MEETING THE

CHALLENGE OF IRAN REUEL MARC GERECHT & RAY TAKEYH

AUGUST 13, 2018 • $5.99 KID TRUMP Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has made it his business to ‘own the libs,’ and business is booming by ADAM RUBENSTEIN

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents August 13, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 46

2 The Scrapbook Too many shoes dropping, elite anti-elitism, & more 5 Casual Priscilla M. Jensen pays a visit to Miss Flannery 6 Editorials The Hard Part • Tax Cut By Fiat 8 Comment Three leaders are better than one by Fred Barnes The FARA faucet: foreign agents are running scared by Eric Felten We’re still hearing the echoes from the Loud family by Philip Terzian Affirmative reaction by Terry Eastland

15 Articles

15 It’s Worse than Vulgar, It’s Trendy by P. J. O’Rourke Washington, D.C., in 2018

16 May Staggers into August by Dominic Green Her days will grow short, when she reaches September

18 Bland Spicer by Ethan Epstein The hometown briefing

20 Working with Charles by David Hodges Krauthammer’s research assistants reminisce 18 Features ASTRID RIECKEN / WASHINGTON POST / GETTY ASTRID RIECKEN / WASHINGTON

21 Kid Trump by Adam Rubenstein Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, has made it his business to ‘own the libs,’ and business is booming

27 The Preeminent Challenge by Reuel Marc Gerecht & Ray Takeyh For Trump and his foreign policy team, cracking the Islamic Republic is job one

Books & Arts 20

COURTESY OF MIKE WATSON 34 ‘Let the Whorehouse Burn’ by Christopher Caldwell Charles Krauthammer with The euro and the damage it wrought research assistant Mike Watson 37 Leonardo the Enigma by Danny Heitman Why it is so difficult to see the great polymath and his work clearly

39 Cinematic Saint by Tim Markatos The challenges of depicting Joan of Arc on the screen

41 Paradise Recycled by James Bowman The lives of 19th-century utopians are more interesting than their utopias

43 Man on a Mission by John Podhoretz The latest installment of Tom Cruise’s series is an instant classic

39 44 Parody A new member of the Trump legal team

COVER BY THOMAS FLUHARTY THE SCRAPBOOK Elite Anti-Elitism (or Anti-Elite Elitism?) he nomination of Brett Kava­ even millions that Kava­naugh’s fellow elites, includ­ Tnaugh to the Supreme Court is customary for ing two liberal Ivy League academ­ proving a hard thing for lib­ other high-level ics, have praised him in the New York erals and progressives judges. Times and Wall Street Journal. to counter. The We were pre­ Why the worry? Because, writes man’s qualifica­ pared, even so, Brown, a Jamaican national, elites tions are nearly for the onslaught praise other elites in Third World unparalleled; he is of tendentious countries, too. highly regarded by allegations and hare­ judges and law profes­ brained criticisms the nomi­ Development scholars who study the sors at elite institutions; nation of conservative judges “Third World” often observe that it and so far the efforts to find always seems to occasion these days. is rarely the poor who hamper the development and disrupt the func­ unflattering particulars about his past Among the best so far: an opinion tioning of institutions that must be have come to nothing. We knew things piece on the left-leaning Vox.com by strong and trustworthy in order for were going to be tough for Kava­ Penn State law professor Eleanor a nation to thrive. More often, elites naugh’s adversaries when, a few days Marie Lawrence Brown. The piece’s are the problem. In my own region after his nomination, the Washington logorrheic headline tells you most of of origin, the Caribbean, the prob­ Post reported that he had racked up what you need to know: “Elite law lem is endemic. Elites act to protect tens of thousands of dollars in credit professors are brushing politics aside other elites, even when they belong to different political parties and have card debt in order to buy . . . tickets to to support fellow elite Brett Kava­ widely divergent interests. Washington Nationals baseball games naugh. That’s inexcusable in the for himself and his friends. So on top Trump era.” So the fact that elites are praising of everything else, he’s a normal dude. Brown, a former D.C. Circuit law Kava ­naugh is the problem, since that’s The credit cards, incidentally, are clerk, concedes that she has “heard what happens in the patronage-based now fully paid off. Moreover, Kava­ nothing but praise about [Kava­naugh] politics of Jamaica. No doubt if Ivy- naugh has reported only a small from my many friends who know educated elites were condemning Kava­ amount of income from sources other him. He is, by all accounts, an extraor­ naugh, that would raise a different set than his salary—less than $30,000, far dinary public servant and a kind and of worries in the minds of Brown and below the hundreds of thousands and generous person.” Yet she’s worried her concerned fellow professors. ♦

probe, but the author didn’t mention seemingly inevitable outcome is like It’s Raining Shoes! shoes dropping—that was evidently waiting for the other shoe to drop. nother prolix online headline the work of the Fix’s headline-writers. In February, after Mueller’s indict­ A recently caught our attention, Come to think of it, shoes have ment of 13 Russian nationals, defense this one at the Fix, the Washington been dropping all over the place attorney William Jeff­ress told Vanity Post’s popular politics blog: “This since Trump became president. The Fair, “It’s hard to speculate” (which, in may be the biggest shoe to drop from expression, as readers likely know, Washington, means it’s easy to specu­ the Trump-Michael Cohen tape.” refers to the common experience of late), but if Mueller “has been able to The piece argued that the subpoena hearing one’s upstairs neighbor arrive uncover that same kind of evidence of Trump Organization CFO Allen home and remove his shoes—first one on the hacking that he has been able Weisselberg is likely an important shoe (thump), then a pause, then the to uncover on these campaign-type

development in the Trump-Russia other (thump). Hence waiting for some activities, then we’ve got another shoe BUTTON AND SHOES: BIGSTOCK.

2 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 to drop.” Around the same time for­ mer director of national intelligence James Clapper, evidently imagining a number of upstairs neighbors tak­ ing their shoes off in succession, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I think there are other shoes to drop here.” And in mid-July, when Mueller indicted Russian intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails, former Obama Justice official Matt Miller told Mike Allen of Axios, “This is the biggest shoe to drop yet.” Miller, like the Fix’s headline -writer, seems to think drop­ ping shoes get bigger and bigger. The very next day in the Post, law profes­ sor Randall Eliason reminded readers that “if Mueller does have evidence of American involvement in any of the Russian wrongdoing, that would be the logical next shoe to drop.” Shoes dropping in logical order! The Trump-Russia story isn’t the only one to attract all these shoes, either. Art Hogan, market strate­ gist at the investment bank B. Riley, expressed his relief to a CNBC reporter that trade wars were tempo­ rarily out of the news. “The pattern in the market,” he said, “is we react to the announcement, and as time passes we wait for the next shoe to drop.” We’re not sure what all these shoes mean, but perhaps it’s helpful to remember that the idiom isn’t sup­ posed to signify just any newsworthy event. It’s supposed to signify inevi- tability. And if there’s one thing we should have learned after 2016, it’s that pronouncement “Despite the constant making things worse for his client. in politics, nothing is inevitable. ♦ negative press covfefe” or then-White It’s either a sign of our society’s House spokesman Sean Spicer’s cryp­ insanity or a reminder that things tic messages “n9y25ah7” and “Aqen­ aren’t so bad that we can all laugh at Talking to Me? bpuu”; or, more recently, these meaningless electronic belches. ormer New York British home secretary Perhaps it’s both. ♦ F City mayor Rudolph Sajid Javid’s tweet of the Giuliani, now much in single letter “I.” Who They Believe the news as the president’s Twitter went to work on legal counsel, recently Giuliani’s monosyllable, They Is gained attention (as if he some finishing the may­ n early July, the Nation magazine needed more) by tweeting or’s message (“. . . make me I published a 14-line poem, “How- a single word: You feel brand new”), others To,” by Anders Carlson-Wee. The That’s it. Not even offering acid commentary. Scrapbook holds rather old-school a period. We assume it The account @PopeHat, opinions on the matter of poetic form, was what’s colloquially for instance, noted that and we found it hard to scan “How- known as a “butt-tweet,” Giuliani had finally made To.” Still, the poem’s language is inci­

GUILIANI: SEAN ZANNI / PATRICK MCMULLAN / GETTY GUILIANI: SEAN ZANNI / PATRICK similar to Trump’s famous a public statement without sive, it has a distinctive rhythm, and

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 3 it ends with a punch. Its thematic poem would make a fine commen­ idea, too—advice from one homeless tary on the backwardness of modern beggar to another—grabs your atten­ America’s culture industry. The artist tion. “If you’re young say younger,” doesn’t matter. The work of art is void the advice-giver says. of intrinsic value. All that matters is www.weeklystandard.com whether the cultural pooh-bahs give Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t or withhold their approval. It’s about Richard Starr, Editor flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough who they believe they is. The poet Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray, Christine Rosen, Managing Editor hardly even there. ♦ Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell, say you sin. It’s about who they believe Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, they is. You hardly even there. National Correspondents Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Deo Volente Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor There were just two problems with Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor the poem. The first is that line about ashington is full of people who Eric Felten, Mark Hemingway, being “crippled”—insensitive. The make self-assured pronounce­ John McCormack, Tony Mecia, W Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers second is that Carlson-Wee is white, ments about what will happen next David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Staff Writers and the language sounds African- week or next year. We often caution Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor American; so the poet is guilty of against this tendency, thinking as we Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor racial insensitivity, not to mention do of presidential candidate John F. Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor “cultural appropriation.” Denuncia­ Kennedy’s argument to his aides for Adam Rubenstein, Assistant Opinion Editor tions followed. picking the unscrupulous Lyndon Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker In the days when poetry was Johnson as his running mate. “I’m 43 Sophia Buono, Philip Jeffery, Editorial Assistants Philip Chalk, Design Director important, both the poet and the years told,” Kennedy said. “I’m not Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant magazine would probably have been going to die in office.” Contributing Editors Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, glad to offend the day’s cultural arbi­ Death is an unpleasant topic, and Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost, Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, ters. No longer. The Nation’s poetry we genuinely hope Supreme Court David Frum, David Gelernter, editors (there are two!) issued one justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, of those apologies with which we’ve plenty more years to enjoy life, but Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, Victorino Matus, become nauseatingly familiar: “We her recent remark about her retire­ P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, made a serious mistake by choosing ment plans strikes us as ill-advised. Charles J. Sykes, Stuart Taylor Jr. to publish the poem ‘How-To.’ We are “I’m now 85,” she said to an audience. William Kristol, Editor at Large sorry for the pain we have caused to “My senior colleague, Justice John MediaDC Ryan McKibben, Chairman the many communities affected by Paul Stevens, he stepped down when Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer this poem. We recognize he was 90, so I think I have about at Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer that we must now earn least five more years.” Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer your trust back.” And so Perhaps we can all, and not just Matthew Curry, Director, Email Marketing on, for another 125 words. Justice Ginsburg, learn from the bib­ Alex Rosenwald, Senior Director of Strategic Communications Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising We were inclined to feel lical injunction: “Go to now, ye that T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising indignant on behalf of the say, Today or tomorrow we will go Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager poet, but then discovered into such a city, and continue there a Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 that he, too, had issued a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 groveling apology: “I am Whereas ye know not what shall be The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, listening closely and I am on the morrow. For what is your life? is published weekly (except one week in March, one week in June, one reflecting deeply. I am It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a week in August, and one week in December) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, sorry for the pain I have little time, and then vanisheth away.” ♦ DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. For caused. . . . I intended for subscription customer service in the United States, call 1-800-274-7293. this poem to address For new subscription orders, please call 1-800-274-7293. Subscribers: Don’t Please send new subscription orders and changes of address to The the invisibility of home­ die-that’s Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. Please include your latest magazine mailing label. Allow 3 to 5 weeks for lessness, and clearly it the plan. arrival of first copy and address changes. Canadian/foreign orders require doesn’t work. . . . The fact that I did additional postage and must be paid in full prior to commencement of service. Canadian/foreign subscribers may call 1-386-597-4378 for not foresee this reading of the poem subscription inquiries. American Express, Visa/MasterCard payments accepted. Cover price, $5.99. Back issues, $5.99 (includes postage and and the harm it could cause is hum­ handling). Send letters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th bling and eye-opening.” How quickly Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to and abjectly do our seemingly inde­ Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, pendent -minded artists submit to the Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2018, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly dictates of political fashion! Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. It occurs to us that with just a little The Weekly Standard is a registered trademark of Clarity Media Group. adjustment of language, Carlson-Wee’s TWS ART. SORRY POET:

4 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 CASUAL

that when my younger sister spilled A Trip to Milledgeville hers I indulged in a superior expres- sion, which lasted until I caught my hostess’s eye. Or she caught mine, considering me with the even and n summer 1962, Georgia’s back Firewood. Scuppernongs. Fresh eggs. unsparing gaze of those Byzantine roads were all the roads there John 3:16. And always and every- angels with the eyes on their wings. were, and a family of six didn’t where, boiled peanuts, which we I lowered mine and joined the other undertake a trip lightly. Or were united in despising. children outside. Iours didn’t, often. But we’d all been We didn’t feel the same way about I think we dashed around a bit but invited to spend the day with a friend crackers. When we were almost where mostly we strolled among the poultry, of my father’s at her farm in middle we were going, we stopped at a cross- who made it clear that they’d been Georgia, and we set out one morning roads grocery for lunch. We may have strolling first, and in their own terri- before it got too hot. had some sandwiches with us, but I tory. There were the guinea fowl, who There were lots of places where remember only the package of Toast- make chickens look like intellectuals, crews were working on the roads, Chee and the delicious coldness of and I believe some ducks and a goose widening them, I think, because plunging my arm into the ice water or two. But oh, the unexpected splen- I remember most the dor of the peacocks. I’d scalped expanses of red never seen one before and clay, gory with recent I’ve never seen them like rain, and the bloody that again, almost a dozen streaks across the pave- dragging their trains in ment where the road the dust until something was at a lower grade. In moved them to stop and the stretches where the shake a tailfeather. Then pines still came right up the shudder and the rais- to the road, no beautifica- ing and the spreading out tion projects had yet been of all those eyes, and the dreamt of. Frequently this beautiful curving inward meant that someone had like a frame or halo. tipped considerable gar- And then the cry. bage over the side, espe- The peacock screams. cially where there was Flannery O’Connor in the driveway of Andalusia Farm, 1962 It screams; it honks; a hollow or ravine. Not it whistles; it combines many bottles though: You could return of the cooler to find a Dr. Pepper. Cold them all in a chaos of aggression and your “cocola” bottle for the deposit, rivulets ran through the orange dust seductiveness. When there are almost a and entrepreneurs checked the road- that had settled on my arm along the dozen peacocks discussing claim-jump- sides for the leavings of folks too sorry way; the car windows were open and ing, the harshness is overwhelming. I to take theirs back themselves. Occa- we were all powdery by that point. took my book and sat on a low limb for sionally a wringer washer had been Before we got back into the car a while, away from the pandemonium. hurled to the mercy of the kudzu. we all washed our hands and faces When it was time to go, we all The signs were the best though. with cool water and made a reason- washed our hands and went to say Smallish ones, much smaller than able stab at hairbrushing. We put on thank you. I had a question to put, billboards. Some were made by fresh clothes and set off, turning onto as well. pros: the soft drink signs of course, the dirt and gravel drive and scatter- The peacocks, I said, they’re terri- or Brown’s Mule chewing tobacco or ing guinea hens in all directions. My ble. It’s like they’re broken somehow. Martha White Flour. Some of the father parked the Rambler under a How can they be so beautiful and richer churches had invested in crape myrtle, and we trooped politely sound so hideous at the same time? storebought Jesus Saves signs, but up the steps to the screened porch. My hostess smiled and looked mostly they’d done them them- There was a round of introduc- thoughtful for a moment. Well, Pris- selves; sometimes a Bible verse ran tions and the lavish experience of cilla, said Miss Flannery in that flat over onto a second sheet of plywood. being offered cocola for the second voice, that is exactly what I keep try- The fancier, bigger signs might be time in the same day. And allowed ing to figure out myself. nailed to a couple of upright posts, to say yes, thank you, we would like

JOE MCTYRE / ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION / AP JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION JOE MCTYRE / ATLANTA smaller ones to tree trunks. Peaches. some. It was such a heady experience Priscilla M. Jensen

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS

The Hard Part

A trillion here, a trillion there—will we ever take deficits seriously?

he recent news that government revenues are ment has fallen in 2018—and did so despite President down, combined with the Treasury Depart- Trump’s hostility to our trading partners and regular T ment’s announcement that federal borrowing is attacks on U.S. companies. up, has evoked howls of we-told-you-so from our friends There is now at least a hope of achieving the kind of on the left. sustained economic growth that two decades ago allowed That last year’s GOP tax cuts have played a role in a Republican-controlled Congress—together with an ideo- widening the federal deficit is beyond dispute—revenues logically flexible president—to generate revenue surpluses. fell 7 percent in June of this year compared with the same War, a brief recession, and a failure of principle led the month in 2017, and corporate tax payments have dropped GOP to squander that achievement, but the Republican steeply. Then, on July 30, Treasury announced that it will Revolution of the 1990s proved beyond doubt that we need borrow $329 billion over the next three months—a hefty not surrender to the tyranny of permanent deficits. increase of $56 billion over earlier forecasts. The department Alas, nothing about today’s GOP leads one to believe announced further that borrowing would need to increase the party has regained the sense and conviction it lost sharply in light of falling receipts and increased spending. in the 2000s. It’s true that Republicans look sane compared We strongly supported the 2017 tax-reform bill, but to congressional Democrats, but that’s saying very little. not in the belief that revenues would magically remain With entitlement spending overwhelming the federal bud- the same. We did so because the U.S. economy had limped get and guaranteeing that future generations will devote along at about 2 percent growth for a decade and seemed much (perhaps most) of their wealth to the Sisyphean task unlikely to do any better for the foreseeable future. Given of ensuring that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid the Obama administration’s regulatory follies and our remain functional, an insurgency within the Democratic highest-in-the-world corporate tax rate, there was little party is demanding we expand these programs. hope of reviving private-sector growth sufficiently to even Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for think about narrowing the deficit—never mind paying All” proposal would accomplish the progressive dream down the debt—without major reform. The GOP passed of nationalized health care, but it would do so through its tax cut in tandem with the administration’s noble Obamacare’s cockamamie system of government-funded efforts to jettison reams of Obama-era regulations. The third-party insurance providers—thus more expensively

result: Economic growth has improved and unemploy- and less efficiently than even a fully nationalized system HAMBACH / AF GETTYEVA

