Presidents FDR and Barack Obama

We are now at the end of year two of the Great Recession (December 2007-2009). To those who asked me after the near meltdown in September of 2008, I guessed that the bleeding of jobs probably wouldn’t end before this December. The bleeding has been slowing in recent months with the “good news” being that fewer jobs are being lost each month than were lost the month before. 

A friend in Detroit recently wrote me: “I have survived five downsizings at Chrysler, and I think I’ll be here for a while. The Obama task force did a masterful job, and the Italian guy from Fiat is doing well so far… I think we’ll be good for a while, but if the economy and car sales don’t begin to climb more substantially in the next six months to a year then things could get dicey again.” If jobs continue to be lost, those car sales aren’t going to happen. 

Since a jobless recovery is virtually no recovery at all, it is hard to understand why President Barack Obama and his administration have not focused more on job growth. They don’t even need to be as creative as they were in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. (It was probably all those incentives for 21^st century green technology that was the real cause of those Republican apoplectic fits over the stimulus package.) The Obama administration could reinstate three tried and tested programs that we know will work. That’s a conservative approach, by the way. 

One is Franklin Roosevelt’s most noble achievement: the Civilian Conservation Corps, which created 250,000 jobs in 1933 and rose to 2 million jobs by the time the U.S. entered WWII at the end of 1941. The CCC employed young men between the ages of 18 to 25 at $30 per month with most of the money going home to their families. Their activities included reforestation, flood control, national parks, and much more. 

 

CCC boys at a experimental farm in Maryland

The National Park Service will be celebrating its 100^th anniversary in 2016. What better time than now to begin eliminating the backlog of repairs and renovations that has been piling up over the years, especially since the anti-park Reagan Era. Even the pro-environment, pro-park Clinton administration couldn’t get the necessary funding from a hostile Republican Congress in the 1990’s. The largest number of unemployed is the 16 to 24 age group (18 %, Sept. 2009). An updated version of the former CCC could do wonders for jobless young men and women and for our national parks. It would be far more constructive than Obama’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. And it would be a wonderful birthday gift to us and to our future generations.   

CCC boys digging a trench

The second project is a national highways and waterways infrastructure program. We’ve been waiting for it ever since Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and ever since that Interstate highway bridge fell in Minnesota: There are several highway projects in Obama’s original stimulus bill but not nearly enough. Probably every state has specific projects that never seem to get accomplished. 

Here in South Arkansas, we know what’s needed. Highway 167 needs to be four-laned from Ruston, LA, to Little Rock. There are several stretches where no work has even begun. The projected Interstate 69 (the NAFTA Highway that will stretch from Canada to Mexico) has “future corridor” signs up, but that’s all. El Dorado, Camden, and Magnolia would greatly benefit from that highway and so would the impoverished delta region of eastern Arkansas.  Highway 82 should be, at the very least, three-laned with continuously alternating passing lanes all the way from Texarkana to Greenville, MS. The time for action on all these projects is now. They will create jobs today and economic growth now and in the future. 

Richard Nixon (President 1969-1974)

Thirdly, we should resurrect Richard Nixon’s successful program called “revenue sharing.” Not known for caring anything about domestic issues, Nixon surprisingly recognized that the federal government was very efficient at raising money and the state governments were more efficient at spending it. The states knew best what they needed, so the federal government should share in helping them fund their important programs. 

Many states are now facing crises in revenue shortfalls due to the Great Recession. As a consequence, to maintain constitutionally-mandated balanced budgets, they are laying-off teachers and other state employees. That’s the worst thing they could be doing. Unemployment begets less spending, which begets more unemployment, which begets further losses of tax revenues, which begets more government layoffs; and the downward spiral continues. Bringing back Nixon’s excellent “revenue sharing” program could prevent additional layoffs and allow the states to rehire those victimized by the crisis. 

Ronald Reagan (President 1981-1989)

You have to remember that all of these programs were successful before the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who championed the concept that government was the problem. Reagan cut taxes on the upper income brackets thereby limiting the federal government’s ability to raise money; he cut funding for the national parks; he cut funding for highway infrastructure; and he eliminated Nixon’s “revenue sharing.” His philosophy was that states should raise taxes at the local level if they needed or wanted new programs or projects or wanted to continue old ones. The result has been a steady 30-year deterioration of the nation. 

CCC boy planting a tree

The creation of jobs through a modernized CCC, a major national infrastructure program, and a new revenue sharing program would go a long way in bringing about a lasting recovery. Government spending for paychecks is preferable to government spending for welfare checks.  

The danger is that President Obama will make the same mistake that Franklin Roosevelt made in 1937. The New Deal had been so successful from 1933 through 1936 that FDR hoped the recovery would continue without the government’s deficit spending. It didn’t work, and the country slipped back into recession in 1937-38.  Deficit spending went against everything that FDR had ever believed, so he was never comfortable with it. However, he should have waited until the Great Depression was clearly over to try to end it. 

Mr. Obama has seemed to have the same reservation, which would be good in normal times but not now. The bailouts of the banks and the auto industries ended the panic and the probable total economic meltdown. The stimulus package has been quite helpful, even though much of it is not scheduled to kick in until 2010. Consequently, President Obama appeared to become more concerned with the deficit than with job growth – until this December. Hopefully, pressure from the Democratic Congress, recent bleak job forcasts from the Federal Reserve, and the president’s recent forum on job creation have gotten him back on track. If not, the Great Recession may still become the 2^nd Great Depression. Hopefully, he will utilize these lessons of history. 

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published December 12, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama

Thankfully, President Barack Obama has begun restoring our severely tarnished reputation. Early in his presidency he prohibited the illegal torture techniques that were sanctioned by the Bush/Cheney administration, and he ordered the eventual closing of our prison at Guantanamo. Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced the trial of five alleged terrorists accused of involvement in the 9/11 criminal conspiracy (eight years after the atrocity). Appropriately, the trial will be held in a federal civilian court in New York City. Hopefully, we will soon see an end to all of Bush-Cheney’s open-ended incarcerations without charges or trials. That policy violated our traditions dating back to the Magna Charta of 1215 and our own Constitution, which guarantees the writ of habeas corpus and a speedy trial.   

However, we need to do more. While insisting that his administration won’t violate the Constitution and international treaties, President Obama has done nothing to ensure that these immoral, unethical, counterproductive, and criminal activities won’t be resurrected when the next Bush/Cheney-type administration comes to power. Although prosecutions are not necessary, we need to know why any of the instigators and violators believed that the president was above the law.

Investigations need to be continued by the Congress, the CIA, and the justice department. We must insist on a thorough study and full disclosures. Laws must be passed to prevent the USA from ever lowering itself into officially sanctioning this kind of behavior ever again. Future presidents must be put on notice. The despicable concept that we must use the methods of the enemy to defeat the enemy simply means that neither one of us can claim the moral high ground. As Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon said during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, “We have to remember who we are.”

We can understand why President Obama has been reluctant to investigate those who authorized the use of torture or those who followed orders and personally committed barbarous acts. Democrats in general don’t have that revengeful spirit so typical of the Republican Party. Mr. Obama, himself, seems to have that Clintonesque characteristic of wanting to be liked by everybody, even when (like Bill Clinton) many people are going to hate him for no other reason than he exists. Regardless, a sense of justice demands action.  

