By Frank L. McNamara Jr.
If what is past is prologue, the recently busted "Occupy Boston" protesters can take solace from what eventually became of their 1960s forerunners, whose example they so conspicuously emulate. (But surely itwould be unfair to call those arrested early this morning sixties wannabees.)
History records that a surprising number of the college professors of the 1960s, after starring in their own movies by protesting the depredations of unbridled capitalism, the military industrial complex, and the Vietnam War, discovered...money! Or, more accurately, the lack of it, going on to become themselves overly compensated Wall Street investment bankers, hedge fund managers, partners of white-shoe law firms, and chairmen and CEO's of companies doing business with that government, including the military that they had so long despised.
I suspect that in due course many of those arrested last night will experience a similiar metamorphosis. The arc between protester and plutocrat is not that long. Those who traverse it will end up contributing disproportionately, just as their sixties counterparts did and do, to entrenched, mostly Democratic, polititions. (Big Business, which controls government and does business with it, likes its government to be Big.) In so doing they will forget that the polititions they support are successors to people like Mayor Menino, enjoying symbiotic relationships with the very public sector unions (in the case of the Boston police union) whose buzz-saw tactics the "Occupy Boston" protestors now deplore.
So, in the final analysis, what can be said of the arrested "Occupy Boston" professors? Or of the entitled plutocrats against whom they protest? Or of the entitled, unionized police who arrested them? Or, for that matter, of the entitled entrenched, politition who ordered their arrests?
That they deserve each other's throats?
That the more things change, the more things remain the same?
How about this: We all desire change and more just society; but the only change worthy of the name is brought about by men and women who are prepared to suffer at the personal level.
Protesters, plutocrats, police, and pols who are at once desirous of fame and money, yet fearful of failure and sacrifice, are not reliable agents of the change we all seek.
Frank L. MaNamara Jr., a lawyer at Bowditch & Dewey, is a former US Attorney for Massachusetts.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
The President of Contempt
By Bret Stephens
Nixon was tricky. Ford was clumsy. Carter was dour. Reagan was sunny. Bush 41 was prudent. Clinton felt your pain. Bush 43 was stubborn. And Barach Obama is...
Early in America's acquaintance with the man who would become the 44th president, the word that typically sprang from media lips to describe him was "cool."
Cool as a matter of fashion sense - "Who does he think he is, George Clooney?" burbed the blogger Wonkette in April 2008. Cool as a matter of political temperment - "Maybe after eight years of George W. Bush stubborness, on the heels of eight years of Clinton emotiveness, we need to send out for ice" approved USA Today's Ruben Navarrette that October. Cool as a matter of upbringing - Indonesia, apparently, is "Where Barack learned to be cool," according to a family friend quoted in a biography of his mother.
The Obama cool made for a reassuring contrast with his campaign's warm-and-fuzzy appeals to hope, change and being the one we've been waiting for. But as the American writer Minna Antrim observed long ago,"between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt." When it comes to Mr. Obama, boy does it ever.
We caught flashes of the contempt during the campaign. There were those small-town Midwesterners who, as he put it at a San Francisco fund raiser, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them." There were those racist Republicans who as he put it at a Jacksonville fundraiser would campaign against him by asking, "Did I mention that he was black?" There was the "you're likable enough Hillary," line during a New Hampshire debate. But these were unscripted disgressions and could be written off as such.
Only after Mr. Obama came to office did it start to become clear that contempt would be both a style and method of his governance. Take the "mess we have inherited." line, which became the administrations ring tone for its first two years.
"I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited," said the late Richard Holbrooke-a man with memories of what Nixon inherited in Vietnam from Johnson -and about Afghanistan in February 2009. "We are cleaning up something that is-quite simply-a mess ," said the president the following month about Guantanamo. "Let's face it, we inherited a mess," said Valiere Jarrett about the economy in March 2010.
For presidential candidates to rail against incumbents from an opposing party is normal, for a president to rail for years against a predecessor of any party is crass-and something to which neither Reagan nor Lincoln, each of them inheritors of much bigger messes, stooped.
