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Jewish World Review
Nov 6, 2011
9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5772
A Machiavellian model for Obama
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Chris Matthews, the voluble host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” has written a compelling blueprint for President Obama’s reelection. But it doesn’t mention the current president.
Matthews’s new book, “ Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” adds another volume to the already groaning shelf of Kennedy biographies, but this one, happily, isn’t just about Camelot or conspiracies. It’s also about the Machiavellian Kennedy, the political street fighter who with his brother encouraged opponents to believe they were “dangerous enemies” who preferred to be feared rather than loved. “Bobby was the one who’d gained the reputation for ruthlessness,” Matthews writes, “but Jack could be pitiless.” This is the JFK who dispatched his brother to deliver mob-style threats to governors who didn’t back him in the 1960 primaries, and the JFK who threatened to expose corporate executives’ extramarital pursuits. As one Kennedy aide recounted, “Jack preferred killing a politician to wounding one. ‘A wounded tiger,’ he always said, ‘was more dangerous than either a living or dead one.’” Reading these pages brought to mind the current president, who too often handles his tigers with stroking or submission. President Obama doesn’t need to sic the FBI on his opponents, but neither would it hurt him to put some fear in friends and foes alike as he pushes for jobs bills on the Hill and begins a difficult reelection campaign. When Republicans celebrate the sainted Ronald Reagan, they make the mistake of recalling his strong conservative convictions but omit any acknowledgment of his long record of compromise with the opposition. Likewise, Democrats draw inspiration from Kennedy’s stirring phrases, but they forget that he was also a political killer. Obama seemed to understand this early in his term, when Rahm Emanuel played his Bobby Kennedy, keeping recalcitrant lawmakers in line. Now, though, Obama has no bad cop in his White House — his chief of staff, Bill Daley, is this town’s Mr. Congeniality — and the president himself seems congenitally unable to intimidate. He learned the art of Kennedy’s soaring rhetoric but neglected the kneecapping that supported it. Matthews recounts the story of how William “Onions” Burke, the Massachusetts Democratic chairman, humiliated Kennedy in 1956 by going back on his pledge to deliver primary delegates for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, whom Kennedy hoped to join on the ticket. Kennedy “had no choice but to destroy the man,” Matthews wrote. He worked the state’s committeemen to oust Burke as party chairman, then had Burke kept from the room by Boston cops during the vote. Kennedy’s candidate easily won. In 1960, when Ohio Gov. Mike DiSalle resisted supporting Kennedy in that state’s presidential primary, Kennedy threatened him: “Mike, it’s time to [expletive] or get off the pot. You’re either going to come out for me or we are going to run a delegation against you in Ohio and we’ll beat you.” When DiSalle resisted still, Kennedy sent his brother to Columbus to “see DiSalle and make sure he is going to meet his commitments.” Bobby, Kennedy man Ken O’Donnell recounted, “threatened him.” A similar thing happened with Maryland Gov. J. Millard Tawes. As O’Donnell described it: “We ushered the governor into a bedroom and Bobby went in and the governor was not happy, looking over his shoulder for some assistance. But there was none forthcoming.” Tawes relented. An adviser to California Gov. Pat Brown, likewise, said “threatening. . . is the only accurate word” to describe the Kennedys’ treatment of Brown. They “ran a very aggressive war of nerves.” And woe to the man who resisted, such as Pennsylvania Gov. David Lawrence. With Lawrence in the audience, Kennedy gave a speech “kicking him good and hard where it hurts the most,” O’Donnell described. The intimidation, naturally, worked on the Republicans, too. “They were ruthless,” one Nixon man said, in Matthews’s account. “They scared the [expletive] out of me.” They did more than that to Roger Blough, the U.S. Steel president, who defied Kennedy in 1961 by raising prices. “You have made a terrible mistake,” Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives’ offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining “hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the country club.” Kennedy used harsher words than the “socialist” Obama has ever voiced, claiming the executives’ “pursuit of private power and profit” showed “such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.” The price increase was rolled back. “It was a tough way to operate,” Bobby Kennedy said, but “we couldn’t afford to lose.”
Sometimes, that’s how it must be. Can Obama understand that?
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Previously:
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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