On the Front Lines of the Trade War

MAKE MARCO GREAT AGAIN JOHN MCCORMACK

AUGUST 20 / AUGUST 27, 2018 $5.99 On the Front Lines of the Trade War

TONY MECIA on the ups and downs of an Iowa metal shop ANDREW EGGER on the anxieties of Missouri farmers

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM THIS IS A COMBINED ISSUE. THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE WEEKLY STANDARD WILL APPEAR IN TWO WEEKS. Contents August 20 / August 27, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 47

2 The Scrapbook An amazingly inept fact check, team spirit, & more 5 Casual David Skinner’s shiners 6 Editorials ‘Very Standard’? • A Tale of Two Cultures 8 Comment Manafort Agonistes by Andrew Ferguson 2 Brett Kavanaugh and the problem of hyperpartisanship by Philip Terzian The virtues of concentrating the mind by Barton Swaim Articles

12 Sow Tariffs, Reap Retaliation by Andrew Egger Farmers are the first to feel the squeeze

15 Trump Tower Tales and Tweets by Eric Felten The meeting that launched a thousand controversies

17 Labour’s Jewish Problem by Dominic Green 15 Jeremy Corbyn and the uses of idiocy

19 Wrestling with the Speakership by Haley Byrd Jim Jordan’s bid to succeed Paul Ryan Features

21 Footsoldiers in a Trade War by Tony Mecia In an Iowa metal shop, the booming economy is hiding the effects of Trump’s tariffs

27 Rubio Goes Nationalist by John McCormack Meet the new Marco . . .

31 Rick Perry’s Unlikely Third Act by Michael Warren Can a high-profile former governor find happiness as a hardworking energy secretary?

34 Breaking the Climate Spell by Rupert Darwall Getting out of the Paris Agreement was just the first step on the road to energy realism Books & Arts

38 The Fashion of This World by Catherine Addington Godly garments and high couture at the Met

27 41 The Mom Crunch by Naomi Schaefer Riley In the sequel to ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It,’ teens and tech collide

42 Vladimir Voinovich, 1932-2018 by Cathy Young The dissident writer’s remarkable life

43 Chance of a Lifetime by B. D. McClay Taking control by giving it up

45 Sunlit Second Acts by Amy Henderson Three women remaking their lives in Tuscany

46 Angry Kitsch by Hannah Yoest The sudden fame of Jon McNaughton, painter of populist rage 38 48 Parody Area college launches Mediocre Books program COVER BY DAVID CLARK THE SCRAPBOOK Fact Check: It Depends! he fact-checking industry has tendentious hairsplitting. But you T grown tremendously in recent would be wrong. The Trumpian asser- years, and mostly for good reason. tion that moved the PolitiFact’s scru- Half-truths, outrageous rumors, and tineers to action? This one: “In the outright fabrications are common second quarter of this year, the United enough without the Internet. They States economy grew at the amaz- are ubiquitous online. When fact- ing rate of 4.1 percent.” PolitiFact’s checking is well done (by, for instance, objection wasn’t to the data—the Glenn Kessler at the Washington economy really did grow at 4.1 per- Post or The Scrapbook’s fave, our cent in the second quarter—but to the Weekly Standard colleague Holmes adjective: amazing. Lybrand), it aids the intelligent read- “This is a strong showing in the er’s capacity to negotiate the sea of cases with extravagant oratory, one- context of recent history,” PolitiFact’s online confusion. sided arguments, over-the-top exagger- Louis Jacobson writes, “and the But it’s often done poorly—and, ation, and only occasionally outright highest since the third quarter of as Mark Hemingway has ably docu- lies. It’s a place where fact-checking can 2014. But most economists would not mented in these pages over the years, help, but a bit of flexibility doesn’t hurt. use the word ‘amazing’ to describe with absurdly obvious political bias. All this came to mind this week it.” Remarkable, maybe. Impressive, Among the worst offenders: PolitiFact, when we read a PolitiFact entry on one perhaps. But amazing? Come on, which in 2012 served as a de facto arm of Donald Trump’s recent remarks. Mr. President! of the Obama reelection campaign. The You might think this fact-checking Jacobson’s final assessment on trouble with fact-checking political watchdog would have an abundance Trump’s statement: “Strong, but not claims is that politics is a highly rhe- of material to work with from the amazing.” Our assessment of his fact torical sphere: Participants make their 45th president without resorting to check: amazingly dumb. ♦

get the nominations of the Green, Fusion for Dummies Libertarian, and Working Families lection season is upon us, and you parties. Evidently Smith’s genius E know what that means—idiotic consultants weren’t aware of the trickery dreamed up by campaign state’s “sore loser” law that bans can- hacks and political consultants. didates from running in a race in Consider: New York election law which they’ve already lost a primary. allows candidates to run for office On August 4, the South Carolina under multiple party labels. Thanks Libertarian party voted against Smith to the state’s “fusion candidacy” laws, as its nominee—meaning he’s now a smaller party—say, New York’s Inde- lost a primary and may be ineligible to pendence party—can endorse a Demo- run in the general election. The Smith crat or Republican, and that candidate party ballot line with, for example, campaign insists his name was “with- appears on the ballot as its nominee. Rep. Chris Collins, who has called drawn” before the vote, but neither the The upside for the smaller party is that the governor “a bully, a blackmailer, timing nor the legality of the alleged if it garners more than 50,000 votes, and an extortionist.” Also on the withdrawal is clear at this point. it has a guaranteed place on the next Independence line will be congres- The practice of fusion candida- election cycle’s ballot. The upside for sional Republicans whom Cuomo cies is a deliberate attempt to take the candidate is that his or her name is trying to defeat by funding their advantage of the dumb and the unin- appears on the ballot more than once. Democratic opponents. formed—people who vote for a candi- New York statehouse candidates It’s not just New York. The strat- date because they see his or her name of both parties do the same thing, egy of fusion candidacies is practiced listed more often than others. There’s as a report in the New York Times in some other states, too, though per- no evidence that it even boosts the can- pointed out, with the weird result haps not as competently. In South didate’s overall numbers, but consul- that Governor Andrew Cuomo will Carolina, Democratic gubernato- tants get their clients to do it anyway.

appear on the same Independence rial candidate James Smith tried to We suspect Smith will find a way to LLAMA: BIGSTOCK

2 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 stay on the ballot in November, but it would serve him right if he couldn’t. ♦ Patronizing the Revolutionaries n Europe and North America, I museums just can’t win. It takes wealthy people and large corporations to keep them operating, but left-wing artists and intellectuals don’t like wealthy people and large companies. It’s a tough spot to be in, but the Design Museum in London might have seen this debacle coming. The museum this summer hosted an exhibition titled “Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18” featuring politically themed works of graphic artists, from Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster depicting Barack Obama to various Women’s March posters and a gram- matically problematic sign reading “It’s not about me, it’s about we.” The exhibition purported to explain “how graphic design and technology have played a pivotal role in dictating and reacting to the major political moments of our time.” We’re not sure how something could play a pivotal role in dictating and reacting to a series of major moments, but we’re reasonably certain that if you’re a museum and you feature the creations of a lot of left-wing artist-agitators, you’re asking for trouble. The trouble came when the artists featured in “Hope to Nope” heard, according to the New York Times, “that the Design Museum had rented called attention to their moral supe- expecting a showdown, but the its atrium to Leonardo, one of the riority. A hat-trick! museum staff had politely packed world’s largest aerospace The graphic art- up the items awaiting retrieval— and defense companies, for ists decided not just to whereupon the artists felt obliged a drinks reception in July.” ask that their works be to remove the artworks from their They “expressed shock when removed; they showed packages in order to display them to they learned about the recep- up to remove them waiting photographers. tion, and asked for their themselves. On the If you’re in London, the exhibition works to be removed from morning of August 2, continues until August 12, sans the the museum.” a little posse of artists works of a few ungrateful twits. ♦ It must be a blissful world arrived at the museum where such a thing is shock- holding placards bearing, but the offended art- ing the words “THE Disband the Team ists got more out of it than REVOLUTION s The Scrapbook the only one who’s shock: Not only did they WILL NOT BE I grown weary of the word team used get their work exhibited; PATRONISED” and where it doesn’t belong—outside the they earned media attention “#NopeToArms.” world of sports? For a year or two after

ALISDARE HICKSON about the exhibition and Evidently they were Olympic teams were called Team USA

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 3 or Team France, it was cute to refer to Why is everything now a “team”? your company or office as “team” this We wonder if it’s an attempt to or that. Then politicians got in on the describe the otherwise dreary goings- action—Gov. Nikki Haley called her on of politics, government, and corpo- staff “Team Haley,” and so on. rate America in the more lighthearted www.weeklystandard.com We had hoped it would go away, language of sports. Maybe it’s the typ- Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief but it hasn’t. A few instances from just ical American habit of thinking every Richard Starr, Editor Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors the last few days: A piece on CNN. human interaction has to have a win- Christine Rosen, Managing Editor com—“Giuliani says Trump team will ner and a loser. Or maybe Americans Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, respond to Mueller about interview have become so prosperous and enter- National Correspondents later Wednesday”—speaks of “Trump’s tainment-obsessed that we think of Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor everything as a game. Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Whatever the reason, why not Eric Felten, Mark Hemingway, call offices and companies and agen- John McCormack, Tony Mecia, Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers cies and delegations by those nouns David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Staff Writers and not by the word team? Teams are Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor for fun, and we’re pretty certain that Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor nobody on Special Counsel Mueller’s Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor “team” is having fun. Enough with Adam Rubenstein, Assistant Opinion Editor team already. Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker Signed, Team Scrapbook. ♦ Sophia Buono, Philip Jeffery, Editorial Assistants Philip Chalk, Design Director Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant Contributing Editors ’Merica Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost, Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, July 27 game between the Hous- David Frum, David Gelernter, ton Astros and the Texas Rangers Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Goldfarb, A Daniel Halper, Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, legal team” and “the president’s team” featured a few minutes of pointless Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, Victorino Matus, and also of “Mueller’s team.” A piece in delight. Chris White, a Marine vet- P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, the Jerusalem Post speaks of the White eran, made the unusual decision to Charles J. Sykes, Stuart Taylor Jr. House’s “Israeli-Palestinian peace remove his trousers and shirt, bran- William Kristol, Editor at Large team,” the president’s “Middle East dish his Stars-and-Stripes-themed MediaDC Ryan McKibben, Chairman peace team,” and the White House’s underwear—silkies is the military Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer “policy team.” The ever-capable Gerald term—and sprint across the outfield. Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer Seib concludes a column in the Wall He broke at least one security guard’s Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer Street Journal by noting that “the presi- tackle, gave 42,000 people a laugh, and Matthew Curry, Director, Email Marketing dent has a team that seems devoted surrendered peacefully. Alex Rosenwald, Senior Director of Strategic Communications Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising to letting Trump be Trump.” A piece T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising on cybersecurity in the Washington Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager Post notes that the “Trump team” Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 isn’t doing enough, but that fortu- Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 nately “security teams of U.S. com- The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, panies” are doing a lot. In the Seattle is published weekly (except one week in March, one week in June, one Times we read of a “team” responsible week in August, and one week in December) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, for homeless camp removals: “The DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. 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Back issues, $5.99 (includes postage and Foer recalls writing a piece for the then you’re not thinking about that handling). Send letters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th New Republic, which he then edited, dark space that you can potentially Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to that sharply criticized Amazon. Foer be in,” White said afterward. “And Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, received a terse email indicating that if I can gear it toward patriotism, to Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2018, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly the retail giant had decided to yank me, I consider that the holy grail.” Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. its support for the magazine. “It was Utterly senseless and delightful. The Weekly Standard is a registered trademark of Clarity Media Group. signed,” he recalls, “Team Amazon.” Well done, Marine. ♦ BOB VIA TWITTER; LEVEY / GETTYLEFT: RIGHT:

4 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 CASUAL

I walked off the field, wondering if The Shiner-ing my nose was broken, saying, “That’s it. I’m done.” A kind woman on the sideline took a photo of my face to show me the t some point I resolved not I thought, something like a civil- damage. It didn’t look that bad, but it to go gently into middle ian version of the Incredible Hulk: felt like a headache throbbing inside age. I was not searching large-pawed, massive-shouldered, and my nose. Fortunately, the pain did for a new lifestyle, or one pretty fast for a guy who, when stand- not get worse. After a few minutes Ato recommend to others. Not for a ing still, measures about 6ʹ2ʺ. of rest and some ice to my schnoz, I second did I think of writing a moti- In the first half, Civilian Hulk had rejoined the game and finished the vational book on how to be happy in knocked my shoulder with his shoul- second half. your 40s. der, sending me spinning like a top The next morning, the color on my The change in direction happened out of bounds. I realized then that it eye was a deep raspberry. It looked spontaneously, and at times reck- would be wise to avoid the superhero, like someone had finger-painted the lessly. With steadily increasing vigor, I but, on defense, one goes to where the inside of my eye socket. “It’s like a resumed a level of physical activity action is. really big tear,” my son Ben said. I had not known since child- Wearing a shiner, I feel any- hood and never looked back. thing but shiny. I feel dimmed. It’s been fun, I can report, Everything else about me but also humbling. becomes secondary. All people Twice in the last three see is my black eye. months I have come home At work, my colleagues all from Wednesday night prac- wanted to hear the story, which tice with a black eye. My led to many learned comments sport, by the way, is Gaelic about it being time to hang up football, a fast, occasionally my cleats and the importance brutal, turnover-riddled cross of not being “that guy.” between rugby and soccer A cliché in its own right, that is a national sport of Ire- “that guy” is invoked for any land, a country I have never number of venial sins: yell- even visited. ing angrily from the side- If only I were in fourth lines during a children’s grade and had earned these soccer game, wearing a blue stripes standing up to the class dress shirt with a white col- bully! Instead I was simply lar, knowing a little too much playing defense. about food or beer or wine. I try to be one of those irri- “That guy” is an all-purpose tatingly persistent defenders, always So, as the other defender harassed loser, but his greatest failing is that he keeping pace with the person who Civilian Hulk, who was striding pow- is oblivious to his failings. He doesn’t has the ball and throwing my hands erfully toward our goal, I stepped know that he is “that guy.” in any direction the ball might be sent. into position and threw my arms out, And he doesn’t know the world And I was doing no more than that ready for the double team and hop- has reduced him to this one thing. when another player frantically pulled ing to force a bad shot. But instead Like the other day, I was standing in the ball away from my greedy hands of going around me, Civilian Hulk line with Ben at a fast food restau- while thrusting his jaw in the direc- decided to go through me, running rant when a beautiful young woman tion of my face, which I withdrew too head first into the left side of my nose. walked past and looked straight at me, slowly to avoid contact. The result Several people attested to hearing holding my gaze just long enough that was a brushstroke of blue and green the knock of skull on facial bone. I, too, it seemed intentional. For a split sec- below my right eye. heard the awful, depressing sound— ond, I thought it was possible that she These things happen, right? In a depressing, I think, because it sounded was looking at me because she found week or so, the bruise faded. inanimate, like an object hitting the me attractive. Nope, I realized, she The second time, I was again playing floor, which was all wrong because you was just looking at my black eye. defense. My teammate was guard- knew it was living, breathing flesh that

DAVID CLARK DAVID ing the man with the ball, who looked, had caused that hollow knock. David Skinner

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS ‘Very Standard’? his was a meeting to get information on an oppo- switch, and indeed it’s not difficult to imagine him as a dupe. nent, totally legal and done all the time in poli- We tend to doubt that Don Jr., Manafort, or Kushner com- ‘Ttics—and it went nowhere. I did not know about mitted any crime by holding the meeting. But there is no it!” So tweeted President Donald Trump on August 5. He excusing the shamefulness of the thing. Political campaigns was referring to members of his immediate family and his are often approached by people claiming to possess dirt on campaign team having met with Russian lawyer Natalia opponents, but Veselnitskaya’s presentation of herself as a Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. tool of the Russian government puts this affair in a whole The president’s former attorney Michael Cohen is new class of loathsomeness. (according to media reports) willing to testify to special It’s clear that even these amoral operators understood the counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew about the meeting meeting was inappropriate. How else to explain the cascade before it happened. Cohen’s an unreliable witness, but such of lies they told to cover it up? These include saying that: testimony would directly contradict Trump’s claim that he n There were no contacts between the campaign and for- knew nothing about the meeting. eign governments. A quick recap. Rob Goldstone, the publicist who initially n There were no contacts with Russians. connected Veselnitskaya and the Trump campaign, had n There were contacts with Russians but they written in a message to Donald Trump Jr. that “the Crown weren’t improper. prosecutor of Russia . . . offered to provide the Trump cam- n The Trump Tower meeting was about policy matters. paign with some official documents and information that n The Trump Tower meeting was about routine “opposi- would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia tion research.” and would be very useful to your father.” Don Jr. agreed to a n The Russians never produced the material they’d meeting and replied: “if it’s what you say I love it.” promised. As late as July 2017, Don Jr. maintained that the meeting n There’s nothing improper about accepting opposition was about Russian adoptions. But with the revelation of the research from a foreign adversary. email exchange with Goldstone, in which the candidate’s son Each defense lasted until facts emerged to render accepted the meeting on the basis of receiving “information it inoperative. that would incriminate Hillary,” it became clear that Don Among the more dispiriting aspects of this sordid affair Jr.’s original story was meant to mislead. It may be true, as is the untroubled, nothing-to-see-here-folks attitude of the president insists, that “zero happened from the meeting.” Trump surrogates, Republican officeholders, and most of the But the more relevant fact is that the eldest son of the Repub- conservative media. Once upon a time, conservatives were lican nominee sought information from a foreign adversary keenly aware of the importance of norms. They are the rea- for the purposes of affecting the outcome of a U.S. presiden- son a society does not need to spell out laws to govern all pos- tial election. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort sible behaviors. It is precisely the normative pursuit of virtue attended the meeting and so did the president’s son-in-law, that has allowed America to be a land of freedom and liberty. Jared Kushner (he says he left early). Rick Santorum used to make this point on the campaign Trump doesn’t deny any of this. At a July 2017 press trail all the time. Bill Bennett wrote an entire series of books conference, he sought to minimize the significance of the about it. meeting by admitting the attempt to collude: “It’s called Republicans ought to be castigating the president over opposition research or even research into your opponent. I’ve the Trump Tower meeting, not covering for him. Even had many people . . . call up—‘Oh, gee, we have information if they support him more broadly. And what would it cost on this factor or this person or, frankly, Hillary.’ . . . Politics them? Nothing. They could say, “While the meeting does is not the nicest business in the world, but it’s very standard not appear to have been illegal, it was unethical and has no where they have information and you take the information. . . . place in American politics. Trump and his campaign were In the case of Don, he listened. I guess they talked about—as wrong to do it and should be ashamed of it.” You can say that I see it, they talked about adoption and some things.” and still support the president, still want to vote for him in But the meeting was never meant to be about “adoption 2020, still want The Wall. policy”; it was always about defeating Hillary Clinton. The problem, as always, is that Trumpism doesn’t allow Don Jr. now says that he was the victim of a bait and for honest appraisals or piecemeal support. If you’re in for a

6 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 penny, you must be in for a pound. Defending norms was surfaced that China was funneling money to the Democratic one of the bedrocks of conservative thought right up until party, including the Clinton-Gore campaign—remember the winter of 2016, at which point Republicans suddenly the fundraiser at the Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights became contemptuous of the very idea of norms. attended by Al Gore?—GOP leaders demanded an investiga- We suspect Republicans will come to regret their new tion. In 2015, when credible evidence emerged that Secretary “anything goes” rationalization. Will it be okay for Eliza- of State Hillary Clinton had used her position to enrich the beth Warren’s presidential campaign to seek copies of Don- Clinton Foundation, Republicans called it another indica- ald Trump’s still-secret tax returns from hackers working for tion that she lacked the character to be president. North Korea? Or for Bernie Sanders operatives to meet with But the fact that Trump and his closest advisers were Iranian regime cutouts for dirt on Trump cabinet officials? keen to get their hands on opposition research generated by It wasn’t long ago that Republicans were concerned about America’s greatest foreign adversary is no big deal for Repub- foreign meddling in U.S. elections. In 1996, when evidence licans. How far we’ve come in just two years. ♦ A Tale of Two Cultures n July 7, Colombia inaugurated a new president, what the unemployment rate is, but most young men can Iván Duque, a young conservative who won office only find a living by bartering or stealing. Bands of starving O by promising pro-growth policies and vowing Venezuelans—people on what’s grimly termed the “Maduro to take a tougher stance against gangs and drug cartels. diet”—roam the streets looking for shops to loot or trash Duque has major challenges ahead of him. The chief divi- cans to rummage. sion in Colombian politics remains that between the urban The causes of the Venezuelan catastrophe are wholly elites and the rural poor. Marxist-Communist ideals still internal. Chavismo, the warped ideology of Maduro and prevail among large numbers of the poor, and although his allies—named for the president’s predecessor, Hugo the country’s two largest revolutionary groups—the Revo- Chávez—is totalitarian in its aims and brutal in its means. lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the The state dictates all, and it exists exclusively for the pro- National Liberation Army, or ELN—have declined in tection of its chavista masters. Maduro controls the major strength, both continue to operate. institutions of government and shows how easily ordinary Real as these challenges are, though, they haven’t socialism—state ownership of the means of production— stopped Colombia’s economic progress. Foreign direct becomes the rulers’ ownership of everything. Oil is the only investment continues to increase; growth is at a respectable reason Maduro’s government hasn’t collapsed. The chavistas 3 percent; and unemployment, at around 9 percent, is man- use the cash from state-owned oil company PDVSA to buy ageable. Duque sees economic growth as the key to alleviat- off the military and other officials. ing Colombia’s political and social animosities. He’s right. Which brings us to the August 4 assassination attempt The country’s greatest challenge is to include the nation’s during a speech by the dictator. It seems to have been car- rural poor majority in the next decade’s prosperity. Hence ried out with explosives strapped to a pair of small drones. his plans to deregulate the country’s agribusiness, coal, and No one knows if it was a genuine assassination attempt, oil industries; cut business taxes; and simplify the tax code. but the likelihood is that it was staged to supply a pretext He believes in the rising tide. Twenty years ago, Colombia for imprisoning Maduro’s enemies. He has openly blamed was a failed state. Thanks to the remarkable efforts of Álvaro several people, including two main opposition leaders, Juan Uribe (president 2002-10) and his successor Juan Manuel Requesens and Julio Borges. Santos, a country with limited natural resources is on the On August 8, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley visited the path to peace and prosperity. Colombian town of Cúcuta, along the border with V enezuela, Colombia’s neighbor Venezuela is indescribably more to announce $9 million in U.S. aid to help the starving Ven- blessed geographically—with the world’s largest proven oil ezuelans fleeing westward in search of food and basic medi- reserves, eighth-largest natural gas reserves, and rich min- cal care. We wish the hip progressives of the United States, eral deposits. Yet the Caracas government no longer pub- many of whom once loudly praised Chávez, could have been lishes economic figures because they would only reveal the there, too, and seen what state control of the private sector truth that there is no economy. Venezuela is in permanent has done to a once-prosperous nation. Emaciated Venezu- depression. President Nicolás Maduro’s solution to inflation, elans aren’t fleeing war. They’re not fleeing a country that which tops 110 percent every month, has been to remove five lacks resources. They aren’t fleeing the devastation of a nat- zeros from the country’s worthless currency. Nobody knows ural disaster. They’re fleeing socialism. ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 7 COMMENT

