April 18, 2017--Presidential Daddy Problems

Since John F. Kennedy almost all of our presidents and aspirants to the presidency have had Daddy problems.

This struck me again recently when watching Donald Trump, pose in the Oval Office to sign an executive order to gut one more Obama initiative. This one I think having to do with environmental protection regulations.

President Trump has not given much attention to making the White House office his own. The shelves are deplete of books with the exception of an impersonal row or two of leather bound volumes purchased by the foot. Probably an ornamental set of Dickens novels. His desk has a messy stack of papers and files but no visible tchotchkes. And on the credenza behind his desk where all presidents array at least a dozen pictures of their families (even Nixon did this!), on Trump's credenza there is just one picture--a severe black-and-white photo of his Germanic-looking father, Frederick. And, yes, there is also a stack of souvenir golf balls. I assume one from each of his 17 courses.

When thinking about presidents and their fathers, there are reasons to begin with Barack Obama. His Daddy problem stemmed from the fact that he essentially didn't have one. I believe he met his Kenyan father just once when he was 10 years old. The title of his first book, Dreams From My Father, says it all. In fact, it could serve as the title of books by at least a dozen of our presidents--how they each were either in search of their fathers or coveted their involvement, love, and acknowledgement. In Barack's case all of this was missing and that contributed to the kind of adult and president he became.

Of presidents Kennedy had a pathologically involved and controlling father. From early on Father Joe unrelentingly prepped his sons for public life. His oldest boy, Joe Junior, was slated to become president and when he was killed in action in World War II Joe Senior's attention immediately turned to second son Jack, who he pushed to get into politics (JFK was reluctant) and for whom he then behind the scenes bankrolled his career and, it is generally agreed, not only promoted his various runs for office, but in 1960 spread enough money around to assure his winning the nomination and then conspired with political bosses in key states, including bribing them, to fix the vote count to assure his son's election to the presidency.

And once elected, Joe Kennedy, out of public view, played a major roll in influencing policy. It is now also fully known that President Kennedy on a daily basis sought his father's guidance and was powerfully motivated to please him and seek his approbation. Some biographers even say that JFK's hawkish inclinations were in large part to demonstrate manhood to his philandering Daddy.

Joseph and John F. Kennedy

Lyndon Johnson succeeded Kennedy. His father was a major player in the Texas state legislature but a poor businessman. So much so that when his finances collapsed the Johnson family lived for decades in dire poverty. Sam Johnson was a very severe man and never showed son, Lyndon, much affection or offered encouragement or praise. Robert Caro, Johnson's remarkable biographer, writes at length about how LBJ sought to please his father even well after he died. Much of what Johnson did was an attempt to make up for his father's failure and ultimately to surpass him.

Then there was Richard Nixon. No one had a more clinical Daddy problem than young Dick. There is no evidence that his censorious father ever praised him for any of his accomplishments. Quite the contrary. Dick was also raised in virtual poverty--his father's various business schemes for the most part failed and he took his frustrations out on his children, especially the bright, hardworking, and eventually successful son. Desperate for his father's praise and encouragement, he pushed himself beyond sensible or legal limits and brought himself down in the process. The disparagement and constant criticism he felt from his father was a large part of what motivated Dick--to show by his dogged success that he was worthy.

Jimmy Carter's father, according to his biographers, was also a withholding patriarch for whom his son, Jimmy, could never do enough to win his affection or praise. One even goes so far as to say that Carter's propensity to laugh without seeming motivation when speaking in public was the result of a lifetime of accumulated anger. Much of it derived from his father's severity. It was, in a manner of speaking, a nervous laugh that attempted to obscure the frustration and anger he felt from an unhappy, caustic childhood relationship with his Daddy.

Ronald Reagan's father was a lifelong alcoholic who moved his family from town to town across the Midwest in an attempt to find work and change his luck. He was unsuccessful in many ways--never able to provide for his family, establish a sustainable relationship with his wife, or provide emotional support for his children. Son Ronald was so wounded by his upbringing, though he was a great storyteller, that he barely mentioned him. It was as if these memories were so painful that he excised his father from the narrative of his life in an attempt to get out from under the memories of his gnawing presence.

