Random Thoughts at the All-Star Break

The extended heat wave of early July has finally subsided in eastern Pennsylvania, at least for a brief moment, so I exhale a sigh of relief, comforted by the thought that for three days the baseball season begins a short hiatus to accommodate the annual All-Star game. Although the season is already several games into the second half, the All-Star Break is baseball’s unofficial halfway point. The Cardinals enter the break in second place in the National League’s Central Division, only one game behind the surprisingly strong Cincinnati Reds. The dreams of a glorious season that enraptured Cardinal Nation on Opening Day are tempered by the long grinding struggle that is, in reality, the 162-game baseball season. Cardinals’ fans remain cautiously optimistic, hoping for a second half surge that will end in ninth-inning walk-off celebrations, home plate mob scenes and ticket-tape parades. But nagging injuries – Ludwick’s calf, Freese’s ankle, Rasmus’s hamstring, Penny’s lateral quad muscle, and Lohse’s forearm, among others – transform our imagined glory into anxiety-ridden, inning-by-inning, nail biting misery. Such is the life of a baseball fan.

It is during these brief moments of sanity, in the quiet solitude of an off day, when I understand why those closest to me may mistakenly believe that my life during baseball season falls into an abyss of warped priorities. Waking up early each day, I catch the train into town and work in the office, often not returning until 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. Arriving home at the edge of dusk, I feed my daughter’s guinea pig, make dinner, and watch that night’s Cardinals’ game, which monopolizes my time until after eleven, sometimes approaching midnight. This of course adds severely to my cumulative sleep deprivations, which are particularly magnified when the Cardinals play on the West Coast. When I explain that “my team” needs me, that I am certain Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan rely on my telepathic instructions to Schumaker and Pujols to lay off breaking balls in the dirt; to Holliday and Rasmus to hit the cut-off man on throws from the outfield; and to Suppan and Hawksworth to keep the ball down, I am met with the cynicism of rolling eyes and shakes of the head. “Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post has said. “You can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick.”

Adding to my “managerial” obligations are my many parental responsibilities – teaching Hannah to drive (which makes a hair curling, extra-inning drama seem like a relaxing weekend in Stone Harbor) and offering Dad-like advice to two skeptical, independent-minded teenage daughters neither of whom are much impressed with the demands of my unremunerated (and officially unacknowledged) internship with the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Club. In my remaining spare time, when not cutting the grass or running errands, I agonize over the final touches of “Ehlers on Everything” and respond to the right-wing rants of my critic-in-chief and ideological nemesis, the infamous “Rich R.”, who tenders unsavory disputations on every word, phrase, or grammatical deviation that hints of liberalism.

So as I ruminate at the All-Star Break, confronted with three nights and no Cardinals games, I have a moment to reflect. Here, then, in no particular order, are some random musings and thoughts on the state of the world as seen through the eyes of a sleep-deprived and unpaid writer, political philosopher, amateur theologian, and baseball manager:

On Politics:

· Has America always been a house divided? As splintered and rancorous as America at times appears to be, is it really any worse than the state of affairs during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when as a nation we were so intensely divided over the Vietnam War and civil rights that students were gunned down by the National Guard and our nation’s cities were the scenes of repeated rioting? It was a time when entire generations spoke past each other and our youth experimented to excess with newfound sexual freedom and drug use, when an anything-goes culture clashed with the staid conformity and repressed instincts of the fifties. By comparison, today’s blue state - red state divisions do not look that bad. Yes, we have Tea Party protests and disruptive town hall meetings, but there is an element of healthy debate in some of this. Compared to the early seventies, when the Weather Underground was blowing up public buildings and a segment of our youth was turning on and dropping out, there are some aspects of today’s political culture that, however screwed up, are an improvement upon forty years ago. A little less interesting, mind you, but distinctly healthier.

· Has anyone figured out what the Russian spy scandal was actually about? From what I can tell, the closest thing to a state secret revealed was the new menu offering from Wendy’s.

· Does Nicholas Kristof have a point? The liberal New York Times columnist has been on a pro-Palestinian kick lately; a thoughtful one, offered with his typical humanitarian flair, but in this instance I worry he has lost balance and, as is often the case with perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a sense of recent history. I agree that the Israelis mishandled the Turkish flotilla raid that led to nine deaths, and they were right to ease the blockade of goods being imported into the Gaza strip, but the bad guys remain the leaders and members of Hamas. Until its leaders speak and act differently – acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and stop lobbing unprovoked missiles into the suburbs of Tel Aviv – I cannot generate much sympathy for them. It is unfortunate that the more reliable defender these days of the only democracy and glimmer of hope in the Middle East is not the liberal establishment but, rather, conservatives and evangelical Christians.

