So, say you’re a freshly inaugurated president in January 1961. What is the most pressing domestic issue you need to address?
Need help? Okay. How about the fact that nearly half the country is operating as an Apartheid state? You’ve just defeated Richard Nixon narrowly with the help of an enthused black vote. On the other hand, you also won because you carried Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, the Carolinas, and half of Alabama.
Technically, you have 63 Democrats in the Senate, but it takes 67 votes to cut off debate and kill a filibuster (the threshold was lowered to sixty in the 1970’s). But that’s not even your problem. You can go in a wide swath from Virginia down to Florida and across to Texas, and you won’t find a single Republican senator (although Republican John Tower of Texas will be elected shortly). There are at least 22 Democratic senators from Jim Crow states.
So, how do you proceed? Let’s ask Kennedy’s point-man on Civil Rights, his counsel Lee C. White:
I was fortunate to have been President Kennedy’s civil rights counsel and to have continued in that capacity with President Johnson through March of 1966. When JFK moved into the White House, civil rights leaders and African Americans in general sensed that there was a new attitude in the federal government, that doors would more readily swing open for consideration of their great concerns. And, of course, they were correct…
…One of the first JFK actions was to establish the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and designate the vice-president as its chairman. With his usual vigor and industriousness, LBJ talked Hobart Taylor, a brilliant lawyer and the son of one of his black friends and supporters in Texas, to be the staff director. With whites and blacks, lawyers and businessmen, and Taylor’s pushing spirit, the Committee produced a program known as Plans for Progress, which amounted to pledges by corporations to increase the number of minority employees by an agreed percentage over a specified period of time. The program was not without its critics, who contended that it was window dressing because there were no sanctions and the program was the equivalent of the federal government awarding “Good Housekeeping Seals of Approval.”
Word reached Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney General, who passed on the criticism to JFK. I wound up with the assignment to check it out. Working with Taylor and George Reedy, an assistant of LBJ and later his press secretary, I went over the numbers and the nature of the Plans for Progress program and concluded that it was a step in the right direction, that there were no sweetheart deals, and that the participants on both sides were sincere. The major deficiency was that there was no statutory underpinning for the program and that it was not possible to require or enforce sanctions. Ultimately, Congress did create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. was its first chairman.
So, you see, what was at first seen as mere window dressing led to something more concrete. Liberals complained about the Kennedy administration providing little more than lip service to the most pressing issue of the day. But, the truth was that the administration didn’t have the votes to do what needed to be done. Those votes wouldn’t come until after Kennedy’s assassination and the landslide election of 1964. All administrations face constraints. That doesn’t mean that they don’t make progress. And, when they try to put the best face on that progress (inadequate, though it be), liberals always feel doubly-insulted (or hippie-punched, if you prefer). That’s just how we roll.
You know, without all that complaining nothing would have gotten done. But, you’d think we’d get a little more sophisticated about it over time.
Would Kennedy have continuously appealed decisions in courts like Obama has done?
I’ll admit, this is something I accept on most issues. Not on executive power, and not on gay rights. Obama is fiddling while people’s rights are being stripped away. Or rather, he’s the one holding the matches.
Heh:
Yeah, but that’s pushing legislation through, not allowing courts to do the work for you.
W/e, we’re all fucked anyway:
Arctic Ice in Death Spiral
The “we” then is not the “we” now. There isn’t great corporate memory in political movements, except for the shining high points. A similar thing happened with FDR.
Most of the folks complaining weren’t born when JFK was elected President. And the current President was not born until the August after JFK was inaugurated.
“Too soon old. Too late smart.” applies to age cohorts as well as individuals.
Isn’t there something very strange about this whole turn of events?
It finally dawned on me tonight.
We are all taught as kids that we live in a republic, that the people can enact change via their ballots, that the party that wins the majority in Congress along with the White House gets to set the policy for the country. I suppose all those things are true, but they are true only in very limited ways. The limiting factor is the existence of the plutarchy and its ability to spend money to thwart the popular will.
So… winning elections by itself doesn’t achieve much. We don’t accomplish anything unless the plutarchy blinks, and the only time the plutarchy blinks is when something truly scares it. We don’t. Obama doesn’t. Right now, nothing does. When the left can do something like execute a successful general strike, the plutocrats may finally blink long enough for our side to enact some meaningful reforms. But we’re kidding ourselves as long as we think that winning elections is enough. There’s far more to it than that.
