THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF SAMANTHA POWER BY SETH MANDEL FEBRUARY 2017 Commentary HOW DEMOCRATS WILL TRY TO STOP TRUMP

NOAH C. TEVI ROTHMAN TROY on the sudden on bureaucratic rediscovery resistance to of checks and the new

Commentary balances president

FEBRUARY 2017 : VOLUME 143 NUMBER 2

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ABE GREENWALD on the convenient new disapproval of a make-nice-with-the-bad-guys foreign policy

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FEBRUARY 2017 COVER.indd 2 1/12/17 2:36 PM ‘Tough Love’—The First and Last Obama Lie

WROTE AN ARTICLE in this space six months complete. And, as he had when he began it, in farewell into the Obama presidency entitled “The Turn interview after farewell interview, he characterized his I Against Israel.” It appeared in the July 2009 issue. assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish presence in the These were its concluding paragraphs: Holy Land as an act of tough love. “Friends need to tell “The goal of American foreign policy in the each other the hard truths,” said Secretary of State John Middle East is now the creation of a Palestinian state. Kerry in a speech defending the abstention. Very little will be expected of the Palestinians in the Which raises the key question: Why abstain? creation of that state; Hamas should renounce terror If “hard truths” define friendship, then by all means and recognize Israel, but a failure to do so will not kill they should have made the truths as hard as possible. the deal. Violence should be foresworn, but even that is If Obama and Kerry truly believe the Jewish presence of secondary importance to the state itself. in East Jerusalem is illicit, then they should have voted “A great deal is, however, expected of Israel. for the resolution. Instead, they took the coward’s way Settlements are to be frozen, including their ‘natural out. They opened the vault to the criminals and placed growth.’ Israel must bolster the Palestinian economy, the jewels in their hands while wearing white gloves provide Palestinians with jobs, and so there would be no residual trace make things better in Gaza. Israel is to of their fin erprints. The abstention give; the Palestinians are to receive. Is- was in some weird sense the mark of rael’s giving is to be accompanied by a their bad conscience. They wanted JOHN promise of reduced violence. Palestin- THE EDITORPODHORETZ something to happen while maintain- ian receiving will be accompanied by ing some historical deniability about Israel’s surrender of more territory beyond the entirety their involvement in it. of Gaza and the near-entirety of the West Bank already In the eight years of the Obama presidency, war in Palestinian hands. Israel, the president asserts, will broke out twice between the Palestinians and the Is- be better off if all this happens. Trust him. He’s Israel’s raelis and nearly broke out a third time. In each case, friend. A better friend than anyone else, remember, the issue was not the West Bank, or East Jerusalem, or because he’s willing to be honest about Israel’s need to anything near. The two wars and the third near-war sacrifice itself on the altar of nothing more than a prom- took place in and around Gaza, from which Israel had ise, and maybe not even that. withdrawn unilaterally in 2005—more than three years “And so the turn against Israel that so many pre- before Obama took office. The wars were the result of dicted during the 2008 campaign is coming to pass— aggressions by the terrorist organization Hamas. with a smile, and a nod, and an invocation of a word The idea that the settlements and the Jewish that actually means something very different from presence in East Jerusalem are the main barrier to friendship. It might even mean its opposite.” peace between Israel and the Palestinians was proved The decision in December by President Obama to to be a lie right before Obama’s eyes in 2009, and 2012, abstain on a UN Security Council vote effectively declar- and 2014. And he didn’t care to see it, because he is ing any Jewish presence in East Jerusalem or the West blinded by an antipathy he wishes to ascribe to Israeli Bank a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and action when honesty would compel him to find it in his therefore illegal under international law marked the own misguided leftist ideology—or within his own soul. moment he crossed the finish line in the course he had Israel has survived the horrendous blessing of charted from 2008 onward. The turn against Israel was Barack Obama’s false friendship.q

Commentary 1

EdLetter.indd 1 1/12/17 2:41 PM

February 2017 Vol. 143 : No. 2

Articles

Tevi Will There Be an Internal Revolt 12 Troy Against Trump? Of bureaucrats I have known, worked with, and couldn’t fire

Noah C. Decisions and Revisions 18 Rothman That a Moment Will Reverse How Democrats and liberals will now say exactly the opposite of what they said during the Obama years.

Abe Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair 24 Greenwald During the Trump years, expect the left to reverse course on foreign policy.

Seth The Cautionary Tale 28 Mandel of Samantha Power Every day she has to wake up knowing she became what she despised.

Joseph Hope I Die Before I Get Young 34 Epstein The sixties, forever with us.

Contents.indd 2 1/12/17 2:42 PM

Politics & Ideas

Ronald Moral Equivalence Run Amok 39 Radosh Bad Moon Rising, by Arthur M. Eckstein

John Dispelling the Myths 42 Steele The Upside of Inequality, by Edward Conard Gordon

Naomi We See You 44 Schaefer Riley The Attention Merchants, by Tim Wu

Daniel A Party of One 46 DiSalvo When Ideas Mattered: A Nathan Glazer Reader, Edited by Joseph Dorman and Leslie Lenkowsky

Culture & Civilization

Terry The Darkness of Hank Williams 49 Teachout Hillbilly Elegist.

Jonathan S. A False Theatrical Peace 52 Tobin Oslo in New York.

Matthew Mediacracy: 55 Continetti Twilight of the Narratives

From the Editor 1 The Way We Live Now, by Christine Rosen 4 In the Future, Everyone Will Be Dead for 15 Minutes Letters 6 Letter from Washington, by Andrew Ferguson ‘Everybody Says How Cool I Am’ 9

Contents.indd 3 1/12/17 2:42 PM In the Future, Everyone Will Be Dead for 15 Minutes

URING THE LAST FEW WEEKS of 2016, some thus altered our standards for judging fame. Today, when celebrities died. Every year celebrities die, of Kim Kardashian catches a cold, we read about it; when D course, but for some reason the deaths of the a contestant who lost on Survivor: Gabon ten years ago pop singer George Michael, the actress Carrie Fisher, dies unexpectedly, the tabloids carry the story right next and Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, was a trifecta too to news of the latest terrorist attack. crushing for humanity to bear. Soon, #f—k2016 It seems that although we know intuitively was trending on Twitter as people ex- that death is the great leveler and that no pressed their disbelief and sadness at THE WAY number of sycophants in your entou- the death of so many beloved famous rage or followers on Twitter or plastic people, as well as a more general dis- We Live Now surgeons on speed dial can prevent gust for the year that had just elapsed. CHRISTINE ROSEN it, we believe that celebrities are im- A panicky South Carolina man even mune to it. Our worship of fame has launched a GoFundMe page to “Help Pro- always been in part an envy of the wealth tect Betty White from 2016,” which raised $2,000 to and control that the famous supposedly enjoy. With keep the Grim Reaper from slaying the beloved Golden social media granting us real-time access to the lives Girl. (On the advice of Ms. White, who remains alive and of celebrities, and on-demand entertainment services well at age 94, he donated the money to charity.) that provide an endless library of actors’ past film and Why has the reaction to celebrity death become TV shows, our celebrities (even our B- and C-list celebri- more intense and more personalized in recent years? ties) seem always and ever available to us and immune More often than not, people act as if the loss of a 1980s to the ravages of aging. No wonder their deaths take us pop icon or an aging movie star is a personal affront and by surprise. feel moved to proclaim their grief on social media in ways Never mind that this conceit allows us to avoid that previous generations would have found maudlin some uncomfortable truths about our heroes, such as and embarrassing. the fact that many of the celebrities who died “too soon” One reason might be the simple fact that there are in 2016 (Prince, David Bowie, Fisher, Michael) had been too many celebrities. Years ago, in The Frenzy of Renown, or were currently serious substance abusers whose drug the historian Leo Braudy noted that the “expansion of use might have had something to do with their foreshort- the possibility of fame” had transformed an earlier era’s ened lives. understanding of what qualifiedas genuine celebrity and The meaning and power of celebrity have also changed in recent years, thanks in large part to reality Christine Rosen writes monthly in this space. television and social media, which have permanently

4 February 2017

TWWLN.indd 4 1/12/17 2:44 PM obliterated the distinction between performance and re- of the new year, Kim Kardashian, who had sworn off ality. As Donald Trump’s recent election victory suggests, social media for a brief moment after being robbed in you’re only faking it if you don’t win. Our new reality is Paris, returned to social media with a professionally a world where presidents can hire people like Omarosa crafted “home video” meant to quell rumors of trouble Manigault, a former contestant on Trump’s Celebrity in her marriage. The montage featured images of Kim Apprentice reality show whom he thrice fired on TV, as somehow managing to play with her children while “public liaison leader” in his White House. Omarosa wearing stiletto heels, tasteful shots of toddlers gambol- (who, like Cher and Madonna, feels she has earned the ing around luxurious yet suspiciously pristine modern right to be known by her fir t name) is a veteran of more houses, and Kim kissing her husband, Kanye West, all than 20 other reality shows. Surely the West Wing will while Jeremih’s treacly song “Paradise” plays in the prove a worthy playing field for such cutthroat skills. background. The Potemkin Kardashian video is as com- The notion that 2016 was an especially awful year pelling as it is manipulative. “Welcome to Kardashian was not limited to counting up the deaths of celebrities Kamelot,” New York magazine wrote. and demi-celebrities, however. Various memes—such In his 1984 book, The Minimal Self, historian as the plaintive “Dear 2016: Y U No End Soon?”—were Christopher Lasch observed an American tendency to- popular online in the waning months of the year. And ward “emotional retreat” in times of crisis. He described at the end of December, the New York Times editorial a people notable for “our protective irony and emotional board took to the fainting couch to assess the previous disengagement, our reluctance to make long-term emo- 12 months: “Let’s pretend tional commitments, our we’re in some cosmic thera- sense of powerlessness and pist’s office, in a counseling The problem today isn’t emotional victimization, our fascina- session with the year 2016,” retreat; it’s emotional excess. The tion with extreme situations the Times editorial began. and with the possibility of (Oh yes, let’s!) “We are asked eagerness to compare 2016 to a plague applying their lessons to ev- to face the year and say year is more than just a brief moment eryday life, our perception something nice about it. of collective cultural narcissism. of large-scale organizations Just one or two things. The as systems of total control.” mind balks. Fingers tighten Lasch was writing about around the Kleenex as a cascade of horribles wells up in possible crises such as global thermonuclear war, but memory: You were a terrible year. We hate you. We’ll be today, on the left, Trump’s election is pretty much consid- so glad never to see you again. The silence echoes as we ered equivalent. grope for a reply.” Evidently at the Times, “fake news” is But unlike Lasch’s time three decades ago, the bad, but self-indulgent pap masquerading as publishable problem today isn’t emotional retreat; it’s emotional writing is fine excess. The eagerness to compare 2016 to a plague year is A few lone voices urged perspective. In an opinion more than just a brief moment of collective cultural nar- piece in the Times, Charles Nevin noted that as bad as the cissism. 2017 might be the year The Feelings Economy year was, he was still happier living in 2016 than “fiddlin finally comes into its own, and emotions become the nervously with one’s toga while awaiting the arrival in governing force in how we interpret events: On college Rome of the Visigoths (in 410) or the Vandals (in 455).” campuses, undergrads say they feel unsafe when they But most news outlets endorsed the suffering its hear views that don’t mirror their own—so it must be readers were enduring and offered advice on how to get true. People claim that Trump’s victory makes them feel through the next 12 months. “Those who feel miserable as if their lives are at risk—so it must be true. and afraid have plenty of justific tion,” the Times’s edi- In 2017, fake news will not be the problem; tors wrote. “For many it was the election of a president emotionally manipulative news will be. A culture that unfit for the job. He seems to want to run the country like interprets world events as personal traumas will not some authoritarian game-show host, but we don’t really be prepared to tackle the serious challenges the world know what he’ll do, and uncertainty worsens the sicken- faces in the years to come, from economic instability ing feeling.” (Imagine those words beings written in the to terrorism. We need less Twitter-moaning and more wake of Obama’s election in 2008.) tough-mindedness, less emotional wallowing and more The future isn’t fake news. It’s emotionally ma- rational action. And if you absolutely must temporarily nipulative “news” that deliberately blurs the boundary quell your anxieties with reality television, at least watch between reality and performance. In the early weeks Deadliest Jobs, not Too Fat to Transition.q

Commentary 5

TWWLN.indd 5 1/12/17 2:44 PM Letters

Obama’s Monuments

To the Editor: One of his most enduring lega- Forest Reserve Act of 1891, until OHN PODHORETZ and Noah cies will literally be monuments— Congress took away that power. JC. Rothman describe the “dec- national monuments; President In 1906, Congress passed the An- imation of the Obama legacy” Obama has created more than any tiquities Act, which authorized (“Bare, Ruined Choirs,” Decem- other president. the president to create national ber). They submit: “If you wish to Many of these are controver- monuments to protect “small” ar- see his monument, look around,” sial. The designation of national eas of significance. Congress never describing the vast political dam- monument protects federal lands defined the word small, allowing age infli ted on the Democratic forever, but one thing they’re “pro- presidents to use their own defin - Party. The authors end their article tected” from is economic develop- tions. Many significant American noting that in four years “there ment, and locals often don’t appre- treasures have been protected as may be no monument of Barack ciate that. One national monument national monuments. Before it was Obama’s left standing for anyone in California, Mojave Trails, is 1.6 a national park, the Grand Canyon to look at.” million acres. A marine national was made a national monument by Messrs. Podhoretz and Roth- monument off the New England Teddy Roosevelt. man make an excellent case that Coast protects 5,000 square miles. Here is the interesting part. Obama’s legacy will have crumbled Local fishermen and lobstermen Many of the local residents near in four years. I am not so sure, are not happy about it. Nor are national monuments feel, as Sena- however, that there won’t be monu- many locals happy about the new tor Mike Lee of Utah put it, that the ments. It comes down to a matter of 87,500-acre national monument in monuments amount to “govern- perspective. If you live in places like Maine’s North Woods. ment-sponsored injustice and bu- northern Maine, Utah, or Nevada, Presidents have long been reaucratic tyranny.” These critics and you look around in four years, protecting and reserving federal of national monuments are hoping you will likely still have plenty of lands. Most national forests were that the new president feels the monuments to President Obama. reserved by presidents under the same way. No president has ever

War and the 6 February 2017 GOP

Letters.indd 10 1/12/17 2:45 PM undesignated a national monu- ment, and it is unlikely he would have the authority to do that. Don- ald Trump has stated he will undo executive orders; would he try to undo national monuments? Could he? If monuments to President February 2017 Vol. 143 : No. 2 Obama are going to crumble, some of them will need to be national John Podhoretz, Editor monuments. � Thomas Straka Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor Pendleton, South Carolina � Jonathan S. Tobin, Senior Online Editor 1 Noah C. Rothman, Assistant Online Editor � Carol Moskot, Publisher Kejda Gjermani, Digital Publisher Institutional Leah Rahmani, Publishing Associate � Decay Ilya Leyzerzon, Business Director Stephanie Roberts, Business Manager � To the Editor: Terry Teachout, Critic-at-Large ’M A RETIRED baby boomer who � I was born in 1946. I come from the Board of Directors working class and I’m a Vietnam Daniel R. Benson, Chairman veteran. I returned to our country Meredith Berkman, Paul J. Isaac, from Vietnam in June, 1968, in the midst of an undeclared war Michael J. Leffell, Jay P. Lefkowitz against the war in which I served. Steven Price, Gary L. Rosenthal But things in our nation are much Michael W. Schwartz, Paul E. Singer worse today than they were even during those dark and chaotic Cover Design: Carol Moskot times. The center, it seems, can- not hold. The election of Donald To send us a letter to the editor: [email protected] Trump officially marks our descent We will edit letters for length and content. into the endgame of the “Weimar To make a tax-deductible donation: [email protected] Republic” phase of our larger na- For advertising inquiries: [email protected] tional decline. So I would have to For customer service: [email protected] agree with Yuval Levin’s astute and perceptive essay about the decline of American institutions (“Trump Fills the Vacuum,” December). Commentary (ISSN 0010-2601) is published monthly (except for a combined July/ The operative word to describe August issue) by Commentary, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization. Editorial and business offices: 561 Seventh Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY, 10018. Telephone: (212) 891-1400. Fax: (212) the state of our disunion would be 891-6700. Customer Service: [email protected] or (212) 891-1400. “decadence.” But I interpret that Subscriptions: One year $45, two years $79, three years $109, USA only. To subscribe please go word less in its strict moral sense to www.commentarymagazine.com/subscribe-digital-print. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and more in the technical sense and additional mailing offi s. Subscribers will receive electronic announcements of forthcoming issues. Single copy: U.S. is $5.95; Canada is $7.00. All back issues are available in electronic in which Jacques Barzun used it form at commentarymagazine.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to Commentary, P.O. Box in his classic historical critique of 420235, Palm Coast, FL, 32142. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped, Western Civilization, From Dawn self-addressed envelope. Letters intended for publication may be edited. Indexed in Reader’s Guide, to Decadence. Having grown up in Book Review Digest, and elsewhere. U.S. Newsstand Distribution by COMAG Marketing Group, 155 Village Blvd, Princeton, NJ, 08540. Printed in the USA. Commentary was established in an extended family of European 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, which was the magazine’s publisher through 2006 and continues to support its role as an independent journal of thought and opinion. Copyright © 2017 by Commentary, Inc.; all rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Commentary

Letters.indd 11 1/12/17 2:45 PM immigrants who endured the Great allel universe for the nostalgia of by- out by specifying. She errs in saying Depression, I recall hearing the gone times, and the zeitgeist today that there is little evidence BLM has adults talk about lean times during makes me think of the European “in any way adopted the means or which they still held out the hope nations that were sleepwalking to- the goals” of the Black Panther Party that things would get better. And ward the abyss before the outbreak and its ilk. She is right about the things eventually did improve, af- of the First World War. I hope I am means, but wrong about the goals. ter we won the Second World War. being too pessimistic. But I doubt it. BLM is quite clear that its goals are That sense of hope seems to have George Hoffman the same, declaring on its website vanished, as demonstrated by Don- Stow, Ohio that its purpose is to “(re)build ald Trump’s stunning victory in the the black liberation movement” election. We seem trapped in a par- 1 (parentheses in original), by which it means precisely those violent groups. It treats “our beloved Assata Shakur,” a murderous leader of the ultra-bloody Black Liberation Army, as its patron saint. On the Matter As for the means, if BLM deserves credit for not organizing or urging the murder of policemen in the man- ner of its heroes, would Ms. Nichols also credit the Nazi-imitating white of Black Lives nationalist movement because it has not behaved as storm troopers? She says BLM’s pronouncements amount to “standard liberal fare.” I Matter quoted BLM’s platform calling for “a global liberation movement [to] overturn US imperialism, capital- To the Editor: me as standard liberal fare. BLM ism, and white supremacy.” Is this READ JOSHUA Muravchik’s ex- is hardly the only group on the what liberalism has come to? I posé of Black Lives Matter with left to come out against Israel, “Black lives do matter,” adds Ms. great interest (“The Truth About for example. But other pronounce- Nichols. My question is: Who denies Black Lives Matter” December). ments strike me as laudatory. Black that? If, as Ms. Nichols suggests, But in the end, the “truth” promised lives do matter. And there is a BLM “is the beginning of a discus- by the article’s headline proved to be demonstrable problem of police ag- sion,” it is a demagogic one. If it is less than shocking. Indeed, it proved gressiveness toward African Ameri- one, nonetheless, then my critique to be less than credible. cans—even if there is no evidence of of BLM is a continuation of that The fact that Black Lives Matters this being a deadly problem. Black discussion. Ms. Nichols closes with looks up to the militant black orga- Lives Matter is the beginning of a a warning against shutting down nizations of the 1960s is unsettling, discussion. No more, no less. It’s not discussion. As far as I can see, the to be sure. But there seems little a discussion this country can afford only ones shutting down discussion evidence that BLM has in any way to shut down. are the likes of BLM on college cam- adopted the means or the goals of Lauren Nichols puses who have blocked speakers, these groups—at least not institu- Salem, Oregon interrupted meetings, forced resig- tionally. Do BLM leaders roam the nations, demanded censorship and streets carrying guns? Do known trigger warnings and “safe spaces”— BLM members—not disturbed lone 1 all to silence, intimidate, or circum- shooters—hunt down police or rival scribe views they do not share. activists? What, in fact, do they re- ally do aside from march and make Joshua Muravchik writes: pronouncements? AM NOT SURE what in my article 1 Some of those pronouncements I Lauren Nichols finds not to be are unfortunate, but they strike “credible,” and she does not help me

8 Letters : February 2017

Letters.indd 12 1/12/17 2:45 PM ‘Everybody Says How Cool I Am’

