Photo of the Day: Late Summer Dawn, Lake Chautauqua, NY

It’s hard to believe that I’m back two weeks now from vacationing at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, but the images and other memories of that time linger—including this picture I took on my last day there, of walking by Lake Chautauqua at dawn. 

Particularly in those last few days there, as the weather cooled, segueing toward fall, it offered a feeling of peace and serenity that I, in turn, present to you, vicariously.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Latrelle Miller Easterling, on Love and the Pharisees’ Test of Jesus)

“The word ‘test’ in the Bible is only used in relation to the Pharisees and the devil. They didn’t realize that Jesus could play ball. They threw a curveball and he hit a home run. Jesus called them out as they were trying to demean him. He said, ‘All are worthy of love. Full stop. All are worthy of love.’ ”— Bishop Latrelle Miller Easterling, in her Chautauqua Institution sermon “I am a Friend of God: Not a Greeting Card Kind of Love,” quoted by Mary Lee Talbot, “Love is a Decision, Easterling Says, Not an Emotion,” The Chautauquan Daily, June 27, 2023

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Rev. Zina Jacque, on Jesus and the ‘Emergent Moment’)

“Our role is to emerge from the fires of hate, racism, economic injustice and climate change. It is in our DNA to emerge. Like the butterfly, effort is required for us to emerge.

“When we do emerge, we will be like Jesus — bringers of truth, walking humbly and loving mercy. We will have a relationship with the divine and we will share that love with all those we meet. We will stand in the gap for those in need and we will be willing to be put outside to bring others in.”— Rev. Zina Jacque, lead pastor of the Community Church of Barrington, IL, “In an Emergent Moment” sermon delivered July 4, 2021, at the Chautauqua Institution (NY), quoted in Mary Lee Talbot, “To Emerge Requires Transformation in Darkness, Waiting and Struggle, Zina Jacque Says,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 7, 2021

Photo of the Day: Dawn Breaking, Chautauqua Lake, Upstate NY

In summers past, maybe even at this late point in the season, my lungs would have been refreshed and my eyes gladdened by a walk by this lakefront on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. This year, like much else because of the threat posed by COVID-19, that experience was out of the question.

This photo I took in the summer of 2007 represents my attempt to relive that, virtually, through the power of memory. 

It is one of the tragedies of our age that so many believe that the virtual can match the actual. But, for now, it will have to suffice.

Photo of the Day: Carnahan Garden, Chautauqua Institution, NY

Over the last 25 years, I have frequently vacationed at the Chautauqua Institution, a National Historic Landmark in southwestern New York. This year, with its traditional summer program of lectures, the arts, and entertainment relegated to the virtual sphere, I have chosen not to visit. 

I find myself missing it already, not just for these programs, but also for the quiet beauty of the grounds. Carnahan Garden, just off the amphitheater that serves as the heart of the community, is an example of this serenity. 

I took this photograph of the garden last summer. For nearly a half century, it has more than fulfilled its purpose of providing “quiet enjoyment” to Chautauquans eager to escape the noise and haste of the world.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Christina Rossetti, on How ‘Hope is the Counterpoise of Fear’)

“Hope is the counterpoise of fear

While night enthralls us here.

Fear hath a startled eye that holds a tear:

Hope hath an upward glance, for dawn draws near

With sunshine and with cheer.

Fear gazing earthwards spies a bier;

And sets herself to rear

A lamentable tomb where leaves drop sere,

Bleaching to congruous skeletons austere:

Hope chants a funeral hymn most sweet and clear,

And seems true chanticleer

Of resurrection and of all things dear

In the oncoming endless year.

Fear ballasts hope, hope buoys up fear,

And both befit us here.”—English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Hope is the counterpoise of fear / While night enthralls us here,” from The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers (2001 edition)

I took this picture nine years ago while on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution, a village in upstate New York where vacationers are likely to see thousands of day lilies and other flowers bloom all around. A flower feels like an appropriate symbol of hope these days—both for our survival in this time of crisis and for the ultimate deliverance promised by Jesus through the Resurrection.

Essay: John Kasich as Candidate: What Could Have Been—and What May Be

Identified initially by Jeb Bush as the “Chaos Candidate,” Donald Trump has segued all too readily into the Chaos President. The damage he has caused encompasses just about every sphere of Presidential activity, but I think he has been especially egregious in the case of the Republican Party, where his hold on members has exceeded even George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Dick Nixon—all re-elected to the Presidency—at the peak of their popularity.

Events of the past few weeks—most recently, the President’s nativist, even race-baiting, tweets and speeches about the left-leading quarter of Democratic congresswomen known as “The Squad”—have led concerned members of the GOP—and even those not remotely close to it—to cast about for challengers within the party. The best candidate to pick up the mantle—though, perhaps, not the most likely—is John Kasich.