ANDREW FERGUSON Manafort Agonistes

hen potential clients crossed cence until his death, at 91, in 1998. government to give them still more. the threshold into his dark Clifford’s indictment in the early Registering as a foreign lobbyist, he W and paneled office not far nineties coincided with the period described his services like this: “par from the White House, Clark Clif when Paul Manafort began to make ticipation in the development and ford would give them a little speech. real money, as people in his line of work implementation of a strategy to aid in Yes, he told them, he could offer say. I like to think of the coincidence the procurement of foreign assistance.” them his “extensive knowledge of as a passing of the baton, from one Over time, like many of his peers, how to deal with the government on generation, one era, to the next. Mana Manafort simply stopped registering as your problems.” And cer fort too had worked for a a foreign lobbyist and went about his tainly he could give them great president, Ronald work unmolested. A dirty job, yes, but “advice on how best to pres Reagan, though at a much somebody had to do it. ent your position to various more distant remove than Before too long, though, it no lon departments.” Clifford’s intimacy with ger looked like a dirty job, at least in But, he said: “If you want Truman. Still, enough the judgment of permanent Washing influence, you should con of the presidential aura ton, which fattened right along with sider going elsewhere.” lingered to intoxicate the swelling fees to Manafort and his Clifford served as Harry the pigeons who gath contemporaries. Democrats and Truman’s closest aide for ered at the threshold Republicans alike joined in—the firm five years, and when he quit of his townhouse in of Frank Mankiewicz, a faithful Dem the White House and set up Alexandria, Virginia. ocrat beatified from his days working his own law firm, he refused Manafort specialized with Robert Kennedy, received $14 to call himself a lobbyist, in overseas clients. We million from blood-caked govern much less a man of influence. used to call them klepto ments in 1991 and 1992. Soon political He protested when others crats: tyrants with large, consultants of both parties were wing applied such terms to him, mysterious bank accounts ing their way to the emerging “democ and as he grew in stature and and zero scruples in deal racies” of Asia, Eastern Europe, and years they didn’t dare. With ing with domestic rivals. Africa, hiring themselves out to befud his patrician air and elegant suits and Nigeria gave his firm $1 million in 1991, dled beginners, bagging clouds of the wing tips that shone like the fin Kenya came across with $660,000 a free-floating cash, and spreading their ish on a limousine, he was a lawyer, a year later, the Philippines gave another expertise like malaria. All this bipar counselor, an adviser, a “wise man,” million, and so on. These dollar figures tisanship made criticism difficult: At who occasionally, almost as a cour were obtained at the time by the Cen last, Republicans and Democrats could tesy, might agree to guide his clients ter for Public Integrity and published agree on something. through the labyrinths of the capital in a report titled, with the understate From the start there’s been an and offer a word here or there to one ment typical of good-government insouciance to Manafort that only appropriate official or another. But lob groups, “The Torturers’ Lobby.” If you adds to his air of malevolence and cru bying? “Lobbyist,” in Clifford’s day, include fees Manafort received from a dity. When he was caught hoovering was a vulgarity. You might as well call Maoist rebel group in Angola, these cli up federal public housing subsidies for Caruso a crooner. ents alone brought him more than $3 wealthy clients in the last year of the Thus it came as a shock to many million from 1991 to 1992—close to Reagan administration, he was called people when, towards the end of his $6 million in today’s dollars. before a congressional committee, career, federal prosecutors revealed in What did Manafort do for his which greeted him with appropriate court filings that not only was Clifford money? All his clients, notwith revulsion. His testimony was one long a lobbyist, he was a crook too. He was standing their abysmal human rights shrug. Sure, he said: “You could char charged with fraud, conspiracy, taking records, received foreign aid from the acterize this as ‘influence peddling.’ ” bribes, and lying to investigators in a U.S. government. They wanted more. He was proud to be a member of the shady bank deal. Because of his age the They hired Manafort to help them noble fraternity of lobbyists, and every charges were eventually set aside, and get more. Having more, they could in lobbyist in Washington seemingly felt Clifford was allowed to retire, a relic the future afford (among other things) the same. from another age, protesting his inno to pay Manafort more to get the U.S. And so it went into the new cen

8 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 tury, leading at last to the courtroom spanning accumulation of real estate. before Biden’s panel, his cause was in Alexandria, where Manafort stands It’s too bad, because Manafort’s gran already lost. trial for laundering the vast sums of diosity and his execrable taste are indi At the time, opposition to Bork, money he has sucked from foreign cators of something more damning especially in its more scurrilous mani kleptocrats of a more recent vintage. even than money laundering: the lob festations, was regarded as a startling The judge has disallowed evidence of byist’s lack of shame over the trade he breach of political protocol—leading, the defendant’s style of life; the jury has worked, legally, for 30 years. among other things, to the telling neol won’t be able to consider the $15,000 Every now and then I pine for Clark ogism of “borking” nominees. And in ostrich jacket, or the $18,000 karaoke Clifford, who had the good manners to a sense, this was true. For decades the machine, or the gluttonous, globe- be a hypocrite. ♦ Senate had tended to defer to presi dents on judicial nominations on the grounds that elections have conse COMMENT ♦ PHILIP TERZIAN quences and that the Senate’s primary interest should be the lawyerly qualifi cations, not the legal opinions, of indi Brett Kavanaugh and the vidual nominees. Just a year before Bork’s candidacy, problem of hyperpartisanship for example, the decidedly conserva tive Judge Antonin Scalia had sailed t’s been a little over a month since a divided court. And yet, while the through the Senate on a unanimous Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nomi Democratic leadership in the Sen vote, and as late as 1993, Judge Ruth I nated to succeed Justice Anthony ate is unanimously opposed to Kava Bader Ginsburg benefited from the Kennedy on the Supreme Court, but naugh and will deploy all the tricks genteel tradition of declining to somehow it seems longer. of the trade to slow his ascent, the answer how she might vote on hypo This might be caused by the ten Republican leader—Mitch McConnell thetical cases. dency of summertime to pass more of Kentucky—is not one to be outma In truth, however, senatorial slowly in the mind than other seasons, neuvered in such circumstances, as we courtesy was a modern exception, or it may be due to the peculiar politi learned two years ago. not the historic rule. Most failed cal genius of the man who Still, the important nominees to the Supreme Court date nominated him. For while fact to remember is that from the 19th century, and in very Kava naugh’s selection was McConnell was a member nearly every instance, partisan politics greeted with the standard of the Senate 31 years ago was the dominant, often exclusive, pronouncements we associ when Judge Robert Bork factor. Even in the modern age, ate with Republican judicial found himself in Kava nominees of undoubted distinction appointments—“In select naugh’s place, and while the sometimes found themselves in ing . . . Kavanaugh [Donald] political landscape is signif partisan cross hairs. Trump has put reproductive icantly altered since 1987, Charles Evans Hughes (1862- rights and freedoms and McConnell has not forgot 1948)—in my view, our most notable health care protections for ten the painful lessons of specimen of statesman-jurist—is a case millions of Americans on the Bork nomination. in point. A successful attorney and pro the judicial chopping block” McConnell begins, of fessor of law, reform governor of New (Sen. Charles Schumer, course, with the same tac York, the 1916 Republican presiden D-N.Y.)—the now-familiar tical advantage enjoyed by tial nominee, secretary of state, and a series of daily crises and Democrats for much of the judge on the Permanent Court of Inter media breakdowns we asso past century: command of national Justice (World Court) in The ciate with the Trump presidency have the process. For the key to undermin Hague, Hughes had even served for six shoved Kavanaugh onto the sidelines. ing Bork was not principle, or impas years as associate justice of the Supreme For the moment, at any rate. sioned argument, but delay. As is well Court before running for president. Opposition to Kavanaugh is ubiqui remembered, especially by Republi But when Herbert Hoover appointed tous on the left as well as vocifer cans, Bork was subject to an extraordi him to succeed William Howard Taft ous, and the stakes are indisputably nary—and extraordinarily successful— as chief justice (1930), Hughes bore the high: Republicans enjoy a razor-thin campaign of professional criticism full brunt of progressive distaste for his majority in the Senate, which might and personal abuse. The chairman of brand of liberal Republicanism—and well disappear in a few months’ time; the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Joseph not least, the need for a scapegoat three Democrats suspect that Kavanaugh Biden (D-Del.), was pleased to delay months after the Great Crash. is unlikely to supply the swing vote public hearings for three arduous In those days, Supreme Court Kennedy occasionally furnished on months. By the time Bork appeared nominees did not customarily testify

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 9 before the Judiciary Committee, and nence. Worse still, his appointment had neither expected nor deserved, and the so Hughes was obliged to maintain a been made possible by the resignation Senate’s adverse judgment was close dignified silence while the opposition of Justice Abe Fortas, Lyndon John (55-45) but absolute. raged and stormed on the Senate floor. son’s longtime comrade-in-arms and To be sure, the gothic quality of Indeed, so mortified was he by the phe liberal favorite, in an ethics scandal. Robert Bork’s subsequent ordeal— nomenon that he asked the president In short, Democrats were furious Chairman Biden’s constitutional to withdraw his name to preserve his and, in naval parlance, determined incoherence, Sen. Edward Ken stature, but Hoover declined—and to fire a warning shot across Nixon’s nedy’s rancid oratory, Sen. Howell Hughes was confirmed (52-26). Not bow. At that time and in that place, Heflin’s question about why Bork so lucky, however, was Hoover’s next they had the power to do so: In a pro sported a beard—is firmly lodged in Supreme Court nominee, a distin cess now sadly familiar, the unfailingly conservative memory and recalled as guished North Carolina jurist on the courteous and well-tempered Hayns the ghastly dividing line it seemed federal bench, John J. Parker, who was worth—whose courtly demeanor was at the time. But the Clement Hayns rejected by a single vote. rendered more poignant by a mild worth precedent is equally instruc In both instances, the quality of stutter—was caught in a crossfire he tive. Will it be overturned? ♦ Parker and Hughes as potential jus tices was not in dispute; the issue was politics. Hughes personified the East COMMENT ♦ BARTON SWAIM Coast/Wall Street establishment that particularly agitated Western progres sives of both parties, and Democrats The virtues of concentrating were confident that Congress would soon flip in the deepening Depression. the mind These same ingredients recurred a generation later—not when Ronald he news that Pope Francis has understanding has emerged of the sig Reagan named Judge Bork, but when revised the Catechism of the nificance of penal sanctions imposed Richard Nixon nominated Judge Catholic Church to designate by the state. Lastly, more effective T systems of detention have been devel Clement Haynsworth to the Supreme the death penalty “inadmissible” was oped, which ensure the due protec Court in 1969. By then, Democrats had greeted in the American media as evi tion of citizens but, at the same time, controlled the presidency and Con dence that the church is at last catch do not definitively deprive the guilty gress very nearly without interruption ing up with the times. That assessment, of the possibility of redemption. Con since 1930, and the election of Nixon— superficial though many Catholics will sequently, the Church teaches, in the who had been vice president in the consider it, isn’t altogether wrong. light of the Gospel, that “the death only GOP administration in nearly The Catechism, published in Latin penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and four decades—was seen as a particu and an English translation in 1992 and dignity of the person” [a statement lar affront. Moreover, in the fractious largely the product of Pope John Paul by Pope Francis from 2017], and she 1960s, Nixon gained votes from the old II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later works with determination for its abo Roosevelt coalition by appealing to the Pope Benedict XVI), had already been lition worldwide. cultural conservatism of the (tradition altered in various ways on the question ally Democratic) South—the Southern of capital punishment. In this instance John Paul II accepted the valid Strategy, so-called. the pope altered note 2267, heretofore ity of the death penalty but wished to Haynsworth, chief judge of the a sentence affirming that “the tradi minimize its application; indeed the Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of tional teaching of the Church does not previous note in the Catechism, 2266, Appeals and a genteel South Carolin exclude recourse to the death penalty if had been altered by him in 1997 in a ian, had roughly the same effect on this is the only possible way of defend way that sidestepped the death pen the mood of 1969 Senate Democrats ing human lives against the unjust alty completely. The original text had as Charles Evans Hughes had on their aggressor” (my italics). Now it reads, acknowledged the propriety of the 1930 forebears. There was no ques Recourse to the death penalty on the death penalty “in cases of extreme tion about Haynsworth’s distinction part of legitimate authority, follow gravity,” but the updated text excluded and merit—a Harvard Law graduate, ing a fair trial, was long considered that statement. appointee of Dwight D. Eisenhower, an appropriate response to the gravity A hint of John Paul II’s deference to desegregating Southern jurist, and of certain crimes and an acceptable, tradition and scripture still remains— “one of the truly great federal judges” albeit extreme, means of safeguard why the word “inadmissible” rather ing the common good. Today, how in the recollection of Justice Lewis F. ever, there is an increasing awareness than wrong or sinful?—but the Cat- Powell—it was Haynsworth’s misfor that the dignity of the person is not echism’s new position seems unambig tune to personify the threat Nixon’s lost even after the commission of very uous: It’s hard to see how the church triumph posed to Democratic preemi serious crimes. In addition, a new can work with determination for the

10 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 worldwide abolition of a practice with taking life is morally risky (e.g., what pneumonia. Brady died last year, aged out considering that practice morally if you execute the wrong person?); 79, of heart disease. Neither expressed reprehensible. Francis’s explanatory and second, that no one is beyond anything like genuine sorrow for their letter calls the change an “authentic redemption (consider Dostoyevsky’s crimes, and the parents of the victims development of doctrine.” Crime and Punishment). lived out their days in the knowledge The pope, if a hidebound Prot Neither apprehension is unrea that their government kept the pair estant may be permitted to say so, sonable. Both are in separate ways alive and tended to their health. The hasn’t done his church any favors. responses to the modern state’s inabil sense of injustice rankled many. The death penalty is warranted in the ity to acknowledge metaphysical Those sentenced to capital punish Bible. Nearly all the church fathers claims about intrinsic right and wrong. ment, by contrast, do often die peni (Tertullian, typically, is an exception) The older view held that the man tently. “Depend upon it, sir,” Samuel accepted its validity. So did the doc who committed deliberate and mali Johnson famously remarks in James tors of the church, including Thomas cious murder forfeited his right to life. Boswell’s Life, “when a man knows Aquinas. Clement of Alexandria (150- That’s a claim about justice, whereas he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it 215), who lived at a time when Chris citizens of modern liberal democracies concentrates his mind wonderfully.” tians had little or no influence on the are in most cases prepared to talk only Those who die by execution under law laws of nations, argued in ful governments are almost the only The Stromata that “when one people on earth who are permitted to falls into any incurable evil— The older view know the exact moment of their deaths when taken possession of, for before they die. The terminally ill example, by wrong or cov held that the man have an idea, but usually an imprecise etousness—it will be for his who committed one. Everyone else—including those good if he is put to death. For imprisoned for capital crimes where the law is beneficent, being deliberate and the death penalty is inoperative—has able to make some righteous malicious murder to guess. For us, the incentive to con from unrighteous, if they will sider death’s reality and meaning is sig only give ear to it.” forfeited his nificantly diminished. By taking such an overt right to life. Jon Ozmint, head of the South stance on a position held by Carolina prison system from 2003 to church authorities for cen 2011, confirms Dr. Johnson’s observa turies, and by alluding vaguely to an about utility—what works, what dis tion. Of the 15 inmates whose execu “increasing awareness” of human dig courages criminality, what contributes tions took place during Ozmint’s time nity, Francis makes it sound as though to safety and public order. The Catholic in office, 12 had confessed their crimes, the secularist philosophies of postwar Catechism, even from its first iteration embraced some form of Christianity, Europe and North America were right in 1992, seems to accept that more util and faced their end with poise. “Most all along, and that Christianity, after itarian logic. of the guys who show up on capital 2,000 years of callous unconcern, has But the newer attitude brings its convictions are full of piss and vin only just caught up. In that way, at least, own very practical problems. One is egar, full of anger,” he says. “Once Francis sounds a little like the young the victim’s—and sometimes the gen their appeals are exhausted, they grow liberal-minded clergy of mainline eral population’s—sense of injustice up very fast. The reality of the death Protestant denominations in America when a vicious killer gets to spend penalty forces most guys to examine who declare their support for same-sex the rest of his days fed and housed themselves, forces them to think about marriage and thus concede that they at public expense. I’ll use an extreme what they’ve done and what comes and their entire religious tradition instance, but a real one. From July after.” Ozmint seems to have genuine have embraced a bigoted and unjust 1963 to October 1965 Ian Brady and affection for the 12 who died at peace. proscription for centuries. Maybe the Myra Hindley murdered five chil “I saw them grow up. By the time they updated view is the right one, but it’s dren near Manchester, England, and died, they were good men.” no great enticement for the heathen to murdered them in ways so unspeak That consideration won’t change consider the benefits of Christianity. ably vile as to make it difficult for me the minds of most of those who I wonder, though, if the newer even to write their names. The Moors oppose the death penalty on principled Catholic attitude to the death penalty murders, as they became known, were grounds, but one would think it might doesn’t overlook something impor carried out while Britain still prac give Catholic authorities some pause. tant. I don’t know why atheist or ticed the death penalty, but the trial Surely they wish for the condemned nonreligious people oppose the death occurred after its abolition in 1965. what the psalmist asked for himself: penalty (though many do), but Chris Brady and Hindley lived the rest of “Lord, make me to know mine end, tian opposition seems motivated their lives in relative comfort. Hind and the measure of my days, what it is: mainly by two thoughts: first, that ley died in 2002, aged 60, of bronchial that I may know how frail I am.” ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 11 Tariffs “will make our country much richer than it is today,” and “only Sow Tariffs, fools would disagree.” Mertz, a Trump supporter and no fool himself, says he hopes such hard- Reap Retaliation nosed trade policies will help the economy in the long run and, just as important, compel China to straighten out its trade-crookery. Mertz says he’s Farmers are the first to feel the squeeze. experienced China’s brazen price by Andrew Egger manipulation and intellectual property theft firsthand, both as a farmer and as an engineer at Emerson. For him, it’s a moral matter: Who wants to do business with a cheat? “I spent probably 10 years train- ing the Chinese engineers how to do things. And then, all of a sudden, we find product on the market which was not ours but was built exactly the same way,” Mertz says. “I think many people, they understand the unfairness if you do things which aren’t right, the pirating of the high-tech industry and all that stuff. If you’re going to deal with a trading partner, there has to be sort of an ethicalness and an honesty in your trading and your dealings. Whether it hurts us more than it hurts them—I don’t know where that goes.” So far, it has hurt farmers plenty. Better sell now: Illinois farmers emptying a bin of soybeans on June 13— As a matter of economics, the problem just before China’s retaliatory tariffs were announced. is simple. China imports enormous amounts of U.S. agricultural goods— enny Mertz of Chesterfield, move his operation out of the St. Louis particularly Midwestern crops like Mo., knows a thing or two area where he had grown up. So this soybeans, which are used as feed for D about farm crises. He’d only year, when he heard President Donald livestock. According to the American been in the ag business a few years Trump was picking a trade fight with Soybean Association, China imported when the last big one hit. That was after China, the world’s largest importer of 31 percent of total U.S. soybean pro- President Jimmy Carter slapped a grain American produce, Mertz’s reaction duction in 2017, to the tune of $14 embargo on the Soviet Union to pun- was straightforward: “Oops.” billion. So when Beijing retaliated ish it for invading Afghanistan. The Farmers are already feeling the against America with tariffs of its own, embargo hurt the Soviets, but it hurt squeeze this year from the Trump agriculture was the obvious target— U.S. farmers more. Grain prices cra- administration’s tit-for-tat tariff war not to mention a political pressure tered, and farmers who had bought up with China, the biggest step yet in point, given President Trump’s rela- land to capitalize on booming exports President Trump’s campaign to rene- tive popularity among the ag crowd. suddenly found themselves struggling gotiate America’s “terrible trade On July 6, China slapped duties on beneath crushing debt. Foreclosures deals.” The stated aim is to punish $43 billion worth of U.S. goods, nearly spiked. Farm kids fled to the cities. China for its unfair trade practices, $17 billion of it in agricultural prod- Mertz was one of the lucky ones—he including intellectual property theft ucts, including soybeans, sorghum, had a second job to fall back on, work- and counterfeit goods, and to act on and pork. The move hit markets like ing as an engineer at Emerson Electric. Trump’s personal hobbyhorse of tight- a lightning bolt out of a clear sky: Soy- But he, too, eventually felt the crunch: ening U.S. trade deficits. A month in, bean prices dropped a dollar a bushel He was priced off his land, forced to the president has already adopted when the tariffs were announced and a triumphant tone: Tariffs are “the another dollar when they were imple- Andrew Egger is a reporter greatest,” “working big time,” “far mented, plummeting to a near-decade

at The Weekly Standard. better than anyone ever anticipated.” low below $9 a bushel. SCOTT OLSON / GETTY

