Historians complain to the NYT about McCain's campaign
To the Editor:
I write as an American historian, born in the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who has over many decades observed Republican leadership.
One of the most luminous moments — the “Declaration of Conscience” — came during the McCarthy era, when Margaret Chase Smith joined with six of her Republican colleagues in the United States Senate to denounce fellow Republicans for resorting to “the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance.”
The coverage of the 2008 campaign leads me to ask:
Are there not today Republicans of conscience who will coalesce to say to Gov. Sarah Palin and her backers: “Stop it. This vilification is not what the party of Abraham Lincoln is about.”
And say to Democrats: “Stop it. The Keating Five was then, and this is now. What we should care about is the lives of Americans in the 21st century.”
As was said of Prague in 1968, “The whole world is watching.”
William E. Leuchtenburg
Chapel Hill, N.C., Oct. 8, 2008
The writer is emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a past president of the American Historical Association.
To the Editor:
Re “Politics of Attack” (editorial, Oct. 8):
In the 1960s, Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, the master demagogue of racial and cultural politics, made an art form of whipping up his audiences against the “distorted,” “communistic” national news media and other “intellectual morons” of the establishment.
At least he had the courtesy, when addressing his more literal constituents, to send state policemen to stand near the reporters covering his rallies lest the crowd should take him at his word.
Given the abuse directed at the news media on hand at a recent Palin rally in Florida, including the black network sound man told to “sit down, boy” (among the more printable names), the Alaska governor may want to think twice about overexciting the old base of George Wallace’s 1968 run for president — though it is not clear that she has his political self-awareness.
When talking to a Newsweek reporter in private, for example, Governor Wallace would smile insincerely after delivering some quotable snark on, say, the Supreme Court, and exclaim, “Isn’t it good someone has some spirit?”
Still, he spent the final chapter of his long career trying to atone for the destructive consequences of his rhetoric, however politically effective it had been at the time.
Diane McWhorter
New York, Oct.
8, 2008
The writer is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Birmingham’s civil rights movement.
Read entire article at NYT Letters to the Editor
I write as an American historian, born in the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who has over many decades observed Republican leadership.
One of the most luminous moments — the “Declaration of Conscience” — came during the McCarthy era, when Margaret Chase Smith joined with six of her Republican colleagues in the United States Senate to denounce fellow Republicans for resorting to “the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance.”
The coverage of the 2008 campaign leads me to ask:
Are there not today Republicans of conscience who will coalesce to say to Gov. Sarah Palin and her backers: “Stop it. This vilification is not what the party of Abraham Lincoln is about.”
And say to Democrats: “Stop it. The Keating Five was then, and this is now. What we should care about is the lives of Americans in the 21st century.”
As was said of Prague in 1968, “The whole world is watching.”
William E. Leuchtenburg
Chapel Hill, N.C., Oct. 8, 2008
The writer is emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a past president of the American Historical Association.
To the Editor:
Re “Politics of Attack” (editorial, Oct. 8):
In the 1960s, Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, the master demagogue of racial and cultural politics, made an art form of whipping up his audiences against the “distorted,” “communistic” national news media and other “intellectual morons” of the establishment.
At least he had the courtesy, when addressing his more literal constituents, to send state policemen to stand near the reporters covering his rallies lest the crowd should take him at his word.
Given the abuse directed at the news media on hand at a recent Palin rally in Florida, including the black network sound man told to “sit down, boy” (among the more printable names), the Alaska governor may want to think twice about overexciting the old base of George Wallace’s 1968 run for president — though it is not clear that she has his political self-awareness.
When talking to a Newsweek reporter in private, for example, Governor Wallace would smile insincerely after delivering some quotable snark on, say, the Supreme Court, and exclaim, “Isn’t it good someone has some spirit?”
Still, he spent the final chapter of his long career trying to atone for the destructive consequences of his rhetoric, however politically effective it had been at the time.
Diane McWhorter
New York, Oct.
8, 2008
The writer is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Birmingham’s civil rights movement.