Notables

And personal aggrandizement

Two notable Americans passed away within a day of each other this week but I can only focus on one because her role was so much more meaningful personally. I hope anyone’s passing is worth our consideration as death is truly the irreversible and inevitable.

Henry the K lived a long, complicated, and remarkable life, passing away Thursday at the century mark. Many colleagues, particularly those of us who believe in using realism as an explanation for how states behave, worshipped him and his words. Because I believe one should be respectful of families (and worshippers) in mourning, I will withhold comments other than to relegate him to a category reserved for Robert McNamara.

I do heap praise on the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for many reasons, a woman seven years younger who succumbed a day after Kissinger. I never met either of them, though I heard Kissinger once at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the tender age of about 90 and then in 2017ish at the National War College. I genuinely wish I had met O’Connor because she was in fact a trailblazer I several ways.

I had never heard of her when Ronald Reagan nominated her as a Supreme Court Justice early in his first term, checking a block on campaign promises. I had never, into my twenties, been all that interested in women’s firsts, if I am candid. I had done well enough competing with others so I figured it really wasn’t that big a deal. That began to change when one of two co-op students hired in a federal agency’s regional office in 1977, literally doubled the number of women employed there out of 150. Sexual harassment was rampant and snotty comments about expectations were insufferable. But it still didn’t entirely sink in how hard it was for those ahead of me nor how reversible things could be. I had spent my childhood largely living in countries where I was a distinct minority, ethnically and in appearance, so I thought conditions were rather immutable rather than something to fight. Just work harder, I thought!

When I heard O'Connor’s background, I did find it pretty cool—having lived in Arizona, the charm of growing up in a remote ranch well outside Phoenix and Tucson was interesting to me. I tried imagining what schooling was like as a sustained activity when it involved multiple hours’ transport. When I realized she went to Stanford where she was in a handful of women who had ever studied at that law school, I began to watch her rulings with more interest than I had followed the Court earlier. I also beginning to feel the decided pressures of women seeking acceptance in a professional environment. Women in my generation might have taken for granted O’Connor and Dr. Carla Klausner, my mentor in college, had solved for us with their early determination to fight for jobs they richly deserved but the struggle was incredible hard for those women. And the ones I knew never whined about it.

O’Connor spent a quarter century on the Court after filling the other ‘boxes’ women generally have in their lives. She married another attorney, suffered the indignity of being directed to some lesser career path because women were really only expected to have children and, paraphrasing Hillary Clinton in 1993, ‘bake cookies a la Tammy Wynette’. O’Connor created her own legal path as well as raising sons, living in a fulfilling marriage, and serving her community in politics. She rose through Maricopa County Republican politics—not exactly a community welcoming women in leadership. I became so proud to know she did all those things, regardless of her affiliations, her decisions, and her original views.

Writing in her substack ‘Letters from an American’ yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson described O’Connor as ‘a pragmatist who paid attention to the real-world consequences of the court’s decisions and who was willing to rethink her positions’. That practicality draws me to respect anyone, repeat anyone. I was disappointed to hear stories that she viewed the 2000 choice before the Court in Bush v Gore in partisan terms (allegedly she could not stomach Gore as president) but I also recognize the Court has nine humans rather than angels deciding the most challenging cases in our country. Besides, none of us is flawless in decision making as a whole so why should I expect her to have been more so?

As we now, O’Connor was the deciding vote for decades on women’s health care. For the umpteenth time, the essence of Roe was a woman’s right to choose health care in conjunction with her physician rather than a state interfering in that most sensitive topic. O’Connor served in an era when her Party increasingly objected to her personally for thwarting their desires, even though she continued supporting the Roe decision with real people in mind—the very freedoms that the Republican Party professed to care about in another galaxy far far away.

I was out walking in a library parking lot when I heard she was stepping down from the Supreme Court in 2006. It led me to wonder what single issue would bind the Republican cause together after Roe v Wade inevitably fell under a more conservative justice replacing her. Indeed, one could hardly find a more eager, less tolerant justice than Samuel Alito who relished writing the 1973 decision out of existence on the grounds that states should interfere in women’s lives the same week the Court refused to stop states from controlling guns because it infringed on personal freedoms. I have to wonder how O’Connor, had she not been struggling with acknowledged dementia, would have seen that hypocrisy. I doubt O’Connor would have anticipated her party held together by loyalty to an individual whose affiliation to rule of law is non-existent.

The bulk of my utter respect for her, however, resulted from her willingness to face the world without ever seeming to seek personal aggrandizement. I am sure Sandra Day O’Connor had an ego as one cannot fight the multiple battles she did throughout life without an ego grounded in self knowledge. She had sons who supported her after her husband went into care for the September dementia which ultimately claimed the Justice. How tough it had to be when it became known he wanted to remarry someone else after, he forgot in his decline, that he and Day O’Connor were still married after sixty plus years. She met that challenge and so many others without public whining, without crass remarks, without blaming the system. She wa dignified, gracious, supportive, and stalwart throughout.

Our nation truly lost a role model yesterday in an era when youngsters are growing up hearing about partisan clown shows, non-existent conspiracies to ignore so many in society, and an overall sense of victimization. Thank goodness she never had to face the worst of it as she suffered, withdrawn from view, from the heinous disease which stole her. Sandra Day O’Connor may have been miles away in a different generation and a different field but she became one of my personal heroines in a time of cynicism. We were so bloody lucky she was ours.

Thoughts on heroes or heroines in public life? Thoughts on Justice o’Connor’s approach to life? I welcome all thoughts.

I am away for a few days keeping a promise to my husband. We are enjoying a visit but note that climate change means deepening patterns of weather rather than just warmer temperatures. It is a frigid December so far but I am out walking for my 100 Miles in December for the American Cancer Society, regardless. Brrrr. Wishing you warmth.

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences. Please forward if you think of interest to others. Thank you especially to the financial supporters.

Be warm be well, and be safe. FIN

Heather Cox Richardson, ‘Letters from an American’, substack.com