January 24, 2008
Well, what do you know. Congress isn’t broken after all. The president isn’t an obstructionist. When the country is in crisis, the wheels of government can spin at lightning speed.
Of course, it depends on the crisis. We’ve had a crisis in Iraq for almost five years; we have an energy crisis, a climate crisis, a health-care crisis, an immigration crisis, an education crisis, and all we get is partisan deadlock. But when the economy, stupid, takes a little dip, everybody hops to it. Get that stimulus package enacted, said Treasury Secretary Paulson the other day, and "we’ll run like a bunny to carry it out."
What’s up, doc?
Proposals to reverse the present economic "downturn" — none dare call it recession just yet — are being developed by the administration and by both parties in Congress. They differ in the details — Republicans want still more tax cuts, Democrats want extended unemployment benefits — but all tout immediate income-tax rebates (apparently those too poor to pay taxes wouldn’t get anything) of something like $800 for individuals and $1600 for couples. The idea is to inject a spurt (or surge) of cash into people’s pockets, presuming they’ll spend it right away, thus increasing consumer demand and keeping employment high to meet it.
Economics 101.
Whoopee! With 800 bucks you can start up your motor home and buy enough gas to get you to, say, the Oregon border and back. Or you can visit your local furniture store and clean up at its going-out-of-business sale. You could also pay down your credit cards, contribute to your IRA, or pay the adjusted portion of your adjustable-rate mortgage and forestall foreclosure for another month or two, but those options may not be patriotic, since the government wants you to buy things.
Remember the 2001 tax rebate? During the Clinton years, the federal government had amassed a healthy surplus, and the newly-installed President Bush and his Congress, facing a bit of a downturn then too, magnanimously returned some of it to the public, who obviously could spend it more wisely. It didn’t do much for the economy, nor for the taxpayers. When I got my $300 check, I felt uncomfortable: Why wasn’t the government saving this for a rainy day? It started to rain hard after September 11.
And remember the $100 check the Congress proposed a couple years ago to help drivers cope with soaring gas prices (when they were about half of what they are now)? The politicians were enormously pleased with themselves but quickly withdrew the scheme in the face of a national guffaw: What’s a hundred bucks? people scorned; don’t just piddle with the energy crisis, do something about it.
I suspect that most Americans feel the same about the current giveaway plan. Another $145 billion in tax breaks only adds to the enormity of the national debt; what we really want is the opposite: fiscal responsibility. We want a balanced budget and prudent spending. Over the years, Bush’s rah-rah mantra of tax cuts has been met with a yawn by the people at large. Instead, there is a yearning for sacrifice that has eluded the politicians, Democrat and Republican alike. If the country really needs things, we’re willing to pay for them, as long as the rich and the corporations pay their fair share too.
Americans know that the economy doesn’t need a "jump start" — "targeted, timely, temporary," as the administration alliteratively announced — but an engine overhaul. The latest economic stimulus package is no New Deal; it’s more like "Let’s Make a Deal," where you never know what’s behind Door #1. True and lasting economic stimulus is best produced by getting necessary things done — putting people to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure, funding public transportation, encouraging investment in alternative-energy research and projects, financing affordable housing — things that benefit the nation as a whole. Tax rebates are the atomized opposite, a sprinkling of fairy-dust over the land.
We citizens want change, as the presidential candidates never tire of reminding us, but for most of them "change" is just a word. The economic stimulus package is change too — as in "pocket change." What we really want is to feel good about ourselves again, and we feel best when working together towards a common goal, for the common good.
We’d run like a bunny for that kind of change.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
POLITICIAN AS SYMBOL
January 17, 2008
At Christmas, a group of baby-boomers who had gathered for years to drive the cold winter away sat by a warm fire with eggnog and fruitcake, discussing — what else? — politics. We’re fairly like-minded people, mostly Democrats or sympathetic independents, and we marveled that a woman and an African-American had simultaneously risen as major candidates for president, and even more marvelously, without apparent acrimony. I ventured that the decades of struggle for equality may at last be paying off, that the country may have finally transcended the barriers of gender and race.
"I’m not sure that’s true," said Joanne, an advertising executive. "I believe there is both attraction and resistance to Hillary as a woman and Obama as a Black man. I’m leaning towards Obama because of his message of hope and collaboration, but because of my own experience with glass ceilings over the years, I identify with Hillary as a woman. Race and gender are not particularly evident now because nobody’s voted yet. People vote with their hearts more than their heads. Once the voting starts, things will be different."
She couldn’t have been more right, nor I more wrong.
Amidst the endless analysis of how much the tearful moment influenced the Clinton upset in New Hampshire last week, a key insight came from Melissa Harris-Lacewell, assistant professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton, who remarked in an interview on public radio here that Clinton’s show of vulnerability was a factor in the surprising shift because women finally saw her as "a symbol of themselves."
As much as any of us would like to think of our electoral decisions as a purely rational choice based on issues and positions, politics — like religion — lives to a great extent in the non-rational realm of symbol. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote that "a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider ‘unconscious’ aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained."
Symbolizing is a complex process of transference, the investing of an object, animal, or person with an identity derived from and mirroring one’s own. As with actors and other public figures, people establish relationships with politicians that are as real as those they have with people they personally know. Their love or loathing of them is passionate, though they are merely images on a screen or in print. In the intimacy of the voting booth, people make their choices intimately; they do not do this when answering questions from a telephone pollster. Programs and proposals count, of course, but the non-rational, symbolic relationship is stronger. This is not mere "likability." The candidate is endowed with the projection of the voter’s own self-image.
When it comes to presidential aspirants, the symbol is doubly potent, since the president is the symbol of the nation itself. A century ago, the sociologist Emil Durkheim observed that societies are not merely the aggregate of the individuals within them but something much larger, entities in themselves. They "exist outside the individual consciousness," he wrote, and have a consciousness of their own. Loyalty to the totem or to the flag, and to the chieftain or to the commander-in-chief, is, as Erich Fromm contended in Escape from Freedom, a way for the individual to relieve the sense of isolation by submersion in a collective identity.
Now the complex of symbols, so long suppressed, has begun to emerge, non-rational and thus exceedingly volatile. As we have seen this past week, the tiniest gesture or word can have grossly disproportionate effects. It is up to the candidates to walk the mine-field of symbol with great care.
At Christmas, a group of baby-boomers who had gathered for years to drive the cold winter away sat by a warm fire with eggnog and fruitcake, discussing — what else? — politics. We’re fairly like-minded people, mostly Democrats or sympathetic independents, and we marveled that a woman and an African-American had simultaneously risen as major candidates for president, and even more marvelously, without apparent acrimony. I ventured that the decades of struggle for equality may at last be paying off, that the country may have finally transcended the barriers of gender and race.
