POLITICS: What today’s Republicans need – A good strong dose of Theodore Roosevelt

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
TR prepares to face a yet-unpicked Democratic opponent in 1904, drawn by Joseph Keppler for Puck.

Are you like me?  Do you feel distinctly annoyed and disheartened watching the final stages of this year’s pathetic contest for the Republican presidential nomination?   Then remember this:  2012 is not the first time the Party was this stupid!!  Exactly 100 years ago, in 1912, this same Republican Party rejected Theodore Roosevelt as its nominee, despite Roosevelt’s having won most of that year’s Republican primaries and having the support of most of the party’s own members across the country.  


Instead, meeting in Chicago, a small circle of “stand pat” Bosses and insiders insisted on giving the nod to incumbent President William Howard Taft, forcing Roosevelt to bolt and run as a third party candidate.  Roosevelt ran for President in 1912 as a Progressives or Bull Moose-er.  He easily beat Taft in the 1912 popular vote, but Democrat Woodrow Wilson took advantage of the split and won the White House that year.  Click here for full results.     

If Theodore Roosevelt were alive today, would Republicans in 2012 reject him again?   I have no doubt.  TR believed in the party of Lincoln, a party of ideas and progress and equality.


Just for nostalgia, here are a few favorite cartoons, just to remember how good a Republican president used to be able to be.   Enjoy.

Roosevelt seen conquering New York State Republicans at their 1910 convention in Saratoga, winning the convention chairmanship over the party’s own sitting Vice President, James S. Sherman.  Drawn by W.A. Carson of the Utica Post. 

Another Puck cartoon show TR as president in his bid to drive corruption from the US post office.

Lions, tigers, zebras and all the other African animals run for the lives on hearing the TR  plans to visit for a hunting trip after leaving office in 1909.


GUEST BLOGGER David Taylor on the War of 1812 – Before the SEALs: When America Faced the Water

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
This print by T. Buttersworth depicts the January 1815 battle between President and Endymion that led to the capture of Commodore John Rodgers’ cherished frigate. Courtesy, U.S. Navy Art Collection. (p. 194)

Our generation’s images of the military have been dominated by the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so many Americans have lost sight of the Navy. Act of Valor, the Hollywood film in theatres this month, reminds us of the Navy with the story of a SEALs Special Operations team like the one that caught and killed Osama bin Laden.

Two centuries ago and for much of early U.S. history, reminders were unnecessary. Americans grew up on the water, made their fortunes and risked their lives there. That was where our opportunities and risks lay. Nobody from that time speaks to ours more vividly than Joshua Penny, a sailor-turned-spy: Special Ops, 1812 style.

Penny’s saga dumbfounded me when I stumbled on it while researching The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy. He sought his fortune at sea as a boy, got kidnapped by the British, fought his way back home, and ultimately served as a spy against his old nemesis, the British Navy. For that service he did time as a prisoner of war, and came out unbowed.

Penny knew his story spoke for many others. Every town up the East Coast had at least a few vessels in the maritime trade, and for decades boys saw it as their ticket out of poverty. In New England “few of the boys would reach manhood without having made at least one voyage to the Newfoundland Banks after codfish,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his history The Naval War of 1812, “and in the whaling towns of Long Island it used to be an old saying that no man could marry till he struck his whale…” Roosevelt himself hailed from Sag Harbor near Joshua Penny’s hometown, and as a boy was captivated by 1812 sea stories.

Penny, one of nine children from a hardscrabble family, went to sea to seek his fortune.

He learned the nautical life and where each rope belonged, as Herman Melville would a generation later. He learned the three-watch system (dividing up the day into three shifts or “watches”), how to handle a ship’s sails, and how to scramble up into the “trees” ten stories above the water without being tossed into the rolling depths. Like the others, Penny trained his bare hands and feet to grip the ropes even in bitter cold. (“Sailors, even in the bleakest weather, never wear mittens,” Melville noted; they literally held their lives in their hands and didn’t want anything getting in the way.)


Penny suffered most brutally from a prominent cause of the war: the British Navy’s practice of kidnapping U.S. seamen and pressing them into the imperial navy. The British stopped hundreds of American ships and in the decade before 1812 “press-ganged” roughly 10,000 American seamen, claiming they were British deserters. Even sailors holding papers proving their American citizenship weren’t safe. “I had frequently seen the papers of neutrals torn in pieces by the press gang, and thrown in the fire,” Penny reported. The U.S. went to war with “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” flying on banners from American sails.

Penny fell into the hands of press gangs and was held by the British navy for years. His first mission, as he saw it, was to escape. He called British warships “nefarious floating dungeons.” After being shanghaied the first time by British conscription officers as a teenage sailor onshore in Ireland, he managed to escape — only to be snared again. He was forced onto a 28-gun frigate along with three other Americans, several Danes and Swedes. He tried another escape, and was captured and flogged as a lesson to the others. He deserted once more and spent 14 months hiding in the caves of South Africa’s Table Mountain, surviving on honey and meat.