S BARACK OBAMA passes into the next phase exit interviews were given to interviewers who, in their of his stellar evolution, as the protostar of the approach to the president, ranged from “sympathetic” A 2004 Democratic convention fades into the to “bootlicking.”) One Vox reporter asked Obama a planetary nebula of 2017 and a very long retirement, question about the Affordable Care Act. It was 12 phrases from his presidency that once rang in my ears minutes of monologue before the other reporter, like grow dimmer by the day. To tell the truth, there’s not a lot a man jumping onto a passing train, could ask an- of them. For a man with such a reputation for eloquence, other question. After 20 minutes the reporters had he leaves behind little quotable material from his presi- asked him a total of two questions. He was still talking. dential years. Yes, generations from now schoolchildren And then, from this dog pile of verbiage, he drew will still be reciting “If you like your doctor . . . ” And a proposal that summarized much of what’s madden- there’s “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.” And: “The ing about Obama’s performance as election’s over. I won.” And also: “If president. you’ve got a business—you didn’t “I’m saying to every Repub- build that.” The rest is silence. lican right now”—a steely gaze, a Well, not silence. It’s plainly thrusting index fin er—“‘if you can diffi ult for Obama to stop talking. in fact put a plan together that is He is a verbal man if not an eloquent demonstrably better than what one. The Obama utterance that sticks Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support stubbornly in my mind at the mo- ment is of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan.’” very recent vintage. I made a point of listening to all the The Republicans could even call it TrumpCare if “exit interviews” Obama granted over the last several they wanted, the president said. It wasn’t about him! months. There was a lot of overlap, of course; one of the “I’d sign on to a Republican plan that would say, ‘We’re keys to a successful politician is the ability to say the same going to give more subsidies to people to make it even thing thousands of times without hanging yourself in the cheaper, and we’re going to have a public option.” next Comfort Inn. But the interviews did serve as a quar- Here was the essence of Obama’s rhetorical style ry from which the president pieced together his farewell as chief executive: a feint toward common ground while address. Together they present a notable self-portrait of pushing his opponents still further away. It was dramat- the man and the people who love him. ic, delivered in an exasperated, put-up-or-shut-up tone. It As the day of his departure neared he added a new was utterly insincere. It gave an impression of boldness riff to his repetitions, in an interview to two friendly where there was none. It limned a meaningless proposal reporters from the pro-Obama website Vox. (All the to make him appear fl xible and bipartisan while scoring a partisan point. And it displayed his sly understanding Andrew Ferguson is the author of our monthly Letter of how public policy should work. A “public option” in from Washington. Ferguson wrote our Press Man col- a national health-insurance program would bring us umn for three years. He is a senior editor at the Weekly closer to the socialized medicine that Obamacare sup- Standard and the author, most recently, of Crazy U. posedly made unnecessary. And the way to make nation-

Commentary 9

Ferguson.indd 9 1/12/17 2:46 PM Commentary ebooks al health insurance “cheaper,” in the president’s view, is to Most public men strive to please an audience. It make it cost more, by giving more people more subsidies. has been Obama’s good fortune to surround himself The Vox audience, of course, lapped it up like with an audience that wants to please him. “Everybody hungry pups. One could just imagine the arguments likes to talk about how cool I was,” he said at the be- spinning through the twittersphere and echoing down ginning of his chat with George Stephanopoulos, who the halls of the Center for American Progress: Look, it’s tilted toward the “bootlicker” end of the spectrum. very simple—Obama said he’s happy to repeal his own Later he drove the point home, without fear of con- law if the Republicans findsomething that’s cheaper with tradiction: “People always talk about how cool I am.” more options . . . To Doris Goodwin, however, he expressed a demurral: By now Obama has refined his demagoguery so “I don’t buy the hype when everybody is saying how that it perfectly suits the modern partisan of the left— great I am.” that is, a partisan who refuses to see himself as parti- Just between us, I think he buys the hype. How san. This isn’t the traditional populist demagoguery could he not? He has been described, by the writer of William Jennings Bryan or even Lyndon Johnson, Michael Beschloss among others, as the “most intel- aimed at the unschooled, the unlucky, the desperate. ligent man ever elected president.” Throughout his Noah C. Rothman This is demagoguery aimed at the well-to-do audience long exit, one jejune sentiment after another was of Trevor Noah and Saman- greeted with solemn nods Andrew Ferguson tha Bee: the overschooled By now Obama has refined his or giddiness from his in- and undereducated, the terlocutors. As president, self-certain and self-satis- demagoguery so that it perfectly suits he visited the pyramids, Matthew Continetti fied, who see ideological the modern partisan of the left—that is, he told one interviewer, deviation as a moral lapse and the thought occurred Jonathan Foreman rather than a difference of a partisan who refuses to see himself as to him: Fame is fle ting. opinion. It’s demagoguery partisan. This is demagoguery aimed at “Sometimes I carry with with a graduate degree. It’s me that perspective,” he Seth Mandel the overschooled and undereducated. boob bait for pseuds. refle ted. Our economy, he Among whom are the tells us, is more digitized KC Johnson readers of Vanity Fair, the celebrity slick that brought in than it was, and our news now lacks the traditional Doris Kearns Goodwin to do an exit interview. To the edi- filters we once relied on, and the old ways of manufac- tors, the choice of Goodwin must have been obvious: She, turing are no longer relevant, and we can’t respond to like most American writers, has written a book about technological change by sticking our head in the sand, Abraham Lincoln, and the parallels between the two and our country is undergoing big changes in terms of presidents from Illinois have been a common theme for demography . . . and . . . and none dared point out that Obama’s partisans. When Goodwin asked him to com- the smartest president in history has yet to make an ment on a Lincoln quote about personal ambition, the observation that couldn’t be found in any back issue president feigned reluctance—“It’s always dangerous to of the Economist. amend the words of Abraham Lincoln”—before taking a “There is a big part of me that has a writer’s header into what he evidently thought were deep waters. sensibility,” Obama said in one exit interview. “And so “When you’re young,” he said, “ambitions are that’s how I think. That’s how I pursue truth. That’s somewhat common—you want to prove yourself. It may how I hope to communicate truth to people.” Indeed, THE PUBLIC’S CONFIDENCE in today’s mainstream media is at grow out of different life experiences.” Some people—I’m with his memoir, Dreams from My Father, 21 years a record low. These essays, pulled from the pages of Commentary greatly condensing the president’s word salad here, and ago, Obama proved he had a native gift for what words you’re welcome—have an ambition to do one thing, some can do, how to use them intimately, to reveal layers of magazine, explain why. From making themselves the story in Ferguson, people to do another. But they all want to get ahead. “I do thought and feeling. This lends an almost tragic note to Missouri, to concealing the story on ObamaCare, the liberal press is think that there is a youthful ambition that very much the self-debasement of these last years—the intellectual has to do with making your mark in the world,” Obama and verbal sloppiness that his adorers have let him get increasingly becoming an activist institution that seeks to indoctrinate continued. “And I think that cuts across the experiences away with. citizens rather than inform them. Noah C. Rothman, Andrew Ferguson, of a lot of people who end up achieving something sig- Then again, perhaps it was inevitable. He talked Matthew Continetti, Jonathan Foreman, Seth Mandel, and KC Johnson nificant in their field “ with Axelrod about his upbringing by a loving mother. At this point Goodwin could no longer contain “For all the ups and downs of our lives,” he said, “there detail just how broad and deep the problem has become. herself. “Oh, well said, sir,” she cried through the wasn’t a moment that I didn’t feel as if I was special— clouds of vapor. “We can amend Lincoln.” that I was just this special gift to the world.”q AVAILABLE AT 10 February 2017 DOWNLOAD IT TODAY!

Ferguson.indd 10 1/12/17 2:46 PM Pernicious Media ebook ad.indd 1 3/6/15 4:15 PM Commentary ebooks

Noah C. Rothman Andrew Ferguson Matthew Continetti Jonathan Foreman Seth Mandel KC Johnson

THE PUBLIC’S CONFIDENCE in today’s mainstream media is at a record low. These essays, pulled from the pages of Commentary magazine, explain why. From making themselves the story in Ferguson, Missouri, to concealing the story on ObamaCare, the liberal press is increasingly becoming an activist institution that seeks to indoctrinate citizens rather than inform them. Noah C. Rothman, Andrew Ferguson, Matthew Continetti, Jonathan Foreman, Seth Mandel, and KC Johnson detail just how broad and deep the problem has become.

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PerniciousFerguson.indd Media 11 ebook ad.indd 1 1/12/173/6/15 4:152:46 PM WILL THERE BE AN INTERNAL REVOLT AGAINST TRUMP? By Tevi Troy

Y FIRST face-to-face encounter litical realm loves to borrow military metaphors.) That with the federal bureaucracy meant stopping the department from issuing guid- came on January 22, 2001. I ance, rules, and statements that refle ted the views of was the deputy director of a the departing Clinton administration. The most im- “parachute team” for incom- portant tactical objective in this mission, we were told, ing president George W. Bush, was this: Secure the fax machine! (It was 2001, after and our job was to “secure the all.) At that time, there was one specially designated beachhead” at the Department fax machine used to send new regulatory language to of Labor on the fir t day of the the Federal Register, which publishes all newly minted new administration. (The po- regulations. There was a bureaucrat I’ll call Mitchell Sykes whose job it was to man that fax machine. We M Tevi Troy, a frequent contributor to Commentary, is were to findSykes and stop him from doing anything.* a presidential historian and former deputy secretary of We were barely in the door when the cultural Health and Human Services and White House aide. His latest book is Shall We Wake the President? Two Centu- * Some identifying names have been changed throughout this ries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office article.

12 February 2017

TROY.indd 12 1/12/17 2:49 PM differences between the federal bureaucracy and the souri Senator John Ashcroft, she told me that they rest of America became apparent. We arrived at 8 a.m. worshipped at the same church. I was unconvinced,

The vast majority of career officials, we learned, did as was the savvy Labor secretary for whom I worked, TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL not arrive at 8 a.m. So we had trouble finding Mitch- Elaine Chao, now Donald Trump’s nominee as secre- ell Sykes. We began asking around and were met with tary of transportation. Later, but not that much later, shrugs and unknowing looks. The director of the we saw that the attempted burrower had gone on parachute team began to grow agitated. His face red- to become chief of staff at the Democratic National dened, his voice rose, and he slammed the table once Committee. or twice. Finally, well after 10, more than two hours Another thing we learned about early on was the after we had fir t arrived, we were told that Mitchell lifetime tenure rules–technically known as “civil-ser- Sykes was outside our office. With great anticipation, vice protections.” These rules made it exceedingly dif- we looked to the door to catch our fir t glimpse of the fi ult to fire even obstinate and uncooperative career all-powerful bureaucratic potentate, the man who con- officials. Walking through the building, we often saw trolled the entire Federal Register for the $12 billion, people wearing “Bring Back Baxter” buttons. “Who is 17,000-strong behemoth called the Department of La- Baxter?” I asked. Apparently, Baxter was a career offi- bor. And in walked…a nebbish. Balding, bespectacled, cial at DOL. (He was also an officerwith the local union with J.C. Penney slacks hiked up above his waist. In a for government employees.) During the Clinton ad- somewhat high-pitched voice, he introduced himself: ministration, Baxter came to believe he did not have to “Hi, I’m Mitchell.” work on departmental business in order to receive his The parachute team director looked at him and taxpayer-funded paycheck. When he was challenged hesitated a moment, wondering if this could really be by Department officials, he threw a tantrum, became the man we were seeking, then asked, “Are you Mitch- abusive, and continued to refuse to do governmen- ell Sykes?” tal work. To their credit, President Clinton’s political “Yes,” he responded meekly. appointees began the hard and painstaking work of The director said: “I want you to stop sending all building a case against Baxter that would enable them regulations to the Federal Register right now.” to firehim. (There are indeed mechanisms for dismiss- “OK,” Sykes squeaked. ing federal employees, but they are arduous and sub- This was my fir t introduction to the challenges ject to review and being overturned.) After a number WILL THERE BE AN INTERNAL of the federal bureaucracy. Trying to get anything done of years, the Clinton Department of Labor brought requires knowing the pulse points and the people— the case and fired the man. Baxter and the local union and then crossing your fin ers that they can or will ginned up protests, distributed the buttons, and file comply. Of course, as a conservative from the think an appeal. An arbitrator ruled against the Department, REVOLT AGAINST TRUMP? tank world, I had heard tales of the liberal bias of ca- and Baxter returned to the office, secure in the knowl- reer officials. The skepticism about the ideological edge that he would never have to do a stitch of work motivations of career officials was a subset of a larg- in exchange for his government paycheck. He was now er conservative skepticism about the administrative truly untouchable, unaccountable, and bureaucrati- state. Steven Hayward sums up this attitude nicely cally invincible. in his new book Patriotism Is Not Enough: “That bu- The appearance of the Baxter Buttons was also a reaucratic government is the partisan instrument of message for the incoming political team. If the Demo- the Democratic Party is the most obvious, yet least re- cratic Clinton administration had failed to get Baxter, marked upon, trait of our time.” there was no way the Republican Bush administration Transition briefers had warned us of the prac- would be able to pursue and win a similar case. As one tice of “burrowing in.” This term refers to the maneu- of my colleagues, a senior political administrator, re- ver by political officials at the end of an administra- called, the ugly memory of the Baxter case continued tion to shift their jobs into the career civil service, to resonate, as his attempts to make personnel shifts thereby securing lifetime tenure and allowing them were made more diffi ult by the fear of losing another to advance their ideological agendas or simply im- Baxter-like battle. pede needed reforms. Early on, we saw a shameless Then of course there were the infamous stories attempt at burrowing in at the Department of Labor of laziness or incompetence. Most everyone in the po- in the person of the woman who had been Labor Sec- litical world has heard about officials who never show retary Alexis Herman’s chief of staff. She tried to con- up for work, who have full-time jobs at big-box stores vince us that she was sympathetic to the incoming while they are on the government clock, or who can administration. Knowing that I had worked for Mis- be found most afternoons during the working day at

Commentary 13

TROY.indd 13 1/12/17 3:03 PM the local pub. I cannot testify to whether these stories to be even more liberal, meaning that D.C.-based ca- are true or not, only that political officials hear and reer officials are coming from a more liberal pool of share them all the time. The stories range from the ap- individuals. So it is safe to say that most of the career palling to the ridiculous. Sometimes it can be hard to officials that politicals encounter will be more likely to tell which. One friend of mine named Susan regaled be Democrats than Republicans. At the same time, the us with the tale of a career receptionist at the Depart- numbers also suggest that while the preference exists, ment of Health and Human Services who never passed it is not necessarily overwhelming. messages her way, because she was unaware that calls In my experience, this likelihood of Democratic directed to “Sue” were indeed meant for Susan. Very lever-pulling does not, however, mean that most ca- patiently, Susan had her assistant write “Sue is short reer officials bring their political predilections into the for Susan” on a sticky note and affix it to her desk. The carrying out of their duties at work. But some do, and calls finally began to flo . they can do a lot of damage. Lois Lerner and her par- Well over 99 percent of the 2 million-plus people tisan allies at the Internal Revenue Service appeared TRY TO STOP TRUMP STOP TO TRY working in the federal government are career officials all too eager (and able) to quickly execute the Obama HOW DEMOCRATS WILL DEMOCRATS HOW Even in the White House, where the president has far administration’s bidding to withhold preferred tax more say over personnel, career officials dominate: Of treatment from conservative organizations. But this the 1,800 or so people who work for the Executive Offic outrageous and infuriating series of incidents was of the President, approximately two-thirds of them are such a big deal precisely because it was such a blatant career. The vast majority of people working at the larg- example of what career officials should not be doing. est offices within the EOP—the Office of Management And there are certain offices, such as the Division of and Budget, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Civil Rights at the Justice Department, that tend to Trade Representative’s office—are career officials openly collaborate with Democratic administrations Many are dedicated professionals who work long and resist working with Republican administrations. hours and are extremely knowledgeable in their areas. This office covers some of the most contentious issues, This is especially true in the White House, where career including voting rights, hate-crime prosecutions, al- officials tend to be the best of the best, hard-working legations of police bias, and transgender rights. The and talented. But it is also true among the highest ech- prospect of an incoming Trump administration has elons at most departments, the SES, or Senior Execu- some officials musing in the press about a possible tive Service. Top career officials I worked with at HHS “exodus” of career staff from that challenging division. could have made vastly more money working in the private sector but chose to dedicate significant portions FFICES like Lerner’s at the IRS or Civil of their careers to public service. The political scientist Rights at Justice, I believe, are excep- John DiIulio has written a thoughtful book, Bring Back tions—troubling exceptions, to be sure, the Bureaucrats, arguing that we need more, not fewer, but not indicative of the overall rela- career officials, to accomplish all of the tasks that Con- tionship between politicals and careers gress has assigned to the administrative state. Regard- government-wide. There have been many less of whether you accept his argument, it is clear that occasions when careers resist excessive career officials do dominate the federal government, Oaction by Democrats and support proposals coming and presidential administrations need to take that into from a Republican president. They may like the Demo- account. To be a successful political appointee, you had crats better on the whole. Few would deny that. But best learn not only how to work with, but also how to to the extent that career officials display a bias in the get the most from, career officials transmission of their duties, it tends to be not in favor As for the question of bias, which generally of their political parties but instead in favor of the pre- dominates Republican thinking on the question of rogatives of their agency. career officials, it is true that career federal official What does this mean? Career officials do not are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. A want to see their agencies embarrassed and so will typ- 2015 poll found that 44 percent of federal employees ically resist or argue against actions that can be seen were Democrats or Democratic leaning, as compared to discredit or harm the reputations of their agencies. with 40 percent who were Republican or Republican They do not want to see the power of their agencies di- leaning. Senior-level federal officials, with whom top minished, so they will resist actions that favor another politicals would have the most interaction, were even agency over their own. And they believe in the mission more Democratic-leaning, by a 48 to 40 margin. And of their agencies, so they want the agencies to continue of course, people in the D.C. metropolitan area tend carrying out that mission.

14 Will There Be an Internal Revolt Against Trump? : February 2017

TROY.indd 14 1/12/17 2:49 PM This bias in favor of the prerogatives of an agency experienced politicals know who careers are, what does have practical consequences. Someone who signs they do, and how to work with them. Some meetings up to work for the Environmental Protection Agency of a political nature should of course be held without is more likely to support robust regulation of coal career officials in the room, but it’s a mistake to shut production than, say, someone who works at a con- them out of all meetings. As imperfect and generally servative think tank. But they also might be resistant pro-Leviathan as the arrangement is, both careers and to overly aggressive and costly regulations that might politicals typically know the score, and there is a gen- lead to criticism of the agency in the Wall Street Jour- erally understood détente among them. nal or, worse from their perspective, the Washington The question for 2017 is whether this détente Post. Furthermore, while the EPA official may be more will hold. likely to be a liberal, the official at the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security might have a more ONALD TRUMP is a different kind of Republican-friendly approach because of job-related president from the type we have seen insights into national-security threats. Some of these previously. He is blunter and brasher and officials may be sympathetic to President Trump’s law- generally more hostile to the way things and-order views and tough-on-terror stance. They may are done in Washington. In addition, the also have been frustrated with Obama’s more weak- opposition to Trump is more adamant, kneed approaches to these issues. and even perhaps more unhinged, than at Above all, career officials have a healthy and re- Dany point in the modern age. This hostility to Trump alistic sense that Republican and Democratic admin- may reshape the relations between career and political istrations are different and bring different character- officials in a way that could affect the ability of Trump

WELL OVER 99 PERCENT of the 2 million-plus people working in the federal government are career officials. Even in the White House, where the president has far more say over personnel, career officials dominate: Of the 1,800 or so people who work for the Executive Office of the President, approximately two-thirds of them are career.

istics with them. I recall one career officialin an agency to carry out his ambitious agenda. security office who told me that the incoming Obama There is some evidence for this notion that administration officials were likely to have sexual and things may be different this time. A poll in February narcotic histories that could make it diffi ult for them 2016 showed that one-quarter of career officials ca- to obtain security clearances. When I responded with reers would consider quitting their jobs if Trump se- a knowing smile, he told me that I should not get too cured the presidency. Still, 67 percent said they would cocky: “You guys,” he said, referring to Republicans, remain in place, which is not surprising given the life- “get tripped up for shady business practices.” time tenure of these jobs. These positions are not giv- This sort of back-and-forth is typical during en up easily. Furthermore, the promises of those who changes of administration. Career officials are savvy would consider quitting in the face of a political event bureaucratic maneuverers. They understand that Re- they opposed should be taken with a grain of salt. The publicans come into power looking to reduce the size long line of cars driving north along the I-5 from Holly- of government, while Democrats seek to expand its wood to Canada has not yet materialized, for example. regulatory reach. They have plans and option papers There were indications of bureaucratic resis- and briefing books on the shelf prepared for Repub- tance to the legitimately elected president during the lican administrations and for Democratic ones alike. transition period. In one Politico piece, career official They are happy to tell political appointees which ideas at HHS were disturbingly candid about their disdain have been tried before, and why they failed, and per- for President-elect Trump, while at the same time pro- haps even how they could be made to succeed. Certain- tecting themselves in the veil of anonymity. One told ly, some will leak, but so will some politicals. And some reporter Dan Diamond that “it’s tough from the career will cooperate more than others. But for the most part, staff side,” before asking, “Do you stay and try and

Commentary 15

TROY.indd 15 1/12/17 2:49 PM be the internal saboteur?” Another called the Trump led to hyperbolic headlines such as “Trump team’s de- win “obviously shocking and upsetting,” a third “soul mands fuel fear of Energy Department ‘witch hunt.’” crushing.” One of the staffers quoted paid lip service Something similar happened at the State De- to the fact that they “respect the need to have a peace- partment, where a request to disclose teams working ful transition of power,” but added that “it’s just frus- on gender issues led to similar hysterical headline. The trating to calmly hand over the keys when you know State Department agreed to the request, only because they’ll wreck the car.” Politico’s Blake Hounsell quoted the query asked for position titles, not names, of those one anonymous, presumably career, officiallamenting involved. The Energy Department, however, actually the appointment of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson at refused to supply the names of the career officials in- the State Department: “I’ve been resisting the urge to volved in such activities. This decision was presumably drink since 7 a.m., when I read the news.” made by political, not career, officials,and it called into Diamond noted in his story that the older, more question President Obama’s pledge of his full coopera- senior career HHS officials he spoke to were “more tion with the transition. It also sent a powerful message sanguine,” having seen transitions in the past. It’s pos- to the career officials: Their resistance to legitimate re- sible, therefore, to say that the less judicious individu- quests would be largely ignored, and possibly lauded, als were just venting and will come into line come the by the mainstream media. inauguration. But it’s also possible that these younger One other potential difference between previous staffers may represent the new face of a more parti- political-career interactions and the current one is the san career bureaucracy. First, the overtness of the ca- level of controversy regarding the issues Trump high-

