Washington Jewish Week Letter: Tactics on Trump (from Facebook post)

This week's Washington Jewish Week published, as a Letter to the Editor (http://washingtonjewishweek.com/40875/letters-sept-7-2017/editorial-opinion/letters/), my on-line comment on last week's editorial entitled "Complaining rabbis got outmaneuvered by Trump." I gave my permission to publish it in the print edition as a Letter to the Editor. Still, without context, the Letter may seem a bit odd. The editorial was about the decision of Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Rabbis to decline to participate in the traditional High Holy Days call with the President of the United States.http://washingtonjewishweek.com/40722/complaining-rabbis-got-outmaneuvered-by-trump/editorial-opinion/editorial/

I think criticism of rabbis appearing "political" as a general matter (part of the WJW's concern) is unfair. The moral health of our society is at stake. But the WJW's criticism of the effectiveness of the tactic (as opposed to the strategy) was well-taken. In hindsight, it would have been more effective to draw out President Trump by telling him in advance what issues the rabbis intended to present in the annual call -- something that would have led the notoriously thin-skinned (and cowardly) President to cancel the call. Then the rabbis could have noted that the President could not even bring himself to deal with his dangerous behavior. An on the off-chance that the call would have occurred, some good could have come from that.

As things played out, Trump was, correctly, made to look bad. If the rabbis had been more subtle in their approach, he would have been made to look even worse. We should remember that this is not an "if the Tsar only knew" situation. Trump knows exactly what he is doing, and he needs to be called out on it.

FWIW, here is the WJW editorial:

What is a Jewish group supposed to do when it wants to make a principled statement to the president of the United States? How aggressive should it be? And how carefully should its members consider the political ramifications of what they are doing?

After President Trump’s defense of the white supremacists who staged the deadly Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, and his apparent insensitivity to the moral implications of the public pronouncements he made, the rabbinic leaders of the three main liberal streams of Judaism took a stand in a manner they thought would attract media attention — and it did. In a joint statement on Aug. 23, the leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements announced they would not participate in the annual Jewish communal High Holiday conference call with the president.

According to the rabbis’ statement, Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville violence were “so lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred that we cannot organize such a call this year.” And they went on to say that “the president’s words have given succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia.”

We agree with the sentiment expressed by the rabbis. We are also pleased that in addition to generating headlines, the move may have inspired some Jews who had long ago given up going to synagogue to contemplate coming back. But we do not approve of their tactics.

Most political observers could have predicted — particularly given the president’s past behavior, as well as the fact that the rabbis had yet to confirm a date for the conference call — that Trump would successfully fire back. Indeed, less than 24 hours after the rabbinic letter lecture, the administration responded that there was never going to be a High Holiday conference call. As a result, the rabbis had announced a boycott of a non-event.

At the time that they issued their very public statement, the rabbis knew that the High Holiday call was up in the air. So we can’t help but conclude that the statement was more of an effort at political grandstanding than it was a serious effort to deliver a substantive message.

In retrospect, it probably would have made more sense of the rabbis to say, “We look forward to our annual High Holidays call with the president, during which we plan to make clear our concern and our dismay regarding the president’s recent actions, and intend to encourage him to more forcefully embrace our shared American and Jewish values of inclusion and tolerance.”

Doing so would have put the ball back in the White House’s court and would have made these leaders look more rabbinic than political. And since ours is a tradition that values dialogue, we respectfully suggest that the rabbis would have been better off trying to engage with the president, rather than jumping prematurely to hang up the phone.

"What did you do during the [Viet Nam] War, Daddy?"

Today I posted this article on Facebook, with an accompanying brief commentary.

Born the same year as Donald Trump, Thorne-Thomsen made a very different decision than our current president. How male baby boomers responded in the 1960s and how they saw their decisions, says a lot of about character. There was no one perfect answer. But on any scale of responses, Trump's was near the bottom. And his refusal to recognize his use of privilege (including what appears to have been a phony doctor's note), is consistent with his other character flaws.

Carl Thorne-Thomsen

Brief life of a man of principle: 1946-1967

HARVARDMAGAZINE.COM

At good friend from high school responded as follows:
Sorry, but I have no respect for anyone, especially the educated, who knowingly participated in what I consider the worst thing our country ever did. Citing "justice" after being drafted is convenient. The fight for justice was the fight AGAINST the war, not fighting IN it. Once in battle you are morally obligated to do heroic things -- and to kill people who have done you and your country no wrong. Had he lived, I suspect he would have gone into politics, holding his medal high.

My friend's point has some force, but led me to draft a response.  Since it is too long for a short Facebook Comment, I thought I'd put my response in this blog:

For those of us who were opposed to the War, I think that those who decided to go to jail rather than submit to the Draft were the most principled, but those who were not legitimate conscientious objectors who did submit because of the class-based unfairness (and adherence to the rule of law in a democratic society) were pretty high up there. Both approaches recognized responsibilities of citizenship within a country which elected its leaders, however foolish those leaders may have been. One was the path of civil disobedience and the other was the path of being faithful to democratic and egalitarian norms.

In 1969, upon college graduation, I went to work as a VISTA Volunteer (something I had planned to do since the creation of VISTA in 1964). Working in a prison in Memphis, I concluded pretty quickly that I did not have the courage to do time rather than submit to the draft once my year in VISTA was over. And leaving the country to avoid the draft seemed to me to be an abandonment of responsibility to participate in the movement to end the War, and an abandonment of a country that provided my "tribe" as a Jew a refuge from the terrible fate that other Jews faced in the first half of the 20th Century. I had pretty well decided I would submit to the Draft and hope that I would not become cannon fodder. I was freed from that fate because my doctor's letter -- an honest description of my health (a description which I did not think would get me a deferment) -- caused my Draft Board to classify me 4-F.

So how did our Baby Boomer Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates respond to the challenge of the 1960s. Whatever one thinks of the "political" motives of Gore's and Kerry's decisions to go into the active-duty military (to which I assume my friend was alluding), they were operating within the rule of law and did not pull the 20th Century version of a Grover Cleveland, who paid someone poorer to take his place in the Civil War. Quayle and Bush the Second, on the other hand, hid out in the National Guard -- which, unlike in the post-Draft era of the Middle East Wars, was a virtual guarantee of not being shipped overseas. As for Bill Clinton, while he pulled a fast one on his local Draft Board, at least he continued to work in the Anti-Viet Nam War effort, unlike so many of our generation who, once they were clear of the draft, simply bugged out of involvement. Donald Trump, on the other hand, bought an Upper East Side doctor's note that was illegitimate (he could not even remember on which foot the alleged "bone spur" was located), and did nothing with his freedom but go into the family business, which, it appears, was rooted in part in perpetuating housing discrimination in Brooklyn and Queens.
Trump was the worst of the Baby Boomers, and somehow HE became the last Viet Nam era Baby Boomer President. And I think that is why telling the story of Carl Thorne-Thomsen is important.