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CHARLES C. W. COOKE LUKE THOMPSON The Next Space Age Trump as Centrist

The Roots of Liberal Condescension KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

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PROTECT YOUR CHARITABLE INTENT: HOW ONE DONOR ADVISED FUND DOES IT

llan* found professional success in • The assets left to his account will be real estate. Among other factors, he VRPHinvested FDVHV based D VSHFL¿F upon LQYHVWPHQWguidance provided DGYLVRU credited the free-market system with by him when he established the account (in allowing him to succeed. In return, he had a spe- cial place in his philanthropy for organizations can be suggested for the account), allowing cultivating and protecting the values of liberty the fund to grow over time. and free enterprise for future generations. • He chose to entrust DonorsTrust to When Allan died, his estate plan comfortably carry out an account distribution provided for surviving loved ones. But he left plan he created in consultation with Ensure that a larger share of his estate to his preferred DonorsTrust. He also had the option to charitableA vehicle—a “bequest” donor-advised name a successor advisor to oversee $WKLV¿GXFLDULHV¶RSWLRQWKH'RQRUV7UXVW freedom account at DonorsTrust. the account. • rings for her. That one estate distribution to a DonorsTrust account could be funded with illiquid bequest account now provides posthumous assets, such as real estate and interests support to more than a dozen organizations Use DonorsTrust to leave a legacy in closely held entities, or with other that advance the principles he held dear during of liberty. non-cash assets such as publicly traded his lifetime. And by using a bequest account at stock; and the estate’s administration DonorsTrust is a community DonorsTrust as part of his estate plan, future was streamlined since the charitable dis- foundation committed to limited distributions from the account to any particular tribution went to one publicly supported organization will only continue if the organiza- government, personal responsibility, charity that could then handle the task of tion’s mission remains in-line with his philan- and free enterprise. We help donors making distributions in his honor to sup- thropic intent. who share those principles support port a wide variety of charities. charitable organizations working +HUHDonor-Advised DUH WKH SULPDU\ Funds EHQH¿WV Make RI Legacy $OODQ¶V Above all, Allan chose DonorsTrust to preserve liberty for future Giving Easier generations. Can we help you? because we take our role as defender of each client’s unique donor intent DonorsTrust bequest account that are also Learn more by calling us or VLPSOL¿HG very seriously. Like our clients, we commit available to you. visiting donorstrust.org/legacy. ourselves to preserving and advancing liberty • The bequest KLVHVWDWH¶V¿GXFLDULHVGHDOWto DonorsTrust as embodied in the principles of limited gov- ZLWKMXVWRQHFKDULW\WRIXO¿OOKLVSODQsettling the charitable aspects of his ernment, personal responsibility, and free estate plan enterprise.

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OCTOBER 10, 2016 | VOLUME LXVIII, NO. 18 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 23 The Irredeemables

Every faith gets its Inquisition, and Dan McLaughlin on Bobby Jindal every Inquisition gets its Grand p. 19 Inquisitor. Ours has a thing for pantsuits, and she is even tougher on BOOKS, ARTS heretics than was the Spanish original: & MANNERS Tomás de Torquemada, an orthodox 38 FREEDOM TRAILS Dominican, did not think anybody Jay Nordlinger reviews The irredeemable. Kevin D. Williamson Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 39 CURRENCY DISUNION Andrew Stuttaford reviews The Euro: How a Common ARTICLES Currency Threatens the Future of Europe, by Joseph E. Stiglitz. 14 ROB PORTMAN’S PERFECT CAMPAIGN by Eliana Johnson The Ohio senator has surged by hyper-localizing his reelection bid. 42 A LITERAL NANNY STATE David French reviews No Child 17 RECOVERY AT LAST? by Ramesh Ponnuru Left Alone: Getting the Confusion about economic policy is distorting both political parties’ analysis. Government Out of Parenting, by Abby W. Schachter. 19 BOBBY JINDAL’S LEGACY by Dan McLaughlin He paid a political price to shrink the government—and improve Louisiana. 44 DAWN OF THE TERROR ERA John J. Miller discusses The Secret 21 THE RIGHT’S VENTURE CAPITALIST by John J. Miller Agent, by Joseph Conrad, and its What Michael Grebe achieved at the Bradley Foundation. BBC television adaptation.

46 FILM: UNSULLIED FEATURES Ross Douthat reviews Sully. TURN, TURN, TURN THE IRREDEEMABLES by Kevin D. Williamson 47 23 Richard Brookhiser sees fall arrive. Hillary Clinton and the politics of leftist condescension. 26 TRUMP AS CENTRIST by Luke Thompson Finding the ideological core within the bluster. SECTIONS PROGRESSIVISM GOES GLOBAL by John Fonte & John Yoo 30 2 Letters to the Editor Transnational governance and its contempt for the consent of the governed. 4 The Week THE NEXT SPACE AGE by Charles C. W. Cooke 36 The Long View ...... Rob Long 33 Athwart ...... James Lileks As private spaceflight advances, Washington must reconsider its role. 37 43 Poetry ...... Daniel Mark Epstein 48 Happy Warrior ...... Andrew Stiles

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2016. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.M . to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONALREVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters-READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/21/2016 2:16 PM Page 2 Letters

OCTOBER 10 ISSUE; PRINTED SEPTEMBER 22

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Trade or the Trade Establishment? Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Robert D. Atkinson’s “Four Myths about Trade” (September 12) are almost correctly Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra stated; which is to say, incorrectly stated. Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson “The first assumption is that America is the world’s economic leader because it is the Executive Editor Reihan Salam most open, entrepreneurial, and market-driven economy.” Mr. Atkinson’s evidence against Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspond ent John J. Miller this “assumption” (which is really a conclusion) is weak. While “other countries [are at Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty least equal] in numerous areas” and “the United States runs [a colossal] trade deficit,” both Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta Art Director Luba Kolomytseva were also true during America’s fastest growth period (between the Civil War and World Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz War I). America’s economic jinx since then hasn’t been trade. Production Editor Katie Hosmer “The Washington trade establishment’s second core belief is that trade is an unalloyed Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst good, even if other nations engage in mercantilism.” I defy Mr. Atkinson to find a single Contributing Editors non-ironic affirmation of “unalloyed good,” as opposed to “good on the whole.” Otherwise Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster he correctly characterizes economics since Adam Smith. If Mr. Atkinson disagrees, Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long whence derives his view that “reciprocal free trade is the optimal condition?” Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen Mr. Atkinson thinks China proves that mercantilism works in that China has been able

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE to “leap ahead.” Even if we stipulate the leap, something other than mercantilism has Editor Charles C. W. Cooke happened at the same time. The Chinese economy has become less Communist, while ours Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Deputy Managing Editor Nat Brown has become less free. National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Staff Writer David French Third, “the theory [of comparative advantage] holds that nations have natural advan- Senior Political Reporter Alexis Levinson tages in certain goods . . . and each does better when it specializes in those industries.” Not Reporter Katherine Timpf Associat e Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell quite. Goods’ relative prices differ between trading countries, or there would be no trade. Digital Director Ericka Andersen There is nothing “natural,” essential, or permanent about the comparative advantage. Assistant Editor Mark Antonio Wright Technical Services Russell Jenkins Specialization is economic; it would retard but not necessarily prevent a reversal. Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Web Developer Wendy Weihs Fourth “tenet”: “Because the United States leads the global economy, because mercan- Web Producer Scott McKim tilists hurt only themselves, and because our current industrial structure is optimal or close EDITORS- AT- LARGE to it, the economy as a whole must benefit from trade even though some individuals may Linda Bridges / Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan be hurt.” Again, Mr. Atkinson restates economic orthodoxy, almost. 1) “The economy” NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW would not benefit: Only people can benefit. 2) The benefit does not depend on whether the Ian Tuttle United States “leads” the global economy. 3) The statement is true even though mercan- BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM tilists do not hurt only themselves. 4) There is no agreed meaning of “industrial structure” Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack for a whole economy, still less what it would mean for it to be optimal. Nobody claims that Contributors Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen “our current industrial structure is optimal or close to it.” 5) So a better restatement would Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman be: “Trade benefits our people on the whole.” James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / Michael Novak Roberto Alazar Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Via e-mail Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman ROBERT D. ATkINSON: My thanks to Mr. Alazar for his letter. The letter focuses on semantic Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey quibbles (e.g., “people” vs. “economy”) and appears to misunderstand my argument. I am Circulation Manager Jason Ng Advertising Director Jim Fowler arguing less about the validity of neoclassical trade theory and more about shortcomings Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet in the beliefs of the Washington trade establishment. My source of “data” for this is more Assistant to the Publisher Brooke Rogers Director of Revenue Erik Netcher than 25 years of personal interaction with its members and of reading their views. PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN Regarding Adam Smith—who is always brought up in the debate over trade as if one were Jack Fowler John Hillen quoting scripture—a close read of The Wealth of Nations shows that Smith believed that FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. under some conditions foreign mercantilism could hurt the British economy. I wonder if Mr. Alazar really believes that we should not bother to enforce the WTO rules. Since when PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli did defenders of the free market come to believe that government economic distortion Dale Brott is bad here at home but okay from our trading partners? If free-market conservatives are Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway Mark and Mary Davis to be intellectually consistent, they need to press for free markets both at home and Virginia James Christopher M. Lantrip abroad and acknowledge that distortions hurt U.S. firms, regardless of whether the U.S. Brian and Deborah Murdock or a foreign government imposes them. Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Honestly, the thought of her becoming president makes us feel a little faint, too.

n Hillary Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 commemoration at Ground Zero, stumbled off a curb, and collapsed into the arms of Secret Service agents before being thrust into a campaign van. The wretched moment, caught on the smartphones of bystanders, zipped online, where it reified all concerns about her health. This is the year of the elders: She will be 69 on Election Day, Donald Trump will be 70, Bernie Sanders was 74 when he bowed out. But she has had a concussion, plus three blood clots, for which she takes a blood thinner. The image of a tired and ailing senior citizen reinforces the facts that she has no vital message and that she has been front and center for a quarter century. As bad as the video was the response of her team. First they said it was hot that morning (the weather was glorious). Then they admitted that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier. Then Bill Clinton told CBS News that she “frequently—well not frequently, rarely—but on more than one occasion” has fainted from dehydration. The only thing as familiar as Hillary Clinton is the fog of mendacious doubletalk in which she lives and breathes.

n On September 9, Clinton, addressing a fundraiser, wrote off millions of voters. “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of de plor - ables. . . . Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Is lam o- n Matt Lauer became the target of a liberal mob for allegedly phobic, you name it.” “Some of these folks,” she went on, “are being too tough on Clinton and too soft on Trump during a tele- irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The next vised forum with first one and then the other. Far from rolling day, she backtracked. “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ over for Trump, though, Lauer exposed some of his weaknesses. and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half.’ ” No kid- Follow-up questions about Trump’s alleged secret plan to defeat ding. Since Donald Trump is polling in the 40s, Hillary’s first ISIS, for example, made it sound like empty bluster. Liberals’ re mark labels more than one fifth of Americans un-American. attack on Lauer does not reflect his performance so much as it Like many liberals, when Hillary Clinton looks at America she does their view that voters are too dim to understand how terrible sees a country succumbed, or succumbing, to dark forces. Trump is unless journalists spell it out for them in capital letters. Ironically such wild misdiagnosis simultaneously blurs and If debate moderators follow the cue, they will be adding to the encourages the true deplorables—alt-right cranks and racists disgrace of this election season. who have indeed flocked to Trump’s banner, and been retweeted by him. Small but noxious political infections require acts of n Trump, at a Washington, D.C., campaign event, finally admit- hygiene, not flame-throwing. ted the truth: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.” So ends five years of Trump absurdly banging n Clinton has slid in the polls thanks to new disclosures about her on the issue. There are, of course, complications: Birther ru - improper server, her sickness and dissembling about same, and mors are an old thing in American politics, going back to Ver - her general charmlessness. Over six weeks, her lead went from monter Chester Arthur (allegedly born over the border in eight points to one. Trump supporters think that the polls may Can a da). The rumor that Obama was born in Kenya may have understate support for him. On the other hand, Clinton will benefit arisen in Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign: The from a much stronger get-out-the-vote operation, and the distrib- McClatchy newspaper chain, acting on a tip from Clinton hench- ution of votes may give her a slight advantage in the Electoral man Sidney Blumenthal, even sent a reporter to Africa to inves- College. It is no coincidence that the race has tightened while tigate (Blumenthal denies the whole story). No matter where it Trump has spent more time with the teleprompter he used to began, or how many other tales have been spun likewise, this was scorn. The polls show continued resistance to the idea that he has dirtbag gossip, easily refuted by consulting Barack Obama’s the right temperament to be president. He has a few more weeks birth certificate. That Donald Trump held it to his bosom for ROMAN GENN to overcome it. five long years after it was released is—what you would expect.

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THE WEEK

part of his economic agenda to which Trump seems most commit- n RNC chairman Reince Priebus said that the party might ted and over which the presidency would give him the most leeway. impose sanctions against future Republican presidential can- didates if they ran in this year’s primaries, took a pledge to n Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor responsible for support the nominee, and then reneged. No sensible person the worst leak in the history of American intelligence, is seeking a holds it against the head of the RNC that he wants his party presidential pardon. “These were necessary things, these were to unify behind its presidential nominee. But he is asking vital things” to disclose, Snowden told the Guardian in a recent John Kasich and Jeb Bush (two men he named) to back interview. Except they weren’t. The revelations about metadata Trump because of a pledge that Trump himself said he would collection, which have been the occasion for Snowden’s celebrity, not honor. And it is not clear how Priebus’s threat serves the constitute only a small portion of the information he exposed; party’s interests. If Trump wins, Kasich and Bush are highly according to General Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the unlikely to run for president in 2020. If he loses, it will prob- Joint Chiefs of Staff, the “vast majority” of Snowden’s disclosures ably make sense for the party to signal that it wants to win “were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, tech- back Republican defectors rather niques, and procedures.” The result has been a massive setback than punish them. And right now, in American intelligence-gathering and defense: High-level offi- Trump would be better off cajol- cials have confirmed that Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists ing Republican holdouts than have modified the way they communicate. Meanwhile, a senior bullying them. Mike Pence Russian security official confirms that Snowden, who is currently grasped the point when he prom - living in hiding in Moscow, has provided information to Russian ised to “earn” Republicans’ intelligence. If Snowden is what he says he is—a whistleblower votes. Priebus, on the and a patriot—he will do what he should have done in 2013: other hand, seems to surrender to the Justice De partment and take his chances at trial. be taking on some The Obama administration should accept no other resolution. of Trump’s more un fortunate char- n Sean Hannity welcomed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange acteristics. onto his Fox News program, where he described Assange’s past crimes as little more than a bit of snooping. In reality, Assange has endangered the U.S. and its alli es while throwing n No Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has in his lot with Vladimir Putin, so what could possibly make had a proposal for child-care subsidies as expansive as Trump’s. Han ni ty treat Assange as a friend? He’s trying to hurt Clinton. The fact has won him some praise from liberals. Conservatives As sange has revealed embarrassing e-mails hacked from the should be skeptical. Trump wants companies to offer six weeks DNC, and he is teasing the release of more soon, which could of unemployment benefits as part of maternity leave, and claims be a huge boon to the Trump campaign. Excusing Assange now it will cost them nothing because he will crack down on waste demonstrates the slippery assumptions that pass muster in and abuse in unemployment programs. The numbers, unsurpris- some circles of the Right. National security ought never to be ingly, don’t add up. If he keeps the promise, then, he will have to second to electoral politics; giving air time and well wishes to add to the burdens employers take on when they decide to hire an enemy of the U.S. is shameful regardless of the benefits of people. Trump is also offering a tax deduction for child-care co-belligerency against Democrats. costs, with much of the money going to affluent two-earner couples in high-cost locales. The value of the deduction would n Garry Kasparov could have chosen to live out his life as a uni- be pegged to the average cost of child care in a state. There are versally admired chess champion—he is regarded by many as the conflicting accounts about how large a deduction stay-at-home best ever to have played that game. Instead, he has dedicated moms would receive. Trump’s interest in making policy more himself to the cause of democracy, freedom, and human rights, family-friendly is commendable, but it would be simpler to just especially in his former country, Russia. He has stuck his neck let all parents keep more of their money. out. Onetime comrades of his have been killed, including Boris Nemtsov. Another comrade, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was almost n A Trump speech to the Detroit Economic Club coincided with killed, by poisoning, but came out of his coma. Kasparov has said the campaign’s release of a scaled-back tax-cut plan. The plan that his chess fame does not necessarily immunize him from seems to be a moving target: The National Federation of Inde - danger. But Dinesh D’Souza, with a new soft spot for the Russian pendent Business was told it includes a large tax cut for small authoritarian, cited Kasparov for the proposition that Putin isn’t businesses and then endorsed it, while organizations trying to such a danger to his critics in a tweet: “Have you noticed that figure out its impact on revenues were told it did not include that @Kasparov63 is a public critic of Putin & very much alive?” To tax cut. The plan definitely includes a deep reduction in the which Kasparov himself wrote, “Have you noticed I live in New corporate tax rate, which would no longer be one of the highest York now?” Yes, he does—and he is still on alert. in the developed world: a very positive development, even if not one likely to achieve Trump’s new target of sustained 4 percent n On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Politico published an exten- GETTY IMAGES

/ economic growth. Trump’s trade policy, unfortunately, would sive oral history of that day—specifically, the odyssey of Air undermine that goal, and his rhetoric continues to betray not the Force One. Security officials determined that the safest place slightest hint of familiarity with the integration of many American for the president to be was in the sky. One of the many fascinat- MARK WILSON companies in global supply chains. Unfortunately, tariffs are the ing tidbits to emerge was this: Shortly after he and his team

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THE WEEK

boarded the plane, President Bush said, “Okay, boys, this is what understandable impulse. Saudi financial support for the propaga- they pay us for.” That is very Bush. tion of jihadist ideology is as notorious as the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, as was al-Qaeda’s n Congress voted to enable private litigants—the most sympa- emir, Osama bin Laden. It is past time that we undertook a thetic imaginable, families of 9/11 victims—to sue the Saudi clear-eyed evaluation of our relations with a repressive regime government for complicity in terrorism. The move stems from an that, while providing important intelligence cooperation, de - The Unprecedented Negative Interest Rate

NTEREST rates around the world have been pretty low The chart, by focusing at the end on the U.S. rate, actually lately. You might be surprised to discover how low. understates the case. Central banks around the world are I According to the landmark history of interest rates experimenting with negative interest rates, and the Wall compiled by Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla, human Street Journal reports that globally there is now approxi- beings have been engaging in recorded credit transactions mately $10 trillion of government debt with negative yields. for more than 5,000 years. Homer and Sylla report that it Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen revealed in a recent speech was customary for Sumerians to charge an interest rate of that the U.S. might try negative interest rates as well. 20 percent per year for loans of silver as far back as 3000 Which raises the $10 trillion question: Is the economy so B.C. In Babylonian times, the priests of the god Shamash of much worse now than it has been over the past 5,000 years Sippar loaned silver at 6.25 percent per year, but rates often that negative interest rates make sense? climbed as high as 20 percent. In the sixth century B.C., the The most reasonable answer is probably “Yes.” For today, rate on Greek loans was 18 percent, while the rate on “safe” unlike any other time in human history, our financial markets Greek investments dropped all the way to about 8 percent have been taken over by Keynesian central bankers deter- by the first century A.D. mined to drive interest rates into negative territory, purport- Contracts involving large sums of money or resources edly because of the positive stimulus such low rates have been extremely important for most of history. Indeed, provide. This creates a terrible equilibrium. If rates are “recorded” history is often a record of some debt arrange- expected to be negative, it makes no sense for private ment. When the economic stakes were high, it made sense investors to accumulate capital. The government is effec- to hire a scribe, or to chip away at a tablet. While much of tively charging you a fine of 1 percent of capital for the interest-rate history is anecdotal, by the Middle Ages it crime of having money in the bank in the future. When cap- became common to keep detailed economic records, so it ital accumulation and the accompanying investment tanks is possible to construct an interest-rate series on compara- in response to this policy, growth slows, making the wiz- ble assets back to that time. ards at the central bank even more sure that rates should The accompanying chart follows the discount rates and be even more negative. In the age of Harambe, interest bond yields for the economic powerhouses of the time peri- rates are lower than they have been since Hammurabi. od as compiled by the financial firm Global Financial Data (GFD). As described by GFD chief economist Bryan Taylor, —KEVIN A. HASSETT up until the 16th century, the economic powerhouse was Italy; then it was Spain; then, in the 17th century, the Netherlands briefly dominated the world economic stage, Interest Rates from owing to its strong trade connections; then, because the The Year 1285 country was small, its dominance quickly shifted to Great Britain. Following World War I, the United States became 25 the center of global economic activity, and it has since re - mained so. While it is important to note the somewhat 20 subjective nature of determining an economic power-

house, these assumptions allow us to construct a continu- 15 ous sampling of rates across hundreds of years.

