The enigma that is American politics

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 4.)

As you read this, I’m in the United States. It’s a country I’ve visited several times, but it remains an enigma to me.

The people I meet here are friendly, courteous and helpful. I see no trace of the crazy America that we read about in the headlines: the mass shootings, the religious fundamentalism, the overheated patriotism, the rabid political views, the nasty outbursts of apparently racist police violence. I find it hard to reconcile these with the Americans I encounter.

It’s a country of extremes, which is probably inevitable given its turbulent history, diverse populace and tradition of rambunctious individualism. But in between those extremes, there’s a vast mass of ordinary people just trying to get on with their lives – people whose values are not so different from our own.

There’s another striking aspect of the American enigma that’s very much on display right now: its politicians.

This is a dynamic country full of clever, energetic, creative people. Even people who profess to despise America devour its culture.

We read American books, listen to American music, watch American films and television, wear American-inspired clothes, are kept alive by American drugs and rely on American technology. There’s hardly a place on earth that isn’t influenced in some way by America.

So, given the incredibly rich human resources with which it’s blessed, how is it that we see such a dispiriting line-up of candidates for the presidency?

Surely in a nation of 320 million people – the country that accomplished the most audacious feat in history by putting man on the moon – it must be possible to find more inspiring candidates than those whom American voters are currently considering for elevation to the most powerful political office on earth?

The highest-profile Republican contender is a braying braggart with a frighteningly simplistic, one-dimensional world view. If we thought George W Bush was a monstrous practical joke, a President Donald Trump would be an even more tragic mistake.

His pitch for the support of American voters seems to depend on two things. One is his sneering criticism of the other Republican contenders; the other is his reputation as a man untouched by political correctness. In the absence of any coherent policy or vision, these are not convincing credentials for the White House.

What of the leading Democratic contender, then?

Hillary Clinton is the polar opposite of Trump, and not just in ideological terms. While he plays up his status as a maverick, untainted by connections with the Washington establishment, Clinton is the consummate political insider.

She’s capable, intelligent and a seasoned schmoozer. She has a track record as Secretary of State and happens to be one half of the world’s most famous power couple.

Her performance in TV debates, and under the blow torch during a gruelling 11-hour congressional hearing into American deaths in a terrorist attack for which her Republican rivals held her responsible (rather unreasonably, it seems to me), has been polished and assured. She gives the impression she would make a tougher and more decisive president than Barack Obama.

But she has a few skeletons rattling around in her closet and opinion polls suggest many Americans don’t trust her. Besides, the Clintons, like the Bushes, have had their time in the White House. 

Trump and Clinton aside, there’s a supporting cast of lesser presidential hopefuls, consisting of the usual ragtag collection of egotists, misfits, no-hopers and fumblers – proof that ambition and overweening self-confidence can take you a long way in American politics even when there’s a gaping ability deficit.

American TV satirists are never short of material, least of all at election time. Some contenders for the White House seem unprepared for questions on even the most basic policy issues.

You could call this the Sarah Palin Effect. The Republican nominee for vice-president in the 2008 election had never travelled outside America until 2007 and, when questioned, couldn’t name a single newspaper or magazine that she regularly read. This presumably inspired her fellow Americans with the realisation that anyone could run for high office.

It wasn’t always like this. American politics once resounded with soaring, visionary rhetoric.

Consider the speeches of John F Kennedy, bits of which are still routinely quoted more than 50 years after he died. Kennedy may have been a shameless libertine – a man whose alley-cat personal morality was sharply at odds with his virtuous public image – but he knew how to inspire his fellow Americans with words that created a sense of hope and opportunity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, arguably the greatest US president of the 20^th century, had a similar gift. His “fireside chats”, broadcast over the radio, reached into millions of homes and helped carry America through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Like Kennedy, Roosevelt never talked down to his audience. He spoke eloquently, even loftily, confident that his audience would get his message – and they did.

Somewhere along the line, America has mislaid this element of its political culture. I was reminded of this watching a recent documentary film called The Best of Enemies, which recalled a famous series of cerebral 1968 television debates between the American intellectuals Gore Vidal, on the left, and William F Buckley Jr on the right.

