The Triumph of Willful Men (and Women), and What to do About It

The best thing to come out of the health care debate, as far as I can tell, other than a lukewarm bill whose merits and demerits will continued to be debated ad nauseam (I’m for it, though I’m glad I don’ t have to vote for it, on the record) is the call for the reform of the filibuster. If the filibuster is changed or eliminated, that would be, in my opinion, real, lasting reform. I’m not so sure about the health care bill. And getting rid of the filibuster would be a salutary change in progressive thinking. For reasons that I cannot fathom, liberals, progressives, democrats, have been over the past decade profoundly uninterested in discussing structural reform of the American government. The Bush-Gore election should have been an occasion for serious talk about Electoral College reform, and no more Floridas should have been a top issue for any new Democratic administration. And likewise, on January 20th 2009, Obama should made clear that ending the filibuster (at a time when the Dems only had 58 seats in the senate) should have been a top priority, rather than wasting months with oleaginous talk of bipartisanship.

The complete lack of interest in the reform of any constitutional arrangement is a hallmark of contemporary progressives, and it distinguishes modern progressives from Progressive era progressives, New Deal progressives, or Great Society progressives, all of whom expressed great interest in changing the way the government works in fundamental ways, and often tried to neuter the filibuster’s potential for gumming up the government works. (But, BTW, kudos to the “little band of willful men” who tried to prevent US entry to WWI. ) Getting around the nine old men on the US Supreme Court, and if Roosevelt’s court packing was too blatant a way around it, the need to do so spawned all sorts of constitutional innovations. And trying to loose the southern grasp over the senate, both in terms of committee chairmanships, procedure, and filibusters, was a major cause for civil rights liberals in the 1950s and 1960s. But for all the talk of change that ushered in Obama, there has little serious talk until now of changing the structure of government. There are reasons for this. Sstructural change is not inherently partisan; changing the filibuster or electoral college rules could help either party. They are not bread and butter issues. And arguably the filibuster is more murky now then it was half a century ago. It is no longer the prerogative of dixiecrats but is an equal opportunity delaying tactic, used by both sides freely. But besides adding to the profoundly antidemocratic nature of the senate, it makes the senate a place where serious legislation goes to die. Its fine to expand the health care system, try to pass a cap and trade bill (good luck), or tackle immigration reform (good luck again), but it is only when progressives learn again that the forms of the government are not inviolately given, and are, in the hands of the people, possess an inherent plasticity, that reform will really matter. The rest is just soundbites. The Obama presidency has had its first real encounter with structural and procedural reality, and I hope they and we learn from it.

Incrementalism, in Part

One of the major questions in the health care legislation and the endless conundrums of the debate is whether one can start with small gains and advance to bigger and bigger ones. And the answer is, of course, sometimes incrementalism works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Those who defend the current senate bill sometimes point to social security and civil rights as successful examples of incrementalism. Perhaps. One can read the evidence in both ways. While it is certainly true that by excluding domestic and agricultural works from the original social security act in 1935, at the behest of southern senators, there was a huge gap in the coverage and fairness of the social security act, which was only remedied in subsequent decades. On the other hand, the creation of social security system strikes me as a far more radical act than anything contained in the current health care bill, which fits into the model of regulated capitalism, and does not, it seems fundamentally transform the health insurance industry. (This might be debated in some quarters. Much depends on how the health exchanges work in practice.) And civil rights seems like an even worse case for incrementalism. This is a complex subject, but I would argue that though the series of executive orders and state and federal laws from 1941 through the early 1960s on civil rights were significant, but racial equality was really instituted in this country by a wrenching revolution in the mid-1960s, in one convulsive fell swoop.

One thing is clear. If all the big issues are delayed until a future date–I think of the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians—incrementalism will get you nowhere, and the unresolved issues will unresolve all the issues the parties thought they had resolved. There is a Zeno’s paradox of incremental reform; of perpetually taking half steps and never arriving at one’s destination. This has me very worried. On the other hand, Edward Bernstein was right, and Kautsky and Lenin were wrong. I think the current bill is okay, and if I were a member of congress, I would support it. However, it does mean that for the foreseeable future, health insurance in this country will continue to be doled out by for profit private insurers, and the United States is likely to continue to have one of the worst health insurance systems in the developed world.

Obama and the Morning After

President Obama's speech on Afghanistan left me hoping that he succeeds but deeply skeptical about the prospects of his escalation. The left and right are already picking it apart for obvious reasons, and if it fails he may well stand alone. The biggest fallacy behind it, I fear, is the belief that a surge in Afghanistan will have the same useful impact as the surge in Iraq. But any analogies between the two countries are badly flawed.

As Juan Cole points out, Afghanistan and Iraq are very different societies. And the factors that aided the success of the Iraq surge--some of them ugly forms of ethnic cleansing--won't necessarily apply in Afghanistan.

No two wars are alike, and it is a great mistake to assume that what works in one will work in another. In countries as different as Iraq and Afghanistan, the complexities and dangers of each nation make for vastly different military situations.