The chart plots two rates. The discount rates are short- 10

term central-bank rates spanning the years 1522 to 2009. Interest Rate (Percent)

The long-term government-bond yields go back all the way 5 to 1285. The duration of each long-term bond varies, ranging

from those with no maturity date—as with the oldest Italian 0 1285 1309 1333 1357 1381 1405 1429 1453 1477 1501 1525 1549 1573 1597 1621 1645 1669 1693 1717 1741 1765 1789 1813 1837 1861 1885 1909 1933 1957 1981 2005 bond, the Prestiti of Venice—to those with the now-standard ten-year maturity period of the U.S. government bond. Discount Rate Bond Yield What sticks out, of course, is the end of the chart, where Rate both the short-term and the long-term interest rates are SOURCE: GLOBAL FINANCIAL DATA, GFD CENTRAL BANK DISCOUNT RATE INDEX, lower than they have been at other times in recorded history. AND GFD LONG-TERM GOVERNMENT BOND YIELD INDEX

8 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 1 0 , 2 0 1 6 base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/20/2016 12:44 PM Page 1

DOCTOR’S MEMORY BREAKTHROUGH ADVERTISEMENT One Simple Trick to Reversing Memory Loss World’s Leading Brain Expert and Winner of the Prestigious Kennedy Award, Unveils Exciting News For the Scattered, Unfocused and Forgetful

By Steven Wuzubia The Missing Link Health Correspondent; is Found and Tested Dr. Meir Shinitzky, Ph.D. a former visiting Clearwater, Florida: Dr. Meir Shinitzky, It’s hard to pronounce that’s for sure, but professor at Duke University and a recipient Ph.D., is a former visiting professor at Duke it certainly appears from the astounding of the prestigious J.F. Kennedy Prize University, recipient of the prestigious J.F. clinical research that this one vital nutrient Kennedy Prize and author of more than 200 phosphatidylserine (PS) can really make a huge Vital Nutrient international scienti c papers on human difference in our mental wellness. 17 different Reverses “Scatter Brain” body cells. But now he’s come up with what double blind studies with placebo controlled This incredible PS nutrient feeds your brain the the medical world considers his greatest groups have been involved in the clinical research vital nutrient it needs to stay healthy... PS now has accomplishment — A vital compound. so of PS with patients between the ages of 55-80 the attention of some of the world’s most prominent powerful, it’s reported to repair… even regrow years of age. Periodically the researchers gave brain experts. It has been written up and published damaged brain cells. In layman’s terms — Bring these patients memory and cognitive tests and the in leading science and medical journals and its back your memory power. And leave you feeling results were simply amazing: ndings have electri ed the International scienti c more focused and clear-headed than you have in 1) PS patients outperformed placebo patients in community. All 5 Tests - 100% Success Rate years! Earth-Shaking Science 2) After only 45 days there was a measurable Dr. Shinitsky explains this phenomenon in Published, clinical reports show replenishing your improvement in mental function simple terms; “Science has shown when your body’s natural supply of Phosphatidylserine, not 3) After 90 days, there was an impressive and brain nutrient levels drop, you can start to only helps sharpen your memory and concentration amazing improvement in mental function experience memory problems and overall mental — but also helps “perk you up” and put you in a The group taking phosphatidylserine, not only fatigue. Your ability to concentrate and stay better mood. PS as it turns out also helps to reduce enjoyed sharper memory, but listen to this… they focused becomes compromised. And gradually, a everyday stress and elevate your mood by lowering were also more upbeat and remarkably more “mental fog” sets in. It can damage every aspect your body’s production of the hormone cortisol. happy. In contrast, the moods of the individuals of your life”. Not only do brain cells die but they When cortisol levels are too high for too long you who took the placebo (starch pill), remained become dysfunctional as if they begin to fade experience fatigue, bad moods and weakness. unaffected….no mental or mood improvement away as we age. This affects our ability to have This drug-free brain-boosting formula enters your at all. mental clarity and focus and impacts our ability bloodstream fast (in as little as thirty minutes). to remember things that were easy for us to do in My Memory Of cially Reviewed by the U.S. Food and our 20’s and 30’s. Started to Scare Me. Drug Administration: PS is the ONLY Health Scientists think the biggest cause of brain Supplement that has a “Quali ed Health Claim deterioration in older people is the decreased I would forget all kinds of things for both Cognitive Dysfunction and Dementia”. and something that I just said functioning of membranes and molecules that earlier in the day would have Special Opportunity surround the brain cells. These really are the completely slipped my mind. I almost forgot my For Our Readers transmitters that connect the tissues or the brain granddaughter’s birthday and that would have We’ve made arrangements with the distributor cells to one another that help us with our sharp been horrible. I had forgotten lots of other little of this proprietary blend of PS, which combines memory, clear thinking and mental focus, even things along the way. I was worried about it. with several other proven special brain boosting our powers to reason well. “When we are in Over the last several months I’ve noticed my natural ingredients to give you the mental clarity our 20’s” according to Dr. Shinitzky “our body memory seemed to be getting pretty unreliable and memory gain that you need, to give you a produces key substances like phosphatidylserine and so I thought I’d better do something about Risk-Free trial supply. This is a special “Readers and phosphatidic acid”…unfortunately they it now. So when I read about this amazing PS Only Discount”. This trial is 100% risk-free. are believed to be critical essential nutrients nutrient and how much it would help me with my It’s a terri c deal. If Lipogen PS Plus doesn’t that just fade away with age, much like our memory I wanted to try it. help you think better, remember more... and memories often do leading to further mental It’s great! 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week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/21/2016 2:09 PM Page 10

THE WEEK

nies religious liberty and systematically discriminates against n Pittsburgh, a city synonymous with the 20th-century industrial women, religious minorities, apostates, and homosexuals. The economy, is serving as a cradle to what promises to be one of the courtroom, nevertheless, is no place for such a reckoning. Di - great technologies of the 21st, with Uber deploying its first self- plo ma cy is no more a fit subject for litigation than is terrorism driving automobiles in the Steel City. It is a safe bet that those a law-enforcement matter. Moreover, such legislation will spur cars will become fully operational and widespread right around other countries to allow their citizens to sue the United States, the time the Democrats are successful in unionizing and and perhaps even to enact criminal laws authorizing arrests of cartelizing Uber drivers, as they have so successfully done with current and former U.S. officials (including military personnel) the taxi mafia that Uber threatens to put out of business. For the for actions taken in our national defense. Foreign policy is the moment, Uber is keeping humans in the driver’s seat, just in case, constitutional bailiwick of the political branches. They extend and the autonomous vehicles’ programming is so risk-averse that reciprocal diplomatic immunities, but have policy options rang- the robot taxis are, for the moment, of limited usefulness. If ing from negotiation to warfare. That’s as it should be, and experience is any guide, self-driving cars soon enough will be as Oba mais right to promise a veto. different from today’s test models as the iPhone 7 is from the Motorola cinder blocks of the Reagan era. This will present some n On its way out the door, the Obama administration has signaled interesting policy problems, no doubt, with the nannies torn be - to health insurers its readiness to grant them bailouts that would tween trying to limit autonomous cars to save all those cab-driver violate longstanding Justice Department guidelines and the will jobs and mandating them when they turn out to be safer than of Congress. The game concerns Obamacare’s temporary risk- human-operated Volvos. Uber and its competitors have been corridor program, which was designed to help insurers that suf- obliged to fight with regulators and parochial business interests fered losses from participating in the exchanges. The program from Day One, and no doubt there will be an attempt to make it does not have the money to pay them what they want, since there into a national scandal the first time an autonomous car gets into have not been enough profitable insurers to kick in and Congress a fender-bender. But the future is coming, in spite of the best refused to provide any other funds. (Insurers have requested $2.87 efforts of the regulators and rent-seekers. billion, eight times as much as other insurers have put in.) Some in - sur ers have sued, demanding payment from the Judgment Fund, n Missouri is to become the eleventh “constitutional carry” state. which was established to settle claims against the government but In September, its legislature overturned a gubernatorial veto and is not available to an agency when it has, as in this case, recourse abolished the state’s concealed-carry permitting process entirely. to seek funds from Congress. So held the Justice Depart ment’s When the new system goes into effect next month, residents of Of fice of Legal Counsel in 1998. Congress has said no to a bail - the “Show Me” State will have to show nothing before exercising out of insurance companies, and Obama signed the legislation. their basic rights. Upon hearing the news, the usual suspects— So the Justice Department should prepare to defend against their Everytown, The Daily Show, the New York Times editorial board, claims—and HHS should desist from conniving with them. etc.—screamed bloody murder. But few Americans seem to have been listening. Since 1987 (in which year Florida moved to a n HHS has proposed a new rule to force states to fund Planned “shall issue” concealed-carry system and began the restoration Parenthoo d. The federal government provides Title X funding of the right to bear arms), voters have been treated to an endless to state governments so they can provide family-planning ser- parade of ghastly predictions. Concealed carry, they were told, vices. States have had discretion over the disbursement of would lead to shootouts in the street; to bloodbaths in the super- these funds. The proposed rule forbids state governments to markets; to the return of the Wild West. None of it happened. In - distribute federal money “using criteria in their selection of stead, over the last three decades, gun-homicide rates have been subrecipients that are unrelated to the ability to deliver services cut in half and crime has returned to its pre-1960 levels. There is to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.” In other no evidence that the abolition of state permitting systems will words, states will not be allowed to steer money away from reverse this trend. Indeed, there is no evidence that permitting groups they consider morally abhorrent because of their in - systems do anything much at all to the crime rate. For recogniz- volve ment in abortion and fetal-tissue trafficking. Specifically, ing that purposeless restrictions on constitutional rights are futile they will be blocked from defunding the nation’s largest abor- and unjust, Missouri’s legislature should be applauded. tionist, Planned Parenthood. The administration has managed, then, to combine some of its favorite causes: executive legis- n With the apparent collapse of the latest Syrian cease-fire mere lating, government subsidies, Washington-knows-best inter- days after Secretary of State John Kerry announced it, we have ference, and the culture of death. another opportunity to learn the same lessons all over again. Rus - sia and the Assad regime will pursue their interests regardless of n Two years after the corruption at the Department of Veterans international agreements. Cease-fires are inherently unstable un - Affairs was revealed, the House of Representatives has finally less all sides are content with the status quo on the ground. Yet passed a bill to make it easier to terminate VA employees for mis- with competing factions that desire to dominate more than to conduct or poor performance: a long-overdue step in reforming achieve a level of autonomy and stability, the only status quo they an agency mired in incompetence and malpractice. Predictably, are content to perpetuate is continued violence. With final victory the American Federation of Government Employees, which elusive, look for this civil war to end at an indeterminate future represents 230,000 VA employees, and the White House have point through exhaustion instead of negotiation. suggested that the bill might undercut veterans’ health care. But given that veterans are currently dying—literally—in the parking n The United States is not alone in experiencing a populist revolt lots of VA hospitals, it seems like a risk worth taking. on the right focused on immigration. Europe has seen an upswing

1 0 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 1 0 , 2 0 1 6 base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/19/2016 1:42 PM Page 1

Vaccines and Stem Cells:

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THE WEEK

in immigration-restriction movements, ranging from the broadly neither.” Thirteen years later, in fulfillment of those purposes, responsible center-right in the Netherlands to the ugly and irre- slavery was nowhere. Free men and women should stand for that. sponsible elements rallying under the Le Pen banner in France. In Germany, that energy is sustaining Alternative for Germany n The National Collegiate Athletic Association—the self-serving (AfD), which is less anti-EU than is the U.K. Independence bureaucratic apparatus that reaps an annual multibillion-dollar party but opposes the euro and strongly opposes liberal immi- paycheck off the labor of disproportionately poor and minority gration, especially from the Middle East. That formula seems to students—is suddenly concerned about social justice. The NCAA be of some interest in Germany, with AfD having played a key has decided to pull seven championship events out of North role in two humiliating defeats of Angela Merkel’s Christian Carolina (and the Atlantic Coast Conference has followed suit) Democratic Union, most recently in the regional elections in because the Tar Heel State had the hateful audacity to pass a law Berlin. AfD has not quite decided what kind of party it wants to requiring that its citizens use the public bathrooms that corre- be, although it has forcefully rejected the most unsavory ele- spond to their biological sex. Given the NBA’s recent decision to ments of German nationalism, especially the National Demo - pull its All-Star Game from Charlotte for the same reason, it’s cratic party of Germany (successor to the “German Reich party,” become unmistakably clear that progressives are determined to to give an indicator of that group’s views). The lesson is the same turn the court and field into sweatier versions of an Oberlin class- here and there: If the responsible Right fails to deal seriously with room. One hopes these symbolic victories for pregnant “men” are the question of immigration, the resulting political vacuum will worth the eventual backlash. We suspect that most people around be filled by something. the water cooler want to talk about sports, not gender politics.

n Injecting a poison-filled syringe into the arm of a 17-year-old, n Bill Cosby’s lawyers have done the inevitable: claimed racism. a Belgian doctor killed the patient, the first minor to be legally This is especially interesting in light of Cosby’s longtime gospel: euthanized in Belgium, which in 2014 revised its laws to elimi- personal responsibility. Cries of racism give patriotism a run for nate all age restrictions on the practice. The principle having been its money as the last refuge of a scoundrel. established, it was a matter of time before the precedent would be set. The patient was dying and had requested a hastening of death, n Ever since the ancient Greeks, the ability to vividly portray as those who defend the right to die will be quick to note. Its characters very different from oneself has been indispensable to critics will point out that, by its own logic, the law should apply writers. Now it has become a literary crime: “cultural appropria- equally to children who suffer from depression or mental illness, tion.” Speaking at a writers’ conference in Australia, the author at which point the grim absurdity of the right to die should be Lionel Shriver explained what should be an obvious truth: that obvious to all. Palliative care coupled with emotional support of “the ultimate endpoint of keeping our mitts off experience that the dying is the obvious alternative to assisted suicide, which is doesn’t ‘belong’ to us is that there is no fiction.” This was beneath the dignity not just of the dying. enough to make one sensitive listener head for the exit and write a long, bitter complaint about “identity,” “marginalized n Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader, had a Soviet education. He groups,” “defining their own place,” and “the normalization of wrote his dissertation at Patrice Lumumba University (now imperialist, colonial rule,” all of which was quickly echoed by called the Peoples’ Friendship University). His dissertation was leftists around the world. As Shriver pointed out, fictional char- “The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the acters, being fictional, cannot be exploited, and history and cul- Zionist Movement.” He found that the Holocaust was a “fantastic ture have no owner, nor are they finite resources that one person lie.” Now there is news from the Soviet archives: Abbas was an can deprive another of. Obvious? Not to the cultural Left. But as agent of the KGB in Damascus, nicknamed “Mole.” We cannot long as brave souls such as Shriver are around to stoutly defend be shocked or scandalized. Studying at Patrice Lumumba, deny- the cause of literature, fiction writers will not be intimidated into ing the Holocaust, leading a PLO that refuses to make peace with putting their imaginations in a cage. its neighbor: Isn’t that enough? n General Mills, the Minnesota-based food giant and one of the n Colin Kaepernick may be having a bad year on the field, but he nation’s largest advertisers (annual marketing budget: $700 mil- has had a great one on the sidelines: Not standing for the National lion), is pressuring third-party ad agencies to increase their diver- Anthem has become a trend among American athletes. What to sity: Agencies bidding for the company’s business should have make of it? Coercion is detestable: The compulsory salute and the staffs of “at least 50 percent women and 20 percent people of orchestrated ovation are the marks of the worst societies. Free color” within their creative departments. “We’ll get to stronger speech, by contrast, should be a mark of ours. The best way for an creative work that resonates with our consumers by partnering athlete (or anyone) to think about the National Anthem is to think with creative teams who understand firsthand the diverse per- about what it represents. Frederick Douglass wrestled with the spectives of the people we serve,” said Kris Patton, a General problem in a Fourth of July speech in 1852, when slavery flour- Mills spokeswoman. Ah yes, because women need women to sell ished and he himself had been free for only 14 years. “The exis- them Lucky Charms, and people of color require people-of- tence of slavery,” he told his audience, “brands your republicanism color-specific ads before they’ll buy Totino’s Triple Pepperoni as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity Pizza Rolls™. We understand that this is mostly about virtue- as a lie.” Yet he did not despair for America, because of its founding signaling, but c’mon General Mills, Trix are for kids. principles. The Constitution, he went on, was a “glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery n In 2015, a 69-year-old man sat on a bench, exposed himself, among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is and masturbated in front of a group of female students on the

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campus of the University of Catania in Sicily. The man, identified in court documents as Pietro L., defended himself by noting that he engaged in the practice only occasionally. He was sentenced to three months in prison and ordered to pay a fine, but his sen- tence has now been overturned by Italy’s highest court. It ruled that a recent change to Italian law meant that obscene public acts were no longer criminal—providing they weren’t performed in the presence of minors. Luckily for Pietro, his audience had reached the age at which lewd displays must now be tolerated.

n Edward Albee wrote more than 30 plays over the course of his half-century-long career, but if he’s remembered, it’ll be for just one: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a succès de scandale when it premiered in 1962, notable for its sexual frankness and its seething dissatisfaction in the midst of Kennedy-era optimism. Today, the play is no longer “edgy,” but its anxiety and menace are as riveting as ever—perhaps because the sense of unraveling Police officers and firefighters respond to a bombing in the that envelops George, Martha, Nick, and Honey over the course Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, September 17, 2016 of their evening together has since extended far beyond the con- fines of Albee’s New England bourgeoisie. Reviewing the pre- the bombing “an intentional act,” making his own contribution to miere, Robert Coleman of the New York Daily Mirror called it the roll of Obama-era euphemisms, while two days later, news “a sick play for sick people.” He was right, and the sickness— that Rahami might not have acted alone prompted a CNN terror- the characters’, and ours—is the reason the play has endured, ism “expert” to propose that “two or three lone wolves may have and will endure, whatever history makes of the rest of Albee’s gotten together.” oeuvre. Dead at 88. R.I.P. These are only the most recent demonstrations of liberals’ refus al to acknowledge that the United States faces a deadly n His mandate, from WFB, was “to go about seeking strange and threat grounded in a distinct ideology. Terrorism is not an expres- remarkable things.” In the Seventies, D. Keith Mano did just that, sion of frustration at a lack of economic opportunity; it is vio- in a back-of-the-book column in NATIONAL REVIEW called “The lence in tend ed to subvert the existing political order, and, in the Gimlet Eye.” He reported on pawnbrokers, jockeys, Chinese case of peo ple such as Rahami, to replace it with the political wait ers, Russian Orthodox believers, firewalkers, phone-sex op - framework required by supremacist Islam. Acknowledging er a tors, homosexuals before they were called gays. His eye was this fact does not require condemning Islam as such; it requires clear, bright, restless, his prose crackled like a just-lit fire. Before simply ac knowledging that a strain of Islam, with broad appeal his NR days he wrote a string of well-received novels, culminat- today, opposes the American way of life. ing in Take Five, that tracked pilgrims’ progresses in the modern Our policymaking should be based on this recognition. In - world. In 1990 he returned to the form with Topless, about an stead, liberal leaders have been hampering counterterror efforts. Episcopal priest who inherits a topless bar. He also wrote for The Obama administration has drawn down our intelligence television (St. Elsewhere), magazines with pictures (Playboy), efforts at home and abroad while smearing police departments and magazines with words (Esquire). He was consumed with across the country as racist. Meanwhile, in New York City, May or God, the world, and the flesh; his personal mortification was de Blasio caved to the demands of Islamist activists earlier this rooting for the football team of his alma mater, Columbia. In year and ordered the NYPD to stop using a report that helped of - person he was loud, sharp, smart, fun, and kind. If we were a fi cers identify individuals who might be considering terrorism. team, we would retire his number. Dead at 74. It’s hard to imag- Restoring these tools is one necessity. Another is reforming ine Keith at rest or at peace, so God bless, and au revoir. our immigration laws to better screen out unsavory characters. The results of our thoughtless immigration policies were on dis- TERRORISM play on September 17 not only in New York City but halfway The Attacks Continue across the country, in St. Cloud, Minn., where 22-year-old Dahir A. Adan, born in Kenya but of Somali extraction and N Saturday, September 17, a bomb packed with metal raised in the U.S., stabbed ten people at a local shopping mall shrapnel exploded in the Manhattan neighborhood of before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer. Inroads into O Chelsea, injuring 29 people, eleven hours after an explo- Minnesota’s Somali diaspora by both al-Qaeda and the Islamic sion in Seaside Park, N.J., along the route of a planned Marine State have been widely reported, and should serve as a warn- Corps charity run. Both bombings—and at least two other at - ing going forward. Those seeking entry to the United States tempts, one in Manhattan and one in Elizabeth, N.J.—appear to should face serious scrutiny; it’s not “xenophobic” to prefer be the work of Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalized applicants who embrace American ideals. citizen from Afghanistan. That no one was killed in any of these particular attacks is GETTY IMAGES / The sequence of events, culminating in Rahami’s capture, a minor miracle. But the adherents of Islamism are many, and coincided with liberal attempts to make the weekend’s goings-on dedicated, and they’ll try again. It’s long past time for a coher- anything other than what they obviously are: Islamist terrorism. ent, coordinated, aggressive strategy to root them out before JAMIE MCCARTHY On Saturday night, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called they can do so.

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Senatorial Campaign Committee and a super PAC run by associates of Senate minority leader Harry Reid recently can- celed millions of dollars’ worth of ad buys on Strickland’s behalf. Tom Lopach, the executive director of the DSCC, has reportedly conceded that “Portman has run a damn fine race.” With many of Portman’s Republican colleagues who are seeking reelection to the Senate still struggling, his cam- paign offers something of a guide to success for Republicans in the Trump era. “Of anybody, he has had the tough- est tightrope to walk between Kasich, Clinton, and Trump,” says Randy Evans, the Republican national committeeman from Georgia, who has kept close tabs on the race. “Somebody should write a text- book just based on his campaign.” It should’ve been a rough summer for Portman, the embodiment of the moder- ate Republican establishment in a year that has favored outsiders. He lobbied to bring the Republican convention to Cleveland, and then the party’s primary voters nominated Trump, who is every- thing he is not. During the convention, Trump picked a fight with Ohio governor John Kasich, who has refused to endorse Rob Portman’s him or to help his campaign. Portman has endorsed Trump in the loosest possible Perfect Campaign way. He has a knack for avoiding contro- The Ohio senator has surged by hyper-localizing his reelection bid versy and conflict, and he spent the con- vention doing community service and BY ELIANA JOHNSON making noises about how he had envi- sioned things this way even before Trump Columbus, Ohio clinched the nomination. In the weeks HIO STADIUM, or “The Shoe,” he has found support in unlikely places: that followed, as Trump feuded with the is a sea of scarlet, gray, and from college sports teams, yes, but also family of a dead soldier and reiterated his O white as fans stream in to see from a number of unions that had never charge that President Obama was the the Buckeyes face off against before endorsed a Republican in Ohio, founder of ISIS, polls began to show him the University of Tulsa. Football here is a and that are backing Hillary Clinton in the dragging down Republicans across the quasi-religious experience. But today, presidential race. country. But Portman cemented his lead. another set of fans is present. The school’s That helps to explain his surprising suc- It helps that outside groups have put baseball team, drinking beer and lounging cess, and why many are beginning to him at a $12 million advantage in inde- under a tent outside the stadium when a write off as a lock for the GOP a race once pendent expenditures, unleashing a 60-year-old man materializes in its midst, expected to be one of the most competi- barrage of television advertisements re - starts cheering and chanting, “Rob! Rob! tive in the country. “It’s not over yet, but minding Ohio voters why they booted Rob!”—and then, moments later, “Port- things are looking really, really, really Strickland out of office in 2010. That man! Port-man! Port-man!” good,” says Matt Borges, the chairman of money has come from all corners of the The unlikely subject of this fandom is the Ohio Republican party. They didn’t party, from the super PAC funded by the Rob Portman, Ohio’s junior senator. He always look so bright. Every public poll Koch brothers to their ideological foes at prefers kayaking and mountain biking, conducted through the end of May had the Chamber of Commerce. Some of his but as he awkwardly swings a make- Portman either tied or trailing, in one case colleagues, including Pennsylvania’s Pat believe bat in the team’s direction, they by a nine-point margin; the latest trio, Toomey and New Hampshire’s Kelly only cheer more loudly. Portman is up for from Bloomberg, CNN, and Suffolk Ayotte, have not had the same advantage, reelection in what was supposed to be a University, have Portman up 17, 21, and 8 and have found themselves in tighter races grueling battle against the state’s former points respectively, and Democrats are in part because in both states Democrats ROMAN GENN Democratic governor, Ted Strickland. But starting to give up hope. The Democratic are investing more than Republicans.