Very astute post. JFK’s presidency was the first I was old enough to follow closely, and I did–and it was continuously controversial, with liberals angry at him for not doing enough and conservatives for doing too much. Everybody had ideas about how he should do things better.
Speaking of Civil Rights, the legislation that Kennedy proposed, Martin Luther King wanted and that was finally passed after JFK’s assassination–didn’t satisfy a lot of young blacks and other political progressives–although they were called radicals then.
But you don’t have to go back that far. Bill Clinton was eviscerated by progressives for most of his first term.
Here’s what I learned: if progressives focus on issues and pressure a president and a party they supported, they’ve got a better chance to be heard. Work on issues, be as persuasive as possible. But at election time, it’s a choice between two alternatives, and one of them is almost always much, much, much worse than the other.
In other words, lobby, but don’t demonize.
Booman, thanks for another thought-provoking post.
If anyone’s wondering why JFK created what became the EEOC when the focus of the southern civil rights movement at the time was on access to public accommodations (e.g., lunch counter sit-ins, bus rides), it’s because Kennedy’s executive order was a primarily a response to organizing done by the northern civil rights movement—as documented beautifully in Thomas Sugrue’s “Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North”.
Sugrue also explains how movement leaders used that original executive order to create a “virtuous cycle” of organizing to bring more cases before the commission, which led to public education about the issues involved, which led to commission rulings and standards that rippled across the country, which led to new court cases, which led to new laws, which led to new organizing opportunities. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Movement leaders and organizers focused on what the great Bob Moses called “organizing the demand side of the equation”, recognizing the power, and often the necessity, of people speaking and acting on their own behalf (as opposed to letting others, e.g. well-meaning liberals, speak about what “should” be done).
One final thought: by organizing against oppressive corporations (as the CIO did in the 1930s, as the northern civil rights movement did on employment), or against oppressive local governments (e.g., segregated school districts in the North, voting rights in the South), leaders and organizers of social movements can create the conditions that allow/force a progressive presidential administration to act as their ally (and vice versa). (Recent example: the Obama DOJ filing suit in federal court to block Arizona’s anti-immigrant law.)
I’ll check out the Sugrue book, thx.
The story of what became eventually the EEOC is also about how a few leaders in a position of power with a commitment to progress — namely RFK and Pres Kennedy and a couple of their people on that committee — could insist that the formal equal employment undertaking be more than just a slick ongoing PR job that was long on promises but very short on actual results.
That was the problem JFK and RFK faced as, for a couple of years, VP Lyndon Johnson chaired the president’s committee with LBJ’s handpicked staff director Hobart Taylor — later called an “Uncle Tom” by AG Rbt Kennedy — both of whom clashed repeatedly first with Kennedy’s Sec’y of Labor Goldberg then his replacement Willard Wirtz. The tension was over the fact that plenty of promises to hire blacks were being made by employers, and press releases to this effect were being issued, but no follow-up was done by Johnson and the result was little if any change in the numbers of blacks hired.
Credit first RFK for stepping in and directly confronting VP Johnson about the overall ineffectiveness of the effort, and JFK, who also brought in LBJ for an explanation of the matter, for firmly deciding not to allow LBJ to mismanage an important program that would be an embarrassment to both P and VP if the actual pathetic hiring numbers got out during the ’64 election. Unfortunately, this was all coming to a head about the time of Dallas, so there the matter lay for the next admin, and the later cong’l action to create EEOC.
How sophisticated should bitching be?
Bitching is bitching, and righteous bitching is righteous.
while I appreciate your thrust toward even-mindedness, in the end I think you and I differ substantially on how much this government has simply lost control. Over everything, including wars, the economy, and general principles. The place is no longer remotely recognizable. We are way beyond either moderation or bitching. In the short-term people need to brace themselves for further shocks they would never have imagined. 70% of Americans, about 250 million people, live paycheck-to-paycheck, each one blow of chance or shock of time from ruin, only we are no longer dealing with only chance and time, in the formerly normal sense, but the large-scaled inevitability of debt-based collapse, compounded by military recklessness, and Wall Street greed. In those major respects, Obama has chosen foolishly, or as someone else recently said, “he campaigned as a visionary, but performed as a functionary.” Woe to the nation.
