On May 17th last I was privileged to be part of a small group of approximately 150 people to attend a fascinating, and sometimes moving, "fireside chat" type conversation between Ted Sorensen, the former legal counsel, policy adviser and chief speech writer for Senator (1952-1960) and latterly President Kennedy (1961-1963), and Pulitzer Prize winning historian Professor David Kennedy of Stanford University, California. The event was hosted by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
At 82 years old Sorensen is almost blind, one of the after effects of a severe stroke he suffered in 2001. That being said he is a wonderfully articulate and vocally impressive man. His delivery style is that of a man who has been writing all his life and he possesses an extraordinary command of historical facts and personal memories. One of the questions posed by Professor Kennedy was to describe the relationship he (Sorensen) had with President Kennedy as it related to speech writing. Sorensen described this relationship as "collaborative" where he would create a first draft for JFK's review, Kennedy would edit and make small changes or request deletions, Sorensen would re-draft and they would continue in this vein until the final text was agreed.
Remember, he is the man who drafted every major speech given by JFK from 1952 to 1963 including the famous "Ask not what your country can do for you..." inaugural address, the American University speech of June 10th 1963, Kennedy's civil rights 'moral issue' speech to the nation the very next day and his brilliant address to Dail Eireann (the Irish parliament) on June 28th 1963, among many, many others.
It was fascinating to hear this man's firsthand accounts of his experiences in the White House, at the side of the President, while tumultuous events like the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin crisis, the civil rights demonstrations and the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded around them.
At the book signing afterwards, I shook his hand. He told me that the speech he wrote that JFK delivered to Dail Eireann on June 28th 1963 was one of his favorites. He then proceeded to sign my book and for good measure recited, verbatim, off the top of his head, a verse from "The Foggy Dew".
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The political implosion of the GOP
"The hardest job for a politician today is to have the courage to be a moderate. It's easy to take an extreme position" - Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), U.S. Senator from Minnesota 1949-1965 and 1971-1978 and 38th Vice President 1965-1969.
The recent senatorial primary results from three key states have given us a taste of what is to come this fall. A couple of weeks after an unprecedented outcome in Utah, where a sitting, two term Republican senator was defeated in his party's state primary for the upcoming November election, nervous candidates in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Arkansas watched closely to see if they were next to incur the wrath of a deeply frustrated electorate. The results from those races show that Democrats need to be concerned for the future of a hefty number of elected members come November; however the really big story here is that the Republican Party is eating itself alive - more anon.
The history of politics in the United States shows that in off year elections (i.e. when there is no presidential election) the party that currently holds the White House suffers some, and often significant losses in the congressional and senatorial races that are commonly referred to as the 'mid-term' elections. Congressmen (a generic term that refers to male and female representatives) are up for election every two years, are elected to the House of Representatives and are 438 in number. The United States Senate on the other hand contains 100 members who are elected to six year terms. Depending on timing, there may be anything from twenty to forty senatorial seats up for grabs in off year elections.
There is one thing we know for sure. There is huge anti-incumbent sentiment among the electorate right now. It is highly likely that this will reflect itself in Democrats losing some congressional and senatorial seats in November. As I mentioned earlier, this is par for the course in American politics. However, we are beginning to see a trend emerge from the primaries that have taken place thus far and it is not one that augurs well for Republicans. Here is a quick summary.
First, there is the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist. Charlie is a moderate, which means that he holds some views that appeal to Democratic voters. He sided with President Obama in 2009 by voicing his support in favor of the president $875B stimulus package, which brought down on him the ire of the Republican establishment and the Tea Party nut jobs. With his governorship due to end this year, Crist is running for the Senate. Until a month ago he was running as a Republican. That was until the GOP establishment came out in support of Crist's opponent, the far more conservative Tea Party candidate, Marco Rubio, resulting in Crist breaking with the Republican Party and changing his affiliation to Independent. And yes, he is still running for the Senate.
A number of weeks ago, incumbent GOP senator Bob Bennett of Utah, a man with a record of voting conservative 86% of the time, was unceremoniously dumped from the November state ballot by losing his party's primary election. The reason? He wasn't conservative enough. In Kentucky, an eye surgeon named Rand Paul, the unelected son of longtime Republican congressman, former Liberterian Party candidate for President and darling of the Tea Party movement, Ron Paul, defeated the establishment Republican candidate in that state's GOP senatorial primary this month.
You see the pattern emerging here? Existing, well established and respected GOP incumbents, many of whom lean to the far right politically, are being tossed out on their backsides because they are deemed to be not conservative enough by the Tea Party mob who are vying to take control of the Republican Party. There is a bitter, ideological war going on within the GOP that has the potential to tear it apart.