12 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Other farm commodities—corn, to determine how the payouts will been doing their best to catch up, cotton, pork, and dairy—have suffered be distributed won’t be available for buoyed in recent years by investment collateral damage from tariffs as well. months after that. Meanwhile, com- from multinational agribusiness And then there are the ripple effects modity lobbies are jockeying for posi- giants such as Cargill. It is to Brazil through the farm production chain: tion, each trying to ensure its own that China is turning now as they suppliers, processors, packers, distribu- farmers can recoup their losses. attempt to wean themselves from tors. Nobody along the line is equipped “Everybody’s arm wrestling,” Basse U.S. produce. With Brazilian farm- to absorb the costs of the new tariffs. says. “Arm wrestling for what money’s ers reaping sky-high profits, some On their face, the numbers are dev- there, trying to get their sliver of gold. experts fear the trade war has handed astating for farmers, who operate with We just don’t know at this point— them a golden opportunity to close high overhead and slim profit mar- the administration’s not been clear the gap further. gins in the best of times. It gets worse in terms of who gets what, and how “Brazil, when you talk about logis- when you consider that tanking prices much, and all of that.” tics, has really made tremendous prog- don’t just affect this year’s harvest: Meanwhile, agriculture experts ress in the last 10 years, particularly They retroactively damage income warn that this short-term pain may with the building of what’s called the from last year, too. pale in comparison to a greater danger: Northern Arc, which is a bunch of “For all the folks, including me, the permanent loss of U.S. farm superi- ports either in the Amazon or along that were storing some of their grain ority in global markets. Over the past those northern areas of Brazil that from last year—typically during few decades, American farmers who can export tremendous amounts of the summer, if there’s any kind of grow feed crops like corn and soybeans corn and soybeans in a short period drought scare or something like that, have enjoyed a boom as countries of time,” Basse says. “The American you’ll get a market bump, and so you around the world have increased their farmer no longer has the logistical hold some of your grain for that. Well, living standards. As people in China advantage that he thought.” this year, we’re talking thousands and and India started to make more money, It’s little wonder farm country law- thousands of dollars farmers have lost they wanted to eat richer, higher-pro- makers are beginning to sound the because of that,” Mertz says. “It’s the tein diets. That meant raising more alarm. Republican senators Rob Port- kind of thing in hindsight where you livestock. And that, in turn, meant an man of Ohio and Joni Ernst of Iowa say, well, I should have sold it. But insatiable demand for livestock feed. have teamed up with Alabama Demo- nobody really foresaw what was going The United States, with its vast swaths crat Doug Jones to introduce legisla- to happen with China.” of arable land and unsurpassed infra- tion that would clip the wings of the All of this has been bad news for structure, was in prime position to president’s unilateral tariff powers. the Trump administration, which had capitalize. Farmers pumped out record The bill, called the Trade Security repeatedly assured farmers it would crop after record crop, but demand was Act, would require the Department not allow them to bear the brunt of the such that prices were good as well. of Justice to provide a legitimate trade dispute. After weeks of farm out- This competitive advantage has national security rationale for a trade cry, the White House announced on been a source of comfort to farmers action before the White House could July 24 that it would issue $12 billion like Mertz. In their reasoning, even put it into place—a clear broadside in emergency aid, in the form of direct if China develops new trade relation- against Trump, who has consistently payments and crop buybacks, to help ships with other suppliers, they will be used national security concerns as farmers weather the unexpectedly dif- able to recoup their market share once a barely disguising fig leaf to justify ficult year. How much of the financial the trade dispute is over. trade actions. pressure that will alleviate is unclear. “We over here in the United States, Other Republicans remain under- “I’m not a big guy on government because of our infrastructure over the standably skittish about undercutting aid. I prefer the free market. But I do years, have been able to supply product one of the president’s signature poli- think that they depressed the mar- to the world in a very efficient manner cies. Missouri’s Republican attorney ket in a significant way,” says Illinois that most countries aren’t able to do. general Josh Hawley, who is backed farmer James McCune. . . . Places like Brazil, the reason that by farm groups in his challenge to But serious questions remain about they haven’t taken over many of the Democratic incumbent senator Claire whether the administration will be markets is they can’t get their products McCaskill this November, declines able to get that aid to the farmers who from the inland areas out to the ports,” to object to Trump’s trade policies on have been hardest hit and whether Mertz says. “Because there aren’t any either legal or practical grounds. “I it will arrive soon enough to make a roads, and it takes a truck six or eight continue to support the goal here of difference. The Department of Agri- weeks to go from the farm to the port. trying to get trade deals for workers culture has promised to have money If they ever fix their infrastructure, and especially for farmers,” Hawley in the hands of farmers by Septem- they would be a formidable competi- says. “I’m sure when you’re talking to ber. But farm economist Dan Basse tor. But you know, they haven’t yet.” Missouri farmers, what they’re telling says that the crop yield data needed Brazilian farmers, though, have you, what they’re telling me, is that

14 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 they feel like they’ve gotten the short and help farm income expand fur- 2017—a little over a week after the story end of the stick for years when it comes ther. But farmers and economists broke that Don Jr., having been prom- to trade. And they’re right about that. alike acknowledge that it’s difficult ised dirt on Hillary, met with a Krem- And so I think the president going out for Trump to threaten China with lin-connected attorney. That morning, there and wanting to shake up things, short-term political pain, given the President Trump tweeted: “Most poli- to say we’ve got to get better trade fact that President Xi Jinping can’t be ticians would have gone to a meeting deals, he’s right to do that. So I sup- voted out of office. Either way, they’re like the one Don jr attended in order port the goal, and I keep saying let’s see counting on it being over soon. to get info on an opponent. That’s poli- what kind of a deal he gets.” In the meantime, they’d settle for tics!” Which seems like a pretty explicit That last statement is a common getting China to the table. acknowledgment that Don Jr. was there refrain: Even the most pessimistic “The U.S. is waiting for the Chi- for oppo. But putting aside the ques- farmers continue to hold out hope nese to call and apologize and say tion of whether this week’s tweet was that China will blink and Trump that we somehow want to negotiate,” more stark and explicit, what is remark- will pull off a dazzling success that Basse says. “The Chinese aren’t going able is that there are still questions to will lower longtime trade barriers to call.” ♦ be answered about the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower given how thoroughly it has been scrutinized and documented, primarily by the Senate Judiciary Com- mittee. Let’s go over what we know. Trump Tower We know the idea for the meeting was floated to Donald Trump Jr. by music promoter Rob Goldstone, the Tales and Tweets manager for a Russian pop singer, Emin Agalarov. We know that the idea for the meeting was suggested by Emin’s plutocrat father, Araz The meeting that launched Agalarov, whose businesses include a thousand controversies. by Eric Felten the event-production company that put on the 2013 Miss Universe pag- n the first Sunday in August, eant (then owned in part by Donald President Donald Trump Trump) in Moscow. Araz had met “a O was up early and tweeting. well-connected Russian attorney” “Fake News reporting, a complete who “told him that they had some fabrication, that I am concerned about interesting information that could the meeting my wonderful son, Don- potentially be damaging regarding ald, had in Trump Tower,” the presi- funding by Russians to the Democrats dent said. “This was a meeting to get and to its candidate, Hillary Clinton.” information on an opponent, totally Emin relayed this to Goldstone, tell- legal and done all the time in poli- ing him the information “could be of tics—and it went nowhere. I did not interest to the Trumps.” know about it!” It was clearly of interest to Don Jr. The tweet was an “admission that Goldstone thought it would be easier to the Trump team had not been forth- reach the son than the candidate him- right,” judged the New York Times, self. “I would run this past [Donald “when Donald Trump Jr. issued a Jr.] first,” the publicist later recounted, statement in July 2017.” By that the Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya on a because he “was the lesser level.” Times meant Don Jr.’s initial response Moscow TV broadcast in November 2016 We know precisely when Goldstone to questions about his June 9, 2016, made his pitch—in an email at 10:36 meeting with a Russian lawyer in new tweet as “the starkest acknowledg- a.m. on Friday, June 3, 2016. We know Trump Tower, a response that failed to ment yet that a statement he dictated that Don Jr. responded positively to mention his hope to acquire opposi- last year about the encounter was mis- the proposal 17 minutes later. tion research on Hillary Clinton from leading.” The Washington Post’s take We know what Goldstone proposed the meeting. was similar: “Sunday’s tweet appears to spur Don Jr.’s enthusiasm: “The The Times described the president’s to acknowledge more explicitly than Crown prosecutor of Russia met with before that the meeting was indeed [Emin’s] father Araz this morning Eric Felten is a senior writer predicated on opposition research.” and in their meeting offered to pro-

at The Weekly Standard. Is that true? Let’s go back to July 17, vide the Trump campaign with some / AFP GETTY YURY MARTYANOV

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 15 official documents and information had rambled off into talking about the There are two controversies that would incriminate Hillary and adoption of Russian children, which intertwined. The first is the fact of the her dealings with Russia and would be had been forbidden to Americans by meeting itself; the second is how very useful to your father.” the Russian government in retalia- the Trumps responded once knowl- We know how Don Jr. responded: tion for the Magnitsky Act. “It became edge of it became public. “if it is what you say I love it espe- clear to me that this was the true It was a year later that reporters cially later in the summer.” By Mon- agenda all along and that the claims of started asking questions. The White day and Tuesday, Trump Jr. and potentially helpful information were a House legal and communications Goldstone were exchanging emails pretext for the meeting.” teams recommended full disclosure arranging the meeting for Thursday That’s when Jared Kushner, who and transparency. Flying back from afternoon, June 9, with the lawyer was running late, arrived. “When I Europe, the president took a different whom Goldstone described as a tack. On July 8, 2017, he crafted “Russian government attorney.” a brief—dishonest—response to We know a lot about the Rus- be put out under Don Jr.’s name. sian lawyer, too. Natalia Vladi- The dishonesty was not in what mirovna Veselnitskaya had lunch was said but in what was omit- beforehand with the translator ted. The statement President she would use that afternoon, Trump dictated for his son read, Anatoli Samochornov, and with “We primarily discussed a pro- Ike Kaveladze, who worked for gram about the adoption of Rus- Araz Agalarov. Eventually join- sian children that was active and ing the party was Russian-Amer- popular with American families ican lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, years ago and was since ended by who like Veselnitskaya had been the Russian government.” True working with Glenn Simpson enough. What he left out was of Fusion GPS to push for the that Don Jr. had taken the meet- repeal of the Magnitsky Act, ing because he had been prom- under which 18 Russian officials ised proof of Clinton criminality had been placed under U.S. sanc- from a Russian source. tions in early 2013. The we-were-just-talking- Veselnitskaya reportedly asked adoption line lasted all of one Akhmetshin, “What do you An anti-Trump protester in Chicago, June 3 day. The next day, a new, more think I should tell this Trump’s complete statement was issued: son?” He gave her advice on how to got there,” Donald Trump’s son-in- “After pleasantries were exchanged, talk to busy Americans: “I told her law stated to Senate investigators, a the woman stated that she had infor- like how to present and how not to,” woman, with the aid of a translator, mation that individuals connected to Akhmetshin later testified. “I actually was “talking about the issue of a ban Russia were funding the Democratic cautioned her, you know, the Russians on U.S. adoptions of Russian chil- National Committee and support- are—they kind of attack you first thing, dren.” This was not what he expected. ing Ms. Clinton,” Trump Jr.’s new there’s no like small talk, so I told her, “I actually emailed an assistant from account read. ‘Don’t do that.’ ” Other suggestions: the meeting after I had been there for Donald Trump Jr. has stuck to that Don’t “speak too long, because she 10 or so minutes,” Kushner recounted. second statement ever since, includ- kind of tends to speak long. I said like What did the email say? “Can u pls ing when he was interviewed by Senate keep your sentences short and kind of call me on my cell? Need excuse to get investigators. Along the way some self- don’t waste people’s time.” out of meeting.” serving filigree was added to make it all She apparently didn’t follow Paul Manafort didn’t leave the appear less crass: “To the extent that his advice. meeting. The campaign chairman at they had information concerning the Veselnitskaya opened the meeting the time, he took some perfunctory fitness, character, or qualifications of with a broad assertion that Russians notes and dozed off. any presidential candidate, I believed were pouring money into the DNC, Goldstone, the music promoter, that I should at least hear them out,” but she didn’t back up her allegations was mortified at how the meeting had he told the Judiciary Committee last with anything specific. “Her state- gone: “On the way out, Don Jr. kind September. “Depending on what, if ments were vague, ambiguous, and of thanked me. And I said to him, I’m any, information that they had, I could made no sense,” Don Jr. would later sorry. I’m really embarrassed by this then consult with counsel to make an state. “No details or supporting infor- meeting. I don’t know what that was informed decision as to whether to mation was provided or even offered.” about.” More than two years later peo- give it any further consideration.” It

And before he knew it, Veselnitskaya ple are still asking what it was about. almost sounds like a public service. AGENCY / GETTYBILGIN SASMAZ / ANADOLU

16 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 But why, if the story has remained that the tweet goes on with the caveat, 1001, which, as Trump Jr. was warned, the same for a year, is there such “but that doesn’t matter because there “makes it a crime to make any materi- breathless reporting on the presi- was No Collusion (except by Crooked ally false, fictitious, or fraudulent state- dent’s tweets? Perhaps because spe- Hillary and the Democrats)!” Even so, ments or representations in the course cial counsel Robert Mueller’s office the attention-getting assertion is that of a congressional investigation.” is investigating whether false or mis- collusion is not prohibited by law— Similarly, President Trump has leading statements by the president attention-getting because it suggests clung to his assertion that when it amount to obstruction of justice. the president is preparing to abandon came to the Trump Tower meeting, It’s the position of the president’s his caveat and admit some sort of col- “I did not know about it!” That is a lawyers that, when it comes to the ques- lusion. And what if he did? snug fit with what Don Jr. said when tion of Don Jr.’s ill-advised meeting, While it may prove to be true that asked by Senate investigators, “Did Trump Sr. has told the truth. On Janu- there is nothing criminal about “col- you inform your father about the ary 29, 2018, they responded to queries luding” with foreigners, a suggestion meeting or the underlying offer prior from the special counsel about “Alleged by the president or his advisers of some to the meeting?” Trump Jr.’s response Obstruction of Justice.” The last item sort of collusion in Trump Tower could left no wiggle room: “No, I did not.” dealt with Trump’s botched effort at put Don Jr. legally sideways. That’s If Trump Sr. abandons his assertion damage control in the initial response because Trump Jr., in his interview he was out of the loop, Don Jr. is the to questions about the meeting. The with the Senate Judiciary Committee, one left holding the bag. lawyers stated, “the President dictated declared: “I did not collude with any If the Trump team had been fully a short but accurate response to the foreign government and do not know truthful from the start about Don Jr.’s New York Times article on behalf of his of anyone who did.” meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, son, Donald Trump, Jr.” Don Jr. cannot now claim to have President Trump would have made But that short statement brought engaged in some sort of everybody- it harder for the special counsel—let to light another layer of dishonesty. does-it noncriminal “collusion” with- alone the New York Times—to try to Built into the lawyers’ response was out running afoul of 18 USC Section cut his tenure short. ♦ the admission that the president had “dictated” the original statement. The president’s spokesmen and lawyers had long been insisting, falsely, that he’d had no hand in it. Labour’s Aside from obvious questions of character, is a president legally obliged to tell the truth to the New York Times? Jewish Problem Unsurprisingly, the Times, in a June 2 explainer, argued that he is: A “Watergate-era precedent exists for Congress to consider lies to the pub- Jeremy Corbyn and the uses of idiocy. lic to be obstruction of justice in the by Dominic Green looser context of impeachment pro- ceedings. An article of impeachment eremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s David Duke, the demented ex-grand that lawmakers approved against Labour party, is a man of prin wizard of the KKK, and Nick Griffin, Nixon before he resigned included Jciple. Unfortunately, all his princi- the thuggish ex-leader of the neofas- ‘making or causing to be made false ples are noxious. He is an anti-Semite, cist British National party. or misleading public statements for a useful idiot in a Lenin cap, and an “You’re a f—ing anti-Semite and a the purpose of deceiving the people of unreconstructed, impenitent Trotsky- racist,” the ex-minister Dame Marga- the United States into believing’ there ite-Maoist of the vintage that enliv- ret Hodge suggested to Corbyn in the had been no misconduct.” ened the student unions of the 1970s, House of Commons in mid-July. “You The Times’s proposed impeachment tried and failed to take over Labour have proved you don’t want people trigger may be silly and self-aggrandiz- in the 1980s, and then tried again like me in the party.” Hodge is Jew- ing, but there’s no doubt that by mak- and succeeded in the aftermath of the ish and members of her family were ing assertions in the glib, unlawyerly crash of 2008. He remains convinced killed in the Holocaust. A Labour (and sometimes truth-optional) con- of the rectitude of his principles even moderate, she has routed the British text of Twitter, the president puts him- when they secure the endorsement of National party in her Barking, Essex, self and his family at legal risk. Take constituency. The Labour leadership, another of his recent tweets, the July 31 Dominic Green is the Life & Arts editor which has proven serially incapable declaration, “Collusion is not a crime.” of Spectator USA and a frequent contributor of taking action regarding dozens of A fair reporter would be sure to note to The Weekly Standard. cases of anti-Semitism in its ranks,

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 17 immediately announced an “Under its adapted inquiry into Hodge and Ian guidelines,” the editorial Austin, a second MP who explained, “a Labour Party had protested. member is free to claim Hodge was infuri- Israel’s existence is a rac- ated by the refusal of ist endeavour and compare Labour’s national execu- Israeli policies to those tive committee to endorse of Nazi Germany, unless the International Holo- ‘intent’—whatever that caust Remembrance Alli- means—can be proved. ance’s (IHRA) definition ‘Dirty Jew’ is wrong, ‘Zion- of anti-Semitism. The ist bitch’ fair game?” IHRA’s legal definition In so doing, Labour makes has been endorsed by a distinction between the Conservative govern- racial antisemitism target- ment, the Crown Prosecu- ing Jews (unacceptable) tion Service, the College of and political antisemitism Policing, the Scottish Par- Jewish community groups and their supporters protest Labour party targeting Israel (accept- liament, the Welsh Assem- tolerance of anti-Semitism, in London’s Parliament Square. able). The reason for this bly, and 124 local councils, move? Had the full IHRA definition with examples relating to many of them Labour-ruled, as well as Labour’s shadow cabinet. Since then, Israel been approved, hundreds, if dozens of international bodies. Labour evidence of endemic anti-Semitism has not thousands, of Labour . . . mem- leaders, however, proposed to rewrite continued to accumulate. The events of bers would need to be expelled. or water down 4 of the 11 clauses, the last two weeks confirm that the rot and thus to broaden the field of what runs from the head of the party to the Corbyn would be among them. A would be tolerated within party fora. bottom. We shall start with Labour’s few days later, footage emerged of Cor- For reasons that Labour’s leadership purulent bottom and then examine its byn, on the Iranian propaganda chan- have not satisfactorily explained, they cracked head. nel Press TV, detecting “the hand of wish to preserve for their members Like all racists, anti-Semites fanta- Israel” in an ISIS attack on Egyp- two of the anti-Zionist’s sordid plea- size that their enemy is monolithic. A tian soldiers in the Sinai. In the same sures, the assertion that the founding chilling fact of political power is that interview, Corbyn described a Hamas of the Israeli state was racist and that it can homogenize its enemies into a terrorist, convicted of the murder of Israel is “like” Nazi Germany. single group. The old saying goes that seven Israeli civilians in a café bomb- Corbyn has led Labour as it has if you ask two Jews, you’ll get three ing, as his “brother.” mutated into Europe’s most successful opinions. Not in Corbyn’s Britain It also emerged last week that on anti-Semitic party, while continually you don’t. On July 16, 68 rabbis from Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010, Cor- insisting that none of its anti-Semitism across the Jewish spectrum signed a byn opened and addressed an event at is in his name. His cultish supporters, letter protesting the “severe and wide- the House of Commons called “Never sharing in the folly of his principles spread” anti-Semitism within Labour Again for Anyone—From Auschwitz and slavering at the prospect of power, and objecting to the “most insult- to Gaza.” Corbyn, it is alleged, ordered believe in the purity of his intentions. ing and arrogant way” in which Cor- the expulsion of a Holocaust survivor Not everyone in Labour has fallen in byn and the Labour leadership have who objected to the comparison of line: The foremost dissenters are Jew- denied the existence of a mountain of Israel to Nazi Germany. He also found ish Labourites and the Blairite cen- evidence. Then, on July 25, the three himself apologizing for his presence trists who are being purged as enemies leading Anglo-Jewish newspapers, in in the 1990s on the international advi- of the people. an unprecedented display of consen- sory board of an NGO called the Just That Labour has to define sus, published the same editorial on World Trust. In 1996, when Corbyn led anti-Semitism at all indicates the extent their front pages. Just World Trust’s British chapter, Just of what earlier and more candid social- “We do so because of the existential World defended Roger Garaudy, the ists would have called its Jewish Prob- threat to Jewish life in this country that French philosopher convicted of Holo- lem. In 2016, Corbyn tried to shut would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn- caust denial. down the issue with an internal inquiry, led government,” they wrote. Labour’s After the rabbis’ letter, Peter Wills- led by the human rights lawyer Shami refusal to adopt, and its leadership’s man, a longtime Corbyn ally and a Chakrabarti. After absolving Labour insistence on diluting and rewriting, member of the party’s National Exec- of all charges, Chakrabarti received the IHRA definition was “sinister,” a utive Committee (NEC), was caught Corbyn’s nomination to the House new low in “Corbynite contempt” for on tape telling an NEC meeting that

of Lords and is now a minister in Jews and Israel. Labour’s anti-Semitism problem / IN PICTURES GETTY VICKIE FLORES

