Political Booknotes
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill. Tip O'Neill, with William Novak. Random House $19.95. Tip O'Neill's memoir is the kind of book...
...Studying quite literally in the shadows of guard towers—or in classes ravaged by dust storms, which prevented conversation and sometimes even vision across the room—many "Nisei" emerged with just the sort of educaion the AFT, William Bennett, and the rest of us say we want our kids to have...
...He describes a letter written to him early in his congressional career by his mentor, Sister Agatha, a former teacher from his parochial high school...
...Two-hundred-sixty-nine fits on a button or a bumper sticker...
...It covers 50 years of American politics, with some fascinating insights...
...Not much has changed...
...Since she refused to talk about politics, she was handled gently by the press...
...Oxford University, $19.95...
...President" and "Presidentress...
...When husband Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, she guarded entry to his bedside with such ferocity that some observers said she was president, exercising "petticoat government ." No matter what you want to call her, the wife of the president usually has the power inherent in most wives, that of "pillow talk ." Such intimate, ill-defined, but very real power inevitably troubles an American public, guaranteeing an ambivalent response to a First Lady's unelected role in political life...
...Don't fall into the trap of assuming that there was ever a time when kids could recite the Federalist Papers...
...Originally from Bombay, India, he did not consider himself political when he first arrived on the Dartmouth campus...
...He does indicate his own operating style, in some ways similar to the president's: "The details of legislation have never been my strong suit, which is why I've always left them to other people...
...But when she accompanied her husband across the expanding country, the first presidential couple to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific, newspapers hailed her as the "first lady of the land ?' "First Lady" as a title flourished, although Jacqueline Kennedy initially forbade her staff to use it...
...For example, liberals use the specter of Joe McCarthy to make it "impossible for conservatives to point out that there are people in this country who are, in fact, working in concert with the enemy...
...O'Neill also tells a revealing story about his selection as minority whip in 1971 by Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Speaker Carl Albert—the decision that enabled him to become speaker six years later...
...That's a fine quality, but it would get you into a lot of trouble if you were governor...
...Among the nuggets: He, in 1959, suggested to presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who was looking for campaign help in Massachusetts, "There's another guy you might look up...
...But nowhere does the statement call for public service outside of school that would force our kids to challenge their assumptions about government and society in the emotional way the "Nisei" had to examine their own...
...Ben Hart and Ralph Reed, Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham, the young and the restless of the New Right, are the conservative movement's aces in the hole...
...O'Neill also offers sharp and candid observations about politicians, from Robert Kennedy (they didn't get along...
...If the public clamored for the president to have a wife, it also expected her influence to remain within the sphere of traditional women's work...
...Her suggestion...
...He's a lawyer in Boston, a sharp kid...
...Suzanne Fields Exile Within: The Schooling of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945...
...And it wasn't the progressive curriculum, including a special "Problems of Democracy" course, that made them understand freedom...
...The Third Generation was published by Regnery Gateway, the right-wing press, apparently because the Heritage Foundation agreed to buy up most of the first run itself...
...His name is Chuck Colson...
...Washington is the place for you, where you can do so much good for people in need all over the country!' Moreover, O'Neill does not describe in analytical detail how he ran the House during his ten years as speaker, what the O'Neill system was, or why he was a strong speaker...
...The biggest moment in Ralph Reed's life came when he saw the film "Patton...
...For the First Generation, it's a clash of philosophies, Marxist brutality, Western open skies...
...But it should be read more for entertainment than enlightenment...
...You have a certain softness about you which would make it difficult for you to say no to anyone...
...The future belongs to the energy and the street smarts of the Third Generation...
...Take, for example, a right-wing issue like the Soviet attack on KAL 007...
...How they developed their democratic consciousness says something about education reform today...
...According to his Third Generation bio, Adam Myerson, the editor of the Heritage Foundation's flagship, Policy Review, is "willing to publish a risky or a zany article, as long as the thesis is supported by hard data and sound reasoning...
...They were intellectual groundbreakers, but they didn't understand politics and power...
...Abigail Adams, who followed her, was mercilessly ridiculed for being foolish in "loyally supporting her husband's views!' James Buchanan, one of the two bachelors to be elected president (the other was Grover Cleveland, and he married while occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), heard his niece, who acted as his hostess, described as "Our Democratic Queen ." But because Buchanan was not married, he was suspect in another way...
...Consider what happened to Dinesh D'Souza...
...Our kids would know a whole lot more about America's grandeur and weaknesses if they had to work in day-care centers, hospitals, prisons, parks...
...After Albert vetoed Dan Rostenkowski for the post, Boggs and Albert reportedly settled on Hugh Carey of New York...
...POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill...
...Jonathan Zimmerman...
...Thomas James reveals, however, that during the same period the students who experienced most forcefully the hateful underside of this patriotism—the 30,000 Japanese-Americans, mostly second generation "Nisei," who attended federally administered schools at "relocation centers"— had a more subtle, emotional understanding of our democracy than "free" kids...
