Politics, Power and Sen. Byrd
"The Former Klansman Who Backed Obama," was the Huffington Post's hook for its account of Sen. Robert Byrd's demise. The New York Times' website came closer to the mark: "Elected a record nine times to the Senate, Mr. Byrd, 92, championed the legislative branch and brought huge amounts of federal dollars to West Virginia."
The purposes of politics are murky and mixed: the public weal, the advancement of this-and-that, and . . . and . . . in Robert Byrd's case, as everyone knew but discussed only occasionally, the construction of personal empires founded on constituent gratitude.
It's very, very human. The political world works thus and always has. Julius Caesar, but for the inconvenience of a few knife wounds, could gaze upon Byrd and recognize a kindred spirit. Politics is about many things. On the top ledge is power, reinforced by longevity.
A man first elected to the Senate in 1958—when Lyndon Johnson ran the institution, Cokes cost a nickel, and high school girls wore long skirts and black suede loafers—stayed there until this week. Why? Without impeaching the memory of the late senior senator from West Virginia (who, as obituaries note, belonged to the KKK during much of the 1940s), we might reflect on the obsessions of the politically mighty and the dangers to freedom those obsessions pose.
A skill all to itself, like balancing spoons on the nose, politics logically attracts those who understand and enjoy the skill. Fine. Somebody has to do it. The problem here is paradoxical: Success can breed real danger.
The danger lies in the love it creates for the instruments of success, meaning the tools of power: laws; regulations; expensive giveaways of taxpayer money in the manner of the late senator from West Virginia; the sense (from a voter's standpoint) of dependency on government favors; the accompanying sense of entitlement to government favors.
In a half century of Senate membership (not counting half a dozen years in the House), the late senator from West Virginia created a lot of grateful dependents. These for various reasons, including attachment to the rumble of federal gravy trains headed to West Virginia, maintained him in office.
So isn't that just democracy—the sovereign people having their say? Ummmm . . . yes. To a point. The point itself can be hard to see. It crops up when a public official comes to view himself as indispensable—vital—untouchable. Teddy Kennedy, who came to the Senate just a few years after Byrd, certainly saw himself so. He was one more the Lord had to beckon home to open up a seat for someone else.
The term-limits movement that showed some leg in the '80s never got as far as it deserved to. It achieved some success at the state and local levels, but not in Washington, D.C., the apex of power, where secular power's ultimate custodians proved unwilling to renounce their prerogatives.
That attitude was of course prima facie proof of the need for constitutional or legislative limits to endless service. Yet the people who needed limiting had first to vote to limit themselves. You see the problem.
Nearly everyone has heard Lord Acton's axiom about power: It "tends to corrupt." Corrupt whom, though? The power-wielders alone? Just as corrupted can be the beneficiaries of the exercise of power.
The buying of votes through the bestowal of favors on voters might possibly but doesn't have to serve the interest of policy beneficial to liberty and moral order. New courthouses or bridges, in the Byrd-West Virginia manner, make gratitude more immediate and tangible than can some generalized sense of ease. As Senate Appropriations Committee chairman and dedicated legislative tactician, Byrd kept the bridges and federal buildings coming. At the expense of non-West Virginians. Naturally.
Should heaven prove his next stop, the late senator from West Virginia will find power arrangements slightly different: no voters to entice with favors, no positions or offices to claim and guard jealously. What a revelation!
Meantime, here on our power-mad earth, let's finally do term limits.
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"Should heaven prove his next stop, the late senator from West Virginia will find power arrangements slightly different: no voters to entice with favors, no positions or offices to claim and guard jealously"
If a writer is going to mention Senator Byrd was a KKK member three times in the same piece of "praise"?, he ought to at least note the poor soul was also one of the few democrats who kept his head and stood against the billions and billions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan not to mention the young lives( black, brown and white) he opposed sacrificing for what has proven to be the debacle of our age. It is getting to the point that if you don't like hazardous waste, endless war in the middle east, and blind stupidity in political commentary, you simply can't be a republican (or a democrat) these days.
And if one is going to mention any of the senator's mild objections to the Middle East fiasco, one might also mention his support of the Vietnam, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo military interventions all of which were undeclared illegal wars and all of which were political debacles. (One wonders if the senator famed for carrying a copy of the constitution in his pocket and for completing his legal education while serving in Congress realized the illegality of so many of the actions to which he lent his support.) A cynic might suggest that the senator was anti-interventionist when partisan politics were at stake.