Mr. Obama has been particularly protective of CIA agents who committed the acts of torture, even though the USA has been historically unsympathetic to those who “just followed orders”: after our Civil War, there was the trial of the Confederate commander of the Andersonville prison; after World War II, there were the Nuremburg, Germany, trials of Nazi accomplices to the systematic murder of 12 million innocent people; also after WWII, there were the trials of Japanese war criminals (when we executed those convicted of water boarding, a torture procedure that Dick Cheney seems particularly fond of).

President John F. Kennedy

To some of my friends, I somewhat facetiously defended Obama’s reluctance to investigate the CIA’s role in the Bush-Cheney policy. Based on CIA assurances in 1961, President John F. Kennedy approved the Eisenhower administration’s CIA plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, an act that was supposed to provoke an internal uprising that would overthrow Fidel Castro. It was a disaster. After learning that virtually nothing the CIA had told him about the operation was true, Kennedy made the mistake of saying, “I wish I could tear up the CIA and throw it to the winds.”

After that, JFK had a major house cleaning at the top of the CIA, but his relationship with the CIA was strained. Nor was JFK ever again completely confident of what the CIA told him. JFK did support the CIA’s coup to overthrow the South Vietnamese president Diem: Kennedy probably hoped to replace him with someone who might institute land reforms that would give the government some popular support. But when the CIA told him that Diem had committed suicide, JFK didn’t believe it. Diem may have been an incompetent president, but he was a devout Catholic.  JFK believed Diem would never have taken his own life.

Some conspiracy theorists have included unspecified CIA agents as among the large, diverse group who hated JFK and who may have been involved in his assassination. Of course, there is probably nothing to it, but how could anyone with Lee Harvey Oswald’s known, suspicious background have been allowed anywhere near Kennedy without being under close surveillance? Regardless, whether or not Mr. Obama has been thinking about this, no president wants to raise the ire of the CIA. He needs the CIA on his side.

Scooter Libby, VP Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff (Scooter Libby, David Addington, Douglas Feith, et al.) are probably the only members of an executive branch that were ever feared by the CIA. They even got then-CIA director George Tenet to change the CIA’s assessment of Iraq’s potential of having weapons of mass destruction to support the Bush-Cheney position. Amazingly, only Scooter Libby has been held accountable for the lies that got us into Iraq – but not directly.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson

Libby had lied to investigators who were trying to find out who blew the cover of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent for twenty years. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had exposed part of the Bush-Cheney hoax when he wrote a New York Times op-ed piece. Wilson made it clear that President Bush was well aware that Iraq had not been trying to obtain uranium yellow cake from Niger as he had claimed. Ms. Plame had been a vital deep-cover agent in acquiring information about Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Also, her exposure as a CIA agent certainly jeopardized her numerous contacts. This was a clear warning by the administration as to what would happen to other whistleblowers.

(I understand that some people oppose the justice department’s investigation of CIA abuses – remember, the FBI refused to participate in those “enhanced” interrogation techniques. Some have claimed that these torturers were our deep-cover spies who operate under various respectable professions in foreign countries. No, agents like Ms. Plame could never do that. That’s not their job; and if they did, it would blow their cover. Anyone to whom they exposed their true identity would probably have to be murdered.)

Once again, it is both amusing and troubling that the same people who object to investigating CIA operatives who engaged in reprehensible interrogation practices never objected to the vindictive Bush-Cheney staff’s destroying the career of Valerie Plame. Hardly anyone complaining now ever cared that Bush-Cheney had deliberately exposed one of our most effective spies in the Middle East. Where were these people when we really needed them?

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published November 27, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

Movies that contain scenes about Christmas often seem awkward if we see them at the wrong time of the year. I presume you already know about It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, so I have selected twenty other personal favorites to recommend that have something to do with Christmas. Remember, though, they may not be what you would normally call a Christmas movie.

1. Captain Newman, MD (1964) with Gregory Peck and Tony Curtis: This is a comedy-drama about a psycho ward in an Arizona military hospital during World War II. Angie Dickinson agreed to a six-year contract with Universal in order to play opposite Gregory Peck in this film. Peck commands the psycho ward and highjacks new orderly Curtis to work in his ward. He then coaxes the head nurse of another ward, Dickinson, to transfer to his.

Gregory Peck in the titular role

There are great performances from Eddie Albert as a colonel who has become Mr. Future, Bobby Darin as the lone survivor of his fellow crewmen, and Robert Duvall (in his second big-screen appearance) as an officer who had avoided discovery by the Germans – and avoided the war - by hiding. The scene when Curtis explains to Peck how the ward got its five-foot Christmas tree is a screen treasure. It ends on Christmas Day.

George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge

2. A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge: This one has been filmed many times, but this version is my favorite thus far. Scott is perfectly cast, but so are the rest of the cast. Roger Rees as Scrooge’s nephew Fred and David Warner as Bob Cratchit add depth to characters who generally get only routine attention. All the ghosts are wonderful with Edward Woodward being the standout as Present. Timeless!

Donnie Melvin and Geraldine Page

3. A Christmas Memory (1966) with Geraldine Page and young Donnie Melvin: Melvin plays Buddy, who is actually Truman Capote; and Capote narrates this personal memoir of his childhood. Buddy’s best friend is a very simple and kind woman (Miss Page in an Emmy winning role) who “is still a child.” Every Christmas the two of them, with their dog Queeny, gather and buy all the ingredients for fruitcakes and mail the cakes to “friends.” They share the house with Buddy’s two aunts, but we only see them on Christmas morning. This one is super special. “It’s fruitcake weather!”

4. The Christmas Tree (1969) with William Holden, Virna Lisi, Bourvil, and young Brook Fuller: The critics hate this one, but I love it. Holden’s son, Fuller, is exposed to radiation from the explosion of a plane carrying a nuclear bomb. While Holden explains to his girlfriend that his son’s condition is incurable, you hear a car crash. When he leaves, you see the commotion of the accident, but Holden, the devastated father, never notices it. Holden tries to make his son’s last days as happy as possible, and he even gets him two wolves as pets. “We’re so lucky: every day is a holiday!” the boy exclaims. If it were only so. It ends on Christmas Eve.

5. A Dog of Flanders (1959) with Theodore Bikel, Donald Crisp, and young David Ladd (son of Alan and former husband of Cheryl): A boy and his grandfather (Crisp – superb as usual) befriend an abused dog; the dog befriends them by helping to pull their milk cart on their daily rounds; an artist, Bikel, befriends the boy, who also wants to become an artist. But what happens when the grandfather dies and the boy must survive on his own? Filmed on location in the Netherlands. It ends on Christmas Day.

6. The Homecoming (1971) with Patricia Neal and Richard Thomas: This inspiration for The Waltons TV series was recognized as an instant classic the moment it first aired. Patricia Neal was still recovering from three strokes and had to be persuaded to take the part of the mother. It’s the Depression Era, and the father has had to find work far from home. It’s Christmas Eve, and his family is waiting for his homecoming. It’s John-Boy, the recipe, and even a ride in a one-horse open sleigh.

