Where will the United States be today without president Abraham Lincoln, fighting tooth and soul to end the wretched American civil war, and still keep the confederate, secessionist south in the union? How would modern democracy fare without Mr Lincoln's ringing words from the Gettysburg Address of 1863: "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? That triumph was a solid Republican victory against the rebellious southern slave states.
A few other milestone victories have been scored since then in America. But this time, they were steered by the Democrats. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson's landmark 14-points for a League of Nations plan at the Versailles meeting (after World War I) heralded the birth of the United Nations as we know it today.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the monumental social security bill in the aftermath of the Great Depression.
In the mid 1960's, president Lyndon B. Johnson achieved landslide legislative achievements in the epic Civil Rights Act (1964), and Voting Rights Act (1965) following race agitations led principally by the martyred Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Mr Johnson's leadership propelled into law new standards for civil rights, and social compassion for the poor through Medicare program for the aged.
Only a few years back, had Mrs Hilary Clinton succeeded in pushing through the reforms for a national health care plan for all Americans, the Democratic party will have claimed yet another (a fourth!) consecutive feat in recent American history.
The Republican gurus saw the feat coming, and blocked it like a defensive football game. Through a burly resolve, they pounded the health plan with every means necessary including the provoking of latent conservative fears of big government.
A conservative column headlined "The Clintons' Lethal Paternalism" said: "American values are one reason costs are high (and) American behavior - violence, diet, unsafe sex, drug abuse, teenage illegitimacy (creates) health costs that cannot be blamed on inefficiencies in the system". It assailed: "The Clintons' (health care) plan presents the face of paternalistic liberalism, of government that is bullying because it is arrogant, and arrogant because it does not know what it does not know. It is unlovely and, literally, lethal".
Politics is dodgy. One party's sparkling success is another's startling demise. No star in the heavens diffused the Republican resolve not to be outshone and outdone this time around. The resistance came in droves, and its effect could merit a poignant (but classic) How-not-to-support-a-good-idea award. Mrs Clinton's health plan was demolished, limb by limb, till all its potential, near possibilities, and flaws thawed.
When it is said that partisan democracy is not perfect, this incongruity could be the hideous nail in that coffin. The caginess or dismal lack of objectivity misses the golden rule that thinkers should think of the subject at hand regardless of the political contexts.
History is for the long haul. It is neither for the shortsighted nor the faint hearted. Seeds for momentous achievements always had their bitterest antagonists. Antipathies come a dime a dozen. But true leaders lead with or without consensus, with or without agreeable public opinion, but with selfless vision and gumption. Without the latter two qualities, a nation and its people floundered. True leadership is too rare. While watching the sky for portents, the stargazers had better not hold their breath. Many are called, but the real thing comes once in a blue moon. Those professing to have what it takes soon morph the rhetoric into stale defences or visible confessions.
But there were leaders! In the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris, Mr Woodrow Wilson's seminal League of Nation's plan (to prevent wars through international teamwork) was taunted by such worldly figures as British prime minister David Lloyd George, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, and the incensed Georges Clemenceau of France who mocked: God's commandments are ten; Wilson's are fourteen. Named "the Tiger" by his people, Mr Clemenceau was driven by what Mr Leon Edel, the historian, called "the primitive passions that called for revenge and punishment rather than reconstruction - a disaster that could, as it ultimately did, spawn a Hitler".
Mr Franklin Roosevelt's conservative opponents called him a cripple. They attacked: "social security (is) a violation of the traditional American values of thrift, initiative, and self-help". They exclaimed: "every American would have to submit to the indignity of wearing a dogtag bearing his social security number". They charged: "social security was a case of robbing a thrifty Peter to pay an improvident Paul". His critics were peeved that Roosevelt was "grafting a welfare state upon a capitalist foundation". Today, how would most elderly Americans fare without the monthly social security checks? Call that the Roosevelt vision!
(In his day, Mr Winston Churchill too was cast into the wilderness like a wounded lion, for stressing his gut suspicion of Hitler's grand plan to conquer all Europe. Wasn't he ostracized by the civilized society for his nerve? Nestled in the appeasing arms of prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and charmed by the choral lullabies of the coterie of Lords and Sirs, Great Britain slept like a lovely infant oblivious to a looming danger.)
With Mr Lyndon Johnson, his own south from the cradle was up against him. He was reported to have responded in the 1966 campaign: When you start feeling sorry for yourself that no one loves you, just ask yourself who you would trade places with! Before him, the south had so intimidated president John F. Kennedy that this American idol misplaced his compassion for the disenfranchised and thereby lost the golden opportunity of putting his famous name to the civil rights bills for "equal protection of the laws".
With Mrs Clinton, even with her national health care plans in tatters, she had succeeded in nurturing a live maternal concern inside the fabric of the American mind. Being now safely lodged there, it will in due course develop its earnestness. According to the biographer, Mr Roger Morris, she was sensitized way back in the 1990's where "the working poor and middle class accounted for most of the thirty-seven million Americans without health insurance and sixty million more with inadequate coverage, all facing ruin in a major illness".
A nation rich in conquests can confront its health care crises, and win that too. The woman's vision thrives as that enduring reference point. Once started, a good thing must be finished. And after war fatigues in America, who is better placed for 2008?
Mrs Clinton possessed abiding strengths: Her formidable role secured the two-term presidency for her husband in 1992 and 1996. Surviving eight years in the ring and on the ropes as First Lady, she clinched her own victory as a New York senator. For a permanent stake in the American sun, however, an affordable universal health care is the one to situate her for both the presidency and posterity.
The American nation itself stands to gain with her for two reasons: One, a universal health care served the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time. All Americans including both the working poor and middle class deserve this. Two, for posterity - besides a health plan success possibly placing her on the level with better presidents - she would have paved the way for diligent women to showcase the best of the better half of America.
Alas, brawny America is a man's, man's world. No woman has dared take the highest seat in the land. In that, Mrs Clinton's female role models are zero. Moreover women voters tend to be their own worst enemies; they sight another woman, and hesitate. With eyebrows raised, they pause and behold their own limitations there.
But the fickle may be persuaded to take a fresh, bold look at the iconic figures: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Ida Wells. Poor but undaunted, these freedom icons took on the slavery establishment and its abolition when it was most suicidal to do so. With mind, heart and soul, some served as guides and freed victims through the so-called Underground Railroad from the perilous south to the hypocritical north, and Canada.
Lately, the symbolic Rosa Parks inspired the mass non-violent protest that ended segregation through the 1964 Civil Rights Act. With her 92-year body laid in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda amid patriotic tears and half-masts (31 October 2005), she is the first woman ever so haloed by America.
Defying Klansmen, lynchings and other deadly sports stacked sky high, these infallible women made the difference. They bequeathed to America the mythological examples that gild the true grit American. These are the serendipitous signs on the tidal waves whose crests Senator Hilary Clinton must tap, for victory. It is historically appropriate that the year 2008 resonates with her lead. |
