Book Review: Waking Giant

David Reynolds' Waking Giant aptly demonstrates the innumerable revolutions that transformed America between 1815-1848.

A quick read, David Reynolds' Waking Giant is an excellent primer in early-to-mid-19th century American political, cultural and social history. First, from an "interesting things to say at a cocktail party" aspect, the book is filled with numerous "a-ha" moments. For example, ever wonder where the expression "O.K." came from? Well, wonder no more: it came from Martin Van Buren's 1840 reelection campaign against Whig William Henry Harrison. Known as Old Kinderhook, the Democratic convention campaign used those initials and included them in the slogan "Down with the Whigs, boys, O.K."

Another example - ironically also from that 1840 campaign - is "keep the ball rolling". Harrison supporters would push large leather balls from town to town for each campaign rally - an activity that became an American expression shortly thereafter. I know, I know, 'who the hell pushes a ball from town-to-town'? This is what you did when there was no TV or porn to occupy your time, folks.

Yet another example is "the peanut gallery". During this era, the rise of theaters in America led to a democratization of "the play". There were three separate seating arrangements in theaters. Upper class patrons were in the box seats, middle class folk were in the wooden benches in front of the stage, while the working class (not to mention the prostitutes) were in the cheaper seats known as the "gallery". Those seated in the gallery smoked, drank booze, and chewed peanuts, disposing of the shells on the floor, leading to the phrase "the peanut gallery".

Reynolds argues - persuasively - that the Age of Jackson gave rise not only to democracy in politics, but to a wide range of cultural, social and religious revolutions from 1815-1848. The era of "isms" included abolitionism, transcendentalism, spiritualism, among others and they all made the era one of dizzying changes. Every aspect of American life underwent fundamental change. Sex, religion, politics, even cultural activities all expanded and changed so that a person awaking from a 30-year sleep in 1848 would find American unrecognizable from the world he left in 1818. Few eras in American history - our own perhaps being one of them - can claim to have had that much transpire in such a short period of time.

Reynolds looks at literature, the arts, music, dance and other aspects of social history with the same crisp and concise analysis he gives to politics. Children from the "Summer of Love" in 1967 would be shocked to learn that such sexual liberation had transpired 130 years earlier in Jacksonian America. A "free love" movement during the era challenged Puritan sexual mores. Women's rights and abolition began to expand upon who, exactly, "We, the people" really were.
The sexual revolution of the era - granted on a smaller scale than the "fuckfest" that was the 1960s and 1970s - led to other revolutions in the culture. For one thing, the number of abortions performed in the United States increased dramatically. The number of abortions went from 1-in-25 live births in 1830 to 1-in-5 live births a short 20 years later in 1850. Indeed, it was only after the Civil War that what we would recognize as a true antiabortion movement first took hold in the country.

I think my favorite aspect of the book, though, are those "a-ha" moments I mentioned earlier. Whether it's "O.K", "keep the ball rolling", "the peanut gallery", or the even fact that the word "homosexual" did not even appear in the English language until 1892, Reynolds laces his narrative with interesting facts that link the bygone era of mid-19th-century America to our world today. Now, the next time someone says, "we don't need any comments from the peanut gallery," you'll know where the expression came from. Chicks dig that, guys.

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Book Review: Tried By War

Of all the amazing accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln's career, perhaps the greatest was his ability to overcome the urge to travel to General George McClellan's headquarters and blow his head off.

James McPherson - whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom has become one of the great studies of the Civil War era - focuses on Abraham Lincoln as commander-in-chief. Citing a dearth of such studies in the Lincoln historiography, McPherson concentrates on the day-to-day military leadership Lincoln provided to what seemed to be a never-ending line of big-talking do-nothing generals.

One of the main premises of the book is that Lincoln was forced into taking a far more active role in military affairs than he had ever intended, largely because of the ineptitude of his commanders. He spent countless hours studying military histories late at night at the White House, talked with generals and military advisers, asking probing questions that helped to shape his military strategy.

It was not until Ulysses S. Grant's rise through the ranks that Lincoln found a general who shared that strategy: defeat of the Confederate army. More important than capturing Richmond, Vicksburg, Atlanta or even defending Gettysburg was the pursuit and defeat of that army. Lincoln - and Grant - realized that until that army was defeated, the war would continue even if the Union successfully captured every major city in the South.

