by Michael Liss
We might have been a free and a great people together, but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. —Thomas Jefferson, “Jefferson Draft” of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.
George Washington may have been the “Indispensable Man” whose strength we used as our North Star, Benjamin Franklin the cherubic, ever optimistic face we showed to the outside world, James Madison the primary architect of our Constitution, but, for raw emotion wedded to soaring eloquence, no other American of the Revolutionary period quite approached Thomas Jefferson.
I have never been a big Jefferson fan. He runs a little hot for my taste. I prefer the brooding-yet cerebral miniaturist approach of Lincoln, who says, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
My passion right now is somewhat strained, and I’m concerned that being a free and great people together might be a bit far-fetched. Like just about everyone else on my side of the divide, I want to know what happened and why. How on Earth did we manage to break the GPS and end up right back where we started?
Let us take a deep breath, and, with the cool professionalism of the Federal Railroad Administration’s Accident Management Branch, examine the wreck. Yes, I know, Trump has targeted the Agency and plans to roll back safety regulations on hazardous gas transit, crew member requirements and fatigue risk, but this is only December 2024, and we are still living the good life.
OK, exhale.
This was not a landslide, not actually, and not by any historical metric. Harris clearly lost, Trump clearly won, but Trump’s popular and Electoral Vote margins are more in sync with the trench-warfare-limited-gains of the non-Obama elections we’ve had since 2000. Similarly, it was not a mandate for anything, no matter how often Trump and his team in Congress and the media claim that.
Why does this feel like a landslide, when historical context tells us it isn’t anywhere near one? Read more »
In the game of chess, some of the greats will concede their most valuable pieces for a superior position on the board. In a 1994 game against the grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, Gary Kasparov sacrificed his queen early in the game with a move that made no sense to a middling chess player like me. But a few moves later Kasparov won control of the center board and marched his pieces into an unstoppable array. Despite some desperate work to evade Kasparov’s scheme, Kramnik’s king was isolated and then trapped into checkmate by a rook and a knight.
People are basically good.
During the 1990s, the impossibility of a black president was so ingrained in American culture that some people, including many African Americans, jokingly referred to President Bill Clinton as the first “black president.” The threshold Clinton had passed to achieve this honorary moniker? He seemed comfortable around black people. That’s all it took.
That Fifties-looking gent to your right is John J. Sparkman (D-Alabama) who was Adlai Stevenson’s running mate in 1952. Sparkman served in Congress for more than 40 years, the last 32 of them in the Senate. While not a star, he was associated with several pieces of important legislation and became Chair of the Senate Banking Committee and, late in his career, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was also a committed segregationist and, in 1956, signed the Southern Manifesto, in emphatic opposition to Brown vs. Board of Education.
This scary-looking guy to your left is John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who, during a truly extraordinary career that included being a Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War, also managed to sneak in two terms as Vice President under two very different Presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. You are going to hear a lot over the next few weeks about “chemistry” between Joe Biden and his running mate. Suffice it to say that John C. Calhoun never had chemistry with anyone, except perhaps of the combustible kind. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Calhoun disagreed constantly, particularly on the enforcement of federal laws that South Carolina found not to its liking (including the juicily named “Tariff of Abominations”), which led Mr. Calhoun to resign the Vice Presidency during the Nullification Crisis in 1832.