6 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 could do. An analysis of the Sanders plan by Charles Bla- last 18 years, so that investment of $1,000 was worth around hous, a former member of the Medicare board of trustees, $1,460 in today’s money. Indexing capital gains would mean puts the cost at $32.6 trillion over 10 years. you are taxed only on $1,040, not the full $1,500. In cases in But the Democrats don’t control both chambers of which the asset has appreciated over a long period, the dif- Congress and the White House; Republicans do. And the ference in tax liability would be substantial. GOP, having done its work to release the private sector Treasury would effect the change by reinterpreting from a punitive tax structure, now sits silent and refuses the term cost in the tax code—the cost of purchasing an to lift a finger to reduce the size of government and con- asset would be adjusted for inflation. That is certain to sequent expenditure of public money. There were hope- invite legal challenges, but there are legitimate argu- ful signs 18 months ago—the White House proposed ments for the change. The language of the statute doesn’t modest budget cuts, and the Education Department told specifically require cost to mean the amount of the origi- Congress it needed less money than it did the year before. nal purchase. In Mayo v. United States (2011), the Supreme When Trump took office, he rightly censured the previous Court unanimously ruled that Treasury had the right to administration for piling on “more new debt than nearly interpret the word student in the tax code to exclude peo- all of the other presidents combined.” Yet in his State of ple working 40 hours a week or more. The High Court in the Union speech a year later, he omitted all mention of the Mayo relied on the 1984 Chevron decision that gives agen- nation’s $20 trillion debt and nearly trillion-dollar deficit. cies flexibility in the interpretation of vague statutes. And the leaders of his party in Congress had nothing much Hence, say supporters of regulatory indexing, Treasury to say either. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the can interpret cost in a way that accounts for inflation. House Freedom Caucus, gave Trump’s speech an “A-plus.” Yet the word cost in the tax code has little of the flex- A few in the House recognize the party’s oppor- ibility of the word student. The latter term might include tunity and obligation to put expenditures in the same almost anyone and, for purposes of taxation, requires a ballpark as revenue. Budget Committee chairman Steve highly technical definition. The plain meaning of the word Womack (R-Ark.) recently proposed sensible reductions cost—the amount you pay for a thing at the time of pur- to entitlement spending, but Senate majority leader chase—needs little elaboration. Mitch McCon­nell—assuming the past is precursor—will That’s why, in 1992, the George H. W. Bush adminis- quickly conclude that such a measure is too controversial tration concluded that it did not have power unilaterally to and kill it in the upper chamber. reinterpret the word in this way. The Chevron doctrine, wrote With the 2017 tax bill, Hill Republicans acted to create then-assistant attorney general Timothy Flanigan in a memo the economic circumstances necessary to maintain pros- agreeing with Treasury’s conclusion, “does not furnish blan- perity and meet the country’s financial obligations. That ket authority for the regulatory rewriting of statutes when- was the first part, the easy part. The second and harder ever a dictionary gives more than a single definition for a part—undoing the reckless errors of more than one gen- statutory term. . . . Such a reading of Chevron would eviscerate eration of Washington policymakers—is no less necessary the well-established rule of construction that statutes must be to the future of the republic. ♦ accorded their plain and commonly understood meaning.” We don’t doubt that lowering the capital gains tax on long-term investments would generate real benefits—and encourage the type of value investing that drives our eco- nomic success. But we wonder if these benefits are worth the practical and political costs of trying to set tax policy Tax Cut By Fiat by regulation or executive order. On a practical level, the power of the purse belongs to Congress. reasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on July 30 As a matter of politics, Republicans already struggle acknowledged to the New York Times that the to overcome the accusation that they do the bidding of the T Trump administration is considering a substantial very rich. This accusation can’t entirely be avoided in a pro- de facto cut in the capital gains tax. The change wouldn’t business political party. But why give it credibility with a happen through legislation, the Republican majority being unilateral move that risks being reversed in the courts any- far too thin for that, but by regulatory fiat. “If it can’t get way? Indexing capital gains for inflation is a complicated done through a legislation process,” Mnuchin told the policy to defend, and Democrats won’t find it hard to criti- Times, “we will look at what tools at Treasury we have to do cize it as a tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers. it on our own and we’ll consider that.” There are cogent arguments for reducing capital-gains The idea would be to index capital gains for inflation. If taxes and for indexing to avoid taxing inflated gains. We you bought a stock for $1,000 in 2000, say, and sell it in 2018 believe every tax ought to be reduced (and government at the price of $2,500, you pay a tax on the $1,500 capital scaled back accordingly). But the Treasury Department gain. But inflation has increased by about 46 percent over the isn’t the place to do it. Congress is. ♦

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 7 COMMENT

FRED BARNES Three leaders are better than one

emocrats have tried to block officer who is reportedly held in high the FBI wiretap. So until the Sen- the House Intelligence Com- regard by U.S intelligence.” ate Judiciary Committee jumped in, D mittee’s investigation of the Steele’s tales about Page were from Nunes was alone. And the Judiciary FBI and its probe of the Trump presi- Russian sources who had not been Committee’s conclusions were often dential campaign. They have failed. vetted. In other words, the items ignored by the media when they were And the Senate Judiciary Committee had not been checked out, which a much like the House committee’s. is investigating the actions of the FBI thorough investigation would have For instance, last winter when on its own. required. “Steele has not been in Rus- Nunes put out a memo that said the Democrats made a fatal mistake. In sia since his cover as a British spy was wiretap application had depended on their eagerness to quash scrutiny of the blown nearly 20 years ago,” accord- the Steele dossier, he was pilloried. The FBI, they embraced a dossier of unveri- ing to Andy McCarthy of National Judiciary Committee agreed, but it got fied claims about President the cold shoulder. It was cost-free to Trump put together by Brit- Until the Senate attack Nunes. It was risky to clash with ish ex-spy Christopher Steele. Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley It blew up in their laps—and Judiciary (R-Iowa) and Senator Lindsey Graham in the FBI’s even more so— (R-S.C.), both political big boys. after it was used improperly Committee It takes strenuous effort for a dis- to justify the wiretap of a jumped in, Nunes senting idea—like clashing with the minor Trump adviser, Carter FBI—to get traction. With Grass- Page. It was a partisan docu- was alone. And ley and Graham on the same side as ment, having been financed the Judiciary Nunes, the task got easier—three lead- by Democrats. ers rather than one. Ideas fade without The dossier was heav- Committee’s leaders. Graham has been especially ily relied on in the FBI’s conclusions were valuable. He’s an engaging figure wiretap application. Only a who’s taken seriously by reporters and part of that application has often ignored by never hides from the press. been released publicly, the Nor can an idea emerge in a press rest redacted. Devin Nunes the media. blackout. That came close to happen- (R-Calif.), chairman of the ing. Next to Trump, Nunes is prob- House committee, has asked the Review. The FBI later cut its ties ably the most disliked Republican in Justice Department to unmask with Steele for leaking information Washington by the elite media and the redacted sections, or at least two to reporters. Nonetheless, Democrats their hangers-on. While the main- dozen specific pages. treated him as Mr. Reliable. streamers echoed each other, there There are bigger questions that the “The Trump campaign,” Schiff were five journalists who broke with full application cannot answer. Yet said, “is offered documents damaging the accepted narrative. these are on the minds of Nunes and to Hillary Clinton, which the Rus- Without the many stories they other Republicans on both commit- sians would publish through an out- broke, the idea that the FBI might tees. Who in the Obama administra- let that gives them deniability, like have been involved in skulduggery tion authorized the request for the WikiLeaks. The hacked documents could have vanished. Nunes would wiretap during the final months of would be in exchange for a Trump be a pariah. And congressional com- the 2016 campaign? (It was approved administration policy that de-empha- mittees would be back to looking for on October 21.) Which officials were sizes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Trump-Russia collusion, duplicating involved? How did they intend to use and instead focuses on criticizing Robert Mueller’s efforts. For the FBI the material they might obtain? What NATO countries for not paying their story, there’s no special prosecutor. laws might have been violated? fair share.” The five journalists are Byron York At a committee meeting on March 17, Once it turned its focus on the FBI, of the Washington Examiner, Mollie 2017, ranking Democrat Adam Schiff the Nunes committee was a target for Hemingway of the Federalist, Kimber- (D-Calif.), cited the dossier as if it were Democrats and the media. The Sen- ley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, unquestionably true. He described ate Intelligence Committee and other Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, and

LIKENESSES: DAVE CLEGG LIKENESSES: DAVE Steele as “a former British intelligence Republicans were less interested in McCarthy of National Review.

8 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 McCarthy wonders what the reac- the other party. “It would be covered “We have seen a significant uptick tion would be if a Republican admin- as the greatest political scandal of the in FARA-related business, both from istration had used a “suspect agent” century,” he says. I couldn’t have put new clients wanting to ensure they are and a court to spy on the candidate of it better. ♦ in compliance and from existing cli- ents who are asking us to ensure that their prior filings are fully buttoned- COMMENT ♦ ERIC FELTEN up,” says Josh Rosenstein of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birken- stock. “Many of them have told us that the new regulatory environment is The FARA faucet: foreign prompting them to take a hard look at FARA compliance.” Sensible stuff, that. agents are running scared Law firm Wiley Rein is at “a record pace in fielding inquiries from cli- he first of a pair of Paul Mana­ Central Intelligence Agency Volun- ents in regard to compliance with fort trials began this week in tary Separation Pay Act makes the the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” T a courthouse in Virginia. The list; FARA does not. says attorney Daniel Pickard. “We’re international lobbyist and onetime But now, thanks to the various receiving lots of requests for guidance head of the Trump presidential cam- investigations of the special counsel, as to whether clients need to file.” paign is charged with parking mil- FARA seems to be everywhere. There According to a Justice Depart- lions in cash offshore to evade taxes are the Manafort charges, of course, ment spokesman, there were 50 per- and otherwise launder his earnings. but don’t forget the 13 Russian social cent more FARA filings in 2017 than These are common enough charges in media trolls and their alleged corporate in 2016. And if anything, the pace the shadier back-alleys of global has quickened since then. Asked if high-finance and political fix- there’s been a boom in FARA work ing. The second trial, slated for To say that FARA and whether the current prosecutions later in the District of Columbia, was, at least explain it, Thomas J. Spulak of King deals extensively with a rather & Spalding is blunt: “Yes and yes.” less common sort of allegation— until recently, Savvy law firms are putting the word that Manafort failed properly to out to clients with international busi- register his activities under the an obscurity ness that they need to get right with federal Foreign Agents Regis- would be a wild Uncle Sam. Jenner & Block produced tration Act (FARA). a white paper in February titled “The To say that FARA was, at understatement: In Revival of the Foreign Agents Registra- least until recently, an obscu- half a century, just tion Act: What You Should Know and rity would be a wild under- What to Do Next.” Covington & Bur- statement. In 2016, the Justice three convictions. ling warned, “The breadth of the stat- Department’s inspector general ute, its criminal penalties, the absence audited the enforcement of FARA sponsors. They are accused of defraud- of interpretive guidance, and the grow- and “found that historically there ing the United States by “impairing, ing attention paid to the 1930s era law have been hardly any FARA pros- obstructing, and defeating the lawful by federal prosecutors combine to cre- ecutions.” And by hardly any, the IG functions of the government.” One ate dangerous and difficult-to-manage meant hardly any. In half a century— of the “lawful functions” specified by risks for multinational companies, lob- from 1966 to 2015—there were “only the Mueller team is FARA. And then bying firms, and public relations firms.” seven criminal FARA cases.” One there is Russian grad student and gun- Which is an elaborate way of saying produced an actual conviction at trial, rights advocate Maria Butina, who was if you have to ask whether you need to two resulted in guilty pleas, two of the recently charged with violating an even file, chances are you might want to. accused pleaded out to other charges, more obscure parallel to the FARA There’s no shortage of persons and “two cases were dismissed.” So in statute, 18 U.S.C. 951, which regulates covered by the law, in no small part 50 years, all of three people have been “agents of foreign governments.” because of the circumstances of found guilty of FARA violations. All of these prosecutions have its passage. In the years before the One other measure of what a back- focused the minds of Washington’s United States entered World War II, water FARA enforcement has been: lobbyist class and others who are Nazi propagandists and provocateurs The Senate Select Committee on wondering whether they might find actively infiltrated American social Intelligence website offers a helpful themselves defined as “foreign agents.” and political organizations. Their list of some two dozen “Major Intel- They’ve been lining up at lawyers’ goal: to skew public opinion about ligence Related Statutes.” The 1993 offices to register their activities. the war in Europe. The Foreign

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 9 Agents Registration Act was drafted Grassley says, “We’ve been working of the statute. “Controversy,” Engle to empower the federal government to with stakeholders to find a way to says, “sometimes creates progress.” respond to that threat, and as with thoughtfully address legitimate con- Not that this will turn off the law- many wartime security laws, FARA cerns raised by U.S. subsidiaries of for- yers’ FARA faucet: “We have cer- was written as broadly as possible. eign companies.” Grassley has FARA tainly seen an uptick in the num- Consider the law’s quite expansive reform legislation now before the For- ber of clients seeking FARA advice definition of “person.” The statute eign Relations Committee. recently,” says Christopher E. Bab- explains: “The term ‘person’ includes Arent Fox’s Engle says two things bitt of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale an individual, partnership, associa- have come from all the publicity about and Dorr. “We would expect that to tion, corporation, organization, or any FARA and its broad application: (1) continue—particularly if any of the other combination of individuals.” more compliance with FARA; and (2) proposed FARA reforms are enacted.” Then there is the “foreign principal” a new impetus for long-overdue reform It’s a win-win of a sort. ♦ who makes a “person” into a foreign agent by giving him, her, or it direction. Several subclauses note who is included COMMENT ♦ PHILIP TERZIAN in the definition of foreign principals. The first is straightforward enough: “A government of a foreign country and a We’re still hearing the echoes foreign political party.” But what of the second subclause, which defines as a from the Loud family “foreign principal” any non-American “person outside of the United States.” was a little surprised last week missioned and ran An American Fam- Just a bit broad, don’t you think? to learn that Bill Loud, patriarch ily, the culture of television had long Given the expansiveness of the I of the Southern California fam- since taken a downward trajectory. statute the better question than who ily depicted in the first reality-televi- It is worth noting, incidentally, that is covered might be who isn’t. Craig sion show (An American Family, PBS, while An American Family is credited Engle heads the political law group at 1973), had died​—​at the patriarchal with inventing reality TV, that is not Arent Fox. He says most people even age of 97. But of course, I shouldn’t quite accurate. A few years earlier a remotely covered by the act don’t want have been surprised: A generation New York-based documentary film- to run afoul of FARA any more than or more has passed since the they want to get themselves into any Loud family’s celebrity came other sort of trouble. Of those who and went, and the lifespan of To what extent was are conceivably covered by FARA celebrity is usually exceeded the behavior on An but unregistered, Engle says the vast by human longevity. As with majority want to be in conformity with more than a few pop-cultural American Family the law. “Now that FARA is in the landmarks, An American Fam- prompted by its papers, clients are calling.” They’re all ily must now be explained as asking, “Oh, does that apply to me?” well as remembered. inquiring cameras— It’s a good question. Let’s say you It seems difficult to imag- and is there anything are the CEO—or even just the press ine now, but there was a time spokesman—for a U.S. business owned when television program- Americans will not by a German firm, and you express to a ming was not only confined reporter an opinion about tariff poli- to a handful of commercial do in full view cies. Are you required to declare your- networks but almost invari- of strangers? self and your company foreign agents ably staged and orchestrated. and keep up twice-yearly filings with The successful launch of communi- maker named Robert Fresco had the FARA office? It can’t hurt. cations satellites in the early 1960s gained permission to film a minor In our age of globalized business, allowed for “live” broadcasting from criminal proceeding in a Denver this has all sorts of companies worried distant locations​—​especially useful county court. Almost no American that a prosecutor in need of a handy to news divisions​—​and the establish- trial had ever before been filmed, statute with which to leverage them ment of the publicly funded Corpora- much less recorded and photographed, may learn from Team Mueller just tion for Public Broadcasting (1967) for any length of time, and the result- how useful FARA can be. Business gave America a pale imitation of ing four-part PBS series​—​Trial: The lobbyists have been looking to Capi- Britain’s BBC. Commercial TV had City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. tol Hill to make FARA less encom- begun in the immediate postwar era Watson (1970)​—​demolished that par- passing and less elastic. A spokesman of mass-market uplift, but by the time ticular barrier. for Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck the Public Broadcasting Service com- I record this, by the way, for a

10 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 personal reason: Some months later installment and delighted, as well, Bill Loud’s infidelities and Pat Loud’s I happened to work with Fresco on when all seven Louds earned the offi- demand for divorce. a project, and he seemed genuinely cial imprimatur of celebrity in bygone So An American Family raised two touched that I not only recalled times: a cover portrait and analytical questions about celebrity culture having seen Trial but also remem- story in Newsweek. and its handmaiden television that bered the (unforgettable) name of Bill and Pat Loud seemed to have remain current and are probably the presiding judge: the Hon. Zita been recruited from central casting: He unanswerable: To what extent was ­Weinshienk​—​an early lesson in the was a handsome, self-confident, Jag- the Loud family’s behavior, especially evanescence of fame. uar-driving manufacturer of machine its misbehavior, prompted by those An American Family was an alto- parts and she was a boozy, chainsmok- inquiring cameras, and is there any- gether different sort of enterprise. A ing, mildly frustrated character out of thing Americans will not do in full husband-and-wife documentary team a John Cheever story. The Loud chil- view of strangers? for several months followed around an dren, male and female, were largely To their credit, the filmmakers’ affluent Santa Barbara couple, Pat and encased in 1960s-’70s uniforms—​big claims for their project were com- Bill Loud, and their five adolescent hair, garish colors, bell-bottom trou- paratively modest: Despite the title children, and then distilled hundreds sers​—​and seemed interchangeable to of the series, they did not regard the of hours of raw footage into 12 hour- me. But the breakout star of the series Loud family as representative either long episodes. was the eldest son Lance, flamboyantly of America or of families—​ ​not even in I was a senior in college at the time gay, in love with the camera, habitu- a decade when the chattering classes and, once again, it should be explained ally aimless, alternately laughing were largely persuaded that both had that my access to television in those and weeping. seen better days. They filmed, as it halcyon days was limited to a semi- The viewing public, needless to say, were; you decided. And in Bill Loud’s functional set in a common room in was equally hypnotized and appalled. defense, he complained that the foot- my dormitory. I had little interest in An On the one hand, it was both shocking age was deliberately edited to present American Family. But two of my best and inexplicable that anyone, much “only the negative, bizarre, and sensa- friends in the dorm were besotted by less a seemingly respectable family, tional stuff,” as it may well have been. the series, and in their case, it’s not would allow themselves to be recorded Forty-five years later, his surviving hard to see why. Whereas the Louds by a film crew, all day and every day, four children​—​Lance died in 2001, at struck me as exceptionally banal and for months on end. To be sure, the 50​—​and even Pat Loud seem to regard annoying​—​conversation was devoid Louds were devoted, one to the other, him with affection and gratitude. of ideas and ambition seemed to con- in mysterious ways and, in the fash- The problem, of course, is that the centrate on fame—​ ​they saw wretched ion of families, deeply self-absorbed. primal instinct that drew Bill Loud excess and irresistibly cheap melo- Yet there was turbulence beneath the toward the camera and pop-cultural drama. And like most of America, sun-drenched surface, which exploded immortality is a two-edged sword. they were quickly addicted to each in a famous on-camera revelation of Speaking of his father a couple of years ago, one of the younger Loud sons recalled that his business “pro- vided a family of five kids with a very Worth Repeating from WeeklyStandard.com: comfortable life, and took [us] around the world. As a kid I never thought mong all the gifted people I have encountered, I am much about it. As a middle-aged guy, A profoundly thankful to have accidentally fallen—albeit I can only shake my head in awe and briefly—within the personal orbit of the world’s most revered respect.” Indeed, Loud’s life can be “neighbor,” Fred Rogers. seen from another perspective: He had been a PT boat commander on D-Day, Like throngs of other parents, I first came to admire received a Bronze Star in Korea, and Mr. Rogers through his weekday children’s television program, built a prosperous business enterprise but I never imagined I would one day have lunch with him from scratch. to discuss a child-care issue of mutual concern. And I never And yet that same paragon of the dreamed that Mr. Rogers in person would be a more perfect American dream was a precursor of a coarsened popular culture that, in the version of his remarkably warm and wise television persona, for decades since, makes the dialogue and an unexpected reason: There was no hint that his graciousness set-pieces of An American Family seem and goodness were scripted. like Molière by comparison. “But I’m really grateful,” he told an interviewer —Richard B. McKenzie, ‘My Chance Lunch with Fred Rogers’ when the series was broadcast. “It was a very gratifying experience.” ♦

