THE WORLD ACCORDING TO OBAMA LEE SMITH

WILLIAM KRISTOL & MICHAEL MAKOVSKY

APRIL 11, 2016 $5.99 PPseudo-seudo- SSocialistsocialists & Clluelessueless CCapitalistsapitalists DAVID AZERRAD IRWIN M. STELZER

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents AprilApri 11, 2016 • Volume 21, Number 29

2 The Scrapbook Misbehaving models, parsing the president, & more 5 Casual Andrew Ferguson, nostalgic for newsprint 6 Editorials The Costanza Approach BY WILLIAM KRISTOL & MICHAEL MAKOVSKY Donald the Menace BY STEPHEN F. H AYES Articles

1010 Hobbled Lobby BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI K Street says it’s ready for Donald Trump—it’s wrong

1212 Without Exceptionalism BY DANIEL KRAUTHAMMER Trump doesn’t know what makes America great 12 14 When No Means No BY FRED BARNES The principled politics of Paul Ryan

16 Vietnam’s Agincourt BY MAX BOOT The fi erce jungle battle that brought down an empire

18 Blind Mistrust BY ANDREW STARK Donald Trump and the federal confl ict-of-interest laws

19 How to Win Friends and Kill People BY LEE SMITH Strange new respect for Syria’s Assad

20 Opiates of the Masses BY JOHN P. W ALTERS, DAVID W. M URRAY, 20 Obama talks smack about the overdose epidemic & BRIAN BLAKE Features

22 The New Red Scare BY DAVID AZERRAD Are the socialists coming?

25 Clueless Capitalists BY IRWIN M. STELZER What has happened to support for America’s market economy? Books & Arts

BY AMY HENDERSON 25 29 America on Exhibit Yale’s Peabody and the birth of museums

31 Word from the Ashes BY KIP EIDEBERG Chronicling the collapse of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State

32 High Anxiety BY DANIEL ROSS GOODMAN The anguished vision of Edvard Munch and his school

33 Life Within Lives BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN Who reads—and who writes—biographies, and why?

38 Men of Steal BY JOHN PODHORETZ After this, even Ed Wood might ask for a refund 31?? 40 Parody Scandalous Adlai COVER BY DAVE CLEGG THE SCRAPBOOK The Selling of the Librarian 2016

n the good old days, Democrats especially inner-city branches; and as librarians. Her immediate predeces- I would complain about the invasion President Obama pointedly mentions sor is James K. Billington, the distin- of Madison Avenue into the sacred pre- in his nominating statement, “She’d be guished Russian scholar from Harvard cincts of politics (see The Selling of the the fi rst woman and the fi rst African and Princeton who was appointed by President 1968 by Joe McGinniss). But American to hold the position—both Ronald Reagan in 1987. Billington, those days are long gone; and, in fact, of which are long overdue.” in his turn, had succeeded Daniel our Democratic friends have long since Of course, the problem is that J. Boorstin, the famous University mastered the techniques of advertising hardly any of this has anything what- of Chicago historian, who had been in the service of partisan warfare. soever to do with being librarian of named by Gerald Ford. Past librarians THE SCRAPBOOK was prompted Congress. Hayden describes a library of Congress include the poet/diplomat to think along these lines last week as an “opportunity center,” a haven Archibald MacLeish. These were not after watching what must be an un- for young people, a neighborhood role models for kids, or race/gender precedented four minutes of televi- refuge in times of civil strife, a place “fi rsts,” or even credentialed special- sion: a promotional video, produced to “apply for a job” or, better yet, “get ists in library science. by the White House and (presum- the latest Harry Potter.” All of that Indeed, Hayden’s appointment ably) paid for with public funds, to describes the modern urban public seems to emphasize a philistine streak support the nomination of Carla library; none of it describes the Li- in Barack Obama. While George W. Hayden as the 14th librarian of Con- brary of Congress, which (as its name Bush populated such positions with gress. To our knowledge, no presi- would imply) is the principal source artists and intellectuals, Obama’s dential nominee for any position in of information for Congress, a schol- fi rst director of the National Endow- government has ever before been the arly research institution, and archive. ment for the Humanities was an ex- subject of a campaign commercial. Nobody in Washington walks in off Iowa congressman, and his head of the This would suggest that the White the street to the Library of Congress National Endowment for the Arts was House is either oblivious about the in search of the latest Harry Potter— a Broadway theater owner and Demo- precedent or nervous about Carla which in any case, they wouldn’t be al- cratic bundler. Now, for the principal Hayden. Perhaps it’s a little of both. lowed to borrow. scholarly/cultural post in the federal What is genuinely surprising about As far as THE SCRAPBOOK can tell, government, Obama has chosen to the video, however, is its content. Dr. Hayden seems like a nice person highlight Carla Hayden’s gender and Hayden is a veteran librarian, a prod- and would probably make a fi rst-rate race at the expense of her meager uct of the Chicago public library sys- director of the public library system in scholarly credentials. And produced tem, and, for the past several years, any large city. But she’s almost wholly an embarrassing four-minute promo- chief of the library system in Balti- unqualifi ed for a post that, in mod- tional video, at taxpayers’ expense, more. She communicates her obvi- ern times at least, has been reserved which THE SCRAPBOOK hopes will be ous enthusiasm for public libraries, almost exclusively for scholars, not the fi rst, and last, of its kind. ♦

Misbehaving Models models used by climate scientists put than that drawn by the current con- the worst-case scenario at 3 feet of sea- sensus. And so, naturally, it has been ust three years ago, the U.N. Inter- rise, and those models are off by 3 feet, praised and highlighted. Jgovernmental Panel on Climate then doesn’t that mean the oceans Suggest that global warming cli- Change predicted that, by the end of may just stay put? mate models are possibly faulty pre- this century, sea-levels will rise some- Of course not. Because if some- dictions and you are lambasted as an where between 1.7 and 3.22 feet. A one had presented research showing antiscience, know-nothing no-good- new report has found, however, that that computer models overestimate nik. Even to question the believabil- prediction may be off by some 3 feet. the consequences of climate change ity of the computer models is to bring “Study jolts sea-rise predictions” the they would have been denounced or an immediate charge of denialism. Washington Post headlined its article ignored. The new research, by con- That is, unless one is asserting that on the research. trast, asserts that climate models the models have it all wrong because And what a jolt it is, a full-blown have been underestimating the dire they’ve been insuffi ciently apocalyptic. challenge to “current consensus pre- effects. The “startling fi ndings,” you Still, it’s remarkable to discover that dictions.” After all, if the existing see, “paint a far grimmer picture” the much-vaunted scientifi c consensus

2 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 on the effects of global warming can indeed be wrong—and, what’s even more remarkable, that the error can be gladly and openly acknowledged by the very same scientifi c community that has been telling us that their com- puter models are unassailable. The key, as any career-savvy scien- tist knows, is to fi nd the models to be wrong in a politically correct way. Pre- dict less doom and you are a potential- ly criminal skeptic putting the world at risk; predict more gloom and your research is fêted on the front page. It doesn’t take a computer model to predict the sort of scientifi c climate those incentives create. ♦

Just Show Up? late’s legal correspondent, Dahlia S Lithwick, has had it up to here with Senate Republicans, who are refusing to hold hearings on Presi- dent Obama’s Supreme Court nom- inee, Merrick Garland, with the presidential election so soon. Some- thing must be done, she claims, and, well, here’s something: After a suitable period of time— let’s say by the end of September of 2016—Judge Garland should simply suit up and take the vacant seat at the court. This would entail walking into the Supreme Court on the fi rst Monday in October, donning an extra black robe, seating himself at the bench, sipping from the mighty silver milkshake cup before him, and looking like he belongs there, in ments became so contentious. After is, however, historically illiterate the manner of George Costanza. Senator Joe Biden took over the to say that Republicans share equal Judiciary Committee in 1987, Demo- blame with Democrats, who have Lithwick reckons if Garland did crats, under his leadership and that of done far more to destroy comity this “he would be doing his job and Ted Kennedy, proceeded to blow up and deference on this issue. Indeed highlighting that this is precisely the nominations of Robert Bork and the problem with violating insti- what Senate tantrum throwers are Clarence Thomas in ways that were tutional norms is that once such refusing to do.” Lithwick further positively slanderous. In 1992, Biden violations become acceptable, it argues such radical gestures are personally argued for waiting out only encourages more—and more necessary because there’s both an Bush’s term before confi rming any egregious—violations. “intensity gap” and an “insanity gap” more justices. At the end of George In 30 years we’ve gone from over- between Republicans and Democrats, W. Bush’s presidency, the Democrat- whelming Senate consent on most such that only Republicans are will- ic Senate had a backlog of over 200 judicial appointments to a process ing to blow up the Supreme Court judicial nominations on which they that verges on complete dysfunc- nomination process to retain power. refused to move as they waited out tion. And now when liberal colum- What’s baffl ing about this column his term. nists see what the Democratic party is the way it ignores who is really re- The GOP is not immune to the hath wrought, they respond by mak- sponsible for how judicial appoint- charge of fi ghting fi re with fi re. It ing rather alarming and immodest

