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administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
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Don Baer
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�The Los Angeles 'I'imes
February 16, 1996
Woman's Batt~e With IRS May Reach High Court.
• Taxes: She wants.refund of
S7,cm check her senile father
wrote to the agency, which fears a
flood ofsuits citing disabilities. ·
By LESLIE BERGER
TINES STAPf WRITeR
The U.S. Supreme Court could be the
stop for a daughter's campaign to
force the lntemal Revenue Service to
refund a S'1,000 check mistakenly written
by her late .father when he was 93 and
senile.
Although the IRS admits the Granada
Hills man never owed such a rum, the
agency .hu steadfastly refused to return his
money, saying he misaed the deadlfne to
apply for a. refunc:t. Now, after a federal
appeals court ruled against the tax agency,
the IRS and U.s lawyers haye appealed to
the Supreme Court.
The woman pursuing the case on behalf:
of her father's estate, 70-year-old retired
schoolteacher Marian Broekamp, said the
issue Ia more a matter of principle than cold
next
cash.
. a.._''l just felt that this waa not Justice," said
.DrOCkamp, who taught for years In the Los
Angelo Unified ·School District, cared for
her wtC:Owed father, Stanley McGill. until
his death and recently moved to Prescott,
Am.
0
"My father was older, senile, he had been
he didn't know what he .wa& doing,"
B~~~ .said Thursday. "I' just thought
there must be a lot of other eases like this.
You know, you have to stand up for what
you beJteve in."
•
.
In fac~ there are a lot ot other cases like
. Brockamp'a. So many, according to a
ll.wyer ,.ith the U.S. Justice Department,
that the IRS fears it could be awash in
demands for refunds from taxpayers ~Jalm
lnl they were too disabled to meet a
deadline. If Broekamp prevails. .
·
It's not ·that the federal government
be,rudges Brockamp the $7,000, said at·
torney Bridget Rowan, It's just loath to
~~ out exceptions to tax laws that ought
to be evenly applied.
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·
"W~ h_ave such a diverse group of
taxpayers in this countrY suffering from a
host of problems," Rowan said. "It could
m.
0
C'f'lt7f'I'..J
f'IC'•7T
oc::
end of a sum. Brockamp believes
open the floodgates."
that Is what happened with the IRS
But the seeming absurdity of
check-that It probably should
Brockamp's plight has drawn the
have been $700 instead of $1,()()0.
auention of even President Clln·
Months after McGill's death at
ton, who last month directed the
age 9S In 1988, Broc:kamp dissecretary of the Treasury to recovered the cashed IRS check
view the pertinent tax law and
among his disorderly paperwork.
consider if it "should be changed to
At first she thought it was a
avoid such unfair resultS in the
simple ma'tter that her accountant
future.''
might c:Iear up by deducting the
In an apparent reference to the
payment from the modest estate's
Brockamp case, Clinton noted in a
taxes. But after both her elderly
brief Jan. 31 statement that "the
accountant, who died while fight·
law at times may produce harsh
ing the IRS, and his daughter failed
results. This is particularly so
to settle It, Broc:kamp hired Encino
when taxpayers fail to seek a · tax lawyer Robert F. Klueger, who
refund because of a well-docu·
filed suit against the IRS in U.S.
mented disability; or similar comDistrict Court in 1993.
pelling circumstance."
"I told them two years ago, don't
The president's statement was
make a federal case out of this, cut
Issued the same day that the solicius a check," said the plain-spoken
Klueger. ''They wouldn't do it."
tor general's office filed its petition
Cor review .with the Supreme
The IRS had denied Brockamp a
refund, saying her father missed a
Co"Qrt, continuing the defense of
the IRS stand. Both sides expect
two-year statute of limitations for
the high court to agree to hear the
claims. Ir he sent lhe money in
April 1984, he ahould have sought
matter, which has been percolating
lpr several years and has spawheci .Its l'e~urr. r.q 1.8t2r than April 1986,
at least two conflicting decisions by .the agency said.
But Kluege: haa been challeng •
feoieral appeals courts.
ing the IRS' position, using a legal
The Brockamp case began In
principle ealled "equitable tolling,"
1984 when McGill, a retired civil
which provides that deadlines for
engineer living on Social Se.:urity
claims of all sorts can be extended
and modest returns from investwhen the applicant 13 disabled.
ments, sent the IRS a cheek for
Clearly, he says, McGill was dis$7,000 even though his recent tax
bills had amounted to no more than
abled.
Traditionally, government agenSSOO, according to his daughter.
Described as a once- brilliant cies were exempt from the provisions of equitable tolling, which
mathematician who helped develop
always had applied to private demortgage amortization tables that
fendants in lawsuits. But in 1990,
· are still in use, McGill clearly had
lost his mental capacities. He could
while reviewing the case of a
not recognize old friends, forgot
Department of Veterans A!fairs
worker late in suing for employconversations after a few minutes
and would "stare blankly when
ment discrimination, the U.S. Suyou tried to explain things he knew
preme Court held that equitable
tolling principles could Indeed apvery well,'' Brockamp recalled.
He also had a disturbing habit or
ply to the federal government.
Although the high court did not
writing checks for far more than he
specify whether equitable tolling
owed-often adding a zero to the'
n7 n:;u
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. Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of J>ublic Affairs
University of ~esota ·
Twin Cities Cainpus
'Hwnphrey Center
··30119th Avenue Se.ith
:Minneapolis•.:MN SS455
:{612) ·625;.9505
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.·FAX: (612} 6ls~3513i 6l5·6S3~
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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Hubert H. Humphrey
Twin Cities CtUrtpu..~
lnstilul~ of Public Affairs
.~0 l-19rh A venue South
February 23, 1996
Mu111t:apnlis, MN 554'.55
612-625-0142
Donald Baer
Director of Speechwriting
The White House. 202~456-5709
F~:
61'2-625-3513
.!
Dear Don:
,.
How have you been? :X ·have detected your fine[:cratt at work on a nqmber· of occasions.
i
.
We've developed a:ur Chinking about the:themes./~d.rescma~~.s of ~·public work'' considerably
since the Camp David: meeting last year. Our t~mking bas· ~specially been deepened through·
writing Building America, a book I did ·with N,;ncy Kari (the friend and colleague who coauthored the New De'*ot.rat piece with me last ~ear on public work); it's forthcom~ng soon.
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What. tlJ.e, l;?Q,9,~ does, 1 am convinced, is. to reloc!a~ ci:tit~ns.tl.ip. ,~d ,tb~ .prg;b,lems. . wi~ d~~9Critcy .
from th.e periphery ofJpeople's Hves {what one JJo~s."off~hours," as a.~olunteer~: 9r·~ voter):t~..the·::·
~enter: it refocuses·o.n!'th~_deC?p crisi~ in "work"[:that'peo~le.f~l today, an~~ it ti~~ d)~t i_o.:~he·. crlsis··.'
m democracy. Most pdlitical· rhe.tonc about .work··~~s about JOb loss ~nc;l1ncpme erQs~on, .but . ·
there are otber queStions ~t. play as well-. the rlte~g-of work; '.'what is wealth?" ;These come up
all around the edges public· discussion. aucttarian· get$· at it clearly; despite' his o~er garb'~ge .
("the American ecoJto~y shoul!i stand (or more~tb~ ·br~~.of deodorant"}.. I think' it's a s~ret o(.
his appeal, aga.insNh~:Republican establishme:nt. $o..does Bill Be.nnett, or, .in.progressive gui~e.. ·:.
the Atlantic piece lasti October 'by C()bb et. al, +tl~~ng Gar Alpe.rowitz and others' arguments, on•.
how we've come to define "wealth" much too ~anowly. · ·
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The new line of Satu!)n ·com~ercials als.o get atttthe :con~r~· people have about. tb~ meanip·g. ~f ;.:
work-- they m\ist:be !based on focus groups. -111e:Y show: people regaining pri.d~ an4 ownership lll.:
.
.
:.
their work, producing!·things .of quality; the tag fpri.e is ·~$Qnic:one finally figured ·out, people, a:~e · ·
m.ore important than ·~machines." Finally, we've seen. the. power of this discussion in couritl~~ ...
settings in our ·own: Wiork through the Ce:nter
Demoera~y and Citizenship. In this project 'we
1
· did with Bill GalstcJ>n~ ' Reinventing Citizensbip~" ·,for instance, where we t.atk~d with people ·:aero&$:
many·agencies·, people .all over were eager to t~lt-abciuriww i't~s''time "to put dvil; ~ac~ iii'. chiyil : '
service" ~~ moving b~yi:md. si_mple "customer stice."
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tok
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Political leadership: can help. :surface and cryst~l;iz¢ these.:d~p c.~n,cerns, I'm convinced:· ~e,'·ve . :.
come to see the "Nebe~ah" model of public l~atlership: a$ :~aving much more ~ulti-dimensional,: ·
poten~al than I undetj~~od last yea~ at ·~~? ~y.id:. ~oli~cal leadeJ:ship that t~e~. up _lar:$e :.
.·:
quest1ons of the meanmg. of ~ork, 1ts c1v.tc Jmp~catu;ms :an4 ov.ertones, an~ the ~sututions, .,
·
professions, and aSs~iatioos:·of m.any kinds ttJ;r
."c~ntribute to the ~"Qntry ·~rid its ch~le!lge~:·.
through work" can, ~lp energize and inspire. y~:.constituenc:ies. Civil rights, for instance~ {~hich
once was imbued Wit~·ithese.,themes in. its "treJ:doin" oays);·Labor (which .is palpably in nee_d of:::·.
rediscovering the old' R~11ther/Hillman traditioJ of the ci;vk 'wertot~cs of wox:k). we demonstrate·· .
how core American ideals·, like libeny· and justice, are 'inextricably tied to ''public work, work .
with public overtones.
can
II
We don't propose 'policies in the book·· it's a. fr~nning ·bo()k; but it does spe~ direc~y and i
Boyte
to Baer
�. nvrrrnr;;1:.1
.LI'IO I .r.; I VII:.
usefully to the "outsidemess" that people feel about govem.ment, I believe. What we know, more
clearly now, is that government is far more credible {people have ownership, it becom.es "the
people's" again) when jt is .connected to the worf. ~f people, .productive activity of significance, in ·
many different settings and in~titutions
•• busine~s
as well as:·, ''co1nmunity ."
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People don't live with the distinctions that theorists' make between "civil society,'' ..t,he public
sector," and "business,'' and they never bave (th~ris.ts. tb~rnsplves once ti.ed c~mmunity and· .
b~~iness _ac~ivity togetbet in :'cjvil ~ciety"). :WJtn:t~se. dis~ctions are transl.ated into ca]1s for
Citizenship 1t becomes a· sentimentalized verston volunteensm that opposes government ~ ·
··
community. This is~ for Lamar Alexander, Vl(hcf gets his ,(ramework froD1 Bill Scbambra·(a:
· .
friend, who is interestijlgly sympathetic to our line· of arguiJlent); it's also trile for many
Democrats, like Bill B~~dtey, who draw from m¢ .''civil society'' theorists and intellectuals like
Ben Barber and Jay Westbrook. These distincti~nrs, I've be~ome convinced, are just not helpful.
analytically, politically, or i.n ·terms of actual wo}kithat nee~ to :be done to "renew dernocr~cy'."
Smart politics .is good :politics, More, "cominu~ty" is rebuilt through collll1)on work, not through: ·
searching for it.
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E.J. Dionne's new boolci Thej Only Look DeadJ helpfully get." at the gove~ent side of ~s::. the ..
most important aspect, of the Progressives was dpt·government instead of community, but
:.
government as our co~mon i*strument in dtaliJg, w~th vast,economic change an~ transition, ·and :. :.
in taming and stabi1ii$~ wor~ environments. B~r Allu.rica c~:>mplements.E.J.'s: argu~~ri~; in . '~
everal ways. We unearth an~ther side of the Ptfgressives, that illustrates (through programs ~e :..
cooperative extension; and figures like lane Adf:ams and· Liberty Bailey, a friend of Teddy. ,
.
Roosevelt and the elocquent founding philosophe,r qf extension, now almost forgo.tten) government.
as ''of the people,'' developing civ.ic capacities ~hd providing civic resources; we· also show hpw .
~h~s. c~ntin~ed to shap~ .a good deal ?f ~e N~w l~al policy, ~d was re~eeted in large, p~pular ..
mtuanves hke the CCC
(whose conttnumg b1p~rsan
populanty, framed m terms of "public work~'.
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is a contrast to AmeriCorps, framed as "volunt1fisin.")
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Today, as well, for ;pe,ople to· see government ~ "of the. people,'' issuing from. themselves and
using it for common ~asks, requires connecting -~t to:people's rea] everyday w~rk. Citizenship...
·
framed as "work" {wheth.er paid or unpaid) tha~ h!ls ¢ivjc meaning can. be in COmnl;Unity gr,oups, ,.
and unpaid. It can be 'in business. It ean be in ~o~emmeitt. :.:When citize.nship,is work with· larger;.. :·
meaning it takes ori power and depth, as wen ~xponentiaUy Increasing tbe range· of settings. · ·
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af,.
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We make this point in our book, using .many stories, from American history and contemp.oraiy . ·
settings. Did you ~ee :the sketch of our·book in~tbe US·..News story on civic renewal -- Wray i:bad· ·
read an early draft'! rn send'that, a piece we did .for Long Island· NewsdiJ.y on Bucbanan'sJake
populism, and the bobk desciiption.
I
Sincerely,
·~eyre
Boyte to Baer
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·
�llitill.lli!
H8rry'C: Boyte and NB.neyi:N~ .Kari
.
', ·~·
It's a Print~iw Fi~ld ~OfPhoDY Populists J
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Critics voice alarm about democracy's problems-spedal interest
money, declining volunteertsm, and hatred of government. Building
America argues these are symptoms, not causes; the loss of the meaning of work ts the ~eeper crisis. People once saw their labor as building
the commonwealth. Now, work is a means to an end.
·
1Ulding.America is a
marvelous book, much
needed, and deeply
appreciated... "
-Deborah Meier, Author,
The Power of Their Ideas
''Harry Boyte and Nancy Kari
have captured the words and
music of the inspiring stories of
Americans doing the serious
work of democracy. They show
us the path to restoring vitality
to the .American experience."
-David Cohen, Co-Director,
Advocacy Institute
Worlc of public value-in
farms. and businesses, schools, government
.
service, and voluntary groups-lent reality to Ideas of freedom and
democratic self-goyemment. Publtc-spirtted work enabled diverse
peoples to forge connection, g~ln a stake ln the nation, and ftnd intellectual challenges.; In the 1930s, the Ctvtltan Conservation Corps put
mllllons to worlc bulldlng bridges, making parks, and planting forests.
Images of worlc a~ democracy filled popular culture-movies, post
office art, and Langston Hughes' poetry.
Today, people are inalnly con~mers, not producers. Government provides services to customers. ·Bqt there.are signs of change. From low
income communities to colleges, from high tech newspapers to nursing
homes, Building A~erlca describes many examples of the revival of
publlc worlc. Boyte; and Karl also put forth an original theory of worlc
as a source of demJocrQtlc renewal. They conclude with a call for a
rebirth of freedom :wtth "government of the people and by the people"
that catalyzes and: embodies publlc worlc.
Harry C. Boyte Co-Director of the Center for Democracy
and Citizenship, at the Humphrey Institute of Public:
Affairs. Author of six previous books on democracy, com·.
muni ty organizing, and citizenship, Boyte coordinated the
New Citizenship, a national effort to renew public life.
'
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Nancy·N. Kari is Associate Professor and Director of
Faculty Development at the College of St. Catherine.
Kari is a leader in efforts to renew citizenship in higher
education to change professional work into more
democratic practices.
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Can cOm.passiorzate conservative~ (ir.communitaria.n lib~rals ·do it best?
group of citizens from Watervitle, Maine. and : s·unounding
towns gathered ·this month ~or a
community· forum on the i·stage of. the
Waterville Opera House pfot the re·
!!ion's future into the 21st:cen.iurv.···For
3o hour.s over three da"\15. tne coll~ctibn
· of mill owners and iNeJfarc rno1tiers.
merchants, retirees 11n.d ; teenagers
slugged it out. arguing olier· gpafs •and
compromising oo pri~riti~s ;and finally
arriving at a shared vi5ioil of :how. the
citizens of central Maine. miebt best
educate their children:·,an'd foster community prosperity in th.c decade!! ah~ad.
Many 50c:ial critics are: intrigued by
such local efforts. seeinst in tne!le·
A
to
Mainers' tears and rempcr;tantrums the
hopeful signals .of a desperately needed
renaissance in American civic life. Some
observers celebrate the Waterville ·proc-
dozen~ of..simi~r.effort~
ess (and
around
the country) ~d~e: do~t·modern·. approximatio~tof, &be Ameri~n "art of as5aciation .. 1ha~i 5E)1.enlU1'1oted· the Frenth
Hristoc:rat Ale~s de TocqueviJie wl'lcn he
OMe(Ved the·~~dJiing de~ocraey. rn.the
18305. More ¢vnu:al ·ol:i~!Vers dismiss
the Watervill~ ~:'.vi;sioi1J~g· ,proces~··with it-s CQrnP\(r·crs and:p~Qprielacy software; overhe~. ~P.roj~ors· and Pb:D-·
trained "'facili~u)rs''.-a~· :on'e mor~ examph~.of tcch~o,tratlc•. ov,erly managed
public life or.~wotse.- aS' ·a dubious and
self--conscious . xercise ·in·:nos'talgia,
Those reacc on$ define Ut~·boundaric:s
in a V.igorous nCw,;niuional debate about
the ero~ion and possible ·r.esu5citation of
American civk. soeiety. A-year ago, Harvard ·political scientist Roben Putnam
pubH:;hc:d a nt)w-:·(amoU$.articlc: called
··Bowling Atone."~ in which he used.· the
decline in:. popularity of bowl ins' leagues
as a·Wr)' metaphor for \~hat he ~aw as tbc
serious'decay,of civic inslitution5 and soeiaJ. tru~t·in Ame•·i~a. The: diugn'osis was
notm itself·nc:w; it·twd.&lready .,;,pi red a
p.hitos«?phY ~nd .P.'JH~tc~l m.Oveme.nt
known a.-., ·communuarlanu•m.. B11t Put·
nam bwc~ed. up ~h~ di:agnc:tsis with
SWC.epi~g .and rigorous docun\entation
showimt'rhat 'PTAs. fr:ater,'nal ~troups. !abor: unTonll and other:: familiar'· institutions were f;i!lt di~ppc:~ring .'from the
A~rica·n . cuhural; lan~scapc. ·. ·
Cltlzecnqtris4ag. A vear:'lu.rer':•ftw critics ·dispute Putnam's g..:ncral rhc:sis. although thc:re-: is .nluth .discussion 11bout
the causes and cur.c:.s for ~,ivic disengage·
ment. (:itizen!; are resj)Q~ding ..in many
waf,i in count.le~ ptacc.s.like Waterville:
il'l con.setVativc Tvler. Texas.. :wherc: a
eolorful.l;piSt;opai pric:si :·namC'd David
�..
Renowetlon. In Phikidelphia, fol/q from the Frrnrkford .
~alloway is· training home-Jro~n leaders '60s·style to take ch!lrge of their own
neighborhoods; in .Chat~noogli, Tenn.,
where a town losing ntanufacrur.ing jobs
and beleagu.tred by, soei~ prob.lems re•
covered 1ts p_ride· and ptl;)d·~ct~vity,
thanks to groups lilcc: P,. PARE: to Parents that inspire cltize'ris to turn their
own lives around and th~n tack(e neigh·
borhood problems:· ar¥: in Cleveland's
West Side neighbcirhoQd, where a host
of activists have form~d a partnership
With local indusuy·:tO salt~age job~ train
welfare· recipients ~d iresiore lhe once
cohesive community.
·
The int~Uectuat ferment is..discemible
not only predictable pla.¢es tike univer"
sities and a~d·emi.c j~tirilais bU:~ also in
the corridors of Congr.ess·~nd the White
House, in fovndatipn ponfolios ·and in a
host of new national c#,ganizations with
the langUage of "eotf$unity'' and "re·
newal" in their titles. A few examples:
• President Clinton~ whose:. White
House h:as sponsorec;t :a.' Reiiwenting
Citizenship Project, plans ·to highlight
the issue in his State of the Union address this week. He told U.S. News:
. ''People believe they're being treated
like coucb potatoes and spectators that
are supposed to show up at the ballot
box and respond to the last 30~second
ad. They need to feef like ·they make a
in.
M"mistry 'have worked hal'd to revive local busiitw~s lllld housillg.
differeRCe ·again.~' He said his work
passing
·
· t . zones· in cities
1
and
'the eanied·income tax
eredit
· govemment ·can improve.
liyes and .pr~~Cted the
w.m :beuefit &om this
HaWJnlll·J!lrass;-roots•renewal. ·
· ·COalS of.Indiana;
vlnue-Jrn~lster B'ill
in.trodutee'd. in Congre&$' a
COI.IeCl:iVe'IV as the
char.itable organizations; including
churcties, Other bi~ls' would·::.,.se tax dot•.
latS' 'tO p~omote Cilizen crime PiltrOl~,.
·mentQ.ring prograins .. for ttenagers and.
moral guidance for.;welfare:inothers.
• Th~ .Pew· Charitable:Trust has shifted
.jts· f~,an·~iQg priorit-ies :.:to sUpport three
·neW projectS aimcd:afthe restoration ·of
'civi~soeicty, espedany,~in neighborho~d~
st~ggling:with ecoi'lc;t~ic uphcava). Th~
.(oundation .had be:ez:~ ~.concentrating. o"
,helping East'ern Europe and only bei~J.t•
.edly saw the urg~rlt:itced· to c.Ombat.soci~l
.',di$$0httion in Ameriea's own communi~
tie5~ Says.Paul Lig~r. p'ublic:;poJicy dircc. '. ,tor::"We ba:d1.a·gro~~g sen~ t~at
. the i:lemocratlc flame:was burnmg
· : less;br.ight b~ck bome:."
: · vaew·r""":-tM.:strwt. Typical of
. the) communities. that attraCted
.. Pew officials·~ imention is Frank. ,ford, a .working-class neighbor·
. · hoOd in ·No;th: :P..hiladelphia. Fiv,e
: ·yeats ago, ~rankford, ~as in seri. : ,ous· declin·e,: a~d lo:ngtimc reside~ts were'> gro~in·g hopelc:s's
·a~\it the po~sibilit:Y.. or ever rc:·
versing rampant dni$ use, crime
·and: a faherin'gJocal ~onomy. .But
·When
Changed· Iff•.:Cleve/Qnd 's ..Connie Coscu got a
new job with·help.fro, a:.communitj pup.
8 .p('a·n~ed. rec:O~Struction
of
·lhe'; subway system t~reatencd to
shut down the area's.:business d·is·
trier, with devastating conse65
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quences.. local church leaders rilllicu the
cit.izens to demand a seat at the public
table. They p~rsuaded tran.'ii~ officials to
do most of. the disruptive construction
work in off hours. 11llowing; l9cal businesses to keep their doors ·open -and
avoiding what might have been Fral\kf()rd's economic death kneU.
The voice that Frankfor~ gained in
that crisis has since turned the communi·
ty around. according to the
:
Rev. Robin Hynieka. exee· ,
utive dtrec:tot: of the Fra!lk- i
ford Oroup Ministry. Today, this once impou~nt .
neighborhood is recruiting
for a community police ·
force, organizing a youth i
basketball league and ere- ,
ating an offiee that allows :
aspiring entrc.preneurs ·to
share some of their stan"'up .
costs as thev rebuild the ;
business district. Equally ;·
important are signs of; ·
Frankford's resusc-itated i
esteem: When a record: 30 ;·
inches of snow wall dumped ! •
on the city thi-s mon.t:h, .
frankford didn't sta·nd ·
around moaAing .about _rhe
inefficicncv of.cit'v workcn;.
Residents· rented prh,:~lc.
snowplows and split il:le
cost. As Connie De buy,
chairperson ·of the Fr&nk· ; .
ford Plan, explains: "Onc:e ;: .
you get past the resentment:: ·:
of the government not :~o- :· ·'
ing it for you. you get it·
done vourself."
Soeial reformers looking,
for the kevs to successful communitv
organizati'O-n find manY: detail!i: o"r
Frankford's story compefli~g-the precipitating crisis, the in~olv~ment of. the
churc;h and especially the ~elf-help ·ethic. But is it possible for legislation to
nurture communitv S:eJf.re:.lia.nce- to
make citizens want io grabia snow shovel and dig in?
·
:' ·
Learned helplessness? Th~ ~oars legislation is a controversial aue~t tn d~ just
that. Implicit in the pro.po$ed Ia.~ credit.
ror eJCample, is the notion t~at th·C:'·gr~wth
of government...;,esped;llly;the social re·
forms of the past 60 yearsl-;is to blame
for the desiccation of pri~te charitv.
Many Rcp11blican law~akers now: be·
lieve the proper response to the decay of
civil society is to dismant.lc· the st'ate·s
social programming and allow the ~:mce
robust "intermedial')''' institutions be·
tween government arid t~e market to
breathe again- espec:iillly the church.
Historian Marvin Olaskv ari!ues that
Toc:quevillc was largely 'prat~>ing the
church and churcb·~pon~ored associa·
tions in America;;.. cnnriti.c5•. schools.
even newspapers. ~os( :of 'which were
founded with exp·J~it -spirhi,fal and com·
munitarian pur~s~s. A serious. problem
with modern-da\i welfare and llocial serv·
ice programs. h.F n,l·aintains. is.: that the
church: has becn~ueezc~·out 9fthe for·
mula and with itt~~ biblical understand·
ing of comptissifi)n as a c:ovc'na.nt earned
I
r • vv,
v~
tax credit'.proposal, c:oncedirig that calcu·
lations of tax savings for act~ of a'luuism
run contrary to the spirit of community
building;· he would prefer.' an 8(}.· or 90
percent tax. credit tbat would require
some'ac:tual.sa~fice and aSsumption of
community responsibility. .
:
It's not just !he religious tight that im·
plicates the overweeJ1in·g ·state :in civic
decay. Northwestern University'~ John
McKnight believes the . growth::. of the
hetping prof~ssions and ·~rcde~tialing
Chatt~ooga school into (I community Cl!nter.
only through ~r:pentunc~' l.ll· his ·forthcoming bo~ Rtmewi1tg Atirerictm Com·
pns.fiou. he ;u'~4i~s t·~ilt it. h;,ls become
nearly impossi~lc; regauy·.£md administratively, tO of~er spiritual co·unseling to
drug addicts. c\'cn ,though p~;ograms .that
treat addictionllas·srn have a: better track
record than rh¢ s(~ndard~'medicai model" in moving airo~ol·ic:s.an4 drug abusers
back. ·to produttil!~ li\!eS•. ·
Like Alilny cfitics, Oiasky supports the
idea of a Jimitd;:t·g~ver.nmerit -:ole in promoting civic ~:ci~sr, a~.:~eJ.fare. &,t he
!tlso argues thaF, tu,storacatJy the.abl·~-~
aed nee~y werp alWays e~ccted to g•ve
somethang b<tq~...; .ehoppm.g. wood wa~ a
popular quid pro.quo -in private wc(f;u::e
programs. It's .tb:¢ unrestricted flow of
tiberal compassion, a~ ~e ·con!!equent
sense of entitrement.; Olaskv,maintains.
that create the: p~ra!~~g ~lplessness
now.seen in both ihdiv•duals and communitie!i: Olasky 1!. lukewarm a.bout Co;us·s
has created a nation of'cli~nts w.ho view
government servic:es. as c:Ommo4ities. In
his .,e:w bOok of essays•. The Canl'l~ss-Soci- · :
tty, McKnight: argues tllar:the growth Qf ·
·the nonprofit. sector- hospitalsr. schools
and so f()t1h -·has squeezed out .ttie space
. for genuin.e ·'citizenship,': .wheJ:"~ groups
. of peop_le onc:e, came togetl,ter to· work on
. r:ommon problems.
, .
.·
Others ·argue. in fact; _;·that. 'the Jan·
guag~ .of.~lul'lteerism:·is· ~ major obstaetc ~o any iru!C revival·of.:civie,Hfe. Uni: versity of Minn~sota ~iologist Hany
Boyte contends that; :Americans have
· lost'.:touch with the id.ea·. lheir t·abor was
connected· to· the commonweal:.: For his
new book, Buildi"' A~crica: The /Jf:mo-
cra~ic
Pr'ornise.. of Public. Work, :~yte insurviving parii~ip:an~s in the
Civilian Con5ervatiorr COrps,,,·and he
~ei'Vie..Ved:.
believes
~hat·.thei(
stro.ng.
sen~
of citi·
z:enship ~s. forged- th·rough their cxpe·
rience 'of doing what was:widely consid·
.
..
U.S.NF.w.; li. WOIIU> Rt>~.)•\.1'<~ 2!1,1996
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ered important public work. People are
not born citizens, he notes, nor do they
become useful citizens by speaking a
sentimental language of community
building and empowerment.
Where conservatives like to blame democracy's travails on big government's
largess, left-leaning critics are concerned
about the corrosive effects of the market
on civic life- and the potential for more
damage if government regulation of the
corporate world is dismantled. Benjamin
Barber, a political scientist from Rutgers
University, notes that in TocqueviDe's
America, the market of shopkeepers and
artisans was small and actually contribut·
ed to civic life by serving as a public
square, a place of ideas. But today's mall
serves no such function, he argues, nor
does it promote community values, since
people are treated as nothing more than
niche consumers. Barber's view is in sync:
with Putnam's most recent analysis,
which implicates television- and ,the
cynicism and passivity associated with
vastly increased viewing- as the most
potent force undermining civic society.
Cycles of nostalgia. On the streetj of
real communities, of course, people
don't talk about· abstractions like the
state, the market and civic society at all.
But they do make trade-offs, according
to Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The .Lost
City, a study of community values in 19S0s
Chicago. Simply put, the trade-off pits
community, with its greater emphasis on
authority, rules and relationships,
against expanded choice a more di·
· verse market of commodities. And most
Americans have opted to sacrifice a large
measure of old-fashioned community cohesion for more consumer brands. But,
Ehrenhalt adds, nostalgia for a simpler
past comes in cycles and America seems
to be in another such period now.
But experts aren't sure. A Rockefeller
Foundation study, the only attempt to
quantify civic revival systematically,
came up empty-handed. There are hundreds of local success stories, with
enough variety to bolster theorists of any
ideological stripe. But it's a big country,
and lots more communities do n~t have
inspirational stories than do.
Still, insists McKnight, the infrastructure of civic life remains intact, even in
some of the nation's poorest urban
neighborhoods. It's just waiting to be rediscovered. And Barber echoes this sentiment: "Americans are homeless.
They're longing for a civic home. And
they know it's not Washington, and it's
not the mall."
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• CULTURE &IDEAS
Stellar news for
stars and dreamers
The heavens have their best week since Genesis
m
BY WRAY HERBERT wrnc DA* HAW1C11S 01 ·
I'MILAIJiliMIA. WNIIISM CDNDIIII ~ KAIDI
SCMMIDT IN CIIATWCIOClo' 4"11 CIGasnlPMIR EVAN! DC 1'DAS
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, JANUARY 21,1996
T
he heavelns rained new& last week.
Astronomers meetins ijt San Antonio asto..nded one another with a
series of dramlttic reports thai promise to
improve '!ur f4ndamental understanding
of the unwel"'4t. They presented conclusive evidence that stars the siie of our sun
have planets abd those planets might be
· able to sup~rt life. They saw for the farst
time galmel fforming at the dawn of
time, thanks lo pictures taken by the
Hubble Spa~e Telescope.· And they
learned that •t least half of our own
Millcy Way ~axy is compo$ed of ordi·
nary stu~ n exotic, as-yet-undiscovered ~articles at some have postulated.
Here show to1understand ~~highlights:
• Life-sustaining planets. The search for
planets around other·stars has been driven by philosophy as well as science. If one
other planetary system is found, the ar·
gument goes, then the universe· surely
must contain many others. And if.anoth·
er planet is found that has propitious
conditions for the formation of life, then,
perhaps, we are not alone.
·
The two planets discovered by Geof·
frey Marcy of San Francisco State University and his associate Paul Butler are
nof the first ones ever discovered beyond
our solar system. The reason they are so
exciting is that they bqin to meet the test
of possible life. They orbit the stars 70
Virginis, in the constellation Virgo, and
47 Ursae Majoris, in the Big Dipper.
Both stars are about the size of the sun,
and their ~lanets are gaseous like Jupi·
ter, only bi"er. The temperature of the
planet orbating 70 Virginis is probably
about 185 depcs, allowing liquid water
in "a nice toasty warm bath," Marcy says.
That's about right for complex organic
molec:ules to form similar to those "that
presumably led to life on Earth." Water
on the second planet is probably frozen.
The planet around 70 Virginis is par67
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•
A MAN 0
If ever a man
did, George Washington
had ·"bearing," an attitude.
of his body that helped
to make his fame . .
He was .also of strong
and flaring temperament, which
l.ent energy to his purpose
but made his anger
terrible. And, io conta·in
and channel his high feeling,
he had a personal
moral code built on maxims
he had studied-from youth.
An essay on cha_racter
by RICHARD BROOKHISER
T
HE list of personal events and traits that
~nabled
George Washington to do what he did is long and
various, and ranges from a youthful bout of smallpox, which immunized him a~ainst the disease, to a
fondness for the Stoic philosopher Seneca, which may have
immunized him against temper tantrums. But the important
qualities that shaped Washington fall into only a few cate- ·
gories. His character may be described as a three-story ·
building. The top floor was furnished with the political ideas
of eightee1,1th-century America, with which we are familiar.~
But the other two stories were equally important. The second
50
floor was his morals-and to these. we will return. The
ground floor consisted of what was given to him by nature
and cultivated by the conditions of his life: his physicality
and his temperament. His form was imposing, and his temper was dangerous. Displaying the one and controlling the
other were essential to his success as a leader.
In '1760 Captain George Mercer, who had been Washington's aide in the Virginia militia, wrote a description of him.
[He is as] straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two
inches in his stockings [at his death he was measured at six
feet three and a half inches] and weighing 175 pounds ....
JANUARl
1996
H
in
a
th
w
' su
m
ed
th.
a
pa
oh
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�ON HORSEB-ACK
His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating great ~trength ... He is wide shouldered but has not
a deep or round chest; is neat waisted, but is broad across
the hips and has rather lon·g legs and arms. His head is
well-shaped, though not )arge, but is gracefully poised on a
superb neck. A large and straight rather than a prominent
nose; blue gray penetrating eyes which are widely separated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather
than broad, with high round cheek bones, and terminates in
a· good firm chin. He has a clear though rather colorless
pale skin which bums with the sun. A pleasing and benevolent though a commanding countenance, dark brown hair
119 6
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which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and generally _
firmly closed, but which from time to time discloses some
defective teeth. His features are regular and placid with all
the muscles of his face under perfect control, though flexible and expressive of deep feeling when moved by emotions. In conversation he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential, and engaging. His demeanor at all times
compose<;! and dignified. liis movements and gestures are
graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.
Some of the physical details of this portrait changed over
the course ofWashington~s life. His defective teeth came out,
Illustrations by C.F. Payne
51
�to be replaced by various sets of almost equally defective
false teeth. And he gained weight, though only up to a point:
by the time he was fifty-one he weighed 209 pounds; fifteen .
years later he weighed one pound more. Mercer does not
mention the light pockmarks on his nose, souvenirs of his
disease, probably because so. many people in the eighteenth
century bore them. But the general impression that Mercer
gave would be registered by other observers for the next
forty years, often in nearly identical words. One English visitor wrote in 1796, "Washington has something uncommonly majestic and commanding in his walk, his address, his figure, and his countenance." It was an impression not of
·glamour, or of beauty-:some of his features (the large hands,
the shallow chest) were potentially unattractive-:-but of the
presence of the whole figure. Many of us have bodies that sit
or stand dully, or droop like suits on wire hangers. Washington's organized the space around it, as a dancer's arms or
legs seem to stretch beyond the tips of the fingers or toes.
Soldiers were very much aware of his presence and his
doings. James Thacher, a ·medical officer of the American
Army, wrote that 'whim Washington first took command, in
'
.
1775, the men were "much gratified" to be able to pick him
out from among his aides at a glance. The Marquis de Lafayette's rapturous description of him at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, even after making allowance for hero
worship, explains why Washington's men considered him
heroic: "His graceful bearing on horseback, his calm and deportment which still retained a trace of displeasure ... were
all calculated to inspire the highest degree of enthusiasm.
. . . I thought then ~s now that I had never beheld so superb
a man."
Women also took note of him. In a letter urging him to
serve second term Mrs. Eliza Powel, a Philadelphia hostess, cited his looks among his qualifications for office, and
argued that his physical stature enhanced his political
stature: "Your very figure is calculated to inspire confidence
with people whose simple good sense appreciates the noblest qualities of mind with the heroic form." After she first
met Washington, Abigail Ada':lls wrote to her husband,
a
You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of
him, but I thought the one half was not told me .... Those
lines of Dryden instantly occurd to me
, "Mark his Majestick fabrick! ·he's a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine
His Souls the deity that lodges there.
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God."
~ears late'r John Adams, with less enthusiasm, compared
Washington to "the Hebrew sovereign chosen because he
wa:s taller by the head than the other Jews." Washington was
certainly a head taller than Adams:
Mercer began his description by calling Washington
"straight as an Indian." This comparison, too, recurred over
the years. "Had he been born in the forests," wrote Gilbert
Stuart, who .painted him in his sixties, "he would have bet(n
the fiercest man among the savage tribes." In such ways
would Europeans and even Americans add a dash of local
color to figures they associated with the frontier. But the
frontier was real, and Washington had spent more time in it
than many of his contemporaries-more, certainly, than all
but a few subsequent Presidents. He had fought alongside
and against Indians, and he entertained them in the presidential mansion. The simile may have been romantic, but it was
not fancifuL
Washington's body commanded attention because of its
prowess as well as its appearance. A visitor to Mount Vernon
in 1772 remembered to~sing an iron bar on the lawn with
some young men, when Washington asked "to be shown the
pegs that marked the bounds of our effort; then smiling, and
without putting off his coat, held out his hand for the missile." Washington's toss "str[ uck]. the ground far, very far beyond our ut~ost liinits ..... the Colonel, on retiring, pleasantly observed, 'When you beat my pitch, young gentlemen,
I'll try again."' Garry Wills has pointed out that the anecdote
is already, in that telling, taking the shape of a legeJ1d, but
there is no reason to doubt it. Washington boasted that he
had once thrown a stone up to the Natural Bridge, a 215foot-high rock arch in the Shenandoah Valley. His workaday
feats.of strength and stamina were scarcely less remarkable.
During the Revolutionary War he could stay awake and on
horseback for days at a stretch. On his first expedition to the
Pennsylvania wilderness he walked for a week through
snowy, pathless woods, .fell off a raft into an ice-choked river, spent the night on an island, and ~hen pressed on to a trading post. His traveling companion, a frontiersman, came
down with frostbite; he did not. ·
Many of his pastimes were active and such as would show
him off. He attended a dancing school, and he practiced
what he had learned until he. was in his late fifties. During his
first term as President he carefully described in his diary the
balls heJd in his honor, and the number and ~omeliness of
the women in attendance: "There were about seventy-five
well dressed and many of ,them very handsome ladies" at
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, "among whom ... were a
greater proportion with much blacker hair than are usually
seen in the southern states."
Another activity that was part hobby, part simple necessity, was riding .. Thomas Jefferson (who, as a Virginian, knew
what he was talking about) called Washington "the best
horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could
· be seen on horseback." Washington's hours in the saddle are
evident even in nonequestrian pictures of him: John Trumbull's portrait after the Battle of Trenton clearly shows a pair
I
of well-developed t~ighs. When I showed it to a bodybuilder, she said, "Nice quads."
A typical day at Mount Vernon began with a circuit of his
filmis. During his first year as President he sometimes rode
. from southern Manhattan to Morningside Heights and back,
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�form Washington· designed for himself and the officers of
a round trip of fourteen miles. "He rode, as he did every
his regiment, which was hardly that of a guerrilla: "the coat
thing, with ease, elegance, and with power," George Custis,
to be faced and cuffed with scarlet and trimmed with silver;
his step-grandson, remembered. His "perfect and sinewy
a scarlet waistcoat with silver lace; blue breeches; and a silframe ... gave him such a surpassing grip with his knee~,
ver laced hat." He designed his last uniform during the war
that a horse might as soon disencumber itself of the saddle as
scare of 1798: "a blue coat with yellow buttons and gold
of such a rider." Washington tested his firmness in the saddle
on many a fox hunt. He acquired a pack of hounds in 1767; · epaulettes (each having three silver stars) .... The coat to be
without lapels, and embroidered on the cape, cuffs, and
his diary two years later records a month during hunting seapockets. A white plume in the hat to be a further distincson like this: January 4, Fox hunting; 10, Fox hunting; II,
tion." Washington's waistcoats and plumes were not the afFox hunting; 12, "Went out in the Momg. with the Hounds";
16, "Went a ducking"; 17, Fox hunting; 18, Fox hunting; 19,
fectations of a dandy. He wore uniforms because he was a
soldier, or-as when he appeared before the Continental 1
Fox hunting; 20,-Fox hunting; 2l,Fox hunting; 25, "Hunting
below Accatinck"; 28, "Went a Huntg." The hunts began be- . Congress in military garb-because he hoped to become
fore dawn and could. last up to seven hours. Washington folone. He looked good in them because he looked good. Men
responded to the spectacle.
lowed his pack closely, and was "always in at the death ...
yielding to no man the honor of the brush."
"It is an interesting question," Thoreau wrote, "how far
In egalitarian ages riding may have sinister political con- · men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of
notations. A "man on horseback" is a would-be dicta:tor. An . their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any
English Puritan of the seventeenth cencompany of civilized men which belonged to the most retury declared that "none comes into
spected class?" George Orwell, going even further, argued
that leaders are if anything remarkable for their "quite fanthe world with a saddle upon his
\
'
ASHINGTON'S FEATS OF STRENGTH AND STAMINA
WERE REMARKABLE.
-·
THE NATURAL BRIDGE.
HE ONCE THREW A STONE UP TO
DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR HE
COULD:STAY AWAKE AND ON HORSE-BACK FOR DAYS.
back neither any booted and spurred to ride him"-a sentiment echoed in the nineteenth century by Jefferson. What
those democrats ignored is the appeal of the centaur. A spectator identifies with both the rider and the mount, admiring
the rider's control of a beautiful and powerful animal, and
appreciating the guidance of knowing legs and hands. ,Certainly Lafayette at Monmouth, and other soldiers on other
occasions, appreciated Washington's firmness in the saddle.
Today such feelings can be savored only indirectiy, from
westerns; in Washington's day it was possible to experience
the emotion without denial.
Washington displayed his figure in uniforms. He had a
lifelong interest in shows and spectacles of all kinds-plays,
circuses, puppet shows, exhibitions of wild animals-but
the show with the longest run was himself. In August of
1755, after General Edward Braddock's army had been destroyed by the French and the Indians in the wilderness, Vir. ginia raised a regiment to defend itself, and put Washington
in command. Children's books still say th.at Washington had
advised Braddock to take his men out of red coats and dress
them in forest colors-advice the Englishman supposedly
. ignored. How likely al_l this is may be judged from the uniTIll\ ,\ T I..\ NT ll:
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1
tastic ugliness." A gallery of "the great ones of the earth" circa 1944, he wrote, would include "Mussolini with his scrubby dewlap, the chinless de Gaulle, the stumpy short-armed
. Churchill, G~ndhi with his long sly nose and huge bats' ears .
. . ."Washington would stand out from both Thoreau's locker-room lineup and Orwell's rogue's gallery, because he
passed the first test of politics.
The body is the basic unit of all human intercourse, including politics .. Civilization modifies or suppresses that fact,
in the interest of cultivating other aspects of people. Yet even
rulers who are intelligent, prudent, or visionary must make a
sensual impact if they are to lead. If their bodies cannot command attention, they must compel it by secondary physical
. means, such as elo~uence, or by props-masks, regalia, Air
Force One. (Gandhi u~ed the most ostentatious props of,any
modem leader-the dhoti and the walking stick.) Republics,
which profess to dispense with props, fall back on the primal
importance of the body. Sixteen of America's Presidents
have fought in battle, the ultimate physical test: Washington,
Monroe, Jackson, William Henry Harrison. Taylor, Pierce,
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Theodore. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Bush .
55
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Two who did not were college athletes: Ford and Reagan.
·Americans admired Franklin D. Roosevelt for his struggles
'.vith polio, but they would not have admired him so much as
a leader if he had not also been handsome and dashing (and
if he had not carefully concealed his wheelchair). WashingLOn had physical authority in its simplest form, and though
ie enhanced it with exercise and adornment, they functioned
as supplements, not substitutes. He "has so much martial
:iignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to
··,e a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people,"
wrote Benjamin Rush, a physician and politician, in October
~ ·.f 1775. "There is not a king in Europe that would notlook
~;ke a valet de chambre by his side."
TREMENDOUS IN HIS
WRATH
W
ASHINGTON'S temperament was more complicated than his "Majestick fabrick," though the two had
some relation. Just as big dogs are less excitable
:1an small ones, so Washington showed. something of a big
::1an 's ease and composure-up to a point. He. enjoyed com;any and entertaining, especially at Mount Vernon; accounts
·.f his discomfort at the dinner table come from the time of
. :.i~ presidency, when the table was not truly his own. Gentle:::en were expected to entertain, by virtue of their station in
::fe, but had he not taken to his role, guests would not so of~
·.~ have described him as "affable" or "amiable." He had
'.ne of the sure signs of a capacious spirit: the ability to laugh
<::another's jokes (he favored surprising scenes and ironic
.~~xtapositions). Even though Washington lectured Gou·, ~eur Morris, he enjoyed the sarcasm of the younger politi·.;an; until other aspects of Arnold's character assumed
;rominence, he enjoyed the wit of Benedict Arnold. A subtler
::.ark of Washington's hospitality of mind appears in his let·.t;r~, in the change!! his style underwent depending on whom
:.r; was addressing. When he corresponded with Lafayette,
·. :-:. :. prose took on some of Lafayette~s ingenuous warmth.
rT.ie of Washington's most charming letters was written to a
::.an who most needed to be charmed: an amateur composer.
·-:;;hat, alas! can I do to support [your music]?" he wrote to
h-an cis Hopkinson, who had sent him a set of pieces for the
:"<rpsichord. "I can neither sing one of the songs, nor raise a
·~"!:1gle note on any instrument to convince the unbelieving,
• rJ·;t J have, however, one argu~ent which will prevail with
;r.t"'>Ons of true taste (at least in America); I can tell them that
:·. i:. the production of Mr. Hopkinson." "[Wa~>hington] has
·-..·. happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet car:O:·ing his point," Abigail Adams wrote, "that if he was not
:>;ally one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might
._,;a \'ery dangerous one."
Hi~ temperament tiad its raw edges, however, and when
r.:;r;y were incautiously touched, he could become dangerous
r:' those around him. George Mercer noted that Washington's
,
----~-----
skin was pale, and easily burned; it was also thin. One Eng_lish guest at Mount Vernon, after taking due note of his "affability and accommodation," added that there was "a certain anxiety on his countenance which marks extreme
sensibility." Washington was remarkably sensitive to hostile
criticism. Though he came in for less of it than any other
President has done, he did get some, chiefly from a handful
of Republican editors, who called him variously a gambler, a
cheapskate, a horse beater, a dictator, and "a most horrid
swearer and blasphemer." "I think he feels those things more
than any person I ever yet met with," Jefferson wrote after
Washington complained to him of the tone of Philip Freneau's National Gazette. Jefferson knew well what Wash. ington was complaining of, since he kept Freneau, a journalistic hatchet man, on the State Department payroll.
Like many sensitive people, Washington had a temper. He
was passionate for distinction and for having his way, and
' when he was frustrated, his affability could vanish. Gilbert
Stuart likened him not just to an Indian but to a fierce Indian.
Another English guest at Mount Vernon, this one a comic
actor, saw in his face a "compression of the mouth and [an]
indentation of the brow ... suggesting a habitual conflict
with and mastery over passion." It is interesting that a portrait painter and an actor, two professional s(udents of character and appearance, saw such similar things in him. Washington's passions had shown themselves for all to see at
Monmouth Courthouse; the "trace of displeasure" noted by
Lafayette was left over from dressing down a general who
had retreated without orders.
But Washington's temper and willfulness were not detected only by experts, or displayed only in battlefield crises .
They were a lifelong presence, in war and in peace. When
he 'was sixteen years old, and had begun surveying the holdings of his in-laws and neighbors, the Fairfaxes, Thomas,
Lord Fairfax, the head of the family, sent an assessment of
· the young man to Washington's mother: "I wish I could say
that he governs his temper." Washington's first battle, eight
years later, a wilderness tangle that touched off the French
and Indian War, showed him to be headstrong and highhanded, as well as bold and enterprising. One of Britain's
Indian allies who had been with Washington in battle "complained very much" of Washington's behavior; he "command[ed] the Indians as his slaves," and "would by no means
take advice .... but was always driving them on to fight by
his directions."
These were the excesses of a youth. But Alexander Hamilton wrote of the forty-eight-year-old Washington, after four
years' service on his staff, that he was "remarkable [neith~r]
for delicacy nor for good temper." Hamiiton was in a bad
mood himself when he wrote that, for Washington had recently chewed him out. ''Two days ago, the General and I
passed each other on the stairs" at headquarters. "He told me
he wanted to speak to me. I answered that I would wait upon
him immediately." Two minutes later, by Hamilton's own
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count, "I me,t him at the head of the· stairs where,: accosting
me in an angry tone, 'Colonel Hamilton,' said he, 'you have
kept me' waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I
must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.'" Hamilton
resigned then and there, as he said, "without petulancy,"
which was obviously untrue-though, to do him justice, he
was not the only petulant man on the staircase.
In 1793, during a period of Franco-American tension, a
pro-French satire describing Washington's execution by
guillotine was mentioned at a Cabinet meeting. Jefferson
recorded what happened next with a seismologist's care.
Washington became
much. inflamed, got into one of those passions when he
cannot command himself.... [said] that he had never repented but once having slipped the moment of resigning
his office, and that was every moment since, and that by
God he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made
emperor of the world. ... That that rascal Freneau sent
him three of his papers every day, as if he thought he
would become the distributor of his papers, and that he
could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult
him. He ended in this high tone.
Late in 1795, when Edmund Randolph, a former Secretary of State who had resigned under pressure, published a
vindication of his own conduct, Timothy Pickering, the
current Secretary, witnessed a similar scene. Washington
enumerated Randolph's defects, cried "He has written and
published this," and threw the pamphlet to the floor. There
are problems with the details of Pickering's account, as
there are with those of Hamilton's. Pickering was remembering an incident many years after the fact; Hamilton
wrote two days later, but in a fit of pique. Both stories nonetheless agree with Jefferson's, and with Jefferson's considered judgment in his last, formal portrait of the man, that
Washington's "temper was naturallyirritable and hightoned," and when "it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath."
The episodes described by Washington's three political
assoCiates have something else in common: each of the outbursts recounted came to a quick and definite end. As Hamilton himself admitted, "less than an hour" after their clash
Washington sent an aide to tell Hamilton how highly he
thought of him, and to express the hope that a talk between
them might heal the breach. Although Hamilton rejected the
olive branch, Washington gave him .an infantry brigade to
command, and entrusted him with a crucial attack at Yorktown eight months later. The topic under discussion when
Washington's guillotining came up had been whether to embarrass France by publicizing certain indiscretiOJ'!S of its ambassador. Although the satire that set Washington off was the
work of French sympathizers, he decided when he became
calm again to continue current policy, which was to be discreet. He would not respond to provocation by needlessly
'I' II 1:
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provoking a foreign power. And in the third case, after spurn~
ing' Randolph's vindication, Washington "calmly resumed
his seat The storm was over;"
Anger sometimes bums itself out. Emotional storms can
clear the air. But anger can also be like the first leak through
a crack in a dam which brings on a deluge. The pattern of
closure in Washington's outbursts suggests deliberate. control.
They ended because he willed them to end. Considering the
problems that arose during his eight and a half years as Commander in Chief and his eight years as President, there. must
have been many storms that were controlled before they burst
out. Virtually every observer who noted Washington's temper
also noted the close rein he kept on it-including Washington
himself. Henry Lee, a family friend, once told the Washingtons that the painter Stuart had said his subject had a temper.
Martha Washington exclaimed that Stuart had been out of
line to say so. Lee finished the story: Stuart had added that ·
the temper was under "wonderful control." "Mr. Stuart is
· right," Washington remarked. Right on both counts.
Washington's temperament was like the horses he rode. A
high tone can be anger; it can also be .courage. The young
man who brushed aside Indian advice and rushed to defeat
'-,Vas the same man who, later in that war, stopped his men
from firing at each other in the night by stepping between
them and striking their muskets up with his sword. In the
next war, at the Battle of Princeton, he led his men so close
to the enemy's line that an aide pulled his hat over his eyes,
out of fear that Washington would be felled by the volley. A
sense of latent anger or suppressed force can be an aspect of
courage-an emphasis and a highlight. But if spirit is to
manifest itself as courage and not flow away in pointless
eruptions, it must be channeled and directed.
The few odd features of his body were integrated into a
powerful whole by grace and demeanor, by the way Washington moved and carried himself. Physical traits balanced
one another like counterweights. Passions are not so responsive to mutual influence; left to themselves, they jostle together, each seeking only its own fulfillment. In order to integrate them successfully, Washington had to draw on other
areas of his character.
.
A ROMAN MORALITY
M AN· s stature and temperament are more or Ies~
A
giv~
en to him by nature, but good behavior is something
that must be learned. If he follows a good example
regularly enough, then good actions may become second nature to him. The intersection of virtue, habit, and precept is
pinpointed in the word "morals," which simultaneously
opens out to mor1;11ity, right and wrong, and delves down into
manners, customs, mores. Morals were the second story of
Washington's character. Throughout his career as a leader he
wrestled with the problem of national self-governmenL
Morals were the way he governed himself.
57
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.... ---- ----
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Washington's contemporaries were greatly interested in
encouraging goodness with good advice, in adults as well as
in children. Benjamin Franklin related in his Autobiography
that as a young man he had drawn up a list of thirteen virtues
he wished to acquire, and a program for practicing them. "I
was surpriz'd to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I
had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish." One of the most popular sources of guidance in his
day, which Washington himself might have cited as an influence, was the virtues of the Romans. Historians and biographers have certainly cited them. "So everyone" in the Amer-
60
ican government, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick write in
The Age of Federalism, "was more or less Roman. George
Washington. ranked first, and John Adams was the next Roman below him."
For all their artistic and philosophical brilliance, the Greeks
were failures at politics; Hamilton. in The Federalist, expressed "horror and disgust at the distractions with which they
were continually agitated." The Romans captured the American imagination because they had done what the Americans
themselves hoped to do--sustain an extensive republic over a
course of centuries. The society of Revolutionary War officers
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�caueo memse1ves mecmcmnatl; "president," "congress," and
"senate" were all Roman terms. But the Roman example was
also cautionary, for when the Romans lost their virtue, they
slid into empire. When Franklin said, in response to a question
from Eliza Powel, that the Constitutional Convention had pro-·
duced '.'a republic, if you can keep it," he and she would have
remembered that trye Romans had failed to keep theirs.
Washington encountered the Roman atmosphere long be. fore the Revolution. He bandied about Roman allusions with
· the Fairf~xes: William Fairfax, who managed the Fairfax
holdings, wrote to Colonel Washington at his frontier post letters decorated with occasional philosophical reflections, including the reminder that Washington's trials as an officer'
were, after all, less onerous than Caesar's. But Washington's.
extended exposure to the idea of Roman virtue, beyond sententious letters, came from two popular works by or about Romans, filtered through an English sensibility: Senecas
Morals, a collection of essays by ~e first-century philosopher
and playwright, translated in 1682 by the English pamphleteer
Roger L'Estrange, and Joseph Addison's 1713 drama Cato. Wash-
IS
TEMPERAMENT HAD
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6
ton, and that has drawn some, though perhaps not
enough, attention from historians, is one that he had
copied 9ut by hand by the age of sixteen: "Rules of Civility
and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation." The
rules outline a different map of morality, and a different constellation of virtues. During his second presidential term
Mrs. Henrietta Liston, the wife of the British ambassa-.
dor, asserted that Washington had "perfect good breeding,
& a correct knowledge of even the etiquette of a court,"
though how he had acquired that, "heaven knows." Jeffer, son, Adams, and Franklin had lived. in Europe for years; no
wonder they knew their way around a drawing room. Mrs.
Liston did not know that Washington had been practicing his
manners for half a century, along with the morals that they
implied.
The "Rules of Civility"-110 in all-are based on a set
composed by French Jesuits in 1595. In 1640 an English
translation appeared, ascribed to Francis Hawkins, the
ITS
ington acquired a copy of Senecas Morals in his late teens,
and he quoted lines and phrases from Cato all his life.
Aside from a few discrete arguments, and a general air of
moral striving, however, the noble Romans do not much resemble Washington. He took them as an inspiration, and perhaps also as a corrective to 9ertain of his flaws. But the
"philosophic" state of mind, as described by Seneca, can
seem inert and torpid: "The true felicity of life is to be free
from perturbations .... Not to amuse ourselves with either
hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which
is abundantly sufficient; for he that is so, wants nothing."
Washington loved Mount Vernon as much as anything else .
in his life, but if that had been all he loved or cared for, he
could easily have rested there.
The trouble with the Roman virtues, or at least those that
Washington studied, is that they are inhumane. As Cato approaches its climax-and its hero~s suicide...,-()ne of the republican remnant argues for surrender, saying that, after all,
Caesar has "the virtues of humanity." "Curse on his virtues!"
Cato replies. "They've undone his country." The noble Romans offered to solve life's problems by keeping others at
arm's length, or by hectoring them-or worse. ·
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.
RAW EDGES,' AND WHEN
WASHINGTON'S
WERE A LIFELONG PRESENCE,
'
rks
A
SET ofprecepts that meant much more to Washing-
INCAUTIOUSLY TOUCHED,
BECOME DANGEROUS.
NESS
POLITENESS AS· POLITICS
HE
COULD
TEMPER AND WILLFUL-
IN WAR AND IN PEACE.
twelve-year-old son of a doctor. (The precocious Hawkins
was supposed to have made his translation four years earlier.) The Hawkins version of the niles went through eleven
editions over the next three decades. How it got to Virginia
in the middle of the next century is unknown. Presumably a
schoolmaster or tutor made Washington write the rules out,
in part as an exercise in penmanship. Washington's copy is
in the second half of an exercise book, after samples of assorted legal forms and some poems.
Several of the rules cautioned against Seneca's bete noire;
anger: "In reproving show no signs of cholor but do it with all
sweetness and mildness," advised No. 45. "Be not angry at
table whatever happens and if you have reason to be so, show
it not ... especially if .there be strangers" (No. 105). Others
were rudimentary bulwarks against the grossness of life in an
age when a traveler at an inn might share a bed with a
stranger. "Kill no vermin, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc. in the sight
of others" (No. 13). "Spit not into the fire ... nor set your feet
upon the fire, especially if there be meat before it" (No. 9).
But the overall focus was est~blished in the very first rule:
"Every action done in company ought to be done with sqme
sign of respect to those that are present." The "Rules of Civil-
a
61
�ity" are "virtues of humanity"-guidelines for dealing with
Washington may well have too, since Colonel Parke was the
others, based on attending to their situations and their sensigrandfather of Daniel Parke Custis, Martha's first husband.
bilities. Seneca and Addison were concerned with a man's
Aristocratic manners had .an underside: those who sought
attention across the social gap, whether for themselves or for
peace. of mind and rectitude; the "Rules" are concerned with
men. "When you see a crime punished, you may be inwardly ' some project, had to resort to flattery and hypocrisy to attract
pleased; but ... show pity to the offending sufferer" (No. 23).
royal or noble eyes. Washington certainly knew this, from
''Treat [artificers and persons of low degree] with affability
his own experience in the French and Indian War. In 1757 he
and courtesy~ without arrogance" (No. 36). "When a man
tried to press a scheme for frontier defense on the British
· does all he can, though i~ succeed not well, blame not him
commander in chief in North America, John Campbell,
that did it" (No. 44). "Cleanse not your teeth with the table
fourth earl of Loudon. The mode of flattery he employed was
to deny that he was flattering. "Do not think, my Lord, that I
cloth napkin, fork, or knife; but if others do it, let it be done
w~thout a peep to them" (No. 100). The decent way to behave
am going to flatter; notwithstanding I have exalted sentiments of your Lordship's character and respect your rank, it
toward criminals, craftsmen, honest failures, and boors varies
iil detail, but the principle of approach is the same.
is not my intention to adulate. My nature is open and honest
Washington bought handbooks of politeness as an adult,
and free from guile!" The exclamation point underlines the
and the recipients of his courtesy (along with comments on
insincerity. (Lord Loudon rejected the advice.)
it) were legion, from Henrietta Liston to the coughing guest
All modern manners in the Western world were originally
at Mount Vernon who was mortified when his host appeared
aristocratic. "Courtesy" meant beh~vior appropriate to a
COJ.!rt; "chivalry" comes from "chevalier"-a knight. Yet
in the middle of the night with a bo":l of tea. His attention to
civility also had political ramifications. When he gestured to
Washington was to dedicate himself to freeing America from
Vice President Jefferson to precede him from the dais at
a court's control. Could manners survive the operation? A·
Adams's inauguration, he was making a political point,
year and a hllif into Washington's presidency. Edmund Burke,
about the rule oflaw, not men. But the lesson had first been
reacting to the . first insults offered the King and Queen of
taught him as a rule of civility: ''They that are in dignity or in
France by the French Revolution, argued that they could not.
office have in all places precedency" (No. 33). Rule No. 32·
"The age of chivalry is gone," he keened. "Never, never
foreshadowed political events in a way that is almost uncanmore, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex,
ny. Superficially it is about who gets the best bed: "To one
that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the. heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itthat is your equal, or not much inferior, you are to give the
chief place in your lodging, and he to whom it is offered · self, the spirit of an exalted freedom." According to Burke,
ought at the first to. refuse it, but at the second to accept
the only alternative to the proud submission of a Colonel
Parke, and the less-than~proud submission of a Colonel
though not without acknowledging his own unworthiness."
The maxim begins with household arrangements but ends by
Washington, was a society cobbled together by force and
enouncing a principle of accepting honor only with relucself-interest.
tance and modesty, which Washington was to, follow when
The "Rules of Civility" suggested a third option. Without
he became Commander in Chief, president of the Constiturealizing it, the Jesuits who wrote them, and the young man
tional Convention, and President of the United States. This
who copied them out, were outlining and absorbing a system
of courtesy appropriate to equals· and near-equals. "To one
relation between the maxims in his exercise book and his
conduct in public life is not surprising, since "civility"
that is your equal, or not much your inferior ... ".begins the
· shares a linguistic root with "civic" and "city." The way men
pantomime about the best bed, which was to be re-enacted
behave in polite society is related to how they order society.
by a republican leader almost 200 years later. When the
Politeness is the first form of politics.
company for whose benefit decent behavior was prescribed
There are as many different forms of courtesy as there are
expanded to the nation, Washington was ready. Parson
forms of society. The manners that, prevailed in Virginia as
Weems got this right when he wrote that it was "no wonder
every body honoured him who honoured every body."
much as in England, at least u~til the early eighteenth century, were those of an aristocratic society, marked by sharp distinctions. Manners meant the graceful acknowledgment of
STAMPING
others across social distances. One of the grand gestures of
HIS CIIAKA(:TEK
that system had been performed in 1704 by a Virginia gentleman, Colonel Daniel Parke, a violent and tempestuous
ASHINGTON'S morality enjoined him to be courman, who was also capable of dignity and grace. Serving in
teous; he was goaded to good behavior, and to doing well, by concern for his reputation.
the English army, he carried the news of victory at the. Battle
of Blenheim to Queen Anne, who offered him a reward of
Washington and his contemporaries thought of reputation
£500. Parke would accept only a miniature portrait of her.
as a thing that might be destroyed or sullied-some valuable
cargo carried in the hold of the self. When Henry Knox wrote
Everyone in Virginia :at the time knew of this gallantry;
W
62
L\Nl!.\R,.
111116
�..
, to Lafayette that Washington, in going to the Constitutional
Convention, had "committed" his fame "to the mercy of
events," they were like two merchants discussing the risky
venture of a third. The cargo was precious because reputation was held to be a true measure of one's character-indeed, in some sense identical to it. Today we 'worry .about
our authenticity-about whether our presentation reflects
who we ."really" are. Eighte.enth-century Americans attended
more to the outside story, and were less avid to drive putty
knives between the outer and the inner ~an. Character, as
Forrest McDonald has explained, was a role one played until one became it; character -also meant how one's role was
judged by others. It was both the performance and the reviews. Every man had a character to maintain; every man
was a character actor.
When Washington was appointed Commander in Chief,
~ he explained his acceptance of the job to Martha in exactly
these terms: "My Dearest .... It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my Character
to such censures as would have re. fleeted dishonor upon myself, and
mous proportions, made him invaluable to the supporters of
the Constitution, and a bane to its enemies. It also made his
support of the Constitution a matter of enormous delicacy to
him. When hesurrendered his commission, in ·1783, he told
Congress that it was the "last solemn act of my Official life."
He could return to official life in 1787 only if he could be
sure that in doing so he was seen to bow to political necessity. "Inform me confidentially what the public expectation is
on this head," he wrote to Knox two months before the convention, "that is, whether I will, or ought to be there?" Similar concerns attended his decision to accept the presidency,
both the first and the second time. Even an act as straightforward as giving a farewell address, he wrote to James Madison in 1792, "may be construed into a manoeuvre to be
invited to remain." There were potential pitfalls wherever
the scrupulous· bearer of a reputation stepped-none mor~
treacherous than the one pointed out to him by Eliza Powel: .
that he might acquire a reputation for being obsessed with
his reputation. Washington wished to succeed in office, but
he needed to avoid dishonor in pursuing success .
Countries, like individuals, have reputations, and Wash- ·
HARA.CTER WAS SEEN IN WASH ING·TON
's
TIME AS
A ROLE ONE PLAYED UNTIL ONE BECAME IT;
\
CHARACTER ALSO MEANT HOW ONE'S ROLE WAS JUDGED BY
OTHERS.
IT
WAS BOTH THE PERFORMANCE AND THE REVIEWS.
given pain to my friends-this I ain sure could not, and
ought not to be pleasing to you, & must have lessend me
considerably in my own esteem." Washington wanted the
job; he had come to Congress wearing his twenty-year-old
uniform, by way of dropping a visual hint. But he wanted
even more not to fail to do something he ought to do.
Defeat posed a lesser threat to his reputation than dishonor. It was bad enough to lose the Battle of Long Island, in
August of 1776; far worse to flee Kip's Bay in September
without making a stand. Two weeks after that debacle Washington wrote from Harlem to Lund Washington, his cousin,
that he faced "the impossibility of serving with reputation,"
on account of the militia's incompetence. He warned his
cousin not to mention his fears to anyone yet, but added that
"if I fall," the military circumstances should be publicized,
"in credit to the justice of my character." Losing or dying
· could be extenuated-could, in the right circumstances, be
heroic. But dishonor was an inexpungeable blot.
At war's e~d Washington's reputation, swollen to enor-
ington was as concerned for America's reputation as he was
for his own. "We have now a National character to establish,"
he wrote when the war was winding down, "and it is of the·
utmost importance to stamp favorable impressions upon it."
Courtesy and reputation--'-the medium and the stimulus of
Washington's morality~perate on and through other people. Courte~y is how you treat them; reputation is what they
think of you. The result of Washington's lifelong concern
with courtes~ and reputation was that he was able to put the
strenuous morals of the noble Romans in a social context,
and make Cato's best lines real. "Tis not in mortals to command success, I But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it" [emphasis added]. How could deserving Romans
justify the plural "we"? On Addison's own showing, the
most deserving Roman of them all affected nothing outside
his little band, and died by his own hand. Courtesy and reputation made it possible for a would-be Roman in the North
American boondocks to say to his countrymen "we," and to
command a response. ®
Calligraphic initials and flourish by Jean Evans, derived from the handwriting of George Washington
64
J i\ IIi II i\ II \' . I 9 9 li
· 33738A
azr
�ECONOMY
The Politics of Anxiety
With a presidential
.. election iust around
the corner, the politics
of economic change
may move to center
stage, as it did during
last century's
transition from farm
to factory.
BY PAUL STAROBIN
2402 NATIONAL JOURNAL 9/30/95
F
eeling a bit edgy? Join the crowd.
These are nail-biting times. Within
the past year, a cover story in Fortune magazine proclaimed "The
End of the Job"; leftist polemicist Jeremy
Rifkin wrote a book called The End of
Work; and The New Democrat, a magazine published by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), announced "The
Death of Machine-Age Politics."
But calm down: We've been there
before. "About once in 100 years this sort
of thing happens," President Clinton
explained at the White House the other
day in remarks to religious leaders. "We
are going through a level of change in the
way we work and live that is comparable
to the change we went through when we
moved from being an agrarian society to
an industrial, more urbanized society."
The central economic and political
reality of our time, Clinton and many others are saying, is the bumpy shift from the
age of steel to the era of the silicon chip.
Sure, this began decades ago. But with
the transition building momentum and
cutting ever-deeper grooves in the
nation's economic life, there's a growing
public awareness, spurring both excitement and worry, of just how different
tomorrow will be from yesterday.
With a presidential election just
around the corner, the politics of economic transition may move to center
stage. Divining the meaning and path of
change could be the key to mastery of the
Arilerican political arena.
It's the sense of insecurity bred by this
shift, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich
says, that has given rise to an "anxious
class" of workers who need govermentsupported training and education programs and universal health insurance.
It's the shattering of the industrial
order and the spread of computer technology, House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
R-Ga., argues (citing futurists Alvin and
Heidi Toffler), that paves the way for a
"Third Wave" transfer of political power
away from Washington bureaucracies to
state and local governments and ordinary
citizens.
And it's the erosion of brute industrial
might, Republican presidential candidate
Patrick J. Buchanan warns, that is at the
heart of America's decline as a world
power and the stagnation of workingclass incomes.
Some analysts go even further, implicating the waning of the industrial era not
only in such economic afflictions as
widening income inequality but also in
such cultural problems as the white backlash against affirmative action.
Such explanations may overreach.
Social trends aren't simple by-products of
the economy, and such economic problems as the federal budget deficit don't
stem from the dawning of the computer ·
age.
Nevertheless, in normal times, Clinton's reelection prospects would be highly
favorable-after all, the economy has
grown during his watch, inflation hasn't
and the borders are secure. His apparent
political fragility reflects, at least in part,
a deeper, murkier amalgam of forces rippling through the economy.
History offers a lens that can bring
these currents into sharper focus-and
maybe even suggest a few practical lessons for those in political life who now
seek, sometimes frantically, to navigate
them.
A look back turns up intriguing parallels between the transition from farm to
factory in the 19th and early 20th century
and today's shift to a postindustrial economy dominated by service-sector jobs.
Buchanan's celebration of manufacturing as the root source of national wealth,
for example, echoes the thunder of populist leader William Jennings Bryan, who
in 1896 declared, "Destroy our farms, and
the grass will grow in the streets of every
city in the country."
Bryan won the Democratic presidential
nomination that year but was beaten by
Republican William McKinley-a history
lesson that Donald Fowler, the chairman
of the Democratic National Committee,
recalled in a recent talk to a group of college-age Democrats.
The Bryan-led Democrats were "dead
wrong" in aligning themselves with the
"farm element" of society, Fowler said,
�The transition to an Industrial economy 100 yean ago was far from painless.
would impose tariffs.) Farm price supports and the like were installed earlier
this century in the spirit of saving the
rural way of life. The polic;es didn't do
anything to stop the exodus from the
farm, but they did manage to make the
corporate farmer a ward of the American
welfare state.
COGNinVE ELIOS
Bill Gates, the chairman and chief
executive officer of Microsoft Corp.,
ranks No. 1 on the Forbes magazine list of
America's wealthiest people (net worth:
an estimated $13 billion). But the bounty
of the Information Age hasn't been widely shared beyond the techno-geniuses and
a relatively small cadre of workers-"the
cognitive elite," they've been dubbed-in
the emerging knowledge sector. Ordinary
workers wonder what's in it for them.
Maybe it's no comfort, but the infant
industrial era, aka the Gilded Age, also
created magnificent fortunes-for steel
baron Andrew Carnegie and other masters of the new technology. Nor did the
fabulous technological advances of that
era quickly translate into productivity
gains that boosted the pay of lunch-bucket workers.
Why not? Consider the invention of
electricity, which revolutionized the factory. It took a long time before factory
managers figured out that electricity
. meant not a marginal change in the production process but a total rethinking of
2404 NATIONAL JOURNAL 9/30/95
the structure of the workplace, according
to Claudia Goldin, an economic historian
at Harvard University. As a result, the
productivity gains of electricity "spread
very slowly," she said in an interview.
What's more, the new industrial era
also spawned an elite cadre of office
workers, such as bookkeepers, whose
math-whiz abilities won them high wage
premiums over traditional manual workers-and thus widened the earnings gap
in the labor force. High school graduates
weren't common-at the turn of the century, only about 10 per cent of America's
youth graduated from high school-and
could command relatively high wages. "It
was yesterday's cognitive elite," Goldin
said.
Then, in a schooling drive mobilized by
the business community, America in 25
years became a nation in which more
than half of its youth graduated from high
school. This change laid the foundation
for a prosperous middle class in the
industrial age.
And now? Economists widely agree
that the gap between the working poor
and the working well-to-do has been
widening since the 1970s, a period that
coincides with the introduction of computers into every nook and cranny of the
economy. Increased competition from
low-wage foreign workers may bear part
of the blame. But it's also true that many
big firms in not only the manufacturing
sector but also the services sector (banks,
for example) have used new technology
to reorganize their production processes
in ways that have increased the demand
for highly educated, highly skilled workers and cut the demand for a larger pool
of unskilled workers. A 1991 study of
1984-89 data by Alan B. Krueger, an
economist at Princeton University, found
that workers who used computers on the
job earned 10-15 per cent more than otherwise similar workers.
The widening earnings gap threatens to
feed social unrest. But the experience of
the industrial age gives many economists
confidence that broader education and
training can improve matters-a hopeful
sign, Goldin said, is the growth of courses
in the ABCs of computers at the nation's
junior colleges.
Economists widely applaud Labor Secretary Reich's tireless promotion of education and worker training as the best
response to structural economic change.
Gingrich, too, has stressed retrainingand at one point even suggested giving
tax credits for purchases of laptop computers for children. (Clinton recently suggested that all U.S. schools be linked to a
computer network by the century's enda project that he said ''will take the same
ferocity and effort that it took to build the
nation's railroads.")
Some worrywarts argue that today's
cognitive elite will never expand into a
mass labor force. They say there will be
no work, or only lousy work, for millions
of people. Rifkin broadcasts this message
in The End of Work-a book that has gotten good media play and made him a
desirable "shock value" speaker on the
lecture circuit.
Similarly apocalyptic warnings were
sounded about the machine era back in
the 19th century. Mechanization did virtually wipe out farmers, but the industrial
age created a lot of new jobs. Mass factory-floor labor and bank teller jobs may be
things of the past, but who can honestly
claim to know the range and number of
jobs in the new economy? In an essay in
The New York Times last year, Nathan
Rosenberg, an economist at Stanford
University, pointed out that the revolutionary consequences of some inventions
are seldom anticipated at the time of the
invention. Back in the 1830s, he wrote,
"railroads were seen merely as feeders
for the existing canal system" of shipping
goods. And the steam engine was seen as
"a pump for flooded mines."
THE PERILS OF POPULISM
The shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy nurtured the Populist
movement-the biggest, best-organized
mass movement based on economic displacement in the history of American politics.
.i
_j
�•
•
These days, the air is thick with populist rhetoric, and some political analysts
predict the reemergence of a grass-roots
movement anchored in the discontent of
industrial age workers. But a look back at
the often-romanticized 19th-century Populists points to the limitations of this type
of political program.
Farmers who were in debt to bankers
and at the mercy of railroads
(which set the shipping rates
for their produce) were the
mass constituency of 19thcentury Populism. They correctly viewed industrialism as
a threat to their numbersbut also were prone to belief
in conspiracy. "Wall Street
owns the country" was a
popular slogan; there were
also attacks on immigrants
and warnings of moral decay.
Populists turned to the
government for help: At the
first national convention of
the People's Party in 1891,
the platform called for public .
ownership of the railroads
and a progressive income
sent the interests of the common people
across regions, yet it had less to do with
interests than with a rural way of life that
was under siege by the new order. Bryan
Democrats were offering an affirmation
that the farm was as important to America as the factory and the city." But, as
Greenberg observes, "the promised
devalued currency may have offered
ulist grain. Nor does Clinton cut it as a
populist: He recently bragged abdut the
"record number of millionaires" created
during his Administration.) Jackson
recently said that mergers in the banking
and media industry represent "economic
violence" against ordinary workers who
stand to lose jobs. Buchanan has attacked
Citicorp and Goldman Sachs & Co. as
part of a Wall Street cabal
whose influence over economic policy is eroding the
living standards of industrial
age workers. And multinational corporations, he recently said, are "amoral
behemoths" with no loyalty
to America. (Tom Carson, a
reporter for the leftist Village Voice, recently wrote of
telling Buchanan, "I've been
waiting my whole life for
someone running for President to talk about the Fortune 500 as the enemy, and
when I finally get my wish, it
turns out to be you.")
Maybe this message will
play. Michael Kazin, a historian at the American Unitax.
versity and the author of the
Populist candidate James
B. Weaver won more than 1
recently published The Populist Persuasion, said that he
million popular votes and 22
wouldn't be surprised to see
Electoral College votes in
Buchanan pick up some
the 1892 election. The movement peaked in 1896, when
black votes. Black factory
Bryan, a Democrat, was also
workers in urban areas have
nominated by the Populists.
been among the hardest hit
The Great Commoner's ralby manufacturing plant cutlying cry was "free silver"-a
backs; Buchanan's antiplea for cheaper money
immigration stance could
also strike a responsive
based on silver coinage that
chord.
would relieve farmers of
their crushing debts. Like a
But industrial disclocation
religious crusader, he prohas been going on for a long
time. Remember all those
claimed that mankind should President William McKinley
not be crucified "on a cross His vidory In 1896 ushered In an era of Republican dominance.
laid-off auto workers from
Michigan who moved to
of gold."
McKinley, a war hero and loyal ally of farmers the hope of a reprieve from debt, Texas in the 1980s?-without coalescing
Wall Street and the new industrial class, but for the workers it represented a pay- into a mass populist movement. Political
attacked Bryan for being backward and check that would buy less.... [Factory) prognosticators who predicted otherdivisive. His watershed victory ushered in workers were looking for a vision that wise-back in 1991, Kevin Phillips was
an era of Republican dominance of the promised better jobs and greater prosper- hyping the presidential prospects of Sen.
Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, "a feisty popWhite House-and these days is pored ity."
over by such students of the politics of
Agrarian populism waned as farmers ulist"-look silly today.
Why hasn't populism taken? One execonomic transition as Stanley B. Green- continued to leave the field for the factoberg, a Clinton adviser and pollster and ry and as discoveries of gold in Alaska planation, turned up in interviews of
former political scientist at Yale Univer- and South Africa spurred a run-up in American workers by labor economists at
Harvard University, is that workers blame
sity.
prices that eased farm debt.
McKinley's "entire political career had
These days, it's Buchanan on the right the waves of corporate downsizing not on
been predicated on selling the virtues of and Jesse Jackson on the left who, with their bosses but on the remote forces of
industrialism to the emerging working their strident assaults on financial elites, global competition from which employers
class in Canton, Ohio," Greenberg writes most closely resemble 19th-century pop- can't easily protect them. In the 19th cenin Middle Class Dreams, his new book on ulists. (Although the press sometimes tury, by contrast, the railroads and banks
American politics. "By comparison with refers to Gingrich as a populist, his presented farmers with less remote vilMcKinley's vision, William Jennings enthusiasm for the new age of informa- lains.
"The number of people who were
Bryan's was narrow and ultimately archa- tion and his embrace of a pro-business
ic. Silver in 1896 was supposed to repre- deregulation agenda go against the pop- forced out of well-paying industrial jobs
NATIONAL JOURNAL 9/30/95
2405
�These days, there's no shortage of calls
for an overhaul of political structures to
suit the requirements of a postindustrial
economy.
Gingrichites, echoing the Tofflers, say
that Big Government is outdated because
the industrial economy is yesterday's
news. They say that the attributes of the
new political structure should mirror the
attributes of the new economy-namely,
flexibility and decentralization. Thus the
push for Washirrgton to cede power to
state and local governments.
Likewise, the leaders of the DLC have
taken aim at what they view as hidebound
elements of the Democratic coalition,
such as labor unions, that have clung to
New Deal, machine-age thinking. "America needs a new governing philosophy
- that takes account of the new economy
< and technologies that are transforming all
of our institutions, public and private,"
"" the DLC's magazine, The New Democrat,
declared in a recent editorial.
Republican presidential hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan
And, although they're often branded
He warns that the erosion of America's Industrial might Is at the heart of Its decline.
New Populists by the press and analysts,
into low-paying marginal work was be the Progressives, embodied by Theo- Ross Perot and his Perotistas are more
small," Morton Keller, an economic his- dore Roosevelt.
akin to "latter-day Progressives," Everett
torian at Brandeis University, said. "Most
Unlike the Populists, some of whose Carll Ladd, the executive director of the
of the (factory] workforce was not that ideas they pulled into their orbit, the Pro- Roper Center for Public Opinion Rewell paid."
gressives didn't stake out a fundamental search Inc., said.
Today's threatened workers also ap- challenge to the new social and economic
Perot enthusiasts who attended his
pear to be more fatalistic about techno- order. They were civic-minded reformerS recent issues-fest in Dallas consisted
logical change. An auto worker inter- who stood to prosper in the new economy largely of suburban middle-class types
viewed for a Labor Day segment on but were appalled by the corruption of who voiced enthusiasm for good-governPBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour took the big-city governments and the squalor of ment reforms of the political system, such
philosophical perspective: "Well," he raw industrialism. And they worried as term limits and electronic-town-hall
said, "they didn't ask the horse about the about the political stability of unregulated democracy. Nor do exit polls of Perot vottractor."
capitalism.
ers in 1992 paint a picture of disenfranThe Progressive impulse was to make chised, economically displaced losers: 60
And Greenberg, among others, says
that the Democratic Party's preoccupa- the new order more efficient, scientific per cent of them said that they had fulltion with civil rights and other .cultural and gentler: It produced federal regula- time jobs, compared with 55 per cent of
issues in the 1970s produced bitter feel- tion of the railroads and the meat-pack- all voters, 57 per cent of Bush voters and
ings of betrayal that made economically ing industry, more-rigorous budgeting 52 per cent of Clinton voters.
vulnerable factory workers easy recruits techniques, workmen's compensation,
But is it really so plain that the postfor laissez-faire, socially conservative and the creation of the Federal Trade industrial economy fertilizes a soil in
which libertarianism and small "d"
Republicans in the 1980s. These days, this Commission to restrain monopolies.
argument goes, Gingrich and his crowd
Herbert Croly and other Progressive democracy will (and should) flourish?
Dispersion-the spread of information
have successfully channelled the pent-up theorists argued that a new economic
anger of workers who face hard economic order that concentrated private power in networks that enable people to "telecomtimes into animosity toward Big Govern- the hands of massive industrial trusts mute" and firms to scatter their producment.
demanded a new political structure that tion units all over the globe-is a core
But Bruce J. Schulman, a historian at would give government authorities feature of the new economy.
But whether the postindustrial econoBoston University, said that today's pop- greater powers to intervene in the private
my will also be decentralized-putting
ulists face the same fatal problem as yes- sector.
These changes laid the groundwork for the power to make important decisions
terday's. "In the end, these nostalgic
movements want to restore an imagined New Deal welfare programs that, as liber- into a much greater number of handsvanished past," he said. "You can see al economist John Kenneth Galbraith re- remains to be seen. The recent wave of
them as the last gasp of people whom the cently argued in a op-ed piece in The New mergers in the information industry sugworld is passing by.... They can become York Times, accommodated "the great gests that the new economy could also
temporarily significant, but they never thrust of history." He explained: "There lend itself to an arrangement in which a
was no unemployment on the early farms small number of global titans-the
seem to win."
or in the villages. Only with industrial Rupert Murdochs and Michael Eisnersdevelopment and urbanization did unem- exercise enormous clout.
THE PROMISE OF PROGRESSIVISM
The number of small community
ployment compensation become a need."
Where's TR when we need him?
And social security wasn't needed in a banks, long a distinctive feature of the
The real masters of the politics of the rural society in which "the young on a U.S. economy, has sharply declined in
recent years as information technology
farm-to-factory transition turned out to farm took care of the old."
J
j
2406 NATIONAL JOURNAL 9/30/95
�.
"
..
•
•
has become a force for consolidation in
financial services. And automation has
helped the Wal-Marts of the retailing
world to achieve economies that have
forced the shuttering of couldn't-compete small shops on the Main Streets of
America.
Political analyst Michael Barone argues that postindustrial society is returning the nation to a "Tocquevillian America" of the 1830s that's individualistic,
property-loving and lightly governed.
Maybe, but postindustrial society also
seems highly fragmented: The tight
bonds of community that linked 18thcentury rural America seem nowhere evident. The computer age hasn't yet reproduced the days when the young cared for
the old and a. government welfare net
thus had no place in society.
A "progressive" politics for the new
economy remains up for grabs. History
suggests that, to the extent that new political structures develop to accommodate
changes in the economy, the process
takes a very long time. As Daniel T.
Rodgers, a historian at Princeton University, noted, the great age of industrialization was from 1850-1920--an era of small
federal government. The Progressive
wave gathered force only toward the end
of this period, and it took the Great
Depression to produce the New Deal era.
Bill Gates of
Microsoft Corp. may
be the Information
Age's answer to
Andrew Carnegie,
who built a
magnificent fortune
in the Gilded Age.
Nevertheless, the elections of 1996, for
both Congress and the White House,
could be a referendum on America's
response to postindustrial society. Voters
will decide, among other things, whether
the Gingrich-led Republican repudiation
of New Deal programs is a bold, farsighted response to the new economic
age or a flawed, ideologically blinkered
reading of the landscape. Congressional
Democrats face the challenge of going
beyond their knee-jerk criticism of
Republican initiatives as radical and cruel
and telling the public how they plan to
navigate the choppy waters of the
moment.
In the presidential arena, an independent or third-party candidacy could be a
vehicle for Perot or somebody else to
take a new postindustrial message to the
voters. A possible independent candidate-Bill Bradley, D-N.J., who recently_
announced that he would leave the Senate after next year-has devoted much of
his energy in recent years to fashioning a
safety-net policy program that addresses
the concerns of the anxious class. For
example, he'd require corporations to
cover health insurance benefits for laidoff workers for at least a year.
Presidential elections, it's been said,
are often about character, not policy proposals. But the need for a conduit for
free-floating anxiety about economic
change could be part of what is producing remarkably high poll numbers for
Colin L. Powell, a military man who
exudes calmness and quiet authority.
Least likely to succeed, if history is any
guide, is a Buchanan-style populist with a
message rooted in the past. The political
masters of economic change are those /
who manage to give soul, sustenance and
•
hope to the new order of things.
l
NATIONAL JOURNAL 9/30/95
2407
��Farm bill
options· all
look bleak
'
t sounds friendly enough the "Freedom to Farm Act."
U.S. House Agri,culture
Committee Chab;man Pat
Roberts, R·Kan., and Rep.
Blll Barrett, R·Neb., have
eme proposed the idea as a rad·
teal alternative to farm
programs.~evenother
.
House Republicans have
signed onto the proposal.
Only sev.en..
In a nutshell, they would
give landowners a pay·
ment based on their exist·
ing bases of major program crops -wheat, barley, corn, etc. without regard to whether:the farmers
keep producing it. It's the old "decoupling"
proposal, which disconnects farm program
payments from production.
.
In 1990, then-Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. R·
Minn;, proposed a similar scheme. It was
shot down because farmers didn't want to
be seen as welfare recipients.
In 1995 Congress is writing a new farm
law and there's less money to spread
around. Roberts emphasizes that the Free·
dom to Farm concept causes payments to.
decline ove.r 7 year:a..and end up with zero.
Zero I
The farm program that now stabilizes
North Dakota's agriculture economy with
$500 million- at least 70 percent of net farm
income - would disappear. Roberts would
create a commission that would look at farm
program changes after the year 2002.
His proposal was a surprise. Many farm
groups oppose decoupling, and have
counted on Roberts - a fellow Kansan with
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and U.S.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman - to
help protect farmers from draconian cuts
envisioned by the Republican revolution.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., favors a targeting concept based on higher prices for
the first 20,000 acres of production and
nothing after that.
The National Farmers Union and the
North Dakot~ ·Parmers-U~on:·are-p\lshing ··
for a "targeteci marketing~loan~..PrQgram
that is s1milar, but would be capped at
$125,000 per operator. People who make
$100,000 in off-farm income would be tnel·
igible. Farmers would be able to receive
benefits on only one farm.
Meanwhile, North Dakota farmers and
their Minnesota neighbors are saying very
little about the farm.blll debate. They are
busy in the. fields. Their ears are numbed
from rhetoric of prairie populist Democrats
who have always warned farmers about
"disastrous cuts• that never happened.
One thing seems certain. If the $13.4 billion in cuts projected by Congress come
true, none of the program options will look
good for farmers and farm .states like North
Dakota. Even presidential hopeful Dole will
not be able to save them 1n·. the 11th hour.
Forum
editorial .
'
,'
~.
�...
.......
'
EDITORIAL
·1·rouble
at the door
·---:> (.
f.....·· -· '
State's leaders need to anticipate
changes
effects of major. farm-bill
"
The lhlng oboullil'e oul hare. on the plains is this: It
lakos n Jell nr Jlftl'tlislunco lo prospor.
)ul'l when WG think wo have ono Jlrolllenl solved,
onothor comes knocldne at our door.
· Thttro nre a coupln of lhom pounding on Lhe. door
nnw.
II', for UlCOil\fJio, wu lhuughtlho prn&Jiacl of losing an
Air l'it»rce bn!lo was slnrllh1g, we ought to llo quaking
} nhoul chnnJ;"K In fudurul fnl'lll pnllr.y.
~
l•br ulllrnuto guucl nr for ulllnmlu Ill, they huvo th~
~ pohmllnl to knock us silly.
\ - Evun tbongh agrlcuhure accounts for half of North
~ Dakota's economy, it's monJ difficulllo focus a rescuo
~ effort on illban on an Air F'orco boso. Compared to
flgrlcl<ura, an AJr librco base ls allogelher tonglbla,
"' vlslblfl nnd undttrstandnble.
-;Jinrm 1mlicy, mounwblle, is JnuciLilad by lnlornullonnl
.~ pol Illes, by preslclenllal pplillcs, lJy raglonolpollllcs, by
~ J)DriiiiDil poJIUca, by lho lndlvlchml nnlura of fnrmlng nnd
rcll\ching, and by llucl\LDUng worlct murkels. Jror these
&'ousons, it's awfully dil'rir.ulllo build n rully nround
u,;&·lc:ullu&·o na WCI wcmlcl build n rnlly ftmuncl nn ulr bose.
: llut tho COllSC1CIUUUCOll of n rodlcuJ chango in form
,pulley uru broadur, dcopar nnd, for the entire slate, more
.nlormlng .
. · Wo need to preparo, and we noed lo do so wilh a
;commons\Jrote urgency.
• ~ Tho farm blll proposals floating out from ntotnbers of
:thu majOI'it~ party - Including tho Jll'OBidenliul
:euuclldolo lrom lbe nollon's lnrgest wheal stale - would
;EJ()l UCI kind to North Ookala agriculture, 'fhe uudgal
:qulllng would como dlroclly from tho bottom Uno of
:North Dukola farmars, and thQ orfocts will bo fell in
:civory cnm1nunily In lhB stale.
·
:: Wlwtlinr In lhtt luna n&n lha•o kinds nf t:uts oro good
·:Is dobntablu. Thoru's n corluln strong l\(Jponl fnr lL J>Olicy
·tlull woons \IS North Dokotnns from thu ruderal boUle.
?l'hm·o's nlso n slrong n•·aumonllo ho mnclo that food Is
:dlrfuruntl'rom other cnnunodilles, nod lhot American
.:~lXJlilyct·s huvu more than gollen thoh· money's worth
:!f]om l'edarul Cnran programs that hove stabilized food
:production and protectod nallonal dlvcrsl\y,
: • Iteyurclla•s o( lhu argunumls, lllho GOP farm bill
·:~roposals bc.tcome law ~ and Republlcans certainly have
.:llto votes to mnke them so- North Dakota is In for a
;:shock.
·~: Wo'd better set reo.dy, and we'd baUer do ll now.
,•' 11'8 fo1Jy ror onyonn from this llDte to put parliaanshlp
,:nhnod of reullly, Wo nood &1 unified approach lo what
promiHos lu bun llRinfuJ odjualmolll. This moons lhal
··our Deln()c:rats In Congress, our Republican governor,
our Dcmocrallc agrlc\Lilura commissioner and the wldo
·~runge or opinion leaders who make up lhe state's
::agrlculturol and bonking establishments need lo get
: logclhur - now. Thuy don't have to agree about what
~. ·(hu perfect furm policy mlghl be. Dut thoy need lo deal
·, clirm~lly wilh lhe impact of potential changes - and gel
out nhcnd of ll.
•
Gov. 1M Sc:hnftu ought to ttUickly cunvcmu ''
roprnsonlnlivo groUJl of lhc:se reOJ)Ie and roc::oncilo the
c:nnlltnllnR slurJICIS of Jlfllonlln fnrm bill ufrm:l~&. All
lnvulvud 11huuld sult•m·lismudllp usldu tmd nlluck thu
CJUnsllons with thu unlly ond ursency we sow durlng the
':nmpnlsn to snve the Air Force bnses. ·
'rho stokos are huge, and tlme Is short.
.·
::Go
�)U
~~
C 1,: ::: · H U N D R E D
S EVENT EENTH YEAR
;
'
GRAND: FORKS
EDITORIAL
Grand Forks Herald, Monday, September 11;.1995
• Reade1·'s opinion/ Congress should include marketing loans in the 1995 jarn1 bill.
Farmers still need income security
Today, the Herald introduces a new feature on
the C'ditorial page. Each Monday, we will publish
a guest editorial in place of a Herald editorial.
This change will give reader opinions more prominence on the page. -Editor
By Robert Carl_son
GLENBURN, N.D.- Farming is a high risk
venture requiring large capital investments for
future returns that are always inconstant. It may
be ironic that an adequate supply of food, the
product of this risky and uncertain business, is
essential to human existence.
The United States has a farm policy to ensure
an abundant food supply for consumers. Producers use farm programs to take some of the risk
out~of farming so that-they can stay in the. business and remain efficient.
This month, Congress will begin in earnest to
recast farm policy in the 1995 farm bill. We know
there will be major changes for agriculture, because of budget reductions and economic philosophy in this Congress. Farm support spending is
now less than half of what it was 10 years ago,
currently representing only four-tenths of 1 percent of the federal budget. Despite the previous
spending slashes, agriculture continues to be a
favorite target for congressional cost cutters.
The congressional budget resolution calls for
$13.4 billion in farm program cuts over the next
seven years. That is approximately a 25 percent
reduction in projected spending for agriculture.
On top of cuts already made over the last five
years, that doesn't leave enough money to continue a useful farm safety net. It also assumes
that farm programs will be phased out over the
seven years.
Federal farm programs are vital to North Da·
kota's economy. Farmers in this state sell about
$3 billion worth of crops and livestock each year.
Out of those gross sales, farmers' net income is
about $700 million in recent years. Farm program payments average· $550 million annually,
comprising nearly 80 percent of net farm income.
Multiply farm payments to gauge the impact on
the state's economy, and it quickly becomes evident thaettle end of farm programs would be a
disaster for rural and urban North Dakota. It
would be comparable to closing three or four air
bases in the state.
Several thingS can be done to improve this situ·
ation. The $13.4 billion in cuts must be pared
back to a level that allows a fair and reasonable
program to work. The USDA recommends a
more modest $4.2 billion in cuts over seven years,
and although painful to producers and rural
states, that reduction would still allow a ·safety
net to remain in place.
~
We need new, simpler farm programs that recognize the reality of spending reductions and the
need to compete in international export markets
while maintaining effective income protection for
producers. Applying budget conforming cuts to
the present program makes it ineffecti\"e, and
with its complex and outdated system of iiXed
acreage bases and yield formulas for each commodity, the current program does not fit today·s
needs.
National Farmers Union has developed a marketing loan proposal that ties price support to u
percentage of average market prices and eliminates acreage bases and yield formulas. The plan
grew out of a study from th~ Unh·ersity of Tennessee's Agricultural Policy Center. It"s designed
to be the best alternative possible to meet budget
goals; ·make our products-competith·e internationally, and provide a basic income support )(>\'l'l
for producers.
We in agriculture oflen are told that the future
will belong to the producers who can capturE:' a
growing world market Our challenge is to con·
vince policy makers that U.S. farmers need a new
and effective safety net if we are to remain world
leaders in productive efficiency.
Carlson is vice president of the North Dakota
Fanners Union. He farms near Glenburn..\'.D.
�or
FarmeJ's,
thiS is
not a drill
t's time for farmers to get
serious and get vocal
about the 1995 farm b111.
This Is not a drill.
Up to now it's been hard
, to know which policies are
• • serious and which are
! real.
The R~ublican budget
I
Foi'UII1 ~~= th!~~ :o~:!ks
8
sent to President -B111
ditorl•al and
Clinton. He has· indicated
, he'll veto the package
because of deep cuts in
Medicare and Medicaid. He objects to
$13.4 b1llion in cuts to farm programs, but
this will be a smaller issue in the long
run.
.This Is no small issue in North Dakota.
If the post-veto compromise is anywhere
close to the Republican position, North
Dakota will have some big headaches in
the next seven years.
The most recent study by the Food and
Policy Research Institute at Columbia, Mo.,
show some startling impacts.
An average 1,60o-acre grain farm in
Dames County, N.D., starts with net cash
income in 1995 at $71,210. That income
sinks to $9,950 by the year 2000 - a reduc.tion of 86 percent.
·
Sure, things start climbing up after that,
to $12,040 in ~he year 2000, but what ~om
fort Is that? It's stUI one-sixth of current
levels.
If off-farm jobs were available in all corners of North Dakota, both husband and
would wife would have to have them to
offset this loss.
1
And surprise: the picture is worse for the
bigger farmers.
A 4,000 acre farm in Dames county
would go from a $102,070 net cash income
down to a negative $1,810 in the year
2000.
North Dakota State University officials
have determined such cuts would reduce
land values by 30 percent. This seems conservative.
And where are the farmers?
.
Most in this region have been busy in
the fields with a tough harvest. They are
lulled by $5 per bushel wheat, but that
won't last through the 7-year life of the
•
bill.
Sure, Clinton has said he'll veto the budget )>111, but then what happens to farm:
policy?
.
Robert carlson, vice president of the
North Dakota Farmers Union, says agriculture is such a small part of the budget
picture that it will get flushed down the
drain. Some important Republicans and
conservative lenders are just as concerned.
There is too much at stake in North
Dakota to dump the federal farm programs without thought and participation
from the grassroots level. If Congress
can't do that by December, they should
· extend the current farm program into
1996.
�
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Don Baer
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Don Baer
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1994-1997
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36008" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
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Donald Baer was Assistant to the President and Director of Communications in the White House Communications Office. The records in this collection contain copies of speeches, speech drafts, talking points, letters, notes, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, excerpts from manuscripts and books, news articles, presidential schedules, telephone message forms, and telephone call lists.
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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537 folders in 34 boxes
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Don Baer
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2006-0458-F
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Box 5
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2006/2006-0458-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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42-t-7431981-20060458F-005-007-2014
7431981