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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Thoughts on the death of Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009)
I extend my condolences to the family and friends and partisans and allies and admirers of Sen. Edward M. ("Ted") Kennedy (D-MA) upon his passing.
Alas, my first two reactions to the news were not flattering to him, and indeed they are likely to annoy many of those to whom I've just extended my condolences.
My first thought (premised on Christian faith) was that Teddy Kennedy's four decades of dodging his proper responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne — however slight or (as I suspect) culpable that responsibility actually was — are finally over. May justice finally be done, whatever that may be, by Him to whom such final judgments are ultimately reserved.
My second thought involves a comparison with the current occupant of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — an address at which brother John famously lived, and to which father Joseph and brothers Joe Jr., Bobby, and Teddy all famously aspired.
Teddy's most serious run at the presidency, against Jimmy Carter in 1980, represented a deliberate and thoughtful rejection by a majority of the Democratic Party of a candidate who was all bi-coastal style and sizzle, a media favorite wrapped in romance and dynasty, but whose actual record was still then pitifully thin and whose character had already been repeatedly proven to be deeply flawed. One line from Teddy's convention speech — "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die" — is still remembered over anything said by the Democrats' actual nominee from that campaign. And of course said nominee, the Dems' incumbent — who had already, in my judgment, become the worst American President of the 20th Century — went on to a well-deserved crushing defeat by Ronald Reagan.
Although it could still be prompted to go on the occasional drunken bender by that kind of vaguely poetic but ultimately content-free rhetoric from someone like him, however, as of 1980 the Democratic Party still had better sense than to entrust the country's fate to a shallow scoundrel like Teddy Kennedy, no matter how much that went against the media's romantic "Camelot restored" narrative and the fervent desires of the Hard/Angry Left. Yet by 2008 — their decency and sensibilities having been fatally compromised in the meantime by a serial liar and sexual predator who they also rallied to defend — the Dems had become utterly shameless, utterly irresponsible, and utterly besotted with another shallow but romantic scoundrel who had only a fraction of the governmental experience that even Ted Kennedy ca. 1980 could claim.
More than mourning the man who's just passed from the living, then, I mourn the passing of those times. Contrasting the Dems' rejection of Ted Kennedy in 1980 to their embrace of Barack Obama in 2008 makes me mourn the end of the time when the Democratic Party was a party of mostly grown-ups instead of mostly idolaters and haters, the time when as a party the Dems could soberly and seriously reject a glamorous media-hyped figure as its national candidate. I know not when or if we shall ever see the return of such responsible men and women to a position of power in the Democratic Party. (In the meantime, they'll be the few but perhaps vital minority of Democrats who are muttering to themselves, with entirely justified and increasing panic: "But nine trillion in deficits? Seriously?")
Posted by Beldar at 05:08 PM in Congress, Current Affairs, History, Obama, Politics (2009) | Permalink
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Comments
(1) Bill M made the following comment | Aug 26, 2009 5:46:47 PM | Permalink
May justice finally be done, whatever that may be, by Him to whom such final judgments are ultimately reserved.
To which I say, "Amen."
(2) Milhouse made the following comment | Aug 26, 2009 6:33:32 PM | Permalink
I'm afraid you're romanticising the Ds of 1980. Two distinctions are enough to completely explain why Kennedy lost his primary and Obama won his: 1) Obama was not running against an incumbent president; 2) Obama may be a scoundrel, and inexperienced, but he never killed anyone (that we know of). Had Ford won the 1996 election, or had Kennedy not killed anyone, there is no doubt that he would have won the 1980 primary. Similarly, had Obama been foolish enough to challenge a sitting President Kerry, or had he a well-known Chappaquidick-type scandal in his past, he would probably have lost.
