Catsam, in compiling a fascinating history is not presenting solely black history or Southern history or civil rights history. he is presenting an ever-evolving American history, a concept underscored by the presentation of the book and reinforced by our recent election, which has presented us with a moment to look back and forward to the next stage of "Freedom's Main Line."
What a lousy week this has been for book lovers.
When I lived in Washington, and whenever I travel there, which is fairly regularly, I have always looked forward to Book World as a staple. It always provided a non-New York centered look at books, and often was every bit as good as its New York Times counterpart, and on some Sundays could be significantly better. Much will be lost in this transition. And virtually nothing gained. I'm not quite in mourning. But I'm also not far from it.
Hat Tip to my buddy Bill.
However, it seems rather shortsighted to simply look at that fact and claim it as a major accomplishment. After all, the Clinton administration went even longer without an attack on US soil from foreign terrorist groups after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Furthermore, how is it possible to take credit for a lack of attacks after 9/11 without at the same time acknowledging that the administration did not stop the worst terrorist attack in American history? Bush's advocates cannot possibly have it both ways, denying any responsibility whatsoever for not preventing 9/11 but claiming a lack of attacks after 9/11 as the result of successful policy. 9/11 happened during the Bush presidency. That is an immutable fact. The failures on 9/11 were systemic, to be sure, and blaming Bush, or blaming Clinton, would be largely pointless. Until you start using the lack of attacks as a political chit. At which point, the rules of the game change.
Finally, the United States has allies. In part as a nearly direct result of their coordination with American policies, Spain and England suffered terrorist attacks after 9/11. (I was in England on the 7th of July, 2005.) Shallow triumphalism on terrorism needs to take into account that the Global War on terror (Bush's titular creation, not mine) was, well, global. To declaim an attack in London or Madrid because it does not fit the narrative qualifies as rank opportunism (and pretty crass abandonment of the significance of our allies). It hardly meets the standard of rigorous political analysis.
President Obama faces the circumstances for greatness but the question remains whether he masters the moment, or the moment masters him. Supporters like me believe he is the man for these troubling times. The clock is ticking on his hundred days, a constructed but symbolically resonant creation that presidents since FDR have faced with varying degrees of success. Obama's challenge will be to maximize his mandate, to use the current goodwill he has garnered as a springboard, and to use not only the next hundred days but beyond to impose his will on events rather than allow events to overrun him.
Throughout today's monumental, historic, inspiring, and emotional events, my thoughts have continued to wander back to two individuals other, of course, than Barack Obama. I have written thousands of words about both and probably exhausted nearly as many hours thinking about them. One is Congressman John Lewis. The other, bizarrely, perhaps, is Robert Mugabe.
John Lewis is one of the central figures in Freedom's Main Line, and is someone who has earned almost universal respect for his courage and convictions. One of the central figures in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s, Lewis never fulfilled the role of charismatic leader. But charismatic leadership was always only a tiny slice of what the Movement was all about, the visible tip of an often obscured massive operation that may have required a Martin Luther King, Jr. for public consumption but that needed determined leaders like John Lewis to make things run. As a Congressman Lewis has similarly spoken out for justice and human rights, rarely (he is a Congressman -- to say "never" would be to protest too much) grandstanding, and always impressing with his strength of character and commitment. Seeing John Lewis in such a visible seat during the inauguration proceedings gave me joy on a day that all of us can celebrate, but that most of us have to recognize means that much more to African Americans. Barack Obama is our president, but to deny pride of place to African Americans would be churlish at best.
And yet as I listened to Obama present a speech that by his standards was merely adequate, but that instantly re-elevated the level of presidential speechmaking exponentially, I also thought about Africa and Africans. About Kenya, to be sure, and Obama's heritage, of course. But also about how someone like a Robert Mugabe has so abandoned his claim to speak for his people. About how Mugabe's ruthlessly thuggish kleptocracy has forsaken the people of Zimbabwe, has abused power, has made a mockery of democracy. About how perhaps a President Obama will be able to stare down Mugabe and his demonically clever machinations whereby all criticisms derive from the fiendish colonial past. Obama's earnest beliefs about both democracy and freedom place into stark reality the barrenness of Mugabe's claims to the country he so promisingly took control of nearly three decades ago. The Age of Obama should spell the end of the Age of Mugabe and his ilk. Not through Obama's force of will or use of force, but rather simply by his very presence. No longer should a Robert Mugabe be able to hide behind his people and stake a claim to Africanness that allows him to abuse other Africans.
