signs of revolution

[peaccenicked]

Historian Henry Graff Says American Presidency Is Losing Prestige

By Jason Hollander



Henry Graff (left), professor emeritus of history, and Bernard Sunshine, president of Columbia's Alumni Federation. Graff gave a lecture titled "A New President, Again," during a luncheon hosted by the Alumni Federation at the Columbia Club in midtown.

Henry F. Graff, who taught this country's first course on the history of the Presidency, is uncomfortable with the way America's highest-elected public office is being perceived and conducted. He cites the coming Nov. 7 election as a signal that reverence for the position of our nation's highest officer has dangerously diminished.

"There's a levity in this campaign, a new cynicism about politics," said Graff, professor emeritus of history. "This is very worrisome. In the new century, there's no sure way of saying what problems are coming down the line."

Graff gave a lunchtime lecture last Thursday titled "A New President, Again" in the Columbia Club in midtown. Regarding the major party candidates for the 2000 election, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Graff said, "Neither is fully what we want."

Both candidates, he noted, are tagged with fundamental imperfections. "Gore may be the first candidate who's significantly damaged himself by appearing before the public," he said. As for the pervading question of Bush's intelligence, Graff joked, "Reagan was not a learned man, yet already we have two great monuments for him."

Graff attributes a melting of presidential politics and public entertainment to the lessening of traditional respect for the office. American President's now feel the need to attach themselves to newsmakers because today, Graff said, "there are other leaders in society."

Two examples referenced were Jimmy Carter's visit to the Pittsburgh Pirates' locker room after their victory in the 1979 World Series and Bill Parcells dumping popcorn on Ronald Reagan (as if it were Gatorade) at the White House after the Giants' Superbowl win in 1987.

"I don't think this is the way the Presidency should be conducted," said Graff. "I don't think the President should appear on talk shows." Graff's concern with presidential perception is rooted in fear for a leader who does not inspire trust. The question that needs to be asked, Graff said, is, "Do we have sufficient gravitas when the moment comes that the President says 'follow me'."

Part of the problem of leadership, he noted, stems from the reliance of modern Presidents on polls. "They know what's popular and that's the road they take," Graff said. Polls have become so important to Presidents that now a staff pollster is employed along with White House chauffeurs, photographers and valets. The pollsters, he said, are basically there to tell the President what to think.

The media whirlwind that puts politicians under a microscope is partly to blame for the intense scrutiny that Presidents are subjected to. "In the 19th century, most people didn't know what the President looked like," Graff said. "Now we focus on their tie." He explained that this examination of the President allows for "the old story of intimacy breeding contempt." Still, Graff said, the public relishes details about the President, especially regarding personal issues. "We like scandal, we like the dirt. We like dishing it."

Putting his concerns into context, Graff referred to a letter John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, shortly after he began his term as the second President. He told her that he believed someday the American Presidency would become more important than any other elected office in the world. By the end of Adams' term, many of Europe's highest elected-positions had in fact been eliminated by revolution or a change in governmental structure. "There's a lesson here for us," said Graff. "We'd better learn it, the hour is late."

At the conclusion of Graff's lecture, which was hosted by Columbia's Alumni Federation, one alum asked to hear something positive about the upcoming election and the future of the position. "Presidents surprise us," Graff said, "Many blossom while in office." However, he added, "Whoever gets in will need a lot of blossoming."

[peaccenicked]

second sign congress


The Cowardly Lion of American Politics
by Patrick J. Buchanan
May 13, 1997

Who rules America? The five most powerful institutions are the Supreme Court, the presidency, the Federal Reserve, the federal bureaucracy and the media. Congress probably isn't in the top 10...

Even the most rabid defender of a Republican Congress must feel today a little like the father who -- having dreamed of seeing his boy one day quarterback the Dallas Cowboys -- belatedly accepts the painful truth that the kid prefers to skip rope with the girls.
The "historic" budget deal where Clinton got what he wanted, in return for tiny cuts in capital gains and estate taxes, confirms that the Republican Revolution of 1994 was largely bombast.

But at least we have clarity. The GOP's presidential wing, which has long argued that the White House, not Congress, is the lodgment of real power we should seek, was right all along. For the Congress of 1997 is a pale shadow of the Congress of 1789.

