Against the Wind

 

A couple of years ago, American journalist and author published Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour 1932-1975 (Crown, 2020), which I commented on here on February 26, 2021. Now he has completed the story of the greatest of the Kennedy brothers with his mammoth (1280 pages!) sequel, Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism 1976-2009.

The first volume told the story of how an otherwise unqualified 30-year old younger brother of a dynastically oriented president unexpectedly became - over the course of 47 years - one of the stars of the U.S. Senate and one of the greatest advocates for liberal causes in American politics. In an overly rich, overly privileged, overly entitled family of unbridled, arrogant ambition, "Ted" Kennedy became the one most truly admirable figure from that family and from that time. The first volume prefigured a detailed and ambitious personal and political biography, and the second volume does not disappoint.

In the first volume, Gabler retold the familiar account of Ted's rise through the lens of his marginal status within the family itself - the youngest child, from whom little was expected in comparison with his star-quality brothers, but who unlike them developed precisely those personal empathetic qualities which enabled him to connect naturally and effectively with people and in the end made him a better and more effective politician than his higher stature brothers - "Teddy, the most empathetic of the Kennedys, in part because he was the most disrespected of the Kennedys."

In this volume, Gabler examines the radically changed circumstances against which  Kennedy's later Senate career enfolded - the American turn to the right, reflected in the disastrous election of Ronald Reagan and all that has followed since (and anticipated in the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter), as well as the deterioration in American political institutions, not least Ted's beloved Senate itself. 

Once Kennedy finally disappointed himself and many of his fans by not becoming president and instead turned his attention full-time to the Senate, his story really takes off. "Ted Kennedy, however, had come to the Senate with a different agenda, a different attitude. He was no less desirous than his brothers of getting things done, no less desirous of making a difference. But when he got to the Senate, Ted Kennedy had patience." For fans of legislative process, Gabler seems to recount virtually every detail of virtually ever bill Kennedy was connected with (one reason why the book is so monumentally long).

But ultimately this is not a process book. Gabler's account of Kennedy's legislative successes and failures finds its fullest meaning against the background the transformation of the political landscape from the highpoint of liberalism in the mid-1960s to liberalism's gradual exhaustion in the 1970s. Gabler interprets the end of the liberal era in primarily moral terms. "Trying to stir a liberal conscience in the electorate, as Bobby had tried to do in 1968, was not a road to success in 1980 either. In a survey conducted after the campaign, three political scientists found that the 'Senator’s compassion for the less fortunate, long considered to be an attribute, generated more criticism than praise.' The moral moment had long since passed." Gabler's concept of the moral moment may be the leitmotif of the entire book.

And, of course, closely connected with the loss of liberalism's moral authority, would be the loss of a traditional constituency, illustrated so well in the account of the politically and personally bruising Boston battle over school busing, with which this volume begins. Somehow, in Kennedy-friendly Massachusetts, Kennedy kept getting reelected, but elsewhere other liberals were less fortunate.

Nonetheless, Kennedy never gave up. The most dramatic example of that, of course, was his commitment to providing adequate health care for Americans. As the dying Kennedy said to the new President Barack Obama: "“This is the time. Don’t let it slip away.” That time, it didn't.

Obviously, the personal cannot be separated from the political - especially in a self-conscious political dynasty like the Kennedys. So Gabler fills us in on Kennedy's long-drawn out marital troubles with his first wife, Joan, his complex relationships with his children especially his son Patrick, and his successful second marriage and the benefits (both personal and political) which followed from it. Inevitably, we re-experience various Kennedy family tragedies - among them the particularly problematic episode surrounding Ted and his nephew William Smith.

As in the first volume, Gabler does not shy away from the importance of religion in Ted's personal story. So we hear, for example, a lot about Ted as a daily Mass attender. In the famous letter, he wrote to the Pope at the end of his life, which President Obama delivered on his behalf, Kennedy wrote that the gift of faith he had received from his mother had “sustained and nurtured and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. I know I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my past.” And, even as he asked the Pope to pray for him, he recalled the causes that had motivated him so passionately: “I want you to know, your Holiness, that in my 50 years of elected office I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I’ve opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a U.S. Senator.” 

Few have been able to claim a nobler legacy.

Doomsday Sunday

 

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

   Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

   Dies at the opening day.

[Isaac Watts, O God, Our Help in Ages Past, based on Psalm 90]

Time, it seems, flies by faster and faster the older one gets. And so, behold, it is Advent again, the most time-conscious of liturgical seasons - and, by periodic quirk of the calendar this year, the longest possible Advent of all, a four full weeks!)

Inevitably, in our contemporary time and place, when Advent arrives we are already immersed in our annual, year-end Christmas extravaganza of celebrations of all sorts - Christmas music, Christmas cards, Christmas parties, and, above all, Christmas shopping! Advent, with its penitential purple vestments, seems somewhat restrained amid all this holiday exuberance. Our modern holiday season is an exciting, extravagant, celebratory time. At its best, it is in Charles Dickens' famous words: "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." 