Then again, the contempt Mr. Obama felt for the Bush administration was mearly of a piece with the broader ambit of his distain. Example? Here's a quick list: The gratuitous return of the Churchill bust in Britain. The slam of the Boston police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates. The high profile rebuke of the members of the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union speech. The diplomatic snubs, of Gordan Brown, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nickolas Sarkozy. The verbal assaults on Wall Street "fat cats" who "caused the problem" of "10% unemployment." The never-ending baiting of millionaires and billionaires and jet owners and anyone else who, as Black Entertainment Television's Robert Johnson memorably put it on Sunday, "tried rich and tried poor and like rich better."
Now we come to the last few days, in which Mr. Obama first admonished the Congressional Black Caucus to "stop complainin', stop grumblin', stop cryin'," and later told a Florida TV station that America was losing its competative edge because it "had gotten a little soft." The first comment earned a rebuke from none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, while the second elicited instant comparisons to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. They tell us something about the president's political IQ. They tell us more about his world view.
What is it that Mr. Obama doesn't like about the United States-a country that sent him hurtling like an American Idol contestant from the obscurity of an Illinois Senate seat to the presidency in a mere four years?
I suspect it's the same thing that so many run-of-the-mill liberals dislike: Americans typically believe that happiness is an idividual persuit; we bridle at other people setting limits on what's "enough"; we enjoy wealth and want to keep as much of it as we can; we don't like trading in our own freedom for someone else's idea of virtue, much less a fabricated contempt of the collective good.
When a good history of anti-Americanism is someday written, it will note that it's mainly a story of disenchantment-of the obdurate and sometimes vulgar reality of the country falling short of the lover's ideal. Listening to Mr.Obama, especially now as the country turns against him, one senses in him a similiar disenchantment: America is lovable exactly in proportion to the love it gives him in return.
Hence his increasingly ill-concealed expressions of contempt. Hence the increasingly widespread couter-contempt.
Nixon was tricky. Ford was clumsy. Carter was dour. Reagan was sunny. Bush 41 was prudent. Clinton felt your pain. Bush 43 was stubborn. And Barach Obama is...
Early in America's acquaintance with the man who would become the 44th president, the word that typically sprang from media lips to describe him was "cool."
Cool as a matter of fashion sense - "Who does he think he is, George Clooney?" burbed the blogger Wonkette in April 2008. Cool as a matter of political temperment - "Maybe after eight years of George W. Bush stubborness, on the heels of eight years of Clinton emotiveness, we need to send out for ice" approved USA Today's Ruben Navarrette that October. Cool as a matter of upbringing - Indonesia, apparently, is "Where Barack learned to be cool," according to a family friend quoted in a biography of his mother.
The Obama cool made for a reassuring contrast with his campaign's warm-and-fuzzy appeals to hope, change and being the one we've been waiting for. But as the American writer Minna Antrim observed long ago,"between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt." When it comes to Mr. Obama, boy does it ever.
We caught flashes of the contempt during the campaign. There were those small-town Midwesterners who, as he put it at a San Francisco fund raiser, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them." There were those racist Republicans who as he put it at a Jacksonville fundraiser would campaign against him by asking, "Did I mention that he was black?" There was the "you're likable enough Hillary," line during a New Hampshire debate. But these were unscripted disgressions and could be written off as such.
Only after Mr. Obama came to office did it start to become clear that contempt would be both a style and method of his governance. Take the "mess we have inherited." line, which became the administrations ring tone for its first two years.
"I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited," said the late Richard Holbrooke-a man with memories of what Nixon inherited in Vietnam from Johnson -and about Afghanistan in February 2009. "We are cleaning up something that is-quite simply-a mess ," said the president the following month about Guantanamo. "Let's face it, we inherited a mess," said Valiere Jarrett about the economy in March 2010.
For presidential candidates to rail against incumbents from an opposing party is normal, for a president to rail for years against a predecessor of any party is crass-and something to which neither Reagan nor Lincoln, each of them inheritors of much bigger messes, stooped.
