The Bosque Boys

Very disappointing. Sad news for the Senate. Sad news for the nation.

I just read this Karen Tumulty piece in TIME on Caroline Kennedy's quest for "Camelot II," which is relentlessly critical. No caveats. No judicious presentation of "on the other hand." No mercy. And, worst of all for the Kennedy putsch, Tumulty gets it right.

When TIME mag dishes out this brand of unapologetically unsympathetic reportage of a liberal scion-slash-icon, it is worth noting.

One other not-so-subtle swipe at the heiress: click onto the above TIME link and check out the art. The pic of Caroline is absolutely hideous. The message: this is a woman much too unattractive to be a Kennedy or a senator.

Due to the elevation of its junior senator to the presidency of the United States, Illinois state law requires its governor to appoint a qualified candidate to fill the open seat for the remainder of the term, terminating with the regularly scheduled canvass for senate in 2010. Yesterday, the duly elected governor, Rod Blagojevich, appointed, Roland W. Burris, longtime Illinois public servant, to represent the people of the Prairie State. In ordinary times, this would all be pro forma and not much of a news story. But these are no ordinary times.

Backed up by the President-elect, Senate Democratic Leadership has drawn a line in the sand, forswearing to block the appointment, arguing that Governor Blagojevich, as a result of his recently discovered perfidy, is unfit to make the selection.

From the Senate Democratic Leadership:

"This is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat. Under these circumstances, anyone appointed by Gov. Blagojevich cannot be an effective representative of the people of Illinois and, as we have said, will not be seated by the Democratic Caucus."

Statement in full on PDF here courtesy of C-SPAN; interestingly, this statement is not available as of this writing on any of the usual Senate websites.

Democratic Leadership is wrong. It makes no sense to block a legitimate replacement appointment solely because of his indirect relationship with a politician about whom you are feeling guilty and politically vulnerable.

Burris is a qualified candidate in terms of the Constitution, which admittedly does not set a very exacting standard: 30 years of age, nine years a citizen of the United States, and a current resident of Illinois. More significantly, as all parties acknowledge, Burris is also an eminently qualified candidate in terms of reputation and political experience.

There is no reason to believe that Burris cannot effectively represent the people of Illinois. Harry Reid and his boys ought to take a deep breath, admit that Blago outfoxed them--and then stand down.

Granted Blagojevich is most likely a bad guy, which Harry Reid and company knew long before Patrick Fitzgerald made the man a pariah. What changed exactly? Legally, not much. This governor, who remains unindicted (at this point he faces only a criminal complaint), has all the formal power he did before December 9th.

UPDATE: Just now USA Patrick Fitzgerald asked for a 90-day extension to indict (breaking news via USA Today here). Really, what in the Sam Hill is going on with this case?

Thus far the Illinois legislature has not gotten serious on impeachment, nor have they enacted legislation that would have placed the replacement decision in the hands of the voters (legislation which Blogojevich had promised to sign). The common wisdom holds that the Democratic-run Illinois state senate balked upon considering the possibility that a special election might favor a Republican candidate in this atmosphere.

So, in the absence of action on the part of the legislature, the governor reasonably argues that he has an obligation to move forward.

According to the Constitution, the Senate reserves the right to refuse service to anyone it pleases. But this may well be a case in which the institutional "right" conflicts with right and wrong, and the fine print may not be in keeping with the "spirit of the law."

Bottom line: Harry Reid and company need to hold their noses (for public consumption), seat Burris, and move on.

Samuel Phillips Huntington has died. He was a great asset to liberty and scholarship, a Harvard professor, and the author of The Soldier and the State, The Crisis of Democracy and The Clash of Civilizations, among others. Brits at Their Best has a tribute and links.

