I ignore those who insist that there’s something untoward about discussing the life’s work of a man at his own funeral—they can begin with his 1970 Health Security Act and work their way forward to the Kennedy-Dodd bill of 2009 on their own. I decline, that is, to say that had I insisted on codifying my ideological commitments in a Senate bill a month before my passing, I would have done so because those commitments were so important to me in life that I wanted them to define my death. Because, in the end, giving one’s natural death to a cherished cause differs from dying for it only by dint of circumstance and timing: to accomplish with one’s death what one fought for in life is the wish of the true believer, and there is nothing untoward in that. But, as I said, there will be none of that.
Instead, I will marvel at the stentorian stupidity of George H. Nash, who received a degree in History from Harvard in 1973 then promptly forgot everything he learned earning it. To Nash, the death of Edward Kennedy represents an opportunity to bemoan “a disconcerting historical trend: the royalization of American politics.” Strangely, he does not begin his investigations with the many powerful branches of the Adams or Walker family trees (despite the former being the most prominent and the latter being the most recent). Instead, he claims that from
Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt to the Kennedys and Camelot, American liberalism has repeatedly succumbed to this phenomenon. It begins in a cult of personality, extends to the leader’s wife and children, and then to a “court” of retainers and apologists.
The royalists, then, are not the ones descended from the state representative of Massachusetts’s 7th district—they are the descendants of the impoverished Irish immigrant that man represented from 1849 to 1851. That bears repeating: the son-in-law of William Walker, Julius Rockwell, represented Patrick Kennedy in the U.S. House of Representatives from the moment Kennedy disembarked in 1849 until Rockwell resigned 1851 and the only worrisome political royalty Nash can locate here are the Kennedys?
Granted, the family to whom he extends this cultish devotion is direct, “the leader’s wife and children,” so emphasis on the children of the Joseph Kennedy, Sr. is warranted: Joseph Jr., John, Robert and Edward are all direct descendants of a single powerful personage, as are the relatives in his other example, the pair of fifth cousins connected by a great-great-great-great-grandfather, Nicholas Van Rosenvelt, upon whose death in 1742 the family splintered into the Republican Oyster Bay and the Democratic Hyde Park Roosevelts.
Wait—now I’m confused.
Not only are the Roosevelts distant cousins instead of sons or brothers, they also belong to opposing factions of a family that’s been at political odds since before the Revolutionary War. How exactly are Republicans who voted for Theodore and Democrats who voted Franklin Delano symptomatic of American liberalism? Moreover, since Nash wants to talk about cults of personality extending to wives and children and courtiers, how could he not mention the two-term Connecticut Senator, Prescott Bush, whose son, George Herbert Walker Bush, and grandson, George Walker Bush, were both President? Does he believe the royalist inclinations of American liberalism are responsible for the Bushes?
Probably not, because this insidious royalism “starts in hero-worship and ends in nostalgia,” and beloved as both Bushes are, neither are afforded the “disturbing” and “disconcerting” treatment “that for nearly a century has afflicted American liberalism.” Anything that “starts in hero-worship and ends in nostalgia” threatens the body politic with an idiot malignance . . . as Nash himself proves when he starts the first paragraph of his essay with some hero-worship and ends it with nostalgia:
On March 30, 1981, Pres. Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated. What if he had died that day, before he had persuaded Congress to enact his signature program of tax cuts? Would his liberal opposition on Capitol Hill have given up their philosophical opposition to his agenda? Would they have stood silent if militant conservatives had tried to rush through sweeping tax-cut legislation as a monument to Reagan’s legacy?
Translation:
“What if the Great Hero had died in 1981? Would the Golden Age for which I now pine have ever come to be?”
I believe he was better off pretending two of the four most recent Presidents weren’t immediate kin—at least then he made my job a wee bit difficult.
(x-posted.)
23 comments
August 29, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Pablo
Unless you’re actually dying in pursuit of a cherished cause, how do you give your death to it? How exactly do you accomplish something (preferably awesome) through the universally inevitable function of dying a natural death?
Exit question: Shouldn’t puberty have a higher purpose?