18 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 was the invention of Jewish “Trump you do,” Margaret Hodge is reported 1930s, Oswald Mosley, whose ideas fanatics.” He then asked if anyone as having said, “and by your actions about tariffs, welfare, and the Jews are had ever heard anti-Semitic senti- you have shown that you are an curiously similar to Corbyn’s, failed ments in the party and pronounced anti-Semitic racist.” to win a seat. Last week, a poll put himself “amazed” at the show of Last week, Corbyn finally acknowl- Labour neck and neck with the Con- hands. Meanwhile at the bottom of edged Labour’s Jewish problem in servatives, with 40 percent support. the party, a Labour councilor in the a Guardian op-ed intended to assure On August 6, the party announced seaside town of Bognor Regis, Sussex, Jews that a Labour government would that it would be abandoning its inves- got into trouble over some indelicate be no threat to Jewish life in Brit- tigation of Margaret Hodge; Ian Facebook postings. ain. The op-ed ended with criticism Austin, however, remained under “Talmud Jews are parasites,” said of Israel, praise of anti-Zionist Jews, investigation in a process that he councilor Damien Enticott. “They and a veiled warning that as the “far described as “Kafkaesque.” The deci- drink blood and suck baby’s dick.” right is on the rise across Europe and sion not to punish Hodge followed an Jews, Enticott said, they “need exe- America,” British Jews should shut appeal in Sunday’s Observer by Cor- cuting,” and Hitler had the “cure” up and stick with Labour. byn’s deputy, Tom Watson, calling for Israel. Endicott at first insisted Corbyn now leads a party as famil- for Labour to halt its arguments over that someone else had been using his iar to historians of the 19th century anti-Semitism before it disappears computer: “I don’t share anti-Semitic as it is alarming to survivors of the “into a vortex of eternal shame and views at all.” Then, confronted with 20th. For the first time in British his- embarrassment.” Watson also called the evidence, he characterized him- tory, the parliamentary opposition is for Labour to adopt the IHRA recom- self as “anti-Zionist, not anti semantic a socialist party in which the delu- mendation without delay. While Cor- [sic]” and as a fearless man of prin- sions of anti-Semitism and its foreign byn is a useful idiot, it remains to be ciple: “I will continue to speak my policy corollary, the delusions of anti- seen who among his close allies will mind on subjects that I believe are Zionism, are articles of faith and a loy- make the best use of his idiocy in the completely insidious.” alty test. The difference is that in the long run. ♦ This, crudely, is Corbyn’s attitude. He seeks a just world. He is an anti- Zionist in a world where perceptions are distorted by the insidious power of capital. He is a freedom fighter in Wrestling with a world where the hidden hand of America controls the market and the hidden hand of Israel tips the scales in the Speakership favor of its American master. For Cor- byn, socialism is not a dialectical system for the decoding of capitalism and its conversion into collective owner- Jim Jordan’s bid to succeed Paul Ryan. ship. Nor is it a historical tragedy that by Haley Byrd brought hunger, war, and massacre to every society that it touched. Social- uring an August 4 rally in The crowd started to chant: ism is a perennially renewable good central Ohio to support a “Speaker of the House. Speaker of the intention, a library card of the soul, D beleaguered special election House. Speaker of the House.” a virtuous spending of a bottomless congressional candidate, President Jordan announced on July 26 fund of other people’s money. Donald Trump took a moment to that he would launch an improbable These are his principles. As a praise another Ohio Republican. campaign to replace retiring House socialist and a fool, it is to be expected “What a great defender he’s been, speaker Paul Ryan when the Wis- that Corbyn might be susceptible to what courage,” Trump said of Rep. consin Republican steps down next anti-Semitism, the socialism of fools. Jim Jordan, a man with a penchant year—if, of course, the party is able The worst of his principles is his cyni- for burning bridges who has been par- to maintain control of the chamber in cal refusal to accept the implications ticularly vocal in his efforts to protect November’s midterm elections. Jor- of his other principles. Each time his Trump throughout various investiga- dan’s candidacy is the latest wrench trafficking with Jew-haters is exposed, tions of Russian interference in the to be thrown into the contested speak- he apologizes not for a shameful moral 2016 election. “He’s a brave, tough er’s race, yet it is evident he does not failing but for the “hurt” and “pain” cookie,” added Trump. yet enjoy enough goodwill within the that he has inadvertently caused the GOP conference to become speaker. touchy Jews. Haley Byrd is a reporter Rank-and-file Republicans argue that “It’s not what you say, but what at The Weekly Standard. Jordan has tossed too many grenades

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 19 at the GOP leadership during his Jordan’s candidacy places more pres- doctor, Richard Strauss, who died in decade-plus in Congress to be viewed sure on both McCarthy and Scalise to 2005, preyed on members of the team as a unifying candidate. If anything, offer appealing promises to conserva- during medical examinations, because his bid for the position may serve as a tives in exchange for their support. it was an open secret in the locker useful negotiating tool for other con- room. Jordan vehemently denies that servative members seeking greater he had knowledge of the situation. “I influence and more ambitious policies. Jordan’s candidacy places never saw, never heard of, never was The House Freedom Caucus, more pressure on both told about any type of abuse,” Jordan founded by Jordan and his closest told Fox News’s Bret Baier on July 6. allies in 2015 and made up of about Kevin McCarthy and Steve “If I had been, I would have dealt three dozen members, is well-known Scalise to offer appealing with it.” Some of Jordan’s colleagues for its ideological solidarity and guer- promises to conservatives in quickly came out with statements of rilla negotiating tactics. Its members support for him—including Scalise. have long desired a greater say in the exchange for their support. Jordan timed his announcement for legislative process, and close leader- Still, House Freedom the speaker’s race for the very begin- ship races offer a rare opportunity to Caucus spokesman Darin ning of the August recess, when mem- extract concessions. While the pre- Miller says, ‘Congressman bers returned to their districts for five cise list of Freedom Caucus demands weeks to campaign and meet with con- is unclear, caucus members would be Jordan is not running as a stituents. A source close to Jordan tells happy with offers such as committee placeholder candidate.’ me that the congressman anticipates chairmanships. conservative grassroots And the top contend- voters will urge Republi- ers to replace Ryan are can members of Congress well aware that they must to support his longshot curry favor with the Free- bid for the speakership dom Caucus if they want during their time at home. to claim the speakership. In a July 26 letter filled Majority Leader Kevin with effusive praise for McCarthy has made clear Trump, Jordan asked his that he wants the job, colleagues to back his can- and Ryan has person- didacy, decrying the cur- ally endorsed him as his rent state of Congress and successor. But McCarthy pointing specifically to does not yet have suffi- big spending under a two- cient support to clinch the year bipartisan agreement vote. His previous attempt reached by congressional to win the post in 2015 fell leaders in February. short for a number of rea- Jordan’s letter also con- sons, including his widely tained a laundry list of criticized remarks sug- policy priorities, noting gesting the House GOP’s Jim Jordan speaks with reporters in the Capitol, July 11. his desire to fully repeal Benghazi investigation Obamacare, institute had been politically motivated, as well Still, House Freedom Caucus spokes- work requirements for welfare pro- as unsubstantiated allegations of an man Darin Miller assures TWS, “Con- grams, fund Trump’s wall along the extramarital affair, which McCarthy gressman Jordan is running to become southern border, defund Planned Par- denies. Ryan argues that the California speaker. He’s not running as a place- enthood, and reduce the federal deficit Republican has matured since then holder candidate.” through substantive spending cuts. He and that “Kevin is the right person” to The 54-year-old has recently been also indicated that he would support a replace him in January. mired in controversy amid accusa- more decentralized legislative process But that will be more easily said tions that he knew about alleged that would place power in the hands than done. Jordan’s candidacy indi- sexual abuse at Ohio State Univer- of committee chairmen rather than cates McCarthy may once again strug- sity and failed to take action to stop a select few in leadership. “President gle to secure sufficient support from it when he was an assistant coach for Trump has taken bold action on behalf the most hard-line wing of the party. the wrestling team from 1986 until of the American people. Congress has In preparation for that scenario, major- 1994. Several former wrestlers have not held up its end of the deal, but we ity whip Steve Scalise is quietly weigh- claimed that Jordan had to have been can change that,” Jordan wrote. “It’s

ing his prospects as a backup option. aware that the school’s former athletic time to do what we said.” ♦ BERNSTEIN / GETTY AARON P.

20 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Footsoldiers in a Trade War In an Iowa metal shop, the booming economy is hiding the effects of Trump’s tariffs

By Tony Mecia indicate business is strong. K ooima acknowledges that Trump’s tariffs and foreign responses to them are making Rock Valley, Iowa steel more expensive, cutting into profits, and endangering he flatbed trucks come from as far away as some of his product lines. But surprisingly, he’s not too Chicago and Minneapolis. They roll past distressed or worried. He says he’s sympathetic to Trump’s the cornfields and grain silos of northwest goals and sees tariffs as just one part of new federal policies Iowa and pull into Kooima Company’s that have led to a surge of orders since the 2016 election. sprawling plant every day. They are loaded “It’s going to be a little painful in the short term, but in Twith sheets of steel. the long term, there could be a good outcome,” Kooima says. Kooima’s workers use lasers and a variety of other “The little bit of cost is being outweighed by all the positive machines to cut the steel, bend stuff that is happening.” it, punch holes in it, and weld Trump’s tariffs are rip- it to other pieces. The com- pling through the U.S. econ- pany then sends the intricate omy, sometimes in unexpected parts to makers of agricultural ways. They have made the and construction equipment. price of steel more volatile, They head to assembly lines aggravated people who deal in and wind up in trucks, balers, it, and introduced uncertainty tractors, and other machinery. into markets that depend on The location of K ooima’s predictability. But so far, as plant—four hours northwest Kooima’s experience shows, of Iowa’s largest city, Des many businesses are weath- Moines—seems remote. Yet ering the tariffs because of its business is planted firmly the wider strength of the U.S. in the middle of the two indus- economy. That outlook helps tries, steel and agriculture, that Kooima workers unloading sheets of steel explain why Trump remains have felt the biggest effects popular in rural areas even as of the Trump administration’s tariffs. The 25 percent tariff the fallout of his trade policy seems to land disproportion- on foreign steel imposed in March has dramatically raised ately on key elements of his base such as blue-collar work- Kooima’s costs. Retaliatory tariffs by China and other coun- ers and farmers. tries have hurt U.S. farmers, who buy much of the equipment produced by K ooima’s customers. A NEW TRADE POLICY Kooima, which has grown to 170 workers since its n the 2016 election campaign, one of the many ways founding 30 years ago, has felt the effects, too. But on a July Trump broke from tradition was in making trade pol- walk through the plant with owner Phil Kooima, a third- I icy one of his top issues. For many years, leaders from generation metal fabricator, the high-pitched whirs of both parties had backed free trade—signing deals such as cutting steel and repeated clangs of metal against metal the North American Free Trade Agreement (Bill Clinton, 1993) and approving China’s entry into the World Trade Tony Mecia is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Organization (George W. Bush, 2001). Trump, though,

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 21 Timeline of a Trade War February 17, 2018: April 1: China June 6: Mexico Commerce Department concludes imposes retaliatory announces $3 billion cheap steel imports damage tariffs on about in retaliatory tariffs on national security. $3 billion of U.S. U.S. agricultural goods, April 19, agricultural products. including pork and cheese. 2017: 2018 Commerce FEB. MAR. APR. MAY Department opens investigation into March 1: Trump orders 25 percent duty May 31: Trump announces steel and steel imports. on imports of foreign steel and 10 percent aluminum tariffs will apply to Canada, on aluminum; Canada, Mexico, and the E.U. Mexico, and the E.U. Canada retaliates temporarily excluded as negotiations with with $13 billion in tariffs on U.S.-made foreign countries commence. steel and aluminum and trade goods ranging from bourbon to toilet paper.

tapped into public anxieties about the anti-dumping cases, as had been the effects of free trade, helping propel usual Washington practice. By then, him to crucial victories in industry- steel had risen to about $610 a ton. heavy states such as Michigan, Ohio, In May 2017, inside an auditorium Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. at the Department of Commerce, offi- On the campaign trail, he promised cials held a hearing on steel. More to renegotiate NAFTA and exit the than three dozen witnesses shared Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation their perspectives, including steel- trade deal negotiated under President company executives, union bosses, Barack Obama that even most of his pipe-makers, and heads of trade Republican opponents backed. Trump groups. CEOs testified that their proposed adding a 45 percent tariff to industry was vital to national defense Chinese imports and a 35 percent tariff but that it was having to close plants on imports from Mexico. He was vague Phil Kooima on his factory floor and lay off workers because foreign about plans for steel specifically, other companies, sometimes backed finan- than saying he would fight to protect steel jobs and stick up cially by their countries’ governments, produced a glut of for U.S. industry against trade cheats. steel that was driving down prices. Nucor CEO John Fer- Economists said the Trump trade plans would devastate riola, for instance, said that his company’s product winds the stock market and plunge the country into recession— up in Humvees, Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a theme echoed by many of his GOP rivals. In denounc- and the Patriot missile system. While acknowledging that ing Trump’s candidacy, Mitt Romney in March 2016 said military applications constitute “a relatively small share of Trump’s tariff plan would “instigate a trade war that would our overall sales,” he added, “in a time of national crisis, raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entre- the U.S. cannot afford to rely on imported steel slabs from preneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.” foreign suppliers like China and Russia.” At the time of the election, hot-rolled steel coil, one The governments of China, Russia, South Korea, Bra- of the most common U.S. steel products, sold for around zil, and Turkey prop up their steel companies, he claimed, $500 a ton. and such subsidies harm U.S. production. “When we’re Three months after Trump took office, the Commerce not making money, it’s very difficult to continue to invest Department launched an investigation to determine if U.S. in new machines and invest in our teammates in order national security was being imperiled by foreign-made to help them be ready when we have a need for national steel. If so, Trump could order widespread tariffs or quo- defense,” Ferriola said. tas on foreign steel, as opposed to the piecemeal approach Not all those testifying favored tariffs. Some consum-

of targeting particular countries or products through ers of steel, such as tin-can makers, warned of higher food STANDARD ALL IMAGES: TONY MECIA / THE WEEKLY STANDARD; TIMELINE: THE WEEKLY

22 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 June 20: The E.U. announces July 6: Citing unfair trade, Trump hits China with August 1: Trump retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods $34 billion in new tariffs on industrial products. says he is considering ranging from steel and aluminum China says United States is launching “the biggest 25 percent tariffs on products to corn, peanuts, jeans, trade war in economic history” and responds with $200 billion more of and motorcycles. $34 billion in further tariffs on U.S. agricultural Chinese goods. products, including soybeans and meat.

MAY JUNE JULY AUG.

June 22: India July 25: Trump and the E.U. August 7-8: announces $241 million in announce intent to negotiate lower U.S. announces intent retaliatory tariffs against U.S tariffs, increase trade, and eliminate to impose $16 billion agricultural goods, including the new tariffs on metals and in new tariffs on almonds, apples, walnuts, associated retaliatory tariffs. Chinese goods. China chickpeas, and lentils. responds in kind.

costs. And representatives from the Chinese and Russian brought into mills by the hundreds, adding to the esti- embassies assured the panel that their countries’ steel mated 140,000 U.S. steel-company employees. industries caused no harm to U.S. national security. The Of course, that’s not the end of the story. China, Can- United States produces more than enough steel to supply ada, Mexico, Turkey, the E.U., and others retaliated with its military, they pointed out. tariffs on all sorts of U.S. products—including soybeans, When the Commerce Department released the results pork, motorcycles, whiskey, and steel. Economists say this of its investigation in February 2018, it sided, unsurpris- is what the start of a trade war looks like, with countries ingly, with the president’s policy preference. Foreign steel, it taking turns piling up the levies, inhibiting trade, driving found, accounted for about one-third of the 107 million met- up prices for consumers, and slowing economic growth. ric tons of steel the U.S. economy used in 2017. Although Then there’s the matter of the U.S. industries that U.S. producers still have a commanding market share, the depend on steel. There are far more workers engaged in report concluded that inexpensive foreign imports were shaping steel than in making it: Federal data says there causing domestic steelmakers to lose money, lay off workers, are 1.5 million metal-fabrication jobs, a figure that doesn’t and close plants. U.S. steel plants in 2017 ran at just 72 per- include work such as auto assembly that is closely tied to cent of capacity—below the 80 percent level they needed steel. This summer, the price of hot-rolled coil hit about to be profitable—the report said, and “excessive imports $900 a ton—80 percent higher than when Trump was of steel in the present circumstances do threaten to impair elected. Metal-fabrication companies are now engaged in national security.” By then, steel had risen to $750 a ton. a high-stakes guessing game in which Washington largely In March, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on products holds all the cards: Where will steel prices be in a month? made by foreign steel mills. He initially excluded some U.S. In three months? Will the tariffs come off Canadian steel allies but later applied the tariffs to them, too. By then, and when? The answers determine how much steel to U.S. hot-rolled steel coil had shot up to more than $850 buy and how much to stockpile. a ton. U.S. steelmakers had been able to aggressively raise To comprehend the complex effects of the tariffs, it their prices because demand was improving and the prospect helps to understand the typical path that steel takes from of tariffs on foreign steel meant they didn’t have to worry as its origins into something most consumers would rec- much about being undercut by overseas competitors. ognize. An alloy of mined iron ore (or scrap metal) and carbon, steel is forged in a mill. The vast majority of U.S. TARIFFS AT EYE LEVEL steelmaking capacity is controlled by six companies: here’s little disagreement that the tariffs have Nucor, U.S. Steel, ArcelorMittal (based in Luxembourg), been good for U.S. steel companies, which are Gerdau (based in Brazil), AK Steel, and Steel Dynamics. T investing in new plants or expanding old ones Most of the steel Kooima uses in his Iowa plant originates in Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Florida. from U.S. Steel, Nucor, and Steel Dynamics. Until tariffs Sales are up. Profits are strong. New workers are being made its steel too expensive, Algoma, a smaller company