At the same time, in the Church’s calendar, these final weeks of the year, beginning with All Saints Day and continuing into Advent, invite us to focus on the coming of God’s kingdom. If November’s emphasis is on a sober consideration of our natural human limits and the eventual end of all things - Dickens' fellow-passengers to the grave - Advent continues that theme with increasing tonal emphasis on our hope-filled joyful expectation of the renewal of all things in Christ. 

Meanwhile, the proximity of Christmas invites us to remember Christ’s first coming, which we will soon commemorate and which we are already anticipating in all our society-wide pre-Christmas celebrations. That first coming of Christ challenges us to recognize and respond to Christ’s presence and action among us, here and now, which in turn prepares us for Christ’s promised return – Christ yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As Saint Augustine famously said: Let us not resist his first coming, so that we may not dread the second [Discourse on Psalm 95].

 

Ostensibly the most future-oriented of seasons, Advent is thus really a sort of symbol for the entire Christian life, lived (as it inevitably must be) in the present - between the first coming of Christ and his hoped-for final advent. As Christians, we live our lives literally in this interval between Christmas and the end. And that is what Advent is all about. As Pope Saint John Paul II said in 2002: “the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. To predispose our mind to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, one day will come to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize him as present in the events of daily life. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training what directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.”

Perhaps among puritanical liturgists and other similar scolds, Advent is considered a competitor to Christmas. But Advent is not in competition with Christmas. Advent is not in competition with anything – except complacency. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of the night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into (Matthew 24:43).

Now the rituals and symbols of Advent, as we celebrate Advent in the Church today, rely a lot on the seasonal imagery of darkness and light that defines this time of year in our northern hemisphere. Recently re-popularized folkloric customs like Advent wreaths with their evergreens and candles are all reflections of that. Symbolic beings that we are, we readily respond to such imagery. and the imagery is indeed beautiful and attractive and comforting. That said, Advent uses seasonal symbolism, but Advent is more than some sort of seasonal pageant. The Christian life is not a season, nor is it a play. The world really was in darkness before Christ – the darkness of alienation from God. But unlike natural darkness the world’s alienation from God is not some abstract natural force.

Moreover, we are the ones who have contributed – and continue to contribute - to the world’s darkness. For this reason, Advent has long been observed as a genuinely penitential season. Thus, Pope Innocent III (1161-1216, Pope 1198-1216) prescribed black as the liturgical color for Advent - although purple eventually beat black to become the season’s official color. Conveniently, purple simultaneously symbolizes repentance but also royalty - Christ the King coming in glory.

If Advent is properly understood as a penitential season (even while we are immersed in our families, at work, and on the city streets in holiday celebrations of all sorts), what is the penance appropriate to Advent? The answer was long ago given by Saint Paul, in words with which Advent traditionally begins: throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12). 

If that be so, then we need to ask ourselves, exactly what is it that keeps us in darkness? Why isn’t the light of Christ shining forth from us and through us to light up the world? Paul’s words challenge us to be attentive to what is happening right now. Living as we do in a culture of institutionalized irresponsibility, Advent’s message is a radical wake-up call to mean what we say - to mean really to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Advent, we are often told, is all about waiting - for what has already begun with Christ's first coming to be completed at his final coming. But the fact that Christmas is already here in our daily activities and celebrations complicates that experience. Any anyway most of us really aren’t very good at waiting, which may be why we rush into Christmas so quickly. 

The good news of Advent, however, is that it is precisely the present that matters. Jesus’ warning in this Sunday's Gospel [Matthew 24:37-44] about the days of Noah, reminds us how fundamentally common, how universal, the experience of the present really is, in spire of everything that is going on and everything that is going wrong in our world, here we are are still eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage – just as it was up to the day that Noah entered the ark. The fact that the present time is limited should make it all that more precious, ought to make it matter that much more, because what I do now, the way I live now, the kind of person I am becoming here and now, that is the kind of person I will be when the Lord comes, and so the person I am going to remain for all eternity.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[Advent Collect, Book of Common Prayer]

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

To anyone anywhere who reads this, Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day has always been - and remains - my favorite secular holiday. It perfectly captures the season and invites us (whether or not we chose to respond) to reflect upon our history as a nation and on the condition of our current national community. But, most of all, it is an especially beautiful time for basic human community, that of family and friends gathered around the table of God's and nature's bounty and the results of human labor.

Deep in my treasury of holiday memories is Perry Como's classic rendition every Thanksgiving of Bless This House. For the authentic 1950 sound, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeAyYg2Wj0.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The Impeachment Quagmire

 

Into the ever expanding surplus of Trump-era books, journalists Rachel Bade and Karoun Demirjian have published Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump (Harper Collins, 2022). As its title suggests, this book is less about Trump than about his two impeachments - and less about Trump and the two impeachments than about Congress (and particularly congressional leadership) and how the two Trump impeachments were handled. And, as the word "Botched" in the title hints, the authors are also somewhat critical of the way congressional leaders handled the two impeachments. 