DONALD TRUMP is a different kind of president from the type we have seen previously. He is blunter and brasher and generally more hostile to the way things are done in Washington. In addition, the opposition to Trump is more adamant, and even perhaps more unhinged, than at any point in the modern age.

reer officials cited was alarming, especially given how lighted in his campaign. Candidate Trump ran on re- careful they typically are. Second, Diamond points out pealing Obamacare, combating political correctness, that there are 1,000 HHS officials who “can trace their and law and order. Many career officials in these agen- jobs back to Obamacare.” Presumably, these individu- cies have seen their mission in opposite terms—they als will be most resistant to repealing and replacing were tasked with promoting the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, the stated policy of the new president. maintaining speech regimes on campus, and creating And finall , the open speculation from a career official new guidance on how to monitor allegations of racism even if anonymous, about serving as an “internal sab- by police officers. This discrepancy, coupled with then oteur” should raise alarm bells among not only incom- President-elect Trump’s calls to initiate a hiring freeze ing political officials but also career employees, whose for federal workers, led to a Washington Post report jobs are directly tied to their ability to work with, and about federal agencies rushing to fill any possible va- generate the trust of, political appointees. cancies before the January 20th turnover. Presumably Another worrisome portent was open resistance these new hires would not only get in before a hiring to what should have been viewed as routine requests. freeze, but also share the Obama administration’s per- Trump’s transition team posed a list of questions to spective on these hot-button issues. different departments regarding the agencies’ activi- So it is fair to assume that the mistrust between ties in recent years. Such questions are standard oper- politicals and careers will be higher in this new ad- ating procedure, and transition teams of both parties ministration than in previous administrations. It cer- present them to agencies during transition as a mat- tainly seems possible that the intransigence of the ca- ter of course. As part of this process, the Trump team reer officials could be more significantto efforts of the asked which career staffers at EPA and the Depart- incoming administration than in previous changes ment of Energy were involved in climate-change poli- of power. If so, the Trump team, already convinced of cy. These questions made their way into the press and the hostility of the establishment, may be even warier

16 Will There Be an Internal Revolt Against Trump? : February 2017

TROY.indd 16 1/12/17 2:49 PM than a typical GOP political team. leeway to hire people who are friendly. This ability to Should there be this kind of open dislike of the shape the incoming career hires may in fact be one

Trump politicals by career officials, how might that of the reasons that, following eight years of Obama, TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL manifest itself? The careers have a number of tools they many career officials may be resistant to the incoming might employ. One is the leak. Career officialsoften have administration. In addition, while one or two people good ties to the media who cover their department, and might resign, organizing a mass resignation from civil- they know how to get a message out. In addition, stories service jobs that effectively grant lifetime employment leaked against a Republican administration are often and generous benefits is unlikely. The truth is that taken at face value and hyped by both the media and some career folks may grumble, or leak, or privately the opposition party. Sometimes leaked charges lead to seethe, but it is unlikely that they will be able to stop investigations, many of which are spurious. an administration from accomplishing its major ad- Leaking is noisome but ultimately not that effec- ministrative priorities. tive. When I was serving at the Department of Labor, What this account should reveal, beyond some a particular Washington Post columnist had a knack minimal amusement, is that the career officials are just for getting marginally embarrassing scoops about the part of the playing field. They don’t make it impossible international travel of political officials. After the sec- for Republicans to accomplish anything, and they don’t ond or third time it happened, it became pretty clear necessarily make it easy. They are a factor all incoming from which office the leaks were emanating. The solu- administrations need to deal with. Unwise administra- tion was to limit access to people from that office. This tions come in and go on hunts for burrowed-in officials might have the impact of keeping non-leakers out of shut out careers from all decisions, and generally try the loop along with the actual perpetrator, but it was to do the work of thousands of career officials with a better than foolishly handing a hostile columnist more handful of political appointees, many of whom have grist for his attacks. Career officials are generally not little experience with the agency in question. HHS has happy about being excluded from their official duties, a workforce of 70,000, with only about 150 political ap- and therefore will have an in-built incentive to put pointees. It is impossible to get much done unless the their own pressure on the leaker to knock it off. politicals let the career officials do their jobs under the Another tactic is “slow walking” policies to direction of the senior political leadership. which career officials object. This can work for a time, If a new political team is thoughtful and knows and on certain projects, but it also becomes obvious what it is doing, it can get a lot done. As a former se- fairly quickly what is happening. Political leaders have nior political head of administration at a cabinet de- tools with which to combat intentionally dilatory be- partment told me, “When you get in, you take some havior. Senior politicals do annual reviews for careers, time, you get rid of the bad apples.” This does not mean and these reviews affect bonuses and salary increases. dismissing them, of course. The Baxter case described Politicals also have some say over assignments and above demonstrates the folly of that approach. But placement. An obstinate employee can’t be fired, as we there are tools wise administrators can use to elevate have seen, but can be offered a job at the same level in cooperative officials and move aside obstinate ones. North Dakota or another distant state. This does not This does not entail making the decisions based on have to be done too often before the word spreads that ideology or partisan affili tion. It does mean looking the politicals know how to use the tools at their dispos- at the willingness of the officials to do the legitimate al and that they are willing to employ them. tasks they are assigned to do. A third tactic careers can use is resignation. This If the Trump administration heeds these lessons, is of mixed utility. Politicals, especially in the Trump it can accomplish much in four or possibly eight years. administration, may see the resignation of a resistant Perhaps not as much as promised in the heat of a cam- employee as an opportunity, both to get rid of a prob- paign—few administrations can—but still a great deal. lem and to hire someone more cooperative. The civil- But to do so requires coming to grips with what the ca- service rules may make it hard to fire someone un- reer bureaucracy is, what is isn’t, and how an incoming sympathetic to the president, but they do allow some administration can best deal with it.q

Commentary 17

TROY.indd 17 1/12/17 2:49 PM DECISIONS AND REVISIONS THAT A MOMENT WILL REVERSE How Democrats and liberals will now say exactly the opposite of what they said during the Obama years By Noah C. Rothman

HERE WAS A TIME when questioning climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the a president’s legitimacy represented Rabin assassination.” Liberal concern over the “de- an act of near-treasonous incitement. legitimization” of Obama extended to the Republican That time was 2009. Take the case of filibu tering of judicial nominees, the moment when Thomas Friedman of the New York a Republican lawmaker shouted “you lie” during an Times. He wondered whether vitri- Obama speech before a joint session of Congress, and olic attacks on Barack Obama (specifi- expressions of concern from conservatives about the cally, a poll on Facebook) had “begun fraudulent voter-registration outfit called ACORN. tipping over into de-legitimization” William Yeomans, a columnist for Reuters, even and were “creating the same kind of sought to discredit anyone preemptively who ques- tioned the legitimacy of the Electoral College if Barack NoahT C. Rothman is assistant online editor of Com- Obama lost the popular vote in 2012: “In the unlikely mentary. event that Obama should be reelected without carrying

18 February 2017

Rothman.indd 18 1/12/17 2:50 PM the popular vote, however, there will surely be members the opposition party convey that the Bush economy was of the opposition irresponsibly hurling that fact around substandard? Their answer was to call into question the

as reason to reject the president’s second-term agenda,” value of the jobs being created. To illustrate the “crisis,” TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL he prophesized. Strangely, Yeomans declined to shame Democrats settled on dubbing the jobs created under Democrats for obsessing over the political ramific tions Bush soul-sucking, unfulfilling drudgery. of Hillary Clinton’s 2-million-vote lead over Electoral From the pages of major metropolitan newspa- College victor Donald Trump. pers to the floor of the United States Congress, liberals All this has been unceremoniously discarded down the mocked the decline of what New York Times reviewer memory hole. At the dawn of the Trump era, Demo- Elissa Schappell dubbed the Rust Belt’s “slide into ob- crats are reacquainting themselves with the virtues solescence” under Bush—“from ‘union proud’ to Mc- of life in the opposition. In the minority, matters that Job servitude.” What Democrats once called Bush’s were of little or no consequence to liberals during the “jobless recovery” was now a false revival typified by Obama era—or issues the raising of which would cause the creation of the wrong kind of jobs. “No disrespect liberals to accuse conservatives of acting in bad faith— to our hamburger flippers in America,” said then Illi- will almost certainly take center stage in their indict- nois Representative Rahm Emanuel, protesting a con- ments of President Trump. troversial memo to the president that recommended reclassifying food-service work as manufacturing labor. RETURN OF THE HAMBURGER FLIPPERS: When “They work and do a good job, and we are outperform- it comes to the economy, watch for two metrics Democrats ing Japan and Germany and China in the hamburger- dismissed offhand during the Obama era to become mat- flipping business.” ters of great public urgency in the Trump era: underem- This flippant political contortion was itself ployment and the labor-force participation rate. recycled from the Reagan years—the last period of At 62.4 percent in September 2015, the labor- genuinely explosive economic growth. “By destroying force participation rate—the degree to which poten- many high-paying factory jobs, are high-tech produc- tial workers are either employed or are trying to find a tion techniques going to turn the United States into job—was at its worst point in nearly 40 years. Though a nation of $50,000-a-year systems managers and it has since ticked up slightly, that number has con- $3.50-an-hour janitors and hamburger flippers?” be- tinued to languish. Obama critics have, from the be- moaned Walter Cronkite in September 1984. ginning of the economic recovery after the 2008–09 Concern over the quality of “McJobs” always recession, combined the labor-force rate with the “un- seems to be directly proportional to the GOP’s political deremployment” rate—the category known as U6 that fortunes. In the Obama presidency, the value of service measures workers who are employed in occupations employment was never an issue. Rather, the burning that do not optimize their skill sets or availability—to questions were whether employers could be made to question the strength of the revival. pay a “living wage.” Now, in a new period of GOP domi- Now that Trump has inherited this malaise, nance, the low aesthetic and supposedly mindless liberals will suddenly turn around and blame him quality of this kind of employment will once again pre- and Republicans for it. This means that Democrats occupy liberal minds, especially if the unemployment who once argued that the labor-force participation rate remains. rate was artificially low as a result of the surge in re- They might have a problem pinning it on Trump, tiring baby boomers will probably forget they made though, since his entire campaign accepted the “ham- this argument. No longer will nonworking students burger-flippe ” argument in his insistence on reviv- who haven’t yet joined the workforce as skilled labor- ing the manufacturing sector to “make America great ers represent the light at the end of the tunnel for the again.” He used it to great effect against Obama and economy. Liberals are sure to rediscover the tragedy of Hillary Clinton. the long-term unemployed discouraged workers and involuntary part-time laborers, and in very short or- HOW NOW, DOW JONES: Democrats are also like- der. And the horror of the working conditions under ly to rediscover the evils of a surging stock market in which people are finding jobs. the Trump era if the Dow Jones Industrial Average con- We saw this in 2003 under George W. Bush. After tinues along its present trajectory. For a glimpse of this a double-dip recession in 2001 (the fir t began six weeks coming reversion to a comfortable mean, Americans after Bush took office, the second after 9/11), the econo- need look only to how the stock market’s performance my had gotten back on a firmer footing. Job growth was was derided as a symptom of a societal sickness under relatively strong. How, under such conditions, could Ronald Reagan.

Commentary 19

Rothman.indd 19 1/12/17 3:05 PM “When politicians and pop culture impresarios the market’s level of greed. “The rapid shift in overall refer to ‘the eighties,’ they usually mean the vapid, he- market momentum is another sign of Extreme Greed donistic, amoral years of America’s new gilded age, in our index,” La Monica observed. That’s, after all, when yuppies reigned and greed was good,” writes fi ting. “Trump fir t became famous in the ‘Greed is the historian Gil Troy in Morning in America: How Good’ 1980s decade,” he wrote. The Third Gilded Age Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980’s. For the other half, is upon us. Troy noted that Reagan’s America was one character- ized by drugs, crime, failing schools, socioeconomic CAESAR, THOU ART MORTAL: We can also expect breakdown, “selfishness, even hard-heartedness,” and the Democrats to be, all of sudden, alarmed, preoccu- an America in which the wealthy benefited dispropor- pied, and horrified with executive overreach—thanks tionately. entirely to the unilateral expansion of executive au- In July 1984, the Census noted an increase in the thority by Obama, about which they were oddly silent number of Americans living in poverty under Reagan. when it mattered. TRY TO STOP TRUMP STOP TO TRY That finding was dubbed “the smoking gun of Reagan The portfolio of implicit new powers Donald HOW DEMOCRATS WILL DEMOCRATS HOW unfairness” by House Speaker Tip O’Neill. With infl - Trump will inherit from the outgoing president is stag- tion and unemployment down, GDP growth up, and gering. The constitutional-law professor in the Oval the so-called misery index reaching its lowest point Office routinely asserted the unilateral authority to act since 1972, Democrats had no choice but to bemoan on his policy preferences based on the founding char- the way economic performance was unfairly benefi - ter’s penumbras and emanations solely because Con- ing the wealthy and connected under Reagan. The ris- gress would not. As a result, Trump will not only have ing tide on Wall Street (the 25-year bull market began the power to repeal existing executive orders, as have in 1983) provided the grist for their mill. This is an all of his predecessors, but is also being bequeathed argument that is almost certain to be resurrected to “executive actions” that already have questionable le- tarnish Trump. gal authority. It will be hard for Democrats and liberals to ad- Trump has been provided by immediate prec- vance this one with a straight face, but one can expect edent with a new set of tools to try out when he sees them to shoulder on nonetheless. During a depress- fit. He might, say, delay the implementation of laws ingly sluggish post-recession recovery in Obama’s two regardless of their legislative terms, because Barack terms, Democrats lacked criteria by which they could Obama did just that when it came to the implementa- declare the recession over and the liberal program a tion of ObamaCare. If he wants to amend existing law success. Their best case: The performance of the stock and encounters a recalcitrant Congress, Trump can market. simply order executive agencies or department to is- By October 2012, the Dow had gained nearly 70 sue waivers or statutory interpretations (i.e., the birth- percent from its low point in September 2008. The control mandate that somehow was found to arise out S&P had risen 80 percent over the same period. “For a of ObamaCare) that are in confli t with the letter of the president who is supposedly bad for business, Barack law but comport with his personal preferences. Obama has been surprisingly good for business,” wrote Democrats may also find themselves interested the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson on the eve of Obama’s in the virtues of executive modesty when it comes to di- reelection. Citing the market’s performance, Millsaps rect interference with the private marketplace. For his College historian Robert McElvaine urged Americans part, Trump harbors no ideological misgivings about to judge Obama not against any Republican presi- such interference. He demonstrated this before taking dent of the last 80 years but against President Herbert office with the announcement of a deal to preserve a Hoover. This was the most overt effort in a campaign handful of jobs at an Indiana-based air-conditioning to convince Americans to judge Obama on events that plant run by Carrier. By providing Carrier’s parent did not occur—in this case, the non-occurrence of a company, a defense contractor, with “inducements” new Great Depression. in the form of taxpayer-provided benefits in exchange Donald Trump had not yet even taken office be- for meeting hiring and capital investment quotas, fore the market’s performance was deemed of suspect the Trump administration showed anti-laissez-faire value. “Greed is back on Wall Street after Trump’s win,” colors. “The free market has been sorting it out, and the headline in a report via CNN’s Paul R. La Monica America’s been losing,” lamented Vice President Mike blared just 10 days after Trump’s victory. By compar- Pence in December 2016. “Every time,” nodded Presi- ing the performance of bonds versus stocks, the CNN dent Trump. “Every time.” analyst devised an index by which he could measure To some Democrats, the Carrier deal represented

20 Decisions and Revisions That a Moment Will Reverse : February 2017

Rothman.indd 20 1/12/17 2:50 PM a brand of what the Huffin ton Post dubbed “authori- uted to secret racism. Because such acts were deemed tarianism”—but it’s the kind of authoritarianism they illegitimate, every effort to counter them was justified are not sure they should oppose. In an interview with It was because of this contorted logic that Democrats the Huffin ton Post, New America Foundation Open managed to convince themselves that their pique was Markets Program Fellow Matt Stoller warned that the a species of righteousness, and, holding fast to this de- “incentives” represent leverage over Carrier’s owner, lusion, they eliminated the Senate filibu ter in 2013 for United Technologies, which Trump may use to impose all executive appointments but those to the Supreme Washington’s will on the private firm. “‘Do what I say, Court. or else,’ is not a good way to run a country,” Stoller said. Now, staring down the barrel of a GOP adminis- The New Yorker’s John Cassidy noted that liberals had tration and Republican majorities in Congress, Demo- rightly chided Trump for offering Carrier a “bribe” in crats are indulging in a little wistful regret. “I, frankly, exchange for a positive headline, even though this kind think many of us will regret that in this Congress, be- of “economic nativism and nationalism” has its con- cause it would have been a terrific speed bump, po- stituencies. tential emergency break, to have in our system to slow It wasn’t all that long ago that Americans were down the confirm tion of extreme nominees,” con- told that it was the worst kind of pitiless capitalist ex- fessed Delaware Senator Chris Coons mournfully. Even cess to let a legacy industry like American automobile incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried manufacturing go bankrupt. That argument won the to rewrite history by contending recently that he pri- day when the outgoing Bush administration extended vately lobbied Democrats to pass on eliminating the emergency TARP funds to General Motors and Chrys- filibu ter in 2013, but he related that he “didn’t prevail.”

THE IMPLICIT NEW POWERS Trump will inherit from the outgoing president are staggering. The constitutional-law professor in the Oval Office routinely asserted the unilateral authority to act on his policy preferences based on the founding charter’s pen- umbras and emanations solely because Congress would not.

ler in December 2008 amid what CBS News described Schumer’s position on the nuking of the filibu - as “urgent requests” from President-elect Barack ter is a weathervane that shifts direction along with Obama and Congress. Most of those federal funds went the winds. He was by no means an opponent of a pro- to paying off the two troubled car firms’ debts and se- posed rules change when he told the audience of a curing United Autoworkers union members’ pensions. March 2013 dinner that Senate Democrats would “fil While union members had their livelihoods bolstered up the D.C. circuit one way or the other.” “If the oppo- in the form of an agreement from GM to preserve their sition was not to the person but just to filling the posi- existing wage rates, nonunion members of GM’s fam- tion, that was where we would draw the line,” Schumer ily saw their pensions eliminated. In the end, GM did told Think Progress on the eve of nuclear Armaged- turn to bankruptcy in 2009, which decimated the in- don. “This is getting close to that.” vestments of small bondholders. One wonders how The Democratic Party’s rediscovery of the sepa- the Huffin ton Post might view this kind of politically ration of powers and the problems of executive over- expedient “authoritarianism” with the benefit of hind- reach will actually be salutary, even if the motivation sight. will be grossly political. And it will represent a healthy How will the legislative branch respond to what challenge to congressional Republicans, who were up are sure to be challenges to its authority from the next in arms about Obama’s conduct but will now have to administration? For Democrats in the minority, dis- face an angry president of their own party if they make sent will once again become patriotic. Under Barack a stink about the matter. Obama, the standard issue foot-dragging expected of a minority party was branded “obstructionism” of a GETTING AND SPENDING: Democrats are about special kind that betrayed an ugly and personal acri- to turn into debt hawks. The Pavlovian liberal response mony toward President Barack Obama often attrib- to Republican governance was ably demonstrated by

Commentary 21

Rothman.indd 21 1/12/17 2:50 PM Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times quarter of 2016. Unemployment is relatively low, and opinion writer Paul Krugman. In a January column, the Dow is riding high. Only a prevailing sense of per- he warned that the GOP was set to blow up the federal sonal economic crisis among a segment of the voting budget deficit “at almost precisely the moment that public to which Trump feels indebted could possibly deficits were starting to matter again.” His column is justify such fiscal illiteracy. But this is not just terrible replete with road-worn admonitions about the GOP’s policy; it’s also progressive in exactly the way Demo- alleged commitment to making the “rich richer” while crats are progressive. Will Democrats suddenly em- conceding that deficit spending and government bor- brace frugality just to oppose a Republican? Will they rowing “competes with the private sector for a limited become the callous wretches they have for so long op- amount of money.” While railing against alleged GOP posed in the name of parsimony? hypocrisy on the matter of budgets, Krugman appears unwavering in his determination to ignore his own. RISE UP: In early 2009, at the nadir of their political The national debt was of little concern to Krug- relevance, Republicans discovered enthusiasm for the man and his fellow travelers as it nearly doubled conservative cause that they desperately needed in the from $11 trillion to $19 trillion over the course of the spontaneous rise of the Tea Party. The passionate op- Obama presidency. But as Krugman demonstrates, position displayed by average citizens to the prospect Trumpian debt expansion will instantly be deemed of unsustainable government spending proved to be wildly irresponsible and dangerous. Trump has prom- a boon to the GOP. It provided the boost Republican ised a variety of big-ticket spending items as part of candidates needed for their races in 2010. It created his agenda, including the extension of unemploy- new recruiting and fundraising tools, and crowds who

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S rediscovery of the separation of powers and the problems of executive overreach will actually be salutary, even if the motivation will be grossly political. And it will represent a healthy challenge to congressional Republicans, who were up in arms about Obama’s conduct but will now have to face an angry president of their own party if they make a stink about the matter.

