Philippa Kaur

For those trying to come to terms with a particularly tumultuous election year full of deep divisions, ideological invective and personal insults, guidance can come from a historical figure whose insights into American politics still prove useful.

As I chronicle in my new book, “Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers And The American People,” Will Rogers stood as perhaps the most influential commentator on public affairs in the United States a century ago. Born in Oklahoma, he had risen to fame as a cowboy humorist in vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway shows and silent movies, and he earned public acclaim with his shrewd, folksy and witty observations on American life and values.

By the 1920s, this led to a syndicated column Rogers wrote for over 300 newspapers, a stream of magazine articles and essays, and steady appearances on the national lecture circuit. He hosted a national radio program and had starring roles in several Hollywood “talkie” movies.

Rogers became the most beloved figure in America until his death in 1935. As I discovered in my research, a flood of eulogies appeared in newspapers and magazines following his passing. Typical was this one appearing in the Minneapolis Journal: “We all loved Will Rogers … . Poets we have had, and philosophers, and humorists of note; but not one among them all so endeared to the heart of the whole people. None was ever mourned with such genuine grief, none will be so missed from our common life.”

Especially fascinated by the nation’s politics, Rogers often trained his humor on its foibles and achievements alike. Three touchstones guided his commentary: a genial skepticism about politics as usual, a belief that politics must be subsumed within a broader perspective on life and, above all, an insistence that political discussants honor a code of civility.

Will Rogers sends up politics and politicians in this radio broadcast from 1924.

‘I just … report the facts’

Rogers got most of his laughs from skeptical jabs at the system. He gleefully skewered the “bunk” of American politics, his favorite word for politicians’ shameless hypocrisy, bombastic rhetoric, inflated egos and shady deal-making. Both Democrats and Republicans stood guilty of peddling bunk.

“You know, the more you read and observe about this politics thing, you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other,” Rogers said. “It is getting so that a Republican promise is not much more to be depended on than a Democratic one. And that has always been considered the lowest form of collateral in the world.”

The Oklahoman poked fun at the political system’s grandiose rituals and fumbling institutions. He wrote of a benumbing presidential convention in 1924 that took three weeks and 103 ballots to nominate a nonentity: “In number of population the convention is holding its own. The deaths from old age among the delegates is about offset by the birthrate.”

Rogers pilloried governmental ineptness in Washington, D.C. One year, when Congress reconvened after a round of egregious bickering and inaction, he joked, “Let us all pray: Oh Lord, give us strength to bear that which is about to be inflicted upon us. Be merciful with them, Oh Lord, for they know not what they do.”

He claimed a simple approach: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

‘Critical yet charitable’

Yet Rogers insisted that political disputation should be kept in perspective. He urged his fellow citizens to avoid politicizing every public issue and instead concentrate on more meaningful endeavors – family, friends, community and work.

Despite the dire warnings of political zealots, he said, “There is no less sickness, no less Earthquakes, no less Progress, no less inventions, no less morality, no less Christianity under one (president) than the other.”

But for Rogers, the ultimate guarantee of stability came from the mass of workaday American citizens seeking commonsense solutions to public problems. What Rogers called the “Big Honest Majority” lived simply and worked hard, wanted a good life for their families and pursued their own version of happiness.

The average citizen, Rogers believed, had solid judgment and “was not simple minded enough to believe that EVERYTHING is right and doesn’t appear to be cuckoo enough to believe that EVERYTHING is wrong.”

Finally, Rogers urged an approach to politics that was critical yet charitable, principled yet magnanimous. A connoisseur of civility, he insisted that political disputants were opponents, not enemies, and that contrary viewpoints deserved respect.

The humorist set the example: “I haven’t got it in for anybody or anything.”

Will Rogers dining with Oklahoma Gov. Bill Murray on Feb. 3, 1931, in Oklahoma City. Murray had his usual meal of hard-boiled eggs and milk; Rogers chose fried chicken.
Associated Press

Surviving overwrought partisanship

Even as he pilloried politicians’ shortcomings, he never made it personal. Despite their faults, Rogers wrote, “the Rascals, when you meet ’em face to face and know ’em, they are mighty nice fellows.” He declared famously, “I’ve joked about every prominent man in my time but I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Determinedly nonpartisan throughout most of his career, he leaned toward the party of Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression while jesting, “I don’t belong to any organized political faith; I’m a Democrat.” The cowboy humorist saw politics as an endeavor for genial discussion, not a blood sport.

Rogers’ political axioms of healthy skepticism, perspicacity and civility remain useful guides for surviving even the most sordid electioneering.

So when you hear overwrought partisans lamenting “the end of democracy” or “we won’t have a country left anymore,” take a deep breath and consider Will Rogers’ calmer, wiser approach to presidential elections a century ago. Remember his conclusion that America won’t be ruined “no matter who is elected, so the Politicians will have to wait four more years to tell us who will ruin us then.”

Then you can adopt his sage advice that when dealing with a political adversary, “don’t disagree with him looking at him; walk around behind him and see the way he’s looking.” More

Ten states will vote on ballot initiatives on abortion this November: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada and South Dakota.

Many political analysts and pundits view abortion as a partisan issue, fueling speculation that direct votes on abortion rights will boost Democrats’ chances up and down the ballot in November. Some Democratic strategists are hoping that turnout from the ballot initiatives will swing elections away from Republican candidates in key states such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

But the effects that ballot measures have on which candidates win or lose is rarely so straightforward.

For the past three years, my work as a political sociologist has been cataloging and studying ballot initiatives. Based on state-level data and recent trends, I believe it is highly likely that many of November’s ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights will pass. But that will not necessarily translate into broader Democratic candidate victories.

An attendee wears a ‘vote for life’ shirt during a rally in Kentucky ahead of the abortion ballot vote in October 2022.
Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The wave of abortion rights votes

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned half a century of federal abortion protections in June 2022, sending the question of whether and when people can get an abortion back to individual states to decide. Republican legislators in Kansas quickly seized the opportunity and rushed a referendum enabling them to ban abortion onto the August 2022 primary ballot.

It backfired. Despite being majority Republican, almost 60% of Kansas voters rejected the abortion ban.

In 2022 and 2023, voters in six more states protected abortion rights with ballot initiatives. Kentucky and Montana voters rejected abortion bans, while California, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont voted to codify abortion rights in their state constitutions, all through ballot measures.

Ballot initiatives are nonpartisan

Ballot initiatives – also called propositions, measures, referendums and more – refer to votes on a policy instead of a politician. In some states, voters can put initiatives on the ballot by gathering signatures. In all states except one – Delaware – state legislators can put issues directly before voters in the form of a referendum. In other instances, such as amending most state constitutions, decisions must go to a popular vote.

The media often portrays U.S. politics through a polarized, two-party lens. Ballot initiatives do not necessarily fit the mold. Ballot initiative votes on topics such as the minimum wage and Medicaid expansion show that some policies are popular across Democratic and Republican party affiliations. For example, raising the minimum wage is undefeated in 24 ballot initiatives at the state level since 1996, including in traditionally conservative, liberal and swing states.

