A reflection written during the Spring of 2019
My earliest political memory is from the early evening of Tuesday, November 8, 1960. It was the night John F. Kennedy won the presidency. My mother needed to run out to a store of some sort and I sat in the back seat of the car. It was cold and dark. I was seven years old and living in Lenox, Massachusetts. My mother’s nervous energy and intense concern were palpable. She and my Massachusetts Irish Roman Catholic Democrat father wanted very much for Kennedy to win. The car radio crackled, because my Mom was desperate to not miss any news about the election that on this special night was dominating all broadcasting. This was the night I began to learn that politics was a big deal.
In many ways my reverence for politics, history, and the importance of government came from those few years of President Kennedy’s administration. The Massachusetts Irish Catholic Democrat side of my family adored Kennedy. He was held up as the best thing to ever happen to this world—just shy of Jesus of course. My mother was a young German immigrant and she took her cues of what to believe in America from my father’s family. Regardless, she readily embraced the adoration of Kennedy. As a result, politics and the government were introduced to me as hopeful, inspiring, and fundamentally positive constructs. This belief shaped my approach to politics that in many ways continues to this day.
The Kennedy story ended tragically of course. It was the afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963. I was sitting in my fifth-grade classroom at Lenox Elementary School listening to a lesson our teacher Miss Neill was presenting, when our principal walked into the room, walked up to Miss Neill and whispered the news of the president’s assassination into our teacher’s ear. The shocked look on her face sent waves of anxiety throughout the room. In retrospect Miss Neill handled it all very well. She calmly, respectfully, but with obvious pain told a room full of ten and eleven-year old boys and girls what had happened to the president. It couldn’t have been easy to announce this news to us and it wasn’t easy for me to hear it.
My mother cried for four days. The black & white television was on continuously carrying news of the shocking account. The grief was cutting and profound. I remember watching Oswald being shot on live TV, the president’s casket lying in state under the Capitol rotunda, and the salute John-John gave the funeral procession. To this day, I can relive the sorrow and gloom. It will never go away.
One afternoon during the summer of 1964 my friend John and I made Johnson for President signs and held them up to traffic traveling on Walker Street in Lenox Dale. No one prompted us to do this. It was our idea of having fun and doing something meaningful. By then politics was of high interest. Although I don’t remember having a fondness for LBJ, nevertheless he was President Kennedy’s VP and had been sworn in on the day JFK died. That was enough reason to support him and I did so enthusiastically. Barry Goldwater, Johnson’s Republican opponent, was successfully portrayed across the country and in my circle of family and friends as a dangerous and unpredictable menace, who must be defeated at all costs. The election of 1964 cemented in my mind that Republicans were menacing and Democrats virtuous. For better or worse, the political narrative of my life has largely followed this course.
1968 was a tumultuous year in American politics. I was in high school by then and totally drawn into the drama of civil rights and anti-war protests rocking the nation. Eugene McCarthy, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, emerged early in the election cycle as liberal provocateur running for the Democratic presidential nomination with a demand to end the war in Vietnam as his principal issue. By this time young people were quite politically active, certainly compared to later periods. Many youthful, anti-war, counterculture types found McCarthy appealing. And therefore, so did I. My path of teenaged individuation hitched itself to this rainbow-colored, daisy-decaled bus.
Prior to the election of 1972 I was old enough to vote. Full of urgency, I asked my father to take me to the town hall so I could register to vote as soon as I turned eighteen. The desire to vote continues to attract. I may have missed a few local elections held on a rainy Tuesday for offices seemingly far removed from my life. You know, the kind that garner 20% of the possible electorate, if that. But in general, I have been a loyal and devoted practitioner of the voting franchise. I have never missed a presidential or midterm election. Not one in 47 years.
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Politics is about values. History has taught us that for people to live in harmony with shared values is quite difficult and has too many times devolved into a deadly endeavor. Although articulated by an erudite American, the universal quest of citizens across the globe can reliably be said to converge on the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing the serious consequences of getting politics right occurred to me early on as profoundly important. Having had two parents whose young lives were consumed by World War II, one as a young girl in war-torn Germany and the other as a teenager fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific, I learned early about the repercussions of societal and cultural breakdown.