The story from The Pew Forum:

A few tidbits

Collectively, Protestants account for more than half (54.7%) of the 111th Congress, about the same proportion as their share of the U.S. adult population (51.3%). But American Protestantism is very diverse and encompasses more than a dozen major denominational families, such as Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, all with unique beliefs, practices and histories. When these Protestant denominational families are considered as separate religious groups, Catholics are the single largest religious group in the 111th Congress. Catholics, who account for nearly one-quarter of the U.S. adult population, make up about 30% of Congress. Indeed, the number of Catholics in Congress is two-and-a-half times the size of the next largest religious group, Baptists, who make up about 12% of the members.
. . .
Differences become much more pronounced at the party level. While 70.8% of congressional Republicans are Protestant, fewer than half of Democrats (43.6%) belong to Protestant denominational families. On the other hand, the share of Democratic members who are Catholic (36.6%) is much greater than the number of Catholic GOP members (21%). And while Jews make up 13.4% of all congressional Democrats (including two independents who tend to caucus with the Democrats), they account for just 0.9% of congressional Republicans, with one Jewish Republican in the House and one in the Senate.
. . .
In many ways, the changes in the religious makeup of Congress during the last half-century mirror broader changes in American society. Congress, like the nation as a whole, has become much less Protestant and more religiously diverse. Indeed, the total percentage of Protestants in Congress has dropped from 74.1% in 1961 to 54.7% today, which roughly tracks with broader religious demographic trends during this period. As recently as the early 1980s, nearly two-thirds of Americans identified themselves as Protestants. In the recent Landscape Survey, the number of self-identified Protestants dropped to 51.3%.

Not surprisingly, many of the major Protestant denominational families have lost ground in Congress in the past 50 years. Methodists, who made up nearly one-in-five members (18.2%) of the 87th Congress, which was seated in 1961, make up only 10.7% of the 111th Congress. The share of Presbyterians and Episcopalians also has dropped significantly during this period, from 13.7% and 12.4%, respectively, to 8.1% and 7.1% in the new Congress. Finally, Congregationalists have dropped from 5.1% to 1.1% during this period.

A few Protestant groups have fared somewhat better, however. From 1961 to today, the number of Baptists in Congress has remained roughly the same, at around 12%, as has the Lutheran share (around 4%).

There is a growing sense that the 111th Congress will not include a Senator Kennedy from New York.

Why? The reasons are numerous and growing every time Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (Schlossberg) faces the people and the media. She is not impressive. She is going South fast in terms of public opinion, and even the press corps is starting to feel uncomfortable with her. As improbable as it might have seemed a week ago to deny this heir apparent to America's favorite political dynasty, it is increasingly evident that the ascension is a non-starter.

DOA.

Ironically, deliciously, the "Palin Standard" is gaining currency--not with the mainstream media, who continue to exist in a tortured state of denial concerning their journalistic malpractice in 2008, but with the less-pedigreed class of politician watchers. Inquiring minds want to know: what makes Caroline qualified for high office? What are her positions on the issues? What has she been doing over the last thirty years? How often has she voted? How does she respond to the bright lights and rapid-fire questions from the Fourth Estate? How many times does she say "you know" in a three-minute interview?

In fact, she is quite unlike Sarah Palin? She is not nearly as experienced, as likable, as telegenic, or as articulate as the Alaska governor.

Caroline supporters were counting on a "stuff job." They believed they could make the locals choke down this decree from on high--and smile during the process. Evidently her backers have not given up on that strategy, but things are tough and getting much tougher. Even more troublesome for her campaign, she is not responding to adversity like a champion. She really is "deer caught in the headlights" unprepared. My sense is that she is about to fold like a house of cards.

Even if her partisans are successful in thrusting her upon the Senate, she will face more of the same. In fact, one might plausibly argue that the best thing for what ails Republicans right now might very well be a brittle and tongue-tied heiress in the Senate as a symbol for the new Democratic Age.

But those Democrats are smarter than they used to be. This about-to-be President, whose support will be absolutely essential if Kennedy is to prevail, seems to understand when to pull the trigger on dead weight.

I could no more renounce him than I could renounce...wait a minute...hold on...like I was saying, I renounce him.

I have a strong hunch that Caroline is about to go away.

During the the most disquieting white-knuckle moment of Campaign 2008, in an attempt to explain his loyalty for his controversial pastor, Barack Obama famously served up his white grandmother as an analogous relationship:

a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

On second thought, maybe the late Mrs. Madelyn Dunham and her notorious prejudice against black men was not so misplaced.

From the Wall Street Journal today:

WASHINGTON -- Murders of African-American teenagers have risen 39% since 2000 and 2001, according to a report due out Monday.

