Hello Middleshelfers, sorry for the change in scheduled posting

As we have been pointing out, the book selections for July were intended to look back at our nation’s founding in an effort to help us better understand our history.  Understanding where we came from in terms of our country’s past struggles is one element that might help us achieve common ground.  Knowing the trials and tribulations of where we have been could help guide us through to where we want to be.

In searching for books to highlight, we found many that were written about the well-known founders like Washington and Jefferson and last week we recommended reading about the often forgotten founder John Jay.  It would have been easy to recommend something about Alexander Hamilton as the hot pick, and choosing David McCullough’s 1776 or epic biography of John Adams would have been easy selections (which we do recommend people read).

However, after much thought, we decided that some of the necessary lessons on how to achieve common ground could be found in a book about a later president who while not present at the creation, had a profound impact on our nation that was every bit as crucial as the Founders.  This week’s book dramatically explores how a president not only overcame his rivals but managed to bring them together to help him forge a nation.  His determination to find common ground on issues in a way that his rivals could not only live with but come to agree with him on is a story worth understanding.

Doris Kearns Goodwin has been hailed as one of the most acclaimed historians writing about the presidency during the last 50 years.  Though her career has not been without some controversy over primary sources, she has spent her career focusing on those presidents that she felt had made seismic shifts in the country’s history.

Her best-known work is Team of Rivals: The Political Genus of Abraham Lincoln.  What makes this book a model for common ground is the story she tells of how President Lincoln managed to bring the three  men who had run against him in 1860 into his cabinet ( Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward) and obtained not just their loyalty but a reconciliation of their differences as he moved toward abolition.

Lincoln’s position on why he recruited his rivals was:

“We need the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet. We needed to hold our own people together. I had looked the party over and concluded that these were the very strongest men. Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services.”

 

While Seward not only became an ally but a trusted friend, Chase sought to undermine Lincoln.  Nevertheless Lincoln kept him in the cabinet because he respected his knowledge of finance. His willingness to overlook Chase’s animosity even resulted in him appointing Chase as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court since he felt that he was the one best able to carry forth the newly adopted Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.

While the book focuses primarily on the three political rivals Lincoln beat in 1860, there are also other rivals that are featured, especially Democrat Edwin Stanton.  Stanton was a brilliant attorney who had regarded Lincoln as a “country bumpkin.”  However, when Lincoln decided to change his Secretary of War, he tapped Stanton for the job despite Stanton’s low opinion of him.  Like Seward, Stanton became a Lincoln loyalist.  It was Stanton who said upon Lincoln’s assassination, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

So what was Lincoln’s secret to bringing common ground to a disparate group of one time rivals?  According to one review:

“Part of the answer lay in Lincoln’s steadfastness of purpose, which inspired subordinates to overcome their petty rivalries. Part of it lay in his superb sense of timing and his sensitivity to the pulse of public opinion as he moved to bring along a divided people to the support of “a new birth of freedom.” And part of it lay in Lincoln’s ability to rise above personal slights, his talent for getting along with men of clashing ideologies and personalities who could not get along with each other.”

Kearns’ book helps us to understand that among the many talents that Lincoln possessed was the unique ability not just to make friends of enemies but to overlook the animus in order to mine the talents of those who had opposed him throughout his presidency.

It’s Thursday again CGC MiddleShelfers and we hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

In last week’s book entry, we took a look back at how previous generations celebrated the Fourth of July.  We thought that we would stay with the patriotic theme albeit through a historical lens for the month.  Much is made of and written about the Founding Fathers and we will spotlight them next week.  However, we decided because of the many issues currently being hotly debated in our nation impact women in particular. It seems germane that as the nation examines and continues to discuss the origins of the guiding documents and institutions as they relate to the rights of women, we look back at the roles and extraordinary contributions that women played in creating our country.

Additionally, it is particularly relevant since:

“according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, a total of 455 women have filed as candidates for Congress, easily topping the old record of 298 in 2012. Fifty-one women have entered Senate races, compared to 40 who set the previous standard in 2016. Gubernatorial candidates are even more striking: 60 this year, far exceeding the 34 women who ran in 1994. This influx of women in public roles is matched by a rising tide of females behind the scenes who are running campaigns themselves, not just serving male bosses”

 

Cokie Roberts, an award-winning journalist, and author has written two books about women who influenced the shaping of our country.    In Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, Roberts introduces the reader not just to the more prominent women most have heard of such as Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, and Mollie Pitcher, but she includes the stories of some lesser-known women who had a substantial and transformative impact of the men who framed our nation’s principles.

Her companion volume, Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation, continues to highlight these and other women such as Rebecca Gratz, Louise Livingston and Sacagawea, using private journals, correspondence and some previously unpublished sources to explore their accomplishments.

If you also happen to have an elementary school-aged child you read to or buy books for, Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Women and Girls of the American Revolution by Laurie Halse Anderson, is worth checking out as well.

It’s Thursday again CGC MiddleShelfers and we hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

How will you be celebrating the Fourth of July if at all? Will you attend a town or city-wide parade? Watch some fireworks and put out the flag? Or will you simply enjoy a mid-week day off or start a longer vacation?  Do you think that of all the holidays that we observe in the U.S. this should be the one that unites us all under one common ground view? As we reflect on what the Fourth of July means to our nation, it might be worthwhile to look back at how previous generations celebrated the holiday and this week’s book recommendation does just that.

