We Were There
As with most born in the decade after World War II to parents who
understood what the New Deal and the GI Bill meant for their lives, the
era of a forward thinking government started to end on that bleak day
in November, 1963, but that is not true.
Our inspirational president was taken from us, but his successor was a true New Dealer with a mission. And after the Kennedy-inspired Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were signed into law, President Johnson moved on to a war on poverty and creating a Great Society.
Those dreams did not end because of superior advocacy against change from the Republican Party, but because of the tragic mistake in southeast Asia which tore the country in two, leaving what President Johnson wanted to accomplish in the dust and President Nixon in its wake.
It has taken us forty years, but it appears we may finally be back on track. There is no way to be certain only a month into this administration, but the question seems worth considering, particularly after the president's speech to a joint session of Congress and the transformational budget put forth later in the week. It is this: are we seeing greatness here? Are living through a presidency that will change this country in the way that Franklin Roosevelt's did?
Nobody in the summer of 1933 could possibly have known that, except for two aberrational years in the 1950s, the Democratic Party would control Congress until the 1980s and that the next Republican president (Eisenhower) would embrace the New Deal. We can make no such predictions either, but it is absolutely possible we are at the dawn of a new age in the same way our forebears were 76 years ago.
One of the miracles of the internet age is the opportunity to read the views of thoughtful people not enveloped in the beltway haze or the need and desire to create controversy out of nothing and those sober views of a public looking for direction, guidance, hope and a plan to get us out of the mess we are in, are what makes it possible to stand back a bit and look at what is happening, with greater perspective than we have otherwise been afforded.
One of my favorites among them posts here on TPM and, in the greatest traditions of our best columnists, wondered whether sites such as this one would soon disappear with too little to complain about. That clever way of noting what an amazing month or so we have just ended has me thinking about what greatness means in terms of a presidency.
I do not think anyone expects that the simple change of presidents will cure our ills. We elected (in a way) a complete fool to occupy the presidency for eight years, twenty years after doing the same thing. That followed the presidency of as corrupt and potentially despotic president as we have ever had, followed by two somewhat well-meaning lightweights, and in between the two utter dolts, we had two others presidents who for various reasons were unable to rise to what the occasion required.
As a result, we have found ourselves in dire straits. Joe McGinnis' once famous book not only described the odd way in which we had come to "market" presidential candidates, but warned us of the consequences of electing them this way. That George W. Bush was considered, by a significant number of people, to be more qualified for the presidency than, first, Sen John McCain, and then Vice President Gore and Senator John Kerry, makes McGinnis' point but, for today's purposes, the essential issue is how much the country has to pay for such decisionmaking.
So George W. Bush's only gift to his country may have been to make the presidency now underway to become possible. It may not be a coincidence that Lincoln followed the arguably worst president of all time, James Buchanan, and Franklin Roosevelt came to clean up the mess made by the hopelessly out of touch Herbert Hoover.
Hence:
Nothing like this has been said by any President speaking from that podium in that room since President Johnson told Congress and the nation:
That is what presidential leadership is all about. The President, contrary to the opinion of the prior administration, is not a monarch who can "do" this or fix that. The President's authority in the main comes from his role as a leader of the national debate. When the President points his country in the right direction, toward our better angels trying to make this country live up to the best instincts of our nature, and the ideals upon which we became a nation, he approaches greatness.
Not that everyone will see it that way, of course. I don't want to live in a country where everyone thinks the same thing, but the opinions of the selfish, the deluded, the foolish, need not be allowed to get in the way of progress, especially when we need to move forward with, as they say, all deliberate speed.
This President knows what he is up against. We know that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are channeling the GOP of 1933 and repeating the attacks their predecessors made on FDR and the New Deal.
They hated President Roosevelt. They accused him of every bad thing they could think of and their descendants still hate him today. The rest of us---a huge majority of us---know better.