· Where is the outrage? Oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates, killing fish and wildlife and upsetting ecosystems, disrupting the lives and destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of residents on the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. If the Deepwater Horizon disaster does not cause us to hesitate with further offshore drilling ventures, reconsider our energy policies, and recommit to green energy solutions, we are destined for a future of continued dependence on foreign oil, irreversible climate change, and economic troubles. As Gretel Ehrlich, writing for Sojourners, recently said: “We’ve forgotten that when we step down on the earth we are walking on a living membrane. Now we are wounded people recklessly pimping a wounded planet. We’ve turned away from a sacred view of the world, a deep openness in which we accept that all living things have value. We’ve drilled recklessly under the ocean floor for economic gain, and in the process exchanged a sense of well-being, beauty, hope, and wonder for the myopia of profit.”

· Is Rush Limbaugh serious, merely delusional, or a complete fraud? Limbaugh has repeatedly portrayed President Obama as an “angry black man” who is intentionally tanking the American economy in order to obtain “economic reparations” for minorities. Not only does this make no sense, it is so disingenuous that I find it impossible that the fat windbag actually believes most of the verbal trash he spews on the airwaves.

· Should we be worried? Chris Matthews warned last week that the Democrats should take Sarah Palin seriously, that she could actually make a credible run for the White House in 2012. Her unfavorable ratings still seem too high, in my opinion, for her to be a serious threat, and I do not believe she can withstand the intense media scrutiny that presidential elections impose. But Matthews knows a thing or two about American politics, so if he says she could win, it is a matter of concern for sane, rational Americans.

On Law:

· What’s in a lawsuit? The Department of Justice was correct to enjoin Arizona from enforcing its new immigration law. The doctrine of federal preemption renders the state law unconstitutional. This is a non-political, legally correct position that even the Bush administration would have had no choice but to assert as well. Federal immigration policy has national and foreign policy implications, it affects our relations with sovereign nations, international aid groups, and it requires substantial coordination of federal law enforcement resources. We cannot realistically have 50 different immigration policies scattered among the states, particularly when the federal government (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is required to implement the deportations and detentions that would result from laws like that in Arizona. That said, it is long past time for Congress and the President to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

On Life:

· Is the United States in the midst of a tattoo epidemic? Or is it only Philadelphia? The many and varied forms of displayed body art that I observe on my walks through center city remind me of building graffiti and subway art, except that the tattoos are less aesthetically pleasing.

· Why did I join the private sector? A recent survey of the federal workforce showed that 8 in 10 federal employees like the work that they do, and more than 90% think that what they do is important. This is how I felt for the nearly 20 years I worked in government, when I possessed a heightened sense of self-worth and the feeling that what I did mattered, that I was contributing, if only in a small way, to an effective criminal justice system and a functioning Constitution. Oh, yeah, the money.

On the Cult of Celebrity:

· Why should we care about the fate of Lindsay Lohan? Don’t misunderstand, I feel sorry for her in the way I feel sorry for any anorexic, drugged out, over-partied, spoiled brat with a bad father, but do we really need to devote that much air and print time to such a trivial story? Is she not just one more of the hundreds of examples, from Judy Garland to Gary Coleman, of child stars being consumed, exploited, chopped up and discarded by a narcissistic Hollywood culture of breast implants, glorified drug use, money and superficial glitz?

· Speaking of role models, is Cleveland really such a bad place to live? I am not sure whose idea it was for LeBron James to waste sixty minutes of national television time announcing that he has chosen “South Beach” (not Miami mind you) in which to spend the next several years of his NBA career, but he could have more easily and tactfully humiliated the fans of Cleveland with a press release.

I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. --Crash Davis in “Bull Durham”

As with changes to baseball’s grand traditions, social and political progress often advances gradually and in small increments. Just as with the elimination of artificial surfaces in most major league ballparks, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will eventually be repealed and John Edwards’ ego will eventually deflate. So, as you continue on your life’s journey, remember always the immortal words of former Yankees manager Bob Lemon, “The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen.”

American Demagogues and the Decline of Civility

America prides itself as a beacon of democracy, a model of hope and freedom for the rest of the world. We value freedom of speech and the First Amendment, citizen participation, and the right to vote. Although our system of governance is not perfect -- we are not, and have never been, above partisan bickering -- there is a history of bipartisanship in American politics that has achieved many good things. Democrats and Republicans together enacted environmental protections in the early 1970's, tax reform in the 1980's, and deficit reduction in the 1990's. Each of these things required mutual respect and cooperation among ideological opposites. It can be done.