7. The Lady and the Tramp (1955) with the voice of Peggy Lee: This is my all-time favorite Disney animated classic. Can a streetwise stray settle down with pampered cocker spaniel? The Tramp treats the Lady to a spaghetti dinner outside an Italian restaurant and the result is pure magic. Disney’s artists beautifully and realistically captured the mannerisms of our canine friends. The songs are also good, especially one sung by Peggy Lee. This special movie begins on one Christmas Day and ends on another.

Vintage Howard Duff as he looked at the time of "A Little Game"

8.  A Little Game (1971) with Ed Nelson, Diane Baker, Katy Jurado, Howard Duff, and young Mark Gruner: A boy (Gruner) brings his best friend (Christopher Shea) home from a military academy for the Christmas holidays. The boy hates his new stepfather (Nelson), and he may have already murdered a classmate back at the academy. The stepfather hires a private detective, superbly played by veteran actor Howard Duff, to investigate. Mark Gruner is excellent as the deranged cadet, who worshipped his sadistic late father and is very possessive of his beautiful mother (Baker). The boy wants his own rifle for Christmas!

9. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980) with Alec Guinness and young Ricky Schroder: An impoverished New York City youth learns that he is the heir to a British title and estate. He moves into his grandfather’s castle, but his mother must live separately in a distant cottage. The Earl wants nothing to do with her. Things begin to change when another youth claims to be the rightful heir. Look for Patrick Stewart (Star Trek’s Captain Picard) in a small role. It ends on Christmas Day.

Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole

10. The Lion in Winter (1968) with Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn, Timothy Dalton, and Anthony Hopkins:  Henry II is having a Christmas Court and hopes to pick the heir to his British throne. He invites his three sons and even invites his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has kept locked in a tower for years. Miss Hepburn won her second of four Best Actress academy awards for this one, and it may be her finest performance. Anthony Hopkins made his debut in this film as Richard the Lionhearted. Don’t miss a single word or frame of this delicious film. And John Barry’s music is fabulous as well.

11. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol ((1962) with the voice of Jim Backus: The nearly blind Magoo is a great Scrooge! You will be surprised at how faithful this animated version of Dickens’ story is handled. There are some catchy tunes, but the  dark side of Dicken’s England is captured quite successfully.

Julian Ciamaca as Marcel

12. My Mother’s Castle (1991) in French with English subtitles: This is the sequel to the splendid little film My Father’s Glory, which is one of my favorite summer movies and should be seen first. Autobiographical, this movie continues the story of Marcel Pagnol’s wonderful childhood. With young Julian Ciamaca playing Marcel, the film is in good hands. For the Christmas holidays, Marcel’s family decides to return to the hills where they had vacationed the previous summer. They then decide to return on a regular basis and use an illegal shortcut along a canal to make their visits more practical. This one is fun. And beautiful!

Teddy Eccles as Sam

13. My Side of the Mountain (1969) with Theodore Bikel and young Teddy Eccles: One critic described it as “an improbable story of a boy who ran away from home to live on his own in the woods.” Ironically, it is a true story based on the actual experiences of a GIRL! When the girl wrote her book, she changed herself to a boy so that readers would find her adventures more believable. Teddy Eccles plays Sam, the young “Thoreau,” with confidence and maturity. Sam escapes from the city into the mountains of Canada, he creates a home for himself and his pet raccoon inside a dead tree, he captures and trains a peregrine falcon, he makes his own clothes, he goes skinny dipping in his own pond, and he pursues his experiments with the uses of algae. Theodore Bikel shows up as the wandering minstrel Bando in search of local folk songs, and he and the boy hit it off – but the singer has to leave before the first snow falls. It ends on Christmas Day.

14. The Night of the Hunter (1955) with Robert Mitchum, Shelly Winters, Lillian Gish, and young Billy Chapin (pictured): Billy Chapin carries this film, while being surrounded by some of the very best in the business. Chapin and his little sister, possessing money stolen by their late father, are chased by madman Mitchum, but they find refuge with Lillian Gish. This is the only movie ever directed by screen and stage legend Charles Laughton. Incredibly, this beautifully filmed movie was originally panned by the critics, and Laughton swore never to direct another movie. It ends on Christmas Day.

Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton

15. Ordinary People (1980) with Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, and Judd Hirsch: This is Hutton’s film, but his Oscar was for Best Supporting Actor. Ms. Moore’s supporting performance is astounding because we still recall her TV sitcom days; however, she was nominated in the wrong category and lost in the Best Actress competition. This was the first film directed by Robert Redford, and it is pretty near flawless and was awarded the Best Director Oscar. The teenaged Hutton is recovering from a failed suicide attempt. His brother had recently drowned in a boating accident, but he had been able to survive. His mother can seemingly show him no love. His father, superbly played by Sutherland, who amazingly wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar, is aware of the growing problem between his wife and son, but doesn’t know what to do. The son begins to see a psychiatrist, best supporting nominee Hirsch, and finds someone he can talk to. This is no ordinary film. Part of the story takes place during the Christmas season.

John Mills and John Howard Davies

16. The Rocking Horse Winner (1949) with John Mills and young John Howard Davies: A boy (Davies) rides his rocking horse to receive tips on winners at the race track. The hired hand (Mills) places the bets for him. The boy  hopes the money will help keep his troubled family together. Interesting and off-beat. Part of the story occurs during the Christmas season.

Ian Michael Smith and Joseph Mazzello

17. Simon Birch (1998) with Joseph Mazzello, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, David Strathairn, and Ian Michael Smith: Young Mazzello plays a boy who is eager to learn who his father is. His best friend is a dwarf named Simon Birch, who believes he has a special destiny. Their church’s Christmas play, with Simon as the baby Jesus, is a riot! Jim Carrey narrates and also makes a cameo appearance at the end.

John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., and Pedro Armendariz

18. Three Godfathers (1948) with John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Pedro Armendariz, and Ward Bond: Three bank robbers, being pursued by Ward Bond’s posse, help deliver a baby and promise the dying mother to take care of the newborn infant. It’s one of the Duke’s best, and it’s directed by John Ford! Before you know it, you discover the western you are watching is a Christmas tale.

Leo G. Carroll, Basil Rathbone, and Humphrey Bogart

19. We’re No Angels (1955) with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray, Leo G. Carroll, Basil Rathbone, and Joan Bennett: On Devil’s Island, three escaped convicts (Bogart, Ustinov, and Ray) help out a naïve family, the Ducotels (Carroll and Bennett), at Christmas time against a ruthless relative (Rathbone) who is coming to check the store’s books. The hero turns out to be Adolph. You never see Adolph, but he is Aldo Ray’s pet snake.

Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby

20. White Christmas (1954) with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, and Dean Jagger: Two army buddies (Crosby and Kaye) team up after WWII as a singing act. They help out another singing duo, two sisters played by Clooney and Vera-Ellen, and go with them for the sisters’ gig at a Vermont ski resort. The resort happens to be owned by the general they served under and loved during the war (Jagger). Christmas is approaching,  there’s no snow, there are no tourists at the lodge, and the general may lose his resort! Need I say more?

by David Offutt, October 2005 (Re-edited November 2009)

President Barack Obama has been deliberating for some time over one of the many messes left to him by Bush-Cheney: the eight-year-old war in AFGHANISTAN. Our president’s administration has been compared to John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest,” and he has a chance to learn from JFK’s misadventure in Vietnam and his finest hour in Cuba.

