Ike asked James Bassett to come to DC from LA for all of 1954 and to work w Nixon on two tasks Ike assigned: putting an end to McCarthy and winning the midterms. Senate took care of the first task w/o much help from Nixon or Bassett - but definitely some help behind the scenes. Nixon couldn’t succeed at the second task. Interesting that Ike himself really didn’t lift a finger to help. Nixon, always suspicious, wondered if he’d been assigned the midterms so that he could be booted off the ticket in 1956 if he failed.
At this time back in the nixon era, the watergate committee spent the summer investigating, jailing, and ridding the Republic of corrupt politicians. Our timeline is different, and articles like yours are essential for teaching, Critical Thinking about the upcoming election and prosecution of the insurrectionists. Thank you and looking forward to many more great articles!
Also, let's not underestimate the huge force for positive change that James and Deb Fallows created through Our Towns, changing life for the better, every day, across the country and the world.
The Great IF Stone:
There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.
* I.F. Stone's Weekly (1954-03-15)
I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" — the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.
* The Haunted Fifties (1963)
*
“We simply find ourselves – as if trapped in a metaphysical maze – coming back century after century, though in a spiral of increasing sophistication and complexity, to the same half dozen basic answers worked out by the ancient Greek philosophers.”
― I.F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates
The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.
A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.
* I.F. Stone's Weekly (1967-08-03)
* Lifelong dissent has more than acclimated me cheerfully to defeat. It has made me suspicious of victory. I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.
* I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (1969-05-19)
* I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.
* I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (1971-12-14)
*
[" Isidor Feinstein Stone (better known as I.F. Stone or Izzy Stone) was an American investigative journalist.
" He is best remembered for his self-published newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly, which was ranked 16th in a poll of his fellow journalists of "The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century." ] goodreads
“Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We're not entirely sure there ever were. They've found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France, some yet undetermined thing which might be the legendary inward eye. But all evidence, such as it is, suggests that, if there ever were poets, they were all burned into extinction during the interglacial period of despair.”
― Paddy Chayefsky, The Latent Heterosexual
“This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings”
― Paddy Chayefsky, Network [Screenplay]
“We are a gutted generation, born in the depression and obsessed with prosperity.”
― Paddy Chayefsky, The Collected Works: The Screenplays, Vol. 1: Marty / The Goddess / The Americanization of Emily
I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let G-d worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be
We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. The Americanization of Emily
"You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! ...you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!" Network [Screenplay]
“...human life doesn't have truth. We're born screaming in doubt, and we die suffocating in doubt, and human life consists of continually convincing ourselves we're alive. One of the ways we know we're alive is we love each other...”
I've read the FDR speech before, but had never listened to it in full. Absolutely remarkable rhetorical display from America's greatest president ever.
I agree with you re Afghanistan. The failure stems from Don R's refusal the accept the proposal of the Loya Jerga in about 2003 which wanted to restore what had been a successful monarchy. Had we accepted that idea we could have left then and the burden would have been on the Afghans themselves rather than taking the burden of trying to create a western democracy on a feudal, religious society. That decision and the military's can do attitude led to ultimate disaster.
I recently read an article by two veterans of the war in Afghanistan who said our military brass’s twenty year insistence that we were winning the war was never true. The media is too eager to believe what the military tells them The fact that Afghanistan’s government and military collapsed even before we withdrew proves the military claims were wrong. The only way that war could have been won would have been if the people of Afghanistan had had the kind of determination to resist tyranny that the Ukrainians so clearly have.
President Biden ought to have maintained the bluntness of calling out MAGA Republicans, those who continue to insist that Trump won the 2020 election and that our American governmental institutions are corrupt, as traitors to our American system. Our former President and his cult members are not simply ideological opponents. President Biden's speech would have been more impactful had he stuck to this theme. Instead, President Biden blunted this essential message by introducing elements of the usual political rally.
