John F. Kennedy v. George W. Bush: Polar Opposites

[madmusic]

We may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but we can to a degree judge a president by what what book he deemed most influential. Two cases in point. George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy. Both found a book highly influential. As BoxNews says, "We report, you decide."

George W. Bush:

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, August 2000: Besides helping to make "faith-based" the politicians' favorite euphemism for 'religious,' the (Manhattan Institute) has fostered the notorious Charles Murray as well as one of George Bush's favorite writers, Michael Magnet, author of the 'The Dream and the Nightmare,' the latter being all those poor folks mucking up the place. In a review in the Texas Observer, Michael King wrote:

"Poor people are poor and nasty because they choose to be so, and any attempt by the community at large to ameliorate their unhappy circumstances is by definition counterproductive. And though he tap-dances around the subject in various statistical ways, the undeserving poor (a.k.a. the underclass), whom Magnet pities and despises in almost equal measures, are most specifically the black urban poor: those foul-mouthed, crack-smoking, baby-dropping, white-folks mugging, wild-running Caliban-caricatures of the suburban imagination, who refuse to work because they have learned (apparently from reading Norman Mailer, Michael Harrington, and R.D. Laing) that they can act crazy on street corners selling dope without fear of retribution while readily pocketing twenty grand a year on welfare.

"What are the solutions to this cultural catastrophe? Do nothing - only much more nothing. Scratch these neo-cons and one inevitably turns up Charles Murray (of Losing Ground and The Bell Curve), the "brilliant" sociologist who has concluded repeatedly that all welfare programs should be abolished because they do more harm than good (especially by allowing able-bodied mothers to stay home with their kids when they should be on the job market keeping wages down). Lately Murray has taken to saying the same thing about public education, since certain children are, well, ineducable. (We all know who they are.) Magnet suspects Murray is right, although he says he wouldn't go that far - the requisite political will is unfortunately lacking, and perhaps in the short-term, "casualties would be too great." He counsels instead the usual draconian measures to force welfare mothers (only the deserving widowed or divorced, of course) into the job market, although with surprisingly liberal provisions for day care and Head Start programs." (According to the Manhattan Institute, "Referring to this book, Gov. Bush has said, other than the Bible, that it was the most important book he had read...")

http://prorev.com/bush3.htm

John F. Kennedy:

Nearly 45 years ago, Michael Harrington wrote "The Other America" a book that lifted the heavy veil that made invisible to the rest of the country, the poorest Americans, millions trapped in poverty - outside of public policy, outside of political power and outside of the American dream. Among those millions were hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities - infants, children and adults, seniors and their families. Harrington wrote about the poor in the Appalachians, the shocking hunger of children in the Mississippi Delta, the thousands who toiled the fields as migrant farmworkers in unimaginable conditions, and the isolation of poverty in the inner cities, while discrimination prevailed against people of color, and agains (sic)

The book was read by President John F Kennedy and then Attorney General Robert Kennedy and profoundly influenced them - and millions of other Americans since then. The ideas of many critical programs - Medicaid, Medicare, expanded social security benefits, food stamps and more can be traced back to his explosive study on poverty, which, with the civil rights movement, galvanized the nation in the early 1960's into declaring "unconditional war on poverty".

Much progress for sure has been made since the book was published in 1962. Major civil rights and voting rights acts, creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Rehabilitation Act, California's Lanterman Developmental Disabilities Services Act, Unruh Civil Rights Act, the Mental Health Services Act and more were enacted - the work of both Republicans and Democrats.

http://www.counterpunch.org/omoto03242006.html

Not trying to be "the decider" for you, just sayin' is all.

[elehhhhna]

1. K&R. 'Splains a lot!