The sense one gets is that the Democratic leadership (Speaker Pelosi in particular) were too cautious in their embrace of impeachment. Some of this, of course, was due to the usual sorts of factors - ambitious politicians' personality and territorial conflicts. But there were also deeper philosophical concerns about how to approach impeachment (if at all), the fundamental division between the Democrats' ideologically progressive left flank and more mainstream Democrats, and practical political concerns about how impeachment would play with the public and its possibly negative effects on the Democratic majority (dependent as it was on members from non-safe districts).

Since my own view on the subject was then and remains now that the first impeachment was probably a mistake, I am more sympathetic to Speaker Pelosi's position. Like Speaker Pelosi resisting the ideologically progressive left flank for much of 2019, I too think the historical lesson is that for impeachment to work the case must be clear and convincing and the process bipartisan. The 1868 Johnson impeachment (which gave the process a bad name for over a century) and the 1998 Clinton impeachment were politically motivated, partisan attacks (deserved perhaps in Johnson's case, a scandalous overreach in Clinton's case). The Republican impeachment of Clinton backfired dramatically. Clinton's popularity soared, and the Republicans paid a political price. Pelosi remembered this and resisted her ideologically progressive left flank accordingly - until Ukraine.

I believe she was right - and, if anything, was probably wrong to give in to her ideologically progressive left flank. The transformation impeachment into a partisan political weapon has, unsurprisingly, made impeachment a largely unworkable dead-letter. (One consequence is the dilemma we now have about indicting presidents, which we might not have if impeachment - the proper constitutional remedy for abuses of p[residential power - were still viable.)

Prescinding from the more fundamental philosophical issues about impeachment, Pelosi's political instinct was correct that it would only work when the case is clear and convincing AND the support for it is bipartisan. This was what had happened in 1974. Had Nixon been formally impeached, he would likely have been convicted - by a bipartisan vote. But there was never any chance of that in 2019. As I said at the time, just as a good prosecutor should consider whether he or she can win a conviction from a jury, the House should first consider whether there is a realistic chance that the Senate will convict by a 2/3 vote.

Then there was the fundamental problem of political priorities. As the new Republican-led House prepares to focus on investigations and impeachments in 2023, many have asked whether that was really what Republican voters, preoccupied with inflation, etc., actually voted for a Republican Congress to do. That, the authors illustrate, was also very much Nancy Pelosi's concern, when she assumed the speakership in 2019. She definitely wanted to focus on a Democratic agenda which would resonate with voters and - unlike her ideologically progressive left flank - did not believe impeachment could or should be that agenda. Whatever the authors' views on what Pelosi's priorities should have been, their account confirms that she was right to want to focus on a voter-centric agenda rather than on an investigations and impeachment agenda, which would mainly appeal to her ideologically progressive left flank while leaving mainstream voters unimpressed and disengaged.

Thus, returning from the 2019 Madrid Climate Conference, Pelosi "was almost doleful as she implored her leadership team for help messaging the party through the last throes of their campaign to oust Trump. Impeachment headlines will dominate the next few weeks, she warned them at the beginning of December, but we need to focus on our legislative achievements." Meanwhile, "Republicans were accusing her of being on a crusade to oust the president because she was blinded by her hatred of him. The exact opposite was true. Impeachment was an albatross around Pelosi’s neck and always had been. She had never wanted to be in this position."

After Trump's impeachment by the House, the action shifted to the Senate. The authors' account of the machinations surrounding the Senate's trial makes for a fascinating read, one of the best sections of the book. Then, in one chapter, the authors take us through the eventful 11 months that followed (February 6, 2020, to January 6, 2021), followed by another chapter detailing how members of Congress experienced that dreadful day, leading to Trump's even more unique and strange second impeachment.

Once again there were divisions among the Democrats about whether and how to proceed. Again, Jerry Nadler was all in for impeachment, but Adam Schiff was more cautious. "At the Speaker’s personal request, he’d been making the case privately to fellow Democrats all week: if they went after the president in his waning days in office, it would look like they were just trying to keep him from running again. President-elect Biden was also clearly worried that if Congress got bogged down in another impeachment trial, it would upend his chances of accomplishing anything during his first months in office. Democrats, Schiff had told colleagues privately that week, 'should be on the same page as the new president'.” Schiff also foresaw the ultimate outcome. "A second impeachment would likely end exactly as the first had, Schiff told the others on the call, with Democrats on one side and Republicans on another. What was the point, he asked, when acquittal was likely a foregone conclusion?"

In the immediate aftermath of January 6, the obvious - if unprecedented and extreme - way to address the Trump problem (and avoid another pointless impeachment exercise) would have been the 25th Amendment, but that would, of course, required the cooperation of Vice President Pence, which was hardly to be expected. Increasingly, it seemed to the Speaker, "A second impeachment might be the only way to keep Trump in line."

