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MARCH 31, 2005 –
Everyone wants you - the Moderate Independent majority.
Whether it be former
Bush EPA Chief and Republican New Jersey Governor Christine Todd
Whitman, former House Speaker and Republican Revolutionary Newt
Gingrich, or former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Chief
Speechwriter and New York Sun columnist John P. Avlon, there
is a race to see who can break away from the ultra-right corner the
GOP has backed itself into.
Indeed, we have seen
this before at The Moderate Independent, when Republican
former-Congressman and MSNBC-TV host Joe Scarborough tried to tell
M/I that he was really just a fair-minded independent who gave it to
both sides as equally.
For those of you who
recall what happened to poor Mr. Scarborough when he and his writing
were held up to the M/I truth test, it wasn't pretty. (See:
Joe Scarborough, Whining Baby, Complete Fraud)
But
neither Whitman nor Avlon are by any measure a Scarborough-like
lying propagandist, and so their attempts to speak to us, the
moderates and independents of America, must at least be given a fair
read.
Gingrich, on the other hand, was the spawn that gave rise to the
Scarboroughs of the world. And yet, we at M/I are always
willing to give a man a chance at redemption.
Ok,
maybe that's not true, but we are certainly willing to take the
nonsensical drivel written by a right-wing liar pretending to be an
independent and review it for entertainment purposes.
All
of these authors know that the road to Moderate Independents runs
through us, and review of their commentaries or written works are
part of the initiation rights. And so, without further ado,
M/I takes a look at: Christine Todd Whitman's, It's My
Party, Too: The Battle For The Heart of the GOP and the Future
of America; Newt Gingrich's, Winning the Future: A 21st
Century Contract With America; and John P. Avlon's,
Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.
Now,
titles are nice things, but not always the most accurate precursor
of what to expect once the book's cover is actually opened.
Take
the Joe Scarborough winner we reviewed, Rome Wasn't Burnt In A
Day. This claim in the title is actually an accurate
statement of fact: it took six days and seven nights for Rome
to burn, not one day. (see:
Eyewitnesstohistory.com's The Burning of Rome, 64 AD)
And
yet, the exciting buildup of expectations that may be caused by such
an accurate and interesting title was rather ruined both by the fact
that the title sentence was the only one that contained accurate
information in the entire book, and by the sad reality that
Scarborough never correlates what the hell the fact that it took
more like a week for Rome to burn has to do with anything in his
book.
We
start off the same with Ms. Whitman's book (it is hard to decide
whether to call her Governor Whitman,
former-person-who-sat-atop-the-EPA Whitman, or just Chris, so we'll
go with the more generic form becoming of an author, Ms. Whitman.)
It is
pretty hard to question the factual accuracy of her title: It's
My Party, Too. She is, in fact, a Republican. Her
family used to run the Republican Party. So clearly, it is her
party, too.
Not
sure if we were being set up as we had by Scarborough, I waded in
past the dustcover with fear-tainted bravery.
Ok,
Whitman is no Scarborough, and her work is an honest attempt to
steer her party - or what is left of it - back toward sanity, i.e.
the middle. And she comes right out of the gate with a
no-holds-bar slam of the current administration and her frustrating
tenure as head of the EPA under President Bush.
"I...
thought," writes Whitman on page 17, "that we had an opportunity
really to accomplish something: to leave America's air
cleaner, its water purer, and its land better protected than we had
found it." Unfortunately, she doesn't attribute the fact that she didn't accomplish any of that to
President Bush having the wrong environmental policies, but instead
to partisanship: Democrats not wanting to be cooperative and
her party's "hubris."
That
cop out aside, Whitman truly lays out the problem with the GOP, as
she sees it: "...various far-right constituencies of the GOP
are, in actuality, nothing more than narrow interest groups, and
they have not only been demanding that the party leadership kowtow
to them; they have actually been seeking to take over the broader
party and push moderates out."