I am also the product of the positive story America tells itself about our history and exceptionality. The myth of America as the Land of Opportunity, forged from a righteous revolution against tyranny, designed by an exceptional group of enlightened founders ordained to bring light and hope to the world was an exciting and inspiring tale to behold. It fit in naturally with a feeling that I was born into a country unparalleled in greatness and capability. We were the ones who won World War II, sent astronauts to the moon, invented products the world craved, and were large and powerful. This place and people must be special. I grew up proud to be an American.
My patriotic optimism was soon tempered during my junior high school and high school years by the war in Vietnam. Early memories of the war are from Walter Cronkite and The Huntley Brinkley Report giving daily battle updates, news of troop movements and enemy atrocities, and the grizzly broadcasts of weekly casualty totals from Vietnam. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese combined totals were always higher than American losses, which gave a sense of American fighting superiority. But I was a history enthusiast and remember thinking, does every generation of Americans have to fight in a war? And is this the one I will need to fight and possibly die in? It was not a comforting thought. This recognition was reinforced in 1973 when the Selective Service lottery drawing for my birth year (1953) was held. My number was 117, which was a relatively high and therefore safe number that year. I was relieved. It looked like I wasn’t going to Vietnam.
As an aside, I did end up visiting Vietnam in 2014 with my wife. We spent a month working our way from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi. It is a lovely country. My memories are fond. Regarding any connection to the war, there were visits to jarring and sobering war museums, but most significantly for me was to focus on the reception we received from the Vietnamese, who knew we were Americans. It was genuinely warm with no sense of animus, even in Hanoi, the locus of the former enemy. While on the streets of that city one afternoon my eye caught a group of local middle school-aged girls walking together on a sidewalk. Having once been a middle school teacher this was of interest to me. Amidst that cohort of friends as they receded from view revealing their backpacks was one who had on it stitched an American flag. Time can heal, I thought.
By 1968 the war in Vietnam and the protests made me a cynic. I accepted rather briskly the idea that there was a dark side to the American enterprise. Why I found that my home country was capable of imperialist and grievous behavior and why many of my peers, as I’ve learned over the course of my life, did not is a mystery I’m stilling trying to solve. Needless to say, I became sympathetic to counterculture memes and the politics of liberalism, civil rights, toleration, peace, and a Rousseauian back-to-the-earth naturalism, infused with an anti-business/anti-capitalist belief. These influences guided my political thinking for many years and are addressed to this day in my political musings, but with greater maturity and sophistication—or so I would like to think.
I have been a reliable Democrat voter. I’ve voted Democrat for every presidential candidate election since 1972, save one. In 1980 I voted for John Anderson, an independent challenging Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I have regretted that vote ever since, wishing I had voted for Jimmy Carter’s reelection, even now despite knowing the outcome. The pattern is the same for other elective offices. Almost always I voted for Democrats, occasionally for independents, but never for Republicans. I’ve clearly had a loyalty to the party. I remember my Aunt Betty telling me once while chatting with her about candidates in an upcoming election as we sat on Seabrook Beach, New Hampshire one afternoon when I was about twelve or thirteen years old that she routinely voted “straight ticket” for Democrats. I asked her to tell me what that meant. She said that a ballot gave a voter an option to vote for every candidate of a given party without having to select each one individually and that this was how she usually voted. This admission was another influence in my becoming a Democrat.
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A lifetime of interest in a particular field produces a depth of understanding. Much of my reading on a daily basis is political news. Since the creation of the internet it is easy to get deluged in political reporting and commentary. I love it. In addition to such study, I have found it very useful over the years to not just reinforce my political perceptions, but to challenge them. Indeed, much of the growth or maturation of my political beliefs is due to this simple dictum. Another useful practice has been to engage with others in vigorous political debate. This is a time that tests conjectures to see how they hold up to critical scrutiny, especially if communicating with others of differing persuasions. Together these habits have helped me to shape a personal ideology, dynamic to be sure, but serviceable in determining what I believe at any given time. Values clarification is grounding and political thought is really not much more than that.
Despite George Washington’s reservations about Americans bifurcating themselves into two principal political parties it happened as soon as his term as president was over. The names and governing themes of both parties have changed over our history, but the paradigm of two competing political powerhouses ascertaining and articulating the values and ruling priorities of the country remains constant. To a large extent the popular will of the people can be comprehended by understanding the preferences of each party. Following is my objective assessment of the Republicans and the Democrats in 2019.