I'm no expert on the senator and I hope for more from the editorial staff in profiling him.
I tend to agree with Mr. Murchison about the "indispensable" types who've inserted themselves into American "public" life. Why would any healthy republic need such supermen?
Much as I disagree with Senator Byrd, I dont know why they have to mention the KKK connection everytime his name comes up. My great-grandfather was a member in the 1920s, and I dont think he ever saw it as anything more than just a fraternal organization (at least at that time). Am I wrong? I admit to being ignorant about how it ran.
"My great-grandfather was a member in the 1920s, and I dont think he ever saw it as anything more than just a fraternal organization (at least at that time). Am I wrong? "
I defer to other posters as to what they actually were. The organization once burned a large cross on my uncles farm one evening because he was a Roman Catholic. But that was just part of being Catholic in these parts and there was never any real hate created by it on either side, just a warning shot across the bow by bigots to say this is white protestant country -- which it was and to a certain extent still is.
Eagle:
I never said the Senator was principled, I just wanted to insinuate that haulng water for Republicans against Democrats, is a thankless job these days for distinguished journalists like Mr. Murchison. He wrote: "The danger lies in the love it creates for the instruments of success, meaning the tools of power: laws; regulations; expensive giveaways of taxpayer money ..." There are lots of ways to pull that trick on both sides ofthe aisle.
"I defer to other posters as to what they actually were. The organization once burned a large cross on my uncles farm one evening because he was a Roman Catholic."
Grandpa was a member in Oklahoma, and although he wasnt Catholic - he was a Anglican chaplain - I cant imagine him doing that. I dont think he continued his membership when he moved the family to California.
"Grandpa was a member in Oklahoma, and although he wasnt Catholic – he was a Anglican chaplain – I cant imagine him doing that."
Well of course not!! My grandad was a 32nd degree Mason and I have heard alot more stupidity come from my Catholic friends about "those Masons" than I ever heard from him about Catholics. We should all go back and read The Morality of Everyday Life and the benefits of casuistry.One of my favorite Southern Generals was Nathan Bedford Forrest and bad history says he started the KKK because of hate. I think he started it to help keep the Yankees from stirring up more hate and discontent after they had already invaded, defeated and accepted the South's surrender. Life is more complex than puritanism would like us to believe with all the good Christian folk wearing white and all the haters dressed in black!!
Robert,
I understand and agree with your point. Just didn't want to give the impression that Byrd was a principled voice on military intervention.
I read Mr. Murchison's piece as an overall non-partisan denouncement of the pork barrel scams and the notion of the Indispensible Leader.
Yes, where would we be without the senators who in practice - because of the rules they themselves have foisted on an uninformed and gullible public - are lifetime appointees? Do people believe "da country" and "da-mocracy" would collapse without a half century of Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd? Perhaps so - How else would Coast Guard stations be built in non-coastal states? And conservatives believe the Germans are socialists when the state intervenes to protect jobs at VW....
Single term limits and the return of Senate appointments to state legislatures seem to me such easy first steps toward restoration of some semblance of order. Occasionally someone whose actually done something and understands something other than kickbacks and payoffs might even make it to the senate under those conditions.
Eagle,
THe returning the Senate appointments to the state legislatures would indeed be a great step in turning things around. I am not sure a one term senate term would necessarily do any real good in cleaning DC up. If you truly want to get quality people, you would have to take the lobbyists out of the equation and/or the lifetime pension, etc. I would also set the legislative slaries to mirror the average per capita income in the US. Of course none of this stuff will ever come to pass, but that is what will need to be done to even have the slightest chance of turning the bus around before it takes us off t he cliff!!!!!!
I agree with Eagle. Appointment of Senators should be done by the states again. I agree with term limits as well, with one reservation. They might, at least to an extent, lead to an informal cursus senorum, which could become as corrupt as long term holding of elective office.
@robert and Eagle
To quote the gypsy from Touch of Evil:
"He was...some kind of a man. Who cares what one thinks of dead people?"
I agree with Bruce #8. Term limits treat the symptom and not that well. How many times have we seen a congressional seat passed on to a staffer? Term limits is a use and forget non-solution that leaves citizens to still not do their duty of keeping track of who they have sent to represent them.
