While the whole nation seems to be in the process of professing an unearned proficiency in American political history, I thought I’d share this little tidbit from Arthur Schlesinger’s book on RFK, Robert Kennedy and His Times. You may remember the nasty bit of nepotism that resulted in JFK nominating his brother to serve as attorney general. It caused quite a bit of grumbling even if in the end almost no one seemed to have the courage to oppose the move. For a time, though, it looked like a bloc of Southern Democrats in the Senate might cause problems, and RFK had to enlist LBJ to smooth his path. No one was more critical than the Judiciary Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi.
Robert Kennedy and His Times is a fawning book that paints RFK as a brilliant administrator of the Justice Department. You can see that Robert’s good relationship with a virulent racist “devoid of any socially redeeming quality,” is breezily chalked up to an “Irish weakness for rogues.” There’s also the obvious power dynamic involved here, where Eastland’s support was required so it made more sense to be on good terms.
The Washington Post went down to look at Eastland’s archives at the University of Mississippi and unearthed a similar dynamic between Eastland and a young Irish senator from Delaware named Joe Biden. In reading through the 30 pieces of correspondence between the two senators from the mid-1970s, I noticed that almost all of them are explained by Biden’s desire to win appointments to various committees. In addition to being the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Eastland was also the leader of the Steering Committee that decided on committee assignments, so Biden wrote him a letter immediately after being elected and told him what his preferences were. Then he wrote him another letter thanking him for his assignments even though they weren’t what he asked for.
Some of the examples were “dear colleague” letters written to all the senators that invited them to join him on the floor in support of a particular amendment or bill. There’s a couple pieces about the organization and jurisdiction of subcommittees. What’s clear is that Biden’s correspondence with Eastland was that of a supplicant asking for good treatment and consideration from a powerful man who had control of his fate. It’s the same humbling exercise RFK went through during his confirmation process.
The one glaring exception to this pattern is Biden’s effort to enlist Eastland’s support for his anti-busing legislation. That’s what is causing most of the criticism today, and it’s certainly a part of Biden’s history that deserves scrutiny. It’s clear that he and his Republican colleague from Delaware, Senator William Roth who co-sponsored the bill, were feeling pressure from their white constituents at home to oppose forced busing of students. It’s also clear that by pushing the bill, Biden knew he could ingratiate himself to the powerful Eastland. Forty-two years later, we can judge that how we may, and attach whatever negative weight to it that we want.
We should keep in mind, however, that Biden wasn’t an equal to Eastland or some kind of friend. He kissed his ass because his ass needed kissing. It was a situation that made many northerners and liberals bristle at the time. A lot of the committees in both chambers of Congress were controlled by old school southerners because Democrats never lost in the South and so naturally its politicians often wound up with the most seniority.
When the so-called Watergate babies were seated in the House in January 1975, one of their first orders of business was to try to change the seniority system to knock some of the segregationists out of their committee chairs. As long as they were there, as Eastland was until he retired in 1978, they had to be reckoned with. It was a big deal when Teddy Kennedy replaced Eastland as the Judiciary Chair in 1979. Thereafter, it was a liberal who needed to be appeased.
Biden does a poor job of explaining these things which is going to continue to cause him unnecessary problems. He was civil to Eastland because it would have been harmful to his ambitions and his effectiveness to be anything else. They were never equals. Yet, in fairness, Biden was civil in all his Senate relationships, including with members of the opposing party. It was part of his strategy for maximizing his influence and getting things done, and it informs how he views the Senate today.
It’s difficult for people who didn’t serve in the Senate in the 1970’s to relate to a lot of what Biden is saying and it comes off as tone-deaf in a variety of ways. He isn’t trying to say that the best way to deal with white supremacists is to be on friendly terms with them, although that was in fact the case in the limited context of being a freshman senator during the Ford and Carter administrations. It was also the case for RFK when he needed confirmation as attorney general in 1961.
We don’t live in those worlds anymore and we have to be careful how we talk about that troubled past. But we also shouldn’t distort it in a way that makes it seem like there was no cost to standing up to the power these men wielded at the time.
