Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address

I just returned from a week in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness that my son said is my natural element. He may be right for there are places there I have known better and longer than any other places on this earth. Along the way I stopped to see two old friends who had given me my first job while I was still in college.

The conversation turned, as it often has, to those days when they bought a boy’s camp in their late twenties with no experience running a camp or even working in one. All they brought to the job was a commitment to make a difference in the lives of young men. Over the years they attracted a high-quality staff and nurtured a generation of boys who went on to become astronauts, professional athletes, university professors, artists, doctors, lawyers, researchers, technology experts, and a fair number of managers and consultants.

On the drive home I thought about their experience and its relevance to this Presidential election. No matter which candidate enters the White House next year, he will be walking into a job for which he has no prior experience. Regardless of opinions to the contrary, no one is truly prepared for the responsibilities and complexities of the modern American Presidency.

In fact, as historians have pointed out, some of those who supposedly rank among the most qualified turned out to have some of the more controversial and least successful administrations–Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, John Quincy Adams. At the same time some of the least-prepared rose to greatness or near greatness–Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy, Harry Truman.

What enabled my friends and former bosses to be so successful even though they were young and inexperienced can be summed up in one often-over-used word–character. Their camp was all about values, When I look back on it values were everywhere. The camp was like a fabric woven from them.

It was this focus on values that enabled them to make decisions about critical issues that no one–not even they could have anticipated. It also enabled the camp to have a center–what I have often referred to on this blog as a moral compass–so that each of us was on the same page and all our actions reflected those values.

Many other wilderness camps around ours had some serious incidents. One ended up closing because of a drowning. Another lost two young men on a survival outing. A third lost two counselors who stupidly took an aluminum canoe out into a thunderstorm. It’s not that we did not have accidents or everything was perfect, but because of that moral compass the accidents were not fatal or even life-threatening.

This may seem simple, but when you send groups out into the wilderness, potential accidents are everywhere. On trips I took out one boy put a knife through his hand far from a hospital. Another accidentally poured a pot of boiling water on his leg. A third managed to accidentally bump a canoe sitting at a portage landing and send it careening down a set of dangerous rapids.

Normally I don’t get too personal in these blog essays, but I relate these stories because they are metaphors for situations faced by Presidents. The observation about the primacy of character also holds true for Presidents, as confirmed by some of our most imminent Presidential and leadership scholars. James MacGregor Burns and Bernard Bass, the first who coined the term transformational leadership and the second who helped to define its qualities, both see character in the form of principles and values as the heart of transformational leadership.

For Burns, transformational leadership means leaders who focus on:

End-values such as liberty, justice, equality.

Bernard Bass notes while pseudo-transformational leaders care only about “maintaining the dependence of their followers,” the transformational leader must elevate people toward achievement by “building enthusiasm, challenge, meaning.” For Bass,

Authentic transformational leaders, who may have just as much need for power as pseudo-transformational leaders, channel the need in socially constructive ways into the service of others.

The Counterrevolution already seems to have honed in on what will be the theme for their campaign against Barack Obama. Borrowing from Hillary Clinton, they will seek to attack his youth, his inexperience, even his naive views of policy and human nature in a campaign whose template could be 1960. This theme emerged during the recent Obama world tour, most notably in John McCain’s remarks about Obama’s Berlin speech, which by all accounts from personal sources in Germany was well-received.

Whether Barack Obama has the character it takes to become President is still an open question as it also is with McCain.  But I can predict this campaign will revolve around it, in part because the incumbent has exhibited a considerable lack of it.

Looking back on the lives of Lincoln or Kennedy, hindsight now reveals flashes of character in their pre-Presidential years, but at the time those seemed less evident than they do through the lens of hindsight.

What is notable about both is that in the course of the campaign each delivered a speech or speeches that did provide those clues. Kennedy’s Houston Ministerial Association speech still stands as one of the definitive statements of church-state relations in American history. Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address defined his campaign. As one New York writer who was there observed:

No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.

Another eyewitness described the speech:

When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall, - oh, how tall! and so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man.”

Yet when Lincoln began speaking:

His face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.

