Aug. 13, 2007

I wonder, if the Bushes decide against a White House wedding, whether it might not be in part in order to avoid comparisons with one that took place almost exactly 40 years ago. In 1967 Lynda Bird Johnson wed there, marrying the Marine Corps veteran and Bronze Star recipient Charles Robb. A newsreel about the event is available here. In the midst of an unpopular war, and as his own popularity gradually disintegrated, Lyndon Johnson’s daughter married a dashing example of the best the military had to offer. As her father struggles with a Johnson-like predicament, Bush’s daughter is engaged to a former aide to Karl Rove, who is also the son of a tobacco lobbyist and GOP apparatchik. (John H. Hager, coincidentally, served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor in the 1990s, while Chuck Robb was its junior senator.) There’s something appropriate about that contrast, but I doubt it’s one the President would want to highlight.

Karl Rove deserves to be remembered as the man who thought Americans should have enough education to understand his fables but not enough to doubt them.

Mr. Rove married a liberal’s faith in the potential of government to a conservative’s contempt for its actual functioning. This was the contradiction at the heart of “compassionate conservatism,” and it helps explain the tension between the president’s fine words about, say, helping those hurt by Hurricane Katrina, and his actions.

17 corpses were found in the streets of Baghdad, more than double the number during a recent Shiite festival and consequent curfew. It suggests that Shiite death squads took off a few days for the festival, but are now back to work. It is a hell of a shift.

In 2004, I was made director of museums, and from the start they started sending people loyal to al-Sadr’s party to monitor and control everything in our institution. They interfered in every single thing and changed things without our knowledge. They encouraged the staff of the department to go directly to the ministry, rather than through us. They removed people not connected to the party and put people in who were not qualified. It is worse than under Saddam.

[Teddy Roosevelt, known for the proverb,"speak softly and carry a big stick"] was much less likely to wield a big stick than to try desperately to shake hands on almost any terms. It's more like, 'Speak loudly and carry a ready handshake.'

If you look back over the last few decades, an era of politics has run its course. Both parties achieved some of their highest goals. Democrats got civil rights, women’s rights, the New Deal, and recognition of the need for a cleaner environment. Republicans got the defeat of the Soviet Union, less violent crime, lower tax rates, and welfare reform. The public agrees on this. So the issues now become: How do you deal with the terrorist threat? How do you deal with the retirement of the Baby Boomers? How do you deliver health care with people changing jobs? How do you make sure America retains its economic strength with the rise of China and India? How that plays out is something we don’t know yet.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I was born and raised in Lincoln, Illinois. In 1853, my forefathers decided to name their small community after a circuit riding attorney who had caught their fancy. While advising against the decision because"Nothing named Lincoln ever amounted to much," the tall, gangly lawyer finally agreed to their request, and he christened the town by breaking open a watermelon and sprinkling the juice on the courthouse steps. Because of the circuit, so many small towns and larger cities in Central Illinois formed a connection to Abraham Lincoln, a connection which can still be felt today.