Along the same lines, I believe that Hillary will challenge Obama in 2012, and since she has (as far as we know) no blood on her hands she will win despite Obama's incumbency. I predict that she will then name a black running mate, in order to mollify the black voters; but she will look for a genuine moderate rather than a wolf in sheep's clothing like Obama, or at least one who can more convincingly play the part. If Harold Ford had won his Senate race, or if he were running for anything in 2010, he'd be the obvious choice; as it is, he's too far from the public eye.
Kerry, BTW, did actually kill someone. But unlike Kennedy, the authorities didn't cut him any slack because of who he was; they investigated it properly, and concluded that it was a genuine accident and no charges were warranted. There is no reason to suspect that that decision was in any way incorrect. So there was no scandal, and nothing to become a primary issue.
(3) rls made the following comment | Aug 26, 2009 7:00:43 PM | Permalink
There is not one single good thing that I can say about Mr. Kennedy. Even if there is something "good" about him it is mitigated by his failure to take responsibility for MJK's demise at such a young age. Every year he existed was a year he stole from another human.
Sorry to be so crass.
(4) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 26, 2009 10:02:16 PM | Permalink
Beldar,
I have considerable regard for you but must take exception.
1. This day, hope God is merciful. When he is in the ground, appraisals of his life and times will be appropriate.
2. Recall Patrick Buchanan's rule-of-thumb stated in a different connection (some years later), "...when the mob is coming to get the old man do you have him sit down and write down a list of his 'mistakes'? NO. You start firing from the upper floors!" Messrs. Gallup et al gave the advantage to Kennedy for many months throughout 1979 and, if you will recall, Kennedy himself elected to run in response to a caucus within the Congress organizing a draft. These advantages evaporated in a matter of weeks in November 1979. I submit to you the public was firing from the upper floors at that malicious crew in Tehran, and Kennedy was in the line of fire. Mr. Carter campaigned only in Ohio;
3. The media were not in the tank for Kennedy. Recall the embarrassment inflicted upon Kennedy by Roger Mudd in the simple act of asking the Senator in the course of a televised interview why he was running (to which the Senator's answers were less than crisp);
4. Herbert Hoover presided over a 30% contraction in domestic product, which is to say an ordinary economic recession x 15; Woodrow Wilson instigated the deposition of Kaisar Wilhelm II and was willing to accede to elements of a Carthaginian peace for the bourgeois republic which succeeded his constitutional monarchy in order to get France et al to agree to dippy collective security schemes; Richard Nixon's economic policies were wonderful...as cautionary tales about what happens when you mess with the price system; do you recall Mr. Nixon's vigorous response to OPEC? You do not, as there wasn't one. Mr. Carter had his policy failures, most particular manifest in an unwillingness to do anything serious about currency erosion while promoting public demoralization by leaving the impression that no one could be expected to do anything. That having been said, he had some intelligent initiatives implemented (deregulation in the transportation sector) while others (e.g. tax reform) were stymied by the essential corruption of the U.S. Congress. To call him the 'worst president of the 20th century' is de trop.
5. Barack Obama is, given his preparation, wholly unsuitable for the position he holds and it speaks ill of a great many in the Democratic Party's constituent power that his candidacy was taken seriously and attracted ample funding and organizational talent; he certainly readily tolerates scoundrels (i.e. Rahm Emmanuel), hangs out with a Baskin-and-Robbins collection of rogues (Rezko, Wright, Ayers & Dohrn), and he and his wife have participated in what Jack Newfield calls the 'disguised quid pro quo' that is all too much a part of American politics ("I get you a 99 year lease from the city, you get my friend some insurance" [or my wife an amply paid position as a diversity racketeer with the University of Chicago Hospitals]). It is de trop to refer to him as a 'scoundrel'. A man with a modicum of wisdom would not have led the life Obama has; what is pathetic about Obama is that there is so little to him at the age of 48; he is a consumer product.
(5) Michael J. Myers made the following comment | Aug 27, 2009 12:07:56 PM | Permalink
Art Deco, you protest too much when you say "This day, hope God is merciful".