Today’s Republican Party is harder to define than in recent years due to the rise of Trumpism. Prior to the presidential candidacy announcement of Donald Trump in 2015 I would have ascribed the following characteristics to Republicans: They believed in small government, low taxes, little regulation, personal freedom/responsibility, hawkish foreign policy, free trade, a right to gun ownership, and the facilitation of business growth. But since the rise of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s Republican campaign and governing tactics took a sharp turn toward abandoning democratic norms of mutual tolerance for political opponents and forbearance, by which is meant applying restraint when exercising institutional leverage. Gingrich advocated for hyper-partisanship and enhanced combativeness in dealing with political rivals that is now commonplace, reaching its zenith in the presidency of Donald Trump.
The Republican Party has become an amalgamation of anti-establishment, anti-institutional, anti-immigration activists motivated by a populist return to a time when white men were the controlling demographic group. They are threatened by multiculturalism, claims of climate change, economic globalization, women equality, gun regulations, free trade, and pressures to curb corporate intervention in governance. Republicans have also adopted a much more non-interventionist approach to foreign policy, abandoning traditional international alliances and holding back on committing American troops to overseas hotspots. Despite this they see fit to increase military spending. What remains from Republicans of old is a penchant for low taxes of the rich, pro-business policies, and individual freedom.
The Democratic Party, with which I am affiliated due to cultural and familial reasons already mentioned, and with a history reaching back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is the oldest active political party in the world. It went through significant changes over this time and its background is a blend of both admirable and egregious positions. The current Democratic Party can be traced back to the robust federal interventionism, some would say intrusion, of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs of the 1930s. The result is a modern party that promotes the interests of labor, minorities, women’s rights, gay rights, immigrant assimilation, universal healthcare, environmental protections, opportunities for the disenfranchised, consumer safeguards, higher education, and urban issues.
Democrats are faced with a big challenge at present concerning wealth inequality. From the time of its founding in the early 19th century the party aligned itself with agrarian concerns and away from banking and business interests. In short, it has a long history of being the party of the “people”, by which is meant in today’s vernacular the working class. However, in recent decades an unforeseen abnormality has occurred. As many of the Baby Boomer children of the mid 20th century received college educations and correspondingly higher standards of living than their parents the affairs of the working class increasingly receded from among affluent Democrats. This became glaringly obvious when many of the types of voters who historically would have voted Democratic voted for Trump and the Republicans instead in 2016. This has led to a bifurcated party of progressives, who in part want to re-establish outreach to those lower on the socioeconomic spectrum primarily through wealth redistribution and the centrists, who see capitalism and economic growth along with redistribution as a foundation for financing programs for the poor and lower middle class.
An argument can be made that we may be seeing another realignment of the party system, in which former working-class Democrats are shifting to Republicans permanently and educated high income suburban voters who in the past leaned Republican are shifting to the Democratic Party. The 2018 midterm elections supported this view and the 2020 election may reveal more about whether such a partisan transformation is in fact occurring. My sense tells me that it is.
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What I have presented thus far is a prelude to my prevailing political thought. It is worth noting in describing these values that I am consciously and intentionally trying to avoid animus, malevolence, and acrimony despite my day to day strident feelings toward the political opposition. Rather, I am relying on a combination of innate optimism regarding human nature and what I see as a refined observational astuteness of contemporary conditions within a historic context. Afterall, I have been paying attention to this stuff for about 50 years.
In describing my ideology, I intend to paint with a rather broad brush, finding it unnecessary at this time to “get into the weeds” concerning political positions. This will not be a well-researched white paper detailing policy prerogatives supported by sophisticated rationales. Relatively expansive themes concerning what I see to be political fundamentals will instead be the order of the day.
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I begin by laying out what I’ve been calling for some years the “3 dichotomies”. At around 2007 or so I had this epiphany that explained to me some, if not the, elemental differences between liberal and conservative thinking. Boiled down they are:
Distribution vs Production, Community vs Individual, Equality vs Liberty
The left side of each “vs” is predominately a liberal value and the right side is chiefly a conservative value. When I first concluded these dualities made sense, I quickly realized that I was a political moderate or centrist. And that was fine. All of these values I shared. Sure, I leaned left historically and emotionally, but it was now much easier to not demonize those on the right. I felt relieved at not having to remain in a defensive posture supporting liberalism as the only valid dogma. Tension between each of these dichotomies is how the political philosophies struggle, engage, and debate. If conditions skew too far in any one direction, then the balancing tendency of American democracy asserts itself. I am still comfortable thinking this simplistic rationalization is functionally accurate. To me it explains a lot of partisan wrangling.
