Don't Miss "American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver"

Robert Sargent Shriver is a great man: a great friend, a great husband, father, and patriot. His historic legacy is far-reaching; the lives he touched and made for the better are countless.

On Monday night, January 21 - appropriately, Martin Luther King Day - PBS will be broadcasting a movie describing his remarkable life, "American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver," written, produced and directed by Emmy award-winning Bruce Orenstein. The PBS movie scheduled for 10 pm EST / 9 pm PST - but check your local listings, since times might vary.

Three values of Sargent Shriver have dominated his career: civil rights for those who suffered the gross injustice of slavery and discrimination; public service by young people to help the poor and the uneducated abroad and at home; and, together with his great and wonderful wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, providing for the physically and mentally impaired through creating the Special Olympics, where tens of thousands of impaired children and adults have found dignity and self respect on a truly level athletic playing field.

But for me, his most important legacy during his years heading the Peace Corps and the War on Poverty--young people doing public service to assist and teach the disadvantaged at home and abroad; and the one most relevant to today's politics is that he proved - and I mean proved beyond the shadow of a doubt - that a socially conscientious and caring federal government can be a friend of the average American, not the enemy that many conservatives believe and would have Americans believe.

Many, perhaps most, Americans today do not remember that before John Kennedy, the Democratic Party was supported by few African Americans, because the Democratic Party from the Civil War and through the 1950s, was dominated by Southern leaders who believed in and implemented segregation; and the Republican Party was still identified as the party of Lincoln.

But at a magic moment in the presidential campaign of 1960, the loyalty of African Americans began a momentous and historic switch to the Democratic Party. And that beginning can be traced to Sargent Shriver. He was head of Senator Kennedy's civil rights division of the campaign. And when the Reverend Martin Luther King was jailed because of a traffic infraction in Georgia and sentenced to four months of hard labor, Sargent Shriver went to his then brother-in-law, Senator Kennedy, and convinced him to call Rev. King's wife, the late Coretta Scott King.

After that phone call, a tectonic and historic political shift began to occur. After Rev. King and the courageous leaders of the civil rights movement kept up the political pressures, President Lyndon Baines Johnson joined with Rev. King and these leaders to lead a Democratic-dominated congress to pass the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. From that moment forward, the realignment was sealed --African Americans (not all, but most) came to recognize the Democratic Party more committed to equal opportunity and non-discrimination than the GOP. And that remains so to this day.

On August 8, 1994, President Bill Clinton presented Sargent Shriver with the Presidential Medal of Freedom - the United States' highest civilian honor as recognition for a lifetime of public service.

A personal note: Sarge Shriver was an icon of mine ever since I first met him at the annual spring banquet of the Yale Daily News, the Oldest College Daily," in 1966 (he was Chairman of the Yale Daily News in 1938; I was proud to be a successor of his in that august position 28 years later). He spoke that night about the meaning of President Kennedy's famous line in his 1961 inaugural address: "Ask not what this country can do for you; ask what you can do for this country."

Sarge told us that night, an audience of privileged and almost entirely white Yale students, that we had been given much by our country - by living in affluence, with good parents and good homes and great hopes for the future. But we owed something back, especially to those who had darker skins and had suffered discrimination and racism and those who suffered the oppression of poverty and broken homes.

That was, he said, the basic bargain of American citizenship. Responsibility is owed to others less fortunate by every citizen who has benefited from the riches and opportunities of America. In return, government can and must be our partner - our friend -- representing the public interest and the common good, not the enemy as many conservatives still believe. But only our partner and friend to help level the playing field and give all of us an equal opportunity to make our lives and the lives of our children better.

There are no "entitlements," he said; only this basic bargain summarized in President Kennedy's inaugural address -- to give to others and receive back from the government in return an equal opportunity to succeed.

In later years, I kept in touch with Sarge. He offered me his backyard on one memorable summer afternoon in 1974 - a rather large backyard, at that - at his beautiful home in the "rural" areas of a place called Rockville, Maryland, when I had the audacity to run for congress at the ripe old age of 28. And through the years he kept in touch as I watched his extended and loving children and grandchildren grow older as he, at the ripe young age of 92, and Eunice, at the ripe young age of 86, grow younger.

Thank you, Sarge. Thank you for being the hero, the role model, and the inspiration for now several generations of Americans who have been taught by you the values of civil rights, social justice, and dignity and self-worth for all people.

I hope everyone watches Monday night. And go to americaniudealistmovie.org to watch excerpts and read more about Sarge's life and legacies.

Comments

[priorzola]

Thanks for the heads up on the Sargent Shriver documentary. It was a thought-provoking film that reminded me what we are missing in modern politics; dedicated government officials who are willing to work on behalf of people and ideas and not simply corporate interests. Shriver's approach revealed that it is in the execution of a policy and not merely the policy itself that determines it's success. Unlike Hillary Clinton's ill-fated attempts at health care reform, Shriver knew how to sell an idea and work doggedly to make it real by, first and foremost, laying the groundwork and doing the heavy lifting himself.

What Democratic candidates can learn from the perserverance of Shriver is that to do the much needed policy shifts that our country most definitely need to engage in following the Bush administration (everything from a foreign policy strategy shift to a new energy policy to a strong and reinvigorated attempt at health care reform), one must rely upon bureacrats and policy gurus who look at the totality of the problem and sell those ideas to lawmakers not through Lobbyists and to a few party whips to do all the hard work. Like Shriver, we must sell these new initiatives to each Congressional member one on one and appeal to the greater causes and concerns of being an American and securing the future of our country, everything from our ideas to the wealth and health of our people.

The American people are looking for the kind real leadership embodied by Shriver, a man who walked it like he talked it. If we begin appointing truly dedicated policy leaders working for necessary change instead of continuing to allow pseudo-Machiavellian man-boys like Karl Rove to roam the corridors of power helping nobody but himself, our country might alas become a beacon for 21st century leadership instead of a has-been also-ran whose best days are behind it. Hopefully, a few candidates for President were able to watch the documentary and were taking notes on what it truly means to be a servant of the people.

[nlightenup]

Thank you, Mr. Davis, for letting us know about the Sargent Shriver movie. I'll be watching, and hope an immense number of others watch, too, because we are all so much in need of being reminded of what's possible.

[Melissa]

He is a great American. His children are all carrying out his legacy. I'm looking forward to watching this.

[Knowbetter]

And his daughter marries the son of an SS officer. Very sad.

[Ladyrantsalot]

The African American journey to the Democratic party started long before the Kennedy administration. FDR's New Deal and Truman's desegregation efforts were pretty important features of this historical shift (remember Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat rebellion in 1948?). But the Kennedy years were essential, of course. JFK had the soaring rhetoric and Shriver had the moral commitment to get rhetoric translated into practice. A few friends of mine have seen previews of this documentary and it's supposed to be terrific.