something about "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics" by David Axelrod

David Axelrod emerged on the national political scene as Barack Obama's invaluable strategist during the 2008 campaign. After the campaign, Axelrod stayed on as Obama's senior advisor for half of the first term. He returned to the campaign trail for Obama in 2012. While these events, covered in Axelrod's memoir, Believer, are momentous, I enjoyed the beginning of Axelrod's story most of all.

When he was a child, the future strategist, born in New York City, witnessed a John F. Kennedy campaign speech. Axelrod cites that moment as a formative experience. He had caught and internalized the political optimism of the day. He recalls the experience with undiminished sincerity.

I also enjoyed his brief recount of Chicago's modern political history. This memoir also offers a little of the guilty pleasure of gossipy criticism, such as when Axelrod criticizes Elizabeth Edwards for micromanaging the 2004 presidential campaign of her husband, John.

Axelrod went to college in Chicago, then started as a journalist investigating Chicago politics and corruption. He had his own column in a city paper by age 18. Axelrod was friends with Obama long before they campaigned together, both having built careers out of Chicago politics.
 
Axelrod keeps the narrative moving. He could have written a whole book on just the first week in the White House, with the whole country groaning under the weight of the the financial crisis. But Axelrod gives those monumental days only the standard highlight reel. His writing is crisp, clever, and often funny. His forty-year career goes by too fast at times. He is an underrated and undervalued figure in our national politics. His enduring belief in the promise of America is precious.

(posts) a drawing of Coolidge

about another dumb dream

The President was riding a missile that he ordered launched, like Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove. With nothing to lose but this life, I hopped on. We soared the skies, and I looked down in fascination at the goings on below--ships sailing seas, wars being waged, people busying beaches and boardwalks. The Earth was a map. I considered our inevitable descent, and how my sense of wonder would shrink into terror and grief. The missile wavered; it would soon begin to sink, then turn slightly this way and that in a gentle turbulence. Finally, we began our approach. At 15,000 feet I bailed, foolishly thinking I might somehow escape. Pushing to the end of the map, the missile, with the President aboard, dropped sharply to Earth; but I fell off, beyond the map page. I tucked and rolled across ground, scratched to a stop, and rose to my knees. A buddy from work was there. I hugged him tearfully, tightly, sobbing, destroyed.


Note: I know that people do not generally like to hear about other people's dreams.

another opinion

This week USA Today published an opinion by the Heritage Foundation's John Malcolm supporting the presidential authority behind Executive Order 13769 ("Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States"), the so-called "travel ban." President Trump may have the authority, but Malcolm's argument in support is flawed. He writes, "Presidential authority to protect our homeland should not be second-guessed by courts based on some hidden intent divined from tweets and statements made by surrogates in the heat of a presidential campaign." First, Malcolm's attempt to attribute to surrogates Trump's Muslim ban campaign rhetoric is wrong. In December 2015, during the campaign, candidate Trump said at a rally, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Second, and worse still, Malcolm tries to nullify the intent behind campaign promises. Of course candidates make false promises, but we still have to pretend the promises are true.


Notes:

• At issue is the scope of presidential power over the border. The Supreme Court has allowed parts of President Trump's travel ban to go into effect and will hear oral arguments on the case this fall.
• The "he did not mean it" argument was once part of the legal defense.
• Every previous President made an empty promise.

Source: "Travel ban is president's authority," USA Today, July 5, 2017

(posts) rhetoric

After the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, President Ronald Reagan remarked, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

High Flight
   by John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

 

something about "I Should Be Dead: My Life Surviving Politics, TV, and Addiction" by Bob Beckel

Bob Beckel's long political career included holding office as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Carter Administration and managing Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. In the years since, he has gained a little more recognizability through his frequent appearances as a political analyst on the news networks. The confessional I Should Be Dead relays some difficult sequences from Beckel's youth and then efficiently details his professional life and recovery. His father's alcoholism is a defining phenomenon, and since childhood Beckel has lived his life as a survivor. Even though it is the book's selling point, Beckel's own debauchery does not occupy a lot of time in the narrative. The man was a functional addict, so you read about campaigns, and now and again Beckel reminds you that this narrator was working with generous amounts of cocaine and alcohol in his bloodstream. It is a painfully personal tale, but Beckel forgoes emotional depth and tells it with a genial directness that makes for an easy read.


Note: I was hoping for more of a political memoir.

(posts) a doodle

about the politcal landscape after Trump's first month

Instead of building their local networks and promoting policy positions to win voters back, Democrats are banking on a Trump administration implosion. Presumption and inference will not do it, though. A Bangladeshi factory is standing by, ready for orders to produce t-shirts emblazoned with "Four More Years."

about choosing a Russia-friendly oilman for Secretary of State

Under the guise of a supercoalition, the US can outsource to Russia some of the intervention grunt work in the Middle East; this would permit more US time and resource investment in Asia. The oil-rich lands of Russia and the Middle East represent the past; Asia will be a larger part of the future. 