President Kennedy sent two men to Vietnam to assess our prospects and report back: one each from the state department and the defense department. When they returned, the state department official said that the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and had no popular support and the situation was hopeless; the defense department representative said that all that was needed for success was more troops. Kennedy asked them if they had visited the same country. Could Afghanistan be a similar situation?

Coincidentally, we have now had another anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place from October 16 to October 28 in 1962. If you know little about this crisis or need an excellent, quick refresher, I highly recommend ABC’s 1974 dramatization The Missiles of October, available on DVD. If you’re interested, I also recommended it in Films for Presidents’ Day under my “movies” category. President Obama, as well as all our future presidents, should be required to see it.

Briefly, the Soviet Union secretly placed offensive missiles in Cuba after assuring the U. S. it would never do so. One of our U2 spy planes photographed the building of a nuclear missile installation site and the jig was up. The crisis was about how to get the Soviets to remove the missiles without JFK or Premier Nikita Khrushchev being provoked into losing control of events and starting a suicidal nuclear war. Fortunately, both leaders rose to the occasion.

Looking back on the skill displayed by our American president and a Russian dictator to avoid a needless war in 1962, we can regrettably contrast their performances to that of Bush-Cheney and Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism documented 935 lies made by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and six of their top officials to promote their effort to go to war in Iraq.

 “They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” said Sheriff Jim Alderden about the recent “balloon boy” hoax. The boy’s parents are now facing felony charges. So far, though, the only member of Bush-Cheney’s administration that has been charged and convicted for anything connected with the Iraq War hoax was Cheney’s chief of staff “Scooter” Libby.

Surprisingly, even the despicable Saddam Hussein actually did what he could to avoid war. He eventually allowed UN inspectors, led by Hans Blix, into Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction. He was willing to be exposed as a fraud who had no WMD’s rather than have his country invaded. I personally think he was trying to protect those lavish palaces that he had been spending most of his money on. Bush-Cheney ordered the inspectors to leave Iraq so that we could invade.

In stark contrast to Bush-Cheney’s eagerness to go to war, JFK and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were determined to avoid war if it was at all possible. It was a brilliant suggestion by Robert Kennedy that ultimately resolved the crisis. Khrushchev sent a favorable response in which he agreed to remove the missiles if we would promise not to invade Cuba. While we analyzed his offer, a second offer arrived that was unacceptable. It appeared to have originated from the Soviet military or Khrushchev’s Presidium, and there was some question as to whether Khrushchev had been removed from power. Bobby Kennedy recommended that we pretend we never got the second offer and accept the first. It worked! The Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba.

As to Afghanistan, President Obama might do well to pull off some variations of the Bobby Kennedy ploy.

A 1995 report by our own War College suggested that securing stability in a country the size and population of a country like Afghanistan would require a minimum of 620,000 troops. When Bush-Cheney wanted to divert our attention away from Afghanistan and invade Iraq, Gen. Shinseki told the Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure Iraq. He was essentially fired by Bush-Cheney. Since Obama has appointed Shinseki to head Veterans Affairs, his expertise should be used in the president’s decision making. If we finally accept the War College’s report, which Bush-Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld chose to ignore, Mr. Obama may decide that it is time to find a way for us to leave Afghanistan.

Gen. Petreus has never claimed the surge in Iraq in 2007 was the primary reason that much of the violence dissipated. The U. S., understandably, has not wanted to advertise our most effective tool in Iraq: it has been the use of bribes to get Sunni leaders to stop fighting us and to fight the insurgents instead. President Obama may be counting on Afghan Sunnis being just as bribable as Iraqi Sunnis. That may be true, but we are going to have to outspend the opium lords for it to work.

More along the lines of a Bobby Kennedy ploy would be for us to accept some version of the offers that were made years ago but were rejected: Then-President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan suggested using Muslim troops from the 22-member Arab League and the 57-member Islamic Conference as peacekeepers. Also, in 2004, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, six Muslim nations (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, and Yemen) offered to send Sunni and Shiite troops as peacekeepers in Iraq.

American troops and our contracted mercenaries, like Blackwater, are considered to be foreign occupiers and are deeply resented by Afghan Muslims. Remember, American colonists resented being occupied by British troops. The colonists considered themselves to be loyal to the king, but our Revolutionary War broke out anyway. Likewise, sending more Americans into harm’s way will probably further antagonize the local Afghans throughout the country.

Who knows? If President Obama addresses the possibility of using Muslims, some of the numerous Muslim nations may still be willing to form a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. It would be a daunting task with multiple problems to work out, but it certainly would allow us to find out whether Muslim nations truly want our troops out of the Middle East. Also, after Bush-Cheney neglected Afghanistan so they could invade Iraq, the result has been such a muddle that for us to try to do now what we should have done originally may very well be impossible.

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published October 30, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

I find it alternately amazing, amusing, and annoying that the Republican Party has suddenly decided that deficit spending is bad.  We’ve had Republican presidents for 20 of the last 29 years. During that time, they practiced Herbert Hoover’s trickle-down economics of helping the rich get richer. At the same time, they borrowed what was needed to run our national programs, ran up our national debt, and made paying the interest  on that debt one of the largest programs – and certainly the most wasteful program – in our government.

Ronald Reagan cut taxes on the wealthy, borrowed and spent, and tripled the national debt within four years. It was “morning in America,” there was pie in the sky, and we could borrow forever. He sold our soul to Japanese banks and was reelected in one of the largest landslides in American history. The lesson the Republican Party learned from Mr. Reagan was that voters don’t care about deficits.

The first President Bush inherited the huge Reagan debt and the Savings and Loan Crisis. Eventually, to head off a complete economic collapse, he broke his popular but unrealistic campaign promise of “No new taxes.” As a result, he was voted out of office after one term. The Republican base deserted him,  apparently believing that he should never have cared about deficits regardless of the consequences.

 

The second President Bush reinstated Reaganomics, cut taxes on the wealthy, borrowed and spent, went unnecessarily to war in Iraq on a credit card, sold our soul to Chinese banks, and doubled the national debt. His administration didn’t believe in government regulation and refused to deal with his huge deficits. Before he could get out of office, we had the biggest stock market crash since the Reagan Era, the biggest bank collapses since the Reagan Era and also in American history (Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual), and the near meltdown of the global economy.

Now that President Obama is using deficit spending to get us out of all these messes, the Republican extremists are stirring up their followers to protest the deficit! Where were all these people during the last eight years or during the twelve years of Reagan-Bush? Why didn’t they care when we needed them? They seem to have already forgotten that we are now in the Bush-Cheney Great Recession and that we need to avoid a second Great Depression.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democrat) inherited the Great Depression from Herbert Hoover (Republican) and offered the people a New Deal. Relief, Recovery, and Reform were the three primary issues that he faced. His Relief and Reform efforts were so successful that they have saved us from disaster time and again when some of his successors practiced irresponsible policies. However, the New Deal was less successful in Recovery, and it would take World War II to restore the nation to full employment.