I saw Kasich late last month at the historic Amphitheater at Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York. Even for someone not a confirmed Republican such as myself, it is easy to see why Kasich for so long enjoyed a long string of electoral successes. The last challenger left standing against Donald Trump in the 2016 GOP Presidential primaries charmed a predominantly liberal audience that, under normal circumstances, would criticize, even abominate, a good part of his track record. 

Many in the audience came out of curiosity, wondering how much he would dare to deviate from his longtime baeven if he might show signs of throwing down the gauntlet to Trump. A Yahoo column by Matt Bai nominated the former Ohio governor for the task, noting the extreme need for it (a challenger who, by “primarying” the incumbent, can bleed him enough to make him lose re-election) and why he’s best suited for the job (he’s a longtime conservative, unlike the more libertarian William Weld).

Aside from Kasich, there are only two other Republicans who still hold the appeal to the party’s longtime free-trade, balanced-budget brand of conservatism: Mark Sanford and Mike Pence. But Sanford is also the one who represents the most damaged goods. Whatever portion of the party that didn’t reject him for his opposition to Trump in the House of Representatives has still not forgiven him for his “hike in the Appalachians” that was quickly exposed as a visit to this South American mistress.

'

Pence would very much like to succeed Trump—maybe sooner than later—but through the first term, he has been mighty careful to cover his tracks. He has to be: the President recalls how Pence carefully sounded out reactions to Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016, offering something between a criticism and exculpation. The most interesting Trump appointee who will be on the bubble after 2020 will be Pence. With his usefulness as an emissary to the evangelicals at an end, how much longer can the Veep survive?

As for Kasich, several considerable obstacles loom in the way of his candidacy. His popularity among Republicans, for instance, is not what it was when he first ran for governor. 

It is a sign of the madness now overtaking the GOP that Kasich—with a record as a conservative dating back to the Nixon Administration, a deficit hawk in his nine terms in Congress, and someone who voted yes on all four impeachment counts against Bill Clinton—is now considered an outlier in his own party. Google “John Kasich” RINO and you’ll come up with more than 33,000 hits. 

Kasich can’t even be counted to win Ohio, as many residents hold it against him that he spent almost two years out of the state running for the Presidency instead of minding his gubernatorial duties. (Chris Christie, also in bad odor with New Jersey residents like me, surely can relate.)

But a challenge from within the party must come against Trump, no matter how dim its prospects may appear now. 

There is one powerful practical reason for Kasich to jump into the race, even at this late date: In Presidential politics, you never know what will happen. After George H.W. Bush expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, his approval rating leaped, scaring off potential Presidential challengers like Mario Cuomo and Sam Nunn. But when a recession hit, Bush’s ratings didn’t stay high. Bill Clinton was perfectly placed to reap the benefit of his audacity in challenging the President. 

If Kasich can’t beat Trump as a Republican, would he try as an independent?  First, the effort would involve building a viable third-party from the ground up, a step that would have to be undertaken immediately to assure his appearance on as many state ballots as possible. (Though lacking Kasich’s government experience, Ross Perot more than made up for it in his 1992 campaign with his considerable private wealth.) 

On the other hand, Kasich could siphon off from both parties: Republicans tired of Trump’s serial bullying and Democrats wary of their candidates' profligate tendencies and tilt leftward. The odds are long, to say the least.

But in addition to a powerful practical reason for a Kasich candidacy, there is another moral, admittedly quixotic, one: someone must step into the breech to deny Trump’s kidnapping of the soul of the Republican Party. The climate of fear generated by his daily tirades and tweets has turned once-proud Capitol Hill titans into pathetic shells of themselves. 

For a long time, I thought that Joseph McCarthy posed the greatest danger ever to Capitol Hill in fanning anti-Communist panic—and terror among colleagues afraid to stand up to him—through baseless charges.

But now, with all the power and attention accorded the Presidency, Trump has far surpassed him in his capacity for mischief and damage already inflicted on both Republicans and the republic they ostensibly serve. 

Recently, I came across Harold Macmillan’s description of his Conservative Party leader, Neville Chamberlain, at the start of his time as Prime Minister of the U.K.: “To question his authority was treason: to deny his inspiration, almost blasphemy.” It could stand equally well to describe Britain’s transatlantic allies three-quarters of a century later, except that Trump’s government experience is far less than the British appeaser's and his hold on party unity more mysterious.

It may be that a statesman is a defeated politician and that only an unwelcome hiatus in his political career has freed Kasich’s tongue at last and liberated him from a lockstep march with the right wing.

But, at this point, the party needs as many people like him as possible who will attempt to awaken it from its age of unreason--and to question why its head not only remains in such inexplicable thrall to Vladimir Putin, but won't even support efforts to ensure that the 2020 race won't be influenced by the former KGB operative.