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 23 in Ontario, Canada, was a fourth supplier for Kooima. steel industry close.” And, she added: “It is not our intent From the mills, the steel typically goes to a distribu- to see our customers disappear.” tor, also known as a “service center.” Distributors process In an interview after the event, Gross, the distribu- the steel and prepare it for the next step. In K ooima’s case, tor-association president, said the effect of the tariffs has a distributor receives hot-rolled steel coil from the mill, been complex and unpredictable. While the steel mills which is spooled like a roll of paper are “coining money,” among his towels, and flattens it into slabs or folks, “I don’t think anybody feels sheets. These are what are trucked to they are on solid ground right now.” Kooima’s plant in Rock Valley. He says distributors are filled with Distributors depend on strong “angst and uncertainty.” relationships with the mills. They Gross figures he lost a couple hun- jockey for favorable prices, of course, dred thousand dollars because he had but also to ensure they are at the front a deal to buy Canadian steel when of the line to receive steel when sup- the Trump administration unexpect- plies grow tight. The relationships are edly included our northern neighbor friendly but not always harmonious. in the list of countries subject to the At a Chicago meeting of steel distrib- tariffs. But overall, he says, business utors in June, some suggested that the has been solid while the price of financial success the mills are reaping steel has risen: His costs are higher, has failed to trickle down. but so are his revenues because he’s Inside a packed meeting room at Mike Kooima, left, with Peter Zagskhi selling at higher prices, and his cus- the historic Union League Club in tomers are still demanding lots of downtown Chicago, about 60 people turned out to hear Jean steel. “It has helped us, though I don’t want to admit that, Carroll Kemp, a senior vice president with the Steel Manu- because you are going to pay 10 to 20 percent more for that facturers Association, which represents mills, talk about the barbecue when you go to Home Depot,” he says. “For the tariffs. Most of the audience were from steel-distribution country, maybe it’s not so great. For us as a service center, it firms. But at a back table sat Jack Biegalski, a sales director has helped us in certain ways.” with ArcelorMittal, who stood up and introduced himself. He added, to laughs: “There’s a lot of people smiling in here, FROM DISTRIBUTOR TO FABRICATOR so it must be a good time to be in the steel business!” s workers in Kooima’s Iowa plant unload the sheets Andy Gross, president of the Association of Steel Dis- of steel coming from a distributor, Phil K ooima, tributors as well as head of the Chicago-based Alliance Steel, A 54, reminisces about his family’s history in this deadpanned in response, “I know ArcelorMittal is happy to business. During World War II, his grandfather, Charles be in the steel business.” The crowd roared with laughter. Kooima, moved to Michigan to make armaments. When In a 30-minute talk, Kemp showed a slide presentation hostilities concluded, he moved back to Rock Valley and defending the steel tariffs to a skeptical crowd. She said the started his own small metalworking plant, what’s known in root of the problem is global “excess supply,” driven mainly the industry as a “job shop.” It became the family business. by China, which makes half of the world’s steel and 10 times In 1988, K ooima’s father suggested his son become an as much as the United States. China has increased produc- entrepreneur and start his own business. When he launched tion faster than the worldwide demand for steel has grown, Kooima Company, it wasn’t an acrimonious split, just the she said, resulting in “excess capacity” at U.S. mills that has chance to start something new. Kooima’s business wasn’t a not been relieved through negotiations. Tariffs were a sen- competitor: The family business was a machine shop that sible tactic, she said: “Sometimes, you have to break a few made round metal parts, while Kooima Company is a fabri- eggs in order to make your perfect French omelet.” cation shop that works with flat metal. The distributors pressed Kemp in the question-and- Around the country, there are thousands of job shops like answer session. One said the tariffs created “significant Kooima’s. Some are mom-and-pop operations with a handful pain in the distribution world.” Another said the situa- of workers, while others have hundreds of employees. Most tion is “very stressful for everybody in this room—except occupy niches and don’t compete with each other. Kooima for Jack.” Kemp replied that the goal of the tariffs is not to is strong in agricultural and construction equipment. harm steel users but to ensure that the steel industry and Another job shop might specialize in pieces for residential those who depend on it are around in the future: “Consum- housing or commercial construction. Some places might ing industries do not benefit if large portions of the U.S. have employees work on the metal by hand, while bigger

24 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 operations such as K ooima rely more heavily on automation. Even with growing concerns about trade, that favor- In a town of 3,800 residents, K ooima and his plant stand able outlook continues. In June, the National Association of out. “He’s a big fish, let’s put it that way,” says David Miller, Manufacturers reported that 95 percent of companies sur- Rock Valley’s economic development director. Outside the veyed in the second quarter had a somewhat or very posi- town, in Sioux County, farming is dominant, but closer in, tive business outlook—an all-time high. The U.S. economy there are around two dozen shops that specialize in steel has added manufacturing jobs each of the last 12 months. fabrication and related specialties such as metal plating and Fabricated-metal jobs are up about 4 percent over a year ago heat treating. With 740 workers in 2016, manufacturing is and kept increasing even after the steel tariffs took effect. the town’s biggest industry. The average salary for these With Trump talking up U.S. manufacturing, K ooima workers is $64,200, more than double the average U.S. indi- says some big companies are “getting nervous and saying, vidual income. “It’s a one-stop shop, where if you’ve got a ‘Do we really need to buy this in China and is it worth part you need to have made and finished, we can do it all in- the risk if something goes wrong? Let’s buy this in North house within a mile of each other,” Miller says of the town. America, where we can control it.’ ” That translates to more Like most of rural America, the area is solidly pro- orders for his Iowa firm. Trump. Of Iowa’s 99 counties, Sioux County gave the presi- Kooima has been forced to make some adjustments. dent his most lopsided win in the state in 2016—a 69-point Sioux County’s unemployment rate is half the national victory, 82-13, over Clinton. average, and qualified workers are scarce. So he gave his Within days of the election, Kooima says, new orders employees the option to work an hour of overtime a day started pouring in, especially from his customers in the con- and a half-day on Saturdays, which could boost their pay struction-equipment business. He won’t name his custom- by more than one-quarter. The offer stands as there is so ers but says they include all the household names. Business much work to do. confidence surged in late 2016, largely on the expectation But the tariffs are eating into K ooima’s profits. Steel that a Republican-controlled White House and Congress prices rose so fast this spring and summer that his quotes would cut regulations and taxes. to customers didn’t fully reflect his costs. Only now is he

The Right Judge for the Job

THOMAS J. DONOHUE to our nation’s job creators come will make an excellent addition to PRESIDENT AND CEO before the Supreme Court, and the our nation’s highest court. In the U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE outcomes of those decisions have a Chamber’s view, he takes seriously lasting impact on the way businesses the interests and legal arguments on Earlier this summer, President operate, invest, hire, provide benefits all sides of a case. Judge Kavanaugh Trump was called upon to to employees, and much more. has repeatedly demonstrated that exercise one of the most important For this reason, the U.S. Chamber he treats all who come before him responsibilities of the American of Commerce’s Litigation Center seeking justice with the utmost dignity presidency: nominating a justice to regularly advocates cases in front of and respect that every party in our the U.S. Supreme Court. His decision the Supreme Court. This includes legal system deserves. would have implications for virtually fighting frivolous lawsuits, bad This is why the Chamber fully every institution and aspect of our regulations, and faulty lower court supports Judge Kavanaugh and has society, including the future of our rulings. It also includes defending deemed his confirmation a “key vote” free enterprise system. Facing this free enterprise, free speech, and the that will be factored into our grading monumental task, the president hit rights of business owners. Through of lawmakers this year. Rather than a home run by nominating Circuit our decades of experience before the play political games with such a Judge Brett Kavanaugh. With senators Court, we’ve found that the most critical matter, senators should give returning to work this week, it’s important qualities in a justice are his him a fair hearing and then swiftly now up to them to finish the job and or her fairness and consideration of move to confirm him as an associate confirm this outstanding nominee so the principles of limited government justice on the Supreme Court. Once that he can get to work. enshrined in our Constitution. they do, Judge Kavanaugh can get The American business community Legal professionals of all political to work on the many pressing legal has always had a major stake in the persuasions who have worked with issues that will come before the Court. affairs of our nation’s highest court. Judge Kavanaugh over the years have Multiple times per year, matters of described him as an accomplished, Learn more at critical, precedent-setting importance fair, and thoughtful jurist who uschamber.com/abovethefold.

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 25 regaining the ability to estimate more 180 different kinds of knives needed accurately. He says he’s happy to pay for harvesting machines. Workers in overtime as long as there is work to that area have had to hustle to process support it, and for now, he’s seeing the steel they need to keep up with a no slowdown and feels confident rash of new orders. in managing the company’s risks. “With the dollar going down, our His biggest fear, he says, is a “black overseas orders have gone crazy,” says swan” event—something terrible that Mike K ooima, 43, who has worked nobody can anticipate. at the plant for 21 years. (He is not As his prices rise, he anticipates related to Phil Kooima—around here losing some work, ironically, to foreign the name is “like Smith,” Mike jokes.) competition. Walking into the plant’s “Germany and France are buying a lot welding shop, he picks up a piece of of products.” The dollar is down more metal resembling an empty cube with than 6 percent against the euro since the top missing and holes in its sides. For Kooima Co., tariffs mean both higher Trump’s tariff decision, which makes costs and tougher competition. Sheet steel, at Welded from four different pieces, left, is subject to tariffs, but many products U.S. products more attractive to for- it is designed to hold a truck battery made of steel, as the one at right, are not, eign buyers. As for the tariffs, he says: in place. With the price of U.S. steel giving a pricing edge to Chinese companies. “It is what it is. I don’t think we can do surging, his cost to make the battery anything about it. We can complain, tray has risen dramatically. But a competitor in China can but that doesn’t do nothing.” buy steel there at around $550 a ton (40 percent less than Phil K ooima figures the tariffs will be “short term.” the U.S. price), weld the pieces together, and ship it to the While there have been stories in the news of steel users United States for cheaper than Kooima can make it. While blaming the tariffs for drops in business—such as Harley- there’s a 25 percent tariff on Chinese hot-rolled steel coil, Davidson’s announcement that it would shift some motor- there’s no tariff on battery trays made of Chinese steel. One cycle production abroad and the nail plant in Missouri Kooima customer has already told him he’ll be switching to that laid off more than 100 workers and blamed rising steel a Chinese supplier in the fall. costs— Kooima knows of nothing similar in his industry. “Why wouldn’t there be a tariff on this?” he says. The economy is booming, and nobody is suffering. “Trump needs to figure that out.”K ooima says he gave his “Eventually, Trump will get what he wants, and that congressman, Republican Steve King, a tour of the plant in is China and the other countries to drop any tariffs on May to make the same point. the American stuff, then we’ll go back to level pricing,” Another issue he would like to see addressed is intellec- he predicts. tual property. K ooima holds about 25 patents for such prod- For now, the tariffs might not be helpful for his business. ucts as a “bar with enhanced rigidity,” a “segmented knife But K ooima is buoyed by what he says is an overdue discus- assembly with replaceable wear segments,” and a “com- sion Trump is leading of the merits of U.S. manufacturing. posite harvester spout.” He says a version of the knife his Free-market economists say the negative effects of tar- company developed showed up in the States with a “Made iffs can be hard to detect in the short term. It’s tough to see in China” stamp on it less than a year after he introduced orders that are not placed, investments that are not made, it. He’s uncertain whether a Chinese firm copied his knife innovations that are not designed, and jobs that are not or found the design by hacking into company computers. created. But on the factory floor in Rock Valley, it’s like Trump has cited China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property the old Marx Brothers line: Who are you going to believe, as justification for many of the non-steel tariffs imposed on me or your own eyes? From Phil Kooima’s vantage point, China in July. It’s one more reason Kooima seems comfort- things are heading in the right direction for his company, able with the steel tariffs. his community, his industry, his country. “It’s just good to have somebody support manufac- A MANUFACTURING BOOM turing,” K ooima says. “If the president says it’s good, it’s lot of the plant’s work is performed with really easy for me to come out here and say, ‘Hey, guys, 35 high-tech lasers. These are programmed to we’re making the stuff America needs. They need us.’ A cut shapes from a sheet of steel with great pre- That’s really uplifting. For a guy like Mike, slogging away cision—similar to using a cookie cutter, though slicing at the machine all day long, I can say, ‘America needs har- into quarter-inch-thick steel instead of dough. But some vesting knives.’ It feels good for him. It’s positive. The areas require more human attention, like making the national conversation has changed.” ♦

26 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Rubio Goes Nationalist Meet the new Marco . . .

By John McCormack China. “The most catastrophic thing that could happen is not a trade war, but that we lose one, or that we back down n June 2016, Marco Rubio changed his mind and from one,” Rubio tells me in an interview. announced that he would not be retiring from the Earlier this summer, Rubio delivered a speech in Wash- Senate as he had planned. A major reason he was ington calling for a “new nationalism” in which he decried seeking a second term, Rubio an “economic elitism that has replaced said, was to help the Senate exer- a commitment to the dignity of work Icise what “could end up being its most with a blind faith in financial markets important [role] in the years to come: and that views America simply as an the constitutional power to act as a check economy instead of a nation.” and balance on the excesses of a presi- “I saw the devastating impact of dent”—whether that would be President this kind of thinking firsthand during Clinton or President Trump. my campaign for president,” Rubio After rattling off his concerns about told the Faith and Freedom Confer- Hillary Clinton, Rubio said: “The pros- ence. “I saw it in the factory towns pect of a Trump presidency is also wor- hollowed out by the companies who risome to me. It is no secret that I have shipped those jobs overseas to turn a significant disagreements with Don- bigger profit—and where the dignity ald Trump. His positions on many key of work has been replaced by food issues are still unknown. And some of stamps and disability checks and opi- his statements, especially about women oids.” You just might say that Rubio and minorities, I find not just offensive painted a picture of “American car- but unacceptable. If he is elected, we will nage,” to borrow a phrase from the need senators willing to encourage him Trump inaugural address. in the right direction, and if necessary, Whereas big tech companies were stand up to him. I’ve proven a willing- once featured in his speeches as exam- ness to do both.” ples of American innovation, Rubio Rubio then defeated a populist, now warns of a lack of corporate Trumpian primary challenger that morality and patriotism: “When right August by 54 percentage points. He and wrong is based entirely and solely went on to win by 8 points in the general on profitability, then there is nothing election that November, while Donald immoral about shipping jobs over- Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Flor- seas or surrendering key American ida by 1 point. Other conservative GOP technology and innovation to China.” senators outperformed Trump in the He singled out Google for refusing to key battleground states of Ohio, Penn- work with the Department of Defense sylvania, and Wisconsin. And Trump’s but contemplating a return to China. approval rating today is mired in the 40s Even when dissenting from despite a roaring economy. Yet the lesson of 2016 for many Trump administration policy, some of Rubio’s tweets have Republicans is that they need to be more like Trump. a more Trumpian flair these days. “I know for a FACT One of those Republicans appears to be Marco Rubio. that @FLOTUS has been a strong voice of compassion for The Florida senator fully backs Trump’s trade war with migrant children. The vicious treatment of her over the last day is a reminder of how Trump Derangement Syndrome,

John McCormack is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. where hatred for him justifies everything, has become an JASON SEILER

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 27 epidemic. Totally lunacy everywhere!!!” Rubio tweeted in the inalienable right to life and liberty and to pursue hap- June, when the issue of separating children from parents who piness,” Rubio said. “This is the kind of new nationalism had unlawfully crossed the border was dominating headlines. we need. And this is the kind of new nationalism we should “Sadly #China is out-negotiating the administration & win- insist new immigrants embrace.” After the speech, Rubio ning the trade talks right now. They have avoided tariffs & told me he doesn’t see a distinction between the kind of got a #ZTE deal without giving up anything meaningful in nationalism he was calling for and patriotism. He acknowl- return by using N.Korea talks & agriculture issues as lever- edged the nationalist label is “often used to describe people age. This is #NotWinning,” Rubio also tweeted that month. who believe that they should only do things that are good What Rubio is trying to achieve appears to be a synthe- for their country and at the expense of other countries” but sis of his own “reform conservatism” and Trumpism. It is, said he rejects that view. for the most part, not an ideological reinvention. It’s more To the “old nationalists” like Bannon and Trump of a rethinking or a rebranding, as the Economist (“Mar- adviser Stephen Miller, of course, Rubio is the poster boy co’s Makeover”) and the New Yorker (“Rubio’s Reboot for for economic elitism and globalism for his membership in the Trump Era”) have observed. And that makes a certain the bipartisan Gang of Eight that wrote the 2013 compre- amount of sense as a matter of politics and policy. Trump is hensive immigration reform bill. Asked if the backlash to after all the Republican president, and the Republican party the Gang of Eight bill, which passed the Senate but never may increasingly become the home of working-class voters got a vote in the House, led to Trump’s nomination, Rubio in the years to come. sidesteps the question and instead talks about how voters Asked how Trump has changed the Republican party, are frustrated with illegal immigrants breaking the law and for good or ill, Rubio has only positive things to say. “One of competing with them for jobs. Asked about Arkansas GOP the things the president was able to do through his election senator Tom Cotton’s argument that we need to cut legal is reconnect the Republican party to working Americans. immigration numbers because new immigrants are putting It was probably a needed correction. It was the party that downward pressure on wages, Rubio says there are “ele- was heavily focused on the employer’s side, which is still ments of truth” to the argument. “What those numbers are very important, but not enough on the employee’s side,” is to be debated and should be able to adjust given changes Rubio tells me. “The early inklings of that were the Huck- in conditions in the economy,” Rubio says. “What I don’t abee campaign and Santorum in 2012. All of them sort of know is if we can just set an arbitrary cap.” nibbled at the edges of it. The president was able to truly embrace it, and I think that’s a very positive thing.” ome of Rubio’s rhetoric on economics, including Rubio now speaks with President Trump “I would say his condemnation of a “radical you’re-on-your-own twice, three times a month.” He worked closely with Ivanka S individualism promoted by our government and Trump on developing a paid-family-leave bill that would by our society over the last 30 years,” seems new for him. give Americans the option of taking some of their Social But most of the actual economic policies Rubio has been Security for family leave in exchange for delaying retire- prominently fighting for in Congress—an expanded child ment by three to six months. “Ivanka views her role as sort tax credit to benefit the working class and the paid-family of the host of a competition of ideas,” Rubio says. “She’s try- leave bill—are of the same type he has long promoted with ing to encourage people to come forward, so we’re going to Utah senator Mike Lee. be the first entrant into this competition on the Republican In the tax reform bill last year, Rubio and Lee worked side.” After Rubio unveiled his bill, Utah senator Mike Lee to deliver for working-class voters—the “47 percent” Mitt announced he intends to introduce his own paid-family- Romney insulted for not paying income tax in 2012 and leave bill soon with Iowa senator Joni Ernst. Welcome to who swung dramatically toward Trump in 2016. Rubio “Celebrity Apprentice: Paid Family Leave Edition.” and Lee pushed for a bigger child tax credit and wanted the While Rubio called for a “new nationalism” in June, the $2,000 per child credit to apply against Social Security and speech focused heavily on the need to strengthen families Medicare taxes as well, in order to benefit the vast majority and civil society. It was the kind of nationalism admired of working-class voters who don’t pay income taxes. They more by David Brooks than Steve Bannon. (“This is one successfully got Senate negotiators to make $1,400 of tax of the best and most unifying Republican speeches in years,” credit refundable instead of $1,100. But their amendment the New York Times columnist tweeted.) Rubio steeped his to make the entire $2,000 refundable failed on a 29-71 vote, new nationalism in the language of the Declaration of Inde- after the Wall Street Journal editorial page lashed out, argu- pendence. “Nothing is more American than the belief that ing it would be “destructive” to increase the corporate tax all men are created equal. Nothing is more American than rate by a percentage point or two in order to pay for more the belief that every human being is endowed by God with working-class tax cuts.

28 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 While Rubio’s support for paid family leave and a big I would have focused on the imbalance in that relationship child tax credit are consistent with his pre-Trump agenda, [with European allies].” he acknowledges that his hawkishness on China has evolved At the beginning of the Trump administration, Utah’s in the Trump era. Asked if he’s trying to be more like Trump Lee introduced a bill requiring congressional approval of with his tweets and his rhetoric on China, Rubio says, “Obvi- any tariff increase, and in early June of this year Tennessee ously when I was on the campaign trail I tweeted a lot less, Republican Bob Corker introduced a narrower bill requir- because I was busy campaigning, but I’ve always handled my ing congressional approval for raising tariffs on the basis of own tweets. I don’t know if anything has changed in terms national security, as Trump did when he increased steel and of the style.” aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico, “I’ve always focused on China,” he and the European Union. adds. “The difference is my main focus Following Rubio’s “new national- in China for a long time was geopoliti- ism” speech on June 6, he said he hadn’t cal and human rights. It remains that had a chance to look at the Corker bill, way, but . . . my geopolitics and human which had been introduced that day and rights [concerns] . . . led me to econom- was becoming the subject of much debate. ics.” Rubio says it was a mistake to grant On July 31 in his office, Rubio remained China permanent normal trade relations, undecided on the measure. “I haven’t which the Senate did by an 83-15 vote in made up my mind on it. I have to think 2000, and admit the Communist country through what it means. I’m generally in to the World Trade Organization. Beijing favor of having the Congress having more “assumed all of the benefits of the world authority,” he said, before expressing con- international trading order but rejected Rubio with Trump in Miami’s cern that “it weakens the nation’s hand in all the responsibilities, and they did not Little Havana, June 16, 2017 [trade] negotiations, because it sends a sig- become more democratic.” nal to these countries that they don’t have At times, Rubio seems to echo the warnings that to compromise, because back home, we’re divided on it.” China hawks like Robert Kagan and William Kristol made in the pages of this magazine before China was hat happened to the senator who promised in admitted to the WTO. At others, he sounds more like 2016 to stand up to Trump when necessary? paleoconservative populist Pat Buchanan. W Rubio contends he’s lived up to that promise. How exactly does he plan to stop American companies While he focuses on areas where he agrees with Trump, he from shipping jobs overseas? “Ultimately when it comes has expressed disagreement with the president on a number to China, there needs to be a cost, a penalty for doing it of issues. Rubio says Trump should be “commended” for because China’s not just an economic competitor,” Rubio his efforts to achieve North Korean denuclearization, but says. “They seek to supplant us, and they use their economy he remains “very skeptical” Trump’s diplomacy will accom- as a way to supplant us—not just economically, but militar- plish anything. ily, technologically, and geopolitically. But as far as the rest of Rubio has been an outspoken defender of human rights, the world is concerned, I think what it means is that when and when I ask him about Trump’s comments sanitizing a large multinational corporation is doing something that’s North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as a leader who “loves good for American workers, we help them, and when they’re his people” and whose people love him with “great fervor,” not, we’re under no special obligation to bend over back- he expresses polite disagreement: “I don’t agree with that wards because their mailing address has a U.S. zip code.” assessment of him. My guess is that the president is not It’s not quite clear how protectionist Rubio has become. someone who has lived his entire life attending Council on Rubio still thinks the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Foreign Relations meetings and as a member of Congress, excluded China, would have been good as a matter of for- sitting through hearing after hearing, and taking [trips with eign policy and economics. “It was the economic equiva- congressional delegations] and meeting these folks. I think lent of our military pivot to Asia” and would’ve opened up he expresses himself as someone who’s new to politics, non-Chinese markets for American agriculture and industry, which he is. It’s one of the reasons why he won. From the he says. “Unfortunately, both of the presidential nominees world of business, he probably feels that in order to reach were against TPP, and therefore that deal was dead.” As for a deal with someone, you’ve got to be nice to them. That Trump’s trade moves against European allies, Rubio simply opens them up. The reason I wouldn’t say those things is objects to the timing: “I would have dealt with China first, because I actually think it would demoralize those who are

JOE RAEDLE / GETTY together with the European Union in particular, and then standing up to that regime.”

