The public service of elected officials and their Catholic faith have once again come into the public eye. With both vice-presidential candidates being baptized Catholics, it was only a matter of time before our attention turned again to the faith of Vice President Joseph Biden, also a Catholic.
elections
The Virtue Deficit in US Political Culture
Had I the resources, the one new book I’d give every delegate to the national political conventions meeting later this month is James Traub’s masterful biography, “John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit” (Basic Books). Traub grabs your attention quickly, seven sentences in: “[Adams] did not aim to please, and he largely succeeded.”
Resisting the Demagogue
YOU’VE GOT TO have a good memory for mid-Sixties pop music to remember the Seekers, an Aussie quartet that once vied for the top of the British charts with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (and did quite well here in the U.S., too). But this isn’t a pop culture quiz; it’s a reflection on our increasingly disturbing 2016 presidential election, with a little help from, yes, the Seekers.
Anger and Citizenship
I hope that, as the 2016 campaign unfolds, the electorate will begin to understand that anger is not a particularly healthy metric of public life.