And as I watch President Obama and listen to him proposing the way back, and then hear the whining cries of the irrelevant among us, President Roosevelt's response to them, weeks before his re-election in 1936 proved that when properly educated and led by a president with vision the voters of this country know far better, almost sings to me:
That is greatness. A country that can tell the difference between a real leader, and one who pretends to be one, such as the Great Reagan, is a healthy one, and one which will, in the end, prosper and lead. Years from now, perhaps, we can say that, we, too, were fortunate to have had the same sort of president who restored this nation as the land of the free and the brave of the best of our history.
Our inspirational president was taken from us, but his successor was a true New Dealer with a mission. And after the Kennedy-inspired Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were signed into law, President Johnson moved on to a war on poverty and creating a Great Society.
Those dreams did not end because of superior advocacy against change from the Republican Party, but because of the tragic mistake in southeast Asia which tore the country in two, leaving what President Johnson wanted to accomplish in the dust and President Nixon in its wake.
It has taken us forty years, but it appears we may finally be back on track. There is no way to be certain only a month into this administration, but the question seems worth considering, particularly after the president's speech to a joint session of Congress and the transformational budget put forth later in the week. It is this: are we seeing greatness here? Are living through a presidency that will change this country in the way that Franklin Roosevelt's did?
Nobody in the summer of 1933 could possibly have known that, except for two aberrational years in the 1950s, the Democratic Party would control Congress until the 1980s and that the next Republican president (Eisenhower) would embrace the New Deal. We can make no such predictions either, but it is absolutely possible we are at the dawn of a new age in the same way our forebears were 76 years ago.
One of the miracles of the internet age is the opportunity to read the views of thoughtful people not enveloped in the beltway haze or the need and desire to create controversy out of nothing and those sober views of a public looking for direction, guidance, hope and a plan to get us out of the mess we are in, are what makes it possible to stand back a bit and look at what is happening, with greater perspective than we have otherwise been afforded.
One of my favorites among them posts here on TPM and, in the greatest traditions of our best columnists, wondered whether sites such as this one would soon disappear with too little to complain about. That clever way of noting what an amazing month or so we have just ended has me thinking about what greatness means in terms of a presidency.
I do not think anyone expects that the simple change of presidents will cure our ills. We elected (in a way) a complete fool to occupy the presidency for eight years, twenty years after doing the same thing. That followed the presidency of as corrupt and potentially despotic president as we have ever had, followed by two somewhat well-meaning lightweights, and in between the two utter dolts, we had two others presidents who for various reasons were unable to rise to what the occasion required.
As a result, we have found ourselves in dire straits. Joe McGinnis' once famous book not only described the odd way in which we had come to "market" presidential candidates, but warned us of the consequences of electing them this way. That George W. Bush was considered, by a significant number of people, to be more qualified for the presidency than, first, Sen John McCain, and then Vice President Gore and Senator John Kerry, makes McGinnis' point but, for today's purposes, the essential issue is how much the country has to pay for such decisionmaking.
So George W. Bush's only gift to his country may have been to make the presidency now underway to become possible. It may not be a coincidence that Lincoln followed the arguably worst president of all time, James Buchanan, and Franklin Roosevelt came to clean up the mess made by the hopelessly out of touch Herbert Hoover.
Hence:
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely - to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down.
Nothing like this has been said by any President speaking from that podium in that room since President Johnson told Congress and the nation:
The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong -- deadly wrong -- to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer....
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight.
It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation; but emancipation is a proclamation, and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is un-kept.
The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American. For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated? How many white families have lived in stark poverty? How many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we've wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror?
And so I say to all of you here, and to all in the nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future.
This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all, all black and white, all North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They're our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too -- poverty, disease, and ignorance: we shall overcome.
That is what presidential leadership is all about. The President, contrary to the opinion of the prior administration, is not a monarch who can "do" this or fix that. The President's authority in the main comes from his role as a leader of the national debate. When the President points his country in the right direction, toward our better angels trying to make this country live up to the best instincts of our nature, and the ideals upon which we became a nation, he approaches greatness.