The advantages of a more bipartisan impeachment effort this time than the previous one were obvious to Congressman Raskin, but in practice that proved beyond what could be accomplished. "It was one thing to vote to impeach, but entirely another for a Republican to join Democrats in prosecuting the leader of the Republican Party. Many of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach were getting death threats." Thus, Raskin never asked Liz Cheney to join the impeachment team. "It would be too much for her, he reasoned to himself. What he didn’t realize then was that Cheney was so determined to end the era of Trumpism that if he just asked for her help convicting him, she would have jumped at the chance. He would come to realize that only when she told him so, weeks after the trial was over."

The story of how Republicans like MCConnell and Graham briefly flirted with abandoning Trump but then were pulled back from that brink is a familiar one, which the authors retell here. The important point, in retrospect, is that the the failure to convict Trump (and disqualify him from returning to office) created the situation we are in now, in which Trump is still the savior-messiah figure for far too many Republicans - and could conceivably be voted back into the White House in two years.

The authors conclude: "First, that Pelosi’s initial gut instincts on impeachment were correct: Impeachment must be bipartisan to work. And second: Impeachment now appears destined to become a political weapon instead of a failsafe instrument to bring a president abusing office to justice."

Over the River and Through the Wood

 

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) was an abolitionist, an activist for both women's and Native American rights, and an opponent of American expansion, as well as a journalist and author. She is probably best remembered, however, for her holiday poem "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day," which (as we all once memorized) famously begins Over the river and through the wood, To Grandfather's house we go. Of course, for me as I fly from NY to CA this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, Thanksgiving is actually more like over the country and through the air. That said, Lydia Maria Child's famous poem continues to frame this dearest of distinctly American holidays, as it has so successfully since she first published it in 1844. 

Over the river and through the wood,
To Grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river and through the woods,
To Grandfather's house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
For 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river and through the woods,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the woods,
And straight through the barnyard gate;
We seem to go extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait!

Believe it or not, the full poem has another 8 stanzas! But I think we've gotten the point by now - that it takes some effort and can be a challenge to get home for Thanksgiving, but it is obviously well worth it! To quote the Perry Como song with which his annual Thanksgiving show always began: Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays.

"Home" for many Americans in our mobile and disconnected society may seem a somewhat elusive concept, endlessly redefined as needed. For Child, it was a traditional New England family house kept by Grandfather and Grandmother who made everyone feel at home. For many today, it might be a local church's "Thanksgiving Dinner" for seniors, creating at least a temporary "home" where none any longer exists, for those for whom the need to share a turkey with family, with friends, with someone remains deeply rooted. And, if those examples are but two ends of the Thanksgiving Dinner spectrum, there are a lot of traditional and innovative versions of "home" in-between. 

Photo: "Thanksgiving Dinner," Norman Rockwell's famous illustration of Freedom From Want, part of Rockwell's Four Freedoms series, based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" State of the Union Address to Congress, January 6, 1941. 

For Perry Como's There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays, go to: 

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=i2aoEd3oakE&list=RDi2aoEd3oakE&start_radio=1&t=130s

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Happy Birthday, Mr. President! 

Today, President Joe Biden marks the completion of his 80th year. Obviously, 80 is a milestone for anyone. For a president, it is a record. For this president, it must but an especially happy occasion, capping not only a long and distinguished political career, but also a presidential first two years of unprecedented accomplishment (by the standards of recent decades) and a midterm election comparably unprecedented in its stunning success for the President and his party. Yes, the party lost control of the House with all the dangers that entails, but continued Democratic control of the Senate means that the President will continue to be able to make executive appointments. Of most long-lasting significance, he  can continue to make judicial appointments, thus halting somewhat the damage done to the judiciary by the Trump interval.

As attention inexorably moves from the 2022 midterms to 2024, the matter of President Biden's age keeps coming up, sometimes somewhat indirectly, sometimes quite directly. Ageism - defined as "prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age" - is apparently alive and well, as it inevitably is in a society that obsessively worships youth and beauty and has lost the once universal appreciation of inherited tradition and the wisdom of experience. It is plausible to argue that it has been Biden's decades of experience in Washington which have helped enable the successes he has enjoyed. It is more than plausible that Biden was the best Democratic candidate on offer in 2020 and perhaps the only one (perhaps because coincidentally the most traditional - and least "woke" - Democrat) of that crowded field of competitors who could actually defeat Donald Trump. That Biden did with the largest popular vote tally ever.

That said, even the most successful statesmen age out at some point. It is certainly reasonable and proper for subsequent generations to aspire for their turn at the political helm, and in a healthy political party processes should be in place to raise up leaders from the next generations.  It will, of course, be up to the President himself to decide whether or not to run for another term at age 82. He has certainly earned the right to renomination. And has equally earned the right to call it quits, having met the moment and fulfilled more than successfully the mission he set himself in 2020.

