Cheater = Historian?

In my earlier litany about cheaters and liars in the history profession, I left out Jayme Sokolow. This incredible scoundrel walked the campus of Texas Technique in the mid-1970s before he was found out as a serial plagiarizer. After being run out of Lubbock, he surfaced elsewhere as a plagiarist, going to the National Endowment for the Humanities from Texas Technique. One of the best of the rest was the prexy of Southwest Texas State University (LBJ's alma mater, now Texas State University) in the late 1960s. James McCrocklin copied a U. S. Marine Corps historical document about the occupation of Haiti in the 1930s verbatim and passed it off as his dissertation ("Garde D' Haiti, 1915-1934: Twenty Years of Organization and Training by the U.S.M.C") for a Ph.D. in history at The University as the Longhorn faithful are wont to call it. UT-Austin rescinded McCrocklin's degree and he resigned his presidency. LBJ then gave McCrocklin a job at HEW (before there was a Department of Education). Moral: if you have more nerve than a government mule, plagiarize 'til the cows come home. If this is (fair & balanced) sleaze, so be it.

"My history professor plagiarizes, so why can't I?"
Copyright © 2005 Matthew Henry Hall and The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Remains Of The (Inauguration) Day

This one's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezy. If you know the 28th state admitted to the Union, you can't go wrong. If this is (fair & balanced) minutia, so be it.

[x Washington Post]
Political Trivia

Who was the only woman to administer the presidential oath of office?

A. Sandra Day O'Connor
B. Eleanor Roosevelt
C. Susan B. Anthony
D. Sarah T. Hughes

For the correct answer, go here.

Copyright © 2005 The Washington Post

Baby Babs: "Let 'Em Eat Cake!"

Little Barbara (to set her apart from Big Barbara, the Big Nasty, Bush) is portrayed as Dub's better half: more humane, more intelligent, and more in touch with reality. A chum from America's Dairyland sent the link to this story along just before the first domestic travesty of 2005. (Iraq is in a class by itself in the travesty sweepstakes.) Dub and Little Barbara (Baby Babs?) staggered around the dance floor in nine different photo ops at nine different inaugural balls last night. On average, the First Couple (of dunces?) spent one minute each at each venue. Were they practicing quick exits for a visit—a'la Dutch & Nancy in Moscow—to Baghdad? The maximum time allowed for exposure on the airport highway in Baghdad is one minute. Any longer and BOOM! Dub ought to send his worthless daughters over to Iraq so that they might experience the fun that a lot of fine 20-somethings are having there while the Bushies zip off to Camp David or Crawford. We have a Fool-in-Chief and a Marie Antoinette wannabe in the White House. If this is (fair & balanced) vituperation, so be it.

[x The Capital Times]
$40M inauguration hardly 'our history'
By John Nichols

The current first lady has always merited her designation as "the brighter Bush." But clearly she needs to study up on American history.

With concern mounting about the wisdom of the Bush team's plans for four days of lavish inaugural festivities, Laura Bush was dispatched to make the case for the $40 million blowout that has been organized to erase any doubt about who is in charge.

Like her husband and his aides, the first lady announced her approval of the ridiculous extravagance that will accompany what is starting to look more and more like a royal coronation. The excess is necessary, she explained, because big parties at the opening of a presidential term are "an important part of our history."

"They're a ceremony of our history; they're a ritual of our government," she said of free-spending inaugural celebrations, after being asked whether it was appropriate to spend tens of millions of dollars on 10 parties at a time when the nation is at war and a portion of the world is still recovering from the tsunami disaster.

It was a measure of the concern of the Bush administration's political overseers that the first lady, whose popularity is greater and surely more deserved than that of the president, was sent out to fight for the administration's right to party.

Unfortunately, she added nothing to the debate over inaugural bloat when she grounded her argument in historical precedent. The fact is that America has a mixed history with regard to inaugural style.

Yes, there have been regal ceremonies and celebrations in the past, organized by Democrats and Republicans. But there have also been restrained recognitions of the transfer of power, particularly in times of war and international turbulence - most notably Franklin Delano Roosevelt's subdued fourth inaugural during the last days of World War II.

In truth, however, only one president has marked his inauguration in the true spirit of the American experiment. That president understood the experiment better than most because he, Thomas Jefferson, had had such a central hand in launching it.

Elected after a bitter campaign that culminated in the first defeat of a sitting president - the often regal John Adams - Jefferson could have been excused for putting on a great celebration to mark the peaceful transition of power. But he chose to do the opposite.

On the morning of March 4, 1801, the president-elect awoke in his small room in Conrad's Boarding House on Capitol Hill - where he had lived during the past four years when he served as a dissident vice president. After dressing in simple clothes, he went to the breakfast room and took his usual seat at the table, declining the offer of a place at the head of the table that had been made in deference to the fact that on this day he would be sworn in as the nation's third president.

Just before noon, Jefferson left Conrad's and walked through the muddy streets of Washington to the Capitol, where he was sworn in without pomp or circumstance and then quietly delivered an inaugural address in which he affirmed his faith in "equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people."