Note: Not the actual reasoning behind President Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

about how "words matter" (part 1)

 
In August 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump said the following at a campaign rally:

Hillary wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, there's nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people--maybe there is. I don't know.

Many people accused Trump of implying that "Second Amendment people" could react with violence if Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate, won the election. Clinton acknowledged and condemned the allegedly veiled threat, using the phrase "words matter." (Trump, of course, denied he was making any allusion to violence; he claimed he was referring to the National Rifle Association's considerable lobbying power.)

In August Trump accused President Barack Obama of being the founder of ISIS. These words drew criticism because they were, interpreted literally, untrue. Trump later said that if Obama had not mishandled foreign policy in the Middle East, then ISIS would not exist. So, for Trump, calling Obama the founder of ISIS is an incendiary way of saying the President, because he withdrew American forces and left a vacuum in the region, bears responsibility for the terrorist group's genesis.

In the second example, the problem seems to be that others might only hear what Trump said and would not infer any meaning beyond his words. In the first example, the problem seems to be that the language Trump used was too open to interpretation. What mattered was the words he did not use but others possibly could hear.

In one example, words matter because people take Trump literally. In the other, words matter because people might not take Trump literally enough.


Notes:

• This post is sophistry.
• The phrase "words matter" seems to be popping up a lot lately. Is it?
• The bit about Hillary wanting to abolish the Second Amendment drew no criticism even though that statement, interpreted literally, is also untrue.
• Explore how the phrase "words matter" relates to the concept of "political correctness." 
• Explore the example of using the term "illegal" versus "undocumented immigrant" when discussing immigration.

about kicking gruffly

Donald Trump's success in these months leading up to the 2016 US presidential election has inspired lots of journalistic hand-wringing. This hand-wringing has taken form in more than a few articles as an analysis of Trump supporters. The unstated premise of these articles is that supporting Trump is beyond the norm, a phenomenon in need of explanation. This leaves Trump support nearly in the category of a neuroses. George Saunders wrote one such piece for The New Yorker. This one features the following keen description of the confounding candidate:

His right shoulder thrusts out as he makes the pinched-finger mudra with downswinging arm. His trademark double-eye squint evokes that group of beanie-hatted street-tough Munchkin kids; you expect him to kick gruffly at an imaginary stone.

Notes:
David Axelrod has a theory about presidential elections. In his own words:

Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent. Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive.

It's a good theory. But I would suggest that Trump is not the anti-Barrack Obama so much as he is the anti-John Kerry.

something about "What It Takes: The Way to the White House," by Richard Ben Cramer

What It Takes is a fascinating look into an American presidential campaign season.

Author Richard Ben Cramer was a journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. But What It Takes: The Way to the White House, the document of the 1988 presidential election, is his nadir. Here, we learn how George Bush collects contacts; how Dukakis masters state politics but flies too close to the sun; how Bob Dole tirelessly meets and greets everyone; how Joe Biden morphs into a salesman; how Gary Hart studies, and how his studiousness lifts his political career. Cramer also covers the decline of these political animals--most dramatically, the psychology and the mind-spinning that leads to Biden's plagiarism and Hart's infidelity.
 
Cramer delivers breathless, compelling coverage as he follows the action and tries to get inside the head of each candidate.

My favorite part comes early, when Cramer peers a little deeper into the Bush family operation. When Barbara Bush learns Oliver North, stained by the Iran-Contra scandal, will attend the Christmas party, she cringes. But, to George Bush's mind,

Ollie was a guy he knew, he'd worked with...The point was, that was all politics. Bush couldn't let it change the way he was. They were friends. Shouldn't be shunned...

The funny thing was, everybody heard Bush use that word, "friend," a hundred times a day, but they never could see what it meant to him.

By what extravagance of need and will did a man try to make thirty thousand friends?

By what steely discipline did he strive to keep them--with notes, cards, letters, gifts, invitations, visits, calls, and silent kindnesses, hundreds every week, every one demanding some measure of his energy and attention?

And by what catholicity (or absence) of taste could he think well of every one of them?

He could not.

But they would never know that.

The funny thing was, the friendship depended not on what Bush thought of them, but what they thought of him, or what he wanted them to think. If they thought well of him, then, they were friends.

So what does it take? Whatever it takes.


Note:

• I could only read a bite at a time, and since the book exceeds 1,000 pages, this read took a while.

