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May 4, 2015 $4.99

LOYOLA on DAVID FRENCH: WISCONSIN’S SHAME Iran PONNURU on KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: HILLARY’S IMAGE CAMPAIGN RFRAs

THE SHERIFF AS REBEL David Clarke does it his way CHARLES C. W. COOKE

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TOC--FINAL:QXP-1127940144.qxp 4/15/2015 2:10 PM Page 1 Contents

MAY 4, 2015 | VOLUME LXVII, NO. 8 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 26 The Rebel Sheriff Kevin D. Williamson on It’s not just the cowboy hat and the Hillary Rodham Clinton p. 16 leather waistcoat that set him apart. On the questions of gun control, race, the nature of BOOKS, ARTS policing, the record of his & MANNERS city’s government, and even 41 BOLD FUSION his own Democratic party, John Hood reviews David A. Clarke Jr. is dramati- The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and cally out of step with what the Fight for the Right’s Future, is expected. Charles C. W. Cooke by Charles C. W. Cooke.

GENRES WITHOUT BORDERS COVER: THOMAS REIS 43 Otto Penzler discusses the decline of literary snobbery. ARTICLES 45 IN THE CRUCIBLE HILLARY, HERSELF 16 by Kevin D. Williamson Michael F. Bishop reviews Sometimes, appearances are everything. Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First THE RFRA FUROR by Ramesh Ponnuru 18 Leader, by Robert Middlekauff. Public commitment to religious freedom is not as strong as it should be. 50 WHERE THE BUCK STOPPED OBAMA’S IRAN CAPITULATION by Mario Loyola 21 Craig Shirley reviews Ronald Never mind victory; the administration isn’t even seeking containment. Reagan: Decisions of Greatness, 24 THE EVEN-STEVEN TEMPTATION by Jay Nordlinger by Martin and Annelise Anderson. adventures in moral equivalence. 51 WAY TO LIVE Kathryn Jean Lopez reviews And the Good News Is . . . : FEATURES Lessons and Advice from the Bright Side, by Dana Perino. 26 THE REBEL SHERIFF by Charles C. W. Cooke How David a. Clarke Jr. became a political celebrity. 29 JOHN DOE’S TYRANNY by David French SECTIONS wisconsin conservatives have been subjected to secretive, baseless investigations. 2 Letters to the Editor 34 FEAR NOT THE ROBOT by Danny Crichton 4 The Week automation will continue to raise our quality of life. 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long 36 DRYDOCK TIME by Jerry Hendrix 45 Poetry ...... Jennifer Reeser aircraft carriers belong to the fleet of yesteryear. 52 Happy Warrior ...... Daniel Foster

NatioNal Review (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N atioNal Review, inc., at 215 lexington avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2015. address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., N atioNal Review, 215 lexington avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NatioNalReview, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00a.M . to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NatioNalReview, 215 lexington avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. PoStMaSteR: Send address changes to N atioNal Review, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.a. RateS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (all payments in U.S. currency.) the editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--FINAL:QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/15/2015 1:12 PM Page 2 Letters

MAY 4 ISSUE; PRINTED APRIL 16

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Learning from Dorothy Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Jay Nordlinger’s piece on Dorothy L. Sayers (“Sing It, Dorothy”) in the April 6 Literary Editor Michael Potemra issue of NAtIoNAL RevIew spoke to my heart. More than a decade ago I read her Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson 1947 essay “the Lost tools of Learning,” and was inspired and emboldened to Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson home-educate my children using the classical method that she advocated. they are National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva now in a public high school pursuing the modern-day quadrivium, but they are Deputy Managing Editors benefitting from the solid foundation they received. the classical paradigm that we Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer followed has taught them to be independent and thoughtful learners who easily see Assistant to the Editor Carol Anne Kemp Research Associate Alessandra Haynes connections as well as fallacies. Dorothy L. Sayers is one of my heroines and I Contributing Editors thank NAtIoNAL RevIew and Jay Nordlinger for aiming the spotlight on her. Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Susan Gibbs de San Martin Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / An drew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen Ossining, New York

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Opinion Editor Patrick Brennan National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Taxation without Ratiocination Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Political Reporter Joel Gehrke Reporters In “the taxman endureth” (April 20), Patrick Brennan criticized Senator ted Andrew Johnson / Katherine Timpf Associate Editors Cruz for promising to abolish the IRS. Mr. Brennan’s criticism is correct as long Nick Tell / Molly Powell / Nat Brown as we have any form of income tax, flat or not. Editorial Associates Brendan Bordelon / Christine Sisto Fortunately, Senator Cruz is a co-sponsor of the Fair tax (H.R. 25, S. 155), Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs which actually abolishes federal income, payroll, business, gift, and estate Web Producer Scott McKim taxes and the IRS. the states will collect a national retail sales tax and the EDITORS- AT- LARGE Social Security Administration will issue a monthly rebate to all legal resi- Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE dents ($226 per adult, $79 per child, indexed to inflation) in order to un-tax BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM spending up to the federal poverty level. the rebate also makes this consump- Ryan Lovelace / Ian Tuttle Contributors tion tax “progressive.” Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman the Fair tax will expire in seven years if the 16th Amendment is not repealed. Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman this is to avoid having a national sales tax in addition to the taxes it replaces. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Mr. Cruz, et al., tear down this tax code. Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Jim Stehr Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Atlantic Beach, Fla. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu PAtRICk BReNNAN ReSPoNDS: As I noted in my piece, Cruz has indeed at times Circulation Manager Jason Ng supported a state-administered sales tax, known as the Fair tax, that would WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 replace the federal income tax. Such a system would allow massively reducing SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 the involvement of the federal government in tax collection, in a way that a flat ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd income tax would not. But Senator Cruz’s campaign says he isn’t running on Advertising Director Jim Fowler the idea right now. Moving toward a consumption tax is appealing, but as I Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Emily Gray wrote, the Fair tax has huge problems of its own. For one, systems work best Director of Philanthropy and Campaigns Scott Lange when incentives are aligned, as they rarely are in government. the Fair tax, in Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith order to get rid of the federal tax-collection bureaucracy, ignores this, and relies Director of Revenue Erik Netcher on states’ doing a decent job of collecting tax revenue for the federal govern- Vice President, Communications Amy K. M itchell

PUBLISHER ment, under a system that impinges on what’s traditionally a source of state Jack Fowler revenue (sales taxes). this is a big enough problem to make this elegant- CHAIRMAN sounding Fair tax idea a bad one, in the view of many tax experts. John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. Letters may be submitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n In the tense negotiations over a nuclear deal with Iran, Obama swore he would make no concessions to America’s most dan- gerous enemy. Unfortunately for him, Congress held firm.

n Farmer’s son, hick politician, railroad lawyer; warlord, phil o - so pher, saint. One hundred fifty years after his assassination, do we think Abraham Lincoln our greatest president? His only com- petitor for that honor, George Washington, had the advantage of not being murdered halfway through his lifework. We know, from Lincoln’s speeches in 1865, the outlines of his post–Civil War policy: malice toward none, charity for all, citizenship for freedmen. An impossible balancing act? Lincoln was both a de- ter mined and a wily politician. His successor, Andrew Johnson, was a man of shifting purpose (from hanging ex-rebels to flatter- ing them) and ham hands. After four years of chaos, America got eight years of Ulysses Grant, who did his best—then 80 years of inequity. Still, the Union was saved from a losers’ veto, and 4 mil- lion men, women, and children were freed. In his Peoria speech of October 1854, Lincoln said, “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. . . . Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit if not the blood of Revolution.” It was washed of the stains of slavery, then of rebellion. So long as democracy can find men tried and failed to achieve. That policy differs from Rubio’s other such as Lincoln in its hours of need, it will endure. ideas, as well, in not promoting upward mobility. Senator Rubio should keep that goal in mind as he tries to arrange some upward n Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Chechen terrorist who, with his brother mobility of his own. Tamerlan, attacked the Boston Marathon in 2013, was convicted in federal court of his crimes. Let us review them. The radicalized n Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) was testy, for both good and ill, in brothers planted homemade bombs at the marathon’s finish line the days following his presidential-campaign announcement. He that killed Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi (a grad student), and rebuked a reporter for asking him why his foreign-policy views Martin Richard (age eight); hundreds were injured. After a few have changed, calling it editorializing. If so, it was editorializing days on the lam, the brothers killed Sean Collier, an MIT campus based on fact, and a fair question. Better was his response when cop, en route to New York, where they planned to plant more interrogated about how far he would take his opposition to bombs. Tamerlan died when the police closed in (he had been ac - abortion: He challenged reporters to ask Democratic National ci den tal ly run over by his brother’s car); Dzhokhar was picked up Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz whether later. His conviction sets up a second trial, the penalty phase: life she favored letting seven-pound babies be aborted, and she re - imprisonment, or death? Clearly he deserves the latter. His mo - sponded by saying she supported a woman’s right to choose, tives were fanatical, his methods heartless, his victims random. period. So few Republicans have had the wit to change the media To feed and house such a wretch for the remainder of his natural conversation on that issue. Paul famously has a lot of ideology as life makes the law-abiding his servants; letting him see the sun well as a lot of personality, and its mixed quality was also on dis- rise leaves his victims unavenged. play. His kick-off mentioned criminal-justice reform, a worthy cause. But he also said that he wants a future in which “any law n Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) launched his presidential run that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is re - with a speech calling for leaving behind the past, for which read pealed.” He did not mean laws against murder, his campaign Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. And what better way to do that than had to clarify. No libertarian presidential candidate has ever to elect a youngster like himself? The senator has some sub- been taken as seriously as Paul. To win, though, he will have to stance, though, to match the generational theme: He really has suppress some of his libertarian reflexes. pursued innovative policies to apply market principles to health care, higher education, and many other issues. You can see these n Governor Scott Walker (R., Wis.) continued his evolution on initiatives as examples of the bold risk-taking that also led him to immigration. He has renounced his support for a comprehen- tackle immigration in 2013. But the contrast is more instructive: sive “reform” including a path to citizenship for illegal immi- On that issue Rubio was not innovative, instead sticking with the grants. Now he is saying that the “immigration system . . . has

ROMAN GENN same flawed “comprehensive reform” that other politicians have to protect American workers and make sure American wages

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THE WEEK are going up.” No immigration reform can make sure most that the coalition against religious freedom is very powerful, Americans’ wages go up, of course. But increased enforce- even in conservative states. The good news is that it appears also ment of the laws against illegal immigration, which Walker to be easily fooled. has endorsed, would boost wages at the low end of the labor market. So would reducing the number of low-skilled immi- n The inheritance tax is an outdated measure—like several of our grants we admit legally each year. On that issue, Walker re- dumbest taxes, it was introduced to pay for the Spanish–American mains silent for now. But by talking about the connection War—that is applied to only a handful of households in any given between immigration and wages at all, he is already ahead of year and produces almost no revenue, providing a fraction of most of his rivals. a percentage point of federal tax income. Republicans have narrowed the scope of the “death tax” and now propose elim- n Of all the charity foundations in all the towns in all the inating it root and branch. This initiative naturally has the world, Moroccan money—at least $1 million of it—found its Obama administration and congressional Democrats in full way into the Clintons’. After making headlines for accepting class-warfare mode. The tax inflicts much pain for little gain, foreign donations while Hillary Clinton was serving as and it is a particularly heavy burden on certain kinds of enter- America’s chief diplomat, the Clinton Foundation has accepted prises, such as farms and small businesses, that may be valuable a sizable sum from a Moroccan-government-owned company on paper because of land holdings and the like, but generate to host a high-profile conference there in May. It’s not the first income insufficient to pay the inheritance tax and thus must be link between the Clintons and the North African nation. As sold. There is a question of justice here, too: If families save, secretary of state, Hillary traveled to Morocco, then launched forgoing pleasures today in order to leave a legacy for their a “strategic dialogue”—even though the State Department cen- children tomorrow, why should the federal government get in sured Morocco in 2011 for “arbitrary arrests and corruption in the middle and demand a cut? Attach an offsetting spending all branches of government.” The very next year, Clinton cut and put the death tax in its grave. called Morocco “a leader and a model.” Perhaps she meant that she admires the corruption. n Laurence Tribe, the famous left-wing professor of con- n So outgoing senator Harry Reid stitutional law, has joined with Peabody Energy, the (D., Nev.), having lied in 2012 about largest private coal company in the U.S., to challenge new Mitt Romney’s not paying his taxes, reg u la tions that the Environmental Protection Agency was asked by Dana Bash of CNN in intends to impose on states. The Left has accused Tribe of 2015 whether he regretted his lie. selling out. He maintains that the EPA plan for reducing He said of course not: “Romney carbon dioxide emissions “violates principles of federal- didn’t win, did he?” Reid goes off ism” and amounts to an exercise of powers that Congress into the sunset, but his baseness took never delegated to it. “The brute fact is that the Obama on enough of the solidity of wit that administration failed to get climate legislation through he may linger as floating matter in Congress,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in De cem - the toilet bowl of political memory, ber. “Yet the EPA is acting as though it has the legislative along with Jim Folsom (“You stupid authority anyway to re-engineer the sonuva bitch, I don’t need you when nation’s electric generating system I’m right”), George Washington and power grid. It does not.” We Plunkitt (“honest graft”), and Jo - don’t know whether his arg ument seph Fouché (“Worse than a crime, will prevail in court. We do it was a blunder”). know that what he iden- tifies as a particular n An alliance of liberals and large corporations forced Indiana to unconstitutional retreat from its defense of religious freedom. After enacting a law abuse of exec- substantially identical to the religious-freedom laws of many utive power other states and the federal government, the state’s Republicans by the Oba - found themselves accused of rolling out an unwelcome mat to ma administra- gays. Supposedly the law would lead to widespread mistreatment tion fits a pattern. CONTRIBUTOR / of them by business owners with religious exemptions from antidiscrimination rules. Never mind that most of Indiana lacks such rules, that market forces and public sentiment seem to be n The academic Left likes to talk about the “fluidity” of hu - ULLSTEIN BILD : reducing discrimination even in their absence, and that anti - man sexuality, but that flow is apparently permitted in only TRIBE

; discrimination laws have almost always trumped religious- one direction. There are people who are sexually attracted to freedom laws in the courts. Indiana Republicans gave in to the others of the same sex but who do not wish to live as homo- pressure, amending the religious-freedom law so that it cannot sexuals, and there are organizations that seek to help them to CONTRIBUTOR / even be invoked to limit antidiscrimination laws. Arkansas live as they wish—which is under some circumstances a Republicans stumbled into the same controversy, but got out of it crime in California, New Jersey, and the District of Co lum -

BLOOMBERG by enacting legislation that instructed the state’s courts to apply bia, a situation that President Obama and aide-de-camp Val - :

REID the federal religious-freedom law to local issues. The bad news is er ie Jarrett have endorsed. There is a good deal of quackery

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THE WEEK in­“reparative­therapy,”­but­there­is­also­simple­counseling oth­er­to­do­so.­That­offense­may­be­understandable,­but­it­is and­support,­which­critics­consider—this­is­not­an­exaggera- not­a­good­enough­reason­for­a­law. tion—tantamount­to­murder,­citing­the­case­of­Joshua­Alcorn (he­wished­to­be­known­as­Leelah),­a­teenager­who­killed n Reruns­of­M*A*S*H are­going­to­be­really­confusing­in himself­when­his­parents­objected­to­his­desire­to­undergo­a the­future.­The­Army­is­on­the­hook­for­legal­damages­for­in­- sex­change­and­who­sent­him­to­a­Christian­counseling­ser- structing­a­man­not­to­use­the­ladies’­room­even­after­he­had vice.­“Leelah’s­law”­would­categorically­ban­these­services started­wearing­skirts­to­work­and­changed­his­name­to­“Ta­- for­minors.­It­is­hard­to­escape­the­suspicion­that­the­motive mara.”­Tamara­Lusardi­served­in­the­Army­for­seven­years for­the­law­is­not­just­sorrow­at­the­way­conversion­therapy and­now­works­at­Redstone­Arsenal­in­Alabama,­and­wishes sometimes­ends­in­tragedy—which­is­true­of­any­kind­of to­live­as­a­woman.­The­Army­attempted­to­be­accom­mo­dat­- therapy—but­offense­at­the­idea­that­anyone­would­want­to ing—“management­was­supportive­of­her­transition,”­as leave­homo­sex­u­al­i­ty­or­transgenderism­behind,­or­help­an­- Stars and Stripes put­it—and­provided­a­gender-neutral Age of Uncertainty II

N my last column, I showed that policy uncertainty rises and have “certain speculative characteristics.” A larger as presidential and midterm elections approach and spread indicates that market participants are charging I cited research that documented a strong negative sta- businesses more for buying their bonds instead of the “risk- tistical link between economic-policy uncertainty and eco- free” bonds of the U.S. government. nomic growth. I heard back from many NATIONAL REVIEW The chart below plots these measures against the mea- readers who wondered whether the apparent relationship sure of policy uncertainty I discussed last time. As the chart between policy uncertainty and growth might be a simple shows, stock valuations and debt spreads both respond coincidence. How can it be, a critic might say, that elections adversely to the increases in uncertainty that seem to come in this gridlocked world matter that much? The questions with the election cycle. The effects are large and so vivid motivated a deeper dive into the data, a dive that uncov- that they are almost eerie. ered some pearls that are the subject of this month’s chart. So elections are times when politicians present wildly Economists deploy theory as a defense against statisti- different views of what policy might be, and when investors cal coincidence. One should reason through a specific dramatically increase their assessments of risk. The higher causal link before looking at the data, the thinking goes, and risk premia that result then dampen economic activity. The then turn to the data and see whether the data are consis- data continue to support the view that policy risk is a very tent with the theory. In the best of all worlds, the theory big deal indeed. motivates the investigator to look at something completely —KEVIN A. HASSETT different, and then the data reveal a new pattern that con- firms the theory. Policy uncertainty should, in theory, affect the economy Policy Uncertainty and Asset Pricing by increasing the risk that people perceive they face when making economic decisions. If you were going to lend Through the Election Cycle: money to a low-risk borrower—say, Bill Gates—then you January 1985−March 2015 might charge him a low interest rate. If you were going to lend money to a tremendously sketchy fellow—say, Jonah 30% Goldberg—then you might charge a higher interest rate. If 25% policy uncertainty has a big effect on the economy, it should 20%

be visible as generally heightened risk premia. These, in 15%

turn, would harm the economy because they would raise 10% the cost of investing in anything that requires financing, be 5% it a new machine, a house, or a new car. The price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 measures the 0% −5%

price a firm can charge an investor in exchange for the Change Year-Over-Year −10% claim on the firm’s earnings that a share of its stock repre- (Rolling Three-Month Average) sents. A relatively high P/E ratio serves as an indication that −15%

the firm can raise capital at a relatively low cost: When the −20% P/E is higher, it means the market perceives the equity to be −24 −20 −16 −12 −8 −4 0 4 8 12 16 20 Months away from a Presidential-Election Month less risky. The spread between the yield on Moody’s BAA- rated debt and the ten-year Treasury yield is an alternative Economic-Policy P/E Ratio of the S&P•500 Moody’s Corporate BAA Uncertainty Index* Debt−Ten-Year Treasury measure of the risk premium. It indicates how much market Yield Spread participants demand in exchange for holding bonds that, according to Moody’s, come with “moderate credit risk” *SOURCE: "MEASURING ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY," SCOTT A. BAKER ET AL.

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THE WEEK restroom. Not good enough. Corporal Max Klinger awaits n Rahm Emanuel has his reparations. won reelection as may or of Chicago, de feating n The Democratic party wants your guns again. A piece of leg- Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, a islation introduced in the House by Representative Rosa Cook County commis- DeLauro (D., Conn.) would provide a $2,000 tax break to any sioner, in a runoff elec- American who would be happy to hand over his “assault tion on April 7. Out spent weapon” to the federal government. “There is no reason on ten to one, Gar cia, with earth,” DeLauro claims, “that anyone needs a gun designed for the support of progres- a battlefield.” And so she wants to buy yours. Putting aside the sives, particularly teach- obvious unseemliness of the state’s attempting to disarm the ers and other members of people for whom it works, there are a host of practical objections public-employee unions, to this proposal. Most prominent among them is the question of still managed to win 44 exactly what problem DeLauro is attempting to solve. A dra- percent of the vote, mak- matic increase in the number of guns in private hands has coin- ing it close, at least by cided with a decline in the number of crimes committed with the standards of elec- firearms. Moreover, the type of weapon that this bill goes after tions in which an incumbent mayor of Chicago is on the bal- is used so rarely in crimes that the federal government doesn’t lot. The runoff represented a split in the Democratic party: even keep statistics on them. As for the structure of the law: Chicagoans, overwhelmingly Democratic, chose the mon- There would be nothing whatsoever to prevent savvy gun own- eyed, business-friendly “Godfather,” ruthless but compe- ers from trading in their existing firearms for far more than they tent, over the idealistic populist focused on inequality. New are worth, and then buying a new, more expensive model in Yorkers, also overwhelmingly Democratic, decided similar- replacement. Rather than griping, advocates of the Second ly in sending and returning Rudy Giuliani and then Michael Amendment should really be saying thanks. Bloomberg to Gracie Mansion over a span of two decades. Dem o crats urging Elizabeth Warren to challenge Hillary n Two years after Shaneen Allen was pulled over in Atlantic Clinton for the presidential nomination, take note. For County and arrested for the illegal possession of a firearm, New Republi cans, too, Chicago has a message, if they’ll hear it: Jersey governor Chris Christie has gotten around to granting In electoral politics, demonstrated executive ability counts her a full pardon. Allen, who had not understood that her Penn - for a lot. syl va nia concealed-carry permit was not valid in her neighbor- ing state, was at first facing a felony conviction and up to twelve n New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.) was left with a red years in prison—a punishment that would have taken her away face in April after it was revealed that his billion-dollar “Start- from her children and barred her from working again as a nurse. Up New York” program had created a grand total of 76 jobs. The Happily, a public outcry prompted the prosecutor to relent initiative was intended to help reverse the state’s dismal eco- before the case went to trial, and Allen was ushered in stead into nomic record by attracting private companies on the promise of a diversionary program designed to help nonviolent first-time a ten-year holiday from taxation. In practice, however, it threw offenders avoid jail time. Her criminal record, however, had good money after very little indeed. For each job created, Start- remained, and could have caused problems farther down the Up New York cost taxpayers a stunning $13,157,894. This news line. Christie’s pardon brings the sorry affair to a sat is fy ing, and came as a blow to Cuomo, as an earlier report had suggested final, close. Will he now take steps to ensure that, next time, that the state was creating jobs at the much less embarrassing he’s not needed? cost of half a million dollars apiece. Given the previous behavior of stimulus apologists, the big question will now n A video taken by a passerby showed policeman Michael undoubtedly be: “Yes, but how many jobs did it save?” Slager shooting Walter Scott, a fleeing man stopped for a bro- ken taillight, eight times in the back until Scott fell, mortally n In recent years, a few jurisdictions around the United States wounded. Slager said there was a scuffle, not filmed, in which have allowed legal resident aliens to vote in local elections. he tried to Taser Scott. But shooting an unarmed and non- Now New York City’s council is seriously considering the dangerous man who is running away is against any civilized idea (the council has raised it before, but now the city has a police procedure; so Slager has been fired and charged with mayor who might be leftist enough to approve the law). As was murder. He will get his day in court. Meanwhile we will get the case a century ago, when non-citizen voting was last in weeks in the court of public opinion, where anti-cop activists vogue, advocates say that aliens pay taxes and use schools and finally appear to have what they sought in the cases of Trayvon government services, and therefore deserve a vote. But citi- Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner—a white man in zenship is more than just a set of privileges and obligations. It’s authority wantonly killing a black man. Omnipresent cell a state of mind—a knowledge of the country’s laws, values, phones and a push for police dash cams will make it easier to and customs, and an understanding that the long-term interests catch gross errors and instances of police criminality. But ubi - of citizen and nation are aligned. Requiring immigrants to quitous video narratives (often partial) will also inflame the demonstrate this knowledge and make a formal commitment to STAFF / media and the public and derange the violent, such as Ismaaiyl the United States before they can influence the making of laws Brinsley, murderer of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. and the spending of public money is not an act of repression

SCOTT OLSON Let justice be done, but may the heavens not fall. but one of simple common sense.

