Courage is the ability to be terrified and aggressive simultaneously.
For some that ability stems from instinct.
For others it comes from desperation.
For a select few it comes from cool calculated deliberation.
If we are to prevail in this election, we must be in the final group.
This election is huge. Make no mistake about it. The stakes are huge. If we lose, then they will destroy so much of what we have striven for. They will pack the courts. They will disenfranchise our key demographics. They will move ever closer to their long-time goal of repealing the Twentieth Century and ushering in a new Gilded Age. Our enemies are real. They are determined and they are pernicious.
Henry Adams once described politics as " the systematic organization of hatred." There can be little doubt that, at least as far as this definition holds, the GOP is superior to the Democratic party as a political machine. I don’t mind that so much because, Adams’ cynicism notwithstanding, I, like the vast majority of Democrats, would like to make politics about something more noble. As such, I am glad to leave the hate-mongering to the GOP. That said, it never ceases to astound me how Democrats seem to believe that good intentions will solve the world’s problems. We invariably beat the Republicans when it comes to the popularity of our ideas, but when election day comes we find that they have done their homework, organized hatred with frightening efficiency, and won far more than they deserved to. I fear that future generations will look back on us and render the same harsh judgment that Theodore Roosevelt once passed on William Howard Taft, his former protégé and successor: We mean well. Feebly.
Those are my fears and they are real. This election is about the soul of this nation and we are in grave danger of losing it. I am terrified and you should be too.
But I do not despair.
The reason for that is simple: Our fate is in our own hands. And we have a historic opportunity.
When I think about courage I think of, among others, Ulysses S. Grant, whose portrait gazes at me as I write this.
I recall one of the lessons that he learned early in the war that thrust him into greatness:
As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris’ camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable.
Kos has written an excellent diary on the front page whose message is as welcome as it is important:
We are winning.
And he's right.
We are.
It turns out that Grant was right: They have as much reason to fear us as we have to fear them. Perhaps even more. For we are out to destroy their idea of America every bit as much as they are out to destroy ours.
And we are winning.
Mitt Romney is a terrible candidate.
Barack Obama is a superlative candidate.
Romney is disliked.
After years of mud-slinging Obama is still liked.
David Plouffe. Davide Axelrod.
Eric Fehrnstrom. Andera Saul.
We have the better team.
Still, there are those who give counsel to their fears. Fox News is running a poll with Obama ahead because they want us to get complacent. They're trying to manipulate us. Karl Rove is going to spend $250 million in SuperPac attack ads against us.
What should we do?
We should stop clutching our pearls.
Yes, our enemies are formidable. But they have as much to fear from us as we have to fear from them. This is indeed a valuable lesson.
Later in the war Grant was pitted against the South's greatest commander, Robert E. Lee. He assumed the command of the Army of the Potomac, which had for three years been in the unenviable position of (with some notable exceptions) regularly getting their asses kicked by Lee.
Lee had become a kind of superman to many of his subordinates. And they constantly feared what he might do next to them.
He had a response that showed he had absorbed his earlier lesson to the full:
Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.
That spirit guided Grant through the Overland Campaign of 1864-1865. And Lee, it turns out, was quite the commander. He bled Grant's Army mercilessly. Grant's subordinates often lacked the requisite aggressiveness to realize his plans and squandered one opportunity after another. Grant's own refusal to give into his fear of Lee led him to make disastrous mistakes, the worst of them coming at Cold Harbor, Virginia, still the most catastrophic day for United States forces in our history.
This is Grant at Cold Harbor:
It's one of the most famous photos of Grant. And he was right then getting his ass kicked. He was losing troops to his own arrogance. He got whipped so bad that he retired to his tent and broke down crying. But, as Shelby Foote noted, he wasn't crying when he came out the next morning.
He thought about what he could do to Lee. And then he did it. And it took him another ten months, but at a little town called Appomattox Courthouse, he received the surrender of the vaunted Robert E. Lee. And the primary reason for that was that he knew that Lee had as much reason to fear him as he had to fear Lee. And he thought about what he was going to do to Lee rather than worrying about what Lee was going to do to him.
And we can profit from his example.
Yes, Rove is out there.
Yes, the GOP is going to violate even the most basic standards of decency to destroy everything that we value.
Yes, we have ample reason to be terrified.
But so do they.
Let us not deny our fears, but let us master them.
Objectively viewed, this election is a historic opportunity.
There is as much to be lost from excessive timidity as from excessive foolhardiness and historically Democrats have lost farm more from the former than the latter.
Let us look on Grant at Cold Harbor, before his worst humiliation and note the determination that pulled him through it.
We have an opportunity to take back our government.
Lute us acknowledge our fears but refuse their counsel.
Let us be terrified and aggressive.
Let us, in short, be brave.