Trump and his cult members do represent a clear and present danger to our system of government as embodied in the two documents mentioned at the beginning of the President's speech: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. MAGA Republicans are not political opponents in the normal sense of partisan politics within our unique, ambiguous and sometimes messy American system. Our American system emphasizes limited but expansive individual sovereignty--liberty with a conscience and deference to the rule of law. MAGA Republicans, clearly and dangerously, would supplant this with some form of authoritarianism where "the people" are ruled by a clique and any say in public policy and America's direction in the world ought only to be echoes of the mindset of these rulers. This is not the American way and those who would make it so, especially using violence, are rebels and traitors.
Biden chose to introduce elements of the stock political rally and thereby blunted and cheapened this essential message that many of us have been patiently awaiting from responsible leaders.
I understand your point, and will explain/ "excuse" the second half of the speech in the following way.
First, this is who Biden is. For better and worse. He spent an eternity in the Senate. He would like to think of it as a place where "reasonable people" can work out reasonable deals. We know all the ways in which that was *never* true in US politics or in the Senate. But the Senate in which Biden spent his formative years was before the Age of McConnell, the Age of the Perpetual Filibuster, the age of the Garland stonewall, and so on. Presidents finally are authentic to their background and formation and personality (Gerald Ford was a man of the "reasonable" era of a the GOP minority in the House), and that is the note he wants to strike.
Second, in the history of "crisis" rhetoric the speeches pretty much always need to end on a "we can do this!" note. I agree that he should have done everything possible to avoid standard political rally fare. But the note of upward-possibility, "this is America" is all but obligatory in these presentations. Remember, again, how enormous, and enormously diverse, is the audience any president must speak to.
I think Biden still has the habit of trying to please everyone. His references to God and being created in his image actually offended me (I'm an atheist) because they were unnecessary, but like you, I was disturbed by his dilution of a critical message to all Americans by his inclusion of off-topic subjects. I'm worried that he just doesn't get it, and that someone in the WH had to actually cajole him into giving this speech. He's just too damn passive when it comes to the MAGA extremists.
I agree that — for better and for worse — Biden's political instincts are from a previous era.
For better, in that he can exude the idea of not being an elbows-out partisan warrior all the time. (Again, most presidents try to avoid this impression. "President of all the people" and so on.)
For worse, in that he can seem not to grasp the new reality of who he is dealing with.
Trump recently called Biden an "enemy of the state," as fascist a phrase as he's ever uttered, and this came on the heels of Trump's claims of victimization and lies regarding the FBI searching for stolen government documents. Blaming Biden, he is starting his ersatz 2024 campaign. Biden responds with silence, as always. Biden doesn't have to have his elbows out, but there should be a response from him. This ain't the good ol' days - Trump is the crazy leader of an extremist GOP.
I just listened to that FDR speech. What a barnburner of a talk that was! I'm ready to vote for him now. It's instructive to look at how clearly he frames his issues. And you have to love the way he repeatedly hammers "Of course!" before affirming each goal of his administration.
What I found ironic and sad was the way various GOP figures and pundits attacked Biden's rhetoric as "divisive"--as if they had never heard a single one of Trump's speeches calling Dems "enemies" or "traitors" or "pedophiles," let alone the ferocious discourse every hour on Fox news.
The sight of these foul-mouthed defamers clutching their pearls is mighty rich.
I voted for Biden and continue to think that Trump is perhaps the worst human being that has ever served as president. However, I am cannot understand how Biden can fail to see that opening our southern border to literally a million illegal immigrants at the very time we must be preparing to resettle millions of our current citizens to cooler, wetter areas to save them from the disastrous impacts of climate change is good public policy. In addition, as many European countries have recognized that the chemical and surgical intervention in children’s bodies as they approach puberty in the promotion of radical transgender beliefs needs to be seriously rethought, his administration presses forward mindlessly in full support of such actions. I thought he was a moderate but he is governing as an out of touch old man totally unaware of what those around him are actually doing. The sad fact is that in these two examples the policies of the ignorant Trump would probably be superior to Biden’s.
Thanks for laying out the case, and how you come to your conclusions. Remember when Liz Cheney said in her Reagan Library speech that she looked forward to the time "when I can just disagree with the Democrats again"? Ie, she looked forward to politics in which people could have different views on, say, taxes or Taiwan or whatever — even Roe v. Wade — and view normal discourse as the way to handle them.