I'm fond of the old shape note hymn, "A Beautiful Life". The refrain from that hymn that sticks in my mind is the recognition that life's end is near "And now I must go to meet the deeds I've done". Teddy Kennedy will meet the deeds he's done, so none of us will or should have much to say about it. I do predict that he's going to need some asbestos underwear.
But I'm more interested in Mr. Dyer's point concerning what's become of the Democrat Party. I think that there's a sea change coming in the body politic. I remember wondering as a young man (circa 1959-1963) whether rock 'n roll had died. It seemed stale and lacking in energy--all played out, tired--and worthless.
Then came the British invasion of the Beatles and others--and music was fresh again.
Obama--an empty suit of all empty suits--played on that tiredness in the body politic. But he's proved to be all show and no go--and we're back in ennui again.
(6) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 27, 2009 12:45:10 PM | Permalink
By "that God is merciful" I mean merely that he is not damned. It is difficult to imagine that a life lived like Kennedy's will not be subject to considerable temporal punishment in purgatory, but what can we know?
It has stunned me in the last year that faced with an unusual national crisis, the Democratic Party responded according to its default mode, fellating its constituency groups and engaging in rounds of public recrimination and posturing. That, and the nomination and election of someone as weightless as B.O., is deeply distressing. I fear we are due to learn some things the hard way. That having been said, there is not (as there was with Kennedy, Johnson, and even Mr. Roosevelt) anything notably crooked about B.O. in his mundane life. As a politician, he is subject to temptations a shnook like me is not; his response to them has been, alas, a variant of normal. He is not a scoundrel, just a man who took favors when a man of particular integrity would not have.
How he is abnormal is in an inability or unwillingness to develop an actual vocation. Had he spent 17 years advising bankers on the content of state and federal laws applying to them, or preparing people's wills, or negotiating with insurance companies, he would have one. Instead, he reads a TelePrompTer.
(7) Mike Thomas made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 9:51:35 AM | Permalink
...makes me mourn the end of the time when the Democratic Party was a party of mostly grown-ups instead of mostly idolaters and haters, the time when as a party the Dems could soberly and seriously reject a glamorous media-hyped figure as its national candidate.
This from someone who fell all over himself to tout Sarah Palin as our next president?
(8) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 1:10:32 PM | Permalink
Dear Mr. Dyer: Amidst all the erupting geysers, no one else has said it, so I will: Welcome back, yet again. I do hope you stick around. As I've said, there have been numerous times in the last month when I've wondered "I wonder what Beldar thinks about this."
As for EMK, I think you are off the beam on your second thought: EMK's 1980 failure was far less a deliberate, thoughtful rejection of him by the Dems than another demonstration of the power of incumbency. No sitting president, however unpopular, has ever been rejected by his party if he said he wanted the job. Not even T. Roosevelt in 1912, who had more qualifications for the Presidency than any incumbent, was able to knock out Taft, who rivals the Bumpkin for second worst 20th century Prez (I think we must give Warren Harding the champion title.) The Bumpkin cracked the party whip, and the Dems, sullenly, came to attention. The record of primaries is instructive: EMK did badly at first (and before he started as the notorious Roger Mudd interview shows. By February it was obvious EMK wasn't going to knock off the Bumpkin. Then a funny thing happened: he started winning primaries. It's as if the electors were saying "We luv ya Ted. If that goddam Bumpkin wasn't here, we'd give it to you in a minute." Quit while you were winning? Boy, that's a formula for egg on your face. So EMK ground on, unable to win, too concerned with face to quit. It went all the way to the convention where EMK got his revenge . It must have been sweet to kick the Bumpkin that way, as so many other Dems wanted to do. It was the closest EMK ever got to the White House, fortunately for the nation. But it wasn't a considered rejection. That came in 1988, when EMK toyed with the notion of running against GHW Bush. Hard to believe, but he was only 56-going-on-1000 that year. But he had been around so long that he seemed older. Much older.