ment benefits to new mothers as a form of maternity promised to take their anxieties with them into the leave and an approximately $1 trillion spending and voting booth. public-works proposal. Unlike Obama’s 2009 stimu- The zeal the Tea Party brought to the table lus, the Trump administration will supposedly seek overshadowed its nastier elements: those within the to structure this plan in a way that maximizes public- movement who were not ideologically conservative private partnerships. Nevertheless, Congress would but merely anti-Obama, some of whom harbored the still be effectively writing a 13-figure check. Moreover, suspicion that this new black president was secretly a the desired effects of Trump’s infrastructure proposal Kenyan Muslim interloper. More fatefully, it led con- are virtually identical to Obama’s American Recovery servative Republicans to disregard surveys that found and Reinvestment Act: Keynesianism, but in this case this populist movement was composed primarily of without the crisis that supposedly necessitates such disaffected political refugees, including a large num- extraordinary measures. ber of Democrats and independents who had little use “Sometimes you have to prime the pump,” for the conservative governing agenda. Trump told Time, echoing the central tenet of John Tea Party envy among Democrats isn’t new. The Maynard Keynes’s prescriptions for growth amid highest echelons of the party, including Barack Obama times of economic adversity. But where is the depres- and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, were quick sion-level calamity Trump seeks to address? There are, to embrace the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement at present, no recessionary pressures on the economy. in 2011 in hopes it would serve as their own grassroots There is no liquidity crisis. There is no credit crunch. uprising even as their version of it came to be typifie The GDP grew at a respectable 3.2 percent in the third by acts of anti-social violence. This was the Democratic

22 Decisions and Revisions That a Moment Will Reverse : February 2017

Rothman.indd 22 1/12/17 2:50 PM Party’s response to a midterm drubbing that cost the but it will prove to be a powerful organizing tool for a Democrats control of the House. How will the party re- movement with no ability at present to get at the levers

spond now, in the middle of its darkest winter in nearly of power in Washington—and little attachment to con- TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL 100 years? ventional notions of civic propriety. This group of un- If history is any guide, the prospect of renewing derground Democrats is, for now, a small band. It has public enthusiasm for the Democratic Party will over- the potential, though, for aggressive expansion with come any prudent objections to unseemly or even vio- the right amount of incubation by imprudent mem- lent tactics. We’ve gotten a taste of this in the deference bers of a party out of power. Democrats and the White House displayed toward an In performing as any opposition party must, aggressive, riotous, and ignorant group of agitators Democrats appear ready to demonstrate that most of who made a bloody stand against a stretch of oil pipe- their so-called principled objections to Republican tac- line at the Standing Rock Reservation in late 2016. tics in the Obama years were mere postures. There is The activist left is convinced that it now consti- no question that many voters are apprehensive about tutes an underground resistance, the final bulwark Donald Trump, but, owing to their many hypocrisies, against the fascist aims of an illegitimate Vichy regime. Democrats are going to find thwarting his agenda a That may sound overly dramatic to outside observers, diffi ult task. They have only themselves to blame.q

Commentary 23

Rothman.indd 23 1/12/17 2:50 PM FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL IS FAIR During the Trump years, expect the left to reverse course on foreign policy By Abe Greenwald

S THE STRANGE year that was not retaliate against the United States after Presi- 2016 came to an end, Donald dent Barack Obama expelled 25 Russian diplomats Trump faced a suitably strange from the U.S. and imposed new sanctions on Russia. accusation. The president-elect’s “Great move on delay (by V. Putin),” Trump tweeted, liberal critics accused him of “I always knew he was very smart!” Trump’s effusive treasonous tweeting. The claims admiration for the man who was behind the 2016 came, naturally, on Twitter. “I hacking attacks on the Democratic National Com- hope you get charged with treason mittee and John Podesta’s email account was worri- you melted Hostess snack cake,” some, offensive, and un-presidential. But it wasn’t in tweeted one writer for MTV. Judd the same neighborhood as treason. It wasn’t even on Legum, an editor at Think Progress, was more mea- the same continent. sured.A “I don’t think Trump committed treason with The Constitution defines treason as “the levying this tweet,” he wrote, “but he’s in the neighborhood.” of war against the United States” and the giving of “aid Trump’s offending tweet had praised Vladimir and comfort” to America’s enemies. If we were to stretch Putin. The Russian president had just said he would the meaning of “aid and comfort” to include social-me- dia compliments, we would find Twitter fairly overrun Abe Greenwald is senior editor of Commentary. by traitors who routinely praise America’s adversaries.

24 February 2017

Greenwald.indd 24 1/12/17 2:51 PM But what’s most interesting about the left’s overreac- ing lack of knowledge about international affairs or just tion to Trump’s tweet is that it condemned a stance on craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unwor-

Russia that Barack Obama himself had maintained for thy of a major presidential contender.” The editorial de- TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL the lion’s share of his two terms as president. And that fended Obama’s missile-defense betrayal in Eastern Eu- stance was widely praised by Obama’s supporters. If we rope and closed on a note that now sounds remarkably believed in the new definition of treason provided by Trumpian: “There are real threats out there: Al Qaeda these sudden Russia hawks of the left, Barack Obama’s and its imitators, Iran, North Korea, economic stresses. previous interactions with Putin would have landed Mr. Romney owes Americans a discussion of the real him in the dock years ago. challenges facing this country and his solutions to them.” There was, for example, that time in March 2012 Consider that a year ago, Trump defended his approach when a microphone in Korea picked up the 44th presi- to Russia thus: “I’m not saying Russia is not a threat. But dent telling Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev we have other threats. We have the threat of terrorism.” that he, Obama, would be more accommodating to Pu- What’s the difference, then, between the Rus- tin’s demands for reduced American missile defense in sian reset of 2009 and its 2017 iteration? What Europe once he got reelected and could drop his harsh- makes the fir t good and the second bad? Why, the er pose toward Russia. (This was the moment that fea- man doing the resetting, of course. For the New York tured Medvedev’s immortal response, “I will transmit Times and other liberal entities, foreign-policy posi- this information to Vladimir.”) tions that were considered brilliant under President That was but one instance of Obama’s long, Obama are now deemed subversive in the hands of dogged (and failed) effort to make nice with a revan- President Trump. The reset policy is one example; chist Russia by dealing with Putin almost entirely on there will be many more to come. For on several key Putin’s terms. In March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary issues, Trump represents more of a continuation Clinton implemented Obama’s “Russian reset” policy, than a refutation of Obama’s approach to foreign presenting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov affairs. But don’t expect to see the kind of support with a symbolic red “reset” button. As the Obama ad- Obama enjoyed for taking similar steps. ministration’s own fact sheet explained: “President Obama sought to reset relations with Russia and re- LADIMIR PUTIN isn’t the only bad ac- verse what he called a ‘dangerous drift’ in this impor- tor with whom Trump is seeking coop- tant bilateral relationship. President Obama and his eration or understanding. He also sees administration have sought to engage the Russian Syrian dictator—and Putin ally—Bashar government to pursue foreign policy goals of com- al-Assad as a potential partner in fightin mon interest—win-win outcomes—for the American ISIS. Although Assad has killed hundreds and Russian people.” Outcomes soon proved, however, of thousands of Syrian citizens and many to be win-lose. Obama reneged on U.S. missile-defense seeV his removal as key both to ending the Syrian civil promises to Poland and the Czech Republic in order to war and draining the appeal of ISIS, Trump has no becalm Putin. But Putin went on the offensive, eventu- interest in helping to bring down the current Syrian ally annexing Crimea in 2014. Putin also failed to honor regime. “If they ever did overthrow Assad,” he has said, new nuclear agreements between the U.S. and Rus- “you may very well end up with worse than Assad.” sia, oversaw years of cyberattacks against the United He’s also praised Assad as “much tougher and much States, and waged an air war on U.S.-backed rebels in smarter than [Hillary Clinton] and Obama.” What’s Syria that continues to this day. more, Trump’s interest in working with Putin militates Even as rapprochement with Putin was failing, against his causing any grief for Putin’s Syrian client. Obama and his supporters remained enthusiastic about For his part, Assad has described President Trump as a the policy. When 2012 Republican presidential candidate “natural ally” in the fight against terrorism. Mitt Romney described Russia as America’s “No. 1 geopo- Trump’s critics on the left will surely view this as litical foe,” the president and his defenders mocked Rom- repellent cynicism. And they would be correct in their ney ruthlessly. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their assessment. But where were they when Obama was foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for engaging Assad with great enthusiasm? When Obama 20 years,” Obama said during a debate with Romney. The came to office, he worked tirelessly to warm relations New York Times editorial board saw Romney’s position between the U.S. and Syria, reestablishing diplomatic as dangerous: “Two decades after the end of the cold war, ties, hinting at eased sanctions on the regime, and Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s ‘No. smoothing Syria’s way into international trade bod- 1 geopolitical foe.’ His comments display either a shock- ies. And, as now, Assad was keen on friendly relations

Commentary 25

Greenwald.indd 25 1/12/17 2:59 PM with a U.S. president. He even invited Obama to Syria. ican diplomatic engagement can itself be a valuable Then-Senator John Kerry was passionate about what “win” for bad regimes hoping to raise their profile. As he saw as a great opening. Assad “wants to engage such, it shouldn’t be granted lightly. Moreover, sum- with the West,” Kerry told Seymour Hersh. “Our latest mitry can succeed only if it involves parties hammer- conversation gave me a much greater sense that Assad ing out the details of a goal they already share. is willing to do the things that he needs to do in or- Those on the left were either quick to defend der to change his relationship with the United States. Obama as breaking courageously with George W. He told me he’s willing to engage positively with Iraq, Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” or quick to amend his and have direct discussions with Israel over the Golan comments so that they seemed a harmless verbal slip- Heights—with Americans at the table. I will encourage up. Obama, of course, did pursue such talks and those the Administration to take him up on it.” Hersh, and talks produced the dangerous and immoral policy the rest of the liberal commentariat, ate it up. “Obama hash that is the Iran nuclear deal and the fruitless nor- Has Syria’s Assad Right Where He Wants Him,” an- malization of relations with Cuba. nounced a 2010 Newsweek headline atop an editorial Despite Donald Trump’s well-earned reputation about Obama’s engagement policy. for bluster, he is actually following the Obama line on It is true that Obama’s engagement push came talks without preconditions. As discussed, he’s eager before Assad launched a brutal campaign against his to work with Putin and Assad toward what he believes own people. In 2009, his defenders might argue, there are common goals. He was also asked by Reuters if he was still a chance of appealing to Assad’s better angels would be willing to talk directly to North Korean leader and inspiring reform. But massive slaughter is not the Kim Jong Un about halting the isolated nation’s nuclear

DESPITE DONALD TRUMP’S well-earned reputation for bluster, he is actually following the Obama line on talks without preconditions. He’s eager to work with Putin, Assad, and others toward what he believes are common goals.

only indication of an irredeemably dangerous regime. program. “Absolutely,” Trump said. “I would speak to When Obama sought to engage Assad, the Syrian dic- him, I would have no problem speaking to him.” tator’s monstrous credentials were well established. Will the left see this as a brave turn away from He had sanctioned a flow of jihadists into Iraq to kill the failed stubborn policy of the past? Not likely. In- Americans fighting in the war. Syria was the closest stead, we’re probably going to hear more about what ally of Iran, a terrorist state bent on the destruction Hillary Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan characterized as of Israel and the United States. His was a terrorist re- Trump’s “bizarre fascination with foreign strongmen gime, a Baathist regime, and an oppressive dictator- like Putin and Kim.” ship beyond rehabilitation. Moreover, even after the Syrian civil war began, the Obama administration ONALD TRUMP’S stance on American tried time and again to cajole Assad into reform or alliances is hard to discern. As he’s done compromise. on most issues, Trump has spoken in For all the above reasons, many conservatives contradictory terms about the future of were outspoken in opposing engagement with Assad NATO. Trump is on record calling NATO from the start. But this time round, as Trump attempts “obsolete,” telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl to work with Damascus, liberals are sure to take great that he considered it “extremely expen- offense. Dsive for the United States, disproportionately so.” Ad- Then there is the matter of talking to rogue re- ditionally, he said, “it can be trimmed up and it can be gimes more generally. When Obama ran for president reconfigured and you can call it NATO, but it’s going in 2008, his vow to talk to Iran (and other regimes) to be changed.” Similarly, he told the New York Times’s “without preconditions” became an election focal David Sanger: “If we cannot be properly reimbursed point. Conservatives pounced, pointing out that Amer- for the tremendous cost of our military protecting

26 Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair : February 2017

Greenwald.indd 26 1/12/17 2:51 PM other countries . . . Then yes, I would be absolutely pre- can foreign policy. To be clear, Obama was wrong pared to tell those countries, ‘Congratulations, you will to let important ties with democracies whither, and

be defending yourself.’” In speaking to Sanger, how- Trump would be just as mistaken to follow suit. When TRY TO STOP TRUMP HOW DEMOCRATS WILL ever, he also said he believed that NATO membership the United States broadcasts its reluctance to stand was a matter of “mutual interest,” and he dismissed as by allies, bad actors become emboldened and soon “fools and haters” those who say he seeks to shirk al- make their moves. That was more or less the story of liances. For the most part, then, Trump has indicated Obama’s presidency. his disapproval of NATO’s current configu ation and hinted at an inchoate plan to shake it up. N BROAD TERMS, Trump and Obama share a His strange bitterness on this issue is wrong- reluctance to challenge American adversaries headed and worrisome. As we weather the current or risk American lives for the sake of friends global surge of illiberalism, maintaining old and or principles. Both men believe deeply in their trusted alliances becomes all the more important. But talent for persuasion and hope that their skills if Trump’s actions turn out to be less hostile than his at negotiation will obviate the need for rougher rhetoric, as seems the case in other policy areas, he measures. In Obama, his supporters saw this might very well end up adopting a position similar to Ialternately as an expression of progressivism or the one held by President Obama. As the reversal on foreign-policy realism. He was either an idealist who missile defense demonstrates, Obama had little prob- put his faith in dialogue or a calculating realist who lem denying our NATO allies what they desperately understood the perilous temptation of overreaction. sought. Sounding not unlike his successor, Obama In Trump, similar actions will surely be attributed to complained of ungrateful allies to the Atlantic’s Jef- darker motives. frey Goldberg only a few months ago. “Free riders ag- It must be said that Donald Trump has given gravate me,” he said. He even told British Prime Min- Americans, left and right, very little reason to respect ister David Cameron that if Britain did not spend at his judgment or sympathize with his intentions. He least 2 percent of its GDP on defense, the “special rela- speaks from unprecedented ignorance for someone tionship” between the two countries would be special occupying his office. And he’s overtly hostile to calls no more. Later in the interview with Goldberg, Obama for transparency. For that and other reasons, it be- blamed the failings of the 2011 U.S. intervention in hooves conservatives to avoid becoming mirror images Libya in part on, as Goldberg paraphrased it, “the pas- of their progressive counterparts. We would do great sivity of America’s allies.” harm on the right if we began to champion Obama-era Obama’s coolness toward longstanding allies policies that now come in Trump dress. And there are went mostly unremarked-upon in the liberal press. some worrying signs of conservatives doing just that. Progressives saw these compromised relationships as Fortunately, however, leading Republicans are already an acceptable price to pay for making supposed prog- pushing back on the most egregious of these—namely, ress with antagonists such as Russia. Neglected alli- Trump’s interest in befriending Putin. That kind of ances were contextualized as the tough but necessary internal disagreement is a sign of political health the work that peace demands. But we should expect no likes of which one can’t easily find on the left. Liberals such pass to be given to Trump if he manages our rela- and leftists marched in virtual lockstep behind Obama tions with allies in a similar fashion. In his case, we’re as he executed his failed policies. On the left, conser- likely to hear much talk of abandoned allies and to see vative infighting during Trump’s rise through the GOP the left rediscover the maintenance of international was a source of amusement. But it’s the ability to op- democratic ties as a foundational principle of Ameri- pose one’s own that keeps a party honest.q

Commentary 27

Greenwald.indd 27 1/12/17 2:51 PM The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power Every day she has to wake up knowing she became what she despised By Seth Mandel

AMANTHA POWER had been waiting cover) and reinforcements from Iranian terror proxies. her entire adult life for this moment. “To But the key part of Power’s speech came a few lines ear- the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, your lier, when she said: “Aleppo will join the ranks of those forces and proxies are carrying out these events in world history that define modern evil, that crimes,” the outgoing U.S. ambassador stain our conscience decades later. Halabja, Rwanda, to the United Nations thundered from Srebrenica, and, now, Aleppo.” her seat at the United Nations Security The line makes for a fi ting epitaph for Power’s Council briefing as Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, suc- own time in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet. The S cumbed to a brutal and bloody siege by government problem is that she spoke these words on Decem- forces. “Your barrel bombs and mortars and airstrikes ber 13, 2016, five weeks before the end of the Obama have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle tens of presidency—and three and a half years into her ten- thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose.” ure as America’s UN ambassador. Before she entered Then Power dropped the hammer: “Are you truly in- Obama’s service in 2009, she had devoted her mete- capable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can oric career to heaping shame on America’s history of shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civil- standing aside, hands in pockets, as mass murders ians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, occurred. She has famously and publicly called out that just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you individual officials as “bystanders to genocide” while will not lie about or justify?” lauding those who resigned in protest of the same. It’s not that Power was wrong. Bashar al-Assad’s Power, who at 42 became America’s youngest- regime has been able to continue to carry out its ever ambassador to the UN, has now become that by- slaughter thanks to Russian airpower (and diplomatic stander. It is her particular contribution to genocide scholarship that illuminates the frustration and despair Seth Mandel is op-ed editor of the New York Post. engendered by her toleration of Obama’s dithering. “It

28 February 2016

Mandel.indd 28 1/12/17 2:52 PM While interning at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Power forged a press-credential request so she could cover the Bosnian war. She was in her element.

is daunting to acknowledge, but this country’s consis- of the strife not only to become president of the Yugo- tent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide slav republic of Serbia but to agitate for the rights of offers sad testimony not to a broken American political Serb minorities in other Yugoslav states. The resulting system but to one that is ruthlessly effective,” she writes evaporation of Yugoslavia was a bloodbath, with Milo- in A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Geno- sevic at its center. He died in 2006 while on trial at the cide, which won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfi tion in 2003. International Criminal Court for genocide and other “The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. presi- war crimes. dent has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and Still on trial for similar crimes is Ratko Mladic. A no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his general who led Serbia’s army, Mladic headed the Serb indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence onslaught on Srebrenica, a town in Bosnia that had that genocide rages on.” been declared a “safe zone” by Dutch UN peacekeep- The story of how Samantha Power sought to ers. With Mladic’s troops closing in, Dutch commander break—or at least reform—that system, and ended up a Colonel Thomas Karremans requested NATO air sup- cog in its efficient forward march, is a cautionary one. port. It didn’t come in time. Demanding the Muslim population’s surrender, Mladic promised that those ORN IN ENGLAND but raised in Ireland, who turned over their weapons and complied would Power, at 9, moved with her mother, younger be spared. The meeting was videotaped. “Your people B sister, and her mother’s partner to the United need not die,” Mladic said. “Not your brothers or your States in 1979 (her father stayed behind in Ireland). husbands or your neighbors. You can survive or you can She became a huge baseball fan and hoped, she told disappear . . . . Allah can’t help you, but Mladic can.” the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos in 2014, to be “the next The Dutch stood aside. The Serbs put women Bob Costas.” That changed when, as a rising sopho- and children on buses headed out of the war zone. more at Yale in 1989, she watched a live feed of China’s The Bosnian Muslim men remained. “I thought that Tiananmen Square crackdown. After graduation, the even the Bosnian Serbs would not dare to seize a patch real education of Samantha Power began. of land under UN guard,” Power writes in A Problem While interning at the Carnegie Endowment for from Hell. On July 10, she wandered into the Associ- International Peace, Power forged a press-credential ated Press house, surprised to find “complete chaos request on Foreign Policy magazine letterhead so she around the phones. The Serb attack on Srebrenica that could cover the Bosnian war. She was in her element. had been ‘deteriorating’ for several days had suddenly She learned Bosnian; filed stories for the Washington ‘gone to hell.’ The Serbs were poised to take the town.” Post, the Boston Globe, and US News & World Report; When she finally got a free phone line, she called her and earned the respect of her peers in the war zone. editor at the Washington Post, who told her that when New York Times columnist Roger Cohen said in 2013 Srebrenica falls, it’s a story. The next day, it was. And that a vodka-drinking contest with a Russian officia the day after that, the Serbs began a mass execution left him passed out in the street—until Power carried of the male population of the town—about 8,000 of him back to the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. them—in what would be the largest mass murder in Her unflappabili y was key. The Bosnian confli t Europe since World War II. was part of an extraordinarily gruesome process of state Two weeks later, Power filed a piece for the Bos- collapse. Yugoslavia, a confederation of Communist sat- ton Globe. Without sharing a byline this time, she had ellites, was led by Josip Broz Tito until his death in 1980. the stage to herself and showed flashes of the lyri- Though an authoritarian, Tito kept enough distance cal nonfi tion writer she would soon become: “Up to from Stalin to receive Western aid during the Cold War. 17,000 Muslims now huddle in the 150-square-kilo- After Tito’s death, ethnic tensions suppressed for years meter Zepa valley, an area of dark green ferns, white bubbled up to the surface, aggravated by decentralizing minarets, and marble bridges that seems more suited reforms that unintentionally put the states on the path to ‘Hansel and Gretel’ than to warfare . . . . It is a remote to independence. Slobodan Milosevic took advantage area coveted only by those told they cannot possess

Commentary 29

Mandel.indd 29 1/12/17 2:52 PM During law school, she wrote a paper on military intervention in confli t zones that turned into her book-length treatment of humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide.

it. In the last war, the Nazis tried, and limped home national-security adviser (and who would have been bloodied; in this war the Serbs are hoping their third his secretary of state after Hillary Clinton if Obama try will be the charm.” had had his druthers). According to Power, Rice said In a 2010 interview as part of the organization the following at an interagency teleconference during Campus Progress’s national conference, Power ex- the fir t month of the genocide: “If we use the word plained why she had gone to the Balkans. It wasn’t to ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be report, but to witness: the effect on the November [congressional] election?” Rice claimed to have learned her lesson. She told Bosnia was on fire. The Serbs had set up con- Power in an interview for the article, “I swore to myself centration camps. There were, [yet] again, that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come emaciated men behind barbed wire in Eu- down on the side of dramatic action, going down in rope. . . . The Holocaust museum was just flames if that was required.” Twelve years later, Power opening up here on the Mall in Washington, would take over as UN ambassador from none other Schindler’s List had just come out—I just than Susan Rice—who had sought to shame Russia at couldn’t reconcile the tension between the the Security Council for the role it was playing in the “Never Again” culture, which had rightly war in Syria while continuing to represent a president evolved, and then what was actually happen- who refused to act. Just as Power would do. ing in Bosnia. I became completely consumed with what was going on, so I decided to go and FTER THE Atlantic article, Power was in- try to do something for Bosnia. terviewed in 2002 on a public-access show A hosted by University of California professor In 1995, back from covering the war, she enrolled Harry Kreisler. She was asked a hypothetical question: in Harvard Law School. That year, NATO began heavy “Without asking you to address the Palestine–Israel bombing of Serb military targets in Bosnia. Power “re- problem, let’s say you were an adviser to the presi- joiced,” according to Osnos. She told him: “Your aver- dent of the United States. How, in response to current age journalists knew that they should not admit that events, would you advise him to put a structure in was their longing. But you see that much terrorization place to monitor that situation, lest one party or an- of people and you’re just a human being in that con- other be looking like they might be moving toward text, and people were rooting for that outcome and genocide?” that intervention.” Power’s response was, in a word, bonkers. And During law school, she wrote a paper on mili- it was bonkers on so many levels that it debunks the tary intervention in confli t zones that turned into her popular conception of Power as a formidable debater eventual book-length treatment of humanitarian in- and premier intellectual. tervention to prevent genocide. She began by suggesting the question was not But it was not her fir t major treatment of the sub- merely hypothetical: “Well, I don’t think that in any ject. In the September 2001 issue of the Atlantic, she pub- of the cases, a shortage of information is the problem. lished an article called “Bystanders to Genocide.” It was And I actually think in the Palestine–Israeli situation, compelling, well-sourced, heartrending, and terrifying. there’s an abundance of information, and what we And unsparing. The subject was not the former don’t need is some sort of early-warning mechanism Yugoslavia, but the Clinton administration’s han- there.” dling of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The Clinton She then made clear that in this hypothetical, administration was not merely excoriated as a mass the Israelis are the aggressors, and that moneyed of indifference. It was dissected. Everybody looked American Jews are influencing U.S. foreign policy by bad—everybody. The policymaker who came out look- waving their checkbooks: “What we need is a willing- ing the worst was Susan Rice, at the time a National Se- ness to actually put something on the line in service curity Council staffer who eventually became Obama’s of helping the situation. And putting something on

30 The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power : February 2017

Mandel.indd 30 1/12/17 2:52 PM Power was critical of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. She admitted that the war would probably improve the lives of Iraqis. But she refused to say it was a just war.

the line might mean alienating a domestic constitu- terests, economic profit, and a geopolitical tilt toward ency of tremendous political and financial import.” Iraq thwarted humanitarian concerns.” After saying the U.S. should invest vast sums of But Power went further. Hussein’s increasingly money “not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually aggressive behavior was the result, she wrote in A investing in the new state of Palestine,” she cut right to Problem from Hell, of Bush’s coddling. And she blamed the chase: We should invest “the billions of dollars it America’s refusal to cut ties with Iraq for Hussein’s de- would probably take also to support what I think will velopment of weapons of mass destruction: “U.S. gov- have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old ernment-guaranteed loans had totaled $5 billion since Srebrenica kind or the Rwanda kind, but a meaningful 1983. The credits had freed up currency for Hussein military presence.” to fortify and modernize his more cherished military Now, an informed person, then and now, might assets, including his stockpile of deadly chemicals. have asked and might ask why, at a time when the American grain would keep the Iraqi army fed during terrorist anti-Semite Yasser Arafat was leading the its occupation of Kuwait.” Palestinians, we would assume that the government You might think, then, that Power would follow of Israel would be the more likely genocidaire. The an- on this line of thought consistently. After the fir t Gulf swer, according to Power, is that Arafat and then-Israe- war and throughout the 1990s, Saddam violated vari- li Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were birds of a feather: ous elements of the cease-fire agreement and fired at “It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the U.S. planes patrolling a no-fly zone while the West—es- benchmark rather than a deference to people who are pecially via Power’s beloved United Nations—helped fundamentally, politically destined to destroy the lives him avoid the financial sting of sanctions. He contin- of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom ued to oppress the Kurds and signaled his resuscita- Friedman has called ‘Sharafat.’ I mean, I do think in tion of Iraq’s WMD development, which Power had that sense that both political leaders have been dread- found so concerning. fully irresponsible. And unfortunately, it does require Yet Power was critical of the George W. Bush external intervention.” administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. She To sum up: Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat are admitted to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews at the time that the same person, the Jews are tilting the balance of the war would probably improve the lives of Iraqis. But power in the area to Israel, and an external force needs she refused to say it was a just war. And she knocked to intervene to protect the Palestinians from Israeli its supposed unilateralism: “It legitimates the go-it- mass murder. alone approach, and it sort of reinforces the impres- sion of us as an outlaw nation, which is ironic because, ND NOW TO IRAQ. In her Security Council of course, Saddam’s regime is far more an outlaw na- speech, Power compared Aleppo to Srebren- tion than ours.” A ica, Rwanda—and Halabja. This referred to In a 2008 Slate piece, she said war and occupa- Saddam Hussein’s campaign of ethnic cleansing of the tion should be used only as a last resort: “In my view rural Iraqi Kurdish population. In several waves in 1987 this consequentialist test was passed in Bosnia and and 1988, after declaring that Kurds should be treated flun ed in the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq.” She went as an insurgency, Hussein’s forces gassed and executed further in a 2003 piece in the New Republic, using Iraq about 100,000 Kurdish men, women, and children, as a touchstone to understand Bush’s “illiberal” power and forced the rest into designated residential areas. projection. “U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought,” The U.S., believing Iraq’s counterweight to Iran kept she wrote. “It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We a measure of stability in the region, was disinclined to need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, confront Hussein or recognize the genocidal campaign sponsored, or permitted by the United States.” for what it was, at least until late 1988. Both the Rea- But the Bush administration’s decision to settle gan and George H.W. Bush administrations opposed in for a lengthy occupation instead of merely decapi- sanctions on Saddam. Power’s conclusion: “Special in- tating the Iraqi regime was made in large measure

Commentary 31

Mandel.indd 31 1/12/17 2:52 PM If Power would station troops in Israel because she worries the Palestinians could plausibly be victims of genocide in the near future, what could she possibly say about Syria?

with protection of the Kurds and other non-Sunni knowledge of the history of bad policy, that’s a really Iraqis in mind—to prevent the kind of genocide Power dispiriting thought.” had warned against in A Problem from Hell. The Bush And that’s exactly what happened. administration wanted to avoid the mistakes of the fir t Bush presidency, which Power had so harshly HERE ARE TWO SITUATIONS in the world criticized. that should shame Power, the anti-genocide The Iraq war had one more strike against it for T activist. The fir t, and less obvious one, is Power: It resulted in the tragic death of her hero, Ser- Burma. The Obama administration cites this country gio Vieira de Mello. The Brazilian-born Vieira de Mello as one of its foreign-policy successes, because the rul- started his three-decade UN career as an anti-Ameri- ing junta took steps toward liberalization in return for can Marxist and developed into something of a realist lifting some sanctions against it. But then everybody along the way, as he got to know the real world. Power seems to have forgotten about it, and in doing so forgot met him in 1994. Always humanitarian-minded, Vieira about the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority cur- de Mello did peacekeeping tours in many of the world’s rently being subjected to an unmistakable genocide— confli t zones, and she praised his work and his life in among the clearest examples ever to emerge in real her biography, Chasing the Flame. time. This is genocide on Power’s watch, and we don’t Vieira de Mello’s career path took him, finall , hear a peep about it. to Iraq. The Bush administration asked him to be the The other, of course, is Syria. Whether or not the UN’s envoy to Iraq. If anyone could handle the stress Assad regime has fully crossed over the line to hav- and chaos, officials thought, it was he. On August 19, ing committed genocide, America’s inaction already 2003, he was killed when al-Qaeda bombed the UN’s flunks Power’s test. As longtime Levant correspondent Baghdad headquarters. Michael Totten has written, we’ve seen the warnings. Chasing the Flame is filled with lessons for the The fir t was Assad’s use of chemical weapons, a chill- reader from Vieira de Mello’s life—lessons she herself ing callback to Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. Another did not heed once she became a policymaker rather was the credible reporting of Shiite Iranian militias’ than a critic. One of them, which Vieira de Mello re- ethnically cleansing Sunni Arabs in core cities, atroci- turned to time and again, was the fact that the UN, ties that were then repeated in other strategic areas. when it comes to taking action, is taking orders. When If Power would station troops in Israel because you’re upset about UN inaction, you’re really upset she worries the Palestinians could plausibly be victims about the inaction of individual states. So, yes, Power of genocide in the near future, what could she possi- was right to rage at Russia over Syria in 2016—but she bly say about Syria? Well, she’d likely say, “We tried.” might have heeded Vieira de Mello’s words about Bos- President Obama declared that Assad’s use of chemi- nia: “If the United States and Europe wanted a muscu- cal weapons would be a “red line” that, once crossed, lar peacekeeping operation here, they would insist on would earn American military intervention. When adding muscle. If they really wanted to stop the Serbs, it became public that Assad had deployed chemical they would have done so long ago.” weapons, Obama put the word out: As the Germans If the United States had really wanted to stop used to say during World War II, the Amis are coming. Assad’s forces, the government Power represented at Power herself made the case for action in Syria. the UN would have done so long ago, before she took “Some have asked, given our collective war weariness, up her post in Turtle Bay. Power’s entire career has why we cannot use nonmilitary tools to achieve the been predicated on the assertion that talk is cheap and same end,” Power told a gathering at the Center for is a way of avoiding necessary action. Refugee-reset- American Progress in August 2013. “My answer to this tlement activist Kirk W. Johnson told the New Yorker’s question is: We have exhausted the alternatives.” Why Osnos: “The reason that people like us are so animated did the use of chemical weapons, as opposed to conven- about Samantha is that if she disappears into this sys- tional weapons, constitute a red line? “These weapons tem, if she gets ground up in Washington, with that kill in the most gruesome possible way,” Power said.

32 The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power : February 2017

Mandel.indd 32 1/12/17 2:52 PM She made her name and her reputation trashing the moral compasses of others who didn’t act when they had the power to do so—and then did exactly as they did.

“They kill indiscriminately. They are incapable of dis- conscience of the administration.” tinguishing between a child and a rebel. And they have Power suggested that Obama brought on a di- the potential to kill massively.” verse team of advisers because he “grapples with” the Power then explained that failing to act in this human cost of decision-making. “I’m even in the mix. case would send a very dangerous message to other I was not a born bureaucrat, and certainly not a born rogue regimes: “We cannot afford to signal to North diplomat,” Power says, laughing. Korea and Iran that the international community is Rose cuts in: “That’s why we’re all curious about unwilling to act to prevent proliferation or willing to this, you understand that.” tolerate the use of weapons of mass destruction.” Power said she understood that, and she re- So, according to Power, we had no choice but turned to the idea that she was just one voice “in the to act. But there’s always a choice, and Obama made mix,” that Obama wanted to have someone like her on a different one as soon as Russia gave him an excuse board because she’s seen the effects of these atrocities to back out. Moscow suggested that the two countries close up, that she’s interviewed survivors. team up to finda way to remove the remaining chemi- “Exactly,” Rose interjects, as though declaring cal weapons to which Assad’s forces retained access. checkmate. Though they failed even to do that, Obama had his It’s not just the gruesome irony that she made escape hatch. Right then, when Obama did all the her name and her reputation trashing the moral com- things Power had accused Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clin- passes of others who didn’t act when they had the pow- ton, and W. Bush of doing, was the moment Power er to do so—and then did exactly as they did. It’s worse. faced her own choice. She could have resigned— In October 2008, she published the last post on and stayed true to the person she wants to see every her personal blog before beginning her public career on morning in the mirror. Or she could have completed Obama’s National Security Council. The post was an an- her bureaucratic conversion and kept her plush pad nouncement that she had made Esquire magazine’s list at the Waldorf Astoria. of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” “Some believe that you are the conscience of the Where did that influence go when it was finall administration,” veteran newsman Charlie Rose told called upon to show itself? What would Power say Power on his eponymous program in May 2015. “That to the woman who wrote A Problem from Hell? How that’s part of the role you play. Are they right?” would she explain herself to herself? Well, look, she Power began to respond, but Rose cut her off: might say, you have to understand—like I told Charlie “Because of your background, because of your experi- Rose, I was not a born bureaucrat. To which the Sa- ence, because of what you wrote, because of what your mantha Power of yore might respond: Coulda fooled life has stood for, that on these very important ques- me. tions, where so many civilians are dying, you’re the After all, she wrote the book.q

Commentary 33

Mandel.indd 33 1/12/17 2:52 PM Hope I Die Before I Get Young The sixties, forever with us By Joseph Epstein

T’S A RORSCHACH TEST: Say what you leths: Do your own thing, change the paradigm, don’t think of the 1960s and you reveal a great deal trust anyone over 30. All this in the name of . . . what— about yourself. anarchy, a misguided notion of democratic values, For some the sixties were a time of revolution itself? The sixties, in this view, put an end splendid creative disorder, in which a rigid to dignity, seriousness, a middle-class way of life that cultural and impossible political life under- made the United States the splendid country it only went critical and long-needed change. The recently was. Establishment, that congeries of social, economic, The fir t problem confronting anyone contem- Iand political power connections, was everywhere plating the sixties is that the decade shows up the under attack. During these years civil rights were ex- thinness of accounting for history by the all-too-tidy panded, especially for blacks in the segregated South. decennial category. An argument can be made that Women’s rights beyond the suffrage were beginning the sixties really began in 1965, with the Free Speech to be recognized. Sexuality (with the important aid of Movement at the University of California at Berkeley. the birth-control pill) was freed from its old middle- One can just as easily maintain that it began in the late class constraints and straitjacketed morality. Win- 1950s with the black student sit-ins at lunch counters dows were everywhere flung open. People could at last in the South in protest of immoral segregationist ac- breath in the fullness of life. commodations. Some would set the beginning of the For others, the sixties were hell on earth. Dis- sixties with the election in 1960 of John F. Kennedy, ruptive protest was endemic. Drug experiments often who ushered in a new spirit of youthfulness; for oth- brought permanent derangement or death by over- ers, his assassination marked the start of the sixties. dose to the young. In the sexual realm, orgiastic squa- The journalist Christopher Hitchens, despite his later lor was deemed normal and sex itself became a trivial political change, always identified himself as a soix- act. Authority was everywhere undermined, as tradi- ante-huitard, or man formed by 1968, the apex of six- tion was spat upon under the banner of glib shibbo- ties agitation and excitement. Many would hold that the great watershed event of the sixties was the Viet- Joseph Epstein is the author, most recently, of Fro- nam War, though that war was not fully engaged until zen in Time, Twenty Stories. 1969 and not officially ended until 1973.

34 February 2017

Epstein.indd 34 1/12/17 2:53 PM The motives behind the “student unrest”—my these, the most famous artistic products of the sixties, favorite of all euphemisms—that set its seal on the were in the main in opposition to mainstream culture. sixties are also in contention. Some argue that mor- Art, though, was never the leading motif of the sixties; al revulsion was behind the protest movements of the politics of protest was, together with the under- the decade: genuine hatred of injustice in nearly all mining of middle-class values. realms of American life, culminating in the deadly in- One’s reaction to the sixties is likely to have been justice of asking young men to die in a needless war conditioned by one’s own personal situation during in Southeast Asia. Others claim this is tosh, that the the time. Perhaps the best time to have been going anti-Vietnam protests were about little more than through the period was in one’s 20s and the best place prosperous college students protesting to save their in one or another graduate school; to be, in another own bottoms, perfectly willing to let working-class words, of an age that put one fully in the stream of whites and poor blacks die in their place. As proof life, open to physical—sexual, pharmaceutical, politi- of their argument, they note that once the draft was abolished, the protests immediately simmered Backed by the books of H.L. Mencken down, then ceased. Isaiah Berlin and Sinclair Lewis, I thought the middle thought that the student protests in America and Europe, were class, though it was the class of my chiefly the product of ennui: “The Welfare State, prosperity, secu- upbringing, hollow and hypocritical. rity, increasing efficien y, etc. do not attract those young who feel the need to sacrific cal—freedom and experiment, with little or nothing themselves for some worthy ideal, if possible in com- at stake in taking radical positions. Best, surely, dur- pany with other like-minded persons, and that they ing the sixties to have been unmarried and without are desperately searching for some form of self-ex- children. pression which will cause them to swim against some I was myself married and with four children. I sort of stream and not simply drift in a harmless way, was 23 when the 1960s began and 28 in 1965, with two too comfortably with it.” At one point Berlin refers to stepsons and two sons of my own. My stepsons were them as “barbarians.” in adolescence as the decades proceeded. Lots of talk Some say the sixties haven’t ended yet, and that about various drugs bruited about among them and the overall cultural effect of the sixties far exceeds their friends; on occasion, listening in on their con- that of the thirties, the other crucial 20th-century versation, one might have thought them passionate decade in American life. They point to the fact that chemistry majors. One of the boys living in our apart- many of those who had a good sixties are now in ment building died from drug overdose. Pot was stan- power: in the universities, in politics, in the bureau- dard fare, the Hershey bars of the sixties generation. cracy, the media, throughout the culture generally, Schoolwork wasn’t where the action was, nor athlet- exerting a strong sixties influence on current events. ics. Adulthood could be put off, apparently endlessly. Identity politics, the prominence of victim groups As a parent, responsible for bringing children safely (blacks, LGTBQ, et alia), the rise of multiculturalism, into harbor, it was a frightening time, or so to me it the democratization of the university, the ready turn seemed. I remember often thinking I was glad not to to street protest, the radical change in both the con- have had daughters. stituencies and the nature of the Democratic and Re- I considered myself a strong liberal, leaning to publican Parties, and so much more—all of it, with- the radical, in politics. I thought John F. Kennedy, for out great diffi ulty, can be accounted for as a direct example, a sell-out—another pretty face but business legacy of the sixties. as usual, little more. I thought American society deep- The key figuresof the sixties are now either dead ly philistine. Backed by the books of H.L. Mencken or easing into old age. Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, and Sinclair Lewis, I thought the middle class, though Stokely Carmichael, Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, it was the class of my origin and upbringing, hollow Jane Fonda, Bob Dylan, Tom Hayden, Joan Baez, Glo- and hypocritical. If you had said to me, as my father ria Steinem, James Baldwin—figures of protest all. used sometimes to say, that “you can’t argue with suc- Joseph Heller’s antinomian novel Catch-22, the hip- cess,” if you meant success in America, I would have pie musical Hair, the movie Easy Rider, the drug- answered that I knew of nothing better to argue with. gier songs of the Beatles and of the Rolling Stones, all Living in the South in 1963–64, I was, at the

Commentary 35

Epstein.indd 35 1/12/17 2:53 PM age of 26, director of the anti-Poverty Program for I would encounter something of this same mor- Little Rock, Arkansas, and its surrounding county. As al righteousness that I found in the New York students such, I befriended and worked with the local chapter come down to join the civil-rights movement among of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Commit- the young at my next job. This began in 1965 in Chica- tee (SNCC), the courage of whose members in facing go, where I was a senior editor of Encyclopaedia Bri- down angry Southern police and their German police tannica. The spirit at Britannica was preponderantly dogs I much admired. When I say “worked with,” I liberal, in a largely admirable way. One editor there mean I gave local SNCC leaders advice on how to se- remained in his home in the South Shore neighbor- cure federal funds for their own political causes. I felt hood long after the neighborhood had become nearly myself on their side as I did on the side of all blacks all black. Another, an older woman, had moved into a whose lives in the South were clearly stunted by inferi- deliberately and carefully integrated apartment com- or education and other segregationist arrangements. plex on the near South side called Prairie Shores to I was impressed by Lyndon Johnson, whom I thought show that not alone her heart but her entire body was of as John F. Kennedy minus the Camelot baloney and in the right place. with real political savvy added. The younger editors at Britannica were differ- The fir t inkling I had of feeling uncomfortable ently disposed, keener on symbolic behavior than on with the sixties was when graduate students from Co- committed actions. The smell of pot wafted in the lumbia, Barnard, and NYU came down to Little Rock, back stairwells at Britannica. Anti-Americanism was supposedly to aid the black cause. A few taught at the part of coffee-break conversation. One among these city’s two impoverished Negro colleges, Philander younger editors used to say about anyone he found Smith and Shorter; others worked on SNCC projects. loathsome, “He’s a great American.” They were fundamentally unserious, I thought, spend- I began teaching in the English Department at ing a summer doing moral tourism. One among them, Northwestern University in 1973. The Vietnam War a young woman, called me at my anti-Poverty offic was over, and so, one might think, were the sixties. But to notify me that a protest march was planned that the universities, where much of the tumult had be- afternoon at the state capital building and that I was gun, were among the fir t of the country’s institutions expected to attend. to continue to feel the effects of the era in a powerful “If I do,” I said, “I would have to give up my job way. The significanceof the university in keeping alive and with it any possible further usefulness I might the spirit of the sixties can scarcely be overestimated. have.” The reason, of course, is that members of the sixties “You’re either with us or not,” she replied, and generation for the past 40 or so years have been the hung up. preponderant teachers of college students, and have imbued many of these students with their own sixties-formed Any interference with what goes on in the views. classroom or outside of it with students is The university culture I entered as a teacher in 1973 was likely to be viewed, incorrectly but firmly, vastly different than the one I had known as a student two de- as an infringement of academic freedom. cades earlier at the University of Chicago. An almost militant in- Not long after I left Little Rock, Stokely Carmi- formality now reigned. Younger professors taught in chael, one of the leaders of SNCC, announced that the jeans and T-shirts. They called their students by their time had come for the civil-rights movement to de- fir t names, and in some instances their students re- clare for Black Power, which meant white participa- turned the compliment. Student evaluations, one of tion was no longer welcome and which put an end to the small victories of the student uprisings, were now the integrated movement that had until then had such installed, so that at the end of every term, a professor splendid momentum. Thus the fir t and last great was, in effect, graded by his students. This put being moral movement of my lifetime—“moral” in the sense lively, as opposed to be being thorough or serious, at that it set out to right clear wrongs, and its appeal a premium. through moral suasion was to the best nature of Amer- Course titles—“Television Commercials as Po- icans—ended, heartbreakingly, in shambles, never to etry,” “Science Fiction in the Real World”—began to regain its former strength or standing. sound more like uninteresting magazine articles than

36 Hope I Die Before I Get Young : February 2017

Epstein.indd 36 1/12/17 2:53 PM university courses. Marxism, disqualified elsewhere ushering them into a group she called INCAR, or in the world, found a home in contemporary English International Committee Against Racism. Everyone departments. Fresh political interpretations of tradi- knew about this proselytizing; nobody stood ready tional works were everywhere on offer. Shakespeare to object. Only when she allowed, after organizing a turned up gay in one classroom, a running dog of 17th- shout-down of a Nicaraguan Contra speaker, that the century English imperialism in another. A graduate man didn’t have a right to speak—in fact, she said he student once came to me to ask if I thought David Cop- deserved to die—and that First Amendment rights perfield “a sexual criminal.” She went on to explain didn’t apply to him did she get into diffi ulties. None that the man who taught the Victorian novel in our of this, not even her turgid Marxist writings, got in the department thought he was because he had contribut- way of her being offered tenure by the Northwestern ed to his fir t wife’s death in childbirth—contributed, English Department. When the university’s provost, that is, by making her pregnant in the fir t place. Not an honorable and earnest traditional liberal named nice to knock a colleague, no matter how nutty or stupid he might be. “We sleep tonight, Ms. Jones,” I replied, “criticism Among his many wise political stands guard,” and walked off. apothegms, Orwell wrote that “Question Authority,” another shib- boleth of the sixties, took a direct toll on liberals fear few things more than universities, where intellectual authority was formerly, quite properly, at the heart being outflan ed on the left. of things. In an earlier era, the chairman of an academic department was the most distin- Raymond W. Mack, denied approval of her tenure guished man, less often woman, in the department. on the grounds of her uncivil behavior, many of her In what the sixties academic rebels would view as the colleagues among the faculty protested. The Modern bad old days, he set the tone and, more important, the Language Association, by this time itself vastly politi- standard, in scholarship, conduct, seriousness gener- cized, beseeched Northwestern to reverse its decision, ally. If a young instructor wished to teach a course in, though under another man of principle, the school’s say, the Beat Generation or the novels of Kurt Vonne- then-president, Arnold Weber, the school did not back gut, he was likely to say sorry, but such subjects fall be- down. It held that anyone who acted on the belief that low the line of serious literary study. Besides, students he or she didn’t believe in free speech was not a worthy could read such stuff outside the classroom on their citizen of a serious university. Foley is still in business, own without pedagogical aid. now a distinguished professor at Rutgers, unaltered in Now, with the chairman being someone who has her politics, still arising each morning hoping to greet agreed to take on the job, with all its pettifogging ad- the revolution. ministrative tasks, only because it meant as a reward A few of Foley’s converted students wandered he could lighten his teaching load or take an earlier into one or another of my courses at Northwestern, sabbatical, no one, really, is at the helm. Now there and a rigid and dreary cadre they were, little luna- is unlikely to be anyone to tell a teacher he can’t do tics of one idea, seeing the exploitation of the work- the course in “Star Wars and the Literature of Apoca- ers, blacks, not least themselves, everywhere. Soon lypse.” Owing to the sixties, conduct became, and has enough they were joined by the academic feminists, remained, free-flo ting, with everyone in business for whose one idea was that current arrangements were himself. Any outside interference with what goes on in everywhere stacked against women, with the cure the classroom or outside of it with students is likely to for this being more courses featuring Virginia Woolf, be viewed, incorrectly but firml , as an infringement Kate Chopin, and other women writers, and a more of academic freedom, as if the right to egregious be- thoughtful disposition of pronouns and suffixes, and havior and politicizing courses were what academic an end to what they called “phallocentrism.” I retired freedom is about. from university teaching before the Queer Theorists took hold, multiculturalism kicked in, and victimol- IDWAY IN MY TEACHING career at North- ogy became the real and staple subject of so many western, a woman named Barbara Foley university courses in the humanities and social sci- M arrived to teach in the English Department. ences. But of course the way had been prepared for She was a no-bones-about-it Marxist. At Northwest- all this by what you might call the enforced tolerance ern, she openly proselytized undergraduate students, of the sixties.

Commentary 37

Epstein.indd 37 1/12/17 2:53 PM N THE SIXTIES, the adversary culture, a term once again, everywhere gave way to radicals, so that fir t used by Lionel Trilling, and standing for an dogmatic academic feminism, victimological African- I academic milieu opposed to the prevailing main- American Studies, and the rest found a secure place in stream, itself came close to becoming the mainstream. the fir t watering and then dumbing down and thor- One of the chief inheritances from the sixties was the ough politicizing of university study that eventually death of traditional liberalism, a liberalism devoted to seeped through the general culture. public justice, political equality, economic opportuni- Scratch a man of the sixties, who now himself ty, and honorable disagreement with opponents—the may well be in his seventies, and you will discover liberalism of such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, someone who feels a continuing, if in however linger- such writers as John Steinbeck, such intellectuals as ing a form, allegiance to the era of his youth. Youth is Lionel Trilling himself. the keyword here. The great promise of the sixties was If the sixties killed liberalism, it also did a pretty to snatch the world from the stodgy and dodgy old, and good job on adulthood. Most men and women who make it anew for the ebullient young. I occasionally see went through the sixties even now find it diffi ult to men I taught with who are now in their late sixties and oppose any doctrine or behavior that is leftist in its early seventies who dress as if still students. They carry origins or inspirations, for to do so would be to be- backpacks, wear baseball hats backwards, are in jeans tray their youth. Among his many wise political apo- and gym shoes—in what I think of as in youth drag. But thegms, Orwell wrote that liberals fear few things for their lined faces, grey hair—and the occasionally more than being outflan ed on the left. In the 1930s, heartbreakingly sad grey ponytail—they might them- this fear brought many liberals into the Communist selves be students. Clearly they intend to go from juve- Party, put them on the side of the Stalinists in Spain, nility to senility, with no stops in between. caused them to overlook the monstrousness of Lenin The price of the sixties was the death of a once-ad- and sanitize the cruelty of Trotsky, and turned the mirable liberalism and the eclipse of adulthood. Some Democratic Party over to identity politics. History has would say, considering the broadening of American so- never been an effective teacher, and so 30 and more ciety overall, it was well worth it. Your call. Rorschach years later, liberals, out of fear of being outflan ed Tests, after all, aren’t graded.q

38 Hope I Die Before I Get Young : February 2017

Epstein.indd 38 1/12/17 2:53 PM Politics & Ideas

Moral Equivalence Run Amok

Bad Moon Rising: How the stein is the fir t historian to use the er Underground? While its fol- Weather Underground Beat the FBI’s files on the organization, re- lowers and supporters hovered FBI and Lost the Revolution. leased as part of the trial record of around no more than 100 to 500 at By Arthur M. Eckstein FBI agent Mark Felt, and the docu- any time, it nevertheless posed a Yale University Press, 352 pages ments prove to be a treasure trove major threat to America’s national of information. Felt (later to be re- security. Eckstein cites a memo Reviewed by Ronald Radosh vealed as the “Deep Throat” of All written to President Richard M. the President’s Men) was brought Nixon in March 1970 by Daniel N Bad Moon Rising, Arthur to trial in 1980 for using illegal Patrick Moynihan, counselor to M. Eckstein has given us methods in his quest for evidence the president for domestic affairs. the most comprehensive that helped locate Weather Under- No one could accuse the careful look at the Weather Under- ground leaders who had vanished and scholarly Moynihan of being a ground, the left-wing do- into the ether. To the extent Eck- McCarthyite. Yet he wrote the fol- I mestic terrorist group of the late stein relies on Felt’s files, his book lowing to Nixon: 1960s and early 1970s. A professor is revelatory. But Bad Moon Rising at the University of Maryland, Eck- takes an unfortunate turn halfway For about a year now I have through that almost invalidates its been keeping a file and think- Ronald Radosh, adjunct fel- value as an account of the most se- ing about sending you a memo low at the Hudson Institute, is rious domestic terror threat the on terrorism. The time has author of Commies: A Journey United States had had to manage come . . . . We have simply got to Through the Old Left, the New before September 11. assume that in the near future Left and the Leftover Left. How dangerous was the Weath- there will be terrorist attacks on

Commentary 39

Politics&Ideas.indd 39 1/12/17 2:55 PM the national government . . . and This begot the “Days of Rage” in the president himself . . . . The war Eckstein Chicago in 1969, when 400 of their has already begun . . . . For the i cadre battled the police in Lincoln last week or so bombs have draws Park for three days, went into been exploding up and down explicit moral wealthy neighborhoods where they the eastern seaboard. We have smashed cars and windows, and to assume, for example, that the parallels then attacked people at the Loop Mad Dog faction of the Weath- between the FBI on October 11. It also included ermen will in time learn to the use of homemade incendiary make anti-personnel bombs, as and the Weather devices, meant (as the group itself they evidently were trying to do said) to “force the disintegration in Miss Wilkerson’s house. We Underground. of American society via a bombing have to assume that those folks There were, in campaign to create chaos.” blowing up corporate head- Bomb they did. Here Eckstein’s quarters in New York will soon his view, two account reveals the ongoing deceit turn to blowing up corporation organizations practiced by William Ayers, the key heads. member of the WU’s Central Com- that took illegal mittee—and after his revolutionary Moynihan added that the WU actions harming days a longtime Chicago academic amounted to “the onset of nihilism and education activist with ties in the United States” combined with American to Barack Obama. Ayers has long an “element of psychopathology.” It interests. denied having anything to do with was so dangerous for the security unsolved bombings that took place apparatus, he concluded that “deal- in Michigan and the townhouse ing with the old Stalinist Commu- explosion in New York. He admits nist Party was child’s play compared task by “bringing the war home,” the WU took such actions but says to dealing with the Weathermen.” leading the struggle by organizing that the organization had changed As Moynihan drafted his memo, students, and affili ting with the tactics after a meeting of the lead- the Weathermen were planning Black Panther Party, the radical ers in May 1970—it would end the to bomb the 13th Precinct Police black group led by Huey Newton. bombing and the turn to militant Headquarters in Detroit, where Ideology was taken seriously by its public demonstrations. The WU they had placed a large bomb in the leaders, who believed that the im- would bomb property only to avoid women’s bathroom. A New York perialist system was collapsing all killing people. City townhouse (the one owned by over the world. In their eyes, Eck- Despite those claims, Eckstein the parents of the “Miss Wilkerson” stein writes, “all it would take [in provides strong circumstantial in Moynihan’s memo) had itself ex- America] was a good sharp shove links between Ayers and his even- ploded when the WU bomb-mak- to push over the entire tottering tual wife, Bernadine Dohrn, and ers made a faulty connection and edifice and send it crashing to the a February 1969 explosion, at the blew themselves up. Their mistake ground.” Their goal was to “sen- Golden Gate Park police station in meant that the intended target—a tence the government to death.” San Francisco, of a dynamite bomb military dance at the Fort Dix Army The group’s leaders decided that wrapped with nails. It killed one Base in New Jersey—was not blown armed struggle would be necessary police office , blinded a second, up. The night before Moynihan to achieve their goals. They fol- and injured 12 more. Eckstein wrote the memo, a series of bomb- lowed the tactics developed by the reveals that the FBI had extensive ings of corporate sites around New French radical Regis Debray, who evidence of Ayers’s detailed knowl- York had also taken place. promoted the idea of revolution edge of the plan, which had been As Eckstein reveals, rather through creating guerrilla focos, devised by the Weathermen collec- than being a run-of-the-mill anti- small groups that would use vio- tive in Berkeley. The bombs came Vietnam war group, the WU was lence against the state, which would from the same batch as those later a Marxist-Leninist organization eventually lead the oppressed in the found in March 1970 at a WU safe that sought to bring a Communist United States to build a “people’s house in Chicago. Yet there was revolution to America. Its mem- army.” The key was to set the guer- never an indictment of Ayers for bers were going to accomplish this rilla war in motion. his involvement. Why?

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Politics&Ideas.indd 40 1/12/17 2:55 PM The government was worried ing Presidents Nixon and Reagan, that its main witness might not be It is a that the Weather Underground believed, or that she might simply i had ties to foreign governments assume all responsibility after she savage that were giving them advice and was given immunity. If she took irony that while funding their work. Even the CIA, all the blame herself, that would he notes, reached the conclusion mean the others working with her the WU leaders that no ties could be proved, But would get off scot-free. The Bureau that hardly ends the matter. Eck- preferred to wait and indict all the pretty much stein did not check records of the perpetrators. escaped legal Stasi, the Czech intelligence agen- Another informant, the late cies, and other files available of Larry Grathwohl, had warned of sanction and the former “People’s Democracies” bombs planted at the Detroit Po- prison, three FBI that often worked in collaboration lice Officers Association in March with the KGB. 1970, and they discovered and de- agents—Felt, Even more important, the com- fused them just where Grathwohl Patrick Gray, plete FBI Weather Underground had testified they would be. The files, available for a few years lethal nature of the bombs would and Edward online on the FBI’s website, contra- have, if detonated, killed many Miller—were dict his argument. The files show people, and the second more pow- that when the WU created the erful bomb would have destroyed indicted and Venceremos Brigade to send young the entire headquarters and killed brought to trial. radicals to Cuba to help harvest everyone in the building. the sugar crop in the 1970s, the Cu- Oddly, Eckstein does not em- ban intelligence service gave select phasize his findings about Ayers, members training in sabotage and even though the Chicagoan re- homes of WU cadre but also of military tactics and recruited some mains an important figure. Per- American citizens they suspected Weather members as DGI agents haps he chose not to do so because, might know of the hiding places to engage in espionage after they as the book’s second half makes of underground members. They returned home. The story is told clear, Eckstein does not think broke into the homes of sup- as well in a book not cited by Eck- Ayers and the WU are the true porters, their families, and even stein—Frank J. Rafalko’s MH/CHA- villains in the story. His villain is relatives. None of them, Eckstein OS: The CIA’s Campaign Against the FBI. writes, “had committed any crime the Radical New Left and the Black Eckstein draws explicit moral and against whom no court would Panthers, as well as a two-volume parallels between the FBI and issue a search warrant.” The FBI German book demonstrating ties the Weather Underground. There referred to these raids as “Black between the WU and the Stasi by were, in his view, two organizations Bag techniques.” Its agents read Wolfgang Kraushaar, Die RAF und that took illegal actions harming the mail of such people, to the der linke Terrorismus. A 1982 Ca- American interests. “Both sides extent of trying to find messages nadian TV documentary, The KGB willingly engaged in illegal acts,” in birthday and holiday greeting Connections offers more evidence. he writes, and then he charges that cards. Eckstein argues that when the “the FBI bears the heavier weight Both sides, he argues, failed. The WU leaders went to Cuba, the Viet- in a polity where civil liberties WU “was not very good at revolu- namese and Cuban authorities to are central.” To put it bluntly, he tionary war,” and the FBI took steps whom they spoke advised them to is claiming that setting off bombs to stop them that were “repressive engage in public opposition to the that could have killed scores of and stumbling.” In Eckstein’s tell- war and not to continue with their people was no worse than trying to ing, the Bureau were Keystone Cops terrorist and secret activities. That stop the perpetrators by using ille- who only ended up hurting their indeed is what they said, but it also gal means meant to prevent grave own reputation. In fact, FBI agents proves that Ayers and Dohrn heeded danger to American citizens. were trying to save American lives their advice, and why it was that at The Bureau, Eckstein writes, and bring murderers to justice. the 1970 Mendocino meeting, the “engaged in illegal conduct.” It Eckstein denies the claim of leaders suspended their bombing staged burglaries not only of the many government officials, includ- campaign.

Commentary 41

Politics&Ideas.indd 41 1/12/17 2:55 PM The blurbs for Bad Moon Ris- on U.S. soil, it was our govern- was at war in 1972” and that the ing come from well-known figure ment that did the real damage and convicted FBI agents “followed on the American left—including harmed America the most. procedures they believed essential the late Tom Hayden, Todd Gitlin, It is a savage irony that while to keep” all government leaders Maurice Isserman, and Yippie co- the WU leaders pretty much es- “advised of the activities of hostile founder Judy Gumbo. Many on caped legal sanction and prison, foreign powers and their collabo- the list have for decades hated three FBI agents—Felt, Patrick rators in this country.” Noting that the WU, because in their eyes, the Gray, and Edward Miller—were Jimmy Carter had pardoned draft move into terrorist violence de- indicted and brought to trial. Felt resisters who opposed the Vietnam stroyed the Students for a Demo- and Miller were found guilty on War, Reagan said the U.S. could “be cratic Society from whose ranks November 6, 1980. Ronald Reagan no less generous to two men who they emerged, and it kept SDS pardoned them two months into acted on high principle to bring an from becoming a major mass his presidency on March 26, 1981, end to the terrorism . . . threatening student organization that might arguing in April that “America our Nation.”q have stopped the Vietnam War. Hayden, for one, points favorably to Eckstein’s argument that it was the Bureau itself that promoted the Weather Underground by hav- ing undercover agents who had Dispelling infilt ated the organization voting with the WU when SDS split at their June 1969 convention. This is nonsense. The FBI’s action had to do with complex the Myths internal splits among the SDS extremists too recondite to be ex- plained in detail here. In any case, the adoption of terrorist tactics by the Weather Undergound was the The Upside of Inequality: that my three-year-old spellchecker direct outcome of the discovery How Good Intentions Undermine doesn’t have the word in its diction- by prominent SDS leaders of the the Middle Class ary. In economics, the increase in tenets and practices of Marxism- By Edward Conard income and asset inequality be- Leninism. When SDS was created, Portfolio Penguin, 311 pages tween the top and the bottom of the the social democrats in its ranks socioeconomic scale in recent de- argued against allowing Commu- Reviewed by cades has generated considerable nist Party members into the group, John Steele Gordon pressure to narrow the spread, but they lost the vote, and the ma- mostly, of course, by taxing the rich. jority said to do so would be Red- IBERALS ARE always Thomas Piketty, author of Capital baiting. The nihilistic violence finding crises that must in the 21st Century, called for a into which the group descended be addressed immedi- wealth tax and a top income-tax rate was the direct result of that fateful ately through govern- of 80 percent. early decision. ment action. A couple And there is no doubt that this Eckstein has done solid re- Lof years ago they declared a civil- increase has been real and dra- search, provided much new valu- rights jihad on behalf of the trans- matic. To make the fir t Forbes able information, and written a gendered, a group so few in number 400 list in 1983, it took $82 mil- worthwhile book. It is unfortunate, lion (roughly $250 million in 2017 though, that the more he wrote, John Steele Gordon, a fre- dollars). Only a handful on the list and the more he attempted to be quent contributor, is an econom- were worth over a billion. Today it “balanced,” the more he accepted ic historian and the author of, takes $1.7 billion just to be on the the ludicrous narrative favored by among other works, An Empire Forbes 400, and there are 153 bil- ex-SDS and Movement people that, of Wealth:The Epic History of lionaires in this country too poor in the middle of terrorist actions American Economic Power. to make the cut.