Both Bush presidents, though they achieved the ultimate political prize, never felt they were worthy of their fathers' love or pride. George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott, was a successful financier and later, when elected to the U.S. Senate, was held in high esteem by his congressional colleagues. To him, his children could never do or accomplish enough to earn his fulsome praise. No matter how much George achieved it was never enough. Like many presidential fathers he was emotionally aloof from his boys, never making them feel appreciated or affirmed.

Bill Clinton's biological father died three months before Bill was born. His mother some years later remarried and Bill took his stepfather's name. But the marriage to his mother did not last and after she divorced him, he drifted out of young Bill's life. So in many ways Bill Clinton was fatherless and many who have studied his life and written about him claim that the emotional void that was the result of this unsatisfying family life helps explain his undisciplined nature as a politician, family member, and man.

George W. Bush, son of the 41st president, also felt his father's emotional coolness and thus tried desperately to please him. Many say that his decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein was to "finish the job" his father left unresolved when he had American troops come to the aid of Kuwait, which had been invaded by Iraq, and to surpass him as a wartime president. Also, some historians feel that his turning to Dick Cheney to serve as his vice president and cede to him so much of the power of the presidency was the result of Bush's impulse to seek substitutes for his biological parent, in the hope that they would offer him the affirmation he so desperately needed.

Other than as a curiosity should any of this interest or concern us?

It could well be that so many of our presidents having Daddy problems of this kind is a problem.

Seeking acknowledgement to salve fragile self-esteem may in the first instance be what motivated most of them to seek the power of the presidency. Not the desire to protect and improve the lives of those who elected them. If emotionally compromised as a result of the influences of their fathers, it also may be that allowing unresolved intra-psychic issues to influence decision making, particularly in crisis situations, gets in the way of their using their best, most rational judgement. We do not benefit by our presidents, when stressed by the consequences of dangerous decisions, to be so emotionally influenced.

One can only wonder what Frederick "Fred" Trump (ne Drumpf) might right now be thinking as his son attempts to deal with the North Korean threat. It could be that son Donald's boundless ego and insecurity are more on display and influencing his decision-making than any of his predecessors.

I would feel better about the situation if President Trump had a full array of family pictures on his Oval Office credenza, not just the one of Fred. Especially pictures of his children and grandchildren because what he decides and authorizes will affect them and their generation more than Trump himself or those of us who have already had full lives.

Fred and Donald Trump

March 11, 2106--Gut Check

In a wise column in Wednesday's New York Times, "Only Trump Can Trump Trump," Tom Friedman finally came around to understanding the Trump political phenomena.

He wrote--

Donald Trump is a walking political science course. His meteoric rise is lesson No. 1 on leadership: Most voters do not listen through their ears. They listen through their stomachs. If a leader can connect with them on a gut level, their response is: "Don't bother me with details. I trust your instincts." If a leader can't connect on a gut level, he or she can't show them enough particulars. They'll just keep asking, "Can you show me the details one more time?"

Friedman could have added that there were a number of earlier presidential candidates who also connected viscerally with voters and, while running for office, offered few details. 

It is a distinguished list--

Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

Two Democrats and two Republicans.

FDR famously said that he didn't have all the answers, all the specifics about the ways in which he would take the lead to bring America out of the Great Depression. That he would try many things, that he would experiment and then see what worked, expand on that, and abandon the rest. That's more or less how he governed. 

Ike said it was "Time For A Change" after 20 years of Roosevelet and Truman and that was pretty much it.  All he needed to do was connect to people's guts. Which he did. His campaign button said--"I Like Ike." That was enough.

JFK also connected at the gut level. He promised to close the missile gap. He incorrectly, probably deceitfully, pointed to "the fact" that the Soviet Union had more and bigger and better missiles than we. Voters didn't press him for details, and he didn't offer any. But in any case they went on to elect him because they connected with him emotionally and trusted him to do the job.

Ronald Reagan specified even fewer things. People simply liked him and that was sufficient to move them to trust him. They believed he would bring "morning" back to America. Sort of, make America great again. And to his admirers he did.

On the other hand, it doesn't always work--Barry Goldwater's campaign slogan in 1964 was, "In Your Guts You Know He's Right." When a Democrat button appeared, mocking his, "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts," that helped assure that Goldwater lost 44 of 50 states.

The other day on Morning Joe, a very frustrated Bob Woodward unsuccessfully pressed Trump to be specific about one of his most effective appaluse lines--how he would get Mexico to pay for the border fence.