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A blueblood and a graduate of Dart - a methodical ground game and a TV- service. Frawley, a stout man with a long mouth College and the University of advertising blitz have helped Portman beard and a ponytail, is clad in a Trump- Michigan law school, Portman prides compensate for that deficiency. Bliss says Pence T-shirt and a hat emblazoned with himself on his political moderation and the campaign will have knocked on 5 mil- HILLARY FOR JAIL. Asked what he likes counts George H. W. Bush as his political lion doors in Ohio by Election Day. To put to hunt, he responds, “Anything that hero. He’s a pragmatist who talks about that in perspective, the RNC says it has moves.” And yet the Portman campaign how great it is to “get things done” knocked on 4.4 million doors nationwide is also handing out, at Clinton rallies despite the gridlock in Washington. He so far, which means that by November, across the state, literature advertising his has avoided many of the partisan knife the Portman campaign may have knocked endorsements from several of Ohio’s fights that have made the front pages and on as many doors in Ohio as the GOP has unions. Bliss says he’s gotten 397 peo- has amassed a pile of legislation to his across the country. ple to sign up for Portman yard signs at name by focusing his efforts almost Bliss has also hyper-localized the race, those events. exclusively on non-controversial matters which has immunized it to some of the Every union that has endorsed Portman such as job training, human trafficking, and national trends. The campaign has sliced has in past years endorsed Strickland, the opioid epidemic. Ohio’s senior senator, and diced the Ohio electorate into 22 sub- which underscores not only the elbow Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, hasn’t said sets and is essentially running about two grease Portman has put into the race but a bad word about him while doing the dozen city-council races rather than one also some demographic changes that are minimum amount of campaigning on Senate campaign. One example: “There helping Republicans in Ohio. The state Strickland’s behalf. You almost get the are the 65,000 voters in the Toledo area was once considered a bellwether because sense that Brown won’t be crestfallen if whose chief concern is stamping out a it resembled the rest of the country, but it Portman wins another term. “I will tell toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie that has is now whiter and poorer, with a median you Sherrod has been a very good part- polluted drinking water,” Bliss says. household income, in 2014, about $5,000 ner on a number of legislative issues,” “When we knock on those doors, we talk below the national figure of $53,657. The Portman says. to them about Rob’s work on Lake Erie. endorsements Portman has received from Rob Portman’s race is a demonstration that while the top of the ticket matters, so too do individual candidates and their campaigns.

All of this moderation belies a fiercely And when they go online, they get ads the Teamsters, the International Union competitive nature—Portman pauses at about Lake Erie. And when they turn on of Operating Engineers, and the United one point to tell me how many more sup- TV, they see ads about Lake Erie.” Mine Workers are evidence not only porters his campaign turned out at a Ohio’s hunters have gotten the mes- that the GOP is increasingly the home handful of local parades than Strickland’s sage, too. At a sportsmen’s dinner out- of downscale, blue-collar workers but did—and the moment the midterm elec- side Columbus where auction items also that the Democratic party has tions ended in November 2014, Portman included fans and fountains in the shape pushed them away. Strickland first ran began assembling the best campaign team of wild turkeys, Jeff Herrick, 59, a for- for Congress in 1976 as a pro-gun, pro- available. If his wonkish attention to mer Division of Wildlife district manager, coal Democrat. After his governorship, detail makes him boring, a label he chafes praised Portman for his advocacy on an Strickland landed at a liberal think tank at, it has also made him a menace on the obscure issue: “leading the charge trying in Washington, D.C., which advocated campaign trail. He has raised more to keep the Asian carp out of Lake Erie,” gun-control measures and clean-energy money—nearly $14 million—than any of which would threaten some of the local— regulations opposed by many of Ohio’s his Republican colleagues. “He has and most edible—fish. A pamphlet on unions. He had a difficult time explaining played every card perfectly,” says a top each plate touted Portman’s push to open where he stood when he was challenged Republican strategist. more federal land for hunters, anglers, from the left in the Democratic primary. When Portman’s campaign manager, and trappers, and featured a picture of That helps to explain why Donald Corry Bliss, touched down in Ohio in him in head-to-toe camouflage with a Trump, too, is performing well in Ohio, January 2015, he realized that Portman rifle in one hand and a dead turkey in the where his lead, however, an average of was more the challenger than the incum- other. Portman regaled the crowd with a about 1.7 points, pales by comparison bent. The first-term senator had about 60 story about how his great-grandfather with Portman’s over Strickland. Port - percent name recognition; Strickland, a died on a duck hunt—with a smile on his man’s race is a demonstration that while former congressman and governor who face. “So that’s the Portman family lore, the top of the ticket matters, so too do lost to Kasich in 2010, was known by 90 that that’s the best way to go, in a duck individual candidates and their cam- percent of Ohio residents. In a cycle dur- blind,” he said. paigns. For Republicans, who are now ing which Senate campaigns are getting Mike “Cooter” Frawley, a 56-year-old able to focus their attention and resources little help from the top of the ticket or toolmaker from Clark County, stops Port - on other races, establishment and boring from the Republican National Committee, man on his way out to thank him for his never looked so good.

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Almost all Republicans in Congress growth rates, already low, have been voted against stimulus legislation in falling for three years. February 2009. Republicans have often Republicans often add that the econo- Recovery at said that various Obama policies, from my would be doing even worse if the his health-care law to his tax increases Federal Reserve were not artificially ConfusionLast? about economic policy is to his environmental regulations, would boosting it. Trump has said that Janet mean economic ruin. The new numbers, Yellen, the top Fed official, is keeping distorting both political parties’ analysis according to Democrats, disproved interest rates low to help the Democrats those claims. Instead, they argued, the and should be “ashamed” of herself. BY RAMESH PONNURU economy is doing pretty well and would “We have a very false economy,” he be doing even better if Re pub li cans said. Trump did not always hold this would quit obstructing the administra- view. In two interviews in May, he said OOD economic news came for tion’s agenda. that interest rates should stay low and liberals at just the right moment. The Census Bureau findings did not, that raising them “would be a disaster.” G As the mid-September polls however, give Republicans any pause. Back then, he also said that he had showed Donald Trump clos- By a variety of measures, especially that “great respect” for Yellen. ing the gap with Hillary Clinton, the of GDP growth, this is the weakest On this question, Trump has moved Census Bureau reported that 2015 was recovery on record in our country’s his- toward Republican orthodoxy while the best year for middle-income house- tory. The Census report itself showed supplementing it with his own trade- holds since it started keeping the records that middle-income households were mark personal shots. During the early in 1967. Their incomes rose more than 5 still worse off than before the economic years of the Obama administration, percent. Poverty declined. crisis. Liberals attribute the sluggish many Republican politicians warned Democrats took the numbers as a vin- pace of the recovery to the aftermath of a that monetary policy was too accom- dication of the Obama administration’s financial crisis, conservatives to liberal modative and that inflation was sure to policy record: President Obama had policies. Republicans note further that result. But the last six years have seen rescued an economy in free fall, and labor-force-participation rates are low, less inflation than any period since the done it without Republican help. even for able-bodied young men. And early 1960s. By the time of the latest 9/7/16 11:10 AM Page 1 Global Warming: A Matter of Degrees

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presidential primaries, most Re publi cans In particular, Obama’s tax increases On the other hand, the case that had stopped talking about inflation. Still, have been relatively mild. The Obama - Obama’s policies turned the economy most of the Republican presidential care legislation included a 3.8 percent around is also weak. The models and candidates found other reasons to criti- tax on investment income. Another tax studies suggesting that the stimulus bill cize the Fed for trying too hard to stim- increase happened as a result of the expi- worked almost all ignore the role of ulate the economy. They said that the ration, at the end of 2012, of the tax cuts monetary policy. But if Congress had not Fed’s activism had kept wages down, enacted under George W. Bush. Obama passed a stimulus bill, surely the Fed increased inequality, punished savers— refused to renew those that affected the would have engaged in more quantita- and, somewhat paradoxically, helped highest earners. Married couples making tive easing in 2009, or taken other expan- President Obama. more than $450,000 a year, and singles sionary steps (such as stopping the That the Fed’s policy has helped making more than $400,000, saw their payment of interest on banks’ excess Obama and, now, Clinton is the most tax rates rise from 35 to 39.6 percent. reserves). We overestimate the effects of defensible part of this Republican Taxes on capital gains and dividends fiscal policy if we fail to account for the orthodoxy. It has helped the Democrats went from 15 to 23.8 percent. possibility of such “monetary offset.” by helping the economy. But the nature It is certainly possible that these tax Some Keynesians predicted that the of that economic help is easily misun- increases weakened the economy by deficit-reduction measures that took derstood. Interest rates have been low reducing the incentive to work, save, effect in early 2013 would hurt the econ- around the globe in recent years, not and invest. But any such supply-side omy. But the Fed had at the same time just in the United States, and most esti- effect is bound to have been small. The adopted a more expansionary policy, and mates of the “natural” or “equilibrium” Tax Foundation, which uses an eco- in fact economic growth accelerated dur- interest rate have been low as well— nomic model that incorporates supply- ing the period. suggesting that Fed policy is not the side assumptions, recently found that Confusion about economic policy, main reason for low observed interest the Bush-era reductions in income-tax often involving the Federal Reserve, is If the political debate over the economy is unsatisfying, so is the economy itself.

rates. There is good reason to think that rates had over the long run enlarged the thus distorting both parties’ analyses. if the Fed raised interest rates above economy by 2.3 percent. And remember, Conservatives, convinced that mone- their natural rate, the effect on the econ- some of those reductions have stayed in tary policy is dangerously loose, are omy would be contractionary, which place. Taxes on dividends remain lower looking hither and yon for evidence would not be good for savers or wage- than when Bush took office. The capital- that it is causing problems. (When all earners. The European Central Bank gains rate is only 3.8 percentage points else fails, try “asset bubbles.”) Liberals raised interest rates in a sluggish econo- higher than it was at the end of the are telling themselves that the Fed my in 2011. The result was a renewed 1990s boom. has proven that it cannot hit its 2 per- European recession. The economy grew faster in 2013 and cent inflation target, and so we need The Fed hasn’t “artificially” helped 2014, when all the Obama-era tax in - fiscal policy to play a bigger role in the economy so much as it has re frained creases were in effect, than in the previ- stimulating the economy in the from the kind of self-destructive policy ous two years. Perhaps the economy future. But the Fed raised interest followed by the ECB. If anything, the would have accelerated even more with- rates last year when we were below Fed has erred on the side of contrac- out the tax increases; but other factors that target, suggesting that higher tionary policy. It spent much of 2015 were capable of overcoming any nega- inflation was something it didn’t really promising to raise interest rates soon, tive effect they had. wish to pursue. Whether or not it was and did at the end of the year, even Other Obama policies may also have right to take that course, there is no rea- though inflation was at the time, and had negative effects. The Con gression - son to suppose it has reached the limit remains, below the Fed’s stated target al Budget Office estimates, for exam- of its power. of 2 percent annually. Growth, as ple, that Obamacare will reduce hours If the political debate over the economy noted earlier, has slowed. Trump was worked by the equivalent of 2.5 mil- is unsatisfying, so is the economy itself. right about interest rates in May, not lion jobs. Its analysis of the issue How unsatisfying? Democrats and Re - in September. stresses that the law’s subsidies decline publicans are offering voters different If the Fed hasn’t been giving the as people gain higher incomes, and answers to that question. Some econo- economy a years-long sugar high, therefore reduce their incentive to make metricians have developed models that though, it calls into question whether additional in come. The higher mini- relate recent economic variables to elec- the rest of Obama’s economic agenda mum wage that took effect in Obama’s tion outcomes. Yale economics professor has been quite as destructive as conser- first year in office may have suppressed Ray Fair devised the most prominent of vatives often say. And there is good job growth; ex tended un employment these models. Based on how the economy reason for thinking that they have over- insurance may have re duced employ- has been performing, his equation pre- stated its impact. ment as well. dicts a Republican blowout.

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Bobby Jindal’s Legacy He paid a political price to shrink the government—and improve Louisiana

BY DAN McLAUGHLIN

OES small government work at the state level? D Bobby Jindal stepped down as Louisiana’s governor in Janu - ary, and local and national coverage of his eight-year tenure would make you think that he had wrecked the state, leaving its finances in shambles and its public ser- vices reduced to Somalia-like levels. At first glance, Jindal’s low approval ratings and the desperate wails of his Democratic successor over the condition of the state’s budget seem to support this view. Closer examination, however, reveals a very dif- ferent picture: Jindal took on the enor- mous challenge of cutting government in Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, September 18, 2015 a state that is culturally deep-red but eco- nomically populist, and he paid a great weren’t losing any battles, they weren’t doom: legislators to convince their con- political cost for his efforts. The lessons being ambitious enough. That’s a recipe stituents that tax hikes were their only for conservatives are sobering: Reform is for maximizing the return on your politi- choice, Jindal to force them to accept hard to pursue, easy to resist, and fre- cal capital—but also for using it up. After spending restraint. quently thankless. The path to smaller eight years, legislators and voters alike To understand Jindal’s predicament, it government requires persistence, back- were exhausted by the pace of reform, and helps to understand how Louisiana’s bud- bone, and a willingness to accept compro- even the state’s Republicans found Jindal get works. Projected spending starts with mises and a lot of defeats. a convenient scapegoat. state agencies’ wish lists, which form the Like many Republican governors, Many criticisms of Jindal’s record are basis for an initial spending plan that Jindal came to office committed to four simply disagreements with his small- arrives in the legislature. This plan almost fiscal goals: lowering taxes, shrinking government goals. His detractors fre- inevitably projects a billion-dollar-plus government, making government pro- quently charged him with irresponsible deficit, which the media dutifully report grams financially accountable, and im - management of state finances, arguing as evidence of looming fiscal ruin. proving the state’s business climate so that large tax and spending cuts were Somehow, without significant tax cuts, that the private sector could grow as the unsustainable. Louisiana’s bond ratings Jindal’s Louisiana passed a nominally public sector shrank. Unlike some others, suggest otherwise. Rating agencies are balanced budget by the statutory deadline he meant it. Over eight years, he cut gov- nonpartisan and are paid to answer one every year and ended up paying its bills ernment at least as much as any American question only: Can the government pay its on time. In another state, that might have leader has done this century. Even before bills? During the eight years of Jindal’s been the end of the process, but not in adjusting for inflation, state spending tenure, Louisiana’s credit rating was Louisiana. State law gives the governor declined despite the post-Katrina rebuild- upgraded eight times and never down- some power to rebalance the books on a ing surge. The discretionary portion of the graded. Year after year, the media trum- running basis if, as they often do, the bud- budget contracted. Jindal slashed state peted budget “crises” and “deficits,” yet get’s projections prove unrealistically payrolls by 30,000 permanent employees the professionals never thought the optimistic. Jindal frequently resorted to (a third of the state work force), reduced state’s credit was in trouble. this authority to make politically painful the state’s vehicle fleet, and privatized Jindal explains the disconnect to me by cuts after the legislature had adjourned, state hospitals, group homes, and pris- saying that the annual budget “crisis” was leaving legislators free to direct irate con- GETTY IMAGES / ons. He directed his staff not to try to the inevitable result of a legislature that stituents to him. “bat a thousand,” in the belief that if they didn’t want to cut spending and a gover- There were lots of cuts to be made, too. nor who wouldn’t raise taxes. Both sides Only about $8 billion, a third of state SEAN RAYFORD Mr. McLaughlin is an attorney in New York City. needed the threat of impending fiscal spending, is in the budget’s “general

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fund,” which is mostly used to pay for their separate existences to the legacy of combined to doom any chance at broader higher education and health care. The segregation. SUNO graduated around 8 reform of the state’s tax code. rest—including primary and secondary percent of its students at the time—one of In the long run, the health of the gov- education—is protected by state law, the worst rates in the nation—and the ernment depends on the health of the separately funded by over 100 dedicated merger would have saved money. But it state’s economy. Jindal points with pride revenue streams that add up to about sparked protests and a complaint to the to rising per capita income, the end of a $1 billion, or both. This design is meant Justice Department, and fell one vote decades-long trend of outmigration, and to ensure that any cuts fall first on short in the legislature. other signs that Louisiana’s economy health care and universities. The sepa- Critics contend that Jindal short- prospered on his watch as the government rate streams ensure that even when the changed the state of needed revenue by tightened its belt. Both are still too depen- state is solvent overall, the governor must signing a huge tax cut in 2008 and allow- dent on volatile oil and gas prices—their “sweep” funds out of dedicated accounts ing a “temporary” cigarette surcharge to decline is one reason the state’s economy with surpluses to shore up the general expire in 2011. Jindal’s successor, John slowed in 2015—but even after recent fund. The media almost always reported Bel Edwards, claimed that he needed booms, the energy sector is closer to 30 Jindal’s sweeps as “raids” and “gim- $836 million in new taxes, yet somehow percent of the state’s economy than to micks” intended to paper over some fun- found room to ask the legislature for $2 the 40 percent it was a few decades ago. damental inadequacy in the budget. billion in new spending; he ended up sign- Jindal often faced culture shock when Jindal’s battles to reform government ing a two-year, $1.5 billion sales-tax hike, trying to persuade legislators to see the services also provoked resistance and while the legislature rejected most of the government as the servant of the state’s comically dishonest criticism. Claims new spending. economy rather than vice versa. His 2013 that Jindal had taken a buzzsaw to fund- Edwards blamed Jindal for every diffi- effort to replace the state income tax with ing for the state’s universities focused cult budgetary decision along the way, but a pro-growth, Texas-style sales tax failed only on direct funding, ignoring capital Jindal remains unapologetic about holding in part because legislators couldn’t investments and enormous increases to the line on taxes: “There’s always plenty understand why anyone would propose to the state’s “TOPS” scholarship fund, of money in Baton Rouge,” he says. overhaul the tax system if the goal wasn’t for college applicants with at least a 2.5 A more defensible criticism of Jindal’s to collect more revenue. GPA and a score of 20 on the ACT. time in office is that the state handed Louisiana had long been dominated Scholar ship funding soared from $118 out too many tax breaks to businesses. by free-spending but socially conservative million in 2008–09 to nearly $300 mil- Louisiana’s corporate tax often nets as Democrats: In 2008, only three legislators lion in 2015–16, offsetting the bulk of little as $60 million in revenue on $3 bil- out of 132 in the Democrat-controlled direct-funding cuts. lion a year in collections, round-tripping legislature voted against a Democrat- Jindal’s budgetary restructuring aimed the rest back to favored businesses. A proposed bill to let public schools teach to make the state’s higher-education insti- February 2016 estimate showed the “creation science.” As voters grew cultur- tutions more accountable. Universities’ state refunding $229 million more than ally alienated from national Democrats funding levels would depend on their it had taken in: The government was and many legislators switched parties— enrollments, and their admission stan- actually losing money collecting taxes. on Jindal’s watch, the state elected its dards would also be raised; in return, At the root of the problem are a slew of first Republican legislative majorities they would have more leeway to raise wasteful, crony-capitalist giveaways in since Reconstruction—both groups tuition. The goal was to boost university- the tax code. One particularl y egregious retained their big-government economic graduation rates while guiding less aca- example, a state credit for local taxes on populism. Jindal has no regrets about demically inclined students toward business inventories, costs Louisiana expanding the tent. He notes that Re - two-year colleges that cost less and hundreds of millions of dollars each year: publican majorities helped him pass from which they would have better Local governments conspire with busi- school choice and other reforms and that odds of graduating. Accountability had nesses to collect excessive assessments, true realignment can take a generation. consequences: Graduation rates rose as knowing that the businesses will ultimately But even before Donald Trump won expected; Louisiana State University, the be repaid by the state while the local Louisiana’s primary in March 2016, crown jewel of the system, saw its total authorities keep the original assessment. Jindal had learned that “an R next to your budget increase; and enrollment increased Jindal concedes that the state’s name doesn’t always mean [you’re] fis- by more than 50 percent at two-year col- corporate-tax system is riddled with cally conservative.” Many legislators leges, while enrollment growth stagnated giveaways. He belatedly tried and failed who used to come home to break ground at four-year institutions. Naturally, the uni- in 2015 to eliminate a number of the on new government projects found it versities resented these disruptive reforms. refundable tax credits that give net hand- harder to sell abstractions such as an Louisiana has 14 state universities, outs to businesses. In retrospect, he says, improved business climate—and easy more than much larger states, and Jindal he wishes he had been able to eliminate to blame the wonky, fast-talking gover- also tried to eliminate redundancies the credits that aren’t a net benefit for nor for the loss of cushy government among them. In 2011, he proposed com- businesses, as well, but doing so without jobs and the disruption of sleepy acade- bining the mostly white University of simultaneously lowering tax rates would mic sinecures. New Orleans with the historically black have amounted to a crushing tax hike. His “In theory, there is a lot of demand for Southern University of New Orleans. The refusal to allow such an outcome and the smaller government,” Jindal muses today. schools are just two blocks apart and owe legislature’s refusal to cut taxes ultimately “In practice . . .”

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“I was an early supporter of Ronald successor to Joyce, and Grebe joined the Reagan,” he says. Grebe never has search committee. At one point, he missed sought public office, but he has consid- a meeting. At the next gathering, mem- The Right’s ered it several times—and he came close bers of the committee told him he should to running for governor of Wisconsin in take the job. Ever since, he’s put up with Venture 1986. “The timing wasn’t right for my jokes about acting like Dick Cheney, who family,” he says. famously headed George W. Bush’s vice- Capitalist That was the year Tommy Thompson, presidential selection process. What Michael Grebe achieved at the a Republican, won election as the state’s Although Grebe had high hopes for Bradley Foundation governor. He went on to serve four terms, what the foundation could achieve, his turning Wisconsin into one of federal- fundamental goal was modest. “I always ism’s fabled laboratories of democracy, tried to approach the job as a steward, try- BY JOHN J. MILLER receiving critical assistance from the ing to honor the legacy of the Bradley Bradley Foundation. As a private foun- brothers,” he says, referring to the founda- ICHAEL GREBE just quit his dation, Bradley is prohibited from en - tion’s namesakes: the two men who built job as the head of a $840 gaging in politics or electioneering—but the Allen-Bradley Company, a maker of M million venture-capital firm. it may support the work of scholars, automotive and electrical components. That’s one way of looking at think tanks, and policy groups, and that’s “Whatever accomplishments we’ve had his retirement this summer as president of what it did under the leadership of at the Bradley Foundation are not person- the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Michael Joyce in the late 1980s and early al accomplishments,” he insists. the country’s largest and possibly most 1990s, as Thomp son and his allies intro- Early on, Grebe inaugurated a project influential conservative philanthropic duced path-breaking welfare-reform and that today may be the foundation’s most foundation, where he has spent the last 14 school-choice programs. Without those visible activity: the Bradley prizes, which years leading an investment strategy reforms, Presi dent Bill Clinton might not function as a kind of Nobel Prize for con- whose goal is to promote limited govern- have signed a law demanding that wel- servatives, with four recipients each year. ment and free enterprise. fare recipients meet work requirements, “We wanted to recognize the accomplish- “I’m worried that we’re losing the war and school vouchers and education sav- ments of outstanding conservatives—to of ideas,” says Grebe. “A year ago, I ings accounts might still be a dream of create a celebration for the home team— couldn’t have imagined saying that right free-market fantasists rather than a slowly and also to publicize their achievements now.” He’s not just talking about the rise growing reality. so they’re better understood in popular of Donald Trump in the GOP. “Trump is Grebe joined Bradley’s board in 1996. culture,” he says. Since 2003, they’ve not the cause of our problems,” says Six years later, the foundation needed a gone to the likes of legal scholar Mary Grebe. “He’s a symptom.” For years, conservatives have prided themselves on the high quality of their ideas. Even when they’ve lost elections, they’ve continued to take the long view, believing that in time their better ideas will prevail. Whatever faith Grebe once put into this notion has vanished. “Look at young people,” he says. “They’re a big part of the population and many of them don’t believe in capitalism.” He could cite a Gallup poll from earlier this year: Fifty-five percent of adults under the age of 30 admitted to a positive view of social- ism. “It’s alarming,” he says. “People talk about the Republican party needing to do some soul searching. I think the conserv- ative movement needs more introspec- tion. We’ve got to do better.” The 75-year-old Grebe (rhymes with “freebie”) was born near Peoria, Ill., attended West Point, and received a pair of Bronze Stars for his service in Vietnam.

