Personal Aside: Most Commentators Agree—Griswold Opened the Door to Legalized Abortion…Defining Moment of the `60s No. 3—the Tet Offensive.

Griswold.

All of the commentators I read before posting this agree that “Griswold v. Connecticut” in 1965 was the open sesame that swung the door ajar to legalized abortion later in “Roe v. Wade.” I am particularly indebted to Matt Nelson for his views basis his constitutional law studies and Frank Nofsinger who comes “right on” with the same judgment. With this decision the Supreme Court ruled that sexual morals and their relation to family life are matters of personal taste and choice in which the state has no interest. The decision was, as reader Frank Nofsinger relates, like turning on a faucet.

There was a time when the Supreme Court defended the concept of the family in Judeo-Christian terms on the basis that the foundation of the republic assumed as much. Ergo: In 1895 Justice Joseph P. Bradley condemned polygamy as “contrary to the spirit of Christianity and the civilization Christianity produced in the Western World.” The statement was accepted as part of the fiber of jurisprudential review.

But following “Griswold,” in “Eisenstadt v. Baird” in 1972 the Court reversed the Massachusetts conviction of William Baird for distributing contraceptives to unmarried persons, holding that “whatever the rights of the individual to contraceptives may be, the rights must be the same for the unmarried and married alike.” The marital couple “is not an independent entity with a mind and heart of its own but an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup.”

It added “If the right of privacy means anything”—enumerating the “right” that Justice Douglas had discovered rummaging around the penumbras and emanations—“it is the right of the individual married or single to be free of unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Thus the Court treated marriage as a mere personal contract with the family no longer the natural, primary cell of human society that precedent Supreme Courts did. Before “Griswold” but waiting in the wings was a discovery by the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology at Clark University in Massachusetts that helped develop the contraceptive pill in 1956. The contraceptive pill must rank with the splitting of the atom which ultimately aided the Supreme Court to assume the role of custodian of life, ruling in “Roe” in 1973 that whatever a judicial majority agrees on binds the nation meaning that no one can say what is unjust because all is changing depending on the nose-counting of a Supreme Court majority.

Congratulations all. We now move to

Defining Moment of the `60s No. 3: the Tet Offensive.

Popular and Media Conclusion: Because America was obsessed with communism anent “the domino effect,” , first the Kennedy and then the Johnson administration blundered into a quagmire in the jungles of Vietnam which led to (a) the destruction of troop morale, (b) widespread drug abuse among the troops, (c) atrocities like the My Lai murders and (d) a generation of emotionally and psychologically scarred veterans. Also as an added fillip, the failure of America in Vietnam produced salutary things such as the reunification of Vietnam, a desirable thing. Such massacres that occurred after South Vietnam’s fall and in Cambodia was America’s fault for going there in the first place.

The Tet offensive of January, 1968 was a cardinal event because our defeat despite all we could do convinced the media and particularly CBS’s Walter Cronkite that we should pull out. Two major reporters for “The New York Times,” David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, led the outcry which influenced Cronkite. When Halberstam died earlier this year in an automobile crash, he was celebrated as a world famous journalist by the media with no mention that Tet was anything more than a disaster for the United States.

Eugene McCarthy who was running for president while losing to Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire nevertheless convinced Johnson and many others that the U. S. was drastically wrong to fight against an indigenously supported native civil war and dishonored the country with McCarthy being the first presidential candidate to propose the idea that it would not be bad if the United States were to lose the war to teach it a lesson. This was the same Eugene McCarthy who in trying to convince Johnson to name him as vice presidential nominee in 1964 pledged to defend the war. Spurned, he turned against Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, the war and which led ultimately to his estrangement from his wife, his Catholic heritage and served to render him a nihilist while in some liberal circles he has been canonized a hero.

The Vietnam experience has long been cited by those who oppose the Iraq War.

Your assignment: Tell us if the above assessment is right and has continued unchanged in recent history.

Flashback: With a Verve that Would Have Dismayed Other Men, Hubert Goes Back to the Senate a 4th Term Winner and Announces He Will Run for Majority Leader Against West Virginia’s Robert Byrd. But Not So Fast.

[Fifty plus years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].

Fighting for His Life.

After the surgery that removed his bladder, Hubert Humphrey recovered quickly…noticeably thinner with his hair now white (he later re-dyed it to the old black and reddish hue) and propelled by his stunning fourth term election to the Senate was well on the road to winning his old prestige as a policy-maker. He called a victory news conference and briskly announced that he would run for the post of majority leader against West Virginia’s Robert Byrd. The betting was that Hubert would win, too, since Byrd’s old KKK membership was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Then he and Muriel went on a Caneel Bay vacation.

But there he came down with a case of the flu that convinced him what doctors had difficulty communicating—that his health was frail. Reluctantly when the Senate convened in January, 1977 he telephoned Byrd and said that he was giving up the effort and wished him well.

His Democratic colleagues were so touched—and worried for him—that they voted a new post for him to take, deputy pro tem of the Senate which added $8,000 to his $60,000 salary (raises always meant much to Hubert), a limousine and a Capitol office. Because it returned him to the Senate leadership, it meant that he could…hurrah!...go to the White House with the rest of the leaders for breakfast there as in the old days.

Things looked good for a time. Then he called his doctor, Edward Berman from Minnesota and said he was doubling up with stomach cramps. Sent to the hospital it was determined he now had intestinal blockage. He was operated on at the University of Minnesota medical center in Minneapolis. He now had to have a second colostomy—one of stool, one of urine.

Amazingly, he was on his feet the next day—but Dr. Berman came in with bad news: the abdominal tumor they removed had spread through his entire pelvis. The doctors told him “terminal.” And everyone knew the peppery Hubert Humphrey was dying. When he emerged from the hospital he was so gaunt one newspaper unkindly described him as nothing more than “a skull on a stick.” But a week later he walked onto the stage to a standing ovation at the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention. He pounded the rostrum and unfurled a lengthy—46 minutes—speech outlining goals for America’s cities. Richard Nixon called him to cheer him up and promised to come and see him in Washington. On October 3, President Carter stopped in Minnesota to pick him up and give him a ride to Washington on “Air Force One.”

Time was running short. Humphrey was asked to do something no other U.S. lawmaker had done in the history of the republic—address a joint meeting of House and Senate. The members were sobered at his appearance but he cheered them up, saying one thing was pleasant. He had lost his hair through the chemo and when it stopped, new hair came in and it was curly! The audience laughed through their tears. He attended the dedication of a new Health, Education and Welfare building that was suddenly named for him.

Later he was guest of honor at a fund-raiser in Washington for a projected Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to be built at the University of Minnesota. I attended. His last words to me whispered from the dais: “Do you still hear from Gene?” I got the unmistakable feeling that McCarthy had not called him—but Richard Nixon did, several times.

Then, finally, President Carter invited him to Camp David which was a fresh experience. In all his years as vice president he was never invited to go there by President Johnson.

Gone to Another Meeting.