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n Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who is tell the story of mankind in the setting of Mesopotamia, nowa- preparing a run for the GOP presidential nomination, is blaming days Iraq—or rather, they used to. Islamic State is on the rampage environmentalists for her home state’s predicament: “Despite the in Iraq. A video shows ISIS men with bulldozers, picks, and drills fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, lib- eradicating this heritage in the same spirit that their colleagues eral environmentalists have prevented the building of a single behead captives. A row of barrel bombs blew to pieces the walls new reservoir or a single new water-conveyance system over with inscriptions at Nimrud. Jonah’s Tomb, traditionally identi- decades during a period in which California’s population has fied, and all the Christian churches of Mosul have been de - doubled.” She is of course correct, and while California probably stroyed. According to one report from Mosul, there has been a will not be a part of a winning Republican bloc in 2016, conser- bonfire of precious manuscripts, and according to another report vatives should make their case in all the liberal-dominated cities the winged half-man, half-bull statues at Nineveh have been and states, which have the most direct experience with defective smashed. Not mindless vandalism, this is ideology in action. Democratic governance. And it might be worth pointing out that “God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these California’s defective water arrangement—limit supply while idols and statues,” exults a militant in the video. People and demand is growing, and cover up the mess with price-fixing—is places with other identities and associations are seen as con- the ur-progressive model, being among other things the source of temptible, fit to be wiped out. The only history that counts is California’s electricity crisis some years back and the underlying theirs. What to them is civilization to everyone else is barbarism. economic model of medicine under Obamacare. Droughts are bad enough; liberalism is an unnatural disaster. n Is there any anti-American despot Barack Obama dislikes? The president took a break from smoothing Iran’s path to a nuclear n Kansas recently passed into law the “Unborn Child Protection bomb by sharing a stage and shaking hands with Raúl Castro, from Dismemberment Abortion Act.” “Dismemberment” is not brother of Fidel, at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City. a term of propaganda. It is the word Supreme Court justice An- “I’m not interested in having battles that frankly started before I tho ny Kennedy used in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) to de scribe was born,” Obama said. No surprise there: History, for Obama, the abortion method by which an unborn child “dies just as a hu - has always been about his biography, so it therefore began with man adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb his birth. His goal, of normalizing relations between the United from limb.” Kansas’s law makes physicians who conduct an States and Cuba, is not quite imminent, but look for it before abortion by this method subject to prosecution. Opposition to January 2017. Meanwhile the hoary Communist dictatorship will death-by-dismemberment might seem like a subject ripe for continue to beat, torture, imprison, and immiserate its people. bipartisan agreement—but that firm pillar of the Democratic establishment, Planned Parenthood, is considering challenging n Last December, a Maryland couple was investigated by Mont - the law in court. “Kansas is now not only the sole state with this gomery County officials for child neglect. The Meitivs’ crime atrocious law; it also now has more restrictions on abortion than was to let their children, ages ten and six, play without supervision any state in the U.S.,” it declared on Facebook. Good for Kansas; in a park and then walk to their home a mile away in an upscale and defenders of this procedure should perhaps think twice suburb. Child Protective Services found the Meitivs neither before talking about atrocities. guilty nor innocent of violating any laws, but lodged a charge of “un substantiated” neglect in their file. “We don’t know if we will n A nation-state only in name now, Somalia is the base of al- get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again,” Danielle Meitiv said Shabaab, a franchise of al-Qaeda. Out on that arid African coast, at the time. In April, they did. The children were picked up by there is nothing for al-Shabaab to do in the way of spreading Is- police a few blocks from their home on a Sunday evening and lam ism except set the Muslims and Christians in neighboring detained for nearly six hours. The Meitivs were required to sign Kenya against each other. In the past two years, al-Shabaab has a “safety plan” promising not to let the children out of their sight killed more than 200 Kenyans, raising sectarian tensions, and until further notice. CPS officials, for their part, have promised also put an end to tourism by murdering or holding hostage Eng - to “continue to work in the best interest of all children.” lish visitors. At five in the morning on April 2, a team of four al- Shabaab terrorists, duly wearing explosive belts, broke into the n In Worcester, Mass., a high-school English teacher said that dormitories of Garissa University, about 200 kilometers from the her school’s staff and students were colorblind. This prompted an Somali border and generally thought to be in a safe region. The all-staff e-mail from the principal, who was furious at the teacher: gunmen then held a selection of the students, releasing those who “Personally, I’m embarrassed when she says our teachers and were Muslims and shooting dead the Christians. By the time the students are colorblind. As if our students don’t know enough to federal police arrived, 15 hours later, 147 corpses lay in pools of honor the beauty of their complexions.” The principal further blood here and there on the campus—more than twice as many wrote, “Cultural Competency 101: ‘colorblindness’ suggests as al-Shabaab killed in the attack on the Westgate shopping mall racism.” It would be impossible to capture the trajectory of liber- in 2013. “The operation has ended successfully,” the Kenyan alism in one news item. It would be impossible to capture the interior minister said, trying to keep his spirits up in the mayhem problems of America in one news item. But this one comes close. of Garissa. “Four terrorists have been killed.” n The University of Michigan planned to show American Sniper n Nimrud dates from the 13th century before Jesus Christ; Dur at a social event. But some students complained that the movie Sharrukin, the Assyrian capital, is said to have been founded in was “anti-Muslim” and would make Muslim students feel “un - the year 717 before Jesus Christ; Hatra, the Seleucid city with safe.” So the university canceled the movie, substituting temples and sculpture, is 2,000 years old. These wonderful sites Paddington. The new football coach, Jim Harbaugh, sent out a

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THE WEEK tweet that went around the world: “Michigan Football will watch lism, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, accused him of chartjack- ‘American Sniper’! Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud to be an ing—“stealing people’s charts without proper attribution,” pil- American & if that offends anybody then so be it!” (Chris Kyle laging work from Silver’s site and others—and Klein was is the late Navy SEAL whose story is told in the movie.) The uni- obliged to admit that Vox had failed to live up to its own stan- versity, embarrassed, reversed course and screened the movie. dards. Such sloppiness was the order of the day—a few hours That was good. In Paddington, the little bear’s beloved uncle and later, what appears to be a combination of inept typing and an guardian is killed in an earthquake. Could the college kids have unfortunate autocorrect had Klein tweeting, “Marco Rubio handled it? tostada on taxes, Medicare, marijuana.” It may not be a verb, but some people do tostada, especially when they marijuana. We n Emmanuel College, a Catholic liberal-arts college in Boston, look forward to Klein’s reports as Governor Bobby Jindal recently joined in the denunciation of Gordon College, a nearby attempts to curry favor among primary voters—and God help nondenominational Christian school. The former will no long er him if Ben Carson gets into the race. compete in athletic events against the latter, because of objec - tions to a letter that Gordon College president D. Michael n Günter Grass was a public intellectual who influenced how his Lindsay signed on to last summer. The letter was sent to Pres- fellow Germans were to think about themselves in the aftermath i dent Obama in response to a proposed executive order ban- of Hitler, and how his fellow Europeans were to think about Ger - ning sexual-orientation discrimination by federal contractors. mans. The Tin Drum, his first novel, portrayed Nazism as a sort Lindsay and several other religious leaders requested that an of bewitchment rather than the rational choice of the millions of exemption for religious organizations be included in the order. Germans who voted for Hitler. This apologia proved popular and Gordon College affirms traditional Christian teaching on sexual won him the Nobel Prize in 1999. Continuously controversial, he ethics, and has a policy that prohibits students and employees denounced former Nazis, accused the West of warmongering, from engaging in sex outside of marriage or with members of the toyed with Communist countries, and opposed German unifica- same sex. Emmanuel athletic director Pam Roecker said that she tion. Towards the end of his life, he confessed that he had kept and other administrators “just didn’t feel this aligned with the hidden his youthful enrollment in the Waffen S.S. and wrote that mission of our college,” despite Emmanuel’s professed Cath - Israel is a danger to world peace. The dispenser of morality was olic identity. Emmanuel’s school newspaper reported that the no different from those he had been moralizing about, and decision “was an easy one and was met without resistance in the many Germans saw this as hypocrisy. Bewitchment had come athletic office.” Shameful decisions are often easy. full circle. He has died at age 87. R.I.P.

n The ignominious collapse of Rolling Stone’s shocking cover IRAN story “A Rape on Campus” has led to a renewed focus on both its Deal or No Deal author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and the magazine’s management. A report, commissioned by Rolling Stone and conducted by the E thought we had a bad deal with Iran. Now it turns out dean of the Columbia Journalism School, highlights their many we might not really have a deal at all. editorial failures. “The magazine,” the report’s co-author, Steve W In the interim agreement supposedly reached at the Coll, ruled, “set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential beginning of April, the Iranians got the negotiators from the U.S. practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the and other major powers to give in on nearly every substantive magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing.” Moreover, “the point. Iran will get to keep thousands of centrifuges, multiple editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and nuclear sites, the right to develop new, more advanced enrich- verification that greatly increased their risks of error.” Putting it ment equipment—even permission to continue nuclear research less politely, we might say that, regardless of whether Erdely and at a highly reinforced underground facility that was kept secret her team suspected that they were dealing with a fabrication, from international inspectors for years. The West’s only victory their behavior was ultimately indistinguishable from that of the was a promise of a new, tough inspections regime, even though feminist Left. In looking for a set of kulaks onto whom she could there is already a long record of Iran’s developing nuclear facili- pin society’s ills, Erdely effectively auditioned rape victims in ties in secret. In theory, the deal pushes the time it would take Iran the hope of finding one that fit snugly into her narrative. When to acquire a nuclear weapon to a year, but widely respected arms- writing her story, Erdely declined to do her due diligence lest control experts have said that, given the difficulty of performing she upset her subject, discourage others from coming forward, good inspections and of building consensus around violations, or come to be seen as doubting a purported victim. And, when she this is not enough. was finally caught, she refused to apologize to those who had But even those judgments come from an outline of concepts actually suffered—namely, the falsely accused—preferring published by the Western negotiators. Iran has been telling a very instead to note that while her story may have been false, she different story: The government says, for instance, that it plans to hoped nobody would draw any broader conclusions from that. operate—not just research—advanced centrifuges, and, most The most pronounced objection to the staging of show trials is worryingly, that it expects immediate and complete sanctions that they desensitize the public to the distinction between the relief once a final deal is reached. The U.S. has maintained that individual and the collective. Had it not been dismantled, Rolling relief will be phased in. Stone’s story would have played the same role. Such points of disagreement suggest that a final deal, with ex- plicit, public details rather than contested, private promises, may n Ezra Klein and Vox suffered two embarrassments. His rival in never be reached. (It is scheduled to be done by the end of June.) the world of condescendingly backhanded “explanatory” journa - In the meantime, damage is already being done. Russia recently

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THE WEEK announced, for instance, that it will sell an almost impreg- nable air-defense system to Iran, a sale the U.S. had long suc- cessfully blocked. The White House believes that an agreement that brings Iran into the world community will be a big step toward solving many of the region’s problems, such as the rise of ISIS. This is, of course, fantastical. The enemy of our enemy and all, but legit- imizing and strengthening a totalitarian, terrorist regime that hap- pens to appear to be loosely on the same side of one battle isn’t much of a long-term strategy. Even in Iraq, Iranian-backed Shiite militias aren’t really the answer to Sunni radicals. This Iranian regime is never going to be a true partner, and President Obama seems to think not just that it could be, but that we should give it just about every concession possible to make it happen. But there is hope that his plans can still be blocked. First, it is no sure thing that the remaining gaps between our negotiators and the Iranians can be bridged, although President Obama’s flexibility has been impressive. More important, members of All indications are that Clinton plans to repackage her hus- both parties in Congress remain skeptical of the outlined deal, band’s economic policies, peddling the notion that they turned and the recent confusion over what the deal meant has only the economy around in the 1990s and can do so again—dubious strengthened the case that the White House cannot be trusted with contentions both. The recession that Bill Clinton ran against in reaching a final deal on its own. 1992 was already over when he took office, and his most The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously extravagantly liberal initiatives were defeated early in his pres- passed a bill sponsored by Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) that idency by a Republican Congress that brought needed restraint would give Congress a period in which to approve or disap- on taxes, regulation, and spending. In any case, the economy is prove of a final deal. Congressional disapproval would prevent greatly changed from that of the 1990s, and we aren’t going to the lifting of sanctions; the bill would also require the White boost stagnating middle-class incomes by promoting labor House to certify every 90 days thence that Iran is complying unions or rationing carbon. with the deal, in order to keep sanctions lifted. In addition to running against a recycled agenda, Clinton’s This is a weak bill—the president retains plenty of flexibility, opponents should articulate an economic agenda broader and and rejecting a deal will require two thirds of both houses. A deeper than cuts to marginal tax rates and vague calls for dereg- measure along the lines of the Kirk-Menendez legislation, ulation. That agenda should include market-based health-care which has not found as many Democratic votes as Corker’s, policies to replace Obamacare; reforms to break up the higher- would help the situation, by reinstating sanctions if the final education cartel that has saddled millions of Americans with negotiations drag on. But the Corker bill may be the most fea- crushing debt; tax relief for middle-class parents; and policies sible way Congress has to place some restrictions on the presi- that would capitalize on America’s rich energy resources. dent. It should certainly not wait on this bill until after a final Clinton’s tenure as America’s chief diplomat, meanwhile, will deal is reached, as some Democrats want. help her little. Clinton led a State Department best known now for If passing the Corker bill interrupts or derails negotiations, the misbegotten “reset” with Russia, for administering special that might be the best outcome. The evidence is mounting that favors to administration donors, for ignoring requests for in - Iran is not interested in a respectable deal. But Congress must do creased security at the American consulate in Libya, and for an its best to demonstrate that, because a respectable deal does not illicit e-mail arrangement for Clinton and her closest aides. She appear to be a priority for President Obama either. was complicit in President Obama’s failed foreign policy from the beginning, and there is little to suggest that she rejects its erro- 2016 neous premises. What we can expect from a Clinton administra- tion is a continuation of Obama’s policies, with even worse ethics. Hillary’s In The current Republican field should set out a strong, responsi- HE suspense is over. Hillary Clinton is running for pres- ble alternative to the Democratic strategy of preemptive capitu- ident. But no one is inevitable. Although Republicans lation. Reasserting the vitality of NATO, arming our allies in T will spend the next several months running against one Kurdistan and Ukraine, redoubling sanctions against the Iranian another, making the case for themselves should encompass regime, reaching out to alienated allies (such as Israel)—there is making the case against Clinton and for conservative principles much the United States can do, in both the short and the long and policies that will appeal not only to Iowa, New Hampshire, term, to secure America and American interests abroad. and South Carolina Republicans next spring, but to most Hillary Clinton has been hovering about the heights of Americans come November 2016. American political power for nearly three decades, yet she has Although Hillary Clinton has mostly avoided statements of almost no substantive accomplishments to show for it, and her substance, she obviously sees America’s economic sluggishness best plans for the next eight years are likely to be the repurposed much as the current president does: as a consequence of income policies of Democratic administrations past. She’s beatable, and inequality, a stingy minimum wage, the decline of labor unions, the substantive work to prepare the ground for her defeat should

SIPA VIA APand, IMAGES in general, America’s turn to the right in the Reagan era. begin now.

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Britney Spears on her hands and knees giving birth on a bearskin rug—said that he was provoked to sex up the junior senator from New York by a comment from Sharon Stone, who pro- claimed the Solon of Chappaqua too residually sexy to be elected president and said that those ambitions would have to wait until she was “past her sex- uality.” Herself was at the time not yet 60; if she is elected, she will turn 70 her first year in office. Sharon Stone, the Clintons, Scooby- Doo, the man-feminists of the New York art scene, the just-one-name-like-Sting- or-Cher thing: That Hillary Show has a distinctly retro feel to it already. We have seen this movie before: Last Vegas, The Bucket List, About Schmidt, John Podesta and Paul Begala starring in Grumpy Old Men. Once more unto the breach. The Lion in Winter, with all the domestic friction and succession drama but no lion. Herself, who speaks in clichés and Hillary, Herself who gives some indication that she thinks in them, too, says that she is in Sometimes, appearances are everything the van—“Road trip!” she tweeted— because she is “hitting the road to earn BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON your vote.” The Clintons—not too long ago “dead broke,” as Herself put it— vERY Mystery Machine must and Scooby-Doo may very well feel have earned well more than $100 mil- have its velma. fresh in her mind. lion since the president left office, the You’ll remember velma De gustibus non disputandum est and Washington Post reports, with his E Dinkley, the grim-faced young all that. Nobody is more mindful of the speech income alone amounting to fogey of the Scooby-Doo gang: turtle- role that her bodily appearance plays in some $105 million. That’s armored-car neck and knee socks, orange; pleated her public persona than Herself, who money, and an armored car is of course skirt and pumps, red; spectacle lenses a has compared her own evolving coiffure what Herself is riding around in, as she very groovy shade of aqua; hair in a to a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. (Of did during her first Senate campaign. severe, LPGA-ready bob. She was the course she’s pals with Haim Saban, the There is something ineffably Clinton - thick and bookish counterpoint to the billionaire owner of that entertainment esque in that: She declined the use of the comely Daphne Blake. But the id moves franchise and many others.) You’ll customary limousine because she wanted in mysterious ways, and velma has remember that in 2006, just before to appear to share the lives and troubles enjoyed a strange post-1970s career as a Herself’s first, failed presidential of the ordinary people, so she rides minor object of erotic fixation, being campaign, the artist Daniel Edwards around in a customized armored van, portrayed on film by the knockout Linda un veiled a statue of the former first having spent a great deal of money— Cardellini and, in a dramatic illustration lady, The Presidential Bust of Hillary starting prices for such vehicles are of Rule 34, by the pornographic actress Rodham Clinton: The First Woman comparable to those of Lamborghinis— Bobbi Starr. President of the United States, the to avoid the appearance that she has a Perhaps that is what sometime sex generous proportions of which pro- great deal of money. symbol Hillary Rodham Clinton had in voked at least 11,487 “bust” puns among Appearances apparently do matter. mind when she nicknamed her campaign the nation’s least ambitious headline That van is the cosmetic surgery of van “Scooby”—a mystery machine, writers. The resin casting was displayed populism, the tummy tuck of a 1 per- indeed; as of this writing, nobody has at the Museum of Sex in New York. “Her center auditioning for a role somewhere documented her presence in it—noting cleavage is on display, prominently por- between Evita and Auntie Mame. But its resemblance to the famously psy- traying sexual power which some peo- the Clintons have always had a strange chedelic Saturday-morning ride of ple still consider too threatening,” the knack for getting people to admire them Mystery Incorporated. Mrs. Clinton— artist said. Mr. Edwards—whose other for their phoniness, not in spite of it. the Grand Glorified Imperial Herself— notable work of the time was a life-size Their admirers—and there are many of

is very much a creature of the 1970s, statue of an enormously pregnant them—are like those odd ducks who ROMAN GENN

