[I wrote this essay in 1991. I am posting it because (1) I think its well-written, and (2) The States' rights crowd endures (mostly in Lincoln's party, which is sad) and it is useful to have some arguments to rebut them with. I hope these are helpful.]
The Civil War remains our most compelling saga. Its characters, causes, and course loom large in our national memory and discourse. The immediate outcome is, of course, well known. The other results are still debated: was it war or revolution; was the slave-power crushed or merely diverted, did the freedmen fare worse with the yoke of slavery lifted from them? The questions go on, and many are bound up in the person of the saga's protagonist, Abraham Lincoln.
Was he truly the great emancipator, or did he cynically use abolition to climb to the presidency? Did he save the union, or recklessly send 650,000 American soldiers to their graves? And what was his lasting contribution to the United States, once the hagiographers have departed and the myths are set aside?
Interest in the Civil War peaked in the last months of 1990 as PBS broadcast the Ric Burns series, and the United States contemplated a potentially bloody ground war in the Persian Gulf. On that occasion, columnist George Will wrote that the Civil War was the inescapable ingredient of our history, that in that struggle the nation was distilled.
Will, as have many others, noted that in 1860 the United States was a plural noun; in 1865 it was a singular noun. Where before the great tragedy, it was arguable that the United States ”were gathered, at their discretion and pleasure, in a compact as self governing states; when the war was ended the idea that the United States is" an indivisible union, a nation and a people was a marker firmly fixed in the mental landscape of Lincoln's America -- because he put it there.
In the beginning, in the months following 1860 elections, the breaking of the union seemed a certain thing. Secession had the tacit support of two ex-presidents, John Tyler and Franklin Pierce, and was thought unavoidable by the soon to depart incumbent, James Buchanan. Abraham Lincoln had other ideas however.
First a look at the historical arguments preceding Abraham Lincoln's defense of the union.
South Carolina's John C. Calhoun was the architect of States' Rights. In the 1820's and 30's he articulated the idea that the various states joined the union voluntarily, and could depart voluntarily as well. This was the fulcrum of Calhoun's argument that the federal government could impose no law on any state unless the state was agreeable to the law, and that any state could declare any federal law "null and void" within their state. The "right" of the states to withdraw from the union was a check on the federal government's inclination to impose its will on the states. Calhoun was challenged on practical grounds by Andrew Jackson during the secession crisis of 1832. Jackson knew well that a government such as Calhoun envisioned was unworkable. Moreover he knew that if the states were allowed to go their separate ways, a rump United states would be short work for the European Powers. Jackson defused the first threat of secession by mobilizing the army to march on South Carolina, while offering the secessionists an opportunity to save face.
Calhoun was challenged on philosophical grounds by Daniel Webster in the latter's January 1830 speech in reply to Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina. The occasion was a debate on appropriations for the western territories. Hayne was to present the southern case; Benton of Missouri would speak for the west; Webster was expected to speak for the north. Calhoun, as Vice President and presiding over the Senate debate, was officially in the role of observer, and often used Hayne to advance his agenda of states' rights.
Hayne spoke fulsomely of the glorious role South Carolina's patriots played in the revolution, advancing with their blood, the principals that were inherent in states' rights. He reiterated his master's contention that any law thought injurious to South Carolina or other states of the region would be nullified by those states, and that the others must accept it as the rights of the states for which the founders fought. In short, the nation was a league of sovereign states, bound together by a pact, and that bad faith by a tyrannical majority constituted grounds for breaking the pact.
In Webster's reply, delivered on January 27th, 1830, he spoke of the union of people, rather than states, forged by the Declaration of Independence and the revolution. This union, he declared existed before the constitution enumerated the role of states and federal governments, and was inseparable. Speaking, as protocol permitted, to the president of the senate (Calhoun), Webster said, "Is [the government] the creature of the State Legislature, or the creature of the people?... It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people... I hold it to be a popular government, erected by the people; those who administer it responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be... We are here to administer a constitution emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the creature of the State governments."
In his speech Webster emphasized the homogenization of the Continental Army by the end of the revolution to show that it was ”Americans" who wrested independence from England, not Carolinians,or Virginians, or New Yorkers; and that those Americans were fighting for the ideal expressed in the Declaration of Independence which was the founding document of the American nation.