It was all but over. He flew back to Minnesota in the company of Sen. Mondale. His pain was growing more intense. When they used pain-killer to dull it, he lapsed into a coma. He died at 7:15 p.m. on January 13, 1978. He was sixty-six. Someone who knew him well said that the epitaph on his tombstone should read “Gone to another meeting.” He had issued orders to be buried right away and that whatever ceremony would take place would be without his body present, as a “celebration.” But his family and the White House ruled otherwise. His body was flown to Washington where it lay in the Capitol rotunda. Then back to Minnesota where it lay in state in the Capitol at St. Paul where 40,000 lined up outside on a terribly cold Minnesota winter day to pay their respects.

The funeral was at House of Hope Presbyterian church in St. Paul. President Carter spoke in tribute and three TV networks covered it. But the topper was a rip-roaring eulogy by Hubert’s favorite preacher, the Rev. Robert Schuller, TV minister and proprietor of the “Crystal Cathedral” in California. Three-thousand people in the church listened to Schuller for seemingly hours. When he finished it was getting dark.

And so Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr., an evangelist himself, was buried in the dark at Minneapolis’ Lakewood cemetery. A great man? I have my doubts but a good one.

More about his legacy next time.

Personal Aside: Defining Moments of the `60s: No. 1: The Kennedy Assassination….The `60s Defining Moment No. 2.

No. 1: The JFK Assassination.

The responses to “`60s Defining Moment I,” the Kennedy Assassination, were all so good I decided to forego giving them grades because all of them were well-written and hugely appealed to the historian in me. Frank Nofsinger’s contribution told how he was in Dallas and watched the Kennedy procession sweep by on the street: priceless anecdote. Lovie’s Leather hit the nail on the head, I think, in pointing out that Oswald was a Communist, had made a trip to the USSR as a defector et al. This is the kernel of truth modern media like to sweep under the rug.

Carl Riker is a little overboard in my estimation describing the benign quality of the Birch Society but I forgive him for his priceless anecdote about meeting Gen. Edwin Walker at the home of Julius and Opal Butler…adding the delicious detail of how Gov. Otto Kerner caused the tollway to swerve at their command. Matt Nelson says it was a mob hit. This has been surmised but never proven but with which Frank Nofsinger agrees which is interesting. Michael Becker is right on the money by pointing out that the Kennedy trip to Dallas was made to make peace between the warring factions of Ralph Yarborough and John Connally, adding a few good nuggets of his own. Excellent.

John Powers writes saying there was no plot per se. He’s right, of course although he doesn’t comment on the fact that there is no doubt Oswald was a Communist sympathizer. Now for my money Leon Dixon is over the top, conjecturing how many of FDR’s buddies and Martin Luther King, Jr., he alleges, were also Reds. No application here, if you will excuse my saying so. It’s interesting to note that only one of you bought the whitewashed media version—Ray McInemy, Sr. who sent me a private email. With only one buying the media-politically correct version, it’s a lot fewer than I had imagined.

Joseph Pine doubts if “anyone now alive knows how and why JFK was killed.” No, that’s not right. There is considerable proof that Oswald was a Communist or Communist sympathizer and was enraged at Kennedy for his Cold War actions. After some ruminating, Kevin Doran comes to the right conclusion: “Oswald was a Communist.” “Hank” is agnostic on any reasons: “Oswald decided for reasons known only to himself and God that he would shoot the president.” That’s not what the historical record says.

Actually, I’m thrilled with your responses and the number who were absolutely correct with the scenario that has been steadily downplayed since Nov. 22, 1963—that Oswald was either a communist or communist supporter and thus the Left killed Kennedy. The Schlesinger-Sorensen-Halberstam mythology perpetuated the idea that there was paranoia, far-right anger and America’s so-called fear of the world, worry about social change and pro-violence. There is no doubt that Jackie Kennedy sanitized and romanticized her husband’s death by linking his era with Camelot. By steering writer Theodore H. White to the musical play, she led him to write that with Kennedy’s death America “lost its innocence.” What rot. The Kennedys tongue-in-cheek knew of a forthcoming assassination attempt against Diem in Vietnam and said nothing--and staged an invasion of Cuba undercover. “Innocence” my foot.

But see how the music lingers? “Let it never be forgot, for one brief shining moment…” That stuff was Jackie’s creation with a bit of realism since there was adulterous behavior between Guinevere and Lancelot never let it be forgot. But this is poetry. The record shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who had previously defected to the Soviet Union and returned here. Fidel Castro was his idol and Kennedy had authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion, had negotiated the removal of the ICBMs from Cuba which Castro hated. Castro was outraged at the pullout of the missiles. Oswald belonged to the “Fair Play for Cuba” committee, was captured on film distributing literature. Simple as that.

Kennedy botched several tests in the Cold War— screwing up the Bay of Pigs by not sending air cover, not responding to the building of the Berlin Wall, winking with Henry Cabot Lodge at what they knew would be the assassination of Diem…but nevertheless, JFK was a very definite fatal casualty of the Cold War. This reality was very-very unpopular with the Left in the U.S. to say. They were very skittish about the Left and communism taking the blame for this…so they revert to anti-right wing and utilized Jackie’s Camelot poetry. Conjectures that JFK may have been killed by the Mafia (largely right-wing theories) or the CIA (Oliver Stone and the Left’s theories) are all very interesting but unproven. What we do know is that the man who killed him was a Communist sympathizer if not Communist in toto. Period.

Now to another defining moment of the `60s…

No. 2. “Griswold v. Connecticut” 1965.

Conventional Version. What was more unreasonable, archaic and reactionary than a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives by married couples—and banned the sale and distribution of these contraceptives in that state? But a Connecticut law, dating from 1879 did this. Sure, it was never enforced—rather like a law forbidding spitting in the street. Nevertheless it was on the books. But it was on the books.

New Haven Connecticut’s Planned Parenthood League decided to get the law ruled invalid. Beginning in 1961 their appeal moved all the way up to the Supreme Court but it didn’t work. A majority of the Court refused to hear the case. One justice, John Marshall Harlan, wrote an opinion urging the court to take the case, saying that in his estimation “a statute making it a criminal offense for married couples to use contraceptives is an intolerable and unjustified invasion of privacy.” “Invasion of privacy”: interesting words.

Harlan’s “invasion of privacy” statement interested Planned Parenthood and its top lawyer decided to build a rationale around “the invasion of privacy.” If it was an invasion of privacy, was there a right to privacy? New Haven’s PP began again. This time the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, Estelle Griswold, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven in association with Dr. Buxton and strove strenuously to break the law and get arrested.

They distributed and sold contraceptives and after notifying the authorities they were doing so, got themselves arrested which is what they dearly wanted. Accordingly, Griswold and Buxton were fined $100 each. Their appeal again made the circuit up through the system. By the time it got to the Supreme Court once again, it was 1965. This time the Court agreed to take the case and Justice William O. Douglas wrote the majority decision finding the law unconstitutional. But to do so he had to devise a “right to privacy.” There was no such right enumerated in the Constitution. So Douglas wrote that a “right to privacy” had evolved from the Constitution in what he called “emanations from penumbras” which he had deduced from Harlan’s 1961 dissenting opinion. Everybody looked up the two words. “Emanations” means “emissions” so no problem there. “Penumbra” is an astronomical term describing a partial shadow from an eclipse of a sunspot—another way to say that the right to privacy evolved in an uncertain way. Thus the “right to privacy” was cobbled together and became part of future judicial interpretation through the decision.