Finally back in Long Island, he resumed life and built a business with his small boat, with a bitter eye trained on finding “the first opportunity of doing mischief to those who had so long tortured me.” When the War of 1812 came, he had his chance.


By the summer of 1813, Penny was on his next mission: to infiltrate and sabotage the British blockade that stopped all sea traffic up the coast. He got aboard the British ship Ramillies posing as a local vendor of produce and clams. The ship’s officers later realized he was “of course a spy to collect information on our movements,” and that he was preparing a torpedo “to destroy this ship.” They tracked him to his home and ambushed him at dawn. After firing at him, they seized him and hustled him, still in his pajamas, under guard to the Ramillies. There he was locked in irons on the bare deck all day in the August heat. For 18 days he survived on bread and water until the ship reached Halifax, where he was jailed as a prisoner of war.


In a few weeks, the story of his harsh treatment outraged the highest levels of the U.S. government. President Madison ordered retaliation. It took nine months before Penny was released and made his way home again, with the war in its final months. He had just one regret.


“It was never my good fortune to command a torpedo,” he recalled, “but I should be pleased to have the privilege of terrifying John Bull…” An attitude worthy of Act of Valor.

David Taylor, in addition  is author of The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy and also Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America. Visit him at his Amazon page.

Guest Blogger: David Durkin on Saint Patrick’s Day in America – Where Did This Come From?

Posted on by Ken Ackerman



Saint Patrick’s Day in New York’s Fifth Avemue, 1909.


What has become of “my people’s” annual national and cultural holiday, Saint Patrick’s Day? Americans of Irish ancestry (and, ‘tis said, those who wish to be Irish) attempt to honor their heritage on a Catholic feast day, March 17, but the day now is as Irish as the Great Saint was himself, that is to say, NOT.





Saint Patrick in traditional blue. 
The green came later.



Saint Patrick, the actual man, was a 5th century Welsh son of a Roman Empire functionary, kidnapped and sold into slave labor across the Irish Sea. After escaping, he became a priest and bishop, returned to Ireland, and worked to convert the heathen in the last wild west of Europe. This conversion – led by Ireland’s three patron saints, Patrick, Brigid of Kildare (Feast Day February 1), and Columba (Feast Day June 9) – gave the Irish people a faith and culture to survive repeated deprivations, preserve in manuscripts the Scriptures, literature, and theology of the Western Church after the fall of Rome, and eventually flourish in a now 1500-year diaspora spanning not only the United States but also Canada, the United Kingdom, most of the rest of the British Commonwealth, and even Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Traditional iconography depicts Patrick in blue, not green. 




  

Green beer and rivers? Rivers of green beer? Leprechauns, big green hats with buckles, green tinsel wigs, and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” tee-shirts? What do any of these things – as offensive as a Washington Redskins jersey to a member of the Lakota people – have to do with Patrick, Ireland, or the sons and daughters of Erin’s green shore?





The Irish began showing up in America long before the Great Famines of the mid-19th century. As one example, the Carrolls from County Tipperary played important roles in the American Revolution. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, was the only Catholic signator of the Declaration of Independence. His cousin Daniel Carroll, became a Maryland state senator after laws against Catholics holding office were repealed in 1776, signed the Articles of Confederation and Constitution, and pushed Thomas Jefferson to sack Pierre L’Enfant as the designer for the Federal City when L’Enfant knocked down an addition to the Daniel Carroll manse. (The house allegedly encroached on a planned but yet un-built street that is now New Jersey Avenue, S.E. on Capitol Hill). Daniel’s younger brother, John Carroll, a Jesuit priest, founded Georgetown University, and became the first bishop in America in Baltimore in 1789 (during the time of the Jesuit suppression in Europe of 1773-1814).

 


Baltimore Archbishop John Carroll,
as painted by Gilbert Stuart.

 

But I digress, being proud of my Irish heritage (and that was just one family! Wait until Ken lets me post about me own!).



Like most immigrant groups, we Irish have sought to retain memories though groups and events celebrating our origins and identity. Some Bostonians claim credit for the first Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in 1737, organized by Boston’s “Irish Society” as a political protest against low social status and scarce jobs. After 1776, Bostonians began coupling the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration with the March 17 anniversary of the British leaving town after the Siege of Boston that year. What makes a better pan-historical mix than being Irish and/or beating the English in Beantown?


In New York City, the first Saint Patrick’s Day parade came on March 17, 1762, staged by Irish soldiers then serving in the British Army. Parade organizers claim that today’s, in 2011, marks the 250th time the grand procession will march up 5th Avenue. With its formal review by New York’s Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan from the steps of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (considered by New Yorkers the mother church in the United States – Baltimoreans may quibble), the New York Parade is certainly one of the largest by number of participants in the world. (See photo from the 1909 parade above.)


