The Age of Federalism.

To give credit where it’s due, tonight’s installment of John Adams went in exactly the direction I’d hoped, spending much more time on the political and less on the personal than previous episodes. We had Hamilton and Jefferson fighting over Federalist fiscal policy, Jefferson and the Adamses debating revolution and the health of France, Citizen Genêt, the Jay treaty, the consternation of Washington over the Republican-Federalist divide, and the first transfer of presidential authority, all of which I greatly enjoyed.

I have only two minor quibbles: Some mention of the Whiskey Rebellion would’ve been grand (and could’ve been used to further dramatize Adams’ fear of the Mob, as soon to be represented in the Alien and Sedition Acts.) And, more importantly, the forgotten Founder in the series thus far has been James Madison, who — unless he’s been one of the backgrounders — has yet to appear. Even the good Doctor, Benjamin Rush, has had more screen time (although that’s probably due to his reconciliatory role in Episode 7.) Madison was in the House while Adams presided over the Senate, so shoehorning him in might’ve been unwieldy. Still, I’d have been content to have seen even a tiny nod to the writer of the Constitution — Instead of screen time, they could’ve just “cast big” a la Rufus Sewell for Hamilton, signalling Madison’s importance with a decent-sized cameo. (Now that I think about it, they should’ve done the same with Tom Paine earlier on.)

But, like I said (and my fondness for Franklin’s Parisian shenanigans notwithstanding), this was probably my favorite episode since part 2, on the Continental Congress. Heck, I even made my peace with Morse’s putty nose tonight. “I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!””

Remembering Rankin.

“Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don’t vote for a woman?” Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation’s first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: “‘Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?” Clinton said. ‘I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'”)

Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade” to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it’s safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton’s record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.

End of an Era.

A personal plug: Also out in stores this week, my fourth collaboration with Democratic pundit Bill Press (1, 2, 3): Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and not a moment too soon). If you couldn’t guess from the title, it basically argues that, just as the New Deal era lasted from 1932-1968, the Age of Conservatism that began in ’64 with Goldwater, hit its stride in the 70’s and 80’s, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and, of course, Dubya, has now hit the proverbial, inevitable, historical brick wall. So let’s survey the wreckage: On one hand, from Katrina to Abramoff and Ed Meese to Alberto Gonzales, right-wing attempts at governance over the past thirty years have usually degenerated into dismal experiments in cronyism and/or incompetence. On the other, conservatism has strayed so far from its ideological roots in the Reagan and particularly Dubya eras that the likes of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley would never even recognize it. (Case in point, the Ron Paul candidacy, wherein a traditional Taft conservative ended up being treated by his esteemed Republican contemporaries in every debate as either a fringe joke or a terrorist-sympathizing dupe.) Either way, the right-wing ascendancy is over, and it’s our time again now (and, though it’s not reflected in this tome, I think y’all know who I’d prefer to be carrying our progressive standard into battle in 2009 and beyond…)

The Constitution Made Whole.

“Not one lawyer in 100 can identify Ohio congressman John Bingham as the main drafter of the 14th Amendment. Yet Bingham is a fascinating historical figure: he served in Congress in the 1850s as the country was torn apart and in the 1860s as it was stitched back together. He was a federal judge and the nation’s minister to Japan. As a prosecutor, he convicted John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators, and as a member of Congress he gave closing arguments in President Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. All that, plus he drafted Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which is perhaps the single most important paragraph of our Constitution.” Over at TNR, Doug Kendall pleas with Obama and others to remember the Reconstruction amendments.

Of Fact and Fiction.

“Historians and novelists are kin, in other words, but they’re more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other’s clothes. The literary genre that became known as ‘the novel’ was born in the eighteenth century. History, the empirical sort based on archival research and practiced in universities, anyway, was born at much the same time. Its novelty is not as often remembered, though, not least because it wasn’t called ‘novel.’ In a way, history is the anti-novel, the novel’s twin, though which is Cain and which is Abel depends on your point of view.” By way of The Late Adopter, historian Jill Lepore surveys the origins of — and often-thorny relation between — history and the novel.