...But these guys have lost their edge...
...When 269 people are killed we think in terms of what slogan to produce," says Amy Moritz, Maryland's outstanding young Republican of 1978...
...When he arrived, he found that the men were dancing with the men and the women with the women ." Today Dinesh works for the White House...
...Laura now works in the White House...
...Only a few...
...Outrageousness, for one thing, is back . ...Movies designed to raise our consciousness are bombing, while people line up for pure entertainment, such as 'Back to the Future,' `Top Gun,' and anything with Rodney Dangerfield, the comic who has everyone laughing ?' Just listen to the kind of ideas that get tossed around at a typical meeting of the Third Generation...
...Get this: Sydney Schanberg...
...If you appoint him, don't ever expect any loyalty from us.' " The only guy that Albert and Boggs could then agree on was Tip O'Neill...
...But the bitterness is even greater for Carter aide Hamilton Jordan, whom O'Neill referred to as "Hannibal Jerkin" Jordan, of course, was aggressively ignorant about Washington politics and openly disdainful of the speaker (O'Neill says that Jordan believed a House speaker was "something you bought on sale at Radio Shack"), earning permanent ingratitude as a result...
...Thomas James...
...But no one seems to mind...
...he saw and did not like the ruthless side of Kennedy's personality), to Richard Nixon (whom he viewed with particular disdain as a lousy poker player), to legendary Boston pol James Michael Curley (described with both awe and amusement), to Gerry Ford (unsurprisingly affectionate), to Jimmy Carter (surprisingly affectionate), and Ronald Reagan...
...Martha Washington, for example, was sometimes called Lady Washington because pomp and circumstance were still fresh in the collective memory of the fledgling republic...
...While showing some fondness for Reagan and his personality, O'Neill attacks him and his philosophy with vigor and some animus...
...He has carefully transcribed and edited the rightwing pep rallies he hosts twice a month at the Heritage Foundation, adding a handy list of recommended reading (Lord Acton, David Hume, Phyllis Schlafly), plus a complete biography of his movement's very best and very brightest...
...Hailed as a "New Woman" because of her college education, she knew better than to speak on behalf of the suffragettes...
...He was a freshman at the University of Georgia, sitting in a packed movie house, when up on the screen Patton told Ike that he wanted to roll the Russians then and there...
...Norman Podhoretz is a Second Generation man...
...We can't force our kids to work in some hospital a few hours a week...
...They were Goldwater men...
...Laura Ingraham, distinguished alumna of the Dartmouth Review, leads a fascinating discussion in chapter three ("Going on the Moral Offensive") on why the right has to borrow from the tactics of the radicals of the sixties...
...There are dozens of stories like this in Hart's book...
...It was their first-hand experience of political represssion...
...I have taught such students in Vermont and Maryland...
...Ben Hart, ed...
...Forget Irangate...
...Of course, something of conservatism's substance is lost in the translation, and there is a certain aimlessness in ideology so crudely rendered...
...The AFT statement points out that less than half of American college freshmen surveyed in 1943=`The patriotic era," according to the pamphlet—could list four points in the Bill of Rights...
...Thus did Rooney and Delaney unwittingly shape both the leadership in Congress for more than a decade and the governorship of New York, which Carey later captured...
...In a way, one imagines, this is progress...
...By all accounts the First and Second Generation are content to be led passively into battle by their progeny, triumphing over experience, the blind leading the bland...
...Why is that person a drug addict...
...Betty Boyd Carol...
...That, Reed remembers, "elicited a spontaneous and uproarious standing ovation from the students in the audience...
...The First Generation of conservatives, you see—men like Friedrich Hayek, Russell Kirk, and Whittaker Chambers—had only limited impact...
...But how she has been acknowledged tells us as much about the politics of the time as about the woman...
...Washington's sophisticates found her intolerably dull—they dubbed her "Lemonade Lucy" for banning alcohol from the White House...
...A widely publicized pamphlet of this title, sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and signed by 150 "prominent Americans" (the statement's phrase), reminds us, yet again, that the majority of American high schoolers can't identify Brown v. Board of Education, Winston Churchill, or Joseph Stalin, let alone describe the electoral process...
...For several minutes the theater was the scene of near pandemonium...
...But, O'Neill tells us, "little did I know that John Rooney and Jim Delaney, two senior and powerful members of the New York delegation, had been in to see Albert...
...But her influence pales next to that of Edith Wilson...
...As Pat Buchanan testifies on the dust jacket, the real political story of the decade is "how Ronald Reagan robbed Teddy Kennedy, Gary Hart, and the 'Party of Compassion' of tomorrow's best political minds...
...The only difference between then and now is that in this year of constitutional fever, "Education for Democracy" has become a very big issue...
...For years no one knew exactly how to address her...
...He comments, "I began my political career in 1936, on a slogan of 'work and wages.' Today, more than half a century later, I'm still a bread-andbutter liberal who believes that every family deserves the opportunity to earn an income, own a home, educate their children, and afford medical care...