August 29, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Pablo
Shorter Pablo: Everybody dies, Scott.
August 29, 2009 at 7:58 pm
politicalfootball
One of the stupefying things about the 2000 election was the way that Gore was criticized as the privileged son of a senator and a Washington insider from birth. The iron law of history is IOKIYAR.
August 29, 2009 at 8:01 pm
jazzbumpa
I do love a righteous rant!
August 29, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Ben Alpers
Taft
Romney
Landon (Kassebaum)
Murkowski
Sununu
…and that’s all fairly recently and just off the top of my head.
August 29, 2009 at 10:40 pm
North
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
August 30, 2009 at 6:31 am
kevin
On March 30, 1981, Pres. Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated. What if he had died that day, before he had persuaded Congress to enact his signature program of tax cuts?
This is woefully ignorant of the history of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.
Before the assassination attempt, the tax cut bill had stalled in Congress, and none of President Reagan’s considerable persuasive powers — which had already been unleashed upon Congress and the public at large — had done anything to pass it. Reagan gave a major address pushing the plan on Feb. 19, 1981, and promised a “full court press” behind the scenes to push through the tax cut.
And six weeks later, it was dead in the water — until Hinckley took his shots at Reagan on March 30, 1981. The groundswell of public support to Reagan in the aftermath of the assassination attempt was absolutely essential to securing its passage not four months later. His first public appearance after recuperating was to promote his economic agenda. He milked it for all it was worth and got fence-sitters in Congress to swing over to his side.
What if Reagan had died that day? Given the cause-and-effect relationship of what happened when he was merely shot, I’d say we likely would’ve seen his tax cut pass even faster.
The question should be: What if Reagan had never been shot at? Well, odds are good it never would have passed at all.
August 30, 2009 at 6:56 am
B Moe
Actually it was a completely predictable response to him trying to frame himself as an aw shucks good old Tennessee farm boy. Running than moron was one of the worst mistakes in the history of the Democrat Party, almost any one else could have beat Bush that year.
August 30, 2009 at 7:39 am
politicalfootball
Actually it was a completely predictable response to him trying to frame himself as an aw shucks good old Tennessee farm boy.
As I said: stupefying. I’m speechless.
August 30, 2009 at 8:32 am
kevin
Actually it was a completely predictable response to him trying to frame himself as an aw shucks good old Tennessee farm boy. Running than moron was one of the worst mistakes in the history of the Democrat Party, almost any one else could have beat Bush that year.
First, he ran as the candidate of the Democratic Party.
Second, it was hard to predict that the Republican candidate, George W. Bush — grandson of a U.S. Senator, son of a U.S. President, scion of the elite institutions of Andover, Yale and Harvard — would be able to better frame himself as an aw-shucks gold old Texas rancher.
Laughable, right? I mean, Bush only bought his Crawford property in 1999 as he geared up for a run, unlike Gore whose Carthage TN home had been in his family for decades. Also, Bush’s “ranch” actually had no animals while Gore’s cattle farm actually had cattle and Al used to work it as a kid. Bush has since sold the Crawford “ranch” because it’s no longer useful as a stage prop and they’ve moved to the suburbs. Gore still lives in Carthage.
But Bush was authentic, right? And Gore was a big fat liar? Because the media said so, that’s why.
August 30, 2009 at 9:46 am
Mike
Running than moron was one of the worst mistakes in the history of the Democrat Party, almost any one else could have beat Bush that year.
Except that he won…but whatever.
August 30, 2009 at 10:18 am
TF Smith
Gawd, modern Republicans…the ignorance just takes one’s breath away.
What is truly bizarre is that TR and DDE have more in common with Ted Kennedy’s liberal Democratic political positions than they do with Reagan, either Bush, or any of the current crowd of GOP bright lights…
August 30, 2009 at 11:59 am
SEK
Unless you’re actually dying in pursuit of a cherished cause, how do you give your death to it? How exactly do you accomplish something (preferably awesome) through the universally inevitable function of dying a natural death?