The
best thing about Whitman's book is it is one of the few honest works
to come from the right-side of the aisle in years. She might
as well be a member of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in
how free she feels to label her party as one hijacked by right-wing
extremists. She details how for more than a decade she has
felt a stranger in her own party, particularly striking for someone
whose father used to head the GOP and who, as she details at great
length, grew up hanging out at GOP conventions, fawning over Ike and
Rockefeller.
Which
of course brings the reader right to the central question that
surrounds such a work, which Ms. Whitman anticipates and addresses
upfront.
"I am
often asked," she writes on page 26, "why I am still a Republican.
People who know my (moderate) politics, who have seen the rightward
lurch of the party and know that there are many in the GOP who have
worked to exclude me wonder why I stay. I have even been
approached by people who think the time has come for a third party
that would unite moderates of both parties."
Her
book is a lengthy attempt to explain just that. Unapologetic
for, despite not believing in the "rightward lurch" of her party,
still campaigning in 2004 for President Bush's re-election, Ms.
Whitman dances back and forth between saying her party is a good one
and that the President is a good man and scolding her party and,
though lightly, the President, for allowing right-wing "special
interests" to have too much say in GOP policy-making.
Drifting back in time to the "big umbrella" days of the Republican
party, Ms. Whitman points out that there actually used to even be
room under that umbrella for "liberal Republicans." Then came
Goldwater.
All
three books make Goldwater a central part of the story, each with a
different take. For Whitman, Goldwater was the seed that
reaped the evil right-wing GOP spawn of today.
"I
found Goldwater... to be scary... as did most Americans," she says,
only later to add, "Ironically, Barry Goldwater would be considered
a moderate today," and that she, "would be far more comfortable
running on (the Goldwater 1964 platform that scared her) than I
would be on the platforms adopted by the Republican Party in more
recent years."
Beginning to see a problem? She found Goldwater so far-right
and radical that he was "scary." She finds the current "new
breed" of Republican and their even further-right platform scarier -
so scary she would be more comfortable running on even the Goldwater
nutcase platform than the new GOP ultra-nutcase platform.
And
yet she campaigned for President Bush's re-election in 2004.
This
book is fascinating from a Moderate Independent perspective.
In effect, it is one big contorting, justifying attempt to answer
the above question: why should moderate, sane Republicans stay
with their lunatic-fringe-governed party?
For
us moderate independents, we don't have such dilemmas - we simply
choose the candidate who is best for the nation. But for
Christie Whitman, what is best for the Republican Party is her main
concern. And the real reason for this, as it seems, is not
actually found in any of the arguments, discussions, or examples she
lays out in defense of her unmovable partisan status.
Instead, it is found in the voluminous - really, really voluminous -
detailing of her personal experiences as someone born in the upper
power echelon of the Republican Party. She gave Ike golf tees,
she pulled for Rockefeller, her parents were king and queen of the
elephants. Describe it as she may, explain it as she will,
Whitman unwittingly makes clear that the reason she remains and will
always remain in the Republican Party despite feeling an alien in a
land of losers is because that's where her power lies.
If
she were to leave the party, she would be nothing but a powerless
voice, someone with no allies or connections, no inside track to
political power. If she stays with the party she was born
entrenched in, then she is somebody. Yes, in this sense
Whitman is no different than the Democrats who pander and cave
because they are only concerned about keeping their personal hold on
party-insider power rather than standing up for what is right.
Whitman will campaign for whoever is the Republican pick, because
her allegiance goes first to the GOP, only second to the nation.
All
this sounds pretty bad, but in reality, it may be only the Whitmans
of the GOP who can bring the party back to normalcy. And that
is the call she sets out in her book. She is a partisan, she
is someone who makes no bones about the fact she puts party loyalty
before national loyalty, but by being so committed to her party, she
determines she must fight to make her home one she feels cozy in,
one she can be proud to call her own. She won't cross over and
support John Kerry or any moderate Democrat, but she is willing to
fight for the day her party might put forth its own moderate
candidates.
The
best part of the book is to know that even the Bush-liking GOP
insider who gave the President Barney the dog as a gift can see what
a radical mess the Republican Party is and has the courage to spell
it out publicly and boldly. The worst part of the book is that
Whitman spends so much time pointing out things like that she was
the one who bought President Bush Barney the dog as a gift.