The state ballots that wound up serving wins on abortion rights since 2022 reflect a similar dynamic. The issue is polarizing, but not down the middle and not strictly along party lines. Nationwide polls show long-standing majority support for abortion rights, including among many Republicans.

Inconclusive at best

There is research indicating that ballot initiatives can increase voter turnout. However, most studies show mixed results and limited effects.

Looking at turnout numbers in the 2022 and 2023 state elections that had votes on abortion rights, and comparing them with those same states’ previous election numbers, we don’t see compelling evidence for the ballot measures bringing out more voters.

Michigan and Vermont had increased turnout in 2022, while voter numbers decreased in California, Kentucky and Montana.

Kansas in 2022 and Ohio in 2023 both saw voter gains, but those votes are poor comparisons, because they took place in a primary and an odd-year election, respectively, when turnout tends to be low.

Ballot initiatives on abortion rights, whether to codify or ban them, also appear to have little impact on partisan elections. After defeating the abortion ban in August 2022, Kansas voters went on to reelect both the Democratic incumbent governor and a Republican incumbent senator that November. Kansas House seats remained unchanged, with Republicans holding a supermajority.

In Kentucky and Montana, a majority of voters rejected abortion bans in 2022 and continued to elect Republicans to state office. In Michigan, Democrats took control of the state Legislature in 2022 alongside the state’s vote for abortion rights.

It is possible that Michigan’s “blue wave” in 2022 got a boost from the state’s ballot initiative to protect abortion rights that year. However, it likely had more to do with direct legislation from the previous election. In 2018, Michigan voters passed a ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission that undid years of gerrymandering that had benefited Republicans. These redrawn maps were first used in 2022.

Most importantly, just because a voter cares deeply about abortion rights does not necessarily mean they will vote for Democrats. Republican women voters overwhelmingly support the right to abortion in all states.

Meanwhile, about 6% of voters chose “uncommitted” in Nevada’s 2024 Democratic primary, in line with the national uncommitted movement in solidarity with Palestinians. This political movement advocates withholding support for Democrats over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Those voters are highly likely to support the state’s abortion initiative in November but may not be persuaded to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris or other Democrats.

Signs supporting the upcoming abortion ballot initiative in Montana are displayed during a rally in Bozeman on Sept. 5, 2024.
William Campbell/Getty Images

Democrats can’t rely on abortion ballot initiatives

Ballot initiatives are about specific issues, not political candidates. In this case, the issue of abortion rights has more nationwide support than the Democratic Party does.

If Democratic politicians want to win in November – from Harris and Tim Walz to state and local candidates – they will need to persuade voters based on their merits compared with their Republican counterparts. They can’t count on abortion initiatives to win the 2024 election for them. More

“Freedom is a core human value,” writes Joseph Stiglitz in his new book The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. “But many of freedom’s advocates seldom ask what the idea really means. Freedom for whom? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s?”

Reflecting on the famous slogan of American jurist James Otis – “taxation without representation is tyranny” – Stiglitz observes with concern that many on the contemporary US right seem to have arrived at the view that “taxation with representation is also tyranny”.

This type of thinking has increased over the decades, extending from Ronald Reagan’s claim that “markets are the solution, government is the problem” to Ted Cruz’s call to abolish entire government departments – including the IRS, the Department of Education and the Department of Energy – and Ron Paul’s assertion that “the more government spends the more freedom is lost”.

Something, argues Stiglitz, has gone awry with the conception of freedom here.

Review: The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society – Joseph Stiglitz (Allen Lane)

In The Road to Freedom, Stiglitz critiques what he sees as the “superficial” and “misguided” interpretation of freedom that has gained ascendancy in the period of neoliberal globalisation. This view, he says, is held in common by the assortment of conservatives, libertarians and other right-of-centre people that make up the US right.

Focusing on the US, he argues that the way the idea has been defined and pursued has led to the opposite of “meaningful freedom”. It has failed “to give due recognition to how interdependent people are in a modern economy” and led to a vast reduction in the “freedoms of most citizens”.

The most important value

Stiglitz has a long resumé, which includes serving as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and is currently a professor at Columbia University. He was awarded a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. In 2011, he was named by Time as one of the world’s 100 most influential individuals.

The author of many works and a longstanding critic of the neoliberal turn in economics and public policy, Stiglitz is perhaps best known to a wider public for his bestselling book, Globalization and Its Discontents (2002). There, he critiqued the neoliberal global trade order, which he argued was exploitative, hindered developing economies and was driven by faulty assumptions about how markets work.

Written in an accessible style, his new book takes an economist’s lens to the topic of freedom. He draws on a wide range of work in economics, including his own, in fields such as information economics and behavioural economics. He also draws on a range of material on politics, including work by key thinkers in liberal philosophy such as Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls.

Economics, Stiglitz writes, provides “tools to think about the nature of the trade-offs that should be central to discussions about freedom”, and about how those trade-offs should be addressed. Extending his earlier work, he argues for “an economic and political system that delivers not only on efficiency and sustainability but also on moral values”.

The most important value, he says, is freedom. But his is a broadened concept of freedom, “conceived as having inherent ties to notions of equity, justice and well-being”. A key part of his argument is that the “powerful strands in modern economic thinking” that have come to be termed neoliberal assume that “the freedom that matters most, and from which other freedoms indeed flow, is the freedom of unregulated, unfettered markets”.

This conflation of freedom with unregulated markets comes with “huge risks for society”. The policies that “freed” the financial sector, Stiglitz points out, led directly to the “the largest financial crash in three-quarters of a century”. Deregulating the banks and failing to regulate derivatives led bankers to use their new freedom to “enhance their profits”.

The 2008 global financial crisis made it clear that this freedom for bankers came at the expense of workers, ordinary investors and homeowners. And, Stiglitz adds, “we as a society lost our freedom”, because “we had no choice but to bail out the banks or the entire financial system would have collapsed”.

Joseph Stiglitz.
Fronteiras do Pensamento, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

A deeper understanding of freedom

Stiglitz notes the way neoliberal policies have freed corporations to “exploit consumers, workers and the environment”, and freed trade to “accelerate de-industrialization” in the US. The combination of key economic developments, such as globalisation and monopolisation, and the resulting concentration of economic power, have played a significant role in “increasing inequality, slowing growth and reducing opportunity”.

These massive inequalities are socially corrosive. The incentives of neoliberal capitalism, Stiglitz writes, “have done much to weaken trust”, which has led to a “narrowing of vision and values”. They engender selfish and dishonest behaviour. “Without adequate regulation, too many people, in the pursuit of their own self-interest, will conduct themselves in an untrustworthy way, sliding to the edge of what is legal, overstepping the bounds of what is moral.”

This has led, in turn, to the rise of populism. “The challenges and attacks on democracy have never been greater in my lifetime,” Stiglitz warns. “Trump is what neoliberalism produces.”