The biggest mistake that FDR made during the 1930’s was pulling back on deficit spending during his second term. It threw the country back into another economic downturn. President Obama should not make the same mistake. Deficits are bad when they are used at the wrong time and must be dealt with, but not now!

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published September 18, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

Former President Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter recently mentioned something that was so blatantly obvious that here in south Arkansas it was hard to understand why it was controversial.  He publicly pointed out that some people oppose President Obama because they don’t believe a black man is qualified to be president.  No one else of his stature had been willing to admit it.

The day after Mr. Obama was elected, there was an eerie silence at my workplace. Only those of us who supported him said anything about the election, we spoke only to each other, and we would stop our discussion the moment a known Obama hater came near or entered the room. But other than in strictly private conversations the election was never mentioned even in a casual way. Nothing like “Well, we have a new president “or “I sure am glad that campaign is finally over.” I’ve never before seen anything like it after a presidential election.

A local friend of mine complains often that none of her older friends ever know what’s going on. Whenever she says something commendable to them about President Obama, they always say, “But he’s Black!” She tells me that her usual response is to say “He is?” She also told me what a friend of hers from Denton, TX, said to her after the Texas presidential primary: “I voted for him, but I don’t think he should be allowed to live in the White House.”

Just last week I was delivering a box of old newspapers to the local animal shelter, which is at the end of a long straight road. The road is lined with spacious lawns and nice houses set back well away from the pavement. One house, however, has had me worried since November. The occupants never removed their McCain-Palin yard sign. On this trip to the shelter I noticed the campaign sign had been moved closer to the road and another sign had been placed next to it: “Prayer – America’s Only Hope.”

President Obama is who he is, and there’s nothing he can do about it. One retired gentleman, whom I’ve known for over six years, clearly explained the problem to me before the November election: “I don’t think I could ever accept him as my president.” This was from a man who was well aware that George W. Bush was incompetent, irresponsible, and easily the worst president in this man’s lifetime. He strongly supported Hillary Clinton, whose positions on the issues were virtually identical to candidate Obama’s. However, when Obama got the Democratic nomination, he switched to Republican John McCain who supported Bush at least 90 % of the time and would have continued most of Bush’s disastrous policies. Eight months into the Obama presidency, this man claims to have never watched nor listened to President Obama on any televised appearance. He says he’s not interested. I don’t worry about people like him. He doesn’t accept Mr. Obama as his president, but he doesn’t hate him.

I am more concerned about those who maliciously say or write things that are patently untrue about Mr. Obama. Another retiree, whom I’ve also known for over six years and who was also aware of the catastrophic Bush-Cheney co-presidency, referred to then-Senator Obama during the campaign as “a black Muslim.” Only a few days ago, he said that he didn’t think a “Muslim-Marxist” was the right man for the job. Anyone who respects and understands the U. S. Constitution knows that there is no religious test for the office of president. Even if he were a Muslim, which we know he is not, it should not matter. You may not even like the Protestant church of his family’s choice, but it is none of your business. 

Also, would a Marxist be so capitalistic as to continue the bank bailouts begun by the Bush administration? Maybe these people really wanted him to do nothing and allow the economy to completely collapse into the Second Great Depression. Then, they would have blamed him for that. Also, would a socialist-communist willingly offer to negotiate away the public option insurance on the health care issue, which would hold down the excessive costs and profits of private insurance companies?

 The Obama opponents who recklessly speak or write lies, hatred, and intolerance are not the ones  I’m truly scared of. Those people have found venues to release their anxieties and hostilities, like letters to the editor or the occasional Tea Party rallies. This summer many of them turned town hall meetings into examples of mob hysteria. These people are often misinformed and seemingly nuts, but they probably are not physically dangerous. Those I fear the most are the silent ones who agree with the lies and distortions that they hear or read. They keep their feelings bottled up within themselves. They can be incited by the loudmouths, and they are the ones most likely to explode into deadly violence.

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published September 18, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

September 17, 1787, was the day the Constitutional Convention signed the U. S. Constitution in Philadelphia. That date is now a federal holiday known as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. Luckily, after a long hiatus, we now seem to have a president and a Congress that understand and even like the U. S. Constitution.

President Barack Obama is a constitutionalist, and sometimes it’s to a fault. Respecting the separation of powers, he wanted the Congress to originate the health care reform bill. Of course, he was also trying to avoid the Clintons’ mistake of creating a health care plan almost solely by the executive branch. However, the president should have submitted his own bill for the advice and consent of the various committees. He needed to be clear what he wanted in it.  The powerful speech he gave September 9 to the Congress should have been given in April or May. We probably would have received an excellent health care reform bill before August – and better than the one we will get now.

The Republican Party, of course, is not going to support any reform bill, and it took advantage of the August recess to confuse and mobilize its increasingly shrinking base. Radicals and reactionaries showed up at right-wing-organized rallies and at town meetings to promote lies and misinformation. Hopefully, some of the attendees were only curious spectators, but it was distressing to think that these people had insurance themselves and didn’t want those without insurance to have the chance to get it. The purpose of these noisy protests apparently was to frighten moderate Democratic congressmen into fearing their reelection chances if they vote for the public option. In Arkansas, Senator Blanche Lincoln and (Blue-Dog) Representative Mike Ross have since publicly stated their opposition to the public option insurance plan.

The Republicans know that without the public option there will be little, if anything, to keep down the costs and profits of the profit-motivated private health insurance companies. Moderate Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, foolishly kept trying to compromise with Republicans who wanted to weaken the bill. His committee recently proposed a plan that is essentially a boondoggle for private insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. His is the only plan in consideration that does not offer the essential public option. Hence, it is the only proposal that may be worse than having no bill at all. Sadly, even Mike Ross over in the House might be sympathetic to the Baucus plan – Mr. Ross used to own a pharmacy in Prescott, AR.

Fortunately, I have a full-time job that provides me with excellent insurance coverage. Thanks to government regulations, every full-time employee must be accepted in our group policy regardless of pre-existing conditions (although, any complication of that pre-existing condition may not be covered). I also have an excellent primary-care physician of my choice. Nevertheless, it would certainly be comforting to know that a public option health plan was available if I ever needed it.

 One valid concern that I have heard against establishing universal health care in the United States is that we may not be able to get an appointment to see our doctor as early as we would like. Apparently, there are not enough primary care physicians to handle the 40-plus million who do not currently have insurance. I hope I won’t be so self-centered as to be unsympathetic to those in need. I am reminded of the character played by Maggie Smith in the movie Titanic. Knowing that 1500 people were going to drown, she said of her lifeboat, “I hope it won’t be too crowded.”

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published September 18, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.

September 17 is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. Since the Election of 2008, we seem to be returning to traditional constitutional government, but we are not out of the woods yet.