In 1780, General Washington himself formalized the celebration by issuing an order allowing his troops to celebrate on March 17 “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence” and commended the Irish Parliament in their attempts “to remove those heavy and tyrannical oppressions on their trade” imposed by Great Britain.  (Click here to see the handwritten original.)

Maryland Governor  Martin O’Malley with his band.
Saint Patrick’s Day parades have been established in cities across the country, from Alexandria to Baltimore, Buffalo, Charleston, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, San Francisco, Savannah, Scranton, Seattle, Syracuse, and many, many more. And these parades quickly became grand stages for the practice of one of America’s great home-grown sports – politics. Candidates came to march and wave at the crowds, kiss babies, slap shoulders, and refine the art of person-to-person organizing that was the lifeblood of American elections from before the time of Tammany Hall in the 1800s to the present Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley (who also has his own Celtic rock band).
In New York, even the Stock Exchange closed on Saint Patrick’s Day up until the mid 20th century, by tradition to accommodate the largely-Irish back-office staffs that left for the parade at lunchtime and did not come back. Since 1991, the United States Congress has built March 17 into a full Irish Heritage Month and Presidential Proclamations follow suit.



In recent decades, the same relentless force of American commercialism that has turned Christmas, Thanksgiving, and even Halloween (all originally more solemn religious or national holidays) into shopping opportunities has focused on this observance of my heritage. It’s annoying and distracting, but some of us remember what the Great Saint brought to our forbearers.


The several strains of my family came to America, struggled, and (Deo gratia) succeeded, like many other immigrants. Today I am tremendously grateful for that, inordinately proud of my family and my people, and finally look forward to peace and prosperity on the entire island of Ireland. That party we throw with all of the Guinness and whiskey every year? We’re just trying to do our part for the Irish economy. Lord knows it could use the help.

David Durkin, a Washington attorney and cultural savant, hosts the best Saint Patrick’s Day bash in DC.  Visit him at his web site at  OFWLaw.com. 

GUEST BLOGGER: Phil Olsson on attacking Iran. Is the USA Being Played the Fool?

Posted on by Ken Ackerman



Iran’s President Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility south of Tehran. AP

 In their recent Opinion piece in the February 27, 2012 Wall Street Journal, Frederick Kagan and Maseh Zariif postulate that “Americans are being played for fools by Iran-and fooling themselves,” asserting “There is no case to be made that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability.” While expressly not recommending a military strike on the Iranian nuclear program, the authors challenge “those who oppose military action against Iran under any circumstances [to] say so, and [to] accept the consequences of that statement.”  (See Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, Osirak 1981. A model for Iran 2012?  February 9, 2012.)

Whether or not Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, there is a strong case that Iran is pursuing Osama bin Laden’s game of solidifying political support by provoking US military threats, economic sanctions and bluster.  Where Americans are actually being played the fool is by not realizing that this kind of provoked polarization creates much larger risks than an Iranian nuclear weapon.  The difficult challenge is to reorient American foreign policy to address this polarization trap


There are a number of reasons not to take military action against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.


First, nuclear weapons are relatively useless to Iran except to the extent they provoke an American reaction which enhances Iran’s prestige.

Second, Islamic nuclear weapons from Iran (or Pakistan) are highly unlikely to be targeted against the holy places of Jerusalem or the parts of Israel with significant Arab and Palestinian populations.


Third, an American strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities is likely to further the alienation of Pakistan and make Pakistan’s weapons available to Iran.

Huge crowd in Teheran protests allleged election fraud in August 2009.



Fourth, Iran is unlikely to achieve a first strike capability which would provide the confidence to attack another nuclear power .

Fifth, during the past half-century American military action, military threats and economic sanctions have only increased the power and prestige of incumbents in targeted nations such as Cuba, Iraq and North Korea.

Sixth, during the past five years, support among the Iranian people for development of a nuclear weapon has increased at the same time that the United States has increased military and economic pressure against that development. (Click here for the actual poll numbers.)   There are serious domestic political issues within Iran, but support for development of a nuclear weapon does not appear to be one of them.  A strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is likely to increase President Ahmadinejad’s support.

In order to oppose military action, there must be some constructive alternative.  That alternative should address the pattern of provocation and polarization which have made the United States more rather than less vulnerable to terrorism.  Provocateurs, such as Osama bin Laden on September 11,2001 and now President Ahmadinejad, seek to elicit hostile American military and economic actions in order to provoke political hostility against the United States.  These provocateurs take advantage of the Information Age, where power is dependent upon broadly dispersed public opinion in a sort of rolling, global daily plebiscite.  Just as mainframe computers have given way to the dispersed computing power of the Internet, so the mainframe foreign policies of sovereign states are diluted by the People Nets of CNN, Al Jazeera, Facebook and twitter.  National power and prestige is increasingly driven by the respect a nation enjoys in this people-wired world.  The United States needs foreign policies which will “friend” these People Nets.