Since I have written several times about Kennedy’s speech, I will focus on Lincoln’s.  As Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon has observed Lincoln constructed the speech like a lawyer’s brief. Its intent was to outline a Constitutional and moral argument against the most divisive issue of those times–slavery.

Today when politicians seek to obfuscate and triangulate any controversial issue it is noteworthy that Lincoln should take on the major issue dividing Americans and not merely discuss it, but take a clear position on it, a position that defined the differences between the two parties. One paragraph in particular leaps from that speech with relevance even for today’s issues, for having framed his arguments around the opinions of the signers of the Constitution, Lincoln then had to deal with the issue of how rigidly we should follow them. His entire speech depended on how well he walked that perennial American tightrope between what high school history classes call “strict” and “loose” construction.

Here is Lincoln’s answer:

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

Here in a single paragraph is exactly what Burns and Bass spoke about it. It is a statement of values, but particularly about the values that would govern Lincoln’s Administration.

Garry Wills has persuasively argued that the speech Obama gave on race deserves to be regarded as a modern Cooper Union speech, that Obama has already given his speech on values, but I think a closer parallel might be the 1932 election in which Franklin Roosevelt delivered the speech that defined his administration and inspired one of the great anthems of the Depression, only to then fall back into giving relatively safe speeches.

FDR’s “Forgotten Man” speech still stands as one of the great campaign speeches in history, yet many Americans and even the reporters covering the election were beginning to wonder if “Forgotten Man” represented only a rhetorical flourish and not a deep commitment to values. To use the language of Burns and Bass was it merely a transactional speech given for a specific tactical purpose and not a transformative one designed to move a nation.

I believe Obama is now in a similar situation. Blogdom is full of rants about how he has moved the “the center” [whatever that is] and is not speaking for bloggers’ pet causes. People are openly wondering if Obama is not an incarnation of john Kerry and that we Democrats face yet another election in which we hold our noses and vote for a candidate we fear will not win and worry that if he does win will prove, as Bill Clinton did, merely a variation on GOP strategy.

In 1932 reporters finally became so frustrated with FDR’s timid speeches that during some informal banter at Warm Springs reporters openly
teased him about his insipid campaign speeches since “Forgotten Man.” FDR playfully challenged the writers, saying,

Well if you boys don’t like my speeches, why don’t you take a hand in drafting one yourselves?

They took up his offer–something that today would spark a congressional investigation–producing the Oglethorpe University Commencement Address of May 22, 1932. Oglethorpe is significant in that it did not merely reaffirm what FDR had said in “Forgotten Man” it also laid out some of the main principles of what would become the New Deal.

Roosevelt advocated “a wider, more equitable distribution of the national income” and stated, “the reward for a day’s work will have to be greater than it has been, and the reward to capital . . . will have to be less.” The speech ends by proposing the experimentation that would become the hallmark of the New Deal:

This country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold persistent experimentation. It is common sense to
take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

While “Forgotten Man” came to define Roosevelt’s candidacy and become synonymous with the New Deal, Oglethorpe is important because it came at a time when people were wondering whether FDR really believed the values he had so forcefully and eloquently articulated in “Forgotten Man.” Barack Obama may have given a great speech in his address on race, but currently his campaign seems to have lost its moral compass.

Like FDR, Obama will need to reaffirm his values if he wants to be President, because the Republican Counterrevolution is ready to hit him with everything they have as Election Day draws closer. In these days where every word in a campaign speech is tested ahead of time with focus groups, it is easy to become cynical about the role of rhetoric in a campaign and whether it can provide a clue to those qualities Burns and Bass outlined.