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 3 proposals that would ignore the Sen- ate entirely in the name of uphold- ing constitutional procedures. To paraphrase Santayana, those that ignore the United States Consti- www.weeklystandard.com tution are doomed to repeat the very lessons of history that caused it to be William Kristol, Editor Fred Barnes, Terry Eastland, Executive Editors written in the fi rst place. ♦ Richard Starr, Deputy Editor Eric Felten, Managing Editor Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Victorino Matus, Lee Smith, Senior Editors Parsing the President Philip Terzian, Literary Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Stephen F. Hayes, Mark Hemingway, ver the years THE SCRAPBOOK has Matt Labash, Jonathan V. Last, learned how to read President John McCormack, Senior Writers O Jay Cost, Michael Warren, Staff Writers Obama. In a word, carefully. Consid- Daniel Halper, Online Editor er, for example, a statement he made Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors in the course of nominating Merrick David Bahr, Assistant Literary Editor Garland to the Supreme Court: Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor Erin Mundahl, Editorial Assistant Shoshana Weissmann, Web Producer I know that Republicans will point Philip Chalk, Design Director to Senate Democrats who’ve made it Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant hard for Republican presidents to get Teri Perry, Executive Assistant their [Supreme Court] nominees con- Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, fi rmed. And they’re not wrong about Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, that. There’s been politics involved David Frum, David Gelernter, in nominations in the past. Although Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Goldfarb, Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, it should be pointed out that, in each Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, of those instances, Democrats ulti- Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, mately confi rmed a nominee put for- Robert Messenger, P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, ward by a Republican president. Contributing Editors Note that Obama did not say that MediaDC Senate Democrats voted to con- Ryan McKibben, Chairman Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Offi cer fi rm every nominee by a Republi- Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Offi cer can president. Remember Bork, the David Lindsey, Chief Digital Offi cer Catherine Lowe, Integrated Marketing Director great Robert Bork, the 1987 Reagan Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Offi cer nominee rejected by a Democratic Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising Senate—unjustifi ably, though that Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising is a different story. The Bork nomi- Rich Counts, National Account Director nation remains the only one in the Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services modern era dating to the Reagan Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 presidency (which Obama seems to Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 mean by “the past”) that the Senate The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, voted down. is published weekly (except the fi rst week in January, third week in March, If Senate Democrats did not fourth week in June, and third week in August) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington D.C. 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, approve every nominee advanced by DC, and additional mailing offi ces. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. 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Send letters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th as the nominee for the same seat after Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to the Bork nomination failed. And Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Kennedy was confi rmed. “Ultimate- Washington, D.C. 20005. Copyright 2016, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly ly,” then, the Powell seat was fi lled, Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. more than six months after the vacan- The Weekly Standard is a registered cy occurred. Just as Obama said. ♦ trademark of Clarity Media Group.

4 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 CASUAL

back, hunched on my stool and rubbing Laps in Judgment my lap with both hands, sideways and up and down and then sideways again, and I sat bolt upright. “The napkins aren’t working,” I told he invention of the smart- Bob Evans tradition, and before I knew the waitress. phone has resolved a primeval it I was gazing on a platter heaped with “It’ll dry eventually, sweetheart.” T fear of our species: What do fl uffy eggs and hash browns. I set aside I returned to my farm-fresh eggs you do when you’re out in public and my smartphone, which was fi lled with with dying enthusiasm. I cast glances forgot to bring something to read? news about major league spring train- at my smartphone but spring training Until a few years ago, the thought of ing. In my excitement I reached for the couldn’t hold my interest. I ate what I facing a subway train, or the line at squeeze bottle of ketchup, gripped it could, paid while seated at the counter, an ATM, or the waiting room at the in both hands, aimed it hurriedly over and assessed my lap again. Even as the Jiffy Lube, launched a primordial fear the potatoes, and squirted several large water dried the stains remained: large, shrieking from the deeps of the reptil- gobbets directly into my lap. uneven discolorations, centered on the ian brain. As the waitress passed by, I said, “I fl ap of my zipper and outspreading No newspaper, no magazine, no book? squirted ketchup all over my pants.” like a map of the Finger Lakes. Fool! Now you may have to Thirty paces and perhaps look up from your lap! You forty customers separated me may have to make eye contact! from the front doors, which Talk to strangers! just then swung open. A high The nightmarish possibili- school girls’ soccer team tum- ties were never far from mind. bled in, rosy from morning With the smartphone, all practice, giggling. such nightmares are gone. Its The lesson here is obvi- pixels or whatever you call ous. The digital age has its them can store all the books snares like every other age. and newspapers and maga- In an earlier era I would have zines you could ever want to brought the Wall Street Jour- read in a Jiffy Lube. nal to read at breakfast. Then, That’s the good part. Yet after covering my lap in once in a while I miss the old ketchup, I could have folded order of things, and I see the the broadsheet and dangled it advantage of those simpler, casually over my midsection predigital times, back when as I parted my way through everyone understood you’d have to be She nodded. the giggling gaggle of girls. I might nuts to enter a Bob Evans Restaurant “By accident,” I said. “I did it even have clowned with them a bit, for breakfast without a folded news- by accident.” avuncular-like, and nodded warmly as paper under your arm if you’ve only “Of course you did, hon,” she said. I headed to my car. packed one pair of pants. With a quick pirouette she grabbed a And now? “I need a menu to take A case in point. One recent morn- fi stful of paper napkins and dropped home,” I told the waitress. The menu ing I was far from home and needed a them next to my plate. An extra glass was as large as a broadsheet, larger quick bite to eat, and across the high- of water appeared, for dousing. than my shorts—a supersize Bob way from my motel a Bob Evans Res- The restaurant was packed with Evans codpiece. taurant beckoned, with its Golden happy customers, and discreetly I went Her friendliness vanished, as if I’d Cornmeal Mush Breakfast, its Sun- to work scrubbing my lap, recalling gotten Bob’s prize porker in a ham- shine Skillet, its Griddle Combo. . . that this was the only pair of pants I merlock and put a pistol to its head. Soon I was seated at the counter had bothered to pack for my brief trip. “No, you cannot.” with my back to the other diners, hold- The ketchup smeared sideways and the So I stood up, smoothed my damp- ing a menu the size of the Magna Carta. water from the napkin sank deep into ened pants front, elevated my gaze, It shimmered with lurid photos of pan- the fabric, and then the napkin began to and walked on, a martyr to the digital cakes dripping syrup and animal fat, of shred, leaving a layer of paper fi lament age. By the time I reached the door pork sausage rounds sizzling with gris- stretched across my front. I rubbed the girls had gone completely quiet. tle from the Sunshine Skillet. more, hard. I was mid-rub when I

DAVE CLARK DAVE The waitress was effi cient in the thought what I must look like from the ANDREW FERGUSON

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 5 EDITORIALS The Costanza Approach

n a famous episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza con- sage from Obama: “We have history. We have history in cludes that every instinct he’s had, every decision he’s Iran, we have history in Indonesia and Central America. So I made, has been wrong and that he should henceforth do we have to be a mindful of our history when we start talk- the opposite of what he had routinely been doing. He imple- ing about intervening, and understand the source of other ments this new philosophy and promptly manages to entice people’s suspicions.” an attractive woman to go out with him by introducing him- Obama has always betrayed a slim and selective knowl- self as unemployed and living with his parents. He then gets edge of American history, but what he does know, or a job with the New York Yankees by telling off its imperious thinks he knows, involves American sins abroad. In his and temperamental owner, George Steinbrenner. view, American foreign policy for decades has been too We’ve long thought President Obama should adopt the aggressive and militaristic and has been on what he con- Costanza approach in matters of national security and sim- siders the wrong side of history, whether in overthrowing ply do the opposite of what his Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, instincts tell him to do, since waging war in Vietnam in the his policies toward Iran, Israel, 1960s and 1970s, or intervening ISIS, Russia, and others seem in Iraq in the 2000s. American textbook studies of how not to foreign policy has been, Obama conduct foreign policy. But Jef- thinks, counterproductive to frey Goldberg’s recent Atlantic U.S. interests and bad for the article, “The Obama Doctrine,” world. And it has created unnec- relating a series of interviews essary suspicions and enemies. with the president, makes it And so President Obama clear that a form of “Opposit- has sought from the very begin- ism” or “Antitheticalism” (if you ning to reverse many aspects will permit a slight butchering of the English language) of American foreign policy. He believes it vital that we already defi nes Obama’s foreign policy. For Obama’s for- seek to reassure enemies (made, as he sees it, unnecessar- eign policy is less about what he stands for than what he ily), while focusing almost exclusively on diplomacy, with- rejects—namely, much of what America has stood for and out resort to threats such as sanctions and military action. done over many decades. Obama’s doctrine, such as it is, The key is to reassure enemies: With Russia that meant a consists of a few simplistic ideas that emerge from a shallow “reset”; in South America it meant reaching out to leftist and ideological disdain for the American past. It marks a thug regimes in Venezuela and Cuba; and in the Middle radical departure from the outlook of every recent Ameri- East it meant embracing radical Shiite and Sunni Muslim can president, Democrat and Republican. regimes, whether the Erdogan government in Turkey or its In December 2013, after the president had announced sister Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt headed the interim nuclear agreement that paved the way for last by Mohamed Morsi or the Khamenei regime in Iran. It has July’s Iran deal, we compared Obama to Clement Attlee, the meant a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and virtual with- British Labour party leader and prime minister following drawal after a brief intervention in Libya. World War II. Attlee believed that the history of British for- The fl ip side of this has been Obama’s disregard of eign policy constituted a “mess of centuries.” He thought America’s traditional allies, about not one of whom he has a new era had dawned, in which guidelines derived from a a kind word to say. The Europeans and Arabs are “free rid- study of history no longer applied and the old power politics ers,” the Sunni Arabs help foment anti-American terrorism were anachronistic. Attlee quickly sought to move beyond and can’t get their own houses in order, a former French the “mess of centuries” by putting most of his faith in the prime minister is a braggart, the British prime minister new United Nations while withdrawing troops precipitously David Cameron became distracted after the Libyan war, and pell-mell from much of the world. the Israeli prime minister was condescending in trying to The Goldberg article makes abundantly clear that explain Israel’s strategic challenges to a man who rose up Obama is following in Attlee’s footsteps. Consider this pas- from humble roots to become president, and indeed he no

