“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”

Today Congress comes back from summer vacation. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed. Perhaps you weren’t even aware that our congresspeople had been away. Well, they're back. And they have much to do. First, there is the ongoing debate about whether to arm the moderates in Syria. Sure, one or two things have changed on the ground, such as whether President Assad’s decision to bomb ISIS positions in northern Syria makes him an American ally and therefore a moderate by definition . . . which just goes to prove John McCain’s point that if we don’t start bombing someone now, pretty soon we won’t know whom to bomb.

We can also look forward to another panel or two on Benghazi, several more votes to repeal Obamacare and finally unholstering the smoking gun that will settle the mystery of the president’s birth. Our representatives need to act fast because all 435 seats in the House are up for grabs in early November – and those who sit in them are in a hurry to get home so they can cut ribbons, kiss babies and get sent right back to Washington.

Which almost all of them will. For despite the high-profile fall of Eric Cantor in Virginia, 91 percent of incumbents continue to win re-election year after year after year. This is particularly astonishing these days when public approval of Congress stands at a whopping 8 percent and a third of the voters don’t even know their congressperson’s name.

So get ready to go out and vote for what’s his name!

Culture of Dependency

“Save your confederate money, boys, the South will rise again.” One-hundred-forty-nine years later, it doesn’t seem likely. And any revival of the old South will be financed, not by Confederate Greybacks (some of which pictured slaves working contentedly in the fields), but by Greenbacks issued by a federal government still reviled across much of the region. For despite the anti-Washington furor reaching its biennial crescendo this political season, southern states remain disproportionately dependent on the United States Treasury. South Carolina, for example, gets almost $8 in federal largesse for every tax dollar it sends north, a list whose top ten includes seven southern states. And despite what its politicians try to tell us, they need every dollar. For on almost any scale – from education to obesity, from household poverty to delinquent debt, from food stamps to unemployment – southern states lag far behind the rest of the nation. Nor does charity begin at home: the tax money they get from the citizens of Connecticut, California and New York is money they don’t have to get from their own citizens, who pay some of the lowest taxes in America.

Despite all this, southern political representatives in Washington, many of whom are the “career politicians” so disdained back home, continue to rail against a government that has become not just their employer but their benefactor. Next April will mark 150 years since Appomattox, and yet America remains both a divided nation and a poorer one because of the continuing sectional hostility.

Dangerously Awesome and Frighteningly Inane

All I hear these days is how depressing American politics has become – relentlessly negative, disagreeably personal and so partisan that actual governing has become impossible. I may have said something like that myself. So imagine my pleasure at receiving this message from Organizing for Action, “the grassroots movement built by millions of Americans to pass the agenda we voted for in 2012:” James –

According to our records, here's what we have down for this exact email address (do some people have inexact email addresses?):

• Supporter: James
• High-powered lobbyist: No.
• Currently a Koch brother: No.
• Level of awesome: Dangerously high.
• Suggested action today: Keep on being awesome.

Of course, there was a small price for keeping on being awesome. In my case it was $9, which didn’t strike me as much of an expectation for someone at my level of awesomeness. I didn’t pony up, so I guess I am slightly less awesome than I used to be. But I just wanted you to know there was a time . . .

• Meanwhile, across the aisle the theater of the absurd reached new levels of inanity. On Wednesday House Republicans voted to sue President Obama for shredding the Constitution – our first black president has become a "king". On Thursday the same bunch couldn’t even agree on their own legislation to “ensure the security of our borders.” So they demanded that Obama – whom they had just sued for acting unilaterally – do something “without the need for congressional action.”

Metamorphosis

Only Antonin Scalia knows for sure, of course, but I believe the original intent of the nation’s Founders was to make impeachment a rare event for a serious cause. In fact, only three presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Both Johnson, who was a dreadful president, and Clinton, who has ironically become the Republicans’ favorite Democrat, were acquitted of trumped-up charges; when Nixon understood that he would be impeached and convicted, he resigned. So Barack Obama must have done some pretty bad things because Republicans want to impeach and sue him. While the lunatic fringe – from Sarah Palin to the South Dakota Republican Party – is demanding impeachment for a ragbag of offenses – our unsecure borders, Bowe Bergdahl’s release, Obamacare’s lies – John Boehner is suing the president for delaying implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate, a law he opposes.