As I am writing this, I am watching the Obamas walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and am listening to David Gergen speak of his fears about the first couple walking openly down the streets of Washington, fears I have shared (and repressed) all day. And yet as I listen I hear not fear or anxiety, but unfettered joy. More than that, I hear relief. The relief of generations. The relief of hope. The relief of possibilities unleashed.
The Washington, DC we all see and read about is the Washington of wing tips and power ties and constant jockeying for power and status anxiety raised to the level of sacrament. But the Washington that Washingtonians experience is the original Chocolate City, a black city. The shrieks of joy are also the shouts of a people. Michelle Obama received the slings and arrows of self-righteous outrage when she commented on her feeling pride in her country for the first time, an assertion as unobjectionable as her critics were ferociously obtuse. It would be facile to claim that we have overcome the country's tortured, demonstrable, long, shameful past, or to allow conservatives to seize upon Obama's inauguration as evidence that racism is a factor no more. But a specific era of racism, long dying, is dead. We are not at Dr. King's mountaintop. But on this, one of the truly great days in American history, its peaks are clearer than ever they have been. And that's something.
[Crossposted at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog.]
(Bonus: Pamela Anderson is prominently involved, but then again, of course she is.)
I am teaching my US 1929-1945: Depression and War class this semester, and I think it is no coincidence that it is packed this time around, with more students than seats or tabletops. The last time I taught this class, two years ago, it had fewer than 15 students. Last semester when I taught the first of my three-course modern US trilogy, covering the period from 1877-1929, a dozen students showed up for the final exam. Suddenly, though, students are clamoring to take this class, and it seems the reason is obvious. They want to try to make some sense of the world around them, and this class its on the two major issues of our time: economic crisis on the home front and American wars abroad.
I find most of the FDR/New deal arguments largely uninteresting. Conservatives and Republicans have taken a reasonable, indeed factually indisputable argument -- the New Deal did not end the Great Depression -- and turned it into an unreasonable, wrong one, namely that the New Deal failed. If we start out from the basic principle that there really is something to the idea of the "Three R's" of the New Deal: relief, reform, recovery, we understand that FDR's programs certainly addressed two of these with some remarkable successes even if the recovery phase never really kicked in. I have never heard an even vaguely viable argument about how the wonders of a market that had quite clearly failed, and had seen the economy hit its nadir during the Hoover administration, was going to magically come up with the millions of jobs that various New Deal relief programs provided. Nor has anyone arguing New Deal failure adequately explained FDR's successful re-elections, especially the 1936 landslide. The New Deal was an imperfect response to a nearly unfathomable catastrophe. Those who point out that the Second World War, and not the New Deal, ended the Great Depression have a point, though they also probably ought to acknowledge that had FDR had his druthers we would have been far more engaged not only in that conflict, but in its run-up, and that the economic benefits thus derived would have come far sooner.
The quest for a usable past is understandable. But the desire to use a cartoonish version of that past to brandish ideology today both abuses and diminishes the past in ways that will inevitably do harm both to history and to the future.
My argument has always been the same: Jim Rice was my favorite player growing up, and as a consequence would always get my vote. I know all of the rational arguments against him, but childhood loyalties are the fiercest loyalties, and in my mind Jim Ed Rice will always be the fiercest hitter around. I hope enough voters saw it that way this year, and that Rice will not be subject to the wait and the whims of the veteren's committee process some years down the line.
The ball is in your court, Amazon.
But I was amused to read Jonathan Chait's evisceration of the Wall Street Journal's "wildly promiscuous use of quotation marks." The editors of the WSJ certainly know better, and Chait uses the intentional usage of punctuation to achieve none-to-subtle ideological ends.
I would assume that there will be a great deal of regional variation, and that the places with the loyalist fan bases will benefit the least. After all, if fans are flocking to see the games in some cities, those owners are going to see little need to drop prices, add incentives, or provide bargains. In other words, if you're in Boston, don't expect most of these trends to help you more easily and cheaply see the Sox, C's, Pats, or resurgent Bruins. But in somewhat more marginal, or perhaps to be kinder, less entrenched, sports markets, Rovell just might be right.
Meanwhile it continues to be the decade of the Boston Sports Fan. If you need a reminder of the current state of Boston sports, see this Bob Ryan article in The Boston Globe.