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Politics is largely about economics or the distribution of wealth and power throughout the population. Individuals want to know that the system of resource apportionment is fair. Of course, political conflict comes from how all of the disparate people of a nation define ‘fair’. As a result, questions of policy, programs, and initiatives often seem to be about what priorities are worth the appropriations of tax revenue. However, I think all of this activity, while incredibly valuable, masks or distracts from what is most fundamental and paramount regarding politics — the continuation of cultural traditions and identity.
Culture, more than politics or even nationalism binds us as a people viscerally and elementally. It’s what ties us to our past, informs our present, and inspires our future. Languages, religions, values, histories, holidays, shared knowledge, proverbs, and accepted behaviors just begin to describe the unifying power of culture. That which we believe sustains our civilization motivates our politics. The force of cultural expression cannot be easily understated or challenged.
The deep sensibility of culture needs to be calculated when appraising the cogency of a political focus. Appealing to tradition can take a positive or a negative turn. For example, Ronald Reagan was smart to entice voters with images, such as “Morning in America” and America as a “City on a Hill” that poetically reached into the heart of the nation. Donald Trump on the other hand conjured trepidations of immigrant invaders and the rise of the ‘other’, by which is meant non-whites, taking over our way of life. Such fear-mongering significantly contributed to his 2016 win.
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A quote from Zen teacher Diane Musho Hamilton serves as a good opening to my next value: “Rather than relying on a thin, idealized hope that we will all one day just get along, we can approach conflict resolution as an art form that we are privileged to develop and hone.”
I long ago abandoned the fantasy that there is only one right way to think. Especially when it comes to the best way to solve problems or improve the world. Politics emerges as soon as two people confront a shared reality. If there is motivation by one or both individuals to alter in any way that reality a negotiation takes place. The ensuing transaction is almost always influenced by a power dynamic. Each person tries to exert compelling leverage to most influence the outcome. The individual most able to persuade, generally achieves that goal. This everyday practice seems natural to me.
I link political power and persuasion as foundational to a democracy. The more convincing one is the more powerful they become. Democracy assumes an equal footing for all individuals and groups to practice persuasion in order to effect change or continue traditions. If that basis is perverted by one party grasping political power through unjust means, such as over-exerting the inducement of money or taking control by military-style force, then democracy ceases as a practical governing model.
I am most often impressed with political exchanges that yield progress by reflecting an amalgamation of differing viewpoints constructed from the persuasive attempts of multiple parties. In short, compromise. Forging agreement among opposing interests is very difficult. It requires four things:
All negotiating groups are committed to the concept of compromise as a fundamentally fair practice and agree to negotiate in a civil manner.
A search for common ground or shared interests is conducted.
All sides are able to claim a win to some degree in whatever the final outcome turns out to be.
Everyone agrees to abide by the terms and conditions of the comprise until a renegotiation occurs.
Political maneuvering that is fair, mature, courteous, and respectful while also being calculated, tough-minded, strategic, and forceful can be a beautiful thing to behold.
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Much is made of American exceptionalism. Interpretation of the concept is multifarious. And it seems everyone who uses the term seems is exceptionally confident they have the right meaning. There are variations of American exceptionalism espoused. They range from a view that the United States has a historically unique origin born from ideology and revolution to the notion that we have a missionary imperative to spread the ideals of liberty, egalitarianism, and democracy across the globe to a belief Americans are ascendant. I’m comfortable with all of this conviction except for American superiority. Accepting we are better than everyone else smacks of tribalism and plants the seeds of unnecessary conflict.
I recognize and embrace that we have something special here in America. In particular and perhaps most important is our 243-year experiment in representative democracy. Within a group of like-minded individuals, who share similar histories, ethnic backgrounds, and cultural traits democracy is not an especially challenging governing method. Majority opinion is easily formed and debate about how to best approach issues is reasonably tame. This is not our experience. The United States is a multicultural nation in which a diverse set of influences flow to form a volatile and ever contentious mix of power, rights, beliefs, assessments, and perspectives. Reaching consensus among the many disparate interests that make up our country is incredibly arduous.