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prefer breast implants to the genuine codes in craptastical public schools? articles, the more obviously artificial Literally every Republican positioning the better. himself to run against Mrs. Clinton in The RFRA That’s the strange thing about the 2016. You know who opposes that career of Herself: Because she is a fem- solution? Herself, who as a senate can- Furor inist, or at least a woman who plays one didate and a presidential candidate not on television, to bring up the subject of only ran against school choice but went Public commitment to religious freedom her appearance is taken as prima facie so far as to link it to Islamic terrorism is not as strong as it should be chauvinism, boorish boobishness of the and white supremacy. sort that illustrates exactly why we need But she has a van! a woman as president. (Maybe. But this The video goes on to show a gay cou- BY RAMESH PONNURU woman?) At the same time, appearance ple excitedly talking about their pend- is 83 percent of every presidential cam- ing wedding, never mentioning that OTHINg better illustrates paign, and 97 percent—at least—of a literally every single presidential ad - the sheer irrationality of Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign. In ministration Herself has served has the national furor over the some cases, the appeal is literally skin opposed gay marriage, as indeed did N religious-freedom law passed deep: When Team Herself unveiled its Herself as a presidential candidate. Her by Indiana than the absence of a national campaign icon—an uppercase “H” with husband signed a law prohibiting HIV- furor over the religious-freedom law a vector pointing to the right—the daft positive people from even entering the passed by Arkansas the following week. young actress Lena Dunham remarked united states on tourist visas, treating Indiana passed a religious-freedom that she wanted to get a “tramp stamp” some gay people as if they were plague law that critics said amounted to free tattoo of the logo. rats, but so what? she has a van! rein for discrimination against gays. Much of life comes down to good she is positioning herself to run as under pressure from liberals, the media, design. How good the H is going to be an economic populist, an Elizabeth and businesses, the Republican legisla- at that remains unclear: On launch day, Warren–style scold of the wicked 1 ture amended the law to quiet the critics. the “JOBs” section of her website was a percent. she will be doing this while The Republican governor, Mike Pence, highly symbolic link to nowhere. Jobs? her husband sports wristwatches that signed the amendment. “NOT FOuND.” Yeah . . . tell America cost more than the typical American’s Arkansas got some of the same neg- about it. But she will have first-rate house and after having plotted the ative attention when its Republican help, gobs of money, and plenty of launch of her second campaign from legislature passed a religious-freedom celebrity flesh to throw at the slavering the multi-million-dollar beachfront bill that was also decried as anti-gay. gibbering maw of the electorate. Her - estate of the late Oscar de la Renta in Its Republican governor, Asa Hutch - self knows that appearances matter: the Domini can Republic. in son, refused to sign the bill until it None of her political career makes a Van! was changed. hell of a lot of sense if you think about Of course appearances matter. Or at supporters of both the Indiana law it for three minutes. least Hillary Rodham Clinton had bet- and the Arkansas bill said that they were she’s a feminist who has served as ter hope that they do: If not upon such merely creating state equivalents of the very little other than an extension of her superficialities as her possession of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that traditionally patriarchic, manipulative uterus, upon what will she base her had been enacted at the federal level, to hound dog of a husband, elected to the campaign for president? upon the bipartisan acclaim, in 1993. That law senate as a tribute to him, like some sad remarkable foreign-policy successes said that the federal government could little Ma Ferguson of the New York sub- she achieved as secretary of state, dur- impose a substantial burden on the exer- urbs. Her record in office has run from ing which time the united states not cise of religion only in furtherance of a mediocrity in the senate to catastrophe only ceded Iraq and Afghanistan to bru- compelling interest, and only by the as secretary of state. tality and chaos but stood by practically least burdensome means possible. But she has some feelings she’d like mute for the emergence of the Islamic Otherwise courts would give people to share, some adventures in High state? upon senator Herself’s scanty with religious objections to obeying a Herselfery. record as a lawmaker? Her husband won law exemptions from it. The Clinton campaign’s launch on charm, charisma, and a psychopathic There have always been some people video opens with a young mother gift for instrumentalizing human beings who think that, as a matter of principle, describing an all-too-familiar predica- without hesitation or regret. One out of everyone should have to follow all ment: she is moving to a new neigh- three is not going to do it. laws, with no exemptions based on reli- borhood because her child is about to The politician’s proposal is never gion. But the law has long allowed for start school and the local public schools really “Vote for me—I’m just like you!” such exemptions. For most of the three are terrible. That’s some powerful It’s “Vote for me—I’m the version of decades prior to the Religious Freedom stuff—powerful stuff that conservative you that you really want to be!” Maybe Restoration Act, the supreme Court had school reformers watched with gob- there are people who s ee that when they held such exemptions to be required by smacked disbelief: You know who has look at Herself. (Again: De gustibus and the First Amendment. Before the courts a solution to the specific problem of poor all that.) Every political machine is a got involved, legislators had codified families’ being trapped by their ZIP mystery machine. exemptions piecemeal.

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This tradition remains sufficiently prosecuting any critics. Nor would it claim that conservatives in Indiana strong that few of the partisans in the matter if the affected media outlets were and Arkansas were going dangerously battles over the Indiana law and the for-profit corporations. be yond the federal law. But the new Arkansas bill attacked exemptions in Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, wrote Arkansas law seems to accomplish principle. Instead, the critics mostly an op-ed claiming that the Indiana law exactly what the critics said they op - said that the state legislation went created a license to discriminate. No posed. If it’s a kind of legislative hate beyond the federal law in two troubling religious-freedom law has been read crime to let businesses invoke reli- ways. It gave religious rights to busi- that way. There are almost no cases in gious rights in private litigation, the nesses, not just to persons; and it which anyone has even asked a court to law should have been a new provoca- applied to litigation in which the gov- grant him a general right not to hire tion rather than, as it seems to have ernment was not a party. Even Fox black people, or serve gay people, for been, an end to the national shoutfest. News ran a graphic highlighting these religious reasons. There have been That denouement suggests that the supposed differences. cases in which more specific exemp- controversy had very little to do with They were imaginary. The federal tions from nondiscrimination laws the actual substance of any legisla - Dictionary Act defines “persons” to were sought. A photographer in New tive proposals. include corporations except when oth- Mexico, for example, did not wish to Both states ended with greater statu- erwise specified, and the Religious provide services for a same-sex wed- tory protections for religious liberty Freedom Restoration Act does not say ding be cause of religious convictions. than they had previously had on the otherwise. Legislative debates in the Even such narrowly drawn claims, books. Indiana weakened its law but 1990s showed both liberal and conser- which have generally been made by did not repeal it, and the weakening vative legislators to understand the law people who said that they would hap- amendment will not affect many possi- to apply to businesses. In last year’s pily provide services in contexts ble cases. (It would be irrelevant to a Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme other than weddings, have tended to case involving the ceremonial use of Court held the law to apply to busi- lose in court. peyote, for example.) nesses, or at least closely held busi- The combined pressure of people It is possible, then, to put an opti- nesses, and only two of the liberal who did not want wedding photogra- mistic conservative gloss on the justices dissented. Most circuit courts phers to be able to bring such a claim debate. It is also worth noting that have also ruled that the federal law applies to court, and people who thought the Republicans were more supportive of to private litigation. The Obama–Holder law went much farther than it actually religious-liberty legislation during it Justice Department reads the law that did, was too much for Indiana Re - than they were during a flare-up over way, too. publicans. In the guise of “clarifying” very similar legislation in Arizona in If the law is to allow religious exemp- their religious-freedom law, they early 2014. A Republican governor tions, it makes sense to allow it in these amended it so that it could not be used vetoed that legislation after both of the contexts. The principle is identical. A to win exemptions from nondiscrimi- state’s Republican senators and the kosher deli should be able to ask in nation laws. 2012 Republican presidential nomi- court for a religious exemption to a Legislating under pressure, much of it nee, Mitt Romney, denounced it. This food-preparation regulation that con- misinformed, created some anomalies. time the Republican presidential hope- flicts with its owner’s or owners’ faith. Indiana does not prohibit discrimination fuls uniformly defended the law, if at The reasonable questions to ask in such on the basis of sexual orientation, varying speeds. a situation are: Is this regulation neces- although some Indiana communities do. Yet the debate was also a setback for sary to advance an important govern- In those places, a florist with a religious religious liberty. It is often said that mental purpose, and is it the least objection to same-sex marriage will rights should not be put up for a vote. burdensome way to do it? Whether the probably have to swallow that objection. Governments will protect rights, how- people asking for the exemption are Everywhere else in the state, a company ever, only if those who wield govern- seeking to make a profit should be irrel- has the legal right not to serve gays at all, mental power are committed to them. It evant to the inquiry. whether or not its owners have any reli- depends, in our system, on votes by And because the point of the law is to gious motives. legislators, by judges, and ultimately guard against government infringements Arkansas had a better outcome. Its by citizens. of religious liberty, it should not matter revised version of the bill, which Polling on these religious-liberty whether the government is actually a Governor Hutchinson signed, omitted controversies is murky. The failures of party to litigation that involves its in - any reference to businesses or private religious-liberty claimants in cases fringement. Everyone understands this litigation. Instead it included a provision involving same-sex marriage, coupled point when it comes to other freedoms. telling the courts to interpret the law in a with the absence of any effective Imagine that a government authorized way “consistent with the Religious protest against those failures, is a sign private lawsuits against newspapers for Freedom Restoration Act of 1993,” that that the public commitment to reli- publishing content critical of the ruling is, the federal law. That should mean gious freedom is not as strong as it party. We would not say that the govern- that it is interpreted to protect busi- should be. And the confused debate ment was respecting the freedom of the nesses from private litigation. over religious-freedom legislation is a press, and we would not say this even if It was an ingenious solution. It dis- sign that the strength of that commit- the government itself refrained from armed the critics’ main weapon: the ment is headed further downward.

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legitimacy. Similarly, with support for dis- American ally. In every particular, Obama sidents, increased sanctions, and a power- has done the opposite, dismantling essen- Obama’s Iran ful military presence in both Iraq and tially every element of containment. worse, Afghanistan, the U.S. could have brought Obama is actively helping Iran to fill the Capitulation Iran to its knees. vacuum created by America’s retrench- In a 2007 paper for the center-left ment in the Middle east. Never mind victory; the administration Brookings Institution, the late Peter Rod - Almost from the start of his presidency, isn’t even seeking containment man, a former assistant secretary of de fense Obama made clear his willingness to and a former senior editor of NAtIONAl accommodate Iran in order to get a BY MARIO LOYOLA RevIew, advocated just such a policy. nuclear deal. As Senator Jon Kyl said at He called for supporting the Iranian pro- the time, Obama’s approach resembled URINg the 1970s, Americans democracy movement, increasing sanc- that of a man who walks into a car dealer- hotly debated whether we should tions pressure, and stabilizing Iraq as an ship and announces that he’s not leaving approach the Soviet Union in the D spirit of “détente” or confront it and, if possible, roll it back, but virtually everyone agreed that the Soviet Union must at a minimum be contained. except on the far left, nobody seriously suggested scaling back U.S. power or accommo- dating Soviet demands on major fronts. Yet that is precisely the policy President Barack Obama has embraced toward Iran, in the teeth of opposition from U.S. allies, Congress, and public opinion. the result is a Middle east that grows more unstable and dangerous by the day. what makes this particularly tragic is that, early in Obama’s first term, we had Iran on the ropes. After three decades of war, isolation, and sanctions, the Iranian regime was as hostile to the west as ever, yet by 2009 the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, which was supposed to be a worldwide millenarian revolution like Communism, had been successful nowhere outside Iran except lebanon. After Iran’s secret uranium-enrichment plant at Fordow was discovered in 2009, Congress passed crippling sanctions, sail- ing past a veto threat with a 99–0 vote in the Senate. together with those imposed by the european Union, they cut Iran off from the world financial system. As a result, Iran’s currency soon lost half its value, bringing rampant inflation inside Iran, and major customers such as India and China faced large difficulties paying for Iran’s oil deliv- eries once payments couldn’t be cleared through financial centers such as New York or london. A fiscal crisis loomed, threaten- ing the government’s ability to keep subsi- dizing necessities such as food and gasoline. the critical thing at that point was to maintain and strengthen a strategy of con- tainment that was already mostly in place. 888-402-6575 Just as george Kennan had predicted it would, containment brought about the fall of the Soviet Union when outside pressure aggravated the regime’s intrinsic lack of

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until he buys a car. Sensing their opportu- moderates are risk-averse and apt to argue alliances such as we have in NATO. nity, the mullahs soon made it clear that that hardline policies carry unacceptable America’s Arab allies remain steadfast on they weren’t interested in negotiating risks. “We can strengthen their arguments the surface despite their mounting criti- anything except the terms of an American by actually posing such risks,” he noted. cism of Obama. The problem is that surrender on the nuclear front. They must Obama’s approach, on the other hand, has Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq, and his have been stunned to discover that not only disheartened the moderates in Iran. He subsequent accommodation of Iranian only did Obama fully intend to oblige, but failed to say a word in support of the “green hegemony over that country, undermines he was also thoroughly committed to help- movement” after the fraudulent 2009 elec- the entire alliance. It’s as if John F. ing Iran become a “successful regional tions and is now doing virtually everything Kennedy had abruptly pulled out of West power,” as Obama himself put it. The possible to extend the life and prestige of Germany and invited the Soviets to occupy president was offering to accommodate the Islamic revolution. It’s hard to imagine it in our stead. Saddam Hussein shielded Iran on every front. what circumstances could be more demor- the Sunni Arabs from Iranian hegemony, Naturally, Iran hardened its positions in alizing for the pro-democracy movement. but that was not a long-term solution response and became dramatically more The nuclear talks, meanwhile, have been because he was a hegemon in his own assertive, pouncing on opportunities to a fiasco of historic proportions. At the end right. Having removed Saddam, the U.S. expand Iranian power throughout the of March, the U.S. and its partners report- needed to remain a stabilizing, dominant region. Iranian military might has suddenly edly reached an agreement with Iran that force in Iraq for years to come. Holding unfurled itself across the Middle East in limits growth in the various elements of its that central position in the Middle East two directions: north across Iraq, Syria, nuclear-weapons program and subjects would have allowed us to deal with almost and Lebanon, and south to Yemen, encir- the facilities to enhanced inspections. Since any situation, in the process rendering our cling the entire Sunni Arab heartland. our diplomats apparently don’t bother with Arab allies unassailable and effectively America’s Arab allies are visibly rattled negotiating actual agreements that can be containing Iran. What Rodman said in by the sudden Iranian expansion, and even written down anymore, we don’t really 2007 remains true today: “There is no way more by America’s apparent acquiescence know what has been agreed, and the Iranian for the United States to be strong against and outright assistance. Several members and U.S. explanations diverge on key Iran if we are weak in Iraq.” of the anti-ISIS coalition have protested points, including the timing of sanctions Instead Obama precipitately withdrew America’s de facto coordination with relief and the scope of inspections. What’s all U.S. forces in 2011, and has since in Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, which is clear is that the U.S. has given in to Iran on effect turned Iraq over to the Iranians. The cornering them into helping Shiite extrem- all the essentials: Iran will get to keep its ubiquitous General Qassem Suleimani, ists murder their fellow Sunnis north and nuclear-weapons program while sanctions commander of the Iranian Quds Force, is west of Baghdad. Far to the south, Saudi are lifted, without having to answer the present all along the ISIS front, along with Arabia hardly bothered to consult the U.S. International Atomic Energy Agency’s heavy Iranian weapons. The U.S. has before launching a campaign of major air many outstanding questions about the pos- assembled a coalition of air forces that strikes in Yemen. sible military dimensions of its program. are now operating as de facto Iranian Obama clearly sees ISIS quite differently And while the White House claims that the proxies, softening up ISIS targets so that from the way he sees the government of sanctions will “snap back” into place if Iran the Iranian-backed militias can take over, Iran. He shouldn’t. Iran has killed as many fails to comply with its obligations, the deal as seen in the recent operation to retake Americans in Iraq as ISIS’s al-Qaeda pre- doesn’t attach automatic consequences to Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown. U.S. air cursors did. More fundamentally, the Iranian noncompliance. power allowed Iranian-backed militias Islamic revolution of Iran is merely the Secretary of State John Kerry recently and the increasingly Iranian-dominated Shiite equivalent of the Sunni revolution testified to Congress that we have to Iraqi army to occupy the city and exact that produced the Muslim Brotherhood, al- accept a large-scale enrichment program revenge on suspected ISIS supporters, Qaeda, and ISIS. In fact, it is the same rev- in Iran because the Bush administration many of whom are just innocent Sunnis. olution, the goal of which is to establish a failed to stop it. He has a point. But saying Our Arab allies warn that any operation worldwide caliphate under the principle that Iran refuses to give up its enrichment against Mosul must guarantee the safety of velayat-e faqih, the unification of reli- capability and therefore we must accept it of Sunnis, but it cannot, because Obama gious and political authority. Yet when is not a statement of fact, but rather a bar- refuses to involve U.S. combat troops. asked why Iran must be stopped from gaining position. Besides, however intran- The Obama administration’s decision to gaining a nuclear weapon, Obama’s con- sigent Iran might be, sanctions still had a end the containment of Iran, let it keep a sistent answer is that it would start a dan- crucial role to play, in making clear to Iran nuclear-weapons program, and help it ex - gerous regional arms race. In other words, (and any potential imitators) that it was pand its hegemony throughout the region, he’s worried about nuclear weapons falling headed down a blind alley and would all while providing billions of dollars in into the hands of our Sunni allies, but never know prosperity or normal inter - sanctions relief, is a strategic debacle bor- doesn’t seemed troubled by the prospect national relations unless it dismantled the dering on material support for terrorism. of Iran itself getting nuclear weapons. program or fundamentally transformed The Islamic revolution wasn’t going to People who believe that conflicts are itself. The sanctions were a pillar of con- stay in what Rodman called its “exuberant best resolved through concessions and cor- tainment, the best hope for transforming phase” forever. Containment was bringing dial dialogue typically say they want to Iran into a peaceful democracy. Iran to its knees. Now Obama has given strengthen the moderates within the oppos- The central pillar of any containment the murderous revolution of Ayatollah ing regime. But as Rodman pointed out, strategy is of course a system of regional Khomeini a whole new lease on life.

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Archie Bunker. (He was the main Marx, and I dared approach the profes- character, bigoted though somewhat sor after class: What should we think The Even- lovable, in All in the Family, the pop- of the terrible human-rights violations ular sitcom.) We kind of policed our- by Marxist governments all over the Steven selves. If you criticized something world? He was irked at me and said relating to a foreign land, you had to that Marx should not be held responsible criticize something relating to home in for what others might do in his name. Temptation the next breath. “Should we blame Thomas Jefferson for Adventures in moral equivalence The Communist East and the demo - the sins of Richard Nixon?” (Say what cratic West? They both had their strengths you will about Nixon, but he didn’t and weaknesses. We Westerners were own slaves.) BY JAY NORDLINGER keen on “political rights,” such as free- Back to the Obama administration— dom of speech and freedom of assembly. which in 2010 participated in a “human- HEN I was growing up, the In the East, they were keen on “social rights dialogue” with the Chi nese worst thing you could be rights,” especially the rights to food, gov ern ment. Afterward, our representa- was a racist. (And racism shelter, and health care. (It was a lie, but tive, Assistant Secretary of State Michael W was often defined with it was widely taught and believed.) H. Posner, held a press conference at gro tesque, malicious looseness.) The Interestingly, the even-steven principle Foggy Bottom. A reporter asked, “Did second-worst thing you could be, proba- applied only if you were talking about the recently passed Arizona immigration bly, was a jingoist. An “ethnocentrist.” A governments hostile to the United States. law come up? And, if so, did they bring it flag-waver. Even simple patriotism was You could criticize apartheid South up or did you bring it up?” This law was suspect, a sign of naivety and boobishness. Africa, or Pinochet’s Chile, or Marcos’s an attempt to curb illegal immigration, You were not to think yourself any- Philippines, without a complementary and a mild one at that—but some por- thing special as an American. You were criticism of America or the West. No one trayed it as onerous. not to be too big for your britches. said, “Who are we to knock Pretoria? Our man said, “We brought it up early Every thing had to be equal, balanced, Reagan just reduced food stamps.” But and often. It was mentioned in the first even-steven. The Soviet Union tossed when it came to hostiles, equivalence was session, and as a troubling trend in our poets into prisons? Yeah, well what the name of the game. society and an indication that we have about the Holly wood Ten? I must say, I smiled a bit when I read to deal with issues of discrimination or At the time, there was a best-selling about President Obama at the National potential discrimination, and that these book called “I’m OK—You’re OK.” It Prayer Breakfast in February. He said are issues very much being debated in was by Thomas A. Harris, M.D. One of we were not to “get on our high horse” our own society.” the original self-help books, it sold about violent jihad. “Remember that The reporter had a follow-up ques- more than 15 million copies. Its title during the Crusades and the Inqui - tion: “Did they,” meaning the Chinese expresses the principle I’m talking sition, people committed terrible deeds officials, “discuss anything about their about: “I’m okay, you’re okay,” or, in the name of Christ. In our home concerns about Chinese visiting in Ari- maybe more accurately, “I’m not okay, country, slavery and Jim Crow all too zona?” Posner said no. you’re not okay.” often were justified in the name of Bear in mind that China is a one-party If I raised concerns about what the Christ.” That is a clear example of dictatorship with a gulag (laogai). Bear Chinese Communists were doing to the even-steven at work. in mind that this is a government that Tibetans, it would fall to you to say, In 1978, the Soviet Union was putting imprisons a Nobel peace laureate (liu “Well, what did we do to the Indians?” dissidents through show trials. Our am - Xiaobo), among thousands of other That wouldn’t help the Tibetans at all. bassador to the United Nations, Andrew demo crats and dissidents. Bear in mind But it would obey “even-steven.” If I Young, gave an interview to a French that this is a government all too credi- said it wasn’t nice to shoot people as newspaper, saying, “In our prisons, too, bly accused of organ harvesting (the they scaled the Berlin Wall, you would there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, murder of human beings, such as Falun say, “It wasn’t nice to lynch blacks in of people whom I would describe as Gong practitioners, for the extraction the South, was it?” political prisoners.” He was obeying of organs). “GUlAG,” said one guy. “Japanese even-steven. He was not on his high What must liu and other political pris- in ternment,” said another (meaning the horse. He probably thought he was being oners think—what must Falun Gong internment of Japanese Americans). polite as well. practitioners and other hunted people “Nazi war machine,” said one guy. At a press conference, President Car - think—that we Americans would talk this “Dresden,” said another (referring to ter said, “I know that Andy regrets hav- way? That we would wonder whether the American and British bombing of ing made that statement, which was Chinese are afraid to visit Arizona? Do that city). “Imperial Japan.” “Hiro - embarrassing to me.” He kept him on in they think we are mad? shima and Nagasaki!” Etc. his job (for a while). In 2011 and 2012, our vice president, We were afraid of committing the Some years later, I was in college Joe Biden, spent time with Xi Jinping, sin of national pride, a pride that might and starting to read NATIONAl REvIEW who was then his counterpart in China. suggest a sense of national superiority. and other subversive literature. In a Now Xi is boss of the Communist party No one wanted to come off as an social-theory class, we were studying (and therefore of the country). Recently,

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Xi Jinping, then the Chinese vice president, with the U.S. vice president, Joe Biden, in 2012

Biden told Evan Osnos of The New the downbeat, Adams talked to the audi- on guard against hypocrisy. It’s good Yorker that Xi had asked him why the ence about how his piece came about. He to consider the beams in our own eyes United States put “so much emphasis on said he wanted to respond, musically, to while, or before, considering the motes human rights.” (I haven’t noticed this in brutality toward women. He had been in others’ eyes. It is also good to keep the last six years, but be that as it may.) reading about such brutality in Egypt, history in mind. Biden told Xi, “No president of the Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere. When despairing of barbarism in the United States could represent the But we were not to be too big for our Arab world, I sometimes think, “You United States were he not committed to britches. We were not to get on our know, two seconds ago, Germans and human rights. If you don’t understand high horse. Because we have brutality their allies, on European soil, were car- this, you can’t deal with us. President toward women right here at home, rying out a holocaust.” Barack Obama would not be able to Adams said. You can “find it on Rush Furthermore, a mindless patriotism is stay in power if he did not speak of it. Limbaugh.” unattractive. But then, so is a mindless So look at it as a political imperative. It At this, the audience responded with national self-flagellation. Bernard Lewis, doesn’t make us better or worse.” robust and sustained applause. I thought the great Middle East historian, recently No? I doubt that Joe Biden learned it was like the “Two Minutes Hate” observed that Americans once said, “My the even-steven principle when he was found in Orwell’s 1984. My guess is, country, right or wrong.” Now we’re apt growing up in the 1940s and ’50s in Adams did not want to be seen as pick- to say, “My country, wrong.” Pennsyl vania and Delaware. But he ing on the “Other”—the Taliban, the The even-steven principle—or moral learned it later. Muslim Brotherhood, the theocrats in equivalence or not getting on your high POOL

, Move with me now to the concert Iran. So did he pick on himself, or his horse—can be taken to absurd ex tremes. hall—to Avery Fisher Hall at New York’s friends? No, no, they never do. He de - It can be logically and morally perverse.

