So what kind of President was Martin Van Buren?
An unlucky one, by all measures.
Going off on a tangent here. But about the reason why Presidents should be thankful they're capped to just two terms of office. Eight years is enough time to do the work you wanted to do when you became President... and usually just right at the time you need to clear out of the Oval Office before the consequences of all the things you've done as President come due.
If a President is lucky enough to get a second term, most often than not they live to regret it: a quick check of Two-Termers find a lot of scandals and bad breaks happening in a second term. Washington, Jefferson, Madison (the War of 1812 was in his second term), Jackson (the Nullification Crisis), Grant (getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but yeah), Cleveland (the non-consecutive counts), McKinley, Wilson, FDR's second term wasn't a hoot, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush the Lesser... yeah, second terms were a bit of downers for those guys. We don't know what Lincoln's second term could have been (most likely fighting with Congress over Reconstruction), and Teddy Roosevelt's wasn't too bad. (NOTE to Obama: it's NOT a given the second term is awful - Eisenhower's was weak but not too terrible, for example - so don't panic. Not yet...). It makes me wonder why a guy even wants to run for a second term, other than the obvious fact that Two-Termers get better ratings from historians than the One-Termers (or as Dana Carvey as Bush The Elder memorably whined "I'm a Jimmy Carter!").
So clearing out after two terms is usually a good idea. Eight years of your agenda is more than likely going to create consequences you will be in no position to correct or fix (because it might mean conflicting with your ideology or legacy). But what happens when you leave someone as a successor to your legacy, when you have one of your backers become President himself?
Harken to the case of Martin Van Buren, a vocal supporter of Andrew Jackson through thick and thin. Van Buren was an ambitious sort, quickly rising in the Democratic ranks as the moral and political opposite of John C. Calhoun (considering how much of a bastard Calhoun was, that wasn't too hard). When social scandal rocked Washington (the Eaton Affair), Van Buren sided with Jackson's faction and pretty much solidified himself as Jackson's heir to the office. Being Vice President during Jackson's second term - to Calhoun's chagrin - didn't hurt.
But what happened to Van Buren's term of office should stand as a warning to any who seek to follow in a Two-Termer's footsteps. The bills of Jackson's tenure came due during Van Buren's, and given Van Buren's temperament in office he was incapable of moving past the restrictions of his predecessor's legacy, dooming his own term.
One thing Van Buren was NOT was an Active-Positive: Van Buren demonstrated no flexibility or skill in compromise in office to cope with the Panic of 1837, marking him with a clear Negative trait. Given that he did pursue various actions, but without the political savvy to finesse them through a divided Congress, this leaves Van Buren as a decent candidate to be labeled an Active-Negative President.
When you look at Van Buren's response to the economic depression caused by the Panic, you'll see the Uncompromising belief system. He did ask for Congress to form an independent Treasury office for government to handle its revenues rather than rely on the banks (the cause of the speculation and much of the Panic's origins), and he did argue for government to print paper money to counter some of the effects of the specie (over-reliance on gold and silver coinage) affecting the downturn. But he argued against more pro-active measures to aid the individuals most affected by the depression: the Panic caused vast unemployment and personal debt that couldn't get paid, and there were thousands in dire need of direct aid. Van Buren, sticking to the strict discipline of constitutional restraint, did not see any constitutional powers to create such relief for the citizenry.
The other problem was that Van Buren was no master of horse-trading or coercion, two of the more effective means of getting Congress to do anything a President wants. Even with a Congress leaning Democratic during the early stages of the Panic, the proposals Van Buren offered went nowhere (it didn't help that Van Buren was not fully in control of the Democrats: Calhoun for example was still a player and like all bastards Calhoun was vengeful). When the Whigs - the rising opposition to Jacksonian Democrats - gained elective power by 1838 it made things harder for Van Buren.
And so, Van Buren got the blame for the Panic and the prolonged depression that followed. He ran for re-election but became a One-Termer President, and the model for any Chosen Successor President doomed to One-Term Infamy: Carvey, Bush the Elder was NOT a Jimmy Carter (who was more a John Adams). Bush the Elder was a Van Buren. Which is still not a good legacy to claim. The one legacy Van Buren COULD claim with any happiness is that he's the popular origin of the American word "okay".
Next up: the President who most likely can't be listed in ANY Character category at all. For a very good reason...
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The Atlantic Just Reminded Me This Is an Anniversary Year
Being a little bit distracted by such things as job-hunting and moving to new job, it took a link I got today from a friend to a photolog on The Atlantic's website of major events of 1963.
That was a huge year in a lot of ways. The Civil Rights movement that started in earnest back in the mid-1950s was in high gear by 1963: King's "I Have A Dream" speech, the Birmingham protests, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the bombing of a church killing four girls. The fighting in Vietnam picking up, and political upheaval leading up to a military coup. The space race now with a woman cosmonaut going up. Two James Bond movies. Two Beatles albums. A television show on the BBC about a gent and some companions traveling the universe in a blue box. And then JFK in Dallas.
So expect a lot of anniversary notices to come and go. Mostly go, I might lose track of things now I'm working full-time (yes I will keep bragging about this for the next four years to overcompensate).
Oh, and this is also the 150th year anniversary of 1863, a big year of American History with the Civil War ongoing. Expect me to get all fangirly near about July 2nd (Day Two of Gettysburg)...
That was a huge year in a lot of ways. The Civil Rights movement that started in earnest back in the mid-1950s was in high gear by 1963: King's "I Have A Dream" speech, the Birmingham protests, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the bombing of a church killing four girls. The fighting in Vietnam picking up, and political upheaval leading up to a military coup. The space race now with a woman cosmonaut going up. Two James Bond movies. Two Beatles albums. A television show on the BBC about a gent and some companions traveling the universe in a blue box. And then JFK in Dallas.
So expect a lot of anniversary notices to come and go. Mostly go, I might lose track of things now I'm working full-time (yes I will keep bragging about this for the next four years to overcompensate).
Oh, and this is also the 150th year anniversary of 1863, a big year of American History with the Civil War ongoing. Expect me to get all fangirly near about July 2nd (Day Two of Gettysburg)...
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Seven, With All Apologies to Bill Brasky
All of this leads to a rather troublesome dilemma: Is a badass still a badass if he doesn't always do the right thing? - Badass of the Week guy (aka "Amazing Ben Johnson")
Pardon my Swedish, but Andrew Jackson was a sunofabeech (I'll be more clear about the sentiment towards the end).
Just take all of the crazy things done by Bill Brasky (even hunting down the Banana Splits), trade in Andrew Jackson's name, and you've pretty much got an idea of what Andrew Jackson's done.
The nicest things I can say about Jackson are 1) he dearly loved his wife and 2) he taught his parrot how to swear in two different languages. I'd throw in that he stared down an even bigger SOB in John C. Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis, but that's like choosing between having someone hit your head with a frying pan over having someone hit your head with a heavier frying pan.
So what kind of Presidential character did Jackson possess?
Jackson more neatly fits the Active-Negative traits of a President far better than his predecessor John Quincy Adams. Jackson as Compulsive is easy to note when you look at what he did as President. Note above all Jackson's habits toward being Uncompromising and having anger management issues.
The anger management issues were pretty noticeable even to his followers: Jackson's entire backstory is one big fight after another. A child solider of the Revolution, he was captured by the British and roughly treated, himself slashed at the head and arm by a British officer who tried to get Jackson to polish his boots. That his brothers died (one in battle, one to illness in captivity) as well as his mother (who pledged to work as a nurse for the British to free her sons, and then died while treating a cholera outbreak) pretty much made Jackson hate the Brits for life. Orphaned, he moved to the then-frontier of Tennessee carving out a career as a landowner, farmer (which grew into slave-owning) and backwoods lawyer (back then formal training and a degree was hard to come by). He got involved in the border wars against various Indian tribes rising up against expanding settlers, gaining battlefield experience and military rank up to General by the War of 1812 and his famous defense of New Orleans at war's end. By then he'd developed some hatred towards the Natives as well.
Another sign of Jackson's anger was the numerous duels, of challenges offered and received. He's close to owning the record number of duels in American history (the number varies between thirteen and somewhere in the hundreds) and is the only President to have killed a man in a duel. Legend has it Jackson got so bored during a Cabinet meeting he dug out a dueling bullet from his arm and mailed it back to the guy who put it there writing "I believe this is yours."
His blunt and candid nature was something that made him less than popular among the political elite of the nation, but made him a favorite of the common people. So when 1824 rolled around and he ran for the President - with his background as state judge, Congressman, General and War Hero, Senator, and all-around badass - he won a solid majority of voters and states. But not enough to win the Electoral vote, throwing the results into the House of Representatives where to Jackson's ire the victory went to John Quincy Adams.
Jackson became the first man to openly campaign for the presidency a full four years before the following election (Screw Protocol was one of his mottoes). It turned 1828 into one of the nastiest personal mud-fights for the office in electoral history. It didn't help that Jackson's marriage to his beloved wife Rachel decades earlier happened when the couple thought her abusive then-husband had finalized a divorce: He hadn't, and had convinced a friend to trick the couple into thinking that. Once the couple married, the first husband leveled the charge of bigamy at Jackson - who by that time was a growing political figure in Tennessee - and created the first political burr under Jackson's saddle. By 1828 that bigamy accusation - while already known to most and already considered resolved when Rachel made her own divorce proceedings (the first in Tennessee's history) - was used as a sledgehammer against Jackson by Adams' supporters. Jackson still won in a landslide - the number of eligible voters between 1824 and 1828 had expanded from propertied men to all non-slave men, and Jackson was hugely popular with the masses - but the stress of the mudslinging drove poor Rachel to illness and death. Jackson grieved and swore to never forgive his enemies.
Jackson's presidency was one of political conflict, especially as Jackson came into office as a Populist figure and derisive of the egalitarian leadership that had forged Washington political circles. Jackson's compulsive nature led him to push for what were radical changes to how government was operating up til then. He imposed a Spoils system of granting federal jobs to party loyalists, arguing that to the victorious go the spoils. He pushed against the federalist-themed American System of Henry Clay's - his enemy from 1824 and 28 elections - by opposing any federally-backed roads or canals programs that didn't involve multi-state involvement. And he broke the Banking system of the United States - the one based on Hamilton's economic planning and backed even by anti-banking figures such as Thomas Jefferson - by ending the National Bank and replacing it with state-level banks operating by different rules.
In each case Jackson's actions were relatively pro-active and could have labeled him as an Active-Positive because like an A-P type he never realized the consequences of those actions. The Spoils system quickly broke down into a corrupt mess with incompetent party hacks getting cushy jobs. And while breaking the Bank created an economic boom of sorts with increasing speculation and credit for business expansion, Jackson's follow-up move to force those banks to deal with specie - gold and silver coinage only, aka Hard currency - caused those state banks to fail, creating the nation's first Depression via the Panic of 1837.
What keeps Jackson in the A-N ranks was the compulsive nature behind each of those moves. Whereas the A-Ps are cheerfully causing reforms in a current system in the belief that good things will follow, the A-N reform efforts are done solely out of the belief that the current system is bad and any changes need to happen no matter what: the changes Jackson pushed were reactions, not actions.
Two more things that harks to Jackson's compulsive and uncompromising nature: his handling of the Nullification Crisis, and the Indian Removal Act.
During John Quincy Adams' tenure he had succeeded in passing a high tariff that Southern states found too stifling and protective of northern interests. It was hoped that Jackson's election in 1828 would end it, but Jackson and his backers didn't focus too much on it, fighting other battles such as breaking the National Bank. By 1832 this became a crisis: Calhoun - serving at the time as Jackson's Veep as Jackson needed his power base to win the 1828 election - resigned his office so he could run as a Senate candidate to push his Nullification beliefs. Jackson, seeing the growing woes and knowing how much of a bastard Calhoun was, finally got around to getting a reduced tariff voted in. It wasn't enough for Calhoun and his state, and so South Carolina held a state convention that deemed both tariffs unconstitutional.
Jackson for all of his States' Rights ways was still an ardent Unionist and knew the nullification movement was an attempt at disunion. He retaliated in three ways: he got passed a Force Act that gave him impunity in dealing with any state trying to ignore the federal government's authority to tax and regulate. And then he sent ships to South Carolinian ports to back it up. And he privately threatened to hang every nullification backer (hint: Calhoun) from the highest trees he could find.
A compromised tariff - backed by Clay, one of the politicos who lived to make deals - was reached relatively quickly and both sides cooled off. But there's a reason why Jackson openly left the presidency with two regrets: "That I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun."
The Force Act and other responses by Jackson were clear signs of his A-N nature: A-Ns lean towards imposing force to get what they want for both good or ill. But the Indian Removal Act and the fallout from that were even more obvious signs.
From the start of Jackson's tenure he had pushed for the removal of native tribes from the eastern states - especially the southeastern states from land slave-owners and farmers coveted - towards the more sparse western territories where settlers had yet to reach. While in theory such removals were to be "voluntary", in fact and practice the removals were enforced through bullying and in some cases outright fraud. The state of Georgia in particular passed a series of laws making it harder for the resident Cherokee to stay there. The Supreme Court ruled against one of the harsher laws in Worcester v. Georgia but in the end little could be done to stop what Jackson started (Jackson apocryphally said "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it", but in truth the ruling never involved Jackson). A lot of solid Jacksonians - notably Davy Crockett - were against the removals, but Jackson himself really didn't seem to care one whit. To him it was a removal of troublesome forces - he had dealt harshly with the Natives of the southeastern states during his military years - and more land for white Americans to buy up.
What he sired was the Trail of Tears: one of the United States' more blighted spots of infamy in history, equal to the internment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II and second only to America's tragedy of race-based slavery. That quote above from the Badass of the Week site manger Ben Johnson is drawn straight from this infamy: thousands of Natives died during their long march out to the Midwest, and Jackson didn't care.
It doesn't change the fact that Andrew Jackson was a badass - of the Presidents, only Theodore Roosevelt can claim greater badassery - but it does explain why I view Jackson as a sonofabitch. And I wasn't the only one: an entire political party - the Whigs - formed based on simple pure hatred of Jackson the person and President.
There have been worse Presidents, some more destructive than what Jackson had done. And Jackson did stand for the nation's unity in the face of southern nullification efforts. But very few have been as complete a son-of-a-bitch as this guy.
Pardon my Swedish, but Andrew Jackson was a sunofabeech (I'll be more clear about the sentiment towards the end).
Just take all of the crazy things done by Bill Brasky (even hunting down the Banana Splits), trade in Andrew Jackson's name, and you've pretty much got an idea of what Andrew Jackson's done.
The nicest things I can say about Jackson are 1) he dearly loved his wife and 2) he taught his parrot how to swear in two different languages. I'd throw in that he stared down an even bigger SOB in John C. Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis, but that's like choosing between having someone hit your head with a frying pan over having someone hit your head with a heavier frying pan.
So what kind of Presidential character did Jackson possess?
Jackson more neatly fits the Active-Negative traits of a President far better than his predecessor John Quincy Adams. Jackson as Compulsive is easy to note when you look at what he did as President. Note above all Jackson's habits toward being Uncompromising and having anger management issues.
The anger management issues were pretty noticeable even to his followers: Jackson's entire backstory is one big fight after another. A child solider of the Revolution, he was captured by the British and roughly treated, himself slashed at the head and arm by a British officer who tried to get Jackson to polish his boots. That his brothers died (one in battle, one to illness in captivity) as well as his mother (who pledged to work as a nurse for the British to free her sons, and then died while treating a cholera outbreak) pretty much made Jackson hate the Brits for life. Orphaned, he moved to the then-frontier of Tennessee carving out a career as a landowner, farmer (which grew into slave-owning) and backwoods lawyer (back then formal training and a degree was hard to come by). He got involved in the border wars against various Indian tribes rising up against expanding settlers, gaining battlefield experience and military rank up to General by the War of 1812 and his famous defense of New Orleans at war's end. By then he'd developed some hatred towards the Natives as well.