Trump refused to, saying there are five ways he had in mind. That was it. Woodward, a scion of the Washington Establishment and master of the traditional ways in which to categorize political behavior, was unrelenting, visibly turning red as he asked again and again. Trump didn't budge. "Trust me," he in effect said. "Elect me president and then I'll show you what I'll do."

I suspect that despite that lack of specificity, not one Trump supporter switched allegiance  to Ted Cruz or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton. They both have 15-page, single-spaced proposals about what they would do about illegal immigrants. But no one is listening to them with their ears. Clinton and Cruz are having trouble connecting with voters at the gut level because your gut can turn you off as well as on.

February 1, 2016--The Emotional Culture of America

The day before the evening caucuses in Iowa--the first time in 2016 that actual votes will be counted--it feels timely to pause, reflect, and predict.

I'm being advised by some friends, including one of my best friends who is wicked smart and well informed, to stop paying so much attention to Donald TRUMP. The implication loud and clear is that by doing so--even with a critical or satiric edge to my writing--I am aiding and abetting his candidacy. That it's obvious he's dangerous and needs to be defeated.

Perhaps my friends are right. I should step back and think about what they are counseling. Not necessarily come to agree with them, but take seriously what they are saying.

We go back and forth for a few rounds and then someone claims that TRUMP is dangerous because of what they see to be his fascistic inclinations.

If TRUMP is a fascist, what else is there to say? Except that hopefully the America of 2016 is not the Italy of 1922.

All of this aside, as I pause to think about the current state of the presidential race, to wonder if I have been showing too much favor to TRUMP and his candidacy, I should ask myself how I think he and others are doing, what can be learned from that, and who am I inclined in November to support.

I have been arguing here that TRUMP has tapped deep chords in current American consciousness and has exploited or resonated with them (take your pick) with astonishing effect.

As a candidate he was initially thought of to be a "clown," an impostor, someone only interested in enhancing his "brand" and, once he accomplished that, he would drift away and return to his literally gilded tower.

But, unlike other Republican political comets, from Michele Bachmann to Herman Cain to Sarah Palin, he has not flamed out but has lingered at the top of the polls now for more than seven months. No other first-term candidate in 100 years has done so so consistently for this long. Not even ultimately popular candidates such as Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, or John F. Kennedy in 1960.

In the face of friends' criticisms I have tried to insist it's important to understand as fully as possible TRUMP's success, and successful he has been, so we can better root it out, defeat him, and--most important to me--learn as much as we can about what it means about today's America. To continue to mock him, write him off, assume he will implode will not get that job done. So, it has been my view that we had better be sure we do not continue to ignore the forces undergirding his appeal and energizing his candidacy and in that passive way be of unintended help to him..

As examples of these views, here are excerpts from a few of the emails I have sent to friends in an attempt to explain my posture--

TRUMP and the other spawn of reality TV, talk radio, and Fox News have seized control of the process. Maybe of reality.

And, they are no longer beholden to the forces that launched them or the people who bankrolled them . Interesting, isn't it, that we haven't heard much lately from the Koch Brothers or Sheldon from Las Vegas. 

What I mean to say is that politics is now operating in a parallel universe of its own. 

I am eager to see if (1) TRUMP maintains his refusal to participate in Fox's debate Thursday night and (2) if he doesn't show up what, if anything, will be the consequences. 

We can already hear the whiners saying that he's afraid of someone wearing a skirt (Megyn Kelly). How can someone who fears a WOMAN be trusted to stand up to really bad guys such as Putin, the Ayatollahs, or ISIS. (Roger Ailes of Fox News already said literally that.) 

It may be that Donald is a political Frankenstein, more powerful than his creators. And, to them, more dangerous. If so, they deserve him.

*  *  *

The case for TRUMP is that more conventional, better prepared and experienced candidates and presidents have been dangerous disasters. Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush come to mind. 

But it may be that he has just the right temperament for the job that now needs to be done. In my view, he is so threatening to the status quo that the array of forces, worried about their prerogatives, are lining up against him. From Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity at Fox News, to the Rush Limbaughs, to the Republican establishment Koch Brothers, to the Wall Streeters, to the professional bureaucrats, and of course all the liberals and movement conservatives. For me, this is an attractive list of opponents and enemies.

