26/01: Taking issue with Joseph Ellis and his ill-advised use of tenuous history to justify faith in Barack Obama
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Tying up a loose end from a week ago. Joseph Ellis is a marvelous historian. His numerous studies of the framers generally offer compelling and insightful analysis buttressed by careful research and tightly wound logic.
Having said that, Professor Ellis advanced a breathtakingly shaky argument in a brief op-ed piece that appeared in the troubled Los Angeles Times last Saturday morning.
His thesis: When it comes to Barack Obama, the candidate's message of hope and togetherness is rooted in our sacred past.
Ellis begins with a summary of the negative:
"Critics of Obama...have described his vision [of unity and bipartisanship] as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president."
"From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system."
Not so, says Ellis. Obama skeptics fail to consider our early history as a nation. Employing extensive quotes from our first four American presidents, he sets out to prove "all the prominent founders regarded the bipartisan ideal as the essence of political virtue" and "would regard [partisan battles] as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become."
True enough. Ellis accurately conveys the words of these "founding brothers," but his argument ignores the obvious discrepancy between their words and deeds. Incredibly, Ellis seems to accept reams of tragically self-deluded and self-serving pieces of self-analysis from the pens of these eighteenth-century luminaries. Even more curious, he ignores his own findings over time, which tell a much richer story of practical reality so often overcoming the ideals and prevailing political theory of the day.
"Adams carried the ideal to such a length that he regarded his defeat in the presidential election of 1800," writes Ellis, "as evidence that he had so eschewed partisanship that he never abandoned the public interest for his own political gain."
Of course, Adams thought himself an innocent victim of partisanship. Rather pathetically, he assured himself that he had lost a national election as a result of his integrity and principles, preserving the above-quoted defense for posterity. But this is the same Adams who saw the Election of 1800 as an historic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. He viewed Jefferson and Madison as traitors to the true republican ideals of the Revolution (and Jefferson himself as a faithless former friend). Moreover, Adams allowed himself to be convinced that the two Republican Party collaborators were, indeed, dangerous Jacobins (radicals who would murder the opposition, burn churches, and cast the nation into the chaos of mob rule).
Ellis also quotes from Washington's foundational "Farewell Address" in which the Father of our Country rails against "the spirit of party." It is quite true that Washington thoroughly hated the evils of partisanship, and the verbiage of the document (mostly written by Alexander Hamilton with some previous aid from James Madison) reflects that vehemence. However, Washington's ire is directed against one party in particular: the aforementioned inchoate party of Jefferson and Madison. Ironically, even as Washington voiced his righteous indignation, he was tacitly protecting and supporting the party of Hamilton and Adams and the Washington administration, the loose political organization we refer to today as the Federalist Party. All the while, of course, Jefferson was busy denying that his organization was a party and maintaining that factional politics was anathema to him and his loyalists. All of it was quite hypocritical (or, perhaps, more charitably, completely lacking in self awareness).
Amazingly, while admitting he "is somewhat tricky on this score," Ellis even tries to shoehorn Thomas Jefferson into his thesis:
"In fact, Jefferson made two of the most eloquent statements against party politics. 'If I must go to heaven in a party,' he claimed, "I prefer not to go at all.' And in his first inaugural address, he stunned his partisan supporters by observing that 'we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.'"
Those ought to be good laugh lines, really. Jefferson and Madison came to the Federal City in 1801 intent on taking no prisoners. Elegant words be damned, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were devastating practitioners of partisan warfare. In fact, they were so expert that they put the other side out of business--which eventually led to the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" (which it was not).
An alternate interpretation of the evidence Ellis presents? The pols of the eighteenth century took great care that their public personae (and perhaps their own self-perceptions) conformed to the demands of the political culture of their time. However, without exception, the reality of governing the evolving early republic drove its leaders to pound one another relentlessly in a fashion modern-day practitioners of hardball politics might find startling.