If, however, he does elect to retire, what next for the party and the country? I had my favorite in 2020, whom I voted for on "Super Tuesday." Presumably lots of others still have their favorites too. But the key question will be not whom did one fall for in 2020, but who can meet the moment that will be 2024. The 2020 primary process more or less ended on the eve of the pandemic, Yet it was covid, perhaps more than any other single issue, that dominated and maybe decided that election. 

Who can say at this point what will matter most in 2024?

Photo: President Biden with Pope Francis, 2021.

Our Most Successful Speaker Steps Down

 

The most effective and successful Speaker of the House in modern American history, Representative Nancy Pelosi, announced yesterday that she is stepping down as leader of the House Democratic Caucus - to be replaced most likely by 52-year-old Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Pelosi's spectacular successes as Speaker and party leader stand in stark contrast to the pathetic performance of recent Republican Speakers, such as John Boehner and Paul Ryan and the current Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. Analogously, the orderly, generational passing of political power on the Democratic side of the aisle contrasts dramatically with the political and moral chaos on the Republican side.

Pelosi has been the House Democratic leader since 2001. She has served as Speaker twice during this time, as the Democrats twice won and twice lost their congressional majority. During her eight years in the Speaker's Chair, Pelosi became one of the most powerful House Speakers in history, displaying her famously formidable vote-counting skills to pass such landmark legislation as the 2010 Affordable Care Act and then in this most recent Congress the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act. She would, therefore, have been a historically significant figure even apart from the bizarre political crises into which our politic has been plunged in recent years. Her historical significance has, however, been much magnified by that crisis.

A tribute to her skill and effectiveness as well as perhaps to some serious Republican misogyny, she has long been a particular object of the right-wing hatred and vilification machine. During the infamous insurrection of January 6 2021, pro-Trump rioters attacking the Capitol in their futile attempt to prevent Congress from counting the electoral votes particularly targeted her and trashed her office. After the Capitol was finally cleared, it was Speaker Pelosi led lawmakers back into the House chamber in order to defiantly do their job, count the votes, and thus definitively establish President Biden’s Electoral College victory. But long before January 6, Pelosi had become perhaps the most visible official the personification of Democratic resistance to the  Trump Administration. Famously, at one of Trump's State of the Union Addresses, at which he boorishly started to speak without waiting for her to introduce him, she visibly tore up his speech. In her own speech in the House yesterday, Pelosi (presumably pointedly) ignored Trump. “I have enjoyed working with three presidents," she said, "achieving historic investments in clean energy with President George Bush; transforming health care reform with President Barack Obama; and forging the future, from infrastructure to health care to climate action, with President Joe Biden.”

An Italian-Catholic mother of five and a grandmother and the inheritor of a Baltimore political tradition, she has represented a golden moment in House leadership, the likes of which we have seldom seen - and certainly will not see anything at all alike in the sad and sorry circus set to start on January 3.

Photo: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

The Trump Show Sequel

Former President Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night. It is too early to predict anything definitive at this stage, but no one should yet rule out Trump or underestimate Trump's tremendous staying power.

Trump may have been the truly worst president in U.S. history. He may well have cost the Republican party both the presidency and complete control of Congress. The Republican "establishment" (whatever that may still mean nowadays) may actively oppose him or just passively hope he'll somehow go away. All that may be. But Trump remains a charismatic messiah figure for a significant segment of "deplorable" culture. He has a genuinely deep personal bond with his supporters that totally transcends the sorts of political events that might have mattered for a more normal candidate. (Think "Access Hollywood," etc., in the 2016 election and republican electoral losses in 2020 and 2022, all of which would likely have sunk a more conventional politician. But Trump is more like a religious leader, than a conventional politician.) I am not yet convinced that enough of Trump's MAGA cult-followers can be won away from him, even by the new right-wing flavor of the month, Ron De Santis.

All that remains to be seen, of course. Despite the permanent campaign, 2024 is really a long way off and a lot may - will - happen between now and then. At present, Trump still leads De Santis in the polls. Maybe more to the point, Trump has no known party loyalty to the Republicans and might happily bring the party down even further - perhaps by running as an independent. We ought always to remember that Republicans have proven notoriously poor at winning votes nationwide. Since 1988, they have won the majority of the popular votes in only one presidential election (2004). A two-person race without Trump in which Trump's MAGA voters just stay home and don't vote, or a three-person race in which Trump runs as an independent (like TR in 1912), either such scenario would almost certainly result in a 2024 Democratic victory. 

And, to be fair to Trump, his Senate nemesis Mitch McConnell shares some of the long-term blame for the Republicans' poor showing. Had he not usurped two Supreme Court seats that a Democrat should have had the right to appoint, there would have likely been no Dobbs decision, and so the Democrats' apparently very effective mobilization of women and younger voters against the Republicans in 2022 might never have happened. And, of course, if McConnell had supported impeachment in 2021 and thus empowered other Senate Republicans to vote to convict, Trump might now be disqualified from office and party politics might look very different indeed.

