In an interview with Jon Stewart, Graham Platner, Maine Senatorial candidate, recounted a moment from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency that affected Platner’s own thoughts on power.  When the Supreme Court kept invalidating FDR’s economic reforms, FDR threatened to “pack the Court.”  Roosevelt wanted to add more Justices to dilute the votes of those deeming his economic measures and uses of federal power unconstitutional.  This threat alone may have led the Justices to start ruling in FDR’s favor and reverse course on their economic due process Lochner-style jurisprudence.  Politicians have to be creative, Platner said.  Surprisingly, after hearing Platner relate how FDR was successful in implementing his policies, Jon Stewart referred to Platner as having principles.  

In fact, Platner was exhibiting a lackof principles for favoring this Court-packing approach. The prioritization of pure power to achieve one’s political aims, by members of both parties, has led to the undermining of the Court’s legitimacy and independence.  Principles are about following rules designed to benefit everyone, including our political enemies, in the service of a larger, more abstract ideal.  Freedom of speech, even for speech we detest, is the ultimate expression of principle.  The principle here was an independent judiciary.  Roosevelt abandoned that principle; Platner praised FDR for it; and Stewart fawned over Platner.

Politicizing the judiciary and abandoning principles has led to a compromising of our constitutional order. Everyone recognizes in the abstract that it is wrong for politicians to influence judges’ interpretations of the Constitution, or for judges to rule based on their political preferences rather than honest readings of legal text and precedent.  Everyone condemns these behaviors when their political enemies do it.  What was surprising was the lack of recognition of how destructive abandoning this principle is when your own party wields that sort of power.  Graham Platner seemed to be taking cues about how to be a leader from FDR’s Court-packing strategy to implement the New Deal, which some argue helped get the United States out of the Great Depression and others argue prolonged the Great Depression.

—-

I first became aware of Graham Platner because of his past Internet activity and his Nazi tattoo. Platner, who said he didn’t know about the Nazi association with the tattoo while others dispute this, had the Totenkopf skull and bones for18 years before covering it up when it came to light politically. Like his hero FDR, Platner may have progressive values with under- and over-tones of a certain type of bigotry. 

Roosevelt publicly condemned antisemitism while turning away boats of Jewish refugees back to their deaths during the Holocaust.  Roosevelt kept Jewish immigration way below quota for refugees trying to come to America, as the Nazis exterminated 66% of the Jewish population of Europe.  Roosevelt made private comments about how the economic dominance of Jews in Poland provoked the virulent antisemitism there. Roosevelt boasted to his own Jewish advisor about how he helped set quotas for Jews at Harvard when he was on Harvard’s Board of Overseers.  Jewish Americans were getting into Harvard based on academic excellence, even despite a lack of wealth, during a profoundly and tragically antisemitic time in the United States and abroad. Roosevelt did not approve of high concentrations of Jews at major universities. Roosevelt also, as one of the darkest aspects of his presidency, oversaw the repugnant internment of Japanese Americans and expressed xenophobia and suspicion towards Japanese people.

Perhaps a variation of Roosevelt is echoed in Platner. Platner has associated with antisemitic conspiracy theorists.  He also seems suspicious of achievement.  He told Jon Stewart that power is not just reserved for smart, special people.  The populist drive to redistribute social capital away from people who have earned it (in addition to those who have decidedly not earned it) has often seemed sinister to me. Both parties have, in their different ways, denigrated achievement and gained support by choosing in groups and out groups.  I find the different versions of populism on both the left and the right concerning.  The Platner/FDR implementation of this seems to lack awareness in how it contradicts their other stated ideals and principles.

And that’s just it. Graham Platner is Democrats’ hope for taking the Senate. People are willing to overlook his Nazi tattoo (it’s perhaps a plus for some). People are also willing to overlook his associations with and boosting of Holocaust-denying conspiracy theorists, his extramarital texts, and the fact that he claims to be working class while being born into money and attending prep school. Platner is also a military veteran who appears forthcoming, kind, articulate, and well read.  Maybe he is (although he doesn’t seem to have read sources that would dispute the narrative he’s built).

Platner’s discussions of creative uses of power may be necessary for some of the honorable goals he wishes to achieve.  But creative uses of power also have a sinister edge.  He was voted most likely to start a revolution in high school.  Because I study freedom, and law, and because I understand how lucky we are compared to much of the world to have the constitutional rights we do have, I understand that not all revolutions, or creative uses of power, are good.  Many are catastrophic. I think of the horrors wreaked by the revolution in Iran, bolstered by socialist ideals (although the socialists were killed once the revolution was a success) which has led to one of the most repressive, Holocaust-denying countries on the planet, a regime that represses its own wonderful people and shuts off the Internet to murder protesters. So it is important to elect leaders not just with values, but with principles about restraints on power.

The question is, how unprincipled have we all become, as a society. How much has the lack of principle of politicians on one side of the aisle created highly unprincipled people on the other, over and over again, throughout American history?  Can we ever get past a point where people mistakenly think they are being principled when they are actually willing to do whatever it takes in the service of their own political causes? Can we get to a principled place, or will this vicious cycle continue?