“Some people see things as they are and say ‘why?. I dream
things that never were and say ‘why not?’”
The line from George Bernard Shaw is remembered, if remembered
today at all, because it became the mantra of the late Senator
Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, a particularly
haunting mantra in the wake of his assassination. The implication,
of course, was that Kennedy was unafraid to have a vision of both
America and the world that others of the day (think RFK
presidential rivals Eugene McCarthy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert
Humphrey and Richard Nixon) were simply incapable of possessing.
Vision required both courage and imagination, and Kennedy spoke
repeatedly of America’s need for both.
It is no small irony then that this new political season finds
the line applicable not to Kennedy’s Democratic Party successors
but rather to George W. Bush. So in the spirit of the just passed
holiday season that calls us all to reflect on our individual and
collective blessings, a word should be said for perhaps one of the
most controversial war-time presidents to sit in the White House
since Abraham Lincoln as he prepares to redirect his Iraq
policy.
There is no intention here to recall either the circumstances of
his family or his election. Not a psychiatrist, I will leave the
musings on alleged foreign policy struggles between the second set
of presidential fathers and sons in American history to others. No
Florida, Florida, Florida in this space, either. The present and
the future deserve attention.
Countless pages and endless air time has been devoted over the
decades to the importance of having a President of the United
States with precisely the qualities that RFK spoke of so frequently
when he quoted Shaw. It is no accident that Presidents who fill the
bill are consistently engulfed in controversy, inspiring not simply
adversaries but mortal enemies, engendering not just dislike or
distaste but summoning up the deepest biles of sheer hatred.
Recognizing this it is time to finally put to rest a Bush theme
that, however well-intentioned, is flatly contradicted by the
tenets of greatness in presidential leadership. “I’m a uniter, not
a divider,” said the candidate of 2000 as he sought to attract
voters with an upbeat personality and presentation. In the event,
of course, he has proved to be exactly not that at all, as his many
derisive critics are so quick to point out.
To which it should be said: Hooray! Uniters who were not
dividers have graced the presidential office periodically, and the
record they leave behind does not recommend. America just loved
Warren Harding, generally found at the rock bottom on the list of
all presidents and their contributions to history.
In point of fact, history bestows the wreaths of honor and
presidential greatness on those who followed exactly the spirit of
Bobby Kennedy’s borrowed quote from Shaw. Looking back from Reagan
to Truman, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Lincoln, and Jackson, the
formula for historical success is clear. And to say the least, a
president who “dreams things that never were” and says “why not?”
— then spends a presidency midwifing that vision into reality —
is destined to spend his time in the White House as a lightning rod
of division.
The premiere example of this, of course, is Lincoln. Seeing
disunion and slavery as what it was, he not only said “why not?” to
their opposites, but grimly went about the task of making those
imagined opposites reality. As with the Bush-haters of today, those
who despised Lincoln for actually daring to make his dream of union
and freedom for blacks a reality were relentless in their attacks.
With the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq hovering north of
3,000, it is worth recalling the absolute furor whirling around the
sixteenth president as he devoted himself to making his vision a
reality of American life, a vision that finally cost over 600,000
dead in four years.
The recent trials and tribulations of the suddenly-famous Miss
USA, Tara Conner, remind that centuries of bad human experience
with alcohol and the fast life cannot save an individual human in
modern times from making the same mistakes with alcohol and the
fast life all over again. There is a similar version of Ms.
Conner’s experience in the world of politics and government, with
smart people who are supposed to have some understanding of history
nonetheless falling into precisely the same traps that history
warns those smart people repeatedly against. Presidents daring to
ask “why not?” are besieged by those who will insist that the
President in question has mismanaged the vision — blundered,
listened to fools and otherwise shown himself to be one of the
worst presidents in history.
And the critics are always right, to a point. Being human, it is
simply impossible for any president to implement a war policy (or
any other policy) without mismanaging, blundering, or listening to
fools somewhere along the line. Flyspeck the historical records of
the great presidents and these moments are glaringly obvious.
But so is something else. That something else is the utterly
dependable voice of critics who simply do not have the will to
carry through with the hard work of making a vision reality,
critics who will abandon constructive thought altogether and head
for the figurative sidelines to carp, moan, whine, and quiver. The
recent interview with complaining neoconservatives in the January
issue of the virulently Bush-hating Vanity Fair magazine,
now combined with the defeatism of Democratic House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, is perhaps best answered not by one of Bush’s aides but
Lincoln’s.
“I am utterly amazed to find so little real faith and courage
under difficulties among public leaders and men of intelligence.
The average public mind is becoming alarmingly sensational,” wrote
Lincoln’s secretary, John Nicolay, as torrents of bitter criticism
rained down on his boss. Bad news of any kind “is enough to throw
them all into the horrors of despair. I am getting thoroughly
disgusted with average human nature.” And John Nicolay never met
Nancy Pelosi!
One of the ironies of the success of a presidential vision is
that later generations — and sometimes even the same generation —
can simply not imagine that there was any other outcome possible.
This is not only never true, the now-accepted view of a
presidentially created reality usually hung in the balance as it
was being birthed.
The new book Copperheads by University of Kansas
history professor Jennifer Weber is a wonderful case in point. The
book brims with the details of the virulent anti-war opposition to
Lincoln from Northern critics. They were dubbed “Copperheads”
because, like the copperhead snake, they were said to strike
without warning. The war to save the Union and eventually the
struggle to emancipate the slaves were dubbed “wicked,” and Lincoln
was bitterly castigated as a purveyor of “fanaticism and
hypocrisy.” Moral relativism? There were Northerners aplenty who
fervently believed the Union side of the conflict represented
nothing more than “barbarism and sin.”
Yet Lincoln stood fast by his vision even as his critics
lacerated him as a bumbling incompetent when he wasn’t busy being a
tyrant, precisely the portrait painted by Bush’s legion of noisy
critics.
The other week, Fox News and National Public Radio commentator
Juan Williams summed up his view of Iraq and America’s commitment
to Bush’s vision of democracy in the Middle East: “Unless there’s
some real change, we’re not in this forever.” But Williams seems to
forget that Lincoln’s vision did not, in fact, take a mere four
years to accomplish. It took America another one hundred years
after that death toll of 600,000 — until the Civil Rights
successes of the 1960s — for Lincoln’s vision to begin to be
realized. That one hundred year period, surely not foreseen by
Lincoln, was rife with lynching, segregation and the rawest,
ugliest racism this side of slavery itself. Should Americans have
simply walked away from Lincoln’s vision because it seemed to be
taking “forever”?
The hard truth is that there are important goals in life that
take time. Freedom for African Americans was one of them. Freedom
and democracy in the Middle East is clearly another. And America’s
security from the terror rampant in the current world is still
another.
So with the new year upon us and already filled with the chorus
of modern day Copperheads doing their best to undermine America’s
will in the midst of a life and death struggle not only for Iraqis
but the rest of us, it is decidedly to George W. Bush’s credit that
he has the courage that Bobby Kennedy spoke of so often as RFK
quoted Shaw.
George Bush has the courage to dream of a good and decent
something that never was — a free and democratic Middle East —
and to stake his presidency on the hard and yes, imperfect work, of
saying “why not?”
Thank you for that, Mr. President.
As with Lincoln, there is a word for your behavior. The word is
leadership.