Neoliberal capitalism, he emphasises, “does not enhance freedom in our society”. It obstructs the understanding people have about “how their actions might constrain the freedom of others”. In general, it “curtails the freedom of the many while it expands the freedom of the few”. As such, Stiglitz argues for “a deeper understanding of the meaning of freedom”, seeking to “strengthen democratic debate of what economic, political and social system will best contribute to the freedom of the most citizens”.

A key problem is simply an inadequate view of markets. Stiglitz points out that the concept of “unfettered markets” is an oxymoron, because it is the state and its laws that provide the framework within which people transact. “Without rules and regulations enforced by government, there could and would be little trade,” he observes. “Cheating would be rampant, trust low.”

The view that “competitive markets are efficient” is also mistaken, because they are subject to contingencies of imperfect information and incomplete contracts. So too is the belief that “markets on their own would somehow remain competitive” – a proposition that simply ignores “the experiences of monopolization and concentration of economic power”.

Without well-designed regulation to ensure competition, Stiglitz argues, “firms on their own will subvert competition in one way or another and power becomes more and more concentrated”. In addition, he highlights “critical market failures” – for example, in protecting the environment and managing natural resources. Regulation is thus necessary to “prevent exploitation of each other and the environment”.

Freedoms, negative and positive

A key part of what Stiglitz wants us to see is that the rules and regulations that govern economies are not “laws of nature”. The economic forces that both enable and constrain our individual choices and actions in a market economy are significantly shaped by socially determined policy choices.

The simplistic neoliberal view fails to appreciate how political freedom and economic freedom, in fact, work together. Instead, this view reduces our political freedom to its own “narrow” economistic version. This has led to the well-rehearsed TINA (“there is no alternative”) theme in public political discourse. What is impaired is “a critical societal freedom” – the “freedom to choose an economic system that could, in fact, enhance freedom for most citizens”.

Stiglitz discusses Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “negative” and “positive” freedom. Negative freedom refers to “freedom from” – freedom from hunger or state coercion, for example. Positive freedom means “freedom to do” – that is, having the opportunity and resources to be able to choose and act for oneself.

Liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin distinguished between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ freedom.
Stefano Chiacchiarini ’74/Shutterstock

The positive definition is central to what Stiglitz calls the “most meaningful sense of freedom”. He discusses the concept in terms of “opportunity sets”, arguing that, since the set of options a person has available to them defines their freedom to act, any “reduction in the scope” of possible actions represents a loss of freedom. Someone who is just scraping by “really doesn’t have much freedom”, he observes – “they do what they must to survive”.

The neoliberal definition narrows the concept of freedom so that it focuses on the negative “freedom from” part – specifically, the state’s imposition of regulations and taxes. It downplays or ignores a crucial aspect of the “freedom to” part: the freedom to pursue one’s interests, “to live up to one’s potential”.

As economist Brian Callaci summarises, the Right focuses on “the freedom of the individual to follow their whims”. In doing so, it has

blinded itself to the more urgent question of whether individuals actually have the ability to pursue their chosen ends. […] what shrinks the “opportunity sets” of the majority of individuals is not the state “coercion” involved in legal rules and regulations, but the constraints placed on people by income and wealth, and by the lack of sufficient social support.

The kind of people we want to be

Markets enable but also constrain freedom of choice. The classic liberal view is that, in a pluralistic modern society, markets function as individual “preference satisfaction machines”. You are free to use your own money to buy whatever goods you want in whatever quantities you can afford.

This freedom to transact was historically liberating. But markets also constrain people’s freedom of choice. They allocate goods based on the ability to pay, so production in general is driven by the preferences of the wealthiest. The preferences of people with little money have little effect, and for people with no money they go unmet.

In reality, power in markets is unequal. People can be compelled to agree to coercive contracts, such as nondisclosure or noncompete agreements, all the way to indentured servitude. And “market discipline” also serves to limit our freedom to choose – to “coerce” us into not pursuing actions or making investments that are socially beneficial but not immediately profitable.

Behavioural economics has demonstrated that “individuals differ markedly from the way they are depicted in the standard economic theory”. They are less rational, but also less selfish and more “other regarding”. The preferences that the market satisfies, Stiglitz points out, are “not set at birth”; they are shaped, in part, by the market itself, conditioned by our social experiences. This is something that “every parent, everyone working in marketing, and everyone waging campaigns of or against mis- and disinformation knows very well”.

As human beings we have desires beyond our preferences for this or that consumer product (first-order desires). We also have desires regarding “what kind of people we want to be” (second-order desires). Satisfying such second-order desires requires collective action to create the economic, political and social rules that reward the preferred values, individual behaviours and social practices.

For example, people may prefer to be more trusting and to “follow the golden rule”. But in a system centred on unfettered markets, which opts not to legislate to adequately protect consumers from exploitation in favour of the market principle of “buyer beware”, the result would be an increase in fraud and swindling, and an increasingly mistrustful society, undermining people’s capacity to be the ethical citizens they would like to be.

On the other hand, having robust regulation that prohibits fraud and deception rewards trust and allows individuals to live as the people they would like to be. As Stiglitz points out, this does not violate market freedom, as well-designed “guardrails” are a prerequisite for its flourishing.

Stiglitz advocates an alternative to neoliberalism he calls “progressive capitalism”, or for a European audience “rejuvenated social democracy” along the lines of “a twenty-first century version of […] the Scandinavian welfare state”. While clearly a believer in the merits of “large parts of the economy” being “in the hands of profit-oriented enterprises”, his favoured model operates with a broader conception of freedom than the unduly narrow and reductive neoliberal version.

In the interests of a well-functioning economy and society, he argues for “a better balance between the market and the state”. This includes redistributive policies, antitrust laws and regulations to tame corporate power, as well as support for trade unions and civil society organisations such as not-for-profit enterprises.

Policy programs for providing things like infrastructure, housing, employment and health care should be viewed as “enhancing freedom”. Limiting the freedom of some individual economic agents (“the rich”), via the “mild coercion” of regulation and redistributive taxation, enhances the welfare of the majority by expanding opportunity sets. “As in all things,” Stiglitz states, “there are trade-offs.” More

In 2016, Don Watson wrote a remarkable Quarterly Essay predicting the success of Trump, when political commentators were largely united in their belief that Hillary Clinton would win the election.

So it’s hardly surprising Watson was back in the United States this year to track Trump’s possible return to the White House. But politics can be a cruel game to follow, and he was clearly caught out by the rapid replacement of President Joe Biden by Kamala Harris – and a very different campaign.

It is too early to analyse the impact of the Trump/Harris debate, but there is little doubt that Harris handled herself impressively and established herself as a viable candidate. How many undecided voters will be put off by Trump’s bluster and boastfulness remains to be seen.

The first half of High Noon, Watson’s new Quarterly Essay on the US election, reads as if Trump’s re-election is inevitable. Watson had no illusions about Biden’s electability in 2024. Whether fairly or not, Biden was widely regarded as too old and unable to defend his record. That said, it is strange Watson has so little to say about Biden’s success four years ago, when he won back some of those voters who had opted for Trump.