President Obama has devised a strategy that recognizes conservative desires for a military solution and liberal desires to get out. Both sides can find much to criticize in it.

My fear is that there is no war that the US and its allies can "win" in Afghanistan the way you win a conventional war. That will make for a very messy ending to this conflict. While I hope that President Obama's policies hasten the end of this fight in some form, I can only contemplate them with a deep sense of skepticism.

Learning from LBJ

While the nation and the world await President Obama's decision on Afghanistan, it helps to look back on another president confronted with the prospect of escalating a war in a far-off land: Lyndon Johnson weighing his options in Vietnam. Comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam are a dime a dozen, but Bill Moyers has done an excellent job of bringing to life Johnson's agonized thinking.

So if you haven't yet seen it, check out the latest broadcast of Bill Moyers' Journal and LBJ's Path to War, Parts I and II.

LBJ's Path to War is composed almost entirely of still photographs accompanied by tape recordings of Johnson's telephone conversations with politicians, friends and government officials. Johnson's strong sense of Vietnam as a bad war, and his fear of the political consequences of withdrawal, make for agonized musings. I've seen references to these tapes before, but still find them riveting--and proof that you don't need "high production values" to make great television.

Moyers' broadcast is a great service. Let's hope our president and the country learn something from it.

The Mayoral Election in New York City

Mayor Bloomberg's surprisingly narrow victory over William Thompson illuminates two important issues: the mayor's relatively thin popularity in the city and Democrats' failure to win mayoral elections

With all the money he had to spend, all his ads, and all the powers of incumbency, Bloomberg won by far less than expected. Early in the evening, when the returns had him and Thompson only one percentage point apart, some people were even talking about an upset.

Early explanations with the narrowness of the race have turned on pollsters' fallibility, voter disgust with the mayor's flipflop on term limits, and resentment of his massive spending. But there's also the gnawing fact that Bloomberg's New York seems less and less hospitable to the middle and working class people who form its majority.

In his victory speech the mayor promised more jobs and more affordable housing, but it is his relatively thin achievements in this area that explain a lot of voters' frustration with Bloomberg. In many ways, he has been a very good mayor. But it is hard to escape the feeling that his city functions better for the rich than for the rest of us. And that, I suspect, contributed mightily to Bloomberg's relative unpopularity.

Thompson ran a weak campaign and came closer than anyone expected to beating the mayor. There will be many explanations for why this happened, but it is part of a pattern in recent New York history: the Democrats' inability to come up with strong, winning candidates.

In a city where Democrats are the great majority, more than once we have seen Democrats lose narrowly to Republicans. Giuliani over David Dinkins and Ruth Messinger; Mike Bloomberg over Mark Green and Freddy Ferrer, and now Bloomberg over Thompson. The Democrats don't seem to be able to turn their advantage in numbers into consistent mayoral victories.

The explanation for why this is so will have to wait for another day. But the Democrats really have some soul searching to do. In retrospect, more than anyone imagined, this was an election that their candidate could have won. Now they job is to figure out why he lost.

A Needed Revision

Political debates often turn on an interpretation of history, especially in today's New York. One of the most potent lines of attack is to say, "Do you want to go back to the bad old days of David Dinkins?"

Rudy Giuliani wields this tactic with relish. But as Michael Powell points out in today's Times, this charge involves a misreading of the Dinkins administration.

Dinkins was far tougher on crime than he is credited, and he worked to create more housing for the city. He had managerial flaws, but in general he worked far harder to meet his opponents than they did to meet him.

Powell's piece is a healthy antidote to the belief that only Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg know anything about running New York City.

If It Wasn't For the Irish and the Jews

Mick Moloney's musicianship, scholarship and showmanship have long enriched our understanding and enjoyment of Irish music in America. Most recently, he has turned his talents to the little-known story of Irish and Jewish collaboration in vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley from the 1880s to the 1920s. The result is a splendid CD, "If It Wasn't For the Irish and the Jews," which was launched in great style tonight at Symphony Space in Manhattan.

The CD itself is a fine recording, thanks to Moloney's own musicianship and the playing of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, a band with a special talent for recovering the beauty of early jazz and show tunes. Tonight's launch was heightened by additional contributions from Dana Lyn, Jerry O'Sullivan, Billy McComiskey, Kerith Spencer-Shapiro, John Roberts, Susan McKeown, The Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, and a splendid array of step dancers and more.

The result was an evening that honored Irish and Jewish musical traditions and their creative mixing in Tin Pan Alley. Thanks to Mick's research, the evening was filled with illuminating anecdotes about Jewish and Irish collaboration and competition in show business, Jewish songwriters penning sentimental Irish songs, and Irish performers passing as Jews.

I have admired Mick's work since I studied with him at New York University in 1980, where he forever enriched my understanding of Irish music in America. (He gracefully favored me tonight with an acknowledgment of my own work on vaudeville that helped him understand the setting of Irish-Jewish efforts.)

