Month: November 2009

Arizona, Baseball, NEH, Politics

Civilization Requires Civility

Posted on by christian

LeachA Great Speech…

When I noted a few weeks back that President Obama had made a good and interesting selection – former GOP Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa – to head the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), I did not expect such speedy confirmation of what a good appointment it was. Happily, it sounds like Leach will indeed be a great Chairman of the NEH.

At the National Humanities Conference last week in Omaha, Leach offered a stirring defense of the importance of humanities education and made the case for using the lessons of the humanities to quide us in a better direction with our politics and policy. His speech is well worth reading for any student of American history and politics.

A Leach talk in September about bridging cultures – he was talking about the western world and the Muslim world – was also excellent.

If you have ever wondered whether we need to teach humanities in the public schools – along with math and science – or whether there is a price to pay for a lack of civility in our public discourse, read Leach’s Omaha speech. A couple of excerpts:

On applying the humanities to public policy

“The United States is currently intertwined in two civil wars, both more than a third of the way around the world, each with a unique set of problems. One is in the wake of a terrorist attack on our shores plotted from a mountainous Afghani redoubt. The other was precipitated against a country that was not involved in the plot against America but was thought to be on the verge of developing weapons of mass destruction, a thesis since debunked.

“In making assumptions about the wisdom and manner of intervening in the affairs of other countries, would it have been helpful for policy-makers to have reviewed the history of the French colonial experience in Algeria, the British and Russian experience in Afghanistan, the French and U.S. experience in Vietnam?

“Would it have been helpful to study comparative religions and observe the historical implications of the Crusades and their relevance to peoples in the Middle East today? And what meaning might be found in our own colonial history—the asymmetric tactics, for instance, of Francis Marion, the South Carolina patriot known as the Swamp Fox, who attacked the best trained army in the world at night and then vanished into impenetrable swamps during the day?”

And this on the often nasty tone of our public discourse:

“In a political system characterized by historic antipathy to extremes, the decibel level of partisan voices is rising. Rancorous, socially divisive ideological assertions are being made with such frequency that few are thinking through the meaning or consequences of the words being used. Public officials are being labeled ‘fascist’ and ‘communist.’ One Member of Congress has even suggested that colleagues be investigated for ‘un-American activities.’

“Most bizarrely, some in public life have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism—the notion of ‘secession.’

“Even the most cursory study of history would reveal the gravity and implications of such polarizing language. We fought a war across two oceans to defeat fascism and spent billions and sacrificed thousands to hold communism at bay. And a century and a half ago, over 600,000 Americans were killed in a bloody civil war over the question of secession. That war, we thought, settled two issues: that slavery was incompatible with humanist, democratic values and that these United States are indivisible, inseparable from each other. We are a union, after and above all.”

A Plea for Civility

Chairman Leach indicated he will focus attention on the critical importance of civility and how the humanities can give us a respect – and yes, understanding – for perspectives different from our own.

Jim Leach knows of what he speaks. In some quarters – one blogger calls him “a pro-Obama turncoat” – he has suffered vilification for breaking ranks with the GOP. In our superheated political kitchen, one man’s turncoat is another’s statesman. And, Leach offers the perfect cooling sentiment.

“Bridging cultural divides and developing a sense for a common humanity are moral and social imperatives. Together, we in the humanities are obligated to help advance an ethic of thoughtfulness rather than conformity of thought, decency of expression rather than coarseness in public manners.

“Civilization requires civility.” Amen.

American Presidents, Civility, Native Americans, Obama

Only In America

Posted on by christian

glacierxFirst Nations Get Real Attention

Barack Obama got off a wonderful line last week when he spoke to more than 500 of the nation’s tribal leaders at a major conference in Washington. The president recalled his Montana campaign last year and the occasion of his adoption by Hartford and Mary Black Eagle of the Crow Tribe.

“Only in America,” Obama said, “could the adoptive son of Crow Indians grow up to become President of the United States.” The quip reportedly got a big laugh and illustrates Obama’s deft touch and graceful sense of humor. The presidential attention may also signal a new day – long overdue – of federal government attention to tribal issues.