Review: Quarterly Essay – High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink by Don Watson (Black Inc.)

Watson claims Bernie Sanders might have done better than Hillary Clinton in 2016 – but I’m not convinced. The Republicans would have consistently portrayed Sanders as a dangerous socialist, if not a communist – and for reasons Watson himself acknowledges, the dirt would probably have stuck. Against Sanders, Trump would have portrayed himself as the defender of American values in ways he could not four years later against Biden.

Appalled and enchanted by the US

Watson writes in the long tradition of outsiders who have traversed the US in search of understanding the complexities of the country.

Don Watson.

At his best, as in his account of life in Detroit and nearby Kalamazoo, Michigan, he combines analysis with poetic prose, often drawing on passing conversations to illuminate perceptions of the world rarely shared by readers of the Quarterly Essays. A taxi driver in Queens echoes Trump’s diatribes against illegal immigrants: “I am very angry,” he tells Watson. “Americans are very angry.”

Rather like journalist Nick Bryant, author of The Forever War, Watson is simultaneously appalled and enchanted by the US.

Like Bryant, he is aware of growing inequality, persistent racism and the extent of its violence, even as he relishes the energy and inventiveness of so much of American life. Like me, Watson knows that entering the US recalls the moment in The Wizard of Oz where black and white suddenly transforms to colour.

He writes that Trump has turned politics into “the wildly adversarial and addictive world” of TV wrestling. We understand “wrestlers are real, but not real […] personifications of good and evil, courage and cowardice, patriotism and treachery”.

As Watson suggests, Trump has created “a fictional setting for his fictions” where “he can be as abusive and as untruthful as he likes” – and where “boasting, posturing and abusing” are expected.

Trump has turned politics into TV wrestling, as Hulk Hogan’s appearance at the Republican Convention suggests.
Jim Lo Scalzo/AAP

One question dominates High Noon, as it did his earlier essay. Namely: what explains Trump’s ability to capture the Republican Party – and perhaps to become only the second president to be re-elected after losing the election following their first term?

Watson is good at explaining Trump’s ability to channel the discontent and anger of millions of Americans. But he fails to explain the almost total defeat of the Republican establishment, which has so jettisoned its own past that no senior member of any Republican administration before Trump could be found to speak at their convention.

Former vice president Dick Cheney (under George W. Bush) is among the establishment Republicans who’ve recently announced their support for Harris, hardly surprising as his daughter, Liz Cheney, lost her position in Congress due to her antipathy to Trump.

Former congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, are among the Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris.
Jabin Botsford/Washington Post/AAP

There is surprisingly little reflection on the culture wars, which have become central to Republican campaigns over the past decade. And no discussion of abortion or attacks on woke ideologies (gender, critical race theory), which have become staples of the MAGA language and help cement the white evangelical vote for Trump.

I wish Watson had spoken to more women, given the growing gender gap within American politics and the way Harris’ nomination has accelerated that. A recent poll shows Harris leading Trump by 13 points among women. Her success in a couple of key states, including Arizona and Nevada, may hinge on otherwise apolitical women turning out to vote on referenda to ban abortions.

Abortion is for Trump what Gaza is for Harris: an issue that arouses great passions that are impossible to reconcile among people they could normally take for granted. In Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump equivocated on abortion, making unsubstantiated claims for postpartum terminations while claiming he’s “great for women and their reproductive rights”.

I suspect the last section of High Noon was written after Watson returned to Australia. His account of Harris’ nomination and the early stages of the 2024 campaign lack the firsthand immediacy of the earlier sections.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Planned Parenthood in March.
Adam Bettcher/AAP

Capitalism trumps democracy

The overriding question Watson poses is: how can a country that believes itself to be a democracy, the leader of “the Free World”, possibly elect a demagogue like Trump?

In the end, it seems, capitalism trumps democracy. Watson quotes the right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel as saying he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible. Harris consistently stresses that Trump’s tax proposals would further increase economic inequality within the US.

“An election,” writes Watson, “is democracy’s effort to outrun the anger and envy arising from its failure to honour the promise of a fair shake for everyone.” My hunch is that Harris understands this. The apoplectic columns in the Murdoch press claiming she is light on policy ignore the fact Clinton lost in 2016 despite an armoury of policies designed to attract working-class voters.

Watson writes that an election is ‘democracy’s effort to outrun … anger and envy’.
John Minchillo/AAP

Trump is almost unique in winning (and then losing) by speaking of anger and decline. Harris is in the tradition of both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama in proclaiming hope. (In choosing the title for his essay, did Watson remember that Reagan cited High Noon as his favourite film?)

I wish Watson had held off finishing this essay long enough to see whether the Harris campaign’s instinctive sense of how to defeat Trump through positivity over anger, stressing his egoism against her desire to unify the country, pays off.

Why do we care so much?

Is Trump a fascist? Watson skirts around this question. He is correct, though, in pointing to Trump’s admiration for Hungarian authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

In today’s debate, Trump called Orban “one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man” and quoted him as saying “you need Trump back as president”. Trump further claimed China and North Korea are “afraid” of him.

Trump claims he can end the war in Ukraine, but gives no answer as to how he would do this. Neither Trump nor Harris have any obvious solution for the war in Gaza, although Trump claims she would be responsible for the destruction of Israel, again with no clear explanation for this.

The constant attempts by Trump’s supporters to interfere with what we would regard as the basic norms of free democratic elections – including, most dramatically, the attacks of January 6 – suggest a second Trump administration would sorely test those Australian politicians who like to speak of our shared values.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Zoltan Fischer/AAP

Watson reflects a much larger Australian obsession with the US, ranging from the AUKUS agreement to the extraordinarily high proportion of American speakers who turn up at our literary festivals.

But as Watson writes in his final paragraph: “You have your own life to lead. Why let yourself be lured into theirs?”

It’s a good question, but Watson has provided an answer for why we should pay attention to US politics. He writes: “Once the Democrats allow themselves to be defined by their opposition to Trump, the fight is as good as lost.”

Until Harris became the candidate, it seemed as if this was the only strategy the Democrats had to fall back upon. Her performance in the debate suggests Harris is both willing to attack Trump and to promise a rather different path forward, stressing the need for generational change.

Don Watson’s Quarterly Essay High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink (Black Inc.) is published Monday 16 September. More

Presidential candidates talk about national decline while campaigning. A lot. This was front and center during the June 2024 debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

“Throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country,” Trump said, as he has repeatedly.

Trump continued by saying that if the United States had a president that Vladimir Putin respected, “he would have never invaded Ukraine.” Trump said “we’re laughed at” and that “the United States’ reputation under this man’s leadership is horrible.”

Biden countered Trump’s evocative statement with the argument that the U.S. has “the finest military in the history of the world” and that it remains well respected abroad.

“The idea that somehow we are this failing country,” Biden said, “I never heard a president talk like this before.”