(You can see where I've derived much of this argument if you read Theodore White's AMERICA IN SEARCH OF ITSELF, the capstone to the MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series.)
Next, I am sorry to say that your assertion that EMK "...whose actual record was still then [1980---GK] pitifully thin..." hurts your argument. If true, then Harry Truman's 1935-1944 record is even thinner, ergo, FDR made a serious error by choosing him to be Veep in 1944. Nope, can't swallow that. I'm sorry to say I think commenter Mike Thomas has a fine riposte when he contrasts the selection of Sarah Palin as Veep material in 2008 with your assertion that EMK in 1980 didn't have the qualifications to be Prez. He had a long record; it's just that you (likek me) can't stand it. Even EMK's record has good bits: trucking and airline deregulation in 1978-79 wouldn't have happened but for him. Nor can we deny his political skills: he got Geo. W. hypnotized (not a hard trick, I admit) and rammed through No Child Left Behind, a colossal disaster from any conservative/libertarian viewpoint, both in prospect and, after eight years, in practice.
Chappaquiddick. Characteristically, the press has kept quiet about it, proving yet again Glenn Reynolds's dictum that the press today is more in the business of NOT reporting than reporting. But the blame spills past EMK. It wasn't beyond the power of Massachusetts prosecutors, all sworn to "do justice" to have EMK arrested, indicted, and tried. Convicted? Not by a Massachusetts jury. Don't believe me? Did the electorate can EMK when he came up for reelection in 1970? Hahahahahaha. But the a, i, and t process would have ruined EMK, conviction or no, conviction. So he leaned on the Massachusetts legal establishment, with complete success. The prosecutors and judges who went along with this travesty deserve plenty of scorn, which they are not, and will not, be getting. It is also a mistake to warble about poor Mary Jo. Had EMK not bumped her off that night, she would be a dreadful harridan of 69, a lifelong Reagan hater, a frenzied defender of Billyboy's hay rolling, and state president of Code Pink. To be sure, she did not deserve to die thanks to EMK's drunken orgies. But this is no young conservative who was snuffed out. Finally, her family kept silent about the matter. They got a trifling payment of $140,000 for it, but I've always wondered. A wrongful death suit would have been a hard thing for EMK to defeat, Massaschusetts juries or no Massachusetts juries. How much was paid under the table? If none was, what does that say about the Kopechne family?
No, the nation dodged a bullet in EMK went off the road that night.
For those who are interested, I direct you to Michael Kelly's (yes, the Michael Kelly who died in Iraq, a real journalist) GQ profile of EMK in 1990. The swinishness was still in full bloom. He had learned nothing from Chappaquiddick? Did he forget it?
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
(9) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 1:28:39 PM | Permalink
Sarah Palin was not 'hyped' by the media and, in fact, is despised by identifiable segments of them. She is not glamorous and an aspect of her appeal is the degree to which she manifests certain vernacular tastes and attitudes.
As a politician, she is quite the antithesis of Barack Obama. The bulk of her experience has been in executive positions and her fund of knowledge has been accumulated through grappling with the issues and problems that confront one in the course of the mundane business of municipal and state government.
The moderator will have to speak to the question of whether he touted her as 'our next president'.
Would you care to give a reason anyone would classify her as an 'idolater' or a 'hater'?
(10) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 4:08:53 PM | Permalink
It is also a mistake to warble about poor Mary Jo. Had EMK not bumped her off that night, she would be a dreadful harridan of 69, a lifelong Reagan hater, a frenzied defender of Billyboy's hay rolling, and state president of Code Pink.
This remark is obscene.