CLENDENIN Lincoln Center, in the last week of cided to defame Rush Limbaugh. And It does no one any good to pretend that . March. A new piece was being pre- he must have known that the audience America has political prisoners or that JAY L , miered by the New York Philharmonic. would delight in this defamation. Arizona is a police state. And what I It was Scheherazade.2, by John Adams. Let me say a couple of kind words heard in Avery Fisher Hall the other A markedly different man from our for even-steven (believe it or not). The week was one of the most disgusting

LOS ANGELES TIMES second president, this John Adams is impulse behind it may be admirable. things I have ever heard in my life. (I’m / probably America’s most famous and It’s good to avoid judgmentalism. It’s not talking about the music, which was

AP PHOTO im portant (classical) composer. Before good to be self-aware, self-critical— pretty good.)

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The Rebel Sheriff How David A. Clarke Jr. became a political celebrity

BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE

N January 2013, a 32-second radio advertisement was ter, when Clarke ran for reelection, Michael Bloomberg’s broadcast in Milwaukee, and—quite by accident—a PAC contributed $150,000 to his opponent’s campaign. political star was born. Hoping to encourage local resi- Initially, Clarke was shocked at the contretemps. “I didn’t I dents to play a part in their own protection, the commer- see this as a national question when I spoke out,” he tells me, cial’s progenitor went firmly on the record in favor of the as we sit down in his Milwaukee office. “The ad was meant in private ownership of firearms: “With officers laid off and response to some local crime issues. I couldn’t have dreamed furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your of being catapulted int o the national spotlight.” Indeed, at first best option. ” Rather, listeners were invited to “consider taking he resisted the pull. “When it started to grow, I tried to corral it a certified safety course in handling a firearm.” “You have a and push it away,” he recalls. “This is my hometown. I’m just duty to protect yourself and your family,” the commercial trying to make a difference here.” intoned. “Can I count on you?” Before long, however, the requests for interviews and The speaker was Milwaukee County sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., appearances became so numerous that they were all but impos- and the reaction was immediate. Within days of the ad’s release, sible to refuse. At first, it was mostly radio. Then a few curious Roy Felber, president of the Milwaukee Deputy Sher iffs’ television stations began to inquire. And, finally, the National Association, complained bitterly that the idea didn’t “sound too Rifle Association got in touch. “Someone in my position is smart.” “People have the right to defend themselves,” he griped, unique,” Clarke tells me. “I’m in law enforcement, I’m black, CONTRIBUTOR / “but they don’t have the right to take the law into their own and I was speaking from a rare position.” Now he is in demand. hands.” Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwau kee, seconded Felber’s “I’ll go where anybody wants to hear me. I don’t tailor my critique. “Sheriff David Clarke,” Barrett lamented, “is auditioning message to one specific group.” for the next Dirty Harry movie.” Predictably, these sentiments At local conservative events, at the Conservative Political WASHINGTON POST

THE were echoed by gun-control groups across the country. A year la - Action Conference, and at pro–Second Amendment meetings,

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the man is welcomed like a rock star. His face is a regular fea- ask for help when we’re trying to solve a crime. That’s after the ture on the front covers of firearms-enthusiast and law- crime has happened. How about before?” enforcement magazines. He is a fixture on Fox News and talk Which is to say that Clarke’s transformation has been more radio. On the face of it, Clarke was just joking when he told the than merely pragmatic. “As the NRA and other groups started to 70,000 attendees of this year’s NRA convention that he “isn’t want to use me as a symbol of the Second Amendment—a black running for anything . . . yet.” But all gags contain a modicum voice—I started reading up,” he recalls. “I became fascinated. of truth, and, with his pregnant pause, Clarke was acknowl- What really struck me was the black tradition of arms. . . . I edging just how popular he had become. “I’m a cop at heart— thought, Wow. This isn’t the black history I grew up reading it’s in my blood,” he insists when I ask about his future. But he about.” Among the many thinkers to whom Clarke attributes won’t rule anything out. his present philosophy are Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, It’s not just the cowboy hat and the leather waistcoat that set and—a particular favorite—Thomas Sowell. “Once blacks him apart. On the questions of gun control, race, the nature of were able to arm themselves to protect against kidnapping and policing, the record of his city’s government, and even his own lynching,” he explains, “things really began to change in terms Democratic party (more on which later), Clarke is dramatically of black freedom.” out of step with his colleagues and with what is typically This unorthodox outlook has gone a long way toward in - expected from African-American males. forming Clarke’s difficult relationship with the Democratic Understandable as his electoral affiliation may be in practice, there is no doubt that Milwaukee County sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is an odd fit for the party of the American Left.

His views have changed over time. Back in 2003, when party, under whose banner he has now been winning for almost the governor was considering a bill that would have loos- a decade and a half. “I run as a Democrat because it’s a parti- ened restrictions on the private carrying of firearms, Clarke san election,” he explains. “And originally, I decided to run as penned a worried letter urging him to veto it. “There are bet- a Democrat because that’s what the family history was. But I ter ways to fight crime than to flood the streets of Milwaukee didn’t want to join the party.” His parents were “Jack Kennedy with dangerous weapons,” Clarke proposed. In an urban area and Harry Truman Democrats” and fans of Martin Luther King such as Milwaukee, he added, an increase in the civilian use Jr., but they didn’t talk about politics much. “As a child,” he of fire arms would jeopardize the “safety of my deputies and recalls, “I w as taught to value education, hard work, persever- the citizens they represent.” ance, and taking responsibility for your decisions in life. Now, By 2007, Clarke had done a 180. “The police are no it seems like those are conservative ideas. But they’re not.” longer able to guarantee the personal safety of citizens,” he “Growing up a career cop,” Clarke explains, “I was always told lo cal talk-radio host Charlie Sykes. In consequence, the taught, ‘Stay out of politics.’ I didn’t have any particular alle- state government should reconsider its “opposition to giance to any particular party.” Still, understandable as his allowing law-abiding people the means with which to pro- electoral affiliation may be in practice, there is no doubt that tect themselves.” Clarke is an odd fit for the party of the American Left. “I Clarke is happy to explain this shift. “Once,” he tells me, believe in limited government,” he affirms. “I know what the “this was a thriving city. It was industry-based, had a lot of welfare state has done to the black family.” manufacturing, was very safe.” And now? “People are at the He continues: “I believe in military superiority. I get that mercy of the criminal element here. I’m in these neighbor- from my dad: He did combat jumps in Korea under fire. I hoods and I talk to these folks. They’re living in terrorized believe that the Constitution protects individuals and not neighborhoods. That bothers me. I grew up here.” groups. I believe in safe streets here at home. And I believe in “There was a time in this country,” Clarke adds, “when a lot states’ rights. For a label for me, ‘conservative’ is more appro- of personal protection was done by the individual. As time priate than ‘Republican.’” went on and these urban centers developed, the government Clarke’s electoral coalition is a combination of poorer took on a bigger role. We were okay with that. But they blacks and suburban white conservatives: “I clean up in the weren’t doing it here. People were waiting an inordinate suburban areas. I always lost a lot of those communities, but I amount of time to get a squad to respond. So I said, let’s define won them handily this time.” And what of those black voters, a role for the citizenry.” who typically do not vote in great numbers for conservative candidates? “I win because I get those folks,” Clarke smiles. “I get ’em. I understand them. They feel connected.” HAT role, Clarke insists, is consonant with the American ’Twas not ever thus. Clarke recalls that when he started out, ideal of self-government. “You have a duty to protect he would explain that one can blame “the white man” and T you and your family,” he charges. “I don’t mean go “slavery” only so much before recognizing that “some of this chasing down bank robbers and all that stuff. But we can’t just is self-inflicted.” That didn’t work, so Clarke took a different

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tack: “I started to connect with them emotionally rather than and should “apologize” to law enforcement. Barack Obama, logically. I started talking about things that affected them. And meanwhile, had fueled “racial animosity between people.” it started to change. With me they think, ‘We’re not real crazy “When the president talks,” Clarke tells me, “everybody lis- about some of the things he says, but he’s ours.’” tens. When Eric Holder holds a press conference, everybody Some of the things that Clarke says are, indeed, highly con- listens. They have to be more careful. Obama should have said troversial. Black Americans, he proposes, “have been sepa- to the rioters, ‘You need to find a more socially acceptable way rated from their history,” and are therefore “easily exploited” of dealing with your anger.’” by politicians. In consequence, he argues, the Democratic “I’m not going to defend the Ferguson P.D.,” he adds. “But party has cultivated a large bloc of voters who are “suscepti- I will defend the pro fession.” In Clarke’s telling, “there was no ble to bullsh**.” institutional racism” in Ferguson, though there may have been “If we were reconnected with our history,” he predicts, some bad actors: “Eric Holder went on a witch hunt. . . . Holder “you’d see some erosion away from this abject servility to the went down loaded for bear when Ferguson first happened.” Democratic party.” And younger blacks need to recognize that, The DOJ’s report, Clarke charges, was “poorly written and while they do have real problems, things in America are better poorly put together”—the product of an attorney general who than they once were. “My dad was an Airborne Ran ger,” dislikes the police and wishes to cast them in a poor light : “The Clarke reiterates. “When he fought in Korea, the Army was DOJ manipulates the numbers.” [partly] segregated. He witnessed injustice. Young blacks have Also unsupported, Clarke charges, is the contention that no idea what they’re talking about.” there are too many Americans in prison. (Wisconsin has the highest incarceration rate for black males in the country.) “That’s a myth,” Clarke tells me. “Drug reformers are mis- T’S “problematic,” Clarke contends, that in many parts of leading the public.” Clarke sees a role for decriminalization of America the population is mostly black and the police the possession of certain drugs, but he is not open to wholesale I force and local governments are mostly white: “I don’t legalization. “For my community,” he tells me, “drugs are a want quotas, but that’s a prob lem.” And yet if blacks want to problem. Guy’s got a little weed on him—a few rocks on him change that, they don’t need to riot, “they need to vote.” At the for his own personal use—he doesn’t need to go to prison. The height of the tensions in Ferguson, Mo., Clarke took to Fox guy with the intent to deliver—yes, he needs to go to prison. News and told Al Sharpton to “shut up.” Sharpton, Clarke sub- I’m not there in terms of legalizing anything.” mitted, was a “charlatan” who “ought to go back into the gut- Clarke casts the drug war as a means by which African ter.” Eric Holder, he added, had offered up a “poor display” Americans are liberated from violence in their communities. (I

   

            

  
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disagree.) “The only reason we went on that lock-’em-up drive in the first place,” he suggests, “was black mayors who went to Congress and pleaded for help. Because of the violence, they John Doe’s pleaded with Congress for tougher laws on crack cocaine. Black mayors did that. yet we’re made to believe it was white congressmen who wanted to throw these black guys in jail.” Clarke’s views on drugs—and, indeed, on almost every- Tyranny thing—are at odds with those of the city’s leadership. “Right now,” he explains, “my relationship with the city is acrimo- nious. We have a county executive who is very anti-police. he Wisconsin conservatives have been subjected has a disdain for the police.” For Tom Barrett, the longtime to secretive, baseless investigations mayor of the city, Clarke has only criticism. “Barrett’s been there for eleven years—almost as long as I have. Mil wau kee has been a disaster under this guy. We have obscenely high BY DAVID FRENCH black unemployment.” Pushing the brim of his hat up slightly, Clarke picks up a piece of paper from his desk. “Let me read you something,” he hey came with a battering ram.” says, with a pained expression. “This is from this year’s state- Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of of-the-city address”: Wisconsin’s Act 10—also called the “Wis - ‘T consin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public- Milwaukee in 2015 is a city where opportunity is growing, employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining investments are increasing, and residents are tackling new en - dea vors. Milwaukee is strong, and this is a year to build on our rules for public-employee unions—was jolted awake by strengths. yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house—the windows and walls— “Does it look like that to you?” Clarke asks me. was shaking. I confess that I am an outsider, and that I do not know. he She looked outside to see up to a dozen police, yelling to motions toward his truck. “Let’s go take a look.” open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. I strap on a bulletproof vest, and we head into the Central She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, City—or, in less polite parlance, into “the ghetto.” At 3 o’clock her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab in the afternoon, the streets are mostly deserted, save for a few some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door. shi ftless people who look up from the sidewalk only to gauge “I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” the interest of the marked police car that is following our truck. She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed In an hour and a half, I do not see a single white face. right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic. Almost half of the homes in the Central City have been “I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please boarded up completely. Others have been stripped of their tiles, don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t their doorknobs, and their sheet metal. Once-pristine back- get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside yards have become vast dumpsters, into which the locals have quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared deposited trash, broken furniture, busted tires, ripped mattresses, and knew this was a bad mix.” and, in some cases, worn-out cars. It is impossible to travel She got the dogs safely out of the house, just as multiple more than three blocks in any direction without seeing a armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bath- makeshift memorial to the murdered, wrapped inexpertly room, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or around a tree trunk. agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but Occasionally, we see a pristine house whose owners are she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee. holding out against the decay. how long they will last is any- “I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” body’s guess. In 1960, Milwaukee had 741,000 residents. To- Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. day, it has just 600,000. he towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled “Milwaukee has the fourth-highest homicide rate per like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would 100,000 people in the United States,” Clarke tells me. In fact, handcuff me.” “20 kids under 16 were murdered here last year.” I presume They wouldn’t let her speak to a lawyer. She looked out- that this means that they were caught in the crossfire. “No,” side and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Clarke tells me. “They were the targets. These people are Someone had tipped him off. trapped.” The neighbors started to come outside, curious at the com- A couple of miles away, in the Northpoint neighborhood on motion, and all the while the police searched her house, the edge of Lake Michigan, children fly kites and laugh happily making a mess, and—according to Cindy—leaving her by the water. At the top of the hill, perfectly groomed Victorian “dead mother’s belongings strewn across the basement floor houses stand proudly. An American flag flies in the distance. in a most disrespectful way.” “There was a shooting down here,” Sheriff Clarke tells me. Then they left, carrying with them only a cell phone and “People were coming in from nearby and causing problems. So a laptop. we beefed up the police presence and fixed it. “They called me a racist.” Mr. French is an attorney, a writer, and a veteran of the Iraq War.

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T’S a matter of life or death.” including items that had nothing to do with the subject of the That was the first thought of “Anne” (not her real search warrant—even her daughter’s computer. ‘I name). Someone was pounding at her front door. It And, yes, there were the warnings. Don’t call your lawyer. was early in the morning—very early—and it was the kind of Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t tell your friends. The heavy pounding that meant someone was either fleeing kids watched—alarmed—as the school bus drove by, with the from—or bringing—trouble. students inside watching the spectacle of uniformed police “It was so hard. I’d never heard anything like it. I thought surrounding the house, carrying out the family’s belongings. someone was dying outside.” Yet they were told they couldn’t tell anyone at school. She ran to the door, opened it, and then chaos. “People came They, too, had to remain silent. pouring in. For a second I thought it was a home invasion. It The mom watched as her entire life was laid open before the was terrifying. They were yelling and running, into every police. Her professional files, her personal files, everything. room in the house. one of the men was in my face, yelling at She knew this was all politics. She knew a rogue prosecutor me over and over and over.” was targeting her for her political beliefs. It was indeed a home invasion, but the people who were And she realized, “Every aspect of my life is in their hands. pouring in were Wisconsin law-enforcement officers. Armed, And they hate me.” uniformed police swarmed into the house. Plainclothes inves- Fortunately for her family, the police didn’t taunt her or her tigators cornered her and her newly awakened family. Soon, children. Some of them seemed embarrassed by what they state officials were seizing the family’s personal property, were doing. At the end of the ordeal, one officer looked at the including each person’s computer and smartphone, filled with family, still confined to one room, and said, “Some days, I the most intimate family information. hate my job.” Why were the police at Anne’s home? She had no answers. The police were treating them the way they’d seen police treat drug dealers on television. or dozens of conservatives, the years since Scott In fact, TV or movies were their only points of reference, Walker’s first election as governor of Wisconsin trans- because they weren’t criminals. They were law-abiding. They F formed the state—known for pro-football champi- didn’t buy or sell drugs. They weren’t violent. They weren’t a onships, good cheese, and a population with a reputation for danger to anyone. Yet there were cops—surrounding their being unfailingly polite—into a place where conservatives house on the outside, swarming the house on the inside. They have faced early-morning raids, multi-year secretive criminal even taunted the family as if they were mere “perps.” investigations, slanderous and selective leaks to sympathetic As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private prop- media, and intrusive electronic snooping. erty, and the verbal abuse weren’t enough, next came ominous Yes, Wisconsin, the cradle of the progressive movement warnings. and home of the “Wisconsin idea”—the marriage of state Don’t call your lawyer. governments and state universities to govern through techno- Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, cratic reform—was giving birth to a new progressive idea, your father, or your closest friends. the use of law enforcement as a political instrument, as a The entire neighborhood could see the police around their weapon to attempt to undo election results, shame opponents, house, but they had to remain silent. This was not the “right to and ruin lives. remain silent” as uttered by every cop on every legal drama on Most Americans have never heard of these raids, or of the television—the right against self-incrimination. They couldn’t lengthy criminal investigations of Wisconsin conservatives. mount a public defense if they wanted—or even offer an For good reason. Bound by comprehensive secrecy orders, explanation to family and friends. conservatives were left to suffer in silence as leaks ruined Yet no one in this family was a “perp.” Instead, like Cindy, their reputations, as neighbors, looking through windows and they were American citizens guilty of nothing more than exer- dismayed at the massive police presence, the lights shining cising their First Amendment rights to support Act 10 and down on targets’ homes, wondered, no doubt, What on earth other conservative causes in Wisconsin. Sitting there shocked did that family do? and terrified, this citizen—who is still too intimidated to This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John speak on the record—kept thinking, “Is this America?” Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceed- ings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and HEY followed me to my kids’ rooms.” their advocacy of conservative reform. For the family of “rachel” (not her real name), Largely hidden from the public eye, this traumatic process, ‘T the ordeal began before dawn—with the same however, is now heading toward a legal climax, with two key loud, insistent knocking. Still in her pajamas, rachel rulings expected in the late spring or early summer. The first answered the door and saw uniformed police, poised to enter ruling, from the Wisconsin supreme court, could halt the her home. investigations for good, in part by declaring that the “miscon- When rachel asked to wake her children herself, the officer duct” being investigated isn’t misconduct at all but the simple insisted on walking into their rooms. The kids woke to an exercise of First Amendment rights. armed officer, standing near their beds. The second ruling, from the United States Supreme Court, The entire family was herded into one room, and there they could grant review on a federal lawsuit brought by Wisconsin watched as the police carried off their personal possessions, political activist Eric o’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for

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Growth, the first conservatives to challenge the investigations head-on. If the Court grants re - view, it could not only halt the investigations but also begin the process of holding accountable those public officials who have so abused their powers. But no matter the outcome of these court hearings, the damage has been done. In the words of Mr. O’Keefe, “The process is the punishment.” It all began innocently enough. In 2009, officials from the office of the Milwaukee County exec- utive contacted the office of the Milwaukee district attorney, headed by John Chisholm, to investigate the disappearance of $11,242.24 from the Milwaukee chapter of the Order of the Purple Heart. The matter was routine, with witnesses willing and able to testify against the principal suspect, a man named Kevin Kavanaugh. What followed, however, was anything but routine. Chisholm failed to act promptly on the report, and when he did act, he Over the next few months, [Chisholm’s] investigation of all- refused to conduct a conventional criminal investigation but things-Walker expanded to include everything from alleged instead petitioned, in May 2010, to open a “John Doe” inves- campaign-finance violations to sexual misconduct to alleged tigation, a proceeding under Wisconsin law that permits public contracting bid-rigging to alleged misuse of county time Wisconsin officials to conduct extensive investigations while and property. Between May 5, 2010, and May 3, 2012, the keeping the target’s identity secret (hence the designation Milwaukee Defendants filed at least eighteen petitions to for- mally “[e]nlarge” the scope of the John Doe investigation, and “John Doe”). each was granted. . . . That amounts to a new formal inquiry John Doe investigations alter typical criminal procedure in every five and a half weeks, on average, for two years. two important ways: First, they remove grand juries from the investigative process, replacing the ordinary citizens of a This expansion coincided with one of the more remarkable grand jury with a supervising judge. Second, they can include state-level political controversies in modern American history strict secrecy requirements not just on the prosecution but —the protest (and passage) of Act 10, followed by the also on the targets of the investigation. In practice, this means attempted recall of a number of Wisconsin legislators and, that, while the prosecution cannot make public comments ultimately, Governor Walker. about the investigation, it can take public actions indicating Political observers will no doubt remember the events in criminal suspicion (such as raiding businesses and homes in Madison—the state capitol overrun by chanting protesters, full view of the community) while preventing the targets of Democratic lawmakers fleeing the state to prevent votes on the raids from defending against or even discussing the pros- the legislation, and tens of millions of dollars of outside ecution’s claims. money flowing into the state as Wisconsin became, funda- Why would Chisholm seek such broad powers to investi- mentally, a proxy fight pitting the union-led Left against the gate a year-old embezzlement claim with a known suspect? Tea Party–led economic Right. Because the Milwaukee County executive, Scott Walker, had At the same time that the public protests were raging, so by that time become the leading Republican candidate for were private—but important—protests in the Chisholm home governor. District Attorney Chisholm was a Democrat, a very and workplace. As a former prosecutor told journalist Stuart partisan Democrat. Taylor, Chisholm’s wife was a teachers’-union shop steward Almost immediately after opening the John Doe investi- who was distraught over Act 10’s union reforms. He said gation, Chisholm used his expansive powers to embarrass Chisholm “felt it was his personal duty” to stop them. Walker, raiding his county-executive offices within a Meanwhile, according to this whistleblower, the district week. As Mr. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth attorney’s offices were festooned with the “blue fist” poster of ex plained in court filings, the investigation then dramati- the labor-union movement, indicating that Chisholm’s

ROMAN GENN cally expanded: employees were very much invested in the political fight.