Public polls on other countries’ views of the U.S. support Biden’s point.

Yet politicians’ warnings of decline persist because they invoke fear for the country’s security, anxiety about another country gaining more power and anger about the United States’ various problems.

Donald Trump speaks at a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity on Sept. 4, 2024.
Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Messages of decline over the years

While Trump’s messages of American carnage are dramatic, exchanges of this sort are not uncommon in U.S. politics.

During the 1960 presidential election, for example, John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, frequently warned that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union, in everything from space exploration to international respect.

“I don’t want historians, 10 years from now, to say these were the years when the tide ran out for the United States,” Kennedy said during his first televised debate against his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, on Sept. 26, 1960.

Warning of national decline has remained a common campaign message ever since, with the challenging party’s side claiming that the country is falling behind or losing respect, forcing the incumbent’s side to play defense.

Pushing back on messages of decline

My research examines the role of perceived threats to national status in domestic and international politics. I ran an experiment in March 2024 with 1,079 Americans, aimed at trying to understand how their concerns about national decline affect their foreign policy opinions.

One-third of respondents were randomly assigned to read a prompt warning that experts and leaders from both parties agreed that the U.S. was declining, relative to its rivals. Another third of respondents read the opposite message, which listed facts from bipartisan experts arguing that concerns about national decline were overblown. The final third read about a topic unrelated to politics.

Those who read about American decline reported increased levels of fear, anger and anxiety than the group who did not read about this topic. One respondent, for example, wrote, “My biggest concern is other countries won’t respect us. Once we show weakness, other countries will try to overtake us.”

However, the text of bipartisan experts arguing that the U.S. was not declining did not assuage Americans’ anxieties.

Approximately 30% of people, both liberal and conservative, who read that experts said the concerns over national decline are overblown outright rejected the premise of the text, compared with just 11% of those who read that U.S. global standing is declining.

Some respondents asked if the text was a joke and said that the U.S. is becoming a “third-world country.” Others pointed to the state of U.S. health care or reproductive rights to question how one could suggest that the country is not falling behind.

Kamala Harris waves as she arrives at a campaign rally in Savannah, Ga., on Aug. 29, 2024.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Fighting emotion with emotion

When the Democratic ticket changed and Biden announced in July 2024 that he would not run for reelection, the political messaging of Democratic leaders did, too.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, have, at times, incited fear about what a second Trump term would look like. But they have also used language and talked about topics that center on joy and excitement, celebrating things like Walz’s tenure as a teacher and football coach and the pride Harris has for her mother’s work and sacrifices.

“Guided by optimism and faith,” Harris said in her nomination speech in August 2024, she encouraged her supporters to “write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

Harris has also provided an emotionally powerful counter to Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” in the form of “Not Going Back.”

In Walz’s first appearance as the Democratic candidate for vice president on Aug. 6, he thanked Harris for “bringing back the joy.” With rallies filled with boisterous call-and-responses and chanting, Harris has seized on joy and excitement in detailing a vision of America’s future, juxtaposing her rallies with what she described as Trump’s “the-world-is-doomed rallies.”

The subtitle of one Harris campaign press release following a Trump news conference, for example, read: “Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was.”

US global standing in 2024 campaign

While Harris’ rallies have largely focused on domestic issues like abortion rights and economic inequality, debates over the country’s global standing will reemerge and persist. In an August 2024 poll, the second-most-common reason likely Harris voters said they supported her was because she would strengthen the United States’ status in the world – while the second-most-common reason other voters opposed her was because they thought she would weaken the country on the global stage.

Trump has continued to describe the U.S. as a “nation in decline.” Harris, in her Democratic National Convention speech, countered that she will work to ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

Harris also remarked in her acceptance speech: “You know, our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is. Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.”

Campaign rhetoric warning of American decline has been common since at least 1960, and it isn’t going away anytime soon. But with a new Democratic ticket and a transformed race, Democrats are now fighting emotion with emotion. And that is more likely to resonate than informing people that things are not as bad as they fear. More

It’s the big question that has loomed over Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign from the start: is the United States ready for a Black woman president?

I get asked this almost every time I speak about American politics. And it’s a question that pundits, observers and experts keep asking, without ever landing on an answer.

That’s because the question is, in the end, unanswerable. It’s so heavily loaded that answering it requires too much history, cultural knowledge, judgment and speculation.

While the question hints at the deeply ingrained racism and sexism that is built into the structures of American politics and culture, it doesn’t directly address these things, leaving assumptions about just how sexist and racist the country might be unresolved.

Asking if America is “ready” also assumes that history is progress – that things move forward in a relatively straight line. It assumes that in the past America was not ready for a Black woman president, but at some point in the future it might be. It assumes, as Martin Luther King junior once said so beautifully, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.

Like much of King’s teachings, this idea has been flattened into an assumption that “progress” is inevitable – that women and people of colour will eventually get equal representation and treatment as society learns, gradually, to become more just, tolerant and accepting.

It assumes that, one day, the United States will live up to its own foundational ideal that “all men are created equal”.

But as Harris has herself said, the United States has not always lived up to its own ideals. Progress on equality – especially in extending it beyond the original, exclusively white men identified in the Constitution – has been patchy and frustratingly slow. It has also been marred by violence and even war.

History is not a forward march. It does not “progress” to some end point of idealism. It is, more often than not, a fight.

Are you ready for it?

Many other countries have shown it is possible to be “ready” for a woman leader at various points in their histories, only to return to being not ready again.

India, the largest democracy in the world, elected Indira Gandhi to the prime ministership in 1966. Gandhi served for over a decade, and then again from 1980 to 1984, when she was assassinated. Every leader since then has been a man.

Similarly, the United Kingdom elected its first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in 1979. After Thatcher resigned in 1990, the UK didn’t have another woman leader until Liz Truss in 2022 (and that didn’t exactly go well).

In Australia, Julia Gillard won a very close election to become prime minister in 2010, only to lose to a man four years later. There has been no real suggestion that a woman, let alone a woman of colour, might ascend to the leadership of either major party in the decade since. And could Australia even be definitively considered “ready” for a woman leader in that period, given how Gillard was treated during her prime ministership?

Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech in 2012.

New Zealand has a stronger record. Jenny Shipley became the first woman prime minister in 1997 by bumping off the leader of the coalition government. Helen Clark was then the first woman to be elected prime minister in 1999, followed by Jacinda Ardern nearly two decades later, in 2017.

Vigdis Finnbogadottir in 1985.
Wikimedia Commons

While Britain, New Zealand and Australia have some political and cultural similarities with the United States, they have different political structures. Unlike in the US, their leaders are not directly elected, making the specific identity of the leader less explicitly the focus of elections.

Other countries with direct elections, though, have also been “ready” for women leaders at one point or another. In 1980, Iceland became the first country in the world to directly elect a woman to the presidency. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir served for 16 years. Deeply conservative Ireland was also ready 30 years ago, directly electing its first woman president, Mary Robinson, in 1990.

