The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    One year later

    By Barth on Tue, 11/03/2009 - 12:44pm |
    President Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961 is the first Great National Event which I can actually recall. The flights of Alan B. Shepherd and John Glenn, leading to the actual exploration of another celestial body in 1969 also come to mind, as does the fall of the Berlin Wall, a tribute to the airlift in 1948 in President Truman's administration and President Kennedy's endorsement of the hopes of "free men everywhere" as it is to anything or anyone else.

    And then there is Election Day, 2008. Hope. Freedom. Renewal. Long lines of people in states where their vote has no real bearing on the outcome, wanting to be part of something. And they were. And we are on our way to becoming once again, the land of the free and the brave; the last best hope for mankind.


    This was not the only place  where there appeared reminders of President Kennedy's warnings against a belief that things happen instantaneously and without hard work yet with the mission clearly stated: "but let us begin."  To those impatient with the pace of change and with our frightened opponents using everything in their discredited playbook to slow us down, today might be a good day to reflect on what has taken place over the first year since our liberation. Eugene Robinson is, as always, very helpful in that regard.

    Do not let the Mourning Joes and the other leftovers from the discredited past rain on our parade today. Jon Corzine certainly deserves to be re-elected against the symbol of the Bush administration who is opposing him, but Corzine's ego, and enormous wealth amassed at, of all places, Goldman Sachs, puts his election in jeopardy. In Virginia, a remnant of the old Democratic Party got the nomination over a Bill Clinton sycophant, and then promptly tried to tell everyone he is a different Democrat than President Obama. He deserves to lose and will. That what is left of the Republican Party is self destructing before our very eyes in the northernmost reaches of the State of New York is not our struggle; it is theirs. 

    None of these races will say anything about the Obama administration, no matter what you hear from the electronic box tonight. If President Obama does not agree with everything you espouse, try to think about the alternatives. . Go out and vote today: if you live in New York City you can even vote on the Republican line for a Kennedy Democrat running to be re-elected as Mayor, but spend tonight in celebration of what we finally accomplished last year and of all that is before us until we make it all the way back.

    A Postscript:
    Much commentary abounds today about what Election Day, plus one year means including this from Ms. Huffington complaining that the president is too "timid" in the way he "governs." Someone I know responds as follows:

    Brainwashed as so many of us have been by Presidents talking in the first person about about what "I am going to do" in office (even to the extent of Bush II calling the United States "my country" in the sense that he is its personification) many of us believe that we elect a president to "govern." Governing under our system is a more complicated process which, sadly, has broken down under the weight of the enormous television imposed costs of political campaigns and the means by which they are financed. It is not the President's "timidity" which retards our progress, but the effects of a corrupting system which like a virus, also gets in the way of any attempt to cure us of it.

    As much as low level "corruption" of the process has always been with us---it is somewhat inevitable to the republican system---two factors have worked together to make a difficult situation that much worse over about the last 30 years: they are Buckley v Valeo, where the Supreme Court seriously retarded the Watergate-inspired attempts to control campaign financing and spending and the tremendous growth of television as to only real way to effectively campaign for office. I am sorry the President has disappointed you, but he is far from the being the problem which is very serious and, worse, may beyond our ability to repair.