 

a young George H. W. Bush

about Ken Burns' film "The Roosevelts"

Ken Burns' most recent entry in the American encyclopedia is "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History." This film constructs a narrative of Theodore and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Teddy, a Republican, served as 26th President of the United States, and Franklin, a Democrat, the 32nd. The documentary film begins with the birth of Theodore in 1858 and ends with the death of Eleanor in 1962. The production is superior, fueled with solid writing, crisp pacing, and sharp editing.

The film relies on loose eye-witness accounts from the Roosevelt's family and friends and the speculation and psychoanalysis of historical writers, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, whose work sells because they dramatize history. The first episode inscribes an origin story for each future President. The narrative willingly indulges the Great Man theory, that idea that history is the result of the charisma, intelligence, and skill of the heroes and giants of the age. In the case of the Roosevelt Presidents as depicted in this documentary, both are born sickly and, merely by living, miraculously defy death. Describing baby Franklin in the arms of his mother, the narration quotes a family member who likens the pair to a Madonna with child. Rather than simply say that the family was proud of their kin, this testimony is treated as bearing some deeper insight and truth. In another segment, the narrative depicts Teddy's time in the badlands as a trial from which he emerged transformed, like Jesus returning from the desert.

John Wilkes Booth

Psychology for clicks

This Vanity Fair article, "The Lonely Guy," makes the case that President Obama's strong inward-directedness underpins his political failures. The diagnosis:

Self-containment is not simply Obama’s political default mode. Self-possession is the core of his being, and a central part of the secret of his success. It is Obama’s unwavering discipline to keep his cool when others are losing theirs, and it seems likely that no black man who behaved otherwise could ever have won the presidency.

But this quality, perhaps Obama’s greatest strength in gaining office, is his greatest weakness in conducting it.

Obama’s self-evident isolation has another effect: It tends to insulate him from engagement in the management of his own administration. The latest round of “what did the president know and when did he know it” on the disastrous rollout of Obamacare and the tapping of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone raised troubling questions: Were Obama’s aides too afraid to tell him?

The author would have us believe that Obama's self is the issue here. The matter is not poor leadership, carelessness, incompetence, bad delegation practices, or the simple fact that every presidency has some major failures. No, in Obama's case we find a complication of self.

The article then relates a few quotes from Obama's peers who say the man is aloof. Gradually the author shifts his thesis away from Obama's selfhood and toward his character, essentially saying the President is not a team player. "He has quietly purged from his inner circle those most likely to stand up to him." The fix? "Obama has always insisted that he is playing a long game. The problem is that when everyone else in Washington is still playing a short game, the president sometimes has to play on their board." This unsupported claim applies to the reader, too. The article's author renders a judgment that time can't bear out and the reader is supposed to click through.

about the State of the Union address, 12 February 2013

Fervent Obama critics cast him as, among other things, un-American for transforming the country into something it has never been and was never meant to be. If he was that, he would be a revolutionary. Of all the policies and ideas he has articulated, somehow his State of the Union invocation of citizenship sounded unprecedented, like little else I've heard from Washington for at least the last 25 years. The concept of citizenship he speaks of goes beyond one's residence in a country; it is the duties and responsibilities that come with being a member of a community.

No, in these addresses we are usually referred to as taxpayers, consumers, or, simply (and vaguely) Americans.

Obama called out our citizenship as an argument for the big Federal socio-economic policies of a social democracy. Here is the key relevant excerpt from his State of the Union address, delivered 12 February 2013:

We may do different jobs, and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title:

We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.

Notes:
The above quote came at the conclusion of Obama's argument for more restrictive gun control laws, and at the conclusion to his entire address. Many pundits complimented the gun control-related content of his speech--here it is:

... Overwhelming majorities of Americans – Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment – have come together around commonsense reform – like background checks that will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun. Senators of both parties are working together on tough new laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals. Police chiefs are asking our help to get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets, because they are tired of being outgunned.

Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress. If you want to vote no, that’s your choice. But these proposals deserve a vote ...

One of those we lost was a young girl named Hadiya Pendleton. She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss ...

Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote.

Gabby Giffords deserves a vote.

The families of Newtown deserve a vote.

The families of Aurora deserve a vote.

The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote.

This you already know

Pre-election coverage foregrounds and makes estimations. The pundit sits in the middle of a mass of cross-talk, intercepting, expounding and proliferating meanings within the discourse that flows between and among candidates and the audience. In this analysis, the audience is parsed, filtered, separated out into segments that each have their own traits and values that call for individualized treatment from the candidates.

Then, after the big night, post-election coverage sets about interpreting new, limited sets of meanings, and projects them into the near and distant future. This analysis diagnoses the population using the tools of cohesion and normalization. The segments of people are recognized as key segments, but their numbers add up to a whole.