In the original Constitution, Congress is given exclusive power to declare war. Yet, Korea and Vietnam were undeclared wars, and before Desert Storm, Congress was paralyzed for months, unable to decide whether George Bush had a right to go to war on his own against a country, Iraq, that had attacked neither America nor a U.S. ally. Bush simply built up his forces and readied his attack until an anguished Congress, on the eve of H-Hour, assented.

This July, Bill Clinton will offer NATO memberships and U.S. war guarantees to three, four or five nations in Europe. Congress has yet to be asked for its prior approval.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money. But control of America's money supply long ago passed to a Federal Reserve whose chairman, Alan Greenspan, barely contains his boredom when called to explain why he has decided to raise interest rates or slow the economy.

The Constitution gives Congress power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. But that power was also ceded, long ago, to an executive branch that negotiates all trade deals and allows Congress a "yes" or "no" vote on 23,000-page treaties. In 1994, Congress gave up its constitutional birthright to a World Trade Organization.

In the Constitution, the Supreme Court is the weakest branch. But treating Congress with an indifference bordering on contempt, that court has usurped the authority of the elected branches to re-shape American society. It was the Supreme Court that legalized pornography, ordered prayer out of our public schools and declared abortion a constitutional right, while Congress kept its protest of this daylight robbery of its legislative powers to the polite and verbal.

In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress outlawed discrimination. An impatient court turned that law upside down, mandating quotas and ordering students bused across entire cities to meet its ideal of a racial balance. Parents raged. But Congress did nothing.

Congress passed an Endangered Species Act to protect the bald eagle, the timberwolf and the grizzly bear. Now, judges close down million-acre forests and deserts, killing projects and towns, as the claims of rats, insects and weeds take precedence over those of families. Congress did not intend this, but Congress meekly lets it happen.

Lately, the Supreme Court has told VMI and the Citadel their 150-year-old all-male cadet corps traditions must end and ruled that all state-enacted term limits on members of Congress must be lifted.

Federal courts have suspended California laws, enacted by voter referenda, that cut off welfare to illegal aliens and ended racial preferences. Conservatives were incensed, but Congress, again, did nothing.

Whether the issue is abortion, quotas, prayer, vouchers, how we may draw legislative districts, the death penalty, flag burning, gay marriages or English language laws, in this so-called democratic republic, we all sit, hands folded, to wait for nine judges, most of them mediocrities, to tell us how we may govern ourselves.

George the Third, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

Is Congress powerless? Of course not. Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress is authorized to restrict the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. A self-confident Congress could assert its primacy as first branch of government. But not once in decades has Congress even given a glance to its big club in the corner.

The dirty little secret in this town is that Congress does not want power. It does not want responsibility. It does not want to face voters and explain why it rejected an arms control treaty or refused to send troops to Bosnia.

When a blazing controversy arises -- how, for example, to make up a shortfall in Social Security or whether to build an MX missile -- Congress asks for a commission, to give itself an alibi: "We had no choice. That was the only option they gave us."

Who rules America? The five most powerful institutions are the Supreme Court, the presidency, the Federal Reserve, the federal bureaucracy and the media. Congress probably isn't in the top 10.

But if the kid likes to skip rope with the girls, maybe we ought to leave him alone.

[peaccenicked]

third sign possibility of new awakings.

America Rediscovers the Working Class

During World War II my father was a soldier and a deep-sea diver who removed or planted mines on the sides of ships or bridges. After the war, he was a union fireman for 20 years, then a municipal hospital administrator — a job as vital, and in many ways as dangerous, as his previous ones.

But for all his adventures, his last advice to my husband before he died was to not do what he did, but rather to go for the bucks. When you were rich and gave money, he said, you were a humanitarian, and they even named something after you. When you worked, no one cared.

He had seen respect for working people diminish and practically disappear under Reagan, and it hurt him as much as the cancer within him. In the '80s, the working class seemed to disappear.

But if anything, Sept. 11 has led to America's rediscovery of the working class. Many, especially the media, seemed shocked to learn that everyone hadn't left the material world for the virtual one, or shed their working-class existence for an affluent lifestyle when their jobs were shipped overseas.