If
you are able to do lots - and lots - of skimming through
self-serving, space-filling personal anecdotes, this book is worth
reading just for the sake of hearing a sane voice from the
Republican Party and enjoying the reassuring feeling that at least
someone over there knows how ridiculous things have gotten.
But
there's another issue that comes up, and it is not just in Whitman's
book, but all three; and in fact, it was a central problem in
Scarborough's book as well.
Every
one of these books talk about the media as being shrill and
partisan. Not one has the courage or clearsightedness to
correctly state that it was the Republicans, led by Rush Limbaugh,
who started the name-calling, constant-lie-spewing hate-talk that
has led to the media mess we currently have. In fact, not only
do all of these books not put the blame primarily with the
propaganda wing of the GOP where it belongs, but, instead, they
attempt to claim somehow that, yes, the liberal media is what is to
blame. CBS is the problem in Whitman's book, not FOX or
Limbaugh.
One
of the central arguments of Whitman's book is one of the central
arguments of Avlon's book: that the Republicans won't win if
they stay so far right; that it is whoever is the most moderate that
always wins. They both ignore the new reality: that the
right-wing blame-and-lie propaganda machine has changed the game and
changed America. They write how it is always the moderate who
wins, how America is truly a nation of moderates; they do not write
how "moderate" and "normal" have been redefined by the constant,
all-encompassing misinformation machine that dominates the entire
media conversation.
So
read Whitman if you want to see that there are still some
Republicans - or at least this one - who are capable of saying
something honest.
On
the other hand, read John P. Avlon's book because, like us here at
M/Il, he includes his middle initial as a part of his name.
Ok,
maybe that's not enough to make a book worth reading.
But
Avlon's book, Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change
American Politics, is practically a scholarly work on the
history of moderate independent candidates and the nation that loves
them. He chronicles so many moderates and the races they ran
that simply to list them would take up as much space as OxyContin
used to in Limbaugh's stash drawer.
Teddy
R, Harry T., Ike, Goldwater v. Rockefeller again, Nixon, Kennedy,
Clinton, Woodrow... heck, even Jimmy Carter gets chronicled in this
master work. And that's just the presidents. Senatorial
races, gubernatorial, class president, PTA leader, you name it - if
someone ran for the post as a moderate, John P. has their story,
complete with facts, quotes, and details galore.
This
is the type of book that someone who wants to be something called
"informed" would want to read. And best of all, unlike many
who claim to write about "moderates," Avlon does it with a
trustworthy and fairly independent voice.
Why
not be the only person on your block able to quote Margaret Chase
Smith as having dealt McCarthyism death blows by saying things like,
"It is time that with dignity, firmness and friendliness, (the great
center of our people) reason with, rather than capitulate to, the
extremists on both sides - at all levels - and caution that their
patience ends at the border of violence and anarchy that threatens
our American democracy?" (from page 330) Wouldn't it be
cool to be the only one of your friends to know that Novak was
writing his nonsensical, partisan drivel even back in 1964
Rockefeller v. Goldwater days? How many people do you know who
can spout on about Bella Abzug and Lowell Weicker in the same breath
(or even know who both of these people were?)
Not
only is Avlon's book one to learn a lot from, it is one that truly
embraces a fiery call to independence. The intro is stellar,
serving up juicy quotes like Thomas Jefferson saying, "I never
submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party
of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in
anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such
addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there
at all," and John Adams declaring, "There is nothing which I dread
so much as a division of the republic into two great parties...
This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest
political evil under our Constitution." (pages 4-5) This
tone is summoned again and again throughout the book, as with this
New York Times quote on the 1964 election: "The decisive
battleground of American politics lies in the center and cannot be
captured from either of the extremes..."
The
problem with this book, however, comes when, as Whitman did, Avlon
gets to his point, which is that America has always gone for the
moderate, is predominantly a moderate nation, and so this is why the
GOP - or as Avlon says it, both parties - better moderate or die.