I very much appreciate your response in that spirit. We agree on climate-emergency issues. We probably disagree on border issues. And on transgender issues, I will confess that I just have not spent enough time thinking or learning about this to have any kind of settled view. (I do think you're right about the political ramifications.) There are other areas of alignment and disagreement. But mainly thank you for reading, engaging, and explaining.
Read the NYT Mag article I posted. Your grandchildren will be living in a different, and much less pleasant country, and they will almost certainly be leaving California in their adulthood, if not sooner.
And know that we've been having some of the largest numbers of border jumpers ever. At the current rate, we're taking in the equivalent of more than one New York State per decade, and this is on top of normal legal immigration, which is in excess of half a NY/decade.
Also, know that you are getting one-sided views on immigration from NPR, the NYT, and until fairly recently, the WaPo. I've had extensive correspondences with five public editors at the NYT, two of whom let me know they were likely to write something about my concerns, only to be gone from the NYT around six weeks after telling me so.
NPR's public editor had some young wet behind the ears, heavily biased daughter of immigrants interview me--someone who kept asking me if I were really a Democrat (given my views on immigration) and kept insisting that the Center for Immigration Studies was a disreputable group (they have testified before Congress many times; they were named an outside reviewer by the National Academy of Sciences to the NAS 2016 report on immigration, etc.).
That late Barbara Jordan, who ran a commission on immigration reform under Clinton recommended cutting immigration numbers down to around half of what they are now and strict enforcement of immigration laws, among other things for the sake of Black jobs. (If you haven't read Back of the Hiring Line, I urge you to read it.
And partly to blame for Biden's bad immigration policy is that Democratic Pres debate moderators included a couple of people from the Hispanic press with strong bias on the issue.There was one scene in the 2020 debates when the moderator asked candidates to raise their hands if they were not going to deport "undocumented" immigrants. All the candidates raised their hands, except Biden, who sort of partially raised his, and was clearly very uncomfortable.
This, when the candidates should have been asked questions like how many people can live sustainably in the US? Or how many people can we allow in each year without harming the livelihoods of American workers. (In 1980, Black workers predominated in meat packing, earning good middle class wages. Immigration increased substantially that decade, and by its end, immigrants predominated in meat packing, earning barely over minimum wage, under atrocious working conditions.
(If you read Back of the Hiring Line, it will become clear that there are no jobs American workers won't do, but there are often jobs where the wages have fallen so low that the American workers, often Blacks, quit, because the wages would have forced them to live in their cars or with multiple people to a room, the way immigrants often do.)
I agree completely about the folly of Biden's open borders policy, although otherwise--except for the gender dysphoria issue, I think he's doing a great job.
But we have an exploding population, bringing to the fore all the quality of life issues that population explosions engender--skyrocketing housing prices, worsening traffic and new roads that help for a few years and then get overwhelmed again (Boston's big dig was a godsend for half a decade or so--and then it wasn't).
Worse, ecosystem services--pollination, clean water and air, disease prevention, and many others, had been fraying. That’s why farmers have to use commercial bees, and that’s why monarch butterflies, and insects generally are disappearing, and why the US has less than half the numbers of birds it did 50 years ago.
Overpopulation, and resulting decline of ecosystem services, is also why we have tick-borne diseases such as Lyme, something that arose around 50 years ago, and overpopulation of other continents is responsible for the emergence of COVID, HIV, and heaven knows what that will emerge in the near future. (I learned about ecosystem services AND global warming in 1975 in a class at UC Berkeley taught by John Holdren.)
Going forward, the Census Bureau projects that we will add nearly a New York State population equivalent every decade for the next four--90 percent of that due to mass immigration.
This is folly given that Americans ARE going to become climate refugees in the next several decades. If you have grandchildren, you should know that they are going to be living in an unpleasantly different America, as this article describes:
I've read a fair amount about gender dysphoria, and my strong impression is that some medical professionals are moving far too quickly to making changes in these children that cannot be reversed, and that some people who have received such "care" come to regret it.
