BOOK REVIEWS: "Upstairs at the White House" and "Backstairs at the White House"

Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J.B. West (1973), Warner Books
My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House by Lillian Rogers Parks (1961), Fleet Publishing
Reviewed by Gregory Hilton
Margaret (Maggie) Rogers could not afford a babysitter so she often took her daughter to work. She was a maid and her daughter Lillian would follow her from room to room as she did her daily cleaning. One afternoon she was told to turn down the bed in the master bedroom. As soon as Mrs. Rogers finished, she was summoned to help the lady of the house with a dress fitting. Lillian, 9, was told to stay behind in the bedroom.

Social Security and Reflections on the Power Town

"Bad Boy: The Life And Politics Of Lee Atwater" by John Brady, DeCapo Press, 352 pages.

Why is Reform So Difficult?
New York is the nation’s financial capital and Los Angeles has the entertainment industry, but Washington, D.C. is the Power Town. Over the past three decades I have been fortunate to know some of the key players. I admire all of them, and they are intelligent, hard working and have good intentions.

BOOK REVIEW: The Oil Crisis of 1973-1974 by Karen R. Merrill, Ph.D., St. Martin's (2007), 192 pages

Reviewed by Gregory Hilton
1973 was not a good year for America’s prestige and psyche. Problems involving Vietnam, Watergate and inflation were looming, but the most significant long term obstacle is described in The Oil Crisis of 1973-1974 by Karen R. Merrill. A key turning point occurred 37 years ago today when President Richard Nixon signed legislation which would dominate political debate for the next 8 years.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America” by Thurston Clarke, Henry Holt (2008).

 

If Robert Kennedy had lived, would he won the Democratic nomination?

This is the third memoir I have read of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign, and they are all well written. The other two were by journalists Jack Newfield and Jules Witcover who covered the campaign. This book was written four decades later but it serves as the most definitive account.
All of three books unquestionably have a liberal bias. Thurston Clarke does not pretend to be objective. He clearly idealizes Kennedy. He portrays the late Senator as a great moral teacher who was always in the forefront of efforts to combat poverty, racism and the Vietnam War.
Many of the authors claims can be easily rebutted by conservatives, but this book is still interesting because of the detail it provides regarding the campaign. To understand the story of 1968 you have to begin with the New Hampshire primary and the Tet Offensive.
A slate of electors pledged to President Lyndon Johnson won the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary, but the results were devastating for the incumbent. LBJ was challenged from the left by Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), and the focal point of the campaign was his opposition to the Vietnam War.
When 1968 began the war appeared to be going well and Johnson had a significant lead in the polls. McCarthy was not considered a serious contender, and the Gallup Poll showed him at 12%. The news media portrayed him as a heroic but grossly underfunded peace candidate.
The massive Viet Cong Tet Offensive of January 31st changed everything. It involved attacks on practically every major city and town. Public perceptions about the war were reversed and negative stories about Vietnam dominated news media coverage. The public began to think the Vietnam War might not be winnable. McCarthy had not attacked Johnson directly up to that point, and the Senator made his first visit to New Hampshire just six weeks before the primary.
The political establishment was stunned by the news out of the Granite State on March 12, 1968 which showed Johnson defeating McCarthy by a slim 49% to 42% margin. When Republican write-in votes were later counted, McCarthy had come within 230 votes of upsetting Johnson.
New Hampshire changed the political landscape. Five days later Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) entered the Democratic contest. This book focuses on the 82 days of the Kennedy campaign. He was only 42 years old and GOP frontrunner Richard Nixon watched RFK’s announcement from Portland, Oregon hotel room. He thought Kennedy would be the Democratic nominee.
The ten week campaign was filled with drama. At the end of March, Johnson withdrew as a candidate. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4th, and riots erupted throughout the nation. Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the campaign on April 27th, but he refused to enter the primaries. He would not give permission to have his name placed on primary ballots.
Kennedy won in Indiana and Nebraska, while McCarthy defeated the Johnson slate in Wisconsin. RFK refused to debate Senator McCarthy which damaged him in the Oregon primary in late May. McCarthy won and Kennedy reversed his position. He agreed to a televised date on June 1st, and California became a “must win” primary. The debate robbed McCarthy of his major issue, which was Kennedy’s reluctance to confront him.
The debate moderator was ABC’s Frank Reynolds who said “There doesn’t seem to be too many differences between Senator McCarthy and Senator Kennedy on anything, really.” Three days later RFK won his greatest victory in California. The next stop was the June 18th New York primary, and Kennedy never had the opportunity to make his pitch to party regulars.