"I’m not sure that’s true," said Joanne, an advertising executive. "I believe there is both attraction and resistance to Hillary as a woman and Obama as a Black man. I’m leaning towards Obama because of his message of hope and collaboration, but because of my own experience with glass ceilings over the years, I identify with Hillary as a woman. Race and gender are not particularly evident now because nobody’s voted yet. People vote with their hearts more than their heads. Once the voting starts, things will be different."
She couldn’t have been more right, nor I more wrong.
Amidst the endless analysis of how much the tearful moment influenced the Clinton upset in New Hampshire last week, a key insight came from Melissa Harris-Lacewell, assistant professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton, who remarked in an interview on public radio here that Clinton’s show of vulnerability was a factor in the surprising shift because women finally saw her as "a symbol of themselves."
As much as any of us would like to think of our electoral decisions as a purely rational choice based on issues and positions, politics — like religion — lives to a great extent in the non-rational realm of symbol. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote that "a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider ‘unconscious’ aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained."
Symbolizing is a complex process of transference, the investing of an object, animal, or person with an identity derived from and mirroring one’s own. As with actors and other public figures, people establish relationships with politicians that are as real as those they have with people they personally know. Their love or loathing of them is passionate, though they are merely images on a screen or in print. In the intimacy of the voting booth, people make their choices intimately; they do not do this when answering questions from a telephone pollster. Programs and proposals count, of course, but the non-rational, symbolic relationship is stronger. This is not mere "likability." The candidate is endowed with the projection of the voter’s own self-image.
When it comes to presidential aspirants, the symbol is doubly potent, since the president is the symbol of the nation itself. A century ago, the sociologist Emil Durkheim observed that societies are not merely the aggregate of the individuals within them but something much larger, entities in themselves. They "exist outside the individual consciousness," he wrote, and have a consciousness of their own. Loyalty to the totem or to the flag, and to the chieftain or to the commander-in-chief, is, as Erich Fromm contended in Escape from Freedom, a way for the individual to relieve the sense of isolation by submersion in a collective identity.
Now the complex of symbols, so long suppressed, has begun to emerge, non-rational and thus exceedingly volatile. As we have seen this past week, the tiniest gesture or word can have grossly disproportionate effects. It is up to the candidates to walk the mine-field of symbol with great care.
THE PRIMARY PROBLEM
January 10, 2008
Just about everybody from every state except Iowa and New Hampshire agrees that the so-called "system" of presidential primaries needs reform. Actually, "reform" isn’t quite the right word, because there is hardly any form to the process to begin with. Every state is sovereign in determining the date of its primaries or caucuses, and this year’s leap-frogging to ever-earlier dates shows you how possessive they are of their prerogative.
Every state wants to be a recognizable player in the selection process — to be what Iowa and New Hampshire have become, places where candidates will invest their time and money to court the voters personally, where the media will pay them specific attention, and where the outcome will influence the dynamics of the race. For this notoriety, this momentary place in history, several states, including populous Florida and Michigan, were more than willing to forfeit all or part of their national convention delegates to defy the primary-season start date agreed upon by the Democratic and Republican national committees, February 5. Over twenty other states, fearing the penalties, piled on to February 5, inadvertently creating "Super-Duper Tuesday" and burying their hopes for uniqueness in the heap. The other twenty-some states (and other entities such as American possessions) chose later dates.
This year, those states with the courage to leap-frog may prove themselves right. Just look at tiny Wyoming. Their Republican convention held last Saturday (the Democrats held back till March 8 but probably wish they hadn’t) drew more participants than ever before and made the national news. Positioned between Iowa and New Hampshire, the vote took on far bigger proportions than their delegate count in itself could ever suggest: Mitt Romney won eight delegates and Fred Thompson, three; even the obscure Duncan Hunter picked up one. The same holds true, and then some, for Michigan and Florida, whose primaries are scheduled for January 15 and 29 respectively. Deprived entirely of voting convention delegates by the Democratic National Committee and of half of them by the Republican, they nevertheless charged forward, trusting that what amounts to a state-sponsored poll would nevertheless put them in the spotlight.
As the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses has demonstrated, the effect of the earliest votes on later ones is psychological, not mathematical. Not a single convention delegate was chosen in Iowa — that comes later at the party conventions and is not formally tied to the caucus votes — but it did not matter. It is voter sentiment, not the number of delegates, that gives a candidate momentum. And once momentum builds, as we’ve seen over the last week, subsequent elections are governed by sentiment.
If you were organizing the nomination process, how would you do it?
Over decades, countless plans have been proposed by scholars, study groups, and legislators. The simplest is a single national primary day, where the entire business would be finished in one stroke. This, of course, would eliminate the local politicking we find so charming (and occasionally so insightful) about Iowa and New Hampshire, and any momentum gained by candidates would have to come from periodic polling data prior to the election. But it might also reduce the absurd campaign spending of state-by-state primaries.
Other proposals spread the primaries over a period of months. The so-called "Delaware Plan," for example, sets four dates between March and June for approximately 13 states each, grouped by size from smallest to largest. This scheme would preserve grass-roots campaigning in the small states at the outset but include a wider representation beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.
The National Association of Secretaries of State has long endorsed regional primaries. Four clusters of adjoining states would be scheduled monthly from March through June, and the regions would rotate from last up to first over the years. Iowa and New Hampshire would retain their pride of place before the first primary date. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee recently introduced a bill to implement this system.
Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Sandy Levin of Michigan, divides the states into six regions and within them six sub-regions (designated A through F), clustered to balance out their delegate counts. The sub-regions would be chosen by lottery each election year to occupy six primary days from March through June. The primaries would thus be distributed evenly across the country, with an equal number of delegates at stake each time. This approach would allow candidates to manage their resources more effectively and make the momentum factor more gradual.
It is alluring to think of a national policy to order the nominee-selection process, but this may be just a dream. Over 300 primary-reform bills have been introduced in Congress over the years; all have thusfar faltered. Even if one did become law, it might prove to be unconstitutional, since the primaries ultimately involve the appointment of presidential electors, which the Constitution specifically leaves to the states.
You’d think that the Democratic and Republican National Committees would be able to implement a national plan, but all they can do is recommend and cajole, and as we’ve seen this year, even cajoling doesn’t work. Only a consensus among all or most of the states could do it.
But don’t hold your breath.
Just about everybody from every state except Iowa and New Hampshire agrees that the so-called "system" of presidential primaries needs reform. Actually, "reform" isn’t quite the right word, because there is hardly any form to the process to begin with. Every state is sovereign in determining the date of its primaries or caucuses, and this year’s leap-frogging to ever-earlier dates shows you how possessive they are of their prerogative.
