'The better angels' side with Obama

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ellis19jan19,0,3818349.story?coll=la-opinion-center

'The better angels' side with Obama

The candidate's appeal to a more unified electorate rings historically true.
By Joseph J. Ellis
January 19, 2008


A lively debate has developed in these pages and in the blogosphere about the viability of Barack Obama's politics of hope. Critics of Obama's promise to bring us together -- blue states and red, young and old, women and men, blacks and whites -- have described his vision as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president.

Central to the critique is the claim that Obama's message flies in the face of U.S. history, that partisanship is, as one critic put it, "the natural condition of politics." Zero-sum, "I'm right, you're wrong" battles are fundamental to the republic. From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system.

While you can certainly marshal evidence to support this interpretation, very few of the so-called founding fathers (save perhaps Aaron Burr) would agree with it. And the first four presidents -- George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- would regard it as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become.

The watchword for all the founders was not "the people" but "the public," which they understood to mean the collective interest of the citizenry, more enduring than the popular opinion of fleeting majorities. The great evil, they all agreed, was "faction," which meant narrow-minded interest groups that abandoned the public in favor of their own sectarian agendas, or played demagogue politics with issues in order to confuse the electorate.

snip//

There are several passages in Obama's memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that suggest a familiarity with the founders' legacy. He recalls teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago and always going back to "the founding documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution," which provide "the record of the founders' intentions" and "the core ideals that motivated their work."

Still, his stump speeches tend to cite Abraham Lincoln as his favorite political visionary. But then, Lincoln traced the source of his own inspiration back to the founders, who "four score and seven years ago" had called on Americans to embrace "the better angels of our nature."

Let the argument about the viability and practicality of Obama's major message go forward. But as it does, even his critics need to acknowledge that he is not a weird historical aberration. His message has roots in our deepest political traditions. Indeed, it is in accord with the most heartfelt and cherished version of our original intentions as a people and a nation.

Historian Joseph J. Ellis' latest book is "American Creation."

Thanks, babylonsister :hi:

_ _ _

There are several passages in Obama's memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that suggest a familiarity with the founders' legacy. He recalls teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago and always going back to "the founding documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution," which provide "the record of the founders' intentions" and "the core ideals that motivated their work."
_ _ _

Specificity of policy is molded by many things, but IMO it has to begin here -- at the Founders' words and intent -- for the Oval Office.

In a separate but related point, I hope many DUers today sense how huge the range of this post by this OP is and will consider that to be the arena for discussion on these boards instead of the debasing crap which often prevails.

We got caught up in the moment even though we were just watching TV. We hugged each other and jumped up and down chanting, "Tell your mama to vote for Obama!" :silly: ;)

Gee, perhaps Obama's campaign has turned me (a 49 y.o. woman) into "my teenager" ... well, at least it HAS infused me with TRUE feelings of hope and exuberance for "the potential" of what Obama can do for our nation and for our standing in the World Community.

I like what appears to be some top-drawer parenting going on at your house as well.

:thumbsup: :hi: :dem:

that answers the claim that hope and unity is a pipe dream.-

The notion that we might be able to learn how to be a more perfect union, is one I need to hang onto. I think many of us do.

Thanks for this

peace~

I AGREE wholeheartedly...President Clinton's legacy has dropped precipitously IMO,by the remarks he continues to make.

a REAL american hero...walks the walk.

by one well-respected poster here. That kind of hurt since I was actually just trying to suggest the country needs some healing. Anyone who knows me knows I despised Reagan and am as far left as you go pretty much, but some people are so enraged that they can't see how our own hatred twists up our insides and makes us all into monsters.

and Lincoln. Nobody has a problem with any of them. Nobody. From any party.

Hardly anything that anyone would want to compare Reagan to, which is just stupid on Obama's part, or even the writer of this piece, if that is their intention. It's offensive.

And the author of this excellent piece is a very well respected historian.

Of course, anyone who is vouched for by Edmund Morgan is OK with me. I do, however, seem to recall Jefferson et. al. fighting more than a few partisan battles. I think setting up a "bring us together" millenial dream versus "zero-sum" partisanship argument is a little too either/or. The truth, like our better angels, tends to inhabit the gray territory in between.

People should feel free to insult me for posting this, but I'll be out all day, so I won't be able to insult back.

http://hnn.us/articles/8656.html

Has Scandal Taken Its Toll on Joseph Ellis?
By Bonnie Goodman
Ms. Goodman is a graduate student at Concordia University and an HNN intern.

On October 26, 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis's latest work, His Excellency, George Washington, was released. The book, which focuses on Washington's flaws, is the first Ellis has written since his own flaws were revealed in 2001.

For nearly a decade, in his classes at Mount Holyoke on Vietnam and American culture, Ellis would enrich the course content by recounting his own experiences in the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. In 2000, in an interview with the Boston Globe, he made a number of claims. He said that he had served in Vietnam in 1965 as a leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. He said that he had worked on the staff of General William C. Westmoreland in Saigon. He said that he had been active in the civil rights movement and in the peace movement.

A little research subsequently revealed that he had lied. As an undergraduate he served in the R.O.T.C at William and Mary, emerging from the program in 1965 as a second lieutenant. Instead of serving in Vietnam, as claimed, he had attended graduate school at Yale. He was not active in either the civil rights movement or the peace movement. After he graduated with a doctorate in 1969, he began active duty, but he served not in Vietnam but as a history professor at West Point, where he remained until 1972, when he finished his duty as a captain.

To many it was a shock that Ellis would risk so much for so little. As Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University told the New York Times at the time the scandal broke, "one of the great things about his writing is that he recreates past situations with amazing vividness, maybe he has become a victim of his own ability to do that." Many believed that Ellis was recreating a past more worthy of his present stature and position. The New York Times questioned his motives: "Why should a man as successful as Mr. Ellis, whose books are those rare creatures, best-selling works of history, feel compelled to reinvent his past? One might almost suppose that he was not so much reinventing his past as confirming his present, projecting his current degree of success backward in time, living up to a version of himself."

Ellis's mentor and advisor at Yale, Edmund S. Morgan, suggested a more sympathetic explanation: "I have been in close touch with Joe from the time he arrived at Yale, very uncertain of himself, as most graduate students are, sure that other graduate students were better than he was, as most graduate students think." It was this uncertainty that might have lead Ellis to recreate a grander past than he actually had. Ellis seemed to agree with this theory. In an interview with the Associated Press he said that he believed he recounted those stories as a result of having a dysfunctional family and an alcoholic father, which leads to a "combination of great achievement and great doubt about yourself."

more...

I guess you are trying to argue that he brought up Reagan because he wanted to make an example of something, and I guess you are also arguing that the example that he wanted to make was not of anything good or bad, but an example of something that was totally neutral and meaningless to the conversation; so, he decided to use the old Ronnie the Savior meme (he saved us from the excesses of the 60's and 70's) as his neutral example of something that one should neither admonish or aspire to.

Did I get it all right? :)

first off, he didn't use ronnie as the savior thing. he pointed out that Reagan was able to change the direction of the country more than Nixon or Clinton, and that it had to as much with the zeitgueist as anything else. he remarked that he believes that we're at a similar moment in the history of our country and the this is potentially just such a moment. Not that complicated, and yes, neutral.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2720540

Thank's for playing.

to be presented in every repug ad...

mustn't they relinquish their tax-exempt status? O8)