6 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 longer likes the demagogic Turkish leader Erdogan (whose U.N., he declared, “In an era when our destiny is shared, country is, if not exactly an ally, a NATO member). power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or Obama’s policy toward Iran is fundamental to his radical should try to dominate another nation. No world order that approach. For decades, American policy toward the Middle elevates one nation or group of people over another will suc- East was founded on three main principles: the security of ceed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” Israel; the secure fl ow of oil from the Persian Gulf and sup- And so when Obama says that Iran should get an equal port for those key oil-producing Arab regimes; and weak- share of regional infl uence, he sees no need for a strategy to ening if not defeating radical Islam. An assertive Islamic ensure Iran doesn’t become the predominant regional power. Republic of Iran stood in the way of all these strategic objec- A true realist would note that Iranian ascendancy comes at tives. So President Obama reversed course and sought to the expense of the United States and would focus on how to reassure Iran at the expense of our traditional allies. He check Iranian expansion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, sought daylight from Israel and expressed initial support and elsewhere. A true realist wouldn’t invoke some mean- for uprisings in Arab countries that had been aligned with ingless “sharing” but would work on pushing Iran back to us while opposing the mass antiregime demonstrations in ensure greater regional stability, the security of our allies, Tehran. As he explained to Goldberg, he wanted Saudi Ara- and a restoration of American credibility. But that would bia and Iran “to share the neighborhood,” which would sug- require serious deliberation and the study of history. gest an effectively neutral U.S. approach. When Winston Churchill returned to power by Most of all, he sought a deal with Iran, without consul- defeating Attlee and Labour in 1951, he managed to tation with our traditional allies who were most threatened restore some measure of Britain’s world position, through by a stronger Iran on a path to nuclear weapons. Obama’s reversing Attlee’s anti-Israel policy, restoring closer ties announcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the United States, and making Britain a nuclear and its implementation were telling. When he unveiled the power. But the damage of the Attlee years was essentially deal last July, Obama declared in his very fi rst sentence that done, and the decline in British power was anyway prob- the United States with its partners “achieved something ably irreversible. But at least—and Churchill saw and that decades of animosity has not”—apparently ascribing as encouraged this—the United States was there to take the much blame to the United States and his own predecessors baton from Britain, to check the Soviet Union, and to as to the Iranian regime. help construct a liberal world order. The one enemy of the United States that Obama is will- The bad news is that unlike Britain in 1951, there is no ing to portray negatively is Vladimir Putin, but this appears other nation to whom America could hand the baton. The more the disappointment of a scorned supplicant than a good news is that, unlike Britain in 1951, our time need not genuine dislike of a foe of the United States. So Obama be past. We can restore our world position—though it will emphasizes about Putin, “You don’t see him in any of these not be easy, after the damage that Obama has wrought. It meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that mat- will take a president inspired by Winston Churchill rather ter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the than Clement Attlee—or at least one attentive to the lessons agenda around any of the issues that are important.” Sum- of George Costanza, and determined to do the opposite of mit agenda-setting is, it seems, the key exercise of global what Barack Obama has done. power in this new age: “The fact is, there is not a summit —William Kristol & Michael Makovsky I’ve attended since I’ve been president where we are not set- ting the agenda, where we are not responsible for the key results.” Ceremonial summits are the key battlegrounds in Obama’s mind. Deploying military power, on the other hand, is a sign of weakness: “The notion that somehow Russia is in a Donald stronger position now, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before [Putin] had to deploy military forces to Syria is to fundamentally mis- understand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the the Menace world generally.” Of course, that Russian display of “weak- ness” helped save Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime and hen we last checked in on Donald Trump’s strengthened it at the expense of opposition forces we sup- campaign it was still a rolling embarrassment— posedly supported, while making Moscow the go-to player W a near-daily parade of pettiness, ignorance, and in the region at our expense. farce that was nonetheless en route to an ever-increasing In the Goldberg article and elsewhere, Obama calls him- delegate lead. self a “realist.” But is it realistic to eschew considerations of Trump had held an unusual QVC-style postelection strategy and power? Obama thinks so. Thus in 2009 at the press conference in which he displayed phony “Trump

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 7 products” in order to pretend that his failed businesses by the arm and jerked her backwards. Trump defended hadn’t failed; he’d announced that he would serve as his Lewandowski, despite his having been caught in a lie, own primary adviser on foreign policy “because I have claiming at one point that the pen in Fields’s hand might a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things”; and his have been a bomb. campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was forcefully This is the Republican frontrunner. Unless the tra- denying eyewitness claims that, after a Trump presser, jectory of the race changes, this is the man who will he’d manhandled Michelle Fields, then a reporter for be the Republican nominee. And perhaps not surpris- Breitbart News. ingly, the latest numbers on his presidential prospects Trump’s media apologists, being apologists, had are even worse than the already-grim numbers from just eagerly amplifi ed the campaign’s deceptions, rational- a few weeks ago. ized the absurdities, and downplayed the misconduct. Trump “would start the general election campaign as the They had abandoned their attempts to paint Trump as least-popular candidate to represent either party in modern a conservative and begun instead to tout him as a trans- times,” declared the Washington Post on March 31, detailing formational populist candidate who would defeat Hillary the results of the paper’s latest poll with ABC News. “Three- Clinton in a landslide. quarters of women view him There wasn’t much data to unfavorably. So do nearly two- support these claims. But Trump thirds of independents, 80 percent boosters made up for that with of young adults, 85 percent of His- enthusiasm and confidence. panics and nearly half of Repub- They disparaged as a de facto licans and Republican-leaning supporter of Hillary Clinton any- independents.” Trump is “more one who refused to support him. disliked than any major-party Now those look like the good nominee in the 32 years the sur- old days. vey has been tracking candidates.” Over the last couple of Last week, the Center for weeks, Trump has crassly The insulting image Trump tweeted Politics at the University of Vir- insulted the looks of Ted Cruz’s ginia put out its fi rst general elec- wife and threatened to “spill the beans” on her involve- tion projections for the presidential race. Hillary Clinton ment in—well, we’re still not sure what. When Trump would win all eight crucial swing states—Colorado, Flor- was pressed about his attacks on Cruz’s wife, he falsely ida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and claimed that the Cruz campaign had been behind an ad North Carolina. That portends a down-ballot disaster for targeting his wife. Republicans. Seven of those eight states have Senate races Trump sat for a lengthy editorial board meeting with this fall, fi ve of them where Republicans currently hold the the Washington Post that was a horrifying combination of seat. The Cook Report last month changed its projections ignorance and bravado. At one point, he dodged a question on ten House races, with each of the tweaks a refl ection of on ISIS and tactical nuclear weapons with a jarring change better odds for the Democrats. of subject, fi rst to the brilliance of his campaign’s attacks Could this change? As we’ve said before, anything is on Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and moments later to the possible. This has been an extraordinarily volatile race appearance of those interviewing him. Later in the inter- in an extraordinarily volatile time. Hillary Clinton could view, he reiterated his threats against the owners of the be indicted. The economy could slide into recession. We Chicago Cubs (for daring to criticize him) and suggested he could have more major terrorist attacks. might take out TV ads exposing their alleged mismanage- But absent some race-altering external event, Trump ment of the team. is likely to win the nomination and then lose disastrously He called for the United States to step back from its to the Democratic nominee. The consequences for down- leadership role in NATO and suggested that it might be a ballot Republicans could be dire and the damage to the good idea to encourage nuclear proliferation. Later, Trump conservative movement irreparable. called for punishing women who have abortions, only to Given all this, we’d think more Republican offi ce- reverse himself in the space of a few hours, complaining all holders and conservative leaders might be speaking out the while that the media are treating him unfairly. against Trump while he can still be stopped. But with a And then there’s Lewandowski, Trump’s top adviser, few notable exceptions—Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who was charged last week with misdemeanor battery. Representative Adam Kinziger of Illinois, and Maryland Lewandowski, who had previously insisted that he “never governor Larry Hogan chief among them—party leaders touched” Fields, turned himself into the Jupiter, Fla., have held their fi re. police department after surveillance video of the incident It’s not too late to fi ght the good fi ght. made clear he had not only touched her but grabbed her —Stephen F. Hayes