Within the last decade we have had two suspect presidential elections, 2000 and 2004.  Before that, from 1995 to 2001, a Republican majority in Congress essentially attempted to replace our constitutional system with a parliamentary system by trying to get rid of a Democratic president for political reasons.Then, the Republican majority in Congress, while a Republican occupied the White House (2001-2007), reneged on its constitutional duty to defend the system of checks and balances.  George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were essentially given a blank check to do whatever they wanted.

For a while, terrorism  replaced communism as the stimulus for creating fear among the American public. Now, because of the incompetence and irresponsibility of the past eight years, there is a current need for government responses to contend with health care reform, global warming, two wars in the Middle East ( one – Iraq – totally unnecessary) , and the multiple crises of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the Republican minority is resurrecting the fear of socialism and communism to attempt to prevent action.

The following four films celebrate our system and remind us how fragile it is.  All of these films matter, and they should be seen often.

1. Advise and Consent (1962) with Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Burgess Meredith, Eddie Hodges, Paul Ford, and George Grizzard: Inspired casting by director Otto Preminger has a lot to do with the success of this film about the workings of the U.S. government.

The President, played with authority by Franchot Tone, is ill (secretly dying) and appoints a controversial figure to be Secretary of State, who will continue the implementation of the President’s policies. The nominee is Robert Leffingwell, played by Henry Fonda, who has opposition within the President’s own party.

Charles Laughton and Walter Pidgeon

Walter Pidgeon plays the Senate Majority Leader who has the responsibility of getting the Senate to advise and consent to the President’s appointment. He appoints a young senator (Don Murray) to chair the committee which will hold confirmation hearings. Charles Laughton plays the Southern senator who leads the opposition to his own party’s nominee. He brings in a witness (Burgess Meredith) who accuses Leffingwell of being a communist.

Note 1: Lew Ayres, who was a popular actor in the 1930’s as Dr. Kildare, plays Vice President Harley Hudson. This is interesting because he ruined his career as a leading man by being a conscientious objector during WWII. Will Geer, who later played the grandfather on TV’s The Waltons, plays the Senate Minority Leader. This is also interesting because he had been blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. Two actors whose personal patriotism had been challenged in the 40’s and 50’s were allowed to play national leaders in 1962.

Note 2: This was filmed one year before the assassination of JFK. You will see the vice president traveling on a commercial airliner and otherwise “coming and going” without secret service protection.

Note 3: This was filmed years before the Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987 and before Newt Gingrich and (what I have always considered) his gang of thugs took over the House in 1995. In Advise and Consent, you will see the Senate minority and majority leaders socializing and playing cards together – this used to be the norm. However, the Republican control of both houses of Congress from 1995 until 2007 led to the end of civility and bipartisanship in the nation’s capital. Dale Bumpers, a former senator from Arkansas, once noted that if the current crop of Republicans ever gained a two-thirds majority in Congress, you could kiss the Constitution goodbye. It will probably be many more years before we see bipartisanship and camaraderie return between the members of the two major political parties. 

The main problem with this movie is this: How could anyone not want Henry Fonda to be Secretary of State?

2. The Best Man (1964) with Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Edie Adams, Margaret Leighton, Kevin McCarthy, Gene Raymond, Lee Tracy, Shelley Berman, John Henry Faulk, and Ann Southern: A superb cast and a brilliant screenplay by Gore Vidal bring life and meaning to this film about the maneuverings required to get the presidential nomination at a political convention.

We have a convention unlike any we have seen in recent years. There are five potential candidates and not one them has enough votes to win on the first ballot. Each is staking his hopes on getting the endorsement of the party’s previous winner, former President Art Hockstader (a Harry Truman-type played by Lee Tracy).

The two front runners could not be further apart. Henry Fonda plays William Russell, a liberal-intellectual-statesman not unlike Adlai Stevenson. Cliff Robertson plays Joe Cantwell, a conservative-opportunist-hypocrite-mudslinger clearly patterned after Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

Interestingly, John Henry Faulk appears as one of the other contenders, Gov. T.T. Claypoole. Faulk had been a radio superstar until he was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. Faulk had been falsely accused of communist sympathies, and here he is playing a presidential candidate only a few years after the blacklist was broken in 1960.

Comedian Shelley Berman gives a rare dramatic performance as Sheldon Bascomb, who shows up at Russell Headquarters with information about Cantwell’s past that would destroy Cantwell’s career: information that was probably true but was irrelevant. Russell’s dilemma is reminiscent of John Kennedy’s realization of his awesome position of responsibility in 1960: JFK was the only man standing between Richard Nixon and the White House! Russell tells Cantwell, “I can’t let you be President.” But how will he prevent his nomination? Will he use the methods of the man he is trying to stop by using a personal smear, or will he take the high road and find another option?

The only problem with this movie is this: How could anyone not want Henry Fonda to be President?

3. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, James Gregory, John McGiver, James Edwards, and Henry Silva: This film, by directorJohn Frankenheimer, is about a communist plot to assassinate a presidential candidate at a party convention and use the tragedy to get a demagogue nominated and elected president. If the plan succeeds, he would be given extraordinary powers because the American public and Congress would be terrified of a communist conspiracy.

In an incident during the Korean War in 1952, an American squad is led into an ambush. They are taken as prisoners into Manchuria and brainwashed by specialists from Russia’s Pavlov Institute. When they are released, every surviving member of the squad believes that Sgt. Raymond Shaw saved them, and he is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

However, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) has been programmed by the Soviets to be the assassin at a presidential nominating convention. His step-father is Senator Johnny Iselin (James Gregory), who has made a name for himself as an anti-communist, stirring up fear by claiming there were 57 or more communists in the US Defense Department. He’s clearly based on Sen. Joe McCarthy; however, Sen. Iselin is an undercover communist agent groomed to become an American “dictator.” And he gets the vice presidential nomination in 1960!

Senator Gordon (John McGiver) says prophetically, “There are people who think of Johnny as a clown and buffoon, but I do not. I despise John Iselin and everything that Iselinism has come to stand for. I think if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more to harm this country than he is doing now.”

Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), the commander of the brainwashed squad, has recurring nightmares of his captivity and cannot accept that Raymond Shaw is “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” It is he who begins to uncover the fiendish plot.

Angela Lansbury plays Shaw’s mother and Johnny Iselin’s wife, and it is she who is the key American operative behind the communist scheme. She explains to her son what will happen after he assassinates the presidential nominee. Johnny will dramatically pick up the slain victim and address the convention. “The speech is short, but it is the most rousing speech I’ve ever read. It has been worked on here and in Russia on and off for over eight years. I shall force someone to take the body from him; and Johnny will lead those microphones and cameras, with blood all over him, defending America even if it means his own death, rallying a nation of television viewers with hysteria to sweep us into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy.”

The unforgettable trigger mechanism to activate Shaw is “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little Solitaire?” Look out when the Queen of Diamonds shows up!

4. Seven Days in May (1964) with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Frederic March, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Balsam, Hugh Marlowe, John Larkin, Whit Bissell, Andrew Duggan, John Houseman, and Ava Gardner: This is another masterpiece by director John Frankenheimer, and it’s written by Rod Serling of The Twight Zone fame. This one is about a military plot, led by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to overthrow the government of the United States.

