Ted Kennedy; health care; incompetance

Within you may find comments on: Ted Kennedy at Ta-Nehesi Coates'; incompetence as a strategy, at Crooked Timber; health reform, at Obsidian Wings.
Ta-Nehesi Coates, who's a young whippersnapper, asked How did he get that lion of the senate title? What were the nuts and bolts he screwed with to get business done? What's the why and how?. I said:

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I think the main reason Kennedy could accomplish so much was that he was an hereditary aristocrat. His life is a textbook example of how that is both good and bad.

Because he came to his position essentially by inheritance, he didn't have to fight for it. He could afford to be principled, but he could also afford to be magnanimous.

Even very conservative Republicans could work with him, because what's more conservative than hereditary aristocracy? Indeed, he wasn't just an aristocrat, he was a *celebrity*, the very highest class of American society, rarified even by the standards of the Senate Millionaire's Club.

The good part of being an aristocrat is *supposed* to be being reared to public service; care for the downtrodden also *supposed* to be one of the emblems of Catholicism. In Kennedy's case they actually worked, so he was an aristocrat in a very Catholic mold, blending the sense of duty with the awareness of not being particularly "elect" in the Protestant sense. In Catholicism, "sinner" and "saint" are not opposites nor mutually exclusive.

And of course, being an aristocrat -- and more than that, a celebrity -- meant that Kennedy's ability to *do* things could not be destroyed by Chappaquidick or anyting else. His hereditary position could not be undone or unmade, so he could get away with things.

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[in reply to an accusation of ignorance]
You misunderstand me. I admire Kennedy *deeply* and have for many decades.

But his virtues -- magnanimity, firm principle, kindness, friendliness -- are not enough to explain why *Republicans* got along with him and were willing to work with him. Virtue and strength of character aren't enough; he also needed power, the kind of unassailable power that came from his hereditary celebrity.

The contrast to GWB, of course, is painful and acute. GWB is the poster boy for all the ways aristocracy is a bad idea -- and how of all the hereditary aristocracies, the worst are the ones where the aristocrats think they've *earned* their positions.

TNC's question is *how* Kennedy could do so much. I don't think personality, principle, or a tradition of collegiality are enough to explain why Hatch and others were willing to work with Kennedy -- I think it's that he was, in an American way, of a higher social class than they were. He was able to use that power for good, but the foundation of his power was just as unearned as any X-Men's. (X-Man's?)

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Karen in DC wrote:

.. after Kennedy got in trouble for cheating at Harvard, he ENLISTED in the army and served as a private, not as an officer as his older brothers had. So, he had to LEARN how to engage with people from other classes, including live and work with them and take orders from those who were not of a higher class. He had a lived experience as a "regular" person that his brothers had not.

Thanks for the info, Karen, I didn't know that. I'm betting that experience -- and being so far down on the sibling totem pole -- did indeed help give him experience seeing things through other people's eyes.

Nonetheless, his position in public life began and depended upon his lineage -- as the Charles Pierce bio a few years ago said:

If his name were Edward Moore . . .

He would not have served so long, if he'd served at all.

If his name were Edward Moore, Robert Bork might be on the Supreme Court today. Robert Dole might have been elected president of the United States. There might still be a draft. There would not have been the Civil Rights Act of 1991

This is the dream of aristocracy, as good as it can get: someone of such high, unearned position that they can be thorougly magnanimous. Alas for Plato, it doesn't happen often enough to justify the whole system, but at least we can recognize it when it does.

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Henry at Crooked Timber posted on incompetance as a signalling device, linking to Scott McLemee's review of Diego Gambetta on Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate, and makes comparisons to the Italian academic scene:

“Being incompetent and displaying it,” he writes, “conveys the message * I will not run away, for I have no strong legs to run anywhere else. * In a corrupt academic market, being good at and interested in one’s own research, by contrast, signal a potential for a career independent of corrupt reciprocity

I said:

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Now *that’s* a theory with broad applicability, if you know what I mean.

I recently read Deer Hunting with Jesus, and was thinking about Sarah Palin and the glorification of ignorance and ill-education in what David Hackett Fischer calls American “Borderer” culture. Gambetta’s theory makes the light bulb go off, for me.

If education is a ticket out of poverty or marginalization, then poor and marginalized people will (rightly) see it as disloyal to the group or the family, unless it goes along with a strong tradition of supporting your parents and extended kin. Proud ignorance is proof that you won’t leave your kin behind—because you have no-where else to go.

Do any of you know if Gambetta talks about such signalling by Japanese yakuza? They are famous for using tattooing and self-mutilation as demonstrations of loyalty and commitment.

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von, one of the conservatives at Obsidian Wings, posted about health care reform and his support for Wyden-Bennett. I wrote:

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Having read a brief overview of W-B, von, I have a question:

Does any other country do this?

I personally have had *enough* of American exceptionalism and insisting on being the first penguin off the ice floe. There's no point in having a big world if you have to keep inventing the wheel to prove how Special we are.

I also am quite appalled at the idea that the solution to our problem is to give more money to insurance companies. Step right this way for yet more regulatory capture and market failure!

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I will also add that the reason I am for single payer is that I abhor means testing. To people of means, means testing may seem "only fair", but in practice it is tiring, degrading, confusing, privacy-destroying, and taxing in every sense. It also inevitably involves huge, invasive bureaucracies and the pushing of much paper, things to which von is deeply opposed.