(11) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 4:56:23 PM | Permalink
Dear Art Deco: Could be that my characterization is obscene. I note, however, you say nothing about its probable truth. Mary Jo was 29, and had worked for the Kennedys since 1964. If Wikipedia's capsule biography of her is anywhere near correct, she would have made a lifelong career as a back room operator in some grade of politics. Thus, my characterization of her had she lived to 2009 as a dreadful harridan of 69 etc. which I reiterate. I can't prove it, but a look at her biography is why I characterized her thus. I don't doubt this has upset you, almost as much as your dewy-eyed snuffling about her tragic loss has enraged her up in Heaven, causing her to jump up and down on Abraham's bosom until he squawks about a sore chest....
On the other hand, I am more susceptible to glamor than a hardened sole like you. I think Sarah Palin is quite glamorous, and her husband a fortunate fellow. Characteristically, the press uses this to give SP the works, while warbling ecstatically about Michelle's toned arms. There's obscenity for you! But getting testy about such obscenity, does no good with the 200-proof frauds who infest the press. So why not laugh at such wallowing? A merry life is a longer one.
Finally, you are remarkably rash to be making such a big bet that The One "... there is not (as there was with Kennedy, Johnson, and even Mr. Roosevelt) anything notably crooked about B.O. in his mundane life."
I gather you have pored over his undergraduate and law school transcripts, examined his handwritten manuscript of DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, and are not in the least puzzled how an essentially unpublished twentysomething with no real academic credentials could get a book contract on race relations in America and get his memoirs accepted (with an additional advance) in place of the race relations book. Nor are you bothered by the way in which his primary and general election opponents in the 2004 Senate race suddenly had their personal lives turned inside out by the same corrupt press that up to now has warbled in the key of C day in and day out.
I find your serenity in the face of all this remarkable, and can only gaze in wonder at your trustfulness in The One's word. Doubtless you sleep well at night, not in the least worried about your financial future, which Bernie Madoff is fulfilling for you...
But continue, sweet one, continue. As I said, a merry life is a long one.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
(12) R.J. MacReady made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 5:00:55 PM | Permalink
Really interesting connection that you've made, and one I've not seen anyone else make.
(13) Michael J. Myers made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 6:27:28 PM | Permalink
Ah Mr. Koster: as always, you dig and think deep and long. Mr. Obama's political background is indeed an interesting one. Forget the remarkable wall that's been drawn over his academic record, the uncertainty whether he published anything at all, either before or after becoming President of the Harvard Law Review. Note the fact that he was apparently not offered a post law shool position as a Supreme Court Clerk or an associateship in a major law firm--virtual mortal locks for any President of the Harvard Law Review. No, our perfumed prince headed back to the streets of Chicago. He was a young punk state legislator of no particular merit when an older member of the Illinois Legislature said "I'm going to make me a US Senator". Voila, Obama's name got put on a lot of bills that other more senior legislators had worked years to push through the Legislature. His opponents in each of his races either got disqualified from running, or supposedly sealed courthouse files were opened "just in time" to raise a scandal for his opponents. In essence, although Obama had been elected to several offices, including the US Sent, Barack Obama had never run a contested election until he hit the Democrat primaries for President in 2007-2008.
I don't doubt that he is a skilled retail politician on the campaign trail; but the stink of the Chicago Machine--or someone or something else--is all over his career.
I don't doubt that Obama has a good deal of intelligence; I don't think that his arrogance comes, like Bill Clinton's did, from the conviction that he was always the smartest person in the room and could talk his way out of anything. Clinton knew that. But Obama knew something else at several points along the way; he's smart, but lazy, and knew that with a little help from affirmative action (a gift from legislative work spurred, in significant part by EMK) he had a pretty good chance of gliding through. When the rubber finally hit the road in the Oval Office, a life time of bad habits, insufficient preparation etc. caught up with him. Even EMK couldn't fix that.
(14) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 6:37:51 PM | Permalink
I gather you have pored over his undergraduate and law school transcripts, examined his handwritten manuscript of DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, and are not in the least puzzled how an essentially unpublished twentysomething with no real academic credentials could get a book contract on race relations in America and get his memoirs accepted (with an additional advance) in place of the race relations book.
