Survey Says

Don't Know Much About...Us I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to travel a fair amount - Europe several times, South America, Canada - and after every trip I've returned thinking its good to be home, but man we sure don't know much about the rest of the world. I remember a trip to Canada a few years ago and engaging in serious conversation with friendly Canadians who seemed to be up on everything happening in the USA from our politics to popular culture. By contrast, most Americans couldn't find Saskatoon with a GPS device let alone name the Canadian Prime Minister - Stephen Harper - or that the national capitol is Ottawa, not Montreal or Toronto. Now it turns out we don't know much about ourselves, either. Newsweek has surveyed 1,000 Americans on the most basic details of our history, government and politics. We flunked. Badly. The questions aren't exactly PhD level, either, but are questions that are asked in the official U.S. citizenship test. Questions like: What happened at the Constitutional Convention? How could 65% of those surveyed not know that the Founders wrote the U.S. Constitution at the Constitutional Convention? Or, how about this. Fully 88% in the survey couldn't name one person who authored the Federalist Papers. Hint: his wife's name was Dolley, as in Madison. Maybe those 65% know her donuts and cakes better. And, don't ask what the Federalist Papers were. I've railed in this space in the past about America's historical ignorance, but 29% not being able to name the current vice president or 73% not know why we "fought" the Cold War. This isn't funny. It is worrying.

Newsweek blames several factors for American ignorance, including a generally complex political system that unlike Europe tends to spread control among local, state and federal governments. I guess this is confusing and there is much to keep track of, but that hardly seems an excuse for the fundamental lack of knowledge exposed in the survey.

The decentralized education system gets some blame. What we teach in Idaho they might not teach in Maryland. Some of the blame should go, I think, to those who have de-emphasized history, social studies and the humanities in favor of science and math. Kids need it all, in big doses.

And there is the income and media reality. A growing percentage of Americans are poor, not of the middle class. Poorer Americans have less access to information and knowledge. In Europe, where a larger share of the population lives in the middle, people are generally better educated and much more knowledgeable about their politics and government.

The mass media is both part of the problem and could offer a slice of the solution, but we mostly have a pure market driven media that features much more American Idol than Meet the Press. It is, after all, difficult to take politics seriously when so much of it is trivialized over the air and on the web.

The Newsweek analysis concludes, and maybe this is the good news, “the problem is ignorance, not stupidity.“ One expert who has studied this American ignorance says, "we suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.”

The real problem here isn't knowing James Madison authored many of the Federalist Papers, it is not knowing enough - as the current budget debate in Washington, D.C. makes so clear - about our federal government and our political system. It's impossible to assess, for example, what must be done to fix the budget if we have no idea how the government spends and taxes.

Survey after survey says Americans want Congress to cut the budget by reducing foreign aid and by stamping out that old standby waste, fraud and abuse. At the same time they say whatever you do don't touch Social Security or Medicare where the real money gets spent. Too many politicians pander this ignorance and we get the endless debates we now witness in Congress.

Simple fact: Americans need information and real knowledge to make sense of their government and then they must care enough to act on the knowledge. Ignorance isn't a strategy for a great country.