12 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 COMMENT ♦ TERRY EASTLAND Justice has now withdrawn the documents and may write new ones that are consistent with the law—and Affirmative reaction tougher about when the use of race in admissions may be justified. Note n 2016 the College of Charleston factor” in admissions. In other words, well that the Supreme Court’s cases ended the practice of considering more and more “students of color” on affirmative action have yielded the I race and ethnicity in admissions were being accepted without race hav- exacting doctrine of “strict scrutiny,” decisions—affirmative action, as it is ing been a factor in the reviews of their under which race may be used in called. The change went unnoticed applications. Evidently there was no admissions only if it is “narrowly tai- in the college community until the reason for the committee to think that lored” to attain the “compelling inter- Post and Courier, the local daily paper, those trends would have abated under est” of educational diversity. reported it on July 29. Whereupon, a race-neutral holistic process. The college also may have to con- almost within the same news cycle, the Race-neutrality seems to have been tend with a rejected applicant alleging school’s interim president, pro- that the “additional review” is racially fessing the college’s commitment discriminatory and a violation of fed- to “diversity on campus,” wrote The Obama eral law, which prohibits discrimina- that the school had not made administration tion on the basis of race and ethnicity. “any changes to its official admis- Such a lawsuit would go nowhere if sions policies regarding race” and tilted in favor of the college weren’t competitive, which is using affirmative action. the use of race in evidently it is. It was as though nothing had Still, it is better not to be sued happened, though it had. The admissions. The than to be sued. The risk of the lat- College of Charleston had long ter has now increased, and a com- employed the so-called “holistic” Department of plaint could focus on the “color line” approach to admissions, in which Justice now may the college has just drawn. Thanks to a committee takes into account that line, an applicant of color may not just academic achievement tilt back. get an “additional review,” but one but nonacademic factors like who is not won’t, which means some extracurricular activities—along with a lodestar for the committee. In 2015 it rejected applicants may claim to have race and ethnicity. But in 2016 the began the implementation of a Top 10 received unequal treatment by the committee removed race and ethnic- Percent Plan similar to the one used by college. And if the extra review of a ity from the list of factors. And now, in the University of Texas for more than declined applicant of color is based the middle of the summer of 2018, the 20 years. Under this plan, admission on race alone and does not involve an college has added them back to the list. is guaranteed to students who finish “individualized consideration” of the Never mind that the freshman class of in the top 10 percent of their classes. person, as the Court requires, that too 2017 was the first in years to be selected Top 10 is race-neutral. And while it is could be a problem. without race-based affirmative action. a pilot program in place in seven of the College of Charleston records show The college will conduct “an additional state’s southern-most counties—the that more and more of the school’s review of students of color who [were] South Carolina Lowcountry—it could “admits” identify themselves as being not initially recommended for admis- be expanded throughout the state. of two or more races. That is just sion,” reports the Post and Courier. Meanwhile, the college’s resump- another piece of evidence that ours is a So the status quo ante is back. tion of affirmative action is a story multiracial, multicultural country that But the committee that eliminated not likely to die down any time soon. is remaking itself every day. race and ethnicity as factors taken It may attract the attention of the Set against this canvas of demo- into account in the holistic approach Justice Department, which just last graphic change, affirmative action is, deserves a good word for its work. month reviewed several Obama-era as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once The committee ended the use of race “guidance” documents that “purport wrote, a “deviation from the norm of apparently because of welcome trends to explain the legal framework that equal treatment of all racial and eth- in the college’s admissions. Accord- governs the use of race” by postsec- nic groups.” For that reason, she made ing to the chief enrollment officer, in ondary schools. The Obama admin- clear that the deviation must be “tem- an interview with the Post and Courier, istration’s analysis of that framework porary.” Hence “the requirement that the committee recognized that “our tilted in favor of the use of race in all race-conscious admissions programs student-of-color enrollments were admissions decisions. “The docu- have a termination point.” Getting to increasing substantially”—having ments were written to advocate where that point is the urgent work of admis- doubled in the past decade—“while the law should go,” a senior depart- sions committees struggling with affir- we were infrequently using race as a ment official told me. mative action and hoping for its end. ♦

14 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 anything but egos. It is the business center of no business, the manufac- It’s Worse than turing hub of making nothing and spending all, incubator of no innova- tion except in fibs, and core of inter- Vulgar, It’s Trendy national banking only in the sense of a Federal Reserve financed by air.

Hog caller for the World, Washington, D.C., in 2018. Fool maker, Stacker of Decks, by P. J. O’Rourke Player with Logrolling and the Nation’s man-handler; lived in Washington from 1988 to around the Washington Navy Yard Whiny, feckless, appalling, 2008, and I return frequently—six and Nationals Park? Whither went City of the Sharp Elbows. I or eight times a year to see friends the Anacostia of yore? Who lives in all and doctors (to the extent there’s a dif- these shiny new places? And why? Yet in fact, Washington’s growth ference at my age) and to eat oysters The resplendent growth and glit- and wealth are all too easily explained. and prime rib and drink whis- People are flocking to the seat key at the Palm (sending me of government power. One back to the doctors). But when I would say “dogs returning was in town for a few days last to their vomit” except that’s month I realized that I have too hard on dogs. Too hard been paying little or no atten- on people, also. They come to tion to the city itself. Washington because they have Paying little or no attention no choice—diligent working to Washington suits my classi- breeds compelled to eat their cal liberal ideas. And—as the regurgitated tax dollars. campaign slogan went for one The federal government Washington denizen who was has captured the economy of best ignored—“Now More the United States, nationaliz- Than Ever.” But I am nonethe- ing and centralizing our labor less embarrassed by how unob- and means of production to an servant I’ve been. extent not seen in avowedly I knew the city had changed, Communist countries such as but I’d successfully ignored this China and Vietnam. until I went to stay with friends The federal government has in a neighborhood where, in done this not with the iron grid 1988, I would not have sent of Marxist theory but with the my worst enemy to run a day- silken threads of entitlement time errand. (I lie. I would spending, the caress of fund- have gladly dispatched Noam ing, the enticement of subsidy, Chomsky to the open-air drug and the seduction of easy mon- market that was Lincoln Park etary policy. 30 years ago, to get himself All these baits and lures are some crack to clarify his thinking.) tering wealth of modern Washington placed in Washington at the crux of a I was flabbergasted even looking out would baffle a free-market economist. spider web of regulatory and legislative the taxi window on my way to “South- The city is not founded, as great cities interference in the marketplace. If we east beyond 8th Street”—once a region are, on a rock, a river, or a road. The want something—anything—we must of the District as remote from my quo- “Landfill of L’Enfant” is not placed in go to Washington and beg it from the tidian life as Helmand Province. a defensible position. The storm sewer arachnids in charge. From whence came the balco- Potomac is a river by courtesy title Hence the gentrification of the nied canyons of apartment buildings only. And Washington doesn’t stand once half-derelict quarters of the Dis- astride a great trade route. Rather, it trict, with courtiers now living in P. J. O’Rourke is a contributing editor squats athwart one, blocking with traf- splendor where slum-dwellers would to The Weekly Standard fic jams the commerce of I-95. not live in squalor. and editor of a new online magazine, Washington is no port or transpor- Who is this new gentry? Are they

American Consequences. tation axis or major marketplace for squires with vast land holdings? (Sort THOMAS FLUHARTY

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 15 of. The federal government owns 640 million acres of land, though not put to very productive use.) Are they May Staggers an intellectual elite? Cue laughter. A military aristocracy? The knights in camouflaged armor are in aforemen- into August tioned Helmand Province, not the Pentagon. The new gentry may be rob- bers but they are hardly baronial. Actually, they aren’t even new. The Her days will grow short, when she gentry are, as they always were, just reaches September. by Dominic Green “Beltway insiders.” The difference is that now they are much more numer- irginia Woolf said that when- 2017. Then she pursued a disastrous ous, and they make much more money ever Charles Dickens felt that negotiating strategy with the E.U. over because as the size of government ben- V a story was faltering in plot Brexit—if, that is, a program of sur- efits has grown, so has the labor of or wit, he threw “another handful of render by stages can be called a strat- extracting them. people on the fire.” Character, she egy at all. Finally, in early July, she Meanwhile, what happened to the reckoned, was Dickens’s substitute summoned her cabinet to the prime poor people? It was an apposite verse for the conventional virtues of orga- minister’s weekend home, Chequers, in old Washington, Matthew 26:11, nization and intelligence. You can go and secured its collective responsibil- “For ye have the poor always with a long way in England on character— ity for a Brexit policy that reneged on you.” There they were a couple hun- all the way to 10 Downing Street. But her election promises of 2017 and sub- dred yards from the Capitol dome. you cannot stay there without organi- sequent policy statements. And the verse was (or should have zation and intelligence. The façade of unity lasted three been) salutary. The weight of gover- In 1990, after pro-E.U. ministers days, until two of the stronger char- nance falls heaviest on the poor. Gov- had stabbed Margaret Thatcher in acters in the pro-Brexit camp, May’s ernment could look around itself and the back, John Major, a man untrou- foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and see at close range what good its legis- bled by charisma, emerged as the con- her Brexit negotiator, David Davis, lation and regulation and the toady- sensus inheritor. After an organized threw themselves on the fire. The ing acolytes thereof had done for the and intelligent campaign, Major won policy lasted four days, until it came poor. None. But that burden of bibli- more votes in the 1992 elections than before the House of Commons. The cal instruction has been lifted from the any previous Conservative candidate. European Research Group, the anti- shoulders of governance. Nowadays Not bad for a character so mild that E.U. faction among the Conserva- Matthew 26:11 reads, “For ye have the he tucked his shirt into his underwear tives, added amendments that would poor always somewhere out in Prince just to be on the safe side. nullify May’s proposal to keep Britain George’s County.” In 2016, after the Brexit referen- permanently under the E.U.’s legal It’s a rich man’s city now. I accept dum, David Cameron’s resignation, suzerainty and partially inside its cus- that as inevitable under the force and the bungled candidacy of the toms borders for goods. The remains majeure circumstances. But something excessively characterful Boris Johnson, of May’s dignity went the next day, besides wealth and power was bother- Theresa May tiptoed into Downing when pro-E.U. Conservatives counter- ing me as I walked around safe, clean, Street. She was supposed to be orga- attacked with amendments designed and prosperous Capitol Hill. The cof- nized and intelligent; she had survived to effectively keep Britain in the E.U. fee shops with their misplaced liv- a term at the graveyard of ambition forever, a gambit that May defeated ing room furniture, free WiFi, and that is the Home Office. She claimed with the support of pro-Brexit Labour exorbitant cups of joe admixed with to be capable of holding together a rebels. Next, Boris Johnson, who is ­untoward ingredients. The restaurants party riven over Europe, of rebind- usually given more to wit than intel- serving dishes that no one has heard of ing a nation divided by Europe, and ligence, delivered a resignation speech from countries where no one has been. of steering Britain through Brexit. She so polite and reasonable that it can The neck-bearded young men with has turned out to be the worst prime only have been a pitch for May’s job. sleeves of tats and the pierce-faced minister in living memory. To survive this double onslaught young women with heads shaved in First, May lost her parliamentary from her own party, May had to accept some places and in other places not. majority through a poorly organized amendments that she opposed and When governance becomes opulent, and foolish electoral campaign in oppose amendments that she wanted. we can perhaps survive it. When gov- This is the equivalent of negotiating ernance becomes omnipotent we can Dominic Green is the culture editor the passage between Scylla and Cha- perhaps endure it. But when gover- of Spectator USA and a frequent rybdis by aiming for the rocks and nance becomes hip . . . All is lost. ♦ contributor to these pages. then bouncing into the whirlpool.

16 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 The vessel may still be floating, but in order to preserve her government of it. Still, the BBC and the Remainers the sailors know that the captain is a until September. They abandoned the in the Conservative party insist that fool and that their fate is tied to hers. plan when it became clear that they they know better than the voters. In case anyone still doubted that May didn’t have the votes. Britain now faces only two pos- was out of her depth, Michel Barnier, The word in Westminster is that sibilities, to collapse backwards into the E.U.’s chief negotiator, delivered May’s enemies will call a vote of no the E.U. or crash forward into a “hard a gratuitous insult by preemptively confidence in September, when Par- Brexit.” The first would turn the cur- rejecting May’s proposals. liament resumes, or in October, when rent failure into a crisis of democracy, The consensus in Westminster is Barnier formally rejects the Chequers because it would betray the referen- that May is a person of good charac- proposal and, as he has at every stage, dum result. The second would be a ter, a vicar’s daughter, trying to do demands further concessions. This hard economic landing. But at least the right thing. She is not Edward may seem like an intelligent strategy Britain would keep the 40 billion Heath, the Conservative prime minis- if you are Boris Johnson or a Conser- pounds and be free to negotiate trade ter who in 1975 persuaded Britons to vative backbencher. But the longer deals with the rest of the world. It vote to enter Europe’s customs union this goes on, the worse it will be. Not would also be a functioning democ- while denying that this would com- just for May, who is a mit Britain to the political union that dead woman walking, the leaders of the European Economic or even for the Con- Community were already planning servatives, who seem and that Heath wanted. Heath was a set on proving their clever liar. May is becoming a fool- unfitness for office, ish and dishonest one. For her, com- but for the country. mitment to duty seems increasingly The Conserva- indistinguishable from clinging to tive party member- power and its perks. ship is in open revolt. May was a Remainer in 2016. Her Labour, despite being Chequers plan was for Brexit in name led by Jeremy Cor- only. She claims that it fulfills the byn, a revolution- terms for Brexit, but this is not true. ary socialist stained The pre-referendum booklets sent to by friendship with every household by David Camer- Islamists and anti- on’s government specified that Brexit Semites, is edging would mean leaving the E.U.’s sin- ahead in the polls. A gle market and customs union. May majority of Conservatives in parlia- racy, because its elected leaders would had endorsed this “clean Brexit” in ment, exposed by the 2016 referen- have honored their promises. 2016 and 2017. Now she is attempt- dum as out of touch with the public, Last week, the newspapers specu- ing to foist the worst of all Brexits are still out of touch. They distrust lated that a hard Brexit would mean on the public. Under the Chequers Boris Johnson more than they fear chaos at the borders. Stocks of medi- plan, Britain would pay nearly 40 bil- Corbyn, even though Johnson is the cine would run out. Trucks would jam lion pounds in dues to the E.U. and only Conservative with the wit to cap- the motorway all the way from London remain inside the customs union, but ture the swing voters. to the port at Dover. The army would it would lose its voice in the councils Nor have a majority of parliamen- have to step in to keep the peace. None of the E.U. and not recover its parlia- tary Conservatives accepted what of this should even be conceivable: mentary sovereignty. the public has already grasped and May’s government promised to prepare May has shown enough wit to what the Euroskeptics always said. for every contingency. retain her office but not the intelli- The E.U. never had any intention It is an index of how disgracefully gence that Britain needs at its most of accommodating Britain with a May has acted in betraying her word, critical juncture since 1945. The pub- bespoke deal. With Euroskepticism and how disgracefully her MPs have lic voted for a revision of Britain’s eco- rising across the member states, it is behaved in putting party before coun- nomic and legal relationships with both congenial and necessary for the try, that this kind of fiasco remains the world. Instead of trying to recon- E.U. to humiliate Britain pour encour- conceivable. Worse, it is all too easy cile parliamentary sovereignty with ager les autres. The character of the to imagine May still in charge as the the global economy, May suggests that E.U. is fundamentally undemocratic, ship goes down. Either the Conserva- Britain become a vassal state of a cor- its policies are lacking in intelligence, tives do the right thing with a modi- rupt and failing empire. Shamelessly, and its leaders are witless. Everyone cum of wit and intelligence, or this her team tried to bring Parliament’s in Britain knows this, even those who collective failure of character will sink

THOMAS FLUHARTY summer recess forward by five days, prefer to be in the E.U. rather than out them for a generation. ♦

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 17 telling Democrats that “we have to talk to Republicans if we want to keep Bland Spicer our country moving forward.” This was a theme that came up time and again, with both Spicer and Paolino The hometown briefing. lamenting political polarization. “I’m a fairly fierce partisan, but I think we by Ethan Epstein can have dialogue. We can learn from each other,” Spicer said. “We need to Barrington, R.I. assembled, and a few younger folks have discussions in a civil and respect- ean Spicer took about as much sported red caps that read “Rhode ful way.” The irony of this plea being time writing a memoir of his ten- Island First.” But the crowd was more made by a former Trump press secre- Sure in the Trump administration curious than partisan. “I don’t really tary went unmentioned. as he did serving in it. The 46-year-old care about politics, but it’s cool when Like the book itself, the event was career Republican operative was Presi- someone from your town writes a mostly a not-terribly-interesting bio- dent Trump’s press secretary begin- book,” one middle-aged woman said. graphical sketch of a genial fellow who, ning January 20, 2017—though some What Barrington Books’ logistical through a bizarre confluence of events, might say he didn’t really begin service hiccup did afford was a greater oppor- ended up as the public face of the until January 21, when he came out tunity for hecklers. “Fascists!” one Trump administration during its cha- and claimed, despite copious photo- shouted at the crowd. Others simply otic opening months. graphic evidence to the contrary, that held signs in front of the line: “Sean Spicer dreamed of working in mar- the inauguration crowd the day before Spicer Lied for Profit” and “Shame keting before getting bitten by the had been the largest in American his- on Sean.” The protesters were moved “political bug,” he said. He recalled his tory. By September he was gone. Now, along by local cops—“This is a private first job in Washington, in the office of 10 months later, he’s released a thin parking lot,” they said. The more clever the legendary Rhode Island Republi- memoir: The Briefing: Politics, the Press, protesters parked their cars in front of can senator John Chafee (“pure class”), and the President. the line of ticket-holders and put big and the various campaigns he served It was to hawk this book that Spicer signs in their windshields. They then on. (“You were winning or losing. Run- returned on Saturday, July 28, to his simply walked away. ning a campaign, you knew whether hometown of Barrington, Rhode Hecklers made it into the event as you were running forwards or back- Island. Barrington is a tony suburb of well. One man shouted, “Sean, any wards.”) And his time at the Repub- Providence, home to a sparkling coun- advice for the young people who want lican National Committee from 2009 try club, an attractive municipal beach, to make a profit from corroding the on. (“We spent a lot of time building and a downtown that tends towards truth?” to a smattering of applause. It a ground game and an operation. It’s farm-to-table restaurants and inde- was presumably to avoid scenes like all in the book.”) Strangely, the book pendent bookstores. Spicer had a typi- this that, the day before this event, BJ’s is light on details about what it’s like cal Barrington upbringing: His father, Wholesale Club in nearby Seekonk, to work with Trump. Spicer falls back who died in 2016, owned a yacht bro- Massachusetts, canceled its planned on hoary clichés about what an “honor kerage company. (Sean says it was the Spicer signing. This is, after all, a heav- and privilege” it is to work in the 1991 luxury tax applied to yachts that ily Democratic area, and Spicer’s local White House. first raised his political consciousness.) roots buy him only so much slack. Here In contrast to some other entries The younger Spicer attended Ports- in Barrington, Spicer simply shrugged in the burgeoning genre of Trump mouth Abbey, a Catholic boarding off the jab: “I think that young people Lit, The Briefing has not, apparently, school, and then Connecticut College. should engage in government and be been a major commercial hit. Unlike He’s been active in Republican politics active,” he said. recent works by Michael Wolff, James ever since, while finding time along the The event was mostly a mellow one. Comey, and Jeanine Pirro, Spicer’s way to serve in the Naval Reserve. Spicer was interviewed by Joe Paolino, hasn’t rocketed up the New York Times Spicer’s event, held at downtown fix- the former mayor of Providence and a bestseller list (it’s No. 13), and on the ture Barrington Books, was advertised dogged Democrat—he’s DNC commit- Amazon charts he’s been languishing for 1:30, but by 2:00 the doors hadn’t teeman for Rhode Island. Paolino, tight in the high triple digits. That’s because yet opened. So a long line formed in with the Clintons, also served as Bill’s Trump books are, commercially at front of the store, which is situated ambassador to Malta. least, the opposite of Aristotle’s Golden in a downtown strip mall. There was a The former mayor allowed that Mean: To succeed they need either to smattering of MAGA hats among the “many of my friends who are Demo- be slavishly pro-Trump or hysterically crats are asking, ‘What the hell are opposed. Spicer’s book sits there flac- Ethan Epstein is associate editor you doing with Sean Spicer?’ ” But cidly in the middle. of The Weekly Standard. Paolino said that he views his role as Perhaps that’s why, even in a cozy