The historian Ronald Steel said:

I think Bobby Kennedy continues to haunt our imagination because he represents what might have been. We can never be disillusioned, because it’s always in the unfulfilled future. He never failed, because he was denied the chance, of course. But he opened the sense of possibilities of change…. He spoke in a language that people could find their hopes, and their dreams. And so, I think we’ll always read in Bobby Kennedy, not what was, or what failed to be, but what might have been.

The general election between Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was very close, and many pundits argue that Democrats would have won if Kennedy had been their nominee. We will never know the answer. The Senator was assassinated the night of his California victory, June 4, 1968,  the results were as follows:

California

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): 46.3%

Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN): 41.8%

Attorney General Thomas Lynch (D-CA): 12% (Humphrey stand-in)

New Jersey

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): 38%

Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN): 35%

South Dakota

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): 53%

Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN): 30%

Delegate Projections as of June 6, 1968

Majority Needed For Victory: 1313

Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D-MN): 1030

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): 890

Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN): 250

Unpledged: 456

The nomination process was far different in 1968 than the system we know today. Even if Kennedy had won all of the primaries it is still doubtful he would have won the nomination.  The primaries determined only 19% of the delegates. Humphrey needed just 300 delegates to secure the nomination and he had the united support of DNC members, the AFL-CIO, big city machines and party regulars. The exception was Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley who was undecided. McCarthy demonstrated considerable hostility toward Kennedy and threatened to throw his 250 delegates to Humphrey. To win, Kennedy would have to convince a number of Humphrey supporters to switch sides.

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner: Their $267,000 First Date

1949: The Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles.

Movie actress Ava Gardner, one of the most beautiful women of the 1940’s and ’50s, was associated with many famous men. According to Time magazine, she was the most photographed woman in the world during the World War II era. She was 5′ 6″, a size zero, and had an 18 inch waist, 36-18-36. Gardner never won an Academy Award but the American Film Institute lists her as one of the top 25 greatest stars of all time.
Her best known films are Show Boat, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Barefoot Contessa, The Sun Also Rises, On The Beach, Seven Days in May, The Night of the Iguana and Mogambo, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

"Decision Points" By George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points will be released tomorrow, and for the first time in two years he is returning to the public arena. The verdict of history is already pointing toward his vindication, and he is now ahead of President Obama in several opinion polls. There is a disappointing conversation now being held at Politico on the topic “Will Bush’s Memoir Change Any Minds? http://www.politico.com/arena/ The radical left and libertarians are repeating their usual lies, and several conservatives are doing a poor job of defending the Bush legacy. This is what they should be saying.

BOOK REVIEW: "40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation" by James Carville, Simon & Schuster, 209 pages

40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation was published on May 4, 2009, and the author was the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory. James Carville never imagined that six months after publication Democrats would lose governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, and were on the way to turning over Ted Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

The Path to Power: Two Young Authors Outline a GOP Comeback

Young voters do deserve special thanks from the President. They gave him the margin he needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries and caucuses, and in the general election Generation Y gave him a staggering 66% to 32% margin. If McCain had won 52% of the youth vote he would be in the White House today. The President’s approval ratings have fallen significantly in all age groups, but the drop among young voters has been the sharpest for any age demographic.