Throughout McPherson's work, we see an agonized Lincoln waiting at the War Department telegraph office for his generals to attack. He wrings his hands at their lack of movement, at their over-caution, and at their short-sighted aims of capturing pieces of land at the expense of pursuing the enemy. There is the possibly apocryphal story of Lincoln saying, "If General McClellan isn't going to use his Army, perhaps he won't mind if I borrow it." That, in a nutshell, was Lincoln's first two-plus years as commander-in-chief. You only need substitute the names of Joe Hooker, George Meade, Ambrose Burnside and a half-dozen others in place of McClellan to get the full impression of what Lincoln faced.

McPherson confronts head on the natural question that might arise: if these generals were so incompetent, isn't Lincoln at fault himself for appointing them in the first place? As McPherson points out, in each and every case where Lincoln appointed these men, they were universally recognized as the most qualified for the position....on paper. There were some exceptions, military appointments Lincoln made with politics in mind [the appointment of Democrat-turned-Republican Benjamin Butler being one of the more famous].

Incorporating his thesis from Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson points out the evolution of Lincoln's thinking as to the main goal of the war. What started out in 1861 as an effort to reunite the Union as it was, evolves into creating a new Union free of slavery. The abolition of slavery gave the War a greater meaning than simple reunion: there had to be a greater purpose for all of this carnage than simply restoring the Union as it was in 1860. That purpose was abolition.

By 1862, it was abolition and the complete destruction of the Confederate army that served as Lincoln's two main war aims. Many times, however, Lincoln would be frustrated by his generals' inability or unwillingness to comply with his commands. In September 1862 he has to actually spell out for McClellan, "Destroy the rebel army." In June 1863 he says in frustration to Hooker, "Lee's Army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point." In anguish, he chastises George Meade after the latter's inability or refusal to pursue Lee's army out of Gettysburg. If Meade had only accomplished, "the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army, the rebellion [would] be over."

As McPherson points out, many generals won battles capturing territory. But the war was won by those generals carrying out Lincoln's edict to destroy the enemy army: Grant at Vicksburg, Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, George Thomas at Nashville and - ultimately - Grant at Appomattox.

Indeed, it was not until the team of Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan came to the fore by 1864 that Lincoln had "his man". That is, a general (or, in this case, generals) who would fight the war the way Lincoln wanted it fought.

Destroying an army is not easy, however. It is bloody, lengthy and hard. The sheer number of Americans who died in these battles staggers the mind today. Grant was known as "The Butcher" - and that was what Northerners called him, so appalled were they at the casualties he [and, ultimately, Lincoln] was willing to endure in the pursuit of his war aim.

Tried By War is a quick read, and not too heavy on the detailed military analyses that sometimes makes reading military history a little like watching paint dry. As with most works that analyze Lincoln, the reader comes away from Tried By War with an even greater appreciation of the man and in amazement at all that this brilliant "backwoods lawyer" accomplished in saving the Union.

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Book Review: Dutch

When Edmund Morris' Dutch was published ten years ago, it created a firestorm within the historical and political community. Morris - a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt - had created a fictional character to accompany Ronald Reagan and to help tell his story. At the time, I remember being shocked that a writer of Morris' credibility would 'stoop' to such a tactic. I refused to read the book at the time. Over the years, though, I've been intrigued by it and often thought of finally picking it up. I'm glad I finally did.

For one thing, Morris' publisher does a far better job than the author ever did during that tumultuous book tour ten years ago in explaining why he used this tactic. Morris was announced as Reagan's 'official biographer' by the White House in 1985. Morris was given unprecedented access to Reagan throughout his second term - with the notable exception of when the Iran-Contra scandal exploded. Even then, though, Morris was privy to far more than most biographers. A few years into the project, however, Morris came to a startling revelation: he no more knew Reagan the man after spending nearly three years with him than he did when he started the project. Reagan was impenetrable to biography. There was so little intellectual curiosity in Reagan's mind, and so much 'acting' that knowing the real Reagan - indeed, if there was one - was impossible.

It was while trying to figure out how to write the biography with this major roadblock that Morris stumbled upon the idea of creating a fictional character. This character would be able to color in the blank spots on the pages of Reagan's life. Granted, it would no longer be biography in the strict sense of the word. Undoubtedly, the author's own hypotheses and opinions about aspects of Reagan's life - and why he did what he did - would make total objectivity impossible.