I started following politics closely when I was nine years old, in 1968, one of the most volatile years in modern American history. It was 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; the Vietnam War and anti-war protests were at their peak in a nation divided; and race riots erupted in our cities. Since then, our political discourse has at times been nasty, mean-spirited, vindictive, and petty. I supported Barack Obama in 2008 in part because he wanted to change all of that. In distinguishing himself from his Democratic rivals, candidate Obama said that it was time to free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past: "I don't want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990's. I don't want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America." In his inaugural address, the newly elected President renewed his call for unity:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

Many commentators thought Obama's hopeful idealism naive. Paul Krugman of the New York Times predicted prior to the election that whichever Democrat made it to the White House would be forced to confront "an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can't bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false." As I observe the current health care debate, I am afraid that Krugman may already have been proven correct.

Last week, Sarah Palin, darling of the conservatives, declared on her Facebook page:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society" whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Is it any wonder that people are showing up at town hall meetings ready to rumble? If you think that the government is ready to deny your sick child medical care, or pull the plug on Grandma, you might be upset as well. But despite her down home Alaskan charm, Palin has always pitted her view of America against those she perceives as outside of the mainstream, the "other" Americans who do not fit the Ozzie and Harriet myth of middle America. During the presidential campaign, Palin falsely portrayed then-Senator Obama as a terrorist sympathizer because he served on the Board of a well respected Chicago educational reform organization with Bill Ayers, a college professor who was convicted of involvement in anti-Vietnam War bombings when Obama was a young child. That Obama, who has always condemned violent protests, was in elementary school when Ayers committed his criminal acts, did not matter to Palin, who has repeatedly demonstrated little knowledge of, or concern with, the facts. It should surprise no one, therefore, that her "death panel" statement was based on pure fantasy, entirely untrue, as not one legislative proposal has called for the creation of anything even resembling a governmental body that would eliminate care for the critically ill as a cost cutting measure (which is presumably what a "death panel" would be).

The United States has always had a lunatic fringe of self-deluded, right-wing wackos -- Jerry Falwell accusing President Bill Clinton of murder and drug smuggling; the Posse Comitatus and similar militia groups spewing hatred and plotting the overthrow of the government -- but Palin should know better. Unlike Falwell and the Posse Comitatus, Palin actually has the potential to be taken seriously. She is attractive and, at times, well-spoken. As a former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, and as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, she has a duty to speak responsibly and to avoid emotional appeals to fear and prejudice solely for her own political gain.

It is one thing for Rush Limbaugh, a radio talk windbag, to spew hatred and lies. It is quite another for someone who desires to someday lead this country. It is the difference between Joe McCarthy and Father Coughlin. While both men are disgraced demagogues of America's past, one was more dangerous than the other. McCarthy held a position of authority. When he abused his powers, he harmed many innocent people. Coughlin was a crackpot with a radio station; while he influenced the views and affected the prejudices of a large number of Americans, he had no real power. Rush Limbaugh, the modern day Father Coughlin, stirs up passions, but when he compares the President's efforts at reforming a broken health care system to Hitler's Germany, he simply exposes himself as a foolish man. And while he, Glenn Beck, and others are partly to blame for the ridiculously misinformed folks who have been showing up, yelling and screaming, at the health care forums around the country, they are just voices on the radio -- they cannot pass any laws, issue subpoenas, or hold people in contempt.

It is not that these modern day demagogues are unintelligent people; they know that neither President Obama nor anyone else in the health care debate has proposed denying medical care to terminally-ill patients, children with Down's Syndrome, or the elderly. But like the witch hunters of the McCarthy era, who saw a Commie on every school board and opposed all social and political progress in the United States, the Limbaugh/Palin faction of American politics plays to fear, ignorance, and the boogie man. It has no interest in ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable health care, if it means that President Obama will get some of the praise.

To his credit, President Obama has continued to reach out to all factions. Part of his greatness as a leader is his willingness, indeed desire, to engage his opponents in a civil and respectful manner. When he gave the commencement address at Notre Dame University in May, the President asked, "As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" Obama knows, and has the courage to insist, that we as a country will not get to where we need to be on issues surrounding health care, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, race relations, and foreign conflicts, until we cease demonizing the opposition. At Notre Dame, he said:

The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem-cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved.

Perhaps applying lessons learned as a community organizer, the President takes a respectful, conciliatory approach to policy disputes. He believes in America as a shining city on a hill, and recognizes that, in a democracy, true reform will only be advanced by demonstrating respect for one's opponents and inviting them to a conversation about what needs to be done to solve the problems at hand. He knows that, if people are acting in good faith, even those philosophically opposed, a reasonable solution can be found in most instances.

Sarah Palin has a choice. She can act responsibly and join Americans of goodwill in finding a workable solution to our troubled health care system, or she can continue to engage in deceit and misinformation. As the Reverend John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame University, said when introducing President Obama at the May commencement, "Easing the hateful divisions between human beings is the supreme challenge" of our time. "If we can solve this problem, we have a chance to come together and solve all the others."