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 29 It’s not the fiery response you’d imagine from Rubio economic growth—one of the best quarters we’ve ever if a Democratic president had said the same words about had, full employment on top of it. [Trump] has appointed Kim. But Rubio hasn’t become a total Trump sycophant. A one—soon two—conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio says and has slowly but surely, in 18 months, helped to remake that Robert Mueller should be allowed to finish his job, the circuit courts, with 24 nominees today—close to one- and he rejects some of the right-wing attacks on the FBI. eighth of all circuit court judges have been appointed by “I don’t think [the FBI] did anything wrong” in surveil- this president in a year and a half. If I told you a Republi- ling Carter Page, Rubio said on CNN on June 22. “There can president had done that, you would say, ‘That’s a pretty [were] a lot of reasons unrelated to the [Steele] dossier for successful year and a half.’ Unfortunately, it’s overshad- why they wanted to look at Carter Page. And Carter Page owed by the noise and stuff he puts out there.” was not a key member of the Trump campaign, and the Trump campaign has said that.” Rubio has introduced a ubio’s 2016 critique of Trump clearly indicated bill to automatically impose new sanctions on Russia if the that, although a Clinton presidency would be even director of national intelligence determines Russia is inter- R worse, he thought Trump lacked a basic mental fering in an American election. and moral fitness to be president. We are now closer to the But none of his current criticism of the president comes 2020 primaries than the 2016 election, and Republicans close to what Rubio was saying when he ran for president who still view Trump that way, like Arizona senator Jeff in 2016. He repeatedly said during that year’s primaries Flake, think Trump should face a primary challenger. that Trump was so mentally unstable he couldn’t be trusted “Everyone has a right to do whatever they want,” Rubio with the nuclear launch codes, and he stood by that assess- says of Flake’s call for a primary challenge. “I could just say ment throughout the general election. Does he still view to you that in the modern era, every president that’s been Trump that way? “Well, he’s had the nuclear codes for a primaried has ended up losing the general election. George year and a half, and we’ve been all right,” Rubio replies. H. W. Bush. Johnson chose not to run. . . . Jimmy Carter. So “So, look,” he continues, “elections are a competition I would say given that history, if you primaried the presi- for power through peaceful means. It’s better than war. dent, you are doing a great service to whoever the Demo- In an election, you’re in a competitive environment. You cratic nominee is, and many of these things that we’ve just are running against another person, and you’re going to spoken about would be unraveled and undone.” do whatever you think it takes to win, and so is the other Absent from Rubio’s list of presidents was Gerald Ford, person. When it’s all said and done, the president has on who was primaried by Ronald Reagan and lost a close race his cabinet Ben Carson, who was a competitor of his. He’s in 1976. Reagan believed there were important principles appointed people that endorsed me, like Mike Pompeo at stake that justified challenging Ford for the nomination, and Nikki Haley. Elections end. What I always find funny and it paid off for him in 1980. Eighteen months into the about that question—not with you in particular, but when administration, Rubio plainly does not feel the same way others ask it—is if he had been my opponent in a general about Donald Trump. election as a Democrat, everyone would be insisting that I Where Rubio’s rebranding will take him is unclear. At leave the election behind and work with him. But some- age 47, he’s young enough that he could conceivably run how, a year and a half later, at least some, mostly on the for president again any time between 2024 and 2040. The left, insist that I continue to hold onto whatever happened political risk of cozying up to an unpopular president is that in that campaign. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said he could alienate a significant number of voters who backed terrible things about each other in 2008. She ended up him but not Trump in Florida. And too many rebrandings serving as his secretary of state for four years. can kill a politician’s brand. In 2008, Rubio endorsed evan- “So as far as my views of the president—he deserves gelical favorite Mike Huckabee for president at the end of credit for a lot. If you for a moment just erase the name compassionate conservative George W. Bush’s administra- Trump, take out all the Twitter and the daily noise, and tion; he then rode a Tea Party wave to the Senate in 2010 just focus on what’s happened over the last 18 months: and subsequently became the nation’s leading advocate ISIS has lost all its territory in the Middle East. All of our of comprehensive immigration reform after the Repub- partners in the NATO alliance are looking for ways to con- lican National Committee and the Republican donor tribute more. The U.S. is recommitted to NATO; in fact, class blamed the 2012 loss on Mitt Romney’s hard-line continues to pour money—has given lethal military capac- immigration stance. As the past shows, Rubio’s embrace ity to Ukraine the previous administration would not give. of the nationalist label in 2018 tells us a lot about where [We] ended the Iran deal. Moved the embassy to Jerusa- the Republican party is at the moment but not necessarily lem. Got a historic tax cut passed that has led to robust where it, or he, will be a few years from now. ♦

30 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Rick Perry’s Unlikely Third Act Can a high-profile former governor and presidential hopeful find happiness as a hardworking energy secretary?

By Michael Warren heading up one of the forgotten departments of the federal government might feel like a downgrade. But Perry seems n November 21, 2016, Rick Perry stepped to relish the job—traveling to international conferences, out of an elevator in Trump Tower and visiting the department’s dozens of research labs, and pro- into the first proper job interview of his moting America’s energy industry. life. Perry had worked as a door-to-door Perry was one of the draws at the World Gas Confer- Bible salesman, an officer in the United ence in Washington in June, where he gave the keynote OStates Air Force, and a cotton farmer with his father before address at the industry-sponsored confab. Sandwiched making his first run for the state legislature in 1984. For the between performances by a marching band and the Har- next 30 years, he was hired by voters in the state of Texas lem Globetrotters, Perry’s speech was standard boilerplate to elected office again and again. But at age 66, Perry was about American natural gas production and market inno- applying for a new job—secretary of energy in the adminis- vation. But it was a hit with conference attendees. “Great tration of President Donald J. Trump. speech,” said more than one person, as Perry surveyed the He remembers entering Trump’s office, where Reince exhibit hall afterwards, and I think they meant it. Priebus and Steve Bannon sat on either side of the presi- It’s at conferences like this one that Perry is able to let dent-elect. “It was like The Apprentice,” Perry recalls. He his retail-politician flag fly. Before one meeting, his Cana- must have been in a reality TV state of mind: Immediately dian counterpart, natural resources minister Jim Carr, following his New York meeting with Trump, the former approached him like an old pal. Perry wrapped an arm Texas governor would hop on a plane to Los Angeles to around Carr and gave the minister a friendly shake. “This appear in the finale ofDancing With the Stars. (As with his is a good man,” Perry declared. Carr told me it’s a “great 2016 presidential bid, Perry and his dance partner lost early honor” to work with the former Texas governor, adding that in the season, but he returned to do a rendition of “Ice Ice the two men have “common interests” on both the profes- Baby” with Vanilla Ice. It’s on YouTube.) sional and personal levels. “We talk about kids, grandkids, Twenty months later, Perry is less a star and more a hockey,” Carr said. supporting actor in Trump’s Washington. For some pols, Their mutual affinity looks and feels genuine, which is energy secretary would be a tough third act. After 15 years all the more remarkable given that their bosses—President as the governor of one of the largest and most robust states Trump and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau—had in the country, and two national campaigns for president, recently engaged in a public dispute over trade and protec- tionism following the G7 summit. Days after the gas confer-

Michael Warren is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. ence, Canada would follow through on its threat to impose THOMAS FLUHARTY

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 31 retaliatory tariffs against the United States for its tariffs on that is. At Trump Tower, Trump didn’t have much to say Canadian goods. Back in May, Trump reportedly brought about the responsibilities at the department he wanted Perry up Canada’s involvement in the War of 1812 and the burn- to run. “We probably spent less than five minutes talking ing of the White House by British troops during a tense about the Department of Energy and the portfolio there,” phone conversation with Trudeau. Perry says. “He already knew I already knew that, by and Perry would rather slap backs in person than slap back at large. He asked about other people.” Who did Perry think critics on Twitter. Those close to him call Perry a collabora- might be a good fit for other cabinet-level agencies? What tor and a team player, someone who looks for ways to make did he think of so-and-so for such-and-such job? connections with people. At the conference, in a meeting Perry wouldn’t divulge who the president-elect dis- with the energy minister of Azerbaijan, Perry mentioned cussed that day, but needless to say, some of those Trump that his wife had been to the capital city of Baku. Earlier appointees haven’t turned out so well. Scandals, disputes in the week, in an encounter with Russian energy minister with the White House, and incompetence have defined the Alexander Novak before a meeting of Pacific-region govern- Trump cabinet, which is why Perry sticks out as a rare excep- ment and business leaders, Perry did his level best to spark tion. There have been no signs of impending revolt from a conversation. “I don’t love cold weather, but I would like career employees at the Energy Department, nor have left- to come to St. Petersburg,” said the lifelong Texan. Novak, wing groups successfully made much noise about Perry’s listening through a translator, nodded sternly. policies. Unlike Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions, Perry has Perry thrives in this realm, connecting industry lead- had no public tiffs with President Trump. Nor has he com- ers and government ministers while promoting America’s mitted the sort of ethical lapses or boneheaded maneuvering energy resources. It’s the closest his job at the depart- that doomed Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, David Shulkin. Aides ment gets to his previous role as chief salesman for Texas. and friends of Perry say that’s where his decades of experi- When I interviewed him four years ago in the governor’s ence in politics have benefited him most. office in Austin, he was almost frenetic, jumping up to take phone calls with corporate executives in an effort to bring hen I ask him what sets him apart from his them to Texas. “I still think I’ve got a passion for what scandal-ridden colleagues in the cabinet, Perry I do,” he told me then, as he looked ahead to his final W points out that the “easiest story for a journal- year in office. “I’ve got 11 months left. I’ve got a deal that ist to write” is about improper flights by a politician. Perry I’m working on. I’ve got lots of deals that we’re going to would know—he used the issue of taxpayer-funded private be working on.” In this sense, Perry was Trump before flights against his 2010 primary opponent in the gubernato- Trump—presenting himself as a consummate dealmaker. rial election, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and was dinged him- But for a number of reasons, Republican primary voters self during his first presidential run, in late 2011, for taking weren’t convinced, either in 2012 or 2016, that the governor some official flights paid for by industry lobbyists. As Perry of the largest and most economically vibrant red state ought jokes, he made all his mistakes long before the national to be their presidential nominee. Those campaigns were the spotlight was on him. only ones Perry ever lost. After dropping out in 2016, he That’s not to say he has avoided controversy entirely. told his wife, Anita, that he was retired from politics. But it’s been controversy of the most boring kind, over “My father gave me some really good advice,” Perry policy, and he’s gotten most of the heat from free-market says. Ray Perry, who had been a longtime commissioner conservatives. Last fall, the Energy Department released and school board member in Haskell County in rural Texas, a report on power grid resiliency. Perry used the report died in April 2017, shortly after his son was installed as to urge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to energy secretary. “He said one of the great gifts of a person approve a new price-setting regulation for electricity mar- in public service is to know when to leave and to leave still kets, one that would financially guarantee older coal and feeling comfortable that you’ve got a little bit to give.” nuclear plants their baseload capacity as newer energy That’s where Perry fils aimed to be in the fall of 2016. resources begin competing (often with government sup- He and Anita were on a trip to Napa Valley, enjoying retire- port) in the marketplace. Among the arguments Perry ment, on Election Day. “I didn’t know the outcome of the deployed was that national security would be threatened election until the next morning. My phone had blown up,” if underfunded power plants were forced to shut down. he says. “I went to sleep rather early.” But experts at conservative institutions like the Heri- Perry felt he still had more than a little bit to give and tage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute quickly reached out to Trump to offer his help. “I wanted to blasted the proposed rule as a “massive subsidy” that was give the president the opportunity to have people like me,” tantamount to “tipping the scale” toward coal and nuclear. he says—people with some actual experience governing, Industry competitors also hated the plan, as did fossil fuel

32 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 opponents on the left. And the regulators at FERC weren’t pipeline capacity to bring crude oil to market. “All of those convinced; in January, they unanimously rejected the rule, together versus the demand in the world, which is going a blow to the administration’s efforts to support and revive up, are putting pressure, and it’s a straight-up supply and coal power. Perry characterizes FERC’s decision as part of demand issue. And I think that helps him understand a lit- a national conversation about energy resiliency, and his tle better why we got these pressures on,” he said. advisers make a fair point—there’s no such thing as a truly The benefit Perry brings to the Trump administration competitive market when it comes to electricity, so govern- isn’t just his experience in government—the president ment has a role to play whether it likes it or not. seems genuinely to value and listen to his advice, at least The resilience rule failure, Perry’s most high-profile to in a few areas. Trump considered replacing David Shulkin date, highlights a frustration the former governor says he has at Veterans Affairs with Perry before the secretary said experienced with the way Washington works: Things hap- publicly he wanted to stay at Energy. But Perry says the pen too slowly and get mired in president asks him “on a regu- bureaucratic processes. It’s a frus- lar basis” about veterans issues, tration he shares with Trump. But since, as a former Air Force pilot, the president also has a tendency Perry has experience working to get out in front of the rest of with veterans’ advocacy groups. his administration, which some- Trump has also consulted Perry times touches on issues in Perry’s on some of the prison reform wheelhouse. One Saturday in late ideas pushed by White House June, Trump tweeted that he had adviser and presidential son-in- spoken to King Salman of Saudi law Jared Kushner. Arabia. Citing “turmoil and dis- Perry has been careful not function [sic] in Iran and Ven- to exploit his closeness with the ezuela,” Trump announced that president nor any of the perks of he’d asked the Arab monarch power. Unlike Scott Pruitt, who to increase his oil-rich country’s before he resigned from the Envi- production by two million bar- ronmental Protection Agency rels. “He has agreed!” Trump effectively had a permanent lunch said. A few hours later, the White Perry with Trump after announcing deregulation plans reservation at the White House House issued a statement clari- at the Department of Energy, June 29, 2017 Mess, Perry says he’s only eaten fying that Saudi Arabia had two at the West Wing a handful of million barrels in spare oil capacity and would be “ready” to times. He’s all but absent from the Washington social scene increase output if needed. It was a small but important mis- as well. He and his wife took National Economic Council take which, had it happened when markets were open, could director Larry Kudlow out to dinner recently, and he made have caused significant confusion. a notable appearance at this year’s White House Easter Egg Perry says he was not briefed on the conversation Roll. But Perry says he went to enough black-tie events as with the Saudis but dismissed concerns that Trump’s governor and he’s not itching to do more. He maintains a mangling of what the Saudi king agreed to would have low profile in Washington during the week, taking walks had any real consequences for energy markets. “It makes around Arlington National Cemetery in the evening before total sense to me for the president to try to influence, retiring to a nearby condominium. On weekends when he’s where he can, to keep gas prices down when Americans not traveling internationally, he returns home to Texas. are traveling—if there’s something we can do within rea- As far as “retirement” jobs go, Perry’s is pretty good. sonable limits,” he says. But does he have the desire to do anything else—perhaps The genesis of Trump’s conversation with King Salman fill a different cabinet post or run for office again? Last year, was a meeting weeks earlier when Perry discussed with the Perry publicly ruled out a primary challenge to Texas sena- president how international political events were threaten- tor Ted Cruz, who is up for reelection. And there’s little to ing to raise oil prices. “He wanted to know why crude prices suggest Republicans will be clamoring for Perry to run for were at the level they were,” Perry said. “And I shared with president a third time in 2024, when he’ll be 74. him that it’s a really unique time in world history from “I’m pretty open that this is my last bite at the apple in the standpoint of oil production. You have Venezuela on the terms of public service,” Perry says when I ask him what brink of collapse. You have issues in Angola.” The problem might come next. “But I also will remind people that I said

KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY for American output, Perry told the president, was a lack of that before.” ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 33 Breaking the Climate Spell Getting out of the Paris Agreement was just the first step on the road to a realist global energy policy

By Rupert Darwall growth and development depends on universal access to affordable and reliable energy resources,” it reads, going hirteen years ago, a Republican president on to offer a manifesto for global energy realism. That who had pulled the United States out of an single paragraph is more definitive than the president’s onerous climate treaty faced isolation at the announcement last August that the United States would annual gathering of Western leaders. “Tony be withdrawing from the Paris treaty. After all, George W. Blair is contemplating an unprecedented Bush nixed the Kyoto Protocol that Bill Clinton signed. Trift with the U.S. over climate change at the G8 summit And Trump, when announcing the Paris withdrawal, left next week, which will lead to a final communiqué agreed the door open to U.S. participation in a renegotiated cli- by seven countries with President George Bush left out on mate deal. At Charlevoix, he closed it. Unlike in 2005, it’s a limb,” the Guardian reported of the meet- very hard now to see any way back. ing at Glenea gles, Scotland. France and This is about far more than pro- Germany preferred an unprecedented split When it comes cess. Trump is breaking the spell communiqué to a weak one, the article said. to the politics of of inevitability of the transition to George W. Bush, who had pulled the renewable energy. The impression of country out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, energy, the interests irresistible momentum has been one blinked and agreed to an official document of the United States of the most potent tools in enforc- that affirmed global warming was occurring and European ing compliance with the climate and that “we know enough to act now.” green ideology catechism. Like socialism, the clean- The 2005 G8 put the United States back are irreconcilable. energy transition will fail because it on the path that ultimately led through the doesn’t work. But it requires strong Copenhagen climate summit—when China leadership to avoid the ruin that will and India thwarted U.S.-led attempts at a global climate disprove the false promise of cost-free decarbonization. treaty—to the Paris Agreement 11 years later. That reality is already hurting those countries that are There was a very different American president this farther down the renewable-energy path of ruin than the June at the Charlevoix G7 (as it has been since Russia’s sus- United States—and, when offered the chance, voters are pension in 2014). Had it not been for the row with Justin taking it out on politicians. In March, a fanatically pro- Trudeau, when the Canadian prime minister responded to wind and solar energy Labor government in South Aus- President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs with retalia- tralia, one of the eight states and territories that make up tory tariffs of his own, the big story would have been the the country, decided to make the state elections a referen- climate split. Where 15 years ago the mere possibility of dum on renewable energy. With some of the world’s most isolation pushed Bush to compromise, Trump embraced expensive electricity and a serious blackout in 2016, South the isolation and inserted an America-only paragraph Australia voters kicked out Labor and voted in a govern- into the summit communiqué outlining a position funda- ment vowing to repeal the state’s renewable-energy target. mentally contradicting the rest of the group’s. Days before Justin Trudeau took the center of the “The United States believes sustainable economic global stage as host of the G7 summit, his Liberal party was trounced in provincial elections in Ontario. The province’s Rupert Darwall is the author of Green Tyranny: Exposing the party had won four consecutive terms in office and had Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex. pressed virtually every pro-renewable, anti-hydrocarbon

34 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Donald Trump with G7 leaders in Charlevoix, Canada, June 9

policy imaginable. In the June 7 elections, they took just put no more than the cost of an ice cream on monthly seven seats in the 124-seat legislature. “I made a promise electricity bills. Nine years later, his successor, Peter Alt to the people that we would take immediate action to scrap maier, admitted that the costs could amount to $1.34 tril- the cap-and-trade carbon tax and bring their gas prices lion by the end of the 2030s. At a meeting in June of E.U. down,” newly elected premier Doug Ford announced. energy ministers, Germany ran up the white flag. Altmaier Nowhere has confrontation with the physical and eco- shocked fellow E.U. energy ministers by rejecting higher nomic realities of renewable energy been more painful renewable-energy targets. “We’re not going to manage than Germany, the birthplace of renewable-energy ideol- that,” he told them. “Nowhere in Europe is going to man- ogy. As party leaders negotiated a new coalition agreement age that. Even if we did manage to get enough electric cars, after the September 2017 elections, they acknowledged we wouldn’t have enough renewable energy to keep them for the first time that Germany was going to miss the sac- on the road.” rosanct 2020 target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels. This had been set in 2007, o country has a greater abundance of hydrocar- and the first 20 percent had been easy. Thanks to German bon energy than the United States. The corol- reunification, the former East Germany had seen its indus- N lary is that no country was as big a loser from tries collapse, and there were plenty of inefficient power participating in the Paris Agreement and its intention to stations to close. It had always been clear, Angela Merkel progressively decarbonize the world’s hydrocarbon super- declared three weeks after the September federal elections, power. On July 10, the Energy Information Administra- that it was not going to be easy to cut the other 20 percent tion forecast that next year, the United States will produce “at a time of relatively strong economic growth.” Note: 12 million barrels of oil a day and overtake Saudi Arabia Stronger growth equals higher emissions. to be the world’s number-one producer. When it comes to Launching the German renewables transition in 2004, the politics of energy, the interests of the United States and

JESCO DENZEL / BUNDESREGIERUNG GETTY energy minister Jürgen Trittin promised that it would European green ideology are irreconcilable.