In 1934, another president – Franklin Roosevelt – on another trip to Montana was honored by the Blackfeet Tribe with a ceremony near Two-Medicine Chalet in Glacier National Park. That’s FDR in the back seat of his Cadillac touring car. He had spent the day touring the park. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is standing next to then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.

In my read of New Deal history, FDR’s policies toward tribal nations were a mixed bag. Roosevelt championed the Wheeler-Howard Act, also known as the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 or, as then-BIA Commissioner John Collier preferred, the Indian New Deal.

Well intentioned as most of Roosevelt’s policy was, it still suffered from a “Washington knows best” bias and even Collier, a generally great Commissioner, possessed a heavy paternalist hand.

Obama’s moves so far seem to hold great promise for true progress on tribal issues.

Obama’s joke about his adopted status was a light hearted moment during an otherwise substantive meeting; a meeting that was almost completely overshadowed in the news cycle by the tragic shootings at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Concluding his remarks, the president said: “I understand what it means to be an outsider. I was born to a teenage mother. My father left when I was two years old, leaving her — my mother and my grandparents to raise me. We didn’t have much. We moved around a lot. So even though our experiences are different, I understand what it means to be on the outside looking in. I know what it means to feel ignored and forgotten, and what it means to struggle. So you will not be forgotten as long as I’m in this White House.”

Mark Trahant, an Idaho native from Ft. Hall and a thoughtful commentator on Native American issues, says Obama’s decision to put the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the center of coordinating federal policy regarding tribal nations means the president means business. I agree. Any good bureaucrat knows that policy follows the money.

Obama’s tone and his appointments – former Idaho Attorney General Larry EchoHawk is the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs – together with his empathy and directives to the bureaucracy could truly mark a new era. Let’s hope so.

Baseball, Civil War, Minnick, Politics

A Very Fine Line

Posted on by christian

health careDoes Idaho’s Blue Dog Risk His Base?

There is a fundamental rule in politics – the first and most important rule, perhaps – that is ignored by any politician at considerable risk. Ask Dede Scozzafava.

Scozzafava was the Republican congressional candidate in a recent special election in upstate New York who could not hold on to a seat that has been in GOP hands since U.S. Grant was in the White House.

Scozzafava ultimately withdrew from the special election and endorsed the Democrat who eventually won. Her demise was sealed thanks to a badly fractured Republican base that thought she had strayed way too far from party orthodoxy. Her political situation was exacerbated – and fate ultimately sealed – by a third party candidate who appealed to the most conservative voters in the heavily Republican-leaning district. In short, the special election in the 23rd District of New York was a real mess, but the wreckage illustrates that fundamental rule.

Secure your base.

Republicans are still beaming over two gubernatorial victories last week in New Jersey and Virginia. In both cases, capable Republican challengers won against damaged Democrats who where unable to excite the party base that carried Barack Obama to victory in both states just a year ago. Most post-election analysis has confirmed that Democrats in both states were not terribly motivated, while the GOP core was very excited. Independents in both states helped closed the deal for the Republicans.

In short, Republicans secured and motivated their base. Democrats did not.

Idaho’s lone congressional Democrat, Walt Minnick, now confronts a similar problem as he walks the very fine line demanded of a western Democrat in a deep red state. Minnick must know that his base is restless.

Minnick’s dilemma – the line he walks – might be reduced to this: in a state like Idaho, he must be an independent with a conservative lean, but at the same time he cannot risk turning his Democratic base – small as it is – against him.

Minnick represents Idaho’s sprawling First District that runs from the west Boise suburbs, south to the Nevada border and north all the way to British Columbia. The district includes the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 named for Frank Church, the last Democrat to represent Idaho in the U.S. Senate, as well as the deepest canyon in North America. The University of Idaho, a fine research school, is in the district, as is the plot of ground where the white supremacist Aryan Nation once held forth.