Roosevelt, Lincoln and Kennedy proved they can. The most obvious occasions for for Obama and McCain will be the speeches delivered to their respective conventions. Those speeches should provide us a clue as to whether either of them has the potential to become the transformational leader our times demand at the White House.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, America, american presidency, astronauts, Barack Obama, Berlin, Bernard Bass, Bill Clinton, boundary waters canoe area wilderness, character, Constitution, cooper union, Democrats, election, equality, FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, Garry Wills, Germany, GOP, Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, Hillary Clinton, inexperienced, James MacGregor Burns, John Kennedy, John Kerry, john mccain, John Quincy Adams, justice, leadership, natural element, New York, principle, rhetoric, slavery, technology experts, the Constitution, transformational, transformational leadership, William Herndon, william howard taft, Woodrow Wilson
Tagged with: Abraham Lincoln • America • american presidency • astronauts • Barack Obama • Berlin • Bernard Bass • Bill Clinton • boundary waters canoe area wilderness • character • Constitution • cooper union • Democrats • election • equality • FDR • Franklin Roosevelt • Garry Wills • Germany • GOP • Harry Truman • Herbert Hoover • Hillary Clinton • inexperienced • James MacGregor Burns • John Kennedy • John Kerry • john mccain • John Quincy Adams • justice • leadership • natural element • New York • principle • rhetoric • slavery • technology experts • the Constitution • transformational • transformational leadership • William Herndon • william howard taft • Woodrow Wilson

Alexis de Tocqueville

The recently passed and about-to-be-signed housing bill is a classic example of why people have become cynical about American politics. It also is a prime exhibit in why the Democratic Party has lost its soul and what the next President faces in a country that is verging on becoming ungovernable. H.R. 3221, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 may go down in history as a piece of legislation that does almost everything wrong and very little right.

The latter is a pretty strong charge, but the seriousness of this issue and the way in which both parties have chosen to deal with it does not bode well for their abilities to pull this nation out of a crisis that is spiraling out of control. Last January when I predicted the housing crisis and its ripples through the economy would be the major issue of the fall election, I did not expect to see us facing the possibility of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needing what will be the largest bailout in American history.

Alexis de Tocqueville has become “in” again with his name popping up in editorial columns and political commentary. I must admit I have never been a hard-core de Tocqueville fan. His tome and its writing have always seemed way to heavy and in places exhibited the kind of noble savage attitude that many Europeans hold about America and Americans. Maybe that’s why the French have thought Jerry Lewis a cinematic genius. But one reason de Tocqueville may be the political philosopher of the hour is that he saw American democracy as vulnerable to fragmentation which could cause it to crumble as much from within as from the outside.

For example, there is this oft-quoted passage:

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

De Tocqueville would readily understand the Christmas tree bill that emerged from Congress this past week. Any Congressional analyst worth the title knows when a 600-plus page bill emerges to deal with a single problem, it will be yet another case where the shotgun approach which has become politics as usual inside the Beltway misses the target but scatters pork all over every village and hamlet in America.

We can all cite recent examples of which the famous Alaska “Bridge to Nowhere” may be the most notorious, but you could very well nickname this legislation “The Bill to Nowhere.” In this election year it appears every member of Congress managed to bring home some bacon for the home folks along with supposedly solving the most serious American economic crisis since the Great Depression. The clause that several sources have zeroed in on reads as follows in the actual bill [NOTE AGAIN THIS SITE GIVES YOU THE ACTUAL SOURCE NOT SOME SECONDARY CUT AND PASTE JOB]:

(4) DEFINITIONS- For purposes of this subsection–
(A) APPLICABLE PARTNERSHIP- The term `applicable partnership’ means a domestic partnership that–
(i) was formed effective on August 3, 2007, and
(ii) will produce in excess of 675,000 automobiles during the period beginning on January 1, 2008, and ending on June 30, 2008.

The New York Times describes this as:

A provision tailored narrowly for Chrysler to ensure that it can benefit from a corporate tax incentive even though the company is now structured as a partnership not a corporation.

I am glad the Times and others are there to point this out because anyone trying to navigate this labyrinth of a bill would not have a clue as to what the actual bill language meant. That it should be hidden in such a fashion shows why so many people have become cynical about their government–especially because this little “trick” was so easily found out. Who do these people in Congress think we are?

But the bigger question is what is a favor to Chrysler doing in a bill designed to solve the foreclosure crisis? For the answer to that you might ask Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, whose names pops up as a possible Vice Presidential running mate. This bill is full of weird provisions like that, provisions that make you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right that we have become a government of lobbyists and not of popular representation. I shudder to think what that old warrior, William Jennings Bryan would make of what has become of our government.

