George Mitchell in Brooksville

The sign at David's Folly Saltwater Farm this week

I had the honor of hearing former Senator George Mitchell speak in a large barn in Maine on Monday. My main interest was, of course, his part in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, the greatest achievement among many great achievements in his political career. But Mitchell, though he joked about loving to hear introductions where others sing his praises, is not really one to rest on his laurels.

What Mitchell mostly wanted to discuss was our present moment in the U.S.A. and the world, to put it in context against our overall history and what he perceives as our chance for a bright future.

He called on the industrial revolution to put our current technological revolution into context. "Most job losses then, as now, are the result of dynamic innovation.... The answer cannot be to turn back the clock, to build walls and to deny science." His answer is to re-train our work force, and to let innovators from anywhere into the country, rather than keeping them out. While allowing that immigration now is a more difficult issue than it once was, and that politics is more subtle and tricky than it once was (anti-immigrant legislation once had names like "the Chinese exclusion act"), it is important to us as the world leader in freedom and human rights, to remain the world leader in freedom and human rights. What makes America great in Mitchell's view is that we are a country not built up on the basis of any one particular ethnicity or religion; it is the faith in ideas of liberty and freedom that make us who we are as a country.

On the notion that our contemporary political discourse is uncivil, he reminded the audience that Jefferson's supporters once decried Adams in extremely graphic and insulting terms in the press (he didn't mention Burr actually killing Hamilton in a duel).

He also attacked climate skepticism: "It cannot be a legitimate debate that the earth is warming, and that man-made interventions are responsible for that. The only debate can be 'What do we do about that?'" He then linked the over-population issue to the issue of women's rights: "When women are not empowered, the population will increase, and that will happen in the countries least capable of dealing with it."

A former first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Mitchell advised his audience against a war-like mindset. "We have to get out of the mindset that the first response to the problems of the world should be military; that should be the last response."

In the Q and A at the end, a woman who had studied Mitchell's Northern Ireland negotiations in graduate school, said she had come to the conclusion that he had "re-knit the middle" over there, and she asked if that was possible over here. He somewhat gloomily referred to his decision, on the confirmation committee, to not filibuster the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, thinking that it might usher in a new era of civility in confirmations and save the process. Obviously, we have only seen that process totally butchered recently.

When asked what the two biggest problems were facing American governance, he said it was gerrymandering and money-in-politics. He was critical of both Democratic gerrymandering in 2000, and the far more widespread Republican gerrymandering in 2010. "We have to get back to reasonable district lines." I'm sure he could see what gerrymandering had done to Derry when he was leading the Northern Irish peace negotiations in the '90's. Ironic that it would be so much more widespread than that in his own country on his return. As to money, he spoke of Citizens United as "one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court," and the resultant embrace of dark money as the biggest threat to our democracy.

He spoke very little about his achievement in Northern Ireland, but I am very glad that I chose to go see him. What he did speak about was the power of the American ideals that we so seldom ever live up to, and seldom have lived up to in our history, but that nonetheless might still guide us to negotiate a better tomorrow.

Mitchell makes a point in front of the standing room only crowd.

Peacerunner

Amazon image for Penn Rhodeen's Peacerunner

I am finally getting around to reading my friend Penn Rhodeen's 2016 book Peacerunner: The True Story of How an Ex-Congressman Helped End the Centuries of War in Ireland.  It's embarrassing that I didn't read it sooner, teacher of the Troubles that I am.

I first met Penn in the summer of 1987 when he gave me a ride to the island in Maine where both of our families have summer houses. I know it was 1987, because he was lamenting that his young son had become a Red Sox fan a year before, and when the famous ground ball passed between Bill Buckner's legs, Penn saw his son's face and felt that young Alex had chosen a team that would never win the Series, that would always disappoint. I argued that rooting for the underdog would build character (none of us could foresee 2004 at that time). Over the years, we have made that trip together several times, and so we have had many long conversations and listened to much music together, particularly Van Morrison and Counting Crows, which are the places where our musical tastes insersect.

Penn's book is about how Bruce Morrison--once a popular US Congressman from Connecticut--reinvented himself as a negotiator for Northern Irish peace after losing badly in the 1990 gubernatorial race in Connecticut. The book makes a convincing argument that it was Morrison's friendly relationship with both Bill Clinton and Irish-American publisher Niall O'Dowd that laid the groundwork for what became the Good Friday Agreement. 

Penn is a lawyer and a children's rights advocate by trade, and this is his first book (though he is presently hard at work on his second one). What makes the book so great are two elements: Penn's belief in the power of politics to resolve conflict, and his skillful command of narrative. Using novelistic techniques such as interrupted action--interspersing dramatic scenes with forays into prior history--he builds suspense about how this well known agreement came together and went down.

I haven't finished the book yet, so I will post again when I do, but I saw Penn the other night on the island, and he shared a few details that did not go into the book, but are interesting for me as I think about, and put the last planning details together for, our Northern Ireland trip. He spoke about the effect that it had for one culture to so dominate in the North for so long. Others told him that when Protestants went to prison, they came out well-muscled, but when Catholics went to prison, they came out well-educated. What one does with one's time can be influenced by what one is fighting for, and what that battle looks like. He also advised me to walk the length of the Falls and Shankill Roads if I have time. His observation was that the Falls--the Catholic/nationalist stronghold--provides beautiful hillside views of all of Belfast, while the Shankill--the Protestant/unionist stronghold on the other side of the Peace Walls--provides no view at all of the other side. It is walled off from the opposing view.