18 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 hometown venue like Barrington, there the event, Spicer reappeared to declare Any editor who worked with are a smattering of empty seats. Though that his crowd was Barrington’s largest Charles knew that he had not truly fin- it’s always possible that the day after book signing in history. ♦ ished fine-tuning his piece until the last second before the deadline passed. Words—and their meanings—were of profound importance to him. No one ever cared more than Charles about the Working with placement of a comma. This was not merely because he was a master word- smith (though he was). It was because Charles he knew that his words held meaning for millions of people, and it was his responsibility as a public figure to take Krauthammer’s research assistants reminisce. great care in how he expressed himself. Such precision was part of his by David Hodges method of persuasion. While he was not one to pull his punches, Charles ike many longtime readers of would think over an issue until he felt knew that if his column contained a Charles Krauthammer, I was he had something to say, he would minor factual error or some super- L heartbroken to see his farewell gather research, and he would create an fluous flare of hyperbole, it would column in the Washington Post in June. outline. Mike Watson, his last research weaken his case. He wanted each col- I was fortunate enough to spend two assistant, observed that he would go umn to be as precise and logical as years as his research assistant, and where his writing took him. “He would possible and his readers to make no since then I have relied upon his writ- try to have two ideas in his outline mistake about the thrust of his argu- ings to make sense of the world. so that he could pick the one that he ment. Bloom noted that “he wanted After Charles’s passing, a group of found the most interesting as he edited the facts in the columns to be unim- his former research assistants came down from the initial draft.” peachable so people couldn’t distract together to reminisce and compare When thinking about the column, it from his arguments by contradicting notes about our experiences working also helped him to picture his audience. a fact, however minor it might be.” for him. Knowing how he was revered “Charles said he often imagined he was Writing with precision did not by his readers, we wanted to share our at a dinner party—in a friendly audi- mean being mechanically confined observations of his writing process. ence, but mixed with those sympathetic by the rules. Like many good writ- As New York Times columnist Ross and skeptical of his position,” accord- ers, Charles delighted in sometimes Douthat wrote, there was “no greater ing to Hillel Ofek, his assistant from bending—or breaking—certain con- master of the form.” While we will 2007-08. In reading his columns, that ventions to make his point. Jonathan never read another new column from tone of respectful argumentation is evi- Fluger (2009-11) remembered spar- Charles, our hope is that others might dent throughout. “The style is almost ring with him over the proper applica- get a sense of how he worked and conversational (‘Why, you ask . . . ’),” tion of a grammatical rule. “I want it from that understand how he might said Peter NeCastro (2011‑12), “but to sing!” Charles told him. approach an issue. never pompous.” Beyond that, he A final observation about working As any writer knows, it is not “wrote to make you see,” said Bor- for Charles: One of the first things we always easy to come up with an idea. den Flanagan (1997-99), “the crux of all learned was that Charles insisted Charles, who filed a weekly column an issue, the most important levers of that calls from his immediate family be for more than 30 years, was no excep- power at work in a situation, the salient routed to him without delay. This was tion. Sometimes he knew in advance ground in human nature of these.” a rule that did not always apply to the exactly what he would write; other To that end, columns would fre- luminaries who rang. times, he would discard a hard-writ- quently have their origins in a fact There was a reason for this. ten and time-consuming column at or quotation that was hiding in plain “Charles’s sense of responsibility was the last moment so he could write a sight. “He homed in on minute details to his family and to the country that new one, just hours before deadline. that revealed a greater principle hid- was its shelter and home,” said Flana- Most of the time, however, things ing behind them or that gave his gan. “This afforded him the intellec- were somewhere in the middle. He arguments more color,” Watson said. tual independence to see what he saw Jeffrey Bloom (1993-94) seconded that and say what he said.” We who had the David Hodges, director of the nonprofit observation: “He was a master at find- privilege to work for Charles learned Governor’s STEM Scholars program, ing a quote buried deep in a New York from his example the right way to write was Charles Krauthammer’s Times or Washington Post story and about Washington and, more impor- research assistant from 2005-07. building a column from it.” tant, the right way to live here too. ♦

20 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 Kid Trump Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, has made it his business to ‘own the libs.’ Business is booming.

By Adam Rubenstein of Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, Ohio congressman Jim Jor- dan, Brexit evangelist Nigel Farage, and the NRA’s Dana n July 23, hundreds of students gath- Loesch. Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, ered at George Washington University wrote “TPUSA ROCKS” above her name. RNC spokes- in Washington, D.C., for Turning Point person Kayleigh McEnany printed a Bible verse below hers USA’s fourth annual High School Lead- and added “MAGA.” The documents are a memento of ership Summit. The four-day event was TPUSA events but also a who’s who of the powerbrokers Oa sequence of workshops on campus activism and student of conservatism in the age of Trump. leadership punctuated by speeches by prominent conserva- Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder, calls himself “the tives, from House whip Steve Scalise and Education sec- luckiest 24-year-old ever to exist.” He started the group six retary Betsy DeVos to rabble-rousers like Sebastian Gorka years ago instead of going to college and now has 130,000 and Anthony Scaramucci. high school students, undergrads, and recent college grad- Backstage at TPUSA events you’ll find facsimiles of uates on board in what he calls the fight “to save Western both the Constitution and the Declaration of Indepen- civilization.” He sees himself as a general in the “culture dence. Placed on a table with cellophane overlays, the war” and TPUSA’s members as “culture warriors”—effec- pages aren’t just symbols—and they aren’t there for ref- tive “disrupters” of the left on campus and eventually erence. TPUSA’s speakers and celebrity guests are asked across America. Kirk travels nonstop; he spent more than to sign the documents. Scan the pages and you’ll see the 300 days last year on the road giving speeches and meet- John Hancocks of Ann Coulter, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Don- ing with donors, students, and politicians. Everywhere he ald Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, ex-Fox News star Kimberly goes he spreads the message that “Big Government Sucks” Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump right on top and “Socialism Sucks.” This fall he’s thinking of selling a of the Founders’ words. You’ll find the scribbled signatures T-shirt that says, “Bring Back ISIS, Vote Democrat 2018.” Hanging out with Kirk is like being backstage at a cross Adam Rubenstein is assistant opinion editor between a political convention and a reality-television show.

at The Weekly Standard. The cameras are perpetually rolling. Everything at the STANDARD / THE WEEKLY HANNAH YOEST

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 21 summit is livestreamed, and the audience is always present, gets offstage to make way for the next speakers: Pence con- always interacting, always commenting. Kirk’s the star of fidant Marc Lotter and Trump surrogate Gina Loudon on a this show. The donors—Kirk prefers to calls them “inves- panel moderated by the Daily ­Caller’s Benny Johnson. They tors”—are the producers. The contestants are the celebrity spend 40 minutes discussing the Trump victory and show- speakers Kirk invites (and it is a battle of survival as former ing a video presentation with a Pepe the Frog meme. For CIA director James Woolsey gets canceled this week when four days, speaker after speaker, hour after hour, the audi- Kellyanne Conway confirms she can make it). The crew is ence is enraptured by such political entertainment and by Kirk’s healthy entourage of protectors and wannabes. the performative politics they’ve come to D.C. to join in. Kirk says yes to virtually every request made of him— YouTube vlogger Hunter Avallone tells the students that and when he doesn’t say yes, it seems as though he wishes after the last election, the left “went as far as to curse us all he could. He introduced me to those with him backstage. with that stampede of unshowered feminists, also known Candace Owens, TPUSA’s communications director, is as the Women’s March. I don’t think I’ve seen this many usually tied to her phone. While I was Democrats act out and get violent with them, she was tweeting praise since we took away their slaves.” of Ivanka Trump at the first daugh- When Kirk hits the stage “Universities offered support to ter’s request. Owens recently achieved students after Trump won the elec- some fame for her influence on Kanye early in the conference’s tion,” he goes on. “Some elite cam- West’s politics. There is Mike Gruen, first full day, the puses even offered coloring books the heavyset enforcer who makes sure students stand up, and puppies to help students cope. everything runs smoothly and on time. applaud, and holler his I wonder how many liberals saw And there’s Kyle Kashuv, a Marjory name. ‘The left destroys this and thought to themselves, Stoneman Douglas High School shoot- ‘Wow: validation, coddling, gifts. ing survivor, who serves as TPUSA’s everything it touches,’ Are my parents getting divorced high school outreach director and is he tells them: ‘sports, again?’ ” His act draws applause the summit’s emcee. All venerate Kirk. comedy, schools, fun, and laughter—and primes the He’s not just the boss but the means people, everything.’ The crowd for the political decadence toward political fame. applause is rapturous; that was to follow. The nation’s vil- When Kirk hits the stage early in lains are obvious at TPUSA: liber- the conference’s first full day, the stu- Kirk knows his crowd. als and the media that twist every dents stand up, applaud, and holler his conservative event and utterance name. “The left destroys everything it touches,” he tells to suit their tastes. It is something we see in action. them: “sports, comedy, schools, fun, people, everything.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to a boisterous The applause is rapturous; Kirk knows his crowd. “By the and participatory morning group. When he compliments way, there are two genders,” he announces, and the students the students’ energy, they begin to chant, “Lock her up.” leap to their feet, crying out in agreement. Kirk is a skilled Sessions smiles, repeats the phrase, and says, “I heard that performer. He speaks for just as long as it takes for the next a long time on the last campaign.” Some in the media pick act to arrive, freewheeling from one topic to the next. Talk- up the story and word quickly spreads that Sessions had ing about capitalism and market pricing, Kirk asks, “Is led the chanting. He hadn’t, and while standing in the there a price you won’t pay for a Chick-fil-A sandwich?” Chick-fil-A line at lunch, all the students could talk about “$100,” a student shouts from his seat. Whether you realize was “fake news” and the biased media. “We were there,” it or not, “You’re having this conversation with Chick-fil-A one says to me. “Did you see this clip online taking it out everyday.” “Except Sundays,” another student yells in jest. of context?” “I bet CNN will cover it tonight as ‘Jeff Ses- “God bless America,” Kirk replies. “We love our sabbath.” sions chanted Lock her up at Nazi conference.’ ” Kirk reminds the crowd that there are three things all The “lock her up” chant was repeated dozens of times TPUSA-ers agree on: “America is the greatest country in over the course of the conference. I ask Kirk if he worries the history of the world.” “The Constitution is the greatest that students are too focused on an old battle and an old political document ever written.” And “free market capital- enemy. “No, not whatsoever,” he replies. “They’re frus- ism is the most moral and proven economic system to lift the trated at the misapplication of justice. It’s less about Hil­lary most people out of poverty into prosperity.” As Kirk wraps and more about if a Republican did what she did, that per- up his pitch, students jump out of their seats and pour into son would be in jail.” But wouldn’t “locking her up” consti- the theater’s aisles, seeking the summit’s most coveted bit tute the silencing of political opposition? Again: “No, not of swag: a selfie with the face of TPUSA. But Kirk quickly whatsoever. I hold conservatives to the same standard.”

22 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 t was William Montgomery who discovered Charlie can also apply for “activism grants” and promote TPUSA’s Kirk speaking at “Youth Government Day” at Bene- mission by hosting related events. Lately there’s been con- I dictine University just outside Chicago in 2012. The troversy over the role that TPUSA plays in campus elec- 72-year-old was active in the local Tea Party movement. He tions—encouraging students to run for office and, in some was mesmerized by the 18-year-old Kirk’s rhetorical gifts cases, it has been said, financing campaigns. The majority and the crowd’s reaction to him. Montgomery, who was of TPUSA’s charitable giving is through a nonprofit that semi-retired after making a pile in real estate and adver- has 501(c)(3) status. The recipients can’t engage in the real- tising, approached the Baylor-bound Kirk and said, “You world politics of elections or TPUSA gets in legal trouble. don’t know me, but you can’t go to college.” Montgomery One of the keys to the organization’s success is Kirk’s wanted him to “take some time off ” and “to start an orga- perceived closeness with the first family. Montgomery tells nization that reaches out to young people” during a cru- me about an event where Donald Trump Jr. was slated to cial campaign year. They met several times over the next speak to 800 students. Kirk and Montgomery were meet- month. Montgomery tried to ing with donors and advis- persuade Baylor to give Kirk ers, and Don Jr. came in and credit for starting this orga- announced, “If it weren’t for nization and sought to sway Charlie Kirk, my dad would his parents, an architect and not be president of the United a mental-health professional. States today.” Baylor didn’t budge, but the Gentry Beach can take Kirks did. In June 2012, Kirk credit for introducing Kirk started TPUSA with “invest- into the Trump circle. The ments” from several donors Dallas-based financier was a he met through Montgomery. groomsman at Don Jr.’s wed- Among the early backers were ding and national vice chair- Christian conservative inves- man of Donald J. Trump for tor Foster Friess and Bruce President. Three years ago, he Rauner, now the governor of brokered a meeting between Illinois. Friess gave TPUSA Don Jr. and Kirk in Texas. $10,000 after meeting Kirk at Kirk says he ended up spend- the Republican National Con- ing around 90 days straight vention and Rauner, through on the campaign trail with his family foundation, gave Don Jr., whom he considers a $100,000 in 2014. “close friend.” When I asked Kirk’s fundraising has The Constitution, Turning Point USA’s autograph board the president’s eldest son largely been through word of about Kirk, he had only nice mouth. Jaco Booyens, a Dallas businessman and philan- things to say. “I think he does a great job,” he explains to thropist, tells me that he doesn’t just invest in TPUSA but me while standing at a cordoned-off bar in a side room at actively looks to help Kirk expand his organization. Each his father’s D.C. hotel. “I think he’s one of the few people of Kirk’s donors seems to want to introduce him to all his on the conservative side who are [fighting] for the next gen- friends, and so on. Kirk has assembled a cabinet of advisers eration. He’s making it okay to be conservative on campus.” with deep pockets to advance his mission. Kirk and Mont- Kirk’s inroads in Trump’s Washington are deep. gomery, who is the organization’s secretary and treasurer, “If there’s one person this president admires, it’s Char- believe that this year they’ll raise close to $15 million. lie Kirk,” House majority leader Kevin McCarthy tells The money will fund its namesake groups on campuses a roomful of high school students on the summit’s third across the country—over a thousand of them so far, Kirk day. Back in March, the White House hosted an event for estimates. The groups bring speakers to campus, canvass young conservative leaders. “Generation Next” featured a on the quads, and agitate in student government. TPUSA panel on jobs and tax cuts with Secretary of Labor Alex sends “activism kits” to every affiliate. These include fly- Acosta and Ivanka Trump and one on the “crises on cam- ers, booklets, buttons, stickers, and rally signs printed with pus” with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex some of its signature slogans, such as “Taxation Is Theft,” Azar and the Justice Department’s Sarah Flores. But the “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings,” and “You Are forum’s main draw was Kirk interviewing the president.

ADAM RUBENSTEIN / THE WEEKLY STANDARD ADAM RUBENSTEIN / THE WEEKLY Entitled to Nothing.” Other campus conservative groups Don Jr. and Kirk have talked about writing a book

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 23 speaker over the four days, “Hillary Clinton is still not our president.” Thunderous applause, every time. Few things rouse the group as much as a Hillary punch line. Stephen Bak, 18, drove down from Lancaster, Pa., for the summit. He was too young to vote in the last election, but that didn’t stop him from following it like a superfan. He started out on Team Ted in the pri- maries and only made his way to Trump when Cruz dropped out of the race. “I became an avid supporter of anyone but Hillary,” he tells me over lunch. He was one of the many people chanting “Lock her up” dur- ing Sessions’s speech at the summit and says the media coverage of it was incredibly unfair. Bak wore a Trump T-shirt the day after the election, and “I had an Amer- ican flag in my backpack.” A lot of the students and Above: Donald Trump Jr. taking his seat at the Turning Point USA teachers at his private school were in mourning. One dinner gala at Trump International Hotel, with his girlfriend girl dressed in a black shirt came up and gave him a Kimberly Guilfoyle and Sen. Rand Paul. Below: students posing for hug. “Okay, this isn’t going to do anything, but what- pictures with U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. ever you say,” he says, remembering her gesture. He looks up to both Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopou- los. “Milo’s more entertaining, Ben is more suited for political life. Milo’s just entertainment.” “Owning the libs” is one of the constants of the sum- mit. This form of political schadenfreude is a big part of the TPUSA playbook. The term originated in campus pranks designed to upset, i.e., “trigger,” liberals. “Trig- ger the libs” quickly morphed into “owning” them. At the University of New Mexico, a TPUSA group in 2017 held an “affirmative action bake sale” where it charged Asians more than whites and whites more than blacks. The bake sale is suggested in the eighth section of TPUSA’s “chapter handbook.” Other ideas include cre- ating your own “safe space” or constructing a “union- ized hot dog stand” to show the excesses of liberalism. At Kent State the same year, members of the TPUSA together about the campaign. “Don and I are exploring chapter wore diapers in a simulated safe space. It’s the tri- the idea,” Kirk tells me. “It’s not definitive, nothing’s umph of the put-down as political principle. agreed upon. You tell a couple people and all of a sud- “Owning the libs is easy,” Bak says. “It’s fun. It’s my den it’s leaked to the Daily Beast.” “If there were a book, favorite pastime.” He came to the conference to be among you know,” he goes on, “one of the things that we’d want like-minded people. He’s heading to Temple University in to talk about is: What does the future of the Republican the fall to study medicine. He doesn’t yet know if there’s party look like? What are the ideas behind it? What are a TPUSA chapter on Temple’s campus, but “if they don’t some of the philosophical, doctrinal defenses of the Trump have one, I will definitely start one. I’ll be happy to.” Bak agenda? Which, of course, is something I’m very inter- thinks Trump has fared pretty well in his first two years: ested in, right? What is a nation-state? Borders? Security? “I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. The economy, Free-market capitalism?” the way it is, a lot of people who are negative towards him in his presidency don’t really know how good of a job he’s rump, Trump, Trump” is the most consis- actually doing compared to past presidents.” His favor- tent chant at the TPUSA summit. Everyone ite book is Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he sees as relevant ‘There supports the president in no uncertain today, “with everyone misrepresenting facts.” terms, and everyone plans to vote for him in 2020. “I have Charlie Kirk himself made a similar journey. Initially

some great news for you guys,” announces more than one he supported Scott Walker for president and then turned STANDARD / THE WEEKLY HANNAH YOEST

24 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 to Cruz. The decision that many Republicans faced during here to scout out what conservative youth activism looks the general election—to brace for Trump or to embrace like in advance of his own presidential run. Cuban and him—Kirk took with unqualified enthusiasm. TPUSA Kirk make national headlines when they debate climate identifies itself as conservative but nonpartisan and holds change (Cuban affirming its existence, Kirk questioning the self-proclaimed remit to “identify, educate, train, it). Cuban implores the students “to be curious and to and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal want to learn more.” “I’ve given President Trump a hard responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” It time,” he says to an audience that, almost uniquely for the is a mission that suggests some dissent from the Trump four days of the summit, falls silent, “and you can argue agenda. But Kirk tells me that it is not his job to criticize rightfully so or not. But one thing I will give him credit those with whom he agrees “on the big things.” Maybe for—and he’s the only president ever really to have done that’s the price of politics today—one can’t call balls and this, and I think it’s because he’s a business guy at heart, strikes anymore without attracting the enmity of fellow and I’m hoping each and everyone one of you adopt this conservatives. Intra-party debate on the right is “sinking approach—he always challenges the status quo. Always. one’s own ship” or “siding with Hillary.” Kirk happily No matter what.” Cheers finally break out. rationalizes every aspect of the Trump administration and The two also spar about health care, which Cuban thinks its policies. Protective tariffs? Trade wasn’t free to begin is a “right.” The self-identified “conservatarian” Kirk doesn’t with, and Trump is making it more free: “Fair and free,” agree—“My Healthcare, My Choice” is another big TPUSA Kirk insists. He does add the caveat, though, that he usu- slogan. They also argue about the role of the party system. ally wouldn’t support tariffs. Kirk says he is a Republican, but Cuban believes political parties are outdated and no longer need to exist. There are his just isn’t a time for policy debate, as Mark better ways of collecting that data, he says: technological Cuban discovers. The Shark Tank billionaire is methods. They debate, spar, and hold to their convictions. T on the bill for the summit’s second day, and he Cuban’s presence, Kirk believes, offers a type of tells me that he flew in just for the event. It seems like he’s viewpoint diversity that his critics claim is absent from

Here’s What a Bailout for the Trade War Would Cost

THOMAS J. DONOHUE Companies are reporting layoffs and deep into the fabric of our economy. PRESIDENT AND CEO price hikes across a wide range of Almost 98% of exporting firms in U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE industries, and the cost of papering the U.S. are small businesses, and over these damages would be steep. they represent about one-third of President Trump last month For example, the auto industry alone all merchandise exports. These set aside $12 billion to help offset would require $7.6 billion. Producers companies rely on trade to stay the economic impact of tariffs on and manufacturers of iron and steel competitive. When it becomes more America’s farmers. While this measure would require $6.4 billion. Dozens expensive to sell goods abroad, they will serve as a temporary Band-Aid of other industries from beverage are forced to raise prices on American for the agricultural sector, most manufacturers to shipbulders would consumers and even cut jobs to farmers and ranchers have responded require government payouts in the compensate. that they want “trade not aid.” More hundreds of millions. For the administration, it’s a broadly, it does nothing to help the The Chamber is also tracking the slippery slope to decide that one numerous other industries that have cumulative impact of the trade war economic sector gets government help taken a hit from the trade war. The on TheWrongApproach.com, which and another doesn’t. Far simpler and U.S. Chamber of Commerce has features an interactive map showing more cost effective would be to lift crunched the numbers to determine the total value of each state’s exports these self-damaging tariffs and work how much it would cost American impacted by tariffs. Not a single to open markets for American exports. taxpayers to do a comprehensive state is spared from the damage, The Chamber is eager to work with bailout for every industry affected. with the industrial Midwest and the administration and all our leaders The result? A staggering $39 billion. the agricultural heartland states hit in government on a better way to As the scope of the tariffs has especially hard. Indeed, the retaliatory strengthen our trading relationships to widened to include more and more tariffs appear to target states where benefit the American people. products from more places—and more close elections are expected this fall. retaliation against U.S. exports— The breadth of the trade war’s so has the scope of the economic impact on American businesses is Learn more at damage on American businesses. evidence of the way trade is woven uschamber.com/abovethefold.

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 25 TPUSA. Stephen Bak enjoyed the back and forth but also YouTube channel are full of videos with chyrons announc- found it silly. “I do like the change of pace. I just don’t ing, “Charlie Smashes College Marxist” and “Charlie agree with Mark Cuban. In general, eccentric billionaires Kirk DESTROYS Ignorant Socialist Protester.” The lat- like that, they’re not actually experts in anything. So he ter has been viewed two million times. was talking about his health care reform plans and AI, and I’m like, ‘You don’t know anything about that, so why are irk likes to say that what plagues public discourse you trying to propose these things to government? You’re today is that the left hates the idea that there are not an expert. And you’re not a politician,’ ” says Bak. K other ideas. But U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley During the question-and-answer portion of Cuban’s makes headlines at the TPUSA summit by suggesting that program, a student asks him if Kirk “had come on Shark the rising faction on the right hates the idea there are other Tank six years ago, would Turning Point USA be something ideas just as much as the left. She asks attendees to raise you’d invest in?” Cuban, with a smile, responded, “Abso- their hands if they “ever posted anything online to ‘own lutely.” “Sometimes you invest in the horse and sometimes the libs.’ ” Most of hands in the audience proudly shoot up, you invest in the jockey. I’d invest in the jockey, for sure,” and everybody claps. But Haley is remonstrating against he announces. this mentality. “I know that it’s fun and that it can feel Backstage after the panel, Cuban, wearing a rainbow good,” she says. “But step back and think about what you’re Dallas Mavericks T-shirt, chats with Kellyanne Conway accomplishing when you do this. Are you persuading any- and Fox News host Jesse Watters. Conway asks Cuban how one? Who are you persuading? We’ve all been guilty of it at the panel went. “It was fun,” he says. Conway, dressed in some point or another, but this kind of speech isn’t leader- something silk and pink, quips that this is usually what ship—it’s the exact opposite.” she says when something has gone awkwardly. “No, it Haley, whose teenage son Nalin is involved in TPUSA, was great,” Cuban insists. “Just not what I expected.” seems to be calling into question the group’s very raison d’être. It certainly did seem like Cuban was having fun out “Real leadership is about persuasion. It’s about movement. there jousting with the ebullient Kirk and his followers. It’s bringing people around to your point of view,” she says. Watters agrees that TPUSA is a fun audience. “When I “Not by shouting them down, but by showing them how it give a speech to YAF, I gotta watch what I say, but here I’m is in their best interest to see things the way you do.” Her like, Lock . . . her . . . up.” If the Young America’s Founda- message is a call to mature in one’s own politics, to “be better tion, or YAF, represents the older, pen-and-paper conser- than the other guy,” and she gets cheers from the students. vative order of William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan Utah senator Orrin Hatch conveys much the same message then TPUSA codifies the new—the emotive, populist, and later in the conference, also to applause. in-the-moment qualities of social media and Trump. As the conference closes, Kirk takes final questions Part of the allure for high school and college students from attendees. One student asks him if he plans to run is the omnipresent confidence of its leader: a man with for president. Wild sounds of approval burst from the an answer for everything. Kirk has over 600,000 Twit- audience along with chants of “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” ter followers and loves to batter the political opposition. Bill Montgomery, too, tells me he hopes Kirk will one day Consider his tweets: “Fact: There are zero Democrats on be president of the United States. He thinks the world of Mount Rushmore” or “If Elizabeth Warren really has a Kirk after six years of working with him on TPUSA. Kirk Native American background, why does she refuse to take is only 24, and he tells me he has no plans to run for any- a DNA test? If Maxine Waters was really so smart, why thing. I ask him about the further growth of TPUSA and does she refuse to take an IQ test?” Kirk’s tweets cross the whether he’d be interested in bringing the organization fake-news line, too. On July 3, he claimed, “83%, 10 out abroad. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says. “It’s something of 12, of all rapes in Denmark are committed by migrants we’re considering. We have groups in Canada.” Is it some- or their descendants,” which is in no way accurate. On thing you could see in Europe? “Oh, without a doubt. I June 21, he tweeted out a list of tariffs Canada imposes would love to take this global. Yes.” on U.S. goods—from cars to steel to cable boxes—and Kirk was leaving Washington for New York early that announced, “We have never had free trade with Canada. evening. He would be appearing on Fox & Friends and Trump is leveling the playing field with Canada who has then taping an episode of Watters’ World. And just like been ripping us off.” Except that under NAFTA, there that, the Charlie Kirk Show rolls on: TV hit by TV hit, are zero tariffs on such goods. Kirk’s critics frequently tweet by tweet, donor meeting by donor meeting, con- point to such tweets when they claim he’s just a provoca- ference by conference. Next up on the agenda: TPUSA’s teur—nothing more than a purveyor of political pranks Young Latino Leadership Summit in Miami the first and Trumpian falsehoods. TPUSA’s Facebook page and weekend in August. ♦

26 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 The Preeminent Challenge The Preeminent Challenge Cracking the Islamic Republic For President Trump and his foreign policy team, cracking the Islamic Republic is job one

By Reuel Marc Gerecht to deal with Iran more decisively than his predecessors. So far, the administration has developed a somewhat & Ray Takeyh contradictory yet potentially successful Iran policy. The he biggest foreign-policy challenge before White House has all the elements of a regime-change strat- Donald Trump isn’t North Korea, where egy despite its denials; yet Donald Trump aspires to new the usual pattern of diplomacy and decep- nuclear negotiations, even suggesting a meeting could tion persists. Nor is it Russia; it doesn’t take place with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani without have the muscle to take on the North prerequisites. Some have called this Reaganesque. After TAtlantic Treaty Organization, which isn’t dead yet. Nor all, Ronald Reagan sought the end of the Soviet empire. is the most imminent problem China, which doesn’t have “While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of the navy and air force to tempt fate in the South and East change [inside the Soviet bloc], we must not hesitate to China Seas. It will one day really declare our ultimate objectives and challenge the United States and to take concrete actions to move East Asia’s democratic and anti- toward them,” he declared at West- Chinese authoritarian states—the minster in 1982. “It is time that we type of fascist confrontation that committed ourselves as a nation— could lead to carnage—but Wash- in both the public and private ington probably has years to check sectors—to assisting democratic Beijing’s ambitions. development.” Putting “Marxism- The most troublesome, imme- Leninism on the ash-heap of his- diate challenge comes from Iran. tory” clearly meant regime change Trump’s decision to walk away from in Mother Russia. Yet Reagan wel- his predecessor’s deeply flawed arms- comed nuclear talks with an array control agreement will likely soon of Soviet leaders, from Leonid consume the administration’s atten- Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev. tion since, depending on what the Tires burn in street protests in Iran, August 2. Can Donald Trump tailor-make mullahs do, war may once more be an approach to an Iran that is suffer- on the horizon. If the president fails to corral the clerics and ing from many of the same kind of authoritarian afflictions the Revolutionary Guards through sanctions and the threat that the Soviet Union did in the 1980s? Can he, his senior of force, the reverberations will surely weaken, if not gut, the staff, and the essential worker bees understand enough administration’s capacity to play hardball elsewhere. Barack Iranian history—its peoples’ long quest for representative Obama punted the Iranian nuclear problem down the road government—to realize that what Reagan envisioned for slightly (and didn’t really pivot to Asia). Trump has proba- the Soviet empire is applicable to the Islamic Republic? bly eliminated the possibility of punting. He now may have Reagan’s vision—“The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the sys- Reuel Marc Gerecht, a contributing editor, is a senior fellow tem of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ray Takeyh which allows a people to choose their own way to develop

is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. their own culture, to reconcile their own differences COURTESY OF THE PMOI

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 27 through peaceful means”—is within reach in Persia if nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Trump and secretary of the clerical regime starts cracking. Iran is an empire that state Michael Pompeo have said they do, too. But the odds has, at least at its core, become a coherent nation-state. are poor that North Korean-style summitry will elicit flex- It carries many of the Middle East’s cultural liabili- ibility from Tehran. It is possible to imagine the circles ties, but it manifestly isn’t a land of tribes and oil wells. around Rouhani encouraging Supreme Leader Ali Khame- That it had the Muslim world’s only Islamic revolution nei to authorize new talks with Washington. Given the way 39 years ago is actually an enormous asset in its con- Rouhani sold the nuclear deal (that the agreement would tinuing religious and political evolution. Unlike most allow the clerical regime to keep and then expand its atomic Muslims, Iranian Shiites and Sunnis know what it’s program, significantly increase the country’s wealth, and like to live in a theocracy. Most have found it wanting. prevent Americans from using sanctions in the future), Post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, the he is on the precipice of political primary American question is whether oblivion. The nationwide pro- Washington’s political elite is capable of The telling question tests that started last December imagining interventionism. A success- and continue despite arduous ful regime-change approach isn’t likely is what Khamenei and efforts to squelch them have fur- if one doesn’t really believe, as Reagan his praetorians, the ther wounded the mullah, trash- did, that American aid to those seek- Islamic Revolutionary ing what was left of his dwindling ing freedom is both good and strategic. Guard Corps, think support among the Iranian mid- The loss of faith in this idea within the Washington will do if dle class and the young. It will be United States is profound and dovetails challenging, however, for Khame- with an analysis that depicts the Middle they start reconnecting nei to grovel before Trump since East as no longer a compelling strate- centrifuges or obstructing any American-Iranian meeting gic theater (killer drones and American International Atomic would produce a volcano of dis- military bases in Bahrain and Qatar can Energy Agency inspectors. content inside the ruling elite. handle the post-9/11 threat and the oil The Islamic Republic’s over- of the Persian Gulf). Even the Iranian lords are capable of considerable nuclear quest doesn’t disturb this mindset. The Iraq syn- hypocrisy and duplicity and have been willing, long before drome has convinced the foreign-policy establishment and a Obama, to communicate and meet with U.S. officials they not inconsiderable segment of the American public that the loathe. Backtracking now, however, would be very tough Muslim Middle East is a hopeless mess. given what the supreme leader has said since Washington withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The administration has its own dilemmas: It relishes AN IRANIAN EXCEPTION? harsh rhetoric and sanctions against the Islamic Republic an Trump carve out a democratic exception for but is restrained by an Iraq syndrome that argues against Iran, where religious dictatorship appears to be confronting Iranian imperialism with boots on the ground. C secularizing the society it rules? Trump seems to Containment is not in the cards. A Soviet parallel to the have a serious animus against the Islamic Republic—he Islamic Republic, in which the United States wears its isn’t in the revisionist right-wing and libertarian camps (see enemy down through wars on the empire’s periphery, isn’t Tucker Carlson, Patrick Buchanan, the American Conserva- going to happen. The clerical regime’s ambitions in Syria, tive, and the Cato Institute) that veer toward Obama in their Lebanon, and Iraq may get checked, but that task will fall reassessment of, or disinterest in, the mullahs’ ambitions. to the natives sans U.S. support or, in the Levant, to the Can Trump energetically try to collapse the clerical regime Israelis, who are already de facto at war with the mullahs. and advance democracy there while forging a détente with Imperial overstretch may still doom Tehran’s attempt to the repressive Sunni states? Such a contradiction isn’t diffi- craft its own Co-Prosperity Zone in the region. cult to handle operationally. The issue is whether the White America will either lose or win its struggle with the House can overcome those within the bureaucracies who clerics at the center: by collapsing Iran’s economy, thereby resist anything too forward-leaning. It’s a good bet that Saudi paralyzing the atomic advance, or by meeting Tehran’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Emirati ruler nuclear challenge head on, which may happen soon if Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who don’t want to see democ- Khamenei gives the green light to increase significantly racy bloom in their kingdoms, would be fine with American uranium enrichment. The clerical regime could reinstall efforts to foster representative government in Persia. the primitive IR-1 centrifuges in large numbers, put the Much of the Washington bureaucracy wants new more advanced IR-2ms back in the under-the-mountain

28 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 plant at Fordow to complete their development, or put the No matter what happens, it ought to be clear to Trump stress on the development (clandestine or open) of the more and his administration that regime change is the only advanced IR-6s and IR-8s, which when perfected could pragmatic course open to them unless they are prepared to operate with small, easily concealable cascades. The clever accept a nuclear-armed Iran. And if they are prepared for approach would be to opt for slow, clandestine progress, military action, they obviously should work seriously on which would test the West’s intelligence services, while advancing Iran’s internal rebellion. Sooner, not later. The publicly playing the aggrieved victim of Trump’s unilateral- option to punt, to repeat, is gone. The Europeans, most of ism. The regime would wait for the next U.S. presidential whom have punting in their DNA, keep coming back to election, hoping the Democrats win and restore what was administration officials, hoping to discover that Trump is lost. But such an approach may not be emotionally satisfy- somehow willing to accept some equivalent of the JCPOA, ing to the supreme leader and senior Revolution- ary Guard commanders. The telling question, then, is what Khame- nei and his praetorians, the Islamic Revolution- ary Guard Corps, think Washington will do if they start reconnecting centrifuges or obstructing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. The ruling elite, especially Rouhani’s circle, is still waiting to see whether Europe can stand against the United States. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has spoken of a European banking and oil package, insulated from U.S. sanctions, being delivered to Tehran. Iranian commentary on the Europeans has, however, become increasingly despairing—despite the best efforts of Federica Mogherini, the European Union External Action Ali Khamenei at an IRGC graduation ceremony earlier this year boss, to keep the Iranians hopeful. The Europe- ans have, so far, failed to meet the demands that Khamenei differently named. The administration would have to eat issued in May. Those demands—that they keep investing a skyscraper’s worth of crow to find a diplomatic solution in Iran while blocking U.S. sanctions—appear beyond the to the Iranian atomic conundrum that essentially reestab- capacity of even the Western European governments most lishes Obama’s nuclear concessions. angered by the president’s decision. Adventurous and, for We need first to better understand the past to see clearly the Iranians, vital European companies, like the energy why an American strategy to collapse Iran’s theocracy makes giant Total and the German engineering behemoth Siemens, sense. Misreading Persian history has almost become de have shown they have no intention of risking their access to rigueur in Washington, on both the left and the right. Too the American market or the U.S. dollar for the JCPOA. often Westerners have looked at Iran as an island of auto- European resistance is, of course, fortified by the admin- cratic stability. This is even true today: Most American and istration’s “national-security” tariffs. And many former European officials see the mullahs’ tools of repression as Obama officials are advising Europeans to hang tight to the indomitable—just as they were for Shah Mohammad Reza JCPOA. They want Berlin to use the German central bank, Pahlavi. The true story of Iran for much of the past century the Bundesbank, as a tool to increase German-Iranian trade, is, however, of a convulsive struggle between rulers wanting especially for midsize and small German firms without a to maintain their prerogatives and the ruled seeking free- significant presence in the American market. An E.U. plan dom. It is this volatile tug-of-war that will define not just the to use the European Investment Bank in a similar commer- future of Iran but the Middle East. cial fashion is also taking shape. Such actions, if they actu- Regime change isn’t an abstract and mad idea: It’s what ally happen on a certain scale, would oblige the White House the Iranian people have sought through massive protests to sanction a European central bank, the lending institution in 2009 and again beginning last December, when popular of the E.U., or European VIPs associated with these banks. protest hit cities and towns across the country. The con- Such U.S. designations would likely work (the power of the tinuing unrest, which has helped to produce a tidal wave dollar and the political predilections of America-centric of vitriol and dissension in the ruling elite, may have con- European business would probably win out), but they would vulsed the regime’s internal nuclear deliberations. The only