Conventional opinion argues: Well, what’s wrong with a right to privacy? Who wants government invading their bedroom telling them how to perform the marital act?

Your Assignment: Either confirm or re-write this version. Was the Supreme Court right in protecting us from the cops rushing into our bedrooms…or should it have allowed the law to remain a dead letter which it had been was in Connecticut since 1879? I expect to hear from Frank Nofsinger, Connecticut’s correspondent to this website. Tell us what this ruling led to and what in your estimation makes it a defining moment in the 1960s. Good luck. Once more, congratulations to most of you on your perspicacity and to the remainder on giving it the old college try. .

Flashback: McCarthy Confirms He Will Run for President as an Independent in 1976 and Makes a Pitch to Me to Raise Money to Enable Him to Take Votes Away from Carter and Elect Gerald Ford Which Ogilvie Vetoes.

[Fifty plus years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].

Announcing for President as an Independent.

Gene McCarthy stretched the limits of credibility when he announced, in January, 1975, that he would run for president as an independent. He claimed that no election since 1796 had been constitutional because the parties had interfered with the sanctity of the Electoral College, although he didn’t enumerate how. The stress of his campaign was far more anti-Democratic party than anti-Republican, meaning that he was no no mood for forgiveness and that he had scores to settle with what had once been his party.

He insisted that Harry Truman was the last “constitutional president” but Truman’s police action in Korea had been undertaken without congressional sanction. But speaking in Madison, Wisconsin he said that “when a party is consistently so wrong on important issues” as the Democratic, “so timid and late on others and has twice lost presidential elections to Richard Nixon, one must ask whether it serves much purpose any longer.” As he traveled the country he said he judged his opponents—Morris Udall, Jimmy Carter and President Gerald Ford—by three standards: their record on Vietnam, their reaction to the 1968 Democratic convention and their position on the Federal Election Campaign Act. He said we did not have an energy crisis. “We have more energy than we know what to do with but we are over-consuming what we have.” On the economy, he said we “have moved beyond Keynes” but did not embrace Milton Friedman.

He declared that the national economy had become “a kind of corporal feudalism in which every American was beholden to one corporation or another.” He contrasted modern corporations with medieval baronies and concluded “it is time for a significant challenge to the political, economic and social power of the corporations.” Lecturing for me at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, he outlined a program of limited wage-price controls, selective credit controls, cuts in spending on the military, national highways and the space program, legislation to restrict the size and speed of cars and reduction of the workweek to four days in order to cut unemployment. The challenges that came from business executives in the class made the performance exciting to say the least.

At other venues he argued that marijuana should be decriminalized and sold under government regulation. He said the government federal government should remain neutral on the matter of abortion…a statement I never satisfactorily got him to expand but which I assume was a criticism of “Roe v. Wade.” He added that he had no liking for religious conservatives—particularly Catholic ones, saying that while he never used birth control himself, he had no quarrel with those who did (but then no conservative candidate had ventured into opposition of private consciences on birth control, only on public funding). Strangely enough for a so-called libertarian who was once a liberal, he said Nixon’s abolition of the federal draft had destroyed the old notion of military service and created a “volunteer, mercenary army.” When he sprung that at my class at Northwestern, I got the idea he was merely striving to be different.

On the other hand, he embraced a libertarian position in general philosophy, sounding not unlike Ron Paul (but with moderate wage-and-price controls if you can fathom such a thing): “There have been many proposals for new laws to end all abuses,” he said. “The real need is to have a president who will say, `I will honor the Constitution and my oath of office. I will protect the political rights of all Americans.’” The cry of “reform,” he said, “is a standard item in the catalogue of demagoguery.” McCarthy’s presidential effort in 1976 cost $442,491”—slightly more than the campaign of Libertarian party candidate Roger MacBride and a little less than the Communist Party campaign run by Gus Hall, a fellow Minnesotan. Old friends and donors from 1968 and 1972 helped him—Stewart Mott, the billionaire GM heir, film stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The largest donor was William Clay Ford, grandson of the founder of the Ford Motor Company. Ford agreed to run for vice president with McCarthy if he didn’t have to give any interviews. McCarthy was delighted and said Ford was “a lot better than those who have been offered over the last twelve years or so”—a swipe at Hubert Humphrey. He was running between 3 and 10 percent depending on the polls that were taken.

The McCarthy Stratagem to Elect Ford.

After President Gerald Ford won the nomination over Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter was coronated by the Dems, the best known candidates in the nation were, of course, Ford, Carter and himself. (An interesting sidelight: In his speech of August 16 accepting renomination, Carter paid tribute to a list of dignitaries including “Hubert Horatio Hornblower—er, Humphrey.” It seems that for many years Carter staffers were mocking Humphrey by referring to him in Carter’s presence as “Hubert Horatio Hornblower”—a reference to the colonial British sea captain in a series of novels by E. M. Forester and it stuck in Carter’s brain so much so that in his oration he involuntarily blurted the name).

After the two conventions were held, when he was campaigning in Illinois, Gene McCarthy and his faithful sidekick, Jerry Eller (my old college classmate) invited themselves to my house where Lillian prepared a sumptuous repast while the Secret Service, bored, sent out for fast-food (turning down our dishes because of regulations in preference to Big Macs which they grumbled over).

Three of them idled in our back bedroom while McCarthy, Eller, Lillian and I were convulsed over funny stories McCarthy told about all his campaigns. It was then I suggested that in the likely event he would lose to either Ford or Carter, he should definitely consider becoming a droll standup comedian on late-night television…a proposal I really meant because his timing, imitations of Kennedy, Carter, Hubert, Nixon and Ford were delivered letter perfect. I considered now that I knew why McCarthy was such a hit with The Little Sisters of the Media—including Marya McLaughlin, his live-in—because as an entertainer he was outstanding. I reflected whether he could keep up with Johnny Carson but he said he was sure he could—but then, as we continued to drink scotch modestly, he agreed that he would prefer a public television format rather like the one Mark Russell has only without a piano. A poet he showed later that night that he could produce brilliant satire of politics in seconds. He reminded me of Dick Cavett only far better.

Then he made a suggestion that I thought was brilliant—a suggestion that Eller assisted him in making. The ill-fated campaign “reform” act was in force and both Ford and Carter were nominated which meant that they could not receive contributions since they agreed to live by the federal stipend. That meant that only McCarthy could receive contributions and through a loophole in the law, an independent candidacy for president could then receive unlimited contributions of private funds. While Eller produced a chart showing states where Ford and Carter were running within a whisker of each other, McCarthy proposed that if I could be instrumental in getting Republican money for his independent campaign, he would use it to design TV commercials in these key states—Ohio being one of them, I remember. Then they produced attitudinal studies financed by William Clay Ford that showed a majority of those who would vote for McCarthy were of Democratic persuasion: which it took no difficulty to understand.

Ergo, said Gene, I think you and I can understand that I am far more interested in seeing Jerry Ford win the presidency than Carter. I know Ford. Dumb but honest. I don’t know Carter but I am un-persuaded that he would be a good president. Raise a couple of million so that we can make television commercials limited to this handful of states and I think we have a pretty good chance of taking enough chunks off the Democratic vote in those states to nudge the Electoral College to Ford. What do you say?

