Watergate, Patriotism, Israel, Weebles

I was twelve years old or so during the Watergate political scandal and the ensuing political and Constitutional crisis. In my faulty memory, every television set was tuned to the proceedings of the Senate Select Committee Hearings. Somber and serious senators from both parties investigating what had happened and dealing with an obstreperous Richard Nixon.

I had no idea what was really going on, only that my father and grandfather were visibly upset and worried, and it was from them that I took my clues about such matters.

Eventually, my father said something that has stuck with me. I don’t remember his exact words, but I recall well the essence. Also, it was special, because he said it to me.

“The way these senators have come together and handled this gives me my faith back in our country.”

Patriotism was and has always been very important to my father. And he has always been an optimist. His patriotism is motivated by both faith and gratitude. His optimism functions as a hyper efficient device to seek out that which would confirm his faith and gratitude.

I’m similar to my father in that patriotism is very important to me. I’m different than him in that optimism does not come easy to me. I’m quicker to see flaws than to see virtue. I have my list of things and people in America today that aggrieve my values of justice, honor, and logic. And I struggle to make a similar list on the optimistic side of the ledger.

It’s for obvious reasons that today I’ve been thinking about Watergate and constitutional crises and times of doubt and dread. However, I chastise myself because I believe that finding patriotism is never more important than when it is hardest to be patriotic. To find the good in our American system, if not in the current politics of outrage or in the many problems and tragedies that beset us. Especially when that system is so stressed that it wobbles. It is precisely then that patriotism could help ease our strains.

So I turn my attention to Israel whose current political crisis is based on a system of government manifestly inferior to our own. A system in which judges have no constitution to follow and no legal constraints and in which a crazy quilt coalition in the Knesset can hold the most slender of majorities and exercise political absolutism.

Israel’s problems remind me of the great gift of our American Constitution. It has guided us through times far worse than Watergate or than the arrest of an ex-president. Note to Benjamin Franklin: We’ve kept our Republic for some 235 years.

So step away from the headlines and the fractious bickering and have faith that America will not only endure but will, more times than most, prevail over its worst instincts and embrace its better angels. And we may wobble, but we will not fall down.