Bernie's Hail Mary

It has been difficult to discern what Bernie Sanders gains from his impromptu visit with the Pope, but apparently his campaign consultant, Jeffrey Sachs, thought it might give him some heft on the foreign policy front. Sachs was the one who arranged Sanders' appearance at a conference staged by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Sachs was also speaking at the conference. All this was arranged through the Pope's "right hand man," Bishop Marcel Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of PASS.

According to the NYTimes, it was at dinner the night before that someone whispered into Sorondo's ear that the Pope would give Bernie an audience if he was in the lobby of the Casa Santa Maria at 6 am before he flew out to Greece. That was all the time Bernie needed to make this trip worth the effort. After all, what's a trip to the Vatican without an audience with the Pope, be it ever so brief.

What Bernie gains from it remains to be seen, as the two days probably would have been better spent campaigning in New York where he trails Hillary Clinton. Some felt it was a cynical attempt to court Catholic voters in New York, but that's not really Bernie's style. More likely, he wanted to communicate that he was on the same page as the Pope when it came to economic and social equality.

The Pope had been burned once before by Kim Davis, and I'm sure was not overly happy about the impromptu visit arranged by Bishop Sorondo. The Pope probably knows that Bernie is spreading a message similar to his, but made it abundantly clear it was nothing more than courtesy greetings that were exchanged, as he did not want anyone to think he was playing favorites in America's election cycle.

The bigger concern is Bernie's speech at the PASS convention, as he was pretty harsh on the American economic system. This no doubt went over well with this Vatican audience, but he has been sharply criticized back home. Bill Clinton quipped that Sanders' fans "would shoot every third person on Wall Street." Not a bad idea actually, however most Americans still haven't warmed up to Sanders' vision of Social Democracy, and it would probably be better if Bernie found some kind of middle ground, especially with so many delegates at stake in New York. Bernie is once again being seen as the grumpy socialist.

Nevertheless, the visit did deflect attention away from Thursday night's debate, which pundits felt he was unable to shake Hillary on the question of judgement. Continually bringing up her vote on the Iraq War is the equivalent of holding her to blame on Benghazi, which the Republicans do. Bernie has to find other matters to question her judgement on.

Unfortunately, the impromptu trip comes across as a Hail Mary, a last desperate gesture before the New York primary this Tuesday to pull out a miracle victory. Bernie would have been much better off pushing his message on the stump rather than at a Vatican convention, which only served to put his motives in question.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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