...The Second Generation learned from the mistakes of the first, building think-tanks, raising money, and organizing politically...
...She wrote him, "I don't think that's a good idea...
...It is not a deeply philosophical book, but here and there O'Neill does set out his fundamental political philosophy...
...Instead she gave birth to eight children in 20 years and focused her attention on her husband's career...
...It certainly didn't come from their teachers, most of whom resented their "Nisei" students...
...Well after breaking faith with Santa Claus, some kids still believe in the Electrical College...
...Consider the title of the wife of the president...
...They would have to ask themselves: Why is that person in jail...
...It's no doubt sexist to note it will be more interesting to women than to men, but anyone curious about the politics of the changing roles of women in our social history will find much to ponder here...
...Examine, as James does in his short but provocative book on their education, the graduation speeches—typically the most banal and bombastic of American rituals—that they delivered within their parched, barbed-wire prisons...
...Tip O'Neill's memoir is the kind of book you can imagine Ronald Reagan writing—informal, gossipy, full of funny anecdotes and reminiscences, short on detail and analysis...
...Lucy...
...The Second Generation might commission a two-year study on Asian flight paths and original intent...
...My own skills had more to do with powers of persuasion and with getting things done...
...Don't pick Carey,' they told the speaker...
...Her history is full of errors, but with each mistake she has learned...
...But they could get a hell of a lot richer one than they're getting now...
...She wants the right to pick a bogeyman of its own, someone as big and as bad as McCarthy to put liberals on the defensive...
...The result is a portrait of young conservatives and the frightening incidents that pushed them right...
...But the Third Generation...
...While other members drew up the laws, I was like a shepherd who knew how to move legislation forward and get it passed...
...Hayes, wife of Rutherford, is typical...
...Libertarians will squeal that this is servitude, not service...
...But then he received an invitation to a college-sponsored dance...
...Norman Ornstein The Third Generation: Young Conservative Leaders Look to the Future...
...Why can't that person find a job...
...Regnery Books, $17.95...
...He's a troublemaker and a publicity seeker who takes credit for everything we've done...
...Maybe you were one of the wise guys in the front of the class who recognized the absurdity of an unnamed vocational school appointing our nation's chief executive...
...25.00 O.K., let's see a quick show of hands: How many of you remember thinking that the president is chosen by an "Electrical College...
...They plan to use it as a fund-raising tool...
...She's been called "Mrs...
...The fact is, as Gregg ("the most promising young journalist of his generation") Fossedal puts it in the book's opening chapter: "Culturally speaking, surf's up in America ?' This is a golden era for young conservatives who want to cut loose intellectually...
...So are Jerry Falwell and Richard Viguerie, and of course Heritage Foundation grand poobah Ed Feulner...
...While I couldn't always cite chapter and verse, I always knew what a bill meant, what it stood for, and which members were most likely to support it ." But if O'Neill does not provide the deep insight of the ultimate insider, he does provide more than enough interesting historical tidbits, observations about important political players, and good, pithy stories to make it a good read...
...Typical was the teacher who, when a student asked why her people hadn't been allowed to prepare for deportation, snapped: "We were not prepared for Pearl Harbor, were we...
...Score one for the AFT's wise recommendation that schools devote more attention to other nations, "both democratic and nondemocratic...
...Malcolm Glad well First Ladies...
...I became convinced at that moment that a political earthquake was taking place within my generation, a shift in values and attitudes that would have major consequences for the future direction of the nation ." Ralph Reed, "most likely to succeed" in the senior class of 1979 at Stephens County High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, class president, varsity debater, and junior assistant scoutmaster, had come of age...
...The New York Times compared his treacherous nature to that of Cain and Judas Iscariot, two historical villains who also lacked a softening female influence in their lives...
...We force them to sit in some classroom—and for a lot longer than that...
...As they studiously transcribe what they have learned in movie theaters and dance halls onto bumper stickers and buttons, the Third Generation will reach a far greater audience than rightwingers ever have...
...Nancy Reagan has been accused of elevating the role of First Lady to that of an "Associate Presidency...
...She had learned that he wanted to leave Congress to run for governor of Massachusetts...
...Why not...
...This book has more information than you probably ever wanted to know about the wives of the presidents...
...We stand for tolerance," opined one student, "for we know the injustice and bitterness that can arise where there is bigotry and intolerance?' Another speaker offered a sophisticated, honest critique of American history that is still largely absent from our classrooms and textbooks: "America makes mistakes, great mistakes," the speaker said, listing the nation's crimes against the Indians, Negroes, and, with unusual empathy, against German-Americans during the previous World War...
...They may never, nor should they, receive an education for democracy on par with the "Nisei's" gruesome lesson...
...You may laugh, but this kind of thing goes over big in the conservative hinterland...
...But there's nothing stuffy or pretentious about them...
...These are passionate young men and women, always on the moral offensive, ready to take on liberalism wherever they find it...
...Harvard University Press...
Vol. 19 • October 1987 • No. 9