He
then delves in great detail into the most recent elections - the
2000 primary and Presidential races and even the recent 2004
Presidential contest. And while he is sure to make Moderate
Independents drool and fawn when he recalls McCain back in his
moderate days of the 2000 primary season saying things like, "It
reminds me of an old bumper sticker - "The Christian Right is
neither," and, "The tactics of division and slander are not our
values. They are corrupting influences on religion and
politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in
the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our
faith... We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones," (pages
422-423) the reality, pointed out just words later, that this speech
"backfired in Virginia," doesn't quite take hold strongly enough
with Mr. Avlon.
He
chronicles Bush's defeats of McCain and Gore by saying Bush is a
genius with regard to understanding emotional motivation who had "an
intuitive sense of where he stood in the big picture," ignoring the
larger reality that George W. Bush was a mindless wind-up doll being
fed bumper sticker platitudes that he dared not stray from, and who
was backed by the biggest war chest in history and, most
importantly, a media propaganda blame-and-lie campaign that
discarded all previous rules and rendered obsolete all historical
comparisons.
In
effect, Avlon's book is similar to Whitman's in that it is a work
that goes to great length to try and make the case that America has
traditionally and historically been a moderate nation.
That
is nice, that is true, and it is laid out wonderfully in Avlon's
book - much more so than in Whitman's, by a long, long shot.
But
none of this changes the reality that, for the first time in our
nation's history, our media is dominated by one-side promoting
propaganda; that 24 hours a day through every medium misinformation
is being fed like we have done for decades in installing and
toppling governments around the world.
Avlon's work is a great study of America's historical moderateness.
But, unfortunately, this is not the historical study that should be
included with regard to his central thesis.
The
central point of Avlon's book, as made clear in the Introduction
and Conclusion, is that moderation is best, that "there is a
moderate majority in this independent nation: one-half of the
electorate divided between two parties..." (page 450)
But
to conclude that quote illuminates the problem: "there is a
moderate majority...underrepresented in the national political
debate and the current composition of Congress." Avlon claims
that, "Until now, the moderate majority has been slumbering,
powerful in numbers, but unaware of its own influence." (page 434)
Hold
on a second, didn't he just spend over 400 pages before that
detailing how the moderate majority has been making the decisions
for America all along? That doesn't sound much like it "has
been slumbering all along."
This
is the big contradiction of both Whitman's and Avlon's works.
They both are looking back to say we have always been a moderate
nation, and so the parties better get back toward the center or they
won't have a chance, when the real story is that something is very
different now; our 200 year history has become irrelevant. As
we have just seen with the Schiavo fiasco, our entire history and
even Constitution have been overcome by theocratic radicalism.
And this has all been made possible by something that never existed
before in the nation's history: a centrally established,
dominant, all-encompassing one-side promoting propaganda machine.
Coming from the Republican side of things, neither of these authors
are willing or able to come out and acknowledge that the new breed
of Bush/Limbaugh Republican has put together a Soviet-like control
mechanism. While a mention and brief relation of America's
traditionally moderate past would be appropriate beginnings to these
works, to truly deal with the central theme they aim to tackle, the
bulk of the work should have recounted the history of the Soviet
Union, the history of government manipulation around the world by
our CIA, the history of this institution, which George W. Bush's
father George H. W. Bush used to head, using propaganda - such as
"Voice of America" radio broadcasts - around the world to topple and
install our leaders of choice.
Both
works acknowledge that America is not currently acting like the
moderate nation it always used to be. But rather than dealing
with what has truly obliterated more than 200 years of American
history and culture, both authors participate in a form of hopeful
denial, thinking if they just remind people how things used to be
things won't be as they are now.
And
what is happening was summed up well in the warning issued by one of
the centrists Avlon mentions in his book,
President Eisenhower:
Until the latest of our world
conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.
American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required,
make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency
improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to
create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added
to this, three and a half million men and women are directly
engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on
military security more than the net income of all United States
corporations.
This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new in
the American experience. The total influence -- economic,
political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State
house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the
imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and
livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our
society.
