A Letter from America: Politics and Southern Hospitality
by Quentin Cockburn

Since arriving in the U.S, the Leafy, socialist inspired Streets of Chapel Hill, I am reminded of Alistair Cooks ‘Letters from America’.*  I used to enjoy listening, (he never spoke quickly) his measured accounts of some obscure facet of American politics, or an equally obscure tangential reference to someone, (a putative Wolf T Flywheel Democrat Senator for Flat Back Idaho), and from this briefest of biographical references craft a stimulating and inspiring window for us to gain an insight into what makes America tick. I wondered if he was ever broadcast in America?  Or would that be regarded as a sort of apostasy of the soul, a voice too near to be given the weight of distance, perspective, detachment and hence reason. I also wondered, as he’d been in America since 1937 what perspective, objectivity he could bring after almost sixty years?

So please, as a ‘clean skin’, grant me leave to give a ‘Letter from America’, and in doing so (bear with me), I think I may draw a half light upon a non problem.

The first two days of our visit Cecil and I went to dinner with locals, firstly with a young couple, in which, around a deck, we admired the “openness” between houses and huge trees as part of the garden experience.  The absence of fence-lines, almost ordained as preserving an ‘open-ness’ within the community.  There seemed to be a lot of waving to neighbours, and episodic references to the ‘so ad so’s’ a few doors down as if they really mattered.  As an outsider we offered to bring grog, help wash the dishes, pick up the plates, all courteously but emphatically rejected.

The next evening presented a dinner at an older couples’ home.  The conversation over local delicacies (jalapeño poppers, a capsicum derived package of infinite complexity) and a superbly cooked steak enticed your correspondents to gauge some insight into the work we were researching – the voyage of the CSS Shenandoah.  We both knew that this was code more or less for politics; the Shenandoah story, all 150 years ago of it, would provide the appropriate segway.

We opened the batting with talk of Australian politics; that interlude was exceedingly brief.  The Queen as a respected and universally admired international figure, then as a consequence ensued a mirth filled reference to our future  monarch Charles III, and the potential for the United States to re-join the Commonwealth.  From this we enquired about the legacy of the Confederate cause.  From our hostess came the belief, though qualified by “what we know now” the conviction that after all was said and done, “We, as Southerners, behaved with honour, as ‘gentlemen’, though our cause was flawed”.

Whilst we mused over similarities between the Confederates and the ‘Round-Heads and Cavaliers’, (one flamboyant and elegantly preserving the code of chivalry, the other puritanical and hence mean spirited and petty) we arrived at a comparison, past and present of Prime Ministers and Presidents.  There ensued a discussion of long serving politicians, vested interests and lobbyists,  Two terms, our host proclaimed, not long enough to be tainted, long enough to establish the important things.

It was then, amidst much laughter that our host delivered his hand grenade.

To the question of who, in our hosts’ lifetime, was the biggest ‘game changer’, most influential.  He looked at us, paused and then pronounced more flatly than a dead cat, “Richard Nixon.”

Stunned silence.

He solemnly looked about, “Richard Nixon took away our faith in the political system, that was the game changer.  He took our trust, our faith in the system away.  And that trust,” he sadly intoned, “has never returned”.

*The first American Letter was broadcast on 24 March 1946 (Cooke said this was at the request of Lindsey Wellington, the BBC’s New York Controller); the series was initially commissioned for only 13 instalments. The series came to an end 58 years (2,869 instalments) later, in March 2004. Along the way, it picked up a new name (changing from American Letter to Letter from America in 1950) and an enormous audience, being broadcast not only in Britain and in many other Commonwealth countries, but throughout the world by the BBC World Service. (from Wikipedia)