8 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 no more likely than Cruz to bow to K Street’s wishes. His reputation as a dealmaker is entirely self-created and self-interested: Bragging about his business accomplishments is a substi- tute for the political and government experience he so obviously lacks. Haggling over licensing fees and favoring marble tile over terrazzo bears very little resemblance to writing, pro- posing, and compromising over a tax code of 75,000 pages and a budget of $4.2 trillion. Bob Livingston may want a dealmaker in Trump. But he’s more likely to get a kingpin. Trump won’t just disappoint lobby- ists, however. He is likely to replace the institutions and practices of K Street with something far worse. The infl u- ence industry, despite its poor rep- utation, operates by a set of rules. Registries must be fi lled out, disclo- Hobbled Lobby sures must be made, gifts must be recorded. Even the consultants who don’t formally register as lobbyists K Street says it’s ready for Donald Trump. must keep careful track of their time lest they run afoul of regulations. It’s wrong. BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI Unwritten norms govern how much fi rms charge their clients. And con- ob Livingston, the former Feehery, Rudy Giuliani, and Trent gressmen have been wary of lobbyists Republican congressman, was Lott — they’re all fl acks for powerful ever since the scandals of a decade ago. B among the conservatives who interests, and they’ve all expressed a Indeed, the scandals themselves dem- met with Donald Trump in Washing- willingness to work with the real estate onstrated just how boring and petty ton on March 21. Now a corporate mogul. “He’s got the right personality,” everyday lobbying is: The crimes of lobbyist whose clients include Veri- Dole told the New York Times in Janu- the most infamous ex-lobbyist, Jack zon and Adobe, Livingston liked what ary, “and he’s kind of a dealmaker.” Abramoff, were shocking precisely the GOP frontrunner had to say. He This notion of Trump as a deal- because they were an order of mag- endorsed Trump as he left the gather- maker, as a businessman and master nitude greater and more lurid than ing. “Bottom line is he’s winning,” he negotiator, is at the heart of his appeal the run-of-the-mill and somewhat told reporters. “He’s going to win.” to D.C. lobbyists. Cruz, the thinking banal ethical murkiness of hosting a Livingston isn’t alone, of course. goes, would disrupt the capital with his fundraiser for a congressman or taking Over the last few months, prominent war on what he calls “the Washington a journalist out to lunch. consultants and business representa- cartel.” Trump on the other hand would But the one thing Donald Trump tives have made it clear that they prefer be willing to listen to the thousands of has demonstrated in this presidential Trump to his chief rival Ted Cruz. Paul registered lobbyists — and thousands campaign is his refusal to play by the Manafort, whose client list included more unregistered public relations and rules. Nor has he any particular loyalty deposed Ukrainian autocrat Viktor media and crisis consultants. He’d be to K Street. He’s rarely used its serv- Yanukovych, has joined the campaign more likely than Cruz to include K ices in the past: According to federal as convention manager. The center of Street’s desired tax breaks and exemp- databases, the Trump Organization Washington’s influence industry, K tions and pork barrel projects in his and Trump Casino employed regis- Street, is far more open to Trump than tax, tariff, and infrastructure bills. tered lobbyists only between the years the rest of the city is. Bob Dole, John Trump, the lobbyists believe, would 1999 and 2001 and for the relatively be a pro-business president rather paltry sum of $205,250. Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the than a pro-market one. Which makes Most of the lobbyists Trump Washington Free Beacon and a contributing lobbyists see dollar signs. retained were interested in legisla- editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is The problem? The lobbyists’ theory tion affecting casino gambling. For-

author of The K Street Gang (2006). is almost certainly wrong. Trump is mer Trump adviser Roger Stone’s GARY LOCKE

10 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 fi rm, for example, was paid $65,250 over a six-month period in 1999 to infl uence the “national gaming Without impact study,” the “transportation of gaming devices,” the “federal gam- ing tax,” and “tax treatment of gaming Exceptionalism losses”— a subject important to Trump because he somehow managed to lose money on his casinos. Another fi rm, Dyer Ellis & Joseph, Trump doesn’t know what makes America great. was paid $40,000 in the years 2000 BY DANIEL KRAUTHAMMER and 2001 to lobby on “issues relating to Merchant Mariner documents” in mericans and Europeans alike winning, by his defi nition, means beat- the Coast Guard Authorization Act. sometimes forget how unique ing a loser. Right now, he says, we’re Maybe Trump wanted to lower the ‘A is the United States of Amer- losing to China and Mexico and Japan cost of importing his menswear line ica,” Margaret Thatcher said. “No and all the rest. But he’ll change that. from Guangzhou. other nation has been built upon an He’ll reverse the fl ow of money from Trump doesn’t lobby. He employs idea—the idea of liberty.” This is the foreigners and illegal immigrants back an entirely different set of means to essence of American exceptionalism. into the pockets of hardworking Amer- bend public policy to his whims. He The American identity and national icans. Trump’s world is a zero-sum donates to campaigns to “buy” politi- bond are based not just on a common game, and Trump’s America will start cians. He threatens and fi les lawsuits. history or culture or language but, winning again only when everyone else He uses the bully pulpit to harass more important, on a set of common starts losing. individuals who stand in his way and ideals and principles, as embodied in This simplistic thinking defi es logic to intimidate potential critics. He the Declaration of Independence: the and basic economics. But it does appeal brags, he threatens, he pouts, he bul- equality of all individuals, the inviola- to a certain sense of American nation- lies. And he relies on a shady network bility of human rights, and the depend- alism: that “we” as a collective need to of business associates and fi xers. Who ence of government’s legitimacy on the rally around a strong leader who will needs Patton Boggs when you have consent of the governed. make us once again richer and more Fat Tony Salerno ready to pour the How do these ideas fi t into Don- powerful than everyone else. Why? concrete for Trump Tower? ald Trump’s vision of American great- Because we’re us and they’re them. To think that Trump will wheel and ness? He promises to “make America This kind of nationalism, however, is deal with Tony Podesta over mohair great again.” But where in his declara- completely unexceptional. The lead- subsidies is folly: If past is prologue, tions can we fi nd the language of the ers of literally any other country on as president he’ll just issue an execu- American creed? Think about it. In all earth could—and often do—say the tive order, sic the Justice Department his stump speeches, tweets, and debate same thing to their people and appeal on his enemies, and hold a three-hour performances, how many times have to the same nationalistic sentiments. press conference defaming whoever you heard him utter the words liberty, There is nothing uniquely American stands in his way. freedom, democracy, Constitution, Found- about what Trump espouses. There is The Republican lobbyists fool- ing Fathers, rights, ideals, equality, oppor- no American ideal or philosophy pro- ing themselves into believing there is tunity? Has he ever quoted the giants viding a moral reason for this national an upside to a Trump presidency are of our political pantheon—Lincoln mission to “win.” engaged in the same short-term think- or Jefferson, FDR or Reagan? Unlike What has been unique in Ameri- ing and selfi shness that has allowed every other candidate, Republican and can political discourse for 240 years is Trump to get as far as he has. Again Democratic, in this race and in races that our ideals have given a higher pur- and again, Trump has benefi ted from past, he completely ignores the ideas at pose to our common mission to govern elites who have underestimated his the heart of the American experiment. ourselves at home and champion our abilities, dismissed his outrageousness, Instead, he repeats words like win- values abroad. Americans, Jefferson or erroneously believed his willingness ning, great, huge, beat, kill, deals, success- wrote, are “trusted with the destinies of to transgress democratic norms can be ful, rich. He quotes himself and his own this solitary republic of the world, the put to their advantage. They’re like the books. The central idea at the heart of only monument of human rights, and retiree who signed up for Trump Uni- Trumpism is the idea of winning. And the sole depository of the sacred fi re versity only to realize too late that he of freedom and self-government, from was being fl eeced. If you dislike the Daniel Krauthammer is a consultant hence it is to be lighted up in other “Washington cartel” now, just wait. in Los Angeles. He holds a master’s regions of the earth, if other regions of President Trump will give the phrase a degree in fi nancial economics from the earth shall ever become susceptible whole new meaning. ♦ the University of Oxford. of its benign infl uence.” It fi lls me with