Key American foreign policy successes during the late 20th century were based on people-to-people, civilian engagement.  China and Russia are examples.

In 1972 at the conclusion of President Nixon’s visit to China the two nations signed the “Shanghai Communiqué,” and agreed to immediately facilitate a wide variety of “people to people” business and cultural contacts.    It said: 

“The two sides agreed that it is desirable to broaden the understanding between the two peoples. To this end, they discussed specific areas in such fields as science, technology, culture, sports and journalism, in which people to people contacts and exchanges would be mutually beneficial. Each side undertakes to facilitate the further development of such contacts and exchanges.
 Both sides view bilateral trade as another area from which mutual benefit can be derived, and agreed that economic relations based on equality and mutual benefit are in the interest of the peoples of the two countries. They agreed to facilitate the progressive development of trade between the two countries.[1]

President Richard M. Nixon with China’s Zhow Enlai in Peking, 1972.

The agreements reached in the Shanghai Communiqué have provided the basis for four decades of peace and economic growth in both China and the United States.

Trade, cultural exchanges, and educational exchanges flourished between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.  In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, not because East Germans were intimidated by NATO weaponry, but because they could see and respect a lifestyle which they wished to share.

Proponents of military intervention and economic sanctions will argue that only “strong” government actions can minimize the risk of terrorism.  Absent the threat and use of military and economic force, America will be seen as weak.  But the use of interventions and sanctions during the past decade has only increased the risk of terrorism. In countries where United States and foreign citizens enjoy open relationships of mutual respect, the risk of terrorism has been much better controlled.

A military strike against Iranian nuclear capability would provoke and polarize civilians in Iran and elsewhere against the United States and eliminate the opportunity for the kind of civilian, people-to-people relationships which six decades of U.S. diplomatic history have shown will deter terrorism and protect the United States.



The United States will continue to need military capability to contain military threats. But this containment should be consistent with Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to “walk softly, but carry a big stick.”  We live in a PeopleNet world and we should not allow Iran or any other nation to provoke us into playing the fool.

[1] Joint Communiqué of the United States Of America and the People’s Republic of China, February 28, 1972, http://www.china.org.cn/english/china-us/2012.htm 5/8/04
 
Phil Olsson is a founding principal of the Washington law firm Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz PC.  Visit him at the firm website, www.ofwlaw.com.

“Wings” (1927), the last silent film to win the Oscar for Best Picture

Posted on by Ken Ackerman

In honor of The Artist last night being the first silent film in 84 years to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, this seemed a good day to peek back at the last silent winner: Wings, best picture for 1927.

Starring Clara Bow,Charles “Buddy” Rogers, and Richard Arlen, Wings is a fantantic epic of two ace fighter pilots from World War I, both in love with the same small-town girl.    It is stunning at every level — the dogfight and other flight scenes are amazing in themselves — and loses none of its punch for lack of a soundtrack.  

Check out this short clip from early in the story (and please excuse the annoying modern soundtrack somebody recorded onto this clip — just put it on mute).  One of the dogfight scenes is below.  The technology may be ancient and the story full of cliches, but the energy just jumps off the screen.    Enjoy…..

  

Presidents Day conclusion: Lessons for Barack Obama, 2012.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman




[Note: I originally posted this brief prediction a year ago, for Presidents Day 2011.  It holds up pretty well, don’t you think?] 



I hope you have enjoyed our extended Presidents Day walk down memory lane with the eleven one-term presidents who failed to win re-election, from John Adams through George H.W. Bush.  

Click here to see the entire series:
               (b) part II, the ninth, Herbert Hoover, 
               (c) part III, the tenth, Jimmy Carter, and

So what was the pattern?  How can Barack Obama avoid their mistakes?   

History never repeats itself.  Each situation, generation, and person is unique.  But history does give clues to who we are and how we act.   Barack Obama has shown himself a masterful politician with a strong organization.  Facing 2012, for my own two cents, I see two key strengths and two key weaknesses:

First, Obama’s strengths:

  • Weak rival:  A Republcan Party still in disarray (despite its 2010 gains) burdened with (a) an over-abundance with weak national candidates apparently too ego-driven to get out of the way (Palin, Gingrich, Romney, and the rest) and (b) a majority in the House of Representatives too ideological to keep itself out of trouble (government shutdowns, overreaching on  social issues, so on);


  • Strong personal good will:  A lingering base of good will in the country among people who still see Obama as reasonable, helpful, centrist, and calm and who consider his 2008 election a historic achievement worth protecting.