Kafka could not have written this script. Israel is invading Gaza; Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels just shot down a Malaysian passenger jet; ISIS has declared a bloody caliphate in Mesopotamia; Iraq and Afghanistan are falling apart. Here at home, we have a crisis on our southern border; our inner cities are crumbling victims of apartheid; most of the West is battling a drought of Biblical proportions.

And the Speaker of the House, to avoid the political disaster of impeachment and yet cover his right flank, is preparing to sue the president for not implementing a law that his caucus has voted 54 times to repeal. 

Gasoline Prices Are Dropping Now (Hurrah! Hurrah!)

24/7 Wall Street recently reported a nationwide fall in gas prices – always good news for the sluggish U.S. economy, which depends on low energy costs and on subsidizing the American consumer and his automobile. And it’s particularly good news for the poor and middle class whose stagnant real income is most sensitive to gas prices. Right?

Well, we need more than cars to drive; we also need things to drive on, like roads and bridges, which are in deplorable disrepair across the country. And perhaps, instead of subsidizing consumption with cheaper fuel, we should encourage conservation by bringing gas prices into line with social and environmental costs. But such changes require two very bad things: public works and higher taxes.

Right now, the highway trust fund is fast going broke, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of both projects and jobs, because House Republicans won’t touch anything that might be perceived as a tax and don’t think the government should be responsible for anything except their pensions and health care. Never mind that only Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have lower gas taxes than America, and that almost half our states haven’t raised the gas tax in ten years.

Still, we continue to crush high-speed rail and any other innovations that might be more efficient and might leave in the ground some of the fossil fuels damaging our climate.

What if instead we rebuilt our crumbling infrastructure, tripled the price of gasoline, and subsidized the transition for those hit hardest by the changes?

Enough

Dick Cheney, who "had other priorities in the 60's than military service," has become America’s most vocal warrior in his old age. He is much in the news this week because of the op-ed piece he and his daughter Liz wrote for The Wall Street Journal. I disagree with the Cheneys’ message; with their reading of recent history (“we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory”); with their amnesia about the 500,000 Iraqi dead as a result of the American invasion; and perhaps above all with their style of personal attacks and innuendo, depicting a president who “doesn’t seem to care,” is “blithely indifferent,” is determined to take “America down a notch.” The Cheneys’ Journal article was part of a larger campaign to announce the launching of their Alliance for a Strong America (there was a time when newspapers didn’t offer their editorial pages to public relations campaigns), a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization. My reaction to the package of article, video and website was visceral repugnance, and the post I began writing this morning was littered with vituperative references to WMDick Cheney and Liz’s over-the-top Senate campaign.

No, I don’t like these people, but I am tired of fighting the battles in the past – the invasion, the surge, the withdrawal, who lost Iraq? – which have led us all down a path of ad hominem blaming, name calling and paralyzing national divisiveness. In my revulsion to the Cheneys I saw a part of me I didn’t much like.

Fresh Blood: A Youth Congress?

Many of you have responded positively to proposals for universal service – and my friend Jock Hooper sent me his article, “Ten Reasons for a National Youth Service” (which notes that only 0.5% of America’s young people are engaged in any public service). The idea is getting national traction: it was the focus of Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Sebastian Junger, for example. But one place where nobody talks about it is Congress, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Libertarians hate the idea, and the Republican Party is so jumpy after Virginia’s primary that people predict no significant legislation of any kind before November – which  shows that Eric Cantor’s unexpected defeat changed little in Washington. Which gives me an idea. Our discussions of national-youth-service jobs include the military, Peace Corps, rebuilding infrastructure, fighting forest fires, restoring public lands, teaching in poor schools. What about Congress itself, where the average age is 55? Why not throw those 435 jobs into the lottery? This isn’t a new idea. Andrew Jackson believed that government is “so plain and simple” anyone can do it (or not do it, as we see today); and in New Hampshire men once served in the legislature, not to stoke their egos or line their pockets, but because it was their turn. A Congressional term is only two years, and if we make the pay and perks commensurate with those of army recruits, think how much money we will save the country and the Koch brothers.