Symbolic Cuts

Minimal Money, Real Impact Noted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has waded into the fray over eliminating federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and sharply reducing the measly dollars we spend on the national endowments for the humanities and the arts. In a piece in the Washington Post, Burns - his Civil War documentary may be the best long-form television ever - asks us to remember that during the Great Depression somehow the country found the dollars to support artists, writers and photographers who produced some of the most enduring work of the 20th Century. Surely, he says, we can afford a fraction of a cent of our federal tax dollar for CPB and the endowments. In the interest of full disclosure, loyal readers need to know I have a strong bias here. I cut my journalism teeth years ago with a daily half-hour broadcast on public television. I have volunteered for 15 years on various boards dedicated to the mission of the public humanities and the bringing of thoughtful programs on American and world culture, history, literature, religion and philosophy to Idahoans and Americans. I'm a true believer in these well established and minimally funded institutions and I also understand the federal budget. The $420 million we spend on CPB, almost all of which goes to local public TV and radio stations and programs like those Ken Burns makes, and the $168 million we spend on each of the endowments is a total drop in the federal budget bucket. The Pentagon spends that much in an afternoon. Case in point, Boeing just got an award from the Defense Department to build a new generation of aerial tankers - price tag $35 billion. Assuming Boeing builds a full fleet of 179 tankers, that averages out to about $195 million per plane. That buys a whole lot of what the endowments and CPB provide Americans. I know, I know, we need new aerial tankers to replace those in service since Eisenhower was in the White House, but don't we also need a place - for a tiny fraction of the cost - where Ken Burns' documentaries reach a huge audience or where the humanities endowment supports a local museum or library? Congress and the president continue the gandy dance around the real need to address the federal budget deficit. We have a crisis in three areas - defense spending, Medicare and Social Security. We need to address a combination of very difficult tradeoffs. Extend the retirement age, means test Medicare, reduce the size and scope of our military power on every continent and raise taxes. It's easier to say than to cut, but there you have the real issues. Anyone who tells you we can address the dismal federal deficit by cutting CPB and the National Endowments is practicing demagoguery on the scope of Huey Long, the subject, by the way, of a Ken Burns' documentary. Much of this debate, it must be noted, is about ideology rather than real budget savings. Some conservatives assail public broadcasting or the pointy headed humanities and arts community as the preserve of "liberals." Nonsense. William F. Buckley found a home on PBS. Were the great man alive today, do you think he could find a place on Fox or CNN? Not a chance. Listen to a week of The NewsHour or Morning Edition and really consider the range of views, opinion and ideology you hear. Public TV and radio have become one of the few real clearinghouses of ideas about the American condition. Not liberal, not conservative, but truly fair and balanced. America is a country of ideas. We have thrived for as long as we have because we value the big debate, the chance for lots of voices - from Ken Burns to the Red Green Show (on PBS) to the Trailing of the Sheep Festival and a summer teacher institute in Idaho (funded by the Idaho Humanities Council) - to be heard, considered, rejected and embraced. We must get serious about the federal deficit. We must also recognize that a guy as talented as Ken Burns would never have a chance in the "marketplace media." A long-form documentary on baseball, jazz, the National Parks or World War II simply won't find a place in modern commercial broadcasting. So, eliminating that platform is really a decision to eliminate the ideas represented there. If we lose what a Ken Burns represents, we lose a connection with our history and our culture that simply can't be replaced. We will regret it, but not as much as our children.

The Importance of Being Borah

A Senator Worth Remembering I'll be speaking on Wednesday night at the Main Boise Library on the life and career of Idaho's longest serving U.S. Senator, William E. Borah. That's him, third from the right, in a photo taken in Sandpoint. I'm going to guess is was in the middle-1920's. The Borah talk is one I have put together as part of the Idaho Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau. I'll talk about Borah's career and lasting importance, but also about his view of the Senate in our form of government. Borah was a progressive Republican, somewhat in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, but he was also fiercely independent and more than willing to buck his own party. I've been reading and writing about Borah for a long time. In fact, I began his journey into blogland more than a year ago with a piece on his approach to Supreme Court appointments. I continue to find him a fascinating character. And, of course, there is that business with Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The Library event is a 7:00 pm in the Main Auditorium. Staff at the Boise Library have also created a great Borah bibliography of books, articles and writings about the man known as "the Lion of Idaho."

Civilization Requires Civility

National Civility Tour Comes to Idaho Jim Leach is on a mission. The former Republican Congressman from Iowa, now chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), has the passionate belief that we're shaking the foundations of our democracy by the way we handle our political discourse. Leach is on a mission for civility. In a speech last fall in Nebraska, appropriately entitled "With Malice Toward None," Leach said: "The public goal should be to recognize that it is great to be a conservative or libertarian; great to be a liberal, a moderate, or progressive. But it is not great to hate. It is not great to refuse to respect one’s fellow citizens at home and refuse to endeavor to understand fellow peoples abroad. "The decency and fairness with which political decisions are made are generally more important than the outcome of any issue. The 'how' almost always matters more than the 'what.'" Leach should know. He spent 30 years in Congress, rose to the top ranks, lost re-election in 2006, taught at Princeton and was tapped by President Obama to run the Endowment last year. Almost immediately he launched a 50-state "civility tour" talking about the importance to a functioning democracy of understanding and not demonizing your political opponents. He talks about the search for "the common good," not just partisan advantage. Leach has a politician's experience and a scholar's disposition. Believe me, that is a rare but valuable combination. The Andrus Center for Public Policy - I serve as the Center's volunteer president - will host Leach for a lunch and talk on June 11th at the Grove Hotel in downtown Boise. The Idaho Humanities Council, the state - based affiliate of the NEH - has been instrumental in getting the chairman to Idaho. Leach will speak on "Civility in a Fractured Society." Leach doesn't call for the abandonment of fiercely held political principles, but rather that we not start the political discourse by assuming that the other person's position is automatically suspect and therefore not worthy of consideration. It is a message the Andrus Center embraces. The Center was formed in 1995 to help carry on the approach to public affair that the four-term former Idaho governor embodied - vigorous, but civil debate that sought to find win-win solutions. Seating for the luncheon and speech is limited and you can reserve a spot online at the Center's website. As columnist Jamie Stiehm noted recently in U.S. News - to steal Dr. Samuel Johnson's phrase - "we've become good at hating," but not so good at being civil. Jim Leach is trying to save us from ourselves. Let's hope he's making progress.