COM After law school at the University of . Michigan, he settled in Milwaukee, mak- JSONLINE

. ing his career at Foley & Lardner, one of the nation’s biggest law firms. Along the ARCHIVE way, he became involved in GOP politics. Michael Grebe

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Ann Glendon, actor Gary Sinise, and “We need to build networks of think He lacks policy positions, as well as the economist Thomas Sowell. The awards tanks, public-interest law firms, and media temperament and judgment.” were not Grebe’s idea—“They came out outlets that collaborate to ad vance the Grebe isn’t sure how he’ll vote in of a strategic-planning session early in my cause,” says Grebe. “We’ve seen the November. “I might vote for Trump, and tenure,” he points out—but they became a Left establish its own networks in I definitely won’t vote for Clinton,” he distinguishing feature on his watch, cul- Colorado and elsewhere. We’ve been get- says. He’s even taking a look at Gary minating each June with an event at the ting outspent and need to respond.” Johnson, the onetime GOP governor of Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Bradley Foundation never has New Mexico who is running for presi- Last year, the foundation gave away approached problems like a command- dent as a Libertarian: “I haven’t ruled more than $41 million. About one-third and-control center. “We don’t come up him out. I need to learn more about him.” of the grants stay in Milwaukee, support- with ideas,” Grebe says. “We identify areas He says he might leave the top of his bal- ing libraries, museums, orchestras, and of concern and invite people to propose lot blank, but he’ll certainly vote: “We other cultural organizations. But a large solutions.” Then the foundation issues can’t forget about all of the other impor- portion of these contributions is “more grants, much like an investment company tant races.” He mentions Ron Johnson, Tocquevillian in scope,” says Grebe, that wants to provide seed money for the the Republican senator running for re - backing “small local institutions doing next big thing. Does Grebe have a favorite election in Wisconsin. good things for people in neighbor- grant from his two decades in Big Grebe worries that, whatever happens hoods.” These include schools, ministries, Philanthropy? He demurs: “That’s like in November, the conservative move- and youth centers. asking which child I like best.” One impor- ment is in big trouble. “Whether Trump The bulk of the foundation’s giving, tant difference, though, is that while he wins or loses, he represents a serious set- however, has a national reach. Grebe wants his kids to succeed, he expects a few back,” he says. “The failure of conserva- ticks off the priorities as if he were of his grants to flop: “If some don’t fail, it tive candidates to get traction says we’re reading from a mission statement: means we aren’t taking enough chances.” losing the war of ideas. A large percent- “democratic capitalism, competent and When Grebe joined the foundation, he age of people don’t share our beliefs. limited government, and a rigorous remained active in politics, even as he We’ve got to do a better job of talking to defense of American interests at home kept this work strictly separate from phil- them. We need to keep investing in and abroad.” These goals haven’t changed anthropy. He has served as campaign ideas—and also in ways to communicate since they were adopted in the 1980s, chairman for Scott Walker, the current our ideas to the public.” when the foundation took on its modern governor of Wisconsin, who came to Grebe worries that the conservative shape, though their particular applica- national attention five years ago for his movement has become a victim of its tion continues to evolve. Today, cyber- efforts to rein in public pensions and limit own success. “We’ve professionalized, security is a major concern, even though the power of labor unions. “When I which in many ways is a good thing,” he the foundation didn’t have its own web- needed to make political calls, I would says. “But we have to remember that site when Grebe joined the board. leave the foundation office,” Grebe says. fresh perspectives come from the states “We’re also more involved in higher At one point, he had hoped that conserv- and from volunteers. Not all good ideas education,” Grebe notes. Even though ative politics would keep him occupied are hatched in Washington, D.C. We need the Left dominates colleges and univer- through 2016: He chaired Walker’s pres- more people from flyover country—peo- sities, Grebe refuses to label higher idential campaign. ple like Phyllis Schlafly.” That’s a ref- education a lost cause. “We don’t want When Walker dropped out of the race, erence to the grassroots activist who to give up,” he says. He mentions the Grebe switched his support to Marco died on September 5 and whose legacy importance of supporting scholars who Rubio. When Rubio stumbled, Grebe is to have almost single-handedly de- work with graduate students: As jumped to Ted Cruz, voting for him in feated the Equal Rights Amendment, an always, Bradley is thinking about the Wisconsin’s GOP primary in March, a appealingly named left-wing crusade of next generation. contest Cruz won. Cruz finally fell in the 1970s. Two years ago, the foundation re - May, but Grebe refused to align himself Today, Grebe has time on his hands: ceived an infusion of $200 million, a final with Donald Trump. He even resigned as Not only did Richard Graber succeed bequest from members of the extended a delegate and skipped the Republican him as president of the foundation in Bradley family, increasing the endow- convention in July. July, but he’s off the board as well. “I’m ment by more than a quarter. “The board “I did not want to be part of a process going to do nothing for a couple of decided to use these new funds for large that nominates Trump,” he says. “He’s months,” he says. “Then I’ll figure out grants in areas of critical importance,” he not appealing to people based on the con- what I want to do.” He mentions hands- says. One of them is marriage and fami- servative ideas and policies that we’ve on volunteer work: “I may help out at ly. “So many things have flowed from held dear. He has a populist instinct the Milwaukee Rescue Mission.” That’s their decline. The data show that people that’s not conservative. Parts of the case a Christian homeless shelter. “I don’t in stable marriages do better financially, for him I can understand, such as the mean that I’ll serve on its board, I mean children do better academically, and so importance of the Supreme Court and that I might go in and serve food or pro- on. This is one of the most pressing issues the unacceptability of Hillary Clinton,” vide counseling.” of our time,” Grebe explains. Grebe acknowledges. “I don’t accept the The Bradley Foundation faces a similar Another priority is to create a thriving claim that he’s going to ‘shake things up.’ challenge. Perhaps it should put out a new conservative infrastructure in the states. We don’t know what he’s going to do. request for proposals: What now?

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks in New York City, September 9, 2016. The Irredeemables Hillary Clinton and the politics of leftist condescension

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

N the 1980s, every punk band had a song about racism, That trend continued in the following decades, to the extent the classic of the genre being “Racism Sucks,” by 7 that organized white racism is effectively a non-factor in I Seconds, whose teenaged members had no doubt learned American public life. As an Anti-Defamation League report a great deal about the hard facts of black life on the put it, “Many Klan groups simply no longer have the member- almost exclusively white streets of Reno, Nev., in 1981. There ship necessary to hold public demonstrations or protests,” was also the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks F*** Off,” also while other white-supremacist groups—with the important from 1981, Black Flag’s “White Minority,” Operation Ivy’s exception of prison gangs—are “stagnant or in decline.” “Unity,” Minor Threat’s “Guilty of Being White”—it is a pretty Aryan Circle, one of the largest white-power groups in the big catalogue. nation, has about 1,400 members, most of them incarcerated. Preachy stuff, in the main, but preaching to whom? By the Groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center tend to track 1980s, it had become difficult to find an honest-to-God open the number of organizations rather than the membership of racist in the wild, at least one under about 50 or so. Punk such organizations, which exaggerates the size and scope of posed as a counterculture, but here at least it was merely set- the movement inasmuch as many of these “groups” are noth- ting the rules of polite society to music. Indeed, it was much, ing more than Potemkin websites or social-media accounts. much more outré to be an open racist than to have a purple Estimates of total membership in racist groups typically run mohawk—a fact that was helped along enormously by less than 100,000 and possibly as low at 40,000—in a nation Geraldo Rivera and his infamous 1988 show with white of more than 300 million—and casually racist attitudes have GETTY IMAGES / supremacist John Metzger, which ended in a televised skin- been declining for decades. head brawl. The General Social Survey found that in 1972, just under People tuned in to watch that episode not because it was one-third of white southerners supported school segregation; JUSTIN SULLIVAN familiar, but because it was so unusual. that number fell so far so fast that the question was dropped

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by the mid 1980s. As Anna Maria Barry-Jester put it at and among those who are part of the problem, the Left iden- FiveThirtyEight, “since the 1970s, support for public and tifies two main cohorts. First are victims of what the Marxists political forms of discrimination has shrunk significantly.” call “false consciousness,” the rubes who are what’s the mat- Whether the question is voting for a black presidential candi- ter with Kansas, who are too gobsmacked and God-haunted date or permitting discrimination in commercial accommoda- to understand their own economic and political interests and tions, racist attitudes and support for racist policies have shrunk therefore vote against them. They are the dupes. The second to a position of being little more than an ugly social eccentricity. group is the saboteurs, those who are driven by hatred, The number of Americans who believe that blacks are geneti- nihilism, and atavistic superstition to oppose all that is good cally inferior to whites is dwarfed by the number of Americans and right and progressive. Trump originally left the Left a lit- who believe that astrology is scientific. tle bit nonplussed: He’s an on-paper billionaire, sure, which Which is to say: It’s a small basket of deplorables, after all. provides some foundation for hating him, but he did not meet Actual, indisputable racism has become so rare that we have their other expectations. Where a proper right-wing villain had to invent exotic new versions of it, such as “white privilege” should be religious—a member of the Christian Taliban, and expressions of bias so surpassingly subtle that when a black preferably—Trump is secular and thrice-married (so far), police officer shoots a black criminal in an overwhelmingly much more Dimmesdale than Chillingworth; a proper right- black city with a black police commissioner and a black mayor, wing villain should be from Texas or Utah, not from New the real underlying question is—of course—white racism. York City; where he should be a gun nut, Trump has long sym- Developing a sommelier’s nose for prejudice is a large part of pathized with the Obama-Clinton view of such bogeymen as what is sometimes known as “virtue-signaling”—performative so-called assault weapons and probably has never handled a moralizing meant mainly to increase the status of the critic— shotgun outside the confines of some rarefied Scottish clays though that term has come into disfavor through overuse. course; where he should be a warmonger, Trump is one part (E.g.: “I find it difficult to take you seriously while you’re Ron Paul (at least when it became popular to oppose the Iraq wearing that swastika armband.” “VIRTUE-SIGNALING! HE’S War) and one part realpolitik Gordon Gekko: Forget democ- VIRTUE-SIGNALING! LOOK, EVERYBODY, VIRTUE-SIGNALING!” Etc.) racy, grab the oil. In the public square and in political discourse, racism isn’t That being the case, the Left settled on: fat racist. about racism. Racism is in fact a kind of shorthand for the vices, real and imagined, of conservatives—and particularly middle-American HE fat part is at least as important as the racist part, conservatives geographically and spiritually outside the because both are shorthand in the progressive mind coastal elite’s sphere of influence—as understood by the sort for sinful. of people who will do their best in a few weeks to make Hillary TNo sooner had Trump appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk Rodham Clinton president of these United States. Mrs. about his health than his Democratic opponents began casti- Clinton’s now-infamous remarks—that one-half of Donald gating him for his “obesity.” Fat trutherism immediately Trump’s supporters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenopho- became the order of the day. There were hundreds of exam- bic, Islamophobic,” and “irredeemable” (strong word for a ples, including Sara Morrison’s conspiracy theory, published Methodist!)—were, in the spirit of the age, focused on the on Vocativ, that the Republican had added an inch to his Internet and social media, on Trump’s “tweets and retweets,” height in order to evade a BMI calculation that would have as Abraham Lincoln never put it. Trump of course does have made him technically obese. “If you wanted to be considered racists among his followers, and he is the favorite candidate of overweight instead of obese, perhaps because you are vain Jew-hating weirdos—at least of Jew-hating weirdos not and already fielding concerns about being the oldest person named Al Sharpton, a man whose continued prominence in ever elected to the presidency, well, adding an inch would be Demo cratic circles is a constant reminder that we would not a great way to do that,” she wrote. “Especially if the claimed have to dig too deeply into Mrs. Clinton’s base to uncover weight was already stretching the bounds of credibility, and characters who make Trump’s sad little gallery of 4Chan the person claiming it seems to have a thing for eating and beasties look like scholars and gentlemen. There is a deal of being photographed with fast food, including buckets of fried deplorability in a nation. chicken, double cheeseburgers, and massive taco bowls.” Mrs. Clinton’s deeply uncharitable and deeply un-Christian Indira Lakshmanan of the Boston Globe echoed the claim. insistence that those who prefer Trump over her are “irre- Others reveled in the story . The Daily Edge: “Dr. Oz says obese deemable” (infelix culpa!) is familiar, bein g as it is only this 70-year-old man who doesn’t exercise is in great shape.” The year’s version of Barack Obama’s description in 2008 of the journalist and TV personality Touré denounced the “nearly same irredeemable cohort: “They get bitter, they cling to guns obese millionaire birther.” Entertainer Bill Madden described or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti- Trump as “270 pounds of Lipitor-guzzling, orange-spray- immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to tanned trans fat.” (Lipitor, a cholesterol reducer, is a tablet.) explain their frustrations.” The president, who plainly thinks of Gersh Kuntzman of the New York Daily News: “Donald himself as a kind of national redeemer, would have to revise Trump can now officially be called ‘Fat Donald.’” You’d those remarks if making them today, because one item on that think Kuntzman would be more circumspect about suggesting litany of sins—anti-trade sentiment—is a hallmark of his nasty nicknames. party’s 2016 offerings. John Stoehr, who writes a column for U.S. News and World The American Left has long embraced the totalitarian slo- Report, argued that this was all fair game: “Yes, it matters,” gan “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem,” he wrote. “Why? Because Trump should be held to his own

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standards. Remember his calling women ‘fat pigs’?” Which Knowing is the shibboleth into the smug style’s culture, a cul- would be fair enough, if such criticism were limited to tural [sic] that celebrates hip commitments and valorizes hip Trump, or even if it were limited to high-profile public fig- taste, that loves nothing more than hate-reading anyone who ures with a penchant for personal attacks, such as Rush doesn’t get them. A culture that has come to replace politics Limbaugh. But it is not—not by a long shot. When the tea- itself. The knowing know that police reform, that abortion party rallies made headlines, the protesters were painted as rights, th at labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things. racists, as marionettes being manipulated by Charles and What is important is to launch links and mockery at those who David Koch, etc., but mostly they were dismissed as fat. don’t. The Good Facts are enough: Anybody who fails to capit- Wonkette published an entire feature on the physical repul- ulate to them is part of the Problem, is terminally uncool. No siveness of those attending a Glenn Beck rally—the sour- persuasion, only retweets. Eye roll, crying emoji, forward to faced woman in the flag shirt on a mobility scooter became John Oliver for sick burns. the Left’s avatar of the movement—with Ken Layne writing: “Remain seated, ye lardbottoms, and also stick to daylight Rensin’s real concern is exactly what you would expect: that hours, so you don’t run into each other, on those ridiculous lefty smugness is hindering lefty progress. That the Left might scooters paid for by Socialist Medicare.” Those devices were actually be wrong about some important things, and that these quickly nicknamed “obesity scooters.” errors are neither relieved nor excused by the “liberal good “This is why liberals need not fear a Tea Party uprising,” intentions” that Rensin accepts without question, does not one high-minded progressive wrote at Wonkette. “The only occur to him. thing you need to feel safe from these a**h***s is a flight of Kevin Drum, writing in Mother Jones, offered a slight correc- stairs.” Later, progressive counter-protesters donned XXXXL tive, arguing that the problem is not smugness but condescension: American-flag T-shirts over fat suits and rode around on scooters while carrying placards reading: “English was good We’re convinced that conservatives, especially working-class enough for Jesus!” and “Thank you, Fox News, for keeping us conservatives, are just dumb. Smug suggests only a supreme inflamed!” Others fantasized about these benighted fools’ confidence that we’re right—but conservative elites also believe In their more intellectually honest moments, some progressives wonder publicly whether sneering is in fact the most effective form of political persuasion.

convening to “ride their obesity scooters in a victory forma- they’re right, and they believe it as much as we do. The differ- tion to celebrate all those lazy gubmint employees who never ence is that, generally speaking, they’re less condescending made it to full pension because they rushed headlong into the about it. Twin Towers.” . . . Generally speaking, elite conservatives think liberals are In the progressive mind, which is a perversion of the Puritan ignorant of basic truths: Econ 101; the work-sapping impact of welfare dependence; the value of traditional culture; the obvi- mind, afflictions of the body are mere manifestations of afflic- ous dangers of the world that surrounds us. For working-class tions of the soul. That is why even though gun violence in the conservatives it’s worse: they’re just baffled by it all. They’re United States is disproportionately a young, urban, African- made to feel guilty about everything that’s any fun: college American phenomenon, the personification of gun violence in football for exploiting kids; pro football for maiming its play- progressive editorial cartoons is obese, rural, and white—see ers; SUVs for destroying the climate; living in the suburbs for Jim Morin of the Miami Herald, Nick Anderson of the being implicitly racist. If they try to argue, they’re accused of Houston Chronicle, Walt Handelsman of The Advocate, and mansplaining or straightsplaining or whitesplaining. If they put many others. It’s so common that it is a cliché, and hence un - a wrong word out of place, they’re slut shaming or fat shaming. remarked upon. Who the hell talks like that? They think it’s just crazy. Why do In much the same way that antique Calvinists and modern- they have to put up with all this condescending gibberish from day proponents of the “prosperity gospel” see health and twenty-something liberals? What’s wrong with the values they grew up with? wealth as signs of divine favor, progressives see high rates of diabetes in rural Georgia and the relative poverty of some parts Drum, like Rensin, cannot quite manage to consider that last of Mississippi as judgment from the great god of politics. question, and concludes that this is a problem of—as you’d In their more intellectually honest moments, some pro- expect—marketing. gressives wonder publicly whether sneering is in fact the most effective form of political persuasion. (It is very, very effective: Ask Jon Stewart, an intellectual lightweight who UT it is not that. Our so-called liberal friends do not developed a reputation as a formidable thinker simply by think we are merely ignorant: They think we are evil. ridiculing people Democrats enjoy seeing ridiculed.) At Vox, The progressive mind believes in the unity of vice, Emmett Rensin published an essay decrying liberal smug- Bthe flip side of the Socratic unity of virtue, the belief that all ness, which caused irony meters to explode on planets in far- good characteristics are not only compatible but also related, away galaxies. that they are aspects of a unitary whole that is difficult to see

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in its entirety. The unity of vice, in the progressive mind, is the suspicion that someone who disagrees with you about taxes or climate policy is at heart a racist, racism being the Trump comprehensive social sin in the American mind. If you are a conservative or a libertarian, you have no doubt encountered progressives who refuse to believe that the Koch brothers are longtime supporters of gay marriage, that Barry Goldwater As Centrist was an NAACP member who funded a desegregation lawsuit out of his own pocket, that Rick Perry has been a leading Finding the ideological core within the bluster voice on criminal-justice reform, that NATIONAL REVIEW has favored marijuana decriminalization since the 1980s. For BY LUKE THOMPSON those of the mindset criticized by Kevin Drum (and, some- times, for Kevin Drum), “conservative” and “bigot” are synonyms. That is how modern progressives can consider the HE Trump campaign, which limped into the end of case of 20th-century southern Democrats who supported summer beset by fading poll numbers and an erratic the New Deal, the Great Society, progressive labor reforms, T candidate, appears to have stabilized in recent the minimum wage, welfare, social-insurance programs, etc., weeks. Trump still trails Clinton as we head into the and spit: “Conservatives!” debates, but her lead has narrowed to its pre-convention levels. This belief, and the hatred associated with it, is religious in Nonetheless, the GOP’s path to the White House remains nar- its intensity. row. To win, Trump will have to carry three of the following Literally. A survey conducted by the American National four states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. Election Study in 2000 found that ill feeling and suspicion That difficult task means that Republicans still have good rea- among religious groups (Evangelicals vs. Catholics vs. Jews) son to look beyond November and ask what the future holds and between racial groups paled in comparison with the should Trump lose. most intense hatred in American politics, which is the self- Much discussion takes for granted that the GOP will be reported loathing of self-described secular Democrats for changed utterly by Trump. Commentators have therefore focused religious “fundamentalists,” which was as near to off the either on Trump’s ideological heresies or on the likely electoral charts as you can get: Asked to rank their goodwill toward residua of his defeat. Will the GOP embrace an anti-trade stance? fundamentalists on a scale of 0 to 100, more than half of Will Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric drive Hispanic voters to the Democratic National Convention delegates surveyed chose Democrats for a generation? These are pertinent questions, but zero—and the average score was eleven. For comparison, the they overlook the ideological core of Trumpism, which is likely average score white Christian fundamentalists gave to Jews to be his greatest legacy. And yes, there is a core. was 66. The Democrats did not think highly of big business, Donald Trump changes his mind. Frequently. He can swing the rich, or Republicans as a group, but they intensely dis- from one position to its opposite in the span of a single staccato liked Christian fundamentalists and pro-life groups. A long sentence. His grasp of and interest in policy can charitably be write-up of the findings was published in the Fall 2002 issue called thin. Yet despite the inconstancy of his declared commit- of The Public Interest. ments, Trump adheres to an ideological bedrock. Surprising as With that in mind, it is interesting, and perhaps not entirely it might seem, there is a “there” to Trumpism. And that “there” coincidental, that Mrs. Clinton chose that particular adjec- is here to stay. Fortunately for Republicans, the substance of tive for the nasties in the Trump camp: “irredeemable.” Trump’s ideology will prove less onerous than his personal “Culture” begins with “cult,” and how we live is an expression unpopularity. The worst thing the party can do is overreact to of what we value and what we believe. These are strange times: the vessel of Trumpism and overlook the bottled lightning that Atheists are more aggressive evangelists than Jehovah’s continues to propel him. Witnesses, the might of the federal government is being Trump has essentially run a third-party candidacy inside the brought to bear in service of the project of permitting men to Republican party, with a third-party agenda to match. Like all use women’s restrooms, the liberal love of diversity and tol- third-party types, Trump fixates on “the system.” Peel back the eration requires that people be drummed out of their jobs and sound and the fury and Trump stands for a broadly “centrist” out of polite society, and people who call themselves “liber- amalgam of good-government reform. Our elites are corrupt, als” celebrate as a positive good the fact that young conser- says Trump, so we have to get money out of politics. Special vatives are afraid to speak their minds on college campuses. interests entrench themselves by playing institutional games, If any of that seems a little weird to you, then Jon Stewart says Trump, so let’s smash through barriers to action that are and the gentlemen at Vox may suggest that this is because imposed by process. “I alone can fix it!” you are not very smart. But that is not quite enough for Trump’s process fixation comes at the expense of substantive Mrs. Clinton, who believes that you are not only dumb but policy commitments. Bring up a meaningful issue involving dumb and wicked. national security or economic policy and Trump’s promises Every faith gets its Inquisition, and every Inquisition gets become notably vague. “It’ll be great,” Trump says. “Buh-lieve its Grand Inquisitor. Ours has a thing for pantsuits, and she is me.” Trump’s centrism is thus observably not conservative. He even tougher on heretics than was the Spanish original: Tomás does not specify the aims and ends of mankind, cares little to de Torquemada, an orthodox Dominican, did not think any- body irredeemable. Mr. Thompson is a partner at the Applecart political consultancy.

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describe what a good society might look like, and skirts hard and ineffective. Trump promises to be a better, tougher, more ideological fights. America must be made safe, prosperous, and successful elite. He’s “a negotiator,” after all. This is why Jon great again. But ask how, and, with the reliability of a migratory Huntsman Jr. rushed to endorse Trump but a vanishingly small bird in winter, Trump returns to fixing “the system.” share of Bernie Sanders’s supporters has done likewise. Trump Trump’s imprecision on substance, paired with his fixation on preaches a changing of the guard, not a political revolution. process, has gotten him mislabeled as either a populist or a mod- Nor does Trump, at least by his own lights, regard a subset of erate. “Moderation,” a blanket term for several different political Americans as the enemies of his constituents. This is because attitudes, fits Trump poorly. Burkean moderation, on policy mat- Trump errantly views race in America through the binary lens ters, views all grand plans skeptically. America has few if any of midcentury. Before the Immigration Act of 1965, well over Burkeans left, but wherever they are, they must disdain the 90 percent of the country was either white or black, with grandiosity of Trump’s various walls, bans, and deportation Hispanic and Asian Americans composing small, geographi- plans. Dispositional moderates, on the other hand, who treat pol- cally concentrated populations. Today, the racial landscape of itics as an elevated business, put a premium on decorum. We can America is much more diverse, and growing more so. There are disagree without being disagreeable, after all. Mitt Romney’s roughly equal numbers of Hispanic and black Americans. The persistent disdain for Trump can be attributed, at least in part, to 3.3 million Muslim Americans cross all racial lines. The old this habit of mind. Lastly, ideological moderation stands in for a binary cannot comprehend this development. Rather than aban- considerable mixture of partisan orthodoxy and heterodoxy, usu- don the binary, however, Trump instead appears to regard non- ally based on some pre-political principle. Trump obviously falls white and non-black racial groups as fundamentally alien, as into none of these categories. perpetual immigrants. Thus, Trump’s bogeymen are, at least in Nor is Trump a populist. Indeed, Trump’s centrism derives his own narrative, suspicious foreign types rather than home- from two premises deeply antithetical to populism. First, every grown fifth columns. centrist earnestly believes that the American people are united. Trump is wrong, of course, on the question of the American- Sure, the United States is a country of more than 300 million peo- ness of these groups, but this mistaken insistence on a racial ple with an almost endless variety of values, material interests, binary distinguishes Trump’s centrism from populism. In high cultures, and histories. Yes, we span a continent. Nonetheless, finance, Bryan saw a large, domestic enemy of the common insists the centrist, our disagreements are more figments than man; Trump instead rails against an alien threat to the body facts. On 90 percent of the issues, perhaps even more, we are one. politic pouring into America from abroad. Bryan probably gen- Second, at the core of centrism sits a radical distinction between uinely thought bimetallism would bring prosperity, but he loved political passion and political interest. Passion leads to conflict, free silver because it would soak the eastern rich and relieve the polarization, gridlock, and mutual animosity. Interest leads to western debtor. Trump likewise probably believes in protec- reasoning, negotiating, and ultimately consensus. No problem tionism as economic policy, but he embraces it chiefly as a is too great to withstand dispassionate bargaining over interests. defense of the American worker against the machinations of No distrust is so implacable as to resist brokering. If we can get other nations. Mexicans and Muslims, in Trump’s view, simply the passions out, and the interests in, we can “get things done.” amount to the vanguard of foreign interests that too often come The populist embraces political passion. He views the patrician at the expense of America’s economic well-being, national pretensions of dispositional moderates as naïve, and Burkean security, and domestic tranquility. anxiety about unintended consequences as cowardly. The cen- trist, by contrast, pines for enlightened and public-spirited elites empowered to set aside the provincial bigotries of faction and RUMP is simultaneously the least articulate and the most hash out a reasonable plan. The populist perceives a genuine politically successful avatar of centrism in at least a cen- struggle between the many and the few and embraces move- tury. To the centrist, politics is not the means of solving ments, parties, and associations as instruments of the struggle. Tsocial problems: Politics is the problem. As a result, centrism fix- The centrist’s bone-deep belief in national unity produces a ates on governing processes as the key to unlocking the popular powerful hostility to entities that divide the public into cate- will. Centrists presume popular agreement and then look for gories. Political parties? Pernicious faction. Organized groups? aspects of the political process that are actively impeding this Corrupting special interests. Centrists may pay lip service to posited agreement from coming into full bloom. It is hardly sur- Tocqueville’s enthusiasm for voluntary associations. Yet in prising that the centrist embraces the process-centered anxieties every concrete application, associations, in their view, become of Right and Left alike, advocating campaign-finance reform, tribal bands that awaken empty rivalries and blind voters to their the elimination of gerrymandering, the enactment of anti-voter- shared condition. For the centrist, these intercessors, these fraud laws, and term limits in turn. The centrist exploits the mis- “labels,” prevent We the People from collectively realizing our perception, shared by as many as three-quarters of Americans, natural unity through the prudent judgment of our betters. that corruption is widespread in the political system. A healthy Trump is admittedly a peculiar vessel for this interests-over- skepticism of government and a low tolerance for self-dealing passions, unity-over-conflict mentality. But make no mistake: It are political virtues. Yet attempts to operationalize this skepti- is the foundation of his candidacy and the most durable part of his cism have been self-defeating. Our last crack at campaign- appeal. In substance, Trump could not be farther from a true pop- finance reform, in 2002, has been an unmitigated disaster, ulist such as William Jennings Bryan. Trump never promises to hamstringing the parties vis-à-vis outside groups. Meanwhile, crush disposable elites. Quite to the contrary, Trump’s brief has money continues to pour into our elections because, when big always been that the particular set of elites running America government touches every sector of the economy and social today have failed to do their job as elites. They are weak, stupid, life, every interest that can will hedge against adverse electoral

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outcomes. More starkly, Congress’s approval rating was just north Centrism’s flash-in-the-pan flammability makes it a fre- of 40 percent when the campaign-finance law went into effect. quent target for opportunists. Its disgust at and suspicion of the Today, it is barely in double digits. That is not a coincidence. system make its adherents vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Similarly, checking “ideological extremists” by eliminating Small wonder, then, that a paragon of crony capitalism such as gerrymandering is a centrist fever dream, as political scientists Trump can seize the mantle of reformer and do-gooder. If Jowei Chen and Jonathan Rodden have shown in the Quarterly patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, the antechamber Journal of Political Science. Using automated redistricting of patriotism is reform. simulations, Chen and Rodden find that asymmetries be - tween the popular vote and the number of legislative seats each party holds can be explained largely by patterns of F Trump passes from the scene, the greatest risk for conser- human geography. Put simply, Democrats cluster together in vatives will be over-correcting to his candidacy and fruit- cities, whereas Re publicans are more geographically dis- lessly fighting the last war. The Republican party was persed. As a result, Republicans win seats with large shares of uniquelyI vulnerable to a hostile takeover in 2016. In recent years, Democratic voters, while Democrats win urban seats with next two different sets of political organizations have shared the name to no Republican voters in them. “Republican” for purposes of branding and ballot access. Beyond As for voter fraud, it is a serious crime, and voter intimidation that, these parties have been institutionally distinct. One of these, is even worse; prudent measures that help reduce their likelihood a more orthodox conservative party, combined the tax-revolt enjoy broad support for good reason. Let us not, however, ethos of the Tea Party with the social conservatism of the reli- indulge in the idea that the outcomes of American elections hinge gious Right. The other, a center-right, more classically liberal on criminality, that the system is “rigged.” It is not. party, brought together foreign-policy hawkishness with high- Kicking out complacent officeholders by imposing mandatory income tax cuts aimed at sparking economic growth. legislative term limits is a popular proposal. According to Our campaign-finance regime, which empowers outside Gallup, fully three-quarters of Americans support the idea. Yet I groups vis-à-vis party institutions, helped create parallel estab- can think of few institutional reforms that would be as disas- lishments in these cohorts. Each national establishment, in turn, trous. A politician will be a careerist whether term-limited or had a base located in the state parties. Both of these parties- not. The career legislator seeks reelection, an aim that at least within-a-party struggled to settle on a nominee until well into tangentially tethers him to the concerns of his constituents. the balloting. Ted Cruz eventually consolidated the orthodox- Term-limited representatives, anxious to secure their post- conservative branch, but his weaknesses as a candidate meant political careers, act as the handmaidens of the powerful. that he struggled to push out Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, and Individuals regularly cycling in and out of different offices Mike Huckabee. The center-right party bounced from Chris have to rely on the labor unions, large corporations, and party Christie to Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio to John Kasich but never bosses that can secure their future. Small wonder, then, that settled on a candidate. Meanwhile Trump shot the gap. His every state with draconian term limits has seen its state legisla- jihad against the establishments of both Republican parties tors bought and sold by powerful and persistent interests. allowed him to draw support simultaneously from insurgent The most powerful argument against term limits from a con- forces within both the orthodox-conservative and the center-right servative perspective ought to be the Obama presidency. Term parties. Trump brought with him a cohort of working-class limits inevitably empower the chief executive in a divided sys- whites who had long voted Republican in general elections tem, as legislative rookies are easily bribed, bullied, or bamboo- but were entering the primaries for the first time. Fed up with zled. Imagine what the Obama administration might have been conditions generally, they embraced Trump as he pitched his able to do had it been able to buy off, cajole, or simply hoodwink candidacy against the system. members of Congress. Since 2010, the president has seen his This situation is unlikely to replicate itself. Moreover, cast- ambitions constrained and often outright stymied by Republicans ing off the foundations of the Republican party’s political in Congress. Forced to rely on executive orders, his agenda has achievements sin ce 2008 would be unwise. On matters of pol- narrowed and can be more easily overturned in the future. An icy, the orthodox-conservative and center-right networks are inexperienced Congress would have been a sitting duck for the more closely aligned ideologically today than has been the his- imperial presidency. Thank heavens for “career politicians.” torical norm for the Republican coalition. To take just one An escapist desire to eliminate politics always appeals to ele- example, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal ments in both parties. People tend to dislike politics—some- use scores, derived mainly from roll-call voting, to track how thing those of us who do politics full-time forget at our peril. closely members of Congress vote together. Their scores show Usually the public is sleepily content to let us politicos bicker unambiguously that the Republican coalition has reached an in the neoclassical playgrounds we reserve to ourselves in the unparalleled coalescence. Because of that coalescence, Repub li- capitals of every state. However, every now and again, the pub- cans held historic majorities at the state and federal levels before lic is aroused to pay attention to politics. This happens when it Trump entered the picture. The few Republican incumbents who becomes convinced that the bickering no longer serves a func- have lost primaries this cycle have done so for reasons indepen- tion, when “the system” stops “working.” We tend to call the dent of Trump. public’s reaction “politicizing” or “mobilizing.” In many cases, Many of Trump’s voters are not particularly conservative it is more accurate to say that the masses have had their latent across the board, and they do not trust the GOP. The Republican hostility to politics activated. Get the anti-political tinder dry party should not abandon conservatism for their sake, but the enough, and all that’s needed is a spark to get people mobilized. Republican National Committee’s post-2012 “autopsy” effort, Trump has provided the spark. the Growth and Opportunity Project, went too far in attempting

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to narrow and delimit the ideological commitments of the party. A party that aspires to represent at least half of a massive, diverse country cannot realistically expect internal quietude and wide- Progressivism spread agreement. Indeed, Republicans can afford to be more open to disputatiousness on such major issues as trade, infrastruc- ture, and immigration to help bring Trump’s voters into the fold. Disagreement in a party is fine and even healthy. Heterodoxy Goes Global does not amount to heresy. Internal squabbles and even tough primary fights invigorate more than enervate. Transnational governance and its contempt Trump’s centrist insurgency is real, and it is not going away. for the consent of the governed Political scientists Jennifer K. Smith and Julia R. Azari make clear in a forthcoming article that the ideas underpinning centrism have been part of American political life for a long BY JOHN FONTE & JOHN YOO time. Centrism has a diverse and geographically dispersed constituency. It is unlikely to disappear, and at least for now has taken up residency in the Republican party. Conservatives are OVEMBER’s elections will represent a decisive fork in going to have to learn to live with it, and learn how to turn it the road for our nation on any number of issues, but toward conservative ends. N none may prove as important as the choice between Fortunately, the demands of centrism may not be overly bur- preserving our constitutional system and embracing densome. While most centrist prescriptions are canards, they transnational progressivism. stem from reasonable, even virtuous, foundations. Conservatives We can see the stakes already in the current fight over the can and should seize the cause of good government, while steer- Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all ing it away from damaging and imprudent institutional reforms. testing of nuclear weapons. The Constitution requires a two- Above all, we need to recognize that the public does not trust its thirds Senate vote to approve treaties, but the Senate rejected the political leaders. Hillary Clinton’s presidency would do little to CTBT 51–48 in 1999. Undeterred by constitutional require- reassure Americans that their government is anything other than ments, Obama will ask the United Nations in late September to a giant conflict-of-interest ring. For Republicans, opposing a accomplish a de facto ratification of the CTBT. manifestly corrupt Clinton administration would present an The scheme works like this: The Obama administration opportunity to gain back the public’s trust. Of course the GOP (according to a State Department letter) will submit a Security would be perfectly capable of squandering such an opportuni- Council resolution according to which any testing of nuclear ty, if it chose to fixate on the wildest and weirdest Clinton con- weapons by any treaty signator y (including the U.S.) would spiracy theories. There would be ample genuine material without “defeat the object and purpose of the CTBT.” If the resolution delving into the fever swamps. passes, international law prohibits the United States from doing Some of the most die-hard Trump cultists, and especially the anything to defeat “the object and purpose” of a treaty that it has alt-right white nationalists, should be condemned and excluded signed but not ratified. American nuclear testing would obviously from the party. But the lion’s share of Trump supporters under- violate the rule. Presto! The U.S. will adhere to the CTBT. stand the need for political leaders even as they distrust the sys- Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker tem those leaders inhabit. Most simply want to see competence (R., Tenn.) sent a blistering letter to Obama denouncing the plan: where now they see only posturing. Part of this is a simple com- “The U.S. Constitution clearly provides the Senate—not the munications problem: Republicans have done a poor job of United Nations—the right to the provision of advice and consent advertising their successes to the public, a situation made dis- for the ratification of any treaty.” The Senate rejected the CTBT cernibly worse by certain corners of conservative media. to protect our right to modernize obsolete weapons and thus However, Republicans should own up to the lack of trust reassure allies under the American nuclear umbrella. Recently, within the party. To build trust with the public, conservative leading opponents of the CTBT, including Corker and former leaders need to refocus on how politics affects Americans day senator Jon Kyl, have argued that, regardless of its substantive in and day out. Talk less about Ronald Reagan and more like views on nuclear testing, the administration cannot ignore the Ronald Reagan, connecting conservativ e policy goals to the Constitution to achieve its policy goals. material lives of voters. Why will tax reform improve life for The administration’s CTBT maneuver is more than just Americans? How will we fix an unsustainable entitlement Obama’s latest attempt to skirt the Constitution. For years, elites regime without dramatically upending long-held expectations? in American legal (e.g., American Bar Association), philan- How do our commitments abroad keep Americans safe at thropic (Ford, Rockefeller foundations), academic (NYU Center home? If these questions cannot be answered clearly and sim- for Global Affairs), corporate (Davos conferences), NGO ply, then conservatives need to ask whether we should be push- (Human Rights Watch), and foreign-policy (Council on Foreign ing the particular policy prescriptions in question. Republicans Relations) circles have promoted the concept that “global prob- must not come across as cruelly indifferent to the economic lems require global solutions” and, therefore, the need for ever well-being of average Americans or cavalierly reckless in using expanding “global governance.” force abroad. Trump may well be a disaster at the ballot box in November, but if he causes Republican leaders in Washington Mr. Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the author of Sovereignty or to reconnect with the regular concerns of their constituents, all Submission. Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, might not be lost. and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Sixteen years ago in a law-journal essay, future U.N. laws of war. Central to the transnational-progressive idea is the ambassador John Bolton posed the question “Should we take concept of the “global rule of law,” under which nation-states global governance seriously?” Bolton wrote that there were cede judicial authority to supranational courts. “vast disparities” between what he described as “globalists” One such court has been operating for more than a decade: the and “Americanists.” The globalists favor the transfer of some International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute, a 1998 decision-making powers from the nation-state to transnational treaty, created it as a permanent global court to deal with war authorities when, in their view, “global solutions” are required. crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crimes of Americanists believe that political decision-making should aggression. The ICC claims jurisdiction over nations, such as the remain within the U.S. constitutional system. United States, that have not ratified the treaty if their officials or “As a convinced Americanist,” Bolton laments that the glob- soldiers commit war crimes on the territory of a treaty member. alists “have been advancing while the Americanists have slept.” The ICC is currently investigating American forces in He argues that the challenge of global governance must be taken Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan is a member of the seriously as it advances in “substantive field after field—human ICC. The ICC contends that it adheres to the principle of “com- rights, labor, health, the environment, political and military plementarity,” meaning that a state would have the right to try its affairs, and international organizations.” Bolton ends by declar- citizens first. But if a state is “unwilling or unable” to try its own ing that the “debate over global governance” is “the decisive citizens, the ICC claims jurisdiction. If an American court were issue facing the United States internationally.” to acquit an American soldier of a “war crime,” the ICC could claim that the U.S. courts were “unwilling” to convict and begin its own prosecution. HAT is the transnational-progressive agenda? A Authority over the meaning of complementarity—and even Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) working paper what constitutes a war crime—rests with the ICC, not with the on “democratic internationalism,” published by G. jurisprudence of democratic states. The ICC prosecutor is JohnW Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney shortly after Obama’s accountable to no democratic authority, but only to the judges of reelection, outlines the goals. The authors call for “social and the ICC itself. It is anathema to American constitutional democ- economic equity associated with social democracy” based on racy and the democratic principle of government by consent of “progressive pragmatism” as articulated by John Dewey. They the governed. Nevertheless, leading figures in the Democratic also argue that building progressivism in one country will not party and in elite liberal circles favor American submission to work. Specifically, in order to “reverse” the policies of “Reagan- the ICC because they have ceased to be national progressives Thatcher fundamentalist capitalism,” the “forging [of] transna- and have become transnational progressives. tional democratic progressive alliances” will be necessary. At the turn of the 20th century, progres- sives led by Woodrow Wilson created the modern administrative state. It expanded during the New Deal and upended the con- stitutional separation of powers and feder- alism. The administrative state effectively made laws and issued judicial rulings through overarching regulations and there- by weakened the principle of government by consent of the governed. These early progressives, however, remained national- ists. They envisioned an administrative state run by Americans. In contrast, 21st- century progressives are transnational. The CFR paper advocates a global, as opposed to a national, regulatory regime: “Solving the cascade of emerging global problems, perhaps most notably climate change, will depend on the globalization of regulatory state capacities.” The regulatory regime of a “global” admin- istrative state would most likely be imple- mented through treaty monitors (comprising various nation-state and U.N. bureaucrats) in areas such as human rights; women’s and children’s rights; refugee rights; the envi- ronment; climate; sustainable development; arms control; small-arms (gun) control; hate ROMAN GENN speech, xenophobia, and racism; and the

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As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton told a Kenyan audience Global governance demands transfers of authority that are that it is “a great regret” that the United States has not submitted categorically different in their contempt for democracy. to the ICC. Secretary Clinton’s chief intellectual strategist at the Nations must transfer lawmaking power to transnational insti- State Department, the head of the office of policy and planning, tutions, which will provide “global solutions” free from was Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter. She has outlined national interests. Their authority must run beyond any nation’s in detail how the global administrative state would work through political control to preserve their claim to universality. The the “coercive power of vertical [government] networks”: aforementioned methods of controlling the administrative state—oversight hearings, judicial review, budgetary control, Vertical government networks pierce the shell of state sovereignty legislative amendment—are incompatible with the institutions by making individual government institutions—courts, regulatory of global governance. agencies, or even legislators—responsible for implementation of rules created by a supranational institution. . . . Vertical govern- The Paris accords on climate change, for example, regulate ment networks make it possible for a supranational court, regula- the activity of all nations by limiting not just industrial pollution tory entity, or parliament to create a relationship with its national but also agriculture and household energy use. The United States counterparts to make those rules directly enforceable. is only one voice—albeit a powerful one—in the setting of climate-change targets, acting on a par with the European Another leading transnational thinker and key Clinton lieutenant Union and China. The Chemical Weapons Convention, to take is Yale law professor Harold Koh, who was the State Department’s another example, creates an independent secretariat with the chief legal officer. Koh advocates a “transnational legal process” power to ban any chemical worldwide. that engages “nation-states, corporations, international organi- zations, and non-governmental organizations” in “a variety of forums, to make, interpret, enforce, and ultimately internalize rules HE principles of American constitutional government of international law.” Lawyers “should trigger transnational inter- stand firmly in the way of global governance. The actions, which generate legal interpretations, which can in turn be Constitution places ultimate sovereign authority not in internalized into the domestic law of even resistant nation-states.” Tgovernment but in the American people. This is the first principle The Constitution places ultimate sovereign authority not in government but in the American people.

Clinton, Slaughter, and Koh welcome a post-American global of our constitutional order. The Declaration of Independence administrative state and transnational legal system that are light states that governments “derive their just Powers from the years away from such quaint notions as the supremacy of the Consent of the Governed” and that when a government abuses Constitution, representative democracy, and government by its authority “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, consent of the governed. and to institute new Government.” As James Madison argued, Today’s advocates of global governance confront the same the federal and state governments “are in fact but agents and obstacle that faced their progressive progenitors: the American trustees of the people.” He wrote in Federalist No. 46 that “the Constitution. Wilson believed that the separation of powers had ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, become obsolete. FDR attacked the Supreme Court for its resides in the people alone.” “horse-and-buggy” readings of the Constitution—until the jus- The Constitution contains no provision to transfer sovereignty tices bent before his Court-packing threat. Both presidents outside the United States. It allows the president to make treaties advanced their reforms by evading the Constitution’s protec- with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. It recognizes the tions for the separation of powers and federalism. They side- president’s authority as chief executive and commander-in- stepped the former by persuading Congress to delegate broad chief, which gives him the power to conduct foreign policy. It legislative power to unaccountable federal agencies. They made gives the executive the authority to conduct normal diplomacy, an end-run around the latter by claiming that any activity, no but not to permanently transfer public authority beyond our matter how small, affected interstate commerce, which fell constitutional system. That idea would have offended the under Congress’s Article I, Section 8 powers. Framers, who had revolted against Great Britain precisely The Obama administration and its supporters seek similar because Parliament had prevented the Colonies from having shortcuts around the Constitution, but with a critical difference. any democratic voice. The president can conduct short-term The nationalization of the American economy prompted an diplomacy but may not make major commitments without the enormous redistribution of power from the states to the federal approval of the legislature. Just as physics has a law of the con- government and from Congress to the executive. Though a servation of energy, the Constitution creates a law of the conser- departure from the original constitutional design, this rewiring vation of sovereignty. of government still kept power within bodies accountable to the The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that the Constitution, not American people. States still regulated crime, contracts, and global institutions, has the final say. In a series of cases, the property. Federal agencies still answered to the president. International Court of Justice ordered the United States to halt Congress could still recall its grants of authority and conduct the execution of aliens convicted of murder because they had not oversight of the agencies. The courts could still exercise judicial received their full rights to consular assistance. The U.S. Su- review to protect individual rights. preme Court refused to comply. It declared: “If treaties are to be

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given effect as federal law under our legal system, determining their meaning as a matter of federal law ‘is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department,’ headed by the The Next ‘one Supreme Court’ established by the Constitution.” Global governance also threatens the Constitution’s enumer- ation of powers to Congress. A fundamental element of the separation of powers is Congress’s sole federal authority to Space Age legislate on domestic affairs. If a treaty requires the United States to change its tariff laws, Congress must still pass legis- As private spaceflight advances, lation to bring the nation into compliance. This core principle Washington must reconsider its role was extensively discussed during the State of Virginia’s ratify ing convention in 1788 and the congressional debate over the Jay Treaty of 1796. In the latter affair, the House BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE declared that the Constitution “left with the President and Senate the power of making Treaties, but required at the same time the Legislative sanction and cooperation, in those cases Merritt Island, Fla. where the Constitution had given express and specific powers S a child, I was in love with America. From England, to the Legislature.” Otherwise, then-congressman Madison everything about the place just seemed marvelous. argued, the president could use a treaty to create new criminal A America was where the movies were set. It was where laws or impose new taxes without the agreement of the House all the good roller coasters had been installed. It had as required by the Constitution. While President Washington cities with skyscrapers with romantic names: the Empire State could reach an agreement with Great Britain, only Congress Building, the Chrysler Building, the TransAmerica. Elvis had could change the laws and provide the revenues necessary to been an American, as had John Wayne. Marilyn Monroe, too. comply with the treaty. The Americans—or so I thought—had invented all of the fun The Obama administration’s effort to jury-rig an international stuff: Superman, Coca-Cola, denim jeans, ten-pin bowling. obligation out of a Security Council Resolution directly violates Americans were rich, and happy, and on top of the world. Their the separation of the executive from the legislative power. He president was a film star, with a welcome-to-Disneyland voice. seeks not only to cut the Senate out of its constitutional role; he And above all—above absolutely everything else—Americans is also trying to create a legal obligation that would prevent the had been to the moon. testing of nuclear weapons, even though Congress has ordered An old joke has it that there are two sorts of countries: the modernization of the U.S. arsenal. Similarly, transnational “those that use the metric system, and those that have put a progressives armed with the Paris accords will seek to impose man on the moon.” Today, this is typically told with an ironic, new environmental regulations to reduce American energy use, self-conscious faux-bombast—as a critical, cosmopolitan nod even though Congress has never passed laws to do so. The toward the jingoism of old. But here’s the thing: It’s true. It is Obama approach, no doubt to be continued under a Clinton difficult to overstate just how substantial a PR victory the Apollo administration, ejects the Senate and seeks to create international program was for the United States, and tough to relay to the obligations unilaterally. inured just how exceptional its space program made the country Using unilateral international promises to leverage new look from the outside. As a boy, I would watch the nightly news domestic laws violates another core constitutional principle: in wide-eyed wonder as the Space Shuttle blasted off. I proudly federalism. The Framers limited the powers of the national gov- carried around my Neil Armstrong lunchbox. I knew by heart the ernment primarily to the protection of national security and the famous, if imprecisely delivered, line: “One small step for man, conduct of foreign policy, the regulation of interstate commerce, one giant leap for mankind.” In America, they got things done. and taxing and spending. Global governance allows the univer- Specifically who “they” were didn’t seem to matter a great sal regulation of every type of human activity. Climate-change deal back then. But, in hindsight, one can’t help but n otice that, agreements, for example, call for the reduction of energy use in as impressive and romantic as the NASA-led missions of my every aspect of society. Such schemes violate the Constitution’s youth were, they in no way resembled the space-based visions limitation of federal regulatory power. that had set the cultural tone. Delve into the popular cartoons The intractable opposition of American constitutionalism and of the Victorian era and the Space Age—as well as the endless global governance will play out for decades to come. Powerful supply of planet-filled movies that followed 1977’s Star forces in elite universities, large foundations, major corpora- Wars—and you will see the universe cast as a bustling frontier, tions, the administrative bureaucracy, and political parties will more akin to the Oregon Trail than to Mount Everest. In The continue to repeat the mantra that “global problems require Jetsons, as in Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon and Ridley global solutions” and continue to promote global governance at Scott’s Alien, the cosmos is conquered not by rare, government- the expense of the constitutional framework bequeathed to us by led forays, but by relentless commercial activity—by P. T. the Founders of our democratic republic. Hillary Clinton’s elec- Barnum rather than John F. Kennedy. In this idealized view, tion would strengthen the transnational-progressive agenda. passengers and freight are conveyed upward by a host of com- But, well beyond this year’s presidential election, our fellow cit- peting companies that have turned the void above into a busi- izens must resist the machinations of the transnational progres- ness opportu nity, and space—far from becoming an isolated, sives and their post-national administrative state if government Kubrickian eccentricity—resembles a translated version of by the consent of the governed is to endure. Earth. Had you asked a child in 1964 where an astronaut would

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stay when “up there,” he wouldn’t have said, “The space sta- dramatically, from a bespoke component into a commercial util- tion”; he’d have said, “The Hilton.” ity. The runway, in other words, will need to become an airport. Of course, this vision has not yet come to pass. On the con- The changes at the Shuttle Landing Facility—and a host of trary: It has been politicians, not entrepreneurs, who have taken other transformations being made at the base—neatly illustrate the lead above the clouds, often as part of broader military or the challenge NASA faces. For all of its history, both the diplomatic strategies. It was a government that launched the first Kennedy Space Center and its sister Air Force station were set satellite; a government that sent the first man into space; a gov- up for one client only: the government. In consequence, it is ill ernment that put men on the moon. The International Space suited to host the free-market competition that is making the Station is a joint project of states: the U.S., Canada, Russia, future of space travel so bright. Were Kennedy being designed Japan, and the 22 members of the European Space Agency. For today, its infrastructure would look dramatically different. Back a while, at least, this made sense; from a standing start, the devel- in 1969, it did not matter that the base’s nitrogen and helium opment of space-bound vehicles proved an extremely costly and pipelines could accommodate only one launch at a time, because highly risky proposition that did not lend itself well to market NASA planned only one launch at a time. But now, in an age of forces. Today, though, things are different. Today, America commercial rivalries, such a choke point is problematic. How, stands on the cusp of a new and exciting era of commercial critics ask, should NASA proceed? Should it spend money spaceflight—of a future, that is, that might finally resemble the improving its facilities so that private companies can make a imaginings of old. If our governments are willing to recognize profit? Should it pick winners and losers in accordance with its that—and to intelligently get out of the way—almost anything preferred vision for the future? And how should it behave when seems possible. the government has a need that conflicts with commerce? Indeed, quite how NASA should get away from its dirigiste model is the topic of a fierce debate. Some within the spacefaring T the Kennedy Space Center, a few miles from Central community rather like the idea of the federal government’s own- Florida’s famous Cocoa Beach, there are ubiquitous ing and operating a commercial spaceport, and they point to the signs of life. That may come as a surprise. Kennedy has national-security needs that such an arrangement would fill. Abeen through a rough time of late. In 2011, in the middle of the Others, generally the more commercially minded, believe that this Great Recession, the much-maligned Space Shuttle program approach would yield a long-term disaster for the United States was put to bed, along with the 9,000 high-paying jobs that it and a boon to its international rivals. They point to the airline sustained. NASA’s budget, too, has atrophied. In 1966, at the industry as an example of how to manage change. Until 1986, height of the Apollo effort, NASA was eating up 4.5 percent of they note, both Washington Dulles and Washington National air- the federal budget. By 1975, that number was 1 percent; by ports were owned and operated by the federal government. But as 2000 it was 0.75 percent; and by 2010 it was 0.5 percent. There the demand for air travel increased—and as Washington, D.C., are no plans to increase it. became a more attractive destination—that arrangement became And yet, everywhere I am taken, I see development, con- unsustainable. (Why? Imagine if your business had to run all of its struction, activity, restoration. Suddenly, everybody wants to decisions through Congress.) And so, accepting that the times had be a rocketeer. In one corner of the 147,000-acre site, Elon changed, the Reagan administration spearheaded the transfer of Musk’s SpaceX is learning to reuse its spacecraft, the better to the two facilities to an outside group, the Metropolitan Washing - cut costs for its clients. In another, Boeing and Lockheed Martin ton Airports Authority. Nobody has ever looked back. are testing a secret Defense Department satellite. And, on the far Critics of the status quo ask why this cannot be done with outskirts, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is getting in on the action. NASA’s Florida assets, too. Could the federal government not Thanks to the work NASA has already done at the site, Kennedy hand Kennedy over to an independent authority? Could it not boasts an enviable infrastructure base that is just yearning to be use an enhanced-use lease to transfer power to the major stake- used, and thanks to a dramatic increase in attention to space’s holders? At the very least, could Congress not move from owner commercial possibilities, it looks as if it will be. “That will be a to regulator? After all, the site already is playing host to a variety satellite-production facility,” I am told as we enter a construction of experiments. The launch I have come to Florida to watch is site near the main gate. “Once the delivery mechanisms are being run directly by NASA. But the Atlas V rocket NASA is cheap enough, the demand is going to explode.” using was built by ULA, a joint project of Boeing and Lockheed It’s not just rockets. Like so much else at Kennedy, the Shuttle Martin, and its launchpad and maintenance buildings are owned Landing Facility, a 17,000-by-400-foot super-runway that used by the state of Florida and leased to all comers. In addition, to host Shuttle landings but now lies mostly dormant, is being Kennedy has just put in a new launchpad, 39C, which was specif- revamped. “There are a lot of potential clients for an asset such ically intended to encourage startup companies that work with as this,” says Jimmy Moffitt, the airfield manager. “But only small-class payloads. How difficult would it be, one wonders, to once some changes have been made.” privatize the whole thing? Those changes will include the construction of a taxiway, the Many in Florida are hoping that the answer is “Not very.” installation of an airside ramp, and the introduction of a suite of Last year, much to the state’s horror, an impatient Elon Musk hangars. At present, the strip has a few unconventional clients: moved some of his operations to a private site in Brownsville, NASCAR and Corvette have used it for the straight-line testing Texas, where, freed from the clutches of both NASA and the of supercars; MoonExpress has set up rocks at one end, to see Air Force, he will be able to limit his interactions with the gov- how well robots can avoid debris; and both Virgin Atlantic and ernment and to plan his operations without jostling for permis- Zero Gravity Corp. have made ample use of the runway. But, if sion. Because the land in Texas is privately owned, SpaceX business is to boom, the facility will need to be adapted more needs only FAA approval come launch time. And, because it is

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An Atlas V rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, September 8, 2016.

sharing the site with nobody else, SpaceX’s engineers can set n the evening, I return to Kennedy to watch the launch of their schedules without reference to their competitors. For Osiris Rex, a nASA-funded, ULA-fulfilled mission to an Kennedy, which has been the center of America’s space pro- asteroid named “Bennu.” I am, in truth, a little nervous. gram for six decades, Musk’s move has been both a wake-up IIn 1987, while on vacation in Florida, my family obtained call and a reminder that, with Texas, California, and Georgia tickets to a launch of the Space Shuttle, only to see bad all hoping to join the fray, the future of Florida’s space industry weather render them void. To us, the cancellation had been inex- is by no means guaranteed. plicable; how were those perfect skies “inclement”? But they Ensuring that others do not follow Musk out of the state is a were, and nASA postponed the launch until after we’d left the priority for Florida’s government. In 2006, the state legislature area. I was crushed. set up a special economic-development agency, Space Florida, Happily, lightning does not strike twice. An hour or so before and tasked it with attracting investment and encouraging pri- zero-hour, a classic-sounding voice begins a desultory count- vate partnerships. Under the group’s leadership, the Shuttle down over the loudspeakers (“T minus fifty-nine minutes,” and Landing Facility is being transformed; the Kennedy Space all that); gradually, the viewing area on the waterfront fills up Center has diversified away from just launches a nd into man- with cameras and enthusiasts; and then, after an eerie silence and ufacturing; and Florida’s movers and shakers have taken steps some nervous mumbling, it happens. to ensure that the federal government is one of its customers We hear it before we see it. At first, a throat clearing: distant, rather than its only customer. thin, unsure. Then, the bass. And, finally, the lion’s roar. Cheers, For Dale Ketcham, Space Florida’s chief of strategic whoops, hollers, and . . . there it was, flanked by a bed of smoke, alliances, these initiatives are not a departure so much as an rising slowly above the tree line. Twenty-nine years later, I have evolution. “As a child I used to play on Cocoa Beach,” he tells finally seen a launch. me as we drive around the site. “In one photo of me, you can As I walk back to my car, a rebellious thought pops into my s ee John Glenn in the background.” Ketcham has seen it all: head: Will my son appreciate this as much as I did? And, more the launch of Apollo 11, the Challenger explosion, the early important, should he? Much of the excitement of what I have years, when nothing seemed to work. “The landing on the just seen derives from its scarcity. But what will happen when moon was my childhood,” he says. “Only the federal gov- rocket launches are quotidian affairs? In the 1950s, my father ernment could do that. My career since has been participat- used to stand and watch the planes take off from Singapore ing in the nASA transition to more of an operations model, airport. Today, nobody would bother. When I, too, am old and NASA VIA GETTY IMAGES

/ the merits of which are debatable. Fortunately, I’ll end my gray, will I look at my children knowingly and tell them that career being a part of the commercialization of the space before the market took over, before the prices dropped, and marketplace. I can be proud, take comfort, and feel excited before every other star was a satellite making its rounds, “I was JOEL KOWSKY about that future.” there,” and it was magnificent?

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

narratives” now unfolding in parts Realm, lending context and nuance of northern Rome. to events now unfolding . . . Outreach efforts in schools and temples designed to welcome new visitors from the north are ongoing The Vienna Times Diplomat, but currently underfunded by the September 28, 1529: From the Republican-controlled Senate, which Newspaper Archives includes many senators who repre- . . . colorful banners, exotic sent rural and more traditionally music, and the tantalizing smell of “Roman” regions, and who have roasting lamb and doner kebabs. The Roman Citizen & Chronicle, veered closer and closer to a xeno- The scene outside the gates of August 26, 410: phobic and racist outlook. Many in Vienna was a delightfully chaotic fact still use the term “Roman array—more like a church fair or . . . unclear at this time who, Empire,” which has been criticized feast day than what some Viennese exactly, is conducting a long-term by progressive groups for its racist conservatives are calling, with scant interaction with the people of and privileged . . . evidence, a “siege.” Rome. Some local politicians have Suleiman the Magnificent used the work “sack” to describe reposed in splendor, enjoying the the series of spirited encounters be - The Hastings Advertiser, October dates and sweets from his homeland tween Roman citizens and the 16, 1066: to the east. “I’m a peaceful person,” undocumented visitors from the he murmured recently to a journal- northern regions who have arrived . . . learning about the diversity ist. “I really have no particular issue within the borders of traditional and culture from across the with the people of Vienna. I merely “Rome,” but it’s impossible at this Channel, such as the multitude of ask that they subjugate themselves early juncture to define either sauces and ways to prepare egg- to the Ottoman crown and either their motive or their specific eth- based dishes. convert to the True Faith of Islam or nic makeup. Already, citizens of Hastings and pay a tax. Or, you know, other stuff. Alaric the Visigoth quickly its surrounding areas are rolling But let’s keep this upbeat.” claimed responsibility for the their “r”s and taking a bit more Indeed, experts and religious series of attacks early yesterday pride in their appearance and their scholars echo Suleiman the Magnifi - morning but has so far offered little home décor. This “invasion”—a cent’s interpretation of his faith, and in the way of proof that he and his complicated word that can mean military strategists suggest that the “Goths” are behind the loosely many things, depending on the “siege of Vienna”—as it is already organized collection of lone-wolf- racial and ethnic makeup of the being called in the populist press— style operations. Local officials speaker—has been more like a is nothing more than a state visit and experts have called for more “merger” of two cultures, both accompanied by flaming catapults. investigation into the root causes of finding a balance after an uneasy “The important thing here,” said these disturbances, noting espe- and fraught relationship. Geerst Trondleheim, lecturer in cially the complicated and hard- For his part, William the Con - Cultures and Diversity at the Uni - to-navigate Roman citizenship queror—and while he and his team versity of Vienna, “is to remember rules that have created such a acknowledge the aggressive nuance that it’s okay for foreign visitors to powerful backlash to the north, of that honorific, they quickly point camp out by the city gates. The wall and religious scholars maintain out that in their native language we built was, in many ways, a racist that Alaric and his army are fol- of French, the word has a more act, an ‘othering,’ if you will, and this lowers of what is essentially a romantic, even erotic, connota- is the natural response to that. Let’s peaceful religion that worships a tion—has made it clear that his cul- not overreact. I, for one, would like to deity who appears as a fire- ture doesn’t permit the subjugation hear the voices and perspectives that breathing dragon wearing a neck- of another. And while it’s unclear Suleiman the Magnificent would like lace of human skulls. right now whether the French army to share with us.” Some have suggested that the intends to stay, the sheer number of It is not clear whether Herr Roman warlike “culture”—which rapes and maraudings taking place Trondleheim’s head was one of has made powerful weaponry such suggests that it does. those spotted on pikes surrounding as spears, javelins, maces, and even It should be remembered that King the Ottoman camp, but his delega- assault axes readily available to Harold and his forces have also taken tion to the visitors was greeted with anyone with enough coin—is ulti- part in invasions and rapes during a noisy and affectionate volley of mately responsible for the “clash of his rocky tenure as King of the arrows and . . .

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Crass Couture

ONALD TRUMP will be the first president to has been known to don the New York–favorite tourist tee use a four-letter word in a press conference. [Bleep] You, You [Bleeping Bleep]. Ten years later, we will look back on his D tenure as an era of refinement and elegance That’s directed at tourists? Apparently a real New because he said “Excuse my French” after he dropped the Yorker looks at that and thinks, You can’t possibly be effenheimer. Trump’s critics on the left will find his can- talking about me. But if you are, [Bleep] you, you [bleep- dor refreshing, though: At least he’s acting like everyone ing bleep]. else. C’mon. Everyone swears. Does the pope swear in A cultural face-plant in the mud wouldn’t be complete the woods if he hits his finger with a hammer? Sure. without someone to describe the pratfall as if it were a Why is the pope in the woods with a hammer? ballet maneuver. And so: That’s a stupid effin’ question. It’s a figure of effin’ speech. Ya eff. A sweater by Lingua Franca that reads Party and [Bee-Ess] . . . best represents the current craze: the dichotomy between Ah, you think: Right, of course. New York values. the vulgarity of the words and the preciousness of the The celebration of crude, inarticulate people as champi- medium. “It’s a cashmere sweater with a ’90s rap lyric. It’s ons of honesty and refreshing directness. None of that that duality that makes it interesting,” says [Vogue fashion- Dreadfully sorry old chap, would you mind if I could news editor Alessandra] Codinha. squeeze through and get off the elevator? Awfully, deucedly kind of you, my good man Bee-ess. Think what Picture an abandoned building in Detroit or the hollowed- you say, that’s the ticket, and what we’re all thinking out shell of a Lower East Side tenement. Two old men sit these days is Eff to the Power of Ten + You. Right? around a fire in a trash can, grilling rats. Wrong. To people raised in polite societies, the brigade “You know what I miss about the good times?” one of Truthful Cursers just look like uncultured boors who says. “It’s not the food or the ready availability of med- rely on a vocabulary of six words to express the rich ical care. It’s the interesting dualities.” panoply of human effin’ emotion. But at least they “Roger that, Slim,” says the other. “I remember when wouldn’t use those words in front of their mothers—or so a fella had a reasonable expectation he’d see a provoca- you hope. Even the most unrepentant slopmouth knows tive juxtaposition between the material of a sweater and there’s a time and a place. You don’t scream obscenities the sentiment expressed upon it. I’d give anything for at little children. You don’t curse like a meth-addled those days again.” sailor with Tourette’s at a nun. There are still a few stan- No, that probably won’t happen. The only people inter- dards, tattered and thin as they might be at this late date. ested in a duality that superimposes a moronic “lyric” upon Well, Vogue.com has a question for you: “Would You a high-end fabric are the people whose job consists of judg- Try Fall’s Most Intentionally Offensive Trend?” In previ- ing photographs of skeletons marching down a catwalk ous eras this might mean a checked blouse with striped wearing outfits made of chicken bones and bicycle chains. pants, or white after Labor Day. But in an era when fash- The next step will be toddlers’ sizes, and the edgy par- ion models walk down the runway wearing $9,000 outfits ent will dress his kids in shirts that say “I don’t give a that consist of trash bags held together with duct tape, [bleep]! Oh wait I just did.” And it’ll be so New York, ugliness can’t be the offense. No, it’s naughty words. On so un-bourgeois. The certainty that someone in a less the shirts! For everyone to see! Isn’t that delightful? important city—you know, all the other ones out there— “The latest trend,” says the website, “is for clothes that would be offended is what makes it so delicious. [Bleep] are loud and proud: Take the Vetements Fall 2016 show, you, you [bleeping bleep]—that’s the mark of a sophis- where a model wore a clean and crisp white shirt with ticated culture. You [Effin’] [Excremental Aperture] printed on the front.” At some point, as noted, President Trump will slip dur- Yes, that’s something you’re supposed to display to ing a press conference and say he doesn’t give a bleep, strangers as you walk down the street. Quite the inversion or the terrorists have messed with the wrong bleeping of Will Rogers’s remark that a stranger is a friend you people, and there will be a great squee among the clever: haven’t met yet. We continue: The word has been spoken by a president, and thus is finally legitimate. They’ll have to come up with a new Vetements isn’t the only label parading its bad attitude. For one to express their edginess. Something just as blunt and Fall 2016, Alyx showed a black shirt that read [That Very immediately recognizable, something with the same one- Bad Word] You in crooked bored-in-class scribble colored syllable punch that can also be conjugated. in with shocks of highlighter yellow, sky blue, and fire- I say this to anyone planning a time-travel trip into the engine red. . . . Lotta Volkova wears a shirt that is embla- zoned with Barbie Is a Slut, while the model Valter Törsleff future: If you land in New York in 2116 and hear people saying Trump you, you Trumpin’ Trump—well, now you Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. know why.