Another sign of Jackson's anger was the numerous duels, of challenges offered and received. He's close to owning the record number of duels in American history (the number varies between thirteen and somewhere in the hundreds) and is the only President to have killed a man in a duel. Legend has it Jackson got so bored during a Cabinet meeting he dug out a dueling bullet from his arm and mailed it back to the guy who put it there writing "I believe this is yours."
His blunt and candid nature was something that made him less than popular among the political elite of the nation, but made him a favorite of the common people. So when 1824 rolled around and he ran for the President - with his background as state judge, Congressman, General and War Hero, Senator, and all-around badass - he won a solid majority of voters and states. But not enough to win the Electoral vote, throwing the results into the House of Representatives where to Jackson's ire the victory went to John Quincy Adams.
Jackson became the first man to openly campaign for the presidency a full four years before the following election (Screw Protocol was one of his mottoes). It turned 1828 into one of the nastiest personal mud-fights for the office in electoral history. It didn't help that Jackson's marriage to his beloved wife Rachel decades earlier happened when the couple thought her abusive then-husband had finalized a divorce: He hadn't, and had convinced a friend to trick the couple into thinking that. Once the couple married, the first husband leveled the charge of bigamy at Jackson - who by that time was a growing political figure in Tennessee - and created the first political burr under Jackson's saddle. By 1828 that bigamy accusation - while already known to most and already considered resolved when Rachel made her own divorce proceedings (the first in Tennessee's history) - was used as a sledgehammer against Jackson by Adams' supporters. Jackson still won in a landslide - the number of eligible voters between 1824 and 1828 had expanded from propertied men to all non-slave men, and Jackson was hugely popular with the masses - but the stress of the mudslinging drove poor Rachel to illness and death. Jackson grieved and swore to never forgive his enemies.
Jackson's presidency was one of political conflict, especially as Jackson came into office as a Populist figure and derisive of the egalitarian leadership that had forged Washington political circles. Jackson's compulsive nature led him to push for what were radical changes to how government was operating up til then. He imposed a Spoils system of granting federal jobs to party loyalists, arguing that to the victorious go the spoils. He pushed against the federalist-themed American System of Henry Clay's - his enemy from 1824 and 28 elections - by opposing any federally-backed roads or canals programs that didn't involve multi-state involvement. And he broke the Banking system of the United States - the one based on Hamilton's economic planning and backed even by anti-banking figures such as Thomas Jefferson - by ending the National Bank and replacing it with state-level banks operating by different rules.
In each case Jackson's actions were relatively pro-active and could have labeled him as an Active-Positive because like an A-P type he never realized the consequences of those actions. The Spoils system quickly broke down into a corrupt mess with incompetent party hacks getting cushy jobs. And while breaking the Bank created an economic boom of sorts with increasing speculation and credit for business expansion, Jackson's follow-up move to force those banks to deal with specie - gold and silver coinage only, aka Hard currency - caused those state banks to fail, creating the nation's first Depression via the Panic of 1837.
What keeps Jackson in the A-N ranks was the compulsive nature behind each of those moves. Whereas the A-Ps are cheerfully causing reforms in a current system in the belief that good things will follow, the A-N reform efforts are done solely out of the belief that the current system is bad and any changes need to happen no matter what: the changes Jackson pushed were reactions, not actions.
Two more things that harks to Jackson's compulsive and uncompromising nature: his handling of the Nullification Crisis, and the Indian Removal Act.
During John Quincy Adams' tenure he had succeeded in passing a high tariff that Southern states found too stifling and protective of northern interests. It was hoped that Jackson's election in 1828 would end it, but Jackson and his backers didn't focus too much on it, fighting other battles such as breaking the National Bank. By 1832 this became a crisis: Calhoun - serving at the time as Jackson's Veep as Jackson needed his power base to win the 1828 election - resigned his office so he could run as a Senate candidate to push his Nullification beliefs. Jackson, seeing the growing woes and knowing how much of a bastard Calhoun was, finally got around to getting a reduced tariff voted in. It wasn't enough for Calhoun and his state, and so South Carolina held a state convention that deemed both tariffs unconstitutional.
Jackson for all of his States' Rights ways was still an ardent Unionist and knew the nullification movement was an attempt at disunion. He retaliated in three ways: he got passed a Force Act that gave him impunity in dealing with any state trying to ignore the federal government's authority to tax and regulate. And then he sent ships to South Carolinian ports to back it up. And he privately threatened to hang every nullification backer (hint: Calhoun) from the highest trees he could find.
A compromised tariff - backed by Clay, one of the politicos who lived to make deals - was reached relatively quickly and both sides cooled off. But there's a reason why Jackson openly left the presidency with two regrets: "That I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun."
The Force Act and other responses by Jackson were clear signs of his A-N nature: A-Ns lean towards imposing force to get what they want for both good or ill. But the Indian Removal Act and the fallout from that were even more obvious signs.
From the start of Jackson's tenure he had pushed for the removal of native tribes from the eastern states - especially the southeastern states from land slave-owners and farmers coveted - towards the more sparse western territories where settlers had yet to reach. While in theory such removals were to be "voluntary", in fact and practice the removals were enforced through bullying and in some cases outright fraud. The state of Georgia in particular passed a series of laws making it harder for the resident Cherokee to stay there. The Supreme Court ruled against one of the harsher laws in Worcester v. Georgia but in the end little could be done to stop what Jackson started (Jackson apocryphally said "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it", but in truth the ruling never involved Jackson). A lot of solid Jacksonians - notably Davy Crockett - were against the removals, but Jackson himself really didn't seem to care one whit. To him it was a removal of troublesome forces - he had dealt harshly with the Natives of the southeastern states during his military years - and more land for white Americans to buy up.
What he sired was the Trail of Tears: one of the United States' more blighted spots of infamy in history, equal to the internment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II and second only to America's tragedy of race-based slavery. That quote above from the Badass of the Week site manger Ben Johnson is drawn straight from this infamy: thousands of Natives died during their long march out to the Midwest, and Jackson didn't care.
It doesn't change the fact that Andrew Jackson was a badass - of the Presidents, only Theodore Roosevelt can claim greater badassery - but it does explain why I view Jackson as a sonofabitch. And I wasn't the only one: an entire political party - the Whigs - formed based on simple pure hatred of Jackson the person and President.
There have been worse Presidents, some more destructive than what Jackson had done. And Jackson did stand for the nation's unity in the face of southern nullification efforts. But very few have been as complete a son-of-a-bitch as this guy.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Wouldn't You Know It, the Busiest Weekend of My Life...
...and I miss out on the huge news of the Pope resigning to make way for a hyperspace bypass to make way for yet another groomed arch-conservative Cardinal who's going to use the Second Vatican Council decisions as toilet paper. Maybe...
How much of this is due to the declining health of Benedict XVI - and how much is due to the fact that as Cardinal Ratzinger he presided over the investigations of hundreds of increasingly public revelations of pedophile behavior of priests some of which remained under wraps in defiance of other law enforcement agencies' attempts to bring about charges - remains to be seen. In truth, the Pope wasn't a young man when he took the office back in 2005 anyway: also in truth, it's hurting the Church's claim to moral certainty when they've been implicated in massive cover-ups and allowances of child rape to continue even after the pedophile priests were identified and confirmed, and that the current Pope for good or ill had a hand in the internal affairs.
The Church will hold its Papal conclave by the end of the month. If they can find a Pope willing to confront the truth of the sexual abuse, and willing to recognize that certain traditions that allow pedophiles to flourish in their organiztion need to pass on, then best of luck and God Bless. But Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul II spent a lot of decades purging out the more liberal bishops and cardinals, leaving the more conservative (and the ones less likely to accept reform) as likely Popes. And this sexual abuse mess has reached every corner of their institution... finding a bishop or cardinal free of the taint would be truly a stroke of God's Blessing...
P.S. Is this gonna screw up stuff like Ash Wednesday or anything?
How much of this is due to the declining health of Benedict XVI - and how much is due to the fact that as Cardinal Ratzinger he presided over the investigations of hundreds of increasingly public revelations of pedophile behavior of priests some of which remained under wraps in defiance of other law enforcement agencies' attempts to bring about charges - remains to be seen. In truth, the Pope wasn't a young man when he took the office back in 2005 anyway: also in truth, it's hurting the Church's claim to moral certainty when they've been implicated in massive cover-ups and allowances of child rape to continue even after the pedophile priests were identified and confirmed, and that the current Pope for good or ill had a hand in the internal affairs.
The Church will hold its Papal conclave by the end of the month. If they can find a Pope willing to confront the truth of the sexual abuse, and willing to recognize that certain traditions that allow pedophiles to flourish in their organiztion need to pass on, then best of luck and God Bless. But Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul II spent a lot of decades purging out the more liberal bishops and cardinals, leaving the more conservative (and the ones less likely to accept reform) as likely Popes. And this sexual abuse mess has reached every corner of their institution... finding a bishop or cardinal free of the taint would be truly a stroke of God's Blessing...
P.S. Is this gonna screw up stuff like Ash Wednesday or anything?
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Six, The Gathering Storm
I'm a little swamped this week, so if we're looking at President Numero Six-o, that would be John Quincy Adams and... okay, let's just label him Active-Negative and such. Gotta keep packing! Gotta get movin' on!
...
(gets gang-pressed back into service) Damn it all! Fine... I'll give you more info...
The Election of 1824 remains THE original controversial Presidential election (the elections of 1876 and 2000 may be more controversial, but 1824 is definitely in the Top Five). Unlike 1800, where the controversy was over Jefferson or Burr being the true choice on a party ticket, 1824 was the first time the Electoral system worked the way the Founders intended. A divided result between a multitude of candidates each of them with enough Electoral votes to prevent one from winning it all.
Why is this a bad thing? Because the Founders wanted the choice for President to be decided by the House of Representatives, not the voting public: they wanted results that would not leave a clear Electoral winner and leave the choice of the Executive to Congress. The Founders felt it was a check and balance by having the President owe his office to Congress' largess. They also figured the House would be smart enough to choose the winner based on the guy who got the most votes anyway: they just wanted Congress to have a final say, a seal of approval as it were.
What the Founders failed to realize was that the partisan nature of the House by this time would create factions favoring one side or fearing another. And it didn't help that one of the FOUR candidates for President from the SAME PARTY - this was before primaries took over caucuses as the means of winnowing down party choices to one clear candidate - was an ambitious mofo by the name of Henry Clay.
The results were that Andrew Jackson won 11 states, 99 Electoral, and 41 percent of the popular vote. John Q. won 7 states, 84 Electoral, and 30 percent. William Crawford of Georgia - once viewed as Monroe's most able successor, but suffering from failing health hurting his support - was third with only 2 states, 41 Electoral and 11 percent. Clay was fourth with 3 states, 37 Electoral and 13 percent (the Electoral is the count that matters at this point). Clay was clearly out of the running, but he had enough pull in the House to switch his supporters over to the candidate he preferred: John Quincy Adams. Clay agreed with Adams on most arguments, and felt his viewpoint and power base would nurture and grow under an Adams' tenure.
Problem was, Andrew Jackson had more public support, and more states. Adams came into office under the worst of circumstances: a minority President (not an ethnic minority, but a minority in terms of voter numbers, think Benjamin Harrison, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) with only 30 percent of the nation as his voter base. And with an angry, vindictive sonofabitch like Jackson screaming on the sidelines about a "Corrupt Bargain". It didn't help that Clay accepted Adams' offer to be Secretary of State, which at the time was the stepping stone to becoming President.
Why did Adams Junior (son of John Adams, making him the first President to follow in a relative's footsteps) even consider offering Clay a prominent Cabinet seat, knowing full well Jackson was out there ready to pounce on anything that reeked of a deal (there has never been any physical or eyewitness evidence that Clay and Adams bargained for the results)? As smart as Adams was - he read, spoke four languages (at least), and was one of the brightest foreign policy minds of the era - he had to know giving Clay any sign of a prize would rile up Jackson's side of the aisle. But he still offered (that Clay accepted is moot to the argument: this is Clay we're talking about, and Clay was an ambitious man).
This is the only solid evidence of John Quincy (should I go with John Q. or John Quincy? Typing out his full name is gonna be overlong) being a Compulsive character, the key trait of an Active-Negative. A better word would be Uncompromising. He probably felt Clay was the best choice for State and that was that, and to hell with Jackson's ire.
There is little else to report about John Q.'s administration. He openly noted he was serving at the displeasure of the majority of citizens (and Congress) and did what he could to work with Congress to pass ambitious public projects such as a national university and more public roads and canals. Some of the canal projects were passed but nearly everything else John Q. attempted to get through Congress failed. The congressional blocking crimped his foreign policy endeavors as well. In the face of growing settler unrest in the Mississippi areas against native tribes already living there, Adams did what he could to enforce existing treaties to protect those tribes, which upset the expansionist factions in the Democratic-Republican party (i.e. Andrew Jackson).
But there was little else John Q. could do. Political opposition in Congress was fierce, and Jackson essentially became the first man to begin running for the Presidency a full FOUR YEARS before the next election. The uncompromising nature of Congress can have an outside effect on the President's actions: much of the Negative (or limited enforcement of powers) of John Q.'s administration was external rather than internal. This kind of makes it hard to truly gauge John Quincy Adams for the character charts as an Active-Negative. I'm leaning that way because of how he handled the Electoral crisis and opening himself up to public ridicule by his enemies.
Next up: work! I'm off to work on Monday! Voot!
...
(gets gang-pressed back into service) Damn it all! Fine... I'll give you more info...
The Election of 1824 remains THE original controversial Presidential election (the elections of 1876 and 2000 may be more controversial, but 1824 is definitely in the Top Five). Unlike 1800, where the controversy was over Jefferson or Burr being the true choice on a party ticket, 1824 was the first time the Electoral system worked the way the Founders intended. A divided result between a multitude of candidates each of them with enough Electoral votes to prevent one from winning it all.
Why is this a bad thing? Because the Founders wanted the choice for President to be decided by the House of Representatives, not the voting public: they wanted results that would not leave a clear Electoral winner and leave the choice of the Executive to Congress. The Founders felt it was a check and balance by having the President owe his office to Congress' largess. They also figured the House would be smart enough to choose the winner based on the guy who got the most votes anyway: they just wanted Congress to have a final say, a seal of approval as it were.
What the Founders failed to realize was that the partisan nature of the House by this time would create factions favoring one side or fearing another. And it didn't help that one of the FOUR candidates for President from the SAME PARTY - this was before primaries took over caucuses as the means of winnowing down party choices to one clear candidate - was an ambitious mofo by the name of Henry Clay.
The results were that Andrew Jackson won 11 states, 99 Electoral, and 41 percent of the popular vote. John Q. won 7 states, 84 Electoral, and 30 percent. William Crawford of Georgia - once viewed as Monroe's most able successor, but suffering from failing health hurting his support - was third with only 2 states, 41 Electoral and 11 percent. Clay was fourth with 3 states, 37 Electoral and 13 percent (the Electoral is the count that matters at this point). Clay was clearly out of the running, but he had enough pull in the House to switch his supporters over to the candidate he preferred: John Quincy Adams. Clay agreed with Adams on most arguments, and felt his viewpoint and power base would nurture and grow under an Adams' tenure.
Problem was, Andrew Jackson had more public support, and more states. Adams came into office under the worst of circumstances: a minority President (not an ethnic minority, but a minority in terms of voter numbers, think Benjamin Harrison, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) with only 30 percent of the nation as his voter base. And with an angry, vindictive sonofabitch like Jackson screaming on the sidelines about a "Corrupt Bargain". It didn't help that Clay accepted Adams' offer to be Secretary of State, which at the time was the stepping stone to becoming President.
Why did Adams Junior (son of John Adams, making him the first President to follow in a relative's footsteps) even consider offering Clay a prominent Cabinet seat, knowing full well Jackson was out there ready to pounce on anything that reeked of a deal (there has never been any physical or eyewitness evidence that Clay and Adams bargained for the results)? As smart as Adams was - he read, spoke four languages (at least), and was one of the brightest foreign policy minds of the era - he had to know giving Clay any sign of a prize would rile up Jackson's side of the aisle. But he still offered (that Clay accepted is moot to the argument: this is Clay we're talking about, and Clay was an ambitious man).