Eller added: It would have to be kept under wraps, of course. You’d have to get some nominal Republicans to join with Bill Ford and get the job done. Do you have any views about this thing?

I said yes. I am wholeheartedly in favor. I was beginning to think Gene here was losing his mind and am gratified to know now that he has a root purpose behind this effort.

He said: Getting even with the Democratic party has been my full-time occupation for some years now.

I said I had one suggestion--.

Not a big name Republican,” said Eller, or the press will see through the idea.

No, not a big name Republican but the sister of my company’s chairman of the board who is herself an heiress…a Common Cause liberal with fuzzy instincts. She would be happy to give.

Excellent!

But, said I, rounding up a cadre of multi-millionaires to do this is higher than my corporate pay grade. But I’d like to talk it over with Dick Ogilvie, the chairman of the Illinois Ford committee. He’s a former Republican governor.

McCarthy hesitated; I don’t know…

Eller said: Yes, hell yes. Ogilvie’s a pragmatist.

McCarthy said, Is he? Okay.

So I got the chairman of the board’s sister to give a bundle. Then I went to Ogilvie. I spent an hour and a half at him for lunch at the Chicago Club and couldn’t sell him.

Too dangerous,” he said. The press’ll find out and I’ll be cooked.

Well then don’t get involved but get me somebody who will do it. I don’t care. What about Peter Benzinger?

No.

I listed about 14 names. To each he said no-no-no.

Well, governor, I said, I guess you aren’t interested in seeing Jerry Ford win. Because I got a hunch that without this device he isn’t going to win.

He said: It looks corrupt.

Corrupt? CORRUPT? Hell, we’d be taking advantage of the reform law! No one can contribute a farthing to either Ford or Carter. Just to McCarthy! Too bad Clem Stone has lost his money; he’d be the guy to do it.

Well I don’t like Stone, said Ogilvie. Then he resorted to taciturnity and turned thoughtful…after which we walked to the lobby.

You know, I said, there’s absolutely no problem here legally. If you need a chairman I’d be willing to sign my name. I think my boss will give me the go-ahead.

You? said Ogilvie. You’re known as a Republican! I’d oppose that.

I’m also known guy who has known Gene for 30 years. I’m not running for anything. What do I care?

No, said Ogilvie. It would look funny. It would hurt me.

How would it hurt you if I did it?

I’d be discovered and I wouldn’t be able to take a cabinet post with Ford.

What do you want?

Attorney General.

And that was it.

So Jimmy Carter won the presidency by a narrow edge, 50.1% to 48.0% for Ford. The McCarthy stratagem could well have tipped the balance in electoral votes. I still feel bad about that. The only payback for McCarthy would be for Ford as elected president to make McCarthy an ambassador somewhere—anywhere. Honduras? Botswana?



Stupid. You can put the blame on Dick Ogilvie. Carter was the worst president in modern times. He pardoned draft evaders, frittered away from defending the Shah so that Khomeini took over. The economy buckled with double-digit inflation and spectacularly high interest rates; productivity declined to 1%. He signed a SALT II treaty that was so bad the Senate wouldn’t ratify it, got the Panama Canal treaty passed and ratified, a bad idea, cut off all aid to Afghanistan, frittered and make the U.S. look foolish while 52 Americans were held hostage in the Iranian embassy for more than a year. He managed the extraordinary feat of having at one and the same time the disrespect of the USSR because of his weakness and the worst state of the economy since the end of the Second World War. The only good thing was the Camp David accords which led to an end to the 31 year state of war between Egypt and Israel…whereupon Israel returned Sinai to Egypt—a plan which got Anwar Sadat killed by the Egyptian military.

Another good thing: After a good amount of dithering, Carter got rid of an inept Fed chairman, G. William Miller by making him secretary of the treasury and then did appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve, an excellent move. But Carter never assumed any responsibility for the lousy economy. He delivered a TV address called the “malaise” speech…although he never mentioned the word…where he blamed a crisis of confidence on the American people. That years later he was named a recipient of the Nobel Prize can only be explained by the increasing leftward politicization of the award in recognition of his severe criticism of Israel.


To this day, whenever I see that grinning Carter on TV I sulk.

Personal Aside: Defining Moments of the Sixties—Your Turn.

Defining Moments: How We Were Misinformed.
There is little doubt that a handful of events in the 1960s were so misinterpreted by liberal historians (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Ted Sorensen, David Halberstam et al) the media that they changed our society…and in particular the Democratic party. That party changed from an entirely acceptable alternative to Republicanism to a left-wing ideologue’s dream. Let’s see how you react to a series of events. I’m going to start with the first one and give you the politically correct liberal contemporary Schlesinger- media version…and ask you to write a paragraph in Reader’s Comments either verifying the current impression or changing it to what you believe is the correct version. I just want to see how you interpret these events. I’ll give you your grade. Here is the first event as pictured by the media which began the accepted version. Warning: Sometimes in this test the accepted version will be the correct one by historical standards. There will be some examples where media and historical facts agree.

In this test, signify that you either accept the conventional version or supply a version yourself…not just illusory but what you believe is the truth

Oh yes: I will be the final judge on which version is right. If you think this is authoritarian, well, yes it is but that comes with owning this blog. Your grade will be published with the next website posting Monday. Here goes. I’m using material supplied by theologian-philosopher George Weigel who selected these defining events.
I: The Kennedy Assassination, November 22, 1963.
Conventional Version: Right-wing paranoia was rampant in Dallas. Adlai Stevenson had visited there a few weeks before and was jostled rudely by a crowd and was struck on the head by a placard bearing a right-wing slogan. He thought about warning the president not to go. What was inflaming the city was fear of communism, the drive then current to impeach Earl Warren who had moved the Supreme Court to the left endorsing public school desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” removing prayer from the public schools. Also right-wingers were increasingly disturbed by rising agitation of civil rights demonstrators. A disgruntled Dallas ex-army major general named Edwin Walker had inflamed right-wingers by signing up with the John Birch Society. He had called Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dean Acheson communist sympathizers. He had run for governor of Texas in the Democratic primary in February, 1962, an election won by John Connally, frustrating the right. Dallas was a “seething madhouse.” “Something awful was likely to happen there and it happened to John F. Kennedy who had gone to Dallas to defend the politics of reason against the politics of irrational fear. Kennedy was martyred by unreason.”

Your Assignment: Is this version right or wrong? In one paragraph in Reader’s Comments either accept the court historians’ version or supply your own revisionist one based on facts (not supposition). DON’T USE SEARCH ENGINES OR REGURGITATE GRANDMA’S CONSPIRATORIAL THEORIES BUT MAKE IT YOUR OWN WORK, USING HISTORICAL FACTS YOU CAN VERIFY. THE HONOR CODE EXISTS. I THINK I CAN DETECT CHEATING.
`60s Defining Moment II will be published here Monday.

Flashback: Hubert Prepares for 1976 Race for the Presidency. McCarthy Plans to Run as an Independent, Challenges Legality of 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act in Supreme Court.

