Last month, Representative Drake appealed to her audience's fundamental intellectual indolence proclaiming, "America does not lose wars." She remains as clueless as our President. In my lifetime, we're 1-2-1 and three or more remain on the precipice of failure. The War on Poverty may be our saddest loss.
LBJ failed to recognize that you can't fight and win two wars against substantial competitors simultaneously. FDR knew better, thus the Europe First strategy. Unfortunately, George W. Bush shares his fellow Texan's lack of strategic acumen. This explains, in part, his failure to get bin Laden or to have any success against two thirds of the "Axis of Evil." We can only hold hope that Obama will come to terms with what is our contemporary and even more significant reality now that American strength has been drained in a way unimaginable eight years ago. That very reality could sap the life from this promising Presidency. How he leads will mean the difference between a legacy similar to that of Jimmy Carter and a legacy of unparalleled accomplishment. But I digress.
Friday I listened to Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) deliver the keynote address at a Brookings Institute forum. On that I will report over the next few days; not possible to do it justice immediately. But as that discussion progressed, two things became more clear. First, in some perverted process, the War on Poverty was juxtaposed into a War on the Impoverished and imprisonment became a key facet of the fight. Next, Jim Webb, as Steve Jarding sensed before most, may be one of those men who appears once in a century to help steady the rudder of our nation's progress. Always recall Webb's invoking of Andrew Jackson's measurement of the health of a society being taken at its lower end.
I remember reading a Wall Street Journal story one morning during the Nixon administration about a social experiment being conducted in South Carolina. It involved the concept of a minimum income. Basically, if you worked, you would receive compensation from your employer, supplemented as necessary by the government to ensure your income topped the poverty level. That was a striking concept at that time. It was much more "Marxist" than anything about which Senator Obama has been vilified. The concept was eventually crafted and implemented and is as unrecognizable by the majority of taxpayers as it is unsuccessful.
A teachable moment during my sit down with Senator Fred Harris this past June affects my lens. As we discussed the War on Poverty and its legacy, the sad realization occurred that despite the fact the strategy was never given the time necessary to bear fruit, the anecdotal evidence of its failures was used to turn it on its head. Somehow, we moved to more corrupting and less obvious forms of welfare to quiet any potential "malcontents." Even more perverse, we found a reliable way to quiet the potential "insurgents" by taking them off the streets: use the weaknesses manifest in an impoverished condition to rationalize imprisonment. For those vested in this strategy, there must never occur again another "Rebellion of 1967."
Here's a problem. We tend to deal with our issues in the context of the moment. As one of my less gifted military professors once extolled, "There's a whole lot of history out there." The photograph which accompanies this post shows how the moment marks the moment. That child, raised in poverty, if born in this century, would stand a better than 66% chance of spending time in prison; and an even greater chance of going to jail. Yet in 1967 there you see him standing beside a soldier. This is a somehow reassuring picture. I am not certain it would be the scene contemporarily.
Here's another problem. We are in an historic economic downturn with our prisons as full as they have ever been and our finances in the worst condition in our history. The 1970's were a period of stagnation and that stagnation was manifest in a rising crime rate. Imagine the burden on the law enforcement, judicial, and correctional infrastructure we are about to experience. Yet, we are sleepwalking into the reinstitution of debtor's prisons. Or maybe we are already there, but without an effective process to break the cycle of economic recidivism.
Those who remember the law and order candidates of the sixties and seventies can expect a d+¬j+á vu experience in the Attorney General McDonnell gubernatorial candidacy here in 2009 Virginia. The usual appeal to the fears rather than the hopes and aspirations of the Virginians will mark the campaign. McDonnell already is testing the water with his highlighting of gangs. It is an effective appeal to those indolent intellects to which Thelma Drake and her ilk appeal. Unfortunately, I did not recognize anyone from the Deeds, Moran, or McAulliffe camps networking at "The Hamilton Project" presentation, so one cannot be certain that an effective counter to this McDonnell tactic is being considered or will be in place after the primary. Virginia Democrats need a message and a standard bearer who can ensure that we take the fight to the real enemy: inequity. We must protest the War on the Impoverished.
Cross posted at VBDems.org - Blogging our way to Democratic wins in Virginia Beach!
Cross posted at Blue Commonwealth