SALAMPIX / ABACA / SIPA USA / NEWSCOM SALAMPIX / ABACA SIPA be a convulsive first for transatlantic relations. sensible approach towards the mullahs is to focus on this

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 29 caldera of popular anger. Secretary Pompeo’s speeches on THE RULED VS. THE RULERS May 21 in Washington and July 22 at the Reagan Library odern Persian rulers’ absolutism was always highlighted the plight of Iranians under theocracy—as well tentative and incomplete. It was the Consti- as any speech by any American official since the Islamic M tutional Revolution of 1905 that first injected revolution has done—and set the stage for a coherent plan. ideas of popular representation into Iran’s bloodstream. Philosophically and operationally, such a policy shift During the first half of the 20th century, feisty parliaments would be recognizing a basic truth: The Islamic Repub- had little compunction about flexing their muscles. The lic isn’t going to evolve peacefully into a nonthreatening local gentry would marshal the peasants, laborers, and Middle Eastern state. Or as Khamenei pithily put it: “Ma tribesmen into polls that would choose each parliament. doshmani ba Amrika ra lazem dareem” (“We require hostil- This wasn’t Jeffersonian democracy, but the system was ity towards the United States”). Obvi- not without legitimacy. Local ously uncomfortable with the religious leaders conveyed the concerns dimension of this clash, American offi- of the peasants and labor force cials have had a hard time accepting It ought to be clear to the ruling class. The center this irreconcilable conflict. Both Dem- to Trump and his and periphery knew each other. ocrats and Republicans have really administration that Bound to each other by land, wanted to believe that Thermidor isn’t regime change is the only family, tradition, and the vote, the far off. (Thermidor briefly arrived with pragmatic course open governing class and the people the presidential election of the cleric created mechanisms for address- Mohammad Khatami in 1997; he and to them unless they are ing grievances. Despite massive the reformist movement behind him prepared to accept a illiteracy, considerable ethnic got stuffed by both Khamenei and the nuclear-armed Iran. division, and judicial corrup- “pragmatic” revolutionaries around tion, a functioning sociopolitical Rouhani and his patron, Ali Akbar network evolved. The diffusion Hashemi Rafsanjani, who helped Khatami rise to power of power meant bargaining among stakeholders, elections and then turned on him.) that mattered, and a parliament sensitive to local concerns. The Iranian struggle against religious dictatorship The first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah, challenged and ought to ring our inner chimes since Westerners, above increasingly overruled this consultative system, imposing all others, ought to appreciate how religious overreach his will in the name of modernity. When the Allies forced produces a secularizing, liberalizing backlash. Though his abdication in 1941 because of his flirtations with the often too timid or politically correct to say so, most Third Reich, constitutional rule again gained strength as Westerners surely would want to see Iranians freed from his son was too weak to resist. This was the golden age of theocrats. It has become an article of faith for many, Iranian statesmen. Such men persuaded invading Rus- however, that Washington shouldn’t try to aid the Ira- sian and British armies to preserve the Pahlavi dynasty nian people, that American actions are inevitably baleful. even as they dispatched the elder shah into exile. In 1946, Often lurking in the background is the guilt-ridden tiers- when Joseph Stalin sought to claim the northern province mondiste view that the type of overt and covert support of Azerbaijan, it was the wily premier Ahmad Qavam who that Republicans and Democrats once gave to the peo- convinced him that the only way he could have an oil con- ples of Communist Eastern Europe is somehow morally tract was to uphold his wartime agreement to withdraw his wrong when applied to Iranians. (On the left, there are, troops. (Harry Truman also helped.) Stalin left but he never of course, doubts about the wisdom, let alone the efficacy, of obtained his oil. The 1953 coup ended this epoch, but not our support for the Eastern Europeans.) in the way that Americans have come to understand. First-worlders, the argument goes, just shouldn’t The two men who unwittingly conspired to halt Iran’s politically interfere in Muslim societies. But a serious democratic interlude were Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and glance at Iranian history ought to tell us the opposite: his antagonist, prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, who that we shouldn’t treat Iranians any differently than fell in the ’53 “coup.” It may be difficult for Americans, we treated Poles under communism. The intellectual, raised on a Hollywood diet of nefarious Central Intelligence social, and political common ground between East- Agency intrigue, to appreciate, but one of the most fabled ern Europeans and Iranians ought to incline President tales of the Cold War was actually an Iranian initiative, not a Trump to let his national security adviser, John Bolton, CIA-run plot. We need to better understand what happened start planning the containment, contraction, and col- in ’53 if we are to understand a fundamental rule about lapse of the Islamic Republic. American interventionism today: It takes two to tango.

30 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 What happened then—the key to Mosad­deq’s fall (he lost But the Islamic revolution was bound to disappoint both elite and popular support)—would be truer today for a public clamoring for democracy. The mullahs proved any regime-change policy, because Iranian society is big- vicious street fighters as they showed little mercy toward ger and more modern. American policy supporting inter- the liberals and secularists who had fought the shah. Dur- nal change can only succeed if it parallels and complements ing the first two years after the revolution, Iran was rocked what would likely happen in a free vote. by a civil war that pitted different revolutionary factions There was a “coup” in 1953 because Iranians willed it. If against one another. The mullahs eventually won: Saddam the clerical regime collapses tomorrow, no matter the Amer- Hussein came to their rescue with an invasion that helped ican effort, it will be because Iranians will it. The American focus domestic energies on Arab invaders. left, and perhaps more than a few on the right, has a “coup The postwar years, however, proved uneasy for the allergy” that springs from ’53. It inhibits creativity. It pre- Islamic Republic as successive waves of protests continu- vents us from seeing the Islamic Republic’s internal contra- ously chipped away at the regime’s legitimacy. The first dictions. We need to go backward to go forward. constituency to give up on theocracy were the students, In the 1950s, an age of postcolonial nationalism, the whose protest in 1999 ended the attempt by the regime to notion of British control of Iranian petroleum was anach- reform itself. Mohammad Khatami, an intellectually curi- ronistic. The aristocracy that was the custodian of Iran’s ous cleric fascinated by Western power and ethics, came nascent democracy offered up one of its own to reclaim its to the presidency in 1997 with a pledge to empower civil oil. Mosaddeq had long been a champion of the rule of law, society and harmonize faith and freedom. The conserva- parliamentary power, and national sovereignty. He was also tive backlash was swift as the regime’s enforcers murdered a stubborn and vain man who feared that any compromise intellectuals and liberal politicians, negated parliamentary agreement with Britain would tarnish his reputation. As legislation, brutalized dissenting clerics, and shuttered Truman and secretary of state Dean Acheson mediated the reformist newspapers. It was that last act that sparked the oil dispute, Mosaddeq turned down successive offers. Iran riots of 1999 on university campuses. In this showdown, could not produce or sell its oil. In trying to navigate his the “moderate” Rouhani, then secretary of the national financially ruinous policies, Mosaddeq started to eviscerate security council, threatened the students with death. The the country’s institutions: He rigged elections, sought to dis- regime imposed order and lost the young. band parliament, and usurped the powers of the monarchy. Then came the titanic Green Revolt of 2009. A fraudu- It was Iran’s politicians, military men, and mullahs who lent presidential election returning Mahmoud Ahmadine- came together to down the premier. The shah was just a jad to power sparked a massive protest, millions strong, that figurehead around whom diverse forces gathered. The pub- further discredited the regime among the middle classes and lic mostly rallied to the monarch. The CIA was involved college-educated. This was a much closer thing than the in the coup planning, but once the initial operation failed, West understood. Khamenei later admitted that the regime Washington threw in the towel. Iranians, however, took had come to “the edge of the cliff.” Once more the Islamic control and removed Mosaddeq. In doing so, they sought Republic survived using brute force. The revolt caused to revive their economy and protect their political institu- many of the regime’s own stalwarts to give up on its ideo- tions. What they had not counted on was that the diffident logical claims. The reformers, always the theocracy’s most monarch whom they returned from exile would soon trans- palatable face, were excised from power. form himself into a despot. Today Iranians are the most secular people in the Mid- Given the recklessness of the clerical regime, it is hard dle East, with the mosques empty even on religious com- to recall just how nutty the shah became. He crowned memoration days. Young men don’t wish to join the clergy himself the Shahanshah, the king of kings, recalling the and women don’t want to marry mullahs. Even senior Achaemenid Empire, in a lavish celebration and declared ayatollahs appreciate that forcing religion into everything himself the policeman of the Gulf. He wasted much of has caused their faith to suffer. The government of God is Iran’s oil wealth on arms that his country didn’t need and drowning in corruption while cloaking itself in an ideology his military couldn’t use. He reduced Iran’s venerable par- that convinces few. liament to a rubber stamp. He created a secret police that And then came last December. More than 100 Ira- was as incompetent in practice as it was notorious in reputa- nian cities and towns erupted in protest. This was in tion. He alienated the clergy, an ally of the monarchy. But part a revolt of the dispossessed. The poor were thought his greatest crime was to eviscerate the old elite that had to be the regime’s last bastion of power, tied to theocracy served Iran well and replace it with a coterie of sycophants. by a sense of piety and the provisions of the welfare state. Iran was reduced to a country of venal rich, a beleaguered But shanty towns have grown enormously in the Islamic middle class, and alienated youth. Republic. Demonstrators hurled damning chants against

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 31 Khamenei, Rouhani, the entire regime, and its imperial- nuclear weapon before its contradictions cripple it. And if ism. Most Iranians today have multiple jobs and rely on the Revolutionary Guards get the bomb, we undoubtedly retirement benefits devoured by mismanagement and will want to see the Iranian people dispatch the mullahs inflation. The average Iranian is 15 percent poorer than and their praetorians. he was a decade ago, while double-digit unemployment Obviously we need to keep starving Tehran of hard cur- plagues the country. The real inflation rate may now rency. Before Obama came to the rescue with the JCPOA, be over 200 percent. All this is taking place at a time of the mullahs stared at a liquidity crisis—insufficient hard provocative class cleavages resembling the last days currency to pay the bills. And although Washington will of the shah, when the elite flaunted their wealth while be operating without the assistance of a European Union the middle class and the poor nursed their grievances. oil embargo and (for now) the de-listing of Iran on SWIFT, Rouhani, a lackluster apparatchik the international financial trans- of the security state, once thought that action cooperative, the most his arms-control agreement would Iran’s clerical regime effective fiscal weapons remain generate sufficient foreign investments today stands strangely American-made. They are being to revive the economy and placate the naked, without a brought to bear. The Trump discontented. That aspiration failed administration’s Treasury under- even before the advent of the Trump convincing ideology or secretary of terrorism and finan- presidency. The Islamic Republic is a reliable constituency. cial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, too politically turbulent, too divided In every decade since may be the most dogged and against itself, too lacking in a reliable assuming power, it has clever financial warrior the cler- banking system or anything resem- lost a segment of society. ical regime has ever confronted. bling the rule of law to be an attractive Major European businesses place for sufficient international com- have already signaled that they merce to compensate for the regime’s systemic problems. have no intention of crossing Washington regardless of E.U. or national measures to protect European investments in Iran. The value of the rial has plummeted. COLLAPSING THEOCRACY Washington can certainly do better in the battle for Ira- he clerical regime today stands strangely naked, nian hearts and minds. A lot is known about the Iranian without a convincing ideology or a reliable con- ruling elite’s corruption, inside the country and abroad. T stituency. In every decade since assuming power, Secretary Pompeo is right to highlight malversation among it has lost a segment of society. Its overlapping security the regime’s many sins; it is a volcanic issue inside the organs create the impression of power, but this could well country. Much more research can be done. We should prove a façade should a nationwide protest movement once see a steady stream of reporting on corruption, via the more engulf the country. The only remaining questions Internet and the Persian services of Voice of America and are whether America has the insight, will, and a strategy Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. Washington has never for aiding the Iranian people against their overlords. The let loose the bully pulpit—the White House, Congress, and Islamic Republic is seriously ill, as was the Soviet Union the foreign-affairs and intelligence agencies together—in in the 1970s and 1980s. But the theocracy may be healthy favor of democracy in Iran. From the president down, the enough to continue its imperialism for years. Precisely administration should speak often and clearly on Ameri- because of the Islamic Republic’s internal problems, the ca’s intention to support Iranians fighting for free elections. regime will probably double down on its aggression. Legit- The president, secretary of state, and national security imacy denied at home will be sought abroad. The Iranian adviser—and these three have to carry the weight—face ruling elite’s sense of foreign mission—it sees itself as the the challenge of doing this while so much of the American Islamic paladin—has combined with Shiite chauvinism right is so hostile to the idea of democracy-promotion. and large, deployable non-Iranian Shiite militias. We Personnel always matters in Washington. The National should want to see, as we did with the Soviet Union, the Security Council, the State Department, and Treasury mounting crisis at home sap the will and resources of should have more officials tracking Iran’s finances and the state, sooner not later. human-rights abuses with the intention of devising new And it’s not that hard to devise a sensible, uncom- sanctions and moving information collected into the pub- plicated, patient approach to cracking this theocracy. We lic domain. The White House would be well-served to shouldn’t be developing a regime-change policy accord- appoint one individual, who has clout with both Pompeo ing to some atomic clock: The clerical regime may build a and Bolton, as an Iran czar who can oversee the portfolio

32 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 and do the enormous legwork that is required in Washing- ought to be elemental power politics for the United States. ton and overseas. The Islamic Republic today is a weak, wobbly regime The CIA has a role. Langley should aim unrelentingly barely surviving successive domestic headwinds. The at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the nuclear regime is still adhering to the JCPOA because it cannot establishment, and the clergy by formulating plans to afford another shock to the system; it is most certainly encourage defections and clandestine-reporting relation- not a gesture of pragmatism purchased by a lingering ships. So far as we know, Washington has never seriously hope that Europe, Russia, and China will come to the res- attempted to get Revolutionary Guards to defect. Ameri- cue. If the mullahs cannot muster a response to President ca’s capacity to target Iranian VIPs—the information pub- Trump’s affront to the regime’s dignity, it’s because the rul- licly available to do this has grown enormously in the last ing clergy and the Revolutionary Guards don’t know what 20 years—is substantial and in all probability woefully underdeveloped at Langley. The CIA also has a place in supporting those inside the country who risk their lives to oppose the regime. There are a wide variety of ways for Langley to do this; the operational details of how one does this are less challenging than locking into existing Iranian networks that need financial assistance. (America has long been on the receiving end of the informal hawala system, used by millions, including Islamic radicals, to transfer untraceably moneys across borders; the Iranian version, havala, is an open door for Langley to play hardball in reverse.) The opportunities for the CIA to help—in labor unions, among students, professors, and writ- Shuttered stores at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in June: As the protest began, ers, in the clergy, or at the National Iranian Oil Iranians shouted to retailers who wouldn’t close, ‘Coward!’ Company, to name just a few—could be tremen- dous. As always in covert action, it takes time to reach out. they should do. They appear deeply uncertain about how If the Trump administration started now, Langley would be aggressive actions against the United States will reverber- lucky to have functioning covert-action networks by 2020. ate inside a society that has grown more openly hostile There will always be reverses—Langley doesn’t have a bril- to its rulers. It is striking that the clerics and the security liant track record in the Islamic Republic—and even under establishment have so far dared not do what they have so the best of circumstances mistakes happen and people die. often done with their lower-class supporters: orchestrate If there isn’t an appetite inside Iran for the CIA’s assistance, large demonstrations in Tehran denouncing America then none of these programs will get off the ground. But if and its president. The Islamic Republic appears to be so we don’t try, we won’t know. We absolutely shouldn’t believe unpopular with its own people that the regime cannot even the left-wing mantra that Iranians, because of 1953, don’t demonize Trump. want or need the agency. The odds are excellent that’s not Contrary to what is written so often and so errone- true. We should find out. ously by academics, the United States has never deployed a Ideally, Washington should try to shrink the Islamic regime-change strategy against the Islamic Republic. Con- Republic’s imperial frontiers, especially in Syria. That is trary to what has been said by so many so often, the Trump obviously going to be difficult, if not impossible, for post- administration actually has a tolerably coherent “Plan B” Iraq America. Containing and rolling back the ­theocracy’s for a post-JCPOA foreign policy if subverting the theoc- Co-Prosperity Zone is important for undermining its power racy is its ultimate, guiding goal. Khamenei, like his pre- at home—in the same way that reversals for the Soviets decessor, firmly believes that the United States has always abroad spiritually and materially weakened Moscow. The sought to topple the Islamic Republic in favor of Western- regime sees its mission civilisatrice as much abroad as it does ized Iranian democrats who would usher in a decadent, at home. Denying the regime foreign accomplishments ungodly age. He knows—even if much of Washington can’t help but thin its esprit and make the regime’s front- does not—that the clash between the United States and the line forces—the Revolutionary Guards and the Shiite for- Islamic Republic is the defining battle of the Middle East.