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N the end, the John Doe proceeding failed in its ultimate For some of the families, the trauma of the raids, combined aims. It secured convictions for embezzlement (related to with the stress and anxiety of lengthy criminal investigations, I the original 2009 complaint), a conviction for sexual mis- has led to serious emotional repercussions. “Devastating” is how conduct, and a few convictions for minor campaign violations, Anne describes the impact on her family. “Life-changing,” she but Governor Walker was untouched, his reforms were imple- says. “All in terrible ways.” mented, and he survived his recall election. O’Keefe, who has been in contact with multiple targeted fam- But with another election looming—this time Walker’s cam- ilies, says, “Every family I know of that endured a home raid has paign for reelection—Chisholm wasn’t finished. He launched been shaken to its core, and the fate of marriages and families yet another John Doe investigation, “supervised” by Judge still hangs in the balance in some cases.” Barbara Kluka. Kluka proved to be capable of superhuman effi- Anne also describes a new fear of the police: “I used to sup- ciency—approving “every petition, subpoena, and search war- port the police, to believe they were here to protect us. Now, rant in the case” in a total of one day’s work. when I see an officer, I’ll cross the street. I’m afraid of them. I If the first series of John Doe investigations was “everything know what they’re capable of.” Walker,” the second series was “everything conservative,” as Cindy says, “I lock my doors and I close my shades. I don’t Chisholm had launched an investigation of not only Walker answer the door unless I am expecting someone. My heart races (again) but the Wisconsin Club for Growth and dozens of other when I see a police car sitting in front of my house or following conservative organizations, this time fishing for evidence of me in the car. The raid was so public. I’ve been harassed. My allegedly illegal “coordination” between conservative groups house has been vandalized. [She did not identify suspects.] I no and the Walker campaign. longer feel safe, and I don’t think I ever will.” In the second John Doe, Chisholm had no real evidence of Rachel talks about the effect on her children. “I tried to create wrongdoing. Yes, conservative groups were active in issue advo- a home where the kids always feel safe. Now they know they’re cacy, but issue advocacy was protected by the First Amendment not. They know men with guns can come in their house, and and did not violate relevant campaign laws. Nonetheless, there’s nothing we can do.” Every knock on the door brings Chisholm convinced prosecutors in four other counties to launch anxiety. Every call to the house is screened. In the back of her their own John Does, with Judge Kluka overseeing all of them. mind is a single, unsettling thought: Empowered by a rubber-stamp judge, partisan investigators These people will never stop. ran amok. They subpoenaed and obtained (without the conserv- Victims of trauma—and every person I spoke with described ative targets’ knowledge) massive amounts of electronic data, the armed raids as traumatic—often need to talk, to share their including virtually all the targets’ personal e-mails and other experiences and seek solace in the company of a loving family electronic messages from outside e-mail vendors and communi- and supportive friends. The investigators denied them that priv- cations companies. ilege, and it compounded their pain and fear. The investigations exploded into the open with a coordinat- The investigation not only damaged families, it also shut ed series of raids on October 3, 2013. These were home inva- down their free speech. In many cases, the investigations halted sions, including those described above. Chisholm’s office conservative groups in their tracks. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin refused to comment on the raid tactics (or any other aspect of Club for Growth described the effect in court filings: the John Doe investigations), but witness accounts regarding the two John Doe investigations are remarkably similar: O’Keefe’s associates began cancelling meetings with him and early-morning intrusions, police rushing through the house, declining to take his calls, reasonably fearful that merely and stern commands to remain silent and tell no one about associating with him could make them targets of the investi- what had occurred. gation. O’Keefe was forced to abandon fundraising for the At the same time, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and other Club because he could no longer guarantee to donors that their identities would remain confidential, could not (due to conservative organizations received broad subpoenas requiring the Secrecy Order) explain to potential donors the nature of them to turn over virtually all business records, including “donor the investigation, could not assuage donors’ fears that they information, correspondence with their associates, and all finan- might become targets themselves, and could not assure cial information.” The subpoenas also contained dire warnings donors that their money would go to fund advocacy rather about disclosure of their existence, threatening contempt of than legal expenses. The Club was also paralyzed. Its officials court if the targets spoke publicly. could not associate with its key supporters, and its funds were For select conservative families across five counties, this was depleted. It could not engage in issue advocacy for fear of the terrifying moment—the moment they felt at the mercy of a criminal sanction. truly malevolent state. These raids and subpoenas were often based not on traditional notions of probable cause but on mere suspicion, untethered to pEAKING both on and off the record, targets reflected on the law or evidence, and potentially violating the Fourth how many layers of Wisconsin government failed their Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and S fundamental constitutional duties—the prosecutors who seizures.” The very existence of First Amendment–protected launched the rogue investigations, the judge who gave the expression was deemed to be evidence of illegality. The prose- abuse judicial sanction, investigators who chose to taunt and cution simply assumed that the conservatives were incapable of intimidate during the raids, and those police who ultimately operating within the bounds of the law. approved and executed aggressive search tactics on law- Even worse, many of the investigators’ legal theories, even if abiding, peaceful citizens. proven by the evidence, would not have supported criminal

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prosecutions. In other words, they were investigating “crimes” nD so, almost five years after their secret beginning, the that weren’t crimes at all. John Doe proceedings are nearly dead—on “life sup- If the prosecutors had applied the same legal standards to the A port,” according to one Wisconsin pundit—but incalcu- Democrats in their own offices, they would have been forced to lable damage has been done, to families, to activist organizations, turn the raids on themselves. If the prosecutors and investigators to the First Amendment, and to the rule of law itself. had been raided, how many of their computers and smartphones In international law, the Western world has become familiar would have contained incriminating information indicating use with a concept called “lawfare,” a process whereby rogue of government resources for partisan purposes? regimes or organizations abuse legal doctrines and processes to With the investigations now bursting out into the open, some accomplish through sheer harassment and attrition what can’t conservatives began to fight back. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin be accomplished through legitimate diplomatic means. The Club for Growth moved to quash the John Doe subpoenas aimed Palestinian Authority and its defenders have become adept at at them. In a surprise move, Judge Kluka, who had presided over lawfare, putting Israel under increasing pressure before the the Doe investigations for more than a year, recused herself from U.n. and other international bodies. the case. (A political journal, the Wisconsin Reporter, attempted The John Doe investigations are a form of domestic lawfare, to speak to Judge Kluka about her recusal, but she refused to and our constitutional system is ill equipped to handle it. offer comment.) Federal courts rarely intervene in state judicial proceedings, The John Doe investigations are a form of domestic lawfare, and our constitutional system is ill equipped to handle it.

The new judge in the case, Gregory Peterson, promptly sided state officials rarely lose their array of official immunities for with O’Keefe and blocked multiple subpoenas, holding (in a the consequences of their misconduct, and violations of First sealed opinion obtained by the Wall Street Journal, which has Amendment freedoms rarely result in meaningful monetary done invaluable work covering the John Doe investigations) that damages for the victims. they “do not show probable cause that the moving parties com- As Scott Walker runs for president, the national media will mitted any violations of the campaign finance laws.” The judge finally join the Wall Street Journal in covering John Doe. Given noted that “the State is not claiming that any of the independent the mainstream media’s typical bias and bad faith, they are likely organizations expressly advocated” Walker’s election. to bring a fresh round of pain to the targets of the investigation; O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth followed up the cloud of suspicion will descend once again; even potential Judge Peterson’s ruling by filing a federal lawsuit against favorable court rulings by either the state supreme court or the Chisholm and a number of additional defendants, alleging U.S. Supreme Court will be blamed on “conservative justices” multiple constitutional violations, including a claim that the taking care of their own. investigation constituted unlawful retaliation against the plain- Conservatives have looked at Wisconsin as a success story, tiffs for the exercise of their First Amendment rights. United where Walker took everything the Left threw at him and States District Court judge Rudolph Randa promptly granted emerged victorious in three general elections. He broke the the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, declaring power of the teachers’ unions and absorbed millions upon mil- that “the Defendants must cease all activities related to the lions of dollars of negative ads. The Left kept chanting, “This is investigation, return all property seized in the investigation what democracy looks like,” and in Wisconsin, democracy from any individual or org anization, and permanently destroy looked like Scott Walker winning again and again. all copies of information and other materials obtained through Yet in a deeper way, Wisconsin is anything but a success. the investigation.” There were casualties left on the battlefield—innocent citizens From that point forward, the case proceeded on parallel state victimized by a lawless government mob, public officials who and federal tracks. At the federal level, the Seventh Circuit brought the full power of their office down onto the innocent. Court of Appeals reversed Judge Randa’s order. Declining to Governors come and go. Statutes are passed and repealed. consider the case on the merits, the appeals court found the law- Laws and elections are important, to be sure, but the rule of law suit barred by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits is more important still. And in Wisconsin, the rule of law hangs federal courts from issuing injunctions against some state-court in the balance—along with the liberty of citizens. proceedings. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth have As I finished an interview with one victim still living in fear, petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari and expect still shattered by the experience of nearly losing everything a ruling in a matter of weeks. simply because she supported the wrong candidate at the wrong At the same time, the John Doe prosecutors took their case time, I asked whether she had any final thoughts. “Just one,” to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to attempt to restart the she replied. “I’m hoping for accountability, that someone will Doe proceedings. The case was ultimately consolidated be held responsible so that they’ll never do this again.” She before the state supreme court, with a ruling also expected in paused for a moment and then, with voice trembling, said: “no a matter of weeks. one should ever endure what my family endured.”

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once luxury items available only to the most deep-pocketed consumers. Robotics have caused tremendous social change Fear Not and will probably continue to do so, but their long-term effect may well be to decrease inequality rather than increase it. Indeed, robotics and automation have perhaps done more to improve quality of life than has any other eco- The Robot nomic force in history. We need to keep this in mind as we assess the massive, world-changing potential of the next Automation will continue to round of technical innovations. raise our quality of life hanks to Star Wars , many of us have images of robots BY DANNY CRICHTON as humanoid figures walking around the desert, but the T reality is that robots are often built into the products we use every day. Consider the keurig coffeemaker. We place a vERY few years, we experience a wave of concern special cup in the machine, hit a button, and the built-in com- over the rise of robots and its effect on jobs. auto- puter handles the rest, leaving us a steaming hot cup of coffee, mation, we hear, will rid the economy of human labor, with minimal human involvement in the brewing process. The E replacing the inefficient flesh-and-blood employee device has become a mainstay in office break rooms, and with amazingly powerful computers. Yet the robot takeover has keurig has sold millions of units around the world. Yet baristas so far not occurred—human workers seem to be surviving and haven’t disappeared from the work force. Despite the popularity even thriving alongside all the machines. of automated coffee machines, starbucks continues to increase another one of these surges of concern is upon us, fueled by its earnings and expand to new locations, with about 1,500 new books such as Tyler Cowen’s Average Is Over and Martin stores opening just last year. Ford’s Rise of the Robots, as well as a spate of articles arguing We often think of robotics as a zero-sum economic game that this time, the computer revolution really is different. and in which humans and machines are locked in a tug-of-war. when we wade through the headlines, this time actually does The keurig coffeemaker shows that the zero-sum calculus look different. can be flat wrong. similarly, accountants did not disappear Google’s autonomous car has already traveled nearly a mil- after the arrival of Excel and QuickBooks; in fact, account- lion miles on California and nevada roads. Elon Musk, the ing majors have been some of the most in-demand college founder of the electric-car company Tesla Motors, recently graduates in recent years. predicted that autonomous cars could enter the market as soon home appliances are particularly good examples of how as this year, potentially wiping out the taxi and trucking indus- automation increases convenience, since they are among the tries in one fell swoop. most common robots we use daily. Cooking is simplified by Robots are getting better not only at understanding road con- microwaves that have all kinds of automation built in, such as ditions but also at “reading” their human operators. IBM’s com- buttons that heat our food to the perfect temperature. Cleaning puter system Watson, which famously defeated its human our homes takes less and less effort as well, with devices such as opponents in the television game show Jeopardy, has continued iRobot’s Roomba, which can automatically sweep the floors. to rapidly improve and is now answering complex queries about Perhaps no robots have had a greater effect on quality of life such subjects as medicine. apple’s siri voice interface for the than the washing machine a nd the dishwasher. In the mid 20th iPhone has also improved. silicon valley seems close to building century, when women no longer had to do laundry or wash a starship Enterprise–like voice-based computer, threatening dishes by hand, they suddenly had considerably more time for hundreds of thousands of jobs in customer-support call centers. themselves. The devices saved hundreds of millions of hours added to the usual worries about computers’ replacing of household labor per year. some scholars argue that the laundry workers is a new concern: Who will own these robots? Will a machine did more to increase female participation in the econ- small stratum of people (capitalists, of course) control them omy than any other change in the last century. and extract exorbitant rents from the rest of us? If you thought While many of these conveniences began as luxury goods, inequality was a problem before, the critics warn, wait until history shows us that automation tends to permeate the economy you see what happens next. quickly. Yesterday’s computers cost millions of dollars and Technological change always brings out these negative took up whole floors of office buildings, and printers cost tens voices, because we don’t have answers for many important of thousands of dollars. Today, we can carry a supercomputer questions. We don’t know where new jobs are going to come in our pocket and purchase a desktop printer for less than a from or even whether there will be work to do at all in 50 hundred dollars. years. Yet in light of the history of technological innovation, Those who fear that robotics will increase inequality over- such fears are unfounded. look the great consumer demand for these products, and the Far from exclusively benefiting elites, automation has supply-and-demand interplay and competition that force prices allowed people of modest means to buy products that were ever downward. Based on its autonomous-driving technology, Google could become a monopoly that owns all cars, but it’s Mr. Crichton is a doctoral student at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of more likely that all car manufacturers will incorporate this Government, where he researches labor economics. technology into their models.

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There is little reason to think that this trend of democratiza- also at risk. The rules of the market affect everyone. Investors tion will stop, and it may even be accelerating. Soon 3-D print- have poured millions of dollars, for instance, into computer ers will allow us to “print” millions of different objects, from startups targeting the legal industry, because lawyers read mugs to the coasters they sit on. Such printers cost thousands boiler plate contracts at hours billable well into the triple digits. of dollars today, but their prices have fallen dramatically over Creative destruction is as old as history, but the pace today the past few years, and they will probably be in wide use by the is accelerating, with millions of workers potentially affected end of the decade. Further, 3-D printers will probably increase by automation in a matter of years instead of decades. the pace of innovation across many fields, as they make it Professions created just a few decades ago are now being cheaper to quickly make product prototypes and sell early eliminated, and entire job categories can rise and fall within a models, allowing more inventors to get in the game and make single generation. their work available to the public. There are no simple solutions. Increased efficiency rewards When technology allows consumers to produce average- all of us with lower prices for higher-quality goods and ser- quality goods at home, companies must offer higher-quality vices, but certain groups of workers could suffer deep losses. products to compete. The greeting-card industry, for instance, It’s possible that education itself will become more automat- faced extinction with the advent of desktop printing, but it ed, which would allow more workers to take classes and started producing specialized designs that home printers can- improve their skills to compete in the marketplace. English- not (yet) match. The market expanded to encompass a greater teaching robots already exist in Japan and South Korea, and range of consumer tastes. more subjects may soon be offered by such automated pro- To be fair, patents and other intellectual-property protections grams. Workers must constantly improve their productivity to ensure that the inventors of technologies are well rewarded for increase their value. This is fundamentally good for the economy, their efforts. hewlett-Packard has made mill ions off its printer because it means that the average hourly value of a human ink, much as Keurig and Whirlpool have made millions off worker is increasing over time. their products. But economies of scale are no more likely to We are all going to have to improve our skills to be compet- drive out competition tomorrow than they are today. itive in this economy, but this transition shouldn’t distract us from the economic bounty that awaits on the other side of the revolution in robotics. uT we shouldn’t tout the benefits to the individual con- sumer of all these conveniences without taking a wider B look at automation and its overall effect on the economy. hIlE the issue of employment garners the most Greater efficiency through robots allows us to produce more in attention from commentators, robotics’ socially less time, but these changes can force some workers to change W transformative effects deserve our scrutiny as well. their occupations. Perhaps no technology has more potential to improve our The most important factor in improving quality of life is pro- quality of life than the autonomous car. We will be able to ductivity growth. Productivity is simply the quantity of goods relax during our commutes, reducing our stress and improv- and services we can produce given limited resources, particu- ing our health. Autonomous cars could almost instantaneously larly our time. deliver a greater number of goods and services, such as If we want to improve our standard of living, there are only meals, household supplies, and home-maintenance services, two options available. One way is to increase our work hours giving us more leisure time. Perhaps most significant, many and thus the amount that we produce. But human productivity fewer accidents would be caused by drunk driving or distrac- rarely grows linearly in proportion to hours worked, nor do we tion while driving. necessarily want to spend more time at work. The other option If autonomous cars become popular, we could greatly reduce is to increase productivity per hour. We do this when we the land space devoted to roads and parking. City governments expand access to education and job training, increasing the could dedicate vast tracts of land to a variety of new uses, such productivity of individual workers. We do this also by enhanc- as parks or housing. ing human industry through the use of tools, which includes Finally, and perhaps most futuristically, we will have to automation and robotics. When we use a microwave to produce adapt to having more robots in nearly all aspects of our daily a meal in five minutes rather than an hour, we have increased life. Siri and Watson are just the first steps toward fully per- our food-preparation productivity more than tenfold. Multiply sonalized digital assistants, and future generations of these such improvements across all devices throughout the economy, sorts of products will lead to all kinds of new social interac- and the massive efficiency gains we’ve made in the last hun- tions and situations, affecting human relationships in ways we dred years look unsurprising. can’t yet predict. Automation in the economy doesn’t st rike randomly; it takes There is no question that our economy will undergo vast hold when market forces determine that physical capital (a c hanges in the next few years. Critics are right to warn that robot) is cheaper than human capital (a worker). America’s many jobs will be made redundant, and that automation might entire manufacturing sector used to be heavily dependent on increase inequality, at least in the short term. But we’ve sur- human labor, but today’s highly efficient factories produce vived—and thrived—through waves of automation for cen- more goods than ever before while employing far fewer peo- turies, and the productivity gains show that we should be ple, because of robotics. championing these improvements, not hoping they stop soon. It’s not only a line worker in a factory or a burger flippe r who The best has been, and always will be, just aroun d the corner. might be replaced by a robot. Many white-collar workers are let R2-D2 show the way.