Since the 1950’s, at least, the district has grown increasingly more conservative. Three GOP congressmen who once represented the First District – Jim McClure, Steve Symms and Larry Craig – went to the Senate from this reliably Republican outpost. For a Democrat, the margin of error in the First District is, well, there is no margin for error for a Democrat.

Minnick won the challenging job of representing this huge district a year ago by narrowly defeating a deeply polarizing incumbent, Bill Sali, who ran hard to the right. Before last fall, the district had not sent a Democrat to Washington since 1992.

Minnick won the way Democrats have often won in Idaho, by defeating a weak Republican – Bill Sali – who had his own problems keeping the GOP base together. Church got his start this way and so did Cecil Andrus and each found a way to keep winning with a consistent appeal to the base and a winning message to the middle.

A year ago, Minnick was able to knit together a coalition that included an energized Democratic base that came to like Obama, salted with just enough moderate R’s who couldn’t fancy more Bill Sali, and complemented by independents who typically vote for Republicans unless they find them, as they did Sali, just too far out of the mainstream. This is the very political definition of fragile territory.

To his strategic credit, Minnick also played to the middle, stressing his farm upbringing while touting his business acumen. His campaign also succeeding in showing Idahoans that he not only supports guns, but uses them. It all added up to just enough to eek out a win in a presidential election year when John McCain polled more than 61% of the Idaho vote.

Late last Saturday night, Minnick cast a vote that may go a long way toward securing his political fate. Idaho’s lone Democrat on the national stage joined 38 other conservative Democrats – the so called Blue Dogs – in opposition to the party’s health care legislation that passed the House by the narrowest of margins. For good measure, Minnick also voted against the rule that allowed the Democratic bill to come to a final vote. In other words, he went the distance in opposition to a idea – health care reform – that is as fundamental to many Democrats as FDR’s old campaign song “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

[Long-time Idaho political observer, Randy Stapilus, also suggests that Minnick may have complicated his already delicate dance on the health care legislation by opposing the contentious amendment, backed by many Blue Dogs, to restrict funding for abortion.]

While health care legislation might be the vote that most of his constituents remember the longest, Minnick has also been at odds with party theology over the last few months on the stimulus package, climate change legislation and some aspects of financial services reform. He may well have succeeded in becoming the most independent Democrat in the House, but that label hasn’t kept him from making every list of most vulnerable incumbents in 2010. He and two potential Republican challengers are amassing war chests and this figures to be a dog fight – blue or otherwise – in the months ahead.

For his part, former Congressman Sali continues to flirt with a potential re-run, a situation that could end up being the best case for the current incumbent.

A year out from his re-elect, here are the questions worth pondering: Will Minnick pay a price among hardcore Democratic supporters for his independence on issues like health care? Or, as he must believe, will he be able to thread the electoral needle once again; re-assemble the Democratic base, again add enough moderates from the GOP and pull a sizable majority of independents?

To be sure there are a world of votes ahead, including presumably the ultimate vote in Congress to reconcile the House and Senate versions of a health care reform bill, and Republicans in Idaho’s First District are still months away from selecting Minnick’s challenger. Lots of things can – and probably will – happen.

Still, as New York, Virginia and New Jersey show most recently, and as successful politicians know instinctively, the party base needs to feel the love. Your friends hate to be taken for granted.

In Minnick’s district, I’m going to peg the dependable Democratic base – it has consistently dwindled since 1990 – at something north of 30%, perhaps even 35%, of the voters. These are the folks that show up at fundraisers, put up yard signs, man phone banks and walk parade routes handing out a candidate’s literature. They also talk to their friends about politics and politicians. You want the base working and voting, not restless and wondering.

There are never numbers enough among the base to elect a Democrat in Idaho, but if these folks decide – even in modest numbers – to sit one out, there are numbers enough to defeat a Democrat.

This is Walt Minnick’s dilemma and it requires walking a very fine line indeed.

Andrus Center, Baseball

Wait Until Next Year

Posted on by christian

BaseballIs It Spring Yet?

