A Mirror for Magistrates
Here is the way the Constitution works now. Roland Burris, a longtime public servant in Illinois, will not be allowed to take his seat in the U.S. Senate because he has been appointed by a corrupt governor in a corrupt state. No matter that the Senate has never in its history denied a seat to an senator, whether elected or appointed, and no matter that there is not a hint of scandal about Burris' appointment. It is highly doubtful that the Senate possesses the right to deny a seat for any cause, once a state has sent its representative. The Senate does have the power to expel members, but of 15 the senators thrown out of the Senate since 1789, all of them were charged with treason: one (in 1797) for conspiring to detach Florida from Spain and give it to Great Britain, the rest for supporting the Confederacy. These must be the precedents that Harry Reid has been gabbling about.
Caroline Kennedy, on the other hand, a political nonentity who makes Sarah Palin seem like Senator Robert Byrd, by comparison, is almost sure to be selected by a corrupt process in a corrupt state that takes into consideration only her enormous wealth and powerful connections. If Governor Paterson names her, it can only be for dishonorable (and probably dishonest) motives. Paterson is hardly a pillar of moral strength: He cheats on the wife who cheats on him, admits to having used cocaine, and has so far refused to crack down on the corruption in state government that rivals the pay-to-pay politics in Illinois.
Ms Kennedy-Schlossberg's* only claim on Hilary Clinton's vacated Senate seat is her maiden name. If a corrupt influence buys her the seat, it will only be the fulfillment of the Kennedy legacy. As the grand-daughter of the bootlegger and black-marketeer Joe Kennedy, who bought and paid for the West Virginia primary for his son John, and as the daughter of John Kennedy, who stole the White House with the help of the Daley machine in Chicago, Lyndon Johnson's ballot-stuffing parade of dead Mexicans in Texas, and the Mafia connections of Sam Giancana (who shared his mistress with Jack), she clearly has the right to inherit the seat once held by her Machiavellian uncle Bobby. What a family, what a party, what a country! Even without so much as mentioning her Uncle Teddy, no decent American can pronounce the name "Kennedy" without a shudder of revulsion. They are the Borgias of American history.
But stop, I am being unfair—and not just to the Borgias, but to Renaissance Italians. Alexander VI and his son Cesare were not held up by their contemporaries as the fulfillment of a dream, a combination of Gregory the Great and Charlemagne. They were simply the most unscrupulous (if even that is fair) exemplars of the noble families who used the papacy as a power base. Even their flatters did not speak of Camelot or a Vergilian Age of Gold. Taken as a whole, the ruling families of the Italian Renaissance—the Medici, d'Este, Gonzaga, and Montefeltro clans were, morally speaking, a dubious lot, but they were also brilliant and cultivated. Lorenzo de'Medici may have bedded many women—though only a fraction of JFK's conquests—but he celebrated his amours in some of the best verse written in his day. He not only patronized scholars, poets, and painters, but he was a man of considerable cultivation. Lorenzo did not have to pay (à la Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School) professionals to write his term papers or cheat on his Spanish exam.
The Kennedys are not, then, our Borgias but our Medici, our Bourbons, our Plantagenets. When we look in Ray Bradbury's funhouse mirror, where we see ourselves as we would wish to be seen, we see the faces of the Kennedys. They are the fulfillment of the dreams of Americans who lust after nothing loftier than wealth and celebrity, and when their goals are reached, they and their children are free to wallow in their vices—adultery, alcoholism, cocaine-snorting. Machiavelli and his later disciples, Pareto and Mosca, would have no trouble in interpreting the Kennedy phenomenon: They represent, if not a true nobility, an elite class, and since the character of every society is best represented by the elite the impresses its image on the less fortunate classes, the Kennedys are who we all want to be assuming we do not prefer the examples of Britney Spears, Kanye West, or Plaxico Burress. Perhaps if Rad Blagojevich chose Plaxico, instead of Roland, there would not have been a problem.
*Yes, I know, she is said never to have changed her name. But names are not simply nonsense syllables we give to children, as Ms Palin did, who can then do what they like with them. She is free to claim any name we likes, and civilized people are equally free to call her by her correct name.
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If I were a Republican, I would fully endorse the appointments of Caroline Kennedy and Roland Burris. Along with the non-entity named to the vacated senate seat in Colorado, the Republicans have decent shots at those seats as senate appointees have a much greater tendency of losing re-election. Of course, the Republicans are a dry-rotted entity and will do little with any sort of election victory. And I am not a Republican.
Whether Roland Burris or Jesse Jackson Jr. or Tammy Duckworth becomes the next Illinois senator is about as an appealing a choice as, say, choosing between Julian the Apostate or Romulus Augustulus to become emperor of Rome. In the last decade, we have had a dot.com bubble collapse, a real estate bubble collapse, a Wall Street bubble collapse, a bond bubble collapse due next year, trillion dollar budget deficits for the foreseeable future, an anti-American "community organizer" elected president, and unfunded entitlements about to become due as the baby boomers retire. We are heading into interesting times that seem likely to produce great upheaval. It is this revolution to come that conservatives should have their eyes on, not which squalid politician becomes the next senator of Illinois. At most, think of the Burris situation as entertainment.