Anti-incumbent feeling isn't confined to Republicans. Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania (yes, the same Arlen Spector of the Warren Commission who authored the infamous 'magic bullet theory' to explain how one bullet inflicted seven separate wounds on President Kennedy and Governor Connolly in Dallas 47 years ago) has lost his state's Democratic primary election for a possible 6th term. Why is this important and why was he defeated? There are two plausible reasons; a) even though Spector was a senator for 30 years he was the victim of the anti-incumbent tsunami that we can see building across the country, or b) which in my opinion is the more likely, Spector, for 29 of his 30 years in the senate was a Republican! He switched parties in 2009 to become a Democrat, openly acknowledging that if he remained a Republican this year he would likely have a very difficult primary challenge. Guess what, he changed parties and still lost. Here was a guy who voted for the Iraq War, voted for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and in the end I think Pennsylvania Democrats just couldn't get the image of Arlen Spector the Republican out of their minds. He lost to a retired three star admiral and two term congressman named Joe Sestak.
Finally, let me say this about the so called Tea Party tidal wave. At a post election rally, Rand Paul said that he wants to be part of a revolution to "take the country back". Really? Back where exactly? Back to 30 years of Reagan/Bush economics and a doctrine of complete deregulation of the banks and the financial markets? Back to an era of tax cuts for only the top 1% of earners? Back to a policy of pre-emptive war and unilateralism? How far back does he, and the so called Tea Party movement, want to take us - 1776? Give me a break.....
The recent senatorial primary results from three key states have given us a taste of what is to come this fall. A couple of weeks after an unprecedented outcome in Utah, where a sitting, two term Republican senator was defeated in his party's state primary for the upcoming November election, nervous candidates in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Arkansas watched closely to see if they were next to incur the wrath of a deeply frustrated electorate. The results from those races show that Democrats need to be concerned for the future of a hefty number of elected members come November; however the really big story here is that the Republican Party is eating itself alive - more anon.
The history of politics in the United States shows that in off year elections (i.e. when there is no presidential election) the party that currently holds the White House suffers some, and often significant losses in the congressional and senatorial races that are commonly referred to as the 'mid-term' elections. Congressmen (a generic term that refers to male and female representatives) are up for election every two years, are elected to the House of Representatives and are 438 in number. The United States Senate on the other hand contains 100 members who are elected to six year terms. Depending on timing, there may be anything from twenty to forty senatorial seats up for grabs in off year elections.
There is one thing we know for sure. There is huge anti-incumbent sentiment among the electorate right now. It is highly likely that this will reflect itself in Democrats losing some congressional and senatorial seats in November. As I mentioned earlier, this is par for the course in American politics. However, we are beginning to see a trend emerge from the primaries that have taken place thus far and it is not one that augurs well for Republicans. Here is a quick summary.
First, there is the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist. Charlie is a moderate, which means that he holds some views that appeal to Democratic voters. He sided with President Obama in 2009 by voicing his support in favor of the president $875B stimulus package, which brought down on him the ire of the Republican establishment and the Tea Party nut jobs. With his governorship due to end this year, Crist is running for the Senate. Until a month ago he was running as a Republican. That was until the GOP establishment came out in support of Crist's opponent, the far more conservative Tea Party candidate, Marco Rubio, resulting in Crist breaking with the Republican Party and changing his affiliation to Independent. And yes, he is still running for the Senate.
A number of weeks ago, incumbent GOP senator Bob Bennett of Utah, a man with a record of voting conservative 86% of the time, was unceremoniously dumped from the November state ballot by losing his party's primary election. The reason? He wasn't conservative enough. In Kentucky, an eye surgeon named Rand Paul, the unelected son of longtime Republican congressman, former Liberterian Party candidate for President and darling of the Tea Party movement, Ron Paul, defeated the establishment Republican candidate in that state's GOP senatorial primary this month.
You see the pattern emerging here? Existing, well established and respected GOP incumbents, many of whom lean to the far right politically, are being tossed out on their backsides because they are deemed to be not conservative enough by the Tea Party mob who are vying to take control of the Republican Party. There is a bitter, ideological war going on within the GOP that has the potential to tear it apart.
