OMNI US
When you say “Democracy” you mean? Money/Corporations-White
House-Congress-Mainstream Media-Imperialism-Secrecy-Surveillance Complex? When Eisenhower warned us against a “military-industrial
[congressional] complex,” he foresaw for a moment the dark system of domination
of today, --Dick
My blog: War
Department/Peace Department
My Newsletters:
Index:
See: 9-11, Bill of Rights, Bill of Rights Day,
Capitalism, Censorship, Citizens United, Constitution,
Constitution Day, Corporate Monopoly, Corporations, Democracy Book Forum,
Dictatorship, Dollarocracy, Empire, Fascism, Grassroots, Greed, Money, National
Security State, Patriot Act, Plutocracy,
Police State, Secrecy, Security Mania,
Supreme Court, Surveillance, Wars, etc.
Contents of #1
Dick Bennett:
Left? No Full Spectrum Diversity
in USA
TomDispatch: US Electoral Democracy
Greg Palast: Stealing
Elections
McChesney: Internet
and Democracy
McChesney: Digital Disconnect
Clements: Controlling Corporate Power, Reversing Citizens United
Nichols: Oppose
Citizens United and Corporate Personhood
Clark and Teachout: Slow
Democracy, Grassroots Politics
Creativity, Dissent, Resistance: Rejecting Status Quo
Elder and Paul:
Better Thinking, Critical Thinking
Dick: Chomsky, Sharp,
Crises, Democracy Deficit
Anti-Corruption Act:
Sign on, Rescuing Our Government from Money
In These Times: One of numerous Pro-Democracy US
Magazines
Contents of #2
Restoring US
Democracy
Nichols, McChesney, Dollarocracy
(one of the best books vs. US
plutocracy)
Dick, Resisting Dollarocracy
Organizations For Democratic Campaign Financing and vs. Citizens United and Corporate Personhood:
Free Speech for People
Move to Amend
Democracy Is for People
Alperovitz, Renovating the American Dream
Progressive Democrats of America
Regnat Populus 2014 Ballot Initiative and Ben & Jerry’s
Stamp Stampede
More of What We’re Up
Against (see Newsletter Index for fuller record)
Jimmy Carter: NSA Spying = US Failed Democracy
Leibovich: Washington Vanity Fair
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About Dollarocracy
When President Barack Obama was reelected, some pundits argued that, despite unbridled campaign spending, here was proof that big money couldn’t buy elections. The exact opposite was the case. The 2012 election was a quantum leap: it was
The unprecedented tidal wave of unaccountable money flooding the electoral system makes a mockery of political equality in the voting booth. The determination of media companies to cash in on that mockery, especially by selling ad time at a premium to the campaigns—when they should instead be exposing and opposing it—completes a vicious circle. What has emerged, argue Nichols and McChesney, is a “money-and-media election complex.” This complex is built on a set of commercial and institutional relationships connecting wealthy donors, corporations, lobbyists, politicians, coin-operated “think tanks,” beltway pundits, and now super-PACS. These relationships are not just eviscerating democratic elections, they are benefitting by that evisceration.
With groundbreaking new research and reporting, Dollarocracy concludes that the money-and-media election complex does not just endanger electoral politics; it poses a challenge to the DNA of American democracy itself.
Excerpt from the
Introduction
In the days and weeks following the
2012 election, the winning side predictably announced that the problem of money
in politics was overrated because, after all, this side won. Imagining that all
was well because the darkest possible scenarios did not immediately play out,
the Christian Science Monitor declared, “Despite concerns that huge
amounts of money spent by political action committee would skew the results,
many candidates backed by large PAC-financed advertising campaigns did not win
their races. Money was less influential than expected. Voters thought for
themselves.”[1] So there you have it. Or maybe not.
While Republicans and their allied
super-PACs did spend billions to defeat President Barack Obama and the
Democrats, it is not as if the Democrats failed to return fire with fire. As
the New York Times concluded,
“The president and his allies appear to have matched or exceeded Mr. Romney and
his allies in the number of advertisements that aired.” As the dust cleared
after the election, it became obvious that the Democrats were very much part of
the system, with their own dependence upon big money in countless areas. “The
president’s re-election does not presage a repudiation of the deregulated
campaign financing unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United
decision,” political correspondent Nicholas Confessore of the Times wrote. “Instead his victory most
likely reinforced the practice.”[2]
This is the truth of 2012: money beat money.
To believe otherwise is naïve, just as
it is naïve in the extreme to imagine that the
money-and-media election complex ground to some kind of halt in November 2012.
To the contrary, it has not yet built up to full force. That’s a daunting
prospect, but it is also good news. Before it becomes the status quo, we may
have an opportunity to intervene. But for that to happen, we must understand
how we got to this point, how this system operates, what the consequences are,
where it appears to be heading, and what Americans can and must do to get their
nation back on the democratic grid. That is the purpose of this book.
The immediate effect of the
money-and-media election complex is to encourage election campaigns, like those
in 2012, that do not even begin to address the societal pathologies afflicting
the people of the United
States United States
The United States
As the subsequent chapters will
demonstrate, widespread popular disillusionment with contemporary elections and
the political system is anything but irrational. The type of society we have is
far better understood as a Dollarocracy than as a democracy. We have a system
that is now defined more by one dollar, one vote than by one person, one vote.
We live in a society where a small number of fabulously wealthy individuals and
giant corporations control most of the dollars—and by extension have most of
the political power. They buy election results that give them control over the
government, and they hire lobbyists to fine-tune that control so that the
distribution of wealth and income continually skews to their advantage. This is
not a mystery. Polling shows that more than 60 percent of Americans understand
that the nation’s economic structure is “out of balance” and that it favors a
“very small portion of the rich” over everyone else."[3] And they despair
that political structures are so skewed and corrupted that nothing will change
this circumstance. As political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters characterized
American governance circa 2012, “Democracy appears chronically dysfunctional
when it comes to policies that impinge on the rich.”[4]
To be clear, elections are not entirely
worthless—especially on the handful of issues where the wealthy do not
necessarily have a horse in the race. Popular forces can prevail, even against
increasing odds, and we admire and respect numerous politicians who enter and
occasionally succeed in the electoral arena. Elections will remain among the
main playing fields for politics in the visible future. Our argument is simply
that the degree of difficulty that citizens confront when they seek to use the
election process to effectively control government policies is vastly higher
than it has been in memory. And it will only get worse unless Americans do
something about it. A difficult truth lurks not far in the future: if our
elections get appreciably more corrupt, extending the trajectory they were
already on in 2012, the use of the term “democracy” to describe the United
States will be inaccurate in even the weakest sense of the term. The point,
then, is not to abandon elections, but to make them viable and credible.
——————————-
1. Editorial,
“Election Winners and Losers: Americans Voted in Large Numbers, but Voters Need
to Be Better Served at the Polls. Meanwhile, Republicans Must Pause to
Reflect,” Christian Science Monitor, November 9,
2012.
2. Nicholas
Confessore, “Results Won’t Limit Campaign Money Any More Than Ruling Did,” New
York Times, November 11, 2012.
3. Jillian Berman,
“Most Americans Say Economic Structure Favors ‘Very Small Portion of the Rich’:
WSJ/NBC Poll,” Huffington Post, November 8, 2011.
4. Jeffrey A. Winters,
“Democracy and Oligarchy,” The American Interest,
November/December 2011, 18.
———————————————————-
Table of Contents
Foreword: By Senator
Bernie Sanders
Preface: Introduction: Privilege Resurgent
1: This is Not What Democracy Looks Like 11
2: The $10 Billion Election: What It Looks Like
When Billionaires Start Spending
3: The Architects of Dollarocracy: Lewis Powell,
John Roberts, and the Robber Baron Court
4: The Bull Market: Political Advertising
5: Media Corporations: Where the Bucks Stop
6: The Rise and Fall of Professional Journalism
7: Journalism Exits, Stage Right
8: Digital Politics: There Is No Such Thing
as “Too Much Information”
9: The Right to Vote: Beginning the
New Age of Reform
Preface: Introduction: Privilege Resurgent
1: This is Not What Democracy Looks Like 11
2: The $10 Billion Election: What It Looks Like
When Billionaires Start Spending
3: The Architects of Dollarocracy: Lewis Powell,
John Roberts, and the Robber Baron Court
4: The Bull Market: Political Advertising
5: Media Corporations: Where the Bucks Stop
6: The Rise and Fall of Professional Journalism
7: Journalism Exits, Stage Right
8: Digital Politics: There Is No Such Thing
as “Too Much Information”
9: The Right to Vote: Beginning the
New Age of Reform
RESISTING DOLLAROCRACY
by Dick Bennett (from Nichols and McChesney).
The Sept. 30, 2013 The Nation includes an essay by Nichols and McChesney entitled
“Dollarocracy.” In the October 28
number, a reader applauded (“Stop the
Rot”) the authors’ accurate analysis of “the threat to democracy posed by money,”
but he now felt “more helpless in the face of monied power. Tell us how to fight for democracy!” The authors do propose a campaign of actions
in the final chapter of their book, CHAPTER 9.
Here is a summary list of how we can redistribute power from elites to
the mass of people:
“The notion of one person, one vote
must become sacrosanct.” How?
Many reforms will be necessary.
(I am listing them in the order they appear in chapter 9, 255-.) But not “fixes,” since other reforms will be
discovered; this must be a movement like the New Deal Era (261).
By establishing “an affirmative right to vote, explicitly defined”
in the Constitution.
Ensuring rapid and efficient polling.
Radical changes in financing campaigns. The private system for funding campaigns with
private dollars is anti-democratic, legalized bribery, and must end (263-).
Foremost: Complete reversal of Citizens
United through constitutional amendment, 28th Amendment:
removing big money and special interests entirely (264-).
Even though constitutional amendments are difficult, their
attempt, raising millions of supporters, helps create the movement and
motivates officials to act for specific reforms within the ultimate goal. E.g., the president could do more with a
movement behind him (e.g. sign an Exec.
Order requiring government contractors to reveal political spending) and
federal agencies could better enforce existing laws (266-).
FCC can (many laws already exist) and should (and the President
should require) pursue full and fair coverage of elections campaigns:
Enforce Section 317 of Fed. Comm. Act requires on-air identification
of sponsors of political ads;
Require broadcast stations to establish the veracity of
third-party political ads before they air;
Reinstitute free airtime requirements to more level the playing
field;
Restrain the 30-second ads that make viewers less capable of
casting an informed-vote;
Increase funding of public and community media;
New funding initiatives and tax policies to free journalism from
the money-media election complex.
Congress and the President should (267):
Institute strict privacy regulations for the Internet, with
citizens controlling data collected from them;
Seek to make Internet a “central forum for America
Derail harmful digital practices that emerged in the 2012
campaign.
President, Congress, and the people should in every way possible:
Circumvent the Dollarocracy rulings of the Roberts Supreme Court.
Congress should
Renew the federal Fair Elections Now Act (public financing for
campaigns, and more);
Pass the DISCLOSE Act for transparency from donors (formerly a
bipartisan proposal but not opposed by GOP in its platform).
And more pp. 268.
FREE SPEECH FOR
PEOPLE (Oct. 21, 2013)
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October 19, 2013
October 16, 2013
October 16, 2013
October 16, 2013
October 9, 2013
October 8, 2013
America
Submitted by Lindsay Van Dyke on Sun, 07/07/2013 - 15:39
The Nation has featured Free Speech for
People's involvement with the movement to overturn Citizens
United along with our recent Across the Aisle report that highlights more than 100
Republican officials who support a constitutional amendment to overturn the
Supreme Court’s decision.
The article reads:
"The most under-covered political
movement in the United States—and there are a lot of under-covered political
movements in the United States—is the broad-based national campaign to enact a
constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that ushered in
a new era of big-money politics.
On the eve of the nation’s Fourth of July
celebrations, Oregon
Oregon is the fifth state to make the call
for corporate accountability in three months, making 2013 a banner year for a
movement that began with little attention and little in the way of
institutional support after the US Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling, in the case of
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that corporations could spend
as freely as they like to buy favorable election results. " Read the full article by John Nichols here.
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Oct. 21, 2013
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Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of
organizations and tens of thousands of individuals committed to social and
economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that
is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests. We call for an
amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights
belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free
speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.
Move to Amend Field
Organizing Headquarters
PO Box 610 Eureka
(707) 269-0984
Contact Us
(707) 269-0984
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©2013 Move to Amend
Oct.
21, 2013
Join the movement to take
back democracy!
A
movement is sweeping the nation calling for a constitutional amendment to
overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling,
take democracy off the chopping block and preserve constitutional rights for
people not corporations. Find out what's happening in your area, and get
involved.
A people's movement
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"Until corporate money is
removed from our political system, our government will continue to be incapable
of moving forward. RepealingCitizens United is the first step towards cutting the
ties that bind our political system, and we are going to have to fight tooth
and nail to do so."
"Until corporate money is
removed from our political system, our government will continue to be incapable
of moving forward. RepealingCitizens United is the first step towards cutting the
ties that bind our political system, and we are going to have to fight tooth
and nail to do so."
-Stacey,
Hapeville , GA
Sign our petition
In
2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Citizens United v. FEC that corporations have a "right"
to spend unlimited money influencing elections. Corporations are not people.
Democracy is for people.
Add
your name to our petition for a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling
and reclaim our democracy.
Campaign
UpdatesFind out what is happening right now.
Supreme Court Considers Further Eliminating
Spending Limits
McCutcheon v. Federal
Election Commission (FEC), a case whose
impact on our political system could be as damaging as Citizens United, was heard
by the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8, and it could dramatically boost the
corrupting influence of the wealthy over candidates in federal elections.
16 States Have Called for An Amendment!
In 2013, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Oregonand West Virginia joined 11 other stateswhich had previously constitutional
amendment. Help make Arkansas, Iowa ,Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York,Texas or your state the next!
Story
BoxMeet an activist and get inspired.
Lyle Hyde, Illinois
Lyle Hyde, Jr. played a
key role in the Illinois Illinois
By
the NumbersSupport for an
amendment is growing.
FACTS ON THE MOVEMENT TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY
Check
out our interactive infographic
People in towns and
cities across the country are advancing resolutions through their city and town
councils and state legislatures that declare support for a constitutional
amendment to overturnCitizens United,
challenge corporate power. and eliminate unlimited campaign spending.
People
in towns and cities across the country are advancing resolutions through their
city and town councils and state legislatures that declare support for a
constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens
United, challenge corporate power and eliminate unlimited campaign
spending. President Obama and members of congress have also joined them. Learn
about the movement by the numbers and find your way to get involved.
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How to
Democratize the US
A long-term
plan to renovate the American dream begins at the local level and scales
up.
October 8, 2013 | This article appeared in the October 28, 2013 edition of
The Nation. [The title of article in my copy of The
Nation is “Renovating the American Dream.”
--Dick]
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A baker takes freshly-baked bread from the oven at King Arthur Flour Co., a worker-owned business in
This article is adapted
from Gar Alperovitz’s What Then Must We Do? (Chelsea Green).
Everyone knows the
The issue is not simply that our situation is worrisome. It is that the nation’s most pressing problems are built into the structure of the system. They are not unique to the current economic slump or the result of partisan bickering, something passing in the night that will go away when we elect forward-looking leaders and pressure them to move in a different direction.
Not only has theeconomy been stagnating for a long time, but for
the average family, things have been bad for a very long time. Real wages for
80 percent of workers have not gone up more than a trivial amount for at least
three decades. At the same time, income for the top 1 percent has jumped from
roughly 10 percent of all income to more than 20 percent. A recent estimate is
that a mere 400 individuals in the United States
Unfortunately,
what we call traditional politics no longer has much capacity to alter most of
the negative trends. To be clear: I think projects, organizing, demonstrations
and related efforts are important. But deep down, most people sense—rightly, in
my view—that unless we develop a more powerful long-term strategy, those
efforts aren’t going to make much of a dent.
In 2007, people
got excited about federal legislation raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to
$7.25 an hour. This was obviously good, but the long-term negative trend
continued nonetheless. The minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, was more than
$2 higher in 1968. Clearly, when great victories don’t even get us back to
where we were more than forty years ago, we need to pay close attention. I
support such efforts, but it appears unlikely that strategies aimed at reviving
the politics that produced the New Deal and Great Society programs are going to
alter the big trends, even if those strategies are intensified by movement
building—especially given the decline of labor unions,
the power base of traditional progressive politics.
There is, however,
a little-noticed twist to this otherwise bleak narrative. Deepening economic
and social pain are producing the kinds of conditions from which various new
forms of democratization—of ownership, wealth and institutions—are beginning to
emerge. The challenge is to develop a broad strategy that not only ends the
downward spiral but also gives rise to something different: steadily changing
who actually owns the system, beginning at the bottom and working up.
* * *
Consider the
evolutionary change developing in that rustiest of Rust Belt states, Ohio United
States
A young
steelworker named Gerald Dickey had a different idea: Why couldn’t the workers
run the facility themselves? Dickey and a group of activist friends teamed up
with an ecumenical coalition in Youngstown Washington
When the
administration reneged after the midterm elections of 1978, the plan fell
apart. But the story did not end there. And what happened next is of even
greater significance.
The inspiring
example of the workers and religious leaders—and the sophisticated educational
and political work they did to spread the word—had lasting impact. They knew
they were up against some of the most powerful corporate (and union) players in
the country. They were fully aware they might lose the battle. They also knew
they had discovered an important idea with great promise. Accordingly, they
made it their business to educate the public, the press and politicians in the
state and around the country about what they were trying to do, and why.
The idea took
root in Ohio
The current
goal is not simply worker ownership, but worker ownership linked to a
community-building strategy. In Cleveland
Similar
networks are developing in many other cities, and big unions are lending their
support as well. Working with the Mondragon Corporation in the Basque region of
Spain—an exemplary integrated model involving numerous cooperatives and more
than 80,000 people—the United Steelworkers, whose national leadership once
opposed the Youngstown effort, has announced a campaign to help build “union
co-op” worker-owned companies here. The Service Employees International Union,
the Steelworkers and Mondragon are involved with a worker-owned laundry in Pittsburgh United States : New York City
About
the Author
Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz is the
Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland
Also
by the Author
Hey, look it
over—public ownership is the most effective way to fix America
A growing group
of activists and socially responsible companies are rethinking business as
usual.
1.
Progressive Democrats of America
www.pdamerica.org/
Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to
transform the Democratic Party and our country. We seek to build a party and
government contro...
2.
Progressive Democrats
of America -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Democrats_of_America
The Progressive Democrats
of America (PDA) is a progressive
political organization and grassroots political action committee operating
inside the United States
3.
Progressive Democrats of America - Grand Rapids, MI - Political ...
https://www.facebook.com/PDAmerica
Progressive Democrats of America, Grand Rapids
4.
Progressive Democrats
of America -
KeyWiki
keywiki.org/index.php/Progressive_Democrats_of_America
May 2, 2013 - Progressive Democrats
of America operates as an activist network inside
the Democratic Party. It has been described as the political arm of the ...
5.
PDA Community
www.pdacommunity.org/
Progressive Democrats, progressives, liberals, global
warming, transparent elections, economic and social justice.
6.
Progressive Democrats of America Meetup Groups - Progressive ...
pdamerica.meetup.com/
Helps groups of people with shared
interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the
world about Progressive Democrats
of ...
7.
Get Active
| Progressive Democrats
of America -
Capwiz
Please contact Progressive Democrats
of America for information on site status. powered
by CQ Roll Call ©2013. Email Updates. Ad Copy 10 Change makes ...
8.
Daily Kos: NJ-Sen: Blue America & Progressive Democrats
of ...
Aug 1, 2013 - Last April, just three
months before he passed away, the ailing liberal lion Senator Frank Lautenberg
issued a strong statement in opposition to ...
9.
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County | Stand Up! Take Action! Vote!
Many of our members are voters in your
District, and supporters of Progressive Democrats
of America. We're writing to urge your support for legislation to ...
10.
Progressive Democrats of America - Illinois | Illinois
We seek to build a party and government
controlled by citizens, not corporate elites -- with policies that serve the
broad public interest, not just private interests.
Searches related to Progressive Democrats of America
From: Regnat Populus <info@rparkansas.org>
Date: Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 2:35 PM
Subject: The Stamp Stampede is coming to
Regnat Populus is excited to announce it's
first celebrity endorsement! Ben Cohen of "Ben and Jerry's Ice
Cream" will be in Little Rock on
Tuesday, October 22nd to speak at the Clinton
Center and afterwards will be teaming
up with Paul Spencer, David Couch and Rev. Marie Mainard O'Connell of Regnat
Populus in the Rivermarket at St. Vincent 's
Plaza near Bosco's Restaurant.
Ben has an initiative called "The Stamp
Stampede" http://www.stampstampede.org/?sid=6dc60352d3b34ed49f1e846d565e6b99
which is a nationwide effort to bring
awareness to the problem of Big Money in American Politics by stamping cash
with messages such as "Not to be used for Bribing Politicians" and
"Amend the Constitution, Get Money out of Politics".
From 2:30 to 4:00pm, Ben will be stamping your cash and Paul and
Marie will be handing out Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream to the first 120 people
there. Paul will speak around 3:15 to update
the group on the Regnat Populus Ballot Initiative for 2014. The
initiative would allow Arkansas
Follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rparkansas
or our website http://rparkansas.org/
Join the Stamp Stampede event at https://www.facebook.com/events/1427148910845942/?context=create&ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming
Come join us! Stamp your cash, eat ice cream,
help fight Big Money taking over our political system!
FOCUS | Jimmy Carter: US "Has No
Functioning Democracy"
RSN, July 19, 2013
Alberto Riva, International Business Times
Riva reports: "Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is so concerned about the NSA spying scandal that he thinks it has essentially resulted in a suspension of American democracy."
READ MORE
Alberto Riva, International Business Times
Riva reports: "Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is so concerned about the NSA spying scandal that he thinks it has essentially resulted in a suspension of American democracy."
READ MORE
NEW
YORK TIMES Sunday Book Review
A Confederacy of Lunches
‘This Town,’ by Mark
Leibovich
By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
Published:
July 25, 2013
Not to ruin it for
you, but: if you already hate Washington, you’re going to hate it a whole lot
more after reading Mark Leibovich’s takedown of the creatures who infest our
nation’s capital and rule our destinies. And in case you are deluded enough as
to think they care, you’ll learn that they already hate you. He quotes his
former Washington Post colleague
Henry Allen: “Washington feels like a
conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America
Chris
Gash
THIS TOWN
Two Parties and a
Funeral — Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! — in America
By Mark Leibovich
386 pp. Blue Rider Press. $27.95.
Contrary to the subtitle, there are actually
two funerals, which constitute the high — and low — points of the book: the
farewells for Tim Russert, longtime host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Richard
Holbrooke, late of the State Department. These chapters are mini-masterpieces
of politico-anthropological sociology. Leibovich does for Russert’s memorial service at the Kennedy Center Potomac .
Both occasions were (yes, of course) sad, both men having been cut down in
their prime (or near prime). But in Leibovich’s rendering, they are gorgeous
pageants of Human Comedy, large-C and small-c.
No one, Leibovich notes, would have enjoyed it
more than Russert, a greatly beloved figure — “mayor of This Town.” He “would
have loved the outpouring from the power mourners. And he also would have
understood better than everyone that all of the speeches and tributes and
telegenic choke-ups were never, not for a second, about him. They were about
people left behind to scrape their way up the pecking order in his absence.” If
it were a movie, and pray may it become one, it could be called “Netwaking Tim
Russert.”