Three Institutions (Part I)

In 1967 I graduated from Harvard College (way easier to get into then); was inducted into the US Army (we had something called the draft) and joined the Democratic Party (I was a liberal). Almost half a century later I remain a Harvard alumnus, a veteran and a Democrat. As I consider these three enormous institutions, all much in the news, I sometimes think I have most affection for the one I most detested when I was in it. Perhaps that’s because the army isn’t always hounding me for money. Take the Democrats, from whom I get several emails a day. Such as:

“We’re about to LOSE. James, We’re on the brink of defeat. There’s no way to sugar-coat it. If we let $125 million worth of Koch Brothers-funded attack ads go unanswered, the 2014 Elections are over and the Tea Party wins again. Please chip in $10 before the midnight deadline.”

“James, In the couple of minutes it takes you to read this email, an attack ad funded by the Koch Brothers' network will run 27 times across the country. Please rush $10 by midnight.”

I loathe the Koch brothers’ politics more than most, but simply and constantly bashing them is a pretty pathetic political strategy. Pitting half the country against two old men, however rich and cunning, gives them a mythological power that is actually counterproductive. Money is a great evil in modern politics, primarily because it is crushing creative ideas, thoughtful platforms, and strong and independent candidates. Maybe we should start there.

Five Feet High and Rising

Forty years ago I went to visit an old man on Prince Edward Island who had built an ark in his back yard. He had started it after Jesus had appeared to him one night on top of an apple tree. Crazy stuff, I know, and yet the old man wove a captivating tale of his visions, his beliefs, his carpentry and craftsmanship. He didn’t know when the flood was coming. He just knew it was coming. The day the news of the irreversible melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet made headlines, the Dow Jones average closed up 112 points. So, should we believe the rising markets or the rising oceans? Have stock prices already discounted the effects of climate change? Are only climate skeptics with snorkels left on Wall Street? More likely, though, as Andrew Revkin noted, the shrugging off of climate change has to do with basic differences in our use of language and our understanding of time. The language of science does not translate well into news headlines (and appears to be completely beyond the grasp of Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma); and geologic time isn’t much use for quarterly forecasts. We don't know when the flood is coming. But the science is clear: climate change is real and it is accelerating, and the real lunacy in this story is the refusal of Congress to confront it.

One of these days I might take a ride back to Prince Edward Island and see if that ark is still there.

Just Wondering

The growing chorus about the evils of government can be very confusing: If rich people use their money to support government programs, is that a good thing because it isn’t government money or a bad thing because it reinforces government policies? For example, when John and Leigh Middleton, who made $2.9 billion from cigars, donated $30 million to help Philadelphia’s homeless, were they addressing a vital human need or promoting dependency. They gave their money to Project HOME (Housing. Opportunities. Medical. Education), an organization run by a nun, whose mantra – “None of us are home until all of us are home” – has that old community-organizing ring, and indeed, HOME works aggressively “to impact public policies, educate elected officials, maximize resources for housing and services, and advocate for human and civil rights for persons who are poor, homeless, and/or disabled.” It seeks to improve public welfare not replace it.

Likewise, should people be able to use their private wealth to effect public policy? Take Roxanne Quimby, who made a fortune in lip balm (Burt's Bees) and has spent most of it buying large chunks of land – over 100,000 acres – in Maine’s north woods. She wants to create a national park, an idea that has put property-rights advocates in a quandary. The Quimbys “can do whatever they want with that land,” said the leader of a group opposing the national park. “It’s their land.” Well, everything except give the federal government “a toehold in the northern Maine woods.” That would ruin the neighborhood.

Welfare in Black and White

Surprise. Surprise. Cliven Bundy is a racist. Who knew?