As Winston Churchill said in part during a speech before the House of Commons in 1947 “…democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried…”. How true. I have a deep reverence for democracy. It blends the best parts of individualism and collectivism, representing a mature form of governance. To be sure, if not well managed, it can lead to oppressive majority rule. After all, Adolf Hitler rose to leadership as a result of a democratic process. We should never be complacent in thinking democracy once established is permanently to remain in place. Democratic governance has not been the norm throughout human history and there remain powerful forces, even here in the United States, which could topple democracy.
For democracy to remain vibrant and useful the people of the country must respect each other. Fundamental conditions include mutual toleration, accepting the political legitimacy of competing political forces, and the results of free and fair elections. Without this basic level of regard for our fellow citizens, then we cannot work in political harmony even as we vigorously oppose each other’s positions. Democracy sets up rules of engagement that all agree to adhere to. Sometimes your side wins, sometimes it loses. Developing the art of persuasion becomes paramount within a democratic system. Exercising inordinate force that delegitimizes or overly weakens one’s political opponents threatens democracy, the nation, and the citizenry. Therefore, I revere democracy over ideology. An ideal that triumphs as a result of extra-democratic power is not an ideology worth celebrating.
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The two grand pillars that support and define politics are culture and economics. I pay a lot of attention to how these foundational concepts play out both in contemporary politics and historically. However, it is the latter of these two principles that I would like to address the following thoughts.
A dominant view is economics boiling down simply to the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. With regards to politics, I include the general welfare of people as the core point of the economic activity just identified. All individuals and communities need both goods and services, otherwise known as resources, to consume in order to establish and sustain quality lives. Also crucial is the dignity and purpose involved in producing and distributing those goods and services to others. We are all economic agents. How and for whom many resources are produced, distributed, and consumed informs much of political discourse and government intervention.
The “pie” continues to be a useful metaphor for reducing a complex social science to a comprehendible instrument for lay people. This economic pie shrinks and grows and is sliced in any number of ways. It is these three actions—growing, shrinking, and slicing—that consume much of the discussion about the pie. Correctly calibrating the right amounts of pie growing, shrinking, and slicing to induce social benefits, such as full employment and relative wealth equality, but also business benefits like maximum production of high value goods and services is a most difficult undertaking.
Systemizing this challenge has been tried worldwide with a variety of economic models over recent history, ranging from highly centralized government command measures (Socialism and Communism) to laissez faire free market systems (Capitalism). In reality, what emerges from the philosophical give and take of politics is an amalgamation of the two extremities. I’m fine with the tug-a-war between Socialism and Capitalism. The struggle strikes me as natural. However, I recognize that over the arc of my political thought, I have moved from a greater belief in the merits of Socialism to an adherence of Capitalism.
Although well intended Socialism requires a heavy concentration of power in government. It is this notion of condensed power, whether in government or any entity for that matter, where I get uncomfortable. Diffusion of authority across several institutions or agencies, such as government, business, and a free media creates a check and balance system not unlike the self-regulating arrangement within the federal government of executive, legislative, and the judicial. Socialism assumes there is an all-knowing group of decision makers who put the economic interests of everyone first. The problem is as history has shown multiple times that those in charge of socialist regimes tend to fortify themselves with levels of power not susceptible to democratic criticism or compromise. Additionally, socialism typically produces slow economic growth and reduced motivation and innovation among workers.
Capitalism assumes private ownership of industry with profit as the prime motivator. History shows capitalism to provide robust economic growth, characterized by innovations that have improved lives worldwide. Since the onset of market economies, which were a key result of the values of individualism and reason spurred by the Age of Enlightenment, capitalism has contributed significantly to modernity and many of the benefits millions enjoy today. Of course, any paradigm has its shortcomings and capitalism is not exempt. Without regulatory controls capitalism can lead to wealth inequalities with a small number of very rich people controlling most of the capital, an exploited working class experiencing hard work and low wages, manipulated consumer prices, and an unstable series of booms and busts.
Simplistically stated, capitalism determines the size of the economic pie and socialism, or a term I prefer—liberalism, decides how many slices are carved. The resulting tension between these two philosophies is natural to me. And played out in the context of democracy everyone’s interests can be addressed.
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This discourse is a snapshot in time. Political thought is dynamic. It will undoubtedly change more over the years I have left. The boy who first recognized the significance of politics and the man who continues to follow its importance will remain engaged by observing, reading, writing, and in other ways weighing in on political topics of the day. To me, doing so is more than just interesting, it’s fun!