Not that everyone will see it that way, of course. I don't want to live in a country where everyone thinks the same thing, but the opinions of the selfish, the deluded, the foolish, need not be allowed to get in the way of progress, especially when we need to move forward with, as they say, all deliberate speed.
This President knows what he is up against. We know that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are channeling the GOP of 1933 and repeating the attacks their predecessors made on FDR and the New Deal.
They hated President Roosevelt. They accused him of every bad thing they could think of and their descendants still hate him today. The rest of us---a huge majority of us---know better.
And as I watch President Obama and listen to him proposing the way back, and then hear the whining cries of the irrelevant among us, President Roosevelt's response to them, weeks before his re-election in 1936 proved that when properly educated and led by a president with vision the voters of this country know far better, almost sings to me:
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me‹and I welcome their hatred.
That is greatness. A country that can tell the difference between a real leader, and one who pretends to be one, such as the Great Reagan, is a healthy one, and one which will, in the end, prosper and lead. Years from now, perhaps, we can say that, we, too, were fortunate to have had the same sort of president who restored this nation as the land of the free and the brave of the best of our history.
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Awesome.
Thank you.
February 28, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
To this day, THEY will tell you that the Great Society failed, and everybody somehow knows this.
The I will watch a Black seminar on CSPAN and the people there our age will talk about how the GS got them through, how it put them through college, how it helped get them on the first rung occupationally, and how they were given the CHANCE to prove themselves.
History is in the yes of the propagandists. At least that is what I feel when I am down.
12% unemployment during FDRs first two terms was a hell of a lot better than 25% unemployment when it began.
Would it not be fun to get George Will on the stand and cross examine him on these issues?
February 28, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I heard Pat Buchanan discussing how the Great Society of 1965 was killed by the off year elections of 1966. It is true that Democrats lost 46 seats in the House but that reduced their majority to 60. The GOP picked up three seats in the Senate, which put the balance at 64-36 (and, of course, in those days, the division was more on a secional basis than by party. In other words, northern Republicans tended to vote with Democrats from two coasts and against southern Democrats and the few truly conservative Republicans there were.)
Remember that this was the first election after President Johnson overwhelmed Senator Goldwater in the wake of the Kennedy assasination and got truly bloated majorities in both houses. I do not see the parallel, nor was it a repudiation of the Gret Society.
February 28, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
1966 is universally recognized by historians as a year of powerful reaction against and repudiation of the Great Society as expressed by the Republican gains in Congress. So sadly Pat Buchanan's declaration is actually pretty close to being true. While Democrats retained strong majorities in both houses of Congress the tone and tenor or the debtes and the sort of support for the more forward looking programs that had existed previously was no longer there. The 1966 election had profound negative consequences for the Great Society and the Democratic Party.
Republicans did not have the votes to reverse the Great Soceity programs so they decided to sabotage them from the inside wherever and whenever they could. This was the period when they weighted down every program they could with unworkable red tape and regulations that they then condemned for being so cumbersome and bound up in red tape. This was the period during which the mythical "welfare queen" was born and when Republicans fused antiblack racist attitudes with their own antigovernment and antiliberal rhetoric. They could attack "liberals" and "liberal programs" as a euphimism for "blacks" and "programs to help blacks" in the minds of millions of white racists who no longer had a political party they could call home. With no other takers competing for these people, the Republicans welcomed them with open arms and called them "conservatives" instead of klansmen and racist scum. They were then dubbed by Nixon only a few years later "the silent majority."
February 28, 2009 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know which histirians have reached this "universal" consensus. Tom Wicker's great book JFK and LBJ supports a different conclusion that so many of us in high school then would remember which is that it was the war, and not the Great Society itself that undid President Johnson's administration and control of the congressional agenda.
There is no way to definitively establish this. The year following the election, 1967, was the first where the war had become a predominant issue but those of us who were there remember how it sucked the life out of everything else. It was, indeed, the effect of the war on the civil rights movement that caused Dr. King to adopt an antiwar stance and by then it was impossible to separate the war from any other issues relating to the administration or the president.
