Decline and Fall

"Have you no sense of decency?" We are experiencing a dangerous trend, the degradation of our politics.

Guest Post author Larry DiCara is a college classmate and a lifelong political observer, student and practitioner. He is among Boston's most recognized civic leaders, having helped shaped the extraordinary change that has moved Boston from a gritty, poor, rustbelt city, one losing population and in obvious decline, into a prosperous, modern hub of education, medicine, and technology. He is often called on for observations and commentary by Boston media.

Guest Post, by Lawrence DiCara

DiCara

I began working on this article earlier this year, long before our national crisis.  It has subsequently been confirmed that members of the United States Senate who attended a confidential briefing on COVID-19 in February, at a time when the President assured all of us that the problem was limited to China, proceeded to sell stocks in airlines and hotels and, in one case, purchase stock in a company that provides remote telephone connectivity. It also predates a report that the President, his family and the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, have had a financial interest in Sanofi – the company which produces hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug which the President has recommended as a treatment for Covid-19! Lastly, it predates a delay in the sending of the $1,200 relief checks so that the name “Donald Trump” could be printed on the check, as if he is dipping into his own pocket! 

This lack of decency – each a front-page story unto itself - highlights the issue of which I am speaking.

“Have you no sense of decency?” Those words, which were uttered during the Army McCarthy hearings on June 9, 1954, have been indelibly etched in American history.  Public figures in America have most always had a sense of decency, which is, I expect, why this question was posed to Senator Joe McCarthy.

For over 200 years, all of us learned that George Washington was “The father of his country.” Few realize, however, as reported by Richard Brookhiser in The Atlantic, that George Washington wrote, in his own hand, “Rules of Civility” – an 18^th Century Miss Manners for those in positions of leadership in the new nation. I question whether George Washington would agree that those same rules are being followed in the 21^st Century. Recently, I read an extensive biography of John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams; they were both stubborn sons of Massachusetts, who shared a sense of the importance of decency.  

DiCara's long history in Boston politics

Forgive me if I sound like a grumpy veteran of 20^th Century political battles, but the degradation of our politics and the degradation of the language used in the public arena, starting with the nation’s Chief Magistrate, is appalling. His recent performance at the National Prayer Breakfast bordered on blasphemy. Bush 43 would have never awarded the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, because of the lowliness of his language and the racism of his rhetoric.   He awarded the medal to Dr. Anthony Fauci!

Growing up, most of us learned in school and at church [that old blue Baltimore catechism, in my case] about the differences between right and wrong. We were taught to respect authority, to be proud of our heritage, to not be boastful, to tell the truth, etc.

We were also taught to respect people, e.g., to offer a seat on the bus to someone who was elderly or physically challenged. Dad taught me to take off my hat in the elevator when a lady was present! What I was taught may not have been that different from the messages passed along from John Adams to his son. We were taught to be “good boys” – those who do their jobs, pay their bills, follow protocol, live by the book. Yet, today Col. Alexander Vindman, who did his job, is vilified, and his patriotism is questioned because of his heritage, yet “bad boys” - those who skimmed and trimmed, like Manafort, Flynn and Stone - are spoken of as victims. 

Both presidents named Adams – father and son – were ridiculed as “gentlemen of the old school.” Would that not be better for our nation than what we endure today? Would anyone describe Epstein and Weinstein – poster children of this current degradation – as gentlemen? 

Americans have had many heroes.  Most Americans would agree that the Presidents depicted on Mt. Rushmore fit that category. Our parents’ generation would listen to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio (and, alas, also to Fr. Coughlin and Charles A. Lindbergh). My generation came to know our leaders via television. Up until the last few years, most all of our leaders were thought of as being civil and decent people. Has that changed?

Recent pardons granted to high profile, wealthy white-collar criminals by the President were the kind of aristocratic (as opposed to Democratic) activities about which the founders of our nation were concerned. After all, they had declared their independence from a monarchist system in which certain people lorded over others as a result of who their grandfathers or great grandfathers might have been. Certainly, Washington and Adams would be appalled, given that a meritocratic system would suggest that a punishment should fit the crime, and that all should be treated as equals. As John Adams wrote: “Facts are stubborn things.” 

These recent trends may also reflect other dramatic changes in what Americans think.  Professor Pippa Norris of the Kennedy School has concluded that Americans are much less democratically inclined than may have been the case two centuries ago.  Even a decade ago, 44% of Americans without college degrees approved of having a strong leader who in the words of the referenced study “doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections.” That is rather scary to me, especially as we endure an existential national crisis.  Perhaps that is why American politics has become a cross between reality television and The Gong Show. Witness this year’s debates and most any presidential appearance.

Anyone who follows America politics knows that this downward spiral is not limited to one team or the other.  The same negativity that one has seen when Donald Trump has hopped aboard Air Force One, at public expense, to urge on the troops in some stadium is not unlike a Bernie Sanders speech to his followers in a similar setting. It is unnerving and disconcerting.

In 1980, a German historian, Alexander Demandt, compiled 210 theories as to the causes for the fall of Rome. Perhaps, some day, another historian might suggest many reasons for our nation’s downward spiral. Mine – the degradation of our politics - is but one.