COMMENTARY
Will traces of the past color our future?

By John Griffin

If our nation and world are in what might be called a pregnant pause, could we call Hawai'i's situation a hapai hiatus?

The Nov. 5 gubernatorial election ushered into power the first Republican governor in 40 years. Is it a lasting revolution or a one-shot wonder? Advertiser library photo • Nov. 6, 2002

The ominous pause these days is between peace and war — whether we invade Iraq and maybe take on North Korea as well, a much more difficult challenge. That, in turn, will influence the economy and everything else.

And yet you have to wonder how much Americans realize the gravity of all this as the holiday season ends with more terrorism always on the horizon. Many are in denial, or hoping we can bluff our way through it.

Hawai'i's more-hopeful hiatus is between the installation of Linda Lingle, the first Republican governor in 40 years, and the opening of a Legislature still dominated by Democrats. Although most talk now is of cooperation, some predict an exciting clash of ideas, along with some stalemates as the two get accustomed to each other.

So on to parallels with the 1950s.

Merrill Lynch senior economist Gerald Cohen, in a research paper last month, pointed out some surprising similarities between then and now. He wrote:

"No two periods are ever identical, and we don't expect cars to sprout fins, but we think that there's a good chance that many of the favorable economic trends of the 1950s will re-emerge in the years immediately ahead.

"Not only are business-friendly Republicans in control of (both) Congress and the White House for the first time since 1954-56, there are other 1950s-era trends that already have re-emerged in the new century that could be a boon to the economy." He cited rising productivity, low inflation and the housing boom.

That sent me back to a year-ender column I wrote in 2001. It concluded in part:

"Thus, for Hawai'i, the new year with its major elections and chances for new leadership and economic recovery, and other change, could be one of history's turning points. Maybe it could be a 21st century version of the 1950s, when these Islands began the revolution of change that has fallen into the rust, inertia and old-boyism we see today."

On that local scale, ponder these comparisons:

With teachers walking the picket line at Moanalua Elementary and other public schools in 2001, unions evoked the militancy that gave them clout in the past. Will their strength persist in a new Hawai'i? Advertiser library photo • April 6, 2001

Momentum in today's mirror image cycle is with Lingle and the Republicans, but a good question is whether this is a lasting revolution or a one-shot wonder.

• The Korean War of the early 1950s was not popular. But it was widely seen as necessary. We had United Nations allies, and it did not spark the level of resentment that came in the late 1960s with Vietnam. We endured high casualties among service people from Hawai'i, and we benefited from increased military spending.

Now we have a necessary war on terrorism and increasing public doubt about invading Iraq. A new Korean conflict would be ironic as well as tragic.

• Our Cold War with the Soviet Union and China grew in the 1950s. World communism was a real threat that needed to be confronted at home as well as abroad. But we also got the red-scare overreaction called the McCarthy era, with its threats, witch hunts and abuses of civil rights.

Threats to civil liberties, real and potential, exist today with our war on terrorism. They, too, need to be confronted. At the same time, many liberals may need to move their minds out of the Vietnam era and into the world we have today with its new threats.

Those making such points include New York Times critic Edward Rothstein. Last week, he noted that several leftist American writers have recently said the left is becoming alienated in its own country. He went on:

"Each of these writers says one strain of American liberalism has gone awry when its celebration of equality and its distrust of power are taken to extremes."

• While Hawai'i's economy was still anchored in sugar and pineapple in the early 1950s, tourism started to jump as statehood and the jet age approached. Today, tourism struggles to hold its own and diversify as we look for an education-based future in technology or maybe some other economic serendipity. Our future now seems less clear.

• Hawai'i's 1950s revolution brought increasing political and economic benefits and power to many local people who backed the Democrats. At the same time others, including many Hawaiians, were left behind. Interracial marriages became more common, with fewer stigmas among the still-strong racial and ethnic groups.

This year's surge that brought Lingle to power seems more complicated racially, including relative newcomers, emerging ethnics such as Filipinos, and other local people disenchanted with the Democrats. Somewhere in this mix is what I call Hawai'i's emerging "hapa culture," the physical and social blending among our peoples.

• Labor unions, especially the ILWU with its plantation and waterfront work force, were a pathfinder and key ingredient in the Democrats' rise to power in the 1950s. (Earlier, some in the ILWU had wanted to take over the Democratic Party, but that's another story.)

Today, after a later era when government employee unions dominated, labor is struggling to hang onto its gains and to find relevance in the new economic and political climate. Last year's educator strikes and the current nurses' walkout are faint reminders of the old militant days.

• Events in the 1950s dramatized the power and value of public education. In the early 1950s, when I went there, the University of Hawai'i was a pleasant yet stimulating place run by conservative regents but also with a few professors who helped inspire and serve the Democratic revolution.

Ironically, many increasingly affluent sons and daughters of the upheaval in the 1950s then sent their children to private schools. If it's natural to want better for your kids, that also helped undermine support for public education.

Now there's a new surge of interest, and I hope support, for public education and the role of UH as an economic engine and pathway to a different future.

The byplay on education between Republican Lingle, the mostly Democratic Legislature and UH under President Evan Dobelle, a Democrat, is as fascinating as it is important to our future.

• Hawaiian sovereignty was hardly on most horizons in the 1950s when we all seemed most interested in making it in the usual American way. The militant 1960s and 1970s started to change that.

Sovereignty is at least on the horizon today, leaving two good questions: How effective can Lingle and our congressional Democrats be, in Republican-dominated Washington, in advancing the Akaka bill and other measures for Hawaiians? And when will Hawaiians find enough unity to help the rest of us understand the possible futures?

• Finally, statehood was a goal for most of us in the 1950s. Along with the quest for social justice and equality, the campaign for statehood provided what President Ronald Reagan later called "the lift of a driving dream."

Hawai'i lacks such a goal today, unless you settle for the November election's mantra of "change." It may be up to Republican Lingle and the Democrats not just to define change but also to find that new dream.