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This isn’t complicated, the problem is not him using this example of how to work with others you disagree with, it’s the “didn’t call me boy” reference. If he had just left this out, there would be complaints, but nothing like the blowback he’s getting. It’s an unforced error that people were waiting for, and he delivered. You don’t have to be African American to know that was offensive.
I disagree on where the source of contention is and it’s made worse by everyone mischaracterizing the problem.
Biden is citing these as examples of getting things done, even when they didn’t agree or whatever. However, he’s citing that in the context for why we should support him. Yet they were members of his own party so the pressures are different. But even where their votes could be had, it was usually at the expense of black voters (which maybe on balance was better at the time in a two steps forward one step back kind of way). So we have wistful nostalgia in one breath about things working without being explicit for WHY they worked, and why they don’t (can’t) work that way again — both because the segregationists are now housed in the Republican Party and therefore you have nothing to offer them for polarized reasons, and ideologically separate so you have nothing to offer them in terms of substance.
So does he not get this? It’s a pretty important thing to figure out.
While I get the horse trading aspect of this to get things done, which is really Biden’s point, the “two steps forward, one step back” resulting from this was never the case for black voters, at least not in terms of what was/is important to them/us. And this is why many black voters have a problem with Biden and his analogy, because it reminds us the extent our issues and concerns are explained away by those in the democratic party who have no direct knowledge, many of whom don’t care, and yet take the attitude with us, similar to what Trump said, e.g. “what have you got to lose,” but more along the sentiment of “you have no where else to go” so we don’t have to fully accommodate you, even as we demand your support. There’s an obliviousness born of not having to care. Its why Biden can say, as he did about Obama, that he is “well spoken” and not even realize how fucked up that is. Its the very definition of white privilege.
It’s hard to say what the problem is since most people are either too stupid to understand the context or too ill-willed to care.
Even on the point you’re making, he’s saying, “the guy was condescending and disrespectful to me, but not as disrespectful as he was to black people.”
What’s his point?
That even with people like that, you can strike deals and make compromises if you’re willing to treat them with some respect.
In other words, this old racist bastard was just as bad if not worse than anything the Republicans have to offer, and it was possible to work with him.
But if you want to get hung up on him using the word ‘son’ and ‘boy’ to misrepresent his meaning, you can go right ahead and do it.
The real problem is how I described it earlier this week. Eastland worked with Biden because they were members of the same party and Eastland wanted to be in the majority. That’s why Biden’s approach would not work with Tom Cotton.
What I get hung up on is we are going to have to deal with unforced errors like this for months, if not all the way to Nov 2020. Why were his own people telling him not to use this story?
They have. His staffers have repeatedly thrown him under the bus on this saying they’ve told him, and he’s doing it anyway. He even knows it because he accompanies crap like this with “I know my side won’t like it”.
I heard his people HAVE been telling him not to use it. Yes, Biden’s big mouth is a problem, but there are 23 campaigns out there who want to destroy him and don’t care about being fair. And then there is Trump and the Republicans that are terrified of Biden.
I’d be fine with a President Biden because I think he’d be roughly the same as Obama, but he’s far from my first choice. But I’m not going to let people turn him into something he’s not without uttering a word of protest. He’s a good person with some flaws, just like most of us aspire to be.
I agree, he is a good person with flaws. Not my first choice, but I still like him. But this process is not fair, and the stakes are so high.
Let’s not get ahead of reality here. This has been an extremely cordial primary so far, no-one has tried to “destroy” Biden.
I’m tired of having to appease these people. Civility is a two-way street. Instead of us saying we need to get along with the segregationists, how about we create a dynamic where the segregationists need to get along with us?
That’s fine, but again, he wasn’t saying we need to get along with segregationists. That’s aggressively missing his point.
I don’t even care what his point is. My point is that we, none of us, need to be trying to achieve civility on the Republican’s terms.
Right. I mean, I basically wrote that in the last piece on this subject. The dynamics are different now, and we don’t have to tolerate a bunch of grouchy racists just to get a committee assignment. We shouldn’t even expect to have our civility lead anywhere because now the bastards aren’t even in our party. Biden’s overall point is not a good one even on the terms that he intended to make it. But he did not try to say that being civil to racists is the way to go. That’s something that John Lewis came close to saying today, but it’s not what Biden said.
