Two Blasts From the Past

No.231: October 4, 2024

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall, so please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with an occasional “Off The Shelf” feature about books, a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.

Dear Friends,

In Wednesday’s Quarter Inch I shared a treasure I picked up at the used book sale: a signed copy of John Glenn’s memoirs. It was delightful to learn about the long and full life of one of America’s finest pilots, war heroes, and first Mercury astronauts. Glenn was a prime example of certain breed of American midwesterner who grew up during the Great Depression: hard-working, God-fearing, thrifty, and full of integrity (a “handshake will do” type).

I mentioned that I was interested to hear about Glenn’s politics from the man himself. A four-term Democrat Senator from Ohio, he always struck me as a reliable vote for liberal causes—soft on social issues and always willing to spend government money. Having read the book I feel like I have a better feeling for the context.

Glenn was a New Deal Democrat. Like so many who lived through the Depression, he would not be shaken out of the conviction that FDR was the savior of the American economy and way of life. There is another school of thought, of course, that thinks FDR actually extended the Depression but, alas, it tends to fall on deaf ears. This mythic FDR framed the way Glenn saw the role of government: if there’s a problem, something should be done. And the Federal government is always the institution that should “do” it. It’s wrong and frustrating, but understandable. Case in point: in the memoir he is sharply critical of Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts in the early 80s, somewhat gleefully pointing out that the economy dipped into a recession. A chapter later or so there’s a one-liner related to NASA funding about how now that the economy was really booming the budget could be increased! Never, never, never will a Democrat connect the dots or give credit to Reagan where due.

I was also unaware of how close his friendship had become with Bobby Kennedy, and those kinds of close relationships tend to shape a man and his worldview. He and Annie were upstairs in the hotel when Bobby was assassinated after leaving his victory speech in the California primary, and it was they that had to tell five (of the eleven) Kennedy kids that their father had been shot. They took them back to Virginia to their house and, when the news came that Bobby had died, he and Annie had to break the news to the kids again. No doubt John Glenn felt a deep loyalty and kinship to Bobby Kennedy and his political views.

The other amazing thing about Glenn’s politics is how they are basically indistinguishable from the present-day Republican Party, confirming my contention that the GOP today is simply the Democrat Party circa the year 2000. I digress. Let me focus in on this arresting passage:

In my twenty-two years in the Senate, I had watched the legislative process change. There was always partisanship—that was the nature of the system. Although it produced disagreement and debate, it ultimately forged budgets and laws on which reasonable people could differ but that worked for most. In general, lawmakers performed their duties in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

This was no longer the case. By the 1994 election, we had single-issue candidates, the demonization of government, the sneering dismissal of opposing points of view, a willingness to indulge the few at the expense of the many, and the smug rejection of the claims of entire segments of society to any portion of the government’s resources. Respectful disagreement had vanished. Poisonous distrust, accusation, and attack had replaced it. [….]

Good proposals were vilified on the basis of personalities and party. I had never forgotten Bobby Kennedy’s fervently stated belief that politics is an honorable profession, but a lot of politicians were acting as if they alone were the honorable ones.

What was worst of all was the prospect that young people who were entering the years in which they could make the greatest contributions to their country would be infected by the self-interest and hopelessness that had invaded political discourse. I thought with anguish of the degrading of public participation and public service as activities that somehow had become unworthy. I believed this cynicism could infect the body politic to such an extent that it could rob the country of its lifeblood—the constant reinvention that our democracy requires if it is to remain strong. The answer to our problems, it seemed to me, was not to savage the nation for its shortcomings, but to create inspiration through its strengths.

He is talking about 1994. This newsletter is often a broken record with the maxim that we are living in precedented times, and I am more thoroughly convinced of it by the day. The rancor and partisan politicization and demonization and “us” versus “them” tribalism is not remotely new in American life. I absolutely admit that this has gotten worse over the past thirty years and there is more than enough blame to go around. The Left shunted aside their John Glenns and Scoop Jacksons and Zell Millers and, more recently, Bob Caseys and Bart Stupaks and embraced ever-more radical ideologues, and the Right listened to way too much talk radio and in the aftermath of that bender decided that what they really needed was an orange wrecking ball.

For whatever political differences I might have had with John Glenn, he was a classical liberal who loved our institutions that enabled a diverse people to live peaceably with one another. He was part of the great “middle” getting squeezed out by rabid revolutionaries from both directions.