Certainly not the Republican politicians and Fox News pundits frantically trying to reel in their words of support after the pot-bellied Nevada rancher's recent pronouncements on “the Negro." Bundy, who knows a thing or two about welfare from decades of feeding his cattle at the public trough, boned up on African-American culture driving past a public housing project in north Vegas. “And one more thing I know about the Negro: they abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.”

You’d think they’d get it after years of nominating Neanderthals to carry their banner. But Republicans still get all indignant when Todd (“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”) Akin turns out to be a misogynist. Or Christine (teaching evolution is big government “imposing beliefs on local schools”) O’Donnell an idiot. Or Michele (“It isn’t that some gay will get some rights. It’s that everyone else in our state will lose rights”) Bachmann a homophobe.

Now American-flag-waving patriot Cliven (“I don’t recognize the American government as even existing”) Bundy wonders, “are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?”

Hmmm, Cliven, good question. In your case, I’m going with government subsidy.

But as all those Germans said in the 1930s, “We had no idea.”

An Appeal to Reason

It’s only the middle of March, and already the first salvos for November’s elections are hitting both inbox and mailbox. They are the political equivalent of pre-emptive strikes, characterized by bold type, underlining and lots of exclamation points (!!!!!), meant to convey shock and awe to the presumably sympathetic recipient. There is a sickening sameness about them, regardless of ideology or party affiliation – a formula that starts off touting the favored candidate but quickly veers into attack mode, painting the opponent as the most extreme example of degraded ideas and vile behavior imaginable. Our candidate is all that stands between the salvation of the republic and the apocalypse. There is no effort in these missives to replace jargon with thoughtful language because they are not intended to appeal to our reason, but to our prejudices. It is a tested formula, which has made political consultants rich and filled Congress with people who speak in mind-numbing sound bites and seem to have misplaced the art of negotiation. Think not of Plato’s Republic but of Plato’s Retreat.

Not only do these campaigns lower the bar of public discourse, but they lure us into giving our team a pass: “Well, if that’s what it takes to make sure those guys lose . . . .” But each time we say that (and believe me, I do), we erode a little more of the commons – the common ground on which we can discuss diverse ideas and negotiate solutions – which is the foundation of civil society.

Mud

Unlike many of my friends, I thrived this winter on the invigorating air and blinding beauty of bright blue skies and white snow (before plowing). But I am ready for the suggestion of spring now in the air, with its lengthening days and the stirring of life anxious to be born. And then there is the mud, ubiquitous, oozing under foot, forming deep tire ruts in the lane. Mud, the curse of early spring, the stuff sleazy politicians dig up on one another. But mud is but the mixture of soil and water, the two critical ingredients in growing our food – the same ingredients that modern agriculture seems bent on destroying: half the earth’s topsoil has disappeared in the last 150 years and water scarcity is endemic in many parts of the world. So I was interested to read that the new farm bill reflects changing American priorities. It provides unprecedented support to small farmers, organic farming and healthy food, all three of which have received the back of the hand in previous bills written by big agriculture. Passed with bipartisan support (although no Republicans showed up for the signing), the bill reflects changing attitudes in the country more than in Congress, where some are still slinging mud at Michelle Obama’s campaign for healthy eating. But childhood obesity is down by 43%, and small local and organic movements are spreading across the landscape, spurred on by dedicated young farmers and demanding consumers. It is the season of mud -- and of hope.

Justice Denied

On Wednesday the Senate rejected Debo Adegbile as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights because of his work at the NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund. The Fund filed a brief on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1982 in a case that still ignites passions in the region. I thought of Owen Walker, a friend I haven’t seen since college, who was for 25 years the Federal Public Defender for Massachusetts. One of his clients was Richard Reid, who in 2001 tried to blow up an airplane by detonating a bomb in his sneaker. Curious about Owen’s reaction to the Senate vote, I called him and asked whether his defense of Reid means he is soft on shoe bombers. He is not. “In fact,” he said, “my views on criminal justice are very conservative. I am also very proud of the work my office did on behalf of our clients.” To punish Adegbile because of someone he represented, Walker said, is “outrageous”, and he pointed out that John Adams, who defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, “went on to become president of the United States.”