Now the weaknesses:
  • Some failures:  Some serious leadership mistakes in the first two years, including (a) ceding too much initial control to Capitol Hill Democrats, letting Health Care eclipse economic policy, failing to take control on the budget deficit and (b) too often being dismissive of — sometimes even hostile to — his base, his friends, and his core supporters.  Remember Plunket’s credo from 1905 Tammany Hall:  “The politicians who make a lastin’ success in politics are the men who are always loyal to their friends, even up to the gate of State prison, if necessary….”
  • The economy: An economy still broken from 2008 (despite fortunes spent trying to fix it), leaving millions still unemployed and under-employed and the country drowning in red ink, and still fragile enough to rise up and give us all another painful bite at some unexpected point.  (Don’t let the stock market fool you on this.  That budget-busting tax-cut deal from last November 2010 can still come back to haunt.)    



Best of luck to all the contestants.  Happy Presidents Day.  

PRESIDENTS DAY: The one-term Presidents: Role models for Obama to avoid.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
John Quincy Adams (image circa 1840), not a happy-looking man.  Obama, don’t be like him !!!




Links to this entire series:




               (b) For part II (Herbert Hoover), click here; 
               (c) For part III (Jimmy Carter), click here;
               (d) For part IV (George H.W. Bush), click here; and



Of the 44 US presidents starting with George Washington, only eight have the sad distinction of being elected, serving four years, then being kicked out by voters.  Two others failed to be re-nominated and one more wisely chose not to re-apply.  


These eleven are a Pantheon of Losers, the disappointing one-termers, whose administrations should be a must-read object lesson for Barack Obama to study and avoid like small-pox if he hopes to win a second term in 2012.


Don’t get me wrong.  Some of these were fine people who did lots of swell, admirable things.  Some rank high in presidential polls, praised for wonderful honesty and rock-solid integrity, though mostly just “E for effort” on achieving their high-minded goals.   For these eleven, the voters spoke clearly.  “You’re fired.”


The three most recent (Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush) hold the closest lessons for Barack Obama, and I’ll talk about them in the next few days. 


For now, here’s my quick take on the first eight, the ones who served before 1913.  Yes, America was different back then, so direct comparisons are unfair.  Still, some lessons of politics speak through the ages.   With that caveat, here goes:    


(Sorry in advance for the cryptic tone.  And of course, if you disagree with my bad-mouthing of any of these fine fellows, please comment.  This is the Internet.  Haggling over politics — even very old politics –– is welcome.)




Pantheon of Losers (Part 1):

  • John Adams (1797-1801):

Fine man, good lawyer, and revolutionary hero, but as president he gave us the Alien and Sedition Acts (closing newspapers, jailing dissenters, deporting immigrants), a foul temper, and a defensive demeanor.  He avoided war with France but inflicted paranoia on the country.  Described as irritable and nasty, he considered himself above politics.  Thomas Jefferson beat him in 1800 in America’s first negative campaign.  Adams made fine material for a terrific David McCullough biography and a just-as-terrific HBO miniseries, but voters knew better and gave him the first-ever Presidential pink slip.  (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 17)

  • John Quincy Adams (1825-1829):

Another fine man, eldest son of the first Adams (above).  Before being president, he conceived the Monroe Doctrine.  After being president, he became a pioneer abolitionist and hero of the 1841 Amistad anti-slavery case.  But as president, good grief!  He never escaped Andrew Jackson’s labeling of his contested election (decided in the US House after Jackson won more popular and electoral votes) as a “corrupt bargain.”  Honest but frosty, Adams believed in “internal improvements,” but his biggest legislative accomplishment was a tariff bill so draconian and slanted toward New England that Southerners called it the “tariff of Abominations,” leading South Carolina to threaten nullification.  Andrew Jackson beat him easily in 1828.  Like his father, JQ Adams seemed to see himself as above politics.  Very big mistake. (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 19)

  • Martin Van Buren (1837-1841):

Van Buren served as Andrew Jackson’s vice president and followed him directly in office.  But unfortunately, Jackson left the country’s economy in shambles after his war against the United States Bank.  The Panic of 1837 brought things crashing down.  Van Buren took the fall.  A master back-room politico (the “Little Magician’), he lacked a personal touch.  Add a penchant for personal comforts and a shade-too-clever manner (he opposed admitting Texas as a slave state, but supported deporting Indians to the west), and voters had enough. (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 31)

  • Franklin Pierce (1853-1857):

