days before his inaugural. And so while its been a while, fair is fair and, for gross hypocrisy and self-righteous self-immolation I nominate Governor Spitzer for our first Piggy Award of 2008.