Webster's Reply to Hayne was the most notable speech of its day. It was copied and distributed throughout the country. Schoolboys memorized and rendered the speech in contests. In Illinois, aspiring politician and future lawyer Abraham Lincoln thought it was the greatest American speech. Lincoln's political views were approaching maturity in 1830, and the Reply to Hayne was a significant ingredient in the mix. In 1858, Lincoln consulted Reply to Hayne as he prepared his House Divided speech. In the First Inaugural, Lincoln made his case for preserving the union by borrowing from Webster: "Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the union itself. The Union is much older than the constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association of 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect union'."
Lincoln and Webster both subscribed to the notion that the Declaration, the ”founding document" of the nation, enunciated a people's desire to exist as a nation. This was the philosophical basis for treating secession as rebellion rather than a revolution, or even counter-revolution, against sectional tyranny. Hearkening back to James Wilson's and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story's views, the Lincoln/Webster view has a more notable pedigree than that of John C. Calhoun.
To Lincoln, secession "was simply a wicked exercise of physical power" -- without legal or moral justification. "It may seem strange," he said of the Confederate leaders, "that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces." The insurrection was prompted by the Republican's victory in the 1860 election, which was accomplished by commanding a majority of electoral votes in an election conducted in accordance with the Constitution. The secessionists lost an election and wanted to leave the country as a result.
Moreover to Abraham Lincoln, the Union represented a still fragile experiment in liberty; that could be all to easily extinguished if the minority exercised, ala Calhoun's theory of States' rights, the prerogative of departing whenever its whims were not granted. To Lincoln, in 1861, the evolution of civilization stood at a junction and could pass on to liberty or tyranny. He expressed the thought at the conclusion of his 2nd annual address to Congress in 1862, "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve, we shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth."
Lincoln's idea of Union was expressed in most of his actions as a war president. His refusal to free slaves, except as a measure of military necessity (under his constitutional power as commander in chief of the Army and Navy) was based on his belief that the act of secession, while it may have made criminals of them, did not deprive the secessionists of their protections under the constitution. Slaves were constitutionally protected property, and Lincoln had taken an oath to protect and preserve the constitution for all Americans, even those that temporarily didn't consider themselves Americans. Similarly, while he privately opposed the Crittenden Amendment (1861), which would have guaranteed the continuation of slavery and its introduction into new territories, Lincoln, as president, promised that he would not interfere with its ratification and would enforce its provisions
Ironically, with Crittenden the South achieved everything it had sought before the 1860 election. Their refusal to accept Lincoln's offer to enforce Crittenden if it were passed and ratified undercut the philosophical and legal basis of their claim to a right to secede from the union, and strengthened the Republican's contention that they were basically sore losers.
Notes on the Gettysburg Address
To fully appreciate the impact of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,it is necessary to examine some aspects of American nationalism.
Nationalism, as I use the term here, should not be confused with that quality which in the 1960's was descriptive of mindless obedience to the state. Rather I use the word in its truer meaning of a desire of people sharing common heritages to exist as a nation.
In the United States of America, our shared heritage is a thing of ideas; rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In the America of 1860, the concept of an American Nation was different than today. Shelby Foote characterized it noting that "before the Civil War, it was customary to say - the United States are ..... After the war, it became - the United States is ......" The difference is profound. In the first instance the U.S. is a collective, plural, entity; in the second it is a single entity, united by common bonds, history, and vision.
It is this latter view that is largely Abraham Lincoln's legacy. It was his personal view that carried him from a young Whig, or National Republican, in the 1830's to the White House in 1860. Lincoln was a pupil of the most important nationalist figure of the mid-century, Henry Clay. He even described Henry Clay as his "beau ideal" in the Congressional races of the 1840's.
Faced with the secession crisis on his inauguration as President, Lincoln's dedication to the principle of an American Nation allowed no compromise to Union. In correspondence Lincoln had described fears that the American experiment in liberty was in jeopardy. In his second address to Congress he referred to America as the "Last best hope of earth". These sentiments were no doubt with him in the hours before he spoke on November 19th, 1863.
Lincoln was also, in my opinion, the most literate of our presidents. His writing was remarkably free of the rococo construction and mellifluous phrases of the day. The Gettysburg Address is, among all his writings, the most poetic, and probably reflects his deepest thoughts on the war, and the horrible price the nation was paying to come into its own - as he saw it.
In short, this speech (invocation seems more appropriate) is one of the seminal passages in our national consciousness. It is one of our defining documents, as is the Declaration. And with the Declaration, it sets forth for all men the clear intent and justification for our (his) actions. "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
For additional information, the following references are recommended:
James M. MacPherson, ”Abraham Lincoln and the Second AmericanRevolution", 1991, Oxford University Press, New York
Garry Wills, ”Lincoln at Gettysburg", 1992, Simon and Schuster, NewYork
David Donald, ”Lincoln Reconsidered", 5th edition, 1961, VintagePress, New York
William Safire, ”Freedom", 1987, Doubleday, New York
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Saturday, August 09, 2008
The Political Theory of States' Rights
(I wrote this essay in 1991 and recently came across it. It read better that when I first read it over in a rush to get it to my advisor. I thought I would post it here.)
In 1786 the new United States of America faced a choice, not between federalism and anti-federalism, but between nationalism and anti-nationalism. As Clinton Rossiter noted in 1787, The Grand Convention the issue was whether it would be a country like England or France; or a "country" like Germany or Italy. The larger states, notably New York and Virginia, were confident that they could go it alone; while the smaller states such as Delaware and New Jersey feared they would be devoured in effect, if not in fact, by the larger states.
By the end of the revolution, states were imposing restrictions on river traffic, interstate trade, fishing rights, and a variety of other issues that usually arise between independent nations. Fishing fleets from Virginia and Maryland actually fired on each others' vessels. New York's Governor Clinton tried to "acquire" Vermont and was frustrated by Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
To further aggravate the situation, the treaty of Paris gave the new nation most of the country between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. These vast lands were parcelled out among the states to administer until such time as they were settled and could become states in their own right. The large states saw the western lands in much the manner that England had seen the colonies and meant to exploit them similarly. Of course the small states had no claim on the western lands and were reluctant to see any national resources directed toward their development -- not that national resources were available for that or any other purpose in 1786. It is in the first stirring of a national movement, that would lead to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the seeds of states' rights were planted. The nationalist spirit that animated the men of Philadelphia co-existed with a feeling, and belief that the states (at least some of them) could have emerged as self-sufficient entities given time. The smaller states, unable to survive on their own would have joined with their larger neighbors. The belief that they could have been self-sufficient evolved, among the ardent states' righters over the next 70 years, into a belief that somehow they had been self-sufficient.
After the convention, the anti-nationalists made common cause with the anti-federalists. Indeed many of the anti-federalists were anti-nationalists the year before. Among their leaders were George Clinton and Thomas Jefferson. The position of the two men bears some examination.
Clinton was the governor if New York, serving his fifth term in 1787. He was nicknamed "the old incumbent". Clinton was one of the most powerful men of his day. His political machine controlled much of the patronage of New York, and he effectively played the aristocratic patroons of the Hudson Valley against the wealthy bankers and businessmen of New York City. Clinton believed that New York was, of all the states, in the best position to break away from the others and go it alone. He actively opposed the constitutional convention by sending a delegation that consisted of two ardent anti-nationalists, and one nationalist (the nationalist, Alexander Hamilton became so impatient with his fellow delegates that he left the convention in a rage, only returning for its closing ceremony).
Once Clinton saw that the constitution was going to be ratified, he threw his lot in with those men who insisted on interpreting the relationship between the states and the federal government in the loosest terms possible. Led by Thomas Jefferson, this group fought for a Bill of Rights, which enumerated the rights of the states and citizens which the federal government could not infringe.
Jefferson's beliefs seem based in Rousseau's interpretation of man as "noble savage." Rousseau proposed that man was at his best the closer he was to earth, and his natural state. To Jefferson, this meant man as farmer and planter. Jefferson's idea of a just government was one that ensured basic liberties, offered protection to its citizens, and otherwise stayed out of their lives. Jefferson conceded the necessity that government must have authority to tax and regulate trade, but thought that these functions should be carried out at the level of government closest to the yeoman farmer/citizen as possible; which meant at the county and state level. Jefferson was willing to concede to a federal government only those powers that were needed to address issues that transcended the states; maintaining a navy, gathering the militias to resist foreign invasion, diplomacy, interstate trade.
Throughout the last years of the 18th century, and during his eight years as President, Jefferson often expressed the thought that the United States might well divide along sectional lines into independent countries. Not until his later years did he demonstrate concern about the sectional issues that threatened national unity. In 1821 he wrote of the slave issue that culminated in the Missouri Compromise, that it "was a fire bell in the night, striking the knell of the union." However, in the years before, Jefferson's espousal of a loose-knit federation of states and a weak central government contributed to his fears.
In the early years, the divisions were along economic lines. New England considered secession in the 1790's and early 1800s'. The trans-montane was always abuzz with secession rumors, the Burr conspiracy and the Spanish conspiracy being just two occasions that the rumors echoed on the banks of the Potomac. After the War of 1812 however, the tensions began to occur on a different fault, and states' rights assumed a new energy and a new meaning.
The issue was slavery. And the debate turned on economic and, increasingly, moral points. After international slave trading ended in 1808, the expense of purchasing and maintaining slaves increased. Never very profitable in the north, slavery all but died out north of the Mason-Dixon line by 1820. In the south however, it was a thriving and effective system of labor.
The problem was that it was too effective. With slavery, and a generous climate, the southern states made little progress toward a diversified economy. There was little outside of agriculture; some shipping from New Orleans, Charleston, and Baltimore -- and limited industry in Birmingham, Alabama and the northern reaches of Virginia.
The south's agrarian life depended heavily on the north's capacity to process raw commodities into marketable goods. The north, in turn, depended on a certain supply of raw materials to keep their factories working. To ensure that supply, the north enacted a series of tariffs that made it uneconomical for the south to trade directly with foreign buyers. The tariffs kept the cost of southern cotton artificially low to northern buyers, while European buyers were kept out of the action.
There was no small degree of southern resentment over the tariffs. Indeed the first secession crisis was caused by the "Tariff of Abominations” of 1828. The tariff so enraged South Carolina's Senator John C. Calhoun that he enunciated a proposal that states, under the sovereign status they enjoyed under the constitution, had the right to declare any federal act "null and void" within the confines of the state. If need be, the states could individually break the pact with which they ”voluntarily” joined the union, establishing themselves as separate political entities.
The flaws in Calhoun's arguments are obvious. His argument presumed that at some point in the past the states functioned as independent political entities. It has been shown previously that some in the larger states believed that they could function independent of the others, and that this belief took on a fictional quality, particularly in the south, that they actually did function in that manner.
Calhoun's argument also ignored the fact that four states, including New York, didn't ratify the constitution; yet all chose to subject themselves to its terms, should it be ratified by two-thirds of all the states.. To argue, therefore, that the states joined as a nation; agreeing with the pact as it existed at the time, and reserving the right to withdraw at a later date, ignores the reality that four of the states joined in spite of the pact. Had there been reservation, they wouldn't have joined in 1787. Simply put, they placed an American nation ahead of their own state's rights.
The tariffs were troublesome to the south because slavery was becoming more expensive. Moreover, slave property was, like land, not particularly liquid. As the tariffs reduced southern options in trade, and impeded commerce, slavery became an increasing economic burden. This raised a second problem; what to do with the slaves if they grew too costly. In the eyes of the southerners, they couldn't just be freed.
By the mid-1820's many southerners were terrified that the slave rebellions that wracked the Caribbean would spread to the United States. In 1831, the nightmare happened. A Virginia slave named Nat Turner, and some of his followers went on a killing spree that lasted several days and resulted in scores of dead. They faced a dilemma, the slaves couldn't be freed -- not without tremendous financial loss and social disruption -- and they had to be kept under control, lest another rebellion occur.
Meanwhile, in the north, a small but vocal abolition movement began demanding immediate abolition and even encouraged slave rebellion. These event, occurring at the same time that Calhoun introduced his arguments for the states' rights to void federal laws and even withdraw from the union, catalyzed a new and virulent secession movement; one that would require a violent civil war to quell.
In 1786 the new United States of America faced a choice, not between federalism and anti-federalism, but between nationalism and anti-nationalism. As Clinton Rossiter noted in 1787, The Grand Convention the issue was whether it would be a country like England or France; or a "country" like Germany or Italy. The larger states, notably New York and Virginia, were confident that they could go it alone; while the smaller states such as Delaware and New Jersey feared they would be devoured in effect, if not in fact, by the larger states.
By the end of the revolution, states were imposing restrictions on river traffic, interstate trade, fishing rights, and a variety of other issues that usually arise between independent nations. Fishing fleets from Virginia and Maryland actually fired on each others' vessels. New York's Governor Clinton tried to "acquire" Vermont and was frustrated by Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
To further aggravate the situation, the treaty of Paris gave the new nation most of the country between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. These vast lands were parcelled out among the states to administer until such time as they were settled and could become states in their own right. The large states saw the western lands in much the manner that England had seen the colonies and meant to exploit them similarly. Of course the small states had no claim on the western lands and were reluctant to see any national resources directed toward their development -- not that national resources were available for that or any other purpose in 1786. It is in the first stirring of a national movement, that would lead to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the seeds of states' rights were planted. The nationalist spirit that animated the men of Philadelphia co-existed with a feeling, and belief that the states (at least some of them) could have emerged as self-sufficient entities given time. The smaller states, unable to survive on their own would have joined with their larger neighbors. The belief that they could have been self-sufficient evolved, among the ardent states' righters over the next 70 years, into a belief that somehow they had been self-sufficient.
After the convention, the anti-nationalists made common cause with the anti-federalists. Indeed many of the anti-federalists were anti-nationalists the year before. Among their leaders were George Clinton and Thomas Jefferson. The position of the two men bears some examination.
Clinton was the governor if New York, serving his fifth term in 1787. He was nicknamed "the old incumbent". Clinton was one of the most powerful men of his day. His political machine controlled much of the patronage of New York, and he effectively played the aristocratic patroons of the Hudson Valley against the wealthy bankers and businessmen of New York City. Clinton believed that New York was, of all the states, in the best position to break away from the others and go it alone. He actively opposed the constitutional convention by sending a delegation that consisted of two ardent anti-nationalists, and one nationalist (the nationalist, Alexander Hamilton became so impatient with his fellow delegates that he left the convention in a rage, only returning for its closing ceremony).
Once Clinton saw that the constitution was going to be ratified, he threw his lot in with those men who insisted on interpreting the relationship between the states and the federal government in the loosest terms possible. Led by Thomas Jefferson, this group fought for a Bill of Rights, which enumerated the rights of the states and citizens which the federal government could not infringe.
Jefferson's beliefs seem based in Rousseau's interpretation of man as "noble savage." Rousseau proposed that man was at his best the closer he was to earth, and his natural state. To Jefferson, this meant man as farmer and planter. Jefferson's idea of a just government was one that ensured basic liberties, offered protection to its citizens, and otherwise stayed out of their lives. Jefferson conceded the necessity that government must have authority to tax and regulate trade, but thought that these functions should be carried out at the level of government closest to the yeoman farmer/citizen as possible; which meant at the county and state level. Jefferson was willing to concede to a federal government only those powers that were needed to address issues that transcended the states; maintaining a navy, gathering the militias to resist foreign invasion, diplomacy, interstate trade.
Throughout the last years of the 18th century, and during his eight years as President, Jefferson often expressed the thought that the United States might well divide along sectional lines into independent countries. Not until his later years did he demonstrate concern about the sectional issues that threatened national unity. In 1821 he wrote of the slave issue that culminated in the Missouri Compromise, that it "was a fire bell in the night, striking the knell of the union." However, in the years before, Jefferson's espousal of a loose-knit federation of states and a weak central government contributed to his fears.
In the early years, the divisions were along economic lines. New England considered secession in the 1790's and early 1800s'. The trans-montane was always abuzz with secession rumors, the Burr conspiracy and the Spanish conspiracy being just two occasions that the rumors echoed on the banks of the Potomac. After the War of 1812 however, the tensions began to occur on a different fault, and states' rights assumed a new energy and a new meaning.
The issue was slavery. And the debate turned on economic and, increasingly, moral points. After international slave trading ended in 1808, the expense of purchasing and maintaining slaves increased. Never very profitable in the north, slavery all but died out north of the Mason-Dixon line by 1820. In the south however, it was a thriving and effective system of labor.
The problem was that it was too effective. With slavery, and a generous climate, the southern states made little progress toward a diversified economy. There was little outside of agriculture; some shipping from New Orleans, Charleston, and Baltimore -- and limited industry in Birmingham, Alabama and the northern reaches of Virginia.
The south's agrarian life depended heavily on the north's capacity to process raw commodities into marketable goods. The north, in turn, depended on a certain supply of raw materials to keep their factories working. To ensure that supply, the north enacted a series of tariffs that made it uneconomical for the south to trade directly with foreign buyers. The tariffs kept the cost of southern cotton artificially low to northern buyers, while European buyers were kept out of the action.
There was no small degree of southern resentment over the tariffs. Indeed the first secession crisis was caused by the "Tariff of Abominations” of 1828. The tariff so enraged South Carolina's Senator John C. Calhoun that he enunciated a proposal that states, under the sovereign status they enjoyed under the constitution, had the right to declare any federal act "null and void" within the confines of the state. If need be, the states could individually break the pact with which they ”voluntarily” joined the union, establishing themselves as separate political entities.
The flaws in Calhoun's arguments are obvious. His argument presumed that at some point in the past the states functioned as independent political entities. It has been shown previously that some in the larger states believed that they could function independent of the others, and that this belief took on a fictional quality, particularly in the south, that they actually did function in that manner.
Calhoun's argument also ignored the fact that four states, including New York, didn't ratify the constitution; yet all chose to subject themselves to its terms, should it be ratified by two-thirds of all the states.. To argue, therefore, that the states joined as a nation; agreeing with the pact as it existed at the time, and reserving the right to withdraw at a later date, ignores the reality that four of the states joined in spite of the pact. Had there been reservation, they wouldn't have joined in 1787. Simply put, they placed an American nation ahead of their own state's rights.
The tariffs were troublesome to the south because slavery was becoming more expensive. Moreover, slave property was, like land, not particularly liquid. As the tariffs reduced southern options in trade, and impeded commerce, slavery became an increasing economic burden. This raised a second problem; what to do with the slaves if they grew too costly. In the eyes of the southerners, they couldn't just be freed.
By the mid-1820's many southerners were terrified that the slave rebellions that wracked the Caribbean would spread to the United States. In 1831, the nightmare happened. A Virginia slave named Nat Turner, and some of his followers went on a killing spree that lasted several days and resulted in scores of dead. They faced a dilemma, the slaves couldn't be freed -- not without tremendous financial loss and social disruption -- and they had to be kept under control, lest another rebellion occur.
Meanwhile, in the north, a small but vocal abolition movement began demanding immediate abolition and even encouraged slave rebellion. These event, occurring at the same time that Calhoun introduced his arguments for the states' rights to void federal laws and even withdraw from the union, catalyzed a new and virulent secession movement; one that would require a violent civil war to quell.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Can we be serious, please...?
This morning, on Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw raised General Wesley Clark's comment about John McCain's qualification to be President, again. You know the comment; something to the effect that getting shot down while flying a fighter plane doesn't qualify you to be President. Of course, the approved response is to condemn the remark, which Tom's guests, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman dutifully did. Tom also suggested that Barack Obama was laggard in his condemnation of the remarks.
So, once again, for the record. Clark, of whom I am not a huge fan, is right. And he is not disrespecting McCain's or anyone else's service by pointing out the obvious. McCain is no more qualified to run for President based on his Naval service than I am qualified based on my Naval service. The fact that McCain's service is decidedly more heroic than mine still doesn't qualify him.
If McCain wants to cite his qualifications he should cite his service on a number of Senate committees. He should cite his principled stand on campaign finance reform. He should cite his leadership in preventing a constitutional crisis over judicial nominations in the Senate. He should cite his willingness to look at stem cell technology on its merits rather than on the theology of his party's most extreme elements.
Of course McCain is loath to run on too much of his record, because so much of it is at odds with the Republican party's "base" which doesn't trust him and may just stay home this year. Which, in turn, leaves me wondering if his courage in battle hasn't quite made it to politics after all.
Of course, Kerry understandably objected to Clark's remarks, because during the 2004 primary campaign, Clark said the same thing about Kerry, to the effect that driving a swift boat and earning some awards was fine but not on a par with commanding two regional combatant commands when it came to getting someone ready for the Presidency.
To which I would add, it doesn't come close to the qualifications gained from being a haberdasher (Truman) or a railroad lawyer (Lincoln) either.
So, once again, for the record. Clark, of whom I am not a huge fan, is right. And he is not disrespecting McCain's or anyone else's service by pointing out the obvious. McCain is no more qualified to run for President based on his Naval service than I am qualified based on my Naval service. The fact that McCain's service is decidedly more heroic than mine still doesn't qualify him.
If McCain wants to cite his qualifications he should cite his service on a number of Senate committees. He should cite his principled stand on campaign finance reform. He should cite his leadership in preventing a constitutional crisis over judicial nominations in the Senate. He should cite his willingness to look at stem cell technology on its merits rather than on the theology of his party's most extreme elements.
Of course McCain is loath to run on too much of his record, because so much of it is at odds with the Republican party's "base" which doesn't trust him and may just stay home this year. Which, in turn, leaves me wondering if his courage in battle hasn't quite made it to politics after all.
Of course, Kerry understandably objected to Clark's remarks, because during the 2004 primary campaign, Clark said the same thing about Kerry, to the effect that driving a swift boat and earning some awards was fine but not on a par with commanding two regional combatant commands when it came to getting someone ready for the Presidency.
To which I would add, it doesn't come close to the qualifications gained from being a haberdasher (Truman) or a railroad lawyer (Lincoln) either.
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