All this coverage depicts a scene in which, prior to election day, the candidates' message descends and swirls down within the electorate. Post-election, the message is sent from below, up to the risers on which sit the podiums and punditry chairs.

Who is the pundit? Who is qualified to be a pundit? Generally, a pundit must be someone who either (1) practices journalism for a publication of certain status, (2) someone who previously held a high-ish public office, or (3) someone who attained some celebrity while incorporated in a political campaign or party. As currently used, the word "pundit" appears to be a term of soft derision that depersonalizes the speaker, and casts them as coincidentally filling a seat that could be filled by so many. To call someone a pundit is to say, "Take their words with a grain of salt". In effect, this can serve to disqualify them while situating them within a dysfunctional machine.

But we have different kinds of pundits who serve different functions. Some speak for voters and are allegiant to one side. Others attempt to refocus, summarize, and speak of political events, trends, and developments when prompted. And now there is an elite.

First in 2008 but more so in 2012, Nate Silver of 538 emerged from the pundit crowd. The left has endowed him with a version of the Author function. His predictions (which cannot account for the unpredictable) draw credibility both from his name and from the nameless science purportedly behind him. The author name means nothing on a scientific paper; but Silver's work has his name, and seems to live on the weight of his name and on the namelessness of his numbers.

Notes:

In the middle of his victory speech, Obama, in his general, high rhetorical way, espoused a a key principal and belief that undergirds whatever his political philosophy is:

America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

Something on the film W

Left-leaning critics of George W. Bush tend to fall into one of two camps: Those who view the man as evil and those who view him as a puppet ne'er-do-well. Oliver Stone's film "W" agrees with the latter view, depicting the 43rd President as an over-confident and devout man driven by his need for approval. This angle of the W story is a familiar narrative--that of a son always seeking his father's approval. To be the man his father could admire, W believes he must appear in control. The role of "the decider" becomes crucial.

The film feels a little canned, but that may be part of the point: Bush is not an exceptional man, nor is his story at its core. What was extraordinary was the consequences of the group-think so pervasive in his cabinet, seized upon and steered by Vice President Cheney--the unassuming villain in this film, always lurking at the edges.

By combining an uncomplicated character study of George W. Bush with a cohesive narrative of his tenure, the film is useful for giving critics a shared interpretation of the events that transpired between 2001 and 2007. The film reviews I read when "W" premiered were pretty consistent and accurate in voicing surprise at Stone's restrained depiction of the younger Bush, revealing a deeply flawed man who found his own direction rather than a one-dimensional villain or straw man. The film attributes W's formidable initial political successes to his religious conversion, brought on suddenly after a physical and mental collapse during a very hungover three mile jog. His failures come as a result of his gullibility and insecurities.

Stone uses a thematic metaphor in the film--the baseball pop fly: the movie Bush often dreams of fielding a high fly ball in center field and then basking in the the praise and adoration of a cheering crowd. In the film's last scene, Bush, dreaming again, backs up to make the play on the pop-up, but the ball never comes down, leaving a confused Bush staring into the quiet stadium lights, wondering how the winning moment and adulation eluded him.

A good piece on Herman Cain asks, Why isn't he even more on the ropes?

Let's examine one of the author's conclusions in the enjoyable article "On the Ropes with Herman Cain" which appears this month in The New York Times Magazine.

The piece profiles the candidate with a critical eye, leaving the general impression that (1) this politician is flawed--seriously lacking, even, and (2) his campaign is unusually resilient. The resiliency point is well made except for this one high-profile example: "And in the first two national polls that were conducted after the sexual-harassment scandal broke, Cain was still looking strong, running right up at the top with Romney." This phenomenon isn't remarkable. While a scandal might pervade a campaign's coverage, it needn't necessarily hurt a candidate's approval. Just a recent example: Obama's numbers held steady through all the Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright talk that followed him in 2007.

A candidate's approval rating is damaged when the nature of his scandal threatens or challenges his base. For example: Democrats sick of George W. and the GOP in 2007 did not worry about Obama associating with mostly irrelevant Leftists. Likewise, today's Republicans, many of whom are suspicious of litigation and dismissive of feminists, don't care about old sexual harassment charges.

An event is only a scandal if it offends the values of your peers, and a speech act is only a gaffe if it draws their derision, thereby embarrassing you.

A separate point: I've read speculation that Cain intends not so much to win to the election, but rather to make himself a celebrity. This jibes with my old theory that elections would soon evolve into popularity contests between game show host-like candidates. But, should this happen, it would only be a temporary phase in the history of US electioneering. And, moreover, that campaigns and candidates are the essential form of PR isn't news.