CNN's Jeff Greenfield, appearing on "The Daily Show," expressed shock at the heroism of the Generation X and Y firefighters, paramedics, police officers and ordinary citizens who risked and gave their lives to save others, and who continue to work to help overcome the destruction. He had assumed that only members of the recently titled "Greatest Generation" could be brave, heroic or even competent.

George W. Bush, touring the site soon after the attacks, was moved by the hundreds of people selflessly digging through the dangerous rubble, searching for victims without regard to income levels, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation or national origin. In blood donation centers, thousands desperate to help are finally defining themselves as Americans, without tacking on other hyphenated labels. Identities that for decades have divided Americans into discrete, competing, interest groups are suddenly meaningless.

As citizens mourn, the media continue to give tribute to each life lost, without caring whether the victim made the minimum wage or was a CEO. What counts now is a person's character, the good he or she accomplished, the love he or she engendered — not someone's portfolio. Each death is a staggering loss to each of us, not just those who knew and loved them. For now, the self-centered exploits of celebrities aren't important. What counts is what they're doing for our nation during this time of crisis.

I wish there were some way, without the terrible events that brought these feelings to the surface, for my father to see how others ultimately valued his principles and the contribution he made during his life; the same contribution that so many others have given, and continue to give. This lesson must be a permanent one, never again to be forgotten and discarded by greed, along with his real last words, which was to always do what you had to do for your children, no matter what.

I know my father didn't really want personal credit, or a monument. What he wanted was our nation to care for, respect and value every citizen, whatever his or her job or background. Now that we've started, we must continue well beyond this crisis to value the legacy of the people that build, maintain, and keep our country alive. The greatness of our nation is that it needs, and can meet the needs, of us all. Our past, and the history we are now writing, lead to the future. Whoever else we are, we are Americans, and every generation is our greatest.

[Imperial Power]

I don't understand the sudden influx of anti-american professors at schools. Probable draft dodgers during vietnam war smoking pot in Canada. I was reading some of Noam Chansky. he only critizes and never looks at anything from another point of view. For instance he says only wonderful things about Iraq. He doesn't point out they invavded Kuwait, threatened the world oil supply, and commited numerous attrocities. His logic is blinded by his hate of capitalism. This can be said for many leftest authors who only criticicze and don't think of problems logically.

[peaccenicked]

He is not contesting that they invaded Kuwait.
the world oil supply. Really in Alaska too.
he is not contesting numerous attrocities.
why does he need to broadcast what is already widesread knowledge.

[peaccenicked]

4th sign
intellectual bankruptcy of the ruling elite
from Said on America
A week ago I was stunned when a European friend asked me what I thought of a declaration by 60 American intellectuals that was published in all the major French, German, Italian and other continental papers but which did not appear in the US at all, except on the Internet where few people took notice of it. This declaration took the form of a pompous sermon about the American war against evil and terrorism being "just" and in keeping with American values, as defined by these self-appointed interpreters of our country. Paid for and sponsored by something called the Institute for American Values, whose main (and financially well- endowed) aim is to propagate ideas in favour of families, "fathering" and "mothering," and God, the declaration was signed by Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Daniel Patrick Moynihan among many others, but basically written by a conservative feminist academic, Jean Bethke Elshtain. Its main arguments about a "just" war were inspired by Professor Michael Walzer, a supposed socialist who is allied with the pro-Israel lobby in this country, and whose role is to justify everything Israel does by recourse to vaguely leftist principles. In signing this declaration, Walzer has given up all pretension to leftism and, like Sharon, allies himself with an interpretation (and a questionable one at that) of America as a righteous warrior against terror and evil, the more to make it appear that Israel and the US are similar countries with similar aims.

Nothing could be further from the truth, since Israel is not the state of its citizens but of all the Jewish people, while the US is most assuredly only the state of its citizens. Moreover, Walzer never has the courage to state boldly that in supporting Israel he is supporting a state structured by ethno-religious principles, which (with typical hypocrisy) he would oppose in the United States if this country were declared to be white and Christian.