Pat and his cronies can think what they want, but they lived in their own bubble.
February 28, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I remember the war being Johnson's downfall, but I was not living in the U.S. at the time and may not have grasped all the factors at work.
I second TheraP's post below. You've done a great job of consolidating 20th century political history for us.
February 28, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you figure that what happened in 1967ff caused the 1966 elections (based on 1965-1966 events)??
February 28, 2009 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
You confuse two different points.
The 1966 elections and Vietnam both helped to screw up LBJ's agenda at different times and in different ways, but it was the elections of 66 that changed the political dynamics on the domestic agenda in congress and served as the initial spark for the Republican resurgence via attacking liberalism in general. Weakening the liberal core of the Democratic majority in Congress did nothing to make the war unpopular. There was no relationship between the two.
In fact, in 1966 the war was not all that unpopular and only a small handful of national figures in the Democratic Party opposed it or even questioned it. As far as the general public was concerned it was only beginning to become controversial at that point. Even at the height of antiwar sentiment the nation was sharply divided on it and only slim majorities ever opposed the war even for a short period of time. Combine the electoral gains for the Republicans in 1966 in reaction to the Great Society with the unpopularity of the war later on and you have a very powerful mixture that damaged LBJ and the Democratic Party in ways that would not become fully clear until years later.
You cited Buchanan as saying the 66 elections finished off the Great Soceity. I pointed out that there is a solid consensus among historians on the role of the midterms in rolling back the tide of the Great Society and that is just a fact, not an opinion. I then added that Buchanan was closer to being right than wrong about that, though unsaid, I don't think he's exactly right on that. On it's own the point about 1966 has no impact on your point about the war and liberal agenda. Both points easily coexist and are not exclusive.
February 28, 2009 11:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been watching for this, barth. And what a marvelous job you've done of pulling together threads linking Obama, Johnson, and Roosevelt and showing what each of them was up against and how similar the threats are for this nation a times of crisis separated by decades. I literally felt goosebumps reading the words of Johnson and Roosevelt - in the light of current events. This is a post to return to. And I find it intersecting with the post by Clarence on the value of liberal arts education.
I wish I could do justice to your post, but all I can say is: Thanks! Well Done! And may we prosper as a nation and a people and keep our eyes on the long term best interests of our nation and the world. (as your post already said, so much better than I could)
February 28, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, but, with no false modesty, I am doing very little more than pasting things written by inspirational people that are relevant today.
And you did inspire me the other day. The point I am trying to make is that these bleepholes have their heroes, which they are welcome, too, but we have ours and, frankly, ours have more authenticity. The Great Reagan even acknowledged his debt to FDR and how much he worshiped him before the Hollywood hobnobbing (and Communist witch hunting) made him into a Republican. But hi "leadership" was pretense. FDR and LBJ (and JFK) were real.
BTW; both links allow you to hear Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson. Both are smiling somewhere now and Lyndon can take special pride in making it possible for a black man to become president and to be the first to pick up his mantle and try to move it ahead.
Yes, God bless America.
February 28, 2009 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this Barth. I thought it appeared, at least in part, a while ago here. We are in fact on the cusp of change I think. Whether that change is as great as we all hope it is will largely fall on the shoulders of the electorate, and our ability to differentiate between the same old shibboleths and what the situation actually demands. There is a lot of inertia behind those "descendants [that] still hate [FDR] today". My own father, a die-hard Republican decries FDR's accomplishments, while enjoying a more comfortable retirement than he would have, had Roosevelt not instituted our social security system.
February 28, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
My mom has died and I tried to talk to my dad about how our family went from being Kennedy Democrats to Republicans, but he never paid a whole lot of attention (I suspect my mom filled out his sample ballot for him and told him who to vote for) so that part of our family history is gone. Since they were both terribly racist, I suspicion that the perception that the "Negroes" were getting helped too much entered into their decisions.
