Imbibing Them Vibes: (Other) Times When Our Politics Were Dumb

You feelin them good vibrations?  I'm not.  A look through American History for them good vibes! 

Transcript

Imbibing Them Vibes: (Other) Times When Our Politics Were Dumb

August 2024

Definition of Vibes: A person’s emotional state or the atmosphere of a place as communicated to and felt by others.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Former Tennessee Senator, and Actor, Fred Thompson

I’m pickin’ up good vibrations

She’s giving me the excitations (oom bop bop)

Brian Douglas Wilson and Mike E. Love

I have been spending time reading Joel Richard Paul’s Indivisible, a book ostensibly about Daniel Webster but really about the Early American Republic.  One of the key takeaways from book is a solid outline of the key policy debates of the day, and their preeminence in the political discourse.  I should be more clear.  The figures of the age, ranging from John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Webster focused on the most important issues of their era.  That statement should have some listeners scratching their heads.  As opposed to what? The least important issues of the day.  Well, Yes.  

• What are the rights of states vs. those of the Union
• How big and upon what should the tariff be, the primary source of revenue for the Federal Government? 
• What is the federal government’s role in infrastructure spending across states, such as roads, bridges, and canals? 
• How can Native American populations in the hundreds of thousands east of the Mississippi River be managed?
• What to do about slavery, especially in an expanding Republic.

These were not just a menu of debates. Within each lay the seeds of either a perpetual union or the breakup of the country into regional or even state-based sovereign nations. And in many cases, these issues were intertwined. In 1830, South Carolina’s desire to leave the Union was begun over a dispute not about slavery but rather about jurisdiction over the state’s commercial activities. It would be the slavery issue, however, that drove South Carolina 30 years later to commit the final act of seceding from the union, with dire results.  

Not that vacuousness was wholly absent.  Also part of the Early Republic was the Era of Good Feelings. During this tour, one newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, published an article titled “The Era of Good Feeling.” The piece described a festive, upbeat mood shared by “eminent men of all political parties.” 

Historian W. Taylor Reveley III noted of this time, “Monroe gained an enormous appreciation for the whole of the United States and for its emerging role in the world, as well as the need for Americans to stick together. By the time he was first elected President, he had learned how to build unity out of what was then, as it is now, fractious political parties. He crossed party lines in making political appointments, selecting John Quincy Adams, a Federalist, as his Secretary of State. His presidency ushered in an “Era of Good Feelings.” Monroe was overwhelmingly supported for a second term as President. A single vote in the Electoral College stood between him and unanimous reelection in 1820. His eight years as President were extremely successful, both at home and abroad, despite a major economic crisis, the Panic of 1819.”

Except the description of this as an “era” was a gross exaggeration. Jackson, a war hero after winning the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, was ordered to protect West Florida. But Jackson, being Jackson decided that he would instead conquer all of Florida, massacre Seminoles, and take on the Spanish, then in legal possession of East Florida. All of this in direct violation of orders from War Secretary John C. Calhoun. The cabinet wished to dismiss Jackson, but Adams and, crucially, Monroe would not do so. Acrimony followed. So much for good feelings.   

And mentioning Jackson when running for President in 1824, opposing Adams, it was thought he needed he needed a clear policy agenda. He did not.  Because of his impoverished beginnings, Jackson was portrayed as a man of the people, a tough guy warrior who would put the elites in their place. One might be forgiven for suggesting that Jackson was the first vibes campaign.  The vibes were misplaced. As opposed to some common man Jackson lived on a vast plantation, the Hermitage (I have seen it, and it is beautiful), and owned over 150 slaves.  

Another plantation owner, William Henry Harrison, was also a vox populi type of guy, with supporters statging he was born in a log cabin and was a simple farmer.  False and false.  No log cabin birth, and at the time of his election in 1840, he was residing in a 22-room mansion.  Harrison was also, like Jackson, a war hero. Except for the battle he won, Tippecanoe, which gave him fame, was fought with less than 2,000 total combatants. Harrison’s force of 1,000 was largely militia, and the opposition native Americans were probably less than 800. Total casualties were around 250. In other words, it was a minor skirmish in the Civil War and a bit less heroic than Jackson’s defeat of the British Regular army at New Orleans.  Nevertheless, the vibe stuck. Harrison’s running mate was John Tyler of Virginia, and some proto James Carville came up with “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” for their campaign, one of the first slogans.   

Yet seemingly frothy, lightweight issues can often mask deeper, serious matters. During the Jackson administration, the so-called petticoat war broke out between the wives of his Vice President, Calhoun (who seemed to have forgiven Jackson’s earlier insubordination), and the much younger wife of Secretary of War John Eaton.  Reportedly led by Floride Calhoun, (good thing I was not around then to smirk at her name or a duel would have followed). Floride the wife of the Vice President, and her coterie of women went to great lengths to publicly ostracize and exclude Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, Peggy O’Neale Eaton, from Washington, D.C.’s elite society over details involving the Eatons’ marriage and what they deemed Peggy’s failure to meet the unwritten “moral standards of a Cabinet Wife.” Jackson (again, being Jackson) did not care and kept up social pleasantries with the Eatons thus putting the his cabinet in a tricky position. Either back up their boss or back up their wives.  If they failed to do the latter, their honor would be at stake, the former, their jobs.    