While I wait for the warmth of spring and the baseball fan’s certainty that opening day (148 days away by my count) brings all things new again with every team in first place, I content myself with thougths like these:

“As I think back and look forward, I see how nothing is straightforward nothing is unambiguous. Salvation does not come through simplicities, either of sentiment or system. The gray, grainy complex nature of existence and the ragged edges of our lives as we lead them defy hunger for a neat, bordered existence and for spirits unsullied by doubt or despair.” ~ A. Bart Giamatti

‘A good cigar is like a beautiful chick with a great body who also knows the American League box scores.” ~ Corporal Klinger from MASH. (He was a fan of the Toledo Mud Hens if I recall correctly.)

“That’s baseball, and it’s my game. Y’ know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave ’em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It’s good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of ’em.” ~ Humphrey Bogart

“Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.” ~ Casey Stengel

“There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” ~Tallulah Bankhead

“From here on in, I rag nobody.” ~ Henry Wiggen, the pitcher in Mark Harris’ classic book “Bang the Drum Slowly.”

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” ~ Rogers Hornsby

Exactly.

Andrus Center, Baseball

It Might As Well Be Winter

Posted on by christian

Bart Giamatti“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.” – A. Bartlett Giamatti

The late, great Commissioner of Baseball, Bart Giamatti, while serving as President of Yale, said: “All I ever wanted to be president of was the American League.”

He ended up heading the National League and somehow – what were baseball owners thinking – they made this brilliant, big hearted man of unflinching integrity the boss of baseball in 1989.

Giamatti, a real commissioner back when baseball owners fleetingly thought they wanted a real commissioner, had a writer’s sensibility and a fan’s devotion to the great game. A Renaissance literature scholar, Giamatti was also a street smart ethicist who knew Pete Rose had to be the example of baseball’s zero tolerance for a lack of integrity. I have often wondered how as Commissioner Giamatti would have dealt with the drug scandals of recent years. I think I know. The owners wouldn’t have liked it.

Shortly after his very premature death after just a few months as Commissioner, Joe Garagiola, the broadcaster and one-time backup catcher, summed up the Commissioner: “One thing you can be sure of, you’ll never hear anyone say I knew someone exactly like Bart Giamatti.”

Giamatti’s little book – A Great and Glorious Game – contains some of the best writing ever about baseball.

At this time of year, with the World Series decided, with NFL and college football dominating the sports page, with the warmth and green of another spring a far distant thought, I always think of Giamatti and his superb, poetic little essay The Green Fields of the Mind.

“The game begins in the spring,” he wrote, “when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

Put another log on the fire. It will be a damn long winter. I hope I can wait until once again those glorious words are spoken in the spring: “pitchers and catchers report.”

Baseball, Politics

The Morning After the Morning After

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Election 2009What Are The Lessons From Election ’09?

Are Republicans poised for a comeback? Sure.

We are a two party nation and – with apologies to the 1840’s Whig Party – the party out of power always finds a way to claw back to relevance.

Does the GOP have some challenges? Absolutely.

Former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis sums it up well when he says the party out of power has a chance now to catch a wave of voter anger about the economy and spending: “The challenge for Republicans is to catch that lightening in a bottle and build a coalition that can lead you to huge congressional gains,” Davis said. “But it’s easier said than done.”

Do the elections of Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia signal danger ahead for the Democrats? Perhaps.

I tend to think gubernatorial races normally turn on more local issues – taxes, roads, and schools – but the party in power is due for a gut check. The message from the two statewide races Tuesday may simply be that “it’s the economy, stupid.” Are Democrats listening?

The most interesting races, with potential national implications, took place in New York. The upstate congressional special election illustrates the tensions in the GOP. And the Big Apple’s mayoral contest proves, well, I don’t have any idea what it proves. Money buys happiness, perhaps.

As Governing magazine notes: “The race cost [Michael] Bloomberg an estimated $90 million. In his three races, Bloomberg has spent more of his personal fortune on campaigns than any candidate in U.S. history. Now, Bloomberg and the city face a $5 billion budget deficit.”

