USS Kennedy and Senator Kennedy
I spent last Friday, to my total surprise, sitting on an aircraft carrier in Boston Harbor. I arrived at 8am at a nondescript parking deck in the waterfront. All I knew was that I was the guest of my wife, who was to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen. We were forced to wait in an endless, but well ordered, line that snaked through multiple “staging areas,” finally passing through what may have been the most efficient security checkpoint I have ever seen. We then walked up a steep metal mesh gangplank, dangling over the waters and being buffeted by the winds. The women’s high heels all got stuck in the mesh. Once inside the relatively warm hanger bay of the USS John Kennedy, our long wait for the ceremony began.
More than 2 hours later, Edward Kennedy arrived and gave an admittedly excellent and moving speech. The symbolism, of the Senator who has worked so much for immigration reform speaking on a soon-to-be decommissioned ship named after his dead brother, was powerful. The rest of the ceremony was good, if a bit too cheesy for my tastes- the video montage accompanying the song “Proud to be an American” was over the top. Nevertheless, it was a happy and joyous day for all involved. I was certainly happy my wife could finally participate as a citizen in U.S. politics.
What stands out most about Friday was how well ordered the whole event was, in a way that civilian life never is. There was, however, one apparent oversight: bathrooms. Given that there were 600 civilians on the carrier, forgetting to think about how they will find the bathroom in the bowels of the ship seems a rather big oversight. To their credit, the Navy admirably and quickly came up with a solution: given each person a military escort to the bathroom.
Somehow this small oversight reminded me of an excellent book I am reading now, Dean Acheson’s Present at the Creation. What is fascinating about the work is the feeling of actually being inside history, of seeing the messy process by which decisions are made. Stupid oversight and mistakes got made during Acheson’s tenure in the government, of far more import that some missing bathrooms on a boat. More importantly, the book makes you realize that history is not some process drive by impersonal forces like fate or destiny. Nor is it the story of single men leading movements. Rather, it is the complex outcome of a set of men and their personalities. To read Acheson is to realize that things could very well have turned out differently, if a different set of men had been there. And when history’s inevitable surprises happen, competence and a sharp comprehension of reality, trumps ideology everytime.