Byrd's patronage style was no different from that of most Republicans--he was just better at it. Let's remember him as one of the few honest men in Congress to tell the truth about Bush's war, which redeems many sins.
In Mexico, a president can only serve one term. This explains why Mexico is a peaceful, prosperous, and well-governed society. This is a subject on which Kluge Hans is correct. The shorter the term, the greater the urgency to loot. The old guys are so bloated on their ill-gotten gains that they have may have time for doing something other than taking bribes and betraying the country.
#12 Clyde Wilson
http://barelyablog.com/?p=26951
Ilana Mercer has written a thoughtful word or two about the late Senator. Even posted one of his warnings (a video of him several years ago warning congress about the build up in Afghanistan) about General McChrystal when the General was still considered cool within the beltway duoploy.
Gentlemen,
I was not suggesting term limits as THE solution but one step in returning to some sane governance. Is anyone here disagreeing with me that we DO need lifetime appointments to a Congress such as Kennedy's? Or dynasties like Dodd's?
I understand Dr. Fleming's point about short terms and the corresponding urgency to loot, but I don't get the sense that the danger posed by men such as, say, Biden, has decreased over the course of the decades that he's been ensconced on his throne.
Lifetime reign by bloodless non-aristocrats is an invitation to narcicists at best and an invitation to sociopaths at worst...to assume power. Neither strike me as the archetypes we desire in those positions.
Of course lobbying will have to be curtiled, but influence peddling of one kind or another will always be around. Still, some measures around this need to be implemented.
At the heart of it, it is a cultural issue and , as noted above, the electorate is responsible for policing the situation. But the Founders were rightly concerned about how effectively the general populace could police and thereby limited suffrage.
Dr Fleming,
So then the Confederate Constitutional Convention was wrong?
In order to return to the original intent of the framers and have the state legislators elect U.S. Senators the 18th amendment will have to be nullified. It is hard to fathom two third of the states were so willing to give up their power to the mob. One of the intents of having the legislator elect Senators was to block carpetbaggers like Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton from being annointed by morally bankrupt New Yorkers.
Byrd was against Bush's war for the very reason it was Bush's. He didn't oppose the empire as long as it was Democrat on the throne. He was a Senate giant when it came to redistributing other people's money to pave West Virginia, $3.3 billion over the last seventeen years. He was hailed as a staunch defender of the Constitution. What a lark given West Virginia as a state is unconstitutional, a product of Lincoln hypocrisy.
As far as his KKK past the race pandering,radio neocons have not stop harping on it out of frustration over Black Americans allegiance to the Democrat party. Byrd and the Klan was always their lead in to spew their deluded beliefs of GOP pious.
Dr. Fleming: The longer the politician stays in office the more wily and corrupt he becomes. It is like prisons where the old cons educate the young ones into becoming more hardened criminals. Now to take Mexico as an example, term limits were introduced to keep the kleptocracy under a little control. They had the history of Porfio Diaz and his 30 plus year rule. Would not the world have been a better place if Hitler and Stalin had six year terms in a one party state, like Mexico used to be? Even if the people following them were Goring and Kaganovich at least there may be some hope that someone would be better. Otherwise we end up with family dynasty's like the Duvalier's and Kim Family in North Korea.
Term limits can be a deterrent to finding capable, honest folks to run for public office. In my city we have term limits on City Council and Mayor, three two year terms. We have some incredibly bombastic, stupid Council people. Once elected it is hard to find serious opposition because likely candidates would rather wait them out and run for the open seat. That gives them plenty of time to do damage.
Term limits would have stopped Hitler and Stalin, you can't be serious?
Bryan writes :Byrd was against Bush’s war for the very reason it was Bush’s"
Bryan,
This was a good if not sufficient reason to oppose it. Byrd lived a long life, fought the good fight, and finished his work. May God rest his soul and grant him the mercy we will all need for our wretched sins,our simple mediocrity, and our lack of charity toward the living and the dead, especially those we most loved. Amen
No sermons please. Senator Byrd didn't oppose Clinton's war on Serbia, nor the occupation of Haiti. As I pointed out, he was not consistent. If his work was to redistribute the tax dollars of the fifty percent who actually pay Federal taxes to his home state that primarily consists of the other fifty that pay none, then he did his work well.
Senator Byrd epitomized the imperial Senate. Will they bury him in his toga?
Bryan writes "Senator Byrd epitomized the imperial Senate. Will they bury him in his toga?"