He got the contract, because they gave it to them. The intelligentsia and their dependents have their signature impulses, and one of these is to establish patron-client relationships with blacks. I do not know why they do this. I do recall Richard John Neuhaus' account of a conversation he had with a professor at a college vigorously practicing 'affirmative action'. Said professor lamented its effect on students on either side of the color bar and then said "we're doing it for ourselves", i.e. for their own ego satisfactions. This is only secondarily Obama's problem; it is the publisher's problem.
Nor are you bothered by the way in which his primary and general election opponents in the 2004 Senate race suddenly had their personal lives turned inside out by the same corrupt press that up to now has warbled in the key of C day in and day out.
That does bother me, and it happened in a Congressional race in New York's Southern Tier five years ago. A clerk in some locus turned over confidential paperwork on Rep. J.R. Kuhl's divorce to a requesting party and it ended up on the internet. It could have been incompetence on the part of the clerk in question, it could be that the clerk was a patronage employee doing what was expected of him (or what he thought was expected of him), or it could be that the clerk was a partisan Democrat doing what he pleased. It is possible, but not a slam dunk, that the initiative for these other embarrassments came from Obama and his inner ring. When I referred to his mundane life, I was referring to his domestic sphere. As far as I am aware, the man is not whoring around, he pays his bills and his taxes, and is not an alcoholic.
Sarah Palin is attractive (tho' not to me precisely)). Jacqueline Onassis was glamorous. Glamorous is not for everyone.
I am not worried that Barack Obama will commit prosecutable misdemeanors. My worries, financial and otherwise, concern his deficit of specialized knowledge and evident horse sense. If he does not see himself as a figure in a cheap middlebrow history, there are those on the staff of Newsweek and such who appear to see him that way. The Roosevelt analogies bother me. Mr. Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy for seven years (which included the First World War) and had been Governor of New York during the earlier (and most severe) years of the Depression. He had also practiced law for about ten years. He was an experienced administrator and he implemented the salient features of his plan for the financial system in a matter of weeks, with considerable success. B.O. has made public statements which confess stupefying ignorance and appears to have been attempting to build a policy monument with this spaghetti logic health plan.
(15) R.J. MacReady made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 8:17:12 PM | Permalink
P.S.--My comment was in response to the blog post, not the other comments.
(16) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Aug 28, 2009 11:46:38 PM | Permalink
Dear Mr. Myers: Fortunately it's August, and I can attribute my redness to sunburn instead of blushes from your compliment, the more so because as Mr. MacReady makes plain, my remarks are capable of causing unsettlement. Thank you.
I'm sorry, but I will reciprocate with a question: What is it about The One that makes you "...don't doubt that Obama has a good deal of intelligence?" I have asked many O supporters this question and gotten remarkably vague generalities, heavily spiced with cross, annoyed looks at such heresy. His books aren't proof of anything except that his mirror is all smeared with lip prints. Mr. Dyer has offered The One's magna cum Harvard Law degree, but that has to carry one hell of a load, and I am less and less satisfied with this explanation. He has no record of executive achievement as, say, Hyman Rickover/George Marshall/Alfred Sloan do.
So what is it that I alone cannot see? A straight line such as this ought to generate at least one reply!