“We shall become a people when each fraction of the total population, so much of which is foreign in our big cities, has something so definite in common with the rest that it feels that it belongs not merely to the voting population but to the social community. We shall become a people when in our times of rejoicing we come together and express those feelings which are given to us, in ways that are mutually intelligible and happy.”

If the above quote sounds like something you might have heard or read this week on the news, it is in fact taken from a book dated from the late 1800’s early 1900’s that included a compilation of articles on how our nation should be spending Independence Day. Available as a free download from the Russell Sage Foundation, in Independence Day Celebrations, Five Articles by Luther H. Gulick, William Orr, Inez Gardner, and Lee Hanmer, the authors detail the why and how of celebrating our nation’s July Fourth festivities. However, the book is more than a blueprint for how to hold a parade or set off fireworks. Rather it is more a series of commentaries on why we should celebrate and how to do so as a community.

While the book certainly includes some descriptions and terms that today might not be considered politically correct, the theme throughout the book is centered on the fact that towns and cities alike were best served when all of the residents participated in the celebrations by bringing their unique and individual heritages to the forefront. For example in detailing the celebration held in Springfield, Massachusetts, the article explains:

“Most impressive and significant was the contribution of the various races and nationalities that help make up the citizenship of Springfield. In a population of 80,000, representatives of thirteen peoples were found who by their interest, enthusiasm, and public spirit furnished the climax of the parade. Three great divisions of the human family appeared in this pageant of the nations; in the ranks were the offspring of four continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, America. Chinamen, Ethiopians, English, Scotch, Irish, French, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Swedes, Poles, Armenians, and Syrians strove, in cordial emulation, to show the characteristic qualities of each people, and the contribution each was made to American life.

“Surely no citizen of Springfield, young or old, could see such a historic pageant of races and nationalities without gaining some appreciation of the nature of the modem contribution to our national life, or could escape having his outlook broadened by some glimpse of the America of the future that is to come out of this mingling of races and race-ideals, or could fail to see the great possibilities for improvement in the amalgamation of many of these people bringing traditions of such beauty and nobility.”
While the book is somewhat dated and anachronistic in places such as its discussion of the perils and frivolity of fireworks, often making the use of pyrotechnics sound like something out of the Music Man’s mantra of “we’ve got Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool!”, the book offers a look back on the times when people were migrating to cities and small communities were seeking to maintain their unique traditions while also absorbing a less homogeneous population. The book is a short read but worth checking out to see that over 100 years ago communities were trying to come to grips with who we are and a proper means to celebrate who we could become.

“As a people, we are in the making, plastic, responsive, receptive. Such a spirit will take the best among all the influences that bear upon it. Our civilization is in a “nascent state”, with its power of affinity at its strongest, and its capacity for assimilation most vigorous. Such occasions as the popular festival of Independence Day constitute a rare opportunity to minister to the multitude, and rightly to shape and fashion our characteristics as a people. No more inspiring or ennobling call ever came to mankind.”

Among the ways that we hope to achieve common ground is through seeing if we can at least get people on the same page as to what issues and facts are being debated.  Once that is achieved, debates and discourse should be somewhat easier.  You have the same starting basis and then layer in the […]

Columnist, radio host, lawyer, and cable commentator Michael Smerconish has just released a new book with a title that may well sum up the current political landscape for those of us trying to reach common ground. While primarily based in Philadelphia, Smerconish has a national audience.  In Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, American Life in Columns, Smerconish compiles over 17 years of his writings for a number of newspapers and where needed, provides updates on how his opinions have evolved to become more centrist.  As former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says in his review of the book:

“If only more of the country could be as passionate as Smerconish about the need for change, we could end partisan gridlock and get our politicians working for the people again. I have always believed in Dwight d. Eisenhower’s wisdom that the center of the road is the only usable space and the extreme left and right are the gutters, and Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right says this perfectly.”

A couple of side notes worth mentioning about the book:

• All of the author profits are being donated to the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center where Smerconish’s wife is on the board and which “serves over 3,000 children and their families annually, as a private non-profit agency that specializes in delivering behavioral health services to Philadelphia’s children and their families,”
• The title of the book may be somewhat familiar to some of you as it is a line of lyrics from Stuck in the Middle with You, a 1972 song performed by Scottish band Stealers Wheel. The song has been used in pop culture numerous times, including in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs. The song was, according to the album notes, a critique of the recording business and the treatment of artists.

Smerconish now identifies himself as an Independent but had been a life-long Republican until 2010. He previously had worked for Vice-President George H.W. Bush and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo when he became a Republican.  However, in 2008 he began to break with the Republican Party endorsing President Obama because he felt that the Republican’s failed to capture Osama Bin Laden. As time had gone on he began to move away from the Conservative views to a Centrist position. In an op-ed in 2010 for the Washington Post, he wrote,   “Buying gas or groceries or attending back-to-school nights, I speak to people for whom the issues are a mixed bag; they are liberal on some, conservative on others, middle of the road on the rest. But politicians don’t take their cues from those people. No, politicians emulate the world of punditry.”

His latest book, especially the updated afterward that follow many of the columns, is worth taking a look at to see how someone who is so well-entrenched in media now tries to walk the middle ground in an effort to alleviate some of the polarization that may well have been caused by talk radio and cable shows.