42 Politics & Ideas : February 2017

Politics&Ideas.indd 42 1/12/17 2:55 PM No small part of the creation of larger and more prosperous world these enormous fortunes in recent The economy has made their success decades is that in the new digital i more valuable. “It’s illogical for a economy, unlike the old industrial Internet CEO managing five employees to one, there is little need for capital has made earn the same pay as one manag- and thus little need to cut investors ing fi ty thousand,” he writes. “As in on the deal and thereby spread billionaires companies grow larger and more the wealth. It is not a coincidence valuable, CEO pay has logically that seven of the 10 top fortunes on of Mark risen relative to the pay of the aver- the Forbes list (those of Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and age employee. The ratio of CEO-to- Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry employee pay may be clever rheto- Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos, but it ric. But it’s illogical economics.” Larry Page and Sergey Brin) arose has also created He also notes that while the in the new economy. S&P 500 index rose 500 percent be- The salaries and remuneration a vast industry tween 1979 and 2007, the incomes of top executives have also soared employing of the top 1 percent went up only in recent years, far outstripping 275 percent. In other words, CEO the increase in average income for hundreds of compensation has grown more their employees. Rex Tillerson’s thousands slowly than the market value of retirement package, as he leaves the largest companies. The growth ExxonMobil to become secretary of of well-paid of middle-class and working-class state, calls for him to get $180 mil- employees. compensation, on the other hand, lion. Curiously (well, not curiously has been restricted by both in- actually), the left never seems up- creased immigration and by glo- set about the enormous incomes balization, with many more people of creative artists and sports stars. potential income, however high competing for middle- and lower- The singer Taylor Swift pulled in his fees. But an entertainer such skill jobs. $170 million last year. James Pat- as Taylor Swift has no limit to the Perhaps the most interesting terson, the mystery writer whose number of people she can enter- part of this consistently interest- book factory turns out about one tain. More, the number of people ing book is the middle section, new title a month, earned $95 who are her potential audience is “Debunking myths: Why Mitigat- million. Top pitchers in the major far larger than it was 50 years ago, ing Inequality Is Not the Solution.” leagues can pull down more than at the height of the Beatles craze, His fir t—one very popular on the $7,000 per pitch. as more and more of the world has left—is that incentives don’t mat- Edward Conard, in his illuminat- reached First World status. Still ter. “No myth is more foundational ing new book The Upside of Inequal- more, the entire world economy to the crusade for income redistri- ity: How Good Intentions Under- in the 1960s was only as large as bution,” he notes, “than the argu- mine the Middle Class, explains why China’s is today. ment that payoffs for successful this is, and why this is not, a crisis. As Conard explains: risk-taking don’t matter.” A founding partner in Bain Capital, The idea that taxing success, Conard has far more experience with A more prosperous world val- which is what income redistribu- the real economic universe than ues and rewards innovations— tion is all about, would not ad- most academic economists and, un- a new song or movie, a new versely affect willingness to take like most academic economists, he technology, or a new insight— risks is a classic instance of George writes plain, sturdy English prose. more highly than a less pros- Orwell’s famous crack that “one His earlier book, Unintended Con- perous world. That’s a good has to belong to the intelligentsia sequences: Why Everything You’ve thing. The growing income of to believe things like that: no ordi- Been Told About the Economy Is the 1 percent is the result of nary man could be such a fool.” Wrong, was a New York Times best- simple multiplication, not a Conard points out that there seller and richly deserved to be. deduction from the pockets of have been a number of “natural Conard notes that a doctor, for the less successful. experiments” in the world economy instance, can treat only one patient over the last half century and more at a time, which severely limits his Even in the case of CEOs, the disproving the idea that incentives

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Politics&Ideas.indd 43 1/12/17 2:55 PM don’t matter, that innovation will mostly tendentious twaddle with both to not lose any of their retire- take place regardless of the rewards little or no basis in reality. ment benefits, including pensions seeking new ideas: Conard, however, is no zealot from often woefully underfunded simply retailing the latest conserva- public pension plans, and to have Look at the enormous differ- tive talking points. In the last part of new benefits bestowed. In other ences in growth and prosper- his book, he questions how effective words, they want more redistri- ity among similar countries charter schools can be in improving bution—to the most prosperous that have dulled incentives by American education, and how limit- demographic group. redistributing income: East ed is society’s ability to lift families at But he also sees several ways and West Germany; North and the bottom out of poverty by making forward, such as lowering barriers South Korea; Hong Kong, Tai- them economically self-sufficient to the immigration of the highly wan, and China today versus And he brings up a subject that skilled and the lowering of the cor- Communist China; and the has been little discussed in the op- porate tax rate. The former is not United States relative to Eu- ed world. The baby-boomer gener- likely to be a priority in the Trump rope. Played out over time, the ation—the pig in the American de- administration, while the latter, differences are startling. And mographic python—is now moving hopefully, will be. there are few, if any, exceptions. into retirement (the oldest baby The Upside of Inequality is a boomers will turn 71 this year). As well-written, thought-provoking Conard also observes that in a they swell the ranks of seniors, the book. It will be invaluable to any- capitalist economy, competition will age group with the highest voter one who wants a clear-eyed look at always assure that it is the customers turnout, they will, undoubtedly, the country’s economic problems who capture most of the value of in- exert enormous political pressure and their possible solutions.q novation. To maintain market share, companies must innovate constant- ly just to keep up with their rivals’ innovations. And competition also forces companies to cut costs and improve quality, passing much of the increased value along to their cus- We See You tomers to ensure they don’t become some other company’s customers. Thus innovation, however rich it makes the original innovator, The Attention Merchants: The Epic the history of modern media who enriches the economy as a whole Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads have stepped in it. far more. The Internet made billion- By Tim Wu Media moguls—from the fir t aires of Zuckerberg and Bezos (and Alfred Knopf, 403 pages newspaper publishers to the sci- millionaires of many, many others), ons of Silicon Valley—are not the but it has created a vast industry Reviewed by source of the smell, so it is odd that employing hundreds of thousands Naomi Schaefer Riley they come in for a book’s worth of of well-paid employees and enriched opprobrium from Wu. He mostly the lives of all who use it, most of O THE PURIST,” dislikes the fact that our lives are so whom find it now indispensable. Tim Wu writes, “few commercialized, that someone is Among the other myths Conard things are smellier always trying to sell us something. debunks, or, more accurately, evis- than advertising, For this, he could blame corpora- cerates, is that success is largely and once you step tions that make useless gadgets, unearned (“You didn’t build that”), ‘ inT it, there is no easy way to fully advertising agencies, or capitalism that there is a shortage of investment wipe it off.” Wu is himself a purist, itself. But instead Wu, a professor opportunities, that progress hollows and The Attention Merchants is a of law at Columbia University, has out the middle class, and that social book about the people throughout set his sites on the people who have mobility has declined. With sharp gotten our attention and then re- analysis, lucid prose, and a few easy- Naomi Schaefer Riley i s sold it to the highest bidder. to-grasp—and devastating—charts, a senior fellow at the Independent Wu is certainly not a pioneer Conard shows how these myths are Women’s Forum. in his concerns about the com-

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Politics&Ideas.indd 44 1/12/17 2:55 PM mercialization of our airways. In How can we make money off of the 1920s when radio was fir t Whether our product? Which in turn leads taking off, Pepsodent toothpaste i to the question: How can we keep approached NBC with the idea it’s AOL’s the attention of our audience long of sponsoring a program called chatrooms for enough so that they will consider Amos ’n’ Andy. While the show buying something else? In Wu’s would largely remain the same as it strangers or telling, new challenges popped had been—a dialogue between two up frequently, like the invention Southern blacks who had moved Twitter’s idea of the remote control, which al- to the big city—now there would of amassing lowed people to take their atten- be an announcer saying at the end tion away just when you wanted of each segment: “Use Pepsodent followers for it most. Or cable television, which toothpaste twice a day. See your 140-character made the audience for each mes- dentist at least twice a year.” Even sage smaller. that low-level sales pitch seemed thoughts, there Though Wu is clearly annoyed beyond the pale back then. “It seems no end by the ways in which these atten- is inconceivable,” Herbert Hoover tion merchants succeed in riveting said in 1922, “that we should allow to the ways that our gaze, his stories also read like so great a possibility for service, the attention case studies of American ingenu- for news, for entertainment, for ity. When MTV executives began to education and for vital commercial merchants can worry that no one wanted to keep purposes to be drowned in adver- grab hold of us. watching music videos, they came tising chatter.” up with the idea for the show The But with the great windfall Real World, which not only tapped that came from such advertising, into the audience’s desire to blur quaint notions were pushed aside. stuff. Commercials were made to the line between ordinary people Wu describes how the success of interrupt the flow of the story. and celebrities but also cost next radio commercials marked “a race Game shows were made to leave to nothing to make. Whether it’s We See You for the conquest of time and space audience members in suspense AOL’s chatrooms for strangers or that continues to this day.” Indeed, just before the breaks. In each Twitter’s idea of amassing follow- not only did broadcasters begin to of Wu’s vignettes, there seems ers for 140-character thoughts, see themselves as “owning” a part to be someone complaining that there seems no end to the ways of the day, but they also were able all of this advertising is going to that the attention merchants can to bring advertising from a public ruin the actual programming. He grab hold of us. space into a private one. cites Edward R. Murrow’s disap- Wu is disappointed that ulti- All of this only accelerated with pointment with CBS. The news- mately some of the best minds of the advent of television, which, man complained that television’s each generation are consumed by 1960 was eating up about fiv sponsors prevented the networks with this task. But then, that is hours a day of Americans’ time, from ever showing anything too what most such minds do in all according to Wu. He quotes one downbeat. “Television in the main generations: They try to figur woman from the time who said: insulates us from the realities of out how to make money. De- “We ate our suppers in silence, the world in which we live. If this scribing Larry Page’s decision to spilling food, gaping in awe. We state of affairs continues, we may use advertisements (“AdWords”) thought nothing of sitting in the alter an advertising slogan to read: on the heretofore uncorrupted darkness for hours at a stretch LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.” But Google website he co-created, Wu without exchanging a word except all of this programming—from writes: “Page may have felt he’d ‘Who’s going to answer that con- the newscasts to the sitcoms to outwitted the Devil, but so do all founded telephone?’” the game shows—were a way for Faustian characters.” He suggests Wu describes the early history broadcasting companies to make that Page saw the addition of these of television, the new tricks that money, in part to pay Murrow and commercial elements as a neces- programmers used to bring in others their salaries. sary evil for a company whose more and more viewers so that In each generation, the media motto was “Don’t be evil.” Page, they could be sold more and more are faced with the same question: Wu says, “had wanted to build

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Politics&Ideas.indd 45 1/12/17 2:55 PM a clean, pure tool, free of com- useful. In a way, they succeeded by well-curated selection of Glazer’s merce’s distortions.” Perhaps, but trying to seize less of our attention writings on ethnicity, race, social Page also wanted to make money for the commercial product and policy, architecture, and urbanism, and lamented the fact that his was more for other things. and his own biography, with ap- just another Internet startup that Sadly for Wu, we will never live praisals of his work by prominent wasn’t profitable. He had seen in a world where public service or journalists and scholars, including how other search engines not only education are going to be the pri- E.J. Dionne, Mark Lilla, Peter Sker- bombarded people with unwanted mary motivators of media. We are ry, Jackson Toby, and Reed Udea. ads but how advertising revenue stuck with a system where people The total package is the best intro- had actually biased the searches try to sell us things. It’s patronizing duction to Glazer’s life and thought themselves. Page and his col- to think the public is unaware of available between two covers. leagues figured out a way to offer this and isn’t able to regulate its The basic outlines of Glazer’s ca- unobtrusive advertising while also own conduct toward it. Perhaps the reer tell us little about his remark- keeping their algorithms fast and public doesn’t wish to.q able and wide-ranging intellectual itinerary. In his student days at CCNY, he was a part of Zionist- socialist group that argued with Stalinists, and he later became a staunch anti-Communist. He fir t A Party of came to national attention as Da- vid Riesman’s junior co-author of The Lonely Crowd (which remains among the greatest bestsellers of American sociology) in 1953. A de- One cade later, based on ideas tested in the pages of Commentary, Glazer published Beyond the Melting Pot (with Daniel Patrick Moynihan When Ideas Mattered: public life for some 70 years. The contributing a chapter and writing A Nathan Glazer Reader son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish im- the preface), which became a clas- Edited by Joseph Dorman and migrants from Poland, Glazer grew sic in the study of immigrants and Leslie Lenkowsky up in East Harlem. He attended the ethnicity in America. Transaction Press, 362 pages City College of New York and then Over the ensuing two decades, split his professional life between Glazer found himself at odds with Reviewed by Daniel DiSalvo magazines and the academy. He much of the American left. First, in began his career as an editor for the 1960s, while in Berkeley, Glazer ATHAN GLAZER Commentary (1945–53) while broke with the New Left student is, with Norman earning his Ph.D. in sociology from movement, criticizing it as naive Podhoretz, the last Columbia University at night. and utopian. Second, in 1975, Glazer of the New York Glazer then received academic ap- wrote Affirmative Discrimination, Intellectuals still pointments: fir t at the University in which he opposed affirm tive with N us. Now 92 years old, Glazer of California, Berkeley (1963–69) action. Third, in 1988, he collected has been thinking and writing and then at Harvard University a series of lectures given at CCNY about American public policy and (1969–93). He also served for years and articles in Commentary into as co-editor of the Public Interest a book, The Limits of Social Policy, Daniel DiSalvo is an as- with Irving Kristol. which came to the sobering conclu- sociate professor of political When Ideas Mattered, a new sion that government couldn’t solve science at the City College of volume edited by Joseph Dorman every problem—and even for those New York-CUNY, a senior fel- and Leslie Lenkowsky, offers us an it could somewhat ameliorate, it low at the Manhattan Institute, opportunity to consider the capa- did so at the peril of creating un- and a 2016–17 visiting fellow in ciousness of Glazer’s interests and intended consequences. Therefore, the James Madison Program at the singular nature of his career hopes that government programs Princeton University. as a thinker. The book combines a could eliminate poverty, racism,

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Politics&Ideas.indd 46 1/12/17 2:55 PM crime, and other social problems When Ideas Mattered shines were unfounded. Nathan light on the enduring themes of Glazer’s intellectual positions i Glazer’s work. The fir t is Glazer’s in the late 1960s and early 1970s Glazer’s lifelong interest in America’s “eth- along with some of his professional youthful nic pattern.” In his study of immi- associations led him to be grouped grant assimilation in New York, he among the “neoconservatives” by encounter showed that Jews, Irish, Italians, Michael Harrington in the pages Polish, and other groups continued of the socialist journal Dissent. with Marxism to maintain dual identities rather However, Glazer never embraced inoculated than completely assimilate into a or took much interest in that hotly preexisting American identity. As- contested label. He worked for the him against similation took a long time—even Kennedy administration’s Housing totalizing with the help of epoch-making and Home Finance Agency, voted events like depression and war. for McGovern in 1972 and Carter political And the overarching American in 1980, and has always considered ideologies and identity that the ethnics assimi- himself a liberal. In refle ting on lated into changed in the process. his time editing the Public Inter- grand theories Refle ting on the most recent est, he noted that the primary of architecture wave of immigration, primarily reason “neo” had to be added to from Mexico and Latin America, conservative was because he and and urban Glazer reminds one that Latinos others supported the welfare state planning. will continue to retain dual identi- created by the New Deal and much ties for a few generations to come, of the Great Society—just not the especially in light of modern travel latter’s efforts at social engineer- and telecommunications, which ing. In 1998, he actually reversed intellectual virtues that are in will allow for stronger ties to their his position on affirm tive action, increasingly short supply, includ- countries of origin than past im- arguing that for black Americans— ing dispassion, humility, and love migrants could expect. The big to whom the nation had a “special of debate. His youthful encoun- challenge when it comes to im- obligation”—it was a legitimate ter with Marxism inoculated him migrants today, as Peter Skerry practice. against totalizing political ideolo- stresses in his analysis of Glazer, is Glazer’s new position on af- gies and grand theories of archi- the extent to which Latinos follow firm tive action (and later his tecture and urban planning. He past patterns of integration and embrace of a soft multicultural- approached questions inductively, upward mobility or see themselves ism in We’re All Multiculturalists from the bottom up, with an ap- as victimized racial minorities and Now) caused some on the right to preciation for paradox and nuance, model their political behavior on label him an “unreliable man.” In which immunized him against se- the black American experience. turn, he expressed concern upon ductive promises that sociology When it comes to the “excep- the closing of the Public Interest in could be a “science” based on data tional position of blacks in the 2005 that the journal had drifted and statistics. Interested more United States,” Glazer remains a too far to the right. However, he in substance than social-science significant voice. As he recounts was never really accepted on the theories or methods, he endorsed in an autobiographical essay, he left. Glazer concedes that he is a Christopher Jencks’s description fir t opposed affirm tive action man of “weak [political] commit- of sociology as “slow journalism.” largely on the basis of a philosophi- ments.” As Joseph Dorman puts Any reader of Glazer will appreci- cal conviction that in American it, Glazer’s unwillingness to follow ate in his writings the empathy for culture and law, rights attach to any party line made him “a party his subjects and his humility when individuals not groups. In the of one.” confronted with the messiness of 1970s, he clearly hoped that black reality. Glazer’s personal grace and Americans would follow the path EING A party of one was self-effacing style rarely made col- of immigrant groups from the the product of his cast of leagues feel personally attacked working class to the middle class B mind and his temperament. even when he was witheringly and the professions. In the 1990s, Glazer cultivated and practiced critical of positions they held dear. he reversed his position in regard

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Politics&Ideas.indd 47 1/12/17 2:55 PM to blacks (but not Asians, His- those they aimed to help. Much panics, or women), arguing that Glazer modernist public housing and America’s special debt to blacks i public art has been destroyed or had “not been discharged” and stressed removed in recent decades. Glazer preferential treatment in selective the need for documented how modernism had university admissions needed to be to lower its sights and become sustained. policies that just another style. Brownstones, Furthermore, he argued that which no modern architect had a maintaining affirm tive action was sustained work. good word for, are now among the important symbolically and that In his view, hottest properties in the New York ending it would “send a message City real-estate market. of despair to many blacks, a mes- making work Yet, Glazer also argues that in sage that the nation is indifferent more attractive spite of our record of failure in to their diffi ulties and problems.” many areas of public policy, we However, that did not diminish the at the low end must keep trying. In particular, he need for blacks to work on their of the labor emphasized the need for policies own behalf. In a 2010 essay in the that sustained work. In his view, American Interest (that is unfortu- market is a making work more attractive at nately not included in the book), he building block the low end of the labor market concluded: is a building block for supporting for supporting families and communities. Some of I believe the view is spreading families and the policies he has endorsed, such that the improvement of the as elements of European welfare black condition must depend communities. states, are anathema to conserva- in greater degree on the work of tives, while others, such as work- blacks themselves . . . Complex fare, are anathema to liberals. as it is, to frame a self-help banization, I came to believe that Returning to Glazer helps one policy narrative based on what although social policy had ame- retain or regain (such as the case is generally understood as the liorated some of the problems we may be) his or her sense of propor- American immigrant path may had inherited, it had also given rise tion in today’s intellectual climate be the best choice available: to other problems no less grave in where uncompromising styles of acceptance of how hard it is their effect on human happiness.” thinking too often predominate. to get ahead in America, but Glazer’s skepticism about social The intellectual virtues that he has recognition that one’s efforts programs instilled a deeper faith embodied, his exceptionally curi- can and often will succeed. That in traditional American cultural ous mind and engaging prose style approach, after all, does have institutions, especially the family are things one can only wish were the merit of largely being true. and community associations, and more frequently emulated. the need to protect them from gov- Be that as it may, perhaps Glaz- N AN ERA of great dissatisfac- ernment overreach. er’s two most important legacies tion with government per- Glazer’s concern that commu- are, fir t, his enduring interpreta- I formance and loud calls for nity life could be crushed by mis- tion of the processes of immigrant government to DO SOMETHING guided, even if well-intentioned, integration in the United States, to better American’s lives, reading government planners is most evi- which deeply plumbs the meaning Glazer on social policy is a use- dent in his work on architecture of e pluribus unum, and, second, ful reality check. After examining and cities. Modernism in architec- reviving and making respectable two decades of social policies, ture began as a “cause.” Its propo- a sort of Burkean conservatism, Glazer concluded in The Limits nents held that by building new which holds that society is a com- of Social Policy that “whereas “machines for living” and recon- plex, policy solutions crafted by the prevailing wisdom was that figuring public spaces, human be- government planners rarely have social policies would make steady ings would be transformed. Things their intended effects, and that progress in nibbling away at the didn’t turn out that way, and in culture makes a difference. In cast agenda of problems set up by the many cases the architects and the of mind if not in politics, he’s a neo- forces of industrialization and ur- urban planners ended up hurting conservative to the end.q

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Politics&Ideas.indd 48 1/12/17 2:55 PM Culture & Civilization

The Darkness of Hank Williams

Hillbilly Elegist Could Cry,” and “Your Cheatin’ for having made music “the same Heart,” are now country standards, way for years,” he called it “Are You By Terry Teachout while a younger generation of rock Sure Hank Done It This Way.” Nu- and pop stars embraced his songs— merous books have been published ANK WILLIAMS is and singing—as enthusiastically as about him, including The Hank the most important did his contemporaries. One of Williams Reader (2014), a splen- of all country musi- them, Leonard Cohen, described didly edited scholarly compilation cians, past and him as “a hundred floors above me of essays, articles, and reviews, and present. At a time in the tower of song.” Another, Bob several biographies, the latest of Hwhen the music he made was still Dylan, praised him unstintingly in which is Mark Ribowsky’s Hank: mostly regional in its appeal, he Chronicles: Volume One, his 2004 The Short Life and Long Country was well on the way to national ce- memoir, speaking of how “the Road of Hank Williams, which has lebrity when he died in 1953, and sound of his voice went through been widely and in the main favor- his posthumous fame would grow me like an electric rod.” ably reviewed.* even greater. Many of his songs, Williams’s rough-hewn “honky- The same ground was covered among them “Hey, Good Lookin’,” tonk” sound has since been sup- to more penetrating effect in Colin “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love planted by more modern styles, Escott’s Hank Williams: The Biog- with You),” “I’m So Lonesome I but he remains an emblematic raphy (1994). Hank, by contrast, figure who is universally thought is a journalistic treatment that is Terry Teachout is Commen- to embody the authentic essence of more concerned with Williams’s tary‘s critic-at-large, and the author, country music. When Waylon Jen- sad, hectic life than his artistry. Still, most recently, of Satchmo at the nings, the most innovative country singer of the ’70s, wrote a song in * Liveright, 472 pp. Williams’s most Waldorf, which has been produced o popular records are collected on Hank Broadway and by theater companies which he criticized his older, more Williams: 40 Greatest Hits (Polygram, from coast to coast. musically conservative colleagues two CDs).