FATEMEH BAHRAMI / ANADOLU AGENCY / GETTY BAHRAMI / ANADOLU FATEMEH eign legion—question their leadership if not the cause. This The cleric’s nightmares should be our battle plan. ♦

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 33 Books&Arts

Demonstrators protesting E.U.-imposed austerity measures clashed with police outside the Greek parliament in Athens in 2010. ‘Let the Whorehouse Burn’

The euro and the damage it wrought. by Christopher Caldwell

s of this evening,” said ity to borrow at rock-bottom interest Pierre Moscovici in Lux- EuroTragedy rates more suitable to venerable corpora- embourg in June, “the A Drama in Nine Acts tions in Stuttgart had brought inflation- by Ashoka Mody Greek crisis is over.” Oxford, 651 pp., $34.95 ary pressures. Greece’s manufacturing ‘Moscovici,A a French Socialist politi- and export sectors had lost their com- cian who serves as the economics com- petitiveness, with a couple of exceptions, missioner of the European Union, was markets 10 years ago, Greece’s entire like olive oil. The country’s economy making quite a claim. At the turn of the economic system collapsed, threatening was reduced to tourism and real-estate century, Greece was the weakest and to take other European countries down speculation. Once the crisis hit, an E.U. most corrupt of the countries to join the with it. The episode revealed flaws not plan to rescue “Greece”—by which was euro, the currency of most E.U. member just in the way Greece’s government meant the Western European banks states. When the American subprime had run its economy but in the design of that did business there—destroyed the meltdown resulted in tightened credit the euro itself. Greek economy altogether. The single currency had already A currency of one’s own is a great Christopher Caldwell is a national undermined Greece’s prosperity, albeit thing to have in a crisis; a country can

correspondent at The Weekly Standard. while making Greeks feel rich. The abil- regain competitiveness by devaluing it. GOULIAMAKI / AFP GETTY LOUISA

34 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 Lacking one, Greece was at the mercy Germany has been the main actor in euro was almost an act of transatlantic of eurozone authorities in Brussels this story since the euro was conceived self-defense. and the International Monetary Fund. a half-century ago. Back then, the For Mody, who represented the Together they imposed a plan to strip country’s neighbors, above all France, IMF in its program to rescue the Irish government benefits, cut wages, and resented the strong German currency, financial system a decade ago, the euro sell off assets. The Greek govern- the deutsche mark, and the devalua- was an “economic absurdity” from the ment sold the fabled Athenian port of tions into which Germany’s more pro- start. Germany is the villain, although Piraeus to the China COSCO Holdings ductive and disciplined economy so of a strange kind—the villain of some- Company and Thessaloniki’s port to often forced them. But Germany, too, thing it had to be dragged kicking and a Russian tobacco oligarch who made had an interest in unifying Europe eco- screaming into doing. Words in a Ger- the newspapers in March when he pro- nomically. The resolution of the Second man’s mouth mean different things tested a referee’s call that went against World War had deprived it of many of than they do in the mouths of others. the Greek soccer team he owns by the attributes of national sovereignty— When most Europeans talk of “bank- descending onto the field with a gun. and this gave it an interest in weaken- ing union,” they mean the Europe-wide The internationally imposed austerity ing the sovereignty of its neighbors. It’s pooling of liability in order to lower led, as a majority of economists had funny: “European unity” was a project risk. When a German says “bank- warned it would, to a dramatic shrink- ing union,” he means having German age of Greek GDP. Greece handed over accountants lay down the law to banks precious assets and wrecked institu- There is a profound in Greece. “We as Germans do not want tions of long standing . . . and wound mystery about the euro, to pay into a big pot,” says Germany’s up owing more. Its debt-to-GDP ratio former finance minister Peer Stein- did not fall but rose, from 127 per- according to economist brück, as if it were an aesthetic matter. cent at the start of the crisis in 2009 Ashoka Mody. ‘Why,’ The strange thing about the euro is to 172 percent two years later. Then that it is an incomplete currency. “Ger- Greece paid with its democracy. In he asks, ‘did Europeans many plays the role of a hegemon in November 2011, just as those numbers Europe,” Mody writes, “but is unwill- came out, the country’s prime minister, attempt such a venture ing to bear the cost of being a hege- George Papandreou, announced a refer- that carried no obvious mon.” What he means is that countries endum on the E.U. austerity measures. that share the euro do not share a fiscal German chancellor Angela Merkel and benefits but came with policy. Fans of the euro often claim that French president Nicolas Sarkozy sum- huge risks?’ the American dollar, too, is “shared” moned Papandreou to Cannes to warn between states. But really the two sys- that they would shut off funds to Greece tems have nothing in common. The should he do so. He resigned. that advanced because a lot of parochial United States is in every respect a single Today, despite what Pierre Mosco- politicians hoped to pull a fast one on economy. Its states are not really sover- vici and his colleagues said in Lux- their rivals in other countries. eign. It has a single banking system. It embourg, Greek debt, at 179 percent, Mody parts ways with David Marsh’s does not (yet) have any language barri- is higher still. The latest E.U. deal 2009 book The Euro, which up till now ers that would preclude workers from requires Greece to run large budget has been the standard reference. Marsh, moving from one place to another. It surpluses until the year 2060 to repay a British journalist who for many has “automatic stabilizers”—constant the debts brought on by the E.U.’s years covered Germany’s Bundesbank, transfer payments that moderate eco- own mismanagement. The country is defends the euro and the Germans. He nomic imbalances. For instance, if Ohio in some respects worse off than it was paints the early political champions of is booming while Florida is stagnating, when Greek protesters mobbed the the common currency, German chan- the former will pay out more in taxes parliament in May 2010, howling, “Let cellor Helmut Schmidt and French while the latter will receive more in the whorehouse burn!” president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, unemployment benefits. The E.U. has as macroeconomic sophisticates who none of these advantages. here is a profound mystery about bequeathed a seaworthy vessel to their Mody explains the arguments of T the euro, according to the Prince­ less money-minded successors, Helmut those economists who were most per- ton economist Ashoka Mody. “Why,” Kohl and François Mitterrand. In par- spicacious about the design flaws of the he asks in EuroTragedy, his authoritative ticular, Schmidt was attuned to the euro. They are a heterodox lot. There new history of the currency, “did Euro- threat of American macroeconomic is Maurice Obstfeld of Berkeley, who peans attempt such a venture that car- irresponsibility, recalling how Lyndon early saw that, in Mody’s words, “the ried no obvious benefits but came with Johnson’s attempts to simultaneously eurozone’s financial framework encour- huge risks?” There is an answer to this: build out a welfare state and rescue aged investors to lend cheaply to gov- Often what economists call risks politi- Vietnam inflicted inflation on Euro- ernments with shaky public finances.” cians see as opportunities. pean economies. In Marsh’s telling, the Forgetting that not everyone is equally

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 35 creditworthy is the great common ances, making about 10 million refrig- and former head of the finance minis- thread that runs through the Ameri- erators in 2001. By 2013 it was down to try’s Europe division Klaus Regling, can (subprime) and the European 2 million. Italian incomes, which had on alluded to the lack of a Europe-wide (euro) crises. average been 91 percent of German ones bailout fund as a Konstruktionsfehler, or And Mody credits Alan Walters, in 2007, had fallen to 77 percent in 2014. “design mistake.” If so, it is a design an adviser to British prime minister mistake that offers extraordinary political advantages to those guilty of the misdesign. The single currency is doomed to failure on every front except one—it is devilishly difficult and risky to dismantle. As long as the euro sur- vives, its designers will hold onto the hope of provoking a crisis that forces European unity on recalcitrant nation- states, that achieves what Mody calls “fiscal union by the back door.” Mody often makes clear that he would applaud a European Union that was agreed on by the front door. Per- haps it adds to the credibility of his economic opinions that his political opinions are so very conventional. But to the extent he believes the euro is an aberration, a mismanaged exception to Happier days: Italians hold their first euros when the currency began circulating in 2002. a generally noble European project, he is wrong. The euro is imbued with the Margaret Thatcher, for seeing in 1986 orcing different peoples to live ethics of the E.U. that a fixed exchange regime such as Ftogether in a confederation is “If the euro fails,” Angela Merkel the champions of the euro envisioned hard to do. Even with political good warned the Bundestag in 2010, “Europe would amplify credit booms by sucking faith and vast resources, it may yet fails.” But in this construction, is the money into those countries where infla- fail. Yugoslavia failed, Czechoslovakia euro a cause or an effect? Did it drive tion was high and productivity falling. failed, and it is only with great diffi- the various members of the E.U. into The most farsighted hero among culty and much transferring of money trouble and decline? Or is it the kind Mody’s forebears is Nicholas Kaldor, the that Italy, after a century and a half, of folly to which troubled and declining Anglo-Hungarian economist. In March still holds its northern cities and its peoples are susceptible? It is both. Hav- 1971, as the first dreams of Europe-wide southern provinces in one political ing devoted their their lives and their money were being sketched out at con- unit. What made the Europeans so sacred honor to the common currency, ferences, Kaldor warned not only that arrogantly believe they could execute a the leaders of the European Union such a currency would be economically union of 28 nations where other, more have come to think of themselves as the inefficient but that it would undermine modest projects had failed? continent’s Jeffersons, its Madisons, the political unity it was intended to The euro was a big part of the its Lincolns. They are unlikely to be promote. If there is a diversity of econo- answer. It was intended to serve not as convinced by an alternative narrative, mies in the group, then the currency will an economic amulet but as a political no matter how well argued, that paints be overvalued for some and underval- trick. European leaders provoke crises them as its Quislings. ued for others. Without stabilizers and and emergencies that they use to seize During the acute phase of the transfers, pressure will build up. Strong power from democratic electorates. euro crisis in 2010, the German phi- countries will receive stimulus overheat That has always been their preferred losopher Jürgen Habermas exhorted while weak ones will go into debt defla- model of continental consolidation. Angela Merkel to be a true leader, one tion and their economies will grind to Jean Monnet, one of the E.U.’s found- who “took domestic political risks for a halt. That is mostly what happened ing fathers, was quite open about it. “I Europe.” Did he not see that European in the European countries this century. have always believed,” he wrote in his leaders were already taking the crazi- Italy entered the E.U. with debts total- memoirs, “that Europe would be built est risks for Europe, or at least in the ing 120 percent of GDP. That alone was through crises, and that it would be the name of Europe, and that they might a parameter that would render it less sum of their solutions.” actually be its problem? Or did he, creditworthy and lead to imbalances. Speaking to Die Zeit in late June, two too, forget that politics concerns not At the turn of the century, Italy was the of the German architects of the euro, just those who take risks but also those

world’s leading exporter of home appli- former finance minister Theo Waigel who bear them? ♦ / GAMMA-RAPHO GETTYERIC VANDEVILLE

36 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 Perhaps no one is more aware of B A the problem than Martin Kemp, an & emeritus professor of art at Oxford and an expert on Leonardo’s work. Kemp explains why pilgrims to the Louvre Leonardo the Enigma aren’t always—or even usually—over- Why it is so difficult to see the great polymath whelmed by their up-close meeting with the Mona Lisa, noting that its and his work clearly. by Danny Heitman curation works against any real sense of intimacy with the masterpiece. The iographer Walter Isaacson’s painting’s presence within a glass case Leonardo da Vinci, which sets it at a cold remove from the visi- became a bestseller when it tors who file past in a posture of per- was published last year, had functory homage, the experience often Bmany good things to recommend it, a dry exercise in bucket-list tourism. although Isaacson sometimes seemed In Living with Leonardo, a memoir intent on domesticating the wild of his years studying the artist, Kemp genius of his subject by depicting it in recalls getting a better look at the a series of tame, teachable moments. Mona Lisa because of his special role as That sensibility culminated in a clos- an expert. “Meeting Lisa outside her ing section called “Learning from prison is an incredible privilege,” he Leonardo” that attempted to distill the tells readers. “The framed picture first enigmatic legacy of perhaps the world’s has to emerge from its specially con- most famous artist into what read like structed, alarmed and air-conditioned a PowerPoint slide from a motivational closet, with its viewing window of spe- speaker. “Be curious, restlessly curi- cially toughened glass. The frame is laid ous,” Isaacson intoned, channeling the face down on a table. The wooden panel great Renaissance painter and inventor. is removed with tender care, and lifted “Seek knowledge for its own sake. . . . clear of the glass. It is carried gingerly to Retain a childlike sense of wonder.” A flattering portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by an easel by the staff charged with han- There is surely nothing wrong with his apprentice Francesco Melzi (ca. 1510) dling it, and firmly clamped into place.” embracing such ideals, but Isaacson’s If Kemp’s detailed account of the tutorial tack suggested a reluctance to Mona Lisa’s undressing reads like a let his readers draw their own conclu- Living with Leonardo seduction, the effect is surely inten- sions about his subject’s life and work. Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World tional. One of the reasons for the It sometimes felt, as I have noted else- by Martin Kemp painting’s fame, he suggests, is its where, as if Isaacson was using Leon- Thames & Hudson, 314 pp., $34.95 underlying sensuality. It evokes in ardo as a stand-in for Dale Carnegie. us a “sense of presence” that is “truly Whatever its drawbacks, Isaacson’s uncanny,” he writes of seeing the Mona Leonardo approach proved commercially shrewd. A Restless Genius Lisa unboxed. “It is alive. The sitter His Leonardo is being adapted as a by Antonio Forcellino seems to respond to us no less than we screen project with Leonardo DiCaprio, translated by Lucinda Byatt respond to her. Through the insistent who was named after the artist, in the Polity, 351 pp., $35 cracks, grimy varnish and splotchy starring role. The screenplay is report- retouching, her teasing glance and edly being written by John Logan, brand as a historical figure. Leonardo’s inviting smile invade our space with whose writing credits include a couple The Last Supper can seem as ubiquitous astonishing vibrancy.” of James Bond movies. One can already as the Apple logo, and to millions of But Kemp argues that along with imagine the marketing bonanza as the people around the globe his Mona Lisa the physical barriers distancing most movie and its related merchandise is as instantly recognizable as a Coca- viewers from Mona Lisa, cultural barri- make Leonardo (1452-1519) into a hot Cola bottle. ers present their own obstacles: Hollywood commodity. Isaacson’s packaging of Leonardo Whatever our reaction, we come to Of course, he is already as much a as a self-help guru points to a broader the picture via a dense haze of popular challenge in apprehending his art. manifestations: advertisements, paro- Danny Heitman, a columnist for the For generations, Leonardo’s paintings dies, cartoons, souvenir mugs, fridge magnets, T-shirts, bikini bottoms, Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of have been so commodified and reflex- pornographic subversions, and mil- A Summer of Birds: John James ively revered that it’s difficult to see lions of reproductions in every kind

Audubon at Oakley House. them with fresh eyes. of printed and electronic medium. I SSPL / GETTY

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 37 have accumulated, mainly by gift, an ahead of their time. But Leonardo’s Forcellino usefully underscores the unsystematic collection of Mona Lisa recorded thoughts are full of runic degree to which Leonardo thrived as a paraphernalia. My personal assistant, obscurities, creating a paper trail more part of a larger creative community. In Judd, recently gave me a pair of Mona Lisa socks, which seem to go down riddling than revelatory. other ways, the book is bracingly coun- well at the start of talks. His Tuscan origins are vague, as are terintuitive. Much is made, for exam- other basic biographical details. He ple, of Leonardo’s forward-thinking Despite being reproduced as rou- probably speaks most directly to us sensibility. But Forcellino concludes tinely as one of Warhol’s soup cans, the in his paintings, which is why Anto- that in many of his ideas, the artist was painting can still, incredibly, convey an nio Forcellino, an Italian authority on more a medievalist than a modern, as in air of mystery. Kemp sees that as the Renaissance art, is such a promising his view of “a world where everything painting’s abiding appeal. We think Leonardo biographer. His Leonardo: A was the mirror of something else, and we know Mona Lisa, but she teasingly Restless Genius, first published in Italy thus the human body was the mirror of reminds us that we really don’t. She’s in 2016, is now available in an English the body of the cosmos. . . . Despite his alternately familiar and aloof, which is, translation by Lucinda Byatt. extraordinary intuitions . . . Leonardo Kemp concludes, a perfect expression of Forcellino’s Leonardo won’t get was not the new man but, if anything, the period in which Leonardo worked. nearly as much attention as Isaac- the last of the old men.” “The overall presentation—the And while the Old World lady is present before our eyes, endures in our common yet for all her apparent reaction understanding as a settled to us, she remains elusive—is place, Forcellino points out profoundly consistent with the that Leonardo’s childhood characterization of idealized village of Vinci “lay on the devotion in Italian sonnets,” he edge of the wooded ravines writes. “Renaissance poets’ tor- of the foothills to the Tuscan mented love was not destined to Apennines, where farmed be requited.” countryside gave way to large The subtitle of Kemp’s book areas of wilderness.” mentions insanity, a refer- That is why, one gathers, ence to what he calls “Leon- Leonardo’s paintings are far ardo loonies”—a subculture of from settled, too. Mona Lisa, obsessives who create elabo- Isaacson deftly observed, seems rate, unsubstantiated theories Tourists strain to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. to be in motion, as if she has to explain the master’s pictures. just turned to see us. The river That element of intrigue informed son’s book, although it should. While behind her evokes a restless world, too. the plot of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Isaacson was a breathless enthusiast, And The Last Supper, with its furrowed Brown’s fictional thriller. “Would The occasionally crafting observations that brows and anguished asides, speaks of a Michelangelo Code have sold anything sounded like jacket blurbs, Forcellino world touched by the divine but never- like as well?” Kemp asks, assuming is less enraptured, more reportorial in theless painfully unresolved. that the answer is self-evident. his tone. Even so, he’s keen to the pos- Leonardo’s genius defies easy sibilities of a good story. summary. His detailed grasp of anat- iting one of the more fanciful Forcellino opens his narrative in omy made the people in his pictures C speculations about the painting, Milan in 1490 at a grand matrimo- compellingly authentic, but they’re Kemp notes that “it has been claimed nial feast—the highlight of which most memorable, perhaps, for their that Leonardo himself posed for the is a mechanical tableau represent- psychological reality. Mona Lisa’s Mona Lisa in drag.” If Leonardo didn’t ing the movement of the planets. It was smile, touched by a wry ambiva- cross-dress to create his most beloved the handiwork of 37-year-old Leonardo, lence, suggests a casual gesture, not a image, the kooky notion that he is who was, long before the birth of Hol- formal pose. Mona Lisa, as with most myths, points lywood, celebrated as a special-effects Leonardo appears to have been to a larger truth: Like the lady herself, artist. “The man responsible smiled qui- unhappy with his handiwork, peri- he can first seem vividly close to us, etly, satisfied at the astonishment he had odically refining the painting, started and yet just out of reach. kindled among guests of all ranks and in 1503, until shortly before his Leonardo left behind some 7,200 from all parts,” Forcellino writes. death. Maybe that’s the biggest rea- pages of notebooks, ostensibly an Leonardo lives in popular imagi- son Leonardo lives so durably in the exhaustive expression of self-disclo- nation as a mad scribbler dashing off culture some five centuries after his sure. They are famous, of course, for visions of the future in the candlelit death. He clearly saw himself—and, their visionary conceptions of tanks, solitude of a table littered with paper. by extension, us—as an eternal work

flying machines, and other gadgets far In beginning his biography at a party, in progress. ♦ FRANCESCO VANINETTI / CLICKALPS REDA&CO UIG GETTY

