Fresh air with Tony Blair

One of the curses or gifts of residing on the American western end of the Pacific is the prospect of flying more than ten hours in those trans-Pacific flights to get you to the eastern seaboard of the continental United States. Taking one to a national humanities conference in Washington, DC this weekend, I had the chance to reflect at length over the political events of the past several weeks. Confined to limited space for an extended period of flying time, in this case, directly between Nagoya and Detroit, one has a lot of time to think and read if one can ignore the four commercial movies that are shown to pass the lengthy hours of flight time in sardine-packed quarters. One also encounters interesting people with intriguing views and fascinating perspectives. Conversations fueled with a tad of Kailua on vodka topped with Bailey’s crème, and garnished with spiced salty sweetened shredded dried squid, tend to add to lively discourse and animated discussion. I got more than I bargained for. With my luck, I ran into a Brit who would fight tooth and nail for Tony Blair, and an Aussie who would dismember John Howard any day in November.

I am, of course, alluding to the Howard-Bush-Blair triumvirate, two of whom survived closely watched and tightly fought reelection efforts. The Aussie’s comments about PM Howard, wildly entertaining in the Outback, is not fit to print in a family-oriented newspaper. Howard’s Conservative Coalition has garnered a majority position on both upper and lower houses of the Australian Parliament, and one must grudgingly admire his political acumen. The Brit’s defense of Tony Blair is strained. Blair of the Labor Party has come under severe attack in his own Party for his support of President Bush and his war policies. Even the staid and definitely Tory conservative Economist Magazine reluctantly endorsed Sen. Kerry in the last election, characterizing the choice as between “Bush the Incompetent and Kerry the Incoherent.” Not unlike the weak opposition to Howard, and my candidate Kerry’s “incoherent” alternative to Bush, Blair may very well survive a general election for the same absence of a credible opposition to his current lease of 10 Downing Street.

I took the long view on GW, quoting him on his 2001 Inaugural Address when he said: “We have a place, all of us, in a long story, a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that become a servant of freedom, to story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story–a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals.”

Taking the “flawed and fallible people” as rather on target, and the “all of us” as a promise of unity that remains to be demonstrated, I am of the hope that the latter would be an operating perspective in Bush’s second term. The characterization of foreign policy in the service of freedom and liberation, to protect but not to possess, to defend but not to conquer, is already being severely tested as American and Iraqi forces wage war against insurgents in Falluja.

With Arafat’s life journey completed, crisis looms in the Palestinian end of the Fertile Crescent, and as the Chinese are wont to remind everyone, crisis is nothing but the conjunction of possibility and despair. Six hours after I touched down Reagan International Airport, Tony Blair of Great Britain comes to town, unabashedly out to make a case for his friend G.W. to push for the possibility-end of the crisis.

Cashing in on a well-earned goodwill for loyalty and unwavering support of official White House foreign policy, the Blair and Bush show Friday proved to be as upbeat as can be graciously pulled off under current favorable circumstances. Inside the beltway, 80 percent of whom nodded to Kerry in the last presidential tally, wears its sophisticated cynicism over all this while mid-continental America waved its triumphalistic red-white-and-blue to honor its war veterans the day before.

Meanwhile, at the newly inaugurated National Museum of American Indians in the National Mall, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the celebrated “one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced” legislator addressed officers and Board members of 56 State and Territorial Humanities Councils in their annual conference at the nation’s capital this year. Delivering the Walter H. Capps Memorial Lecture honoring former teacher, writer, public servant and humanist Congressman Capps of California, the Museum’s main auditorium grandiosely reverberated with the pulpit-tailored prophetic voice of the Civil Rights MLK Jr. tradition, refusing to be cowed into tones of cynicism and despair fashionable among Georgetown and Capitol Hill soirees these colorful though a tad bit wet autumn days. Lewis exhorted his audience to be instruments in facilitating the dialogue and the civil discourse that need to prevail in the public domain not only in America but across the fragile sphere, the real estate we call home, the planet Earth. “We must learn to live together. Find a way to get on the way. Peaceful ends require peaceful means. Humanize America; humanize the world!” In Lewis was found Friday night an articulation of the American story, a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals.

NMICH Board Chair Liz Richebei and member Felicidad Ogumuro were effusive in their gratitude for Lewis‚ inspirational utterances. I plunged into a more practical agenda. “We need a delegate in Congress,” I said. “I hear you. I hear you.” Lewis replied. T’was good to breathe fresh air in the Mall by the Capitol this Fall.