Birth of a Nation.

“‘He United the States of America’ is the miniseries’ motto, giving credit to Adams for everything. Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) is a rascal; Washington (David Morse) is a sapskull. Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) is distracted and, finally, deluded. And poor Thomas Paine seems never to have been born…“John Adams” is animated as much by Adams’s many private resentments as by the birth of the United States. It is history, with a grudge.” Speaking of Jill Lepore, her review of HBO’s John Adams appeared in The New Yorker a month or so ago. Now that we’re four weeks in, I’ll say that John Adams has worked as a decently acceptable Sunday night methadone for early Wire withdrawal. I particularly enjoy Stephen Dillane’s Jefferson, and (like many Americans of the early national period, I’d presume) would rather spend more time with him than with Giamatti’s Adams. Tom Wilkinson’s Ben Franklin is also worth relishing, but he’s somewhat hamstrung by the fact that virtually every other line he gets is one of Franklin’s famous epigrams. (The jury’s still out on David Morse and his putty nose — I’ll reserve judgment until after Washington’s presidency next week.)

My biggest problem with the show thus far, and this reflects my own historical biases more than anything else, is the sheer amount of time spent on John and Abigail’s relationship and family trials. This is not to say I’m totally averse to the social history: The smallpox inoculation, for example, was a intriguing addition to Episode 2. But, more often than not, I’d rather see much more birthing of the United States and much less of the domestic drama. Tonight’s episode, for example, spent more time on the respective travails of the Adams children than it did on the writing of the Constitution. Now, granted, this is partly because John Adams had very little to do with said writing (although you’d get no sense here that he was nevertheless defending it from afar.) Still, Adams and Jefferson discussed our founding charter for only one brief scene, thus shoehorning Jefferson’s thoughts on generational revolution, Franklin’s “republic, if you can keep it” riposte, Jefferson as “the American Sphinx,” the brewing of the Adams-Jefferson conflict, and the venerable undergraduate essay question, “Was the Constitution a continuation or repudiation of the American Revolution?,” all into five or so minutes. As a political history aficionado, I eat this stuff up like catnip. But then there’s at least 30-40 minutes devoted to John and Abigail doing variations on their Saltpeter-Pins schtick, and/or Sarah Polley and the rest of the Adams kids all grown up, courting and drinking. (Gasp!)

Now I understand McCullough’s book is above all else a biography, and some of this is par for the course. But — call me old-school, top-down, whatever — I’m really hoping the final three episodes, and particularly the next two on the “Age of Federalism,” spend significantly more time concentrating on the affairs of the early republic, and both John and Abigail’s important role in them, than on the domestic bliss and family squabbles of the Adamses themselves.

C-Webb Retires.

“‘I really didn’t want to rehab and come back this season because I don’t think that was possible,’ Webber said. ‘Plus, because the way the team is playing, the chemistry is great with these guys, they’re on a roll. I feel like they’re going to win, they have a great chance to go very far in the playoffs. I just felt it was time to let the game go and be able to be happy about what I accomplished without trying to keep coming back.’” Undone by knee injuries, longtime NBA forward Chris Webber calls it quits. (He had recently returned to the Golden State Warriors.)

I always liked C-Webb, and wish he’d won a ring with one of the early-00’s Sacramento outfits. On the debit side of the ledger, there’s his unfortunate timeout and, more importantly, his criminal contempt plea in his perjury trial (concerning loans he received from a booster while at Michigan.) But, still, you have to have some respect for a guy who parlays his NBA millions into an impressive and widely-circulated African-American history collection (probably the coolest basketball-related public project this side of fellow Warrior alum Adonal Foyle’s campaign finance reform group.)

