Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?
Stories, Recollections, Memoir, Cartoons and Doggerel on The Curious, Confounding Case of Joseph Manchin III | JUNE 8, 2022
Welcome to a guide to a special edition of WestVirginiaVille, devoted to the conundrum, the spectacle, the confounding political theater of a Senator from West Virginia named Joe. In this roundup of interviews, articles, memoir, cartoons, and doggerel, distilled from varied viewpoints within and without his home state, we examine the senator's role as an almost all-powerful 'Prime Minister Manchin.’
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STORY INDEX TO SPECIAL JUNE 8, 2022 ISSUE
EDITORS/NOTE: ‘The Curious, Confounding Case of Joseph Manchin III’:
Our modest effort at Joe-collation and sprawling, sometimes grouchy commentary is not just to belittle the man, although there are roundhouse punches and cranky cartoons, but to appeal in these dire days to what’s left of the better angels of Joe Manchin’s nature. Unless they’ve been laid off due to inflation. His — into D.C.’s most powerful roadblock.
INTRODUCTION: Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?:
However complicated his life, Robert C. Byrd left a legacy of accomplishment that benefited the state and nation. His career’s end game also set the example of what a senator looks like when they object to America running off the rails. So, a key question about Joe Manchin: Is he the Anti-Byrd? Or can he finally rise to the occasion and help rescue the Biden Administration in the midterms?
FIRST/PERSON: Traveling the backroads in the Byrdmobile:
J. MICHAEL WILLARD: “I once worked for a man who had been an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan — and I’m proud of it. Not because he was a Klan member more than three-quarters of a century ago, but because of what he became afterward …”
REFLECTIONS: Ted Boettner on “Status Quo Joe”:
“I don’t think Manchin thinks there is anything fundamentally wrong with business as usual and that the inequality we see today is just and acceptable. Byrd, at least partly, seemed to believe in a higher purpose beyond himself. I don’t see that with Manchin, who seems mostly motivated by financial interests and political gamesmanship.”
Q&A: Author Denise Giardina on comparing Byrd and Manchin
Byrd had “a quality that is too rare in human beings: the ability to continue to learn and grow over time.” With Manchin, “it’s a story as old as Greek tragedy — hubris, hubris, center of attention, power, power, money, money.”
MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word outside of West Virginia
“Byrd rails against the mendacity and militarism of the Bush administration, raising a bold if lonely voice in defense of our civil liberties and national character …”| When confronted by his coal industry ties, “Manchin argued the country needed ‘dependability’ in its sources of energy. In sinking the bill, he has frustrated efforts to definitively move beyond coal.”
CARTOONERY: Black By God acidly sketches Joe Manchin’s life & times
The publication ‘BLACK BY GOD’ revives a potent tradition in West Virginia — the zinger, draw-truth-to-power editorial cartoon and Joe Manchin has been a favorite zingee of this “storytelling organization centering Black voices from the Mountain State.”
MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word inside of West Virginia
CHRIS REGAN: “Assuming Manchin does not come home to his party on Build Back Better, voting rights, and Roe (a safe assumption at this point), he’ll have lost many more votes on his left side than he could ever hope to pick up on his right … If he doesn’t come back to his own party in really stunning fashion soon, you can expect Joe Manchin will be driving his Maserati to K street, instead of the Capitol, come 2025.”
‘HEY JOE’: Harmonically urging Joe to take climate action
In late 2021, a harmonic convergence of West Virginians came together on the statewide music video “Hey Joe,” urging Joe Manchin to take decisive action on the climate crisis.
DOGGEREL:’ The Ballad of Bobby & Joe’
‘Joe turns out to be, right now, / the guy who stops all bills, / to bring more billions back to West Virginia / and its rolling hills. / And maybe there’s a Byrd somewhere / who’s spinning in its grave, / as Joe keeps sucker-punching bills / the world needs to be saved …’
Several months before Senator Byrd passed away, then Governor Manchin, made a special trip to DC to meet with Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader. Manchin definitely incurred the ire of Senator Byrd.
During the Reagan Administration I was protesting and lobbying against the U. S. wars in Central America. Robert Byrd was the Majority leader in the Senate at the time. I visited him in Washington and begged him to resist the administration's support for the dictatorships in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. After calmly listening to my plea and evidence against the rationale for war, I challenged Byrd, as leader of the opposition Party, to abandon his support of Reagan and his war mongering cabinet. His very polite and brief rebuff was, "But John, that's what the president wants." Twenty years later, in the lead up to President Cheney / Bush's invasion of Iraq, Senator Byrd supported our protest against the war and against Cheney's assertion that Iraq's oil would pay for it. Was this a humanitarian change of heart, a feeling that , so late in his career, he could protest without political consequences or maybe just the knowledge that the boogie man of communism was not involved? I will never know, but by his public statements and support for the anti Iraq war movement in Charleston and across the nation, I think it was sincere compassion for the terrible suffering of the people effected.