12 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 pride to belong to the one country in neighbors. A core tenet of his foreign the crap out of ” protesters and have history to have built its foundation and policy is to demand our allies give us them “carried out on a stretcher.” forged its bonds of citizenship on these more money in exchange for our pro- When one of his supporters did magnifi cent ideals. It has given me a tection. He seems to view the role assault a protester at a North Carolina deep love for my country—a patriot- of the United States and its military rally and followed it up by declaring ism I feel in my bones. in the world not as FDR’s “arsenal of that next time, “we might have to kill Many foreigners find this some- democracy,” but rather a mercenary him,” Trump praised the man, saying what mystifying, if not unsettling. force with little higher mission than “he obviously loves his country.” That My European friends in particular to reclaim every penny of its cost from Trump confuses such hatred for patri- are often shocked when they come to other nations. otism is telling. And that this hatred is America and see how often often directed toward protest- and fervently we wave the fl ag, ers who are members of racial sing the national anthem, and and ethnic minorities—at ral- celebrate our military. They lies where Trump’s nationalis- recoil and ask how I can par- tic rhetoric fl irts all too closely take in such naked displays of with nativist and racist senti- nationalism. In their countries, ments—makes these episodes comparable shows of national even more disturbing. When sentiment are often linked to he leads his crowds in angry racism, xenophobia, milita- jeers of “USA! USA! USA!” to rism, and chauvinism. And not cheer on this vitriolic behav- without reason: The history of ior, he inverts in the most Europe and much of the world awful way what that chant is replete with countless tragic should mean. examples of political leaders “Nationalism is not to be whipping their countrymen confused with patriotism,” into a nationalistic fury to start George Orwell advised, for wars, crush individual rights, “no nationalist ever thinks, oppress minorities, and even talks, or writes about any- commit genocide. thing except the superiority But America is different, of his own power unit.” Don- I explain, unique in that our ald Trump, having lived a life national identity is based devoted to his own enrichment on ideas. Without a shared and empowerment at the cost belief in liberty, democ- of everyone around him, seeks racy, and equal opportu- to become our president by nity, we would cease to be extending that personal Americans in any mean- philosophy of selfi shness ingful sense. Our patriotic to a national level. He has displays express a shared declared, “I’m very greedy. pride and dedication to I’m a greedy person. . . . those ideals far beyond I’ve always been greedy,” any brittle bond of race, and that now “I want to be ethnicity, or narrow sense greedy for our country. . . . of nationality. I want to be so greedy for Donald Trump is our country.” Is that who chipping away at that truth, reduc- In the domestic arena, he demon- we want to be? No longer Lincoln’s ing American patriotism to an ugly strates disdain for our most dearly “last best hope of earth,” no longer and tawdry nationalism bereft of true held freedoms, threatening to “open Reagan’s “shining city on a hill,” but American values. He denounces and up libel laws” to sue newspapers that Trump’s nation of greed? dismisses allies who share those val- write negative stories about him, jok- Trump’s vision will not make ues—peaceful democracies like Japan, ing about killing reporters, and calling America great. On the contrary, it will South Korea, Germany, and other them “such lying, disgusting people.” make us utterly ordinary among the NATO members—but compliments He regularly whips his crowds into nations of the world. This is a time for and quotes dictators like Vladimir frenzies of anger and violence com- choosing. We must choose to remem- Putin and Mussolini, who disman- pletely anathema to the democratic ber who we are and protect what

THOMAS FLUHARTY tled democracies and invaded their spirit, encouraging them to “knock makes us exceptional. ♦

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 13 rancor that has engulfed the presiden- tial race and thus the Republican party When No Means No itself. He has advised Republicans to stick to the “higher standard of deco- rum” to which the GOP has tradition- The principled politics of Paul Ryan. ally adhered. “We disagreed — often fi ercely so — but we disagreed without BY FRED BARNES being disagreeable,” he told a biparti- san group of House interns. Ryan didn’t target Donald Trump by name. He never does. But if Trump— or to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz — thinks Ryan was referring to anyone else, he’s mistaken. He may be unaware that Ryan hasn’t been changed by the impact of the Trump candidacy, nor by the fury of reckless partisans, talk radio, a few widely read websites, or a clique of conservative organizations. Rare among Republicans, Ryan has ignored Trump’s provocations. After Ryan’s “higher standard” speech, Trump scheduled a rally in the speak- er’s hometown of Janesville, Wiscon- sin. Asked by reporters what issues he and Ryan might work on jointly, Trump abruptly changed the subject to how foreign trade has damaged Wisconsin. Ryan favors free trade and the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) treaty now before Congress. Nor has Ryan joined those who Paul Ryan speaks on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2016. have announced they will never vote for Trump, even if he is the Republi- ouse speaker Paul Ryan is he won’t seek or accept it. “I actually can nominee. Ryan has planted him- not running for president. think you should run for president . . . self on higher ground. H That became clear several if you want to be president,” he told After losing the popular vote in months after the 2012 election, in reporters last week. fi ve of the past six presidential races, which Ryan was Mitt Romney’s vice The next day, just to nail down Republicans may want to copy the presidential running mate. At two his unavailability, Ryan said there tactics of President Obama, Ryan said private dinners, a prominent Repub- are no circumstances in which he in December, fi ve weeks after he was lican introduced Ryan to a bipartisan would become the nominee. “No, elected speaker. “Maybe the way to win group of infl uential policy intellectu- there isn’t,” he said. “ ‘No’ is the the debate is to play identity politics, als and potential campaign fi nanciers, answer. Defi nitively.” never mind ideas. Maybe what you do not all of them conservatives. Ryan Yet Ryan is playing an enormously is slice and dice the electorate: Demon- didn’t bite. important role in 2016. He is the chief ize. Polarize. Turn out your voters. It’s now three years later, and he protector of the kind of conservatism Hope the rest stay home. And I would hasn’t changed his mind. Ryan will that attracted him to politics and moti- just say, yes, it’s possible we could win preside over the Republican conven- vates most Republicans. “I’m a Jack that way — but to what end?” tion in July, but he says even if the Kemp, Ronald Reagan conservative,” Ryan didn’t point directly to presidential nomination is contested, he declared in February in a speech at Trump’s campaign tactics. It was the Heritage Action Conservative Pol- two months before the fi rst contest Fred Barnes is an executive editor icy Summit. in Iowa. But Trump had been the at THE WEEKLY STANDARD and co-author, This role involves more than frontrunner in the GOP race since with Morton Kondracke, of Jack Kemp: defending conservative ideas and July at that point. There’s no one else The Bleeding Heart Conservative Who policies. He is committed to sweep- Ryan could have had in mind.

Changed America (Sentinel, 2015). ing aside the chaos, noisemaking, and In a January appearance on Fox NEWSCOM

14 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 News, Ryan outlined his priorities for passage? I don’t think so. In exit polls have a big manufacturing trade defi cit,” the House this year. They are national in primary states, more Republican he said in December. “But if you add security, jobs and economic growth, voters than not said they favor allow- up all the countries that do have a trade health care, poverty and opportu- ing most illegal immigrants to stay agreement with us, we have a surplus.” nity, and “restoring” the Constitu- in America legally. This sentiment, Ryan’s biggest task would be pre- tion. According to Ryan’s plan, what serving the conservatism of Reagan the House does on these issues will and Kemp. It’s based, Ryan says, on be models for a Republican adminis- Trump would be an underdog principles of “freedom, liberty, free tration, even one with Trump in the enterprise, self-determination, govern- White House. in the general election. In the ment by consent.” More specifi cally The Ryan agenda matters whether unlikely event he captures that means lower taxes, less govern- Republicans win the presidency or the presidency, however, he ment intrusion, free markets, con- not. Trump would be an underdog in would have Ryan as well as servative solutions to poverty, strong the general election. In the unlikely defense, and renewed American infl u- event he captures the presidency, how- Democrats to contend with. ence in the world. ever, he would have Ryan as well as Though Ryan’s intentions are clear, Democrats to contend with. some of his fans won’t give up. Mort “This country has big problems,” which is also refl ected in polls, plus Kondracke wrote recently that “the Ryan said in December. “But if we do Ryan’s support for legalization would way things are going in the presiden- not have a president who will work with make Trump’s promise to deport ille- tial race, I’m going to write in Paul us, we will not solve those problems— gals a nonstarter. D. Ryan. Join me. . . . If enough of us that is, while they are still solvable.” He On trade, Trump would withdraw moderates (Rs and Ds) and independ- was talking about a Democratic presi- from the TPP, which many Republi- ents do it all over the country, Ryan dent, but his concern would apply as cans oppose. But Ryan would make won’t get elected, but we can make a well to President Trump. the case for new trade agreements. “If ringing statement about the kind of Would Ryan take President Trump’s you add up all the countries that do president we want — and don’t want.” agenda as his own and push for its not have a trade agreement with us, we Donald Trump, please take notice. ♦