I'm not sure if Morris was right to do it this way, but he was right about one thing: it works. Dutch is an amazing book. The fictionalized character really does add tremendously to the book as a whole. But where it really helps is in the pre-presidential years. All of the quotes in the book from characters other than Morris' fictional one are true: they were obtained by Morris through years of research and interviews. Nothing in the story is 'fiction' in so far as everything everybody says in the book is something they really said to Morris, or that he really overheard during his three-plus years shadowing Reagan around the White House.

There were three 'wow' moments in the book for me: facts that I never knew, and that by themselves make the book a worthwhile read. First, the assassination attempt. By now, we all know that Reagan was far closer to death than we had ever been led to believe. In conversations with the lead emergency room surgeon that saved Reagan's life, and with Reagan's lead Secret Service agent that day, Morris reveals that a single right turn in the motorcade was the difference between Reagan living and a Bush Administration in 1981.

At the moment that John Hinkley fired his shots at Reagan, one bullet hit the presidential limousine's armored right-rear panel. In doing so, it changed shape and became a tiny high-speed circular "saw blade-like" object that spun into Reagan's chest with such surgical precision that there was no apparent entry wound. Indeed, as Jerry Parr - Reagan's lead security agent - threw Reagan onto the floor of the car and screamed at the driver, "Haul ass! Let's get out of here!", Reagan felt tremendous pain in his chest and said, "Jerry, get off, I think you've broken one of my ribs." Parr took one look at Reagan's mouth and saw that he was coughing up blood. Parr, too, believed that Reagan had punctured something internally. Not sure whether he was looking at a world-wide conspiracy, Parr's training took hold. He grabbed the car radio and lied to the agent in the car behind, telling him "Rawhide not hurt" using Reagan's code name. This was to throw off anyone in the area eavesdropping on the Secret Service frequency. With that done, Parr made the key move that would save Reagan's life: he made a split second decision to redirect the motorcade [which was heading back to the White House] to George Washington University Hospital instead. Had he not done so, Reagan's physicians told Morris, the President would most certainly have died.

As it was, getting him to the emergency room as quickly as Parr did almost wasn't enough. The treating physicians assumed the President was suffering from a punctured lung, caused by a broken rib. It was only when a nurse lifted Reagan's left arm to insert an IV line that she saw a neat slit on the side of Reagan's chest open up. "Oh-oh, he's been shot!" she screamed. Reagan - still conscious - looked stunned when he heard this. Reagan would tell Morris that it was only then that he realized he was dying.

In the end, Reagan's incredible physical health prior to the assassination attempt saved his life. Because he was in such good shape, and his chest muscles were like those of a 40-year old, his body was able to withstand the trauma.

The second 'wow' moment in the book concerns the controversial visit by Reagan to a Nazi burial ground in Bitburg in 1985. I could never understand how a White House as incredibly detailed in planning as the Reagan administration was could have allowed him to accept an invitation by Helmut Kohl to tour a site that held the remains of Hitler's SS troops. Well, there is a very simple explanation. When Mike Deaver went to Bitburg to advance-scout the cemetery, snow blanketed the graves and their stone markers. Deaver could not see the markers. Had he been able to, he would have clearly seen "SS" on the many graves.

While you might think he should have brushed the snow off a few of them, that is hindsight talking. Deaver joked to Kohl, "Will any of these graves embarrass my President?" Kohl's protocol chief reacted defensively saying, "You think maybe Mengele is buried there?" With that, Deaver left. Had he visited a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later - when there was no snow - the whole embarrassing episode could have been avoided.

The final 'wow' moment concerns the weeks after the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Aides became quite alarmed at how disoriented Reagan appeared. New Chief of Staff Howard Baker was stunned by the deterioration in Reagan's mental acuity. So alarmed was Baker that on March 2, 1987, before lunch in the Cabinet room, Baker and his aides purposely positioned their chairs so that they would be able to observe Reagan literally from all angles. Prior to that lunch, Baker's assistant, James Cannon, wrote an emergency transition paper to set in motion the invocation of the 25th Amendment [Presidential Disability] if Baker and his aides found Reagan to be "disoriented" at that lunch. As it happened, Regan was lucid and "on his game" throughout the lunch. Baker shelved the position paper and the 25th Amendment.