Mick's latest offering deepens our understanding of the greatest thing about American culture: its hybrid vigor. Nowhere is that clearer than in music, especially in the Irish-Jewish collaborations that he celebrated tonight. Buy the CD. And if he's on tour anytime soon, don't miss his show.

Art Tatum

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the most phenomenal musicians America has ever produced, pianist Art Tatum, born in Toldeo, Ohio on Oct, 13, 1909. In his relatively short life—he died in 1956—the nearly-blind Tatum made hundreds of recordings, primarily of the American popular songbook, and all featuring his amazing technique with its blistering arpeggiations, harmonic creativity, and technical sureness. That he was the most virtuosic of jazz pianists has never seriously been doubted or challenged. But Tatum’s music is easy to admire, and perhaps difficult to love. I know. For a long time I was one.

The problem with Tatum is that he doesn’t fit into neat category, or school. Of the great swing era performers, he was the only one who was best heard by his lonesome. Playing with collaborators diminished, rather than enhanced his music making. He was unique. One- part 19th century piano virtuoso, the heir to Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninov, one part cocktail pianist like Eddy Duchin and Carmen Cavarallo, endlessly tinkling the ivories in versions of the popular songs of the day, and one part jazz musician, the friend of Fats Waller and Coleman Hawkins, and he sounds like all three. The standard complaint about Tatum is that he doesn’t swing, that his endless runs get in the way of the underlying music. Well, hard swinging wasn’t what he was about, and ornamentation was the essence of his music, and he needed the song forms to confine his talent. And if his challenge was to find an expressive mastery equal to his unrivaled technical mastery, all that one can say is that he got better at this as he grew older, and I think his 1949 Capitol recordings, and his mid-1950s solo work for Norman Granz are the pinnacles of his career, though all the peaks are lofty. The thing is about Tatum, as is the case for all music, if you listen to what he is, rather than for what he is not, his genius becomes apparent, and you get washed over by wave after wave of musical pleasures. Anyway, I have been listening to Tatum all day, and you out there, whoever you are, should too. See Art run. And run. And run some more.

On Nobel Prizes

You don’t expect to know the names of the people who win the Nobel prizes in chemistry, medicine, or physics. You count yourself well-informed if you knew anything the particular discovery that prompted the award. You expect to know the name of the person who wins the Nobel Prize for literature, and once again, I have been disappointed, and suspect I will continue to be as long the prize continues to be awarded to European authors who haven’t been much translated into English. (Hang in there, Philip Roth and Amos Oz. )

You never know about Peace Prize, what the criteria are, and why it doesn’t go to the Quakers or some other pacifist organization every year. And when it is awarded to the commander in chief of the world’s largest and most powerful military, currently conducting at least two major wars, the message can become unclear. But the message in awarding Obama the peace prize is simple. It is a thank you note to the American people for ridding the world of the hyper-militaristic and chauvinistic Bush administration, and not electing John McCain. It is an award to America for rejoining the concert of nations. It is an award for not making things any worse, which America is uniquely positioned to do. It is an award of encouragement, calling on America to do the right thing.
The most obvious criticism of the award will be that it is premature. (And the most obvious pleasure will be to see the right fulminate about the prize.) But when it comes to America’s responsibility for keeping the world peaceful, it can’t be awarded soon enough. Obama’s presidency at home has become mired in health care and other debates, and many progressives have begun to wonder about his priorities, and the bloom is off the rose. This is a healthy debate, but the award is a reminder of the way the rest of the world views America, and as Obama ponders what to do in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Israel and Palestine, I hope he remembers that what the world expects him to do is to keep the peace, end wars, and leave office with a safer, less vicious, less nasty world. This won’t be accomplished by easy political compromises or taking paths of least resistance. The American people, and now the world, are holding Obama to higher standards than those usually imposed on politicians. Whether this is fair or not can be debated. What cannot be is that if Obama fails to deliver on his promise, he will be the most disappointing president since the last sitting president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, one Woodrow Wilson.

Springsteen at Giants Stadium

I caught Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium last night. At 60 he is still fiery and exuberant and the E Street Band rocks along just fine. Together, they do something extraordinary: make beautiful music out of the bitterness and the sweetness of living in New Jersey.

A writer once knocked Springsteen for appealing mostly to white fans, but I think that misses the importance of African American culture to his music. Springsteen is deeply influenced by the Black idioms of rhythm and blues and gospel.

Most important, he embodies what Al Murray once called the greatest gift of the blues: affirming life in the face of adversity,

Last night, I was up on my feet dancing and pumping my fist to lines like:

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood
and these badlands start treating us good.

I grew up in the working-class world of North Jersey. I've always cherished Springsteen's ability to turn its blend of big dreams, shitty jobs, and bruised spirits into moments of pure exultation.

In Springsteen's world, where I was raised, people are bred to what Yeats called "a harder thing than triumph." The greatest gift of Bruce Springsteen is that he finds beauty, resilience, and ecstasy there all the same.