Anti-incumbent feeling isn't confined to Republicans. Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania (yes, the same Arlen Spector of the Warren Commission who authored the infamous 'magic bullet theory' to explain how one bullet inflicted seven separate wounds on President Kennedy and Governor Connolly in Dallas 47 years ago) has lost his state's Democratic primary election for a possible 6th term. Why is this important and why was he defeated? There are two plausible reasons; a) even though Spector was a senator for 30 years he was the victim of the anti-incumbent tsunami that we can see building across the country, or b) which in my opinion is the more likely, Spector, for 29 of his 30 years in the senate was a Republican! He switched parties in 2009 to become a Democrat, openly acknowledging that if he remained a Republican this year he would likely have a very difficult primary challenge. Guess what, he changed parties and still lost. Here was a guy who voted for the Iraq War, voted for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and in the end I think Pennsylvania Democrats just couldn't get the image of Arlen Spector the Republican out of their minds. He lost to a retired three star admiral and two term congressman named Joe Sestak.
Finally, let me say this about the so called Tea Party tidal wave. At a post election rally, Rand Paul said that he wants to be part of a revolution to "take the country back". Really? Back where exactly? Back to 30 years of Reagan/Bush economics and a doctrine of complete deregulation of the banks and the financial markets? Back to an era of tax cuts for only the top 1% of earners? Back to a policy of pre-emptive war and unilateralism? How far back does he, and the so called Tea Party movement, want to take us - 1776? Give me a break.....
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Take the Money and Run (The Steve Miller Band, 1976)
"Money, and not morality, is the principal of commercial nations" - Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the 3rd President of the United States (}1801 -1809)
So here we go again. Get ready for round two. A month after the historic passage of the most groundbreaking and morally responsible legislation in half a century, health care reform, President Obama is once again circling the wagons to take on another special interest behemoth. This time it is the banks and financial institutions, the cognoscenti that play with the nation's money by day and drink martinis after five, the aristocracy of corporate America, the fat cats of Wall Street and their enablers and supporters on K Street (home of corporate lobbyists in Washington D.C.)
Buoyed by their achievement in passing significant health care reform, a bill that will provide medical insurance to an additional 32 million Americans, the Democratic majority in Congress is posied to pass the toughest financial regulatory reform since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930's. Back then FDR didn't a lawyer or a banker to design and implement the changes needed to eliminate the corrupt practices that had brought on the stock market crash of 1929. Instead, he tapped Joseph P. Kennedy (yes, that Joe Kennedy) to be the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the words of one Washington columnist...'the best way to catch the pirates, Roosevelt figured, was to hire another pirate', and he got Captain Kidd himself when he chose Kennedy. Unfortunately President Obama doesn't have a Kennedyesque candidate over at the SEC to take the lead in beating the Wall Street chairmen into submission. In addition to his own significant fortitude and determination however, Obama has an experienced and wily Vice President, a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and perhaps most importantly, the majority of the American people on his side as he steps into the ring with another special interest heavyweight.
Perhaps not surprisingly, standing alongside the banks in complete opposition to any kind of reform on the financial sector, is the Republican Party. It seems inconceivable to me that after taking the side of the insurance companies over the concerns of the American people in the recent health care debate (not one member of the Republican Party, in either the House or the Senate, voted in favor of the health care legislation), the GOP thinks it is good politics to get into bed with the very institutions that have angered and outraged the American people perhaps more than any other.
The Republican Party has succumbed to the will of it's most hard right, conservative members (as well as the anti government fervor being generated by the so called Tea Party movement) and is taking an absolutely huge gamble leading up to November's mid term elections. It is that the American people will be more angry at the current administration for not turning around the economy as quickly as they think they should have (and vote Democrats out of office) than understanding that the economic mess that Obama inherited was the worse since the Great Depression. The gamble also assumes that the American people won't give any credit to Democrats for passing significant health care legislation (and probably financial regulatory reform, thereby handcuffing to some degree the very institutions that caused the financial meltdown) as well as steadying the economic ship of state. It's an argument I don't buy and I believe it is a gamble that they will ultimately lose.
Here is the history. Thanks in large part to the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt, America's banks, and by default the U.S. economy, prospered in the thirty five years after World War II. Then along comes Ronald Reagan, propagandist in chief for the concept of small government and less federal regulation of private enterprise (including financial markets and banking practices). For all his qualities or leadership and communication skills, one should also remember that Reagan has been publicly speaking out against so called "socialized medicine" since 1961. A direct result of Reagan economics (i.e. deregulation) was the famous "Savings and Loans" crisis of 1980's and 1990's, during which 747 separate financials institutions in the United States failed. The cost of that crisis, twenty years ago, was approximately $160B, the vast majority of which was paid for by way of a financial bailout during the presidency of none other than George H.W. Bush.
So, here we are in 2010 and Republican's are not only up in arms because the Obama adminsitration had to bail out the nations's banks in the same way W's father had to two decades ago, but perhaps more appallingly, they are now standing side by side with the very banks that precipitated the current financial crisis, a crisis caused by the predatory and corrupt practices that came into existence as a direct result of the Reagan policy of deregulation in the 1980's.