Of course, the Democrats could also help Trump considerably by a DOJ indictment, which (besides being an inherently terribly dangerous idea for democracy long-term) would make Trump a martyr of sorts. A Democratic Administration attempting to prosecute the leader of the opposition party who is challenging the incumbent for reelection would almost certainly result in a rally-around-the-Trump-flag response, certainly among the MAGA base and likely among many more anti-anti-Trump Republicans.

Trump's third campaign will likely be different from his first in significant ways. Hopefully, one difference will be that everyone will take the possible outcomes more seriously.

We Missed Her This Year

 

One consequence of the Sunday-centric character of the contemporary liturgical calendar is that we missed yesterday what should be a celebration of major importance and relevance for Catholics in the United States, the commemoration of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), the patroness of immigrants and migrants. 

Born in Italy, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880, of which she remained Superior General until her death. When she asked Pope Leo XIII's approval to establish a mission in China, he advised her to go "not to the east, but to the west" - to the United States to serve the immense needs of the hordes of poor Italian immigrants who were then flooding the cities of the United States. So she and six other sisters came to New York. Like so many of the Italian immigrants, she was less than enthusiastically received at first by the Irish-Catholic establishment – in particular in her case, by New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan. But she persisted in her mission and over time founded some 67 institutions in major cities in the United States and in South America. In their day, those institutions served Italian and other immigrants and made a notable impact in their communities. Having become an  American citizen herself in 1909 (thus, in effect, experiencing the fullness of the American immigrant experience), she became the first naturalized American citizen to be canonized in 1946. 

The days of those once so successful Catholic institutions such as she established are now gone, but the need for structured outreach within immigrant communities as an explicit expression of the Church’s commitment to social solidarity remains central to the Church’s life and work in the United States – now as it always has been, and now maybe more than ever. Not unlike our attitudes toward the accumulation of wealth, our response to the immigrants among us is a profoundly spiritual and moral matter - a fundamental affirmation (or not) of the demands of solidarity.

Mother Cabrini died in Chicago on December 22, 1917, and is buried where her American mission began, here in New York, in a shrine on Fort Washington Avenue between Fort Tryon Park and West 190th Street in northern Manhattan. Italian-born Mother Cabrini (as she was known in life and is still referred to now as a saint) had special significance for my grandmother, who made sure we went to visit her shrine yearly to venerate her body (exposed under the altar). In those days, Mother Cabrini's body was still enshrined in the old convent chapel, before being moved to the current shrine church around 1960. It was always a treat to visit the shrine, not least because of its magnificent location in Washington Heights, the highest part of Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River, a mile or so north of the George Washington Bridge. But, while we took in the sights and enjoyed being in the beautiful park (home also to the world-famous medieval art museum, The Cloisters), my grandmother made certain that we visited the chapel, honoring the great Italian patron of immigrants to the New World.

For decades now, the Washington Heights neighborhood, where her shrine remains, has been the New York home for many Latino immigrants, primarily from the Dominican Republic. Sadly Mother Cabrini High School, which had long continued Mother Cabrini's commitment to serve the immigrant community, has since closed, as have so many Catholic schools. 

Even so, the reasons to elevate and celebrate her memory seem all the more relevant today. It is a shame to have missed her celebration this year because of Sunday. Perhaps, instead, her feast should always be kept on a Sunday in this country, so that her sanctity and relevance may be adequately highlighted as they ought to be.

Photo: The Mother Cabrini Memorial located in lower Manhattan with a direct view of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, a fitting location to pay tribute to the patroness of immigrants. The Memorial includes interpretive panels highlighting Mother Cabrini's service to Italian-American immigrants and the poor in New York. The plaza is surrounded by seating and a mosaic created from stones from Mother Cabrini's birthplace of Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy. 

We Wait

 

"Teacher, when will this happen?”

In every period of human history, but especially in times of rapid change and confusion (not unlike our time), people have looked for prophecies and predictions and dubious private revelations to explain what was happening in and to their formerly familiar world. Jesus’ response to his disciples in today’s Gospel [Luke 21:5-19] appeared to be aimed at discouraging much of that.  

Even so, Jesus does challenge his followers to be alert to the signs of his kingdom.

So we need to ask ourselves what things do we see happening in the world right now?

We certainly do seem to be in one of those times of rapid change and confusion, characterized by civil conflict, political violence, and apocalyptic fears and worries, which increasingly frame even such mundane events as our national elections. Especially those of us who are older and can somewhat nostalgically remember a seemingly more stable time, we find ourselves constantly coping with new situations which pose new challenges, which, for us at times are difficult to understand.

In the Gospel which we just heard, Jesus made his ominous predictions just prior to Passover, in the springtime. It is, however, in the autumn of the year that the church annually repeats this message. Autumn is the long-awaited and hoped-for season of harvest, when the year’s work finds fulfillment our season of thanksgiving.

Harvest, however, also marks an end. In nature, November vividly anticipates both the eventual end of the natural world and the eventual end of each individual. The Church recaptures for us that natural cyclical mood, as it recalls Christ’s apocalyptically warning words: Nations will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famine, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

And so we wait – not just for the end of the world, but for our own individual end. And it is precisely how we wait that identifies what following Jesus in the world is all about. By our perseverance we will secure our lives.