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 35 Donald Trump understands this. “Our country is administration. During the Brezhnev years, Poland— blessed with extraordinary energy abundance, which we alone of the Eastern Bloc nations—refused to sign up to didn’t know of even 5 years ago and certainly 10 years ago,” sulphur-emission cuts designed to isolate the U.K. and the the president said in 2017. Those remarks were not only a United States at the height of the acid rain scare. As host paean to America’s energy resources, they were a full-dress of the next round of U.N. climate talks, at Katowice in rejection of the policies of his predecessor and of the Demo- December, Poland is more than usually important as a U.S. crats’ goal of Europeanizing American energy policy. energy ally. Australia, the world’s largest coal exporter, is another obvious U.S. partner. We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more Where the United States can make the biggest differ- than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal. We are a top ence, though, is with the developing nations who depend producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas. We have so much more than we ever thought on overseas finance to build out their electrical grids and possible. We are really in the driving seat. And you know need the cheap, reliable energy only coal can supply. Last what? We don’t want to let other countries take away our September, Southeast Asian energy ministers, noting the sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That’s rising use of coal in the region, called for greater promo- not going to happen. With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy tion of clean coal. In June, India struck a strategic energy independence that we’ve been looking for for so long, but partnership with the United States, described by Perry American energy dominance. And we’re going to be an as an “amazing opportunity for U.S. energy” to sell clean exporter—exporter. We will be dominant. We will export coal, nuclear technology, oil, and gas. American energy all over the world, all around the globe. These energy exports will create countless jobs for our peo- In October 2016, Nigeria’s finance minister, Kemi ple, and provide true energy security to our friends, part- Adeosun, railed against the West’s energy imperialism ners, and allies all across the globe. and the hypocrisy of using coal to industrialize and then denying it to Africans. “By telling us not to use coal they For the first time since 1992, when George H.W. Bush are pushing us into the destructive cycle of underdevelop- went to the Rio Earth Summit, an American president was ment; while you have the competitive advantages, you tie outlining a global energy strategy diametrically opposed our hands behind us,” she said. to the tenets underlying the U.N. climate process. Trump Denying the world’s poor cheap electricity is the offi- was establishing a rival pole based on energy realism and cial policy of the World Bank. In 2012, Barack Obama energy abundance. agreed to the appointment of Jim Yong Kim as president The Rio Summit was the brainchild of Canadian of the World Bank, and the next year, the bank stopped the Maurice Strong, and he understood that what most moti- financing of coal-fired generation. Although the Trump vates political leaders, bureaucrats, and corporate CEOs administration publicly opposes the coal ban and the is the fear of being left out. “The process is the policy,” United States has the largest number of votes at the World Strong said, and the annual climate conferences that have Bank, the institution is doubling down on its anti-fossil- been held since the U.N. Framework Convention on Cli- fuel agenda. At Emmanuel Macron’s climate summit in mate Change was adopted in Rio created a sense of irre- December 2017, Kim announced the bank was extending sistible momentum. It’s that spell Trump is now breaking. the financing ban to upstream oil and gas. Here is the first Countries around the world are being damaged by the order of business for a global energy alliance—to pressure anti-hydrocarbon policies encouraged by the U.N., but the World Bank to lift its hydrocarbon financing bans leaving the Paris Agreement was a step only the United and serve the world’s poor rather than sacrifice them to a States was strong enough to take. Now it is up to the regressive climate agenda. Trump administration to help other countries act in their As it is, China is the biggest winner from the World economic interests. Bank’s energy policies. A June 2017 World Bank report Energy secretary Rick Perry has talked of U.S. will- notes China’s “global dominance” in the supply of materi- ingness to lead a global alliance of countries wanting to als needed by renewable energy technologies. In addition make fossil fuels cleaner rather than abandoning them. Of to China’s control over the supply of base and rare-earth the G7, Japan has traditionally been most leery of decar- metals, last year 7 of the top 10 global suppliers of solar bonization, and after the 2011 Fukushima accident Japan panels were headquartered in China. An eighth is in Hong decided to expand its coal-fired generating capacity by Kong and a ninth in Canada, but with Chinese links. half, building 45 new coal power stations. For as long as the World Bank’s hydrocarbon-financing Poland is another coal-based economy that has no bans remain, American taxpayers will be funding a war intention of phasing out coal. Of all energy-realist nations, on American coal and subsidizing China’s solar indus- Poland is the one that sees eye to eye with the Trump try. If this seems an unappealing prospect, the Trump

36 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 administration should move fast to assemble the necessary Dayaratna, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has also votes ahead of the World Bank meeting in October. noted that one of the impact assessment models used by the Obama administration even produces a negative esti- omestically, the climate caravan keeps rolling. mate for the social cost of carbon under “very reasonable At the beginning of June, 13 Republican sena- assumptions.” A negative carbon tax—subsidizing carbon D tors wrote to the president urging him to sub- emissions—is hardly what First Solar and the American mit the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, Wind Energy Association are funding some of Washing- described by the U.N. as “another global commitment to ton’s most expensive lobbyists for. stop climate change,” for the Senate’s advice and consent. For all the energy revolution so far, the Trump Two weeks later, the New York Times carried a report and administration’s energy agenda remains incomplete. associated op-ed by former senators Trent Lott and John The Clean Power Plan is being rolled back, but the EPA’s Breaux on a new group, Americans for Carbon Dividends, 2009 greenhouse-gas endangerment finding on which which has hired the bipartisan pair to it stood remains in place. There lobby for a carbon tax. “We must put has been talk from the adminis- a meaningful price on carbon,” they tration of creating red and blue wrote, arguing for a $40 per ton tax For the first time since opposing teams of climate scien- “high enough to encourage a turn to 1992, when George tists to give politicians and the cleaner energy sources.” H.W. Bush went to the public a more balanced view of Former Fed chair Janet Yellen, Rio Earth Summit, an our understanding of climate. On another member of the group, told American president energy policy, Rick Perry’s grid- the Times that taxing carbon emis- security study can be extended sions is “absolutely standard textbook was outlining a global to examine how wind and solar economics.” The textbook actually energy strategy subsidies distort the costs of teaches that a carbon tax would be diametrically opposed electricity. That way, Americans efficient if it replaced all the tax cred- to the tenets underlying will begin to see the true price of its, subsidies, portfolio standards, and the U.N. climate renewables and the extra they’ll regulations supporting the expan- have to pay to keep the lights on sion of uneconomic wind and solar process. Trump was thanks to the intermittency prob- energy. Their inherent defect is establishing a rival pole lem of generating energy from that the amount of energy they pro- based on energy realism the winds and the sun. duce depends on the weather, not on and energy abundance. Exiting Paris was the first demand. Because of the way the elec- step. The president has also trical grid works, they dump their ended his predecessor’s war on intermittency costs on other generators, particularly the coal. Globally, the administration’s continued advo- reliable coal and nuclear plants. It is not surprising that cacy for energy realism can win friends among the the backers of Americans for Carbon Dividends and its world’s poor and make allies of some of the world’s seven-figure annual budget include First Solar, Inc. and most dynamic economies. The geostrategic potential of the American Wind Energy Association. American energy is already being felt. American gas is Only a small portion of the putative climate benefits being shipped to Poland and American coal to Ukraine— of a carbon tax would ever flow back to the United States reducing the region’s dependence on Russian gas. As the in the form of avoided climate impacts. Insofar as cutting president pointed out at the NATO summit in early July, greenhouse gas emissions creates environmental benefits, Germany’s pipeline will see it paying “billions of dol- it’s a vast foreign aid program in which costs are incurred lars” a year to Russia, although he subsequently undercut domestically and most of the benefits go abroad. Worse the strategic logic of his argument at the disastrous press still, federal government estimates of the social costs of conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16. carbon still rely on climate models using computer- The Trump administration should now formalize its ties simulated data. These produce higher values than esti- with other energy-realistic nations and show the world mates based on actual climate data. According to a 2017 the benefits of America’s energy exceptionalism—jobs paper by the economists Kevin Dayaratna, Ross McKit- at home, booming exports, and an escape from dismal rick, and David Kreutzer, a $37 per ton carbon tax using energy policies predicated on bogus resource shortages. model-based estimates for the climate sensitivity of car- Having broken the spell, America and its friends around bon dioxide would be halved if based on empirical data. the world can reap the benefits. ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 37 Books&Arts

A vestment for the statue of Our Lady of Graces in Palagianello, Italy, created in 2015 by Riccardo Tisci from a 1950 design by the Benedictine nuns of Lecce. Wig by Shay Ashual.

The Fashion of This World

Godly garments and high couture at the Met. by Catherine Addington

he marketing for Heavenly and gold chasuble was designed by Bodies, the blockbuster show Heavenly Bodies Henri Matisse in 1950 for his Vence now at the Metropolitan Fashion and the Catholic Imagination Chapel project, but the accompanying Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters Museum of Art, would have through October 8 plaque does not focus on the famed art- Tyou believe it centers on a certain male ist. Rather, it discusses the women who opulence. The aesthetic relationship are credited with executing his design: between Catholic clerics and secular hushed surprise, then, to find that the the Dominican nuns at the Atelier fashion designers certainly dominated exhibition opens with a sly tribute to d’Arts Appliqués in Cannes. They are the splashy Met Gala that celebrated the the hidden women of both the liturgical compared with the artisans who carry exhibition’s opening in May; you may arts and the fashion world. out the sewing and needlework for the recall various A-list celebrities bedecked At the entrance to the Anna Wintour major fashion houses, known as les petites in jewels, halos, and miters. It is a Costume Center, before encountering mains (“the little hands”). By credit- the luxurious items on loan from the ing both (mainly male) designers and Catherine Addington is a doctoral student Vatican, visitors are presented with a (mainly female) technicians, the cura-

at the University of Virginia. modest liturgical vestment. This green tors question that division of labor while MUSEUM OF ART ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN

38 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Caption

suggesting that the fashion world shares structural similarities with the ecclesial hierarchy it so often parodies. Top left: ensembles based on nuns’ habits, from designers Thom Browne, Carli Pearson, For this show the costume center, Dolce & Gabbana, and Rossella Jardini. Right: On the back of this papally inspired John located in the Met’s basement, has Galliano ensemble is the inscription ‘Dieu est mon Maître’ (‘God is my Master’). been stripped bare—a cryptlike effect Left: chasuble designed by Henri Matisse. Middle: the “ecclesiastical fashion show.” complemented by recorded chant. A relatively spare, spacious display allows Laurent while the latter is based on a Dolce & Gabbana’s fall 2013 line. The museumgoers to examine the garments 1950 design by the Benedictine nuns of collection’s Eastern influences are more up close, as their craftsmanship requires. Lecce—so there is a kind of curatorial likely to remind visitors of Orthodox One of the most stunning pieces is a egalitarianism in their pairing. aesthetics than Catholic ones, but they chasuble presented by the Franciscan Unfortunately, the show does not are inspired by a period in Italian history friars to Pope Pius XI in 1926 in com- always explore its subject with subtlety that predates such distinctions. Copies of memoration of the 700th anniversary of and respect, and parts of it are little Byzantine pendants from Coco Chanel’s the death of St. Francis. It is covered in more than attempts to poke fun at reli- personal collection and a bejeweled cross scenes from the saint’s life, embroidered gious ritual. This much is clear from by Christian Lacroix further expand meticulously in gold by the Poor Clares the curators’ explicit choice to emu- the concept of the Catholic imagination of Mazamet, France. Similarly impres- late the “ecclesiastical fashion show” beyond strictly Western visual refer- sive needlework can be seen on a cope scene from Federico Fellini’s satiri- ences. Regrettably, that expansion stops given to Benedict XV in 1918 by the cal filmRoma (1972), organizing the short of exploring Catholic aesthetics Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, exhibition according to exaggerated outside of Europe and North America, who depicted an elaborate Lamb of God. Catholic stock characters. The most other than one Galliano dress inspired This is a surprising and fresh homage to emblematic of these is a lavish, jewel- by Peru’s Cuzco School. anonymous, collective women’s art. encrusted “papal” ensemble by John Another unexpected feature of the Galliano for Dior’s fall 2000 collec- he show only realizes its full poten- exhibition is the underappreciated art of tion, similar to the one he designed for T tial at the Cloisters, the Met’s annex creating clothing for statues. The main Rihanna to wear at the Met Gala this dedicated to medieval art. Any Catholic is hall includes two sumptuous ensembles year. The ensemble’s exaggerated hips bound to have a fraught relationship with made for statues of the Virgin Mary. and accessorized thurible certainly the Cloisters—it is simultaneously an One, from Paris, is a dress and mantle of achieve the “carnivalesque” aesthetic exaltation of Catholic visual culture and a gold silk brocade along with an intricate the curators say they were going for, tragic plundering of Catholic churches— tiara of gold, crystals, and pearls. The but the overall effect is gimmicky. but this exhibition works very well in other, from Palagianello, Italy, is a vest- More thought-provoking is the part that space. Here, the Catholic imagina- ment of blue silk with gold trimming. of the exhibition housed in the Met’s gal- tion is not merely a loose inspiration The former was created in the 1980s by leries of Byzantine art, which includes a for the clothes on display but ingrained the French fashion designer Yves Saint series of mosaic-inspired dresses from in the architecture and sensibility of the

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 39 Above: inside the Gothic chapel in the Cloisters, a 2006 ensemble created by John Galliano for Dior (foreground) and an evening dress designed by Olivier Theyskens in 1999. At right: a wedding dress designed by Thom Browne this year, with wig by Shay Ashual. show. The result is celebratory without liano dress imprinted with the cover devolving into caricature. of Machiavelli’s The Prince—famously The highlight is the beautiful use included on the Vatican’s index of of two Romanesque chapels to present banned books—is hidden away under- sacramental garments. In the Langon neath a 15th-century staircase. chapel, a wedding dress by Marc Bohan The curators have a brilliant partner for Dior faces a 13th-century Catalan in wigmaker and hairstylist Shay Ash- altar while Ave Maria plays softly in the ual, who created quietly avant-garde background. A wedding dress by Cris- hairpieces to complement the garments tóbal Balenciaga is positioned similarly on display. Some mannequins are in the Fuentidueña chapel, where it is styled as demure brunettes, focusing trailed by a series of garments inspired the attention on the clothes themselves, by baptismal gowns and first-commun while others are intended to stand out. ion dresses. The language used by the In Ashual’s most stunning work, red- curators to contextualize these works violet streaks matted to the face of the is remarkably free of hedging, describ- mannequin wearing a Thom Browne sades (during one of which Catholic ing the Eucharist as “a rite instituted wedding dress conjure blood and armies sacked the heart of Orthodoxy by Jesus during the Last Supper.” beauty at once. Set against The Unicorn at Constantinople). The experience could not be further in Captivity, a tapestry that has often The exhibition ends with a tri- removed from the disdain of the “eccle- been interpreted as Passion symbolism, umph. In the last room, several pieces siastical fashion show.” the hairpiece turns an otherwise enig- from Alexander McQueen’s stunning The exhibition makes the most matic ensemble into the heavenly wed- final collection—the designer died in of the setting. Liturgical vestments ding garment of a martyr. 2010—are paired with the Flemish hang alongside glass cases enclos- Although the Cloisters section of Gothic art that inspired them. One of ing chalices, reliquaries, and other the exhibition is by far the most coher- these dresses has the architecture of an liturgical items permanently housed ent and compelling, it does occasion- altarpiece, doors closed at the wearer’s in the museum in imitation of a sac- ally falter, presenting garments with breast, flanked by protective saints. risty. Monastic-inspired fashion lines an unclear connection to the Catholic The image conflates the body with the the Cuxa cloister and Pontaut Chap- imagination. Especially strange is the tabernacle in which the Eucharist is ter House, where curators trace the inclusion of items from Craig Green’s kept, an astonishing homage to the sac- aesthetic heritage of contemporary fall 2017 collection, which is unmis- rament. It is a powerful piece in which sportswear back to the minimalism takably Orthodox in its references. an atheist artist reached for the drama and functionalism of the habit. Man- Green’s take on the orarion, or Ortho- of the religious imagination to express nequins are laid next to tomb reliefs, dox deacon’s stole, is at best misplaced the heights to which his appreciation causing audible gasps among museum- and at worst offensive inside a room of for the body soared. In this quiet finish, goers. In one cheeky display, a Gal- medieval tapestries depicting the Cru- the exhibition lives up to its name. ♦

40 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 ily mean they’ll be able to protect their kids from harm. B&A A party that the Reddys host for Emily so that she can be more popular backfires, but it is an occasion for The Mom Crunch Kate to witness what’s expected of girls these days. When Kate asks her In the sequel to I Don’t Know How She Does It, husband why it is that girls are always teens and tech collide. by Naomi Schaefer Riley bringing and drinking vodka, he answers: “Right now, Kate, their sole purpose in life, their only reason for thought this parenting lark being, is to get drunk, and vodka gets was supposed to get easier.” you there the quickest, with no taste Thus gripes Kate Reddy to a How Hard Can It Be? or flavor to get in the way. Drowning friend after finding out that by Allison Pearson their sorrows and all that.” This comes St. Martin’s, 369 pp., $27.99 ‘Iher daughter’s “belfie”—that’s a selfie as a shock to Kate. She didn’t live the of your behind, for those not up on life of a nun growing up, so it’s not the terminology—has gone viral. the risky behavior and promiscuity Kate, the protagonist of British nov- that shock Kate—it’s the deep unhap- elist Allison Pearson’s new book How piness of these girls, the notion that Hard Can It Be?, keenly feels the para- 16-year-old girls get drunk to drown dox of high-tech parenthood: “I want their sorrows. to murder the little idiot and I want to In I Don’t Know How She Does It, protect her so badly.” Kate and her cohort worried about Kate was also the protagonist of things like whether their cookies for Pearson’s bestselling debut novel in the school bake sale looked homemade 2002, I Don’t Know How She Does It. or whether their children would like Like many working mothers, Kate the nanny better than them. Now she expected that the hardest part of rais- and her friends worry about whether ing kids—and trying to find time to their children will do well enough in work in an office as well—would be school to get into a good university; at when the kids were 2 or 3 years old. A one point, she stays up half the night lot of women (including yours truly) writing an English paper for Emily. have made the same mistake. As the Kate’s older friend and mentor, Sally, kids get older and more adaptable, has a 31-year-old son who “is still they are supposed to need our pres- wandering around thinking he has ence less. We can leave them with a a future as a war reporter, or maybe a babysitter or send them off to school professional cricketer,” a 29-year-old without worrying that they won’t Allison Pearson in 2011 son who is doing postgraduate work in remember us when we come home or international relations and “smoking that we will have missed some major now become a stage requiring even far too much weed,” and a daughter developmental milestone. With older more intense parental monitoring and who is on antidepressants and recently kids we needn’t be so concerned that support. Kate is trying to go back to announced on Facebook that she is they won’t understand why mommies work full-time after taking off several bisexual, “which Sally is fine about, go to offices or that each sniffle por- years to raise her children while her except there’s no sign she’s having tends a medical emergency. husband supported the family. But sex of any kind with anyone, male or But in the years since the events between her 14-year-old son’s video- female.” “Honestly, Kate,” Sally con- of the first book, Kate has come to game addiction and lack of interest fesses, “I sometimes think I’ve pro- realize that raising teenagers brings in studying—“Seriously, Mum,” he duced a trio of wimps.” with it a whole new set of demands tells her, “no one works hard at my There was a time when middle- on parents’ time. The teen years, for- age. Except the Asian kids”—and her aged women were mostly done with merly seen as a stage for kids to rebel 16-year-old daughter Emily’s anxiety- the hard work of raising children. and start to set off on their own, have inducing social-media problems, Kate Their kids were grown earlier, and feels she is needed at home more than once they were adults were expected Naomi Schaefer Riley is a visiting fellow at ever. Still, as she and her mommy to act like it. But modern norms have the American Enterprise Institute and a senior friends are starting to realize, more changed all that. As Sally explains to

fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. involvement at home doesn’t necessar- Kate, “Because we have careers, we POST / GETTY MOTT / WASHINGTON EMILY