Jefferson then walked back to his rooming house, where at dinnertime he again refused a place of honor at the table - displaying not merely in words, but in deeds, his belief that the president was a servant of the people, not their better and certainly not their ruler.

The symbolism of Jefferson's approach to his inauguration was intentional.

The new president wanted Americans to put behind them the trappings of their colonial past.

He believed that the age of kings and queens was ending, while the age of democracy was beginning.

It should come as no surprise that George Bush, with his regal instincts and inflated sense of self-importance, would want a big party. But Laura Bush, who has never seemed quite so royally inclined as her husband, should know better than to suggest that there is anything American about these festivities.

They are, in fact, an ugly and wholly indefensible abandonment of the template that Jefferson sought to imprint upon a nation that was founded in revolt against royalty.

© 2005, Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved.

Doubletalk, Doublethink

Let freedom reign! Dub wrote this malaprop in the margin of Condi's note announcing that Proconsul Paul Bremer had skulked out of Baghdad and "transferred sovereignty" to the Iraqis this past summer. Thanks to ol' Dub and his war-criminals, liberty and freedom abound in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The insurgency in Iraq grows and grows. The U.S. military is shrinking back into safe zones. The road from Baghdad International Airport to downtown Baghdad is the most dangerous place on the globe. The late Senator George Aiken (R-VT) wanted us to declare victory in Vietnam and leave. The Aikin Solution is appropriate for Iraq. Enough! ¡Basta Ya! If this is (fair & balanced) presidentialness, so be it.

[x Slate]
Freedom's Just Another Word
Bush gave a great speech. But what did it mean?
By Chris Suellentrop

Perhaps no politician since Lincoln has been better at linking the language of the Bible with the language of democracy, America's secular religion, than George W. Bush. In President Bush's second inaugural address, freedom, like God, comes calling in the night. It comes "to every mind and every soul," Bush said, and it "will come to those who love it." If freedom has left you, have no fear, for there will be a Second Coming, Bush assured, a day when freedom rules the earth. "We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom," he said. "We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul." In Bush's telling, freedom is "a fire in the minds of men," an allusion to the "revolutionary faiths" that powered the French and Russian revolutions. "It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of the world." Bush made freedom sound like God's call, a spiritual force that must be heard and answered willingly but that comes to all who have ears. Freedom must be chosen, Bush said, but it is inescapable that some day all will choose it.

In that sense, this was a speech that could have been written by Francis Fukuyama, who theorized in The End of History and the Last Man that worldwide democracy is inevitable because of man's natural striving for dignity and liberty. Fukuyama was derided by many historians for his assertion that history is directional, with a progress and a path that can be discerned, and Fukuyama's thesis took a severe hit when Sept. 11 drove home the realization that in parts of the world Islamic radicalism has become a compelling alternative ideology to American-style democracy. Yet here was Bush proclaiming that God and freedom are on the same side, and that the End of History is in sight. "History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty," he said.

As oratory, this was a marvelous speech, an inspiring statement of the universality of American values. But what might it mean in terms of the practice of foreign policy over the next four years? Bush said history does not run "on the wheels of inevitability," but he also professed "complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom." If freedom is inevitable, to paraphrase Clayton Williams, another Texan, why don't we just lie back and enjoy it? Are we asked to do anything to advance its cause? Are we democratic Leninists now, trying to accelerate the natural date of History's end?

Bush set a clear goal for the country—"So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world"—that might be called a second Bush Doctrine (the first Bush Doctrine being unilateral pre-emptive war in the face of gathering threats). But what is the means to this end? It is "not primarily the task of arms," Bush said, so the optimistic interpretation is that Bush has signaled that he is replacing hot war against tyrants with cold war. But Bush also declared, "America's influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause." Adding to the confusion, Bush implied that he will be patient with friendly governments, such as Pakistan, when he asked countries to merely "start" on the journey to democracy.

Moreover, the entire thesis of Bush's address is questionable. "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," he said, because democracy is an elixir that will defeat fanatical terrorism. But were Timothy McVeigh or Eric Robert Rudolph driven to kill because America's democratic institutions failed them somehow? Bush's belief that an absence of liberty is the "root cause" of terrorism feels as simplistic as the belief of some of the left that 9/11 was caused by poverty. Although it's true that democratic societies do not historically go to war with one another, it's doubtful that democracy is sufficient to quell violence from nonstate actors.

The abolition of tyranny is a worthy goal for an American government, even if it is unattainable. Liberals, who will be inclined to quarrel with Bush's message, should have no objections to the values Bush identified as the guiding principles for his second administration. The issue is whether he really has any intention of promoting democracy in Russia, China, and the Mideast when promoting it comes into conflict with other economic and security interests of the United States. There is much reason for skepticism here, such as Bush's policy in relation to Saudi Arabia, Tibet, and Chechnya during his first term. But rather than criticizing Bush's speech, Democrats should nod vigorously and then hold him to it.

Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief.

Copyright © 2005 Slate