Handsome and heroic in the Mexican War, as president he gave us the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery to expand into formerly-free territories based on votes of local white settlers.  This led directly to two result.  One was Blooding Kansas, with an estimated 200 people murdered in skirmishes and massacres by pro- and anti-slavery factions.  (Click here for more on this.)  The second was Abraham Lincoln, then a former-congressman practicing law in down-state Illinois, who was so outraged by the law that he decided to re-enter politics.   Harry Truman put it this way.  Noticing Pierce’s swell-looking portrait hanging in the White House at one point, he said: “being president involves a little bit more than just winning a beauty contest… Pierce didn’t know what was gong on, and if he did, he wouldn’t of known what to do about it.”   (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 40)

  • James Buchanan (1857-1861):

The Civil War.  Need I say more?   No, it wasn’t all his fault, but, as they say, the union breakup happened on his watch.  By the time he handed the keys to Abe Lincoln, the country was split in two.  Not only did Buchanan fail to confront the careening tensions over slavery during his term, but he also presided over Wall Street’s Panic of 1857 and a major corruption scandal.  On paper, he was one of the best qualified people ever elected president: a former Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State, Minister to Russian, Minister to England, so on, so forth.   But by 1860, when the secession crisis exploded, Buchanan was 69 years old, which was very old by mid-1800s standards.  His Democratic Party, by 1860 hopelessly split between north and south, looked elsewhere.  (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 42)

  • Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881):

Another reform-minded man who considered himself above politics.  Unfortunately, Hayes only reached the White House after surviving the ulgiest political mess in 19th-century US history, the contested count of 1876 — an episode eerily similar to the Bush-versus-Gore free-for-all in 2000 (hence the nick-name “RutherFRAUD”).   Hayes spent whatever political chips he had left on an unsuccessful quest for Civil Service Reform — an idea popular with intellectuals but detested by most of the politicos who had won Hayes his presidency.   In the process, he irritated his own Party and ignored the country’s more pressing social problems — labor unrest (over 70 died after he called out Federal troops to crush the 1877 railroad strike), growing violence against freed slaves in the South, and a bad economy.  Hayes decided not to seek re-election.  Nobody complained.  (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 33)

  • Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893):

Harrison defeated incumbent president Grover Cleveland in 1888, then proved such a disappointment to voters that they put Cleveland back in office after four years.  This made Cleveland the only US president to serve two non-contiguous terms and reduced Harrison, essentially, to the comma in between.  Harrison was conscientious and serious, but Theodore Roosevelt (not known for understatement) described him as a “cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing Indiana president.”  Fair or not, the voters agreed with TR.  (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 30)

  • William Howard Taft (1909-1913):

Taft never really wanted to be President.  His dream job was always the Supreme Court, and it showed.  Taft entered the White House in 1909 with the best possible political advantage, the full support of his mentor, highly-popular outgoing president Theodore Roosevelt.  Taft then took barely two years to utterly squander the bulk of this good will.  He did it mostly with three things: (a) taking sides in a bitter internal Republican power struggles, and backing the arch-conservatives like House Speaker Joe Cannon (R-Ill) and Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-RI) over TR’s friends, the progressives, (b) a high-profile stink over the firing of TR’s friend and conservation hero Gifford Pinchot, and (c) being bullied into supporting an unpopular tariff bill.  To his credit, Taft had some fine progressive accomplishments, but by1912 he had rendered his party badly split, with TR himself challenging him for the nomination — which Taft ultimately won.  The outcome?  Taft’s Republicans lost Congress in 1910 and lost the White House in 1912.  Though Taft himself ultimately got his dream job as Spreme Court Chief Justice a few years later. (C-SPAN 2009 poll rank: 24)


The lesson for Obama:


History, of course, never really repeats itself.  Every situation is unique.   Some of the presidents I’ve talked about here lost the seats to very talented and aggressive opponents (Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, for instance), or faced terribly difficult challenges (the 1860 secession crisis or the Panic of 1837).  Still, it’s hard not to notice a pattern among the losers.  And here lies the lesson for Barack Obama in 2012.

The fact is, honesty, integrity, and high-minded ideals are very nice to have in a president, but the human touch in better.  Politics is their profession, and they need to embrace it and be damned good at it.  Call it distance, lack of people skills, coldness, shyness, over-intellectualism — none of which are terribly bad character traits for most people in most lines of work — but for presidents these come across as poison: arrogance, uncaring, or weakness.  They create an impression that “he thinks he’s better than us” or “he’s in over his head” or “he has no common sense.”   


Add in a few policy failures, and voters won’t stand for it.  Just look at the record. 


Politics is personal, and being effective in the face-to-face, person-to-person sense is essential to not just to wining and keeping office, but also accomplishing any policy agenda.  Even more so on TV.

  

Next up — Herbert Hoover.   Stay tuned….

POLITICS: President Obama’s 2013 Budget

Posted on by Ken Ackerman

A Viral History first: 
Rather than giving you a long, complicated post about President Obama’s 2013 budget, with lots of confusing charts and small print, this time I decided simply to ask a friend to hold his i-Phone camera while I just told you what was up, face to face.  So here it is, our first video. 