The point is not when Jesus will come but being ready for his coming – not as something to be put off to some far-off future, but as our present preoccupation. The future will indeed come – at its own time and on its own terms – but our task is the present, which is what, in fact, will determine who we will be in the future.

Following Jesus is all about the how in the now – not conducting ourselves in what Saint Paul [2 Thessalonians 3:7-12] calls a disorderly way, but how we live and what we love amid all the disorder around us in the here and now, what we make of this interval, whether it be long or short, until the end – in other words, the durability and quality of our commitment and our faithfulness to him and to one another for the duration. That’s what matters most over the long haul and will determine who we will be for all eternity.

There will be all sorts of problems along the way – an important reminder when so many Christians are tempted by the pursuit of short-term worldly political power.

Meanwhile, we are fortified for that long haul by the durability and quality of Jesus Christ’s commitment and faithfulness to his Father, the same Christ who, in the words we just heard from the Prophet [Malachi 3:19-20a], is rising among us as the sun of justice with his healing rays.

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Times, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, November 13, 2022.

 

 

 

The Crown (Season 5)

 

The popular Netflix series The Crown has now released its long awaited fifth season - starring Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Price as Prince Philip, Dominic West as the then Prince of Wales, and Elizabeth Debicki as Diana. Given this season's chronologically inevitable focus on the marital breakup of the Prince and Princess of Wales and other private and public misfortunes which befell the British royal family during that particularly painful period, season 5 was always going to generate controversy. 

The Crown is, of course, as Netflix itself has been pressured to acknowledge, a dramatic fiction. It is, however, an extravagant Hollywood version of dramatic fiction about historical characters and events that are within living memory, aimed at a worldwide audience whose accurate knowledge and understanding of even very recent British history is increasingly limited. It deals with a series of tragic episodes, in which admittedly probably few of the participants proved to be at their best. Unfortunately, it may appear to peddle some of the worst misrepresentations about those episodes. And, of course, as already said, many of the persons being misrepresented are very much alive and active in public life. One of them, after all, has just become king and will shortly be solemnly crowned, together with his second wife. So the damage done by misrepresenting people and events in the recent past is potentially much more significant than the consequences of fictionalizing events that happened in the 1950s and even earlier (e.g., The Crown's somewhat strangely sympathetic initial portrayal of the Duke of Windsor) or even in the 1960s (e.g., The Crown's bizarre depiction of a personal rivalry between Queen Elizabeth and Jacqueline Kennedy).

Thus, no less a person than Oscar-winning Dame Judi Dench, who once played a queen herself in Shakespeare in Love (1998), has spoken out in an open letter to The Times of London, criticizing the series for its "inaccurate and harmful account of history." She wrote that "the closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism." She recognizes The Crown "for the brilliant but fictionalized account of events that it is," but fears "that a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true." She calls this "both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent." Dench has called on Netflix to include a disclaimer at the start of each episode, which thus far Netflix has failed to do. She is right on both counts. The Crown cannot be considered or treated as the last word when it comes to actual history, but it is mostly very good historical drama to be enjoyed by discerning interpreters of that history.

Also speaking out has been former Tory Prime Minister Sir John Major, who is portrayed in the series - and who in episode 9 shines as mediator in the Wales's divorce negotiations. Major, who has not "co-operated in any way" with the program has described it as a "barrel-load of nonsense." In particular, he has spoken out against a fictional scene in which the Prince of Wales is portrayed as lobbying the Prime Minister to help him replace his mother on the throne. "There was never any discussion between Sir John and the then Prince of Wales about any possible abdication of the late Queen Elizabeth II - nor was such an improbable and improper subject ever raised by the then prince of Wales (or Sir John)," according to Major's spokesman. From the other side of the Despatch Box, former Labour Prime minister Tony Blair (who replaced Major in 1997) denounced a scene in which he is asked to help the (by then) divorced Prince of Wales to remarry “It should come as no surprise that this is complete and utter rubbish,” according to Blair's spokesperson.

Inevitably, The Crown must engage in fictionalization. We can have no certain knowledge and can at best only surmise what happened in conversations among members of the Royal Family and between the Queen and her ministers. Everyone understands that - or should. And, like all dramas about the British royal family, inevitably the fiction embraces a certain point of view. Thus, a film like The Queen (2006) was full of imagined conversations and implications about the private attitudes and beliefs of the movie's characters. Still, the story stayed close enough to what was known and remained within the limits of what was plausible, that it could work as an interesting (if not necessarily completely accurate) interpretation of the events it portrayed. For the most part in its first four seasons, The Crown has likewise only seldom strayed too far beyond the bounds of plausibility (e.g., the Kennedy episode).

