Chris Dodd's Stirring New Book
Ever since John Kennedy won a Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage, presidential candidates have written books. They range from vacuous policy tomes to memoirs meant to inspire to a book by John Edwards about people's houses. I didn't quite get Edwards' point but his central theme -- there's no place like home -- has proven appeal.
Chris Dodd's Letters from Nuremberg is many things: an insider's view of history's most famous fair trial, a meditation on our recent failures to respect its precedents and a poignant family history. If I called it the best campaign book of the election cycle I'd be damning with faint praise. No need to. It's the best book I've read this year.
The insiders' view of Nuremburg and much of the family history are in the letters of the book's title, written by Dodd's father, the late Thomas Dodd-- at 38, second in command of the Nuremberg prosecution team-- and addressed to Dodd's mother, Grace Murphy Dodd.
The letters are superbly written, remarkable in light of the strained circumstances of their composition. They fascinate because they illuminate at once the inner workings of a great historical event and the inner life of a public man in an age that still has lessons to dispense.
Justice Robert Jackson called the Nuremberg trials "one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason." The defendants were 21 leaders of Hitler's high command, the ones who hadn't already taken their own lives, including such monuments to evil as Hermann Goring, Martin Bormann, Rudolph Hess and Albert Speer.
Dodd had a shrewd eye for their vanities and deceits. He regarded them as perpetrators of history's worst crimes, yet retained a sense of their fallen humanity and accorded them genuine due process, as was then American policy. 12 of the defendants were executed, 3 acquitted, the rest imprisoned. The trial stands today as a monument to the rule of law.
The self-portrait the elder Dodd leaves is of a man besotted with his wife and children, in love with his country and devoted to his Roman Catholic faith. A Yale graduate and son of a Norwich contractor, he's erudite but down to earth, as when lamenting a rupture among the "soreheads" on his staff.
Most of all he's a man in love. He writes Grace almost daily the whole time he's away. His words of love, startling in their depth of feeling, vouch for the truth of everything else he writes and help make these letters what they are: as good a map as you'll ever find of how, within a whole human being, the personal and political are connected.
Chris Dodd provides his own moments of eloquence, and in so doing proves himself an attentive as well as devoted son. Dodd knows how far a fall it is from Nuremburg to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the consequences for America's security and reputation in the world.
Chris Dodd's campaign, like his book, outshines his competitors in its substance. More than any other candidate, he has taken the lead in Congress on ending the war in Iraq, defending the constitution and combating global warming. His proposals on health care, wage stagnation and the credit crisis are credible and specific.
Dodd's performances of late are crisp, impassioned and on target. He needs to be better at getting his core message into every interview and speech but after Bill Clinton, he's as gifted and natural a politician as I've met and these days he has it all on display.
Still, polls seem frozen. It is now clear how much Barack Obama's candidacy helps Hillary Clinton. He shares her cautious centrism; his inexperience, besides being an issue in voters' minds, impedes his campaign. But the attention he draws keeps candidates with deeper differences and better credentials from getting noticed.
The result: We have more candidates appearing in more debates than ever before and yet we have no debate; not on redefining America's role in the world, not on global warming and certainly not on America's rapid transformation into just another land of haves and have-nots.
The attention to Obama has ebbed slightly, causing Clinton to grow complacent. I don't know when it's safe to start acting like the nominee but it isn't the year before the election. It's the first serious misstep of her campaign and it nudges open a door.
A candidate with a message that measures up to the magnitude of our problems could walk through that door. If Hillary's and Obama's recent performances are a preview of the general election, brace yourself for the Democrats' third straight loss due to excessive caution and Washington style centrism.
Our constitution, prosperity and survival are more threatened today than at any time since World War II. We need bold government action but our leaders won't say it.
In Tom Dodd's day our democracy defeated its enemies, established a broad middle class and sanctified the rule of law. No one has studied more closely than Chris Dodd the kind of leadership it took to make it happen.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Chris Dodd is nothing more than a career political hack who spent his entire life on the public payroll like his father, who was also a thief and thrown out of the Senate. His book is nothing more than a pale attempt to restore his father's dingy reputation. The Nuremberg trials raise the old issue of how war crimes are defined. The Nazis certainly deserved their fate. However, I can't seem to find any record of the war crimes trials of the British and American air commanders who mercilessly bombed German cities in late 1944 and early 1945 when they had little or no military significance; cities occupied mostly by helpless women and children. To the victors belong the spoils of war crimes trials.