I, for one, think this President is heading for greatness in a very big way, if we can keep the repubs from sabotaging him.
For one thing, the "religious right" needs to start living their religion, and start looking out for the "have-nots" instead of helping the "haves" hold onto what they have and help get them even more.
I am very optimistic that these hard times are going to result, ultimately, in a better life for us all.
February 28, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
My two cents, which is all that it's worth, is that you not be too hard on your dad. These were difficult times, and while civil rights had a definite effect on many people (the south went from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican) the divide caused by the war was very intense. (If you can watch some early episodes of All in the Family. the conversations between Archie Bunker and his son in law, Mike Stivic (who he called "Meathead") would give the sit com version of more serious and often emotionally destructive and draining debates throughout the country between a World War II/Korean War generation and those of us threatened with having to fight in a far off country, which did not seem always to present a real issue for our security in the way that WWII and even Korea did for the prior generation.
During that time, we all said and did a ton of stupid things. All of us.
February 28, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I'm not hard on him, just wishing I had come around in my political thinking in time to think to ask how we got from where we were when I was a child, to where we ended up when I was a young adult.
I remember clearly when I was in 8th grade having a debate class where I was given the task of opposing the war in Vietnam and couldn't come up with a single reason why we shouldn't be there. Then a few years later I was participating in a candlelight march against the war at Whittier College, where my boyfriend was going (he had a college deferment and the thought that it might get revoked was always on our minds)and I have no recollection of the thought process that got me from one place to the other. Maybe it was the "realness" of knowing people that might have to go...
They WERE crazy, frightening times...
February 28, 2009 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
You women are so fickle.
February 28, 2009 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is no one scared about the massive spending deficit we are embarking on during a time when we can't afford any of it?
February 28, 2009 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
We can't afford not to. Rock and hard place. Get used to it for a while, because this recession will be the worst since the Great Depression - even with major economic stimulus.
February 28, 2009 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure we can. It doesn't need to be this big. This is not an economic stimulus. It's alot of spending that's an "investment" but we can't afford it. And it's spending for the sake of spending.
This spending bill is about throwing lots of money at various social problems. But we've already been throwing lots of money at healthcare, education, etc. over the last few years and it hasn't been doing the trick.
March 1, 2009 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Why is no one scared about the massive spending deficit we are embarking on during a time when we can't afford any of it?"
Many are concerned (scared?). Isn't the time to borrow the very time when you cannot otherwise afford what you need?? How do you know we won't be able to pay it back eventually?
Try not mucking up the logic, or maybe put a smiley face to show when you're just kidding!
March 1, 2009 2:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I really appreciate the analysis and the point you make in this essay. My concern, however, is similar to the problem you outline with Johnson and the confluence of his Great Society and the VietNam War. Will Obama become a captive of the debacle in Iraq that was handed to him at the expense of his social programs; at risk of detonating his own "Great Society" programs?
In Obama's case, he seems to be reluctant to strike out boldly in the effort to withdraw from Iraq as promised and to reassess our position on Afghanistan. It would take real courage to tell the warmongers and the neocons that we had no business in Iraq to begin with, and that the search for AL Qaeda in Afghanistan has long since moved past the opportunity to address it with a military invasion/occupation of Afghanistan. Obama needs the courage to strike out on his own and terminate these excursions that have cost us greatly in lives lost and monies misspent.
"We must be as careful in pulling out of Iraq as we were careless in getting into it in the first place."
Absolutely agree with this oft-stated line from candidate Obama, but Obama needs to now follow through with the implied objective that we must withdraw from these disasters, certainly not prolong them.
Do we then "lose" in Afghanistan? We lost as soon as the mission became one of occupying the country instead of ferreting out bin laden. Sorry, folks, but we aren't any better at this than were the Russians or any of the other "superpowers" that have tried this previously in history. And it's pretty difficult to determine how our interests are served by the loss of even one more soldier's life in these tribal lands.