In conclusion, if you haven't read Dutch, do so. While Morris became a little too close to Reagan to truly be objective, the narrative is wonderful and the details extraordinary.”

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Quote of the Day

In 1989, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy [D, Mass] was stalked by paparazzi during a European vacation. One snapped the senator having sexual intercourse in a motorboat. After the National Enquirer ran photos of the tryst, Alabama senator Howell Heflin [R, Ala] joked he was glad to see Kennedy had "changed his position on offshore drilling."

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Death of a Nazi - 17 Years Later

The medical log used by Aribert Ferdinand Heim [above], a.k.a. "Dr. Death". Heim painstakingly logged the innumerable procedures he inflicted on prisoners in the death campus of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen during World War II.



The New York Times reveals today that Aribert Ferdinand Heim, a member of Adolf Hitler's Waffen-SS and a medical doctor at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps - and one of the last fugitive Nazis unaccounted for - died in hiding in 1992 in Egypt, where he had lived comfortably since barely escaping Israeli authorities in 1962. On a positive note, however, he died of ass cancer, which has to really be painful. And he died of ass cancer in Egypt, not exactly known as the Mecca [pun intended] of health care for the ass, or any other part of your body.

Still, even with the realization that he suffered, nothing he endured can compare with the vicious and heinous acts he committed on thousands of victims during the Holocaust. Nicknamed "Dr. Death", Heim performed operations on prisoners without anesthesia; he removed organs from healthy inmates, then left them to die on the operating table; in others, he injected poison, including gasoline, into their hearts; he even took the skull of at least one victim as a souvenir.

Perhaps even more heinous is the ease with which he lived in post-war Germany for nearly 20 years. He lived in the German town of Baden-Baden as a practicing gynecologist with a wife and two sons. As investigators closed in on him in 1962, he fled by car to France, then Spain, then crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt. Once in Egypt, he was able to support himself with money sent by his sister - income he earned on an apartment building he owned in Berlin.

Sadly, the United States actually had Heim in custody immediately after World War II, but inexplicably let him go, apparently unaware that Austrian war-crimes investigators were building a case against him. Shortly after his accidental release, a U.S. war crimes team took testimony about his crimes from Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen. On January 18, 1946, Kohl testified:


“Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates’ mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull, and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.”


Again, dying in a fetid Egyptian slum with ass cancer is in no way equal justice for Heim, but at least he suffered. And, with a little luck, he's suffering still today.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Dissing The President, Vol I and Vol II

It is not true that President and Mrs. Obama called out, "Don't let the helicopter door hit you in the ass on the way out!" to President and Mrs. Bush as they left the Capitol on Marine One [above] after Tuesday's inauguration.

For all the pageantry of Tuesday's inauguration of President Obama, there were still a few examples of good, old fashion pissing contests on display for the world to see. One was behind the scenes, but one was out in the open, delivered in such moderation of tone that it took hours for anyone to even notice it had occurred.

First, the behind the scenes incident. We all have people we have to deal with from time to time for whom we wouldn't piss down their throats if their hearts were on fire. Such is the relationship between former Presidents Clinton and Carter. Don't believe me? Check out this exchange at the Capitol on Tuesday as the former living Presidents were lined up to make their entrance onto the platform. My favorite part is the millisecond where Carter and Clinton are face-to-face with nowhere to look, but at each other. Carter simply breezes right on by. Classic.

For his part, Carter denies that there was any snub. He told ABC News that he had just spent "thirty minutes" talking with Clinton prior to the incident and simply wanted to make sure he said hello to President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, before heading out onto the platform. Watch the video again and you decide. Looks to me like Clinton and Carter would sooner eat their own feet than say hello to one another.

And this isn't the first time - just this month - that Carter has raised eyebrows with his reaction to Clinton. Back on January 7th, when all the living presidents gathered in the Oval Office for a luncheon with then-President-elect Obama, reporters noted that Carter refused to stand next to Clinton, continuously moving inches away from him throughout the photo opportunity. It became so awkward that, at the end, Clinton clumsily tried to make conversation with the president on his right - George W. Bush - with the asinine comment, "I love this rug."