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ating unmolested closer to enemy shores than previous Cold War–era doctrine permitted, secure in the knowledge that the Drydock chance of an attack ranged between unlikely and impossible. Such confidence in the dominance of the carrier encour- aged naval architects to put more capabilities into their design, going from the 30,000-ton Essex-class carrier in 1942 Time to the 94,000-ton Nimitz-class carrier in 1975. Crew size of a typical carrier went from 3,000 to 5,200 over the same period, Aircraft carriers belong to a 73 percent increase. Costs similarly burgeoned, from $1.1 billion for the Essex to $5 billion for the Nimitz (all in adjusted the fleet of yesteryear 2014 dollars), owing to the increased technical complexity and sheer physical growth of the platforms in order to host BY JERRY HENDRIX the larger aircraft that operated at longer ranges during the Cold War. The lessons of World War II, in which several large fleet carriers were lost or badly damaged, convinced bATTLE of the hawks is raging on Capitol Hill. Navy leaders to pursue a goal of a 100,000-ton carrier that Defense hawks say the nation’s security will be could support a 100,000-pound aircraft capable of carrying endangered if the caps imposed under the 2011 larger bomb payloads, including nuclear weapons, 2,000 A budget Control Act aren’t lifted, allowing for more miles or more to hit strategic targets, making the platform defense spending. Fiscal hawks assert with equal vehemence larger, more expensive, and manned with more of the Navy’s that the nation’s long-term economic health—the foundation most valuable assets, its people. Today’s new class of carrier, for all government activities, including defense—will be per- the Ford, which will be placed into commission next year, manently harmed if burgeoning deficits and debts are not displaces 100,000 tons of water, and has a crew of 4,800 and addressed. Defense hawks argue for a massive investment to a price of $14 billion. The great cost of the Cold War–era maintain the United States’ position as the world’s strongest “super-carriers” has resulted in a reduction of the carrier power. Fiscal hawks argue for innovative improvements in force, from over 30 fleet carriers in World War II to just ten efficiency to sustain U.S. leadership. carriers today. While the carrier of today is more capable, This argument as it regards the U.S. Navy is taking place each of the ten can be in only one place at a time, limiting the with special vigor. The budget will have serious consequences Navy’s range of effectiveness. for the size of the fleet and its ability to maintain combat This points to the first reason the U.S. should stop building readiness, which in turn will have consequences for U.S. carriers: They are too valuable to lose. At $14 billion apiece, strategy. If the Navy wants to address its budget crisis, its one of them can cost the equivalent of nearly an entire year’s falling ship count, its atrophying strategic position, and the shipbuilding budget. (Carriers are in fact funded and built problem of its now-marginal combat effectiveness—and over a five-year period.) And the cost of losing a carrier reassert its traditional dominance of the seas—it should would not be only monetary. Each carrier holds the popula- embrace technological innovation and increase its efficiency. tion of a small town. Americans are willing to risk their lives In short: It needs to stop building aircraft carriers. for important reasons, but they have also become increasingly This might seem like a radical change. After all, the aircraft averse to casualties. Losing a platform with nearly 5,000 carrier has been the dominant naval platform and the center of American souls onboard would not just raise an outcry, but the Navy’s force structure for the past 70 years—an era would undermine public faith in elected officials—and the marked by unprecedented peace on the oceans. In the past officials know it. It would take an existential threat to the generation, aircraft have flown thousands of sorties from the homeland to convince leaders to introduce carriers into a decks of American carriers in support of the nation’s wars. high-threat environment. For the first 54 days of the current round of airstrikes against Yet any hesitance to do so would create a cascading fail- ISIS in Iraq, the USS George H. W. Bush was the sole source ure. Carriers are the central cogs in the U.S. war-fighting of air power. but the economic, technological, and strategic machine. They don’t just launch planes for air strikes: They develop ments of recent years indicate that the day of the car- also provide airborne command and control, host the staffs rier is over and, in fact, might have already passed a genera- of strike-group and fleet-commanding admirals, and provide tion ago—a fact that has been obscured by the preponderance underway refueling and resupply of other ships in their of U.S. power on the seas. strike group. In addition, they house much of the fleet’s ord- The carrier has been operating in low-threat, permissive nance in their cavernous magazines. If they were removed environments almost continuously since World War II. At no from the arena as a result of a political decision not to risk time since 1946 has a carrier had to fend off attacks by enemy their damage or loss, current plans to defend U.S. interests aircraft, surface ships, or submarines. No carrier has had to would collapse. establish a sanctuary for operations and then defend it. More For this reason, the modern carrier violates a core principle often than not, carriers have recently found themselves oper- of war: Never introduce an element that you cannot afford to lose. There can be no indispensable person or platform in Mr. Hendrix, a retired Navy captain, is a senior fellow at the Center for a war, for as soon as that element is identified, the enemy will New American Security and the director of its Defense Strategies and risk everything to destroy it, and in that moment a war can be Assessments Program. lost. The carrier has done well in the benign environments of

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The USS Gerald R. Ford, price: $14 billion

recent decades, but in the face of current rising threats, in he efficacy of the carrier lies not in the ship but in the which U.S. credibility is on the line, there are serious ques- capabilities of its planes. Today, most of those planes are tions about its continued worth. T F/A-18 hornets—a superb aircraft that has undergone In 1996, China found itself embroiled in a controversy with many improvements in its lifetime but remains limited by its a government in Taiwan that was intent on declaring its for- original light-attack-mission requirements. mal independence. To send a message, China conducted a In the past 14 years of combat operations, in which Navy air- series of tests that involved firing missiles into the waters craft have flown tens of thousands of sorties, we have learned a around Taiwan and built up forces to conduct an amphibious number of things. First, nearly 80 percent of a hornet’s 9,000- exercise in the Taiwan Strait. In response, President Bill flight-hour lifetime is spent maintaining the flight qualifications Clinton sent two aircraft-carrier strike groups to the strait. of its pilots. China, chastened, embarrassed, and well aware of the United Second, if we factor in the life-cycle costs of the air - States’ recent demonstration of its ability to project power at craft—including the cost of buying it, maintaining it, fueling it, will into Iraq and the former Yugoslavia from seaborne air and training its pilots—and then divide that cost by the number bases, set about developing a series of capabilities that could of bombs dropped in combat, we arrive at an average cost per credibly threaten American aircraft carriers and push them bomb of nearly $8 million. This is seven times the cost of a / back beyond the combat range of their aircraft. In the years Tomahawk precision-strike cruise missile. CARRIER - that followed, China developed long-range aircraft equipped Third, the current average combat range of a carrier light- with anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines, surface ships with attack plane is only 500 miles. This means that, even steaming at AIRCRAFT - long-range missiles, and land-based ballistic missiles capable 30 knots, the carrier would spend 15 hours under an A2AD threat 78 -

CVN of knocking a carrier out of action. Today, any carrier operat- in order to carry its planes close enough to hit land targets. The - ing within 1,000 miles of the Chinese coast knows that it can Navy has consistently opposed investing in the type of unmanned FORD - R - be targeted at any moment. And the problem looks even more long-range combat strike platforms that could renew its rele- serious when we consider that China has often exported mil- vance, and today’s carrier planes do not have sufficient in-flight GERALD -

USS itary technologies to other nations willing to pay for them. refueling capacity to significantly extend the range of the attack - THE

- The United States, the center of technological innovation, aircraft. Proposals to use large “big-wing” U.S. Air Force tankers thus finds itself in the position of being out-innovated. To to extend the refueling capacity beyond what carriers can provide

DISSECTING counter emerging “anti-access/area denial” (A2AD) technolo- ignore the fact that these aircraft will not be able to operate with- / 10 / gies that include ballistic and cruise missiles that can reach in the A2AD threat bubble unescorted by single-seat fighters, 2014 / ships over a thousand miles from shore, the U.S. Navy has whose pilots cannot remain physically effective throughout the invested billions of dollars in anti-A2AD capabilities—such as long 14-hour missions. CONTENT _ electronic-spectrum jamming, directed-energy weapons, elec- Recently, in apparent recognition of these strategic challenges, NEWS / tromagnetic rail guns, and ballistic-missile defenses—in a vain Navy leaders and their supporters in industry and think tanks COM . attempt to defend the carrier. An objective outside observer can have begun to advance the argument that, when dealing with ART - easily identify who is imposing costs on who m in this compe- A2AD-capable powers, it is not necessary to project power DISENO

. tition. The same outside observer would also discern where the ashore: Rather, the Navy and its carriers should conduct a cam-

WWW difficulty with the carrier design lies. paign to control the sea, slowly destroying their opponent’s navy

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and interdicting its trade over time to eventually degrade its capa- infantry was overcome by the chariot, the chariot was overcome bilities and roll back its defenses. This approach is very much in by spears and arrows, spears and arrows were overcome by gun- line with what the U.S. Navy did in World War II, but it ignores powder and artillery, and so on. The United States has sat atop the the overarching strategy the U.S. pursued in that war. pinnacle of power alone for nearly three decades. It reached its The Navy conducted a prolonged sea-control campaign to heights through investments in carriers, tanks, fighters, and destroy the Japanese navy, and thereby create space and support bombers. Today’s Navy looks remarkably like it has for the past for its Marine and Army brethren to capture islands. Navy con- 70 years, just smaller and more expensive. It is an evolutionary struction battalions then built on those islands the airfields nec- force, not a revolutionary force, and it’s an easy target for rising essary to host the Army Air Forces’ long-range bombers, which powers that seek to overtake it. bombed the next island to be captured, and then the next, until the The nation’s sovereign citizens deserve better. They deserve an bombers were within range of the Japanese home islands. At that innovative solution to the United States’ strategic problems. point a conventional bombing campaign was planned to weaken Rather than attempting to find a war to fit the fleet it has, the Navy Japanese industry, degrade living conditions, and destroy mili- should build a fleet to win the war it’s likely to fight. Rather than tary power in advance of an all-out invasion. Only the dropping dedicate such new technologies as directed energy, electromag- of the atomic bombs halted this inexorable drive. The point of the netic rail guns, and hypersonic propulsion systems to propping entire World War II Pacific campaign was not to gain sea control up and defending a legacy platform, it should free these systems

Rather than attempting to find a war to fit the fleet it has, the Navy should build a fleet to win the war it’s likely to fight.

and attrite Japanese naval forces, but rather to bring U.S. forces to find a place in a revolutionary new fleet that is marked by within range of the Japanese capital in order to project power and lower costs and ruthless efficiency. This fleet should be con- bring the war to an end. structed with a focus on swift, decisive victory through power Today, it appears, in an attempt to find a continued justification projection into the enemy’s decision centers in order to bring of the aircraft carrier in war plans designed to deal with A2AD about rapid change in that enemy’s policies. capabilities, the Navy proposes to set aside the capacity for this Resources recouped from ceasing construction of a $14 bil- sort of power projection and its promise of a shorter and less lion carrier could be redirected to the construction of seven expensive war, and accept in its place a strategy based on a missile-laden destroyers, or seven submarines, or 28 frigates, drawn-out, expensive, and disruptive campaign of sea control or 100 joint high-speed vessels, or any combination thereof. It and economic blockade. This is a mistake. The Navy should is true that the size of the Navy has shrunk, with the result that instead invest in upgrading the aircraft in the carrier’s air wing areas of critical national interest are no longer patrolled regu- with unmanned combat strike vehicles to increase their range, or larly; but it is also true that the size of the Navy has shrunk abandon the carrier as the centerpiece of naval warfare and buy because of decisions that the Navy itself has made. The size of numerous additional guided-missile submarines, which can oper- the Navy’s shipbuilding budget has remained nearly constant, ate with impunity within the A2AD bubble and can each carry at $16 billion per year when adjusted for inflation, but when 150 long-range precision-strike cruise missiles. Instead the Navy the Navy elects to purchase more-expensive ships within a has chosen the strategically untenable position of resigning itself stable budget, it is electing to buy fewer ships. That the ships to longer wars. it chooses to purchase have become less combat-effective Some emphasize that the carrier serves other roles, such as pro- over time only exacerbates the problem and raises serious viding overawing peacetime presence, diplomatic influence, and questions about judgment; and expecting Congress to correct unmatched humanitarian assistance and disaster response, and acquisition misjudgments through increased deficit spending they are correct. The carrier performs superbly in all these roles, is irresponsible. The simple fact is that there is enough money but the nation’s citizens don’t pay $14 billion for a ship to hand to purchase surface and sub-surface ships in sufficient num- out water, food, and blankets. They pay that much money, the bers to complicate any A2AD strategy, thereby regaining the cost of 350 new public schools, to ensure that the Navy they strategic initiative and imposing costs on those who would maintain can fight and win, decisively, the nation’s wars. The car- make themselves our enemies. rier, with its present air wing, can no longer do that. We dare not risk being the classic great power, satisfied with the strategic status quo and oblivious to rising competitors. The Japanese, with the destruction of the battleship fleet at Pearl N many ways, the United States is repeating the historical Harbor, left the U.S. no alternative but to invest in the carrier. We pattern of former great powers. Great powers typically rise dare not risk suffering such a lesson of imposed change again. I and rule on the back of a key technological breakthrough or Carriers had their day, but that day ended perhaps a generation combination of breakthroughs. Once established, they tend to ago, and we have been too busy to notice. Congressional leaders, invest in the status quo, continuing to refine their technological torn between the desire to cut the defense budget and the need to edge. The philosophy comes down to the old adage “If it isn’t strengthen the military, will find that it is possible to achieve both broke, don’t fix it.” Such an approach, however, provides a fixed objectives if they simply let go of old paradigms. It’s time to target for other rising powers to focus on. In this manner the move on and lead again.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Rand’s Riposte

ILLARy is running for president, a turn of events lic schools, or corporate regulation, in which case one is a so shocking you could knock me over with a “tireless champion.”) People heard “troublesome” and feather or a dossier of her Senate accomplish- “oppose” in close proximity, which is sad because politics H ments. expect the press to revive the “war on are so negative these days, with all the opposing. And what’s women” plot by asking a male GoP rival whether he feels this about vetoing Healthy Babies? The monster! he’s thwarting progress by opposing the first female prez. The Rand Paul approach derails the 40-car freight train If the candidate has any fortitude, he’ll say, “Really, this and shoots the engineer in the cab for good measure. It’s like nonsense again? Conservatives don’t have a problem with the Gingrich Method for dealing with loaded questions: women. We have a problem with leftists who won’t be happy refuse to accept the premise and eviscerate the reporter with until wizened nuns are required by law to perform abortions, acidic wit. Watching Newt work with a hostile press was like that’s what.” So you hope. you fear he’ll say: “Well, the good watching a porcupine do jumping jacks in a room full of bal- thing about a female commander-in-chief, we’d only have to loons. And that’s why he’s president! People eat that stuff up. pay her 77 cents on the dollar.” If he said that before the Well, no. People who regard the D.C. media as inbred debate he might as well refer to her as Madam President for overclass mouthpieces devoted to the rule of smothering the rest of the campaign. statis ts might cheer, but people who like those nice good- The trouble-with-women meme reappeared in April looking young folk on TV think the candidate is just being when Rand Paul was insufficiently respectful to a reporter. rude. And he didn’t answer the question about voting He shushed her. She was talking and he shushed her. When against Healthy Babies. Rand Paul tells a female reporter to shush, people hear dif- Let’s say the candidate does answer the last point in the ferent things. litany. It usually goes like this: 1. Liberals think he’s saying “you SHuT youR “Well, Susan, that’s a long list, but I’ll take the last one. I WHoRe MouTH.” voted for the Baby Wellness Initiative, which was a House 2. Conservatives think he’s finally doing what candidates version of the Healthy Babies Act, which as you know need to do, which is treat the media like glossy-coated replaced the Infant Mortality Abatement Directive of 1974 jackals who lap up whatever half-digested opinions the due to sunset in fiscal year 2016. What I voted against was New York Times barfed up that morn. After all, this is how an amended bill that included money for drones that per- the interviews usually go: formed abortions in rural areas, which didn’t seem to have “Thank you for appearing on the show today. There’s been anything to do with wellness—” some controversy over statements you’ve made in the last 35 “But many have pointed out the lack of access to repro- years, and some say you’ve flip-flopped on some key issues, ductive health care in the Heartland.” like Iran, abortion, butter as a preferable spread to margarine, “AND MANy HAVe PoINTeD ouT THe LACk of NoSe HAIRS Chinese trade, the latter Darren on Bewitched vs. the former, IN GeoRGe WASHINGToN oN MouNT RuSHMoRe, So WHAT— and, perhaps most troublesome as far as women voters are sorry. It was a procedural vote, and—” concerned, your opposition to a bill that would have reduced “Well, we’re out of time, but we thank you for coming federal penalties for increasing state penalties on local penal- by today.” ties with regard to the Healthy Baby Act of 1975, leading “My pleasure.” many to wonder why you have chosen this time to oppose Rand Paul did something different: He told the inter- healthy, cute, smiling babies whose open faces and wide viewer to go ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she supports innocent smiles are almost a universal sign of hope.” aborting a seven-pound fetus, and then they’d talk. Bravo. Most GoP candidates respond with the hideous grin of a car More please. you want to talk about gay rights? Ask salesman given 50,000 volts of electricity through a catheter, Hillary if a grandma florist should be jailed because she then say, “Well, the issue isn’t healthy children, Susan; we’re didn’t make a bouquet for a transgender-polygamist com- all for those, and I have three lovely ones myself. The issue is mitment ceremony. you want to talk about women’s repro- what kind of future we leave them, and that’s why I’m about ductive health? Ask Hillary if she thinks the abortion rate in to use words like ‘deficit’ and ‘opportunity,’ because they African-American communities is too high, too low, or focus-tested well with six Iowa farmers who showed up at the just Goldilocks right. you want to talk about money in pol- diner wearing hats covered with campaign buttons.” itics? Ask Hillary if taking money from the koch brothers is Annnnd he’s dead. Because people heard “flip-flop,” worse than taking it from robed Saudi creeps who beat which is bad; it implies someone doesn’t have any princi- women for leaving the house without a hall pass. ples. (Note: Adherence to principles over the course of a Can’t miss! except you know what the media’s takeaway long career is regarded as “ideological inflexibility,” unless would be, don’t you? the issue is abortion rights, taxation, the environment, pub- “Candidate’s questions revive the debate about whether using Clinton’s first name is condescending—or Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. just sexist.”

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

family. Make sure your eyes spend a MALEVOICE: “It’s okay, Mrs. Clinton. moment or two directed to each of That person is greeting you. They’re them and—” safe. You’re safe. Do not continue FEMALEVOICE: “What is she doing? spitting at her. Just smile and go into This is . . . stop her!” your greeting protocol. Ask about MALEVOICE: “Mrs. Clinton, no! No! her and her life. Work the checklist, Stop! Do not smell the baby. The Mrs. Clinton. Job, family, hopes, NATIONAL baby is a real thing, Mrs. Clinton. fears. We’ll upload the responses SECURITY AGENCY It’s a living thing. It means you no into the eyeball monitor. Just relax. harm. Remember the rehearsals. You’re safe. This is safe. The Olive RADIO-FREQUENCY Okay? Smile at the baby. Smile. No, Garden is good.” MONITORING that’s not a smile, Mrs. Clinton. FEMALEVOICE: “Why is she eating That’s why the baby is crying.” the menu?” LOCATION: DUNBAR, OHIO FEMALEVOICE: “Send in the Rescue MALEVOICE: “The menu is not food, FREQUENCY: 287.90 GHz Team!” Mrs. Clinton. People don’t eat the SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “No! Wait. menu! Take the menu out of your Wait. Let this play out. Remind her mouth! Those are pictures of food, BEGIN EXTRACT about the smile training we did.” Mrs. Clinton. Pictures of food are [Static.] MALEVOICE: “Mrs. Clinton, you’re not food. Okay, put the menu down. MALEVOICE: “Can you hear me, Mrs. doing great. Just relax. These are Go into your laughter protocol. Clinton? Nod and wave if you can just regular people out for a nice Very nice.” hear me?” dinner, they like you, the baby is not SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “Make a FEMALEVOICE: “What’s she doing?” a threat, everything is good. Okay? note that some of the fast-casual SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “Is she wav- Now, relax your lips again so they restaurant programming needs to be ing? We don’t have a visual yet. Get cover your incisors. Good. Okay, recoded. This is going to come back her into visual range.” now let’s move into a smile. Begin again and again in Iowa and New MALEVOICE: “Mrs. Clinton, can you the smile. That’s when you try to Hampshire.” hear me? Wave if you can.” move the corners of your mouth MALEVOICE: “You’re doing very FEMALEVOICE: “Got it. She’s wav- back towards the ears, okay?” well, Mrs. Clinton. But try not to ing.” FEMALEVOICE: “We need to shut this move your lips when other people MALEVOICE: “Okay, Mrs. Clinton, down now.” are talking to you. Just nod and fol- we have a visual on you now.” SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “She’s going low the listening protocol.” SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “We can see to get it. Just give her a second.” FEMALEVOICE: “Okay, this is work- the earpiece. Tell her to reinstall the MALEVOICE: “No! Mrs. Clinton! ing now.” earpiece.” Stop! I meant move the corners of SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “She’s real- MALEVOICE: “Mrs. Clinton, we’re your mouth to your ears, not the ly connecting to those voters. Are picking up some of the earpiece just baby’s. Give the baby back to the we getting this on tape?” around the outer ear. If you can, just parents. Now! Okay, now laugh FEMALEVOICE: “We’re going to use casually push the earpiece back like we rehearsed—wonderful!— all of this! Really great!” deeply into the ear. Just casually look the parents in the eye, tell MALEVOICE: “You’re doing great, like you’re brushing back your them you’ve enjoyed listening to Mrs. Clinton! Just wonderful. Okay, hair—” them. Do NOT smell the baby now when you’re ready you can FEMALEVOICE: “What is she doing? again. Now turn to face the Olive wrap up your remarks. Whenever Tell her to stop that!” Garden. Walk towards the Olive you’re ready, just slowly stop talk- MALEVOICE: “Okay, Mrs. Clinton, Garden. Don’t jog, Mrs. Clinton. ing and look at everyone around you let’s just leave it there. I was think- This is a fun walk, okay? This is using your smiling tools. Okay? ing maybe a more casual gesture. just Grammy Clinton out for a fun Nice. Nice.” You don’t need to use the Sharpie. walk. It’s okay for your knees to FEMALEVOICE: “What is she doing? Just . . . okay, just keep walking bend, Mrs. Clinton. That’s the way Why is her hand out?” towards the Olive Garden. Just walk normal people walk. Yes, yes, MALEVOICE: “No, Mrs. Clinton! casually. Okay, Mrs. Clinton, see, doing great. Okay now, inside the Hand down! These people do not right there—when a person notices Olive Gar den.” have to pay you when you speak to you and says hello it’s really okay to FEMALEVOICE: “What is she doing them! No! Hand down!” stop and greet them. So, yeah, just with her mouth?” SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “Okay, let’s stop there and turn slightly to your SECONDFEMALEVOICE: “She’s doing wrap this up and hit the road.” left. No, the other left. Notice the it again. Stop her.” END EXTRACT