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Culture & Civ.indd 49 1/12/17 2:57 PM Ribowsky has gone to much trouble dent at fir t glance. He had learned to disentangle the facts of his life Williams to play guitar from a black street from the legends in which they have i musician known as “Tee-Tot,” and long since become enmeshed, and was a in adulthood he continued to listen while the story that matters most superlatively to the recordings of black blues- is the story of his music, Hank tells men like Blind Lemon Jefferson. the reader everything else of conse- straightforward Not surprisingly, his singing and quence about its subject. songwriting bore the unmistak- communicator able stamp of the blues. “Move It ORN IN 1923 in a logging of emotion, and on Over,” his fir t hit record, is a town in Alabama, Williams he insisted that 12-bar blues whose melody is bor- B was a child of the hard- rowed from “Your Red Wagon,” a scrabble class. His father, a rail- the members blues song fir t recorded in 1936. road engineer who was injured In addition, Williams was shaped in World War I, spent eight years of his band, by the gospel music he had heard in a veterans’ hospital, while his the Drifting in church as a boy. “My mother was mother kept boarders and worked [a church] organist . . . and my ear- in low-paying jobs. Williams him- Cowboys, play liest memory is sittin’ on that or- self suffered from chronic back in an equally gan stool by her and hollerin,’” he pain throughout his life, the result told the musical journalist Ralph J. of a spinal-column birth defect unadorned Gleason in 1952. that was not surgically corrected manner. To these influences, Williams until 1951. By that point, he was added a lively, engagingly dry addicted to alcohol and prescrip- sense of humor that was all his tion drugs, which he had initially own. Even when singing about the started using to ease his suffering. by other singers, the fir t of which stormy romantic relationships that These habits reduced his private was Tony Bennett’s 1951 record- were his preferred subject mat- life to a shambles, but they did ing of “Cold, Cold Heart,” that he ter, he often portrayed them with not affect his ability to perform initially became known outside the a smile, just as his onstage per- in public until the following year, South. But Williams was a remark- forming persona was jaunty and when he was fired from Nash- able vocalist in his own right, and self-assured. Nevertheless, melan- ville’s Grand Ole Opry, the premier it is his own uncompromisingly choly was the deepest color on his venue for country music. Still, he direct performances that are most songwriting palette, and he sang continued to perform and record admired by modern-day listeners. such ballads of despair as “I Can’t until two days before he died, eight The directness of Williams’s Help It (If I’m Still in Love with months short of his 30th birthday.* singing was so emotionally com- You)” in a stoically mournful voice Williams’s untimely death sur- pelling that it concealed the mod- that was an ideal complement to prised no one who was aware of his esty of his vocal equipment. His their laconic lyrics: “Somebody self-devastating reliance on drink baritone voice was small, nasal, else stood by your side / And he and drugs. The fiddler-sin er Roy and hard-edged, and unlike such looked so satisfied” And for all Acuff, one of his main influences smoother-sounding country bal- their simplicity, Williams’s lyrics told the younger man that he had ladeers of the late ’40s and early were in no way crude. At a time “a million-dollar talent, son, but a ’50s as Eddy Arnold and Red when country songwriting was 10-cent brain.” Acuff was right on Foley, he sang with a pronounced starting to become more self-con- both counts: Williams’s talent was Southern accent that left no doubt sciously professionalized, the work as distinctive as his offstage behav- of his rural origins. He unapolo- of full-time lyricists whose lyrics ior was squalid and undisciplined. getically called himself a “hillbilly,” had a technical polish that was in Even if he had not been a fir t-rate and fans from similar backgrounds many cases comparable to that of stage performer, his songwriting responded to his refusal to pretend the craftsmen of Tin Pan Alley, he alone would have won him a secure that he was anything other than place in the history of American what he was. At the same time, * Williams’s death was officially diag- nosed as the result of “cardiac insufficie - popular music. Indeed, it was though, his musical background cy,” but his addiction was undoubtedly a through cover versions of his songs was more complex than was evi- contributing cause.

50 Culture & Civilization : February 2017

Culture & Civ.indd 50 1/12/17 2:57 PM opted for plainness—and poetry. Eyes” and “One for My Baby” that Where did the poetry come In his Frank Sinatra recorded a few short from? Williams was barely literate i years later. In Williams’s songs, even and seems to have read nothing songs, the light-hearted ones, marriages but comic books. It is important even the light- frequently end in divorce (as his to note in this connection, as had), and ordinary people spend Ribowsky does in Hank, that he hearted ones, their lives laboring at unfulfillin worked closely with Fred Rose, jobs, seeking surcease in liquor and his music publisher, who gave him marriages “cheating.” It is hard to imagine ideas for songs and is known to frequently end such a man appealing to the young have edited some of his lyrics to girls who squealed for Presley on make them more palatable to big- in divorce, and The Ed Sullivan Show. In any case, city listeners. Moreover, Williams ordinary people he never got the chance: He died in did not write some of “his” best- the back seat of his car en route to a known songs, including “Lovesick spend their show, emaciated and despondent. Blues” and “Lost Highway.” Never- lives laboring at “There ain’t no light,” he had told theless, he was primarily respon- a friend a few months earlier. “It’s sible for most of the songs that he unfulfilling jobs, all dark.” recorded, and while they typically seeking surcease But Williams was wrong to lack the catchy cleverness of com- suppose that his life had come to mercial country, they replace it in liquor and naught. Far from it: All of his re- with a powerful spareness of ut- ‘cheating.’ cords remain in print to this day terance, never to better effect than and continue to sell. Fifty-seven in “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”: years after his death, he received “I’ve never seen a night so long / a special Pulitzer Prize citation for And time goes crawling by / The off by the accents of bona fide coun- lifetime achievement in music. (It moon just went behind a cloud / To try singers, as well as by the guitar- followed similar awards to John hide its face and cry.” and-fiddle string bands that backed Coltrane, Bob Dylan, and Thelo- In addition, Williams was by all them. But Williams’s 1952 network nious Monk.) The Pulitzer board accounts an irresistibly charismatic TV appearances on The Perry Como praised him as “a songwriter who performer, a fact that is clear both Show and The Kate Smith Evening expressed universal feelings with from his recordings and from his Hour were highly successful, and by poignant simplicity.” So he did, surviving radio and TV broadcasts. then MGM was already sure enough and if anything, the darkness of his He was a superlatively straightfor- of his mass appeal to have signed songs now seems to engage more ward communicator of emotion, him to a movie deal. directly than ever before with the and he insisted that the members of Would Williams have become hopes and fears of the working- his band, the Drifting Cowboys, play a full-fled ed pop star in his own class Americans who are por- in an equally unadorned manner. right? Or might his career have trayed so eloquently in J.D. Vance’s No one sang his songs better. been derailed by the subsequent Hillbilly Elegy. They would have rise of rock and roll? It is entirely known what he meant when he T FIRST, THOUGH, Wil- possible that he could have con- told a reporter that the “people liams was better known verted himself into a “rockabilly” who has been raised something A outside the Deep South singer like Elvis Presley or Jerry like the way the hillbilly has knows for the recordings of his songs that Lee Lewis, who were as Southern in what he is singing about and ap- were cut by mainstream pop sing- their style and manner as Williams. preciates it.” Dead at 29, he speaks ers like Bennett and Joni James. On the other hand, Presley, Lewis, for them still, and the body of work Prettified versions of country songs and their fellow rockers deliberately that he left behind has not lost its had been selling well since the ’40s, pitched their music to teenagers. grip on the imaginations of other when Bing Crosby recorded Bob Not so Williams: His was an adult listeners who know nothing of Wills’s “New San Antonio Rose” and music, fully imbued with the tragic the rough world of which he sang. Al Dexter’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” sense of life in much the same way Of how many artists who died in In those days, it was taken for grant- as were the startlingly bleak record- their twenties can the same thing ed that urban listeners would be put ings of such pop ballads as “Angel be said?q

Commentary 51

Culture & Civ.indd 51 1/12/17 2:57 PM After initial talks between tough- as-nails Palestinian operatives and A False more pliable Israeli academics op- erating off the books at the behest of Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, the true breakthrough hap- Theatrical Peace pened when the Israelis violated their country’s legal prohibition against negotiating with the ter- Oslo in New York tion Organization on the White ror group and sent a government House Lawn in September 1993. representative—Foreign Minister Though it is fl ttering to its main Shimon Peres’s acolyte Uri Savir— By Jonathan S. Tobin protagonists—Larsen and his wife, to Norway. As Larsen hoped, Savir the diplomat Mona Juul, who both bonded with PLO Finance Minister N INTRACTABLE regularly break the fourth wall to Ahmed Qurie, aka Abu Ala, during dispute resolved by lecture the audience about con- the tense discussions and their sending negotia- text and chronology—it generally own walks around the secluded tors to a remote sticks to well-known facts about Norwegian castle where the talks setting and forcing the talks that were initiated with- were held. themA to work out their differences out the knowledge of Israeli Prime As the play shows, the Palestin- and realize their common human- Minister Yitzhak Rabin shortly ians continued to push for and get ity—this is one of the great fanta- after his Labor Party took offic concessions almost until the last sies of diplomacy. And, evidently, in 1992. moment the deal was formally for playwrights as well. The idea According to Larsen, the idea signed (with American sponsor- was given a thorough airing in for the effort came from a visit to ship). But most Israelis cheered 1988 with the New York produc- Gaza he and his wife made dur- because the Palestinians promised tion of Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the ing the First Intifada in the late both recognition for the state of Woods, a fi tionalized version of 1980s; while there, they witnessed Israel and an end to terrorism and the 1982 SALT nuclear talks be- a confrontation between an Is- the confli t. tween the United States and the raeli soldier and a rock-throwing The Oslo accords demonstrated Soviet Union. In it, two diplomats Palestinian. They believed both that the willingness of the stronger representing the two nations bond of the participants in the struggle side in a negotiation to treat the during their strolls through the didn’t want to be there and desired weaker side as equal and to make Swiss woods and produce an agree- peace. The Larsens became con- concessions opposed by the majority ment that, though it was not rati- vinced that all that was needed to of its population (and the head of fied by their governments, sug- break the impasse was for the two government when he ran for office gested that peace between peoples fighting over one land to made a historic pact achievable. implacable enemies was possible realize there was a viable and logi- Though the depiction of the sign- as long as honest relationships cal diplomatic solution available to ing is followed by a brief tableau could be arrived at. them. But that option could work in which the subsequent careers Now there is J.T. Rogers’s ac- only if both parties set aside their of the participants are related, the claimed play Oslo, which had a fears and preconceptions about moment when Rabin, Yasir Arafat, run at Lincoln Center last summer the other side and were willing and Bill Clinton posed on the White and is due to reopen on Broad- to make reasonable compromises. House Lawn is the denouement of way in the spring. Based on the Larsen also believed that throw- the play. While a brilliant cast at memoirs of Norwegian sociologist ing negotiators together on their Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Terje Rod-Larsen, the play is a own could lead to the building of Theater, headed by Jefferson Mays docudrama about the secret talks personal relationships that would and Jennifer Ehle (who may well that led to the agreement between overcome the seemingly insur- be the most underrated actress of Israel and the Palestine Libera- mountable diffi ulties. her generation) as Larsen and his As it happens, his plan worked. wife, and crisp direction by Bartlett Jonathan S. Tobin is senior Or at least it did insofar as getting Sher made as strong a dramatic online editor of Commentary. the two sides to sign an agreement. argument as possible for this dry

52 Culture & Civilization : February 2017

Culture & Civ.indd 52 1/12/17 2:57 PM material, this cutoff is why the play cates. Though Israeli governments, Probably not to the millions of fails as history. including the one led by Oslo Israelis that have more important While Larsen was correct that opponent Benjamin Netanyahu, things to worry about as they live under the right circumstances and continued to grant the Palestin- with the aftermath of Larsen’s with helpful nudges from a neutral ians more control over territory, handiwork. But it is more impor- party, a deal could be hashed out, a Arafat’s goals never changed. In tant than they might think. piece of paper is not the same thing 2000, at a summit at Camp Da- The overwhelming majority of as actually ending a confli t. vid, when Prime Minister Ehud Israelis view the Oslo process as an We know that the intentions of Barak offered Arafat statehood experiment that failed badly. They Beilin and his boss Peres, whose and control over almost all of the still favor, as does their supposedly portrayal in the play as a pompous West Bank, Gaza, and a share of right-wing prime minister, a theo- yet determined leader willing to Jerusalem (terms that Rabin had retical two-state solution. But they cast caution to the winds in pursuit said were unimaginable even after understand that until a sea change of his goal rings true, were sincere. Oslo), the Palestinians said no and in Palestinian political culture al- They truly believed that giving soon launched another even more lows recognition of a Jewish state the Palestinians what they said destructive terror campaign. That no matter where its borders are they wanted would create a “New pattern would be repeated during drawn, further concessions aren’t Middle East.” the next 16 years by Arafat’s suc- so much counterproductive as they But 23 years later, we also know cessor, Mahmoud Abbas, as the toll are suicidal. That’s why the parties from both their actions and sub- of lives lost due to post-Oslo terror- of the Israeli left that sponsored sequent revelations, Qurie’s boss ism enabled by the agreement ran Oslo are now a weak minority. Yasir Arafat had no such vision into the thousands on both sides. But for many Americans—espe- in mind. Arafat spoke openly in Seen in that light, the play- cially liberal Jews who constitute Arabic at the time of his aim to use wright’s applause for Larsen, Juul, the prime audience for Oslo—the Oslo as part of a plan to continue and their helpers seems histori- history that followed Larsen’s tri- the war against Israel on more ad- cally illiterate. Like a play about umph has been shoved down the vantageous terms and not to forge Napoleon’s Hundred Days that memory hole and was ignored a final peace. He never stopped ended with his triumphant re-en- while it was happening. The same funding and fomenting terror, and try to Paris in 1815 but left out the can be said of the Obama admin- used his newfound control of Pal- subsequent Battle of Waterloo, the istration as well as the European estinian schools and media to theatrical effort to crown Larsen governments that continue to pro- inculcate new generations in the as a successful hero of peace falls vide financial support for a cor- ideology of hatred for Israel and fl t even if a line is tagged on at the rupt, terrorist-supporting PA while the Jews. end in which Juul wonders aloud blaming Israel for the failure of the Indeed, as soon as Israeli troops whether what they did was for the Oslo process and essentially using began their retreat and the PLO best. the United States Security Council assumed control over most of the Imagine what we might think to criminalize the Jewish presence West Bank and Gaza in 1994, both of the efforts of the diplomats Paul in Jerusalem. Arafat’s Fatah Party and his Hamas Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky—and It is not an accident that the rivals began a bloody campaign of Blessing’s celebration of them— “Oslo Chronology” provided in the terrorism. At the time of Rabin’s as- today if the U.S.–Soviet nuclear glossy program supplement at Lin- sassination in 1995, polls showed a standoff had not become a relic coln Center covers the period after majority of Israelis had thrown off of history. Imagine, instead, that the play’s action by only acknowl- their euphoria and now opposed Moscow had seen the “walk in the edging the one instance of Israeli the pact because they already un- woods” as a sign of U.S. weakness terror during the period (the 1994 derstood that Larsen’s big idea had and weariness and had launched massacre at the Tomb of the Patri- led to more bloodshed with little provocations so extreme they had archs in Hebron) and the assassi- hope of the peace they had been led not to peace but to nuclear war. nation of Rabin. The program says promised. That is the logic of Oslo. nothing about the innumerable in- The events of the next few years stances of Palestinian terror during would completely explode the Oslo OES A BROADWAY PLAY the period or about Arafat and Ab- concept and destroy the politi- that gets this history so bas’s subsequent refusal of Israeli cal fortunes of its Israeli advo- D terribly wrong matter? offers of statehood and peace.

Commentary 53

Culture & Civ.indd 53 1/12/17 2:57 PM Those omissions are astonish- Those groups are gaining influenc Gaza still has a way of looking at ingly bad history, but they are an in the Democratic Party. the confli t that is different from accurate refle tion of the mindset of Far from being irrelevant to cur- that of the Israeli he is opposing. those in the United States from Fog- rent events, Larsen’s blunders and Thanks to Larsen and Oslo, he is gy Bottom to the faculty lounge who the unwillingness of the West to now armed with rockets aimed at continue to blame Israel for Pales- draw conclusions from what hap- Israeli cities and poised to use tun- tinian intransigence. This false nar- pened after the accords go to the nels to kidnap and murder Jews. rative is the root of the myth that the heart of the contemporary vitu- That terrorist who is determined Israelis and Netanyahu threw away peration against Israel and Zionism. to expel the Jews from the land the peace Rabin had signed. That Rather than giving the Israelis credit rather than share it with them lie is also at the heart of the grow- for empowering their foes, Larsen, still doesn’t have the same goal as ing support for the BDS (boycott, with his clever attempt to jump-start his stereotypical Israeli antagonist. divest, sanction) movement against history, joins much of the world in Oslo and all that followed it proved Israel in the United States, and it continuing to wrongly blame Is- repeatedly which side was pre- undergirds support for anti-Zionist rael for not wanting the peace Oslo pared for coexistence and which groups such as Jewish Voices for seemed to promise. rejected it. That is the true tragedy Peace that have overtaken J Street It turns out that for all of his of Oslo and the Middle East con- and Peace Now as the home for common humanity, the Palestin- fli t that the playwright and his left-wing critics of the Jewish state. ian rock thrower Larsen saw in cheering audience have missed.q

C $29.9C9 $29.99 C C

54 Culture & Civilization : February 2017

Culture & Civ.indd 54 1/12/17 2:57 PM Mediacracy

continued from page 56 had once again un- Bradley started asking questions about the story dermined the ability of gatekeepers to determine on his blog. “‘Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic the bounds of national discourse. And gatekeepers Hoax?’ Asks Idiot” was the headline of a post about hate it when that happens. “If you believe discrimi- Bradley’s writing on the far-left site Jezebel. Well, nation against white people is rampant, that Donald guess what: It was. In November, a jury awarded $3 Trump supporters face persecution, that Chicago is million in damages to one of the people the Rolling a war zone, and the media is dishonest, then your Stone article defamed. entire worldview is likely to be confirmed by one The fight against the Islamic State, former awful story,” wrote a blogger for the Washington Post White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last with the name of Callum Borchers. His piece was September, is “in some ways just a war of narratives.” headlined “Pro-Trump narratives converge in one Which means: The Obama administration would say awful attack streamed on Facebook.” The worst part terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and then of the whole sorry episode, Borchers seemed to say, another Islamic terrorist would appear and shoot wasn’t the pain and indignity suffered by a disabled or stab or blow up Americans. So, too, when Hillary person but the “support” Clinton collapsed during his pain and indignity last year’s September 11 gave to “the worldview A story is judged not by its truth memorial, MSNBC anchor of many Trump voters.” Alex Witt ascribed the fall Those deplorables. or even commercial value but by to “horrible weather” (the Borchers’s post was how well it serves the narrative. high that day: 83 degrees). both asinine and reveal- Andrea Mitchell said Clin- ing of the postmodern Does it confirm the prejudices ton “seemed fine” Both as- sensibility of our engaged, of its authors and further their sertions were and remain liberal, adversarial, over- laughable to anyone who schooled, and underedu- ideological and partisan agenda? saw the grainy amateur cated press. For this class Or does it subvert those priorities video, captured by a pe- of people, the word “nar- destrian, of Clinton drop- rative” has come to mean and reveal inconvenient facts? ping like a stone. not “story” or “tale” but The power of the “propaganda.” A story is Internet and social media judged not by its truth or even commercial value to disestablish authority is breathtaking. For years, but by how well it serves the narrative. Does it con- writes Martin Gurri, “governments and mass me- firm the prejudices of its authors and further their dia shared in God’s work: telling the public what ideological and partisan agenda? Or does it subvert to think and how to behave.” Beginning in 2011, those priorities and reveal inconvenient facts? however, with the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, The last several years have not been easy and the Arab Spring, “new technologies have given ones for narratives. When security-camera footage the power of speech to a silent public, to players revealed that Michael Brown had actually assaulted marginalized by the media monopoly over the in- an Asian-American store clerk moments before he formation space.” was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Gurri, author of the prescient Revolt of the Missouri, in 2014, liberals and the Obama adminis- Public, says Brexit and the election of Donald Trump tration were outraged. What angered them wasn’t are further evidence of “a grinding subterranean Brown’s criminal behavior. It was the falsific tion of struggle” between “a networked public and the their narrative—the tale of a gentle giant mercilessly elites who control the great hierarchies we have gunned down by a racist cop. inherited from the industrial age.” He can add to his In 2014, Rolling Stone published a graphic list of examples the collapse of liberal media nar- and disturbing account of a gang rape at a Universi- ratives from Ferguson to Charlottesville—and the ty of Virginia fraternity. The episode strengthened surprise national attention paid to a vicious racist the campus left, at least until journalist Richard attack in Chicago.q

Commentary 55

Culture & Civ.indd 55 1/12/17 2:57 PM Tw ilight of the Narratives

ARLY IN JANUARY, four black teenagers between the felony and the racial animus inflame were arrested in Chicago after they kid- by Black Lives Matter. Black activists responded in E napped and tortured a mentally impaired kind. “Calling a random crime the #BLMKidnap- white man and broadcast their crimes on the ping is just another white supremacist tactic to social-media streaming service Facebook Live. implicate and ultimately punish ALL Black people,” The gang members punched, kicked, cut, burned, tweeted “anti-racism strategist” Tariq Nasheed. and tied up their victim while What surprised me was screaming epithets including the fact that this story was be- “F— white people!” and “F— ing covered at all. Since the Donald Trump!” Then they made election, the national media MATTHEW him drink toilet-bowl water. MEDIACRACYCONTINETTI have repeated their mantra that When footage of the as- religious and ethnic minorities, sault appeared on television news, the grisly and living in fear, are being harassed and oppressed sensational details became part of a larger debate in a divided America. So at odds were the details over racial politics in the Trump era. When conser- of the Chicago kidnapping with this idea that one vative pundit Matt K. Lewis said the actions of the assumed editors and producers would simply mob were “evil,” CNN anchor Don Lemon replied, “I pretend nothing had happened and treat the ugly don’t think it’s evil,” but “just dumb, stupid behav- affair as a local story. ior.” Commentator Symone Sanders said that what They couldn’t do that in this case. Why? Be- had happened was “sickening,” but “we cannot cal- cause of the Facebook Live video, which had already lously go about classifying things as a hate crime.” spread on social media before the major networks Meanwhile, Trump supporters drew a connection picked it up. Most if not all of the alleged hate crimes publicized since last November have been exposed Matthew Continetti, who appears monthly as hoaxes. Yet here was a hate crime that could not in this space, is the editor in chief of the Washington be denied. And its victim was white. Free Beacon. Social media continued on page 55

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