Then again, the contempt Mr. Obama felt for the Bush administration was mearly of a piece with the broader ambit of his distain. Example? Here's a quick list: The gratuitous return of the Churchill bust in Britain. The slam of the Boston police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates. The high profile rebuke of the members of the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union speech. The diplomatic snubs, of Gordan Brown, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nickolas Sarkozy. The verbal assaults on Wall Street "fat cats" who "caused the problem" of "10% unemployment." The never-ending baiting of millionaires and billionaires and jet owners and anyone else who, as Black Entertainment Television's Robert Johnson memorably put it on Sunday, "tried rich and tried poor and like rich better."
Now we come to the last few days, in which Mr. Obama first admonished the Congressional Black Caucus to "stop complainin', stop grumblin', stop cryin'," and later told a Florida TV station that America was losing its competative edge because it "had gotten a little soft." The first comment earned a rebuke from none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, while the second elicited instant comparisons to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. They tell us something about the president's political IQ. They tell us more about his world view.
What is it that Mr. Obama doesn't like about the United States-a country that sent him hurtling like an American Idol contestant from the obscurity of an Illinois Senate seat to the presidency in a mere four years?
I suspect it's the same thing that so many run-of-the-mill liberals dislike: Americans typically believe that happiness is an idividual persuit; we bridle at other people setting limits on what's "enough"; we enjoy wealth and want to keep as much of it as we can; we don't like trading in our own freedom for someone else's idea of virtue, much less a fabricated contempt of the collective good.
When a good history of anti-Americanism is someday written, it will note that it's mainly a story of disenchantment-of the obdurate and sometimes vulgar reality of the country falling short of the lover's ideal. Listening to Mr.Obama, especially now as the country turns against him, one senses in him a similiar disenchantment: America is lovable exactly in proportion to the love it gives him in return.
Hence his increasingly ill-concealed expressions of contempt. Hence the increasingly widespread couter-contempt.
The Dignified Statesman
By Brian McGrory
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - Patten's Berry Farm is the kind of place a Hollywood producer would want to invent if it didn't already exist, with Mrs. Patten selling corn, apples, and pumpkins on the side of a country road in this impossibly pretty town.
I happened to be chatting about the Patriots with the nice woman at the cash register on a quiet Sunday morning when a gleeming black sedan pulled into the parking lot. The front doors opened and men emerged. The back passenger door opened. When I looked up again, George H. W. Bush, the former president, sat in a wheelchair between his car and mine.
This is not unusual, seeing George Bush, the original George Bush, in this town. He was, until a couple of years ago, a fairly regular golfer at Cape Arundel, a fixture on his power boat, an occasional diner at the Hurricance in Dock Square. He orders lobster rolls at the Clam Shack and roams the aisles of the Bradbury Bros. Market. There is little in this world as authentic as George Bush's love of Kennebunkport, Maine.
As we returned to the car, the former president continued to sit, smiling at something I couldn't see. And then I did - our golden retrievers, two of them, their heads poking through the back window pleading for his attention.
"Beautiful dogs," he said. He asked their names - Baker and Walter - then smiled at the answer. I brought up Ranger, the lessor known of his two springer spaniels from his White House days, a dog he loved that died much to young. He said he has a couple of smaller dogs these days.
I didn't tell him I wrote for a newspaper, not that he would have cared, or that I covered his successor, Bill Clinton, or that I once spent the better part of a day with his son when he was governor of Texas. It wasn't worth clouding a moment this clear.
The president extended his arm to shake hands, with me and Pam, who led me on this produce run. I told him he looked good, because he did, sharp and oddly boyish, even at 87 years old in the confines of a wheelchair.
"Spiritual," he replied, whimsically. "I hope I look spiritual. I'm just coming from church."
When we were done, the former president continued on his quiet errand. I should have felt invigorated by this uniquetly American encounter. What I really felt though, was a deep sense of loss.