This is the only solid evidence of John Quincy (should I go with John Q. or John Quincy? Typing out his full name is gonna be overlong) being a Compulsive character, the key trait of an Active-Negative. A better word would be Uncompromising. He probably felt Clay was the best choice for State and that was that, and to hell with Jackson's ire.
There is little else to report about John Q.'s administration. He openly noted he was serving at the displeasure of the majority of citizens (and Congress) and did what he could to work with Congress to pass ambitious public projects such as a national university and more public roads and canals. Some of the canal projects were passed but nearly everything else John Q. attempted to get through Congress failed. The congressional blocking crimped his foreign policy endeavors as well. In the face of growing settler unrest in the Mississippi areas against native tribes already living there, Adams did what he could to enforce existing treaties to protect those tribes, which upset the expansionist factions in the Democratic-Republican party (i.e. Andrew Jackson).
But there was little else John Q. could do. Political opposition in Congress was fierce, and Jackson essentially became the first man to begin running for the Presidency a full FOUR YEARS before the next election. The uncompromising nature of Congress can have an outside effect on the President's actions: much of the Negative (or limited enforcement of powers) of John Q.'s administration was external rather than internal. This kind of makes it hard to truly gauge John Quincy Adams for the character charts as an Active-Negative. I'm leaning that way because of how he handled the Electoral crisis and opening himself up to public ridicule by his enemies.
Next up: work! I'm off to work on Monday! Voot!
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
The Difference Between a Recession and a Depression
The truism is that when your neighbors lose their jobs, it's a recession: when YOU lose your job, it's a depression.
The last 5 years, however, has kind of skewed that joke. Which really isn't all that funny when you consider the hell you and your neighbors are going through trying to find solid work.
The normal turn-around on losing a job and finding a new one tended to be less than six months (if you couldn't find anything in six months you were looking in the wrong places). This prolonged economic downturn, however, saw a turn-around rate averaging a year, maybe more. I personally knew of fellow unemployed who were struggling to find even part-time employ (no benefits, not enough income) for more than a year.
I personally struggled to find full-time employment for more than 4 years. Part-time work came and went and was hard to find (and keep): for all of 2011 I had no employment at all. And I was putting in for five to ten jobs a week. The simple reason was that there were few jobs being created in the first place... with each new opening getting swarmed with 60 to 150 applicants within two days of the posting. I once handed my resume to an HR person speaking at the Career Center for a position that my research background fit to a tee that the HR person mentioned just opened the day before... only to have her tell me she'd already gotten 75 applicants for that spot.
So, from where I was sitting - where my family was coping along with me, doing what they could to help out, and all the burdens they've had to bear - this Great Recession felt like a Depression.
This is a very long-winded setup for the good news. I finally found a full-time job. They really liked my resume: they really liked me. I'll be doing what I like: helping people find books and research materials and getting into computer usage.
I would joke - and I have, elsewhere - that our long national nightmare... is over. Except, well, it's not over.
We're still a nation mired in a jobless economic recovery. Unemployment may be hovering around 7.9 percent (official number: the unofficial unemployment numbers are always a lot worse... and always more accurate) which is better than the 10 percent and worse that it had been at the deepest part of the 2009 valley, but that's not normal. Unemployment should ever be around 4 percent for the economy to be chugging along just fine: an unemployment rate of 2 percent is a strong economy.
We need more action from government to spur businesses to use their profits to grow and hire on more people. We need to stop the wave of cutbacks in the public sector which is hurting that job sector: if our states, counties, and federal government weren't cutting back on their workforce, the unemployment rate would be a full percent less than it is now. We need a jobs bill.
Meantime, to all my fellow job-seekers. I may be employed but I stand with you. Good luck finding work. Really good luck to you all.
The last 5 years, however, has kind of skewed that joke. Which really isn't all that funny when you consider the hell you and your neighbors are going through trying to find solid work.
The normal turn-around on losing a job and finding a new one tended to be less than six months (if you couldn't find anything in six months you were looking in the wrong places). This prolonged economic downturn, however, saw a turn-around rate averaging a year, maybe more. I personally knew of fellow unemployed who were struggling to find even part-time employ (no benefits, not enough income) for more than a year.
I personally struggled to find full-time employment for more than 4 years. Part-time work came and went and was hard to find (and keep): for all of 2011 I had no employment at all. And I was putting in for five to ten jobs a week. The simple reason was that there were few jobs being created in the first place... with each new opening getting swarmed with 60 to 150 applicants within two days of the posting. I once handed my resume to an HR person speaking at the Career Center for a position that my research background fit to a tee that the HR person mentioned just opened the day before... only to have her tell me she'd already gotten 75 applicants for that spot.
So, from where I was sitting - where my family was coping along with me, doing what they could to help out, and all the burdens they've had to bear - this Great Recession felt like a Depression.
This is a very long-winded setup for the good news. I finally found a full-time job. They really liked my resume: they really liked me. I'll be doing what I like: helping people find books and research materials and getting into computer usage.
I would joke - and I have, elsewhere - that our long national nightmare... is over. Except, well, it's not over.
We're still a nation mired in a jobless economic recovery. Unemployment may be hovering around 7.9 percent (official number: the unofficial unemployment numbers are always a lot worse... and always more accurate) which is better than the 10 percent and worse that it had been at the deepest part of the 2009 valley, but that's not normal. Unemployment should ever be around 4 percent for the economy to be chugging along just fine: an unemployment rate of 2 percent is a strong economy.
We need more action from government to spur businesses to use their profits to grow and hire on more people. We need to stop the wave of cutbacks in the public sector which is hurting that job sector: if our states, counties, and federal government weren't cutting back on their workforce, the unemployment rate would be a full percent less than it is now. We need a jobs bill.
Meantime, to all my fellow job-seekers. I may be employed but I stand with you. Good luck finding work. Really good luck to you all.
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
What Is Needed To Fix Florida's (and the Nation's) Voting Woes
The finger-pointing and arguing over the debacle that was the 2012 elections process - hundreds of thousands discouraged from voting due to long lines, those long lines due to ballots being 4-12 pages long (!) - has begun in earnest, but instead of finger-pointing we need to - as a state and as a nation - make these very important reforms to ease voter access and improve voter rights.
1) We need to get ALL eligible people who can vote registered to vote.
2) We need to make it easier for people to vote, period. That means giving them the ability to vote wherever they can on election day or during pre-election early voting days. People get confused by being required to vote by precinct or specific location which sometimes are miles away while a perfectly good precinct is right down the block, and some people have moved since their last registered address and trying to vote from a new address. Same-Day voter registration updating the voter's proper address to allow them to vote right away. Creating a uniform balloting system that identifies the voter's district needs and prints (or electronically displays) the proper ballot - something elections offices here in Florida can do during Early Voting polling - can reduce the need to vote at a specific (and oft-times overwhelmed) precinct: just think of all those voting lines in Dade County that could have been eased by sending voters to nearby polling places that weren't overwhelmed.
3) We need to drop the ban on ex-felons denied the right to vote, and forcing them to re-register to get their right to vote restored. This should be an automatic thing: they've legally paid their debt to society, once out of prison the ex-felon should have the right to act like a citizen again as part of their probationary/ rehabilitative process. Having the ex-felons jump through years' worth of bureaucratic hoops is insulting.
4) We need to drop gerrymandering. Gerrymandering literally wastes people's votes.
5) A Photo ID for voting actually does make sense, alongside the signature requirement when showing up to vote. But the states need to issue such photo IDs at no cost: voting needs to be free in every way possible.
6) We need to have more Early Voting days, not fewer.
7) We need to move Election Day from a Tuesday - the middle of a workweek - to a weekend day like Friday or Saturday or Sunday. AND make the Election Day a national holiday. Back in the old days when voting was done at the county seat and people had to travel by horse or foot, it may have made sense to have elections on a workday when people would be at the county seat on other business. But not anymore. We need to make sure people can get to vote, and making the Big Election a banking/school holiday nearest to the weekend frees up a ton of people to give them all day to get out the vote.
8) We need to include a None Of The Above option for every candidate. It will get messy but if all candidates for an elected office are just disgusting human beings, the voters should have the right to say No to the offal the parties are shoving at them. It should make the parties' more responsive (maybe).
Any other suggestions?
1) We need to get ALL eligible people who can vote registered to vote.
2) We need to make it easier for people to vote, period. That means giving them the ability to vote wherever they can on election day or during pre-election early voting days. People get confused by being required to vote by precinct or specific location which sometimes are miles away while a perfectly good precinct is right down the block, and some people have moved since their last registered address and trying to vote from a new address. Same-Day voter registration updating the voter's proper address to allow them to vote right away. Creating a uniform balloting system that identifies the voter's district needs and prints (or electronically displays) the proper ballot - something elections offices here in Florida can do during Early Voting polling - can reduce the need to vote at a specific (and oft-times overwhelmed) precinct: just think of all those voting lines in Dade County that could have been eased by sending voters to nearby polling places that weren't overwhelmed.
3) We need to drop the ban on ex-felons denied the right to vote, and forcing them to re-register to get their right to vote restored. This should be an automatic thing: they've legally paid their debt to society, once out of prison the ex-felon should have the right to act like a citizen again as part of their probationary/ rehabilitative process. Having the ex-felons jump through years' worth of bureaucratic hoops is insulting.
4) We need to drop gerrymandering. Gerrymandering literally wastes people's votes.
5) A Photo ID for voting actually does make sense, alongside the signature requirement when showing up to vote. But the states need to issue such photo IDs at no cost: voting needs to be free in every way possible.
6) We need to have more Early Voting days, not fewer.
7) We need to move Election Day from a Tuesday - the middle of a workweek - to a weekend day like Friday or Saturday or Sunday. AND make the Election Day a national holiday. Back in the old days when voting was done at the county seat and people had to travel by horse or foot, it may have made sense to have elections on a workday when people would be at the county seat on other business. But not anymore. We need to make sure people can get to vote, and making the Big Election a banking/school holiday nearest to the weekend frees up a ton of people to give them all day to get out the vote.
8) We need to include a None Of The Above option for every candidate. It will get messy but if all candidates for an elected office are just disgusting human beings, the voters should have the right to say No to the offal the parties are shoving at them. It should make the parties' more responsive (maybe).
Any other suggestions?
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Five, The Unknown
Getting a little metaphorical here, so I'll explain.
I've gotten interested in tracking Presidential Character through reading the work on that topic by James David Barber. Thing is, his go-to source Presidential Character: The Novel only covers most of the 20th Century Presidents (up to, just barely, Bush the Elder 1988-92). He briefly describes the first four Presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison - only because they ironically provided near-perfect examples of the four character types - Passive-Negative, Active-Negative, Active-Positive, Passive-Positive - Barber charts. The first four are Introductories.
Which meant by the fifth guy on the hit list - James Monroe - anyone going by Barber to determine Presidential Character of any of the Presidents before Teddy Roosevelt was going to have to do a ton of original research. /headdesk Until we get to Roosevelt, most of these upcoming character reviews are delving into the Unknown.
Another reason why I'm using the word "Unknown" is due to the fact that Monroe is one of those forgotten Presidents. When people think of Presidents in historical thought they jump to the usual suspects of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts. Maybe Grover Cleveland only because he provides humor in non-consecutive jokes. In terms of contemporary history Eisenhower and upward are remembered due to the fact people alive today remember living during their tenures (and because, Tricky Dick, we are never going to forget you /damned with faint praise). But this means a large number of 19th Century Presidents get overlooked by the general populus: notable exceptions would be Andrew Jackson (who noticeably contributed to the term Jacksonian politics dominating most of the century) and James K. Polk (helps to have a They Might Be Giants song named after ya... and a million screaming Mexicans mad at ya).
It doesn't help that a majority of "bad" (read: ineffective) Presidents ruled during the 19th Century, rendering that part of American History a bit of a slog to study through. When nearly every historical interest of that era gravitates toward the giant black hole that is THE CIVIL WAR (seriously, go to any public library in the U.S. The largest non-fiction shelf section outside of cookbooks is gonna be the 973.7 shelves), the rest of the century suffers.
And it also doesn't help Monroe's case that he became President at the least conflicted moment in American political debate. Which is a shame because as one of the rare two-term Presidents of the 19th Century, and as one of the Active-Positive Presidents of the era, Monroe does deserve a lot more interest from historians. At least a lot more interest than in Grover Cleveland (and the non-consecutive joke is deployed. Ta-daaa).
Labeling Monroe as an A-P is risky because I'm not going by any established research from Barber. I'm basing my estimate of Monroe as this because he proved throughout his career an Adaptive and energetic role in a lot of major moments in history leading up to and during his Presidential tenure.
Monroe was the last of the recognized Founding Fathers to become President. He served as a young man in Washington's army during the Revolution. He became a protege of Jefferson's, serving in various duties when Jefferson worked as Governor of Virginia. Although he opposed the Constitution as it formed a too-strong central government by his estimates, he became an active part of that new government by becoming one of the first Senators of the first constitutional Congress. Serving his own stint as Governor of Virginia, he then moved on to working for Jefferson's administration and was sent as a diplomat to France... right at the time Napoleon was offering up the Louisiana Territory for dirt-cheap (literally) price.
Flashback to my article on Jefferson regarding the Louisiana Purchase: yes the final decision - and the rule-breaking to make that decision - was Jefferson's to make in his own A-P character. But Monroe was the guy on the ground: it was up to Monroe to decide right there in France whether or not to pursue Napoleon's offer. This was in the time of long-distance communication taking months: there was no immediate input from Jefferson or the U.S. government telling Monroe what to do. So Monroe, adapting to the situation, made the decision: he saw the opportunity for more territory, the chance of removing a European power from meddling in the western hemisphere, and the value of land being sold for 3 pennies per acre (seriously, that's dirt-cheap). Sending his colleagues back to Washington DC as quick as possible, Monroe stayed on in France securing the first steps in making the deal before Napoleon - notoriously impulsive - changed his mind.
The next clue to Monroe's character trait came during the War of 1812. Under Madison's poor management of the war effort, things were not looking so good for the home team. Right after the British invasion that led to the burning of the nation's capital - our lowest point - Monroe, then serving as Secretary of State, asked Madison to let him serve as Secretary of War (since no one wanted the Sec of State job Monroe continued at that task, making him the only person to serve multiple Cabinet posts at the same time). Under Monroe's guidance, the army got better organized. By this time, effective generals had been found - mostly through the weeding process of bad generals getting captured, killed or fired - and enough victories were had to let Americans feel the war ended as a victory for the nation (let's be fair: it was a tie between Great Britain and the U.S., and a moral victory for Canada).
As one of the heroes of the War of 1812, Monroe was a near unanimous choice to run for President in 1816 (albeit because most Democratic-Republican rivals took each other out of the equation). Having looked to Monroe's background to demonstrate his Active-Positive values, what does his Presidency demonstrate?
Monroe made the most of the "Active" part of being an Active-Positive. He was the first President to extensively tour the nation while in office. And while the tours had the appearance of "jubilees" and celebrations, Monroe did use these tours to talk policy matters with the citizenry: he took the tours seriously as part of his presidential duties. His other Active behaviors included selecting competent men for Cabinet posts that best suited them - John Quincy Adams to State, John C. Calhoun (that bastard, but smart enough to know how to organize a department) to War - after an era of less-competent men holding such offices.
The biggest piece of evidence of Monroe's Active tenure is the foreign policy stance that bears his name and remains a key foundation for all modern U.S. foreign policy (and is pretty much the only thing remembered of his tenure): The Monroe Doctrine. During the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the colonies of Central and South America rebelled against their European overlords: with the wars in Europe over, those imperial powers - especially Spain and Russia - sought to re-conquer their lost colonies and the ones lost by a now-weakened France. As these newly-formed nations lacked a European sponsor the way the United States had when our nation rebelled, the potential of the Central / South Americans to form their own republics were threatened.
