Arlen Specter and the Sixties

Senator Arlen Specter, who has now transferred to the Democrat Party in the United States Senate, is one of the odder founders of sixties counterculture. It was Specter, after all, who came up with the idea of the 'magic bullet' that killed President Kennedy. It is well known in popular culture, an impossible, dancing mannlicher-carcano thing that most people think can't have done what Specter said it did to President Kennedy and Governor Connally in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963.

In fact, it did not have to. Specter's idea was based on the thought that Lee Oswald must have been guilty, and that the photographs and films available required a crazy bullet. As you can see from the animation below this post, when computer reconstructions such as that of Dale Myers are done these days, the bullet has to have had a straight, not a magic path, and has to have come from Oswald's position.

In addition, given that Kennedy was wearing a truss and a back brace, and couldn't move, that bodies move in the direction of a bullet when brain matter is blown explosively forward by a bullet from the rear, that tests on the bullet fragments tie it to Oswald, and that bone fragments and the effects of the supersonic bullet explain why most of the witnesses in front thought something flew past them, there is no need for a complicated conspiracy. Lee Oswald was an embittered and disgraced Marine with a gun. Taking easy shots against a target moving upwards at eleven miles an hour in a car too heavy to change gear easily or without stopping, he made himself as famous as the character in the 'fugitive' TV show he loved.

I spent a long time in my life reading histories of the Kennedy assassination to relax, and could go on about all of them. I've read the Warren report out of interest, and vividly remember buying a summary and overcoming my usual instant travel sickness by reading it in glances on the bus home years ago. I could even tell you Oswald's taste in television. I've chatted with alumni students of mine who knew Jack Ruby as the mouthy 'wannabe' he seems to have been. But, as Vince Bugliosi has shown, and as was obvious anyway, I think that case ought now to be closed.

Specter's lie, however, fed into the poison of Vietnam and the baby boomer's disillusion, and reinforced suspicion of government by its silliness. He made up a fact to fit a near-certainty, rather than admitting he didn't know something. That spread distrust, in its crazy way. My argument is that he shouldn't have done that, and its one that I have had with senior policemen over drinks about things they knew went on everyday in the Met too. Even if you know they are guilty, you should not make up evidence.

Its often very difficult to ever hold the liars to account, and often their lies encourage worse. By the time people like Josiah Thompson and Mark Lane--who are, I think, pseudohistorians, the latter more than the former--started spreading conspiracism, Specter was off elsewhere pursuing his reward, which was a seat in Congress in the 1966 Republican backlash. Since then, he's essentially been a sort of managerial liberal in a state that has always had very radical-conservative elements in his party. He does the necessary things, kills the babies, plays the game. In public, he was helped by--indeed got away with this by-- playing off the likes of Rick Santorum, and by the general effete elitism of the Democrats before Ed Rendell. Santorum, laughed at by the media but a man I honestly admire, didn't seem to get what a backstabber his colleague was until it was too late.

Then, inevitably, time ran out for Specter too, except that he is being provided with a lifeline. His predictable move to the Democrats is being embraced by the Democrat leadership. Salivating at a potential supermajority in the Senate--a highly unreliable notion if its based on Specter, Lieberman, or any one of the rest of its supposed 60 members--they are trying to discourage any challenge to their new best friend.

I really wonder if this is not a mistake. The Washington leadership of the Democrat Party isn't really that good. It is, to use a vulgar British phrase, in fact completely up itself and divorced from most notions of moral reality. Most of the older ones live in the shadow of either abandoning George McGovern or pursuing the long shadow of his aims, and the younger ones tend to reliably travel on the wrong bus. Very few of them would even know what 'chappaquiddick' really meant when they were taking the moral high ground or praising Ted Kennedy.

Specter will serve anyone who lets him sit near the driver, generally, and when bankers are in charge, at least the likes of him realise that party labels are just conveniences.

Specter essentially left the Republicans because he worked out that he wouldn't win their primary. I love primaries, and think them democratic innovations that we should have here. If individuals are in responsible personal office, they should be chosen responsibly. Sometimes, though, I realise why I love the rule of law and the idea of freedom more than democracy, given that Specter did originally win some before the electorate's non-damascene moment.

If you are in Pennsylvania, you have a chance to make the coming Democrat primaries really mean something.

I would say to any Pennsylvania Democrat that you should take a long, hard look at people like Admiral Joe Sestak, who has a good deal of money and guts. Not much of a conscience, but he is more honest about it than Arlen. Specter does not have to be your Senator.

I would also say to readers that a proper, non-polarizing Republican vision of a small state, low tax, federalist party that dismantles the state slowly could well prove very attractive. The question Republicans who agree should ask themselves is, with useful liars like Specter who essentially would be useful cover for that agenda if it got traction gone, how bad or dangerous a reaction to Obama's new big-state successful party are they going to have to sponsor before it loses and they take over? Eisenhower/McCain republicans are much more attractive than Cheney ones. I know. I've kissed a couple.