I think it's a private matter that should remain between the child, their family and their doctor. We cannot become a society that continues to erode medical autonomy based on our perceptions, prejudices and religious beliefs,
Ideally, I'd agree with you. But it's becoming a very fraught issue. My view--as an atheist with mostly left wing Democratic views--is that it's very likely dangerous to do irrevocable surgery or hormonal changes on pre- and peripubescent kids, and best to wait until they approach adulthood. In UK, they've pretty much put a stop to this stuff because there were so many people having bad outcomes (regretting what had been done to their bodies).
I'm sure the right wing is running with it as far as they can, as is their wont. But I do think there's more to it than that. And I do trust Andrew Sullivan, who is definitely not a tool of the right wing, but a gay man who thinks for himself.
An impressive history lesson, agree with virtually everything, except two things. One is the short discussion about arcs and inflection points. It's hard to look over the past 15 years and see any definable arc, rather a jagged mess leading to ? I wish I knew. On the Afghanistan withdrawal, count me a skeptic. The withdrawal started the meme that the administration wasn't competent, and its taken a year to partially reverse that impression. And I share with George Packer the horror over those we left stranded. And only history will tell us if leaving exposed us to future terrorist attacks. I know the other side, and expect you to make it well. But to me, the foreign policy and political verdict so far is negative. Who knows, history may judge it differently. Still, I always welcome your great insights, and your masterful ability to put current things -- as crazy as they are - in historical context. No wonder you had a past life as a presidential speech writer.
Yes, on the arc point — I didn't develop all I was having in mind there, just for reasons of space. And I agree that there are long stretches in US history, and world history, and all the rest, where the arc seems to be leading straight to hell. More on this later.
On Afghanistan, I understand and take seriously your points. I'll try to get into this more fully too, soon. My basic view is: *whenever this happened*, it was going to be horrible, in the ways the withdrawal last year was. So to me the question is: how many more years of postponing that reality were worth it — in the blood of all the different people involved, in money, in the crimes and cruelties that a military occupation inevitably inflicts (in addition to the crimes and cruelties of ending that occupation.)
I think we would agree that it was a *hard* decision — the sort of choice that all the rest of us can talk about but presidents finally have to make. And my point is that it was not portrayed with that weight.
I agree with you that this was a big factor in "bumbling Biden" themes from last year. And thanks for your gracious and generous response.
All good points. It’s a pity Biden will likely pass before the country recognizes how good a man and prescient an administrator he actually is. But if that arc bends in the proper direction, the country will someday. And old Joe probably doesn’t give much of a damn anymore.
If David McCullough were still around, I imagine that Biden would be calling him in for discussions about the legacy of Harry Truman. The differences are obvious but so are some similarities: following a vastly more charismatic predecessor; not a favorite of the press; undisciplined in some comments; prematurely counted out in electoral prospects (in Truman's case, of course, right up to election day).
A few years ago I read an article that said that after WWII most Americans were leery of charismatic leaders. I’m not sure how true that is but when I was young US presidents were not charismatic — Truman and Eisenhower were definitely not. Nor were Nixon, LBJ or Carter. JFK and Reagan were the exceptions, not the rule, but today the media acts like presidents must be charismatic and inspiring to succeed. Personally I’ll take quiet competence over charisma any day. Angela Merkel wasn’t perfect but she sure beats a Trump or a Boris Johnson any day.
Ike asked James Bassett to come to DC from LA for all of 1954 and to work w Nixon on two tasks Ike assigned: putting an end to McCarthy and winning the midterms. Senate took care of the first task w/o much help from Nixon or Bassett - but definitely some help behind the scenes. Nixon couldn’t succeed at the second task. Interesting that Ike himself really didn’t lift a finger to help. Nixon, always suspicious, wondered if he’d been assigned the midterms so that he could be booted off the ticket in 1956 if he failed.
At this time back in the nixon era, the watergate committee spent the summer investigating, jailing, and ridding the Republic of corrupt politicians. Our timeline is different, and articles like yours are essential for teaching, Critical Thinking about the upcoming election and prosecution of the insurrectionists. Thank you and looking forward to many more great articles!
Also, let's not underestimate the huge force for positive change that James and Deb Fallows created through Our Towns, changing life for the better, every day, across the country and the world.
