Dreams, myths and reality.

I’ve voted in and closely watched a good number of presidential elections.  Okay I’m a borderline political junky.  The two candidates about whom I was most passionate — with whom I most identified — were John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama.  No contest.  As it happens, they are a perfect duo when considering dreams, myths and reality.  Kennedy and Obama are connected in numerous ways.  While their family backgrounds are worlds apart, they are both examples of what Lyndon Johnson called “Harvards”: JFK the moneyed patrician, Obama the intellectual patrician.  But perhaps more than anything else they came before us voters at a young age.  In their time they personified youth, or to use one of Kennedy’s favorite words, “vigor”.  The youngest elected (TR was the youngest to take office) JFK was also the first president born in the 20th Century, our century.  Obama, the fifth youngest elected, built his campaign around enthusiastic young supporters.

Whatever the magic mix of their personas, these men as candidates evoked visceral emotion.  They made us dream in a special way.  Forgetting for a moment the adage that campaigning and governing are two entirely different things; what I’m thinking about here has to do with the measure of how presidencies are assessed.  In part that assessment involves how much of the dream going in translates into accomplishment.  It is also in that assessment where myth comes into play.  That is especially the case with Jack Kennedy.  Thanks to an assassin, his time in office was relatively short and in part because of how he died, myth took over almost immediately and has hardly abated.   Historians objectively assessing his stewardship of the office and his accomplishments would not include him in the pantheon of the greats, certainly no Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt.  Nonetheless he remains more than a half-century on an iconic figure, the kind that evokes in his countless fans, “don’t bother me with the facts”.   Why is that the case?

The early violent death is one reason, perhaps compounded and reinforced in brother Bobby’s poignant murder five years later.  Then too, there is that, despite a disastrous start, he ultimately successfully stood down Khrushchev averting a possible nuclear war.  Anyone who lived through those terrifying thirteen days will never forget the relief.  Cuba was the backdrop for both his gross misstep and then his most significant triumph.  Kennedy grew in the office, perhaps no more so than in how his views and actions on civil rights took a dramatic turn culminating in his afternoon embrace of the 1963 March on Washington, albeit after a cool and cautious morning start.  All of this is widely covered in the many volumes written about him.  I’d like to suggest that something else, perhaps more important is at play here: dreams.  Dreams precede a president’s taking of office and they linger on often in a most forgiving way when his candidacy evokes deep passion and emotion, especially when his espoused dreams coincide powerfully with our own.

One thousand days is a very generous period of grace, but coming off the depressing 1950s it’s not all that surprising.  We were all yearning for something different, and Kennedy’s ability to grow, indeed change, gave both him and us license.  We can legitimately argue about how much growth and change, but even critical historians tend to concede both were happening.  What I’m suggesting here is that Kennedy never moved from the glow of campaign mode — the dream stage — in his supporters and many in the greater public’s minds.  The foreshortened presidency never allowed for the usual transition to the post campaign reality by which we usually measure of the occupant’s tenure.  Left with only dreams a leap to myth is just a small step.

The dream phase of Obama’s presidency, now winding toward its constitutionally mandated end, is long since over.   This is not to suggest that it is no longer in the minds of those whose votes elected him.  Indeed, he continues to be measured against those dreams brought on by promises made or perceived.  Dreams are wonderful and can, often do, contribute to victory.  They also embody some hazard.  Some of Obama’s strongest critics have been supporters who have been disappointed with his translation from dreams into the necessary reality.  It’s that difference between campaign “poetry” and the “prose” of governing.  Governing is the reality that follows the grace period and then dominates.  It’s what Kennedy never had and on which Obama in the fullness of his presidential time will be judged by history.   Sure those who continue to be fans, myself included, will never forget the dreams, the “yes we can”, but that particular glow will diminish with time.   It may be recognized as an important part of his biography, but won’t have the emotional pull of “now”.

In that sense the Obama presidency will be ordinary in that historians will weigh its accomplishments against what he promised and, to some significant degree, what was achieved relative to the records of the forty-three presidents who came before him.  As said in my previous post, presidential assessments are tricky.  I firmly believe Obama will fair well — he certainly will always be remembered as our first African American chief executive — but it’s far too early for history’s retrospective judgment.  Many factors will go into that judgment mix including his extraordinary gifts as an orator.  A number of his speeches will assuredly be judged as classics and thanks to contemporary technology future generations will be able to hear and see them as well as read their well-crafted texts.  They will hear his campaign speech on race, his singing of Amazing Grace in Charleston his stirring words at the foot of the Pettis Bridge, and of course the one that brought him to national attention at 2004’s DNC convention.