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thing before except articles on psycholog- in goods and ideas, and the final defeat of ical research. But he had a way with totalitarianism (at least in its secular- Bold words—and a passion for defending Fascist and Communist forms). The human freedom. “For 60 known cen- American Right seeks to explicate, pro- Fusion turies, this planet that we call Earth has tect, and build on these gains. For this we been inhabited by human beings not need make no apologies or concessions. J O H N H O O D much different from ourselves,” reads the We recognize that modern liberalism is book’s first sentence. “Their desire to live illiberal and that modern progressives are has been just as strong as ours. They have actually backward-looking control freaks had at least as much physical strength as hostile to dynamism and progress. In my the average person of today, and among experience, young conservatives and lib- them have been men and women of great ertarians are, as Cooke puts it, “passionate intelligence. But down through the ages, and ambitious,” quite proud to defend most human beings have gone hungry, “the most successful, virtuous, and radi- The best defenses of both traditionalist conservatism and libertarianism are The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, grounded in reality, not in abstractions Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future, by Charles C. W. Cooke (Crown Forum, or idealism. 256 pp., $25) and many have always starved.” The cal political philosophy in the history of y the second page of the intro- reason this reality changed, Weaver goes the world.” They think the left is lame. duction, I knew I would like on to argue, was the birth of the free- They’re right. this book. American conser- enterprise economy, in turn made possi- The Conservatarian Manifesto is full B vatism is “marked by its un - ble by the birth of limited government. of brilliant insights and powerful argu- orthodoxy and its radicalism,” observes To describe modern conservatism as ments. Cooke uses the failures of gun the British-born NATIONAl REvIEW writer the celebration and preservation of control and the drug war to illustrate the Charles Cooke. Rather than seeking to progress may set certain thinkers’ teeth proper limits of state power, without laps- conserve “international norms” or “the on edge. But it’s the right choice, as a ing into dogma or ignoring the inherent tribal precepts that have animated most matter of principle and as a tool of per- tradeoffs of opting for personal freedom. of human history,” he continues, the con- suasion. The best defenses of both tradi- There is a crucial difference, he points servative movement in this country is tionalist conservatism and libertarianism out, between saying “Society would be animated by “eccentric ideas” such as are grounded in reality, not in abstrac- better off if the drugs vanished overnight” free markets, property rights, the separa- tions or idealism. One need not share any and saying “Society is better off when the tion of powers, and freedom of con- particular theology to recognize that man government tries to make drugs vanish.” science. Personal liberty is “a rare is an imperfect creature prone to mistaken, He also discusses at some length some- privilege” enjoyed by only a tiny percent- self-destructive, and hurtful choices. And thing I noticed several years ago: Today’s age of all the human beings who have one need not be an Objectivist or an generation of young conservatives is ever lived. “If conservatism in America anarcho-capitalist to conclude that gov- more accepting of gay rights and less has one goal, it is to preserve that oppor- ernments, being full of such imperfect accepting of abortion than my generation tunity,” Cooke explains. creatures wielding the power of coercive was in the 1980s. Although left-wing ana- As I read these words, I was reminded violence, are unlikely to do better at lysts see these developments as confusing of a wonderful little book first published achieving “the Good” than individuals and contradictory, they are in fact entirely in 1947 entitled “The Mainspring of acting on their own or through voluntary understandable and consistent applica- Human Progress.” Its author, Henry associations. tions of principle—and suggest to Cooke Grady “Buck” Weaver, was a half-blind When the Founders enshrined the prin- that conservatives “should spend their statistician from Georgia who worked for ciples of liberty and limited government time on more fruitful endeavors” than General Motors. He’d never written any- in the Declaration of Independence and fighting a rearguard action against what the Constitution, that was a great leap for- are really inevitable changes in marriage Mr. Hood is the president of the John William Pope ward in human affairs. So were subse- laws and customs. Foundation, a North Carolina–based grantmaker that quent events such as the abolition of But Cooke also properly warns against supports conservative and libertarian institutions and slavery, the invention of the private cor- the irrational exuberance of certain lib- scholarship. poration, the birth of worldwide free trade ertarian activists who claim that if the

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Republican party would simply drop its citing personal slights, irreconcilable dif- opposition to drug legalization and same- ferences on particular issues, or a wider sex marriage, it would suddenly com- rejection of the possibility of consensus. mand the allegiance of large swathes of Modern-day conservatarians would be young voters. Unfortunately, most of well advised to revisit this intellectual today’s voters in the 18-to-29 group history and reread the works of its pro- have quaffed large amounts of welfare- tagonists, starting with the father of I M P O R T A N T state propaganda served up by their “fusionism” himself, Frank Meyer. The teachers, professors, and celebrity icons. longtime literary editor of NaTioNal N O T I C E a nasty hangover awaits them, of course, Review, Meyer argued, in such essays as but in the meantime their votes won’t be “in Defense of Freedom: a Conservative to all National Review so easy to get. Credo,” for integrating liberty and Unlike the notorious tract published by virtue as mutually reinforcing principles. subscribers! Karl Marx and Friedrich engels in 1848, another advocate of such integration The Conservatarian Manifesto is in - (although not of the term “fusionism”) formed by sound principle and devoted to was my longtime friend Stan evans. He a noble goal, but it does resemble that ear- just passed away, but you can still hear his lier work in several ways: it is concise. it version of the argument in all its splen-       We are moving our is quotable. and it makes no attempt to dor (as well as Stan’s trademark chuckle, describe in a comprehensive fashion if you listen closely enough) in his fore- subscription-fulfillment      Cooke’s entire political philosophy, or to word to Principles and Heresies, Kevin 
   office from work out all the details of how that phi- Smant’s excellent biography of Frank losophy might be turned into a practical Meyer, or in Stan’s own 1994 book, The Mount   Morris, Ill. system of governance. Theme Is Freedom. (For would-be con-    to Palm Coast, Fla. This is an observation, not a criticism. servatarians seeking a model for a vigor- Please continue actually, let me restate that: it is an invi- ous, freedom-promoting foreign policy    tation. The term “conservatarian” may be that avoids both isolationism and impetu- to be vigilant: new. But the conservatarian project isn’t. osity, i’d recommend Henry Nau’s 2013      There are fraudulent it has a rich history, and ought to have an book Conservative Internationalism.) equally rich future as the interplay—how- while we’re on the subject of labels, agencies
   soliciting ever messy and boisterous it migh t be— i’ll go ahead and register my objection to your    National Review between the politics of liberty and the “conservatarian.” it’s clumsy. So was the politics of virtue. Buck weaver, for earlier term “liberaltarian” (although the subscription !  renewal example, was a devout family man and latter’s defects extended far beyond without    our authorization. Southern Baptist, and his only book (he inelegance, in that what it described was Please reply only to died in 1949) was later republished by little more than a marketing fad, not a   the libertarian Foundation for economic realistic possibility for political realign- National Review education. The Mainspring of Human ment). with Hayek, i mourn the stealing   
 renewal notices or Progress was a huge success, providing of the proper term “liberal” by the avari-     hundreds of thousands of readers with a cious left, but am enough of a realist to bills—make sure the powerful argument for free markets and concede that the pilferage is permanent.     return address is individual liberty. i think that, if he were Given that Cooke devotes a great deal of alive today, weaver might well associ- his book to the case for decentralizing     Palm Coast, Fla. ate himself with Cooke’s conservatari- government power to states and locali- Ignore   all requests for anism. Many of his contemporaries—the ties—which, he argues, would produce renewal that are not authors, scholars, journalists, and activists better outcomes while harmonizing the
    of the post-war Right—might do the libertarian and traditionalist strands of the directly payable     same. Those who founded such institu- movement—i suppose the term “federal- to National Review. tions as the Mont Pelerin Society (1947), ist” could fit the bill. But it, too, was     NaTioNal Review (1955), and the swiped long ago by those who actually If you receive any mail or Philadelphia Society (1964) brought sub- favored its opposite, centralization. telephone     offer that makes stantial philosophical, political, and whatever we choose to call the re - rhetorical differences to their respective newal of libertarian conservatism, Charles    you suspicious contact projects. Some described themselves as Cooke has advanced its cause immea- [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. libertarians or classical liberals, others as surably. Here’s hoping that his mani- Your cooperation conservatives or traditionalists. They de - festo will prompt the publication of     bated in public and bickered in private. other volumes, by Cooke and like-minded      is greatly appreciated. Some formed lasting friendships and thinkers, that broaden and deepen the found their views converging over time. philosophy while applying it to the chal- others broke away from the discussion, lenges of the 21st century.

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society and a documentation of it, told in were eager to ferret out and explain to an original, colorful, thoughtful manner. the proles. Genres then came 1922. Boni & Liveright the divide between literary fiction and published The Waste Land, by t. S. Eliot, popular fiction, begun in earnest in the Without and the Paris bookshop Shake speare & magical 1922, widened year after year Co. published Ulysses, by James Joyce. until such publications as The New York Although they are critically admired, Review of Books and most literary journals Borders almost revered, the rewards of these liter- ignored the books that people actually ary milestones are not immediately evi- read but devoted thousands of pages, OTTO PENZLER dent to the average reader. O frabjous day millions of words, to expounding on the for literary critics! they suddenly had a genius of, for example, a plot patterned vErything changed in 1922. role. they could interpret what an author after a large sheet of graph paper (as Until then, novelists were had produced, explain what it meant, Gravity’s Rainbow was). novelists. End of story. So to then dig even deeper to expound on the in recent years, however, there has been E speak. subtle, hidden messages that could be a little ripple of change hope fully batter- Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and gleaned only with intense concentration ing its tiny wavelets against the ramparts Emily Brontë wrote beautiful, moving and laborious study. of snobbism. Quietly sneaking up on the narratives that examined the relationships to the new arbiters of literary taste, guardians of esoterica, some authors of between men and women so powerfully readers would no longer walk into a book- crime fiction began to be noticed for the that they continue to resonate to the pre- store, select something from the shelves, originality of their prose and the profun- sent day. reviewers of their time did not and immerse themselves in the happy dity of their observations. identify them as romance writers. experience of being transported by a won- Detective fiction was invented by Edgar On the mystery front, Charles Dickens, derful story, filled with irresistible charac- Allan Poe (who, in a single short story, the most beloved and popular author of ters who had beautiful (or horrid) things “the Murders in the rue Morgue,” cre- his age, created the first fictional police to say and said them in ways nobody else ated most of the tropes of the genre) and detective in literature when he in vented had ever said them. readers of Dickens Dickens, but it was not identified as some- inspector Bucket in Bleak House hadn’t needed guidance to understand thing separate from an author’s body of (1852–53). Later, hoping to outdo his what his writings were about, nor did work; it was merely one more part of his friend Wilkie Collins, who had had great those who read Shakespeare, Chaucer, oeuvre. it was not until Arthur Conan success with such mystery novels as homer, or anyone named Dumas. not all Doyle created Sherlock holmes in 1887 The Woman in White (1860) and The readers may have been fully aware of that the detective story achieved an inde- Moonstone (1868), Dickens planned what every nuance of every relationship in a pendent popularity. “After holmes, the he thought would be the greatest detective novel, or of the books’ connections to deluge,” as the bibliophile vincent Starrett novel ever written, The Mystery of Edwin events of their era, but they had a splendid famously wrote, as authors and publishers Drood (1870). ironically, he died with time and perhaps saw greater depths to the raced to emulate and cash in on the stag- barely a third of the book produced, frus- work upon contemplation, or after a sec- gering success of the great Detective. trating readers and scholars ever since ond or third reading. For the next six or seven decades, detec- with a mystery that would remain un - For ensuing decades, popular fiction tive stories—that is, books conceived of solved forever. One would be hard- was largely ignored by “serious” critics and published as genre fiction—were pressed to find obituaries of Dickens in and academics. With the elevated per- mainly (though not ex clu sively) puzzle which he is identified as a mystery writer. spective brought to bear on virtually stories. in a typical and familiar con- no matter what the subject of a fictional impenetrable works (if i may mention struction, a person is murdered in a con- work may have been, it was reviewed on Finnegans Wake), literary critics flour- fined area (a city, a village, a ship). A its merits and its creator praised or derided ished. they filled magazines, books, and detective arrives at the scene, investi- for the quality of the production, no biased academia with their collective wisdom, gates, makes observations and deduc- decision already having been reached selecting the authors and titles deserving tions, and points his unerring finger at about its worthiness because of the central- of their attention and bestowing on them the guilty party. readers, unable to rec- ity of a specific genre. (When discussing a status often directly correlated to their ognize the same clues that the detective genre fiction, i will limit observations to obscurity and arcane characteristics. unearthed, or to understand them suffi- mystery fiction because that is what i thus, Gravity’s Rainbow, Foucault’s ciently to unravel their secrets, had the know about. i have not recently read Pendu lum, and Don DeLillo’s Under - puzzle satisfyingly solved for them by romance novels, science fiction, or west- world received long, glowing reviews in the hero. Order is restored. erns, but a similar sensibility applies.) the nation’s leading newspapers and the genre reached its zenith in what Writers understood that a crime novel, magazines, and found themselves on the has been described as detective fiction’s like any other work of fiction, needed to be required-reading lists of comparative- golden age, the years between the world an entertainment but also a reflection of literature courses at the better (or more wars. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, pretentious) universities. that they are Ellery Queen, and the other masters of the Mr. Penzler is the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop tedious and incomprehensible to most era began selling in massive quantities at in New York City, the founder of The Mysterious readers ideally suited those who mined precisely the same moment that they were Press, and the editor of more than 70 anthologies. their pages for the nuggets of genius they being ostracized from the literary main-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS stream by the publishers who profited with a genre that had defined itself as pure soon followed by entire courses devoted from them and by the critics who felt jus- entertainment, nothing more, ever since to the subject. By the 1990s, more than tified in ignoring them. Holmes strode onto the scene. In addition 300 universities offered courses in mys- Mostly, critics were right to do so. The to the elements required of all good fic- tery fiction. vast majority of mystery novels and sto- tion, the detective story had demands of In much of the 20th century, a minus- ries were formulaic, produced in an end- composition that are as strict as those of a cule number of mystery writers were less stream for an insatiable reading sonnet or sonata. Even with those firm regarded as significant novelists. After public. Puzzles, without literary merit, boundaries, Hammett and Chandler, and a Macdonald’s breakthrough, many were were the norm. Of course, the same criti- few others, produced work of enduring welcomed into the hall of letters. Robert cism of being utterly pedestrian and pre- literature that was largely ignored by B. Parker was one. A disciple of Mac - dictable could easily have been leveled at major critics and academics. The genre donald (as Macdonald had been of mainstream fiction, both then and now. had a reputation for stick-figure charac- Chandler), Parker wrote his doctoral dis- However, exceptions should have been ters, stilted dialogue, and predictable sertation on Hammett and Chandler. He made to the dismissal of detective fiction plots; and no reputable university dared involved Spenser, his primary protago- in the 1920s. Certainly Dashiell Hammett consider assigning students a book by nist, in cases that raised significant polit- Once the door was opened, the guardians of the literary pantheon welcomed more and more authors clamoring for admittance.

was a major literary figure of his time, a what it regarded as back-of-the-bus hacks. ical and philosophical subjects within genre writer whose work in all likelihood However, just as 1922 drove a wedge the strictures of the detective novel. influenced Ernest Heming way, as an between allegedly serious literature and Elmore Leonard forged his dialogue American prose style developed its own genre fiction, the chasm that had widened brilliantly, and Stephen King described sound, its own muscle, separating itself between them over the years began to be him as the great 20th-century American from Henry Jamesian wordiness. breached in a landmark year of the oppo- writer—an appraisal supported by Lon- For evidence of the lasting significance site kind. The erosion of the distinction don’s Guardian and numerous other pub- of Hammett, I draw your attention to the began in 1969, when a few journalists lications and readers. Pulitzer Prize, which, at one time, was embarked on a crusade to bring deserved Once the door was opened, the regarded as the ne plus ultra of literary attention to an elegant novelist whose guardians of the literary pantheon wel- achievement. Neither Ham mett’s superb form happened to be the detective novel. comed more and more authors clamoring Red Harvest nor The Maltese Falcon The author was Ross Macdonald (the for admittance. Mystery writers in recent won it, and I’d wager Alfred Knopf, his pseudonym of Kenneth Millar) and the years have attempted, successfully, to publisher, failed to nominate them. campaign was spearheaded by John focus on character and prose style rather Winners in the years proximate to Leonard, the editor of the New York than simply relying on plot to define their Ham mett’s publications included The Able Times Book Review, who commissioned books. Richard Price, Thomas H. Cook, McLaughlins, by Margaret Wilson, Early a front-page review of Macdonald’s The Kate Atkinson, Dennis Lehane, P. D. Autumn, by Louis Bromfield, Scarlet Goodbye Look, by William Goldman, James, George Pelecanos, an d Daniel Sister Mary, by Julia Peterkin, Laughing and added a lengthy interview with Woodrell, to name a few, have succeeded Boy, by Oliver La Farge, Years of Grace, Macdonald to the same issue. Two years in moving the crime novel farther into the by Margaret Ayer Barnes, The Store, by later, Leonard continued his support by mainstream of literary fiction. T. S. Stribling, Lamb in His Bosom, by requesting a review from an ardent fan of From the other end of the spectrum, so- Caroline Miller, and Now in November, Macdonald’s Lew Archer series, placing called literary writers have often turned to by Josephine Winslow Johnson. Eudora Welty’s paean on the front page. mystery and crime fiction. John Banville, Show of hands. How many have read (This year, Macdonald’s novels are join- Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, these books, the epitome of success in ing those of Hammett, Chandler, and Thomas Pynchon, and Michael Chabon, the 1920s and 1930s? Right. Elmore Leonard in the canonical Library among many others, have centralized Yet Hammett’s novels, produced while of America series.) murder and other crimes to drive their the prize-winners were being published, This acceptance broke the dam for a novels and stories. The lines are blurring have never been out of print, and remain new deluge. Recognition that a mere between the more ambitious authors in as fresh and captivating today as they mystery writer could also be a serious the mystery genre and those who have were more than 80 years ago. Raymond novelist encouraged newspapers and been defined as authors of literary fiction. Chandler came along right on Hammett’s magazines to devote review attention to What a modern, sophisticated method heels with Philip Marlowe and his mem- them, resulting in dramatically increased of judging a novel: on its merits, not on orable poetic style. All remain in print and exposure and commensurate sales. The a pre-evaluated definition. To the crit- read to the present day. popularity of large numbers of crime writ- ics and academics at the vanguard of They, and occasional other mystery ers persuaded universities to add occa- this movement, I say: Welcome to the writers, were tainted by their association sional mystery novels to literature classes, 19th century.