Every state wants to be a recognizable player in the selection process — to be what Iowa and New Hampshire have become, places where candidates will invest their time and money to court the voters personally, where the media will pay them specific attention, and where the outcome will influence the dynamics of the race. For this notoriety, this momentary place in history, several states, including populous Florida and Michigan, were more than willing to forfeit all or part of their national convention delegates to defy the primary-season start date agreed upon by the Democratic and Republican national committees, February 5. Over twenty other states, fearing the penalties, piled on to February 5, inadvertently creating "Super-Duper Tuesday" and burying their hopes for uniqueness in the heap. The other twenty-some states (and other entities such as American possessions) chose later dates.
This year, those states with the courage to leap-frog may prove themselves right. Just look at tiny Wyoming. Their Republican convention held last Saturday (the Democrats held back till March 8 but probably wish they hadn’t) drew more participants than ever before and made the national news. Positioned between Iowa and New Hampshire, the vote took on far bigger proportions than their delegate count in itself could ever suggest: Mitt Romney won eight delegates and Fred Thompson, three; even the obscure Duncan Hunter picked up one. The same holds true, and then some, for Michigan and Florida, whose primaries are scheduled for January 15 and 29 respectively. Deprived entirely of voting convention delegates by the Democratic National Committee and of half of them by the Republican, they nevertheless charged forward, trusting that what amounts to a state-sponsored poll would nevertheless put them in the spotlight.
As the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses has demonstrated, the effect of the earliest votes on later ones is psychological, not mathematical. Not a single convention delegate was chosen in Iowa — that comes later at the party conventions and is not formally tied to the caucus votes — but it did not matter. It is voter sentiment, not the number of delegates, that gives a candidate momentum. And once momentum builds, as we’ve seen over the last week, subsequent elections are governed by sentiment.
If you were organizing the nomination process, how would you do it?
Over decades, countless plans have been proposed by scholars, study groups, and legislators. The simplest is a single national primary day, where the entire business would be finished in one stroke. This, of course, would eliminate the local politicking we find so charming (and occasionally so insightful) about Iowa and New Hampshire, and any momentum gained by candidates would have to come from periodic polling data prior to the election. But it might also reduce the absurd campaign spending of state-by-state primaries.
Other proposals spread the primaries over a period of months. The so-called "Delaware Plan," for example, sets four dates between March and June for approximately 13 states each, grouped by size from smallest to largest. This scheme would preserve grass-roots campaigning in the small states at the outset but include a wider representation beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.
The National Association of Secretaries of State has long endorsed regional primaries. Four clusters of adjoining states would be scheduled monthly from March through June, and the regions would rotate from last up to first over the years. Iowa and New Hampshire would retain their pride of place before the first primary date. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee recently introduced a bill to implement this system.
Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Sandy Levin of Michigan, divides the states into six regions and within them six sub-regions (designated A through F), clustered to balance out their delegate counts. The sub-regions would be chosen by lottery each election year to occupy six primary days from March through June. The primaries would thus be distributed evenly across the country, with an equal number of delegates at stake each time. This approach would allow candidates to manage their resources more effectively and make the momentum factor more gradual.
It is alluring to think of a national policy to order the nominee-selection process, but this may be just a dream. Over 300 primary-reform bills have been introduced in Congress over the years; all have thusfar faltered. Even if one did become law, it might prove to be unconstitutional, since the primaries ultimately involve the appointment of presidential electors, which the Constitution specifically leaves to the states.
You’d think that the Democratic and Republican National Committees would be able to implement a national plan, but all they can do is recommend and cajole, and as we’ve seen this year, even cajoling doesn’t work. Only a consensus among all or most of the states could do it.
But don’t hold your breath.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
January 3, 2008
The horses are at the starting gates at last. Late tonight or early tomorrow we’ll find out who first emerge from the presidential packs in quirky Iowa. Tuesday it’s New Hampshire, and in another month, after what they’re calling Super-Duper Tuesday on February 5, we’ll have the winners — or will we?
Maybe not. Despite months and months (and months) of relentless campaigning, millions and millions (and millions) of media dollars, countless talk-show appearances, and all those mostly silly debates, polls of both parties show no breakaways. In fact, as primary time approaches, the playing field is leveler now than it was months ago: Obama has gained on Clinton, with Edwards still nipping at them both; Huckabee is overtaking Romney, Giuliani is slipping, and McCain, once deemed good as gone, is starting a surge (in the conventional sense).
In their interviews, the polling people always ask: "If the election were held today, whom would you vote for?" Far more than in previous years, in this campaign the operative word is "today," as voter priorities shift like desert sands. Early in the year, as the candidates were declaring and debating, the burning issue was Iraq. Now that American casualties are down, the occupation of Iraq (why does anybody still call it a war?) has become just another long-term taxpayer’s burden, a Giant Earmark by a president who vetoes spending bills with piddly little earmarks for cultural centers and bridge repair. That, coupled with the administration’s newfound negotiating with the other two points on the Axis of Evil, North Korea and Iran, tamped down the international tension level and halted the momentum of the tough-on-terror candidates, Clinton on one side and Mr. 9/11 on the other. Obama of the New Ideas (though I’m not sure I’ve heard any) and the Happy Christian Camper Huckabee moved forward as domestic issues began to dominate. Last week’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan may reverse this trend and allow a point of entry for the foreign-policy experts from the "second tier," as the press have named the hopeless — McCain, Biden, and Richardson.
The next few months will be the most exciting in decades of presidential politics. With the "first-tier" candidates in both parties now running neck-and-neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, there will be no bellwethers from these states this time. Every single vote in January (even tiny Wyoming’s Republican convention on January 5) will be watched closely, not for delegate count (Michigan’s primaries on January 15 have been denied delegates by both the Democratic and Republican national committees for jumping the gun on Super-Duper Tuesday) but for signs of a tipping point toward a nominee. Then comes February 5, when over 20 states hold primaries or caucuses.
My bet is that not even February 5, nor the several primaries and caucuses that follow it, will determine the nominee of either party. The committed will find no reason to switch, and the undecided will spread their votes more or less evenly over the slate. By convention time this summer, no candidate will have amassed enough delegates to enter as the winner. Then Old-time Politics, the kind we haven’t seen in at least 35 years, will take over: All that ad money down the drain, only to have the nominee selected in smokeless rooms and with multiple floor votes. The convention will become the high drama it once was.