There are a few other examples besides the Southern senators alluded to above of the Senate refusing to seat someone elected or appointed to the chamber. In the 1920s, both William S. Vare of Pennsylvania and Frank L. Smith of Illinois were not seated because of suspicions of corruption. (I only know this because Sen. James A. Reed, whom I had occasion to write about recently http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/show-me-a-statesman/ , was instrumental in preventing Vare from taking office.)
Neither of these precedents would seem to apply to Burris, however, since no one has seen fit even to allege that Burris was paying or receiving bribes.
Thanks for the correction, Dan. Vare was personally corrupt but won the election, but the governor--a political rival in the primary--refused to certify. Vare then drank himself into a stroke and the Senate, while acknowledging the election, refused to seat him. Vare believed it was because of the governor (Gifford Pinchot), so here the case is the opposite of Burris. The case of Smith was closer: He was notoriously corrupt throughout his career. He defeated the sitting senator in the primary and won the election, and when his defeated rival died, the governor naturally appointed the elected successor, who was, however, refused by the Senate because of the corruption.
Dr. Fleming, I would appreciate your assessment of Grover Cleveland who seems to have been one of the politically cleanest presidents yet one with some dubious personal arrangements.
Damn good website, Doc. Yours?
But maybe I better ask: what's the deal with your Kennedy angst? Surely their political DNA, while not angelic, is suitable enough to satisfy the democratic impulse and sentimentality.
Or is it the latter to which you object?
HL Mencken used to say, when asked who the last good president was, "Grover Cleveland, God help us." And I think that is still basically true. In an era of unprecedented corruption--as exemplified then and now by the GOP-- in America, Cleveland did his best to restore some honesty to government and business. I don't think all his measures were good--Civil Service reform assumes that one can safely take politics out of the bureaucracy, a dangerous notion. As for his personal problem, he acknowledged an illegitimate child as his own and paid for it. Although he probably enjoyed the lady's favors, he was not the father it would seem. The lady had been generous to a number of men, and the bachelor was Cleveland, and so he did the decent thing and took the blame.
As for the Kennedys, there is nothing personal. The closest I came to meeting was when I took my wife and her former roommate to lunch in DC. The waiter said there were no tables, but when I mentioned the influential friends--actually former friends--who had taken me there, he put us in a room near one of the kitchen entrances. The only table set up had a champagne bucket and, I believe, some roses. It was only when Senator Ted came in with a rather young assistant that I recalled that this was the restaurant and the room where he had been photographed. The phrase that comes to mind is "butt ugly." He glared in our direction more than once, but I instructed my wife and friend that his private life was none of our business and not to look at them at all. The problem with the Kennedys is precisely the rotten qualities in the American character that respond to them. And, yes, this is the website of Chronicles magazine, of which I am the editor, and The Rockford Institute, of which I am President. The man who designs and maintains it is Aaron Wolf, our associate editor.
Well, thanks for the GC update. From Mencken, no less, though I'm a bit surprised you'd reference him. Mencken would have observed that the presidency rather mirrors the public's soul-and that whom it elects is who it is. If one concedes that, say, Bush refected our base nature, than the flip side is to stipulate that Obama reveals a more munificent, inspring ethos.
Thus, by saying "The problem with the Kennedys is precisely the rotten qualities in the American character that respond to them" is a bit disjointed in terms of a Mencken overview. Just saying.
Again, nice website. Good to read a decent fellow.
Oh, I quite agree with you on our beloved outgoing President. But no, it is my strong impression that Obama reflects our fear, our cowardice, and our self-deception. But then, as HLM once observed famously, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American people.
Kudos on the new website design. It's very well done.
Dr. Fleming remembers the Grover Cleveland situation with regards to the "Ma, Ma, Where's my Pa?" scandal as I remember reading about it. His marrying a much younger woman, Frances Folsom, whom he was guardian of since the age of 11(she was the daughter of a fellow Buffalo lawyer), might be considered dishonorable by some but it seems to have been a genuine love match between two mature adults.
Grover Cleveland was a much more honorable creature than almost all of his successors. He left school to support his family after his father died. Although folks like David Frum and Bill Kristol would criticize him for hiring a substitute in the Civil War, he did so to continue supporting his mother and younger siblings financially. And, after all, didn't Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have other things to do in their era's misguided war? As Erie County sheriff, he carried out his own hangings rather than force underlings to do the work. Cleveland fought the political machines of both parties as mayor of Buffalo. As governor of New York, he fought Tammany Hall. As president, he refused to deal with the American scoundrels that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. And, although his fealty to absolute economic liberalism during the 1893-1897 depression was unwise, at least he showed backbone in sticking with what he thought was constitutionally correct. This contrasts strikingly with the Bush/Paulson/Demorepublican panic of the last few months.