The Petticoat Affair shattered the Jackson Administration, eventually leading to the resignation of all but one Cabinet member. The scandal also aided Martin Van Buren in winning the 1836 presidential election because he was the guy who stuck with the Eatons and Jackson, and for the general, loyalty was paramount.  This affair was partly responsible for transforming Vice President Calhoun from a national political figure with hopes of winning the presidency into a defender of the practice of enslavement as a sectional leader of the Southern states. So out of the petty comes the important.  If Jackson had decided to go along with the majority of his cabinet, it might have ended at that moment.  Instead, he made it an issue, giving the rest of his cabinet no face, no way to reconcile the issues of their families with Jackson’s own desires.  

Once campaign slogans such as Tippecanoe and Tyler Too became the norm, so did the concept of naming a basket of policies under a single all-encompassing phrase.  I blame Teddy Roosevelt for many of our ills.  The imperial presidency and Woodrow Wilson, both Teddy creations, would be enough for my personal decry.  But I can add “Square Deal” to the mix.  According to the Roosevelt Center, “The Square Deal is the name given to Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic legislative program. Roosevelt did not create this phrase; it was already familiar to nineteenth-century Americans. His recurrent usage of it, however, linked it to him in the public mind after the 1902 anthracite coal strike.

Roosevelt increasingly adopted its usage in pronouncements, “This administration stands for a square deal all around.” Subsequently, historians have applied the term Square Deal to mean the legislation and acts connected with Roosevelt’s presidency, especially those that seemed to be undergirded by this sense of fair play and egalitarianism. Roosevelt stated.  And since Teddy begot Woodrow, Wilson himself added “New Freedom. Wilson’s bold vision for his presidency and for the government itself in the form of a living constitutionalism, which is a euphemism for changing the constitution to give more power to individuals, in Wilson’s case, Wilson.  Bold is one word.  Enabling the accrual of power to Wilson through the abrogation of the Constitution is another.  

So now the phraseology, largely the purview of Democrats, for naming administrations was off and running.  Theodore Roosevelt’s New Deal, Truman’s Fair Deal, JFK’s New Frontier, Johnson’s Great Society, Obama’s Hope and Change. 

And introducing Harris’s Newer, Greater, Fairer Squarer Joyer Vibe Deal from Hope and Change.   Rolls off the tongue. I should trademark this right now before some Harris operative steals it.  

Yet, amidst trying to get to the vibes, each of these contained a very serious policy menu. I have noted Wilson’s set aside of that pesky Constitution, but much of our regulatory apparatus and the Fed came from his New Freedom. We have social security from the New Deal and Medicare and Medicaid from the Great Society. The lurching, unwieldy, broken machine that is the ACA came from Hope and Change.  

Yet the Republicans were not exactly immune to the vibes stuff.  When Eisenhower left the army to become President of Columbia University in 1948, there was no clear sense of whether he was a Democrat or a Republican.  But both sides knew he could win, and thus, in 1952 he ran for the GOP. It was “I like Ike” all the way. Policies? Not a ton, but definitely a likable guy as I know from the 60th repetition in his adds. In three one-minute television commercials, the campaign utilizes this crazy new medium, and each sings the phrase “I like Ike” about 50 gazillion times.  

“Everybody likes Ike, 

bring out the banners, 

bang on the drums, 

we will take Ike to Washington.” 

Alright, it is not Leaves of Grass or Emily Dickenson, but it got the job done. What was missing? A single policy proposal.  

Again, despite the vibey thing, Ike did have some policy preferences, KC2 (Korea, Communism, and corruption). He would win the war in the first, contain the 2nd, and reduce the 3rd resulting from perceived incompetence by the Truman administration. But even here, a bit of inanity ruled. A scandal arose over whether Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s running mate, had used campaign funds for personal expenses. This charge was particularly embarrassing because of Eisenhower’s promise that his administration would be “clean as a hound’s tooth.”

 Nixon answered the allegations in a nationally televised speech on September 23. In a masterly performance, Nixon denied that he had done anything wrong detailing where all the contributions went.  He even went through his personal finances to show that though a Senator, he was not a wealthy man, far from it in face. Yet it was the middle section that everyone remembers. 

Nixon noted that one gift from an admirer was a gift given to him but now belonging to his daughters, a little dog named Checkers, and then Nixon stated he was not going to give that gift back.  The public responded to the “Checkers Speech” with an outpouring of support, and Eisenhower kept Nixon on the ticket. It was vintage Nixon. He showed the spuriousness of the claims of his opponents while portraying himself as the consummate family man.  Was Nixon really corrupt some 20 years prior to Watergate? Probably not, but he was not going to give up that damned dog.  

In 1994, one of the most vibes presidents in our history, Bill Clinton, was asked a simple question, boxers or briefs, by a person too young to vote.  It was not that Clinton was asked this question, but rather that he answered it (Briefs, if I recall correctly, and I am trying not to recall correctly). As noted at the time in 1994, “But it was clearly the underwear inquiry that brought the house down.”  “I think underwear preference tells a lot about a person,” Ms. Thompson said afterward. “People my age wear boxers . . . I had given Clinton the benefit of the doubt.”

There has always been a desire to know something about our leaders.  But when Clinton donned sunglasses and his sax on Arsenio Hall’s show in June 1992, two years before the B and B affair and amidst his run for President, it was not about trying to be relatable to common people, ala growing up in a log cabin, or being shown as a bar b que, it is was his attempt to be cool, especially in contrast to the patrician George HW Bush.  The old saw about politicians kissing babies brings to mind the vacuousness of it all.  But the point of the log cabin was that he was a commoner and could understand their problems.  The legend of politicians kissing babies was to show interest in the voters.  The point of playing the sax or underwear desires is all about the candidate and their choices.  What they are about.  

And when these types of vibes campaigns are paramount, they bring the level of stupidity to the top.  

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris: “Space is exciting! It spurs our imaginations and forces us to ask big questions. Space, it affects us all, And it connects us all.”

Ok, that was one of those V.P. things that V.P.s do, and so not the A game.  But her Democratic Nominating Speech thought about for weeks, was penned by the professionals of professionals.

Harris will save us from all those things that Republicans want: 

“The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote. With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

In the June 27 debate, which will take its place among Nixon-Kennedy debates for actual impact on an election, Joe Biden’s frailties forced him to drop out. What was missed was Trump’s relative nonperformance.  

“Just going back to Ukraine for one second, we have an ocean separating us. The European nations have spent $100 billion, or maybe more than that, less than we do. Why doesn’t he call them so you can put up your money like I did with NATO? I got them to put up hundreds of billions of dollars. The secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t – they wouldn’t have any – they were going out of business. We were spending almost 100 percent of the money we paid it.”

Oi.  For one, our ocean was not a help in 1941, but I think he means Russia is nearby.  But did he get them to pay more?  NATO members did make a commitment years ago to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024. Just nine of the military alliance’s 29 members are expected to reach or surpass that target this year—the same as under Trump.  Also, the comparison is inappropriate.  Germany spends 1.5% of its GDP, but almost all of that is spent on NATO.  The U.S. spends 3.3%, but that is spread around the world.  But these are stubborn facts, and what good are those against the impression that Trump is tough on NATO?  

A quick word about the debate and all current debates: there is idiocy in the format.  Two minutes to provide a detailed, comprehensive answer on the federal government’s role in a $24 trillion economy, immigration, or foreign affairs is dumb.  Then, a one-minute rebuttal?  

Brian Wilson, who co-wrote Good Vibrations, was not a politician.  He was not interested in tax revenue, immigration, or the happenings of the old Soviet Union. He was an entertainer (a very good one).  And so is Trump, though more in the WWE vein than the writer of What Would I Be Without You. Trump provides a vibe to a certain kind of person.  Toughness, fighter, acerbic, and even funny-again to his fans.  He is also filling a void for some Americans.  

Traditional identities, whether they be families, communities, work, or religion, have opened up a gap that is now filled by politics.  I am the last person to say politics are not necessary; they are incredibly important.  I am saying that politics cannot make up a personality.  If you get joy from a politician, you will be disappointed.  In a recent piece for National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez noted, “Don’t look to politics for hope and joy. It’s smart messaging, but it will always disappoint.” 

So, what do we have in front of us today?  It is easy to say close the border or welcome your downtrodden.  But behind this is an earnest debate about the nature, need, and future of those wishing to come to our nation.  It is well and good for Trump to say “close the border,” except, as we have seen in 2020, some Democrats will merely reopen on their term.  It is easy to quote the inscriptions on the Statue of Liberty about welcoming people with low incomes, except when that Lady was erected, there was no entitlement process, public school infrastructure, or healthcare upon which immigrants take advantage.  

What is the role of a politician?  Think it is easy to go back to the Declaration.  Live Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—our happiness, not theirs.  We do not need politicians to be our friends.  We do not need them to be our idols, our therapists, or a member of our families, And we do not need them to care FOR us.  This is different than caring about us.  In the latter, they put policies in place that enable us to make choices that will hopefully lead to prosperity.  But they also cannot save us from bad choices.  They are not our parents.  – no Mammala or Daddy Walz.  

When the once venerable, now a joke, New York Times writes an article like this immediately after the DNC convention, you know we are in trouble

“When It Comes to Food and Politics, Kamala Harris is riffing on the Recipe. From giving turkey-roasting advice to making dosa with Mindy Kaling, Ms. Harris has leaned into cooking in a way no other candidate has. She has turned cooking videos into campaign assets and has taken a particular interest in food issues like hunger and farm labor. But she also turns to cooking as a form of meditation.”

The line between vibes and policies is how we feel about them, and what they can do in terms of governance to help us enable our prosperity.    I really could care less that Kamala is a good cook or whether Trump has a low handicap.  I do care about whether they support the inalienable rights guaranteed for us in the Declaration.