Politicians promising a kinder, gentler, and more bipartisan approach have been with us from the beginning. Some of these prophets of non-partisanship may have actually believed their own rhetoric (John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush come to mind), but not one has succeeded in "changing the tone in Washington."
Having said that, Professor Ellis advanced a breathtakingly shaky argument in a brief op-ed piece that appeared in the troubled Los Angeles Times last Saturday morning.
His thesis: When it comes to Barack Obama, the candidate's message of hope and togetherness is rooted in our sacred past.
Ellis begins with a summary of the negative:
"Critics of Obama...have described his vision [of unity and bipartisanship] as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president."
"From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system."
Not so, says Ellis. Obama skeptics fail to consider our early history as a nation. Employing extensive quotes from our first four American presidents, he sets out to prove "all the prominent founders regarded the bipartisan ideal as the essence of political virtue" and "would regard [partisan battles] as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become."
True enough. Ellis accurately conveys the words of these "founding brothers," but his argument ignores the obvious discrepancy between their words and deeds. Incredibly, Ellis seems to accept reams of tragically self-deluded and self-serving pieces of self-analysis from the pens of these eighteenth-century luminaries. Even more curious, he ignores his own findings over time, which tell a much richer story of practical reality so often overcoming the ideals and prevailing political theory of the day.
"Adams carried the ideal to such a length that he regarded his defeat in the presidential election of 1800," writes Ellis, "as evidence that he had so eschewed partisanship that he never abandoned the public interest for his own political gain."
Of course, Adams thought himself an innocent victim of partisanship. Rather pathetically, he assured himself that he had lost a national election as a result of his integrity and principles, preserving the above-quoted defense for posterity. But this is the same Adams who saw the Election of 1800 as an historic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. He viewed Jefferson and Madison as traitors to the true republican ideals of the Revolution (and Jefferson himself as a faithless former friend). Moreover, Adams allowed himself to be convinced that the two Republican Party collaborators were, indeed, dangerous Jacobins (radicals who would murder the opposition, burn churches, and cast the nation into the chaos of mob rule).
Ellis also quotes from Washington's foundational "Farewell Address" in which the Father of our Country rails against "the spirit of party." It is quite true that Washington thoroughly hated the evils of partisanship, and the verbiage of the document (mostly written by Alexander Hamilton with some previous aid from James Madison) reflects that vehemence. However, Washington's ire is directed against one party in particular: the aforementioned inchoate party of Jefferson and Madison. Ironically, even as Washington voiced his righteous indignation, he was tacitly protecting and supporting the party of Hamilton and Adams and the Washington administration, the loose political organization we refer to today as the Federalist Party. All the while, of course, Jefferson was busy denying that his organization was a party and maintaining that factional politics was anathema to him and his loyalists. All of it was quite hypocritical (or, perhaps, more charitably, completely lacking in self awareness).
Amazingly, while admitting he "is somewhat tricky on this score," Ellis even tries to shoehorn Thomas Jefferson into his thesis:
"In fact, Jefferson made two of the most eloquent statements against party politics. 'If I must go to heaven in a party,' he claimed, "I prefer not to go at all.' And in his first inaugural address, he stunned his partisan supporters by observing that 'we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.'"
Those ought to be good laugh lines, really. Jefferson and Madison came to the Federal City in 1801 intent on taking no prisoners. Elegant words be damned, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were devastating practitioners of partisan warfare. In fact, they were so expert that they put the other side out of business--which eventually led to the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" (which it was not).
An alternate interpretation of the evidence Ellis presents? The pols of the eighteenth century took great care that their public personae (and perhaps their own self-perceptions) conformed to the demands of the political culture of their time. However, without exception, the reality of governing the evolving early republic drove its leaders to pound one another relentlessly in a fashion modern-day practitioners of hardball politics might find startling.
Politicians promising a kinder, gentler, and more bipartisan approach have been with us from the beginning. Some of these prophets of non-partisanship may have actually believed their own rhetoric (John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush come to mind), but not one has succeeded in "changing the tone in Washington."