[More than 50 years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].
For the First Time, Humphrey Falters Over a Decision to Run.

The more he and his advisers thought about it, 1976 seemed like it could be the Democrats’ year—and Humphrey’s. In January, 1975 he assumed chairmanship of a committee he could make into a newsmaker: the Joint Economic Committee. In the past it had been a dusty repository of economic statistics because it was not a legislative committee—but it had the potential of commanding news media attention. Hubert shrewdly tailored it to modern media adaptation. He took it on the road and held hearings on everything from medical care to energy. For Hubert it was a natural. Here he had come to Washington proposing to hike Social Security benefits to $50 per month for which he was called a far-left liberal spendthrift. He was the father of Medicare and food stamps. Now he introduced a bill known as “Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Natural Growth Act” that ordered for the first time that national goals should be oriented to this objective.

On the road he went, answering conservatives who feared government had become too big by saying “only a government that is big and strong can possibly stand up against the powerful corporate interests that control our economy.” First, decorously, he suggested that his colleague, Walter Mondale, run for president. But Mondale declined saying he had no liking for the primary ordeal, “all those nights in Holiday Inns.” Now after Watergate there were few alternatives in sight except Hubert. Ted Kennedy was still licking his wounds from Chappaquiddick, McGovern was a dead letter, Ed Muskie was too. Sen. Henry (Scoop) Jackson of Washington was viable and probably Hubert’s big threat. Still, Hubert was better known than Scoop. And Watergate had sent Republicans into disrepute. Hubert’s stock began to rise. News media and politicians began to call him and talk about him. George McGovern came to him to propose a Humphrey-McGovern ticket in 1976 to unify the party. President Gerald Ford publicly suggested that Humphrey would be his opponent in 1976.

The major contender was an unknown—former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer. Hubert held back. He didn’t have to go through the primary route, he thought: he was too well known and could wait for the convention to pick him. Then Carter started out by taking the Iowa caucuses where he, ambiguously, convinced conservatives he was pro-life. Then he carried Florida. He won Illinois (Richard J. Daley hated Hubert and kept his hands off) and defeated Jackson in Pennsylvania. Suddenly “Jimmy Who?” became a media phenomenon. Old-line liberal Democratic regulars told Hubert that he was needed to enter the New Jersey primary on June 6 and beat Carter. Then the nomination would be his.

Hubert aid he would make his decision known by April 30, 1976, Two party regulars (then regarded as moderates), Joe Crangle, party chairman of New York and Congressman Paul Simon of Illinois, became his co-chairmen. Crangle reported to Humphrey that he would win New Jersey 2 to 1. Humphrey booked the big Senate Caucus room where John Kennedy and others had announced for the announcement for 11:30 a.m. April 30. Day in and day out Hubert talked with his wife, Muriel. She told him that they didn’t need the aggravation a presidential campaign would bring, but as always if he wanted to do it, she would support it. Humphrey said he wanted it but inside he knew he was fooling himself. He basically wasn’t feeling good about running.
He hadn’t told his doctor he had detected traces of blood in his urine and he didn’t want to think about it. Even before that episode, he had a disturbing feeling in his innards, something he couldn’t explain but which he feared. He wondered how smart it was to go into a race with the possibility that he would have to drop out. He wondered how moral it would be…to run and maybe to win the presidency…and check out with cancer. He would have to pass up running for reelection to the Senate in 1976 in Minnesota where reelection was a sure-thing. If he ran for president and lost and he came down with cancer and had no Senate, nothing to do, what would happen to his psyche? He pondered.

There were other things. He had not been deluged with offers of contributions—the old Humphrey bugaboo. Jack Chestnut, his last campaign manager, had gone to jail for financial irregularities and Hubert had him and his wife over for dinner before he left and broke down and wept saying he was the cause of it all, he put so much stress on Chestnut that he broke the law.

On the very day of the announcement when the Caucus Room was filling up with media, cameras and notepad scribblers, Hubert sat at home and finally confronted his wife with his worries. She said: Well, Hubert, it’s a hell of a bad way to start a campaign with these worries. In the past you were straining at the leash. You’re not doing that now. You’re 65. We don’t need it. . Why don’t you scrub it?
So he walked jauntily into the Caucus Room at 11:30. . The cameras turned on and he announced he wasn’t going to run. Among his supporters there arose a great wailing. But Hubert felt good about it. His passing up the run made Carter’s nomination all but inevitable. Carter trumpeted that he was disappointed Hubert didn’t run because he—Carter—was looking forward to trouncing Humphrey in New Jersey. In his dreams. He never would have. But Hubert let it pass. He won renomination in September, 1976 and campaigned in Minnesota joyfully. He was overjoyed when Carter picked Mondale for his vice president. Then on September 27, out stumping in western Minnesota, he went to the bathroom and afterward went to the phone. He was urinating blood badly. This time it was invasive cancer.

Dr. Edgar Berman spent two days going over the details with Hubert as he lay in his hospital room. He’d have to have an ostomy on his abdomen, a bag to void his urine. A big operation and for one of such impeccable cleanliness about himself, a kind of humiliation. He agreed, of course. The operation was performed at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital Center. In a six-hour operation, Dr. Willet Whitmore removed his bladder, an inch-long tumor attached to its base and his prostate. He was left with an external pouch in place of his bladder. His recovery initially was remarkable. But in post-operational tests cancer was again detected in nearby lymph glands. He underwent chemotherapy. On October 30 he was discharged and on November 4, 1976 won his fourth Senate term by more than 800,000 votes.

McCarthy Plans Independent Run for 1976…

Unconcerned about his old colleague Hubert’s well-being or health, the antiseptic Gene McCarthy was absorbed in himself. Since he had alienated all important vestiges of the Democratic party, he determined on an independent challenge in 1976. He had a few friends left. In 1974 after he scrubbed plans to run for 6th district Congress in Minnesota, he announced formation of the Committee for a Constitutional Presidency or CCPP, an organization that would be dedicated to the nomination of an independent candidate (himself) who would offer “realistic choices” on issues and “break with the dogma” of the two major parties in 1976. One backer was William Clay Ford, the Ford Motor Company heir and owner of the Detroit Lions.

....and Rightly Challenges the Restrictive Federal Campaign Law.
The next year he focused on challenging the Federal Election Campaign Act in the Supreme Court. The Act, a reaction to the Nixon fundraising scandals of `72 set strict limits on campaign contributions and spending and for the first time candidates would have access to independently-contributed federal campaign subsidies.

James Buckley, the Conservative-Republican Senator from New York, was interested in mounting a legal challenge to the act and his team needed a liberal for window-dressing. McCarthy signed up and not just as a token; his only hope would be to rally some of his old backers like Stewart Mott, the General Motors heir, who could give unlimitedly. After all his challenge in 1968 was through the heavily donations by Mott and without them his campaign would have been inoperative. He joined with the New York Conservative party, Mott, the ACLU of New York, the Mississippi Republican party and the Libertarian party. He had a very good point. The best campaign fundraising reform has always been disclosure, not limits which breed corruption. The court case proceeded under the name “Buckley v. Valeo”—Francis Valeo being the secretary of the U. S. Senate who was ex-officio member of the Federal Elections Commission, Valeo representing the U. S. government. While his challenge was definitely in his self-interest and wouldn’t have occurred to him had he remained a Democrat, it was an exceedingly valuable effort.

On January 30, 1976, the Supreme Court handed down a verdict that upheld the provisions of the law regarding public disclosure, limits of contributions and federal subsidies but the limits on overall campaign spending was stuck down. However the verdict was not a victory for McCarthy and his allies. He described it correctly as saying, “We’re going to give you freedom of religion and then saying you have two choices—Episcopal and Anglican.” Thus for his presidential race in 1976 it would be an uphill battle.

Personal Aside: Obama’s Radicality Seems to Foredoom Him for November.

Radicality.

One look at Chris Matthews’ face last night was enough for me. He was in puppy dog heaven, hosting a visit to a university with…GASP OF JOY…Barack Obama! The glow to his cheeks, the uncritical mien, the adoring glances…all of this was embarrassingly unmanly. Of course the kids were ecstatic. But for one with a memory it reminds me…and I have said this before…of 1972 and how the campuses roared with delight when George McGovern visited them.

The media are always fooled when that happens. Send them to a campus when a Democratic speaks…seemingly any national Democrat…and the pounding is evident in their temples and their eyes show the excitement. They’re always fooled. Liberalism always does well on the campuses. God! YOUTH! ENTHUSIAM! Dear old Chris would have to change his pants.

But lurking outside the ivy halls is the reality that the “National Journal” marked Obama the most liberal senator of all…that he favors higher income taxes, higher Social Security taxes and higher corporate taxes. That he supports enormous hikes in domestic spending, far greater regulation by government of the economy: which remains for the public to be told…a massive increase of government control over health care. Strong opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement: in fact he is a protectionist.

He stands supportive of infanticide by having killed the “Born Alive” bill in the Illinois legislature, meaning that a baby born alive from a botched abortion has to struggle and suffer without care because Obama fears that to render mercy to the baby would endanger abortion rights. He is just about the only U.S. Senator to take that stand because a similar bill passed with the support of Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein before Obama came to the Senate after having killed a version in Springfield.

He opposed the Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion. He wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. In his home state he supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He supports giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. He voted to deny legal immunity to telecom companies that have cooperated with the government in warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists. He wants habeas corpus rights to detained suspected terrorists and security risks at Guantanamo. He wants a full-scale withdrawal from Iraq. He has vowed in his first presidential year to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea with no preconditions.

Seemingly everything he does stamps him as a far-left-wing radical. His insensitivity, his alienation from traditional moral values is exhibited in his ultra-crass secularistic statement the other day. He was referring to his daughters when he casually said in Johnstown, Pennsylvania: .

“If people make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Punished with a baby. This is a very-very cold, uncompassionate and unfeeling young man whose inner-self is masked by a politician’s duplicity. All by himself, he has built the record and has woven the skein that will likely strangle his campaign. You don’t read about this in Carol Marin…the hard-bitten Mother Superior of Feminism, do you? You bet not.

Flashback: McCarthy, Descending to Nihilism, Is Let Go by New School Where He Was Teaching and Not Extended by Simon & Schuster Publishers. Hubert Battles Cancer Again and Seemingly Wins. 1976 Looms as a Democratic Presidential Year.

[Fifty years of politics written as a memoir for my kids and grandchildren].

McCarthy, the Intellectual Drifter.

While Hubert Humphrey was building his nest-egg (although he didn’t know how big since he adhered to rules of the blind trust), Gene McCarthy was drifting into nihilism. When in the Senate he grew tired of bickering with his fellows, he longed to return to teaching and writing. Now he had a contract with the New School in New York as well as one as an editor with Simon & Schuster, 28 floors above Rockefeller Center. In addition he was available for guest lectures. I hired him often for corporate and university appearances in Chicago. But he was dissatisfied. I have always wondered what was with this guy. I have concluded that he suffered from depression. After his election to the Senate, he seemingly wanted early success but deliberately produced failure.

Examples: (1) After joining the Senate, he became lethargic in its work and often spent the afternoons across the street at the Carroll Arms hotel, drinking little but entertaining The Little Sisters of the Media, missing a good many roll-calls. (2) He ridiculed his colleagues with such devastating wit that his words were bound to make it to the senators’ ears. (3) He was unforgiving and bitter whenever a colleague would cross him which negated legislative accomplishments: with McCarthy there was to be no forgiveness for even the most trivial offense. (3) He exhibited no sense of gratitude or obligation to those senators who had helped him, starting with Hubert Humphrey and ending up with the majority leader, Lyndon Johnson—but caustic paybacks to those he offended him. . (4) He seemed constitutionally unable to clear sentences without ambiguity which mystified many, giving the attitude of a bemused, abstruse scholar. (5) When considered by Lyndon Johnson along with Hubert as a possible running-mate, he promised that he would support the Vietnam war but when he lost the nomination to Hubert (who was his senior by many years) he turned against Hubert, LBJ and the war.

(6) He meandered into running for president but stumbled into it at the right time, capitalizing on public dissatisfaction with the war and Johnson in New Hampshire. (7) He was quite properly outraged when Bobby Kennedy entered the fray after Gene had tested the waters and found the public receptive—but then Gene didn’t step on the gas and increase his energy to beat Bobby which drove Abigail nuts.. He showed up at one crucial debate unprepared because he had spent the afternoon drinking with poet Robert Lowell with the result that Bobby got away with murder in the debate. (8) He dawdled away the remainder of the campaign and (9) intended until the very last not to go to Bobby’s funeral after his murder when he was dragooned there by Abigail and his staff.

. Then (10) when the race was between Hubert and him, true to form he performed lazily, blasted Hubert and Ed Muskie whom he called “the latest Polish joke,” lost the nomination to Hubert, after which he brooded and refused to endorse Humphrey—sulking and harming Humphrey’s campaign until the very last hours of the presidential campaign against Richard Nixon when he made sure his endorsement would mean very little.

All the while he quarreled with his wife, Abigail, who showed far more political acumen than he—and went to live with Marya McLaughlin, a hazy CBS-TV journalist with a flare for poetry which stunned his friends (including me) who thought he was at the very least a devout Catholic…losing them, angering members of his own party for not being a good sport and endorsing Humphrey, losing his liberal anti-war followers by laying down on the job as a campaigner. All these things and the constant references to poetry with Lowell. What to make of it all? I have drawn the conclusion that this was severe depression which he couldn’t properly identify. Even beyond this, he seemingly wanted to win but insured that he would lose. But his problem wasn’t drink. He drank abstemiously except for that one time with Lowell before the TV broadcast.

He wrote several books which didn’t sell well—one with James J. Kilpatrick, the conservative, “A Political Bestiary” with cartoons by Jeff McNeely. Frittering away, he ignored his work as editor at Simon & Schuster. Manuscripts piled up on his desk. He wouldn’t read them but would send them to his boss without comment so his prowess as an editor was untapped. When the contract expired, they let him go. His lectures at the New School were apathetic and uninspiring, deviating into rambling. The same thing happened. When his teaching contract expired, they let him go. When I hired him as lecturer for $1,000 a pop plus travel and lodging (not a bad honorarium for those early 1970s days) at Wharton, Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola-Chicago and Harvard, he was very good: witty, incisive and made a big hit. But these were one-time performances. Afterward he would shrug them off. Seemingly nothing that was repetitive interested him. He grew bored early.