Sure, if I’m wrong, I’ll gladly eat my socks, but the bet is moot, insofar as I don’t expect to have any fucking socks.
So, re: liberal complaints about yesterday’s apparent tax cut mess, does anyone have thoughts on my old professor Jonathan Zasloff’s post today?
There’s a bit more analysis at the link.
That might be correct, but only because of the cowardice of a large number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate. That’s what is frustrating.
The cowardice is distressing. And confusing, since, as TarheelDem points out below (and multiple others did yesterday), this was apparently a move that would have provided some political benefits to the vulnerable Blue Dogs (although I still don’t think it’s as massively important as others have made it out to be). Maybe some of the Blue Dogs really did kill the vote because they don’t care that they’re going to lose and are looking forward to their next lobbying jobs. But it feels like there are some deeper forces at play that no one has quite put their finger on yet. Perhaps Tarheel’s Kremlinologist explanation re: Hoyer is close to the mark, although until we get more evidence it’s just entertaining speculation for now.
I certainly regret that so many progressives seems to be doing their best to reinforce the “Dems are weak, craven cowards” trope. I really think that ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy and is very damaging to the party.
So they just decided to commit suicide instead. Brilliant.
I have never seen any act of cowardice so craven as this choice not to vote for a freaking tax cut 40 days ahead of election day. If they can’t summon the courage to approve a middle class tax cut, they’re worthless on every other issue imaginable. I mean, really, how easy can a vote get? Is there nobody who knows how to whip the blue dogs?
All of these difficulties were known before Obama committed to getting a middle class tax cut.
The expiration of the Bush tax cuts is because Bush and the Republicans passed it through reconciliation. My original take was say nothing and let the tax cuts expire. By making it an issue, the White House let the Blue Dogs set them up for failure — again.
My suspicion is that Steny Hoyer is reluctant to whip the Blue Dogs and more than willing to whip the progressive caucus.
The truth is that this might have saved Blue Dogs who are likely to lose.
In this case the progressive position is that there are more effective ways to create demand in the economy than tax cuts—even middle class tax cuts, which if you remember didn’t amount to much as a cut and won’t as an increase for an individual middle class family.
Now, the only reason not to recess is to keep Republican incumbents out of their districts. That’s a pretty poor excuse.
And when the intensive campaigning begins, watch for “Tea Party” activists to engage in a campaign of intimidation of Democratic candidates just like they did in “death panel” August.
And watch the national media turn, in fascination, to the seven Tea Party candidates, suddenly deciding that they are not beyond the mainstream.
I guess I am just not sophisticated enough to know how Obama is going to get rid of DADT. He promised he would do it by the end of the year. He even ridiculed Kip Williams when he complained it wasn’t happening fast enough.
But DADT is still in place. And Obama is still defending it in the courts.
Maybe I am not sophisticated enough to understand the political nuances here, but it strikes me that Obama was just plain LYING when he said he was going to get rid of it.
Kennedy didn’t live to face an election in 1964.
Obama will lose his reelection if he keeps this shit up.
Sorry, but as important as the DADT issue is, I don’t think it’s going to have a big effect on whether or not Obama is re-elected.
QueerReader, I’m hoping that Obama cut a deal with the Pentagon (Gates, Joint Chiefs, etc.) that he’d back them up all year on their “study” in exchange for their support for ending DADT after the study is completed in December.
I’m not confident that’s what he’s doing, but I hope it is. Otherwise, I think you’re probably right; it would be the kind of issue that loses him significant support from his base, as well as from swing voters.
If there’s a double-dip recession between now and 2012, or if Obama in July 2011 decides to cave to Petraeus and not begin the withdrawal from Afghan, then Obama’s re-elect chances decrease significantly.
But the opposition still has to put up a candidate. By 1963, Goldwater was emerging as the odds-on favorite to take the GOP nom, which in fact happened. JFK, always very popular and who unlike the Obama admin hadn’t gone out of his way to alienate his base, only losing some Southern white Dem support after June ’63 when he introduced his CR bill, was likely still headed for a solid re-elect, possibly 57% or so of the pop vote against the self-destructive Barry whose extremist views on FP weren’t going to play well so soon after the Cuban missile crisis.