I did not come to praise Senator Byrd but to bury him. I see that this corporal work of mercy has already been done by his detractors. Now, I must return to my duties as a fifty percenter --those who pay taxes so others can help themselves and others to a few hours or days worth of funding in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are a good man, Bryan, regardless of what you say about the inconsistent pork bareller constantly examined for trichinosis by the folks who invented it, former Klansman, Southern gentleman who stole from rich people like myself to give to poor people in West Virginia and opposed the invasion of Iraq and the quagmire in Afghanistan. Now how is that for the simple truth minus any prayer for the dead?
A gravy-trainer he may have been, but he saw through the Iraq débacle from the start. Covers a multitude of sins, that.
I had rather give money to the poor people of West Virginia than to Goldman Sachs. At least they are Americans.
I agree with Dr. Wilson!! Byrd was the champion of poor white working class people, hillbillies if you will, what other friends did they have in DC? I know he was the king of pork barrel spending but I sort of liked the old rascal. Being against the Iraq debacle was pretty much his finest hour. Big government spending aside, he did at least carry a copy of the Constitution with him and read it frequently. I also liked his fiddle playing. As to whether West Virginia as a state is unconstitutional, yeah, not only that but the eastern panhandle counties wanted to stay with Virginia but they were wrested away and given to West Virginia. However, I don't think any of us Virginians really WANTS West Virginia back. No offense to anyone on here from the Mountain State, but it would be an expensive problem for Virginia to take on. And it's very ironic that the West Virginia state motto is "Montani semper liberari" I hope that is right, my Latin is rusty "Moutaineers Are Always Free". Thanks to the late senator, it seems that they are somewhat dependent on largess from Washington.
Mountaineers are also the most backward lagging groups in any part of the world.
I wonder why European immigrants who could have chosen a much more prosperous life in cities ended up living in the mountains where one's future children are bound to have a very low standard of living and education, due to lack of contact and human concentration.
Mr. Sanjay seems to assume that high concentration of population, coupled with prosperity and access to "education" are prerequisites for the good life. Now, few people would choose poverty, but for those of us with Anglo-Celtic ancestry, the spectacle of the huddled masses in Mexico City or Chicago inspire feelings somewhere between horror and nausea, and as for schooling--which is presumably what you mean by education, the less of it one gets these days the better. Appalachia has been ruined by the same government do-gooders who degraded the Indians (feather and warhoop), but the tough old mountain folk of a hundred years ago or even 50 years ago had many admirable qualities that city-folks could never dream of. The historical question is answered quite easily, since the peoples who settled the mountains had come from similar sorts of places and in the days before a cash economy, one could live reasonably well off game, fish, a small field with an orchard, and enough grain to distill into the more rarified form of bred preferred by our simple people
Why does Mr. Marino repeat what I said as if it were a counter-argument? Of course politicians become more corrupt the longer they are in office--though by the time they reach the federal level they are already quite corrupt or they would not have made it that far. They are also more indolent, which is what one wants out of a corrupt government. Did you never read the fable of King Log and King Stork? One of the reasons American conservatives have never amounted to much and will never accomplish anything is their naive faith in gimcrack solutions, whether it is putting pro-life justices on the court or waving teabags or calling for term limits. Prof. Wilson wised me up long ago, when he explained--and I never tire of repeating this, though if he predeceases me I shall claim it as my own--that constitutions and political systems do not make a people: they reflect the character of a people. Thus, structural changes in elections cannot alter the fact that we are a stupid, servile, and corrupt nation whose politicians will always apply one of Burke's finest insights: "Whatever is the road to power, that is the road that will be trod."
As for President Diaz, he was a gallant soldier and one of the few men strong enough to hold power for so many years in Mexico. I know that the myth of modern Mexican politics makes him the villain, but hardly one of his successors is fit to shine his shoes. Under his rule, Mexico prospered to the extent it can prosper. Under the fiction of Mexican democracy, they have made their country a living hell.
Senator Byrd, though largely an autodidact, was the last literate man in the Senate, and when he spoke one could hear the wisdom of Cicero and Burke. We should be grateful to him if only for the entertainment.
"Mountaineers are also the most backward lagging groups in any part of the world."
I'll take a 'poorly educated' West Virginian over a New Yorker or a Bostonian any day of the week.