At the urging of Adams, Monroe issued his Doctrine. The United States would view any overseas aggression against any Central or South American nation as a threat to American sovereignty: meaning Worst Case Scenario that England - yes read on - will go to war over it. The United States would NOT intervene in any "internal" dispute between an existing colony and their European holder: which placated Great Britain because they were the only overseas Empire to not lose most of their Central / South American colonies, and helped to get them as an unofficial co-backer of the plan.
The United States - still reorganizing after the War of 1812 - may not have been in any shape to enforce the Doctrine, but it gave political cover to Great Britain to enforce protection of their own sea-faring empire (Pax Britannica). It had the political virtue of ensuring the nascent Latin American nations the room to build, and allowed for a gradual, progressive end of colonial rule within the Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine also created the underlying foreign policy belief of anti-colonialism that would influence American policy to this very day.
Other Active-leaning accomplishments were creating a treaty with Great Britain defining the U.S. / Canadian border (at the time) along with dismantling all fortifications by both sides, creating one of the longest undefended borders in contemporary history (future treaties with England and Canada would lead to the U.S. / Canada we have today as the longest undefended border in human history). I mentioned under Madison's entry last week that Great Britain traded away their holding of Florida as a far-sighted removal of a problem, but I erred to point out that their holdings were not Florida Proper (or what we know as Florida today): their holdings were the southern tips of what we now know as Alabama and Mississippi. Spain gained control of Florida as a Spanish territory as part of the solution for the War of 1812, and as obvious as anything there was conflict over it (as England figured, smart guys the Brits). Especially with native tribes in Florida raiding into Georgia. Monroe's Active move was direct and controversial: he sent Andrew Jackson in as general in charge of the armies and militia in the region to defend the border, and Jackson - ooooo, is THAT guy a sonofabitch, more on him later - led raids (he argued he had the authority, but most likely the SOB's Blood Knight character was the impetus) into Florida to fight the natives, angering up Spain with a legitimate international grievance. Whether or not Monroe signed off on Jackson's raiding, it did provide a stick to the carrot that Adams was using as Sec of State to negotiate Florida's purchase from Spain.
As for Monroe's Positive character traits, aside from the obvious relish of those national tours, Monroe reveled in the political game that being President provided him. He worked with Congress, passing a sizable amount of legislation covering taxes and reduction of the national debt. He presided over the period of five states being admitted to the Union, second only to (of all Presidents) Benjamin Harrison (Washington doesn't count because the thirteen original states were already part of the United States when he became President). Monroe did veto and oppose certain forward-looking bills such as the planned Cumberland Road funding based on his Republican-Democrat ideology of strict constitutionalism. Monroe had a hand - mostly behind-the-scenes - resolving the Missouri Compromise allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state (alongside Maine, which began the practice of balancing the addition of a slave state with a free state) and banning slavery in any future states and territories north of Missouri's southern border.
The biggest reason common historical remembrance of Monroe is forgotten today is that Monroe ruled during a literal "Era of Good Feelings." The War of 1812 had burned away the passions for war that troubled the previous administrations. It helped that the chaos of France's revolution and empire had ended, quieting down most foreign policy concerns. Political partisan sniping faded into non-existence: the Federalist Party, broken by the national perception of them failing the nation during a time of war, died as a national power. Monroe pursued an inclusive administration above all other accomplishments. Monroe himself invited little controversy or scandal. Monroe became the second man to run unopposed for the Presidency since Washington: only a vote for John Quincy Adams by a rogue Elector prevented Monroe from becoming the second man other than Washington to unanimously win all Electoral College votes. It's ironic that such success makes a man forgettable: but history is more intriguing with intrigue; interest in history more focused on war and divided debate.
If there was any failing to Monroe's actions as President, it was that he failed to see the consequences of his primary goal of ending partisan strife (as noted, A-P Presidents never plan for the consequences of their acts). He may have created an Era of Good Feelings through efforts to incorporate Federalists into government and Federalist policy into his administration, and he may have tempered the back-room struggles of his fellow Democrats over who would lead the party... but he basically put a lid on a lit powder-keg by doing so. By leading with Federalist (pro-Union) ideology on a lot of issues, he angered up the Republican-Democratic states-rights' (which by this time devolved into Southern State dominance) believers. By refusing to choose a successor among the obvious candidates such as Henry Clay, William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, or even John C. Calhoun (that bastard), Monroe created the environment for his own party to shatter into factions and re-ignite partisan divisions... only this time along more geographic lines and with more rancor than before.
A possible failing for Monroe would be the Missouri Compromise. Yes, it was a compromise over a contentious issue - the addition of a slave state further north than had been previously allowed, and in the Louisiana Territory where northerners hoped to apply the anti-slavery clauses of the Northwest Ordinance - but like all A-P actions it had consequences. It created the "You Shall Not Pass" line for slaveowners blocking them from northerner territories but allowed them to expand to the south of that line: That encouraged the strain of Manifest Destiny that drove the United States to aggressively pursue territorial acquisition into the Texas and California regions then held by the newly forged Republic of Mexico.
Another failing - more debated (not debatable, I mean it's more talked about, actually more shouted about) - was with the Monroe Doctrine: for all its political virtue, it also engendered a vice (again, something Monroe never saw coming). Future American governments interpreted the Doctrine to allow ourselves the power to meddle in the affairs of Central and South American governments. After all, it never limited what the U.S. could do in our own "back yard" (and it implied that the U.S. would intermediate for foreign powers under the right circumstance). For all the good things the Monroe Doctrine created (the gradual end of empire), it also created distrust among Latin American nations due to incursions ("filibusters") and attempted takeovers by American citizens looking to colonize for themselves. The Doctrine also bred the fervor for Manifest Destiny - combined with the long-term failure of the Missouri Compromise - that led to conflict with Mexico. The neoconservatives running around today crying all for military intervention everywhere - without thought of consequence and the destructiveness of war - get some of their "seeding democracy" argument from what the Monroe Doctrine sought to protect. And nowadays, just try talking about the CIA anywhere south of the Rio Grande and see if you can avoid getting punched in the face.
There's a lot about our nation today that formed from the actions of President Monroe: it's a little disappointing how our history books don't do a better job examining Monroe's administration and its effects on the rest of 19th Century and current American history.
Some print references to follow:
Whitney, David and Whitney, Robin, American Presidents 8th Ed., Readers Digest: Pleasantville NY, 1993, p. 47 - 54
Weinberg, Neil, "Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of Presidential Greatness" (2012). Senior Honors Theses. Paper 292. p. 32 - 34
If you have access to JSTOR, see if Murray, Robert and Blessing, Tim, "The Presidential Performance Study: a Progress Report, " Journal of American History, v.70 n. 3 (Dec. 1983) p. 535-55 has anything on character.
Please comment with more research suggestions on Monroe or on Presidential Character as defined by Barber. As I noted at the beginning, we're getting into uncharted waters here with the 19th Century Presidents...
I've gotten interested in tracking Presidential Character through reading the work on that topic by James David Barber. Thing is, his go-to source Presidential Character: The Novel only covers most of the 20th Century Presidents (up to, just barely, Bush the Elder 1988-92). He briefly describes the first four Presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison - only because they ironically provided near-perfect examples of the four character types - Passive-Negative, Active-Negative, Active-Positive, Passive-Positive - Barber charts. The first four are Introductories.
Which meant by the fifth guy on the hit list - James Monroe - anyone going by Barber to determine Presidential Character of any of the Presidents before Teddy Roosevelt was going to have to do a ton of original research. /headdesk Until we get to Roosevelt, most of these upcoming character reviews are delving into the Unknown.
Another reason why I'm using the word "Unknown" is due to the fact that Monroe is one of those forgotten Presidents. When people think of Presidents in historical thought they jump to the usual suspects of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts. Maybe Grover Cleveland only because he provides humor in non-consecutive jokes. In terms of contemporary history Eisenhower and upward are remembered due to the fact people alive today remember living during their tenures (and because, Tricky Dick, we are never going to forget you /damned with faint praise). But this means a large number of 19th Century Presidents get overlooked by the general populus: notable exceptions would be Andrew Jackson (who noticeably contributed to the term Jacksonian politics dominating most of the century) and James K. Polk (helps to have a They Might Be Giants song named after ya... and a million screaming Mexicans mad at ya).
It doesn't help that a majority of "bad" (read: ineffective) Presidents ruled during the 19th Century, rendering that part of American History a bit of a slog to study through. When nearly every historical interest of that era gravitates toward the giant black hole that is THE CIVIL WAR (seriously, go to any public library in the U.S. The largest non-fiction shelf section outside of cookbooks is gonna be the 973.7 shelves), the rest of the century suffers.
And it also doesn't help Monroe's case that he became President at the least conflicted moment in American political debate. Which is a shame because as one of the rare two-term Presidents of the 19th Century, and as one of the Active-Positive Presidents of the era, Monroe does deserve a lot more interest from historians. At least a lot more interest than in Grover Cleveland (and the non-consecutive joke is deployed. Ta-daaa).
Labeling Monroe as an A-P is risky because I'm not going by any established research from Barber. I'm basing my estimate of Monroe as this because he proved throughout his career an Adaptive and energetic role in a lot of major moments in history leading up to and during his Presidential tenure.
Monroe was the last of the recognized Founding Fathers to become President. He served as a young man in Washington's army during the Revolution. He became a protege of Jefferson's, serving in various duties when Jefferson worked as Governor of Virginia. Although he opposed the Constitution as it formed a too-strong central government by his estimates, he became an active part of that new government by becoming one of the first Senators of the first constitutional Congress. Serving his own stint as Governor of Virginia, he then moved on to working for Jefferson's administration and was sent as a diplomat to France... right at the time Napoleon was offering up the Louisiana Territory for dirt-cheap (literally) price.
Flashback to my article on Jefferson regarding the Louisiana Purchase: yes the final decision - and the rule-breaking to make that decision - was Jefferson's to make in his own A-P character. But Monroe was the guy on the ground: it was up to Monroe to decide right there in France whether or not to pursue Napoleon's offer. This was in the time of long-distance communication taking months: there was no immediate input from Jefferson or the U.S. government telling Monroe what to do. So Monroe, adapting to the situation, made the decision: he saw the opportunity for more territory, the chance of removing a European power from meddling in the western hemisphere, and the value of land being sold for 3 pennies per acre (seriously, that's dirt-cheap). Sending his colleagues back to Washington DC as quick as possible, Monroe stayed on in France securing the first steps in making the deal before Napoleon - notoriously impulsive - changed his mind.
The next clue to Monroe's character trait came during the War of 1812. Under Madison's poor management of the war effort, things were not looking so good for the home team. Right after the British invasion that led to the burning of the nation's capital - our lowest point - Monroe, then serving as Secretary of State, asked Madison to let him serve as Secretary of War (since no one wanted the Sec of State job Monroe continued at that task, making him the only person to serve multiple Cabinet posts at the same time). Under Monroe's guidance, the army got better organized. By this time, effective generals had been found - mostly through the weeding process of bad generals getting captured, killed or fired - and enough victories were had to let Americans feel the war ended as a victory for the nation (let's be fair: it was a tie between Great Britain and the U.S., and a moral victory for Canada).
As one of the heroes of the War of 1812, Monroe was a near unanimous choice to run for President in 1816 (albeit because most Democratic-Republican rivals took each other out of the equation). Having looked to Monroe's background to demonstrate his Active-Positive values, what does his Presidency demonstrate?
Monroe made the most of the "Active" part of being an Active-Positive. He was the first President to extensively tour the nation while in office. And while the tours had the appearance of "jubilees" and celebrations, Monroe did use these tours to talk policy matters with the citizenry: he took the tours seriously as part of his presidential duties. His other Active behaviors included selecting competent men for Cabinet posts that best suited them - John Quincy Adams to State, John C. Calhoun (that bastard, but smart enough to know how to organize a department) to War - after an era of less-competent men holding such offices.
The biggest piece of evidence of Monroe's Active tenure is the foreign policy stance that bears his name and remains a key foundation for all modern U.S. foreign policy (and is pretty much the only thing remembered of his tenure): The Monroe Doctrine. During the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the colonies of Central and South America rebelled against their European overlords: with the wars in Europe over, those imperial powers - especially Spain and Russia - sought to re-conquer their lost colonies and the ones lost by a now-weakened France. As these newly-formed nations lacked a European sponsor the way the United States had when our nation rebelled, the potential of the Central / South Americans to form their own republics were threatened.
At the urging of Adams, Monroe issued his Doctrine. The United States would view any overseas aggression against any Central or South American nation as a threat to American sovereignty: meaning Worst Case Scenario that England - yes read on - will go to war over it. The United States would NOT intervene in any "internal" dispute between an existing colony and their European holder: which placated Great Britain because they were the only overseas Empire to not lose most of their Central / South American colonies, and helped to get them as an unofficial co-backer of the plan.
The United States - still reorganizing after the War of 1812 - may not have been in any shape to enforce the Doctrine, but it gave political cover to Great Britain to enforce protection of their own sea-faring empire (Pax Britannica). It had the political virtue of ensuring the nascent Latin American nations the room to build, and allowed for a gradual, progressive end of colonial rule within the Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine also created the underlying foreign policy belief of anti-colonialism that would influence American policy to this very day.
Other Active-leaning accomplishments were creating a treaty with Great Britain defining the U.S. / Canadian border (at the time) along with dismantling all fortifications by both sides, creating one of the longest undefended borders in contemporary history (future treaties with England and Canada would lead to the U.S. / Canada we have today as the longest undefended border in human history). I mentioned under Madison's entry last week that Great Britain traded away their holding of Florida as a far-sighted removal of a problem, but I erred to point out that their holdings were not Florida Proper (or what we know as Florida today): their holdings were the southern tips of what we now know as Alabama and Mississippi. Spain gained control of Florida as a Spanish territory as part of the solution for the War of 1812, and as obvious as anything there was conflict over it (as England figured, smart guys the Brits). Especially with native tribes in Florida raiding into Georgia. Monroe's Active move was direct and controversial: he sent Andrew Jackson in as general in charge of the armies and militia in the region to defend the border, and Jackson - ooooo, is THAT guy a sonofabitch, more on him later - led raids (he argued he had the authority, but most likely the SOB's Blood Knight character was the impetus) into Florida to fight the natives, angering up Spain with a legitimate international grievance. Whether or not Monroe signed off on Jackson's raiding, it did provide a stick to the carrot that Adams was using as Sec of State to negotiate Florida's purchase from Spain.
As for Monroe's Positive character traits, aside from the obvious relish of those national tours, Monroe reveled in the political game that being President provided him. He worked with Congress, passing a sizable amount of legislation covering taxes and reduction of the national debt. He presided over the period of five states being admitted to the Union, second only to (of all Presidents) Benjamin Harrison (Washington doesn't count because the thirteen original states were already part of the United States when he became President). Monroe did veto and oppose certain forward-looking bills such as the planned Cumberland Road funding based on his Republican-Democrat ideology of strict constitutionalism. Monroe had a hand - mostly behind-the-scenes - resolving the Missouri Compromise allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state (alongside Maine, which began the practice of balancing the addition of a slave state with a free state) and banning slavery in any future states and territories north of Missouri's southern border.
The biggest reason common historical remembrance of Monroe is forgotten today is that Monroe ruled during a literal "Era of Good Feelings." The War of 1812 had burned away the passions for war that troubled the previous administrations. It helped that the chaos of France's revolution and empire had ended, quieting down most foreign policy concerns. Political partisan sniping faded into non-existence: the Federalist Party, broken by the national perception of them failing the nation during a time of war, died as a national power. Monroe pursued an inclusive administration above all other accomplishments. Monroe himself invited little controversy or scandal. Monroe became the second man to run unopposed for the Presidency since Washington: only a vote for John Quincy Adams by a rogue Elector prevented Monroe from becoming the second man other than Washington to unanimously win all Electoral College votes. It's ironic that such success makes a man forgettable: but history is more intriguing with intrigue; interest in history more focused on war and divided debate.