The Great IF Stone:
There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.
* I.F. Stone's Weekly (1954-03-15)
I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" — the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.
* The Haunted Fifties (1963)
*
“We simply find ourselves – as if trapped in a metaphysical maze – coming back century after century, though in a spiral of increasing sophistication and complexity, to the same half dozen basic answers worked out by the ancient Greek philosophers.”
― I.F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates
The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.
A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.
* I.F. Stone's Weekly (1967-08-03)
* Lifelong dissent has more than acclimated me cheerfully to defeat. It has made me suspicious of victory. I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.
* I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (1969-05-19)
* I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.
* I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (1971-12-14)
*
[" Isidor Feinstein Stone (better known as I.F. Stone or Izzy Stone) was an American investigative journalist.
" He is best remembered for his self-published newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly, which was ranked 16th in a poll of his fellow journalists of "The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century." ] goodreads
Who remembers Paddy Chayefsky?
“Television is democracy at its ugliest.”
“Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We're not entirely sure there ever were. They've found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France, some yet undetermined thing which might be the legendary inward eye. But all evidence, such as it is, suggests that, if there ever were poets, they were all burned into extinction during the interglacial period of despair.”
― Paddy Chayefsky, The Latent Heterosexual
“This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings”
― Paddy Chayefsky, Network [Screenplay]
“We are a gutted generation, born in the depression and obsessed with prosperity.”
― Paddy Chayefsky, The Collected Works: The Screenplays, Vol. 1: Marty / The Goddess / The Americanization of Emily
I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let G-d worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be
We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. The Americanization of Emily
"You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! ...you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!" Network [Screenplay]
“...human life doesn't have truth. We're born screaming in doubt, and we die suffocating in doubt, and human life consists of continually convincing ourselves we're alive. One of the ways we know we're alive is we love each other...”
― Paddy Chayefsky, Altered States
I've read the FDR speech before, but had never listened to it in full. Absolutely remarkable rhetorical display from America's greatest president ever.
I agree with you re Afghanistan. The failure stems from Don R's refusal the accept the proposal of the Loya Jerga in about 2003 which wanted to restore what had been a successful monarchy. Had we accepted that idea we could have left then and the burden would have been on the Afghans themselves rather than taking the burden of trying to create a western democracy on a feudal, religious society. That decision and the military's can do attitude led to ultimate disaster.
I recently read an article by two veterans of the war in Afghanistan who said our military brass’s twenty year insistence that we were winning the war was never true. The media is too eager to believe what the military tells them The fact that Afghanistan’s government and military collapsed even before we withdrew proves the military claims were wrong. The only way that war could have been won would have been if the people of Afghanistan had had the kind of determination to resist tyranny that the Ukrainians so clearly have.
Thanks John. Alas I agree.
Love reading your stuff! Keep it up
I read the speech.
President Biden ought to have maintained the bluntness of calling out MAGA Republicans, those who continue to insist that Trump won the 2020 election and that our American governmental institutions are corrupt, as traitors to our American system. Our former President and his cult members are not simply ideological opponents. President Biden's speech would have been more impactful had he stuck to this theme. Instead, President Biden blunted this essential message by introducing elements of the usual political rally.
Trump and his cult members do represent a clear and present danger to our system of government as embodied in the two documents mentioned at the beginning of the President's speech: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. MAGA Republicans are not political opponents in the normal sense of partisan politics within our unique, ambiguous and sometimes messy American system. Our American system emphasizes limited but expansive individual sovereignty--liberty with a conscience and deference to the rule of law. MAGA Republicans, clearly and dangerously, would supplant this with some form of authoritarianism where "the people" are ruled by a clique and any say in public policy and America's direction in the world ought only to be echoes of the mindset of these rulers. This is not the American way and those who would make it so, especially using violence, are rebels and traitors.
Biden chose to introduce elements of the stock political rally and thereby blunted and cheapened this essential message that many of us have been patiently awaiting from responsible leaders.
I understand your point, and will explain/ "excuse" the second half of the speech in the following way.