Both the protagonists struck me as thoroughly obnoxious, but the debates, broadcast to coincide with the Democratic and Republican national conventions, fizzed and sparked with vicious but sophisticated humour.

Broadcast in prime time on the ABC network during the presidential primaries, the debates were a surprise ratings hit. It would never happen today – a risk-averse media would dismiss the concept as too highbrow. And even more sadly, the same is true in New Zealand.

Songs to remember Kennedy by

Here’s an esoteric music trivia question: what do the songs The Sounds of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel), Sunny (Bobby Hebb) and The Warmth of the Sun (the Beach Boys) have in common?

Answer: although none of them refer to it overtly, all three were inspired, at least partly, by the assassination of John F Kennedy, which happened 50 years ago this week.

As it happens, they’re also three great songs. Though it was never a hit (it was the flip side of the rather less impressive Dance, Dance, Dance, which went to No 8 in the US), The Warmth of the Sun is an early example of Brian Wilson’s genius, marking the point at which he raised his sights from songs about hot rods and surfing to more ambitious, melodically complex stuff. Wilson and fellow band member Mike Love began writing the song before learning of Kennedy’s death, but it has a melancholy, elegiac quality that captures the mood of the moment. (Incidentally, that’s not the Beach Boys you hear playing on the record; it’s the fabulous Los Angeles session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, one of whom was Glen Campbell.)

Black singer Bobby Hebb’s Sunny sounds like a love song but was written as a response to two tragedies: Kennedy’s death and the fatal stabbing of Hebb’s brother outside a Nashville nightclub. Paradoxically, it’s an optimistic song that draws hope from the restorative quality of love. Although written in 1963, it didn’t become a hit till nearly three years later. It rose to No 2 in the US and No 16 in New Zealand in mid-1966 and went on to earn enduring popularity as a staple in both easy-listening and soul repertoires. Hebb, who died in 2010, never had another major hit, but it’s worth checking out his follow-up to Sunny, a sublime soul treatment of the much-recorded country song A Satisfied Mind. (I never found out who the bass player was, but he was hot. Sunny and A Satisfied Mind were two of the first pop songs I can recall in which the bass insisted on being heard.)

Like Sunny, The Sounds of Silence took its time becoming a hit. In fact it attracted little attention when Simon and Garfunkel first recorded it as an acoustic folk song for the 1964 album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. It was only after their producer, Tom Wilson, decided to soup the song up with electric guitars, bass and drums – provided by New York session musicians who had just finished working on Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone – that The Sounds of Silence took off. Astonishingly, the overdubbing was done without the knowledge of Paul Simon, who wrote the song. But it did the trick: the new version, released in September 1965, went to No 1 in New Zealand as well as the US, and set S & G on their way.

Anyway, give the songs a whirl. It’s as good a way as any of marking Friday's anniversary.

 

 

Kennedy: charismatic, idealistic - and a misogynist

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, February 29.)

When the first accounts started seeping out decades ago about President John F Kennedy’s philandering, they scarcely seemed credible.

The world had unquestioningly bought into the fairy-tale portrayal of the White House during the Kennedy years as a latter-day Camelot occupied by a dashing, charismatic young president, his coolly elegant wife and their photogenic children.

It was an era when a respectful news media didn’t pry into the private lives of politicians, least of all the president. It was only after Richard Nixon and the disgrace of Watergate in the 1970s that American journalists collectively decided that presidents could be deeply flawed human beings, like the rest of us, and no longer entitled to be immune from scrutiny.

Coincidentally, it was at about that same time that the media began carrying the first accounts of JFK’s clandestine love life. These stories were so much at odds with his popular image as the devoted Catholic husband and father that at first, many people were inclined to dismiss them as scurrilous libels.

But as the reports multiplied – not just in tabloid scandal-sheets but sober, conservative newspapers and magazines – the truth about Kennedy’s compulsive philandering became impossible to ignore.

What made the revelations even more sensational were the women he was romantically linked with. It’s now generally accepted that he had a fling with Marilyn Monroe, although whether the emotionally fragile star’s infatuation with Kennedy was a factor in her death in 1962 is impossible to confirm.

Another of Kennedy’s mistresses was Judith Exner, who was simultaneously having an affair with gangster Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia. (Kennedy was supposedly introduced to Exner by Frank Sinatra, who had Mob connections.)