Five minutes with George H. W. Bush, and the problems of the present are made more vivid by the virtues of the not-so-distant-past. Say what you will, but the unimpeachable fact is that he knew how to govern. His compromise on a tax hike (which cost him his presidency), combined with the spending caps and cuts he put in place, paved the way for the roaring prosperity of the 1990's and the federal surpluses that accompanied it.
He reached across the aisle to pass the Clean Air Act of 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, two landmark accomplishments that have a profound impact on every day life. The war to oust Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait had a clear mission and a defined end.
That Washington doesn't exist any more. There are no leaders risking their careers in the name of the common good. There are precious few officials seeking compromise rather than cheap political points. There are no bridges, just roadblocks, no reasonable debates, just frantic threats. The extremes, especially on the right, have overwhelmed the middle, and the result is an economy in a government-prolonged rut.
This wasn't exactly a revelation on the side of a country road in Maine, but a moment of clarity. George H. W. Bush's presidency, maybe even Washington as a whole, was quided by decency and dignity.
You don't outgrow these virtues, you simply abandon them. And to spend even a few fleeting minutes with what we had only makes it more regrettable about what we've become.
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - Patten's Berry Farm is the kind of place a Hollywood producer would want to invent if it didn't already exist, with Mrs. Patten selling corn, apples, and pumpkins on the side of a country road in this impossibly pretty town.
I happened to be chatting about the Patriots with the nice woman at the cash register on a quiet Sunday morning when a gleeming black sedan pulled into the parking lot. The front doors opened and men emerged. The back passenger door opened. When I looked up again, George H. W. Bush, the former president, sat in a wheelchair between his car and mine.
This is not unusual, seeing George Bush, the original George Bush, in this town. He was, until a couple of years ago, a fairly regular golfer at Cape Arundel, a fixture on his power boat, an occasional diner at the Hurricance in Dock Square. He orders lobster rolls at the Clam Shack and roams the aisles of the Bradbury Bros. Market. There is little in this world as authentic as George Bush's love of Kennebunkport, Maine.
As we returned to the car, the former president continued to sit, smiling at something I couldn't see. And then I did - our golden retrievers, two of them, their heads poking through the back window pleading for his attention.
"Beautiful dogs," he said. He asked their names - Baker and Walter - then smiled at the answer. I brought up Ranger, the lessor known of his two springer spaniels from his White House days, a dog he loved that died much to young. He said he has a couple of smaller dogs these days.
I didn't tell him I wrote for a newspaper, not that he would have cared, or that I covered his successor, Bill Clinton, or that I once spent the better part of a day with his son when he was governor of Texas. It wasn't worth clouding a moment this clear.
The president extended his arm to shake hands, with me and Pam, who led me on this produce run. I told him he looked good, because he did, sharp and oddly boyish, even at 87 years old in the confines of a wheelchair.
"Spiritual," he replied, whimsically. "I hope I look spiritual. I'm just coming from church."
When we were done, the former president continued on his quiet errand. I should have felt invigorated by this uniquetly American encounter. What I really felt though, was a deep sense of loss.
Five minutes with George H. W. Bush, and the problems of the present are made more vivid by the virtues of the not-so-distant-past. Say what you will, but the unimpeachable fact is that he knew how to govern. His compromise on a tax hike (which cost him his presidency), combined with the spending caps and cuts he put in place, paved the way for the roaring prosperity of the 1990's and the federal surpluses that accompanied it.
He reached across the aisle to pass the Clean Air Act of 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, two landmark accomplishments that have a profound impact on every day life. The war to oust Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait had a clear mission and a defined end.
That Washington doesn't exist any more. There are no leaders risking their careers in the name of the common good. There are precious few officials seeking compromise rather than cheap political points. There are no bridges, just roadblocks, no reasonable debates, just frantic threats. The extremes, especially on the right, have overwhelmed the middle, and the result is an economy in a government-prolonged rut.
This wasn't exactly a revelation on the side of a country road in Maine, but a moment of clarity. George H. W. Bush's presidency, maybe even Washington as a whole, was quided by decency and dignity.
You don't outgrow these virtues, you simply abandon them. And to spend even a few fleeting minutes with what we had only makes it more regrettable about what we've become.
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