First, this is who Biden is. For better and worse. He spent an eternity in the Senate. He would like to think of it as a place where "reasonable people" can work out reasonable deals. We know all the ways in which that was *never* true in US politics or in the Senate. But the Senate in which Biden spent his formative years was before the Age of McConnell, the Age of the Perpetual Filibuster, the age of the Garland stonewall, and so on. Presidents finally are authentic to their background and formation and personality (Gerald Ford was a man of the "reasonable" era of a the GOP minority in the House), and that is the note he wants to strike.
Second, in the history of "crisis" rhetoric the speeches pretty much always need to end on a "we can do this!" note. I agree that he should have done everything possible to avoid standard political rally fare. But the note of upward-possibility, "this is America" is all but obligatory in these presentations. Remember, again, how enormous, and enormously diverse, is the audience any president must speak to.
I think Biden still has the habit of trying to please everyone. His references to God and being created in his image actually offended me (I'm an atheist) because they were unnecessary, but like you, I was disturbed by his dilution of a critical message to all Americans by his inclusion of off-topic subjects. I'm worried that he just doesn't get it, and that someone in the WH had to actually cajole him into giving this speech. He's just too damn passive when it comes to the MAGA extremists.
I agree that — for better and for worse — Biden's political instincts are from a previous era.
For better, in that he can exude the idea of not being an elbows-out partisan warrior all the time. (Again, most presidents try to avoid this impression. "President of all the people" and so on.)
For worse, in that he can seem not to grasp the new reality of who he is dealing with.
Trump recently called Biden an "enemy of the state," as fascist a phrase as he's ever uttered, and this came on the heels of Trump's claims of victimization and lies regarding the FBI searching for stolen government documents. Blaming Biden, he is starting his ersatz 2024 campaign. Biden responds with silence, as always. Biden doesn't have to have his elbows out, but there should be a response from him. This ain't the good ol' days - Trump is the crazy leader of an extremist GOP.
Dear Jim, how refreshing to have such analysis to read over my breakfast. It’s almost as good as a conversation with you. Greetings from London, Bruce
Bruce, thank you! And I look forward to chances to talk in person again.
And meanwhile, solidarity to all in your current home country on the impending news there ...
I just listened to that FDR speech. What a barnburner of a talk that was! I'm ready to vote for him now. It's instructive to look at how clearly he frames his issues. And you have to love the way he repeatedly hammers "Of course!" before affirming each goal of his administration.
What I found ironic and sad was the way various GOP figures and pundits attacked Biden's rhetoric as "divisive"--as if they had never heard a single one of Trump's speeches calling Dems "enemies" or "traitors" or "pedophiles," let alone the ferocious discourse every hour on Fox news.
The sight of these foul-mouthed defamers clutching their pearls is mighty rich.
Yes. To me it is understandable that GOP figures would call BIden "divisive" with no allusion to any of Trump's speeches. That's politics.
Media "analysts," on the other hand ...
I voted for Biden and continue to think that Trump is perhaps the worst human being that has ever served as president. However, I am cannot understand how Biden can fail to see that opening our southern border to literally a million illegal immigrants at the very time we must be preparing to resettle millions of our current citizens to cooler, wetter areas to save them from the disastrous impacts of climate change is good public policy. In addition, as many European countries have recognized that the chemical and surgical intervention in children’s bodies as they approach puberty in the promotion of radical transgender beliefs needs to be seriously rethought, his administration presses forward mindlessly in full support of such actions. I thought he was a moderate but he is governing as an out of touch old man totally unaware of what those around him are actually doing. The sad fact is that in these two examples the policies of the ignorant Trump would probably be superior to Biden’s.
Thanks for laying out the case, and how you come to your conclusions. Remember when Liz Cheney said in her Reagan Library speech that she looked forward to the time "when I can just disagree with the Democrats again"? Ie, she looked forward to politics in which people could have different views on, say, taxes or Taiwan or whatever — even Roe v. Wade — and view normal discourse as the way to handle them.
I very much appreciate your response in that spirit. We agree on climate-emergency issues. We probably disagree on border issues. And on transgender issues, I will confess that I just have not spent enough time thinking or learning about this to have any kind of settled view. (I do think you're right about the political ramifications.) There are other areas of alignment and disagreement. But mainly thank you for reading, engaging, and explaining.