Gen. James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) disapproves of the nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia that has been arranged by President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March). Scott has the joint chiefs behind him, as well as a key senator (played by Whit Bissell), a goose-stepping colonel (John Larkin), and a right-wing commentator (Hugh Marlowe). There are even protest marchers picketing the White House. The protesters call the President’s supporters “Lyman Lovers.”

Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster

The chairman’s chief aide, Col. “Jiggs” Casey (Kirk Douglas), is left out of the loop. He begins to get suspicious: he learns of a  secret military base called ECOMCON; a weird Preakness horse racing bet among the military brass; and there’s a special military exercise on Sunday in which the President will be isolated from the public, the press, and congressional representatives. He takes his fears to the President, and the President’s most trusted allies begin a desperate investigation. This all takes place within seven days in May.

Lyman eventually decides to ask for General Scott’s resignation to avoid a scandal that could traumatize the nation. A top advisor agrees, “It is time we face the enemy.” President Lyman corrects him: “He is not the enemy. Scott, the Joint Chiefs, even the very emotional, illogical lunatic fringe – they’re not the enemy. The enemy is an age, a nuclear age. It has killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, a sickness of frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness. And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white, and blue. Every now and then a man rides by on a white horse and we appoint him to be our god for the duration. For some men, it was a Senator McCarthy. For others, it was a General Walker. And now it is a General Scott.”

by David Offutt, October 2006 (revised September 12, 2009)

The formation and recognition of labor unions may have had more to do with the rise of the middle class and the greatness of America than anything else.  As their decline began in earnest during the Reagan Era of the 1980’s, so did the standard of living for a large number of the American families. FDR’s New Deal during the Great Depression of the ‘30s recognized the right of workers to organize into unions, but unions have been in decline for the last 25 to 30 years. All of the following films honor the labor movement both here and abroad in one way or another, and two are directed by John Ford. NOTE: I have added The Grapes of Wrath as number 7 to my original list.

1. How Green Was My Valley (1941) with Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and young Roddy McDowell: This Oscar winner for best picture is one of John Ford’s finest achievements. Ford won best director honors for this as well. Oscars also were awarded for photography and art direction. Donald Crisp won the supporting actor award for playing the patriarch of a large Welsh family trying to eke out a living in the coal mines. However, it is Master Roddy McDowell who steals the show. When he joins his father and four older brothers in the mines, we witness child labor depicted as matter-of-fact. Note: The look on his face as he emerges from a cave-in with his dead father in his lap is devastating.

2. Norma Rae (1979) with Sally Field, Ron Leibman, and Beau Bridges: A Jewish labor organizer, played by Mr. Leibman, tries to unionize a textile factory in a Southern state. He finds one sympathetic worker, Sally Field (in her first Oscar winning role), who helps him get the ball rolling. Needless to say, management isn’t happy about this and pulls every trick in the book to defeat the effort.

3. Peyton Place (1957) with Lana Turner, Lee Philips, Russ Tamblyn, Diane Varsi, Hope Lange, Lloyd Nolan, Terry Moore, and Arthur Kennedy: High school graduation, an illegitimate daughter, child molestation, incest, an illegal abortion, suicide, murder, skinny dipping, rumors galore, and the drafting of youths after Pearl Harbor all play a part in this splendid big screen soap opera about life in a small town in New England. Labor Day 1941 is celebrated in this film, and several pivotal events in Peyton Place occur on that day.

Diane Varsi

A fine cast and a gripping story make this one well worth watching. My favorite character is Norman Page, played by Russ Tamblyn, – his mother made his life so miserable that he joined the paratroopers thinking he could get killed quickly; but once he got away from his mother he found that life was so good he fought like a tiger to stay alive. Diane Varsi, as Allison MacKenzie (pictured, left), was expected to become a superstar after this making this movie, but she wasn’t interested and soon left the business. Dr. Swain, superbly played by Lloyd Nolan, testifies at the murder trial and delivers an indictment of small town narrow-mindedness that is food for thought.

4. Rising Son (1990) with Brian Dennehy, Piper Laurie, and Matt Damon: Matt Damon made an impressive debut in this TNT made-for-television film. He plays the son of a domineering father who has sent him to college to become a doctor. The problem is that he doesn’t want to become a doctor. His brother has already become a lawyer because of his father and says that he hates his life. Now, another wrinkle enters the picture: his father, believably played by Brian Dennehy, loses his job as a factory foreman at an auto parts manufacturing plant. The year is 1981, the first year of the so-called Reagan Revolution. A conglomerate had bought the plant from family operation and began cutting jobs, sending jobs overseas, and paying the executives huge bonuses. In a further quest for profits, they closed the plant. Entering the ranks of the unemployed after 36 years of security is a traumatic experience for the once-proud head of the family. Veteran actress Piper Laurie appears as the wife and mother who does her best to keep her family together. This one captures the decline of the American middle class with stark frankness.

Greer Garson and Gregory Peck

5. The Valley of Decision (1945) with Gregory Peck, Greer Garson, Donald Crisp, Lionel Barrymore, Gladys Cooper, Preston Foster, Marshall Thompson, Dan Duryea, and Jessica Tandy: What a cast! This one deals with the owners of a steel mill in Pittsburgh and the problems they encounter in recognizing the union. Donald Crisp, who made a career of playing the father of poor families, finally gets to play the guy with all the dough this time. Playing against type, he even seems perfect. With him as the owner, you know this film will lean toward justice for the working class. Greer Garson and Jessica Tandy play the love interests for Gregory Peck, who plays Crisp’s oldest son. He marries the wrong one, but will he get it right? Watch for young Dean Stockwell as Peck’s son.

6. The Whales of August (1987) with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, Ann Southern, and Harry Carey, Jr.: This is that rare vehicle that comes along to give veteran actors a last chance to shine. We get five first-rate vintage performances from five masters who know precisely what they are doing. Regrettably, only Harry Carey, Jr., is still with us, but at least we have this lasting treasure to remember them all at the same time. Alan Price’s gorgeous music score lets you know immediately that you are about to see something special. After a brief black and white prelude, you see Miss Lillian Gish hanging clothes on the line and you know you are in good hands. It seems that the movies started with her in The Birth of a Nation in 1912, and here she is 75 years later! Basically, this is the story of two elderly sisters who spend each summer together on an island off the Maine coast. It is Ms. Gish’s house, but Ms. Davis is the one who is able to support them. The question is: Are you ever too old to get something new? Handyman Harry Carey wants to build them a picture window, but Ms. Davis thinks they are too old for anything new. Will she change her mind in time to get it installed by Labor Day?

Henry Fonda

7. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) with Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin, and John Qualen: I read John Steinbeck’s classic novel over a four-day period when I was in the tenth grade. It is still one of my favorite books. Director John Ford did a splendid job putting the depression era book on film.

Henry Fonda’s  performances always seemed so effortless that he was underappreciated until the end of his life when he was finally awarded Academy Awards for life achievement and then best actor for On Golden Pond. As Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, Mr. Fonda was pretty near perfect.