Chris Dodd is far and away the best candidate in the Democratic field. No other candidate, on either side, possesses his combination of intelligence, wisdom, experience and integrity. Unfortunately, Democratic Party power brokers and corporate media are not interested in seeing the best candidate elected. Their main concern, as usual, is the avoidance of any feather ruffling amongst their benefactors within the entrenched plutocracy.
Cris Dodd is a man of substance. That is why he cannot be elected president. In today's tabloid world, you either have to be a rock star(Obama) or a dynasty(Clinton). Now that we know the occupation of Iraq will never end, it seems fruitless to even vote. Maybe I'll go into the casket business. That way when I vote for a Republican, at least I'll be voting my own self interest.
"If Hillary's and Obama's recent performances are a preview of the general election, brace yourself for the Democrats' third straight loss due to excessive caution and Washington style centrism."
third straight loss? Gore won in 2000, period.
And Kerry won in 2004. bush has never won anything in his life and everything he touches turns to shit.
I like Hillary. This is not her war, it is the repugs and don't forget it. Why are they trying to lay this on us dems. We were all lied to. I think any of the dem nominees are l00% better than any of the repugs. I think we should stop finding fault. This election is too important to turn on our own. I must say while I like Obama, it took a TV celebrity, Oprah, to bring him to the forefront. I sometimes find Oprah very racist. I think he would make a good VP though.
Give...it IS Hilary's war..she voted for it..period
chris dodd may be a career politician
Let's hope his star does shine..we'
I liked Obama too, until the press reported
the backroom deals he already made. And not voting for the Lieberman/Kyl Amendment is indeed the coward's way out, much like Hillary did with the Military Commission Act. However,
I hope people do notice that Hillary many others voted for the Lieberman/Kyl Amendment,
declaring the Iranian Guard a terrorist organization, which will give Bush the go ahead to start another war. Time to wake up and vote for the right people!
It's unfortunate that Chris Dodds didn't have any leadership skills when we were getting INTO this war.
I ask Democrats, do we really want to elect someone to the presidency who is only capable of hindsight, hindsight that developed only after most of us have been seeing the problem for YEARS? Only after all this death, destruction, misery and financial loss?
Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and especially John Edwards are all responsible for getting us into this war. They had absolutely no vision or leadership on the war then. They encouraged their fellow Democrats to vote for the Iraq resolution. Edwards co-sponsored it and gave TV interviews and an impassioned senate speech endorsing Bush's war.
Now, when it's easy for even the most hardened neocon to see that the war was a collosal mistake, these people have changed their tune and want to "lead us out."
Wake up, people!! Yes, let's forgive them for not reading the intel report, but let's not put them in charge!! Let's not give the job of leading us out of this mess to those who lead us into it.
They've proven their ability to follow, nothing more. They followed Bush and Tenet. And now, they're following the votes.
Words are just words, and words of hindsight and regret do not indicate leadership. We need someone who sees the writing on the wall BEFORE we see it, not years afterwards. That's why leaders are in the front of the line, not the back.
Kucinich, Richardson, Obama and Gravel, and Ron Paul are the candidates who saw the writing on the wall when the rest of us did.
And to our author, your need to bash the other candidates to try to promote your own is telling. I liked Dodd, before I read your disengenuous post. There are a lot of us out here "in the center" who opposed this war while your friend Mr. Dodd was promoting it.
And we're tired of the lack of respect from holier-than-thou people like you.
Excuse me.....whe
I cant wait to read THAT book.
John Edwards has the best chance to win the presidency from a Republican, any Republican.
Nope. Not even close.
Where is the Press? The public has had it with this Stupid, wasteful war. Chris Matthews “ Hardball” should be called “Spitwad”. The so- called press is just covering the polls, not the issues. This shows what a great danger to Democracy the shift from news to infotainment has caused. It is not a search for truth, it is a search for ratings. Goebbels could not have asked for more.
Just to clarify a point: Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, because no one knew his fate at the time. Although I gather some controversy remains, it has been determined that he died, while trying to escape Berlin in 1945. Of course Dodd's father couldn't have known this at the time.