And what about Iraq? I think we have stumbled our way into a tenuous stabilization of Iraq that allows for a serious withdrawal. This should be accomplished expeditiously with no consideration for occupying this country any longer than necessary. In this, I believe there is great opportunity to leverage our withdrawal in negotiations with Iran, Syria, and the other Arab neighbors to secure true stability in the region as best it can be done.
Finally, Obama needs to take a step back and look at the criminal overreach of Executive Power that was embraced by Bush/Cheney. I understand that such power would look attractive - perhaps even "necessary" - to the next occupant of the Office of President. But Obama must have the courage to trust in our democracy and surrender some of the "advantage" provided by extraordinary rendition and secret wiretaps and suspension of habeus corpus and all other transgressions introduced by Bush/Cheney.
In the end, I think the "greatness" of this Presidency will be judged by how successful Obama is in mustering the courage necessary to once again assume the risks of being a free society rather than embracing fascism to keep us all "safe" from terrorists and other boogeymen.
Our present economic circumstance presents opportunity to expand the social programs; to embrace a new "Great Society." We are fortuntte to have in place a Democratic Leadership that can fully exploit this opportunity to the benefit of all those in the working class and the poor.
But I fear Obama will ultimately fail in maximizing this opportunity if he doesn't first restore democracy, transparency, and our fundamental principles of Liberty and Justice as laid out in our Constitution. After all, there has never been a time in history when any kind of social programs that serve the populace ever withstood the growth of fascism or the assumption of powers accrued to a singular dictator. We are now at risk of such a debasement of our democracy that it is imperative that a remedy is required here before we can ever hope to enjoy the fruits of liberty that come from any kind of "Great Society."
Yes, Obama has the opportunity to know greatness of the kind that was visited upon Lincoln and FDR and few other leaders in our history. But it will require an assumption of real courage on his part to do what is right at the cost of exposing himself to the risks that are necessarily a part of living in a free society. I hope, in the end, he finds the courage to maintain the Republic granted to us by our founders, bearing in mind the words of Benjamin Franklin who offered it to us with the caveat "If you can keep it." A tall order, that, but one we must diligently fulfill if we hope to once again know the greatness of this country's ideals and principles after the darkness we have seen these last eight years.
March 1, 2009 2:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with much of what you say, but this President is well read and knows the history which he will not repeat.
Afghanistan is important not so much to "win" but to prevent the Taliban and Al Qaeda from transforming it into a threat to the world. Even before 9/11, there were serious reasons to consider what could be done to the Taliban, whose despotic rule and wanton murder of civilians, raised questions about the responsibility of the rest of the world in not doing anything about it (see, e.g, Darfur, Bosnia, etc.) So, this mess is a big one and I don't know that there is a good answer.
But if we support our president he can achieve the domestic successes we need.
March 1, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barth: Beautiful and concise summation of the political and social elements in play during the past 70-80 years. In particular, because we lived it, everything you said about the 60's rings true.
I think those of us in the 55+ age range have some self-reckoning to do, even now.
In hindsight, our youthful passion was too often too naively selective; so engrossed were we in vehemently protesting the war in Vietnam that -- by virtue of being white, and therefore for the most part, being demographically privileged -- we failed to give credit where credit was due to Lyndon Johnson for his Great Society agenda. Which, as a southerner of that era, took not only real courage but also real determination. Johnson is an example (and they are rare) of one who used his southern wiliness and cunning to push forward and achieve pivotal legislation for the common, rather than for the good ol'boy good.
I remember the night Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election. My friends and I had an impromptu party that night, celebrating his admission of defeat, because we associated him primarily with prolonging the war in Vietnam.
We owe the man an apology, and a thank-you. And, as part of a corrective process, too long in the making, we have the obligation to learn from our own past mistakes, as well as those made by the GOP, so that history does not repeat itself.