Structural inequality

For the most part, though, these women are exceptions to ingrained, structural gender inequality in politics across the world – albeit a reality reflected more starkly in the American experience.

The fact the question of “readiness” remains so prominent reflects the fundamental reality of the unequal representation of women, especially Black women and women of colour, not just in America but in most democracies.

In June this year, UN Women noted only 27 countries currently have women leaders. It said:

At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.

The idea of a “rate” of progress once again assumes the world will be ready for women leaders one day (even if that day might be more than a century away).

Unsurprisingly, the same structural inequality is reflected below the highest levels of leadership. UN Women found only 15 countries where women hold at least 50% of Cabinet minister positions. And when women do get leadership positions, it’s often in areas traditionally understood as “women’s” or “minority” issues, such as social services or Indigenous affairs.

This general trend is reflected in the US, too. After the most recent US election, the Congress has a “record number” of women. Yet it is still just 28%.

Similarly, in Australia, research by The Australia Institute found women are underrepresented in seven of Australia’s nine parliaments.

That should not, however, undermine the significant achievements of women and people of colour, who have long fought for a seat at the table of power – often at great personal risk.

According to the Pew Research Center, the current Congress in the US is also the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, with 133 representatives and senators identifying their ethnicity as something other than non-Hispanic white.

And in 2021, Harris became the first woman, the first person of South Asian descent and the first Black woman to be vice president of the United States. In another historic milestone, President Joe Biden appointed the first Native American woman to a Cabinet position – Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

A milestone was achieved in Australia, too, when Linda Burney became the first Aboriginal woman to serve as minister for Indigenous affairs in 2022.

Weaponising gender and race

None of this, though, can confirm or deny the “readiness” of the United States – or any other country – to elect a Black woman leader.

There are signs a sizeable portion of the American electorate is decidedly not ready to elevate a woman, let alone a Black woman, to the highest position of power.

A great deal of attention has, rightly, been focused on the current Republican candidates’ attitudes towards gender and race. Vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, for instance, has made numerous comments about women, such as his insistence that “childless cat ladies” have too much power. Donald Trump has also repeatedly attacked women with sexist remarks, made obscene comments about women’s bodies, and been found liable in a civil court for sexual assault.

In August, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters suggested generals would “have their way” with Harris if she were to be elected.

Trump, Vance and their surrogates use race and gender to delegitimise their opponents, suggesting they are not fit for positions of power.

Such misogynistic attacks are a common experience for women in politics. Decades before Vance’s insistence that only people with biological children have a proper “stake” in the future, an Australian Liberal senator suggested Gillard was unfit for leadership because she was “deliberately barren”.

As a Black woman, Harris faces attacks on both her race and her gender. Right-wing figures have repeatedly dismissed her as a “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) candidate, suggesting she has only made it as far as she has because of special treatment based not on her merit, but on her identity.

Once again adopting a tactic he honed during Barack Obama’s presidency, Trump has also repeatedly questioned Harris’ legitimacy as vice president and a candidate based on her race.

Context matters

Not so long ago, many people assumed Hillary Clinton would win the race to be “first”. When she accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, she stood, symbolically, underneath a shattering glass ceiling.

A few months later, that ceiling quickly re-formed itself.

But even Clinton’s loss in 2016 cannot definitely prove that America was “not ready” for a woman president. Context is crucial.

Even those voters who might be “ready” for a woman president won’t vote for just any woman. They will make decisions based on complicated, interrelated factors, including a candidate’s policy positions.

Hillary Clinton conceding defeat to Donald Trump in 2016.
Matt Rourke

It’s arguable the role both Bill and Hillary Clinton played in the adoption of free-trade agreements – from Bill Clinton’s overseeing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Hillary Clinton’s support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – alongside economic stagnation in the US, had a much bigger role in Clinton’s loss than her gender. And her characterisation of alienated voters as “a basket of deplorables” certainly didn’t help.

Clinton had significant political baggage after decades in the spotlight. The political, economic and historic circumstances of the 2016 presidential race – alongside Trump’s political ascendancy – are impossible to pull apart.

Similarly, while some Britons might have voted for Thatcher because she was a woman, many also voted for her because of her conservative policy positions, or perhaps because they disapproved of her opponents more.

Decades later and worlds apart politically, Harris is under pressure from a critical section of her own party’s base to modify her position on Israel. This is a serious and pressing policy issue that has nothing to do with her race or gender and everything to do with competing visions for the United States’ role in the world. And this will have an impact on many voters’ decisions in November.

Put simply, it cannot be definitively argued that Clinton lost in 2016 because America was “not ready” for a woman. Or that circumstances have changed enough that the country can be considered ready now.

In a different context, with a different candidate and a different policy platform, America may well have been “ready” in 2016. A different woman – like, say, the unwaveringly popular Michelle Obama – might well have been able to beat Trump. Or not. We simply have no way of knowing.

And even if we did, we still could not know if America was definitively “ready” for a Black woman to lead.

Michelle Obama’s approval ratings have consistently been very high.
Brynn Anderson/AP

Kamala Harris’ ‘firsts’

Nevertheless, at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Hillary Clinton reflected on the possibility of “firsts” and the progress of American history. She proclaimed that “a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams” had finally arrived.

Harris, too, is focused on the future – but not on her “firsts”.

In her first media interview since becoming the Democratic candidate, for example, she dismissed a question about Trump’s focus on her race. Her campaign has successfully framed any specific focus on gender or race – and particularly on women’s bodies – as “weird”.

In this way, Harris’ campaign has firmly flipped the focus of identity politics back onto Trump and Vance. Her campaign is showcasing a very different kind of masculinity – one that is entirely comfortable with Black women occupying positions of leadership.

The Harris campaign is reinforcing this framing by focusing not on individual “firsts”, but on structural gender and racial inequality and women’s basic rights of bodily autonomy. In this way, the campaign is embracing a collective feminism, rather than the more 1990s-style, individualistic, “white women” feminism more redolent of Clinton. Kamala is, after all, brat.

The Harris campaign is explicitly avoiding the tempting shallowness of identity politics, learning the lessons of an often fraught Clinton campaign that appeared to assume Americans would vote for her precisely because she was a woman, or because it was time America did, finally, elect a woman president.

All of this is, implicitly at least, a recognition that “readiness” is not a simple question with a straightforward answer. The Harris campaign recognises it is not necessarily a question of collective “readiness”, but of getting enough Americans who are already ready inspired and mobilised.

As Biden has said repeatedly, “women are not without […] electoral or political power”. According to one analysis, in the four years since 2020, Black women’s voter registration has increased by 98.4%. Among young Black women, it has increased by 175.8%.

Black American women are clearly ready for this moment.

The question has no answer

If Harris is elected this November, many will take this as proof that a threshold has been crossed, that America was indeed collectively “ready” to be led by a Black woman. And that might be true. Up to a point.

The United States once demonstrated itself “ready” to elect its first Catholic president. In 2008, it proved itself “ready” to elect the first Black president.But eight years later, in an historic, world-shaping backlash, it went back to being very much not ready.