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 15 arrived in Dien Bien Phu, when the hidden Vietminh artillery opened Vietnam’s Agincourt up on the French garrison. “Shells rained down on us without stop- ping like a hailstorm on a fall eve- The fi erce jungle battle that brought down ning,” wrote a sergeant in the Foreign Legion. “Bunker after bunker, trench an empire. BY MAX BOOT after trench, collapsed, burying under them men and weapons.” Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam the bait—that mass of colonial troops Things only got worse. The Viet- ien Bien Phu is not a battle sitting in the middle of nowhere, just minh quickly closed the exposed that looms large in American waiting to be attacked—and they were French airstrip, making it impossible D consciousness. That’s hardly sure that they would be able to blast to evacuate the growing number of surprising, since almost no Ameri- the Vietminh forces, once assembled, wounded who overfl owed the aid sta- cans took part. (The exception was two with their superior airpower and heavy tions. A French doctor likened “their dozen CIA contractor pilots who deliv- artillery. But Giap frustrated their slow, gentle groans” to “a song full of ered supplies to the doomed French plans with an improbable feat of logis- sadness.” The defenders could only garrison.) But for Vietnam, as a recent tics: He managed to move more than be reinforced and resupplied by para- visit to that small town in the country’s 200 artillery pieces supplied by China, chute, and even this proved hazardous, northwest reveals, it is the equivalent of through the jungle, using tens of thou- with the Vietminh’s antiaircraft guns Agincourt, Gettysburg, Stalingrad, Gal- shooting down 48 French aircraft. lipoli—a battle that defi ned a nation. Meanwhile the Vietminh infan- For 55 days in the spring of 1954, Dien Bien Phu was the worst try relentlessly pressed assault after the Vietminh, as the nationalist-Com- defeat ever suffered by a assault on the French strongpoints, munist independence movement led European colonial power at all of which carried women’s names: by Ho Chi Minh was known, besieged Dominique, Eliane, Huguette, Clau- the French troops who had built up a the hands of its subjects—a dine, and so forth. (Rumor had it they seemingly impregnable fortress near defeat that ended not were named after mistresses of the the Laotian border. The French-Indo- only the French empire in French commander, Brig. Gen. Chris- china War may have been primarily tian de Castries, a dashing cavalryman a guerrilla war, but the battle of Dien Indochina but the entire era who said he wanted nothing more out Bien Phu was a siege straight out of of Western imperialism. of life than “a horse to ride, an enemy World War I. Today, you can wan- to kill, and a woman in bed.”) The der around some of the remaining French fought valiantly, especially French fortifi cations—concrete bun- sands of men to drag them by hand up the elite paratroopers and legion- kers linked by concrete trenches, all of the hills around Dien Bien Phu, where naires, but they were overwhelmed them dug into the gently rolling fl oor they were carefully camouflaged in by the human-wave attacks. Eventu- of a valley 11 miles long and 3 miles bunkers invisible from above. ally, in the words of historian Martin wide. Here, more than 15,000 defend- Giap himself took up residence Windrow, “one-legged soldiers [were] ers—French troops all, but many of in those hills, with his staff and Chi- manning machine guns in the block- North African or Vietnamese ori- nese advisers. Today you can wander houses, being fed ammunition by one- gin—were supplied by air from Hanoi, through his simple command post, a armed and one-eyed comrades.” 180 miles away across thick jungle. thatched-roof hut with only enough The white fl ag fi nally went up on General Vo Nguyen Giap, a self- room for a mat to sleep on. Next door May 7. It was the worst defeat ever suf- taught soldier and one of the military is a concrete bunker dug into the fered by a European colonial power at geniuses of the 20th century, posi- mountain, where Giap could escape the hands of its subjects—a defeat that tioned some 50,000 assault troops if French airplanes or troops found ended not only the French empire in backed by 50,000 support personnel, him—which they did not. The Viet- Indochina but the entire era of West- on the slopes around Dien Bien Phu. minh commander survived, like his ern imperialism. The French expected Giap to rise to men, on rice and a bit of fi sh or meat, Seen from the vantage point of 2016, while the French troops below enjoyed it all seems slightly baffling. What Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council multicourse banquets washed down military commander in his right mind on Foreign Relations, a contributing editor to with wine and brandy and spent their would willingly cede the high ground THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and the author free hours visiting mobile bordellos to the enemy? Yet that is what Gen- of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of fl own in for their pleasure. eral Henri-Eugène Navarre, the senior Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times The fun ended on March 13, French commander in Indochina, did to the Present Day (Liveright, 2013). 1954, almost exactly 62 years before I when he launched Operation Castor,

16 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 as the occupation of Dien Bien Phu also to impose a Communist dictator- Any way you look at it, the con- was known. The only explanation for ship—a goal considerably less popu- sequences of Dien Bien Phu were this folly—one of the greatest mistakes lar. So unpopular, in fact, that Ho Chi mixed: This military victory led to a in military history—is sheer hubris: Minh and his successors never dared divided nation and another 20 years of Navarre had nothing but contempt for hold a halfway honest election to legit- costly war by North Vietnam against his enemies, “Asiatics” who seemed imate their rule. the South Vietnamese and their Amer- tiny and backward to the heirs of Napo- To this day, the Communist regime ican protectors. Contrary to Com- leon and Louis XIV. Navarre did munist mythology, propagated not count on the steely courage at the War Remnants Museum and determination that the Viet- in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly minh would display—or their known as the Museum of Ameri- willingness to suffer stagger- can War Atrocities), it was the ing casualties to drive out their North that was the aggressor, colonial masters. The Vietminh not the United States. South lost as many as 25,000 troops Vietnam was an independent in the siege of Dien Bien Phu, nation that had little desire to while the French lost more than be conquered by Hanoi, not an 10,000 men. American “puppet” that wel- It is little wonder, then, that comed Communist “liberation.” this glorious victory is celebrated The final Communist victory in so many monuments scat- in 1975 led hundreds of thou- tered around Dien Bien Phu. sands of “boat people” to fl ee Everywhere one looks, one fi nds and imposed a Stalinist tyranny massive stone representations that only began to loosen its hold of heroic Vietnamese fighters in the 1990s when Chinese-style and peasants toiling together reforms were implemented. for the independence of their Today Saigon, as Ho Chi nation. (What one does not Minh City is still generally fi nd are decent hotels or restau- called, is a bustling mega-city rants—Dien Bien Phu remains overfl owing with cafés and con- an impoverished, isolated place sumer goods, new offi ce build- with few foreign visitors and ings and new businesses, cars almost no Americans.) and motor scooters, and Viet- The Vietnamese are right nam is a budding ally of the to be proud of their achieve- United States. (The two coun- ment even if this hagiography tries are united by mutual fear necessarily leaves out a few of China.) It is a tragedy that messy details. Like the fact that history took such a long detour many of the French soldiers to arrive at this destination, and died after being captured. More that even today Vietnam has a than 10,000 French troops sur- long way to go before it achieves rendered on May 7, 1954. Four the kind of freedom and pros- months later, at the conclusion perity enjoyed by countries of a peace treaty in Geneva, fewer such as South Korea and Taiwan than 4,000 were still alive to be Top, French soldiers after their surrender; center, that under American protection Giap’s hut; below, a Dien Bien Phu memorial released. The rest had perished resisted communism. in a hellish captivity that recalled in Hanoi, although pursuing capitalist Yet none of this detracts from the Japanese mistreatment of Allied reforms, remains leery of democracy. the superhuman self-sacrifi ce of the POWs in World War II. There is no Two dozen non-Communist candi- heroes of Dien Bien Phu—the men mention of the suffering of these sur- dates risk harassment and even arrest who defeated an empire. One suspects rendered soldiers, just as there is no for having the temerity to run for seats that even if non-Communists eventu- mention of the heroism many of them in May’s elections for the rubber- ally take power in Hanoi and allow displayed in a losing cause. stamp National Assembly. As in Iran, genuinely free elections, they will Another fact omitted: The Viet- so in Vietnam: The regime reserves continue to revere the fi ghters who minh were fighting not just for the right to “vet” candidates for offi ce secured one of the most important and independence from France—a goal and forbids those who openly chal- least likely military victories of the , VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY / AP; CENTER AND BELOW, MAX BOOT CENTER AND BELOW, , VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY / AP;