But the Carter-Clinton rumble was a mere sideshow. Out in the open, with the subject of his criticism sitting no more than ten feet away from him, President Obama delivered a subtle lambasting of his immediate predecessor - George W. Bush - in his inaugural address. Indeed, it marked the first time since the chilly [and I'm not talking about the weather] ceremony in 1933, where newly sworn-in President Franklin Roosevelt performed a vivisection on the departing President Herbert Hoover while the latter sat and visibly stewed on the platform.

FDR's criticisms were direct, but Obama's were no less pointed even though delivered with a velvet glove. There were the obvious barbs - for example, Obama's promise, "We will restore science to its rightful place", and, in speaking of the economic crisis, "this crisis reminds us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control" - but there were other arrows within the address, all aimed at Bush. For instance, when Obama urged Americans to “choose our better history,” to reject a “false choice” between safety and American ideals and to recognize that American military power does not “entitle us to do as we please,” he was clearly rebuking some of the basic tenets of Bush's tenure.

As Obama recited the litany of things that have gone wrong on Bush's watch, you have to believe that Bush was in a state of shock - after all, he has not been in the habit of being forced to sit and listen while he is taken to task for the negatives of his presidency. In fact, what initially looked like a warm sign of affection - Bush's hugging Obama after the latter finished his address - may now be seen in a different light: perhaps Bush told Obama to, "go fuck yourself". Although that seems more in Dick Cheney's style of vulgarity than Bush's. Since Cheney was confined to a wheelchair [the rumor that he broke his ankle while kicking a puppy could not be corroborated], maybe Bush was delivering Cheney's message for him.

Can't wait for the next presidential reunion.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Hello, 44

President Obama had quite a day. So did the Nation. Tuesday, January 20, 2009, will no doubt long be remembered long after we're all dead and gone. Like everyone, I looked on in amazement at the events of the day. We've known, obviously, for 77 days that this day was coming. Even so, knowing it and seeing it are two very different things.

Obama's Inaugural Address was crisp, to the point and typical of what we've come to expect from him. With the exception of Chief Justice John Roberts' inexplicable fuck up of the Oath of Office, the day was flawless. Even there, though, Obama demonstrated his calm and cool demeanor, quickly helping Roberts recover.

Many analogies have been drawn between Obama and President Kennedy. Others have remembered Franklin Roosevelt and the economy he inherited in 1933. I would argue, however, that what Obama is facing is greater than that which challenged either FDR or JFK. In fact, Obama is facing a combination of what those two men faced 30 years apart. While FDR had an economy mired in Depression, there were no foreign threats to the country. And while JFK was faced with a red-hot Cold War and very real Soviet threat, his economy - while not at the sky-high level of the earlier Eisenhower years - was nowhere near what we would call poor. Well, President Obama is facing Roosevelt's economy and Kennedy's foreign crisis - at the same time.

First, since he appears to be ok, we can joke about Senator Edward M. Kennedy [D, Mass] trying to steal some of the limelight from Obama by becoming ill during the Inaugural Luncheon. Ironically, I was amazed earlier in the day at just how robust Kennedy looked on the platform. Kennedy has been on the platform for every presidential inauguration since 1961 - the year President Obama was born. Kennedy, of course, played no small role in Obama even being there: it was Kennedy's early endorsement of the Illinois senator that first propelled his candidacy from the realm of fantasy to the reality of today.

Not since the Senator's brother was sworn into office has a new president so captivated Washington, and the country. His combination of youthful energy, steel resolve, calm demeanor and self-deprecating sense of humor all recall the last U.S. Senator elected to the presidency, too. Certainly there was a great deal of excitement about President Clinton in 1993. But that was pre-9/11, pre-Depression [I've decided this is no longer a recession, but is in fact a Depression with a capital 'D']. In fact, we were all still kind of heady in 1993 with the end of the Cold War. While the economy was lousy in 1993, it had already started to pick back up to it's pre-1991 levels. So, while there was excitement, there was also a sense that all was well in the country.

Not so, today. Certainly the analogies can be drawn between Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama in what they inherited upon being inaugurated. From an economic standpoint, FDR's challenge was more difficult. As terrible as 7.4% unemployment is, imagine 12%-15% unemployment. That was FDR's inheritance upon taking office.

So, faced with challenges on economic and foreign policy fronts, our new president reports to work on Wednesday. May he have the strength and wisdom he will need in the years ahead.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.