The series does also suffer, perhaps, from a certain contemporary tendency to filter much of royal history through the very modern lens of the conflict between royal duty and personal satisfaction, with at least a finger on the scale in favor of personal self-fulfillment. The somewhat sympathetic portrayal of the Duke of Windsor in the earlier episodes of season 1 was an example of that, and there are again hints of a similar sympathy in the way Diana was portrayed in Season Four. But then, midway through season 2, the Duke of Windsor's misbehavior during World War II was recalled. It seems even contemporary personal self-satisfaction may be required to draw the line when it comes to World War II and putative collaboration with the Nazis. In the end, therefore, the portrayal of Edward VIII tried to strike a certain balance. (Unfortunately, in season five, we are treated to yet more of the Duke's vacuous post-abdication existence in flashbacks focused on - of all unattractive distractions - the story of the Al Fayed family, yet another problematic part of the perpetually problematic Diana agenda. Perhaps the weakest and most unfortunate feature of this season is the screen time annoyingly wasted on the Al Fayeds.)

The series also reflects a contemporary kind of moral ambivalence, according to which people want the monarch (and by extension the royal family) to be dutiful and virtuous, as it were vicariously so on behalf of the nation, which has largely abandoned such aspirations. (I think it was Stanley Baldwin, British PM in the 1930s, who said the ordinary worker would rather stay in bed on Sunday morning but expects the King and Queen dutifully to go to church on his behalf.) But, because those aspirations have been so largely abandoned, people simultaneously disparage those same virtues in favor of self-promoting glamor.

It may seem to be too much to expect balance in the portrayal of Diana, who is, of course, much more of a contemporary figure and who so successfully used the media to promote her own Diana agenda, a sympathetic image of herself and and negative image of everyone else. Indeed, one paradoxical result of the portrayals of Charles and Camilla in seasons 3 and 4 was to highlight how mistaken in the end it probably was to prevent them from marrying in the first place (and what an avoidable error the Charles-Diana marriage therefore was).

Season 5 starts with the 65-year old Queen nearing her 40th year on the throne. It is the politically unexciting era of John Major and the much more exciting media-induced time of tabloid royal scandals. In this vale of tears, even duty must have its limits. Some allowance accordingly needs to be made for human feelings - as we are reminded in the show's treatment of Princes Anne's second marriage and of Princess Margaret's singularly sad romantic trajectory. One of the more sensitive episodes in the season, Episode 4 (framed by the Queen's famous annus horribilis speech) feelingly, even tenderly, examines the human toll not just of the breakdown of the various royal children's marriages but also of the breakdown of marriage as a social institution in today's world and radically changing society.

Indeed, for all the (not undeserved) criticism of this season, at least in episode 5 it attempts to be fair to the then Prince of Wales. It recognizes and highlights his personal intelligence, seriousness, and hard work in, for example, the Prince's Trust, his most famous and successful real-life initiative. Meanwhile, episode 6, highlighting the Queen's 1994 state visit to post-communist Russia and the historic familial links with the Romanovs, represents a nice change of emphasis from the royal marriages' melodrama - a reminder that important real-world events were also taking place and occupying the Queen's attention at that time as well as a familial reckoning regarding the Romanovs' tragic end.

But inevitably we come back to Charles and Diana. One of the best scenes of the two of them may be their intimate post-divorce conversation, which may or may not have ever actually occurred as depicted, but is an effective and plausible dramatic interpretation of how they may have processed their experience. (It is interestingly and effectively set against the background of other, more ordinary couples processing their marital breakdowns.)

This season started with a flashback of a much younger Queen (Claire Foy) launching the royal yacht Britannia. It ends on the eve of Britannia's decommissioning. (Reportedly the actual decommissioning was the one event when the Queen was seen to have cried in public.) The imminent threat to Britannia is one recurring (albeit low-key) leitmotif throughout season 5. It is well known, of course how much Britannia meant personally to the Queen and her husband - the only home they ever designed for themselves. But Britannia was for decades much more than just another royal getaway home. It was a floating, significant symbol of Britain's greatness and of the Crown's centrality to that greatness - something that penny-wise, pound-foolish politicians predictably failed to appreciate. Applying narrow-minded accounting principles to ascertain the value of moral and cultural symbols necessarily misses their true value. The fact that Britannia's final official voyage followed Britain's abandonment of Hong Kong to to the tyrannical rule of China's totalitarian Communist Party provides added pathos to the symbolism of Britannia's loss and Britain's decline, which is, after all, the underlying political part of the story of The Crown.

Around 300 B.C., Greek poet Menander, is supposed to have said, “Time is the healer of all necessary evils.” Thankfully, the British royal family survived its 1990s decade horribilis - in large part because people's appreciation of and their desire to identify Britain with the monarch's vicarious virtue prevailed over the popular disparagement in the 1990s of those very same virtues. The alternative to the parody of royalty presented by the royal family's perceived 1990s descent into contemporary decadence was powerfully provided by the outpouring of respect for Queen Elizabeth at her subsequent jubilees and, above all, after her death - and the instant, respectful recognition (absent any 1990s drama) of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.