Holbrooke’s memorial
service,
in turn, featured 15 eulogists. “The stories were told in the spirit of ‘You
can’t help but love the guy,’ ” Leibovich writes, “even if some people very
much could.” His account takes on a Shakespearean flavor as various eulogists
turn it into a not-even-thinly-veiled smack-down of the conspicuous captive
mourner sitting onstage — President
Obama. As a personality, Holbrooke was your proverbial larger-than-life
dynamo. But dynamos are exhausting, and Obama had reached his exhaustion point
early on, after which he seemed to take perverse enjoyment in undercutting and
humiliating his special envoy to Afghanistan
and Pakistan
Enter (trumpets, fanfare) former President
Clinton, who uses his eulogy slot to plunge a stealth dagger into the man who
defeated his wife in 2008. This makes for spectator sport of the very highest
order, and the craftiest bit of eulogy jujitsu since Mark Antony took to the
rostrum in 44 B.C. to praise Brutus and the rest.
Bonus details: Obama apparently hates having
to sit through other people’s speeches, even when they aren’t sneak attacks on
him. Also: Henry Kissinger telling Holbrooke’s widow that Obama is, as Nixon
was, a loner, with this rather piquant difference: “Nixon liked to have big
personalities around him. Obama does not.” This is a telling observation,
coming from the man who has known all the personalities of his time.
In one sense, these episodes simply affirm, as
do the two parties of the book’s subtitle, an old, familiar theme: Vanity Fair, peacock egos, lust for
power, greed, betrayal and broken hearts. We’re shocked — shocked — that human
nature is taking place in the nation’s capital! Pass the salt, would you?
Anyone who’s lived in Washington for any
length of time, listening to the latest candidate for the nation’s highest
office thump the lectern and proclaim he is going to change the way we do
business in Washington . . . will yawn. We heard rather a lot about all that in
2008. So, has Washington
The answer, according to Leibovich, the chief
national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, is: yes, actually, it
has, but not in ways that benefit the Republic that the founders bequeathed us
and that we squander so promiscuously.
He adduces four serious — I’m trying to avoid
saying “tectonic” — shifts that have taken place over the last 40 years.
Combined, they make “This Town” read like the endgame chapters of Gibbon’s
“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire .” In
addition to his reporting talents, Leibovich is a writer of excellent zest. At
times, this book is laugh-out-loud (as well as weep-out-loud). He is an
exuberant writer, even as his reporting leaves one reaching for the Xanax. As
for those four big changes:
Lobbying. President Obama’s
first year in office was the best year ever for the special interests industry,
which earned $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government. Ka-ching — your
change, sir. There’s a phrase in journalism-speak called “burying the lede,”
which Leibovich appears to do by waiting until Page 330 to cite this arresting
figure (previously reported by The Atlantic): in 1974, 3 percent of retiring
members of Congress became lobbyists. “Now 50 percent of senators and 42
percent of congressmen do.” No one goes home anymore. Cincinnatus, call your
office.
There are a number of sanctimonious standout
“formers” in Leibovich’s Congressional hall of shame, but just to name a few
exemplars who gleefully inhabit ethical no-worry zones and execute brisk 180-degree
switcheroos on any issue, including the Armenian genocide, so long as it pays:
Dick Gephardt, Evan Bayh and Tim Pawlenty. (Christopher Dodd, late of Connecticut
The other major change took place pari
passu with lobbying:
the arrival of big money in Washington America
All of which has given rise to another
unlovely development: political
consultants and their concomitant celebrity. This breed has, Leibovich
says, essentially replaced the old-style political bosses. One might ask: is it
a bad thing that we now have the omnipresent James Carville and Mary Matalin
and their ilk? Aren’t we better off for this “celebrity-industrial complex”
instead of the smoke-filled rooms of yore? Over to you, but at least the boys
in the smoke-filled rooms didn’t yap at us on TV on the Sabbath and endorse
Maker’s Mark bourbon. (Honestly, James and Mary. They’re also doing the safety
briefing voice-over for Independence Air. Is this a great country or what?
Meanwhile, on “Good Morning America” tomorrow, George Stephanopoulos’s guests
are. . . .)