March 1, 2009 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very well put, yourself. I have great hopes for this country because of the lessons we have learned and tried to pass to our children.
March 1, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Vietnam War was waged because Kennedy and then Johnson really believed in the so-called "Dommino Theory" - that if South Vietnam fell, then all of South East Asia would soon follow. The threat was that if Cambodia, Laos, and Thiland fell, other weak states, India, Pakistan, etc. would soon follow.
Remember that North Vietnam invaded the South. The North was backed by China and Russia and the United States, along with 50 allies, went in to support the South. Most don't remember that US soldiers were accompanied by soldiers from many countries, including Korea and Australia. And, don't ever believe the South didn't want us there. They hated the North.
Not properly understanding Vietnam, in my opinion, is a problem the left still has. Why does the left not understand Vietnam? Because, the leadership of the left, for the most part, is made up of persons who went to college and who were deferred out of draft. They weren't there. The left continues, wrongly in my opinion, to call the Vietnam war a moral mistake, when it was actually an attempt to "save the world" from communism. Don't forget President Kennedy, started the Vietnam War.
wwstaebler's comment that she and her friends had a party the night Johnson resigned is interesting and telling. Her recollection is the way I remember it too. The left, especially the intellectual side of the left, despised Johnson because of his support for the war. The right, especially the monied right, liked the money they made from the war (Bell Helicopter, etc.) but they despised Johnson because of his "Great Society".
Both sides, the intellectual left, and the monied right found a way to avoid Vietnam. The left went to college and the boys from the monied side joined the Reserves. Both sides left the fighting to the great middle, the sons of the working class, especially the lower middle class and the blacks.
March 1, 2009 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, your recollection of the war is not the same as mine. I remember both a guerrilla war fought within South Vietnam by a group called the NLF ("the Viet Cong," we called them) which, while assisted by North Vietnam, was mainly made up of South Vietnamese opposed first to the Diem regime, then Ky, then Thieu.
The invasion of South Vietnam by regular North Vietnamese forces did not occur until the Tet offensive in 1968.
At least that's my recollection.
March 1, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barth, you seem to be disagreeing with only one point I made, that the North invaded the South and that the South Vietnamese, most of them, hated the Northerners. You said the NVA wasn't involved until Tet. Well, the North had regular soldiers, in the South when the French were there in the '50s, and they were fighting at the earliest stages of the US involvement, though mostly in the Northern part of South Vietnam. Yes, of course there was an insurgency, the Viet Cong. Most Vietnamese, though, hated their countrymen who were VC. I know that because I was there and heard them. They were afraid of the VC but they did not like them.
None of my comments were meant to be contrary to your post - good post - I was adding my comments. My main point is that the left and right mischaracterize the Vietnam War. It is also interesting to note that there is a long list of Democrat politicians who were there while the Republican list is short. The Republican list of prominent politicians who ducked is much longer than the list who served. They are sometimes called the chicken hawks, a designation I agree with.
March 1, 2009 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no general disagreement with your post. In looking back from today's vantage point, I see many mistakes that were made that were not apparent at the time. One of them was confusing NVA with NLF and an insurgent rebellion against the string of corrupt governments in Saigon, rather than a "communist movement" but we had just gone through Cuba and were in no mood to make these fine distinctions.
What Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy committed us to in Indo-China is minimal compared to the period from 1965 on and we just don't know how President Kennedy would have reacted as opposed to what President Johnson did. I think President Kennedy learned a lesson during the Cuban missile crisis as to how much he should consider the advice from uniformed military in the Pentagon, which President Johnson did not go through to the same extent. (The tapes at the JFK library of conversations in the Oval show the President's "growth" during the eight days alone. They are amazing.)
But, I will admit (even on this site) that it was not until Cambodia under Nixon that I began to see the war as the huge mistake it was. Even today, even with Bush, it is hard to second guess a President without knowing what he knows.
BTW: I do wonder whether the people who met Americans had greater antipathy toward the NLF than did the general populace.
March 1, 2009 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink