In 1962, during his tour as Kennedy’s Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith used the pseudonym Mark Epernay to author a slender book of essays entitled “The McLandress Dimension.” Purportedly the work of one Herchel McLandress, an obscure but influential Boston psychometricist – in fact, an invention of Galbraith’s fertile mind – the McLandress dimension was a metric for the length of time an individual could think about anything other than self. Richard Nixon, with a score of three seconds, was at the bottom of the scale; then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, at four and one-half hours, was near the top, bested only by Eleanor Roosevelt for whom the figure was infinity.
This concept, while wholly fictitious, seems relevant to the strange, concurrent developments in the Governor’s offices of South Carolina and Alaska. In both cases we are being treated to the teeth-grinding results of politicians who have evidently lost any altruistic notions they might once have had about public service, seeing elected office not as an obligation to the citizenry, but rather an opportunity to advance one’s own interests.
In Governor Sanford’s case, we see an individual who waltzed off to the Argentine without bothering to tell anyone how he might be reached in the event some untoward event – say, new unwelcome efforts by Washington to prop up the state’s economy with infusions of cash – required his immediate attention. The proximate issue, to be clear, is not the reason for his absence. Modesty and forbearance suggest this be left to the Governor and his immediate family. Rather the focus should be on this demonstrated unwillingness and possible future inability to carry out the responsibilities of office which, it should be noted, he swore a solemn oath to effectuate. Past, but more important, probable future failure in this undertaking would seem more than ample justification for action by South Carolinians to seek on an expedited basis a replacement, leaving to Governor Sanford the option of resignation or impeachment.
Not so in the case of Governor Palin. Here, as far as we know, are no transgressions beyond woeful worldly ignorance and utter disregard of syntax. We may eventually learn more of the reasons for the Governor’s untimely abandonment of the duties of office which, like her South Carolina counterpart, she had sworn to discharge to the best of her abilities. But barring revelation of a potentially impeachable offense, we will likely be left, as now, with the suspicion either that the Governor’s work was no longer appealing or sufficiently remunerative, or that the siren song of higher office became irresistible. In any of these cases the citizens of Alaska might consider suing the soon-to-be former Governor for breach of promise.
It may be some scant comfort that neither Governor Sanford nor Governor Palin offers President Nixon serious competition at the bottom of the McLandress Dimension scale. But both give painful evidence of fully subscribing to the depressingly prevalent notion that “It’s all about me.”
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Not-So-Grand Old Party
The slow-motion train wreck that is the Republican Party has picked up a bit of speed with the near back-to-back admissions by Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina of having strayed from the marital straight and narrow. In the Governor’s case, the confession was delivered in remarks sufficiently bizarre to justify questioning whether ole Mark is playing with a deck of 52. Although in fairness, his originally unexplained absence from the state might have been applauded by the teachers and students on whose behalf he turned down $700 million in educational stimulus funds.
In both cases, a member of the GOP prominent enough to have garnered some mention as potential a Presidential candidate in 2012 has been brought low and forced to consider the awful possibility of life off the political bandwagon. If the GOP keeps shedding prospective ticket leaders at this fearsome rate, we’ll soon be treated to the return of Sarah Palin to the national spotlight, an possibility which no doubt has comedy writers everywhere enthusiastically appealing to their deities.
But perhaps this is unfair to the party of Lincoln. In a truly Herculean display of optimism, Grover Norquist disagrees that the philanderings of Messrs Ensign, Sanford and their predecessors suggest problems for Republicans. To the contrary, he thinks “. . .It shows that sexual attractiveness of limited-government conservatism.” Which seems analogous to thinking John Dillinger cute because of his affinity for guns. Although, come to think of it, this is a sentiment many Republicans might actually espouse.
To be fair, malfeasance by politicians is hardly an exclusively Republican phenomenon. See, just at the national level, Clinton, W., Edwards, J., Rostenkowski, D., and, more likely than not, Jefferson, W., who you may recall had the bright idea of wrapping up a 100-large bribe and stashing it in his freezer. Obviously greed and disdain for the law and one’s electorate play well on both sides of the aisle.
But what particularly grates – almost uniformly - in the cases of Republicans fallen from grace is the revealed monstrous hypocrisy. Family men all, pillars of their communities, exemplars of probity, and as happy to bask in the glow of their halos as to decry and denounce those less morally elevated. Which is to say virtually everyone of a differing political persuasion. You might think the succession of colleagues being brought low would somehow temper their expressions of righteous indignation. You might even think one or two at least would recall the mossy advice to residents of glass houses. Evidently, you would be wrong.
“I think there is somewhat of an identity crisis in the Republican Party,” says Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council. “Are they going to be a party that attracts values voters, and are they going to be the party that lives by those values?” More to the immediate point, can they keep their accusatory fingers in their pockets and their trousers buttoned?
In both cases, a member of the GOP prominent enough to have garnered some mention as potential a Presidential candidate in 2012 has been brought low and forced to consider the awful possibility of life off the political bandwagon. If the GOP keeps shedding prospective ticket leaders at this fearsome rate, we’ll soon be treated to the return of Sarah Palin to the national spotlight, an possibility which no doubt has comedy writers everywhere enthusiastically appealing to their deities.
But perhaps this is unfair to the party of Lincoln. In a truly Herculean display of optimism, Grover Norquist disagrees that the philanderings of Messrs Ensign, Sanford and their predecessors suggest problems for Republicans. To the contrary, he thinks “. . .It shows that sexual attractiveness of limited-government conservatism.” Which seems analogous to thinking John Dillinger cute because of his affinity for guns. Although, come to think of it, this is a sentiment many Republicans might actually espouse.
To be fair, malfeasance by politicians is hardly an exclusively Republican phenomenon. See, just at the national level, Clinton, W., Edwards, J., Rostenkowski, D., and, more likely than not, Jefferson, W., who you may recall had the bright idea of wrapping up a 100-large bribe and stashing it in his freezer. Obviously greed and disdain for the law and one’s electorate play well on both sides of the aisle.
But what particularly grates – almost uniformly - in the cases of Republicans fallen from grace is the revealed monstrous hypocrisy. Family men all, pillars of their communities, exemplars of probity, and as happy to bask in the glow of their halos as to decry and denounce those less morally elevated. Which is to say virtually everyone of a differing political persuasion. You might think the succession of colleagues being brought low would somehow temper their expressions of righteous indignation. You might even think one or two at least would recall the mossy advice to residents of glass houses. Evidently, you would be wrong.
“I think there is somewhat of an identity crisis in the Republican Party,” says Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council. “Are they going to be a party that attracts values voters, and are they going to be the party that lives by those values?” More to the immediate point, can they keep their accusatory fingers in their pockets and their trousers buttoned?
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