Blogcomment records: politics division

I am reposting this because it took me so many tries to get the link to the Balloon Juice post right, and because the article is so good. arrgh! *stabs*

At Obsidian Wings, where publius wrote A heartbreaking work of staggering dishonesty, about Michael Steele on health care reform, I commented:

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cleek asked:
why are they talking about [obesity]?

Anne Laurie summed it up quite nicely over at Ballon Juice the other day:

Suddenly, out of every media outlet, from the morning talk shows to the political blogs to the Wall Street Journal, comes a new slogan: Americans get less health for more dollars than any other industrialized nation because we don’t deserve good health. We haven’t earned it, and if we insist on using it anyway, we’ll be depriving other, more needy fellow citizens of their fair share. And the mark of our selfish unworthiness is that we’re *fat*.

And of course, this goes double for women, who (a) are more subject to relentless criticism about our weight, and (b) refuse to get in line with the "We're Number One! U!S!A!" crowd, but keep dragging the nation down in international health comparisons with our selfish infant and maternal mortality.

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Fascinating discussion at Edge of the American West about the Medal of Honor, and the increasing tendency for it to be awarded posthumously. I commented:

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There are also some very real, but unwritten, issues, including commissioned vs enlisted, branch of service, combat arms vs service/support, etc.

I would love to hear you elaborate on these “unwritten issues”. Are they also undiscussed issues, the sort of thing that is “mentioned” with nods and hand gestures, so that they never have to be spelled out?

For instance, you say there are issues of “commissioned vs enlisted”. Do you mean that a given action is more likely to garner the medal for a commission officer? — because the people making the decision are commissioned, too — or for an enlisted? — because bravery is more of an expectation for C.O.s, more beyond the call of duty for enlisted personnel.

I would be astonished if there were not also issues of race and gender, but I dare not guess how they play out.

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Thanks for the info, TF.

I’ve been actually thinking about the converse of ScottyMac’s anecdote. The advantage to mostly posthumous MOHs might be that there are no pesky live winners around, to either (a) develop a cult of personality around them, or (b) say inconvenient things. If the object of the award is to develop a narrative of military virtue, it really helps if there’s no living narrator to muddy the message. Or to exploit it for their own purposes, either.

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Josh:

I was thinking more of Julius Caesar, or Sgt. York. We haven’t had a sufficiently charismatic MOH winner collide with reality TV … yet … but it’s a scary thought.

Health care reform; Trutherism

publius at Obsidian Wings posted on Keeping Perspective about health care, and Barney Frank. I commented, variously:

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von:
Why should I accept the devil I don't know instead of the devil I know?

For the reason publius gives: because the current system is reprehensibly bad for many people other than yourself. The devil you know kills people for profit.

If you're afraid of a new massive government bureaucracy, remember that we've *already* got massive bureaucracy -- we'd be shifting it, not expanding the total supply. Your choice is *not* between government bureaucracy and no bureaucracy -- your choice is between Big Government or Big Corporation. If you say you're "opposed to big government", then you are *automatically* in favor of big corporations getting their way. "No large bureaucracies" is not one of the available options.

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I might qualify as one of those batSH!& insane Truthers, by Sebastian's standards.

"People in the federal government took no action to stop the attacks"

-- The "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." memo makes this IMHO a matter of historical record.

"they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East."

-- the Project for the New American Century (signatories to whose Statement include Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby) makes this, also, a matter of historical record.

Does that mean they did it "because"? Not in a planned, strictly-speaking way, *necessarily*, they might just have ignored the Al Quaeda threat because they wanted to go to war in the Middle East -- and Iraq, specifically -- and preventing an Al Quaeda attack did not serve that goal.

So: they failed to protect the country; they wanted war in Iraq. The country was attacked; we went to war in Iraq (though Iraq had not attacked us). Conscious conspiracy? I doubt it. Letting things just sort of happen to get the result they wanted? Not unlikely.

Medical insurance

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings posted on Why We Need Universal Health Insurance, pointing to Kate Michelman's account in The Nation of what her family has gone through. In the ensuing discussion, I wrote -- in response to one of the local libertarians:

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Brett:

What I honestly don't understand is why you're more frightened of the government than you are of the medical insurance industry. I wrangle with some government agency maybe once a year, twice if you count taxes automatically; I wrangle with a medical insurance company or their effects at least once every six to eight weeks.

I have not been personally *afraid* of what the gov't will do, even when we discovered we owed $2K for last year -- they can cope, they'll listen to reason. I have been *afraid* of insurance companies, I have had to experience direct physical pain because of their decisions -- like, for instance, not approving a medication I need before a weekend. Or the time when my coverage lapsed for a month, and I had to cut back on my meds to skirt the edge of illness. Or my husband being in constant knee pain but the company not having agreed to surgery for him, because it hasn't hurt *enough* yet.

You say the government works by coercion and the frequent threat of violence, but I honestly do not see that as realistic threat. The threat I feel from medical insurance companies is direct and personal, a matter of my daily health. What Kate Michelman is experiencing -- what Gary Farber here is, for another -- is closer to a literal life-and-death struggle.

Are you saying that this isn't familiar to you, either personally or in people close to you?