James: https://twitter.com/kdubtru/status/1567621323924426755?s=46&t=paqbEV1MRaJFUeivOWHckg
Read the NYT Mag article I posted. Your grandchildren will be living in a different, and much less pleasant country, and they will almost certainly be leaving California in their adulthood, if not sooner.
And know that we've been having some of the largest numbers of border jumpers ever. At the current rate, we're taking in the equivalent of more than one New York State per decade, and this is on top of normal legal immigration, which is in excess of half a NY/decade.
Also, know that you are getting one-sided views on immigration from NPR, the NYT, and until fairly recently, the WaPo. I've had extensive correspondences with five public editors at the NYT, two of whom let me know they were likely to write something about my concerns, only to be gone from the NYT around six weeks after telling me so.
NPR's public editor had some young wet behind the ears, heavily biased daughter of immigrants interview me--someone who kept asking me if I were really a Democrat (given my views on immigration) and kept insisting that the Center for Immigration Studies was a disreputable group (they have testified before Congress many times; they were named an outside reviewer by the National Academy of Sciences to the NAS 2016 report on immigration, etc.).
That late Barbara Jordan, who ran a commission on immigration reform under Clinton recommended cutting immigration numbers down to around half of what they are now and strict enforcement of immigration laws, among other things for the sake of Black jobs. (If you haven't read Back of the Hiring Line, I urge you to read it.
And partly to blame for Biden's bad immigration policy is that Democratic Pres debate moderators included a couple of people from the Hispanic press with strong bias on the issue.There was one scene in the 2020 debates when the moderator asked candidates to raise their hands if they were not going to deport "undocumented" immigrants. All the candidates raised their hands, except Biden, who sort of partially raised his, and was clearly very uncomfortable.
This, when the candidates should have been asked questions like how many people can live sustainably in the US? Or how many people can we allow in each year without harming the livelihoods of American workers. (In 1980, Black workers predominated in meat packing, earning good middle class wages. Immigration increased substantially that decade, and by its end, immigrants predominated in meat packing, earning barely over minimum wage, under atrocious working conditions.
(If you read Back of the Hiring Line, it will become clear that there are no jobs American workers won't do, but there are often jobs where the wages have fallen so low that the American workers, often Blacks, quit, because the wages would have forced them to live in their cars or with multiple people to a room, the way immigrants often do.)
I agree completely about the folly of Biden's open borders policy, although otherwise--except for the gender dysphoria issue, I think he's doing a great job.
But we have an exploding population, bringing to the fore all the quality of life issues that population explosions engender--skyrocketing housing prices, worsening traffic and new roads that help for a few years and then get overwhelmed again (Boston's big dig was a godsend for half a decade or so--and then it wasn't).
Worse, ecosystem services--pollination, clean water and air, disease prevention, and many others, had been fraying. That’s why farmers have to use commercial bees, and that’s why monarch butterflies, and insects generally are disappearing, and why the US has less than half the numbers of birds it did 50 years ago.
Overpopulation, and resulting decline of ecosystem services, is also why we have tick-borne diseases such as Lyme, something that arose around 50 years ago, and overpopulation of other continents is responsible for the emergence of COVID, HIV, and heaven knows what that will emerge in the near future. (I learned about ecosystem services AND global warming in 1975 in a class at UC Berkeley taught by John Holdren.)
Going forward, the Census Bureau projects that we will add nearly a New York State population equivalent every decade for the next four--90 percent of that due to mass immigration.
This is folly given that Americans ARE going to become climate refugees in the next several decades. If you have grandchildren, you should know that they are going to be living in an unpleasantly different America, as this article describes:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html
This is what the Biden administration considers “best care” for children with gender dysphoria.
https://twitter.com/swipewright/status/1567814809894244354?s=46&t=uJz-OtxGZbHToxw4Z9j_WA
I've read a fair amount about gender dysphoria, and my strong impression is that some medical professionals are moving far too quickly to making changes in these children that cannot be reversed, and that some people who have received such "care" come to regret it.
