Imagine going to the Heritage Foundation to see Ronald Reagan in the late 1980’s. Or listening to Margaret Thatcher at a National Review dinner at around the same time. Or applauding Charlton Heston at the NRA’s annual meeting. This must be the feeling that liberals get during a week of activities at the Aspen Festival of Ideas. A mix of political camaraderie, self-righteousness, and triumphalism oozed from every panel discussion and roundtable.
Only in its third year, this week-long conference, co-sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly and the Aspen Institute, has quickly established itself as the intellectual Woodstock for the wealthy and well-meaning. Bill Clinton made his annual pilgrimage—Aspen is his new Renaissance festival, apparently—and was reliably greeted as healer and seer for those who have had to endure two terms of Republican rule. This year Hillary joined him for some nighttime high-dollar fund-raising. The old Clinton crowd showed up, too: there rarely seemed to be a panel without Rahm Emmanuel, Gene Sperling, Madeline Albright, David Gergen, or Justice Stephen Breyer. True, there were a few Republicans thrown in for appearances, but mostly of the safe variety: Colin Powell or Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. Karl Rove showed up on the final day for a ritual yet respectful skewering, just so everyone could feel bi-partisan and open-minded.
But what struck me in the four days of sessions I attended was not Bush-hatred (or any particular display of partisanship), but rather the insipid and anodyne quality of the ideas under such grave discussion. After just two days, it was clear that the assembled crowd of the good and the great strongly believed that teachers should be paid more, that more investments need to be made in early childhood education, that energy and environment issues ought to be at the top of the national agenda, and that far too many college graduates want to become hedge fund managers. In dozens of panels, there were certainly exceptions, but I would refer anyone interested to the Aspen Festival blog posts by Ross Douthat, whose dry yet incisive commentaries captured the hollowness of this gathering of worthies.
Since Obama’s main qualification for the office seems to be that he reminds people of John Kennedy, I propose a new cabinet level position — Secretary of Kennedyesqueness. The appointee, of course, would be Caroline Kennedy, since this may be the only job in government for which she would have any qualifications whatsoever. The Governor of NY could then appoint a chimpanzee, trained to push the voting buttons on command from Harry Reid, to the Senate. This is how the early space program was staffed, and that worked out well.
Hmm, so Steve Calabresi suggests that the only way that we can blacks into Senate is to have governors appoint them. What seems to escape me is why are blacks afforded such preferential treatment? Has anyone stopped to ponder that the reason that there are no blacks in the Senate is because that no blacks have stepped forward to run for the Senate, and – if they do step forward and run – that the electorate have chosen to elect their opponents instead? Since when is it that skin color should be the sole determinant who serves in the Senate, or the House for that matter? Soft bigotry of low expectations indeed: if blacks can’t win on their own merits, we should just appoint blacks to fill the empty seats.
And here I thought the election of a black man as president was supposed to get us past these notions of race. As a black man, I should say that I am not surprised that we still have to deal with race. The surprising thing, however, is that not many blacks have not caught that the practitioners of race-based politics, whether positively or negatively, has and always will be the Democratic Party.
So, our choices now are racial “fairness” and nepotism? Fabulous.
It’s not so difficult to figure out why African-Americans have been marginalized in pursuit of elective offices requiring state-wide support. Their leadership sold out years ago to the reapportionment gods. They agreed to having Congressional/legislative districts designed that would forever remain majority black (thereby solving a dicey problem for the majority white power brokers–isn’t it nice the way it all worked out). To see the result, take a gander at the Black Congressional Caucus. I’ll wager there’s not one member who could command broad appeal in a state-wide election. Perhaps if there had been a little electoral competition through the years, that would not be the case today.
Obama’s own candidacy flowed from a lack of vetting by his party.