West Virginia was by and large the creation of carpetbaggers who had moved from Ohio and Pennsylvania; its 'secession' happened only because the US Army controlled most of the area from the Ohio to the Potomac.
Oh my, Prateek Sanjay, but you have opened a huge can of worms!
Clyde Wilson writes: "I had rather give money to the poor people of West Virginia than to Goldman Sachs. At least they are Americans."
If Goldman Sachs isn't American, what is it then?
Porfio Diaz had his good points but in the end it all turned to ashes. He hung on too long and did not have an orderly plan of succession. That is why there was a Mexican Revolution, with all it's disasters. That is the problem with people who never want to leave office. Endless power leads to endless corruption. This country has 300 million people. Lets spread the power around with term limits. There is a self perpetuating political class that keeps the same kind of people and ideas in office. Many congressmen start as political aides to sitting congressmen. LBJ is the most famous example. We need people with a wide variety of experiece. People find it hard to challege the incumbents because of their lockhold on funding. Term limits would help open up the system.
"[C]onstitutions and political systems do not make a people: they reflect the character of a people. Thus, structural changes in elections cannot alter the fact that we are a stupid, servile, and corrupt nation whose politicians will always apply one of Burke’s finest insights: 'Whatever is the road to power, that is the road that will be trod.'”
"This country has 300 million people. Lets spread the power around with term limits. There is a self perpetuating political class that keeps the same kind of people and ideas in office. Many congressmen start as political aides to sitting congressmen. LBJ is the most famous example. We need people with a wide variety of experiece. People find it hard to challege the incumbents because of their lockhold on funding. Term limits would help open up the system."
I don't think term limits will have any appreciable impact. I think it would be more beneficial if we could make politics more "local" by breaking the U.S. into four or five smaller countries.
#30. You tell me.
#26. One of the problems with America is it is full of late-comers who know nothing about it, and what they do know is wrong.
Professor Wilson, it seems plenty full of 20th generation idiots also.
I could be wrong but my thought is term limits would be needed, and
as everything in a democracy that could change. But do we want to
appease lobbyists? They, it is reported, formed the "financial
reform". It appears they have appointed themselves as the fourth
branch of the U.S.A. government along with the "green-eyed monster".
I am from the West, so forgive me if my knowledge of Southern History is imprecise or in error, but here is my question.
Who will have the most interesting influence on culture 1000 years hence? The plantation aristocrats who controlled the politics of the Antebellum South (and angled for the compromise that left the upper chamber with great power); the Scots-Irish who provided a reservoir of spiritual strength and independence, and who largely set the standard for the frontier culture from Appalachia to California; or the Yankee merchant class who envied the first and feared the second?
None of the above Mr. Templeton. I believe the prize will go to whoever can tell the most whoppers in one lifetime to the largest audiences.
Right now my money is on David Brooks,Tom Friedman and Charles Krauthammer -- and in that order. BUT, since in the end evil is a real absence, maybe they will eliminate all their enemies, Jerusalem will rebuild a temple and John Lennon will rise from the dead to sing one last rendition of Imagine!
I believe that the most influence 1000 years hence will come from those whose books have managed to survive eventually be published in those days. This will be a matter of chance, how acid-neutral the paper and binding are, and perhaps sheer quantity of current publication. The more copies get printed, the better chance of survival.
It may be from the above comments, "chance and bets" are just a
drop in a bucket 1,000 years from now.
#37. Faulkner and the other world-class Southern writers will be all that is remembered of American "civilisation" 1000 years from now, assuming that there will be any Western men left.
@ #30. The poor people of West Virginia are more American than a company founded by a couple of German Jews.
Knowing worldwide Caucasion birthrates, I don't think there will be Western men left.
Silly thing to boast about, but it's my kind who'd replace them all the way from Sydney, Australia to Anchorage, Alaska.
"Silly thing to boast about, but it’s my kind who’d replace them all the way from Sydney, Australia to Anchorage, Alaska."
Then why are you doing it? I am starting to think you're just a troll.
Dr Wilson is probably right.
This leads me to consider what we would wish to pass on to people 1000 years from now. Chance survival of texts is obviously a factor, but what matters most will be what we pass on to the next generation as part of a tradition so that it can be passed on indefinitely. Plato and Aristotle survived because they were part of a tradition.
Aside form the world class Southern writers, what would we wish to pass on as part of a tradition?
Daniel, it was a light jest.