I think it's a private matter that should remain between the child, their family and their doctor. We cannot become a society that continues to erode medical autonomy based on our perceptions, prejudices and religious beliefs,
Here's what's going on in UK, and some other European nations--from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/health/transgender-youth-uk-tavistock.html
Ideally, I'd agree with you. But it's becoming a very fraught issue. My view--as an atheist with mostly left wing Democratic views--is that it's very likely dangerous to do irrevocable surgery or hormonal changes on pre- and peripubescent kids, and best to wait until they approach adulthood. In UK, they've pretty much put a stop to this stuff because there were so many people having bad outcomes (regretting what had been done to their bodies).
Here's another interesting view on this:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/who-is-looking-out-for-gay-kids-a19
Bullshit. It's a contrived controversy whipped up by the right wing.
https://twitter.com/kdubtru/status/1567621323924426755?s=46&t=paqbEV1MRaJFUeivOWHckg
I'm sure the right wing is running with it as far as they can, as is their wont. But I do think there's more to it than that. And I do trust Andrew Sullivan, who is definitely not a tool of the right wing, but a gay man who thinks for himself.
Agree. Add to that the gross incompetence of the Afghan withdrawal and you provide grist for the GOP mill.
A terrific piece, Jim. I wish it was assigned reading in every newsroom and every editorial meeting.
Thank you! I appreciate your reading, responding, and support.
An impressive history lesson, agree with virtually everything, except two things. One is the short discussion about arcs and inflection points. It's hard to look over the past 15 years and see any definable arc, rather a jagged mess leading to ? I wish I knew. On the Afghanistan withdrawal, count me a skeptic. The withdrawal started the meme that the administration wasn't competent, and its taken a year to partially reverse that impression. And I share with George Packer the horror over those we left stranded. And only history will tell us if leaving exposed us to future terrorist attacks. I know the other side, and expect you to make it well. But to me, the foreign policy and political verdict so far is negative. Who knows, history may judge it differently. Still, I always welcome your great insights, and your masterful ability to put current things -- as crazy as they are - in historical context. No wonder you had a past life as a presidential speech writer.
Bob, many thanks.
Yes, on the arc point — I didn't develop all I was having in mind there, just for reasons of space. And I agree that there are long stretches in US history, and world history, and all the rest, where the arc seems to be leading straight to hell. More on this later.
On Afghanistan, I understand and take seriously your points. I'll try to get into this more fully too, soon. My basic view is: *whenever this happened*, it was going to be horrible, in the ways the withdrawal last year was. So to me the question is: how many more years of postponing that reality were worth it — in the blood of all the different people involved, in money, in the crimes and cruelties that a military occupation inevitably inflicts (in addition to the crimes and cruelties of ending that occupation.)
I think we would agree that it was a *hard* decision — the sort of choice that all the rest of us can talk about but presidents finally have to make. And my point is that it was not portrayed with that weight.
I agree with you that this was a big factor in "bumbling Biden" themes from last year. And thanks for your gracious and generous response.
All good points. It’s a pity Biden will likely pass before the country recognizes how good a man and prescient an administrator he actually is. But if that arc bends in the proper direction, the country will someday. And old Joe probably doesn’t give much of a damn anymore.
If David McCullough were still around, I imagine that Biden would be calling him in for discussions about the legacy of Harry Truman. The differences are obvious but so are some similarities: following a vastly more charismatic predecessor; not a favorite of the press; undisciplined in some comments; prematurely counted out in electoral prospects (in Truman's case, of course, right up to election day).
A few years ago I read an article that said that after WWII most Americans were leery of charismatic leaders. I’m not sure how true that is but when I was young US presidents were not charismatic — Truman and Eisenhower were definitely not. Nor were Nixon, LBJ or Carter. JFK and Reagan were the exceptions, not the rule, but today the media acts like presidents must be charismatic and inspiring to succeed. Personally I’ll take quiet competence over charisma any day. Angela Merkel wasn’t perfect but she sure beats a Trump or a Boris Johnson any day.
Excellent piece. I agree with you on virtually all points.
Alan, thank you, I appreciate it.