*  *  *

I'm concentrating now on both the process and on what what is happening reveals about the political and emotional culture of America. For that, for me, the TRUMP phenomenon is as important as it gets. I think there is a great deal to study and I'm trying to see and learn as much as I can. 

Next stage--after some dust settles (I think Hillary and TRUMP will win in Iowa, Bernie and TRUMP in NH, and then Hillary and TRUMP in SC, with Hillary and TRUMP then on inexorable paths to the nominations) for me then it will be time to try to understand what kind of presidents they might make.  

It may be true that TRUMP could be dangerous, but I do not until there is more actual evidence join in that feeling. And to me also, because Hillary is so full of personal ambition and inner demons, she also frightens me. 

My fantasy since I can't see myself voting for either TRUMP or Clinton-- 

Hillary gets indicted or censured for the email mess and Joe Biden and/or John Kerry enter the race. The Bernie people would go crazy, of course. But Biden and Kerry are the only two people I feel good about. To me either of them would be good presidents.

Otherwise, Hillary wins it all in a walk.

June 18, 2016--Presidential Hair

Commenting about candidates for the presidency as we entered the age of campaigning on TV, my father used to say, as John Kennedy was moving to succeed Dwight Eisenhower, "Without a full head of hair like his, you don't have a chance to be elected. Ike, with just that wisp on top, would not have fared well if he had to run on television."

With that my Dad would stroke his bald pate and look, ruefully and disappointedly over at me, noting my own rapidly receding hairline, realizing he would have to settle for my becoming a surgeon (which I failed to do) and not president. His real American dream.

So what to make of our current crop of candidates' hair?

Scott Walker (remember him, the governor of Wisconsin and Koch Brothers' favorite), the establishment GOP's great white hope, faded fast and dropped out first because of hair problems. His bald spot--much like a monk's tonsure--was made more visible on HD TV by the fact that his remaining hair was dyed extra black with what could only have been shoe polish.

It didn't help his candidacy when a letter surfaced that he wrote to a Jewish constituent in which he said, "Thank you again and Molotov," when he meant Mazel tov.

Marco Rubio, already suffering from the problem that he's youthful-looking and short (sorry, vertically challenged, and thus those 2-inch lift boots he was spotted wearing last week), both of which make it hard for voters to imagine him as commander-in-chief ensconced at the head of the Situation Room table, also has a hair problem. Though artfully disguised, at only 44, he is already sporting a comb-over, which becomes apparent when on the stump in windy Iowa where he has to pay more attention to beating it back in place than repeating his over-rehersed Mr. Robot talking points.

Raphael Cruz is also working on a comb-over. Look carefully and you will spot the beginnings of serious thinning along the seam of his part.

But the three candidates who have by far the most politically interesting hair are Donald TRUMP (an easy call), Hillary Clinton, and even Bernie Sanders.

In reverse order--

Bernie's hair looks as if it's cut by his wife. No $1,250 haircuts for socialist Bernie like the one that undid poor Two-Americas John Edwards. And no hair dye either to make him look more youthful (not that he needs that--he's pretty much got all the Millennials voting for him). And certainly no hair gook. The windblown, absentminded professor look do appear to be working for him. But from time to time I've been noticing evidence of a comb-forward. A modified Chuck Todd. This alone suggests that he's thinking of himself as a viable candidate, not just Crazy Bernie.

What to make of Hillary?

During her years as First Lady she struggled almost as much with what name to adopt--Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Eva Peron, Golda Meir--as she did with her hair.

Beyond her name shifting (really struggles about her identity) even more on her mind was her hair.

On the Internet there are people keeping track of everything going on in the world, including how many hairstyles Hillary sported while First lady. From their and my research I have counted at least 32. Thirty-two!

With even more on display during the past few months in Iowa and New Hampshire. Neither place good-hair-day territory.

Then, beyond imagining, irresistible to make fun of, is the now iconically famous whatever-it-is that The Donald does with his hair.

If there is anyone on the political circuit paying more attention to his or her hair than Hillary, it is TRUMP.

The style never varies and the color is consistently applicated. Couple that with all the sculpting, fixing, and the pumpkin-colored spray-job on his face and the chauk-white mask around his eyes and you have  a living, breathing cartoon superhero.

Counter-intuitively, all this attention to his hair and looks is stereotypically . . . feminine.

So we have big-bully Donald TRUMP coming off at least as girly as Hillary Clinton.

How this campaign continues to fascinate with its surprises.