A More Perfect Union.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one…

I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love…

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow…

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time…

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own…

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

In the wake of the Wright controversy, Sen. Obama delivers a thoughtful and nuanced speech on race in America. Video below:

Now, on one hand, I sorta wish Sen. Obama had never had to give this speech, that we were as far along with regard to race in this country as it had first seemed after Iowa. That being said, since events of recent days in particular have suggested how far we still have to go on the racial recrimination front, this speech was both a necessary and important one. It’s been garnering rave reviews across the political spectrum, and I’d throw my hat in there too — my main quibble with the address is that Obama wrote it himself. C’mon, Sen. Obama, think of the speechwriters. When political leaders write speeches as memorable and moving as this one, it’s going to put a lot of people out of work!

Seriously, tho’, I thought the address moved beyond soundbites to give a substantive and nuanced view of race in America, the type of which we haven’t heard in this country from a politician in a very long time. (I particularly like the Faulknerian flourish on the legacy of history.) And it — in true Obama form — showed that the Senator has an understanding of the grievances on both sides of the racial divide, and went out of its way to establish that Ferraro and Wright were two manifestations of the same intrinsic problem. Like TNR’s Michael Crowley, I am somewhat concerned about whether the nuance of his message will come through to undecided voters, once the Hardballs, Hannitys, and Blitzers are done with it. Still, today’s address was the type of leadership moment that I frankly can’t see either Sen. Clinton or Sen. McCain providing, and it showed once again how much our country stands to gain by electing Sen. Barack Obama our next president in November. Black, white, latino, or asian, leaders this wise, intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring do not come along often.

24.

“‘This convention,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, the most famous reporter of the age, is ‘almost as vain and idiotic as a golf tournament or a disarmament conference.’” Those political junkies out there pining for a brokered convention, be careful what you wish for: The WP‘s Peter Carlson reminds everyone of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, which stalled out between Al Smith and William McAdoo before finally deciding on Wall St. lawyer John W. Davis, who in turn lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge and — in twelve states — Progressive Robert La Follette. (For the longer version, see Robert Murray’s The 103rd Ballot. Which reminds me, having spent the day myself in 1924, it seemed a strange confluence to find this staring back at me upon my return to 2008.)

A disaster for the Democrats that year, the “unconventional convention” did at least provide choice grist for political wags then, and has ever since. “This thing has got to come to an end,” Will Rogers pleaded well into the nine-day stretch. “New York invited you people here as guests, not to live.” (Rogers also noted on the day of the infamous KKK resolution that it “will always remain burned in my memory as long as I live as being the day when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced, of any day in the world’s history.“) When William Jennings Bryan, after days of thundering himself hoarse, wheeled around to support the final Davis ticket (which included as a sop to the Bryanites his younger brother in the veep slot), one reporter quipped: “If monkeys had votes, Mr. Bryan would be a champion of evolution.”

And then there were the snafus. The Carlson piece talks about the Democratic decision to broadcast the convention on the newfangled radio, which turned out be a public relations catastrophe for the party. And there was worse. The Texas delegation — aghast that they shared a block with St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a city with Wall Street and the House of Morgan — had to be talked out of burning a cross. And when the convention band tried to appease their southern guests at one point by striking up a “Dixie” song, they obliviously settled in on “Marching Through Georgia.” Speaking of the Civil War, progressive Republican Hiram Johnson quipped once the Democratic ordeal was over, “How true was Grant’s exclamation that the Democratic Party could be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time.” (Let’s try not to live down to that assessment this year, please.)

Wilentz Jumps the Shark.

“The Obama campaign has yet to reach bottom in its race-baiter accusations…They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.” Taylor Marsh, Ph.D? A Clinton supporter from Day One, he at first dismissed Obama as merely the newest in a long tradition of “beautiful losers,” like Adlai Stevenson and Bill Bradley. (If you come ’round here often, you can probably guess that didn’t sit too well with me. In fact, it’s basically the same argument recently made by friend and colleague David Greenberg, before he went the way of the Great White Hope.) Well, if today’s TNR piece is any indication, historian Sean Wilentz only knows how to lose ugly. Despite the fact that Wilentz has been ranting worse than Krugman for most of this election cycle, I’ve been inclined to give him a pass, partly as a professional courtesy of sorts to a well-esteemed historian of whom I once thought quite highly, and partly because of his well-publicized Dylan fandom. Well, no more. Wilentz has been writing increasingly blatant pro-Clinton spin pieces throughout the campaign, which is his wont as a Clinton supporter, I suppose. But here he’s penned a shrill and intemperate screed which, frankly, is more embarrassing than anything else. It’s the type of angry, weirdly conspiratorial rant you’d expect to be written by an anonymous, and possibly drunk, Salon poster, not one of the more venerable American historians in the profession.