The hypocrisy of these people is stomach churning. Remember, the mess that was created here in the United States is one that has been replicated in dozens of countries across the world, where predatory, unethical and often illegal banking practices have wreaked havoc on economies and people's lives. There is one common theme however, in every case the tax payer has to pick up the tab.
We may not have a 21st century Joseph P. Kennedy to whip these leeches into submission but my money is on President Obama to take the fight to Wall Street and pass the most significant financial regulatory reform since the New Deal.
So here we go again. Get ready for round two. A month after the historic passage of the most groundbreaking and morally responsible legislation in half a century, health care reform, President Obama is once again circling the wagons to take on another special interest behemoth. This time it is the banks and financial institutions, the cognoscenti that play with the nation's money by day and drink martinis after five, the aristocracy of corporate America, the fat cats of Wall Street and their enablers and supporters on K Street (home of corporate lobbyists in Washington D.C.)
Buoyed by their achievement in passing significant health care reform, a bill that will provide medical insurance to an additional 32 million Americans, the Democratic majority in Congress is posied to pass the toughest financial regulatory reform since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930's. Back then FDR didn't a lawyer or a banker to design and implement the changes needed to eliminate the corrupt practices that had brought on the stock market crash of 1929. Instead, he tapped Joseph P. Kennedy (yes, that Joe Kennedy) to be the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the words of one Washington columnist...'the best way to catch the pirates, Roosevelt figured, was to hire another pirate', and he got Captain Kidd himself when he chose Kennedy. Unfortunately President Obama doesn't have a Kennedyesque candidate over at the SEC to take the lead in beating the Wall Street chairmen into submission. In addition to his own significant fortitude and determination however, Obama has an experienced and wily Vice President, a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and perhaps most importantly, the majority of the American people on his side as he steps into the ring with another special interest heavyweight.
Perhaps not surprisingly, standing alongside the banks in complete opposition to any kind of reform on the financial sector, is the Republican Party. It seems inconceivable to me that after taking the side of the insurance companies over the concerns of the American people in the recent health care debate (not one member of the Republican Party, in either the House or the Senate, voted in favor of the health care legislation), the GOP thinks it is good politics to get into bed with the very institutions that have angered and outraged the American people perhaps more than any other.
The Republican Party has succumbed to the will of it's most hard right, conservative members (as well as the anti government fervor being generated by the so called Tea Party movement) and is taking an absolutely huge gamble leading up to November's mid term elections. It is that the American people will be more angry at the current administration for not turning around the economy as quickly as they think they should have (and vote Democrats out of office) than understanding that the economic mess that Obama inherited was the worse since the Great Depression. The gamble also assumes that the American people won't give any credit to Democrats for passing significant health care legislation (and probably financial regulatory reform, thereby handcuffing to some degree the very institutions that caused the financial meltdown) as well as steadying the economic ship of state. It's an argument I don't buy and I believe it is a gamble that they will ultimately lose.
Here is the history. Thanks in large part to the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt, America's banks, and by default the U.S. economy, prospered in the thirty five years after World War II. Then along comes Ronald Reagan, propagandist in chief for the concept of small government and less federal regulation of private enterprise (including financial markets and banking practices). For all his qualities or leadership and communication skills, one should also remember that Reagan has been publicly speaking out against so called "socialized medicine" since 1961. A direct result of Reagan economics (i.e. deregulation) was the famous "Savings and Loans" crisis of 1980's and 1990's, during which 747 separate financials institutions in the United States failed. The cost of that crisis, twenty years ago, was approximately $160B, the vast majority of which was paid for by way of a financial bailout during the presidency of none other than George H.W. Bush.
So, here we are in 2010 and Republican's are not only up in arms because the Obama adminsitration had to bail out the nations's banks in the same way W's father had to two decades ago, but perhaps more appallingly, they are now standing side by side with the very banks that precipitated the current financial crisis, a crisis caused by the predatory and corrupt practices that came into existence as a direct result of the Reagan policy of deregulation in the 1980's.
The hypocrisy of these people is stomach churning. Remember, the mess that was created here in the United States is one that has been replicated in dozens of countries across the world, where predatory, unethical and often illegal banking practices have wreaked havoc on economies and people's lives. There is one common theme however, in every case the tax payer has to pick up the tab.
We may not have a 21st century Joseph P. Kennedy to whip these leeches into submission but my money is on President Obama to take the fight to Wall Street and pass the most significant financial regulatory reform since the New Deal.
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