I’ve been contrasting campaign dreams and reality to governance suggesting why Kennedy’s lingering dreams morphed into myth while reality will define Obama.  This is not to suggest that myth does not attach itself to other presidents, perhaps most of all to Lincoln another fallen hero.  FDR certainly basks in the glow of some myth and in the near term, for Republicans at least, so does Ronald Reagan.  There’s always been the myth of George Washington and his fictional cherry tree and the myth that makes us overlook Thomas Jefferson’s human frailties.  Fact is, we humans need myths and always have.  We need myths and equally so we need dreams.  They sustain us when we’re overcome by reality and they arm us with the will to move forward.  That’s always been true, perhaps all the more so this election year.  

Our March

A very personal remembrance.

We arrived at National Airport and went straight to the Statler-Hilton Hotel not far from the White House.  It was August 27, 1963 and the next morning we would make our way separately to the Lincoln Memorial.  I arrived there early enough to get a front row seat in

Sitting in my first row seat.

  

the reserved section at the foot of the steps leading up to the giant statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln.  The crowd (eventually estimated at 2-300,000) was already gathering.  It was as hot as Washington can be in late summer, but no one seemed to be bothered.  I was wearing a suit and never even considered removing my jacket — a different time, for sure.  The prevailing mood can only be described as festive and joyful, the air filled with anticipation. 

Considering the temperature, the assembled hardly needed warming up, but the star-studded array of talent who entertained us while waiting for the main event was stunning.  There was Marian Anderson, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary to name just a few.  Headliners were getting us ready for what was to come.  I didn't see my father and traveling companion make his way toward the Memorial, but there are many photos of him walking arm in arm with his fellow March leaders: "The Big Ten". (Check out Kitty Kelly's terrific "Let Freedom Ring") Representing the Jewish Community, he would be delivering his speech immediately before Martin King's.

You can read and hear it at the website dedicated to his life.  I watched him write that speech in our hotel room late into the night of our arrival.  He had been in Europe until days before and the American Jewish Congress (of which he was the President) staff had taken it upon themselves to write what was generously the most pedestrian and clichéd text that you can imagine.  Some still claim to have authored what he delivered, which was not the case.  Their draft just wasn't him and he couldn't possibly have delivered it.  To put that in perspective, Joachim Prinz was arguably one of the great preachers and extemporaneous orators of his generation.  Even reading a prepared text was highly unusual for him, but that day demanded it.  He handed the new speech to a typist on the morning of the 28th, delivering it later in the day immediately following a standing ovation performance by the great Mahalia Jackson.  Reflecting on that especially hard act to follow, he departed from his text by opening with the words, "I wish I could sing".

It was a compact speech touching on a number of themes — President Obama quoted a passage from it about neighbor as "a moral concept" while on his March 2013 Israel visit.  Perhaps the most memorable was this passage:

Dr. Joachim Prinz speaking at the March in 1963

When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.

It was a message that rang true to a contemporary audience that had directly experienced the sinister role silence was still playing across the land as many Americans so often stood aside in silence as full rights and dignity were being withheld from many of their fellow countrymen.  He certainly was someone who could never remain silent either in Nazi Germany in the 1930s or in his adopted American home.  It is that fundamental aspect of his character that inspired the theme of a forthcoming documentary film about his life.

King's iconic speech was followed by a call for action by Bayard Rustin, the man probably most responsible for organizing the March and certainly it's most important unsung hero.  With the ceremonies concluded, the thousands who gathered so quietly and peacefully turned around to make their way home.  I joined my father at the back of the Memorial where we both drank Coca-Cola.  Today's ubiquitous bottled water didn't exist in 1963.  It was the first time I had ever seen him drink Coke, a beverage he associated with one of his first encounters with the very discrimination that brought us to Washington.  That happened in 1937, his first year in America, when he traveled to Atlanta to give a talk to its Jewish leaders about the plight of their fellow Jews in Nazi Germany.  In one of those curious coincidences in life, at its center was another black Atlanta clergyman named King.