I like Christopher Dodd. He would make a wonderful president, and be such a bright light after all these years of darkness.
Sorry about the nitpick!
This book sounds good.
I don't think it's wrong for Chris Dodd to publish it now. Most of the other candidates have books out.
I like Dodd, Richardson, and Edwards at this time.
Character is revealed at the mooment of decision, Senator Byrd was the only Senator who stood up against the war. Chris Dodd is running for President, and he committed his crime during the vote. Sorry but Chris is not without sin. And his consciencious is feeling the guilt. The letters he published are not his, they belong to his father. Revealing them now is shameful. These revelations unfortunately serve another purpose, to get him elected.
Look, you can't cover for Dodd. He voted for the war. Thats the bottom line.
The Dartmouth debate among the candidates made it quite clear that the two "frontrunners" are members of the War Party.
We need a President who can help us take a different direction in the world. Dodd may well be that man.
What would please me very much is if Gore enters the race and picks Dodd as his running mate. That would be sweet.
Sweet indeed. That would go right up LIEberturds big flabby behind.
Kucinich would be my first choice though.
And I'm also beginning to think Clinton will pick Obama for VP on her ticket if she gets the nomination. Seems counter-intuitive until you realize, she'd be the BOSS of a very charismatic and popular man -- a power she wasn't able to have over her popular hubby Bill and it would also be a comeuppance to the arrogant boy's club of politics. So, I think now, on a psychological level, an Obama VP would settle both scores for Hillary. Add to the mix that Obama IS a rising star in the Dem party (an asset to her) and a fellow "centrist" in campaign strategy.
My first thought was that she would not want to stand in same spotlight with Obama who can blow her off the stage in terms of charisma/l
By choosing him as VP, she co-opts his light/puts it into her service.
Not bashing her in the least by saying this. Simply acknowledging how this turns the tables on Obama's popularity quite nicely and USES it. She's shrewd campaign strategist and also out to prove (within herself and to the public) that she's not only as good as any man, she can BEST any man. As a woman, I can respect her for this, but I also think the warmongering foreign policy and corporate cronyism she's deeply in bed with is all wrong for America and thus cannot support her for the nomination.
Barack Obama is a superior candidate to Hillary Clinton in every way if you just compare their respective records. Thus, I think Obama would refuse if asked to be the VP for Hillary, but I'm not fully convinced she would even ask him.
First, he would overshadow her constantly. Every day of a Hillary campaign in the general election, people would be reminded that the best person for the job was in the VP spot. In addition to "Clinton fatigue," there would be a lot of "buyer's remorse."
Second, she would have spent the whole primary campaign telling everyone he's not ready, too inexperienced, etc. so how could she subsequently turn around and tell everyone that, it turns out she was wrong and Barack actually is ready to be "a heartbeat away" from the Presidency? Why, a flip-flop like that could be a disast....
Dodd seems like a good man and I would easily vote for him over Clinton, but Obama is the real deal and the best combination of experience, leadership and judgment to be president.
Obama the real deal?...Pu
Obama is a bright but self-important and ambitious empty suit...he has become a charicature, a preacher who is happy only when he can exhort, unfettered, his own rhetoric..
And then he has the gall to self-righteously point fingers at his Senate colleagues for being duped into the 2003 Iraq vote, (when, btw, he didn't actually have to put himself on the line and make a REAL decision), BUT, just last week on the day of the New Hampshire debate, when he DID have, as a sitting Senator, the opportunit
I've always thought it was presumptious of him to run, based on his lack of practical experience alone...le
Now I see Barak "No-Sh'Obama" as a hypocrite and a shrewd political opportunist, not much better in that regard than Hillary...
As for Chris Dodd, a very interesting piece... He seems an honorable and capable man, and if I weren't for JOE BIDEN, I would probably be for Chris Dodd.
But Obama...go
Hillary is a flip-flopper. She brings nothing new to the table, unless you count a recycled FAILED healthcare policy ( that will never see the light of day- as a First Lady she tried to horn in on policymaking, maybe Bill's fault for a long leash instead of letting Al Gore take the point)
She is a triangulator, a true "Lady MacBeth". How dark and bitter her soul must be.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