Once when we met for lunch in Washington, he told me he longed to get back to the Senate. But, of course, Minnesota’s seats were filled with Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. He spoke occasionally of running from New York (where he had an apartment as well as one in Washington, D. C. I asked him why and he answered cryptically: “It’s a good address, the Senate Office Building.” Meaning he didn’t have anything particular to accomplish: just to camp there, have a staff and ruminate.

But New York liberals remembered how he frittered away his opportunities and were not interested. Then he decided to go back to Minnesota and run for the House again in the 6th congressional district where he was born. It was 1974 and Watergate had caused the resignation of Richard Nixon. The 6th district’s Republican congressman, John Zwach, a farmer, had announced his retirement. The seat was open. But Minnesotans wondered: could the man who unhorsed Lyndon Johnson and became for a time the toast of the Georgetown cocktail circuit and who only occasionally showed up for Senate roll-calls find happiness campaigning in St. Cloud, Pierz, Motley and Milaca, Minnesota? As Minneapolis “Star” columnist Jim Klobuchar (who was father of a Yale lawyer who became Hennepin county prosecutor and first elected female U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar) wrote: “Is there a boom in Stearns county for poet-philosophers?”

The hitch was that the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party already had a good candidate to run for the House, Richard Nolan and party leaders begged McCarthy not to muddy the waters. But no, he explored entering the race and was greeted with little applause, managing to miss an important fund-raiser scheduled for him in Mille Lacs county. Thereafter he decided not to run and said, unsurprisingly, that he had never been very keen about running for the House in the first place: “Good God, you know, I’m not very enthusiastic about it.”

Even so, he seemed wistful when he talked to me about a future in politics. As 1976 dawned he said, surprisingly, “You know, I think Hubert and I are the only team which could pull this party together in 1976.” HUH? When Hubert heard that he had made this remark, he said McCarthy had moved beyond being flaky to being “whack-a-doodle.” But McCarthy wanted to run in 1976 for one reason alone: he thought it would provide further celebrity for him: he despised the idea of being forgotten.

Hubert’s 1976 Campaign Plans.

All the while Hubert Humphrey was trying to ignore as best he could some inner rumblings that led him to think his health was failing. What they were included some blood in his urine which told him the old cancerous cells surrounding the bladder may not be cancer free. But he drove this from his mind.

In 1973, a year after his defeat, he was still a senator and a former vice president of the United States. Watergate was beginning to decimate the Republican party. Surely `76 would be a Democratic year. He would be at age 65 positioned right. McGovern had gone down the chute in `72 to the worst defeat in modern electoral history and the radical left that followed him was chastened. . Ted Kennedy didn’t seem interested. He, Hubert, was now positioned in the center of his party—not too conservative, not too liberal. Lyndon Johnson was dead; Richard Nixon becoming disgraced. Hubert once again joined the Senate Foreign Relations committee. There was trouble when the Senate subpoenaed his 1968 and 1972 campaign records but there didn’t seem to be any lasting damage.

Then in fall of 1973 he went to Bethesda for a biannual checkup. Bad news. Tissue samples suggested the return of cancer to his bladder. In 1967 there had been polyps, several of which were cancerous and they were removed. A panel of 10 doctors had thought this would be sufficient. Now the cancer was back. His doctor took the samples to another 10 leading urologists. Only one recommended radical surgery, the others therapy. Not saying a word to he would go to a Washington municipal hospital near the Capitol for X-ray therapy. Discouragingly his system revolted against the X-ray. Once he stumbled out of the hospital with attendants holding him up and told his driver (a limousine was a holdover from his vice presidential days) “take me home as soon as you can.” After an hour or two the pain would subside and he’d return to the Senate, looking fit.

But in December, 1973 he developed a serious reaction to the X-ray treatment and became anemic. He had to have 5 blood transfusions at Bethesda. Sixteen days later he was released and, vigorous as ever, went on TV on economic issues. In April, 1974 his doctor said the troublesome tumor had disappeared. Now Hubert described his ordeal to reporters and said, “I feel better than I have for years.” He went to China for an economic study. In the fall of 1974 he attended the World Food conference in Rome, ran through a schedule that had him rising at 6 a.m. and going to sessions until 2 a.m. the next morning. He was joined by his son Skip (Hubert IV) and they flew to Vienna, looked in at the U. S.-Soviet missile talks, then took off for four days in Israel, requisite for someone preparing to run for president. He met with Golda Meir, toured the Sinai front. By the time he returned home, he was notified that he was up for chairman of the Joint Economic Council. With his health in seemingly good shape, he was readying himself for his last hurrah—this one presumably to be successful—=running for the presidency in 1976.

The contrast between him and Gene McCarthy was like night and day.

Personal Aside: Bob Casey, Jr. Eyed as Possible Obama Veep…The Hugely Inflated TV News Readers’ Salaries.

Catholic circles I frequent are buzzing with the rumor that Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania…an Irish Catholic pro-lifer who came out for Obama the other day…could be Obama’s secret weapon to get the nomination from some recalcitrant super-delegates. Reason: Obama’s strident views on abortion and gay rights have worried some of the super-delegates that while much of the party and almost all the national news media adore the long, lanky, witty, suave Obama, the same cast of players adored George McGovern in 1972 forgetting that the country is less liberal than they. You have this twerp Brian Williams of NBC wondering how anyone could cover Obama and be objective because he is so convincing…and the overgrown kid on “Hardball,” Chris Matthews who told his MSNBC audience when he hears Obama speak he feels a quiver run down his leg (an unmanly confession that could be linked to latent something or other).

But there are other super-delegates, with some blue-collar constituencies who remember 1972 and don’t relish the idea of going down the toilet with the superstar who comes close to prompting Matthews’ la passionata near climax. Those people would be enamored, it is said, with Casey. Casey’s pro-life stance could soften Obama’s pro-abortion stance and cause him to use the tool he employs best…bring-us-together ambiguity. Also what would the Catholic bishops do, then? Deny Casey the sacrament? Not hardly.

The downside is that the Democratic ticket would be composed of two freshmen senators and would exaggerate the inexperience issue. But my sources say that when you contrast this to the power that an Irish Catholic adds to the ticket, the inexperience issue fizzles. On one thing they’re right. Democrats have been slow to get the message on the Catholic vote. They think of everything except the pro-life angle. They nominated an Italian woman congressman from New York, Geraldine Ferraro but got nothing out of it but grief since she was a pro-abort and tangled with John Cardinal O’Connor, diminishing her political prospects. All the other Catholics mentioned or running are pro-abort and hence regarded by the Church…all except Theodore Cardinal McCarrick…as semi-apostates. Not McCarrick who feels a shiver running down HIS leg when he talks to Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, Richard Daley et al. He should get the Archbishop Cranmer award for political dexterity.

All right, no search engines now. This is a trivia question: Who was Archbishop Thomas Cranmer? Give me as many details about him as possible…and you’re on your honor not to cheat.