Dr. Willis Jefferson King was the president of the Gammon Theological Seminary and a distinguished Old Testament scholar.  My father knew of his work and it was natural that he would use the occasion of an Atlanta visit to meet him.  They talked for an hour at the school.  Since their time together was brief, he then invited King to his hotel to continue over dinner.  The news of their encounter and that dinner invitation spread, and to my father's great horror the Jewish leaders before whom he later spoke berated him for having had contact with "that nigger".  His dismay and outrage was so evident that his hosts asked if he perhaps needed a drink.  Anticipating a glass of alcohol, my father told them, "I would like nothing better".  They offered instead a Coca-Cola, which he swore to himself never to drink again.  The March on Washington was the perfect, albeit ironic, occasion to break that personal pledge.  (Years later, as a branding consultant, I worked on Coca-Cola and helped the company launch diet Coke and other line extensions.)

Returning to the March, I went back to our hotel while the Big Ten headed to the White House and their widely reported meeting with President Kennedy.  That evening we were invited to a post-March buffet supper in the garden of Senator Jacob Javits' large and elegant Georgetown home.  Many of those who had appeared on the Memorial platform now stood around his swimming pool eating fine food a chatting.  It was at once lovely and surreal.  I don't remember anyone commenting, but the sumptuous setting was certainly at odds with the theme of the day. That disconnect accurately reflected how Washington worked then and, as noted in my recent post, still works today.

My March on Washington experience was clearly rarefied.  I was the son of one of its leaders and featured speakers, a father to whom I was extraordinarily close.  I sat in a reserved section — most people stood throughout the day.  I joined some of the speakers behind the Memorial after its conclusion and had supper with them and other dignitaries at a senior senator's home.  I flew to D.C. and back, while so many people came by bus or carpool.  Even so, the underlying experience was one that we all shared together, regardless of where we sat or stood and how we came to what most of us have seen since then as a hallowed place.  This was a moment of hope, one of those times that one can actually call "inspirational" without fear of exaggeration.  We participated in and witnessed history together.

None of us who gathered on that day could have imagined that in a matter of 3 short months John F. Kennedy with whom my father and the others met would be dead.  Nor did we anticipate that Lyndon Johnson, who played only a supporting role at that White House meeting, would push landmark Civil Rights legislation through Congress setting in motion huge changes to come.  Sadly, that King might be assassinated one day was less of a surprise.  And of course, the last thing than any of us expected was that, on this the 50th anniversary, a then 2-year-old African American would be sitting in the White House.  President Obama is scheduled to speak at the Memorial on Wednesday.

Would that I could say the March ended racism in the United States.  It did not.  Would that the right of every citizen to vote regardless of color or national origin could be guaranteed.  It can't.  Code words, those whispered or shouted euphemisms, existed then and they still do.  "Voter fraud" is one of today's most popular and we all know what it really means.  Obama himself, his being who he is, has reawakened an ugly hatred that we hoped the March and subsequent actions might have put to the "eternal rest".  There is much to celebrate about how far we've come, but also much to bemoan.  In an interview the Times' Adam Liptak asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "if she was disappointed by the almost immediate tightening of voting laws in Texas and North Carolina after the decision, she chose a different word: 'Disillusioned'.”   Living in one of those states I can, as they say, relate.

Rabbi Prinz speaking in Berlin in 1934

Joachim Prinz delivered literally thousands of speeches in his life, many of them at important occasions and before large audiences.  His courageous voice was loudly heard in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany during the early Hitler Years.  Without question his reputation was made there and provided him memories that lasted a lifetime.  There are people living in Israel and here who still attribute their or their parents' survival to his blunt urgings to get out.  But to him, speaking in something other than his birth language and to a very different audience and country, the March speech was his proudest moment, bar none.  It constituted a concrete connection with the country that he really loved — he never felt at home in Germany.  One might say it affirmed his citizenship in a very powerful way. 

I think, however, that there was something else.  No matter how articulate, how forceful his speeches may have been, no matter how charismatic his personality, the words spoken in the 1930s didn't help prevent the unthinkable.  Some Jews, though clearly not all, heard them and left.   But the German public at large could not be moved.  In that sense his efforts failed.  In contrast a nation of good people listened in 1963.  They listened and they acted.  He and his fellow leaders had a receptive audience that transcended those who stood before the Memorial.  "It is", he said, "not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us" but for the country as a whole.  It's that still valid dream about which Obama talks for a United States of America.  Yes, at times, like Justice Ginsburg, I find myself "disillusioned".  For my father's sake, if noting else, I don't allow that feeling to leave me without the hope that "we can overcome".  More than ever, we need desperately to do so.