38 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 1948 for Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc B A and again in Italian six years later for & Rossellini’s Joan of Arc at the Stake; Robert Bresson, not a fan of Dreyer’s film, made his own edition of The Trial Cinematic Saint of Joan of Arc in 1962; French New Wave pioneer Jacques Rivette in 1994 The challenges of depicting Joan of Arc on the screen. put together a two-part saga about Joan by Tim Markatos that, all together, runs to just under six hours (making it only his second- longest production); and Luc Besson ow do you adapt the life in which case you’ve got maybe seven gave Joan the war-epic treatment in of a saint for the silver or eight hours in a single sitting). The 1999’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan screen? In 1928 the Dan- options available to filmmakers have of Arc. Dreyer wasn’t even the first to ish director Carl The- traditionally been rather limited. You stake his claim on Joan’s story. Cecil Hodor Dreyer provided an enduring could condense the timeline of a saint’s B. DeMille beat him to the punch response to that question with by a dozen years with Joan the The Passion of Joan of Arc, re- Woman in 1916, which was released on Blu-ray by the Crite- already 16 years behind Georges rion Collection earlier this year. Méliès, who had made his own Even in its 90th year, Pas- film about Joan, 10 minutes of sion retains its awe-inspiring which survive, at the start of the power. Dreyer’s film is silent century. (I will note in passing (though talking pictures were the existence of a 1935 German already in production by 1928) film about Joan, which Graham and its intertitles are based on Greene in his capacity as a film the historic record of Joan’s critic for the Spectator described trial. Renée Falconetti, who as being “of greater interest to plays Joan, has a face unparal- students of Nazi psychology leled in its expressive power than to film-goers.”) in all of cinema. To watch her So it isn’t because Dreyer got eyes bulge with the fear of Joan of the Arc Lights: Renée Falconetti there first nor because his film either God or death—which in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film was the only one about Joan in is unclear—is surely to bear circulation but rather because of witness to the making of a saint. life, omitting the everyday minutiae the combination of his audacious film- That gerund, making, is doing a lot that form the bedrock of faith. Like making and Falconetti’s unforgettable of heavy lifting at the intersection of Dreyer, you could focus on a single, visage that his film has come to be cinema and sainthood. Film by its representative episode in the saint’s regarded as a cinematic masterpiece. nature isn’t well suited to depicting life, typically a moment in which faith Watching Passion today is still a the life that goes into the making of a is tested. Or you might try a combina- remarkable experience. The suffer- saint—or of any person of faith, for that tion of the two, compiling the great- ings of Joan, her unwavering (even, matter. Recall that line of St. Paul’s to est hits of stories from the life of the perhaps, overconfident) trust in God’s his disciple Timothy: “I have fought saint in question, as Roberto Rossellini salvific powers, and the grotesqueness the good fight, I have finished the race, did in The Flowers of St. Francis. of her persecutors—all painstakingly I have kept the faith.” Faith is not static Born in 1412 or thereabouts and adorned, sans makeup, in period-accu- trust or mere assent to a set of ideas burned at the stake in 1431, with rate dress, right down to the tonsures— about God or religion attained at a dis- several years on the battlefront in puts the viewer vividly in mind of the tinct moment in time, fired in a kiln between, Joan led a life that was short Passion of Christ. Dreyer cuts between once and preserved unchanged forever and exciting enough to warrant mul- shots with disorienting disregard for after. It’s a dynamic process of becom- tiple film adaptations. Angelic voices, visual continuity and an abandon verg- ing; it asks work of us in the long haul. late medieval warfare, an unjust execu- ing at times on hyperactivity. The only But with a movie, you’ve got two hours tion—what more could a moviegoer­ peace to be found is that which radiates tops (unless you’re one of the more want? And so, besides Dreyer, Otto from Falconetti herself. Whether she’s adventurous Eastern European types, Preminger made a film adaptation drawing upon God for this peace or of George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint whether we’re merely witnessing total Tim Markatos is a writer living Joan in 1957; poor Ingrid Bergman exhaustion is a question Dreyer leaves

in Washington, D.C. was burned at the stake twice, once in provocatively unanswered. CRITERION COLLECTION

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 39 iven Joan’s illustrious cinematic its most sincere is weird and having as she waits for the fulfillment of the Glegacy, we’ve been due for a faith in God does not preclude occa- promises the angelic voices have been new take on her life after the almost sionally wanting to throw sharp objects making to her since childhood. When 20 years since Besson’s movie. Lo, here at Him. The first half of the film sees will she get to ride off to war and ful- comes French director Bruno Dumont Jeannette through her period of anger fill her God-ordained destiny? Though with Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of and doubt. She gets a lesson in humil- Dumont loses some of the magic along Arc, a punk-rock musical drawing from ity from Madame Gervaise, the village with the focus of the film’s stronger the writings of 19th-century French kook who ran away from home to join a first half, he does hit on a third truth poet Charles Péguy, now playing spe- convent, inexplicably and wondrously about faith: It takes patience, often- cial engagements around the country. played by two actresses who are always times more of it than you can mus- Extrapolating from the chatter I over- onscreen and in character at the same ter by yourself. Watching Jeannette heard after the screening I attended, time (no one ever acknowledges that receive the fruits of the spirit through most people will hate Jeannette. By all Madame Gervaise is being played by much toil and frustration in her youth accounts it’s a terrible musi- in Dumont’s film, it’s easier to cal. The music, by French artist fathom where the placidity of Gautier Serre (credited here as Falconetti’s Joan might have Igorrr) seems composed to be come from in Dreyer’s. forgotten. There are no hooks, no rhymes, no elegantly phrased hatever else it may do, art lyrics. Whenever a character W that focuses only on the opens his or her mouth to speak, most notable events and deeds five minutes of autotuned theo- in the lives of history’s holiest logical disquisitions pour out people runs the risk of mislead- while discordant percussion and ing us into forgetting that saints guitars erupt seemingly from were human, too. Joan of Arc is behind the sheaves of grass (it’s one of our more unusual exam- either that or the sheep) in the ples, since for so many modern, sparsely inhabited fields of dust non-Christian artists she was where nearly three-quarters of Jeanne Voisin in Bruno Dumont’s Jeannette more an object of historical or the film is shot. aesthetic fascination or pity than I’ve never met a film that was too two people simultaneously; that would a model of piety and obedience we can bizarre to at least attempt to compre- break the spell). Les Gervaises upbraid still learn from today. hend, and all things considered, Jean- Jeannette for trying to take on a bur- The saints can seem like distant nette is rather easy to get a handle on. den that Christ has already shouldered figures—but what if the conditions of When the film begins in 1425, Joan for her: Christ already knew infinite sainthood are just as attainable today is a wee preteen. We see her first as a agony when Judas hanged himself and as ever? What if the transformative speck of blue fabric on the horizon of separated himself from God’s eternal grace that made saints of holy men a shallow river, her body forming a love, so “why would you want to save and women in Christian history is still bridge between an oversaturated sky the souls of the damned further than available for us, waiting for input on and the equally blue earth below. As Jesus?” This is all rather heady theo- our end? The instructions for Chris- she draws nearer, we begin to make logical stuff, if you ignore for a moment tians seeking holiness are fairly clear out her singing: some variation on that it’s accompanied by a knowingly and simple: Love the Lord thy God the Lord’s Prayer, improvised in the ridiculous punk soundtrack and— with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, way of children with unadulterated yes—a little bit of habit-dropping and with all thy mind, and thy neigh- imaginations. The closer she comes to head-thrashing. bor as thyself. Few of us have any dif- the camera the further south her ditty In the second hour, Joan has grown ficulty paying lip service to that last turns; by the time she reaches the fore- up (she’s in her teens now and played part; it’s the prerequisite God stuff ground (the camera never cutting away by an older actress) and Dumont has that’s scary. Whether it’s God Himself in the interim), she stops, staring us expanded the purview of the film we’re afraid of or whether we’re just straight in the face. Her nursery-rhyme beyond the sheep fields. We visit Joan’s frightened of looking ridiculous if we supplication has turned into a full-on family in one of only two set changes loose our lips to address Him, we could death-metal dirge. Everyone in France in the whole film. Her uncle dabs his all stand to be a little less self-con- is dropping dead and still the kingdom way through all his lines; her mother scious. At least we, unlike Dumont’s of heaven is not at hand. stands off to the side vigorously pluck- Jeannette, don’t need to worry that our Though Dumont is an atheist, Jean- ing a chicken to the beat. By now praises and doubts will summon choirs nette gets right two very important Joan’s fiery adolescent anger has cooled of badly tuned bass guitars to grate on

things about Christian life: Prayer at into a no-less-irritating impatience the Almighty’s ears. ♦ ROGER ARPAJOU

40 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 And yet even today people find B A their reasons for believing. The his- & torian E. P. Thompson, for instance, looked upon the idealized Middle Ages of Morris’s News from Nowhere as an Paradise Recycled exercise in “the education of desire,” by which he presumably meant edu- The lives of 19th-century utopians are more interesting cation in not desiring—or not desiring than the utopias they imagined. by James Bowman anything that postdates the Wars of the Roses. But the books are bad not only in the sense that they are poor predic- tors of the future, which arguably they weren’t trying to be anyway. They are also aesthetically bad: badly written, badly plotted, and with badly drawn characters as remote from ordinary experience as only those made to illus- trate a utopian thesis can be. They do not look like real people but like specimens of some alternate version of humanity that has never existed and never could exist and therefore come across as literally inhuman. Moreover, apart from its summaries of other books that few people not duty- bound by scholarship would ever want to read, The Last Utopians tends to con- centrate less on the works than on the lives of their authors. This is fortunate for Robertson’s readers, since the utopi- ans’ own lives are inevitably more inter- Paul Signac, In the Time of Harmony: The Golden Age Is Not in the Past, esting than the lives that they imagined. It Is in the Future (1893-95) It’s easy to forget about the difficulties with utopia when you concentrate on he strangest thing about our own times, which might otherwise the difficulties faced by the intellectual Michael Robertson’s The appear to be obscure, to say the least. utopians. In that respect, Robertson, a Last Utopians is its title, For even more curious than his mis- professor at the College of New Jersey, which would seem to sug- leading title are the author’s constant is trying to do for his utopian projec- Tgest that there have been no more uto- attempts to disguise or palliate what tors what Edmund Wilson did for Marx pians since the days of the four figures would be instantly apparent to most of and his pioneer socialist predecessors he chooses as his subjects: Edward us if we went back to the books by Bel- in To the Finland Station and Tom Stop- Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Car- lamy, Morris, et al. themselves, instead pard did for various Russian figures in penter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. of reading his secondhand account of The Coast of Utopia. There is an obvious In fact, as Robertson well knows, our them: namely how laughably bad they poignancy in the contrast between the world remains full of utopians, though are. The task of utopian literature has ordinary human frailties and failures they don’t always describe themselves always been to provide an excuse or a of such people and the visions of per- that way anymore. As he makes clear pretext for people to believe in what fection and happiness to which they in a seemingly self-contradictory would otherwise be unbelievable, but devoted their lives. They may have got postscript titled “Utopianism in the such pretexts tend to wear out rather a lot wrong, but we are asked to honor Twenty-First Century,” Robertson sees quickly—as more recent ones, mostly them for the sake of their good and pre- the utopians of today as inheritors of based as they are on swiftly obsolete sumptively liberal intentions. the “legacy” of his four—as a way, per- technologies, should warn us. This haps, of keeping fresh their relevance to stuff dates, in other words, and if we rue, it’s hard to see the lives of the look back to the utopian literature of T Robertson Four on quite the same James Bowman is a resident scholar at the the 19th century, it takes a very spe- heroic scale as Wilson’s Karl Marx, Ethics and Public Policy Center and the cial kind of naïveté to find anything though William Morris comes close— author of Honor: A History. remotely believable about it. mainly because he produced other

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 41 work that was more interesting and Robertson makes no bones about valuable than News from Nowhere. his own utopianism, which may not But the attempts to connect these make him the best person to write interesting things with the waste- this history, and he makes the usual land of banality that is utopia are utopian’s assumption that a better not often persuasive—as when it is world means an utterly transformed said of Morris’s wallpaper designs world, although the transformation that they “are imbued with a uto- may be, for the moment, only on pian desire for harmony with nature the scale of the various hippie com- that suffuses his work in every munes he has visited or Occupy medium.” Since when is “harmony Wall Street. After paying due respect with nature” utopian? The trou- to Karl Popper, John Gray, and Fré- ble with utopia is precisely that it is déric Rouvillois (“All utopias are not in harmony with nature—espe- totalitarian. . . . And, conversely, all cially with human nature. totalitarian states are fundamentally Typically, utopians get around utopian”), he goes on to give “my this awkward fact by denying that own definition” as “the envision- there is any such limiting thing as ing of a transformed, better world,” human nature. Well before Marx which, though he admits it may posited his idea of man as a mere also be applied to Stalin, Hitler, product of historical and economic William Morris, author of News from Nowhere or Pol Pot, is assumed to be “cru- circumstances, Robert Owen estab- cial to shaping a better future.” His lished his “Owenite” communities in only going halfway with change and own ideas seem to have been inspired the belief that “human nature would be not recognizing that it is “modern civi- by Davina Cooper’s Everyday Uto- transformed” by them. Focusing on the lization” itself that was responsible for pias, which sees utopianism as a way hopeful future thus becomes a way of all the evils he thought could be extir- of “engaging with spaces, objects, and forgetting the failures of the past. Any pated from his medieval dreamland. practices that is oriented to the hope, history of utopianism is fraught with Robertson would seem to concur when desire, and belief in the possibility of paradox, since utopians can hardly be he writes that Bellamy “suggested that other, better worlds.” utopians without first abolishing his- once class differences disappeared, Consider for a moment that use of tory—or claiming it, as Marx did, as everyone would naturally conform to the word “worlds” and its plural num- their own property, which comes to Victorian middle-class norms.” ber—as if worlds were as plentiful and the same thing. The past is not only an Yet Gilman’s feminism in Herland as easy to be picked as blackberries. irrelevance to any projected future uto- and Carpenter’s idealized homo- Back in Victorian times, people had pia but a positive danger, since unless it sexuality and what Robertson calls some excuse for utopianism, which is constantly rewritten, as in Orwell’s its “appealing post-Christian mysti- had not had very much in the way of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it serves as a cal spirituality” represent avowed a real-world tryout at that point. Now reminder both of the failure of past uto- breaks with the past as well as provid- it has. Now we have no excuse for an pias and of the fact that the future never ing Robertson with a link to present- easy faith in other, better worlds, as turns out the way we expect or plan for day assumptions that allow him to opposed to slightly improved versions it to do. take even the most bizarre of utopian of this one. This must be why other Here again, the idea of the Victo- manifestations seriously. He doesn’t utopian theorists tend not to look to rian utopians as having a legacy in the acknowledge that such assumptions the past but to disguise their utopia- present strikes me as paradoxical, since must cut him off from the past he is nism as “progressivism.” But towards utopianism by its very nature imag- ostensibly adumbrating. When he what are they progressing if not utopia ines a wholly new start to the nation, writes, for instance, of “social justice” as they conceive it? Robertson himself or even to the species, which would in the Utopia of Thomas More or of quotes Martin Green as comparing the necessarily turn any history that might “gender ideology” and “gender anxi- late-Victorian period to a British “New otherwise be ours into a kind of anthro- ety” in Victorian times, he does not Age”—a reminder, if any were needed, pology: a study of alien but merely hint that such concepts were quite that utopian schemes for the redesign primitive and untutored societies unknown to the people who alleg- of society are constantly being redis- belonging to an entirely different order edly embodied them in their lives or covered and recycled in some puta- of humanity—a hard case to make works. How far can he be said, then, tively more plausible form than those when the supposedly real people are really to be writing about the past, of their discredited originals. That is only imaginary. Robertson reports that and how far is he projecting 21st- what he himself turns out to have been William Morris criticized Bellamy’s century ideas onto the past in order doing in The Last Utopians. If only they hugely popular Looking Backward for to give them a kind of pedigree? were the last! ♦

42 / The Weekly Standard August 13, 2018 And they come close to succeeding in every case. A chase through the streets of Paris with Cruise on a motorcycle is an old chestnut given thrilling new life. Later, Cruise pursues Cavill through London on foot by running through buildings, smashing windows, landing on roofs, and crossing the Thames atop a rail bridge—and I don’t care if he’s 56 and was running in slow motion that got sped up to make him look like he was Steve Prefontaine, the scene is dazzling. A fight in a glistening white bathroom at the Musée d’Orsay that leads to its Tom Cruise, who famously does destruction is just about the best fight many of his own stunts, in in a bathroom ever. Mission: Impossible—Fallout Good as all of that stuff is, it pales before the movie’s two head-spinning set pieces. The first is a skydive from B A 35,000 feet that goes wrong, during & which you hold your breath and shake your head at the wonder of it all, even though you know Cruise’s character Man on a Mission isn’t going to get hurt because there’s The latest installment of Tom Cruise’s series is an instant still 90 minutes to go in the movie. The second, the movie’s edge-of-the-seat classic of the action-adventure genre. by John Podhoretz climax, features Cruise in hot pursuit of a villain at the helm of a helicopter through the cavernous mountains of he new Mission: Impos- blow up the world for no clear reason Kashmir—a series of action stunts and sible—Fallout is the sixth I could make out. People double-cross tricks that builds and builds and builds entry in the Tom Cruise each other, intelligence agencies fight over about 15 minutes until you could franchise in 22 years—a with each other, and Tom Cruise has a almost pass out from excitement. Tfranchise in which the first was fine, rival in Henry Cavill, who’s 14 feet taller. And to give McQuarrie credit for the second lousy, the third a silly effort You can also forget the movie’s two love one nifty bit of writing, there’s a series to inject some personal drama into the stories, with Cruise feeling guilt about of interlocking plot twists in the mid- life of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, the fourth saving the world rather than being with dle of the film (in which a terrific Alec (directed by the animation master his wife and also having to deal with the Baldwin plays a pivotal role) that man- Brad Bird) pretty entertaining, and reappearance of his girlfriend from ages to startle and surprise in a way no the fifth kind of meh. So imagine my the fifth movie, who seems hostile even previous Mission: Impossible ever has. surprise when Fallout proved to be not as she keeps saving his bacon. The ban- Even the patented ridiculous MI spe- only the best in the series by a country ter between Cruise and his Impossible cialty—“I will now rip off my face and mile, but one of the most astounding Missions Force sidekicks, Ving Rhames show I was wearing a mask all along”— action-adventure pictures ever. This and Simon Pegg, is good, but it’s not is approached in a fresh fashion not is the best James Bond movie never what makes the movie special. once, but twice. made. It’s what most ticking-time- Fallout is an instant classic of the There’s nothing serious to be said bomb international spy pictures have action-adventure genre because it’s about Mission: Impossible—Fallout. It wished to be. You want gripping? This likely that Cruise (who also produced) doesn’t have politics. It doesn’t mean thing is as gripping as a giant squid. and his longtime collaborator Christo- anything. It’s just a surpassingly compe- Forget the plot, which I didn’t under- pher McQuarrie (the writer-director tent piece of moviemaking, surehanded stand even while I was watching it— best known for the Oscar-winning and determined the way Cruise is deter- something about a network of fanatics screenplay of The Usual Suspects) sat mined—to make you enjoy yourself, with no defined ideology wanting to down and made a deliberate and ambi- come out of the theater, and tell other tious decision to take various types people they should drop everything and John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, of action-movie sequences and try to buy a ticket. It’s the most entertaining

is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. make the definitive versions of them. picture of the year so far. ♦ PICTURES PARAMOUNT

August 13, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 43 “I don’t even know if that’s a crime—colluding with Russians.” —Rudy Giuliani, July 30, 2018 PARODY

August 13, 2018