Bringing us to the fourth change: Pandora’s (cable TV) box. The rise of cable
television and the 24/7 news cycle, as well as Facebook, Twitter and the rest
of social media, have provided all these people with heretofore unimaginable
influence. “Suddenly,” Leibovich writes, “anyone without facial warts could
call themselves a ‘strategist’ and get on TV. Or start an e-mail newsletter,
Web site or, later, blog, Facebook page or Twitter following — in other words,
become Famous for Washington
It has also enabled journalists to turn
themselves into pundits, with all the glittery and greasy emoluments of that
lower trade. “Punditry,” he writes,
“has replaced reporting as journalism’s highest calling, accompanied by a mad
dash of ‘self-branding,’ to borrow a term that had now fully infested the city:
everyone now hellbent on branding themselves in the marketplace, like Cheetos
(Russert was the local Coca-Cola). They gather, all the brands, at . . . self-reverential
festivals, like the April White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, whose
buffet of ‘pre-parties’ and ‘after-parties’ now numbers more than two dozen —
because a single banquet, it is clear, cannot properly celebrate the full
achievements of the People Who Run Your Country.” Tom Brokaw, current wearer of
the mantles of Walter Cronkite and Tim Russert, has now publicly declared he’s
over and out and done with the damn thing, which has become a grotesque,
narcissistic self-parody.
The proliferation of “formers” and pundits has
resulted in “a high-profile blur of People on TV whose brands overtook their
professional identities. They were not journalists or strategists or pols per
se, but citizens of the greenroom.”
“Citizens of the Greenroom” would have made a
dandy title for this vastly entertaining and deeply troubling book. So would —
to borrow from Garrett Morris’s Chico Escuela shtick on the old “Saturday Night
Live” — “Washington Been Bery, Bery Good to Me!” Or, to borrow from P. J.
O’Rourke’s imperishable 1991 study of Washington
By the end, one is left thinking that our
country would be so much better off if, after putting in their years of “public
service,” all these people would just go home. Or just away. But then what
would we do for entertainment, being left with a mere Parliament of Bores?
Christopher
Buckley lived in Washington
for 29 years before finally going home. His book of essays, “But Enough About
You,” will be published next year. A version of this
review appeared in print on July 28, 2013, on page BR10 of
the Sunday Book Review with the headline: A Confederacy of
Lunches.
US BULLY VS. US
Does democracy weaken men, diminish
real men? Do our constitution, our
rights, our legalities play into the hands of our enemies—from Cold War
communists to today’s hot war terrorists?
And our only recourse, in order to defeat our enemies, to defend our
rights, is to suspend the Constitution?
Communists then, terrorists now are vicious, so we must be vicious? Listen to President Bush shortly after
9/11: “…there is an image of America
out there. . .that when struck, we wouldn’t fight back.” We are sissies. We won’t bomb, burn, torture. So let’s get at it. As President Bush declared to Congress a
few days after 9/11: They “hate our
freedoms.” They “hate us for who we are,
not what we do.” So bomb, burn,
torture. Forward noble troops: defend
our way of life.
But are there two
truths here, or two lies? Did Osama bin
Laden instigate the 9/11 bombings because he hated freedoms and loved the
middle Eastern dictatorships? Can we
best defeat our enemies by mass retaliatory killings and frenzied Patriot
Acts? Or did and do the bin Ladens
believe us not wimps but bullies who disguise our violence and deceive our own
troops and populace with slogans of freedom?
They are not surprised by our endless bombings, assassinations, and
torture because they perceived that monstrous part of our heart long ago. And they foresaw their victory through the US
violence. Like Ho Chi Minh proved, two
resisters—Hydra-like--spring up for every one murdered or tortured. The Ho Chi Minhs/bin Ladens’ leadership,
their power arise from and depend upon the Great Satan’s missiles, tanks,
drones, and carrier battle groups engaged in illegal interventions, invasions,
occupations, and relentless threatening.
They hate what
we do—to scourge the earth illegally
and win, if victory is defined as slaughter.
This is the merciless US identity feared and despised around the world,
motivating attacks on our troops, our convoys, our embassies, even our
marathons and at nightclubs.
They don’t hate
our democracy and its Bill of Rights.
Democracy has not made us soft and weak.
They hate our foreign aggressions.
Militarism and empire have made us tough and hard, and we will win,
until we eventually break but long after our principles were lost.
Reference
Darius Rejali. Torture and Democracy. 2007. Chapter 24, section on the
Franco-Algerian war.
END US