As de Tocqueville would point out the logic of this bill is about rescuing the individual incumbent, which brings us to the deeper meanings of this wrong-headed and preposterous piece of legislation. This bill stands as exhibit A of why political parties are losing their power and why neither party6 has succeeded in pledges to trim the fat from the pork. One of the most important and overlooked trends of our time is about the loss of party discipline in the face of a democracy in which incumbency is increasingly becoming America’s biggest nightmare.

The Center for Voting and Democracy has issued a series of reports over the years about how uncompetitive our elections have become. Their 2007 “Dubious Democracy Report” makes for sober reading. The Center found that what they term the “landslide index,” which measures the percentage of races where incumbents won by a margin of 20% or more, has increased to the point of where 73.1% of congressional races fall into this category. Forty Congressional seats remain competitive, while 375 are not. A total of 150 seats are counted as uncompetitive, meaning their margin of victory is 40% or more! Two hundred and fifty-seven seats are regarded as “untouchable.”

With incumbents so firmly entrenched, they owe their parties virtually nothing. The last speakers who tried to bring unity and discipline to their party–Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay–ended up walking down the capitol steps with their tails between their legs.

Nancy Pelosi’s style could well signal the trend of the future. A politician who built her career on raising large sums of money, Pelosi has become one of the foremost practitioners of a style of governing that cares little about philosophy or consensus but instead operates under the crude strategy of giving something to everyone in order to get legislation passed. The legislation that emerges from such a strategy has no coherent center, no systematic approach, no sense of purpose. What it does have is something for Representative A and something for Representative B.

Obviously this kind of horse-trading has characterized Congress since representatives rode to sessions behind horses, but in the past much of the trading was of a different order: I’ll trade my horse for your horse. But Pelosi has mastered the art of putting all the horses together in monster bills thicker than a phone book, so that you have to navigate the legalese to find the agreements.

The average citizen has neither the time nor the inclination to do this, so relies on those partners in this collusion, the media, to do it for them. The media, of course, do about as good a job of guarding against excess as a binge drinker does guarding a liquor cabinet. The New York Times story on the housing bill represents a classic example of this. First, it gives no direct links to the bill. It does not even give the bill number. Then in the some-of-this-is-good and some-of-this-is-not style of the current media it leaves you without any sense of the heart of the legislation.

With the Pelosi style of governing now standard procedure for both parties, the incoming President–no matter which party he represents–will find it difficult to govern. With over 70% of all those elected owing nothing to either the President or the Party, there is little leverage that can be applied. Every new administration entering 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has pledged to clean up the mess, but recent administrations have accomplished little.

Unfortunately this also involves the Democratic Party. But given the figures in the “Dubious Democracy” report and the six-hundred page housing bill, you begin to wonder if there really is a Democratic Party or rather a loose confederation that more and more is coming to resemble one of those European parties. For example you have the Blue Dogs, forty-some so-called Democrats who vote a great deal with the Republicans and whose first loyalty is to each other not the larger party.

Then you have the Democratic Leadership Council of Bill and Hillary Clinton and others which also operates as a quasi-independent force. Again as with the Blue Dogs their first loyalty is to their faction not to the party.

Finally there are all the interest groups that right now side with the Democrats, but whose members impose litmus tests on candidates that at times put them at odds with their party.

If asked to name what the Democrats stand for right now, my guess is most Party members could not. And so you get legislation like the Housing Bill. The Republicans used to be able to quote Ronald Reagan about less government and less taxes, but this bill, supported by Republicans and about to be signed by a Republican President makes that also seem dubious.

In the end the Housing Bill is about a lack of moral courage and imagination. It tries to solve a crisis the easiest way possible, by giving something to everyone and thereby hurting no one. Curiously the government is behaving not unlike its big corporations and its credit-card-driven consumers: just charge it and we’ll pay it off later.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates:

Enacting [the Housing} proposal would increase direct spending by $25 billion over the 2009-2018 period.

It also states:

That estimate reflects a greater than 50 percent chance that the government would provide no financial assistance to the GSEs over the next 17 months, and nearly a 5 percent chance that such assistance would need to cover as-yet unrecognized losses greater than
$100 billion.