TOP universally popular in Vietnam—but lenge it from running. 20th century. ♦

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 17 intent on the matter of whether the law applies to the president. Blind Mistrust What about the Constitution? Arti- cle II says, “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, Donald Trump and the federal a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during confl ict-of-interest laws. BY ANDREW STARK the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within o federal confl ict-of-interest fi nancial instruments whose identity that Period any other Emolument from laws apply to the president? remained unknown to him. the United States, or any of them.” D Do the criminal laws that But why did the OGE stop just short That’s a confl ict-of-interest provi- prohibit officials from participating of identifying a legal requirement on sion. True, it was designed to prevent a in any decision in which they have a the president? It was relying on a 1974 president from confl icts of interest that fi nancial interest apply to the man or Justice Department opinion written arise when other branches of govern- woman in the Oval Offi ce? by then acting-attorney general (later ment, or state governments—not pri- The prevailing assumption, even on Judge) Laurence Silberman. But that vate companies—might be paying him the part of those who have explored the opinion—and it’s only an opinion, not money. But that constitutional pro- multiple entanglements between vision shows that a president’s Donald J. Trump’s fi nancial hold- sources of fi nancial remuneration ings and the innumerable ways in can disqualify him from offi ce, which presidential action could and do so precisely because they benefi t them, is that confl ict-of- place him in a confl ict of interest. interest laws don’t apply to the Today’s criminal laws that pro- man or woman at the very top. hibit offi ceholders from holding It’s anathema to think that any certain kinds of private interests law other than the Constitution can’t, then, be deemed inappli- can set eligibility requirements cable to the president, simply on for the presidency. As George W. the grounds that it’s illegitimate Bush’s ethics adviser, Richard to “prohibit anyone from becom- Painter, has said, “Constitution- ing president by making them ally it’s going to be very hard to divest of their holdings.” The prohibit anyone from becoming Trumps Eric, Donald Jr., Donald Sr., and Ivanka Constitution does just that. president by making them divest break ground on a Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump himself has recognized of their holdings.” July 23, 2014. that as president he would have But in fact it’s not clear that to take some action to remedy his the confl ict-of-interest laws don’t apply law—was based on an extraordinarily confl icts of interest. The remedy he has to the president. Those who think they weak argument. in mind is to have his children manage don’t might have in mind a 1983 U.S. Silberman noted that a 1960 Bar his holdings. But that is not a remedy Offi ce of Government Ethics (OGE) Association report written to aid Con- for confl ict of interest as understood opinion, which expressed the view that gress in crafting conflict-of-interest by the law and regulations. An offi ce- the conflict-of-interest laws strictly laws had questioned whether they holder is deemed to be in confl ict every speaking do not extend to the presi- could apply to the president. Why? bit as much because of his children’s dent—although OGE went on to say The only specifi c reason the report interests as his own. And in any case, that “as a matter of policy, the President gave is that a president receives so while his children might be managing and the Vice President should conduct many gifts from all over the world that his companies, Trump would still themselves as if they were so bound.” he couldn’t possibly return them all. hold his interests in them. And so he And every president since the pas- Silberman, noting that Congress never would have done exactly nothing to sage of the 1978 Ethics in Government expressly disavowed the report’s partic- address what he himself acknowledges Act has done so. Every president has ular observation on this narrow matter is a serious confl ict of interest. agreed to put his assets in a blind trust, of gifts, then concluded that Congress It’s not clear, then, that the confl ict- where they are sold off and replaced by must have sweepingly intended that of-interest laws don’t apply to the presi- the law not apply to the president at dent. Nor is it true that constitutional Andrew Stark, a professor at all, even in cases of vast and inveterate principle would necessarily bar their the University of Toronto, is the author confl icts of interest. That’s a stretch, application. The law, never having of Confl ict of Interest in American Public to say the least. The better interpreta- been tested on that question in court,

Life (Harvard University Press, 2000). tion is that Congress expressed no clear remains uncertain. MORIGI / WIREIMAGE GETTY PAUL

18 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Donald Trump, more than anyone, A similar risk exists for Trump, who the world’s greatest cities—next in line should realize what a problem that is. faces his own possibly calamitously dis- to lead Britain’s Tories—praises Vladi- After all, as he has said, it would be a qualifying legal unclarity, although in mir Putin for his “ruthless clarity” in tragedy if Americans elected a presi- his case the threat would come from a helping Assad’s troops rescue antiqui- dent, Ted Cruz, who couldn’t serve criminal prosecution that would test ties. London, which has given birth to because a court deemed him ineligible the meaning of the confl ict-of-inter- some of the great glories of the English for not being a natural-born Ameri- est laws, not a constitutional suit that language, now publishes encomia to an can. And it’s unclear, Trump says, would test the meaning of “natural- Oriental despot who saves stones as he whether Cruz—having been born to born American.” By Trump’s own tears men’s fl esh. an American mother but in Canada— lights, that would place the country in On Easter Sunday, a delegation of is a natural-born American, since the an untenable position. And so, again French figures visited the butcher law has never been tested on that ques- by his own lights, he faces two choices. of Damascus. The group comprised tion. Someone, eventually, would take He can commit to having his vast hold- a few well-known antisemites and a President Cruz to court on the mat- ings immediately sold off and his assets other right-wing extremists among ter, possibly plunging the nation—so managed through a blind trust if he is the visiting politicians, journalists, Trump warns—into a governance and elected president. Or he can drop out of and intellectuals. They paid their constitutional crisis. the race. ♦ respects, smiled, and posed for self- ies with a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. French diplomatic sources warn that this gruesome caravan may be a sign How to Win Friends of things to come, with many French policymakers now leaning toward an accommodation with Assad. and Kill People This is not how Paris wanted it. French planes were ready to hit Assad in August 2013 when Barack Obama called off the attack. François Hol- Strange new respect for Syria’s Assad. lande was the last European leader BY LEE SMITH who demanded Assad’s removal. The French president declined to take part ast week the mayor of London Second, writes Johnson, “the victory of in the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria heaped praise on the president Assad is a victory for archaeology.” because he feared it would strengthen L of Syria for liberating Palmyra, Johnson’s fi rst reason is arguable. Assad’s hand. After the massive ISIS and thereby saving its prized antiqui- Assad’s forces have killed many times attacks on Paris in November, Hol- ties from ISIS. In his column for the more people than ISIS, which entered lande joined the Obama administra- Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote that he the war several years after Assad tion’s halfhearted war on the Islamic knows “Assad is a monster, a dictator. started the confl ict by fi ring on peace- State because there was no other choice. He barrel-bombs his own ful protesters who took to So Assad is enjoying a popular people. His jails are full of the streets in March 2011. revival, praise from fi gures like Boris tortured opponents. He and ISIS is vicious and publicizes Johnson, and reconsideration from EU his father ruled for genera- its gore on social media, but policymakers, because Europe is cor- tions by the application of Assad and allies have done nered: ISIS is on the march and the terror and violence.” the same abundantly. Indeed, Obama White House will not lead But according to John- Palmyra is where the Assad the West and is proud that it will not. son, “There are at least two regime built a dungeon in The ISIS attack on Brussels two reasons why any sane per- the desert decades ago to weeks ago that left 35 dead and almost son should feel a sense of torture and murder politi- 300 wounded merely confirmed for satisfaction at what Assad’s Bashar al-Assad cal prisoners. Five years ago, Europe that its major threat is about troops have accomplished.” Bashar al-Assad emptied that borders and immigration. It’s true that First, as bad as Assad and his forces prison, Tadmor, of its Islamist inmates Assad’s sectarian campaign against Syr- may be, they’re still better than the with the purpose of sowing chaos, and ia’s Sunni Arab population is respon- Islamic State forces they vanquished many of them became ISIS fi gures. sible for the vast majority of refugees, in the campaign to retake Palmyra. Johnson’s second reason for prais- and Putin is manipulating the refugee ing Assad—as the champion of archae- crisis to his own advantage. But when Lee Smith is a senior editor ology—is evidence that the West has death comes to the continent, Euro-

at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. become undone. The mayor of one of pean offi cials logically label ISIS the JOSEPH EID / AFP GETTY

