The More Things Change…
BY TOM LAMIA
Politics is a nasty business. Nasty people often gravitate into the business of politics. Power is the business of politics. Electioneering is the door opener to gaining that power. The next seven months will be decisive as never before of whether the U.S. Constitution will survive an all-out attack by the people it was designed to protect. The nasty business of politics will determine the result.
The playing field of politics continuously evolves, as it has done since the Constitution was first adopted in 1789. There have been fundamental amendments; the first ten created rights in the people to protect them from their government; the three Civil War amendments (13, 14 and 15) added further rights to end slavery and protect against its return in another form. Countless other changes in our governance have come from legislation and constitutional interpretation; all done under the guidance of politicians and the elections that gave them the power to shape sociological and technological change. Through all, the Constitution, as amended and interpreted, has persevered. So, why now is it existentially threatened?
One argument is that the “leave well enough alone” principle has worked well enough in the past to avoid self-immolation, so doing nothing is a workable solution. Another is the semi-mystical notion of American Exceptionalism (that saviors have and will come to the fore when needed), so, again, do nothing. My view is that fear of the abyss has saved us so far and could once more if we keep talking and don’t shoot one another. That will happen only if the nasty business of politics finds a way. So far I am not optimistic. The nasty business is not a well oiled and finely tuned machine, it requires the involvement of a cohort of bloodied nasty warriors who will see that the survival of the Constitution and its rule of law is the sine qua non of their own survival as cogs in the machine of governance. The people in charge did not get their power through high character and scrupulous adherence to rules, or to any shared guiding principle. They are the survivors of catch-as-catch-can election contests in which losers go home. They are reined in only by the lessons learned from defeats. Fortunately, those lessons, to date, emphasize a need for caution and a need to keep the golden goose of representative democracy alive.
Even “bad people,” those who sow chaos on issues and facts, can help in finding solutions. Sometimes in the past that has not been clear until the contest is near a cataclysmic conclusion (the abyss). The saying that a pending execution wonderfully concentrates the mind is very much involved in what is happening. I offer a personal historical observation on how I have come to these dreary conclusions:
In 1960 Vice President Richard Nixon was facing Senator John F. Kennedy in the Presidential election. Republican Nixon had served eight years as Vice President, two years as a U.S. Senator and four years as a U.S. Congressman from California. Democrat Kennedy in his second Senate term had come close to the Vice Presidential nomination at the 1956 Democratic Convention; was the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, FDR’s wartime Ambassador to England and had a large fortune made on Wall Street. Both men were young: Nixon 48, Kennedy 43. As Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Nixon pursued an investigation of Alger Hiss with a zeal that got him re-elected to the House in 1950 with majority votes in both Republican and Democrat primaries and led to Hiss’s conviction for spying for the Soviet Union. Kennedy was a war hero and author of Profiles in Courage a ghost written prize-winning book that profiled Senators who had risked their political careers by supporting meritorious but unpopular causes in the Senate.
The Democratic National Convention in 1960 was held in Los Angeles, my native city. There were many candidates for the great prize, all men and all older and more experienced than Kennedy. Several were favorite sons of states that accounted for large blocs of electoral votes. Eleanor Roosevelt and the old guard of “Wise Men” who had served FDR through WW II supported Adlai Stevenson, the Democrat nominee in 1952 and 1956. Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Senate Majority Leader, had the qualified support of several Senators and a big state Governor (Symington, Humphrey, Meyner) each of whom were expected to shift their support to Johnson if their own chances were to dim.
Kennedy had the glitz, money and ambition that came with and through his family. Having financed a number of Hollywood movies, Joseph Kennedy could and did put celebrity magic behind his son. Sinatra, Monroe and other personalities enhanced Kennedy’s aura of youth and confidence. On the other hand, Joe Kennedy had a reputation for tolerance of right wing causes and isolationism that clashed with mainstream Democratic views. In the end, Kennedy money and Boston Irish politics carried the day.
Kennedy got the nomination and won the election by a whisker. Two years later Nixon sought career revival in challenging incumbent Governor Pat Brown in California’s gubernatorial election. It looked like a safe bet for the man known, even then, as Tricky Dick, but Nixon lost. In a post-election press conference the loser grumbled his closing message to the press: “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” It looked like surrender, but wasn’t.
What Nixon did next is with us still. He set out to find a winning formula; found one; then failed to recognize that his winning formula depended on law breaking that could not be sustained and brought disgrace to him and the nasty politicos who advised him and did his dirty work. That Watergate scandal very nearly killed the golden goose for the Republican Party. Trump and his enablers may yet find their way to having that happen to them.
In 1960 I was a 22-year-old senior at the University of Southern California, struggling to stay afloat financially during the summer semester break. That summer the Democratic National Convention came to Los Angeles. The Convention and its temporary influx of politicos and hangers-on created a surge in demand for hotel rooms, call girls, alcohol and other necessary distractions from the hard work of politics. To accommodate delegate-revelers around the clock, the city’s taxicab fleet required drivers willing to work the graveyard shift (midnight to 8 a.m.). And there I was, eager to do my part for city, country and the American Way.
As I drove my cab through LA’s nighttime noir my eyes were opened to the game of politics (and other things) by exposure to the ramblings of voluble fares. Political junkies, delegates, journalists, party bosses and a hierarchy of campaign regulars enjoying a week away from home and family supervision. The revelry included a lot of drinking and associated spilling of secrets (some perhaps true), the essence of which was non-stop dirt dishing on party rivals. For example: Joe Kennedy was a fascist; Jack Kennedy a callow upstart being sold to a gullible public; Johnson a powerful insider who would soon upend the Kennedy enterprise; Eleanor Roosevelt would save the Democrats from the Pope by a surprise nomination of Adlai Stevenson; and more. What was truly confounding for me was the regularity with which people in the back seat would ask who I favored for the nomination. I generally answered that President Eisenhower (a term-limited Republican) was my choice, which brought drunken hoots at my naiveté, but also serious questions as to what qualities Eisenhower had that I found attractive in a president. I came away with a low opinion of the people and process that would decide who would be the Democratic nominee.
Between the Convention and the November election there would be the first televised debates and tsunamis of backroom politicking by those who controlled votes. No one seemed sure of the outcome, but all seemed to be immensely enjoying the process.
A few months later, I voted for the first time. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. My decision was dictated by a sense that the serious but dull Nixon would better protect the nation and my place in it than the bright and charming Kennedy. I voted without enthusiasm for Nixon.
The experience just related has often reminded me of the timeless nature of politics. What works perseveres and is added to the storehouse of tools for the ambitious politician and a professional network of advisers that carry those lessons forward. The tools that seem to have most successfully endured are those that teach how to damage reputations. These are the tools of the nasty staffer who is essential to victory and hence untouchable. Both Nixon and Kennedy had such people. Nixon constantly complained that Kennedy’s people were nastier and thus more successful. He set out to build his own, nastier, staff. He did, and the abyss, his Watergate Waterloo, was the result.