Why History Matters

Knowing the Past... For much of the 1950's and 1960's, this photo - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin together at Yalta in February 1945 - served as the iconic evidence that hard headed, authoritarian Russian Communism rolled over idealistic western democracy at the end of World War II. In the most popular narrative, largely unchanged for more than half a century, the Cold War started at Yalta and the U.S. and Britain were easily rolled by that cagey Commie Uncle Joe Stalin. The truth, of course, is much more complicated, more nuanced, and much more important. A new book - Yalta - The Price of Peace - by Harvard historian S.M. Plokhy tells the nuanced story of Yalta and the account helps explain why the famous gathering in the Crimea was neither a victory nor a defeat for the west, but rather one step in the long march of history that helped shape the post-war world. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others exploited many of the myths about Yalta, including the notion that FDR was naive about dealing with the Russians and that somehow Churchill and Roosevelt should have been able to get a better outcome for Poland. Plokhy's research makes clear that FDR was far from naive. He went to Yalta to make a deal in the interest of getting Russian approval of his outline for the creation of the United Nations and, under intense pressure from his military advisers, to get Stalin to commit to joining the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. He accomplished both objectives. He also got agreement on post-war occupation of Germany and secured for the French, who Stalin wanted out of the picture, a major role in both the U.N. and western Europe. By contrast, neither Churchill nor FDR had much leverage over Stalin when it came to Poland, since, by early 1945, Red Army troops were occupying much of the country and would win the race to Berlin. That is the history and the nuance, yet as recently as 2005, George W. Bush, choosing to read (or remember) history with an ideological bias, was declaring that Yalta led to some of "the greatest wrongs of history." No word on what the former president thinks of Karl Rove's new book that acknowledges no Bush-era culpability for American military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's another history lesson. Still, both cases - Yalta and the post-war and Iraq today - prove a fundamental truth: where there is no nuance, history gets distorted; where history is abused in the pursuit of ideological ends there can be no truth. "History can help us be wise," Margaret MacMillan, the Canadian historian, writes in her new book - Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuse of History. "It can also suggest to us what the likely outcome of our actions might be." MacMillan is the best kind of historian; a skilled researcher and a lively writer on the search for truth. Her last book - Paris 1919 - tells the story of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and helped set the stage for the next war. The book should be required reading for every American politician, since all seem to need to understand the rule of unintended consequences. Ultimately, history is about trying to arrive at truth, which is why MacMillan tweaks Bush and Tony Blair for invoking Munich of the 1930's to justify an invasion of Iraq in the 21st Century. But she is no ideologue, also pointing out that a "liberalizing" China is unwilling to deal with the legacy of Mao and that even normally circumspect, mild mannered Canada experienced a full-throated controversy in the 1990's when a documentary suggested that there might be questions of morality associated with Canadian aircrews and their wartime strategic bombing of Germany. I think Margaret MacMillan might agree that one of the profound challenges facing the American Republic is a deepening and profoundly troubling lack of understanding of our history coupled with the fact that history is ever more regularly twisted to suit some need to score immediate partisan politic points. Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times over the weekend, made this fundamental point in a starkly effective way. Rich quotes a former Bush White House press secretary and the ever present Rudy Giuliani, as saying "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Say what? Obviously, this ultra selective "abuse" of history was rolled out in an effort to portray the current occupant of the White House as "soft or terrorism." Barack Obama may or may not be soft on terrorism, but abusing the reality of recent history to make that case is beyond comprehension and should be labeled for what it is - a distortion or, if you prefer, a lie. As the old saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts, or their own history. The recent race to raise America's educational standing in math and science has generally meant a diminishment of teaching of what we normally call the humanities, most importantly history. I'm all for better math and science education, but I also know that too many Americans, as surveys and Jay Leno's sidewalk interviews have shown us, don't know much about their history. No less an historian than two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough said a while back that the lack of knowledge about our history is jeopardizing our way of life. We don't all need to ponder the real impacts of Yalta in 1945 or know in detail the terms of the Paris peace conference in 1919, but we do need to know enough about our own history to call foul on those who would distort it. We can't rely exclusively on historians to hold the ideologues of the right and the left to account for "abusing" history. Democracy doesn't - or can't - work that way. If we fail to know enough of our history, or, as David McCullough has said, to "know who we are" or we misunderstand "how we became what we are, we're going to start suffering from all the obvious detrimental effects of amnesia." That truly is a threat to our way of life.