The young Thomas Jefferson, shortly after he married the widow of Bathurst Skelton, three years before becoming the Author of Liberty, increased his wealth threefold.  He became the master of Bathurst’s 135 slaves [1]  (Jefferson had inherited only 50 from his parents) and added 11,000 acres of property formerly held by Bathurst [2] to the 5,000 he had previously inherited.   To say that young Thomas Jefferson was born booted and spurred to ride the backs of his saddled countrymen would not be entirely unfair.  His marriage to the wealthy young widow added luster to both boot and spur.

With all this inherited wealth, and in spite of an eloquently expressed life long hatred of tyranny,  which compelled him to risk being hanged as a revolutionary, and his deep moral opposition to slavery, the Author of Liberty should have had the luxury, more than fifty years later, of freeing his remaining 130 slaves in his will, as the Father of our Country had done.  Sadly, that luxury was denied to him.  John Adams, who comes down to us far less heroically than Washington and Jefferson, and not nearly the moral equal of either (in the simplistic popular imagination), never owned a slave.  But that is another rant for someone else to go on about some other time.

Fictional, aspirational president Josiah Bartlet, of  The West Wing TV series, is fond of learned quotes.   He quoted Jefferson some time toward the end of season six.   “A man’s management of his own purse speaks volumes about character,” he said.   And it struck me anew: motherfucker!  

The reason Jefferson could not free his slaves, as he heartbrokenly regretted he could not do toward the end of his life, is that in spite of his great inherited wealth, his management of his own purse was less than perfect.  His love of luxury far exceeded his  ability to pay for shipments of the most expensive French wine, the finest Italian furnishings, the clothes made for him by the greatest tailors in Europe, the magnificent horses he rode, the no expense spared constant remodeling of his gracious and beautiful home, Monticello.

He had racked up impressive debts over the years of his long, luxurious life as a philosopher king.  If he had freed his slaves, instead of bequeathing them as property to his daughters, he would have left his progeny penniless.  The shame of that outweighed any other qualms he might have had.  Even leaving aside the several slave children he fathered with the illegitimate half-sister of his late wife, his long-time slave mistress Sally, (unacknowledged during his life and indignantly denied on his legacy’s behalf for a century and a half after his death) let us say, in unison: motherfucker.   History is kinder to him, by far, than I am.  No doubt.

My meditation on the man who bravely declared the self-evident truth of human equality leads me to wonder about my ongoing belief in the idealistic democracy he played such a large role in shaping.  I continue to believe in the importance of our public institutions.  Most large steps forward as a People were the product of principled government initiative in response to overwhelming events and popular agitation. Think about the use of the Interstate Commerce Clause and the courage and determination of both activists and jurists in the federal courts to end centuries of racism at law.  (Much work remains to be done there, but that’s not the point.  The laws needed to be changed, the government acted to change and, in some cases, even enforce the laws.  A triumph of democracy.)

The importance of principled government action is confirmed for me over and over as I watch the ongoing failure of profit-driven business, our so-called Free Market, to solve any of the pressing problems of our society.  Exponentially increasing the wealth of a few makes the country’s wealth look good on paper, but human lives, like baseball games, are not played on paper. Wall Street’s health in most cases has little to do with healthy lives on Main Street.  

Without a pragmatic and honest government to unite and inspire us we have no hope of solving the biggest challenges we face as a nation, as a species, as a planet.  I am probably even in the majority in this opinion, of those with the leisure to consider the question seriously, and who do not stand to lose wealth by taking this position.  Not that it makes much difference, if my belief in democracy is a silly as other fond beliefs of childhood.

Leave aside the damning fact that our highest court has decided that, Constitutionally speaking, and as intended by the Framers, money is speech in a land where 97% of all political campaigns are won by the side that spends the most money speaking.  Has there ever been anything like democracy for most of the history of this nation, the world’s first modern experiment in government of the People, by the People and for the People?   At isolated moments, perhaps, the best aspirations and highest motives of our citizens have become enshrined in our laws.  Sometimes these isolated moments are decades or centuries in the making.

Slavery and lynching, two practices long protected by American law, the former embedded, obscurely but robustly, in our Constitution, the latter winkingly left up to the states to, er … uh, regulate, are now universally reviled.  Today nobody but the hybrid of a moral cretin and a talking jackass would make an argument in favor of slavery or lynching, though both were the law of the land for generations.  Medicare, once unthinkably controversial, is now something even the Tea Baggers want the government to keep their hands off of.  Social Security too, at one time renounced as part of a Socialist plot, has become something most retired people rely on, at least in part, and value as part of a decent society’s social safety net. Not long ago homosexuals were hunted down and locked up, today they legally marry in many states. Millions are in jail today for preferring marijuana to alcohol as their drug of choice. [OK, I know, an exaggeration, please see note… 3]  Democracy does over time move forward, although more often than not only after excruciatingly long struggles against powerful, organized, determined, well-funded forces. 

In light of all this, can I really be angry at a president who campaigned by appealing to the highest ideals and hopes of many of our citizens and continues to talk the talk, though often obliged to speak less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, while ruling in slavish obedience to the corporate bottom line?  Sure I can, but I don’t know how fair it is.  He is not the only “sell-out” to find life much more complicated as the indebted to campaign donors leader of the free world than he may have wished it to be.  Bill Clinton is often considered the greatest Republican president of the last fifty years, though he was relentlessly attacked as a liberal.  Heck of a liberal Bill was, really.

If Jefferson could have freed his slaves, you just know he would have done the right thing, even as the management of his purse showed most of what we need to know about the actual content of his character.

It bears repeating, as was done a few times on The West Wing:  we campaign in poetry but govern in prose.  Call me strict, but I believe  the Author of Liberty should be judged by his own formulation– ditto this well-spoken idealist we have in there now.  

When someone who talks like a psychopath, or a slave holder, acts like one, I know how to react.  I am mobilized, adrenaline flows.  I’m angry, maybe, but not hurt.   I certainly feel no surprise, no betrayal of principle or trust.  When someone talks like a true and compassionate friend, and acts exactly like the guy who talks like a psychopath, and people around me act like he’s still our true friend — it robs me of hope.  It crushes my soul just a little bit more.   Makes me feel something I strongly resist believing:  that my faith in democracy, in the power of the  People to see the truth and walk toward the light, may be entirely foolish.

I don’t believe that, deep down, but, damn, these complicatedly nuanced idealist motherfuckers who eloquently speak our fondest hopes make it hård.

[1] These 135 slaves were inherited from Martha’s father John Wayles, not Bathurst Skelton, and in 1773.  Among the slaves was Betty Hemings and her last daughter by John Wayles (she had six of his children), the baby Sally.

[2] He inherited the 11,000 acres from Wayles, too.  I just like writing Bathurst Skelton and didn’t have my copy of Fawn M. Brodie’s excellent, groundbreaking 1974 Thomas Jefferson; An Intimate Biography at hand when I wrote the post earlier today.  (see W.W. Norton softcover, pp. 80-87)

[3] Fine, not millions locked up for pot.  But read these shameful statistics.   Could a democracy spend the more than $51,000,000,000 annually that goes to the endless, senseless “War On Drugs” any more wisely?  How about 10% of it to make sure no old Americans are ever forced to be cold, or homeless, or eat cat food?