It was common knowledge among Kennedy’s aides and Secret Service minders that he had a ravenous sexual appetite. All this information trickled out long after Kennedy’s death as former associates of the president came forward with stories of his dalliances.

Yet even after all that, the recently published memoirs of Mimi Alford provide an astonishing new insight into Kennedy’s predatory behaviour.
Alford was recruited from an exclusive Boston girls’ school to work as an intern at the White House in 1962. Just 19 years old, she was a virgin, but she wasn’t to remain one for long. Kennedy had sex with her on her fourth day in the job.

It happened in Jacqui Kennedy’s bedroom after Kennedy offered to show Alford around the White House. Judging by her account, it was perilously close to rape: she didn’t resist, but neither was she given much opportunity to consent. She writes in her memoirs: “The experience was so wholly unexpected and surreal that, as I was driven home in a limo afterwards, I wondered if it had all been a dream.

“Could I have done anything to resist? I doubt it: once we were alone in his wife’s bedroom, he’d manoeuvered me so swiftly and unexpectedly, and with such authority and strength, that, short of screaming, I don’t think anything would have thwarted his intentions.”

Perhaps the most striking thing about this encounter, if it happened as Alford describes, is the sheer, brazen audacity of it. Clearly, Kennedy was supremely confident that he could force himself on a vulnerable young woman – and in his wife’s bedroom – and get away with it.

That to me suggests not just a rampant sexual appetite (Kennedy reportedly once told British prime minister Harold McMillan that he suffered headaches if he went without sex), but massive hubris and a huge sense of entitlement. This may have been the product of his upbringing in a wealthy, privileged household headed by a father infamous for his ruthlessness and ambition.

The other significant aspect of the incident in Jacqui Kennedy’s boudoir is that it seems to have been immaterial to Kennedy whether his partner got any pleasure from the sexual act. That’s consistent with my amateur psychologist’s theory that he simply felt entitled to take whatever he wanted.

Interestingly, JFK’s nephew Christopher Kennedy Lawford, interviewed last weekend by Kim Hill (though not in connection with Alford’s disclosures), referred to that generation of Kennedy men as being misogynists. Certainly the record indicates they were users of women.

To be fair, Alford’s account shows that she subsequently entered willingly into a continuing sexual relationship with Kennedy. Not surprisingly, she was hugely flattered by the attention of the most powerful man on earth. Their affair lasted until his death 18 months later, though she never doubted that he had other lovers.

A peculiar aspect of the affair was that he never kissed her, which seems to suggest (I’m playing the amateur psychologist again here) a fear of emotional intimacy. I mean, how can anyone carry on a sexual relationship without kissing? It doesn’t seem natural.

Alford also saw a much darker side to Kennedy’s personality when he prompted her to give oral sex to his loyal aide Dave Powers when the three were together in the White House swimming pool. Again, you get a sense here of a manipulative man enjoying his power over others. Alford called it callous and unforgiveable.

Kennedy later tried to persuade her to do the same with his younger brother, Ted, but by that time she had the confidence to refuse.

That Alford fell under Kennedy’s spell is hardly surprising. Powerful men have always attracted women. Henry Kissinger, an adviser to Nixon, famously described power as the ultimate aphrodisiac.

The qualities that make men natural leaders – confidence, ambition, ego and often a generous dose of testosterone – are the same ones that make some of them compulsive womanisers. They don’t even need to be handsome: British prime minister David Lloyd George was no Adonis, yet he was known as “the Goat” on account of his busy sex life.

In the case of Kennedy, it wasn’t just power that made him attractive, but good looks and the force of his personality as well.

Judging by Alford’s account, he was also a risk-taker – another attribute that some women find irresistible. Notwithstanding the protective aides and Secret Service men around him, he lived dangerously by engaging openly in illicit liaisons. Perhaps he just felt bulletproof.

The picture Alford paints of Kennedy adds yet another dimension to one of the most complex personalities of the 20th century: idealistic, visionary and inspirational, yet personally decadent to the point of being almost amoral, and very much concerned with satisfying his own needs and desires. It’s a tale that can only further stain his already tarnished image.