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 41 start our families later, so we find our- B A selves going through what they used & to call The Change when we still have kids at home. And our parents are old Vladimir Voinovich, 1932-2018 and starting to get ill or need help. . . . See, if we’d had our babies when he remarkable life of Vladimir traveling narrator finds Russia under Mother Nature intended . . .” TVoino vich, the Russian writer a regime that fuses communism, The struggles Kate faces are those and dissident who died last month Orthodox Christianity, and a cult of of the “sandwich generation.” She is at 85, spanned five or six chapters in the secret police. trying to manage the care of her aging his country’s turbulent history. Born When Moscow 2042 was pub- in-laws, her own mother’s demands at the start of Stalin’s reign of terror lished in 1986, it caused a stir because on her time, home repairs, Christmas in 1932, Voinovich as a child lost his of its caustic portrayal of a thinly presents, the family budget, the vari- father to the Gulag for five years. His ous diets of her family members, her literary career began in the 1950s dur- dog, and her marriage. She frets over ing the Khrushchev “thaw,” when all this in the same stream-of-con- Soviet culture was open to at least sciousness way that was a hallmark some independent thought and he of the previous book, as problems big could publish stories with fairly harsh and small keep her up at night even as depictions of Soviet realities. By the her husband snores away. late 1960s, the liberalization had been reversed; Voinovich ’s first novel,The ince the publication of I Don’t Know Life and Extraordinary Adventures of SHow She Does It, the character Kate Private Ivan Chonkin, could be pub- Reddy has generally been taken to lished only abroad. Eventually his be a kind of feminist icon, a woman writings and his outspoken dissent who could achieve victory in a male- got him expelled from the Writers’ dominated workplace while also Union—and, in 1980, from the Soviet being a loving mother. (This impres- Union altogether. He and his family sion was reinforced when Sarah Jessica settled in West Germany. Parker—former star of the you-can- The collapse of communism a disguised Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; have-it-all show Sex and the City—was decade later brought Voinovich back more recently, it has been read as cast as Kate for the 2011 movie ver- with a hero’s welcome to a new Rus- a startling prophecy of 21st-cen- sion, which flopped at the box office.) sia. Then, another decade, another tury Russia—both because of the But Kate has some pretty conservative authoritarian rollback: Soon he was story’s merged church and state views about men and women. These a dissident again in Vladimir Putin’s and because its supreme leader is an are most obvious as they relate to her Russia. He could still publish and go ex-KGB agent once stationed (like own marriage. on the radio but in his final years he Putin) in Germany. The decline of Kate’s relationship was, as he put it with typical dry wit, a In a talk in New Jersey in 2015, with her husband Richard is both a “persona half grata.” Voinovich quipped, “People keep say- cause and an effect of Kate’s insane Voinovich, whom I interviewed for ing that all the bad things I write come life. After a number of years of sup- these pages (see “Prophet of Ukraine,” true, so I’m going to write something porting his family through his work April 28, 2014), found considerable good.” But his last novel, published as an architect, Richard has a midlife success in the West. Chonkin, the the following year, The Crimson Peli- crisis. But these days it’s not enough alternately grim, hilarious, and mov- can, was a scathing surrealist satire of for a fiftysomething man to buy ing tale of a goodhearted, bumbling Putin’s Russia in which reality blends an impractical car; instead Richard Soviet recruit during World War II, with delirious dreams. “morphed into one of those MAM- was hailed as a “masterpiece” by the The Crimson Pelican showed ILs you read about in the lifestyle New York Times Book Review, while Voinovich still in top intellectual section of the paper, a Middle-Aged the Times Literary Supplement pre- and artistic form in his ninth decade. Man in Lycra, who did a minimum of dicted it would “become one of the Like many of his admirers, I hoped ten hours in the saddle every week.” most popular Russian classics.” He he would outlive yet another authori- Richard’s obsessive bicycle habit is wrote two Chonkin sequels and sev- tarian regime in his country. That was only part of the problem. He has also eral other acclaimed novels—the best not to be. Still, he may yet, through quit his job to become a therapist and known of which is Moscow 2042, a his fiction, have the last word. that has meant he has gone into ther- futuristic satire in which the time- —Cathy Young apy, costing the family a significant

amount of money. ULF ANDERSEN / GETTY

42 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 The problems with the Reddy marriage start to mount, but they ultimately arise from the fact that gender is not just a social construct but is rooted in biological reality. The role reversal as Kate goes back to work at an investment bank and her husband gets in touch with his feelings is not going to end well. When Kate learns that Rich- ard has been using her razor to shave his legs so he can achieve faster times in his bike races—“my husband’s legs look like chicken drumsticks—deathly, almost bluish, pale skin with dark dots where the hairs used to be”—there’s no turning back. Kate’s surprising conservatism isn’t confined to her own marriage. At one point, she delivers an extended lecture to her office assistant Alice about her B&A noncommittal boyfriend. Alice ought to stick up for her (eventual) desire to have children: “I tell my young colleague that I’ve seen the pattern too Chance of a Lifetime often for comfort. Girl goes out with same guy till their late twenties, hangs Taking control by giving it up. in there waiting for him to take it to the next stage. The guy doesn’t bother by B. D. McClay because he’s getting regular sex and free food.” Eventually, the unmarried couple breaks up and the guy finds heila Heti’s novels turn on matters and what doesn’t, what’s a someone else. “The girl now needs to questions. In her first,Ticknor , signal and what’s just noise. “I often find a new guy to have a baby with”— the narrator sets out to attend a beheld the world at a great distance, or but her biological clock is ticking. friend’s party and agonizes over I didn’t behold it at all,” the unnamed Better to force the matter with the Sthe demise of the friendship and the narrator of Motherhood, Heti’s decep- noncommittal boyfriend than to keep failure of his own career; tively pleasant new novel, the question is What Did says in the opening lines. waiting indefinitely. Motherhood American readers are unlikely to I Do to Deserve This? by Sheila Heti “To transform the grey- know that Pearson is a relatively con- In her second, the ques- Henry Holt, 284 pp., $27 ish and muddy landscape servative opinion writer for the Daily tion is right in the book’s of my mind into a solid Mail—the author of such columns as title: How Should a Person and concrete thing, utterly “It’s Liberal Mothers Who Are the Be? The people asking questions in apart from me, indeed not me at all, was Real Dopes” and “Morality: The Real Heti’s fiction know that they are some- my only hope.” These are high stakes Victim of Our Text Message Age.” how stupid. “I was a joke, and my life for a story in which not much happens; Her journalism has clearly helped was a joke,” the narrator of one of her as rapidly becomes clear, the book itself her keep tabs on some of the most short stories says, posthumously. Heti’s is the “solid and concrete thing” on destructive trends of our society. With characters can’t see the obvious truths which these hopes are pinned. How Hard Can It Be?, she has found everybody else seems to know, they The first series of questions in Moth- a way to explore pressing questions— can’t behave the way everybody else erhood comes in an imitation of the I the delaying of marriage and child- seems to know how to behave, and they Ching. The woman flips three coins: bearing, the dangers of social media, can’t seem to learn. heads yes, tails no, the majority car- the growing anxiety of teenagers and What kind of story can be told by a ries the day. She asks the coins yes or their trouble gaining independence as person stupid in this way? One with- no questions, some quite loaded, about young adults, the crushing pressures out clear direction, unclear about what her present, her past, her relationship on people caring for both their kids with her lover, and the task that lies and their parents—without sacrificing B. D. McClay is a senior editor before her. These questions form the

BIGSTOCK story for sermon. ♦ at the Hedgehog Review. book’s story, such as it is: a woman

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 43 approaching the onset of middle age she collaborates to varying degrees with how to correct both ills; to heal her trying to figure out what the rest of her these authorities. When the coin-flips mother’s tears and her own. life should look like. There’s still time tell her to find a knife and place it in Another complication comes from to change course if she wants to, but, front of a mirror, she does so. When the just about the one real authority in her she feels, not much time. psychic has her undergo a ritual to expel life: Miles, the narrator’s overbearing Despite the title of the book, the suspected cancer, she plays along. lover, who responds to the statement “It woman’s agitation isn’t exactly about But the question-asking is also a way might be nice to have a child” with “I’m whether she should have a child. Moth- of trying to create some sort of path for sure it’s also nice to get a lobotomy.” He erhood doesn’t figure into her initial her life to travel. The narrator faces the is heavy with disapproval but good at rounds of coin tosses—the first ques- problem of how to live when you have strategically withholding his input. He tion, in fact, is simply “Is this book a divested yourself of the normal scripts is happy to tell her what to write (a book good idea?” (answer: yes). After some people use to structure their lives. The on Simone Weil) or that her friends are more questions, she asks the coins about early parts of life are climbing uphill; bad for her. It is clear he does not want something called “the soul of time”: at some point you realize that your life a child (he has one already from a previ- is now what it’s going to be. What hap- ous relationship) but he leaves it up to This will be my stated purpose, my pens then? her whether she will have one. His only design or agenda, in writing this—to At one point, exasperated by the request is that she be certain, which, understand what it means, the soul of time, or to explain it to myself. Is that answers the coins are giving, she says: since he is involved with a woman who is never certain about anything, a good premise for this book? You don’t mean anything to me. You no don’t know the future, and you don’t amounts to forbidding it without hav- Is it too narrow? know my life, or what city I should ing to say so. Life isn’t a problem for yes be in, or what I should be doing, or Miles—perhaps because he’ll always Can the soul of time be involved? if I should have a child with Miles no have the option of having another child, or not. You are complete random- perhaps because he’s more secure, per- Am I allowed to betray you? ness, without meaning, and you are yes not showing me the way. That can haps because he has a woman to feel all only be determined by mining my the problems for him. Letting Motherhood be guided by a own heart, and looking at the world Does she want a child? Though the set of arbitrary answers to questions around me; thinking deeper and answer is finally no, often it seems to be is an artistic sleight of hand. A similar more clearly, and not being so inse- yes. Motherhood is its own story. If you cure that I should need you to tell purpose was served by the very differ- me what’s what. And yet, you have don’t know what to do with yourself, ent conceit of How Should a Person Be? shown me some good things. why not create another person? Chil- In that “novel from life,” the narrator dren generate their own existential cri- is named Sheila, her friends are based After this episode, she gives up on ses for themselves, but for their parents, on Sheila Heti’s own friends, and the numismatomancy for a while. It’s at least for the time being, they crowd dialogue is lifted from real life—con- awkward to use an artificial authority out everything else. versations Heti recorded. The “real- when you’ve admitted to yourself its ism” of that book disguised the ways artificiality. Maybe all you want is for he soul of time, the narrator tells in which it was not very realistic at all, someone to tell you what to do, but T us, has something to do with the its ambition, and its sense of humor. It an authority you bestow is one you way we exist only as aspects of time, was a book that was happy to change can revoke just as easily. Eventually, not as individuals. The idea that we are everything about itself from chapter though, she comes back, because she is time’s soul frees us to accept a kind of to chapter except its subject matter— still a blight on her life. “Weeks have passivity; have a child or don’t have a becoming a play, a monologue, a series passed, and the tears, once again, are child, either way is fine. But this ide- of emails—and concerned above all back. What,” she asks, “am I supposed alized passivity—the desire not to with greatness, understood as something to do with my unhappiness?” be anything at all—clashes with the constructed out of the material of our One answer: Have a child, which will images of struggle and sadness that lives rather than invented. truly help you to create something out mark the book. The narrator finds her- In Motherhood, the narrator’s ques- of yourself, really detach you from yourself obsessed with the image of Jacob tion-asking is in part authority-seeking; self in some way. Or so the theory goes. wrestling the angel (an image also dis- she feels, as she tells us, “helplessly But the woman at the center of Mother- cussed in How Should a Person Be?) and wrong” and “desperate to live as a per- hood was herself raised by a mother who feels that if she can understand what’s son beyond criticism”: “I am a blight was full of tears, and she knows that tormenting her, she can demand its on my own life. How can I stop being whatever will happen, it won’t be quite blessing: By wrestling with her night- a blight on my life?” So she flips coins; that simple. If she has been a blight on mares, she might “overcome my lack she consults psychics and friends with her own life, she can’t escape the feeling of trust and faith” and start “learning and without children; she considers that she is also a blight on her mother’s. humility and asking to be blessed, just her dreams and has a tarot reading. And The book she’s writing is meant some- as my thoughts are humbled by the

44 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 random throw of the coins, and my understanding is dependent on their verdict.” She sees herself on a thresh- B&A old, waiting to be transformed. But this isn’t what happens. There is no breakthrough, no great moment Sunlit Second Acts of either accepting or rejecting motherhood. What happens is that the narrator Three women remaking their lives in Tuscany. goes on antidepressants and all of this by Amy Henderson ceases to matter; the sadness goes away, as do the struggles. She still flips coins, still looks into her dreams. But the ten- rances Mayes’s new novel is Julia is escaping a cheating husband. sion is gone. “What kind of story is it,” about three women “of a cer- Her career was as an editor of beauti- she wonders, “when a person goes down, tain age” who first meet when ful books about food and culture, and down, down and down—but instead of their well-intentioned fami- in Tuscany she revels in the arrays of breaking through and seeing the truth Flies try to usher them into a retirement perfect prosciuttos, olives, cheeses, and and ascending, they go down, then they home. None is ready to be wines. She learns how take drugs, and then they go up? I don’t stashed away and they fig- Women in Sunlight to cook Tuscan foods, know what kind of story it is.” She writes ure out an escape: They by Frances Mayes and voyeuristic readers up the story, sends it to her mother, and will run off together and Crown, 432 pp., $27 are treated to descrip- realizes her mother has gone through rent a villa in Tuscany. tions of semolina gnocchi much the same process herself. Mayes’s love affair with with parmesan and duck In a novel more question-driven than Tuscany is well estab- breasts with balsamic any of her others, Heti’s final question lished, beginning with her reduction and orange seems to be What If We Just Stopped bestselling 1996 memoir peel. Julia’s epiphany Asking Questions? If you’re walking Under the Tuscan Sun— comes when she decides into a wall and someone opens a door, adapted as a 2003 movie to write a book on cook- shouldn’t you just walk through? In life, starring Diane Lane— ing in Tuscany; she’s doors do open and close, but there’s no and continuing in such calling it Learning Italian. story but the ones we tell. What if the books as Bella Tuscany and (Mayes herself came out way to come out of existential troubles Every Day in Tuscany. Mayes can make with The Tuscan Sun Cookbook in 2012, really can be as simple as not picking the landscape of Tuscany glow, and she cowritten with her husband.) at wounds and expecting them to heal? does so in Women in Sunlight, offering Camille is the most interesting of You could accept that you are stupid the stories of three American women on the trio. A recent widow, she decides to and also that nothing requires you to a quest to create lives beyond 24/7 atten- reclaim an artistic calling she sacrificed be sad. In a novel obsessed with find- tion to husbands and children. for marriage and children. In a book of ing precisely the right question to ask Mayes oddly casts as the narrator a sunlight, it is only in the dark of night and have answered, the ultimate answer younger American named Kit Raines, that Camille reconnects with her artis- comes in relinquishing control and giv- a writer who lives across the street from tic talent, in an exhilarating burst of ing up on narrative payoff. the villa where the three women will creative activity that starts with a paint- Motherhood is many things—least live for a year. Raines’s writing is not ing of a door. of them, a metaphor. It requires submit- going well and she finds sunlight only ting to an animal instinct in us without when she becomes a wife and has a baby. On impulse, she glues a page on top really wondering if the instinct is for Her narratorly voice is distracting, and of another, then another, fifteen, a stack. Now the door is thick. An the best or not, if the child will thank readers may be inclined to speed past object, not a painting. Light, though. us or not, if this will wreck our lives or her presence to the real substance of the Tears spill as she works. This is not. It accepts the unanswerability of story—the three women enthusiasti- beyond where she thought she could these questions and trades them in for cally bent on reinventing themselves. go. She loves the look. She has made a strange artifact. A paper door, a something real and flesh-and-blood. At One of the three women, Susan, was mysterious new entity, not sculpture, the last, however, the narrator’s moth- a successful realtor. Now widowed, she not book, not painting. She recog- erhood is her decision to write a book. immerses herself in the wonders of Tus- nizes that she has made something Life might not have a narrative pay- can gardens, and designs the grounds entirely her. Flesh of my flesh.New. off, but books generally do, even if you of their villa. Landscaping becomes her have to squint to find it. Here the payoff new vocation. What a pleasure to meet these three might come in the following observa- women—and to enjoy again Mayes’s tion: Some kinds of control are easier to Amy Henderson is historian emerita ability to conjure the sumptuous sun- relinquish than others. ♦ of the National Portrait Gallery. light of Tuscany. ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 45 ciated. Hannity is an avid McNaugh- B A ton admirer; not only has he had the & painter on his show but he has pur- chased a number of McNaughton’s original works. Angry Kitsch The painter uses YouTube and Twit- ter to promote his art with a showman- The sudden fame of Jon McNaughton, ship reminiscent of the Hudson River painter of populist rage. by Hannah Yoest School’s excessively dramatic unveil- ings of paintings of the great American landscapes. McNaughton often releases resident Donald Trump grips videos to explain his art, accompanied the knot of Robert Muel- by triumphal cinematic music. In ler’s necktie with a clenched the video for Crossing the Swamp, his left fist while his right hand voiceover rips into establishment Dem- Pshoves a magnifying glass into the spe- ocrats, Never Trump Republicans, the cial counsel’s face. President Barack deep state, and the “fake news media.” Obama fiddles while Washington The string of right-wing talk-radio burns. Jesus walks away from the lec- buzzwords not only conveys McNaugh- tern after addressing a joint session of ton’s conviction that these nefarious Congress; the assembled senators and forces are doing all they can to harm representatives jeer at him. America but signals to potential cus- These are just a few of the fantas- Jon McNaughton at work in his studio tomers that his art is on the right side tical scenes depicted in the works of of history. artist Jon McNaughton. The 50-year- sation is his clear investment of time. old Utah-based painter’s latest work, The painstaking nature of McNaugh- ot all of McNaughton’s paint- Crossing the Swamp, re-creates Emanuel ton’s work sets him apart from the Nings are political; he sells prints Leutze’s famous Washington Crossing the crowd of amateurs and the Russian of warm, kitschy scenes in the style of Delaware with figures from today’s poli- meme-propagating social-media hacks; Thomas Kinkade, earnest depictions tics: The president and various advisers here is a man not churning out hastily of biblical vignettes, and pictures of and cabinet members, mostly wear- created GIFs but taking time and care Mormon temples. (McNaughton is ing camouflage, row through waters to express his convictions. Moreover, himself a Mormon.) But it’s his politi- McNaughton describes as “laced with the paintings may be the butt of jokes cal and patriotism-themed paintings dangerous vermin, perfectly willing to but they are not themselves intended as that have brought him the most notori- destroy American prosperity for their jokes. There is no irony here; to their ety—and presumably income. They are personal ideologies and financial gain.” maker they are authentic works of art occasionally likened, by both admirers President Trump, in the George Wash- capturing the danger and despair of and critics, to the paintings of Nor- ington position, carries a lantern; Nikki our political moment. His authentic man Rockwell, but the comparison Haley is at the bow, clearing the way; yearning invites the cynical to lambaste demeans and mischaracterizes Rock- John Bolton crouches with a shotgun. the paintings. well, whose paintings capture a supple After McNaughton made prints Although McNaughton and his human expressiveness entirely absent of his swamp scene available for work have reached new and wider from the stiff, flat, uninteresting faces purchase on his website, his whole audiences in recent days, he was not a McNaughton paints. Moreover, Rock- oeuvre went viral: His apocalyptic wholly unknown quantity. His grimly well’s work—from his sentimental Americana was widely shared on anti-Obama paintings—like one from illustrations to his political paintings— social media and discussed in major 2012 depicting the then-president, reveals a deep affection for America, publications and TV. At a time when with a demonic visage, holding a burn- while McNaughton’s reliance on heavy- memes are a mainstay of so much of ing Constitution—brought him some handed symbolism reveals an grim our political discourse—when photo- praise from the right. McNaughton determination to behold his country shopped templates and poorly drawn developed enough of an audience, in not as it is but as it is characterized in images, eminently adaptable and fact, to catch the eye of Sean Hannity alarmist right-wing broadcasting. easy to grasp, are shared by people of in 2012. Most people know Hannity as From a sales perspective, it’s a all generations—part of the reason a political commentator, provocateur, shame McNaughton didn’t wait until McNaughton’s work has become a sen- and unapologetic supporter of Don- Christmas to start promoting Crossing ald Trump, but the Fox News host’s the Swamp, although he has said he has Hannah Yoest is social media editor true calling as an art connoisseur and ideas for other art to sell for the holi-

at The Weekly Standard. critic has gone woefully underappre- day season. The timing is peculiar in VIA YOUTUBE

46 / The Weekly Standard August 20 / August 27, 2018 Jon McNaughton’s Crossing the Swamp depicts the president, his wife and daughter, the vice president, various cabinet officials and advisers, and several crocodiles.

another way: Given the historical sig- he just another savvy con artist out to nificance of the original painting cele- McNaughton’s reliance make a buck? brating George Washington’s greatest on heavy-handed This is not a convincing hypothesis; military victory, what great victory is it is difficult to imagine that the painter McNaughton’s painting commemo- symbolism reveals a of Crossing the Swamp and proprietor of rating? It would seem to make more grim determination McNaughton’s Twitter account pos- sense after some grand political vic- sesses any ironic detachment whatsoever tory, but given the investigations now to behold his country from his work. He is no longer as ambiv- looking into President Trump’s cam- not as it is but as it is alent—or coy—about his regard for the paign and the worrisome midterm president as he was with the Washington outlook for his party, McNaughton’s characterized in alarmist Post in May. “I paint what I feel needs painting seems somewhat desperate in to be said about the current state of our its symbolic register. right-wing broadcasting. country,” he says in his promotional Crossing the Swamp is hagiographical video for Crossing the Swamp. “My hope in its depiction of Trump, a shift from pure id art. Which means, in the sense is that Trump will be remembered as the McNaughton’s blunter caricature-like that art can reveal truths about the president who restored American great- portrayal in Expose the Truth, the paint- undercarriage of the psyche, McNaugh- ness. I want to be on that boat crossing ing in which the president is menacing ton is one of the most significant paint- the swamp.” For all the own-the-libs Robert Mueller in the chamber of the ers of the current era.” postmodern irony of young conserva- House of Representatives. Back in May, McNaughton maintained in the tives today, McNaughton at least is when McNaughton released Expose Post interview that his paintings are sincere and can claim to capture the the Truth, the Washington Post’s Monica about the people who elected President zeitgeist of populist rage. Hesse spent some time with him in Trump—sometimes symbolized in his Derided by critics for his work’s Utah. Despite the painter’s heavy use works as a forlorn “forgotten man”— propagandistic quality, McNaughton of #MAGA rhetoric on YouTube, Twit- and not a declaration of fealty to Trump is unfazed. “I’ve become kind of the ter, and elsewhere, he demurred when himself or his party. Hesse was left to whipping boy of the art world,” he said Hesse tried to pin down his motiva- ponder whether the paintings are just during a local news segment. Then he tions and political leanings. Still, Hesse a way to capitalize on the Trump phe- smiled and shook his head: “But I don’t

COURTESY OF JON MCNAUGHTON nails why McNaughton matters: “It’s nomenon. In our summer of grift, is care.” Do you? ♦

August 20 / August 27, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 47 PARODY

August 20 / August 27, 2018