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study of Washington’s leadership. He The Father of His Country was the expertly traces the arc of Washington’s son of a planter; he started life at the In the career, from his days as a colonial offi- margins of the aristocracy. No log cabin cer driven by vaulting ambition to for him. But as middlekauff puts it, “If Crucible make his mark and his fortune to his he was not quite an outsider, he was far triumphant leadership at the head of from the center of the elite.” The army MICHAEL F. BISHOP the Continental Army. And he sensi- seemed to him the surest path to dis- tively explores the process by which tinction, and he threw himself into a the “provincial” Wash ington became, military career. His fondest ambition over the eight years of the revo - was a commission in the regular army; lutionary War, “an established citizen the future scourge of the redcoats wished of the world.” nothing more than to don the scarlet It has become customary—even himself. Fortunately for America, it trite—for biographers of Washington to was not to be: Washington never won declare their discovery of flesh and his commission, and could not abide blood beneath the marble that has the condescension with which British encrusted his legend. (The marble was officers treated him. Stung by the not long in forming; middlekauff high-handedness of the regular army, observes that by the end of the revo - Washington resigned from the militia. lution, Washington was to his countless He embarked on the career that was Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s admirers “a creature apart, a man set his birthright, taking his place among First Leader, by Robert Middlekauff above all others, a unique being—not a the planter class of the Tidewater. He (Knopf, 384 pp., $30) god, but at the least a chosen instru- inherited the estate of his elder half- ment of Providence.”) Therefore it is brother, Lawrence, and immediately rom 1754 to 1763, Britain and somewhat refreshing that middle - set about acquiring more land, some of France were locked in a bitter, kauff takes Washington’s humanity as it adjacent to his Potomac river prop- bloody struggle for control of a given, and devotes himself more to erty and some far away in the West. F North America. The conflict, political development than to psycho- marriage to the dowdy but rich which spread across the globe, could be logical exploration. His book is nei- martha Custis secured his fortune; the considered the first world war. ther a vast, cradle-to-grave biography commander-in-chief of the Continental And George Washington started it. like ron Chernow’s, nor a brief char- Army was perhaps the wealthiest man He was 21 and a lieutenant colonel acter study like richard Brookhiser’s. on the conti nent, secure in his status of militia, ordered by the royal gover- rather, it is a deeply re searched and but aggrieved by the financial depre- nor of Virginia to travel to the ohio enlightening look at three transfor - dations of the mother country. His Country and divine French intentions. mative decades in the life of an indis- commitment to the revolutionary cause His little force, supplemented by mem- pensable American. was all the more im pressive because bers of the Iroquois tribe, encountered a small French expedition that had been dispatched to take his measure. The result was a massacre. Wash- ington’s men, and the accompanying FOR MARIA SHARAPOVA Indians, driven more by fear and blood- lust than by any orders of his, killed Harder, harder, harder—slam the ball and scalped dozens of Frenchmen. The Down through the claws of those opposing hands. young colonial officer wrote later of The prince and duchess, present in the stands, the episode: “I heard bullets whistle Will soon invite you into Anmer Hall. and believe me there was something charming in the sound.” They recognize—the winner takes it all. It is with this rather inauspicious Theirs is a court where one no more commands event that robert middlekauff, a pro- The people, nor may conquer foreign lands fessor emeritus at the University of And nothing comes of muscle, nerve, and gall. California, Berkeley, and author of The But yours!—yours is a kingdom, fingers curled Glorious Cause—perhaps the finest single-volume history of the American Around a scepter posing as a racquet, revolution—begins his excellent new The clay a rich, red carpet at your heel. And you are our catharsis in a world Mr. Bishop has held several posts on Capitol Hill Which slips us in a fitted sideline jacket and in the White House and is the former executive To meet restraint, regardless how we feel. director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. —JENNIFER REESER

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW 2015 AlaskaAlaska CruiseCruise Sailing July 18-25 aboard Holland America’s luxurious M S Westerdam with

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ake part in one of the most exciting seafaring adventures Brennan, Jillian Melchior, Joel Gehrke, and Kat Timpf. you will ever experience: the National Review 2015 Over 400 readers—make certain you’re among them!—are T Alaska Summer Cruise. Featuring an incredible cast of expected to take this wonderful trip, which is why we urge you to conservative speakers—and affordable accommodations—this act now to reserve your stateroom. Alaska cruises are mega-popu- special trip will take place July 18-25, 2015. Set for the absolute- lar because of the region’s raw beauty. For mother Nature at her ly ideal time to visit Alaska and enjoy its unique, breathtaking finest, you can’t beat the stunning waterways hugging the 49th beauty, the phenomenal journey—which would make for an State, or the glaciers and other wonders that adorn it from the excellent family vacation or reunion—will sail round-trip from Artic to the Gulf. And as an unrivaled family summer vacation Seattle aboard Holland America Line’s beautiful mS Westerdam, destination, how can you compete with an Alaska voyage? You visiting Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Glacier Bay, and Victoria, B.C. can’t. So don’t beat them, join them (with your family)!—on the This is a unique opportunity to meet preeminent conserva- National Review 2015 Alaska Summer Cruise. tive celebrities and to discuss the day’s most important issues: There’s a cabin to meet everyone’s budget: Prices start at just we’re happy to announce that Daniel Hannan, the popular $2,299 per person, and “Single” staterooms begin at an affordable “Euroskeptic” British mEP—along with NR writers Rob Long $3,399 (the same prices we offered on our last trip here in 2007!). and John Fund, cartoonist Roman Genn, and videographer If you’ve wanted to go on an NR cruise, but haven’t, consider James O’Keefe—will be joining a great line-up, including for- this: the “typical” NR cruise “alumnus” has been on an average of mer New Hampshire governor and “Bush 41” chief of staff four of our seafaring trips! They keep coming back again and John Sununu, ace economists Stephen Moore and Kevin again for an obvious reason: an NR cruise is sure to be a great Hassett, former congresswoman Michele Bachmann, pollster time. It’s time you discovered this for yourself. Pat Caddell, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin, An NR cruise is your unique chance to meet and intimately Townhall.com editor Katie Pavlich, top social commentators discuss politics and policy with some of the true giants of conser- Naomi Schaefer Riley, James Lileks, and Andrew Klavan, vat ive and political affairs. Our exciting seminars—we’ve sched- military/security experts Pete Hegseth and John Hillen, lead- uled eight panel sessions (each preceded by a great one-on-one ing conservative academic Daniel Mahoney, and from NR’s interview of a special guest speaker)—provide a scintillating take editorial All Stars Jonah Goldberg, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh on current events. Then there are the exclusive “extras,” such as Ponnuru, Kevin Williamson, Eliana Johnson, Jim Geraghty, our three cocktail receptions (convivial affairs featuring great food Kathryn Lopez, Charles Cooke, John Miller, Patrick and libations), two late-night “Night Owls,” one post-dinner poolside “smoker” (with world-class ONE C OOOOL WEEK OF SUMMER FUN AND CONSERVATIVE REVELRY! H. Upmann cigars and complimen- tary cognac!), plus intimate dining DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT with speakers and editors on two nights. SAT/July 18 Seattle 4:00Pm evening cocktail reception Then there’s the Westerdam: Its SUN/July 19 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars accommodations (elegant state- GET YOUR CABIN! CALL 800-707-1634 “Night Owl” session rooms and glamorous public spaces) are luxurious, and matched by the NOW OR VISIT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM mON/July 20 Juneau, AK 1:00Pm 10:00Pm morning seminar

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WED/July 22 Sitka, AK 7:00Am 3:00Pm afternoon seminar late-night poolside smoker

THUR/July 23 Ketchikan, AK 7:00Am 1:00Pm afternoon seminar “Night Owl” session

FR I/July 24 Victoria, B.C. 6:00Pm midnight morning seminar evening cocktail reception

SAT/July 25 Seattle 7:00Am Alaska 2015 cruise April ad:Panama cruise.qxd 4/14/2015 3:16 PM Page 3

indulgent staff, superior cuisine, and top- A GREAT FAMILY VACATION AWAITS! notch entertainment and excursions. And then there is the spectacular itiner- Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and ary, starting with beautiful Seattle, and fol- great entertainment await you on the beautiful Westerdam. Prices lowed over the next week with these top desti- are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port nations: fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittance to and participation in all National Review functions. Per-person GLACIER BAY National Park protects a unique rates for third/fourth person in cabin (by age and category): ecosystem of plants and animals living in concert with a chang- Categories J & C 17-younger: $ 736 18-up: $1451 ing glacial landscape. You’ll be awed: mon umental chunks of ice Category VC 17-younger: $1301 18-up: $1501 split off glaciers, crashing into the sea, roaring like thunder, water Categories SS & SA 17-younger: $1354 18-up: $1554 shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Glacier Bay has more actively calving tidewater glaciers than anyplace else in the world. DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (from 506 sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge and JUNEAU is the place to let your imagination run wild. Explore the personal concierge, complimentary laundry/dry- lush Tongass National Forest. Visit the rustic shops in town. Or get out cleaning service, large private verandah, king- and kayak, dogsled, raft, whale watch, flightsee or fish. There’s no end size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool to the adventure because we’re in port long enough to truly take bath/shower, dressing room, large sitting advantage of the long daylight hours. area, DVD, mini-bar, refrigerator, safe, and much more.

SITKA The onion domes of St. Michael’s Cathedral are your first clue Category SA that Sitka was once a Russian settlement. Today, be greeted by Tlingit DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,499 P/P native people and astonishing marine life. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 9,799

KETCHIKAN clings to the shores of Tongass Narrows and drapes the SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (from 273 mountains with a cheerful air. The main attractions include Creek sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size Street, the Tongass Historical Museum, and Totem Bight State Park bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool (and a floatplane flightseeing trip to Misty Fjords National Monument bath/shower, large sitting area, TV/DVD, mini-bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling win- is a transforming adventure not to be missed). dows, safe, and much more. VICTORIA, B.C. A touch of England awaits in this beautiful port: Category SS afternoon tea, double-decker buses, and the famed Butchart Gardens DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,399 P/P (a brilliant tapestry of color spread across 50 bloom ing acres). SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,499 Use the application on the following page to sign up for what will be seven of the most fun-filled days you’ll ever experience. Or DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (from 213 sq. you can reserve your stateroom at www.nrcruise.com (or call ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), bath/shower, sitting The Cruise Authority at 800-707-1634). Remember, there’s a area, mini-bar, TV/DVD, refrigerator, cabin to fit your taste and budget, but don’t tarry: all cabins are and floor-to-ceiling windows. available on a first-come, first-served basis, and supply is limited. Join us this July on the Westerdam, in the company of Daniel Category VC DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,799 P/P Hannan, John Sununu, Stephen Moore, Kevin Hassett, Michele SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,999 Bachmann, Pat Caddell, Yuval Levin, Katie Pavlich, Naomi Schaefer Riley, James Lileks, Andrew Klavan, Pete Hegseth, James O’Keefe, John Hillen, Daniel Mahoney, Jonah Goldberg, LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (from John Fund, Rob Long, Roman Genn, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh 174 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), bathtub/shower, sitting area, TV/DVD, large Ponnuru, Kevin Williamson, Eliana Johnson, Jim Geraghty, ocean-view windows. Kathr yn Jean Lopez, Charles Cooke, John J. Miller, Patrick Brennan, Jillian Melchior, Joel Gehrke, Reihan Salam, Category C Katherine Connell, and Kat Timpf on the National Review 2015 DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P Alaska Summer Cruise. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,299 GET YOUR CABIN! CALL 800-707-1634 LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters NOW OR VISIT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM (from 151 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), shower, sitting area, TV/DVD.

Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,299 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,399

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he had more to lose than most of his until their dramatic march south in TTeTerryerry Beach Jacket Soft compatriots. And though he was no 1781. Their French allies had been Luxurious thirsty cotton terry toweling. 1100%00% Napoleon on the battlefield, he was the more consistently reliable on land than Perfect for Pool, Beach or Spa. Cotton most impressive leader in the colonies. at sea, but it was a French naval force t
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS appearances and speeches in the critical co-written by Annelise) Ronald Reagan: time from early 1975 until 1976, and Decisions of Greatness. It’s a brisk Where the again from 1977 to 1979.) He replied that overview of Reagan’s presidency, with people might get tired of seeing him on special emphasis on major decisions Buck TV but they would not get tired of listen- he faced. ing to him on the radio. Reagan may have The volume contains a long interview Stopped been wrong in assessing people’s toler- Anderson conducted with Reagan shortly ance of his image, but it was still a coura- after he left office. Marty asked him CRAIG SHIRLEY geous and impressive decision. about a new book by CBs’s Bob Marty and Annelise Anderson pored schieffer titled “The Acting President,” over thousands of classified documents whose contention, Anderson noted, was stored at the Reagan Library to produce that Reagan’s presidency “had nothing yet another very fine book, Reagan’s to do with ideology or principles, that Secret War (2009), which broke new you had no plan.” Reagan replied, “How ground in the understanding of President the hell could they say this?” Reagan’s Reagan and the Cold War. They spent sev- critics were always portraying him as The world of Reagan scholarship is substantially different—and better— Ronald Reagan: Decisions of Greatness, by today owing in large measure to the Martin and Annelise Anderson (Hoover, 209 pp., $24.95) work of Marty and Annelise Anderson.

eARs from now, presidential eral decades turning out superior scholar- disengaged and unaware; Marty and historians will still be saying a ship, year after year. Annelise demonstrate the opposite silent “Thank you” to Marty Marty and Annelise were always very through out this book. Y and Annelise Anderson and important to Ronald Reagan. They sim- It’s a small volume, but, like every- Kiron skinner for editing Reagan in His ply kept their voices down and d id their thing that came from the Andersons, it’s Own Hand, Reagan: A Life in Letters, and work for him for many years, including important. The interview with Reagan Reagan’s Path to Victory. As a Reagan in the White House. starting in the early alone is worth the price of admission. biographer, I have often quietly thanked 1970s, Marty was a permanent part of He’s out of the presidency, but he is lively, these invaluable individuals. Now I wish the California mafia around the Gipper engaged, detail-oriented—everything to do so loudly and emphatically. Those that included ed Meese, Lyn Nofziger, his opponents said he wasn’t. And he three tomes will always be essential re - Deaver, Hannaford, stu spencer, and wasn’t modest either, telling Marty how sources on the thinking and writing of honorary Californians Dick Allen and many people had already come up to Ronald Reagan. Two are massive books Dick Wirthlin. Time is now slowly him—“knowledgeable people, business of his letters to thousands of people, and claiming these men, including Marty, people”: “I can almost say in advance the third is a compilation of his hundreds who passed away in January; Nofziger, what they’re going to say. . . . They start of radio addresses over the years; all of it in 2006; Deaver, in 2007; and Wirthlin, thanking me for these eight years and is material he wrote personally. in 2011. what has been accomplished. And then Reagan sometimes used help in writ- Marty had degrees from Dartmouth some of them will tell me about where ing his twice-a-week column, but he and MIT and other schools. He taught at they were eight years ago and where they never allowed anybody else to draft his Columbia. He wrote countless books are now.” radio addresses. How important were his and papers and gave countless lectures. Reagan was feisty in this interview; he radio addresses? In 1977, CBs and Wal - He served on countless boards, and not seemed to be letting his hair down. He ter Cronkite offered Reagan a regular just ceremonial ones but serious com- heavily criticized the schieffer book, television commentary that would pay missions that had genuine responsibili- took a swipe at his old budget director the Gipper hundreds of thousands. He ties on such matters as national defense, David stockman’s recently published turned it down, and his aides Mike Deaver economic policy, and higher education. book, and called Tip O’Neill “grumpy.” and Peter Hannaford, flabbergasted, He probably was a legitimate genius. In the chapter titled “The Reagan asked him why. (Deaver and Hannaford But he also had a distinctively dry and Legacy,” the Andersons write that “the famously handled all of Reagan’s media down-to-earth wit. world is substantially different today than He was part of the Reagan inner cir- it was during the Cold War.” And the Mr. Shirley, the chairman of Shirley & Banister cle because he was smart and conserva- world of Reagan scholarship is substan- Public Affairs, is the author of two best-selling books tive, but also because he was a problem tially different—and better—today owing about Ronald Reagan, Rendezvous with Destiny solver. He gave balance and heft to the in large measure to the work of Marty and and Reagan’s Revolution. His third book on Reagan campaigns. And he has left us Annelise Anderson. Reagan, Last Act, comes out in October. one last gift: the marvelous book (also R.I.P. Martin Anderson.

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there is freedom in forgiveness, she “confuse civility with timidity or pas- writes. And it was a “blessing to have sivity.” She’s not anti-insults; she just Way the President of the United States be the wishes we were more clever about them, one to remind me.” crediting the late Ann richards for wit To Live Writing about off-camera moments rather than “schoolyard name-calling.” with the president, she includes heart- hers is a plea for more confident, clar- KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ breaking scenes with men wounded in ifying debate that doesn’t insist on war. In some cases, families were over- winning but seeks to persuade and joyed that the president would make challenges everyone to make a best case the time for them; in others, they were with respect. We should seek common furious. “One mom and dad of a dying ground, she advises, rather than reduce soldier from the Caribbean were dev- politics to a bloody war zone. astated,” she writes about a Bush visit She also offers some advice specifi- to Walter reed, and the mother was cally to fellow conservatives: “If we “beside herself with grief.” She yelled believe that the conservative approach

Dana Perino shares the joys and practical benefits of actual And the Good News Is . . . : Lessons and Advice from the Bright Side, by Dana Perino human encounter. (Twelve, 256 pp., $26)

trength and gentleness at President Bush, “wanting to know to governing is superior, then we ought go hand in hand.” that’s why it was her child and not his who to act like it.” one of the lessons Dana lay in the hospital bed.” the president, And the Good News Is . . . is an anti- ‘S Perino learned from her she writes, “was not in a hurry to dote to despair about politics. It’s a pro- grandfather early on, living the ranch- leave—he tried offering comfort but posal for—and witness to—something ing life in Wyoming. her new book is a then just stood and took it, like he better, from someone who has learned mix of memoir, snapshots from history, expected and needed to hear the anguish, along the way and in her gratitude and thanksgiving. She’s a woman with a to try to soak up some of her suffering wants to share and help others. It’s a generous heart for mentoring, and she if he could.” plea for something better. Whether she’s explains what moved her to write the Perspective is a large part of this book. discussing the presidential-primary book: “I believe that anyone who has So is humor, of a sort that will be espe- trail, twitter, or marriage, she shares the achieved some success is obligated to cially, but far from exclusively, appreci- joys and practical benefits of actual help others do the same.” ated by fans of the Fox news show The human encounter: prioritizing, humility, the former White house press sec- Five, of which she is a co-host. and encouragement. retary offers a fair bit of “pent-up Perino also makes a plea for civility. Overwhelmed by the over- advice,” including seemingly lost “Without some basic manners, we’re connectedness online? go old-school, habits of etiquette, such as “When in doomed,” she writes. “there’s no hope she suggests: “Choose five people a doubt, send a thank-you note.” Perino of reaching agreement if we can’t even month who you want to stay connected doubles down on common sense and talk to each other.” the seemingly utter to (family or friends, colleagues or for- human decency throughout the book. breakdown in civility is actually her one mer bosses) and then send them a per- the best advice she ever got from big bit of bad news. her concern flows sonal, handwritten note.” For her, it’s “a President george W. Bush, she says, from the heart of the book: gratitude. holdover tradition from my parents, was about forgiveness. When former “For a country so blessed,” Perino who made us write letters every week to White house press secretary Scott writes, “America sure can argue a lot. our grandparents and godparents.” McClellan wrote a bitter memoir of his We’ve gone from being the confident there’s more of that from the time in the administration, Bush told leader of the free world to bickering granddaughter of an Italian grand- her, “I’d like you to try to forgive about every living thing under the sun.” mother who made it to the U.S. in late him.” She relates what Bush said when Civility is her rallying cry here. “the 1901 with very little english and she protested: “no buts. I don’t want scathing language used by many of our relied on the kindness of strangers to you to live bitterly like he is. nobody elected leaders, candidate hopefuls, and get her from ellis Island to her sister’s will remember this book three weeks political pundits is beneath them. When boarding house in Illinois. the Perino from now. And we can’t let a book like did public service turn into a bad epi - story is a thank-you note to family, this take us away from the important sode of Real Housewives?” faith, and country, with good stories work we have to do here on behalf of In this book, as in her work on The and thoughts worth passing on along the American people.” Five, Perino makes clear that she doesn’t the way.

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Happy Warrior BY DANIEL FOSTER Who Is for Hillary

elOW, for posterity, a partial list of the recent graduates of the unis she charges three-hundred things that happened in the first 24 hours large per benediction that their student loans are alba- of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential trosses around their necks. But it will all be so much B campaign: fury and sound. • Clinton’s announcement, the circumstances of At its core it will be the world’s safest run, a kind which she had nearly seven years to plan, came three of “don’t make any sudden moves” show that makes hours late, in the form of a two-minute, 18-second G. H. W. Bush ’92 look positively Bull Moose. Bill YouTube video in which Mrs. Clinton does not appear Clinton’s chief political innovation was to stand on until the 1:33 mark. the leftmost edge of the Overton window and then • The accompanying press release, the content of start walking rightward, one step at a time, until his which she had nearly seven years to write, included the approval rating went over 50. I expect his better half to bracing acknowledgment that Mrs. Clinton has “fought follow that playbook. children and families all her career.” Sic erat, as they There are those who think that Clinton’s nomina- say, scriptum. tion-cum-assumption is a subsidy to the GOP field— • The campaign brandished its basic mastery of colors that the primary cage match will get the eventual victor and shapes by revealing this . . . well, this——as a rowdy and ruddy and, as it were, ready for Hillary. But its logo, which, insofar as lots of things are red or blue I’m sure that that is a wash. Because while Clinton is or angular, called any number of associations to mind. I refining her messaging algorithm to the thousandth joked darkly that there would be those who saw a nose- decimal place, Republicans will be lanced and barbed touch to Truther conspiracy theory in the image (wait and run into exhaustion like so many Andalusian bulls, for it, I’ll pause), only to find out that, of course, the by a media of picadores using gotcha questions in pri- boggiest corners of social media were full of just such mary debates to bleed them gentle for the slaughter— speculations. for the matadora. • The campaign unveiled its working slogan—“It’s This isn’t to say that Hillary doesn’t have her own your time”—which, even if it didn’t evoke the over-50 weaknesses. She’s probably a crook, and people don’t dating site OurTime.com, just doesn’t have quite the like her once they remember what she’s like, and same ring as “Hillary ’16: What Difference, at This she’s quite literally as old as the electronic transis- Point, Can We Make?” tor. But . . . • Clinton embarked from New York, in a vehicle I suspect it will come down to the woman question. dubbed the “Scooby van,” for a roadshow with voters. Hillary is running as the First Woman because it’s the NBC’s Charles Todd remarked on Twitter: “So hard in blueprint. Because the incumbent won twice by mobi- this new media age to do anything that looks sponta- lizing “First _____” voter coalitions. neous to political world. This Hillary road trip idea has But it’s no sure bet those Obama voters will be there done just that.” again. Obama significantly outperformed every Demo - • Moments later, RNC strategist Sean Spicer replied, cratic nominee of the last 30 years among 18–29-year- pointing out that in launching her 2000 Senate cam- olds and minorities, and even the One slipped in both paign, the Clinton team toured New York State in a these categories between 2008 and 2012. vehicle dubbed the “Scooby van.” like, zoinks. If Clinton is to be, then, she will be because she did • Clinton and said van were spotted at a Chipotle with women—especially unwed women—what Grill outside Toledo, Ohio. None less than ABC News Obama did with Millennials and minorities. In 2012, obtained the security tape of a sunglassed madam sec- there was no bigger predictor of how a woman voted retary Being Approachable, and appended to the than whether she had a ring on it. Romney won mar- footage the shoe-leather fact that Clinton ordered “a ried women handily but lost the unwed—who consti- chicken bowl with guacamole, a chicken salad, and tuted nearly a quarter of the electorate—by nearly two fruit juice.” to one. And just think: As I write there are a mere 574 days If Hillary can dial in the right combination of policies to go until election Day. and signaling and good old-fashioned false conscious- The only thing we can say for sure about these pro- ness to run up the score with these gals, then I’ll bet no ceedings is that Hillary’s will be a content-free cam- profusion of vowels in the GOP nominee’s name will paign. There will be some bits about income inequality be enough to make the demographics work. and the “middle class,” to be sure, and she will assure Which means our republic is in the hands of all the single ladies. Mr. Foster is a political consultant and a former news editor of NATIONAL As a GOP sympathizer who has spent his adult life try- REVIEW ONLINE. ing to please this very group, I have my concerns.

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