This is a much better explanation than I’ve seen from any of Biden’s defenders, who mostly stick to “Stop hating on Joe!” To repeat the most important parts:
We don’t live in those worlds anymore, but Joe Biden does. That’s why I think he’d be the absolute worst option for Democrats now, he really doesn’t get that things have changed A LOT.
i had intended that to be formatted to show what was quote and what was my text. i guess that doesn’t work.
Tulsi Gabbard is the worst choice, but I basically agree with your points.
I’m to the point where I find Joe embarrassing. I might just toss my ‘Ready for Joe’ sign.
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Your main original point still stands. Biden’s screw up was to even hint that working across the aisle in his old Senate days would be effecive. Today it just isn’t.
At the same time, given that most people don’t follow politics or history as well as you and others your blog, they are less stupid than they are just too busy, distracted, overwhelmed etc. to care about context. Biden saying what he said was foolish simply because most people are not so well-informed and will see it as compromising with racists. It’s a reality that is hard to overcome and he should be smart enough to see that. It says something about him that he might feel so entitled to be president that he doesn’t think this kind of thing out more.
Here’s an actually good article on this issue in the New York Times:
It’s really hard to take your defenses of Biden seriously when you are simultaneously so hostile to legitimate criticisms of him. This dispute has nothing to do with the stupidity of “most people” or ill-will on the part of those who are disgusted by his comments.
It is not the job of voters to understand the context of 1970’s Democratic party politics, or to puzzle out what Joe “really means” rather than to take his words at face value. It is Joe’s responsibility to understand the context of the political landscape in 2019. That includes a president and a Republican party that are actively hostile and threaten the livelihoods of millions of Americans. Trump has repeatedly for physical violence at his rallies, and encouraged neo-Nazis and Klansmen to march in the streets. He fired Kiersten Nielsen because forcibly separating children and throwing them in cages wasn’t “aggressive enough” for him. His Justice Department is prosecuting people for giving out water, rather that letting people die in the desert. He is supported whole heartedly by a Republican party and conservative commentary that would have been at home in the Jim Crow South.
His words undermine the entire motivation of the modern Resistance movement, which delivered the House to the Democrats in 2018, and undercuts the campaigns of every other Democrat running against a Republican incumbent in 2020. After all, if Joe could put aside his differences with Southern segregationists, why shouldn’t Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer put aside their differences with President Trump and Mitch McConnell? Why should we bother to vote for Joe and also work for a majority in the Senate?
Many of us have no interest in finding common ground with the racists marching through the streets. That he doesn’t understand that his words are going to be interpreted in context of this election simply highlights what a poor fit he is for these times.
Long-term, we need to get as many young people voting as possible, because half-measures aren’t going to be enough.
Why didn’t Biden say something like, “I’m willing to work with people who are willing to work with me, take a look at my Senate record. But, the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate have no desire to work with the other half of the country, and we need to beat them in 2020 so that we can get the things we need to do, done”.
That, in a nutshell, is what NEEDS to be said. But Biden, sufferer of perpetual foot-in-mouth disease, had to say that ultimately, he could get along with Segregationists, so vote for him.
That is NOT what he should have said, regardless of why he did what he did 50 YEARS AGO.
Biden is an anachronism, and I believe that he is not the best candidate, won’t necessarily win (or win with the most coattails), and I think he keeps saying things that no one but (a few) center-left Democrats want to hear.
So, out of curiosity, I just visited Joe Biden’s official website.
The very first item in his “Vision” page (https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/) left me wondering.
“America is an idea.
An idea that goes back to our founding principle that all men are created equal.”
That one word just jumped of the page when I saw it. Really?
I know that our founders used that specific noun in the Declaration of Independence, and they meant it. They did not believe that women or people of color were in any way created equal to white men.
How hard would it have been to write “An idea that goes back to our founding principle that all people are created equal.”
Words. Have. Meaning.
I am pretty confident that Biden did not write everything (anything?) on his website, but somebody in that organization needs to bring their brain to work with them.