Our current economic crisis, the Great Recession, makes The Grapes of Wrath a timely film to watch. All those who are hoping to stop the Obama administration from preventing another Great Depression need to be required to see this film. FDR’s deficit spending was so successful during his first term of office that he thought he could cut back on it at the beginning of his second term. The result was another economic downturn. Hopefully, President Obama won’t make the same mistake – incredibly, he is being pressured to stop trying to stimulate the economy!

The Grapes of Wrath is the story of the Joad Family and its nightmarish plight during the 1930’s. Straight from prison, Tom Joad returns home to find that his family has been evicted from the farm they had lived on for generations. The Dust Bowl and depression had bankrupted the family, and the bank foreclosed. Longtime character actor John Qualen plays Muley who tells Tom Joad how he, too, lost his farm. Mr. Qualen once said that Muley was his all-time favorite role, and its easy to see why.

When Tom locates his family, he learns that they are getting ready to leave Oklahoma and go to California. Handbills have told them that work is available on the large farms there. We witness the Okies’ roadtrip across the American West on Route 66 and some of the hardships they encounter. It’s a huge family, from the grandparents on down, and not all of them survive the journey.

Jane Darwell

Jane Darwell plays Ma Joad, and she earned a supporting actress Oscar. Just looking at her may break your heart. You can see the Great Depression in her face and in her mannerisms. It’s a devastating performance!

I tried to show this film to my father, who was in his eighties and had experienced the depression. He stopped watching the movie before the Joads ever reached California, the promised land. Dad said it was too depressing for him. I told him that it hadn’t really begun to get bad yet; and he replied, “I can see what’s coming, and I can’t watch it.”

California was a disaster for the Joads: There had been too many handbills sent out for the number of jobs. Too many available workers meant lower pay for those who got jobs. Migrant camps were overcrowded. Company stores charged high prices. Cops were tools of the owners and harassed the workers and unemployed. Strikes and union organizers were not tolerated. Wanted by the law, Tom Joad has to leave what remains of the family. Before he goes, his sililoquy to Ma Joad is unforgettable: “Whereever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there…”

by David Offutt, August 2006 (revised September 3, 2009)

President Barack Obama seems determined to resolve our multiple crises in a bipartisan manner. In a democratic-republic such as ours, politics is the art of compromise. No one party ever represents all of the people. The concerns of the loyal opposition must be taken into consideration, and rarely should the majority party get most of what it wants without giving up something.

However, at some point, Mr. Obama is going to have to face the reality that the Republican Party simply doesn’t believe in bipartisanship or compromise. If they do compromise, their purpose is to sabotage a bill so that it won’t be as effective as it should be. Once they’ve emasculated the bill, they still won’t vote for it. A potential one million jobs was cut from the Recovery Act to gain Republican support, but then only three Republicans supported it. One of them, Arlen Specter, was essentially driven from the party.

Ever since the election of Ronald Reagan and a Republican Senate majority in 1980, the Republicans have moved increasingly farther to the right and have rejected moderation on virtually every issue. The purge of the moderates from the party that began in 1980 resulted in the Republicans having only five moderates by the time of Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. The only Republicans who voted not guilty were Arlen Specter, Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. The rest of the Senate Republicans voted in lockstep with the party’s political agenda to weaken the president. Now that they recently got rid of Specter, only Snowe and Collins remain.

The party still consists of many conservatives, but it’s the radical-reactionaries who call the shots (like House Minority Leader John Boehner). They are radical (extreme left) because they believe that any Republican president should have no restrictions and that any Democratic president should be subject to parliamentary approval. But, they are mostly reactionary (extreme right) because of their desire to return the country to the “Gilded Age” of the 1880s and 1890s.

George Washington opposed the formation of political parties because he feared they would be factions designed to divide the people. From time to time, throughout our history, he has appeared to have been correct. Had he been around the last thirty years or so, he would certainly have been in a position to say “I told you so.”

For the Election of 1988, George H. W. Bush turned his campaign over to two dirty tricksters, Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes (now running Fox “News”), to lie and distort Democratic nominee Gov. Michael Dukakis’s record and positions. The idea was to drive up Dukakis’s negative poll ratings so the public would perceive Bush as the lesser of two evils. The Republicans used same tactic before the recent Election of 2008 – but unsuccessfully. However, they are still continuing, and it is now beginning to have some effect on Obama’s popularity.

George McGovern (Sen., SD)

One evening during the 1988 campaign, two

Barry Goldwater (Sen., AZ)

guests appeared on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS to discuss the campaign: former liberal Democratic senator from South Dakota George McGovern and former conservative Republican senator from Arizona Barry Goldwater. As I recall, the conversation went something like this: McGovern said, “Barry and I don’t disagree over what the country needs; we just disagree over how to go about doing it.” Goldwater added, “George, you and I need to run again to show these people today how a campaign should be run and what it should be about.” They understood what it meant to be the “loyal opposition.”

The Republican Party has a long history of having contempt for the concept of the “loyal opposition.” After the Civil War ended in 1865 and until the War of 1898, the Republicans labeled the Democratic Party as the party of rebellion and guilty of treason. After World War II ended in 1945 and until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Republicans demonized the Democrats for being “soft on communism.” In 1952, Sen. Joe McCarthy said the Democrats had been guilty of “twenty years of treason.”

The Republican Party reached another low after the Elections of 1994 when, for the first time in 40 years (since the McCarthy Era), it gained control of both houses of Congress. This was the Gingrich Revolution, named after Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, who suddenly became the speaker of the house in 1995. His methods had already earned him his moniker of “Gingrich Khan,” after the ruthless Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. “Politics as usual” was dead. Bipartisanship and compromise were over. As he said, “The president is irrelevant.”

Although they failed, Gingrich and his followers did everything they could to keep Bill Clinton from being an effective president. They even had a partisan Republican appointed as a special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, who was personally dedicated to finding some reason to impeach him.

The Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 appointment of George W. Bush as president in 2000 moved the party even farther to the right by turning the country over to the neoconservatives. Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, hoped to permanently divide the nation between blue and red states by using emotional, cultural issues. The plan was to achieve a permanent, although small, Republican majority so they could rule indefinitely without compromise.

Right now, the Republican Party’s court jesters seem to be the principle voices of the party: Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck. None of them hide their desire to see the Obama administration fail in handling all the crises it inherited. If their outrageous madness isn’t bad enough, Newt Gingrich has reemerged as a frequent guest on interview shows as a representative of his party’s positions and is a threat to run for president. If you throw in former Vice President Dick Cheney, you have a scary lot as the faces of the party. Cheney is reasonably perceived as hoping that another 9/11-type attack will occur so that he can claim vindication for all the illegalities committed by his and George W. Bush’s co-presidency.

Currently, the closest thing we have to a loyal opposition is within the Democratic Party itself. The Blue-Dog Coalition, those who claim to be fiscal conservatives, is playing the role that is expected of a second party. They are challenging some of the proposals of the moderates and liberals who represent the majority of the Democratic Party. As long as they seek compromises due to the unique needs of their constituents, they may serve a valuable purpose. However, if they seek to undermine vital reforms and then vote with the Republican Party – which has become known as the party of “No” – they may do as much harm to the country and the planet as the Republicans already have.

by David Offutt
A version of this essay was published August 12, 2009, in the El Dorado News-Times as a letter to the editor.