If there was any failing to Monroe's actions as President, it was that he failed to see the consequences of his primary goal of ending partisan strife (as noted, A-P Presidents never plan for the consequences of their acts). He may have created an Era of Good Feelings through efforts to incorporate Federalists into government and Federalist policy into his administration, and he may have tempered the back-room struggles of his fellow Democrats over who would lead the party... but he basically put a lid on a lit powder-keg by doing so. By leading with Federalist (pro-Union) ideology on a lot of issues, he angered up the Republican-Democratic states-rights' (which by this time devolved into Southern State dominance) believers. By refusing to choose a successor among the obvious candidates such as Henry Clay, William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, or even John C. Calhoun (that bastard), Monroe created the environment for his own party to shatter into factions and re-ignite partisan divisions... only this time along more geographic lines and with more rancor than before.
A possible failing for Monroe would be the Missouri Compromise. Yes, it was a compromise over a contentious issue - the addition of a slave state further north than had been previously allowed, and in the Louisiana Territory where northerners hoped to apply the anti-slavery clauses of the Northwest Ordinance - but like all A-P actions it had consequences. It created the "You Shall Not Pass" line for slaveowners blocking them from northerner territories but allowed them to expand to the south of that line: That encouraged the strain of Manifest Destiny that drove the United States to aggressively pursue territorial acquisition into the Texas and California regions then held by the newly forged Republic of Mexico.
Another failing - more debated (not debatable, I mean it's more talked about, actually more shouted about) - was with the Monroe Doctrine: for all its political virtue, it also engendered a vice (again, something Monroe never saw coming). Future American governments interpreted the Doctrine to allow ourselves the power to meddle in the affairs of Central and South American governments. After all, it never limited what the U.S. could do in our own "back yard" (and it implied that the U.S. would intermediate for foreign powers under the right circumstance). For all the good things the Monroe Doctrine created (the gradual end of empire), it also created distrust among Latin American nations due to incursions ("filibusters") and attempted takeovers by American citizens looking to colonize for themselves. The Doctrine also bred the fervor for Manifest Destiny - combined with the long-term failure of the Missouri Compromise - that led to conflict with Mexico. The neoconservatives running around today crying all for military intervention everywhere - without thought of consequence and the destructiveness of war - get some of their "seeding democracy" argument from what the Monroe Doctrine sought to protect. And nowadays, just try talking about the CIA anywhere south of the Rio Grande and see if you can avoid getting punched in the face.
There's a lot about our nation today that formed from the actions of President Monroe: it's a little disappointing how our history books don't do a better job examining Monroe's administration and its effects on the rest of 19th Century and current American history.
Some print references to follow:
Whitney, David and Whitney, Robin, American Presidents 8th Ed., Readers Digest: Pleasantville NY, 1993, p. 47 - 54
Weinberg, Neil, "Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of Presidential Greatness" (2012). Senior Honors Theses. Paper 292. p. 32 - 34
If you have access to JSTOR, see if Murray, Robert and Blessing, Tim, "The Presidential Performance Study: a Progress Report, " Journal of American History, v.70 n. 3 (Dec. 1983) p. 535-55 has anything on character.
Please comment with more research suggestions on Monroe or on Presidential Character as defined by Barber. As I noted at the beginning, we're getting into uncharted waters here with the 19th Century Presidents...
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Reading The Beast of Political Thought
Also known as "oh no, we got a homework assignment on Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, boss of bosses, has decreed that the Lost Battalion of the Horde should read Leviathan next as our social project of the season. Hobbes is in the grouping of must-read political thinkers as Locke and Rousseau: Leviathan is spoken of as the serious tract on politics compared to the borderline satire of Machiavelli's Prince.
That said, as a librarian I heartily recommend everyone wanting to keep up with TNC's reading project to ask your local library for a copy of Leviathan for check out. Better still, for those of you with ereader devices or a budding ebook collection should visit Project Gutenberg and download an ebook copy (most ereader formats available)!
To the bookshelves, Horde!
Ta-Nehisi Coates, boss of bosses, has decreed that the Lost Battalion of the Horde should read Leviathan next as our social project of the season. Hobbes is in the grouping of must-read political thinkers as Locke and Rousseau: Leviathan is spoken of as the serious tract on politics compared to the borderline satire of Machiavelli's Prince.
That said, as a librarian I heartily recommend everyone wanting to keep up with TNC's reading project to ask your local library for a copy of Leviathan for check out. Better still, for those of you with ereader devices or a budding ebook collection should visit Project Gutenberg and download an ebook copy (most ereader formats available)!
To the bookshelves, Horde!
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Four, Wrong Man Wrong War
Just to note: Sober Nate Silver recently posted a statistical review of Presidential popularity to determine how a two-term President would fare by historians' measurements during the second term. Not much to relate to the ongoing character series I'm doing here, just noting it for people with an interest in Presidential history.
That said, time to move onto our fourth Federal foreman, our fearless Founder James Madison.
This was the guy when it came to the creation of the Constitution. It was his "Virginia Plan" that formed the basis of most of the final product: he had a hand in the writing of the legal language in the document itself: he was a key defender of the final product - alongside Hamilton and John Jay - being one of the contributors to the Federalist Papers. You would think Madison would prove one of our more effective Presidents, someone who knew the system well enough to manage and moderate it, forging a term of office that would rank among the top five ever.
Re-review that link to Silver's article. It has James Madison at 15th overall ranking by historians. And to be honest, that's a bit high. Mostly because two-term Presidents get more positive views by historians (save the more glaring disasters like Nixon, Coolidge, and Bush the Lesser) while one-termers get more unflattering judgments.
Why am I dissing a guy ranked at 15th as overrated? Mostly because his actual performance as President left a bit to be desired.
If you look back at the first three guys I've reviewed for character, you'll note a common thread: the push for war. Europe had been ablaze for decades as a consequence of the American rebellion, especially France and Great Britain being at each others' throats during both the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Empire. Each of the new Presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson - had to cope with the foreign policy nightmare of getting entangled with an overseas war that our young nation could ill afford. Sheer logistics aside - the thing that hampered England and France during the American tussles - the fledgling United States had been working on stabilizing our finances at home and with our overseas trading. The one war we did get into - the Barbary Coast War during Jefferson's tenure - was against an overseas power that was par to the nation's strengths and over specific grievances that hampered our Mediterranean trade.
All other times, our Presidents kept us out of war on Europe, a large-scale enterprise involving tens of nations and millions of lives that showed little sign of ending thanks to the revolutionary zeal of France at the beginning and then later the military skill and conquering hunger of Napoleon. Washington did so because of his Passive-Negative character (note well his farewell address begging America to avoid all permanent alliances). Adams' Active-Negative character made him intelligent enough to know how hard a war would be, and worried enough about his legacy to avoid starting something he couldn't finish. Jefferson's Active-Positive sentiments allowed him to be open-minded and capable of trying alternative solutions, hence the Embargo acts that actually did no good.
Problem was, during all those years the pressure from other politicians (and sometimes from the public at large) to go to war grew. A boiling pot of resentments and outrages at various actions by Great Britain or France (sometimes both) driving the popular mood into a war-hawk mentality.
Into this came a Passive-Positive president like Madison.
The one word to describe P-Ps... uh, that doesn't sound so good, let's stick with Pass-Pos's... anyway, the word is Compliant: they are amenable, well-liked, have low-self-esteem masked by outward friendly behavior. Like Passive-Negative brethren, the Pass-Pos reacts to situations rather than lead or innovate. These are the types of guys you'd want running the farm when the farm's operating in the black, everybody knows their roles and are competent at those jobs, and there's no sign of oncoming drought or famine for the next, oh, twenty years or so. In short, this is a Caretaker.
For all of Madison's work getting the Constitution created, it wasn't always his initiative driving him to do it, nor any ambition on his part to lead. Madison's mentor was Jefferson, to whom a lot of Madison's ideas originated and toward whom Madison dedicated a lot of work. The name on the Virginia Plan was Edmond Randolph, not Madison (even though most knew Madison was the primary source). Madison was bright, well-educated, capable... but he answered to and sought approval from so many others.
What this meant was that sooner or later under his administration the push for war by the War-Hawks (an actual yet informal group in Congress: this is where John C. Calhoun pops up, the bastard) would finally give way. It didn't help that the causes for war - ongoing British impressment of sailors off American ships, growing frontier tensions with the natives and with Spanish and British colonists along the borders - were still hot topics by Madison's first term of office. It also didn't help that the War-Hawks were primarily a generation that had come of age and political influence after the American Revolution: they had little first-hand experience with war and didn't realize what the costs would be. For example, a good number of the Hawks believed invading Canada and seizing it as more territory for the US of A would be sweet, simple, and quick. Whatever wisdom Washington, Adams and Jefferson had that kept us out of war was in short supply with Madison, who followed more than led.
Madison began the War of 1812 with almost no Army and a small Navy. Most manpower had to be raised by the states through their militias - say hello to the militia provision of the Second Amendment, by the by - and in terms of supplies and organization the United States wasn't ready one bit. Another problem was that during all this time the national military had failed to churn out competent army leadership: most high-ranking officers were political appointments with almost little experience. The state-organized militia leadership wasn't any better (and in a lot of cases, worse). A more Active President might have made sure he had the right men leading his army first before declaring a war: Madison, well...
Hampering the war effort was the fact that the states and the population were NOT unified in their interest in going to war. The states of New England, still pro-British and still pro-let's-not-do-anything-to-mess-with-trade, refused to raise militias as needed to help with any invasion of Canada. Madison had little political influence: being a Southern and Democrat-Republican, he wasn't too popular with the Federalist-led New England populus. Any decent war-time President (usually an Active) would tell you: get ALL the people rallied to the cause first, then declare war. (I will grant that this was the first time a President had to do such a thing: Madison had no guide-book to follow)
For those who slept through this part of the history classes: the War of 1812 did not go well for the Americans. Canada was NOT an easy pick as the War-Hawks believed: in fact, the war brought out a nationalist fervor in Canadians that led them to defend their commonwealth home (still a colonial holding at the time to the British) with enough determination and victories to provide a basis of pride and identity (Canadians remember this war with pride the way they remember with pride their service in World War II). The British weren't even interested in fighting the first fourteen months of this war, due to focusing on Napoleon and European warfare instead. Once Napoleon abdicated after his failures in Russia, Great Britain finally sent major forces into Canada and the United States. This is the point where British troops seasoned against the likes of Napoleon's best faced American civilian militias that fled the battlefield faster than jackrabbits fleeing from hunting dogs.
During all this time, Madison and his Cabinet continued to mismanage the war. Lacking the skills of an Active President, Madison kept relying on people still eager for war and failing to recognize better need of logistics and organization. Over-reliance on militias that kept proving themselves unable to stay on the field longer than 30 seconds left Washington DC itself undefended in August 1814, leading to the great embarrassment of the British occupying our nation's capitol and burning nearly every building to the ground. Only an organized defense of Baltimore by officers who had enough military experience to know what they were doing staved off complete defeat.
British indifference to the whole war - plus the fact that both sides kept winning then losing battles preventing any momentum - was pretty much the only reason the Treaty of Ghent was completed. The causes of the war - naval impressment, native uprisings along the frontier - were long done: England finished its war on Napoleon and had no need of impressment; the war itself killed off much of the hard-line Indian leadership like Tecumseh and essentially pacified the native tribes of the Great Lakes region. Canadian resistance to invasion proved the War-Hawks wrong and ended most thoughts of warring with our northern neighbors (save for one more territorial issue, will cover it later). The treaty itself retained the status quo: all occupied areas reverted back to original ownership. The only significant change was that the United States got British (formerly Spanish) Florida out of the deal, which made sense to the British giving up a tempting piece of territory that the southern slave states would want sooner or later.
The only reason any American would remember the War of 1812 is the final battle, the great victory at the Battle of New Orleans... which historians will always note came two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent only because ship travel kept news of the treaty for another four weeks or so. The British practically don't remember the war at all, a mere afterthought to the struggle against Napoleon. Canadians, as mentioned earlier, remember every victory like they were hockey scores. ;-)
There was little else to say or note about Madison's two terms. The war dominated most of the administration's focus, especially during the second term. Most of the sound and fury during the war - the War-Hawk drum beats, the New England Federalist refusal to fight - pretty much died off on their own accord, not due to any influence on Madison's part. In terms of political issues, Madison retained enough of a Republican view of federalism to veto a major roads and canals bill, yet was open to Federalist ideas of financial policy that retained the federal banking system and high tariffs that favored the New England business interests.
So why am I down on Madison as a Passive-Positive? He was the wrong man for the wrong war. Being Positive made him think well of things (relying on militias and not a standing army as the Founders hoped) without considering the consequences or think long-term: being Passive made him rely on the wrong people (War-Hawks) pushing for what needed to be done. A Negative-inclined President would have paused before bending to a war cause or at least started the war on his terms rather than the War-Hawks' (who had no clue of how to wage war themselves); an Active-inclined President would have avoided war (Active-Negative) or at least made a more energized effort to get it organized and find competent leadership (Active-Positive).
So there we have the first four Presidents, and four examples of what each Character entails as promised from the first time I mentioned this (during my rant about Romney being a Passive-Negative). Next up: James Monroe, and I'm gonna let you readers start guessing which Character he is. C'mon, leave me some comments guessing (or at least showing me you're reading other resources on James David Barber's work on Presidential history). C'mon, I dares ya.
That said, time to move onto our fourth Federal foreman, our fearless Founder James Madison.
This was the guy when it came to the creation of the Constitution. It was his "Virginia Plan" that formed the basis of most of the final product: he had a hand in the writing of the legal language in the document itself: he was a key defender of the final product - alongside Hamilton and John Jay - being one of the contributors to the Federalist Papers. You would think Madison would prove one of our more effective Presidents, someone who knew the system well enough to manage and moderate it, forging a term of office that would rank among the top five ever.
Re-review that link to Silver's article. It has James Madison at 15th overall ranking by historians. And to be honest, that's a bit high. Mostly because two-term Presidents get more positive views by historians (save the more glaring disasters like Nixon, Coolidge, and Bush the Lesser) while one-termers get more unflattering judgments.
Why am I dissing a guy ranked at 15th as overrated? Mostly because his actual performance as President left a bit to be desired.
If you look back at the first three guys I've reviewed for character, you'll note a common thread: the push for war. Europe had been ablaze for decades as a consequence of the American rebellion, especially France and Great Britain being at each others' throats during both the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Empire. Each of the new Presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson - had to cope with the foreign policy nightmare of getting entangled with an overseas war that our young nation could ill afford. Sheer logistics aside - the thing that hampered England and France during the American tussles - the fledgling United States had been working on stabilizing our finances at home and with our overseas trading. The one war we did get into - the Barbary Coast War during Jefferson's tenure - was against an overseas power that was par to the nation's strengths and over specific grievances that hampered our Mediterranean trade.
All other times, our Presidents kept us out of war on Europe, a large-scale enterprise involving tens of nations and millions of lives that showed little sign of ending thanks to the revolutionary zeal of France at the beginning and then later the military skill and conquering hunger of Napoleon. Washington did so because of his Passive-Negative character (note well his farewell address begging America to avoid all permanent alliances). Adams' Active-Negative character made him intelligent enough to know how hard a war would be, and worried enough about his legacy to avoid starting something he couldn't finish. Jefferson's Active-Positive sentiments allowed him to be open-minded and capable of trying alternative solutions, hence the Embargo acts that actually did no good.
Problem was, during all those years the pressure from other politicians (and sometimes from the public at large) to go to war grew. A boiling pot of resentments and outrages at various actions by Great Britain or France (sometimes both) driving the popular mood into a war-hawk mentality.
Into this came a Passive-Positive president like Madison.