Homicides in which blacks ages 14 to 17 years old were the victims rose to 927 over the two-year period of 2006-07, the last years for which statistics are available, compared with 666 during 2000-01, according to the study by criminal-justice professors at Boston's Northeastern University. The 39% increase is much greater than the rise in overall homicides, which jumped 7.4% from 2000-01 to 2006-07.

In all seriousness, one of my central hopes for a Barack Obama administration is this: as an African American president, he will have the resolve and credibility to deal with this long-festering American tragedy of urban violence, which, up until this moment, for reasons of political correctness and our tortured racial past, has been an unutterable and untouchable societal quagmire.

First off, thanks to the Gardener for his kind remarks about me personally, which I fully reciprocate. I thoroughly enjoyed his response to my Joel Stein piece. Ironically, our original idea for a blog centered around what we often did through the years: the exchange of emails hashing out issues of history, politics, culture, and religion. I say "ironically," as I believe our intention was to do much more of that brand of discourse on our blog than we actually do. Well, the best laid schemes...

What is so amazing about Joel Stein?

It is his honesty about himself and his fellow travelers. This strikes me as nearly unique among his brethren.

While I concede the Gardener's point that Stein does not fully understand conservatism, I would also say that observation is almost irrelevant to my assertion of admiration.

A liberal with a sympathetic understanding of conservatism would be truly miraculous, indeed. Of course, I would guess that devout liberal readers of the Bosque Boys (if there were such an animal) would point to a whole slew of perceived misrepresentations and "straw men" over the years.

Not so remarkable. Pretty human, in fact.

What is remarkable is when a liberal (or conservative) swims against the stream of his own ideological shibboleths.

I gave three examples from Stein:

1. Liberals really don't love America as much as Conservatives.

2. Jews enjoy disproportionate representation in the media and entertainment industry.

3. Blithely proclaiming that you "support the troops" while you oppose the war is disingenuous and is put forward merely for the sake of PR.

Those are devastatingly frank admissions--and exceedingly rare.

Does he get us conservatives right? Not exactly--but, then again, it is more our job than his to get us right. Moreover, a lot of our political discussion is thrust and parry. They assert, and then we defend and counter-assert. At some point, we get fairly close to a truth.

So, Joel Stein is NOT amazing because of his cogent observations about conservatives; he is amazing for his incredibly forthright admissions about his own team.

I think this is a man with whom we can do business.

Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

Read the full essay. From The Times Online, link via Brits at Their Best.

Not all religions are equal.

I have deep respect and even affection for A Waco Farmer. He's one of my hetero-life-mates. But sometimes I do a different take on things. Take his recent expression of respect for Joel Klein ( I don't think Farmer was being sarcastic). I did read Klein off-and-on, but gave up on him a couple of years ago as being a great example of the smart fool, the worldly-mind. I will grant that Klein here is honest about his own, and most liberal's, attitude toward America. But he misrepresents conservatives, and so concedes to a straw man.

In Klein's recent LA Times opinion piece he made these statements:

I don't love America. That's what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there's no winning.

But I've come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn't love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I'm more in "like" with my country.


Klein here tells us a lot about himself, but nothing really about conservatives. He contrasts liberal love--seeking to improve the U.S.--with conservative love and concludes that liberals just "like" America. A conservative's love of America, Klein wrote, is "the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world." Wrong. "True love" does not mean blind belief that your children are the best. My wife and I have raised three and we are proud of them. But I have always been aware of their flaws and weaknesses, as well as their strengths. I have sought to minimize the former and encourage the latter. Conservative love for America is not blind. Any real conservative can list on the spot at least three things that objectively make America the greatest, and the ideal place to live. At this moment I would list our Constitution including the Bill of Rights, our national history of self-improvement, and the generosity of Americans with their own money and resources toward those in need. And conservatives, so long as their has been a conservative movement, would like some things in America to be different, and work to change them. Our love is passionate, but not self-deluding.

. . ., I still think conservatives love America for the same tribalistic reasons people love whatever groups they belong to. These are the people who are sure Christianity is the only right religion, that America is the best country, that the Republicans have the only good candidates, that gays have cooties.

So, Mr. Klein, you have advanced enough to transcend tribalism. Perhaps, though, you're just afraid of commitment.