This outcome is likely among the Republicans because none of the contenders is satisfactory to them. Huckabee, the Christian candidate, is suspect by many evangelicals for his leftward leanings on immigration and incarceration. Giuliani, the thrice-married apostate Catholic trying to live down his longtime liberality on gays, guns, abortion, and immigration, will never be able to woo enough of the party base. Romney, the Eastern moderate just recently converted to conservatism, may be rejected not as a Mormon but as an untrustworthy opportunist. And McCain the Maverick, though probably the most electable in November, has that long history of rankling the rank-and-file on fundamental issues. In the December 20-26 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in Iowa and New Hampshire, only 42% of Iowa’s Republican voters and 35% of New Hampshire’s said they could support any of the five major candidates.
Here the Democrats fare much better: In the same poll, 61% in Iowa and 51% in New Hampshire said they could support Clinton, Edwards, or Obama equally. This too may lead to an even distribution of delegates. Because there is so little difference among the front-runners in terms of policy, primary and caucus voters may find no reason to switch from their personal favorites.
This leaves the most tantalizing prospect of all: the Dark Horse. For the Republicans, a hopelessly deadlocked convention could well draft Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, even though he may be running as an independent. Non-ideological, pragmatic, and untarred by the dismal Bush "legacy," he may come to be seen as the best person to unite the party and give it a chance to pull off an unlikely victory.
For the Democrats, someone may be called upon to break a Clinton-Obama impasse. Dodd and Richardson (but not Edwards) have ample credibility to do it. The present list of candidates is so harmonious and competent in foreign and domestic policy that a cabinet is already pre-formed; it only seeks a head.
After a year of campaign tedium, something truly exciting is about to happen. Let the games begin!
The horses are at the starting gates at last. Late tonight or early tomorrow we’ll find out who first emerge from the presidential packs in quirky Iowa. Tuesday it’s New Hampshire, and in another month, after what they’re calling Super-Duper Tuesday on February 5, we’ll have the winners — or will we?
Maybe not. Despite months and months (and months) of relentless campaigning, millions and millions (and millions) of media dollars, countless talk-show appearances, and all those mostly silly debates, polls of both parties show no breakaways. In fact, as primary time approaches, the playing field is leveler now than it was months ago: Obama has gained on Clinton, with Edwards still nipping at them both; Huckabee is overtaking Romney, Giuliani is slipping, and McCain, once deemed good as gone, is starting a surge (in the conventional sense).
In their interviews, the polling people always ask: "If the election were held today, whom would you vote for?" Far more than in previous years, in this campaign the operative word is "today," as voter priorities shift like desert sands. Early in the year, as the candidates were declaring and debating, the burning issue was Iraq. Now that American casualties are down, the occupation of Iraq (why does anybody still call it a war?) has become just another long-term taxpayer’s burden, a Giant Earmark by a president who vetoes spending bills with piddly little earmarks for cultural centers and bridge repair. That, coupled with the administration’s newfound negotiating with the other two points on the Axis of Evil, North Korea and Iran, tamped down the international tension level and halted the momentum of the tough-on-terror candidates, Clinton on one side and Mr. 9/11 on the other. Obama of the New Ideas (though I’m not sure I’ve heard any) and the Happy Christian Camper Huckabee moved forward as domestic issues began to dominate. Last week’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan may reverse this trend and allow a point of entry for the foreign-policy experts from the "second tier," as the press have named the hopeless — McCain, Biden, and Richardson.
The next few months will be the most exciting in decades of presidential politics. With the "first-tier" candidates in both parties now running neck-and-neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, there will be no bellwethers from these states this time. Every single vote in January (even tiny Wyoming’s Republican convention on January 5) will be watched closely, not for delegate count (Michigan’s primaries on January 15 have been denied delegates by both the Democratic and Republican national committees for jumping the gun on Super-Duper Tuesday) but for signs of a tipping point toward a nominee. Then comes February 5, when over 20 states hold primaries or caucuses.
My bet is that not even February 5, nor the several primaries and caucuses that follow it, will determine the nominee of either party. The committed will find no reason to switch, and the undecided will spread their votes more or less evenly over the slate. By convention time this summer, no candidate will have amassed enough delegates to enter as the winner. Then Old-time Politics, the kind we haven’t seen in at least 35 years, will take over: All that ad money down the drain, only to have the nominee selected in smokeless rooms and with multiple floor votes. The convention will become the high drama it once was.
This outcome is likely among the Republicans because none of the contenders is satisfactory to them. Huckabee, the Christian candidate, is suspect by many evangelicals for his leftward leanings on immigration and incarceration. Giuliani, the thrice-married apostate Catholic trying to live down his longtime liberality on gays, guns, abortion, and immigration, will never be able to woo enough of the party base. Romney, the Eastern moderate just recently converted to conservatism, may be rejected not as a Mormon but as an untrustworthy opportunist. And McCain the Maverick, though probably the most electable in November, has that long history of rankling the rank-and-file on fundamental issues. In the December 20-26 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in Iowa and New Hampshire, only 42% of Iowa’s Republican voters and 35% of New Hampshire’s said they could support any of the five major candidates.
Here the Democrats fare much better: In the same poll, 61% in Iowa and 51% in New Hampshire said they could support Clinton, Edwards, or Obama equally. This too may lead to an even distribution of delegates. Because there is so little difference among the front-runners in terms of policy, primary and caucus voters may find no reason to switch from their personal favorites.
This leaves the most tantalizing prospect of all: the Dark Horse. For the Republicans, a hopelessly deadlocked convention could well draft Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, even though he may be running as an independent. Non-ideological, pragmatic, and untarred by the dismal Bush "legacy," he may come to be seen as the best person to unite the party and give it a chance to pull off an unlikely victory.
For the Democrats, someone may be called upon to break a Clinton-Obama impasse. Dodd and Richardson (but not Edwards) have ample credibility to do it. The present list of candidates is so harmonious and competent in foreign and domestic policy that a cabinet is already pre-formed; it only seeks a head.
After a year of campaign tedium, something truly exciting is about to happen. Let the games begin!
FAITH IN AMERICA
December 20, 2007
If there’s any reason to reject a candidate for president, it’s for sloppy thinking. You not only want a person with proven executive skills; you want one with the ability to comprehend practical issues of policy and abstract issues of theory and clearly think them through. For the last seven years we’ve had a president whose decisions seem to have erupted from unreasoned moral or ideological impulse or even self-admitted commands from a higher power. It is historically true that Americans are derisive of intellectuals, and so it’s no wonder that in the 2000 election half the voters laughed with George Bush for his affability and sentence-mangling and the other half laughed at Al Gore for his pedantry and obsessive mustering of facts. Now Gore has won the Peace Prize, and Bush has won the War Prize.
Judging from his "Faith in America" speech of December 6, publicized as a major address, Mitt Romney may not be the candidate to consider. Rather than a cogent exposition of the role of religion in public life, it is a series of disjointed and often contradictory pieties and platitudes that does little to further discourse on this important topic. Analysis of the speech would make a good assignment in a course in logic or expository writing.
Because Romney’s speech had a paradoxical purpose — on one hand to dispel suspicions that his Mormon faith would rule his political life, and on the other to burnish his credentials with the evangelical bloc whose faith rules their political life — it’s no wonder he’s conflicted. Among his snippets of thought: He believes in "religious liberty," but only for the religious; if "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom," what about the freedom not to believe? He believes in the separation of church and state, but also believes some people have taken it "well beyond its original meaning, . . . intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism." He asserts that the authority of churches "is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin," and yet he wants "judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests." Ultimately, he tries to reconcile these opposites by reducing the God of all religions to a smiley-faced "Creator" who bestows liberty and establishes a "common creed of moral convictions," and whom America should acknowledge "on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history."
What kind of a God is that?
Romney labors to assert that this nation was founded on religious faith, but any recent reading on the genesis of the Republic shows quite clearly just how skittish the Founders were of religion-inspired governmental systems. They only gave a nod to God, which to most was an abstract moral force, more natural than divine. Jefferson’s effort to purge the New Testament of "superstition" by scissoring out the religious passages and leaving only the ethical ones reflects the general belief of his colleagues. Had they escaped their own time, they’d have easily disposed of God entirely. Jefferson’s work, the Declaration of Independence, refers to a "creator" and "divine providence," but these are terms more philosophical than religious; when he writes about "the laws of nature and of nature’s God," God comes second. And when it came to writing the Constitution, the Founders refused to mention God at all; it is "we the people" who ordain and establish it.
Religion is a briar patch in a pluralistic society, and few of its own social goals have been accomplished by invoking it. The abortion debate is a prime example. By framing their position in religious terms, it has been impossible for the anti-abortion movement to make a convincing case either in courts of law or in the mind of the public at large. The critical philosophical questions on the nature and protectability of human life can rarely be discussed when religious absolutes overwhelm them.
To my mind, the most successful attempt of a religious body to articulate a universal ethical stance is the Catholic Church’s teaching on social justice. Because the Church had a fully-developed philosophical tradition parallel to its theological one, it was able to set forth social principles that were accessible and understandable by anyone, religious or not. Beginning with Pope Leo XIII in 1891, several popes and councils of bishops developed a social theory based on the dignity of the person, human rights, and the common good. While God was acknowledged as the source of order in nature and society, the documents up through Vatican Council II (1962-1965) avoided scriptural and sectarian references. After Vatican II, Catholic social teaching as presented by Popes Paul and John Paul II took a more biblical and theological approach, which, I believe, undercut their effectiveness to the wider public.
Toward the end of his speech, Romney says that "we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies" — a statement that, like many of the rest, appears out of nowhere; nothing he’d said before either predicted or substantiated it. Would that it were so, but unfortunately religion rarely allies itself with reason in the current social climate.
It is all so much shouting and posturing, and Romney hasn’t done much to clear the air.
If there’s any reason to reject a candidate for president, it’s for sloppy thinking. You not only want a person with proven executive skills; you want one with the ability to comprehend practical issues of policy and abstract issues of theory and clearly think them through. For the last seven years we’ve had a president whose decisions seem to have erupted from unreasoned moral or ideological impulse or even self-admitted commands from a higher power. It is historically true that Americans are derisive of intellectuals, and so it’s no wonder that in the 2000 election half the voters laughed with George Bush for his affability and sentence-mangling and the other half laughed at Al Gore for his pedantry and obsessive mustering of facts. Now Gore has won the Peace Prize, and Bush has won the War Prize.
Judging from his "Faith in America" speech of December 6, publicized as a major address, Mitt Romney may not be the candidate to consider. Rather than a cogent exposition of the role of religion in public life, it is a series of disjointed and often contradictory pieties and platitudes that does little to further discourse on this important topic. Analysis of the speech would make a good assignment in a course in logic or expository writing.
Because Romney’s speech had a paradoxical purpose — on one hand to dispel suspicions that his Mormon faith would rule his political life, and on the other to burnish his credentials with the evangelical bloc whose faith rules their political life — it’s no wonder he’s conflicted. Among his snippets of thought: He believes in "religious liberty," but only for the religious; if "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom," what about the freedom not to believe? He believes in the separation of church and state, but also believes some people have taken it "well beyond its original meaning, . . . intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism." He asserts that the authority of churches "is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin," and yet he wants "judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests." Ultimately, he tries to reconcile these opposites by reducing the God of all religions to a smiley-faced "Creator" who bestows liberty and establishes a "common creed of moral convictions," and whom America should acknowledge "on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history."
What kind of a God is that?
Romney labors to assert that this nation was founded on religious faith, but any recent reading on the genesis of the Republic shows quite clearly just how skittish the Founders were of religion-inspired governmental systems. They only gave a nod to God, which to most was an abstract moral force, more natural than divine. Jefferson’s effort to purge the New Testament of "superstition" by scissoring out the religious passages and leaving only the ethical ones reflects the general belief of his colleagues. Had they escaped their own time, they’d have easily disposed of God entirely. Jefferson’s work, the Declaration of Independence, refers to a "creator" and "divine providence," but these are terms more philosophical than religious; when he writes about "the laws of nature and of nature’s God," God comes second. And when it came to writing the Constitution, the Founders refused to mention God at all; it is "we the people" who ordain and establish it.
Religion is a briar patch in a pluralistic society, and few of its own social goals have been accomplished by invoking it. The abortion debate is a prime example. By framing their position in religious terms, it has been impossible for the anti-abortion movement to make a convincing case either in courts of law or in the mind of the public at large. The critical philosophical questions on the nature and protectability of human life can rarely be discussed when religious absolutes overwhelm them.
To my mind, the most successful attempt of a religious body to articulate a universal ethical stance is the Catholic Church’s teaching on social justice. Because the Church had a fully-developed philosophical tradition parallel to its theological one, it was able to set forth social principles that were accessible and understandable by anyone, religious or not. Beginning with Pope Leo XIII in 1891, several popes and councils of bishops developed a social theory based on the dignity of the person, human rights, and the common good. While God was acknowledged as the source of order in nature and society, the documents up through Vatican Council II (1962-1965) avoided scriptural and sectarian references. After Vatican II, Catholic social teaching as presented by Popes Paul and John Paul II took a more biblical and theological approach, which, I believe, undercut their effectiveness to the wider public.
Toward the end of his speech, Romney says that "we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies" — a statement that, like many of the rest, appears out of nowhere; nothing he’d said before either predicted or substantiated it. Would that it were so, but unfortunately religion rarely allies itself with reason in the current social climate.