The one word to describe P-Ps... uh, that doesn't sound so good, let's stick with Pass-Pos's... anyway, the word is Compliant: they are amenable, well-liked, have low-self-esteem masked by outward friendly behavior. Like Passive-Negative brethren, the Pass-Pos reacts to situations rather than lead or innovate. These are the types of guys you'd want running the farm when the farm's operating in the black, everybody knows their roles and are competent at those jobs, and there's no sign of oncoming drought or famine for the next, oh, twenty years or so. In short, this is a Caretaker.
For all of Madison's work getting the Constitution created, it wasn't always his initiative driving him to do it, nor any ambition on his part to lead. Madison's mentor was Jefferson, to whom a lot of Madison's ideas originated and toward whom Madison dedicated a lot of work. The name on the Virginia Plan was Edmond Randolph, not Madison (even though most knew Madison was the primary source). Madison was bright, well-educated, capable... but he answered to and sought approval from so many others.
What this meant was that sooner or later under his administration the push for war by the War-Hawks (an actual yet informal group in Congress: this is where John C. Calhoun pops up, the bastard) would finally give way. It didn't help that the causes for war - ongoing British impressment of sailors off American ships, growing frontier tensions with the natives and with Spanish and British colonists along the borders - were still hot topics by Madison's first term of office. It also didn't help that the War-Hawks were primarily a generation that had come of age and political influence after the American Revolution: they had little first-hand experience with war and didn't realize what the costs would be. For example, a good number of the Hawks believed invading Canada and seizing it as more territory for the US of A would be sweet, simple, and quick. Whatever wisdom Washington, Adams and Jefferson had that kept us out of war was in short supply with Madison, who followed more than led.
Madison began the War of 1812 with almost no Army and a small Navy. Most manpower had to be raised by the states through their militias - say hello to the militia provision of the Second Amendment, by the by - and in terms of supplies and organization the United States wasn't ready one bit. Another problem was that during all this time the national military had failed to churn out competent army leadership: most high-ranking officers were political appointments with almost little experience. The state-organized militia leadership wasn't any better (and in a lot of cases, worse). A more Active President might have made sure he had the right men leading his army first before declaring a war: Madison, well...
Hampering the war effort was the fact that the states and the population were NOT unified in their interest in going to war. The states of New England, still pro-British and still pro-let's-not-do-anything-to-mess-with-trade, refused to raise militias as needed to help with any invasion of Canada. Madison had little political influence: being a Southern and Democrat-Republican, he wasn't too popular with the Federalist-led New England populus. Any decent war-time President (usually an Active) would tell you: get ALL the people rallied to the cause first, then declare war. (I will grant that this was the first time a President had to do such a thing: Madison had no guide-book to follow)
For those who slept through this part of the history classes: the War of 1812 did not go well for the Americans. Canada was NOT an easy pick as the War-Hawks believed: in fact, the war brought out a nationalist fervor in Canadians that led them to defend their commonwealth home (still a colonial holding at the time to the British) with enough determination and victories to provide a basis of pride and identity (Canadians remember this war with pride the way they remember with pride their service in World War II). The British weren't even interested in fighting the first fourteen months of this war, due to focusing on Napoleon and European warfare instead. Once Napoleon abdicated after his failures in Russia, Great Britain finally sent major forces into Canada and the United States. This is the point where British troops seasoned against the likes of Napoleon's best faced American civilian militias that fled the battlefield faster than jackrabbits fleeing from hunting dogs.
During all this time, Madison and his Cabinet continued to mismanage the war. Lacking the skills of an Active President, Madison kept relying on people still eager for war and failing to recognize better need of logistics and organization. Over-reliance on militias that kept proving themselves unable to stay on the field longer than 30 seconds left Washington DC itself undefended in August 1814, leading to the great embarrassment of the British occupying our nation's capitol and burning nearly every building to the ground. Only an organized defense of Baltimore by officers who had enough military experience to know what they were doing staved off complete defeat.
British indifference to the whole war - plus the fact that both sides kept winning then losing battles preventing any momentum - was pretty much the only reason the Treaty of Ghent was completed. The causes of the war - naval impressment, native uprisings along the frontier - were long done: England finished its war on Napoleon and had no need of impressment; the war itself killed off much of the hard-line Indian leadership like Tecumseh and essentially pacified the native tribes of the Great Lakes region. Canadian resistance to invasion proved the War-Hawks wrong and ended most thoughts of warring with our northern neighbors (save for one more territorial issue, will cover it later). The treaty itself retained the status quo: all occupied areas reverted back to original ownership. The only significant change was that the United States got British (formerly Spanish) Florida out of the deal, which made sense to the British giving up a tempting piece of territory that the southern slave states would want sooner or later.
The only reason any American would remember the War of 1812 is the final battle, the great victory at the Battle of New Orleans... which historians will always note came two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent only because ship travel kept news of the treaty for another four weeks or so. The British practically don't remember the war at all, a mere afterthought to the struggle against Napoleon. Canadians, as mentioned earlier, remember every victory like they were hockey scores. ;-)
There was little else to say or note about Madison's two terms. The war dominated most of the administration's focus, especially during the second term. Most of the sound and fury during the war - the War-Hawk drum beats, the New England Federalist refusal to fight - pretty much died off on their own accord, not due to any influence on Madison's part. In terms of political issues, Madison retained enough of a Republican view of federalism to veto a major roads and canals bill, yet was open to Federalist ideas of financial policy that retained the federal banking system and high tariffs that favored the New England business interests.
So why am I down on Madison as a Passive-Positive? He was the wrong man for the wrong war. Being Positive made him think well of things (relying on militias and not a standing army as the Founders hoped) without considering the consequences or think long-term: being Passive made him rely on the wrong people (War-Hawks) pushing for what needed to be done. A Negative-inclined President would have paused before bending to a war cause or at least started the war on his terms rather than the War-Hawks' (who had no clue of how to wage war themselves); an Active-inclined President would have avoided war (Active-Negative) or at least made a more energized effort to get it organized and find competent leadership (Active-Positive).
So there we have the first four Presidents, and four examples of what each Character entails as promised from the first time I mentioned this (during my rant about Romney being a Passive-Negative). Next up: James Monroe, and I'm gonna let you readers start guessing which Character he is. C'mon, leave me some comments guessing (or at least showing me you're reading other resources on James David Barber's work on Presidential history). C'mon, I dares ya.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Inauguration Day 2013
Technically, Obama was sworn in to his SECOND TERM BEECHES on Sunday because the Constitution specifies it happens on January 20th no matter what... which caused a problem one year conflicting with a Super Bowl, which forced President Reagan to stave off the inauguration parties until Monday, so even though the Super Bowl is now in February and the games this Sunday were for the Conference Championships, Obama is carrying on a proud tradition of recognizing Americans' priorities (sports and beer).
Anywho, here's a Liveblog from the Washington Post if you wanna track that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure the networks are covering it... no, the networks are still talking about Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend. Again.
/headdesk
Anyways, baseball season is around the corner. Go Rays!
Anywho, here's a Liveblog from the Washington Post if you wanna track that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure the networks are covering it... no, the networks are still talking about Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend. Again.
/headdesk
Anyways, baseball season is around the corner. Go Rays!
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Three, It's All Jefferson's Fault
It's a hell of a way to open up a blog post, you think? Blaming Thomas Jefferson for everything?
Well, not everything. But still...
We're up to the example of Presidential Character for the Active-Positive types. The one word to describe this type is Adaptive: these are the guys who enjoy not just the perks of being the President but also the duties, self-deprecating but also self-confident, self-starters who seek accomplishments and problems to solve before anyone else even realizes there's a problem, and someone willing to compromise with others in politics to get things done.
The perfect example of Jefferson's adaptive style was the biggest event during his tenure: the Louisiana Purchase. By Jefferson's administration France fell under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, and during his reign building up to Emperor Napoleon had negotiated Spain - then a vassal state under his brother's rule - to hand over the Louisiana Territory that took up the middle third of the North American continent. His intent was an overseas empire combined with French holdings in the Caribbean. However, ongoing disasters with Haiti including a slave uprising discouraged Napoleon to where he decided against keeping it. At the same time, Jefferson had sent envoys to France to negotiate either a lease or the purchase of the City of New Orleans, the key trading port of the Mississippi River. Jefferson feared that if Napoleon secured Louisiana, he could tie up a major waterway route for the western edge of where the United States then reached.
Instead of negotiating over New Orleans, Napoleon offered up all of the Louisiana Territory. For $15 million. Even in that time, this was effing dirt-cheap (roughly 3 cents for every acre) and essentially the biggest land deal of the millennium (well, for the U.S. For the native tribes already living in the Territory, they never saw one red cent). Napoleon either didn't know the value of land, or simply wanted to get rid of what he then saw as useless (he also probably sought to buy off American neutrality as his war against Britain was kicking into high gear again).
This quickly became a major dilemma for Jefferson, for two reasons: One, he simply wasn't prepared for such a major land-mass addition to the nation's frontier; two, there wasn't any rule for this anywhere in the Constitution.
I need to back up a bit and note how Jefferson was the leader, the banner carrier of the Democratic-Republican Party. Unlike the Federalists who used a loose interpretation of the Constitution to establish laws and precedence, the Democrats believed in strict interpretation of the Constitution, including the limitations of powers on the Executive and ensuring the states had rights nearly comparable to the federal government. Jefferson's original view of government was opposed to a strong Federal system.
But now here was something challenging that view. He may have had power to conduct treaties and leasing arrangements, but there was no authority in the Constitution to make a land purchase from a foreign nation of this size. Jefferson could have gone to Congress, explained the deal Napoleon was offering, and wait for Congress to give him the political authority via amendment to get the deal done. But that meant working with a Congress that could bicker over every detail, delaying what was clearly an impulse buy: Napoleon could well change his mind within another week or month waiting for something to happen and kill the offer.
So Jefferson did what any Active-Positive would do: he broke his own rules. He authorized the purchase without first securing Constitutional authority to do so, pressing Congress to get the funds lined up as quick as possible.
And so, thanks to Jefferson's A-P attitudes, we went from being a decent-sized nation made up of states into an expanding pre-formed empire with enough territory to double in size and to equal the same land-mass as most of Europe. Before this, no one had any notion of Manifest Destiny: the Pacific Coast seemed so far off. After this, reaching the Pacific was now a genuine possibility (and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery proved it, although their original intent to find a Northwest Passage water route didn't pan out). And now all of a sudden the issue of slavery, which was confined to southern states and territories and could have moved no further than the Mississippi, became a bigger hot potato... underlying the passions under the colonization of Texas by southerners, leading to their rebellion against Mexico... leading to Texas annexation into the U.S. and soon after stirring up the Mexican-American War, solidifying our nation's reach between two oceans... adding even more territory that slave-owners sought to acquire for their ever-growing reliance on slave labor economics.
This kinda needs to be pointed out that Active-Positive Presidents are NOT always good things, no matter how... positive... the wording seems. A-Ps are active and very aggressive with their powers... and while they resolve a lot of challenges they never take into consideration the consequences of their actions (political axiom: Every political action generates an unequal and disproportionate reaction (pa < dpr) ). In short, they are quick to act, but fail to plan ahead (Active-Negatives tend to at least put more thought into what they're doing).
Another example is Jefferson's attempt to engage Great Britain for transgressions during the Napoleonic Wars. The United States tried to remain neutral but England kept impressing - raiding American ships and taking crewmen the British claimed were deserters - to the point of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. Rather than pursue the threat of war - Jefferson knew as his predecessors did that the U.S. was in no condition for war - Jefferson tried instead a series of embargoes blocking off all trade with Great Britain. He figured that the lost trade would hurt England enough to force them to terms. He failed to figure that the American traders would also get hurt in the process - and that England had other trade partners and colonial holdings to keep them stocked with supplies. The embargoes failed quickly and spectacularly, causing major rifts across the U.S., and Jefferson ended his term of office repealing those acts before they caused more damage.
Jefferson's two terms of office were very active indeed, more than the administrations of the first two Presidents Washington and Adams. But a lot of those actions had unintended consequences, which led to things like the War of 1812, the march of Manifest Destiny - which Natives, Mexicans, and even Americans would come to loath - and the increasing debate over slavery. Whether or not Jefferson's actions were good, the positive aspects of his actions are obvious... and the negative aspects are obvious as well. The debates will not end here. Not until much later...
Well, not everything. But still...
We're up to the example of Presidential Character for the Active-Positive types. The one word to describe this type is Adaptive: these are the guys who enjoy not just the perks of being the President but also the duties, self-deprecating but also self-confident, self-starters who seek accomplishments and problems to solve before anyone else even realizes there's a problem, and someone willing to compromise with others in politics to get things done.
The perfect example of Jefferson's adaptive style was the biggest event during his tenure: the Louisiana Purchase. By Jefferson's administration France fell under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, and during his reign building up to Emperor Napoleon had negotiated Spain - then a vassal state under his brother's rule - to hand over the Louisiana Territory that took up the middle third of the North American continent. His intent was an overseas empire combined with French holdings in the Caribbean. However, ongoing disasters with Haiti including a slave uprising discouraged Napoleon to where he decided against keeping it. At the same time, Jefferson had sent envoys to France to negotiate either a lease or the purchase of the City of New Orleans, the key trading port of the Mississippi River. Jefferson feared that if Napoleon secured Louisiana, he could tie up a major waterway route for the western edge of where the United States then reached.
Instead of negotiating over New Orleans, Napoleon offered up all of the Louisiana Territory. For $15 million. Even in that time, this was effing dirt-cheap (roughly 3 cents for every acre) and essentially the biggest land deal of the millennium (well, for the U.S. For the native tribes already living in the Territory, they never saw one red cent). Napoleon either didn't know the value of land, or simply wanted to get rid of what he then saw as useless (he also probably sought to buy off American neutrality as his war against Britain was kicking into high gear again).
This quickly became a major dilemma for Jefferson, for two reasons: One, he simply wasn't prepared for such a major land-mass addition to the nation's frontier; two, there wasn't any rule for this anywhere in the Constitution.
I need to back up a bit and note how Jefferson was the leader, the banner carrier of the Democratic-Republican Party. Unlike the Federalists who used a loose interpretation of the Constitution to establish laws and precedence, the Democrats believed in strict interpretation of the Constitution, including the limitations of powers on the Executive and ensuring the states had rights nearly comparable to the federal government. Jefferson's original view of government was opposed to a strong Federal system.
But now here was something challenging that view. He may have had power to conduct treaties and leasing arrangements, but there was no authority in the Constitution to make a land purchase from a foreign nation of this size. Jefferson could have gone to Congress, explained the deal Napoleon was offering, and wait for Congress to give him the political authority via amendment to get the deal done. But that meant working with a Congress that could bicker over every detail, delaying what was clearly an impulse buy: Napoleon could well change his mind within another week or month waiting for something to happen and kill the offer.
So Jefferson did what any Active-Positive would do: he broke his own rules. He authorized the purchase without first securing Constitutional authority to do so, pressing Congress to get the funds lined up as quick as possible.
And so, thanks to Jefferson's A-P attitudes, we went from being a decent-sized nation made up of states into an expanding pre-formed empire with enough territory to double in size and to equal the same land-mass as most of Europe. Before this, no one had any notion of Manifest Destiny: the Pacific Coast seemed so far off. After this, reaching the Pacific was now a genuine possibility (and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery proved it, although their original intent to find a Northwest Passage water route didn't pan out). And now all of a sudden the issue of slavery, which was confined to southern states and territories and could have moved no further than the Mississippi, became a bigger hot potato... underlying the passions under the colonization of Texas by southerners, leading to their rebellion against Mexico... leading to Texas annexation into the U.S. and soon after stirring up the Mexican-American War, solidifying our nation's reach between two oceans... adding even more territory that slave-owners sought to acquire for their ever-growing reliance on slave labor economics.
This kinda needs to be pointed out that Active-Positive Presidents are NOT always good things, no matter how... positive... the wording seems. A-Ps are active and very aggressive with their powers... and while they resolve a lot of challenges they never take into consideration the consequences of their actions (political axiom: Every political action generates an unequal and disproportionate reaction (pa < dpr) ). In short, they are quick to act, but fail to plan ahead (Active-Negatives tend to at least put more thought into what they're doing).
Another example is Jefferson's attempt to engage Great Britain for transgressions during the Napoleonic Wars. The United States tried to remain neutral but England kept impressing - raiding American ships and taking crewmen the British claimed were deserters - to the point of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. Rather than pursue the threat of war - Jefferson knew as his predecessors did that the U.S. was in no condition for war - Jefferson tried instead a series of embargoes blocking off all trade with Great Britain. He figured that the lost trade would hurt England enough to force them to terms. He failed to figure that the American traders would also get hurt in the process - and that England had other trade partners and colonial holdings to keep them stocked with supplies. The embargoes failed quickly and spectacularly, causing major rifts across the U.S., and Jefferson ended his term of office repealing those acts before they caused more damage.
Jefferson's two terms of office were very active indeed, more than the administrations of the first two Presidents Washington and Adams. But a lot of those actions had unintended consequences, which led to things like the War of 1812, the march of Manifest Destiny - which Natives, Mexicans, and even Americans would come to loath - and the increasing debate over slavery. Whether or not Jefferson's actions were good, the positive aspects of his actions are obvious... and the negative aspects are obvious as well. The debates will not end here. Not until much later...
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
When Bills Are Passing The House Despite the Majority
This sorta happened last night:
A very
big thing happened last night in the House of Representatives. For the
second time this month, Boehner broke the Hastert Rule. The issue was
Hurricane Sandy relief, a follow-up vote to a smaller package approved
earlier this month. It passed, but the important thing is how it passed:
Yeas: 241 (192 Democrats, 49 Republicans)
Nays: 180 (Rep. Jim Cooper + 179 Republicans)
Nays: 180 (Rep. Jim Cooper + 179 Republicans)
Just what is the Hastert Rule? It's a nickname of the political concept for "Majority of the Majority," which states that the House Speaker will not allow a vote on a bill unless that bill has a majority of the majority party backing it. It essentially kills the party in the minority to even bring up any bills that a small portion of the majority could and would support, because the majority leadership will cut off that outreach in a heartbeat.
For Boehner to allow a vote that required, NEEDED the minority party to pass is a big deal. That it's the second such vote inside of two weeks (the "fiscal cliff" deal passed on New Years Day also broke the Rule). In a way, it questions the very need or existence of that majority party in the first place.
In truth, this is not about how Boehner is breaking the Majority rule: Boehner is not the problem here. This is really a sign of how dysfunctional and broken the House is when even the majority of the majority cannot be counted on to pass bills that are no-brainer "this has broad public support" deals. There were enough Americans in favor of getting aid to Sandy victims. A previous vote attempt that got dumped by the House GOP led to a massive public outcry and very public rifts between the two wings of the Republicans: the Populists (pretty much the only moderate force left in the GOP) and the Wingnuts (the Batsh-t Crazies).
If the GOP majority of the House continues to be obstructionist on key issues - the Debt Ceiling conflict is a big one, the planned Sequester is the other - are we going to see more votes that will pass with Democratic plus moderate support?
Monday, January 14, 2013
I Take It These People Never Studied 19th Century Utopias In College
I got a one-two punch here:
Over on Salon.com, they got an article about Glenn Beck wanting to start an Ayn Rand inspired Utopia community.
Over on Balloon Juice, they got an article about the gun-worshiper crowd offering up a map of the proposed Citadel, a walled community of Second Amendment acolytes defending themselves from the imminent global apocalypse brought on by godless fascist commie libruls. See below:
(The quality of such a walled-in community is best left to the military experts. But having just one route in or out through two gates is a major design flaw. And a serious campaign using siege engines like trebuchets would make quick work of the walls and housing without even risking troop incursions... and we're talking using weaponry from the Middle Ages, peoples. Like Patton said, fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man.)
And for any of you regular readers, you kinda already know how I feel about Utopian thought: the absolute expression of an -ism ideology brought to the real world... where Utopias quickly fall apart from internal strife and mismanagement.
It does amaze me that there are yet another round of generations eager and willing to buy into this kind of Utopia business pitch (and there is money involved here. Why not? Libertarianism is all about the free market). Part of it may well be that most of my fellow Americans pursuing these libertarian communities simply don't remember their American history, or that our schoolbooks no longer devote a chapter to the attempts like New Harmony and Oneida and Fruitlands to build a "model community".
It doesn't amaze me that there seem to be enough Americans willing to buy into these communities out of what looks like cultural fear. There's been that fear brewing for ages, brought to the fore with having Obama in the White House, and it's gotten to the point where such communities are openly promoted on the national stage. From where I stand, this is an unfounded fear: there is no Apocalypse or Armageddon approaching, there are no invading hordes charging across the oceans.
Look, a lot of the anger stirred up against Obama are from partisan media hacks paid to stir up trouble. Always talking about the current President as ZOMG WORST PREZ EVER. Which is what they've been saying since the days of George Washington for God's sake (yes, even he got demonized by the masses during his two terms). A lot of this anger from the Far Right? I heard a lot of this sh-t back during Bill Clinton's tenure. Guess what? Nation's still here. There was a lot of wailing and pulling of hair from the Far Left (and then the centrist Left, and then about 60 percent of the nation) during Bush the Lesser's tenure about him being the WORST EVER. Guess what? Nation's still here. Every President - even James Monroe, the only other guy than Washington to run unopposed - gets demonized by the opposition: it all depends on how accurate they truly are. Do you think ANY of these wingnutters are going to feel sheepish about how they've been behaving these years when Obama finishes out his term and exits in 2016 with the United States of America still here? I doubt it...
Back to the planned Citadel and GlennBeckistan communities. If you're seriously intent on throwing in your money on these communities, just remember: they've tried this already with something called Future Cities Development and they filed for bankruptcy in 2012. There's a list of attempts on the Economist's website as well, and none of them ended with smiles and sunshine. Caveat emptor, people (it's Latin for "suckers").
Over on Salon.com, they got an article about Glenn Beck wanting to start an Ayn Rand inspired Utopia community.
Over on Balloon Juice, they got an article about the gun-worshiper crowd offering up a map of the proposed Citadel, a walled community of Second Amendment acolytes defending themselves from the imminent global apocalypse brought on by godless fascist commie libruls. See below:
 |
| This looks like a beginner-level Dungeons & Dragons module from 1982. |
(The quality of such a walled-in community is best left to the military experts. But having just one route in or out through two gates is a major design flaw. And a serious campaign using siege engines like trebuchets would make quick work of the walls and housing without even risking troop incursions... and we're talking using weaponry from the Middle Ages, peoples. Like Patton said, fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man.)
And for any of you regular readers, you kinda already know how I feel about Utopian thought: the absolute expression of an -ism ideology brought to the real world... where Utopias quickly fall apart from internal strife and mismanagement.
It does amaze me that there are yet another round of generations eager and willing to buy into this kind of Utopia business pitch (and there is money involved here. Why not? Libertarianism is all about the free market). Part of it may well be that most of my fellow Americans pursuing these libertarian communities simply don't remember their American history, or that our schoolbooks no longer devote a chapter to the attempts like New Harmony and Oneida and Fruitlands to build a "model community".
It doesn't amaze me that there seem to be enough Americans willing to buy into these communities out of what looks like cultural fear. There's been that fear brewing for ages, brought to the fore with having Obama in the White House, and it's gotten to the point where such communities are openly promoted on the national stage. From where I stand, this is an unfounded fear: there is no Apocalypse or Armageddon approaching, there are no invading hordes charging across the oceans.
Look, a lot of the anger stirred up against Obama are from partisan media hacks paid to stir up trouble. Always talking about the current President as ZOMG WORST PREZ EVER. Which is what they've been saying since the days of George Washington for God's sake (yes, even he got demonized by the masses during his two terms). A lot of this anger from the Far Right? I heard a lot of this sh-t back during Bill Clinton's tenure. Guess what? Nation's still here. There was a lot of wailing and pulling of hair from the Far Left (and then the centrist Left, and then about 60 percent of the nation) during Bush the Lesser's tenure about him being the WORST EVER. Guess what? Nation's still here. Every President - even James Monroe, the only other guy than Washington to run unopposed - gets demonized by the opposition: it all depends on how accurate they truly are. Do you think ANY of these wingnutters are going to feel sheepish about how they've been behaving these years when Obama finishes out his term and exits in 2016 with the United States of America still here? I doubt it...
Back to the planned Citadel and GlennBeckistan communities. If you're seriously intent on throwing in your money on these communities, just remember: they've tried this already with something called Future Cities Development and they filed for bankruptcy in 2012. There's a list of attempts on the Economist's website as well, and none of them ended with smiles and sunshine. Caveat emptor, people (it's Latin for "suckers").
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Two, Always Second
Abigail Adams: I never asked for more. After all, I am Mrs. John Adams and that's quite enough for one lifetime.
John Adams: Is it, Abby?
Abigail: Well, think of it, John, to be married to the man who is always the first in line to be hanged!
-- from the movie 1776.
In all other respects, John Adams - one of the major players in the ground-breaking uprising that formed the United States of America - was second in line for everything else. To say that this made him a personally bitter man isn't entirely right: he was pretty grumpy and stubborn to begin with.
Adams was one of the major independence leaders in New England... except that he was overshadowed by his more passionate cousin Sam Adams (yeah, the beer guy). He was one of the workers on the Declaration of Independence, the key document in American History and our nation's most sacred secular parchment... except that Thomas Jefferson was the major drafter and provided more of the literary flourish that makes the Declaration so memorable. Adams was one of two major ambassadors to France trying to secure financial aid and military support from France... the other guy was Benjamin Freakin' Franklin, who wooed and wined his way into Frenchmen (and women's) hearts.
And of course, when it came time to vote for our nation's first executive under the Constitution... well, John Adams had to know in his heart that George Washington was the go-to guy there. The only consolation Adams had to have was the knowledge that he'd qualify for President once Washington retired for good.
But by then the American political landscape had shifted: while the Founders attempted to create a non-partisan form of federal government, it couldn't last. People naturally gravitated towards like-minded groups, and quickly two parties formed: The Federalists and the Republican-Democrats (aka the modern Democratic Party). They formed along domestic, foreign, economic, and geographic lines. And they formed around two natural leaders: Democrats (States' rights, France-leaning, agrarian anti-bank) swarmed to Thomas Jefferson; Federalists (Strong central government, British-leaning, business pro-bank) swarmed to... Alexander Hamilton. Once again, Adams was second-place. And while Adams got to be President, Hamilton was used to the idea of being the power-broker behind the scenes (his role during Washington's tenure). This meant Adams and Hamilton - both ambitious men - were quickly at odds.
As a President - as a person - Adams is a textbook example of an Active-Negative. The one word comparative is Compulsive: A-Ns are stubborn and uncompromising, ambitious, hard-working but derive no pleasure or feeling of success, suffers from low self-esteem, and a problem with anger management.
An Active-Negative could be a problem as President - especially on the uncompromising part - but you can agree that at least things get done. A-Ns come in with an agenda or an ideology and gets right to work on it, that quickly defines the administration and the nation. It also creates a ton of political conflict, which shakes up the discourse for both good and ill (sad to say, usually "ill" due to hurt egos and unintended consequences).
Adams' administration was contentious where Washington's more... placid, stable. It didn't help that Adams had decided - out of deference to his predecessor - to keep Washington's second term Cabinet intact. It hampered Adams' abilities to get things done his way because the Cabinet were composed of men who preferred answering to Hamilton, who indulged in behind-the-scenes meddling to Adams' ever-growing ire. And it didn't help that in that age, the Vice President was elected separate from the President: Veeps were the guys who won second place in the Presidential election, which at the time was Thomas Jefferson (this was one of two times in American history the President and Vice President were from different political parties, well three if you count that SOB Tyler). Jefferson was nowhere near interested in helping his ex-friend (they broke their friendship over the French uprising) out against fellow rival Hamilton (the enemy of my enemy... in this case was still an enemy).
Of Adams' administration, there was one dominant matter: how America should respond to the European conflict between Revolutionary France and Great Britain (alongside other fearful monarchies). By the time Adams entered office, the French Revolution had concluded its Reign of Terror and had reverted back to an uneven (and corrupt) Directory coping with wars and inflationary economics. France was winning the ground war but was heating up their foreign adventures at sea, creating issues with the United States trying to ply trade across the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Adams sent diplomatic agents to France to discuss an amicable solution that didn't involve dragging the U.S. into a war it couldn't afford. By 1798 Adams' agents replied back that they were approached by three French officials known only as X Y and Z and told to offer up a huge bribe just to even get one meeting with the French foreign minister Talleyrand. The Americans refused, informed Adams what happened, and two of them returned home. Adams then called on Congress to begin war preparations, but withheld the scandalous letters. When the Democrats in Congress balked, Adams revealed the XYZ Affair to the public. The cry was immediate: "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!"
Adams's Active nature kicked into gear. He called on Washington to return and serve as Commander-in-Chief of any organized army Congress would muster (Washington was in no shape to lead: Adams begrudgingly allowed Washington to organize with Hamilton as second-in-command). He formed a new Cabinet post for a Secretary of the Navy (separate from the Secretary of War (Army)) and ordered the first true U.S. naval fleet to be built (the famous ships of the Barbary Pirate Wars and the War of 1812).
But there was also Adams' Negative nature. He knew the United States was still too financially weak to endure a prolonged war against France. He feared getting involved between Great Britain (resolved issues with the Jay Treaty, which was one reason France was angry at the United States) and France would stir up the populus into a civil war of sorts between Anglophile and Francophile. His active nature combined with his negative fears to make another attempt at brokering a deal with France. (Most A-Ns are reluctant to start wars, as they're usually smart enough to know wars don't end well and fearful enough of failing) He re-sent diplomats to France who this time were received warmly by Talleyrand who publicly admitted he had sent the XYZ agents as a form of apology. They were able to hammer out a deal that ended the Quasi-War efforts in the United States.
And this is where Adams' uncompromising A-N habits became his downfall: his resumption of peace talks while the public - especially the Federalists like Hamilton who fancied himself the next great American war hero - were stirred up into war passions caused a break among the Federalist party leaders. They were eager for a war that Adams didn't want. Losing his party leadership would hurt Adams' chances for re-election in 1800.
It didn't help that during the Quasi-War period that Congress passed with a Federalist majority the Alien and Sedition Acts. The nation's first anti-foreigner law that gave government the power to expel unwanted immigrants or travelers to our shores: this was the Federalist response against French emigre agitators. It was also the first censorship law that allowed government to arrest and jail anyone who spoke against the federal government: this was the Federalist response against the Republican-Democratic newspaper publishers railing against Federalist majority rule.
Adams may not have started those Acts but he did sign them into law, and he and the Federalists did profit from them. This is the other big worry about A-N Presidents: they don't like criticism very much. Their uncompromising, angry world-view (best described as "My way or the highway") make them the most likely among Presidents to subvert into dictatorial rule. Other A-Ns during wartime or political strife show the same disregard for dissent (Wilson, Nixon, Cheney).
The Federalists didn't go completely overboard enforcing the Alien Sedition Acts: to be fair, compared to the Reign of Terror and other purges, this was the meekest with only 25 arrests and 10 convictions (Stalin would consider that a coffee break). And there's no evidence that Adams personally oversaw or ordered any persecutions. But like all repressive acts it backfired on Adams and his party: the Republican-Democrats were able to rally against the Acts and make huge wins in the 1800 election. Combined with Adams' losing his party's support, he fell in his re-election bid to his rival Jefferson. Worst of all, the Democratic reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts were to lay the foundations to two ideas destructive to the concept of federalism: state nullification - when Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions - and secession. Even though such arguments have been shot down - nullification in the Peters case, secession through the American Civil War and Texas v. White - we're stuck with the damn things even today...
From David and Robin Whitney's American Presidents (8th ed.), one of the sources I'm using, a final summary:
Adams' legacy in the end wasn't much except in one regard and he does get a first: he presided over the first relative peaceful transition of the Presidency from one political party to another. And like some A-Ns, his administration's legacies got the benefit of hindsight showing where his caution about war proved the most sensible.
