With an army of political scientists convened in the capital, one topic seemed irresistible to a layman cruising their huge gathering: “Love and the Political.”
Goody, goody, I thought. Sexual high jinks, the Lincoln Bedroom, Paula Jones, Wilbur Mills and Gary Hart all thrown into a steamy, late-August broth as “official Washington” still vacationed!
But Thursday’s panel at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association was a tad more cerebral than bargained for by a newsie whose focus had been on matters not weightier than a former agriculture secretary being indicted for taking freebies from poultry processors.
Indeed, one found a University of California professor delivering a paper called, “Embracing the Cosmos: Reading Nietzsche’s `New Infinite,’ ” while a Temple University academic offered the ungainly titled, “Power in/through/as the Other: A Levinasian Reading of the Machiavelli-Hobbes Relationship.”
Hmmm. This discussion, which included a University of Chicago academic, did not have the accessibility of the political fare generally served up in this town.
The latter might be epitomized by pundit king John McLaughlin asking a TV panelist to tell us, on a scale of 1 to 10, whether Hillary will be indicted, Newt will be dumped or war will break out between the Koreas.
Instead, it was off to a sparsely attended session on “Horkheimer and Adorno’s `Dialectic of Enlightenment’ on its 50th Anniversary.”
You forgot it was the 50th anniversary of Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment”? Stop watching so much television.
“We see Nietzsche everywhere these days,” said a Catholic University panelist discussing the authors’ take on the 19th Century German philosopher.
Who was I to disagree?
That declaration came near the start of a nearly two-hour session which concluded with a perturbed feminist spectator, who teaches at the University of Southern California, making steadfastly clear, “I am disturbed by the erasure of Marx and materialism from this discussion.”
Who was I to disagree?
Of course, the woman served as unwitting reminder that, like many academic disciplines, political science does not suffer from a lack of factions. Thus, the 600 panel discussions during the four-day event included this offering from the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Political Science Caucus: “Queer Theory and Political Theory.”
About 6,000 people are attending a convention where the academic papers delivered have included “Heteronormativity in Western Political Thought” and “Disciplining Male Desire: Homosexuality, Prostitution and Social Class in Late Victorian London.”
But, mostly, there were old standbys, such as “Aristotle & Xenophon: the Nature-Politics Relation,” “Domestic Institutions, Two-Level Games, and Institutionalizing European Cooperation” and “Governing Capitalist Change: The Associational Bases of Industrial Restructuring in Comparative Perspective.”
In fairness (sort of), there were panels and papers on distinctly intelligible topics, such as one on media coverage of the White House (UPI’s Helen Thomas was candid on big stories the press corps there misses), the supposed “gender gap” during the 1996 elections and the future of national nominating conventions.
There are folks doing practical and provocative work, despite the facile assumption that the field is far removed from the world known to the pols, lobbyists and consultants here.
Friday, for example, brought a study by Richard Keiser of Minnesota’s Carleton College, who examined the rise and fall of black mayors in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles.
He concludes that their ascension was in many ways a fluke and their exit, especially in Chicago and New York, less a matter of white backlash than a reversion to a norm of “co-opting potential black leaders and demobilizing the black vote.”
In addition, he scrutinized the seemingly pragmatic ways of Latino voters, who have been inclined to depart coalitions with black leaders and side with white ones they feel have a better shot at winning.
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It’s not earthshaking but part and parcel of serious folks not being totally out in left field.
The evergreen topics include “Morality and Politics.” It was addressed this year at a “Hyde Park session,” named after the freewheeling debating in London’s Hyde Park, and attended mostly by members of the association’s political left.
James Morone, a Brown University professor who resembles a bespectacled Art Garfunkel, served as catalytic host, coming off as a sort of Phil Donahue on Benzedrine.
“What’s wrong with the Left? It has lost its vision. Why is the Right ascendant? Because they believe!” he declared.
“So, then, whad’ya make of what’s going on in American society?”
This rather open-ended invitation prompted a helter-skelter debate in which about 20 academics on the Left, center and Right seemed, after initial courtesies, to talk right past one another.
Yale University’s Cathy Cohen derided “white, heterosexual patriarchal traditions” dominating society and segued into proclaiming, “I don’t believe in the institution of marriage.”
“We need to understand heterosexual marriage as a tool to exploit and punish,” she said, though without the usual grimness of many feminists. She chided those who view marriage as some moral panacea, though in doing so she seemed to be setting up a straw man, or woman.
Theda Skocpol of Harvard University spoke to left-leaning allies in warning about creating false debates as to whether morality or economics matters most. Morals are always central to politics and life, she said, but it is a mistake for the Left to let the Right appropriate moral and family issues.
“It’s time for democratic forces to take the moral high ground,” she said. “We need to revive the prophetic tradition of morality” manifested by the abolitionist and civil rights movements.
Many of those same traditions, she argued, can be recaptured by the Left if it focuses more on “family-centered movements.”
Justifiably combative conservatives got in their 2 cents. “I am on the religious Right,” said Robert Lloyd of Pepperdine University. “People forget there’s a lot of diversity and sophistication on our side.”
This prompted a classic nodding of heads and “yes, yes, he’s right” from one and all, before the bashing continued.
At one point, Andrew Rehfeld, a University of Chicago grad student, calmly asserted that the Left fails by not linking morality to everyday life. It’s all caught up in battling the Right over what’s right or wrong when it comes to gays and the homeless, little else.
“So much of morality is about everyday life, the things we do as opposed to the things others should do,” said Rehfeld, who indicated he listens regularly to AM radio.
This was a point concurred with by Skocpol.
Yes, yes, the Left is too obsessed with gays and the homeless when discussing morality. It should talk more about elites who run the country “or people who make promises to be at sessions like this and then don’t show up.”
A big, “Oooh” went up. She was referring to none other than a renowned Harvard colleague, Robert Putnam, who was arguably the star scheduled attraction for this session, but dissed it at the last minute.
Tom Baylis of the University of Texas did attend, perhaps to the ultimate chagrin of some around him.
Near the end, he noted how the prime subjects of scrutiny in the profession have tended to be “interest, power and ambition.”
“Political scientists don’t have any business talking about morality,” he said sternly.