Please humor us on the rough edges.  Over time, we’ll get sharper with our production values.  But for now, let us know if you think the experiment a successs — and don’t be shy about constructive criticisms!  This is new territory for us.  And, of course, special thanks to our excellent cinematographer, Peter Matz.

By the way, the source for all the charts I’ve used here is the Historical Tables section of President Obama’s 2013 budget, straight from the OMB web page.   Enjoy.  Just click on the image above.

   

Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, Osirak 1981. A model for Iran 2012?

Posted on by Ken Ackerman




Path of the Israeli jets on route to destroy the Osirak nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981.

 
Late on the Sunday afternoon of June 7, 1981, sixteen Israeli F16 and F15 fighter jets took off from Etzion Air Force base in the Negev Dessert, flew two hours over Jordanian and Saudi airspace (confusing local air controllers by speaking Arabic in various dialects), reached Iraq, then flew another hour at tree-top altitude (to avoid radar detection) to a spot just 18 miles south of Baghdad.  Here, they dropped sixteen 2,000-pound bombs.  At least eight of those bombs squarely hit the containment dome and largely destroyed the nuclear reactor called Orisak, a 70-megawatt, uranium-powered facility purchased by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from France and built largely by French and Italian technicians.  It was within a month of completion. 

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin — who in 1979 had signed the Camp David peace accord with Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat — explained his decision to order the attack:  “The atomic bombs which that reactor was capable of producing whether from enriched uranium or from plutonium, would be of the Hiroshima size. Thus a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose.”

Saddam Hussein, circa 1981.

Militarily, the Osirak mission was a complete success.   All Israeli pilots and planes returned safely, loss of life at Osirak was limited to ten Iraqi soldiers and one French technician (Israel claimed it launched the attack on a Sunday to minimize civilians on site), and Orisak was all but destroyed.  

Diplomatically, it was a disaster.  The raid came as a total shock and surprise, and world governments almost universally condemned it, painting Israel — not Iraq — the rogue nation.  The United Nations passed two unanimous resolutions calling it illegal and aggressive, a “clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct” according to Security Council Resolution 487, which also cited Iraq’s right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to “establish programmes of technological and nuclear development.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Even the United States joined in condemning the raid, voted for the UN resolutions, and temporarily blocked US-Israeli military aid.  Israel had given the US no warning, leaving even Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger “stunned” on hearing the news, according to British records.  France, Britain, and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) all disputed Israel’s claim that Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon from Osirak. 

Since 1981, debate has raged over the legacy of Israel’s Orisak raid.  Many — both in Israel and globally– credit it for fatally de-railing Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, crippling it for at least ten years until the 1991 Gulf War.  Later intelligence confirmed that Saddam Hussein in those years was actively trying to build a bomb and Israel was among his top targets.  As a result, many analysts today see Israel’s 1981 attack as a textbook model of effective, responsible pre-emptive action to avoid war. 

Ironically, even Iran — today’s rival — attacked Orisak with two Phantom jets in September 1980 early in the Iran-Iraq War, an episode that reportedly included rare secret coordination between Iran’s radical Islamic Khomeini regime and Israel.


On the other side, critics still doubt Iraq’s capacity in 1981 to build a nuclear weapon and point to the steep price Israel paid in terms of diplomacy and world standing.  If anything, they argue, the raid better prepared Israel’s enemies, teaching countries like Iraq (and later Iran) the urgency of obtaining nuclear weapons sooner while hiding them better from the eyes of global inspectors.  

Iran 2012

Today, 31 years later, Israel again faces a large, hostile neighbor — Iran — evidently reaching  a critical stage in developing a nuclear bomb.  Iran today gives every sign it intends to use it against Israel.  Unlike 1981, the world community seems committed this time to stopping Iran getting the bomb, relying on sanctions, negotiations, and political pressure — but so far to little or no effect. 


Iranian president Madmoud Ahmadinejad


In recent weeks, Israel has signaled growing alarm and raised the specter of an Orisak-like raid.  Iran, in turn, has promised harsh retaliation and launched its own military exercises in the Gulf of Hormuz, threatening world oil supplies.

Will cooler heads prevail?  Is war inevitable?  This time, if anything, the stakes are higher.  Iran in 2012 is a stronger country than Iraq back then.  Saddam Hussein in 1981 was distracted by his recently-launched bloody eight-year war against Iran.  By contrast, Iran today has allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and agents around the world, making it far more able (and willing) to retaliate violently against Israel, America, or Europe.

Also, an Israeli raid against Iran today would be far more complex that Orisak in 1981.  It would have no element of surprise, Iran’s nuclear facilities are widely dispersed, many are underground, and intelligence is uncertain.   If could easily fail to do much damage at all.  Diplomatic dangers are bigger too.  An Israeli strike (or if coordinated with the US or NATO) easily could backfire and strengthen the radical Islamist Iranian regime, making it more unified and hostile and giving leaders like president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad every excuse to crush dissenters.