I’m not sure I like the notion of my government gambling with 50-50 odds or the idea that there is 5% chance this bill could end up costing $100 billion. If Barack Obama wins the White House and the Democrats retain or increase their control of Congress they will rue the day they made this Devil’s Bargain. To quote de Tocqueville:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Tags: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, alexis de tocqueville, American democracy, American history, american politics, bailout, Barack Obama, christmas tree, Chrysler, cinematic genius, Clinton, Congress, de Tocqueville, Debbie Stabenow, DeLay, Democrats, depression, economic crisis, editorial columns, Europe, faction, fall election, fannie mae and freddie mac, Gingrich, Great Depression, jerry lewis, landslide, media, Michigan, money, Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi, political commentary, political philosopher, Presidential, Reagan, Republicans, ripples, solitude, william jennings bryan
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Economic and Social justice is the one issue everyone is aware of and no one wants to seriously address. It’s like a particularly obnoxious mess in the corner of the room that has grown to the point where the stench is overwhelming and the looks are enough to make you puke, so you cover up the smell with deodorants and try to hide the mess behind the furniture because it’s easier to cover it up than to deal with it.

One reason for this is that everyone admits clearly that cleaning up the mess will not be easy; It will require hard work and sacrifices if it is to be dealt with in a suitable fashion. The problem is that like a household mess, you slowly get used to it; people even find it hard to remember when it wasn’t there. I remember once entering a neighbor’s house occupied by two small, obnoxious dogs who were not housebroken. No need to describe the situation further, I’m sure you get some idea of what that house was like. But the people who lived there did not seem to mind a situation that would have had the rest of us running for the doors or doing something about those dogs.

For economic and social justice the equivalent of those dogs is the t-word–taxes. The GOP Counterrevolution’s position on this is clear since Arthur Laffer drew a curve on a napkin for none other than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld: the progressive income tax is a bad idea that discourages innovation by not allowing the rich to partake of the fruit of their stock manipulations. Under the guise of what the present President’s father once termed “voodoo economics,” the Counterrevolution has all but made it gospel–maybe even the twelfth commandment–that we need to allow the rich to keep their money because they will spend it in ways that benefit us all by stimulating the economy.

My name for this is economic masturbation, for the rich get to engage in the equivalent of self-gratification with an occasional blow job thrown in. The somewhat salacious sex metaphor is apt, because these people view economics in the same self-centered way that others in this culture view sex. There is no concept of mutual sharing, not even a pretense of love or empathy with someone else, even if only for a one-night stand.

I doubt that there are few Americans left who do not remain unaware that the gap between rich and poor is now at its widest since the early years of the twentieth century or that the super rich now control as high a percentage of the nation’s wealth as the tycoons of the Gilded Age. Economists and political scientists have written about our growing inequality for over a decade. A few of them have even hit the best-seller lists.

Among researchers the data collected by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Picketty is perhaps the most depressing and important. What they found is best explained in their letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Our work has shown the top 1% income share has increased dramatically in recent decades and has reached levels which had not been seen since before World War II and even since before the Great Depression when including capital gains. The reduction in taxes at the top since 2001 has mechanically exacerbated the discrepancy in disposable income between the rich and the rest of us. Thus, it is obvious that the progressive income tax should be the central element of the debate when thinking about what to do about the increase in inequality. Even conservatives like Alan Reynolds would agree and that is why they prefer to dismiss the facts about growing income inequality rather than face the debate on income tax progressivity at a time of growing economic disparity.

In addition a variety of research has confirmed the characteristics of this inequality, of which the most significant is a report by a distinguished panel of the American Political Science Association. In 2004, the APSA found:

Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist. Progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some areas reversed.

The APSA task force pointed out four years ago:

Government is expected to help insure equal opportunity for all, not tilt toward those who already have wealth and power.

Where the Democratic Party has been as most of this has taken place is out to lunch. There has also been an explicit embracing of the pro-business philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Council.

If all this largess went to genuine innovators who promised to remake this nation rather than to the Enrons of this world, that would be one thing. No matter what you think of Carnegie, Edison, Ford, Rockefeller you can at least acknowledge these tycoons did come by their wealth somewhat honestly through innovations that made industrial America the envy of the world. Then they gave back to the country through the foundations that still bear their names and play major roles in American society.