Adegbile, raised by a single mother, has lived what we used to call the American Dream. That dream is not just for the dreamer. It is the mythic glue that holds this country together. I expect Republicans to reflexively vote against Obama nominees. But it took seven Democrats to put politics above the promise of American life.

The Servant Problem

The difficulty with the help these days is that so often they turn out to be illegal. What was once a “nanny problem” for American office seekers has spread out from the nursery and across the Atlantic, where it recently toppled Mark Harper, who was – and I am not kidding – the immigration minister of Great Britain . . . until he discovered that his house cleaner of six years was an illegal immigrant. He fired her and resigned in “embarrassment” from the cabinet – too tainted to continue as point man for the Conservative government’s “go home” campaign, whose mission to rid the land of undesirables is embedded in its name. If it weren’t for their power to do evil, the lack of self-awareness of so many political leaders would be comical: Louisiana Senator David Vitter, the sponsor of legislation for abstinence-only education, turns up on a hooker’s telephone log; Newt Gingrich carries on an eight-year affair with a staffer while leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton; Larry Flynt outs the affair of Gingrich’s lieutenant Bob Livingston in Hustler magazine; Idaho Senator Larry Craig calls Clinton “a nasty, bad, naughty boy,” then gets arrested in an airport men’s toilet.

So as Speaker Boehner, under pressure from his Tea Party wing to turn back the “illegal invasion,” again jettisons immigration reform, I encourage our political leaders to carefully check their servants’ papers. For as Mitt Romney could have told Mark Harper, a good yard boy is hard to find.

The Arc of a Career

We turn from the Super Bowl to other sports, such as the Sochi Olympics, which open today amid terrorism threats, euthanizing stray dogs and construction delays: “OK, so my hotel doesn’t have a lobby yet,” tweeted Mark MacKinnon of Toronto’s Globe and Mail. Next week pitchers and catchers report to spring training – and speaking of catchers, it turns out that Chris Christie, who aspired to become the heftiest president since William Howard Taft until a bothersome traffic jam in Fort Lee snarled his plans, played one in high school. Christie’s athleticism initially surfaced as the New Jersey governor was  distancing himself from his old friend, David Wildstein, whom he’d appointed to the Port Authority: “We didn’t travel in the same circles in high school. You know, I was the class president and an athlete. I don’t know what David was doing during that period of time.”

There is a touching backstory to Christie’s baseball career. Just before his senior year a better catcher transferred to his school. The Christie family considered suing to prevent him from playing, but ultimately decided not to, and Chris, a captain, buried his disappointment and cheered his team to the state championship from the bench.

My Republican friends insist that Christie manned up after Bridgegate, taking responsibility for the incident and firing those responsible. I read a different tale – of the aphrodisiac of power transforming a boy trying to throw out runners at second base into an ambitious politician throwing his friends under the bus.

The End of the Road

The trouble with kicking the can down the road is that someday the road will come to an end. The biggest can now on the political highway is the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the State Department’s final environmental analysis that construction will not significantly affect overall carbon emissions (primarily because Canada will develop the Tar Sands anyway) makes it hard to evade much longer. The pipeline is the defining issue of the Obama presidency. It lays bare the conflicting philosophies of the two major wings of the Democratic Party: economic growth and environmental protection. And when your (and your opponent’s) entire 2012 election campaign can be reduced to a single word – jobs – you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner. Bridging this divide – which dwarfs the Republicans’ Wall Street/Tea Party split that obsesses the media – is the most important issue of our time. The pressure to accept the pro-growth arguments is enormous – it will create jobs, produce North American energy, spur the economy; and “if we don’t do it, someone else will.”

Politically, this is a lose-lose issue for Obama: the party’s progressive wing has a long tradition of defining economic growth as the pathway to social justice (and also to campaign contributions); while environmentalists, who insist that such a position is obsolete and ultimately ruinous, have dug in their heels on Keystone. But I also believe it is the president’s greatest opportunity, a chance to lead a national conversation on how we will live together on this earth without destroying the things that make life possible.