So, let the Republican and Democratic message machines spin Tuesday’s results as they will. The election that will tell us more about the longer term direction of the country will take place next November.

As CQ notes: “The governing party almost always loses seats in midterm elections, when the voter turnout is lower and the bulk of the energy and enthusiasm is with the opposition party. With 257 House seats, Democrats are nearing the maximum number of seats they could conceivably control under the current Congressional maps. Surveys show the 2010 elections could be unfriendly to incumbents.”

Many things are in play for both parties, primarily the economy. Will things be a good deal better next summer or fall? Will the GOP be able to unite behind something (or someone) positive as an alternative to Barack Obama? Will Afghanistan be front and center as a kitchen table issue?

Could this be an historical parallel? In the mid-term elections in 1934, Franklin Roosevelt’s party actually expanded its margins in the Congress even as the economy remained in the ditch. Voters concluded that FDR had an optimistic plan and was both trustworthy in carrying out the plan and focused on the concerns of most Americans.

Congressional Republicans in the 1934 mid-term elections were unable to articulate an effective alternative to FDR’s still emerging plans and they simply had no counter to his likable disposition and communication skills. Many shrill voices took to calling the president a dictator, a socialist, or worse, but the vast majority of Americans simply didn’t buy it.

We know Obama has read this history. But knowing history’s lessons and applying them is only part of the challenge of political leadership. My guess is the president can still tap a reservoir of patience among most Americans, but by next summer voters will really be judging him.

Civil Rights, Film

Dame Helen

Posted on by christian

Can’t Wait For This Film

Is there a better actress in the world than Helen Mirren? OK, maybe Meryl Streep, but it would be a close contest…or a tie.

Ever since Mirren seemed to inhabit the role of the hard living, chain smoking, hard luck British Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in the superb Masterpiece Theatre series on PBS, she has been better and better in each succeeding television or film role. Now she is poised to open in Boise director Michael Hoffman’s new film – The Last Station – about the life of Leo Tolstoy. Dame Helen plays Tolstoy’s wife, Sofia.

She won the best actress award at the recent Rome film festival for her role in Hoffman’s new film and the Daily Telegraph has an interview on Mirren’s return to her family roots in Russia.

The film opens in January next year. I’m sure the film will be great, but Helen Mirren, well – she’s just the best.

Campaign Finance, Health Care

Health Care Reform

Posted on by christian

hospitalStates May Still Call the Shots

Here is the opening graph of a Washington Post piece that ran on November 1st:

“The debate over whether to let states opt out of any government-run health insurance plan overlooks a key facet of the health-care measures being assembled in Congress: When Washington is done, the shape of any new health-care system is likely to be finalized in Lansing and Boise and Baton Rouge.”

The full Post story is here.

Will states be up to the challenge? Indianapolis may be an example of what local initiative can accomplish. Emergency responders in the Indiana capitol city now have wireless access to medical records.

According to the publication, Federal Computer Week, “The goal is to help the medics provide more effective emergency care to patients by having real-time access to a digital record of the patients’ pre-existing medical conditions, previous treatments, allergies, current medications and other information.”

Like almost all big changes in American public policy, much of the detail and implementation in health care and insurance reform- regardless of the overheated rhetoric out of Washington, D.C. – will take place under the eyes of part-time, citizen legislators. Depending upon your point of view, that could be a very good thing or not. We will find out, piece by piece, state by state.

Civil Liberties, Poetry

All Souls

Posted on by christian
yeats UpdikeA Day of Remembrance

On All Souls Day, a remembrance of those we love and live among us in memory, two poems by John Updike and W.B. Yeats.

I can’t get this little Updike poem – one of his last – out of my head and, on this crisp fall day of remembrance, it once again seems particularly appropriate.

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise – depths unplumable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge,
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

– John Updike
from “Endpoint and Other Poems”

And Yeats’s – All Souls’ Night

Epilogue to “A Vision’

Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost’s right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

The rest of the All Souls’ Night is here: