February 2008 - Posts
If you want to influence someone, get to him or her in high school. It's my experience that people at that age are the most impressionable, the most searching for guidance, for example, for purpose.
It was in high school that I came under the charm and influence of William F. Buckley, the dashing, charismatic young conservative who wrote "God and Man at Yale," "McCarthy and His Enemies" and founded the wistful, precocious, companionable monthly magazine "National Review."
As a high school student, I could tell you which drug store got National Review first. I went to hear Bill Buckley at a meeting of the Montgomery County Young Republicans and it was from National Review that I gained my early affection and appetite for political philosophy and argument.
To start out as a young conservative is not to end up there. But you have to start somewhere. You have to "care" before you can think, think before you can change your mind, and in my case, not stop changing.
I owe that start to the man who died today, at his desk, the great author, writer, sailor of the ocean sea, Alpine skier, Renaissance man and, in mine as in so many millions of cases, teacher and political guidance counselor.
I offer two last thoughts on Bill Buckley. In the 1950s, when it needed to be done, he exorcised old conservatism from its pre-World War II isolationism and, its redolent anti-Semitism.
There is something else to be said for William F. Buckley and it concerns his own religious faith. He wrote once of the young man who stood alone in an empty church juggling balls in the air. It was something he could do: throw balls into the air and catch them, each without dropping in a swirling feat of personal mastery. It was the one thing he could do.
It was the thing he could offer up to God when they were, as best he could arrange it, alone together. In all the books and columns he wrote, in all the editions of National Review he published, our great William F. Buckley, Jr. was offering up "his" prayer. This is what he was doing, his work, at his desk, when he was taken home.
To work is to pray. Laborare est orare. Watch video.
On Tuesday, Feb. 19, "Hardball" host Chris Matthews grilled Obama supporter Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Texas, on what Obama had accomplished while in the Senate. Watson was unable to respond during MSNBC's post-primary coverage that night, but he posted a response on his Web site on Wednesday. "Had I not lost my mind, here are the accomplishments I would have mentioned," Watson writes in his response, and then highlights some of Obama's feats.
View the original exchange from Tuesday night here:
Update: Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., talked about Obama's track record on "Hardball" on Wednesday. Watch the video:
Bill Clinton is at his best when his back’s to the wall. Beaten for re-election in Arkansas in 1980, given up for dead politically, he came roaring back in 1982. Knocked off-stride by the revelation of his Vietnam-era “draft letter” on the eve of the 1992 New Hampshire primary, he walked door to door handing out videotapes to voters. His message: I can’t get my message across through the media, so I’m doing it myself. (Of course, reporters like me, I was with the San Francisco Examiner, walked along with him. I have a picture of candidate Clinton greeting my young son that brisk Saturday morning before the primary). The emergence of the self-styled “Comeback Kid” was just around the corner. That Tuesday he would make the very best of an eight-point loss to declare himself the moral winner of the 1992 New Hampshire primary.
The same thing happened when President Clinton got into trouble in 1994. When the Democrats lost control of Congress, he buckled down, pulled in his sails, brought Dick Morris aboard and declared the era of big government was over. He also signed the Republican-drafted welfare bill, while ultimately hanging tough in defense of affirmative action.
Hillary Clinton has been equally at her best in bad times. In 1998, with Monica clouds overhead, she went up to New York and campaigned for senate candidate Chuck Schumer eight times, winning tremendous respect for sticking to her job, not just as First Lady, but as a vital national Democrat. I’ve said this the wrong way before. Let me say it right now: Hillary Clinton’s grace under pressure in those dreary months gave her a political lift she’d never enjoyed before. Her national approval numbers spiked from the mid-40s to just above the 70 mark in one poll. Her toughness in walking through fire had much to do with the strong invitation from New York Democrats, U.S .Congressman Charlie Rangel led the parade of welcome wagoners, to begin competing for a senate seat of her own.
This ability to look good under fire, and, let’s face it, look not quite so good when things are going swimmingly, seems to be an essential, even predictable pattern to the Clinton family’s political chronicle.
Look at Senator Clinton’s relentlessness in the brutal weekend before this year’s New Hampshire primary. Beaten by Obama in the Iowa caucuses, her poll numbers seemingly in full erosion, she kept at it, giving speech after speech in giant rooms, just as her husband had done back in ’92. And, unlike him, she came in first, winning a primary that many in her and Obama’s camp thought she would surely lose.
So here Senator Clinton comes again, her husband aboard and sharing in the challenge, plotting a comeback in Ohio, Texas and then on to Pennsylvania. Their Mapquest tells them what they have to do: win those states, wrap up as many superdelegates as possible, get the Florida and Michigan delegates counted. It’s a daunting ambition. That said, it is in this very terrain, uphill and hard slogging, that these two have performed, separately and together, at their lifetime best.
Scott Fitzgerald said there are no "second acts in American life."
In the case of Tom Lantos, the second act of his life was that of a member of the U.S. Congress. An expert on foreign policy and a fighter for human rights everywhere, as well as a gentleman with a distinguished European accent, he was one of the intellectuals in what members of congress fondly call "the people's house."
I remember having lunch with Tom at the Library of Congress one quiet Friday when the House was out of session. Tom liked visiting over there; I think he liked the academic environment of the Library. He also had no airs about wanting to eat at some fancy Washington restaurant. A man with big mind and a world of experience, tastes and curiosities, he lived modestly and had no need for the company of those with greater wealth.
Tom once told me how he managed to both live on two coasts; he was a Congressman from Northern California and had not become caught up in the wealth of those who find their way into the world of Washington and the U.S. Congress. "Two reasons, he said: I survived the Holocaust and have a wife, Annette, who doesn't mind living like a grad student."
A Hungarian Jew, Tom escaped capture by the Nazis not once but twice. He was saved by the courageous intervention of the legendary Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands from the death camps.
Tom came to America, gained his education, worked in business and for Sen. Joe Biden, won election to the Congress and was the only survivor of the Holocaust to do so.
He had a wonderful heart and was a majestic American. When he was asked to react to the opening of the Berlin Wall, he didn't miss a step. He said he first wanted to thank all those courageous men who made the event possible. Those brave soldiers who had fought in World War II, those Americans and British and Canadians who had stormed Normandy, fought their way up Italy and died in bombing raids over Germany herself.
He spoke of Harry Truman, who had held the line against communist expansion in Europe, and of Dwight Eisenhower, who not only led the fight against Nazi Germany but secured the peace in the decade afterward. He said it was a final tribute to the brave American and Allied soldiers who fought to bring down Hitler. Finally, he said, the liberation of Europe, for which they fought and so many died, had been won.
This morning at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and battler for human rights, died, the last scene in one of the great second acts in American history. Watch video.