Am I overstating the case? Well, let’s take a look at some of the spleen-venting on display here: “After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama’s promises of a pure, soul-cleansing ‘new’ politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp–over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress–will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.” Calculated, deeply dishonest conduct? Ploy? Manipulative illusion? Tell us what you really think, Prof. Wilentz.

And that’s just the first paragraph. It gets worse. Check out this unsightly sentence: “As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign’s most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads.” Riiight. I really started to buy your case after that fifth negative adjective or so.

I’d spend time refuting Wilentz point for point if I thought he was trying to make a reasonable case here. But he spends most of the article just shrieking “race baiter race baiter race baiter!“, punctuated with occasional whiny, Clintonesque accusations of pro-Obama media bias. (One of the many targets of Wilentz’s wrath, Frank Rich, has recently pointed out the problems with that line of argument.) But, in general terms, in order to buy what Wilentz is selling here, you’d have to believe all of the following:

That there’d be no conceivable political advantage whatsoever for the Clinton campaign to paint Barack Obama as solely “the black candidate” (“It has never been satisfactorily explained why the pro-Clinton camp would want to racialize the primary and caucus campaign.“) Hmm. Anyone have a theory on this? Dick Morris? Hitch? I can’t for the life of me imagine how such a tack might’ve helped the Clintons, here in our post-racial America.

That there were no racial overtones whatsoever to Billy Shaheen and Mark Penn et al, just sorta accidentally invoking drug hysteria, even once the campaign got explicitly Willie Horton with it and called Obama weak on mandatory minimums.

That, similarly, there were no racial overtones whatsoever to Bill Clinton comparing Obama’s huge Carolina victory to that of Jesse Jackson, something that bothered even ostensibly neutral observers such as Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald.

That people (such as myself) who at first wondered in shock if a Bradley effect had anything to do with the fifteen-point New Hampshire turnaround were actually operating on orders from the Obama campaign.

That African-Americans unaffiliated with the Obama campaign such as Jim Clyburn and Donna Brazile, among countless others, who took umbrage at the dismissive tone of the LBJ/fairy tale remarks (which I’ve said were not racist, just tone-deaf) were also “deep undercover,” at the sinister behest of Obama’s race-baiting shock troops.

That the Clinton campaign has been the unfairly aggrieved party throughout this election cycle, and would never dream of indulging in “outrageously deceptive advertisements.”

That rather than trying to defuse racial controversies as they’ve emerged during the race, Sen. Obama has personally sought to exploit them for nefarious purposes.

That Clinton staffers just innocuously sent out the Somaligate photo to Drudge, having no earthly idea at all that it might play to the whispering campaign about Sen. Obama’s religion. I mean, who woulda thunk it?

And so on. Meanwhile, in between the purging of bile (Obama’s “cutthroat, fraudulent politics,” “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since Willie Horton, “the most insidious” since Reagan in Philadelphia), Wilentz trots out stale and rather sad race-conspiracy talking points from pro-Clinton hives like TalkLeft, such as Jesse Jackson Jr. chiding superdelegate Emanuel Cleaver for standing in the way of a black president. (Please. As if female superdelegates weren’t receiving similar calls from the Clinton camp. Clinton even made the explicit gender case — again — in the debate tonight.) I dunno, perhaps this is what you should expect from a thinker who cites Philip Roth as an expert on black-white relations. (Although, fwiw, Roth’s voting Obama.) Nevertheless, Wilentz has crossed over the line here from politically-minded historian to unhinged demagogue, and made himself to look absolutely ridiculous in the process. It’ll be hard to read his historical work in the future without this hyperbolic and ill-conceived polemic in mind.