In the councils of government, we
must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.
We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the
huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
prosper together...
Another factor in maintaining
balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's
future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the
impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and
convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without
risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.
We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to
become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow...
Down the long lane of the history
yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever
growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful
fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual
trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one
of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with
the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral,
economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by
many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain
agony of the battlefield...
...together we must learn how to
compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and
decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I
confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this
field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has
witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one
who knows that another war could utterly destroy this
civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over
thousands of years...
Both Christine Todd Whitman and
John P. Avlon try to address the problems of today's America but
looking back and trying to deny that the nation may truly be a
different creature now. Eisenhower's comments were no joke,
and he was not talking about something that existed back in Teddy
Roosevelt's or Woodrow Wilson's or Harry Truman's day. He
was talking about something "new" that, if not kept in check,
could change the "very structure of our society."
The history that needs to be
chronicled to address what is currently happening in America is
not the good ol' days that Whitman and Avlon look at; it is the
rise of Napoleon and The Terror in France, the rise of Hitler in
Germany; the changing of Rome from a Republic to a Holy Empire; it
is the manipulation of nations through propaganda by such regimes
as the former Soviet Union - these are the histories that are
relevant to the current state and direction of America.
John P. Avlon is at his best when
he is speaking in his own voice as well as summoning the voices of
the great who've gone before in painting an inspirational portrait
of what it means to be a Moderate Independent. His book is a
very worthy read, a wealth of knowledge, and an eloquent call for
unity and a brotherhood of sane moderation.
Unfortunately, both Whitman and
Avlon are either too unwilling or unable to see what has truly
happened and is truly happening in our nation. Like the
conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry was new, occurring for the first time ever in our history
back in 1961, the conjunction of a media dominating, one-side
promoting propaganda machine and the general dominance of the
media over the minds of Americans is new now, some 40-odd years
later.
The military-industrial complex was
not guarded against - it now resides directly in the White House
and in particular in the Vice Presidency. And we can not
pretend this is not real and hasn't changed "the very structure of
our society." We must, as Eisenhower said, "not fail to
comprehend its grave implications," nor its reality.
And the same goes for the rise of
the propaganda machine and spread of media-addiction across the
land. "We must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications," nor to acknowledge the reality of its existence.
The good news is the intelligent
and moderate within the Republican Party are running out of
patience, opening their eyes, and reaching out, attempting to open
the eyes of the nation. Unfortunately, their eyes have
opened but only a slit. It is a start, but it doesn't make
for comprehensive or coherent treatises. Recounting how we
traditionally have been a moderate nation is not the same as
detailing,
How Centrists Can
Change America,
the subtitle of
Avlon's book. In particular, it is not at all similar to
detailing how centrists can "become a more effective and coherent
force," as he says we must on page 436, in the reality of today's
propaganda, media-addiction, and military-industrial complex
governed society.
Like Whitman and Avlon, I do
believe that the majority of humans - not just Americans - are
moderates by nature. Unlike them, I don't deny the reality
that religion, propaganda, and the undue consolidation of power in
the hands of the wrong people have turned previously moderate
people and nations into nonsensical extremists again and again
throughout our world's history. And the convergence of these
three things in our nation at this time has gone a long way toward
doing that, and is not stoppable simply by looking back and seeing
that things used to be different.
Speaking of which, Newt Gingrich's
book, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract With
America, might just be something worth taking a look at, no?
As it is not an actual intelligent, honest work like the two
reviewed here, it will be reviewed separately. But oddly
enough, if either of these two authors are looking to do a history
of when our nation stopped being what it historically was, it
might just start with a chapter about this man; this man who
doesn't seem to miss the concept that our history is not
necessarily our future, as he says in his introduction, "Today
America is vulnerable to... threats that... could undermine, even
eliminate, America as we know it..."
Somebody sees the end of America as
we knew it as possible. Stay tuned for a trip into true
insanity, where propagandizing melds with bi-polarism and
misinformation combines with misanthropism, creating one of the
least great, but most relevant, works of the year.
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