Note: This post did not go out yesterday because an amazing sleet storm took down limbs, trees and my power line. I’m not suggesting it was manmade. I’m just saying it was some storm.

The Sanctity of Life

Today is the 40^th March for Life, the massive annual protest on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is also the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee. This is not a coincidence. The GOP has long manipulated the abortion issue, and this year it is downplaying the sectarian stridency that offended many women and is instead emphasizing public-funding issues and (here’s a surprise) tying it to Obamacare. I believe that all life is sacred, but that is not a simple matter in a world where life depends on – and arises from – death. I have yet to meet a woman whose abortion was a callous choice rather than a wrenching decision, and it seems a cruel irony that those who scorn the role of government in our lives demand it regulate the most personal of all decisions. This is not new. When I ran for Congress in Pennsylvania in 1996, abortion was rarely discussed even though everyone knew it would determine the election. In Lancaster County, a teenage boy followed me screaming, “baby killer” (for the record: not true), and on the Sunday before Election Day, ministers across the district commanded their congregations to “do your duty” on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, “stand-your-ground” and “open-carry” laws find increasing favor in the pro-life party; and Texas, where husbands could once kill adulterous wives and lovers, “provided the killing takes place before the parties to the adultery have separated,” will today execute its 509^th person since 1976, although his arrest violated international law

Odds and Ends

• Taking a page from Bibi Netanyahu’s playbook, wherein the prime minister calls recognizing Israel as a Jewish state “an essential condition” for peace, the Tea Party is demanding recognition of America as “the nation-state of the Christian people.” “It’s the only way to win the war on Christmas,” said an unidentified spokesperson, who added that the Party is considering burying the hatchet with John Boehner over immigration reform. “Instead of calling those 14 million Mexicans ‘illegal immigrants’, let’s think of them as Catholics. And minorities? Most of them have lighter skin than Boehner. So no more ‘Happy Holidays’. No more Muslim presidents. And a pathway to the presidency for Ted Cruz.”

• Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman prepares to return to North Korea for his basketball game between American professionals and North Koreans. The game is scheduled for Jan. 8^th, the 31^st birthday of brutal-dictator-cum-basketball-fanatic, Kim Jong Un, although Rodman is having trouble signing up players. This isn’t surprising, since the last American to visit, 85-year-old Merrill Newman, spent a month in jail, and Kim more recently called his favorite uncle “despicable human scum” and had him shot for, among other things, “half-heartedly clapping.”

It’s an odd relationship between the 6’7” Rodman, who wore a wedding dress to promote his autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be, and tiny Kim, who rules a country dominated by horrendous human suffering and an atomic bomb. But there have been stranger envoys in history, and, who knows, maybe basketball will prove better diplomacy than isolation.

Perfect: Enemy of the Good

Soon after the House passed the bipartisan budget agreement I received an email from Moveon.org. That wasn’t surprising, as I get about three a day. This one slammed the agreement, urging me to write my Congressperson and, of course, to send Moveon $3. A modest sum compared to the numbers we hear from the likes of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ 501(c)(4), but it's getting tiresome nonetheless. The message, too, is getting tiresome. While we hear much about the right-wing fulminations against the bill, we hear far less about the progressive opposition (which includes people I genuinely admire, such as Chellie Pingree of Maine and Nebraska’s Tom Harkin). And there is plenty not to like, particularly the refusal to extend emergency benefits for the unemployed, which is both heartless and counterproductive.

But the agreement is a step, however tentative, toward rebuilding a consensus for actually governing. I am tired of the humorless scolds, on the left as well as the right, who have decreed any compromise to be a renunciation of the faith – and a great fundraising tool. We should hold fast to our principles. We should fight for them. But our principles do not make us gods. It is at least possible we are wrong, that there are other ideas, that it might behoove us to listen to other people. We get angry when we know we’re right and can’t get our way. Isn’t it time to put the doubt back into democracy and the humor back into humanity?