As commentators are beginning to note, Monday marks the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, and the following Thursday marks the same anniversary for Kennedy’s inaugural, two classics of American rhetoric that could hardly be further apart and still remain in the same genre. It is a long way from Ike’s measured and noble praise of balance to Kennedy’s inspiring but unrestrained call to “pay any price.” It’s usual to say that the 1960s didn’t really began until Kennedy was assassinated, if not later, but the transition from Eisenhower’s restraint to Kennedy’s rhetorical lack of it may mark the transition more effectively than the murder in Dallas.
So far, my favorite pieces on the Eisenhower anniversary are by my friend and former colleague Will Inboden at Shadow Government and by my current colleague Jim Carafano in the Washington Examiner. I’ve got a piece myself coming out at Heritage’s Foundry on the actual anniversary that explores the rhetorical and substantial similarities between Eisenhower’s Farewell Address and its famous predecessor by George Washington. In writing that piece, I was struck by just how rarely it is that the U.S. elects a president who finds inspiration in prudence. Like Will, I’m not persuaded by Peter Feaver’s argument that Obama is meaningfully similar to Eisenhower: the attitudes of the two presidents toward federal spending, to take just one obvious and vitally important example, could hardly be more different.
Of course, a president doesn’t have to be prudential to be great. Still, the overlap between greatness (or near-greatness, in Eisenhower’s case) and prudentialism is striking. The only other president who has, to my knowledge, been described at length as philosophically prudential is Lincoln, by William Lee Miller in his Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography. Miller’s style takes being casual to a new and to me slightly irritating level, but it’s a fascinating read nonetheless. As Miller puts it: “The mature Abraham Lincoln would exhibit … a combination of the moral clarity and elevation of … the prophet, with the ‘prudence’ and ‘responsibility’ of a worthy politician. … Prudence as a virtue [does not] exclude, as pragmatism tends to do, general moral ideals and larger moral patterns beyond the immediate situation. … Prudence as a moral virtue made a bridge to intellectual virtue.”
But as Eisenhower might have noted, and as Miller does note, the entire tradition of prudence has been devalued, in favor of the more desiccated concept of pragmatism. As a more recent president put it, the question is simple: “What works?” And Eisenhower’s address helps explain why. As he noted, the threat to American liberties was posed not so much by big government as such but by top-down direction of all kinds. Much of this originated in the federal government, but not all of it: there was also a risk of becoming “the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Such an elite, with its progressive pretensions to expertise and fixing things, is inherently hostile to concepts of prudence and balance, which imply that many problems can at best be managed, not solved.
Perhaps that is why Eisenhower’s Address is now, with the exception of the oft-misunderstood passage about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, much more cited than read: it is based on a philosophy that Eisenhower — like Washington — believed provided the safest foundation for American liberties but that is so profoundly out of tune with the age on which the U.S. embarked after he left office that we can no longer understand what he was saying. If that is so, I view our national need to recover that philosophy as a problem of the first magnitude.
Jen,
I recommend reading any of Mike Royko’s books or old columns. You will find that this mentality is not “crazy” or “unhinged”, but pretty much within the real of “normal” for Chicago politics.
Why not both? As a society we are not nearly suspicious enough of ambition or those who crave attention or power unless or until something goes blatantly wrong, like this. The signs for Blago or Spitzer or countless others are usually there all along, but ignored. A second factor is that ethical and legal have become synonymous terms in political circles. Blago proabbly figured that because there wasn’t a specific law against what he was doing than he had every right to do it and indeed would be stupid not to do it. there is very little thought given to any sort of existential notion of what one *ought* to do it politics, only what one *can* get away with.
The only thing important in Chicago politic is … Who sent you ?
What is even the slightest bit “crazy” about this? He won in a landslide despite being a known crook. Why would he clean up his act? He’s surrounded by other crooks from top to bottom in that gov’t. What are they going to do if he tries to shake them down–call a cop?
What Blago did was not different from other politicians. He just got caught. Look at Obama. He gets elected to the Senate and his wife got a $200k bump in pay for a do-nothing public sector job.
This is how modern corruption works. You give my wife, or son, or friend, etc … a cushy fake job at a non-profit, university, or foundation … and I pass the legislation you want passed.
Look at Clinton’s “library” for more of the same. Blago was just dumb enough to say out loud what he was doing.
Obama probably just had to hint that he felt Michelle was underpaid and looking for an “equitable” position. His supplicants knew what he wanted (cash) and responded.
As the Obamas and Clintons know, the key is not to ever document or specify exactly what the quid is for the quo.
Jennifer, far more disturbing a thought is– what if he *isn’t* crazy?
I mean, what if Blago KNEW EXACTLY what kind of man Obama is– or, perhaps more critically, was?
Perhaps Blago simply expected the Obama of Washington would act like the Obama of Chicago, and scratch his back the same way Obama scratched everyone else’s backs.
Which doesn’t make Blago crazy– it just makes him stupid, for he failed to notice that Obama is quite happy to throw everyone he’s ever worked with under the bus the moment it suits him.
I don’t know whether to be afraid or impressed by Obama. The man has surrounded himself with scumbags his entire life, yet he’s clearly used each and every one of them. I guess I can admire that, but sheesh– Obama *has no friends*, does he now?
Just political tools, means to end. Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Blago. . . The question is, who will he use and discard in Washington? Gates? Hillary?
The man doesn’t collect friends– he collects fall guys.
Isn’t that what they mean my machine? Truman had the Pendergast machine. Pendergast wound up in prison.
From Wikipedia:
Truman shocked many when as Vice President he attended the Pendergast funeral a few days after being sworn in and a few weeks before Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as President. Truman was reportedly the only elected official who attended the funeral. Truman brushed aside the criticism, saying simply, “He was always my friend and I have always been his.” [1]
The only crazy people are those who think that you can run a huge “reformist” one-party system without corruption.
Oh, come on, Jennifer! Obama had “some relationship with him”? He advised him on his most recent gubernatorial race, during which Rezko got a target letter from the USA informing him that he was under investigation for corruption. And Obama knew very well that Rezko funneled money to Blago. Don’t tell me Obama didn’t know EXACTLY who he was dealing with before, during and after his undefined “relationship” with Blagojevich. Furthermore, he endorsed him twice. If you’re all about “hope & change,” do you really think it makes a lot of sense to endorse the candidates of the Daley machine again, and again, and again? Candidates who will be assured never to rock the boat and who will thwart all attempts at reform?
Obama is a fraud. It’s that simple.
I am curious about Mrs Blago – aka Rezko’s real estate agent. Wow, this plot is thickening quicker than my mom’s mushroom soup!
“How does some one function in a high office with such a loose grip on reality?”
Throughout recorded history, mankind’s leaders have been less mentally stable than the general population. If ancient oral histories, legends and epics are reliable in any way, our leaders have always been whack-jobs compared to the rest of us.
That’s “how someone this unhinged gets to be governor and gets re-elected without anyone blowing the whistle.”
Blago is not *stupid, unhinged or out of touch w/ reality*. His actions are completely rational and logical based on his former observations of the president-elect. He knew Obama’s history of using the system to get ahead and was just doing what he thought was the normal way of things.
He knew what Bill Clinton meant when he said that the Obama phenomenon was a *fairy tale*.
He may be the most honest one of the whole rotten Chicago Machine bunch. He just made the mistake of saying it too loud.