In addition, Kasich is one of the few Republicans with national standing who called out the President, without equivocation, for his “Squad” rants.  Nor has he been shy in taking on the GOP at large, noting, in a Washington Post piece, that they are “in a coma” right now, with no (new) ideas on how to proceed concerning workforce training, education, or climate change. 

In some ways, I found the most fascinating, loaded utterance of Kasich at his Chautauqua appearance might have been an adverb: “currently,” to describe his membership status in the Republican Party. At that point will calculated ambition or just plain moral disgust lead him to make a break?

Many progressives in the Amphitheater that day either did not realize or were too polite to bring up aspects of the former two-term Ohio Governor’s record that would normally provoke them, including:

*loosening concealed-handgun regulations;

*signing more restrictive legislation resulting in the closure of half of Ohio’s abortion clinics; and

*attempting to restrict collective bargaining for public employees—an act repealed eight months later by a huge majority.

But, if Kasich is not everything he would like an audience to believe he is (what politician is?), he has demonstrated qualities in deeply short supply in Washington right now: an ability to adjust to reality and compromise. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, he backpedaled from the more right-wing policies he first tried to enact when he began his term and cooperated on bipartisan legislation that helped him win re-election.

Charm comes so easily to Kasich that, after his Chautauqua appearance, I was surprised he hadn’t done better with Republican voters in the last election. At one point, he invoked 75-year-old Mick Jagger, and he seemed to imitate the Rolling Stone frontman as he continually crossed the stage, even descending into the audience. 

He praised the sylvan setting of this lakeside Victorian community, cracked jokes with a timing that only a professional comedian could approach, picked out audience members to address, and briefly took stances that the audience could agree with: more government funding of Medicare, reduced drug prices, even a gesture toward what he called “responsible gun control.”

 

What struck me, above all, was the difference between his sense of humor and Trump's. When Kasich joked, 90% of the time it was at his own expense. He invited the audience to laugh with him, in a generous spirit that welcomed others into a circle that suggested, “Look, no matter what our differences, we’re all friends here, right?” 

Trump’s “humor,” if you want to use that term, is nothing like that. Fundamentally, it is never directed at himself, because he’s not only incapable of taking a joke but even making one at his own expense, because that would suggest that he’s something other than the biggest and the greatest. 

Neither quick like JFK’s nor genial like Reagan’s, this style is mean-spirited at its core, an insult artist’s arsenal of ridicule, degradation and humiliation. It's an overgrown middle-school crybully's string of nicknames and taunts mixed in with protests against offenses to his own tender ego, all of it shouted because he knows that, in front of carefully chosen audiences, he can get away with it all.

Toward the end of his Chautauqua appearance, Kasich was asked if he would run for President in 2020. He started out with the politician’s usual disclaimer that he had learned never to close out his options, but then allowed that, whatever happened, he would act as he always did: not move until he could see “a path forward.” A Presidential campaign, he explained, was so arduous that he could not foresee subjecting his family and followers to the process unless he had a realistic chance of success.

It is, as Kasich implied, a tall order to ask someone to enter a Presidential race with little or nothing to show for it at the end. (Several Democratic candidates seem to hope a run will enhance their prospects for a VP bid, a Cabinet post or—take your departing bow, Eric Swalwell!—a semi-permanent MSNBC commentary gig.)  

At the end of the day, it is highly likely that Kasich could, for all his pains, end up deeply in debt; place strains on his family; win few appreciable votes; or, most horribly, risk a bullet from an assassin.

He could also end up a mere footnote, crushed beneath an incumbent juggernaut, the way that liberal Pete McCloskey and conservative John Ashbrook were after running against Richard Nixon in the 1972 GOP primaries. 

But there are worse fates. While these two Nixon challengers came from completely opposite sides of the political spectrum, they each recognized, a year after they were driven from the race, that the President they had defied was a threat to the constitutional order, and they were among the first members of their power to call for his removal from office. 

In the end, Kasich might have to go into the ring against the worst gutter fighter in American politics now for the simplest of reasons: honor calls for exposing Trump’s vulnerabilities, exploiting them to the fullest extent possible, and weakening him enough so that if the former governor can’t beat him, the next person to come along will do so.

(The image accompanying this post shows Governor Kasich in January 2011.)

Quote of the Day (Rev. Irene Monroe, on the Proper Direction of ‘Righteous Anger’)

“Righteous anger is holy discontent. Where injustice to people exists, the anger is directed at the injustice and not the people.”— Rev. Irene Monroe quoted in Mary Lee Talbot, “Use Righteous Anger to Change Society, Monroe Says,” The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 18-19, 2018