The divides of American politics are deep and structural. They have remained unresolved since the country’s foundation. The election of the first Black woman would be hugely significant, a remarkable historical development in what has already been an extraordinary campaign.

But the question of whether America is “ready” for this moment cannot be answered by a single individual.

There are two versions of America: one that is ready for this moment (and has always been), and one that will likely never be. These two versions co‑exist. And they are, for the moment, irreconcilable.

Both sides know that victory in November is only an indication of where power lies in this moment. It will not be some clear resolution to a centuries-long question about what the United States is and what it wants to be.

That’s not how history works. More

Six weeks ago, it was inconceivable that Vice President Kamala Harris would be in the driver’s seat of this year’s US presidential election.

Harris was the afterthought running mate of President Joe Biden, an historically unpopular incumbent. Donald Trump, having survived an assassination attempt by millimetres, had a commanding lead in a presidential race for the first time in his political career.

Republicans were also coming off a flawless national convention that gave a strong message of party unity and enthusiasm for Trump’s third consecutive run for the top office. Even the vice-presidential selection of Senator JD Vance, a recent convert to Trump’s nationalist project, was seen as evidence of the former president’s strength.

Yet this week, on the cusp of early voting, Harris leads Trump by nearly two percentage points in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and by 3.2 points in the FiveThirtyEight polling roundup.

Democrats, evidently ecstatic over Biden’s departure from the race, have embraced Harris’ relative youthfulness and vitality. Although she has a strong progressive track record, Harris’ popularity has soared as she has embraced moderate positions on energy, immigration and key foreign policy issues. Her vibe appears to be superhuman.

Does this mean Harris will run away with the presidency? Or can Trump get back in this race?

Flailing at the worst time

Since Harris’ ascendancy to the nomination (perhaps the fastest in modern American politics), Trump’s campaign has been flailing.

He questioned her racial identity before a group of Black journalists, a rhetorical manoeuvre that predictably landed with a thud. He has spent a couple of weeks flip‑flopping on abortion, enraging his pro‑life supporters.

Most recently, his maladroit campaign turned a visit to Arlington National Cemetery honouring service members killed during the US pullout from Afghanistan into a complete disaster. Harris and the media are slamming Trump for politicising the hallowed resting place of national heroes and even bullying the cemetery’s staff.

It may seem hopeless for the Republicans. The race, however, is not what it appears.

In fact, the candidates remain quite close in the critical swing states. The three “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, in particular, are vital to Harris’ chances. Harris knows this and is even willing to campaign with Biden in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his blue‑collar, working‑class appeal is greatest.

Each campaign is spending tens of millions on ads in Pennsylvania alone. They know that turning out their voters in that state could be the key to overall victory.

Loath to lean into his advantage

Trump also has a latent advantage that may prove helpful in the end. On several key issues, he is still out‑polling Harris: the economy, inflation and immigration.

With Harris winning the vibes contest, Trump needs to break through with voters on these public policy matters. Trump will have the opportunity to do just that in the first presidential debate on September 10.

To reframe the race in his favour, he will have to show that Harris has herself shifted position on immigration and energy policy. In her only media interview since becoming the Democrats’ presidential nominee, for instance, Harris said she no longer supported a ban on fracking, which she had backed in 2019.

But can Trump manage this? So far, he has not demonstrated the discipline required to make this a race on policy. He appears to be more interested in competing on the vibes front, discussing who is better looking (Harris or himself) and who is attracting the biggest crowds to their speeches.

Trump’s top campaign advisers this year, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCavita, are a more accomplished and disciplined team than he has ever had. Through the Republican convention in July, the pair had successfully manoeuvred Trump, who had been deeply damaged by the January 6 insurrection, to a leading position against Biden. They orchestrated a near‑sweep of talented Republican challengers in the primaries and kept Trump’s focus on the issues that mattered to voters.

Rather than leaning into their advice, however, Trump appears to be disengaging from his campaign managers’ steady hands. In recent weeks, he has also brought back Corey Lewandowski, who ran Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, sparking rumours of a campaign shake‑up.

Trump speaking to supporters during the 2016 presidential election, with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Gerald Herbert/AP

Perhaps Trump’s near-death experience at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July has made him want to do things “his way”. Perhaps he is tired of being managed. Perhaps he is alarmed by Harris’ gravity-defying rise in the polls.

In any case, he needs to return to a focus on the policy issues where he connects most with voters to get back on top of this race.

If he doesn’t, he’ll lose his second presidential campaign in a row. More

America’s first family has been in the news again recently. This time, the focus has been Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. After nominating as an independent candidate for the US presidential election, he subsequently withdrew and endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump.

His staunch anti-vaccination stance had already been reported, but then came the bizarre stories about him chainsawing the head off a dead whale and driving around with it attached to the roof of his car – after he’d already admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park ten years ago.

Review: Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan (HarperCollins)

The nephew of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) and son of Robert (Bobby) F. Kennedy, the former US attorney general who was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, RFK Jr has a long history of inconsistent and embarrassing behaviour.

But what is more concerning, according to Maureen Callahan’s new book Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, is his behaviour towards women, including the neglect and gaslighting of his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who died by suicide in 2012.

RFK Jr neglected and gaslit his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, before she died by suicide in 2012.
AAP

She writes that he “remains unbothered and unquestioned about the circumstances” leading to the death of this “fragile woman who he tormented toward the end of their marriage and in the lead up to her suicide, cheating on her, cutting off her credit cards and access to cash, trying to forcibly hospitalise her, telling her she’d be ‘better off dead’.”

RFK Jr’s prominence in the 2024 US election (Trump has appointed him to a senior role in his transition team) makes Ask Not particularly timely and topical. While the book mostly focuses on people and events from the past, it highlights the persistent influence of the Kennedy legacy on American politics.

Entitlement and recklessness

Ask Not draws a line between the Kennedy history and contemporary America, while also connecting the stories of the many women who have suffered at the expense of the Kennedy men’s extraordinary sense of entitlement and recklessness.

Divided into 12 parts, with sections on 13 different women, Ask Not turns the attention from the prominent Kennedy men to the women they “destroyed”. Some of these women are well known. There are two sections devoted to Marilyn Monroe and three to Jackie Kennedy. Other women would have barely been noticed by the Kennedys until their lives were ended or ruined through associations with the family.

Robert and Ethel Kennedy with their children, 1966. From right: Kathleen, 15; Joseph, 14; Robert Jr, 13; David, 11; Mary Courtney, 10; Michael, 8; Kerry, 7; and Christopher, 3.
AAP

Callahan identifies Pamela Kelley as one of those women. As a teenager, she was friends with RFK Jr and his brothers David and Joe. In August 1973, she reluctantly agreed to travel with David and Joe and others on a trip to Nantucket. Seven teenagers piled into an open jeep.