Hillary Clinton a mass of contradictions, calling on her husband to pull her out of tough spots (as now in Iowa) while at the same time showing off her cajones as a potential commander-in-chief, while blustery tough-guy Donald Trump spends hours each day fussing with his hair.

Though, he said, if he's elected he'll be so busy in the White House that he won't have time for his hair and will get a buzz cut.

That prospect is almost enough to get me to vote for him.

July 21, 2014--Clown Car

I don't know if they're still doing this, but in my youth, a favorite moment during the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circus was when a car smaller than a VW would trundled to the center of the center ring and slowly disgorge clown after clown after clown after clown. At least a dozen appeared to have been piled into that tiny vehicle. I guess this was the inspiration for Steven Sondheim's Bring in the Clowns.

Of course there was a trap door beneath where the car came to rest and the clowns scrambled up from below the circus floor. Think of this as a metaphor for what follows.

Though Ringling Brothers may have moved on to higher-tech stunts, the good news is that their own version of the clown car is beginning to trundle toward center stage in the Republican scramble for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Three GOP clowns were especially active last week--Chris Christie, thinking his troubles are either behind him or that potential voters in Iowa have not been tracking the Bridgegate scandal (or, what is in fact true for them, seeing it to be a scandal created by the liberal eastern-establishment media) plunged into adoring crowds who came out to see a genuine political celebrity (ironically a celebrity created as much by media-fed scandal as achievement) who was eager to show the Republican competition how a seemingly straight-talking, tell-it-like-it-is anti-Washington regular overweight guy looks and feels like in the flesh (double meaning intended).

It feels pretty good, the ever-modest Christie concluded, all smiles before heading back to New Jersey, praying that the various prosecutors and grand juries investigating the mess at the GW Bridge as well as other signs of corruption will not indict him before next November. My guess is they will, and that that will finally deflate him. In the meantime, he'll keep pressing the flesh. (Sorry, at times I can't restrain myself from being bad.)

Also getting into their clown gear were Rick Perry, who I believe is still governor of Texas, and Rand Paul, Ron's son, who I think is a senator though the last time he was seen in Washington was two years ago when he was sworn in. He's now a part of the Washington establishment, like it or not, and since politically being perceived that way is a ability, he is trying to figure out how to be both a senator and an anti-establishment, anti-governement figure though he is in fact a public employee and earns more than $200,000 a year in salary and generous benefits paid for by taxpayers whose taxes he wants to cut. Get it?

Only a clown could be that audacious. And then have you seen his hair-dye job and eye makeup? Right out of clown school. But there I go again being bad.

What is unusual so many months before the Iowa caucuses is for undeclared but for-certain candidates to attack each other directly, by name. This early in the game unannounced candidates have always talked in broad generalities while wandering around the country attempting to line up wealthy supporters while appearing to be above the fray and trying to act presidential.

But Rick Perry couldn't control himself. He went right after purported front-runner Rand Paul both by policy and name. Maybe he recalled that the last time around, assuming his memory is more intact this time--he had trouble during the debates remembering even his own talking points--perhaps he is acknowledging that that last-minute strategy didn't work. His front-runner status lasted about a week.

Though the problem may have been more him than his strategy, this time around he is working more on the strategy than the "him" part.

The governor showed up last week with a new pair of professorial-looking eye glasses. These are part of a strategy to look smart because, again in 2012, he both looked and sounded, how else to put this, dumb.

And he's even given up wearing cowboy boots. Another strategy to make him look serious. And maybe to appeal to women and independents who don't like to see too much testosterone in their presidents. Though God knows with John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and FDR it flowed freely.

All Democrats. Hum.

Rick Perry, to show he knows the location of Russia and that he can't see it from his ranch, and is thus comfortable with foreign policy issues and therefore ready to move into the White House, but also to distinguish himself from the GOP frontrunner, attacked Rand Paul by name, calling him an "isolationist," "flat wrong," and "curiously blind" (recall the eyeglasses).

Very bold. But before the ink dried on reports about Perry's otherwise high-toned speech, Paul's people retaliated, calling Rick Perry "dead wrong," saying that though he is running around wearing "smart glasses" (not spiffy smart but the style of glasses that make you seem smart), "apparently his new glasses haven't altered his perception of the world or allowed him to see more clearly."