Dear Art Deco: Thanks for your responses. I think you overlook an important element when you write: "This is only secondarily Obama's problem; it is the publisher's problem." The secondary element is that it feeds an already far too lusty sense of superiority and entitlement in The One. This is fertile ground for corruption later on. How much later on? When Michelle got that promotion at the University of Chicago hospitals, going from 121+K salary to 316+K a month after The One's ascension to the federal Senate, the bill started to come due. Such a promotion looks fishy. The hospital bawls that Michelle is worth her weight in gold, which at the salary she's dragging down is certainly true, but what else can they say? I'd be less bothered if the press was digging away AND PUBLISHING what they found, but fat chance of the present trilling gang of mountebanks doing that.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
(17) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 29, 2009 8:09:07 AM | Permalink
Mr. Koster,
That he graduated from the Harvard Law School magna cum laude is an indication that his general intelligence is ample. The thing is , general intelligence is only one element of achievement. (I will note as an aside, not everyone's public life can or should be devoted to achievements more rarefied than earning a living). As has been noted before, he appears for occult reasons to have rejected a clerkship after completing his schooling, was not employed by a firm for two years after completing his schooling, appears to have spent the equivalent of just three years practicing a mix of labor and landlord-tenant law, and appears to have spent the equivalent of about five years teaching constitutional law (while publishing nothing in reviews). I do not see in this man a 'sense of entitlement'. What I see is an absence of something. I am neither an attorney nor a man of achievements, so I would defer to Mr. Dyer as to an assessment of just what it is that is not there.
(18) nk made the following comment | Aug 29, 2009 12:33:23 PM | Permalink
I remember the media being more than necessarily friendly to Kennedy in 1980. He and his wife Joan had been estranged but when he decided to run, they got back together and made joint press appearances. When a reporter asked what I thought as a relatively innocuous question, whether Mrs. Kennedy would campaign with him, the reporter was booed by the other reporters.
Another instance, Carter said, "I will not lose my head in a crisis". The press roundly pilloried Carter, taking it as a veiled reference to Chappaquiddick, which it doubtlessly was. I don't remember whether Carter backpedaled. (In any event, Carter had already lost more than his head in the Iranian hostage non-crisis. An ally on the border of the Soviet Union and Walter Crinkite.)
(19) Milhouse made the following comment | Aug 29, 2009 10:11:37 PM | Permalink
Dear Mr. Koster, you are simply wrong when you say that "No sitting president, however unpopular, has ever been rejected by his party if he said he wanted the job." The following sitting presidents tried to get their parties' nomination and failed: Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland (in 1896), Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and LBJ.
(20) Art Deco made the following comment | Aug 29, 2009 10:30:59 PM | Permalink
Harry Truman elected in 1951 not to run for re-election. Woodrow Wilson was an invalid from 1919 until his death in 1924. He was in no position to stand as a candidate for anything. His critics complained he had effectively turned over the government to his wife.
(21) Milhouse made the following comment | Aug 29, 2009 11:05:31 PM | Permalink
Truman certainly did run for reelection. He only pulled out after he was trounced in the New Hampshire primary, and his polling showed that he wasn't going to do much better in the coming primaries. His claims otherwise were much like a cat that falls over and then pretends it meant to do that.
Wilson was an invalid, but he still sought the Democratic nomination, and schemed to get it. He did not voluntarily retire.
(22) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Aug 30, 2009 12:31:17 AM | Permalink
Dear Milhouse: You have made the common error of reading what I wrote instead of what I meant...Nope, can't use that gag to wriggle out of it. Ol' LBJ lies in the road, blown up in his quest for the nomination, utterly demolishing my generality. I would argue that Truman didn't really want the job in 1951-52 once he saw he would have to fight for it, but I don't think the debate judges would rule in my favor. With Wilson, he may have wanted the job, and said so to his intimates such as Tumulty, but his incapacity was obvious enough to stop him. That I think the judges would give me. All your nineteenth century examples the judges would give you.
This still leaves me with Taft v. T. Roosevelt, Coolidge v. Hiram Johnson in 1924, Ford v. Reagan in 1976, and Carter v. Kennedy. Numerically, the score is in your favor, but note that my examples are better for recent Prezes. I hope this partial retreat is satisfactory.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
(23) Phil made the following comment | Sep 3, 2009 8:38:46 PM | Permalink
I pray the Father only sees the blood of Jesus on EMK -- it would be totally sufficient for any sins a mere man might commit.
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