DADT, similar on a moral basis to the CR issue of the 60s, but not quite as politically impactful and emotional a matter to as many not directly affected, probably was handled too softly by Obama early on. I think he gave the Pentagon brass far too much room to dither and delay and thereby kick the can down the road for another day, when they hope an even more conservative Congress will then have enough votes to force a status quo standoff.
Not Obama’s finest hour in showing the sort of tough Trumanesque CinC leadership needed for the occasion, but by itself an issue not likely to torpedo O’s re-elect prospects.
Gays will just stay home in 2012.
And it’s not just DADT. Obama promised my people an Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and now we know that will not happen.
He also promised to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and we now know that will not happen.
Obama continues to drum gay men out of the military in a cruel and inhumane fashion.
How ironic that America’s first black president is also AWOL on the civil rights movement of our time.
Ready to write off gays and lesbians and their supporters? Good luck winning the 2012 election, Barack.
I know that your anger makes you feel like the gay community will, and perhaps even should, stay home from the polls in 2012. But that’s almost certainly not going to happen. In prior presidential election self-identified gays have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. And most gays, like most people generally, are not one-issue voters. Maybe a few people will stay home and not vote out of protest, but to the vast majority of gays it’s extremely important that a Democrat be re-elected than a Palin Republican (in part for the reasons that Brodie hints at above). Even if the Democrat isn’t moving forward in the way they would prefer.
There are two things still ongoing. The first is the Defense Authorization Bill. If the Senate Democrats don’t throw DADT repeal and the DREAM Act over the side to get the bill through, it will pass. And that depends on getting at least one Republican vote on this. So where are the Log Cabin Republicans on this? Is there any pressure on them to pressure their Congressional leadership? Or Snowe and Collins?
The second is the DADT suits that are moving through the courts. One is the Log Cabin Republicans suit, which got a ruling overturning DADT on constitutional grounds. The second is Margaret Witt’s case which is somewhere in the process of appeal to the Supreme Court. In both cases, the US Government is the defendant and DoJ is in the tricky situation of having to defend the US government and ensure that justice is done. If the Obama administration is working this route as well, the US government will defend itself and have the courts force it to comply. That means that likely both Log Cabin Republicans and Witt will go to the Supreme Court, combined into a single appeal. There is some risk in the Supreme Court route because no one knows how Justice Kennedy will rule. Which is why the action in Congress has not been abandoned.
If Congressional Democrats can’t get it through as a rider on the Defense Appropriations, the court route is a backup. If they can, the court route is moot; it is no longer the law. And on this the Maine twins and House Blue Dogs are the key players. Unless the Log Cabin Republicans can make it a bipartisan bill, extremely unlikely with the Tea Party crowd pulling the extreme Republican caucus to the right.
Obama said he would get rid of it by the end of the year in prospect of having it attached as a rider to the Defense Appropriations. There are enough Democratic Senate votes if it ever gets past the filibuster. And the fact that it is a Defense Appropriations bill puts some time pressure on passage.
It’s not over until it’s over, and it’s not over. So continue to apply pressure on every member of Congress, Republican or Democrat.
Don’t let the Republicans off the hook on this. Democrats shouldn’t be the only ones getting the pressure just because they have made the commitment and Republicans are in opposition.
Not to mention, there’s the Pentagon plan that comes due in a couple months. Once that it in, there are no more ready excuses for delay.
I am gay and old enough to remember. So here goes:
Gays were ambivalent about Carter in 1980. Reagan won that year.
Gays were ambivalent about Dukakis in 1988. Bush won that year.
Gays were ambivalent about Gore in 2000. Bush won that year.
Think you can write off Gays and their supporters? Think again.
And exactly how did that advance your interests to have Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II win?
Republicans seem to have written off the Log Cabin Republicans but they still get out and vote for Republicans.
Don’t count on gays to vote for Democrats. It is that simple. Gays and lesbians have been treated with contempt by Obama. It is not logical for them to turn out for him in 2012.
That is just a political reality Tarheel.