By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, delivered on an icy-cold, blue-skied January morning in 1961, is best-remembered for its iconic declaration: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Yet the final phrase uttered by the young leader that day needs to be recalled into the national memory: “God’s work on earth must truly be our own.” Here was the nation’s first Catholic president practically rephrasing the Talmudic tradition that “God created the world, but people are creating it.”
It’s not about politics—it’s about the mood, the undercurrent of hostility and brooding and the degradation of community debate into camps, allegiances, red states-blue states, and even the religious branding of social categories. My Catholic buddy tells me he doesn’t feel good about the country; my Jewish pal thinks we are spinning out of our moral orbit; my colleague the writer believes that we are in a period of self-flagellation, doubt, and self-contempt.
There is an expectation that some of the same righteous “non-politicians” who came to Congress in 2010 will now be booted out of the House and Senate this fall—they have collectively failed to move the approval rating even a point upward. We are a restless, tired, overtaxed, and cynical electorate. The national spirit droops even as the pundits say things are getting better. The new Congress blew it, more or less, by repeating a regrettable sense of entitlement and failing to understand that the United States is an actual nation of complex histories, resentments, regions, and an already overwhelmed national health insurance structure that is no model for anything. And yet: Many sobering conclusions are being wound and rewound in the media, by the “experts,” and in the minds of so many good citizens who are subliminally configured by the pontificating and polling.
To be fair, there is a real shift in the national gestalt since 2008 when we anointed Barack Obama a messianic deliverer and it turns out he has to run the country, manage wars, maneuver through a labyrinth of ancient senatorial cabals—all while saving the banks, the automotive industry, Social Security, and keeping us safe from terrorists. And I confess to a yearning for some heroism on the part of the rhetorical leaders in the District of Columbia.
Memories are strange: We pine for a JFK (I know that I do), who was lost to us in 1963. But we forget that Ronald Reagan, now a legendary president, was considered damaged goods in 1982, that the rock star Bill Clinton was impeached by the US House of Representatives in 1998 and survived a trial in the Senate, and that George W. Bush had a 90%+ approval rating in the autumn of 2001. We citizens are better than any standing government, any current president, and any transient mood. Our problems are real and hard and even dangerous. But we are a nation of good traditions, open debates, free elections, progressive tendencies, and a history that constantly reveals self-healing and resiliency.
The fact that our president is being reevaluated by some appears to be based on his work, not his race—and that’s a noble thing. We need to turn to each other and remember more, bemoan less. There is work to do—God’s work. And it is truly our own.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com