Yet there appears to be a pact of silence not to discuss America’s growing inequality during this election season. Not a single Democratic Presidential debate featured even one question about economic inequality, There were plenty of questions about the Reverend Wright and Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire confessional, but nothing about this nation’s growing inequality. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain have mentioned the issue. Maybe their policy advisors don’t get it or their pollsters tell them the issue has no traction.

In past times of national crisis–especially war time–Democratic Presidents have not hesitated to call on ALL Americans to sacrifice for the common good. But this crisis is different in that the party of Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman has not issued any ringing cries for sharing the burdens of our longest war and our increasingly problematical economy.

The Democratic Party, whose very heart and soul once lay in its commitment to equity and those whom Franklin Roosevelt termed the “forgotten man” has lost its moral compass and instead triangulates by a kind of political dead reckoning that calculates the position of the Counterrevolution and then move a millimeter towards that mythical American “center.” The most depressing part of this disowning of the party’s heritage is that a goodly number of Democrats have become tacit if not open converts to the Counterrevolution (i.e. the notorious Blue Dogs). Their banner is no longer the ringing phrases of FDR or Woodrow Wilson, but Arthur Laffer’s napkin.

We can talk about the importance of a Democratic victory in November for the Supreme Court, hoping we will see no more Scalias, but if a Democratic victory means only more of the same then it will prove a hollow victory. A Barack Obama Administration will obviously not be a McCain Administration, but without a platform that revives the Party’s commitment to equality an Obama Administration and the Democratic Party will continue to wander aimlessly.

So if this platform is to mean anything, I would recommend each committee member take a short course in American history and read four speeches that defined the American Century: Bryan’s “Cross of Gold, Wilson First Inaugural, FDR’s “Forgotten Man,” and Harry Truman’s Kiel Auditorium speech. In those words they will find what the Democratic Party once stood for, in those words they will find the Party’s lost moral compass, in those words they will find what made the American Century or what Henry Wallace defined as the “Century of the Common Man.”:

Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say that the century on which we are entering - The century which will come out of this war - can be and must be the century of the common man.

Wallace’s speech would inspire one of the most important and recognizable works of the American Century, Aaron Copland’s, “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Copland explained:

It was the common man, who, after all, was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army.

The centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s lost soul lies in two actions the Party assented to and in essence sold its soul for what Party officals thought would be the votes of the American people: tax cuts and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act.

Taxes and financial reform in the form of the mortgage crisis will be the main issues of this campaign. Already the Counterrevolution is dusting off the old rhetoric even as it rehearses over and over again the punch line of “tax and spend.”  I predict you will see more ads about the Democrats raising your taxes or spending too much of “your” money than any human should be asked to bear. Karl Rove is again back at the center of this campaign while somehow managing to con his way onto Faux News where he will espouse his belief that America must return to the days of William McKinley.

That the chief strategist for the Counterrevolution should evoke not Reagan or Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt, but the mediocre William McKinley, he of the “front-porch campaign,” shows how absurd American politics has become. That he should do so openly and have no Democrat attack him for it is a national disgrace.

The pundits do have one thing right: this election represents a national watershed. For all Barack Obama’s rhetoric about change, this election hinges not on change but on the lack of it. In the Democratic Platform we will learn whether the Party as we know it is dead or still has a heartbeat.

Will it abandon the Republican Lite, the me-too philosophy it has adhered to for a decade, a philosophy that has cost it the last two Presidential elections? Will the gains of 2006 seem an aberration caused by the Iraq War? As Harry Truman used to say, “if the choice is between a Republican and a Republican, they will take the real Republican every time.”

As FDR, Wilson and Truman all recognized, times of crisis and critical historical turning points call for bold solutions. Thus far the Democratic Party has seemed far from bold. It has behaved like a team protecting a big lead in the final stages of the game. So how can the Democratic Platform recover its Party’s lost moral compass?

Above all, it needs to stand unequivocally for equity. That means framing this election as a battle between William McKinley and FDR, between those who believe in a Social Darwinist “survival of the fittest” ideology and those who believe in a level playing field.

