"AS MUCH as I might wish it were otherwise," I wrote in Arguable last week, "politics is not for the principled."
It is a view I have expressed on more than a few occasions. Like most Americans I have a low opinion of most national politicians. Making allowances for hyperbole, I'd say Mark Twain was closer to right than wrong when he wrote, in 1897: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
But not everyone agrees.
Responding to my lament about the lack of good character in elected officials, US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton, an Arguable reader, has filed a dissent. "I disagree with you and would urge you to reconsider," he emailed. As a federal judge, Gorton is careful to avoid comment on current political issues. But he called me to task on the broader point, spurred in part by the memory of a beloved family member. With his permission, I share his words, slightly edited for length and clarity:
Politics had better be for the principled. We had better encourage young people of principle to go into politics or our country and our democracy truly will be in jeopardy. I know you didn't say that all politicians are unprincipled but you imply it — and the more that becomes the common perception, the more it will discourage good people with honorable intentions from seeking public office.
I realize I am not wholly objective. You know how much I admired my older brother, Slade Gorton, the late US senator from Washington State. He was a principled public office holder for 40 years — as a state representative, attorney general, and senator — who was interested not just in getting elected but in doing something constructive once he was in office. He did not become rich in public office. He lost two out of his eight statewide election campaigns, at least partly because he wouldn't change his stance on some crucial issues. Of course some of his political activity was intended to help him win elections. If you don't win, you don't implement any of your good ideas!
My brother wasn't alone. He served with many good public servants — politicians — on both sides of the aisle. Senators Howard Baker of Tennessee, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota, Scoop Jackson of Washington State, and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut come to mind.
The point is this: You are right that there are a lot of unprincipled politicians, party hacks who are in office for their own glory. But there are also enough good elected politicians to have saved this country from itself many times. We desperately need to find and encourage a new generation of public servants to follow in their footsteps. Your public endorsement sometimes would help.
Point taken. In fairness, I have on occasion made a point of praising the ethics and candor of public officials with whom I strongly disagreed on matters of policy but whose decency and integrity I admired. And when I encounter a candidate for office whose honesty and good motives strike me as unimpeachable, I am glad to offer an endorsement.
 Senator Slade Gorton in 2000. |
But such encounters seem few and far between these days. Perhaps that is a function of living in Massachusetts, where top-to-bottom one-party dominance and a secretive Legislature controlled by a handful of quasi-authoritarian leaders discourages men and women motivated by a sincere public spirit from entering politics in the first place.
Then again, distrust of office seekers is as old as office-seeking. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1799 that "once a man has cast a longing eye on [public office], a rottenness begins in his conduct."
I agree with Judge Gorton that America desperately needs to motivate young men and women of rectitude, vision, and good character to go into public life. I only wish we knew how to do so.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We all live in Catland now
My siblings and I were very young when we discovered a cat hiding in our garage during a thunderstorm and asked our parents if we could keep it as a pet. My father — an immigrant from rural Slovakia who had grown up on a farm — was baffled by our request. None of the cats he had ever known when he was young had lived indoors with people. As far as he was concerned, cats belonged in the barn, or at any rate outdoors where they could catch mice and rats. Let a cat have the run of the house? What an idea!
But before he had a chance to say no, the cat — whom we named Lightning, for the weather in which we found her — had jumped into his lap and begun purring. My father surrendered on the spot. Lightning became the first feline member of our household, and I took my initial step on the path to becoming a cat person. When I married many years later, I acquired not only a wife but also her cat Jemima. (That cat had the distinction of becoming a registered voter in three states.) My kids grew up in a home where having a cat or two was taken for granted and at least one of my sons is well on the way to full-fledged cat-personhood himself.
Yet it wasn't so long ago that just about everyone regarded cats the way my father originally did — as scruffy outdoor scavengers that fended for themselves, preyed on mice, and evoked no more affection than squirrels or pigeons do today. Well into the second half of the 19th century, the notion of a cat as a beloved domestic pet would have seemed ludicrous.
But then everything changed, as the literary critic Kathryn Hughes recounts in "Catland," a remarkably intriguing new book about the "great cat mania" that swept over Britain and the United States beginning in the 1870s. Much of that mania was due to the illustrations of Louis Wain, a commercial artist whose pictures of cats dressed and acting like humans became an international phenomenon.
More than a century before there was an internet to fill up with videos of cats being cute, odd, sly, or irresistible, there were drawings by Wain of cats being cute, odd, sly, or irresistible. His work appeared in magazines and on postcards, in cartoons and advertisements, in children's books and newspapers. Wain depicted cats in a myriad of attitudes and situations — as fashionable Victorians strolling in top hats, as overdressed females on a shopping spree, as poker players having a boys' night out, as Santa carrying a miniature Christmas tree, as a randy couple in a lascivious embrace, or as a malicious scoundrel pouring boiling water into a goldfish bowl.
 In "The Bachelor Party," painted by Louis Wain in 1939, a group of tomcats enjoy their cigars and liquor. |
Over the course of Wain's career, writes Hughes, "cats lost their previously weaselly faces and ratty tails to take up their place as rounded, silky, and large-eyed personalities in a plush modern world." Hobbyists began organizing competitive cat shows and breeders promoted distinct types of cats, complete with pedigrees and the status conferred by rarity. What Hughes calls "Catland" thus has a dual meaning: It refers to the whimsical world portrayed in Wain's anthropomorphic illustrations but also to the transformation in society's perception of cats — a transformation reflected to this day in everything from supermarket aisles filled with packaged cat food to veterinary clinics that specialize in cat care to the backlash JD Vance provoked with his disparaging reference to "childless cat ladies."
And then there are all the cats in popular and social culture. In one fascinating digression after another, Hughes recounts the origins of Felix the Cat, describes the literary world's embarrassed reaction to T. S. Eliot's whimsical book of cat poems, explains how "pussy bachelor" became a slang term for a sophisticated gay man, and comments on the presence of half a million cats as soldiers' companions in the Western front trenches during World War I. She also introduces us to Arthur Edward Young, a London housebreaker who was the first "cat burglar."
"Catland" has a chapter on famous cat-haters, including Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, all of whom suffered from ailurophobia — an irrational fear of cats. Conversely, there is a mention of one of the most famous and accomplished "childless cat ladies" in history. Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing and one of the 19th century's great humanitarians, never married or had children. But she lived, Hughes notes, "with as many as 17 cats at once, on the grounds that they possessed 'much more sympathy and feeling than human beings.' "
For a confirmed cat person like me — surely you've noticed the cat that prowls among the books in the Arguable logo — Hughes's book could hardly fail to appeal. But whatever your view of Felis catus, "Catland" is the cat's meow — a deeply researched chronicle of a little known history, an enchanting cabinet of curiosities, and an ingenious, witty work about the species that for so many of us is entwined with domestic happiness.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the op-ed page
From "Thankful for our immigrants," Nov. 25, 1999:
In an era of plunging unemployment and soaring cynicism, we need immigrants more than ever. They are the secret of our success, these hardworking risk-takers who so esteem our way of life that they are willing to uproot themselves from their homelands to live among us. The Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth 379 years ago. What a debt of gratitude we owe them, and all the immigrants who followed in their wake.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Last Line
"We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution." — John Quincy Adams (played by Anthony Hopkins), Address to the US Supreme Court in "Amistad" (1997)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
-- ## --
Follow Jeff Jacoby on X (aka Twitter).
Discuss his columns on Facebook.
Want to read something different? Sign up for "Arguable," Jeff Jacoby's free weekly email newsletter.