John Adams: Is it, Abby?
Abigail: Well, think of it, John, to be married to the man who is always the first in line to be hanged!
-- from the movie 1776.
In all other respects, John Adams - one of the major players in the ground-breaking uprising that formed the United States of America - was second in line for everything else. To say that this made him a personally bitter man isn't entirely right: he was pretty grumpy and stubborn to begin with.
Adams was one of the major independence leaders in New England... except that he was overshadowed by his more passionate cousin Sam Adams (yeah, the beer guy). He was one of the workers on the Declaration of Independence, the key document in American History and our nation's most sacred secular parchment... except that Thomas Jefferson was the major drafter and provided more of the literary flourish that makes the Declaration so memorable. Adams was one of two major ambassadors to France trying to secure financial aid and military support from France... the other guy was Benjamin Freakin' Franklin, who wooed and wined his way into Frenchmen (and women's) hearts.
And of course, when it came time to vote for our nation's first executive under the Constitution... well, John Adams had to know in his heart that George Washington was the go-to guy there. The only consolation Adams had to have was the knowledge that he'd qualify for President once Washington retired for good.
But by then the American political landscape had shifted: while the Founders attempted to create a non-partisan form of federal government, it couldn't last. People naturally gravitated towards like-minded groups, and quickly two parties formed: The Federalists and the Republican-Democrats (aka the modern Democratic Party). They formed along domestic, foreign, economic, and geographic lines. And they formed around two natural leaders: Democrats (States' rights, France-leaning, agrarian anti-bank) swarmed to Thomas Jefferson; Federalists (Strong central government, British-leaning, business pro-bank) swarmed to... Alexander Hamilton. Once again, Adams was second-place. And while Adams got to be President, Hamilton was used to the idea of being the power-broker behind the scenes (his role during Washington's tenure). This meant Adams and Hamilton - both ambitious men - were quickly at odds.
As a President - as a person - Adams is a textbook example of an Active-Negative. The one word comparative is Compulsive: A-Ns are stubborn and uncompromising, ambitious, hard-working but derive no pleasure or feeling of success, suffers from low self-esteem, and a problem with anger management.
An Active-Negative could be a problem as President - especially on the uncompromising part - but you can agree that at least things get done. A-Ns come in with an agenda or an ideology and gets right to work on it, that quickly defines the administration and the nation. It also creates a ton of political conflict, which shakes up the discourse for both good and ill (sad to say, usually "ill" due to hurt egos and unintended consequences).
Adams' administration was contentious where Washington's more... placid, stable. It didn't help that Adams had decided - out of deference to his predecessor - to keep Washington's second term Cabinet intact. It hampered Adams' abilities to get things done his way because the Cabinet were composed of men who preferred answering to Hamilton, who indulged in behind-the-scenes meddling to Adams' ever-growing ire. And it didn't help that in that age, the Vice President was elected separate from the President: Veeps were the guys who won second place in the Presidential election, which at the time was Thomas Jefferson (this was one of two times in American history the President and Vice President were from different political parties, well three if you count that SOB Tyler). Jefferson was nowhere near interested in helping his ex-friend (they broke their friendship over the French uprising) out against fellow rival Hamilton (the enemy of my enemy... in this case was still an enemy).
Of Adams' administration, there was one dominant matter: how America should respond to the European conflict between Revolutionary France and Great Britain (alongside other fearful monarchies). By the time Adams entered office, the French Revolution had concluded its Reign of Terror and had reverted back to an uneven (and corrupt) Directory coping with wars and inflationary economics. France was winning the ground war but was heating up their foreign adventures at sea, creating issues with the United States trying to ply trade across the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Adams sent diplomatic agents to France to discuss an amicable solution that didn't involve dragging the U.S. into a war it couldn't afford. By 1798 Adams' agents replied back that they were approached by three French officials known only as X Y and Z and told to offer up a huge bribe just to even get one meeting with the French foreign minister Talleyrand. The Americans refused, informed Adams what happened, and two of them returned home. Adams then called on Congress to begin war preparations, but withheld the scandalous letters. When the Democrats in Congress balked, Adams revealed the XYZ Affair to the public. The cry was immediate: "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!"
Adams's Active nature kicked into gear. He called on Washington to return and serve as Commander-in-Chief of any organized army Congress would muster (Washington was in no shape to lead: Adams begrudgingly allowed Washington to organize with Hamilton as second-in-command). He formed a new Cabinet post for a Secretary of the Navy (separate from the Secretary of War (Army)) and ordered the first true U.S. naval fleet to be built (the famous ships of the Barbary Pirate Wars and the War of 1812).
But there was also Adams' Negative nature. He knew the United States was still too financially weak to endure a prolonged war against France. He feared getting involved between Great Britain (resolved issues with the Jay Treaty, which was one reason France was angry at the United States) and France would stir up the populus into a civil war of sorts between Anglophile and Francophile. His active nature combined with his negative fears to make another attempt at brokering a deal with France. (Most A-Ns are reluctant to start wars, as they're usually smart enough to know wars don't end well and fearful enough of failing) He re-sent diplomats to France who this time were received warmly by Talleyrand who publicly admitted he had sent the XYZ agents as a form of apology. They were able to hammer out a deal that ended the Quasi-War efforts in the United States.
And this is where Adams' uncompromising A-N habits became his downfall: his resumption of peace talks while the public - especially the Federalists like Hamilton who fancied himself the next great American war hero - were stirred up into war passions caused a break among the Federalist party leaders. They were eager for a war that Adams didn't want. Losing his party leadership would hurt Adams' chances for re-election in 1800.
It didn't help that during the Quasi-War period that Congress passed with a Federalist majority the Alien and Sedition Acts. The nation's first anti-foreigner law that gave government the power to expel unwanted immigrants or travelers to our shores: this was the Federalist response against French emigre agitators. It was also the first censorship law that allowed government to arrest and jail anyone who spoke against the federal government: this was the Federalist response against the Republican-Democratic newspaper publishers railing against Federalist majority rule.
Adams may not have started those Acts but he did sign them into law, and he and the Federalists did profit from them. This is the other big worry about A-N Presidents: they don't like criticism very much. Their uncompromising, angry world-view (best described as "My way or the highway") make them the most likely among Presidents to subvert into dictatorial rule. Other A-Ns during wartime or political strife show the same disregard for dissent (Wilson, Nixon, Cheney).
The Federalists didn't go completely overboard enforcing the Alien Sedition Acts: to be fair, compared to the Reign of Terror and other purges, this was the meekest with only 25 arrests and 10 convictions (Stalin would consider that a coffee break). And there's no evidence that Adams personally oversaw or ordered any persecutions. But like all repressive acts it backfired on Adams and his party: the Republican-Democrats were able to rally against the Acts and make huge wins in the 1800 election. Combined with Adams' losing his party's support, he fell in his re-election bid to his rival Jefferson. Worst of all, the Democratic reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts were to lay the foundations to two ideas destructive to the concept of federalism: state nullification - when Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions - and secession. Even though such arguments have been shot down - nullification in the Peters case, secession through the American Civil War and Texas v. White - we're stuck with the damn things even today...
From David and Robin Whitney's American Presidents (8th ed.), one of the sources I'm using, a final summary:
He tried to do what he believed was right for his country, rather than what was politically expedient. His blunt frankness sometimes lost him friends, but he was respected for his honesty even by his political enemies... (p. 18)
Adams' legacy in the end wasn't much except in one regard and he does get a first: he presided over the first relative peaceful transition of the Presidency from one political party to another. And like some A-Ns, his administration's legacies got the benefit of hindsight showing where his caution about war proved the most sensible.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Here's a First: a Poll
It's probably a bit messy but we'll see how it works...
Update (1/13/13): Noooooo. The Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve spokespeople have all said they won't use the Platinum Coin to pay off the debt if Congress remains insane. Defeats the whole purpose of a poll. Sniff... I can't ever have the fun toys...
What image should be on the face of the $1 Trillion Platinum Coin?
Update (1/13/13): Noooooo. The Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve spokespeople have all said they won't use the Platinum Coin to pay off the debt if Congress remains insane. Defeats the whole purpose of a poll. Sniff... I can't ever have the fun toys...
What image should be on the face of the $1 Trillion Platinum Coin?
Just remember kids, the rules on coinage is that it can't be a currently living President, so all those mock-ups with Obama's face on the front, you're doing it wrong kiddo...
Thursday, January 10, 2013
My Two Cents On The Platinum Coin (Yeah, I Went There)
With the Fiscal Cliff no longer an issue, the next scheduled disaster from our elected leaders is apparently yet another Debt Ceiling vote needed to ensure the Federal government can pay out those Medicare checks, military pay, and basically keeping the street lights on.
There's a good argument to be made that we don't even NEED a Debt Ceiling vote, the whole thing can be done through other budgetary bills and never be an issue: but sad to say the powers that be in Congress don't want to give up their ability to be bratty monsters to their fellow Americans, and also they've realized they can use this man-made disaster to wriggle out some twisted deals making the rest of us suffer in the process.
Considering how broken the system is, we've got a ton of people thinking outside of the box, using some lateral thinking. And one idea that's come up - it actually started brewing last year when the government shutdown over the last Debt Ceiling vote happened - is the fact that under current law the Treasury Department can cast a platinum coin, give it any value they deem fit, and then use that coin as revenue to be spent however the government needs. The actual value of platinum as a metal isn't at stake - this is called Seigniorage - all that matters is what value the Treasury Secretary can put on that coin. As a result, the Secretary could stamp it as a One-Trillion-Dollar (that's 1,000,000,000,000.00 if you wanna count out the zeroes) Coin and that coin, probably no bigger than an Eisenhower Silver Dollar, will be worth that one trillion.
A law originally designed to allow the government to make and sell commemorative coins to a collectibles industry to turn a modest profit could be used to tell Congress to go screw itself over the Debt Ceiling nonsense:
That persons among the Obama administration are talking seriously about this of course has the Far Right in an tizzy. Most of them don't even realize the concept of seigniorage and are trying to mock the Platinum Coin proponents by thinking one trillion worth of platinum has to be cast for the world's largest coin. The truth is much simpler: the coin can be the size of a DIME (our smallest coinage) and as long it's made out of platinum it can get valued however high it can, meaning it CAN be a One-Trillion Coin.
This may look on its face like a silly solution. But the reason we're even thinking of this as a legitimate possibility is due to the fact that Congress is broken. Full-on partisanship rules the floor, and the House Republicans have convinced themselves to never retreat on any issue that would give Obama a good day. Especially if they can use their hostage-taking on the Debt Ceiling vote to force harsh social spending cuts on the Democrats. There is no reason to believe that the House GOP will negotiate in good faith to resolve the matter, and we'll be facing yet another showdown just like in 2011 that crimped the nation's bond rating and caused enough financial chaos to choke a bull.
To consider Matthew O'Brien's thoughts:
There's a good argument to be made that we don't even NEED a Debt Ceiling vote, the whole thing can be done through other budgetary bills and never be an issue: but sad to say the powers that be in Congress don't want to give up their ability to be bratty monsters to their fellow Americans, and also they've realized they can use this man-made disaster to wriggle out some twisted deals making the rest of us suffer in the process.
Considering how broken the system is, we've got a ton of people thinking outside of the box, using some lateral thinking. And one idea that's come up - it actually started brewing last year when the government shutdown over the last Debt Ceiling vote happened - is the fact that under current law the Treasury Department can cast a platinum coin, give it any value they deem fit, and then use that coin as revenue to be spent however the government needs. The actual value of platinum as a metal isn't at stake - this is called Seigniorage - all that matters is what value the Treasury Secretary can put on that coin. As a result, the Secretary could stamp it as a One-Trillion-Dollar (that's 1,000,000,000,000.00 if you wanna count out the zeroes) Coin and that coin, probably no bigger than an Eisenhower Silver Dollar, will be worth that one trillion.
A law originally designed to allow the government to make and sell commemorative coins to a collectibles industry to turn a modest profit could be used to tell Congress to go screw itself over the Debt Ceiling nonsense:
As former Congressman and author of the original bill Mike Castle told Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post, the intent was to use the government's seigniorage power to very modestly reduce the deficit. Seigniorage is the delightfully literal concept of making money by making money. It's the difference between the cost of creating currency, and the value you assign to that currency -- in other words, the "profit" governments get from minting money. The trillion-dollar coin is seigniorage just like commemorative coins are seigniorage -- well, except that the trillion-dollar coin is a whole, whole lot more of it. Even if you don't find this terribly convincing, it doesn't really matter. The plain text of the law, not its intent, is what matters. And that means the trillion-dollar coin is almost certainly legal.To be fair, our debt obligations aren't as high as one trillion: it's roughly about 52 billion. A more modest plan would be to mint more than 52 platinum coins at One-Billion each and save the One-Trillion coinage for a more special occasion.
That persons among the Obama administration are talking seriously about this of course has the Far Right in an tizzy. Most of them don't even realize the concept of seigniorage and are trying to mock the Platinum Coin proponents by thinking one trillion worth of platinum has to be cast for the world's largest coin. The truth is much simpler: the coin can be the size of a DIME (our smallest coinage) and as long it's made out of platinum it can get valued however high it can, meaning it CAN be a One-Trillion Coin.
This may look on its face like a silly solution. But the reason we're even thinking of this as a legitimate possibility is due to the fact that Congress is broken. Full-on partisanship rules the floor, and the House Republicans have convinced themselves to never retreat on any issue that would give Obama a good day. Especially if they can use their hostage-taking on the Debt Ceiling vote to force harsh social spending cuts on the Democrats. There is no reason to believe that the House GOP will negotiate in good faith to resolve the matter, and we'll be facing yet another showdown just like in 2011 that crimped the nation's bond rating and caused enough financial chaos to choke a bull.
To consider Matthew O'Brien's thoughts:
As my colleague Derek Thompson explains, a world without a debt limit increase is a world where the government has to stop paying 40 percent of its bills overnight. Everything from food stamps to defense spending to maybe even Social Security benefits would go unpaid. Now, Congress would presumably relent after a few weeks of this, but if it didn't, the economic damage would be mind-blowing...
And that brings us to the trillion dollar coin. If you haven't heard, there's a law that technically lets the Treasury mint platinum, and only platinum, coins in whatever denomination it chooses. It's legal, it's doubtful anybody would have standing to challenge it in court, and it would let us keep paying our bills, without setting off massive inflation, if the debt ceiling isn't raised. But as Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein point out, the politics of it are toxic. It sounds crazy, and it would look like a crazy power grab, all of which would empower the very Republicans pushing us towards a possible default. Risking complete catastrophe is worth it if it will break the swamp fever according to this logic. That very well could be true if we were talking about a run-of-the-mill catastrophe, but it falls apart when we're talking about a debt default. The financial fallout and increase in our long-term borrowing costs are much too high a price to pay for discrediting the default caucus. Here's the way out. If Congress doesn't lift the debt ceiling in time, Treasury should prioritize payments while Obama and Republicans negotiate an increase. But if a day ever comes when incoming revenues won't meet interest payments, Treasury should mint a platinum coin to cover the difference. As Steve Waldman argued, use a billion dollar instead of a trillion dollar coin -- and only as a last resort to avoid irrevocable damage.The full faith and credit is worth a platinum coin.
Personally, I kinda find this One-Trillion Coin idea amusing, a creative solution to a bankrupt problem. But I'm kinda also with O'Brien here: I don't think we should be jumping straight at the platinum coin as the immediate solution. The real problem is that we've got a Republican base pushing for a default (remember Grover Norquist, kids? He wants to drown your government in his bathtub) no matter the hazards. Going to the coin solution isn't going to solve the way Congress does business. Congress needs serious fixing, especially considering how much of a sick joke the Debt Ceiling really is.
Get rid of the Debt Ceiling. That's the real solution. The pity of it is, that also takes real political courage right now, and NO ONE has that.
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