As FDR would recognize, like the Great Depression the current crisis will require a wide degree of experimentation to resolve it as it did in the early days of the New Deal. What is more important is what principles guide that experimentation.

In the case of the 2008 Democratic Platform, equity is one area where specific proposals will not matter. In fact I will make another prediction–Karl Rove would love to lure the Democrats down to the proposal level because his tactic all along has been to let the Democrats propose program after program and then take the debate to the level of principles. “Tax and spend” works because no matter what programs the Democrats throw out there, the GOP can evoke its shopworn mantra that represents a classic example of the old truism that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it.

The Democrats and Barack Obama can end run Karl Rove by making the campaign a battle of philosophies not a battle for proposals. John Kerry tried the proposal route and lost. He had a phone book-thick list of proposals and no one read it. He would refer to the phone book and his web site constantly in the debates. American did not want a phone book then and they don’t want a phone book now. They yearn for principles.

About the time the leaves start falling, this country will see the true impact of the mortgage crisis. Disasters will be falling all around us like the leaves from the trees.

A platform of proposals written in August is likely to be out of date by October, but one centered around principles will not. The American people want to know what will guide their President as he deals with the next surprise the mess throws up. They want to know what moral compass he will use to lead us out of the morass.

Now is the time for the Democratic Party to recover and reaffirm its lost moral compass. Otherwise a year from now we may be complaining about President McCain’s latest blunder.

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A case is winding its way to an inevitable date with the United States Supreme Court, a date, which if prior decisions of this Court are any indication, could end the idea of a truly democratic media that has served as a cornerstone of this country.

The case involves Sinclair Broadcasting, a name that people may recognize from the 2004 campaign, when Sinclair tried to air what amounted to a hatchet job pseudo-”documentary” on John Kerry. Only a nationwide outcry spared Kerry from having Sinclair air something that would have made the Swift Boat ads seem like a minor irritation.

With his usual astuteness, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps identified the danger in Sinclair’s action:

It is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology.

If you think the Faux Network is a national disgrace and a threat to the venerable traditions of American journalism, Faux has nothing on  Sinclair. Last year the FCC fined Sinclair a slap-on-the-wrist $36,000 for airing programs the featured “I’m only in it for the money” “journalist Armstrong Williams, who had been paid by the Bush Department of Education to hustle No Child Left Behind.

Sinclair is heavily aligned with Faux, with many of its stations serving as Fox affiliates. Over one-third of Sinclair’s stations are direct Faux affiliates, including a large station in Baltimore which already has one Fox affiliate. Another 30% are affiliated with MyNetwork TV, which is owned by Fox Broadcasting Company, a division of Fox News. In other words, almost two-thirds of all Sinclair stations are Fox stations.

This is why the lawsuit is so important. For some years now, Sinclair has been pressuring the FCC to relax its media ownership rules to allow companies like Sinclair to own multiple TV stations in a local market.  Sinclair has also fought many of the big cable giants in attempts to strong arm them into more favorable retransmission agreements.

The most recent Sinclair case dates back to 2002 when the company first challenged the FCC rule allowing ownership of two TV stations in a market only if at least eight independent voices remain. That issue was temporarily put on hold when several years ago, when then FCC Chair Michael Powell proposed to approve an unprecedented level of media concentration.

Key aspects of the FCC’s decision included increasing the 35% limit for TV ownership to 45%, meaning a single company could control almost half of all broadcasting stations and, more important, two companies could control 90%. It also raised the caps on how many local stations could be controlled by a single company and widened the ability of companies to engage in cross-media ownership within a single market.

Commissioner Copps stated the essential case for those who objected:

At issue is whether a few corporations will be ceded enhanced gatekeeper control over the civil dialogue of our country; more content control over our music, entertainment and information; and veto power over the majority of what our families watch, hear and read…Why does any company need to control three television stations in any city? [My underline]…Where are the blessings of localism, diversity and competition here? I see centralization, not localism; I see uniformity, not diversity; I see monopoly and oligopoly, not competition.