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not a totem, and I bet he appreciates events, are horrible enough. Whitehead Freedom being treated as such. has one matter-of-fact statement that is This novel, The Underground Rail - a real stunner: “Lucy and Titania never road, is touched with greatness. It is also spoke, the former because she chose Trails touched with okayness. It is an uneven not to, and the latter because her book, with marvelous passages and un- tongue had been hacked out by a previ- JAY NORDLINGER marvelous ones. There are home runs ous owner.” and whiffs. I think of musicians who are I was stopped by another sentence brilliant one night and off the next. too—one that explains that two dogs Other musicians are neither brilliant nor “had been beloved by all, man and nig- off, ever. ger alike, even if they couldn’t keep Whitehead’s book is most successful away from the chickens.” In my ear, this when it tells its story. It is least suc- echoes Twain (“We blowed out a cessful, I think, when it teaches and cylinder-head.” “Good gracious! any- preaches—like a social-studies teacher, body hurt?” “No’m. Killed a nigger.” being sure that you recognize America’s “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes massive sins. Also, I think some of people do get hurt”). Whitehead’s moral and historical judg- On the plantation, there is non-stop ments are wrong. But I remember that sadism. One day, white people assemble it’s his book, not mine or yours. for a picnic. The entertainment, to The Underground Railroad , by Colson The Underground Railroad is the accompany their eating, is the sight of a Whitehead (Doubleday, 320 pp., $26.95) story of a young woman, a slave named black man being tortured to death. Cora, who runs away from a plantation Ultimately, he is doused with oil and OLSON WHITEHEAD is an in Georgia. The story begins with her roasted. Whitehead writes, “The south- American novelist, born in grandmother, Ajarry, who has been ern white man was spat from the loins of 1969. He is one of the most snatched from Africa. “Two yellow- the devil and there was no way to fore- praised and honored writ- haired sailors rowed Ajarry out to the cast his next evil act.” ersC in the country. He has won a ship, humming. White skin like bone.” In due course, Cora makes a run for it, Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Before long, her captors rape her. She together with a fellow slave. For a while, “genius grant,” etc. His latest novel twice tries to kill herself, “once by the novel becomes a thriller. The run- has been hailed in the Boston Globe as denying herself food and then again aways are chased by the evilest slave- a “fully realized masterpiece.” Presi - by drowning.” catcher of all, Ridgeway, who, to add dent Obama announced that it was on Telling his story of slavery, White- insult to injury, has a philosophy: “the his reading list. Oprah Winfrey picked head uses the language of the time, and American Imperative.” It is the American it for her book club—which can mean it can take some getting used to: “buck,” Imperative, he says, to kill, steal, en - a bonanza. “pickaninny,” and, of course, the worst slave, and destroy. (I never thought Al Franken was word of all, “nigger.” Children in slav- By the way, the Underground Rail - funny, before or after he was elected to ery are relatively carefree, for a short road, in The Underground Railroad, is the Senate, but I did smile on reading time. Then they have the joy ground out not a metaphor. It is literal: a network of about the dedication of one of his books: of them, as Whitehead says. “One day a subterranean tracks, complete with “For Oprah.”) pickaninny was happy and the next the choo-choos, engineers, and so forth. The New York Times published a light was gone from them; in between There is such fancy in this novel (a lengthy excerpt of Whitehead’s novel. they had been introduced to a new reality novel being a good place for fancy). And reviewers’ copies came with an of bondage.” (Whitehead uses pronouns In South Carolina, the runaways extraordinary letter, serving as the very in a modern fashion.) have a respite, doing honorable work first page of the book. The letter was Let me give you one of the most beau- am ong decent white people—or decent- from the editor-in-chief of Doubleday, tiful, and striking, sentences in the seeming. Actually, the whites are sub- who spoke of the book in near-historic whole book. It’s about a freedwoman jecting blacks to eugenics—well terms. “To bring novels like this into the who “was meticulous in her posture, a before Mar garet Sanger. They are also world is the reason we all chose this walking spear, in the manner of those injecting them with syphilis—well be - maddening profession.” who’d been made to bend and will bend fore the Tuskegee Experiment. Colson Whitehead is a beloved no more.” It is in South Carolina, I think, that the African-American writer who has now In slavery stories, I find, as in Holo - narrative grinds to a halt, or at least penned a sweeping novel of slavery. He caust and other stories, all you need to slows considerably. The author takes to is, in a sense, beyond criticism: a Mor - do is tell it—without gilding the lily. teaching and preaching. He is the gan Freeman of letters. Yet he is a man, The subject matter, and the attendant social-studies teacher, with one didactic

3 8 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 1 0 , 2 0 1 6 books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/20/2016 1:44 PM Page 39

paragraph after another. The evil that exist, if there is any justice in the world, Ameri cans did to the Red Man, for for its foundations are murder, theft, Currency example. (In point of fact, some evil ran and cruelty. Yet here we are.” both ways.) Can’t Whitehead assume In the closing two pages, there is a that people know this? I was reminded suggestion of the parable of the Good Disunion of the sitcoms I grew up on in the 1970s Samaritan. Cora is by the side of the ANDREW STUTTAFORD and ’80s, not all of them produced by road, badly in need of help. A white cou- Norman Lear: always making sure that ple passes her by (like the priest in the social points were driven home, in parable). Then comes a young man with purse-lipped ways. red hair and blue eyes. He asks (unlike As a rule, teaching in a novel should the Levite) whether the stranger needs be accidental, I think, not bluntly striv- help. She shakes her head no, and he en for. moves on. Finally comes the Samaritan, Whitehead depicts black people strung so to speak: “an older negro man,” whose up in trees, for miles and miles, as far eyes are kind. as the eye can see. He dubs this “the I think back to the opening chapters Freedom Trail”—thus pouring irony on slavery—the capture of Ajarry, and scorn on the real Freedom Trail, that Cora’s grandmother; Cora’s life on the path in Boston which leads a traveler Georgia plantation. One effect they had The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the past hallowed Revolutionary sites. on me was to make me wonder, What Future of Europe, by Joseph E. Stiglitz In North Carolina, an Irish maid rats would I do, if I were enslaved? How (Norton, 416 pp., $28.95) out her employers, Martin and Ethel, much would I comply? How much MAGINING that a large number of very different economies could be What would I do, if I were enslaved? squeezed into a single poorly con- structed currency was one fatal How much would I comply? How Iconceit. Imagining that the story of what happened next could be squeezed into one much would I rebel? rigid “narrative” was another—but that’s what economist Joseph Stiglitz has done who have been harboring a fugitive would I rebel? How much would I risk? in The Euro, a badly flawed book about a slave (Cora). In explanation, she tells Would I run? No one can know the disastrous idea. her friends, “A girl’s got to look after her answers, I think. We are lucky enough Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and a Co - interests if she’s going to get ahead in not to be slaves. lumbia professor, has been crusading for this country.” Is that the maid talking or To Whitehead’s style, or modus years now against the wickedness of Whitehead? I think Whitehead, really, operandi, I had this objection: Mo - “neoliberalism,” a term that, like “late more than his character. mentous events happen too abruptly, capitalism,” says more about the person Earlier, I spoke of moral judgments— even nonchalantly. The discovery of a using it than about what it purports to and my disagreement with the author. long-hidden fugitive, for example. It’s describe. Check out the titles of some of He mocks Ethel for her girlhood desire wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. We need his more recent books: “The Great to serve as a missionary in Africa. Fair a little . . . space, somehow. Divide: Unequal Societies and What We enough. Whitehead uses religion as a Also, you know how, in horror movies Can Do about Them,” “The Price of foil in this book. Again, fair enough. But and other movies, the good guys leave Inequality,” “Freefall: America, Free he mocks the woman after she has been the bad guy alive, instead of killing him Markets, and the Sinking of the World lynched—stoned to death—by a white off when they have the chance? And Economy.” The Euro is the latest install- mob. Is the mocking really necessary, at you’re screaming, “Don’t leave him ment in a long leftist tirade. this point? In the margin of the page, I alive, he’ll come back!”? The same kind Stiglitz has valuable points to make on wrote, “Heartless.” of thing is liable to happen in novels. the EU’s dangerous monetary experiment, Worse, Whitehead equates the white The calamitous return of the un-killed- but it’s easy to lose sight of them amid all man who wants to rape the slave with off bad guy is a cliché. the pages devoted to his insistence that the the white man who wants to help her— I have spoken of one dragging part devastation caused by the single currency because they both act from selfish pur- of The Underground Railroad, and is another example of the havoc that “mar- poses, wanting satisfaction. there are others. But, on the whole, the ket fundamentalism” has wrought. This book has a point of view, may - book kept me turning pages. I wanted to Yet the euro was, at its core, an exercise be even an agenda: America the misbe- find out what happened next. I turned in central planning. Stiglitz concedes that gotten and irredeemable. The country fast, straight through to the end. This it was a “political project” to accelerate was built by slaves, with no one else may seem like faint praise, especially the process of European integration. But contributing a lick. A hero of the in light of the treatment that this novel more than that, it was to be a challenge to book—probably a spokesman for the has been accorded. But it is not. Not in the supremacy of the dollar and a perma- author—says, “This nation shouldn’t my book. nent brake on the unruliness of foreign-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

exchange markets, ambitions far removed to defend, and the latter was, in some discusses the fact that Germany shaped from market fundamentalism. Indeed, cases at least, overdone, poorly timed, or the ECB but fails to give enough weight one of the earlier critics of the proposed both: There’s a limit to the extent to which to the democratic concerns that help ex - new currency was Milton Friedman, not a country can be expected to deflate its plain why. that Stiglitz finds the room—or the way to recovery. But to attribute—as In any event, those promises were bro- grace—to mention it. Stiglitz does—the tough love shown by ken, and not just by a series of bailouts. Stiglitz questions the economic ratio- the “Troika” (the European Central Bank Whether by effectively permitting local nale behind the euro (arguing, intrigu- or ECB, the European Commission, and central banks to “print” new euros, or by ingly, that, contrary to the claims of its the International Monetary Fund) respon- allowing unpaid balances to mount up in advocates, it was always likely to oper- sible for the euro zone’s bailouts to mar- its clearing system, or, belatedly (Stiglitz ate against convergence within the bloc) ket fundamentalism is, to put it at its would argue), by a series of increasingly and the way that it was put together: kindest, a misreading. What drove it was elaborate market operations culminating The structures needed to make it work the complex internal politics of the cur- in the European version of “quantitative properly weren’t there. Yet his list of rency union. easing,” the ECB has turned out to be far those responsible for the inevitable cri- Stiglitz rightly highlights the difficulty less stingy a central bank than German sis is tellingly incomplete. To be sure, he of reconciling the management of the voters had been led to believe it would be. acknowledges the important (and often single currency and basic democratic Stiglitz does not seem too bothered by overlooked) fact that individual govern- principle. As he notes, voters in the euro this: Some democratic failures are evi- ments could—even within the constraints zone’s laggards were offered no serious dently more equal than others. He is (legit- of the euro zone—have done more to alternative to the harsh and sometimes imately) angry about the way that the head off disaster than conventional wis- questionable treatment prescribed for Troika forced out the socialist Greek pre- dom now suggests, but, for the most part, their countries. Beyond that essential but mier George Papandreou (his “long-term he blames the Left’s preferred bogeymen, unremarkable insight, he touches on a friend”), but he has nothing to say about While there were undoubtedly areas in which regulation was too lax, the greater problem was that regulators were nudging financiers in wrong directions. greedy bubble-blowing bankers and their broader, somewhat neglected issue: what the not-dissimilar putsch that replaced accomplice, light-touch regulation. it means when a democracy transfers the a less ideologically sympathetic figure, But while there were undoubtedly oversight of key areas of the economy Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, areas in which regulation was too lax, the from the legislature to technocrats and, with an unelected, obedient proconsul. greater problem was that regulators were specifically, to “independent” central Then again, this is the Stiglitz who nudging financiers in wrong directions, banks such as the ECB, a practice Stiglitz claims that the objectives of European whether it was toward real-estate-linked attributes to the then (supposedly) pre- integration included “strengthening lending or into the belief that Greek sov- vailing “neo liberal ascendancy.” democracy”—a revealing interpretation ereign risk was not that much greater than That’s a debatable proposition to start of a project born of the notion that German. In the early years of the euro, with and it has next to nothing to do with Europe’s voters could not be trusted to Greece had to pay (on average) less than the independence of the ECB, which keep the peace. The idea behind what 0.3 percent more to borrow than Ger - echoes (as Stiglitz recognizes) the tradi- became the EU was that power should be many. That was nuts, but those steering tions of the Bundesbank (Buba), Ger - transferred away from democratic nation- the euro zone had persuaded themselves many’s legendary central bank. Far from states to a supranational authority staffed that the economies of the countries now being the product of late-20th-century by largely unaccountable technocrats. locked into the currency union had truly neoliberalism, Buba’s independence— And over the decades, it was, often by converged. They hadn’t. And, crucially, and its inflation-fighting mandate—date the sleight of hand made necessary by the warning signals that would have back to its origins in a ruined country European electorates’ stubborn suspi- been sent by the currency markets of that believed it knew where debauching cion of Brussels’ relentless drive toward old—a drachma crash, say—had been a currency could lead. ever closer union. silenced. Ideology trumped reality, poli- Without Germany, there would have But a new currency was not something tics trumped markets, and the result was been no euro. But, proud of their that could be introduced on the sly. People catastrophe. There’s a lesson in that, but Deutschmark, German voters didn’t want would notice. To a greater or lesser de - Stiglitz doesn’t appear to see it. to switch to a new currency. Sadly, they gree, the inhabitants of the future euro Stiglitz is on safer ground criticizing were never given the chance to reject it, zone would have to consent to such a the steps, from bullying the Irish govern- but assurances from their government that change, and to a greater or lesser degree ment to assume private bank debt to the the ECB would, for all practical purpos- they did. But they were not prepared to indiscriminate emphasis on “austerity,” es, be a Buba 2.0 were part of a package surrender enough sovereignty to give the taken by the euro zone’s leadership after of promises (no bailouts was another) euro a better chance of success. As much the crisis erupted. The former is very hard designed to soothe their unease. Stiglitz as Stiglitz might wish otherwise, that

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

hasn’t changed. If there is to be any real- And with that, I drove to a store, bought istic prospect of keeping the current euro A Literal a pacifier, and immediately helped calm zone intact while restoring prosperity to my distraught son. its weaker brethren, it will, one way or I thought about that incident while another, involve a pooling of resources, Nanny State reading No Child Left Alone, by Weekly but the richer countries won’t agree to that Standard and Reason writer Abby on terms that the poorer could accept. DAVID FRENCH Schachter. The book is about the un- This impasse owes nothing to market holy alliance between government nan- fundamentalism and a great deal to the nies and private busybodies who are absence of a shared identity: Germans are regulating and sometimes criminaliz- Germans, Greeks are Greeks; neither are ing the discretion out of parenting—all Eurozonian. They lack the needed sense for the “good of the children.” of mutual obligation. Those whose kids are grown—or Stiglitz maintains that if the euro zone’s who opt out of government schools— members won’t agree to a more compre- can miss the staggering array of regu- hensive monetary union, big trouble lies lations that govern everything from ahead, threatening not only the euro but, how children nap at private daycares to maybe, the broader European project. I’m the kinds of food properly served at not convinced: “Muddling through” with school. Taken together, the government what Stiglitz labels a blend of “temporary is increasingly implementing a one- palliatives” as well as some “justly cele- No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out size-fits-all model of child-rearing— brated” deeper reforms has kept the cur- of Parenting, by Abby W. Schachter in which every baby is breast-fed, no rency going so far, albeit at a terrible cost. (Encounter, 280 pp., $25.99) one hurts his feelings (or his body) on It could continue to do so for quite a the playground, and each person is while yet. And, despite the best efforts of Y son was born in De - appropriately slim after eating state- the rebellious Brits, the EU seems set to cember 2000 at Cayuga approved meals. endure too. Medical Center in upstate The governing model is risk-avoidance It’s worth adding that Stiglitz’s defini- New York. Immediately, taken to an absurd extreme. Schachter tion of that more comprehensive monetary thereM were complications. He was a effectively lays out how government union begins, understandably enough, with month premature, his lungs collapsed, and regulators intervene when they imagine a credible “banking union,” debt mutual- he was quickly diagnosed with pneumo- that something bad might happen (in ization, and the like, but then spills over nia. A joyous day had turned immediately the absence of any evidence of harm) or into a vision of a command-and-control into one of the most stomach-churning when the risk of danger is so absurdly euro zone that—if that is what is really experiences of my life. low that the act of, say, driving your required to make the currency union work For days we watched him, held him child to the grocery store is grossly well—is another good argument for as best we could, and prayed fervently irresponsible by comparison. putting a stake through it once and for all. as he panted for air. When he wasn’t Even when there is a problem—for A different way to go could, reckons panting, he was crying and whimper- example, childhood obesity—you can Stiglitz, be the creation of a system under ing. Because of all the wires and tubes count on the government to respond with which euro-zone countries (or groups of attached to him, it was hard to hold him, one-size-fits-all nonsense. Children are countries) adopt “flexible euros” that trade and nothing seemed to comfort him— different, yet the government responds against each other within a (much) more except when we were able to bottle- with uniformity. Some parents are in deed tightly managed version of Europe’s ear- feed the breast milk that my wife was terrible, but foster families can be worse. lier exchange-rate regimes. He also puts faithfully (and painfully) pumping. And the entire effort is shot through with forward yet another solution, some form In the midst of this misery, I asked dubious science and classic governmen- of “amicable divorce”: Either Germany one of the nurses for a pacifier—hop- tal favor-trading (are milk portions best (alone or in conjunction with other north- ing that that would bring my son some for kids, or best for the dairy industry?). ern European countries) should quit the contentment and relief. Owing to the sur- Fighting against the overreach are a euro zone, or the currency should be prise circumstances of the early labor, small group of activists Schachter calls divided into new euros—northern and we hadn’t gone to the hospital with the “Captain Mommy” or “Captain Daddy.” southern, a division that has, in my view, bag we’d prepared, there were no paci- These are the free-range moms—the long been the right way to go. What unites fiers in the hospital gift shop, and we’d people who grant their children more these alternatives is the welcome recogni- hoped the nurses could help. freedom to walk to school, to play tion that one size does not fit all: A curren- One of the nurses looked at me like alone, or to take the train; the people cy must reflect the realities of its home I’d asked to give our son a shot of Jack who (gasp!) dare to question breast- economy. Tragically, there’s no sign that Daniel’s, to “take the edge off.” Her feeding mandates; the parents who the central planners in Paris, Brussels, reply was cold: “At this hospital, we actually don’t mind if their kids play Frankfurt, Paris, and Berlin agree. After discourage ‘nipple confusion.’” My hard at the playground. all, they tell us, the euro-zone crisis is over. response was indignant: “Well, in my Many of these parents were drafted We’ll see. family, we practice nipple diversity!” into the fight when the state came calling

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after they used the same parenting tech- when children get truly, morbidly obese, son watched the “rough” way I was niques their parents had used. Con - does the potential physical benefit of playing with our youngest child. (I was ventional wisdom in one generation forced relocation outweigh the terrible in the pool with her, tossing her in the becomes criminality in the next. In one psychological costs of family separa- air to make a big splash when she came of the book’s more effective passages, tion, especially when the parents aren’t down.) My daughter was laughing and Schachter shares how expectations for trying to hurt their kid? When kids are having a great time, but it didn’t matter six-year-olds have changed. In 1979, so thoroughly protected from risk, do to the neighborhood busybody. She readiness for first grade included being they pay an emotional price later when “could” hit her head. She “could” get able to “travel alone in the neighbor- they find that the world isn’t as “safe” hurt. So this woman approached my hood (four to eight blocks) to store, as they’d hoped? wife and threatened to call Child Pro - school, playground, or a friend’s home.” Moreover, are legal sanctions truly tective Services. Now, sending a child that age alone to the most effective method of control- It was a chilling moment. The life- school is enough to bring the police to ling misbehavior? After all, the law is guards immediately vouched for me, your door. not the only check on wrongdoing, and for which I’m thankful, and we defused Given the multiplicity of regula- relying on legal-compliance check lists tensions. But other families are not so tions, it’s clear to me now that my as a stand-in for effective caregiving fortunate. Stray but a little from the

Given the multiplicity of regulations, it’s clear to me now that my happy childhood was a veritable hellscape.

happy childhood was a veritable is shallow indeed. Peers and families new norms of childhood fun, and the hellscape. I ran by myself almost a half can and do intervene all the time to government is one phone call away. mile from my house to play (unsuper- protect children, and the state should After all, risk is terrible. Something bad vised!) by a local sinkhole while older remain only the protector of last might happen, and we can’t be too care- kids circled us riding go-karts at un - resort, the entity that intervenes not ful with our nation’s most precious healthy speeds. At school, I engaged because it knows best but because it’s young re source, can we? in disturbing, violent behavior by saving lives. Read Schachter and you’ll realize repeatedly fighting off the imaginary Schachter effectively conveys how that we can, indeed, be too careful. In Nazis at Bastogne with my brave the state child-welfare bureaucracy is taking such extreme care, we impose friends. At home, I faced indescribable vast and largely unaccountable, with unacceptable costs on parents, and we risks as I let myself in the house before virtually any parent one misinterpreted weaken our children. Our kids are my parents came home and then moment away from a legal nightmare. tough enough to endure dodgeball. It brought my chess set onto the front I’m reminded of a recent visit to our turns out that bubble wrap may well porch to match wits with my latch-key neighborhood pool, where another per- hurt them more. neighbor. My goodness, anything could have happened. It’s a curious reality (one perhaps under-explored in the book) that par- ents of my generation (and older) are SOME ANGELS exactly the people who’ve rejected that same freedom and are even now impos- Lying on their backs, looking up at the sky, ing new standards that would have ren- The boys have made angels in the snow. dered their own parents neglectful Eyes to heaven, with heaven looking down, criminals. My generation is wrapping They wave their arms like wings, while seraphs their kids in emotional and physical In the clouds bless them with their winged arms. bubble wrap. I found my childhood free - The shapes they leave behind are lovely. dom exhilarating. Was it secretly terrify- But more wonderful still are the footprints ing for my peers? I saw on the blue hill at twilight. To her credit, Schachter doesn’t advocate replacing a misguided gov- A brief trail of delicate fairy shoes ernment’s futile attempts at utopia with Started out of nowhere in the field her own, more libertarian version of And ended a stone’s-throw distant, maybe perfection. She recognizes that terrible Left by one who longed to feel the earth parents can do grave harm, but she’s Once more beneath his feet and touched down sensible enough to know that bad facts Briefly before starlight called him home. can make bad law and that the cure can be worse than the disease. For example, —DANIEL MARK EPSTEIN

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

rorism, in a genre that today clogs the hundred years. Several authors landed on Dawn of the bestseller lists with titles by the likes of the list twice, and six, including William Daniel Silva and Brad Thor. Although Faulkner, James Joyce, and Evelyn The Secret Agent focuses on the ideas Waugh, accounted for three entries. Only Terror Era and activities of anarchists and says Conrad made it four times, for Heart of nothing at all about Islam or Muslims, Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), JOHN J. MILLER fascination with it has surged in our new Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent age of violent extremism, as readers look (1907). That’s a pretty good run for a chap HEN Martial Bourdin for literature that might help explain the who spoke English as a third language. moved through the streets madness of the modern world—and its Critics often call Conrad a conserva- of London on February 15, story reached American televisions in tive, and Russell Kirk once placed him on 1894, he planned to strike September, when Acorn TV began str eam- a list of “ten exemplary conservatives” Wa blow against the order of the world—or ing a BBC production that debuted in the who shaped his own thinking. As Kirk so it would seem, judging from his deci- United Kingdom earlier this year. well knew, forcing today’s political labels sion to bomb the Royal Observatory in Joseph Conrad was a remarkable man: onto figures from the past is a tricky busi- Greenwich Park. The truth is that no - Born of Polish ancestry under Russian rule ness. Yet he was clearly on to something body knows exactly what the 26-year- in what is now Ukraine, he worked for with Conrad, who throughout his books old Frenchman intended. Rather than French shipping companies and traveled demonstrated a conservative skepticism blowing up his apparent target, Bourdin the world aboard British steamers before of ideologies and their notions of “pro g - managed only to blow up himself. In - finally settling down in England, where he ress.” In The Secret Agent, he skewers vestigators collected his bone fragments became a literary giant. Today, Conrad is anarchists, authori tarians, and social- from a path that led to the famous hilltop perhaps best known for Heart of Dark - ists and also defends old-fashioned building, which was unharmed. ness, a sh ort novel about a riverboat jour- British liberalism, which believed in A dozen years later, Joseph Conrad ney up the Congo and an ivory trader political liberty, bourgeois values, and used the incident as an inspiration for his called Kurtz. (Francis Ford Coppola retold prudential statesmanship. Conrad even book The Secret Agent . Just as Bourdin it as a Vietnam War story in his 1979 invented a character who would be at had become the sole casualty in what may movie Apocalypse Now.) Toward the end home in Radical Chic, Tom Wolfe’s have been the first act of international ter- of the 20th century, the Modern Library 1970 send-up of rich liberals who try to rorism on British soil, Conrad wrote what polled its editorial board on the best cultivate a certain image by mixing with may:: be the first great novel: :: of global :: ter- : ::English-language : novels of the previous left-wing militants.

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Oddly, one of the book’s great fans is London. Much of the dialogue comes Ted Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist straight from Conrad’s pages, even as it known as the Unabomber. As he mur- compresses an important chapter into dered three people and maimed more just a few moments of screen time. In across nearly two decades, he used Con - the book, Vladimir says that the anar- rad’s name as a pseudonym and appar- chist terror “need not be especially san- ently read The Secret Agent over and guinary.” He adds that royalty and over. Even before his capture in 1996, religion no longer hold the public’s FBI agents were drawing connections esteem. “The sacrosanct fetish of today be tween Kaczynski’s views and those is science,” he says. “What do you think expressed by one of Conrad’s memo- of having a go at astronomy?” rable characters, known only by his Just as Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 nickname: “the Professor.” A frustrated hijackers attacked the World Trade scientist, the Professor always carries a Center because they saw it as an emblem bomb beneath his coat and a detonator of American capitalism, Vladimir offers in his hand and expresses contempt for the Royal Observatory as a symbol of just about everybody. Kaczynski must civilization—the source of the prime have been drawn to the Professor’s meridian, the standard reference point deadly rhetoric but also blind to Con - for maps and clocks everywhere. In rad’s satiric purpose. selecting this target, Conrad has several The Secret Agent tells the story of purposes. The first is to lampoon the act Adolf Verloc, a London shopkeeper who itself. In 1920, he described how he sells “shady wares” (i.e., pornography). came to write The Secret Agent and He lives with his much younger wife, recalled Bourdin’s 1894 mishap in Winnie, and her adult brother, Stevie, a Greenwich, calling it “a blood-stained gentle but confused soul who nowadays inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was probably would be diagnosed as autistic. impossible to fathom its origin by any Verloc also associates with a band of reasonable or even unreasonable process anarchists and informs upon their activ- of thought.” In the novel, however, Con- ities to Mr. Vladimir, an official at the rad also recognizes the rising power of Russian embassy. science and how its influence has started At the time Conrad wrote, the inter- to displace palaces and churches as Joseph Conrad national anarchist movement included sources of authority. Finally, of course, is peaceful strains embodied by the likes the simple fact that Vladimir doesn’t of Leo Tolstoy, but also became notori- really care about any of this: He just sonal cruelty. And although we may ous for its violence. In the United wants to sponsor an outrage that will never defeat this permanent feature of States, the lone-wolf anarchist Leon provoke a backlash against freedom, human nature, people everywhere have Czolgosz assassinated President Wil - much as civil libertarians say that the the power to prevent it within their liam McKinley in 1901. Meanwhile, political responses to 9/11, such as the small spheres. Russia’s czarist gov ern ment saw anar- Patriot Act, eroded American liberties. The BBC version of The Secret Agent chists as proto-Communists and sought The scholar Frederick R. Karl credited is a reasonably faithful adaptation. Its to suppress them. In The Secret Agent, Conrad with having invented “the major deviation involves a scene of tor- Vladimir, Moscow’s man in London, political detective novel.” In other ture that the writers probably added orders Verloc to become an agent provo- words, Conrad took the example of because they mistakenly thought that cateur who pushes the anarchists to Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock their show needed an extra helping of commit an act of terrorism that will give Holmes stories had found a massive 21st-century relevance. (“If you torture the public “a jolly good scare” and com- audience just a few years earlier, and him, he wins. We become him,” says pel the British government into a repres- seasoned it with political commentary. one character, in a line taken not from sive crackdown on political radicals and There is some truth to this, though it Conrad but from the earnest platitudes refugees. “This country is absurd with its would be wrong to regard The Secret of today’s hand-wringing liberals.) Yet sentimental regard for individual liberty,” Agent as merely a subspecies of the this is a small annoyance in a produc- he says. Then he proposes a bombing of whodunit. The book’s real mystery lies tion with plenty of strengths. Toby the Royal Observatory. not in its clever plotting but rather in its Jones plays Anton Verloc as a bum- This makes for one of the best scenes domestic drama—and especially in the bling, amoral manipulator, and Vicky COM

. in the BBC’s three-hour miniseries, as characters of Winnie and Stevie, who McClure as Winnie Verloc shows that Verloc—his first name switched to suffer dearly from Vladimir’s machina- good actresses can do great work even TUMBLR . “Anton,” possibly because “Adolf” is tions and Verloc’s choices. The main- in motionless silence.

HISTORY forever ruined—reports to his handler springs of evil, Conrad seems to say, Behind it all sits Conrad’s perceptive - Vladimir, who lays out the rationale for the are not foreign embassies or social and prophetic novel, written for his BRITISH attack as they ride through 19th-century forces but rather individual acts of per- times but with lessons for ours.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Unsullied

ROSS DOUTHAT

LINT EASTWOOD’S Sully is a movie with an interesting challenge: It’s a disaster movie about a disaster that Cwasn’t, with a central crisis that occu- pied just a few short minutes of real life and ended happily for everyone. East - wood is telling the story of US Airways Flight 1549 and its captain, Chesley Sullenberger, who coolly steered his plane into the Hudson River after a bird strike and landed smoothly enough on the frigid water that every passenger sur- vived. It’s a justly famous story—but is it story enough? The answer is: not quite enough to Aaron Eckhart and Tom Hanks in Sully make a good movie, but enough to make an often riveting one. Eastwood and his vindication so foregone, that this nar- frigid river. Then, finally, when Sully screenwriter fill in a story around the rative never becomes compelling or— gets his day in bureaucratic court, we water landing that raises questions about to anyone who lived through the real get the cockpit perspective, start to fin- Sully’s heroism and judgment. It turns out Sully’s apotheosis—particularly believ- ish, from the thumping shock of the that maybe he and his co-pilot (Aaron able. When the man of the hour goes birds to the final splashdown. Eckhart) could have made it safely fretfully through the dark streets of New All these angles are effective. We get back to LaGuardia or forged ahead to York City, or worries about whether he to imagine ourselves as passengers—lis- Teterboro, and that the Hudson splash- and his wife will be able to afford their tening to the flight attendants’ terrify- down was therefore a form of pilot error. mortgage payments after this, the scenes ingly synchronized bark of “Heads Or so argue a clutch of suits from the can’t quite escape the tug of uninten- down! Stay down!”—facing death for National Transportation Safety Board, tional comedy. an instant and then being delivered and who grill Sully in between appearances What the narrative does more suc- scrambling stunned onto the wing. We on Letterman and suggest that, while he cessfully, however, is provide a mecha- get to be amazed anew at the pilots’ very may have saved 155 passengers and crew, nism through which Eastwood can Eastwoodian sort of heroism: men of it was also his fault they were endan- visit, revisit, and re-revisit those fateful honor doing a hard job well. And we get gered in the first place. few minutes above and then beside to experience the almost-crash with Since Sully is played by Tom Hanks, Manhattan. And the chance to be re- New Yorkers who witnessed it firsthand, and since everyone knows that the real peatedly immersed in such a remarkable as the plane drifted past their towers and Sully was never anything but a hero, escape is what the Sully audience is there sank toward their river—watching hor- there isn’t a lot of suspense generated by for, and why the film is doing gang- ror trans formed into inspiration, tragedy this inquisition narrative (one that, the busters at the box office. Sully’s dark into the miraculous. NTSB insists, is a gross embellishment night of the soul occupies too much of What this last angle conveys—as, a of what really happened). We’re sup- the movie without being powerful or little too heavy-handedly, do a few posed to believe that it filled Sully with convincing. But his miracle has power Sully hallucinations of planes crash- self- doubt, and the movie supplies many enough to be riveting every time we ing into buildings—is the extent to scenes of Hanks, under white hair and watch it, and Eastwood is wise to give us which the United 1549 landing was sporting the Sully ’stache, furrowing his that chance over and over again. the anti-9/11. It had the same setting, decent brow and staring into the dis- So we see what Sully did from dif- the same heroic rescue workers, the tance, or having pained conversations ferent angles—through the eyes of a same uncanny, dreamlike quality: a with his wife (Laura Linney) about their few representative passengers, through plane diving toward the Manhattan financial situation and future, or having the eyes of the air-traffic controller skyline, a plane where no plane is sup-

. bad dreams in which Katie Couric de - who thinks he’s lost a plane, through posed to be. nounces him on the hotel TV set. the eyes of the ferryboat captain and Except that instead of Mohamed Atta But the NTSB inquisition is so implau- other rescuers who got there in time to there was Sully, and this time everyone WARNER BROS sibly hostile, its conclusion and Sully’s pluck all 155 flyers safely from the came out alive.

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The lore of baseball is full of autumn year there costs over $60,000 if you’re City Desk heroics: The outfielder snags the paying full freight. I look at the kids in almost–home run, the relief pitcher their Ts and cut-offs and think, Don’t Turn, walks to the mound with two on and one blow it on intersectionality studies (it’s out, the old veteran uncorks a walk-off hopeless asking them not to blow it on hit. These stand out in high relief while self-destructive love affairs). Turn, Turn the losing teams plod to year’s end or Culture stops its EZ-listening concerts disperse to their off-season breaks, and Hamptons fundraisers, and mails out thinking, “Better luck next spring.” listings of all the art and artists it is We have added one more mark of about to display and present. A finality to the calendar, as beautif ul as it Memling triptych in the robber baron’s is bitter: the double towers of light that house; Scandinavians performing the rise from the financial district every 9/11 quartets of Shostakovich; plays that will night. Will they one day be switched try to elbow their way to notice past cast off? Become generic, as Armistice Day changes in Hamilton. Last and least, in faded into Veterans Day? Or could they the public spaces of the big stores that retain their specificity for centuries, as sell stationery, children’s games, desktop England remembers Guy Fawkes, and paraphernalia, and magazines, the arti- RICHARD BROOKHISER Christendom Jesus? sanal craftsmen who make content for But cheer up, because this time of bound print-outs will give readings for a NOT-GREEN leaf or two may year is also a time of beginning. The fact handful of eccentrics (unless they are appear without causing com - that it is must be a tribut e to the habits Armenian exhibitionists, in which case ment, the decline of the sun is instilled by universal public education. the lines will stretch for blocks). (N.B. a long slow slide, and even New Year for the last few centuries has All this product is available, for much Ain summer the humidity breaks occa- sionally. But on the day when all three converge, it is with the feeling, almost the Cheer up, because this time of year is sound, of gears meshing and turning. If you had not felt it before, you would think also a time of beginning. only, That’s pleasant, for so it is: Crisp is better than sticky, side- and under-lighting come in January; before that it came in cheaper, on your device with ReadApp.) is more dramatic than the steady down- March. But children of the early modern Retail knows now is make or break, ward beat, and red, orange, and yellow are era who were lucky enough to get any two hurdles and a sprint to the finish. Fall pleasing especially when they pop out schooling got it when the farm chores collections, for clothes: stick-figure girls against a backdrop of chlorophyll (much were done, so urban/suburban kids who and bare-chested boys gaze at each other as one teenager with blue hair amuses, have never seen a furrow still start their in desireless stupor, sleeves and skirts whereas a roomful of them—as at a rock year mentally in September; their par- falling off appropriate limbs. Halloween, concert—alarms, or depresses). We have ents, and other former children, do like- similar, but as a joke: monster life, fake felt and heard the tick before, though, so wise. Every noon, in the park two blocks death, imitation celebrities, sex life we know where this is going. from my apartment building, I see a (naughty nuns, French maids, the doctor Attn: Hasidim, piling out of your double line of preschoolers, boys and will see you now—it’s hard to make vans. Attn: Mexicans, sweeping the girls holding hands two by two, the girls jokes about sex anymore since every- fields with the efficiency of locusts. Get in plaid pinafores, the boys in shirts with thing funny is everywhere taken serious- your sweet corn, get it now. Already neckties. One boy is extra, he holds ly), Disney characters thrown in for the acres of it—especially those planted hands with the teacher (a privilege, or innocent. Then, the Birth of Christ (see only to qualify for agri-tax breaks—are an unbearable burden?). What will they above): new devices, toys for kids, toys dry and spindly. Pick it, shuck it, roast it; wear, who will they be, as adults? In my for adults, necessities (you used to hate best of all, gnaw it raw off the cob. Its nursery-school class there was one girl, getting, say, undershirts, but now you time is running out. black It alian hair and eyes, who would appreciate it), stores handing out cham- The last four months have seen a look unmistakably the same 20 years pagne, eggnog, anything for foot traffic, parade of flowers, and kitchen-shelf later. I haven’t seen her in almost 40 the as-yet-unknown novelty item that florists know the parade goes until the end years; the hair is no longer black, I imag- will set the nation agog. Non-famous (one of the last to bloom has a funereal ine, though maybe the eyes . . . Armenians (one such who is a friend name worthy of Edgar Allan Poe: monks- A dozen blocks to the south, the once told me) benefited from their Julian hood). Some tough guys—calendula, old streets in and around the great university calendar to sit out the madness and take roses—can go on after the end, showing are simply crawling with students. It is advantage of the post-Christmas sales. a little color as late as Thanksgiving. not the city’s Ivy League school (that is A s the sun slips lower, the moon rises Gather them while ye may, the next miles uptown), but it has stepped up its higher. Warm enough to need no jacket, flowers will be early-morning frost on game big time in recent years, both aca- cool enough not to sweat. Come to the your windshield. demically and as a real-estate empire. A café, sweet is the night air.

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Happy Warrior BY ANDREW STILES Hillary the Hilarious

HEN People magazine made Hillary Clinton reeling from the fallout of Walkergate. These pundits, all of the lead story in its May 2014 issue, my us, could stand to take a deep breath, back away from our then-editor at the Washington Free Beacon screens, and have a good long laugh at Hillary Clinton. It’s not W e-mailed a photo of the cover to see if I hard. Some of us have been doing it for decades. would have the same reaction he did. “Looks like she’s Laughing at Hillary doesn’t make you a bad person, and holding a walker,” I wrote back. Because it kind of did, even it doesn’t make you a Republican. “What’s the difference?” though she wasn’t. some Democrats might say. Jon Stewart and Stephen It was clearly a patio chair that Clinton, then 66, was lean- Colbert taught them that, when it comes to political humor, ing on for support in that photo, presumably to avoid another jokes are something not to be laughed at, but rather embarrassing fall. Or maybe not. It could just as easily have applauded and cheered in an orgy of self-righteous affir- been an old person’s walker custom-built to resemble a patio mation. For a certain cultural set, comedy isn’t about chair, or perhaps a stylishly outfitted Hoveround mobility “punching up” or “speaking truth to power.” It’s about scooter for the wealthy. We may never know. EVISCERATING your partisan foes, no matter how minor. For The Free Beacon ran what we thought was an overtly far- example, the number of county-level GOP officials cical story about Hillary’s (alleged) walker because we Stewart/Colbert UTTERLY DESTROYED in their careers is likely thought our readers would enjoy it, which they did. Many lib- on the magnitude of genocide. erals in the media did not. “Walkergate” became an Internet Rogue programs such as South Park aren’t shy about com- scandal of the highest order. People was compelled to issue a paring Hillary Clinton to a “turd sandwich,” but the main- formal denial that Hillary had used a walker in the photo stream media culture is dominated by sympathetic liberals shoot, and the Free Beacon was denounced in the Washington who either don’t find anything about her funny or are simply Post for its “inflamed” contribution to a “ludicrous debate.” uninterested in roasting one of their own. Both are ludicrous Two years later, jokes about Hillary’s old age and failing propositions. Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon has won health are still funny, but the line between parody and reality praise for her portrayal of Hillary as an antisocial, power-mad is becoming less clear. On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, the psychopath but has also said of Clinton, “Obviously, I love Democratic candidate was heaved semi-conscious (and semi- her so much.” It’s weird for anyone to admit to loving a politi- shoed) into an idling getaway van like some punch-drunk cian, much more so for a professional comedian. bachelor into a taxi at 3 A.M., or a cumbersome duffel into the Democrats could at least take a moment to revel in the dark belly of a 747. humor of their situation, having nominated perhaps the only Hillary’s lifeless tumble was a sight to behold, and cer- human being (as she often, unconvincingly, reminds us she is) tainly newsworthy. If a bystander had been there to capture capable of losing an election to Donald Trump. Hillary strug- it on camera, you can be sure that it would have been gled to finish off Bernie Sanders, a 75-year-old socialist who promptly wiped clean from the server of history. But there looks and sounds as though he was roused from a tent behind was a video, and the campaign was forced to admit that the venue at the first primary debate just to fill out the stage. Hillary had pneumonia. Just like that, Hillary’s health entered Hillary might be qualified, but she is hilariously bad at the bounds of acceptable discourse. interviewing for the job. Normal people can’t relate to her We are even allowed to make fun of it now, apparently, and because, for example, she’s incapable of making small talk not just the inflamed right-wing trolls. Everyone can do it, without talking points and can’t answer a simple question like even liberals. In what might be the most refreshing develop- “What is your favorite ice cream?” without hedging, as if to ment in an otherwise demoralizing campaign cycle, The New avoid taking a position that could come back to haunt her in a Yorker, of all places, published a cartoon that (gasp!) made a deposition—because who knows, with her, it might! joke about the elderly politician’s health scare. In theory, Hillary should be an easy target for comedians. The cartoon features Clinton propped up by two secret She’s the most powerful senior citizen on the planet. She agents, above the caption: “People wanted her to act more wants so badly to be president, it’s unnatural. This is typically like Bernie, but I don’t think they meant the one from a disqualifying feature shared by all presidential candidates, ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’”—a reference to the 1989 comedy but Hillary is just worse. She’s been campaigning for decades, in which two insurance agents lug around their dead boss is past the age of retirement, is in questionable health, and yet (Bernie) in an effort to convince others he’s really alive. In stumbles onward in the hope that one day the Secret Service the end, their whimsical charade succeeds. Will the will be heaving her aboard Air Force One. Clinton campaign’s? Admit it, there is a certain humor in watching people like Before Hillary’s (most recent) fall, any untoward sugges- Hillary fail. It was pretty fun watching Jeb Bush implode, tions, any dumb jokes about the candidate’s health, were usu- wasn’t it? But Hillary might not fail this time, and if we’re ally met with howls of derision from liberal pundits still going to keep our sanity through another four (eight?) years of Clintons in the White House, we’re going to need all the Mr. Stiles is the politics editor of Heat Streat. laughs we can get.

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BUCKLEY AT HIS BEST.

This collection“ of obituaries and eulogies may well establish WFB as the modern master of this literary form. I have read every single one of my father’s 60-odd books.

I do not exaggerate to

propose that this may prove to be William F. Buckley’s fi nest book“ ever. —CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

Remarkable remembrances of titans of politics, religion, literature, and culture.

ON SALE OCTOBER 4, 2016 DISCOVER MORE AT ATORCHKEPTLIT.COM I I