I addressed that (by not addressing it) in the first paragraph: Kennedy had been seriously ill since May, and the “Kennedy-Dodd” bill was composed mostly by aides and Dodd. Kennedy floated the bill in June as a last statement of his principles, i.e. the item he wished his death to be associated with. (Remember, the plan was to pass reform in July, which tallies with the release of Kennedy-Dodd as a table-setter in June.)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Who keeps using what word now?
Actually it was a completely predictable response to him trying to frame himself as an aw shucks good old Tennessee farm boy.
Did you watch the same election I did? Because I distinctly remember him running as an experienced technocrat, and being attacked on that front with spurious claims that he believed he invented the Internet. I think, as others noted, that you’ve mistaken Gore for Bush.
August 30, 2009 at 12:54 pm
North
SEK, I was agreeing with you about the idiocy of decrying the Kennedy and Roosevelt families as royalist while ignoring the Walker/Bush dynasty. But I can see how that might not have been clear.
August 30, 2009 at 5:58 pm
andrew
There’s a helpful list of political families here at the Political Graveyard.
August 30, 2009 at 5:59 pm
andrew
I think I just had a link to the Political Graveyard sent to the spam filter.
August 30, 2009 at 7:47 pm
SEK
Good to know, North. I thought you were maybe knocking jazzbumpa for something and was, as per the usual, confused.
andrew, it has been resurrected!
August 30, 2009 at 8:50 pm
B Moe
And the Democrats predictably and accurately attacked Bush for being all hat and no cattle. They were both fucking phonies, which is why I voted Libertarian in 2000. The Democrats had the ticket reversed, they should have put Lieberman in the top spot.
Do you know the reason the Gore family own a cattle ranch, by the way? Google Al Gore Sr. and Armand Hammer, it is some good reading.
Depending on which crowd he was addressing, he ran as a lot of different things.
A pretty common mistake in 2000.
August 30, 2009 at 8:53 pm
B Moe
Why isn’t it equally idiotic to decry the Walker/Bush families while ignoring the Kennedy dynasty?
August 30, 2009 at 9:56 pm
ari
The above was the 40,000th comment recorded on this blog. I just thought you might feel special knowing that, B Moe. (BevMo? Big Mo? Doug’s brother, Baruch?)
August 31, 2009 at 8:01 am
JPool
Why isn’t it equally idiotic to decry the Walker/Bush families while ignoring the Kennedy dynasty?
Mostly because no one’s actually doing that. Otherwise, great point.
They were both fucking phonies, which is why I voted Libertarian in 2000.
Look, we all made some interesting choices back in 2000, when it seemed like eight years of Clinton had gotten us f*ck all and it wasn’t yet clear that things not getting dramatically worse was a benefit in its own right. That doesn’t actually make your original comments about the 2000 election any more accurate. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Gore was an awful awful candidate, just not for the reasons you described.
The Democrats had the ticket reversed, they should have put Lieberman in the top spot.
OK, now we know that you’re high. Maybe, for reasons best known to yourself, you would have preferred President Lieberman, but do you really think that he fits with your earlier “almost any one else could have beat Bush that year” line? Joe “Whinypants” Lieberman would have made an effective Democratic presidential candidate
everin 2000? You thought that Perot really had a shot too, didn’t you?August 31, 2009 at 12:44 pm
herbert browne
*then promptly forget everything he learned earning it*
“The Transitive Vampire” informs me that the correct form of the verb in the decoupled trailer of this compound sentence is “forgat”… ^..^
August 31, 2009 at 3:57 pm
SEK
Depending on which crowd he was addressing, he ran as a lot of different things.
And this differs from any modern political how?
Why isn’t it equally idiotic to decry the Walker/Bush families while ignoring the Kennedy dynasty?
If you’ll note, in the post, I discuss both of them—my point was that it’s idiotic-unto-lunacy to bemoan political dynasties and ignore the most recent one because you happen to be a fellow-traveler, because what you’re saying, then, is that “political dynasties are evil, except when they’re on my side.” That’s a lunatic hypocrisy, inasmuch as you’d have to be daft to believe that people somehow forgot about the guy who left office not but seven months back.
Thanks, herbert, and corrected.