Walzer's inconsistencies and hypocrisies aside, the document is really addressed to "our Muslim brethren" who are supposed to understand that America's war is not against Islam but against those who oppose all sorts of principles, which it would be hard to disagree with. Who could oppose the principle that all human beings are equal, that killing in the name of God is a bad thing, that freedom of conscience is excellent, and that "the basic subject of society is the human person, and the legitimate role of government is to protect and help to foster the conditions for human flourishing"? In what follows, however, America turns out to be the aggrieved party and, even though some of its mistakes in policy are acknowledged very briefly (and without mentioning anything specific in detail), it is depicted as hewing to principles unique to the United States, such as that all people possess inherent moral dignity and status, that universal moral truths exist and are available to everyone, or that civility is important where there is disagreement, and that freedom of conscience and religion are a reflection of basic human dignity and are universally recognised. Fine. For although the authors of this sermon say it is often the case that such great principles are contravened, no sustained attempt is made to say where and when those contraventions actually occur (as they do all the time), or whether they have been more contravened than followed, or anything as concrete as that. Yet in a long footnote, Walzer and his colleagues set forth a list of how many American "murders" have occurred at Muslim and Arab hands, including those of the Marines in Beirut in 1983, as well as other military combatants. Somehow making a list of that kind is worth making for these militant defenders of America, whereas the murder of Arabs and Muslims -- including the hundreds of thousands killed with American weapons by Israel with US support, or the hundreds of thousands killed by US- maintained sanctions against the innocent civilian population of Iraq -- need be neither mentioned nor tabulated. What sort of dignity is there in humiliating Palestinians by Israel, with American complicity and even cooperation, and where is the nobility and moral conscience of saying nothing as Palestinian children are killed, millions besieged, and millions more kept as stateless refugees? Or for that matter, the millions killed in Vietnam, Columbia, Turkey, and Indonesia with American support and acquiescence?

All in all, this declaration of principles and complaint addressed by American intellectuals to their Muslim brethren seems like neither a statement of real conscience nor of true intellectual criticism against the arrogant use of power, but rather is the opening salvo in a new cold war declared by the US in full ironic cooperation, it would seem, with those Islamists who have argued that "our" war is with the West and with America. Speaking as someone with a claim on America and the Arabs, I find this sort of hijacking rhetoric profoundly objectionable. While it pretends to the elucidation of principles and the declaration of values, it is in fact exactly the opposite, an exercise in not knowing, in blinding readers with a patriotic rhetoric that encourages ignorance as it overrides real politics, real history, and real moral issues. Despite its vulgar trafficking in great "principles and values," it does none of that, except to wave them around in a bullying way designed to cow foreign readers into submission. I have a feeling that this document wasn't published here for two reasons: one is that it would be so severely criticised by American readers that it would be laughed out of court and two, that it was designed as part of a recently announced, extremely well-funded Pentagon scheme to put out propaganda as part of the war effort, and therefore intended for foreign consumption.

Whatever the case, the publication of "What are American Values?" augurs a new and degraded era in the production of intellectual discourse. For when the intellectuals of the most powerful country in the history of the world align themselves so flagrantly with that power, pressing that power's case instead of urging restraint, reflection, genuine communication and understanding, we are back to the bad old days of the intellectual war against communism, which we now know brought far too many compromises, collaborations and fabrications on the part of intellectuals and artists who should have played an altogether different role. Subsidised and underwritten by the government (the CIA especially, which went as far as providing for the subvention of magazines like Encounter, underwrote scholarly research, travel and concerts as well as artistic exhibitions), those militantly unreflective and uncritical intellectuals and artists in the 1950s and 1960s brought to the whole notion of intellectual honesty and complicity a new and disastrous dimension. For along with that effort went also the domestic campaign to stifle debate, intimidate critics, and restrict thought. For many Americans, like myself, this is a shameful episode in our history, and we must be on our guard against and resist its return.

[reagan lives]

If one can use both Said and Pat Buchanan to support a position, it has to be true.

[reagan lives]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.
http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/top...um=22&topic=149 (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=22&topic=149)

Just saving you the trouble...

[peaccenicked]

Is this not just another ad homenin attack?