BOOK REVIEWS: Generation Right: The Young Conservative in the Age of Obama (2010) by Dan Joseph, Xlibris, 186 pages; and Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation by Jason Mattera (2010), Threshold, 288 pages.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory"

The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory, by David Plouffe, Viking, 390 pages, reviewed by Gregory Hilton

President Obama’s popularity has plummeted, and Democrats are now headed for a significant setback in the 2010 midterm election. Survey data already has the President losing a hypothetical 2012 re-election campaign to former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA).

We Could Use a Man Like Uncle Joe Again: Speaker Cannon Would Have Been Popular This Year

Inauguration Day, March 4, 1921. President Woodrow Wilson leaves the White House for the last time with Senator Warren Harding (R-OH), Rep. Joe Cannon (R-IL) and Senator Philander Knox (R-PA). Cannon was 84, but would outlive both Presidents Wilson and Harding.

Rep. Joseph Cannon (R-IL) was a vigorous foe of government spending, taxes, deficits and liberal legislation. He certainly would have approved of today’s Tea Party movement. Both his critics and admirers referred to him as Uncle Joe, which was the title of his autobiography. He was the most powerful Speaker in the history of the House of Representatives, and held that office from 1903 until 1911.
At the same time he served as Chairman of the Rules Committee. Legislation approved in committees would never make to the House floor if Cannon was opposed. If a bill included new spending measures, Uncle Joe’s opposition was often automatic.
The seniority system was not used in those days, and the Speaker was also able to control legislation by appointing all committee chairmen and members. Leaders of the so-called progressive era said they were consistently thwarted by “Cannonism,” which meant Congressional intransigence.
Uncle Joe was first elected in 1872 and served on Capitol Hill for 48 years. It was a record which remained unbroken until 1958. Despite his years of service, he only introduced one bill and it was a minor matter concerning post offices in 1874. He told one opponent, “The country does not need any legislation.”
Cannon was Chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee for eight years. He explained his job by saying: “You may think my work is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent them from being made.”

• For six years the Speaker was successful in stopping passage of personal, corporate and inheritance taxes. He said income taxes were unnecessary because the government had sufficient revenues from tariffs. Democrats and liberal Republicans were in favor of a 2% income tax, but Cannon questioned how long that rate would stay in effect.
  The Senate enacted the income tax several times, but the Speaker was always able to defeat it until his last term. His effort to amend the income tax so it would expire after two years was not successful. Despite his opposition, the House passed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution establishing an income tax on July 12, 1909, and it bears Cannon’s signature.
• Cannon always battled liberal Republicans, and referred to himself as a staunch conservative. He said President Theodore Roosevelt, a fellow Republican but a progressive, had “no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license.”
• On April 6, 1917, the House of Representatives debated a resolution to declare war on Germany. The Constitution had not yet been amended to grant women the right to vote, but several states had already done so. Freshman Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) remained silent throughout the roll call on America’s entry into World War I, and was planning not to vote.
  The clerk was calling the roll for the final time when former Speaker Cannon appeared at her side and said, “You represent the women of the country in the American Congress. I shall not advise you how to vote, but you should vote one way or another.”
  Rankin made up her mind and was one of 50 lawmakers to vote no. She was defeated in the next election and did not return to the House for 22 years. On December 8, 1941, she became the only lawmaker to vote against World War II, and was promptly defeated once again.
• In 1923, the year Cannon left the House, Time magazine put him on the cover of its first issue. Cannon had been chairman of the committee whose work resulted in construction of the first office building for lawmakers. It opened in 1908, and in 1962 it was renamed the Cannon House Office Building.

The former Speaker died at the age of 90 in 1926, and if you want to learn more see Tyrant From Illinois: Uncle Joe Cannon’s Experiment With Personal Power by Blair Bolles (1951), or his autobiography, Uncle Joe Cannon, (1927).