The Fired Highly Paid TV News Readers.

Isn’t it time for Diane Burns to call the Sultan of Pout, the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson and charge that she was fired because she is black? Felicia Middlebrooks did at WBBM. Big Jess pulled a demonstration and the little lady has been back there ever since.

On TV, life is tough, especially when you got $3 million a year for doing an elementary job of reading without mispronouncing (which Diane has done well) but her charismatic presence did nothing to revive the eternally dead not-to-be-resurrected Channel 2. The Sultan wouldn’t lift a finger for Maryann Childers because she’s white.

But then nobody can raise that Channel 2 Lazarus from the tomb. Anyhow, why shouldn’t they have fired the station manager Joe Ahern who hired her in the first place? Diane was a winner at Channel 7. She goes to 2 and sinks like a stone. Do you suppose it might have something to do with Ahern? Of all of them I like Childers best. She seems to know what she’s reading.

Personal Aside: My Interview with Leon Despres.

All Hail Leon Despres…Valiant, Articulate, Infinitely Courageous…and--

Sunday on WLS-AM 890 was a rather special night for me because on my ABC radio program I interviewed a man who was front and center in Chicago news for many years…from the time I moved back to this city from Minnesota in 1964 through today-- and whose idealism colored the politics of the city council, even continuing to the present. He is former Alderman Leon Despres who has just marked his 100th birthday. A gifted lawyer, a friend of Clarence Darrow, very courtly and respectful of my differing point of view, he is as articulate today and as intellectually sharp as he always has been. Indeed the engineers behind the studio glass were amazed at his clarity and conciseness of vision. Co-interviewing him with me was Don Rose, a frequent columnist for “The Chicago Daily Observer” and a legend in his own right, having been the Chicago press secretary for Martin Luther King during King’s stay in Chicago and the guru of many liberal political campaigns, some successful some not-so.

Leon Despres (for non-Chicagoans, his French-originated name is pronounced “de-pray”) was probably the least-liked alderman by Richard J. Daley and because of that and his unflagging devotion to liberalism the least effective from the standpoint of getting things done in the council. As the late Vito Marzullo, the epitome of old-school aldermen (whom I brought to Harvard in 1977) said: “He couldn’t even get a dog out of a pound.” But Despres, who represented the 5th ward—Hyde Park—which encompasses the University of Chicago, occupies a distinguished berth in the city’s 20th century politics. Some aldermen enter political life as so-called “reformers’ and betray their ideals. Not to Leon (or as he is called “Len’).

....a Dogged Fighter for the Left…But Don’t--

His university constituency continually reelected him although it is intriguing to note that originally, as he testified to me, even the U of C was not all that liberal. When Len was a boy, he went to both the John Dewey-formulated Lab elementary school and prep school—an elite education for the time indeed. In the early days of the 20th century, the Lab schools did not admit blacks, the reason being as one of the top educators said, “the Negroes wouldn’t feel comfortable here anyhow.”

As a fighting member of the city council from 1955 to 1975 (but who continued in activism as a leader after he left it), a man who never, ever sold out, Len Despres fought for civil rights (the top of his agenda), followed by strong opposition to patronage abuses, improvement of parks, the first ordinance to get building inspectors to target peeling lead in dilapidated housing which led to childrens’ lead poisoning, a campaign to save historic architectural buildings (such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House although he couldn’t save the Garrick theatre and the old Chicago Stock Exchange from the Daley wrecking ball), city planning, government efficiency and honesty, housing and urban renewal (the eradication of slums) and greater city responsiveness to ward problems.



His first fight in the council was successful: killing the idea that driveway permits could be sold on the side by aldermen who wanted to make a few bucks). Irving Kristol once said that liberals are turned into conservatives by being “mugged by reality.” Len was more than mugged but never changed, was never embittered. This number one supporter of civil rights for blacks was accosted while walking in his neighborhood at 55th and Blackstone avenue in 1967 when he was 60 years old by two black youths who shot him twice and fled. This event didn’t change his attitude one iota. He was the least likely alderman to call for “law and order” and the most likely to plead that cases of deprivation were prompted by lack of education and failure of government to adequately serve their needs.

…Some of His Nostrums, for All His Courage…



Don’t get the idea that as much as I admire courtly, well-mannered Len Despres, smiling from his wheel-chair, I agree with him in all aspects of his liberalism—although I’m with him on patronage abuses, preserving architectural masterpieces from demolition, improvement of parks, anti-lead poisoning, city planning, government efficiency and thrift. His beneficent liberalism and soft-nosed compassion bother me but I cherish his endurance as a great Chicago monument to integrity himself…just as I just admire his vigor at age 100 and his willingness to say things that may not be taken as popular by a resounding number of listeners, especially on WLS, the Rush Limbaugh station. He spoke out in behalf of his candidate for president, Barack Obama as his daughter and her husband…both somewhat senior in age…listened impassively. He rounded out the show by saying that although a South Sider he supports the Chicago Cubs of the North Side rather than the White Sox, a truly courageous thing to say in this city, despite the fact that the Cubs haven’t won a national championship for more than 100 years.

…Demonstrate the Failure of the Left that Has Made Us Worse Off?



When I asked him whether the LBJ-style welfare policies may have poisoned the inner-city, broken up families and thereby encouraged single-headed households with no male figure—a species that naturally encourage children to run the streets at night due to the overworked, harried and harassed female figures trying to hold the maimed families together, I was dismayed to hear him say that more of the old liberal nostrums must be utilized. Much as I value him and honor him as an icon, I had hoped that he would look back from his centurion vantage-point and say, yeah, blacks have not been helped noticeably by those well-meaning programs…the dissolution of families has brought poverty, lawlessness and barbarism to society that in many cases is worse than what we started with.

No, Len wasn’t buying that. Never mind, his genuine contributions to Chicago political life and his shining integrity endure. But I couldn’t help observing to Lillian as we left him that liberalism will not…probably can not…change or adapt to changing needs because it has turned so overwhelmingly to secularism. The gigantic nostrums prescribed by his candidate, Obama, are no different than those fought for by Len himself from his youth—and when adapted what have they given this nation? Poverty, illegitimacy, sorrow, bitterness, deprivation. The idea that government itself is the great entitlement-dispenser, that federal social programs are the remedy, that religious constructs must be viewed apart from social progress. As we left I felt sad because I as much as I value him as a friend I wish he’d bend and give just a smidgeon of thought to so-called conservative anti-poverty programs that liberals have resisted these many years—as long as Len himself has been active, for a century…educational vouchers, incentives for the private sector to create more jobs, recognition of the vital role the Judeo-Christian teachings on family would have along with the prodding of churches to stress this rather than the insane way they chase the political correctness pellets for adulation of black masses.

But that is too much to ask. What is not is to extend praise and admiration to a gallant Chicagoan of 100 for the courage to fight the crusades he has…which on the local level were invaluable—for which all of us are in his debt. God bless you and keep you, Sir.

And to mourn that Republicans in the city council of his vintage…Robert Merriam, John Hoellen et al…are gone, not to be replaced by a party that has lost its moorings. Please God, let it return to what it once was.