It is all so much shouting and posturing, and Romney hasn’t done much to clear the air.
NO JACK KENNEDY
December 13, 2007
Governor, you’re no Jack Kennedy.
Last week, Mitt Romney got close to Houston to deliver his update of "the religion speech" presidential candidate Kennedy made in September of 1960. Things were just a little different, in several respects. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, an audience deeply suspicious of his Roman Catholicism; Romney appeared at the George H. W. Bush Library 40 miles out of town, to a hand-picked crowd of friends and supporters. Kennedy fielded questions from the ministers; Romney took none. And in terms of substance, Kennedy presented a clear and unequivocal position; Romney’s was murky and often contradictory.
Of course, the times were different too. Nearly 50 years later, it is almost impossible to conceive how real a threat to "American values" the Catholic hierarchy appeared to be, not only among conservative Protestants but among liberal intellectuals as well. In an article in the journal The Historian (March 33, 2001, available at www.encyclopedia.com), Thomas Carty summarizes the concerns of Paul Blanshard, a civil libertarian lawyer and author, in his 1960 book, God and Man in Washington: "Seeking to expose Vatican interference in U.S. public policy, Blanshard defined six particular points of contention with Catholicism — state support of Catholic schools, censorship of movies and books, discrimination against Protestants and Jews in mixed marriages, segregation of Catholic children by schools, a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, and the banning of birth control in Catholic hospitals — and challenged voters to consider whether a Catholic presidential candidate would support the Vatican’s stated positions on these issues."
Two of these concerns — government aid to religious schools and the rights of Catholic health-care facilities and insurance plans to refuse to supply contraceptives (and now, tellingly, to perform abortions, which at the time was universally prohibited by state statutes) — are legitimate Constitutional questions still being debated today. The others turned out to be straw men: Now we have an ambassador to the Vatican, Catholic schools have many non-Catholics looking for a better education, mixed marriages include couples of the same sex, and the movie industry censors itself.
Kennedy took on these arguments by fighting fire with fire, completely embracing the civil-libertarian position of Blanshard: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote." The sword, he noted, can cut both ways: "Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you." Religious liberty implies that the presidency is "a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group."
His position on religion and public office was simple: "I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair." Regarding ethical issues that religious leaders may lobby government to regulate — his examples are "birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject" — "I will make my decision in accordance with . . . what my conscience tells me to be the national interest."
Kennedy could quite comfortably take this position because he didn’t care much what the pope thought anyway. Carty cites an alleged quote by Jacqueline Kennedy at the time: "I think it is unfair for Jack to be opposed because he is a Catholic. After all, he’s such a poor Catholic. Now if it were [his brother] Bobby: He never misses mass and prays all the time."
The strategy of the speech was convincing. The opposition to Kennedy as "the Catholic candidate" (rather than, as he said, "the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic") was stanched, and the Catholic question quickly evaporated.
Romney’s task, at least at this stage of his campaign, is only half like Kennedy’s. To beat Mike Huckabee at his own game in Iowa next month, he has both to allay suspicions that he is taking orders from the Mormon hierarchy in Temple Square and to affirm that he too is a "Christian candidate." It’s a bouncy tightrope to walk, and should he win the Republican nomination, he will then have to jump to a bouncier one, explaining how a Christian candidate can be everybody’s candidate too. If Huckabee wins, he’ll have that jump to make as well.
Taking one aspect of the JFK side, he asserts that "no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions." But how authentic is that? After all, the leaders of the evangelical churches have been exerting explicit influence on politicians for the last quarter-century, on abortion rights, gay marriage, stem-cell research, and teaching creationism, among others. (The Mormon church, in fact, has been far less invasive on these issues.) Indeed, Romney himself has had to reverse his liberal stance on abortion to curry favor with the evangelical bloc. If, as he says, "Americans do not respect believers of convenience," how much respect should Americans owe him?
The tightrope really begins to bounce when he addresses the question of privacy in religious matters. On one hand, he asserts that no candidate should have to "describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines," calling this "the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution." This is flatly absurd. Rather, the reverse is true: In this era of promotional candor about candidates’ personal lives, it only makes sense for them to articulate their specific beliefs rather than put forth the usual saccharine generalities most of them use to establish their credentials with religious voters. Romney himself could help defuse anti-Mormon sentiment by bringing his religion’s fundamental beliefs to light. And yet, while avoiding his own religion on Constitutional grounds, he felt no qualms about one unabashed audience-appealing credo: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind."
After these gyrations, he turns to the other hand: Religion is not "merely a private affair with no place in public life." The "Constitution rests," he says, on "the foundation of faith," and true faith to him transcends the sectarian; it is "a common creed of moral convictions" harmoniously shared by all religions — "our nation’s symphony of faith." The only problem is that it’s not true: Look, for example, at how the Episcopalians are tearing their church into shreds over gay marriage, an issue the evangelicals have thrust into "the public square."
The murkiness of his position may be inadvertently clarified by his concluding story about the First Continental Congress, whose members quarreled over offering official prayers for guidance. "Then Sam Adams rose," Romney states, "and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character as long as they were a patriot."
God at the service of politics. Jack Kennedy may be turning in his grave.
Governor, you’re no Jack Kennedy.
Last week, Mitt Romney got close to Houston to deliver his update of "the religion speech" presidential candidate Kennedy made in September of 1960. Things were just a little different, in several respects. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, an audience deeply suspicious of his Roman Catholicism; Romney appeared at the George H. W. Bush Library 40 miles out of town, to a hand-picked crowd of friends and supporters. Kennedy fielded questions from the ministers; Romney took none. And in terms of substance, Kennedy presented a clear and unequivocal position; Romney’s was murky and often contradictory.
Of course, the times were different too. Nearly 50 years later, it is almost impossible to conceive how real a threat to "American values" the Catholic hierarchy appeared to be, not only among conservative Protestants but among liberal intellectuals as well. In an article in the journal The Historian (March 33, 2001, available at www.encyclopedia.com), Thomas Carty summarizes the concerns of Paul Blanshard, a civil libertarian lawyer and author, in his 1960 book, God and Man in Washington: "Seeking to expose Vatican interference in U.S. public policy, Blanshard defined six particular points of contention with Catholicism — state support of Catholic schools, censorship of movies and books, discrimination against Protestants and Jews in mixed marriages, segregation of Catholic children by schools, a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, and the banning of birth control in Catholic hospitals — and challenged voters to consider whether a Catholic presidential candidate would support the Vatican’s stated positions on these issues."
Two of these concerns — government aid to religious schools and the rights of Catholic health-care facilities and insurance plans to refuse to supply contraceptives (and now, tellingly, to perform abortions, which at the time was universally prohibited by state statutes) — are legitimate Constitutional questions still being debated today. The others turned out to be straw men: Now we have an ambassador to the Vatican, Catholic schools have many non-Catholics looking for a better education, mixed marriages include couples of the same sex, and the movie industry censors itself.
Kennedy took on these arguments by fighting fire with fire, completely embracing the civil-libertarian position of Blanshard: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote." The sword, he noted, can cut both ways: "Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you." Religious liberty implies that the presidency is "a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group."
His position on religion and public office was simple: "I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair." Regarding ethical issues that religious leaders may lobby government to regulate — his examples are "birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject" — "I will make my decision in accordance with . . . what my conscience tells me to be the national interest."
Kennedy could quite comfortably take this position because he didn’t care much what the pope thought anyway. Carty cites an alleged quote by Jacqueline Kennedy at the time: "I think it is unfair for Jack to be opposed because he is a Catholic. After all, he’s such a poor Catholic. Now if it were [his brother] Bobby: He never misses mass and prays all the time."
The strategy of the speech was convincing. The opposition to Kennedy as "the Catholic candidate" (rather than, as he said, "the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic") was stanched, and the Catholic question quickly evaporated.
Romney’s task, at least at this stage of his campaign, is only half like Kennedy’s. To beat Mike Huckabee at his own game in Iowa next month, he has both to allay suspicions that he is taking orders from the Mormon hierarchy in Temple Square and to affirm that he too is a "Christian candidate." It’s a bouncy tightrope to walk, and should he win the Republican nomination, he will then have to jump to a bouncier one, explaining how a Christian candidate can be everybody’s candidate too. If Huckabee wins, he’ll have that jump to make as well.
Taking one aspect of the JFK side, he asserts that "no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions." But how authentic is that? After all, the leaders of the evangelical churches have been exerting explicit influence on politicians for the last quarter-century, on abortion rights, gay marriage, stem-cell research, and teaching creationism, among others. (The Mormon church, in fact, has been far less invasive on these issues.) Indeed, Romney himself has had to reverse his liberal stance on abortion to curry favor with the evangelical bloc. If, as he says, "Americans do not respect believers of convenience," how much respect should Americans owe him?
The tightrope really begins to bounce when he addresses the question of privacy in religious matters. On one hand, he asserts that no candidate should have to "describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines," calling this "the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution." This is flatly absurd. Rather, the reverse is true: In this era of promotional candor about candidates’ personal lives, it only makes sense for them to articulate their specific beliefs rather than put forth the usual saccharine generalities most of them use to establish their credentials with religious voters. Romney himself could help defuse anti-Mormon sentiment by bringing his religion’s fundamental beliefs to light. And yet, while avoiding his own religion on Constitutional grounds, he felt no qualms about one unabashed audience-appealing credo: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind."
After these gyrations, he turns to the other hand: Religion is not "merely a private affair with no place in public life." The "Constitution rests," he says, on "the foundation of faith," and true faith to him transcends the sectarian; it is "a common creed of moral convictions" harmoniously shared by all religions — "our nation’s symphony of faith." The only problem is that it’s not true: Look, for example, at how the Episcopalians are tearing their church into shreds over gay marriage, an issue the evangelicals have thrust into "the public square."
The murkiness of his position may be inadvertently clarified by his concluding story about the First Continental Congress, whose members quarreled over offering official prayers for guidance. "Then Sam Adams rose," Romney states, "and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character as long as they were a patriot."
God at the service of politics. Jack Kennedy may be turning in his grave.
FABLES OF BEES
November 29, 2007
In last week’s column I pointed out how unrelated Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie is to actual honeybee biology and sociology. He and his storyboarders have surely seen as many nature films on honeybees as their children have, and even helped them with their homework on bees in their natural science and ecology classes. It’s not that they were ignorant, it’s just that they had this funny idea about a bunch of guys bucking the system and saving the planet, and decided to dress them up in bee suits. Plus, they had all those wretched old bee-puns they thought were too damned hilarious to keep to themselves.
There’s nothing new in turning bees into tiny people. Almost from the beginning of thought, human beings have regarded the beehive as an image of what their own society is or could be, a natural model of public life and private virtue.
In ancient Greece and Rome, beekeeping had already become something of an industry. Colonies were hived in clay vessels and in hollowed-out logs and carted from orchard to orchard to pollinate plants and yield different-flavored honeys. And although beekeepers got their honey by gouging it out of the hive much as bears do, they learned a great deal about bee society in the process. In the fourth century B.C., the philosopher and natural scientist Aristotle wrote extensively and quite accurately about honeybees. The Roman poet Virgil was fascinated by these insects; his father was a professional beekeeper with hundreds of hives. In his Latin verse treatise on agriculture, The Georgics, he describes honeybee society as ruled by a "king" whose "one Will keeps all the bees secure." "He is the guardian of their labor," he wrote. "They all admire him and surround him, roaring deeply. They crowd around him and often lift him on their shoulders. They throw their bodies down in war, and through their wounds seek a beautiful death."
He wrote those words in the first century B.C., during the reign of Emperor Augustus Caesar. Is there any connection?
In medieval Europe, honeybees became icons of the spiritual life. It was generally known that all the worker bees are female, but it was impossible to determine for certain just how they reproduced. Most authorities asserted that they generated offspring asexually, becoming fertile by eating the pollen of flowers and regurgitating it as baby bees. One chant from eleventh-century Milan, used at the liturgy to praise the Easter candle, puts it more poetically: "They conceive by mouth and give birth by mouth; with a chaste body, not from foul desire, they copulate. Then, preserving their virginity, they generate offspring. They are called mothers, but they remain intact; they generate children but do not know husbands." A similar chant from Rome proclaims: "O truly marvelous bee, whose sex the male does not violate nor the fetus shatter, nor does bearing children destroy her chastity! It is just as holy Mary conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin."
This charming view of honeybee life eroded during the Renaissance and Reformation. Scientists eventually discovered that the queen bee, hardly chaste, mates with multiple drones and produces all the offspring of the colony. Still, writers could not resist political allegory, however far-fetched. Protestants enlisted the bees into their anti-Catholic screeds; a 17th-century Flemish pamphlet, The Beehive of the Romish Church, shows the pope as king-bee living inside his own (beehive-shaped) papal tiara, exacting honey-money from his apian bishops, priests, monks and peasants.
In 1609, an English cleric, Charles Butler, published The Feminine Monarchie, an ode to the late Virgin Queen Elizabeth: "We must not call the Queen ‘Rex’; the Bee-state is an amazonian or feminine kingdom," he wrote in his preface.
As political and economic theory developed in Enlightenment Britain, bees were often employed either as exemplars or as foils. In 1705, an expatriate Dutchman, Bernard de Mandeville, wrote The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest, a pamphlet in verse whose invisible-hand thesis presaged and perhaps influenced Adam Smith’s. The bees in a colony all work for themselves; when the gods suddenly make them altruistic, the entire economy of the hive collapses. He summarized the moral of his story thus: "Then leave complaints: Fools only strive / To make a Great, an Honest Hive. / To enjoy the world’s Conveniencies (sic), / Be fam’d in War, yet live in Ease, / Without great Vices, is a vain / Eutopia seated in the Brain."
The examples are endless, but one last one may be relevant to our present political debate: the pervasive image of the beehive in the Mormon Church. Founder Joseph Smith took the bee (which the Book of Mormon names deseret) as the central symbol of his new community of Latter-Day Saints. When his successor Brigham Young settled the land that would become Utah, he called it Deseret, and Mormon temples are lavishly adorned with beehive carvings to this day. In 1881, Salt Lake City’s newspaper, the Deseret News, described the beehive as "a significant representation of the industry, harmony, order and frugality of the people, and of the sweet results of their toil, union, and intelligent cooperation." You may wonder if Mitt Romney has any thoughts on the subject.
Honeybee society has rarely been seen by humans as a democracy, though much recent research indicates that in nature it is not the queen that makes the crucial decisions in the colony but the collective sense of the workers themselves: They are the ones who apportion the various hive duties, regulate the temperature inside the hive, and decide when to replace a failing queen.
Bees, we must suppose, do not choose their form of government. They are meticulously ruled by a genetic code shaped and constantly modified by two million years of experience. It is interesting to speculate just how much human social and political structures, so comparatively late in coming, are driven by our own genes.
Move over, Seinfeld. More fascinating, and substantive, bee stories are surely on the way.
In last week’s column I pointed out how unrelated Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie is to actual honeybee biology and sociology. He and his storyboarders have surely seen as many nature films on honeybees as their children have, and even helped them with their homework on bees in their natural science and ecology classes. It’s not that they were ignorant, it’s just that they had this funny idea about a bunch of guys bucking the system and saving the planet, and decided to dress them up in bee suits. Plus, they had all those wretched old bee-puns they thought were too damned hilarious to keep to themselves.
There’s nothing new in turning bees into tiny people. Almost from the beginning of thought, human beings have regarded the beehive as an image of what their own society is or could be, a natural model of public life and private virtue.
In ancient Greece and Rome, beekeeping had already become something of an industry. Colonies were hived in clay vessels and in hollowed-out logs and carted from orchard to orchard to pollinate plants and yield different-flavored honeys. And although beekeepers got their honey by gouging it out of the hive much as bears do, they learned a great deal about bee society in the process. In the fourth century B.C., the philosopher and natural scientist Aristotle wrote extensively and quite accurately about honeybees. The Roman poet Virgil was fascinated by these insects; his father was a professional beekeeper with hundreds of hives. In his Latin verse treatise on agriculture, The Georgics, he describes honeybee society as ruled by a "king" whose "one Will keeps all the bees secure." "He is the guardian of their labor," he wrote. "They all admire him and surround him, roaring deeply. They crowd around him and often lift him on their shoulders. They throw their bodies down in war, and through their wounds seek a beautiful death."
He wrote those words in the first century B.C., during the reign of Emperor Augustus Caesar. Is there any connection?
In medieval Europe, honeybees became icons of the spiritual life. It was generally known that all the worker bees are female, but it was impossible to determine for certain just how they reproduced. Most authorities asserted that they generated offspring asexually, becoming fertile by eating the pollen of flowers and regurgitating it as baby bees. One chant from eleventh-century Milan, used at the liturgy to praise the Easter candle, puts it more poetically: "They conceive by mouth and give birth by mouth; with a chaste body, not from foul desire, they copulate. Then, preserving their virginity, they generate offspring. They are called mothers, but they remain intact; they generate children but do not know husbands." A similar chant from Rome proclaims: "O truly marvelous bee, whose sex the male does not violate nor the fetus shatter, nor does bearing children destroy her chastity! It is just as holy Mary conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin."
This charming view of honeybee life eroded during the Renaissance and Reformation. Scientists eventually discovered that the queen bee, hardly chaste, mates with multiple drones and produces all the offspring of the colony. Still, writers could not resist political allegory, however far-fetched. Protestants enlisted the bees into their anti-Catholic screeds; a 17th-century Flemish pamphlet, The Beehive of the Romish Church, shows the pope as king-bee living inside his own (beehive-shaped) papal tiara, exacting honey-money from his apian bishops, priests, monks and peasants.
In 1609, an English cleric, Charles Butler, published The Feminine Monarchie, an ode to the late Virgin Queen Elizabeth: "We must not call the Queen ‘Rex’; the Bee-state is an amazonian or feminine kingdom," he wrote in his preface.
As political and economic theory developed in Enlightenment Britain, bees were often employed either as exemplars or as foils. In 1705, an expatriate Dutchman, Bernard de Mandeville, wrote The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest, a pamphlet in verse whose invisible-hand thesis presaged and perhaps influenced Adam Smith’s. The bees in a colony all work for themselves; when the gods suddenly make them altruistic, the entire economy of the hive collapses. He summarized the moral of his story thus: "Then leave complaints: Fools only strive / To make a Great, an Honest Hive. / To enjoy the world’s Conveniencies (sic), / Be fam’d in War, yet live in Ease, / Without great Vices, is a vain / Eutopia seated in the Brain."
The examples are endless, but one last one may be relevant to our present political debate: the pervasive image of the beehive in the Mormon Church. Founder Joseph Smith took the bee (which the Book of Mormon names deseret) as the central symbol of his new community of Latter-Day Saints. When his successor Brigham Young settled the land that would become Utah, he called it Deseret, and Mormon temples are lavishly adorned with beehive carvings to this day. In 1881, Salt Lake City’s newspaper, the Deseret News, described the beehive as "a significant representation of the industry, harmony, order and frugality of the people, and of the sweet results of their toil, union, and intelligent cooperation." You may wonder if Mitt Romney has any thoughts on the subject.
Honeybee society has rarely been seen by humans as a democracy, though much recent research indicates that in nature it is not the queen that makes the crucial decisions in the colony but the collective sense of the workers themselves: They are the ones who apportion the various hive duties, regulate the temperature inside the hive, and decide when to replace a failing queen.
Bees, we must suppose, do not choose their form of government. They are meticulously ruled by a genetic code shaped and constantly modified by two million years of experience. It is interesting to speculate just how much human social and political structures, so comparatively late in coming, are driven by our own genes.
Move over, Seinfeld. More fascinating, and substantive, bee stories are surely on the way.
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