The FCC’s ruling in favor of the Powell proposal started a firestorm of protest across the country from both the left and right. Calling the decision “Floodgate,” William Safire wrote:

A single media giant, up to now allowed to own television stations reaching slightly more than a third of the nation’s viewers, will soon - thanks to Floodgate - be able to reach nearly half, a giants step toward 100% ‘penetration.

It did not take long for Congress to take action after being inundated with what is probably the largest public protest in the past few years.  Even though the Republicans controlled the House at that time, the pressure was too great even for them to resist. The final vote of 400-21 stunned everyone with its strong bipartisan support.

Last December the FCC finally got around to reaffirming the old media ownership rule that allows ownership of two TV stations in a market only if at least eight independent voices remain (the so-called eight-voices test).  Whereupon Sinclair again filed suit. Two weeks ago Sinclair was told the case would have to be taken up by the Ninth Circuit in Washington, D.C. where most FCC-related cases are handled. This in turn has precipitated a new round of “court shopping” by both Sinclair and forces who want to keep the December FCC decision.

It is doubtful that the case will reach the Supreme Court for at least a year, meaning that the new President could well have an impact on it if he gets to appoint any new justices early in his term.

Of the issues that will shape the Democratic Party Platform probably none is more important and more ignored than media fairness. If education lies at the heart of our democracy as Thomas Jefferson believed and voting rights is a fundamental issue in desperate need of a twenty-first century overhaul, media fairness is the issue that threatens to render the other two meaningless, for without a free and diverse media our citizens will face the equivalent of Big Brother or the ubiquitous televisions of Fahrenheit 451, a media under the control of a few who view their mission as propagandizing America.

If Ayatollah Academies represent the intent of the Counterrevolution’s education policy, then the Ayatollah media is the inevitable result of their media policy, for the GOP favors a degree of media concentration for this country that would forever end the Constitution’s vision of a free press.

According to its own web site, Sinclair’s television stations reach 22% of all American households in 22 states. According to which source you believe, the company is either the largest or second largest owner of television stations in the United States. Its degree of control has been compared to Clear Channel’s domination of the radio market.  If you couple this with Sinclair’s “alliance” with Faux News, you have a scenario in which the largest owner of television stations in this country airs the biased propaganda of the nation’s first overtly political network.

Meanwhile there lurks the issue of the Democratic Party Platform. On the DNC National web site, media fairness rates barely a mention. If the Platform follows a similar policy of benign neglect along with what has been the current Democratic acquiescence to the Counterrevolution, the idea of an independent media could suffer a severe if not fatal blow.

Let us hope Barack Obama does nor make the same mistake as the Democratic Party. Media fairness needs to be made a central part of the platform for the same reason education and voting rights do–without them we do not have a democracy. Given the unprecedented protest to the Powell decision media fairness could also be a winning issue for the Party. If played right  It could well be the sleeper issue of this election.

The platform needs to above all make clear its belief in the principle of media fairness. It needs to do this in a bold, unequivocal fashion just as with vouchers. The American people have already become cynical about the media, so this will resonate loudly with them and clearly define the differences between the two parties.

In fact if Barack Obama would run on the issue of media fairness alone, he would have a fair chance of occupying the White House a year from now. As the public response to Powell’s proposal indicated, this is one issue all Americans representing a broad spectrum of political beliefs have united around. When Phyllis Schlafly and the National Organization for Women are on the same side of an issue, you know something extraordinary faces this country.

Beyond affirming the principle of media fairness, the platform should include the following:

1) Forbid cross media ownership period.

2) Call for more rigorous adherence to the FCC’s rules on media ownership.

3) Support provisions that will widen media ownership by people of color which has declined during the Bush years.

4) Bring back the Fairness Doctrine, then,

5) Prosecute Faux News.

Tags: America, american journalism, American people, Ayatollah Academies, Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, cornerstone, counterrevolution, democracy, democratic media, Democratic Party, democratic party platform, DNC, education, education policy, fahrenheit 451, fairness, fairness doctrine, FCC, fundamental issue, GOP, hatchet job, inevitable result, John Kerry, media concentration, media fairness, Michael Powell, minor irritation, Obama, Phyllis Schlafly, principle, Sinclair, sinclair broadcasting, swift boat ads, the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, United States, united states supreme court, venerable traditions, voting rights
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