Finally, the world — the US, Europe, the UN and IAEA — still hopes to avoid confrontation with diplomacy.  Should Israel jump the gun, it could once again find itself isolated at a crucial time.

On the other side is the danger that could be posed by a nuclear-armed Iraq and the chance that a well-conceived, well-executed operation could work militarily, be quietly supported in much of the world, and could set back Iran’s nuclear program for years or decades.  

There is a clear allure to trying to address a complex problem like Iran’s nuclear program with a simple, bold solution like an Osirak-style military strike.  It is easy to admire the Israeli pilots of 1981 for their skill and courage.  If only courage and boldness were all it took…. 

We who are not privy to the latest intelligence cannot second guess this decision.  But times change, and simple pragmatic facts may make what worked so well in 1981 not work at all in 2012.  Let’s hope that the leaders in Washington, Jerusalem, Europe, and, yes, Tehran, fully weigh the complexities and risks before jumping into some very deep water with both feet and starting something they cannot stop.  

GUEST BLOGGER: John McArthur on researching Abraham Lincoln’s forgotten good friend Ned Baker

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Colonel Edward D. Baker (R-Oregon), the only sitting United States Senator ever to be killed in battle, being shot at Balls Bluff, Virginia, October 1861.   Illustration by Currier and Ives. 

            Nobody who knew them was surprised to see Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln personally lead the mourners at the funeral for Colonel Edward D. Baker in Washington, D.C, on October 24, 1861.  Baker, the first and only United States Senator ever killed in battle — shot down at Balls Bluff in nearby Virginia in one of the Civil War’s first bloody encounters – had been so dear a friend that in 1846 the Lincoln’s had named their second son after him.  A few years later, Lincoln would tell a reporter he found Baker’s death the harshest blow he suffered in the whole war.
Senator Edward Baker, circa 1860.
            Who was this “Ned” Baker who played so large a role in the life of Abraham Lincoln?  His name has fallen into utter obscurity, but I have been working over the past three years to find out.  The story is tantalizing.
             Ned Baker was a teacher, lawyer, soldier, politician, pioneer, and preacher.  Today, we see his name everywhere: Baker City, Oregon; Baker County, Oregon; even Baker Street in San Francisco.  His face is carved in plaster inside the Illinois State Capitol and a full size marble statue of him stands inside the Capitol in Washington, D.C.   They named Fort Baker, Nevada for him, renamed the Lime Point Military Reservation in California for him in 1897, and even located a Fort Baker in the District of Columbia – all for this man who is relatively unknown to us today.
            Edward Baker was born in London, England, on February 24, 1811. The Baker family moved to Philadelphia in 1815 and then to New Harmony, Indiana in 1824.  The next year, young Ned moved to Belleville, Illinois to seek his fortune. A couple of years later he moved to Carrolton, Illinois to read law.
            While studying for the bar, he met Mrs. Mary Ann Lee, a widow with two small children. Mary Ann introduced him to a new and rapidly expanding group known variously as “Disciples” or “Campbellites.”  Led by Alexander Campbell, this movement (known by its adherents as The Restoration Movement because it desired to restore New Testament Christianity) spread rapidly in the early 19th century, especially in the west: Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.  Their plea for simple New Testament Christianity and their simplistic church polities struck a chord with settlers in these new lands. 
Ned Baker joined the church at about the same time that he married Mary Ann.  A good speaker, he quickly became one of the movement’s pioneer preachers. For a time, he even considered making preaching his vocation.  Unfortunately, though, Ned had a weakness for gambling that Disciples found offensive.  Over time, he continued to attend, support and occasionally preach, but his contribution to the Disciples has been largely ignored or downplayed.
            Baker served in the 1832 Black Hawk War and then settled in Springfield, Illinois, where he ultimately practiced law, enter politics, and became friends with his neighbor, the future President Abe Lincoln.  In my research, however, I found that the real reason he went to Springfield had to do with his continuing ties to the Disciples of Christ.  Baker’s law partner in Springfield, Josephus Hewitt, besides being an attorney, also happened to be a traveling evangelist with the Disciples and was trying to start a church in this rapidly growing community.   While Hewitt did the preaching, Baker ran the law practice that paid their bills and encouraged the work.  Within a few months they had purchased land.  The church they started in 1833 still meets today.
            Although Edward Baker went on to make his name in the Illinois and U.S. legislatures and in his service during the Mexican War, this friend of Lincoln started out on that road by being a missionary bringing the Gospel to Springfield.

John McArthur is a preacher and writer from Ohio living in Illinois.  His first book, James A. Garfield: Letting his Light Shine, was published in 2009.