According to Callahan, Joe tore through the streets of Nantucket, driving in circles before crossing into the other lane and incoming traffic. He swerved and the jeep flipped at least twice. “The carnage,” Callahan writes, “was unbelievable”. Two of the girls had broken necks. Pamela was thrown 30 metres into the air before landing on a tree trunk. She would never walk again.

Six days later, Joe Kennedy pled not guilty in court, standing before Judge George Anastos, an old classmate of his late uncle, Joseph Kennedy. Callahan recounts the scene: “You had a great father and you have a great mother,” Anastos said. “Use your illustrious name as an asset instead of coming into court like this.” He gave Joe a $100 fine and let him go.

There was a similar lack of accountability when Joe’s uncle, US Senator Ted Kennedy, faced court over the death of Mary Jo Kopechne a few years earlier. The young political staffer was the only passenger in a car that Ted Kennedy crashed after a party at Martha’s Vineyard in 1969.

Ted had been drinking and was speeding when the car plunged from a bridge into the water. He left Mary Jo in the car to seek help but did not call the authorities. By the time trained rescuers arrived, Mary Jo had suffocated.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s car is pulled from the water in July 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island.
AAP

Defying belief

The stories in Ask Not often defy belief. But most of the older stories in the book have been well and truly verified by now. For the more recent examples, Callahan has relied on original interviews with friends and families of the affected women, plus additional sources including other books and media reports. She provides notes for each woman included.

She conducted original interviews with (mostly unnamed) people who knew John F. Kennedy Jr’s wife Carolyn Bessette, who died along with her sister when a plane he was flying crashed in 1999. She also spoke to those who knew RFK Jr’s second wife Mary Richardson, Mary Jo Kopechne, Pamela Kelley and a young girl called Martha Moxley.

Martha Moxley, aged 14, a year before she was murdered.
AAP

Moxley was brutally murdered aged 15. RFK Jr’s then-teenage cousin, Michael Skakel, was convicted and jailed for the crime. After serving 11 years of a 20-year sentence he was released and the conviction was vacated, pending a retrial that never happened. RFK Jr later published a book, Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit.

Callahan also drew on “a long history of reporting on the Kennedy dynasty” as a writer for Vanity Fair and the New York Post. Callahan’s author note doesn’t specify whether she interviewed any of the Kennedy men. Although there is very little direct attribution in the book, Ask Not appears to be thoroughly researched and she is an excellent writer.

Her language is concise and evocative. Each section reads like a tightly edited feature story. She draws the reader in, and at various points, leaves them wanting more. Ask Not is a long book, but it is also compulsively readable (not to be confused with an easy read; it’s frequently disturbing).

A key strength is the unconventional structure. Divided into 12 parts, it does not follow a chronological order, instead combining the various stories of the women by themes such as “Rebels”, “The Girls”, “The Survivors” and “Falling Stars”.

Unexpectedly, Ask Not includes sections on women within the Kennedy family: the matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and two of her four daughters, Rosemary and Kathleen (known as Kick), sisters to JFK, Bobby and Ted.

These sections provide insights into the family’s attitudes towards women, driven largely by pervasive patriarchal values and misogyny, but also through Rose’s religious beliefs: “The only Catholic more devout than Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy may have been the pope.”

From left, are, seated: Eunice, Jean, Edward, on lap of his father, Joe Kennedy Sr, Patricia, and Kathleen, and standing, Rosemary, Robert, John, mother Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Joseph Jr. 1938.
AAP

When Kick Kennedy decided to marry an English protestant, she continued to have a relationship with her father Joe, while Rose completely cut her off. She died, aged 28, in a horrific plane crash in 1948.

Her sister Rosemary lived a long life, but her story is no less tragic. According to Callahan, Rosemary was seen as different to her smart and sporty siblings. She was “slow at school, earnest, child-like and needy”. The Kennedys were winners; yet she was a loser.

Her father Joe was so embarrassed of Rosemary that he hid her away for years before arranging for her to have experimental surgery at age 23. She was lobotomised and “left functionally as a two-year-old” and subsequently “stashed away in another state without any contact from her siblings or parents”.

Dangerous men

Ask Not starts with “Icons” and Carolyn Bessette, detailing her initial reluctance to allow her husband, JFK Jr, to fly her to Martha’s Vineyard on the night of July 16 1999.

Long before he made a series of rash and senseless decisions that led to the plane crash that killed him, Carolyn and her sister, Lauren, JFK Jr had a history of selfish risk-taking. “No one could have believed that the kind, humble, gorgeous John Kennedy had a habit of putting others in danger too – most often his closest friends and girlfriends,” Callahan writes.

JFK Jr had a history of selfish risk-taking before he, wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister died in a plane crash he piloted.
Luca Bruno/AAP

“Speeding, swimming too far out into the ocean, driving recklessly onto sidewalks or while high on pot, skiing in whiteout conditions, acting like an expert in all sports when really he was just an amateur – there was little John wouldn’t dare and he bullied almost everyone in his life to be as wild as he was.” Like many of his male relatives, JFK Jr was not used to being told “no”. Whatever he wanted, he got. His life was defined by a sense of entitlement others would struggle to comprehend.

The initial focus on JFK Jr works well, as he exemplifies the recklessness and carelessness of the Kennedy men that Callahan outlines throughout the rest of the book. For most of the Kennedy men, a sense of entitlement extended beyond their professional lives and into their interactions with women. JFK Jr was somewhat of an exception, according to Callahan. His father, on the other hand, may have the worst reputation for womanising.

Even though some of the women in JFK’s life had shared their experiences publicly before, they make for confronting reading. As president, JFK would invite young women who worked at the White House to drinks in his office before offering them “a tour of the residence”. When 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley agreed, the president pushed her onto Jackie Kennedy’s bed, pulled off her underwear and had sex with her.

Jackie Kennedy famously endured her husband’s relentless womanising.
John Rous/AAP

According to Callahan, JFK Jr had a voracious sexual appetite. He constantly slept around, repeatedly infecting his wife with sexually transmitted diseases, sharing lovers and prostitutes with his friends and brothers. Concerningly, his womanising was well known in Washington circles, including among the press who turned a blind eye.

A destructive force

Other Kennedy men may not have been as extreme, but they tended to share a perception that women were objects of lust, something that they were owed.

In diaries he left around for the house for his wife Mary to read, RFK Jr kept a list of all the women he had been with. There were so many – “astronomical numbers”. He ranked them from 1 to 10, as if he were a teenager, according to Callahan.

“The Kennedys remain a powerful and frequently destructive force, both in our politics and in our culture,” Callahan writes in the prologue, citing RFK Jr’s current influence as an example.

We must examine the Kennedy history, Callahan argues, and question the family’s enduring legacy. “Do the Kennedys deserve to remain a power centre in American life and politics?” she asks. She ends the prologue with an explanation for the book’s title, taken from JFK’s famous 1961 inaugural address, and a call for the question to be reframed.

“Ask not” has also forever been an admonition to women in the Kennedy sphere: Ask no questions. Don’t ask for help or respect, for fairness or justice.This book takes that as a dare. Ask Not?Let’s. More