Family jewels

By Mustang Bobby

Not to pick a fight with Jane Hamsher, for whom my respect knows no limit, but I don't think she's giving Caroline Kennedy a fair shake on her possible appointment to fill out Hillary Clinton's Senate term.

The woman has never run for office in her life. We have no idea how she'd fare on the campaign trail, or how well she could stand up to the electoral process. She simply picks up the phone and lets it be known that she just might be up for having one of the highest offices in the land handed to her because -- well, because why? Because her uncle once held the seat? Because she's a Kennedy? Because she took part as a child in the public's romantic dreams of Camelot? I'm not quite sure.

I recall that the same arguments were made in 2000 when Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate. True, Ms. Clinton is an attorney and she had worked in the Senate before becoming First Lady, but she had never run for office before, either, and she was basically anointed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan to take his seat. And if her name had been simply Hillary Rodham and she hadn't been married to the President of the United States, and had just bought a nice place in Westchester County and decided to pick up the phone and call people, what would her chances have been?

Caroline Kennedy does have one thing going for her that Hillary Clinton didn't have, and it's not just her name or her family connections. She has spent most of her life in New York and she has been involved in, among other things, education reform. She is also an attorney, and her resume is as impressive as anyone out there being seriously considered for the position. I think it's unfair to gloss over her accomplishments and disqualify her just because she is the daughter of a president and the niece of two senators. That may have opened some doors for her, but she's been the one who proved herself, and it's not her that is carrying the baggage of memories of Camelot. I also don't think she's naive enough to think that she will be above it all and not be able to take on the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics in New York or in the United States Senate.

As for the entitlement issue raised by having a slew of family connections in positions of power, I think that it sounds a lot worse than it actually is. After all, we've seen it throughout the history of the country and it pretty much balances out good versus bad (the Roosevelts vs. the Adamses; not to mention rafts of Tafts), and denigrating a potential candidate purely because of pedigree is, I think, a shallow argument. In some ways it can be a curse to be a member of a political family; for example, Jeb Bush's chances for winning the White House are pretty much shot to hell, even if he does become the next senator from Florida. On the whole we have found that family connections don't necessarily mean a lockstep continuation of policy or even political alignments; Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican and FDR was a Democrat.

I don't know if Caroline Kennedy is up to the job of Senator from New York. Then again, no one knows if anyone is, and certainly the names being bandied about (including -- are you ready -- Fran Drescher) are enough to make you wonder what the qualifications are. But she shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because of a pedigree she had no control over.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Doing something

By Mustang Bobby

What I don't know about economics and monetary theory could fill several large volumes, and if someone asked me what we should do about the current financial crisis, I'd probably stare at them like a Shropshire sheep, then come up with something along the lines of "homina-homina." Fine; my reaction -- or lack of it -- doesn't mean anything to the global economy. But when people we've entrusted with running the country and the economy display the same kind of indecisiveness and incoherence, it can lead to all sorts of unpleasantness. It's not that they don't have the answers; economists will argue about the granular stuff, but it's the appearance of confidence and having a solution at hand that matter.

Stock markets are like herds of cattle or flocks of pigeons; they respond to input -- either positive or negative -- without really thinking; they just take off in a flurry before processing the news. But they also pay attention to the attitude, and when the leaders -- or the presumptive leaders -- actually do something that indicates they will take charge and do something, the markets respond positively, even if the ideas and stimulus come from President-elect Obama, who has no power whatsoever. Action brings confidence and relief.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not this financial situation is comparable to 1932 when Herbert Hoover did too little too late to try to bring the nation out of the Depression. The nation and the world waited on the verge of panic for the new administration to come into office in March 1933, and when Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office and declared that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, it was almost cathartic. It wasn't his solutions that worked -- many of them put in place in the first 100 days and the years after didn't do all that much. It was just his attitude of confidence and belief that Americans would be able to get through it, and he was the leader to get us going again. As Will Rogers noted at the time, "If he burned down the Capitol, we would cheer and say, 'Well, we at least got a fire started somehow.'"

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Krazy Bill Kristol

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just for being himself. Oh, and for saying this about Sarah Palin:

She reminds me a lot of FDR.

He may have been joking, sort of, just to annoy "the left-wing blogs," but he's still a Palin-happy nutjob.

The "cut" of personality

By Carl

This whole mystique that surrounds Barack Obama is no secret to me. I've felt it several times in the past forty years of political awareness, as recently as 2004, when John Edwards ran the first time.

What amuses me is the staunch defense O-Bombers will put up for any criticism of the Senator's policies, legislative achievements (if you can find any), or positions (basically, he's as much a Democratic progressive as Hillary Clinton, who has thirty years of progressive action to show for it).

There is much to be said about the cult of personality that has grown up around this tyro. Let's look at another politician who could inspire:

On March 4, Roosevelt gave his now famous inaugural address, promising that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Within days he had secured legislation guaranteeing the banks, and on March 12, he took to the radio for the first of his fireside chats. “When the people find out that they can get their money — that they can get it when they want it — the phantom of fear will soon be laid,” he soothed an anxious nation. “I can assure you, it is safer to keep your money in a re-opened bank than under your mattress.”

When banks re-opened the next morning, the lines were gone, as Robert A. Caro recounted in the first volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson, “The Path to Power.” People put money back in, so much that on the first day after the chat, deposits outweighed withdrawals by $10 million.

It was the legislation, but mostly, Mr. Caro writes: “Their confidence was restored by his confidence. When he smiled on the crisis, it seemed to vanish.”

So, you see, it was the legislation that backed up the sunny disposition. In other words, there was steak behind the sizzle.

We face a similar crisis today in this country. The last President to truly inspire us was Bill Clinton. Before that, it was Ronald Reagan. Both were charismatic, true, and both had a plan, dug into the dirt and came up with solutions.

Clinton's, of course, worked for everyone. Reagan's stole from the poor to give to the rich. We can see that policy does not necessarily preclude incompetence.

But what about the cult of personality? What about the charisma?

“Today, attacks on the cult of personality seem really to mean attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire,” Mr. Caro said in an interview. “But you only have to look at crucial moments in the history of our time to see how crucial it was to have a leader who could inspire, who could rally a nation to a standard, who could infuse a country with confidence, to remind people of the justice of a cause.”

Still, Mr. Caro adds a caveat: “That doesn’t always translate into a great presidency.”

Adolf Hitler springs to mind as a charismatic leader who had nothing in his heart or mind but hatred for his people, yet inspired them at one of Germany's most difficult times.

Why is this trait so troubling to me about Obama?

“What is troubling about the campaign is that it’s gone beyond hope and change to redemption,” said Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton (and a longtime friend of the Clintons). “It’s posing as a figure who is the one person who will redeem our politics. And what I fear is, that ends up promising more from politics than politics can deliver.”[...]

Accounts of the campaign’s “Camp Obama” sessions, to train volunteers, have a revivalist flavor. Volunteers are urged to avoid talking about policy to potential voters, and instead tell of how they “came” to Mr. Obama.

“If you don’t talk about issues in great detail, if you do it in a way that is not the centerpiece of your campaign, of your rhetoric, then you become a blank screen,” Mr. Wilentz said. “Everybody thinks you are the vehicle of their hopes.”

That can only end up in disappointment. The coalescence of my fear comes down to this sentence:

If you had the policies ready and in place and were confident they were the right policies, you'd talk about them endlessly.

Anything else and you're just selling me a used car.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)