I call that hitting above the belt and not politically smart since so many voters need glasses not to make them look smart but to see. Though someone should check to see if Perry's have prescription lenses or are just window glass.

Now if we could only get Herman Cain wound up and ready to climb into that clown car how much fun would that be this hot summer where nothing else is going on. Except, of course Israel invading Gaza and Russians or Ukrainian rebels shooting down commercial airplanes.

January 16, 2014--Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

I am reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis in Robert Dallek's excellent biography of John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life.

During the 13 days that it lasted, as the United States and the Soviet Union came eyeball to eyeball, facing the all-too-real possibility of a massive nuclear exchange, the unanimous advice JKF got from his military leaders, including Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay, the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, was to take the opportunity to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. They felt that we still had the military edge but only if we attacked them preemptively.

Thankfully, for the sake of human life and civilization, JFK resisted that advice and here we are living to tell the tale.

Kennedy had been burned by a version of the same kind of advice 18 months earlier when the CIA and his generals advised the new president to support the invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

From that fiasco, JFK learned to be suspicious of his military advisors. Their job, he realized, was to wage war. Not peace. And as commander in chief, with the wisdom of our Founders that the military should be under civilian control, he needed to be leery of predictable advice to attack and invade.

I was reminded of those fateful times the other morning when former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared on Morning Joe to promote his memoirs, Duty.

As has been widely reported in the press, not only does Gates take frequent swipes at Joe Biden (inaccurately claiming that in 40 years of public life he has always been wrong in his policy recommendations) but also one of his presidential bosses, Barack Obama. Obama, he claims, not only did not "passionately" support the mission of soldiers mired in Afghanistan, but also was to "suspicious" of his generals' advice.

To that I say, "Thank you President Obama."

Let us recall that it was his generals who pressed him to send more troops to Afghanistan in another ill-fated effort to defeat the insurgents and stabilize the Afghan government under corrupt President Hamid Karzi. And beyond that, as Obama became more aggressive in declaring that we would withdraw all combat forces from there by the end of this year, it was his generals who went public, advocating that we leave a residual force in Afghanistan for 20 more years.

As JFK said in January, 1961--

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgement on each of us, it will ask: "Were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates?"

Gates should know that history as well as that of the Eisenhower presidency before taking a too causal look back on his service under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. At least eight times during his presidency, former Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower faced down advice from his generals to preemptively wipe out the Soviet Union with massive strikes. They pressed what became a familiar mantra--that the U.S. would for only a few more years have the nuclear edge and that since war with the USSR was inevitable, we should get it over with while we had the advantage.

And at least eight times, Eisenhower, who more than any president was skeptical about such military advice, declined to launch the nukes. Better than anyone else, Ike knew that as surgeons will more often than not say, "Operate," generals will invariably say, "Bomb. "

Under the radar right now, while focusing most of our attention on Governor Chris Christie's exquisite agony, members of the U.S. Senate are quietly advancing legislation to ratchet up the sanctions against Iran. At the very moment that for the first time in decades there is a glimmer of hope that we may be able to negotiate our way to some sort of accommodation with them about their nuclear weapons program. Iran has already signaled that if this new sanctions bill is approved by Congress, overriding what would be a certain presidential veto, they will back out of further negotiations.

Maybe this is a geopolitical example of bad cop (Congress), good cop (Kerry-Obama); but with the Israeli leadership doing what it can to derail negotiations and Congress, very much including many Democrats under the influence of the Israel Lobby, we would be faced with another dangerous situation where bombing not negotiating threatens to become policy.

November 22, 2013--Still Numb

Everyone old enough is thinking back to 50 years ago.

"Where were you when you heard?"

No one needs to ask, "Heard what?"

I was typing notes for a class I would be teaching later in the day at Queens College. That and everything else except the grief was suspended. It was not necessary to call the college to see if classes were being cancelled. I just knew. We just knew all we needed to know. The assassination. That was it.

There was fear. We were still waging the Cold War and, who knew, maybe the Russians were responsible and there would be more. It was only a year and a month since the Cuban Missile Crisis when we stood at the brink of a full-scale nuclear war. That was not propaganda or political posturing. It was one minute to midnight.

If you had someone to cling to, to weep with, you did.

And watch on black-and-white TV through that longest day and into and through the night and next day. And the day after that. And then one more day.

Numb.

Still numb today.

It will never be different. Or the same.