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 19 major problem. They’re concerned with their own security, not the big pic- ture—like how to deal ISIS a decisive Opiates of blow, or contain Iran, or knock Putin back down to size. The Americans are supposed to do the big picture. They the Masses have the military, the economy, the prestige to shape a global strategy. After all, they built the post-WWII interna- tional order. Obama talks smack about the overdose epidemic. And as Brussels burned in the wake BY JOHN P. W ALTERS, DAVID W. M URRAY, & BRIAN BLAKE of a major terrorist attack, where was the president of the United States? early 50,000 Americans died Take the administration’s promo- Obama was in Havana watching a base- of drug overdoses in 2014, the tion of “medically assisted treatment” ball game with the leader of a state that N latest year for which there are (MAT) for the opioid dependent — an sponsors terrorism. If you let the ter- statistics, with heroin overdose deaths example of its desire to cope with the rorists disrupt your routine whenever alone increasing 440 percent over the disease of addiction rather than heal- there’s a terrorist attack, Obama said, previous seven years. On March 29, ing those who suffer from it. MAT (the then the terrorists win. But that’s not at an Atlanta summit on drug over- prescribed use of synthetic opioids like the message he sent when he decided dose deaths, President Barack Obama buprenorphine or methadone as sub- to sit next to Raúl Castro rather than acknowledged that more people now stitutes for opioids) can be an impor- stand by Europe. die of drug overdoses than die in traf- tant intermediate treatment to help The message was this: Isolating fi c accidents. In the eighth year of his stabilize the addicted and get them Cuba for 50 years was wrong. For presidency, we are now in one of the on the path to recovery. But rather Obama, even when the Soviets based most lethal drug epidemics our nation than use it as a bridge to full recov- nuclear weapons 90 miles from Amer- has ever endured. ery as has been the usual protocol, the ica, it was a mistake. It was wrong What did the president offer as a Obama administration has declared to make too big a deal out of the dif- response? The policy list is familiar: MAT as the fi nal, long-term solution ferences between communism and more training for physicians, insurance for what it sees as a “chronic, relaps- capitalism, Obama told an audience “parity” for drug treatment, expanded ing disease.” Abstinence is dismissed in Argentina shortly after his Cuban access to opioid-overdose antidote med- as the wrong goal entirely; instead, excursion. Forget these distinctions ication, and the expansion of “syringe the addicted are offered a lifetime of and go with whatever works, said the services” that give the addicted needles dependence on opioid-substitutes. American president. The whole Cold with which to continue the pursuit of Such policies seek to accept War was a mistake, Obama thinks, and their deadly habit. and accommodate the epidemic all the ideas that came out of it, like Obama’s proposals, some use- rather than heal it. And what of the enmity with Iran, like NATO, like the ful, but most misguided, are nearly drug crisis beyond opioids? Meth- international order that America has all directed at the results of the epi- amphetamine, marijuana, and cocaine, underwritten since the end of WWII. demic, not its causes, attempting for instance, also present addictive Who needs Europe anyway? As Obama to mitigate the fate of those already challenges and require treatment. But told a journalist, allies like France and trapped in drug use. In contrast to a there is no similar “medically assisted the United Kingdom are “free riders.” true public health approach, Obama’s treatment” or overdose antidote for Foreign policy isn’t poetry. It’s not policies do not address the epidemic’s cocaine or meth. Those addicted to for the solitary genius, but the grind- spread, do not target the source of the these substances were simply ignored ers. It’s the hard and meticulous work pathogens, and do not prevent new by President Obama. of many men and women over many victims from succumbing to addic- As addiction and the death toll generations who understood the world tion. It is an agenda that will neither climb across the country, the adminis- is fl awed, as are they and the nation, contain nor reverse the epidemic. tration dogmatically pursues an after- America, they serve. Still, as they well the-fact “harm-reduction” ideology, knew, morality in international affairs John P. Walters is the Hudson Institute’s chief averse to prevention, supply-reduction, is the privilege that American power operating offi cer and former director of drug or enforcement. They are bending their afforded the United States and our control policy for President George W. Bush. diagnosis of the opioid epidemic until allies. That moment is in jeopardy. To David W. Murray and Brian Blake are senior it fi ts the available, and ideologically preserve it will require leadership, sac- fellows at Hudson’s Center for Substance desired, tools of response. rifi ce, and humility—all qualities that Abuse Policy Research, and both served in To the extent the president does after the last seven years America will the Offi ce of National Drug Control Policy address prevention, it is in citing have to rediscover. ♦ during the George W. Bush administration. the role of prescription pain-pills in

20 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 predisposing users to take up heroin. medications — are wholly inadequate. supply increasing, expect a cocaine Restricting doctors’ prescribing behav- They demonstrate a pattern of diagnos- resurgence parallel to the heroin surge. ior is offered as a way to control the ing the crisis in a way that fi ts their pre- Drug prevention efforts have col- heroin outbreak. There is some validity existing tools and policy predilections, lapsed. Legal dope in Colorado and to this perspective. But we have a dual while refusing to acknowledge the true elsewhere has driven down percep- epidemic of opioid use. One is strictly nature of the heroin threat. tions of risk among young people. medical, and it is beginning to wane as Taking the heroin threat seriously Nor has legalization of marijuana cut doctors take more seriously the risks of would require the president enforce the cartels out of the action: It is help- addiction. The other epidemic involves the border with Mexico and check the ing them open new business avenues, heroin: It is in full confl agration and is spread of migrant gangs that have using the Colorado black market to not susceptible to the medical adjust- become the cartels’ distributors in the facilitate the production and interstate ments that the president proposes. heartland. The administration would smuggling of high-potency dope. The administration’s own experts at further have to reconsider its policy of To limit the cartels’ power, the presi- the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) early release for thousands of convicted dent needs to enforce federal drug laws and the National Institute on Drug federal drug felons, 99.5 percent of domestically, eradicate their crops in Abuse (NIDA) have recently presented whom are serious traffi ckers, including Mexico, aid Mexican officials, seize evidence that the heroin problem can- all of the 61 inmates whose sentences smuggled drugs, and attack the gangs’ not be apprehended in the fashion the president commuted on March 30. organizations and fi nances within the the White House proposes; that is, the Expanding treatment and distrib- United States. But none of these is high “transition” from prescription opi- on the president’s agenda. His cur- oids to heroin has been oversold. rent budget request cuts funding for In reality, as a NIDA administrator international programs and even has noted, there is a separate her- for treatment, the worst of both oin supply “pull” that accounts for worlds. Funding for the success- the extraordinary increase in both ful Access to Recovery program, heroin use and overdose deaths in for example, was allowed to lapse the past several years, particularly on the promise that the Affordable accelerating since 2010 and with Care Act would fi ll the void. Like no end in sight. NIDA experts fur- many Obamacare assurances, it has ther note that transition from pre- not materialized. scription pain relievers to heroin Well into his Atlanta event, the “is rare.” president made brief mention It is the escalating supply of her- Heroin addict Tara, a onetime mother of fi ve in Ohio, of prevention, and the audience of oin, now fl ooding in from Mexico, uses her hoodie tie to shoot up, October 18, 2015. experienced drug treatment provid- that must be addressed — that and ers, public health advocates, and the trade in illicit fentanyl, a highly uting antidote drugs like naloxone to public safety offi cials responded with potent, synthetic opioid that is making trained fi rst responders are useful pro- sustained applause. It was as if they the heroin epidemic even more lethal. grams, but they cannot be suffi cient were acknowledging that, in the face of Fentanyl is available not because it’s in the absence of a dedicated effort to 50,000 Americans dead, the discussion being diverted from legitimate pharma- constrict drug supply. When the presi- of needles, naloxone, and MAT was ceutical sources but because Mexican dent declares that “the only way that neither suffi cient nor serious. drug traffi ckers are producing it. we reduce demand is if we’re providing But don’t expect anything more Fentanyl deaths appear to be mis- treatment,” he is simply misguided. from Obama. In January, when it classified, according to the CDC, Reducing the supply and availabil- was announced he would lead efforts wrongly listed as due to prescription ity and acceptability of illicit opioids— against rural opioid abuse, Secretary drugs when they are actually part making drugs difficult, expensive, of Agriculture Tom Vilsack may have of the heroin crisis. Since prescrip- and dangerous to pursue— can reduce revealed the troubling truth about tion misuse peaked around 2006 and demand. For example, the cocaine the president and drug policy. He has been in recent decline, this is an shortage of the last decade was driven told the Washington Post that long- important realization: Driving the by supply-reduction efforts in the term strategies would inevitably be epidemic of opioid deaths is the illicit source country, Colombia, and inter- up to the next president. heroin supply, and the administration diction efforts against smugglers. It There will be a lot of urgent work isn’t proposing a single measure to not only drove down use, but more required before we can turn this respond to this fact. addicts sought treatment and recov- around. The president at this point The administration’s solutions — ery. Perversely, even this success is may be just passing through. But his such as “prescriber education” grants now being reversed because of Obama policies will destroy lives for years

NEWSCOM and efforts to “take back” unused administration neglect. With the to come. ♦

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 21 The New Red Scare Are the socialists coming?

BY DAVID AZERRAD of socialism is gaining popularity in America, it ain’t Uncle Ulyanov’s brand of nationalized industries and fi ve- ased on the delegate counts, it seems we may year plans paving the way to a glorious future in which not feel the Bern past this summer—except the state withers away and private property is abolished. in one important regard: Bernie Sanders has There is almost no support in America for the Marxist- made socialism reputable in America. Call it Leninist variety of socialism, which was discredited after the afterBern. we won the Cold War. BIn the one developed country where, as sociologist Cold War socialism came in two varieties. It was used Seymour Martin Lipset explained, “It Didn’t Happen” either to describe the intermediary stage on the way to com- and “Socialism Failed,” majorities of Democrats and mil- munism or as a synonym for full-blown, end-of-history communism. The confusion can be traced back to Marx and Engels, who used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably in their writings. It was Lenin who fi rst distinguished the two regimes. “The scientifi c distinction between social- ism and communism is clear,” he wrote in The State and Revolution. “What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the ‘fi rst,’ or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of produc- tion becomes common property, the word ‘commu- nism’ is also applicable here, providing we do not Young Sandernistas rally in Yakima, Washington, March 24. forget that this is not complete communism.” Complete communism—the higher and fi nal lennials now look favorably upon socialism. Merriam- phase of Communist society—will only come about after Webster reports that “socialism” was the most looked-up the state has withered away. “So long as the state exists there term on its website last year. is no freedom,” Lenin explains. “Only communism makes Bernie Sanders, it is true, did not inaugurate these the state absolutely unnecessary.” trends. In the early ’80s already, one in fi ve Americans Such visions of a stateless society may appeal to Com- thought the United States would be better off if it moved munists and Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists, but they are toward socialism. What the independent senator from sure to fi ll the souls of our self-styled socialists with dread. Vermont has done is to further popularize and legitimize Whatever today’s socialists support, you can be sure it the S-word. requires heavy doses of statism. Conservatives and libertarians are dismayed by the In fact, it is hard to think of a single area of society growing support for an ideology they thought had been in which they don’t want the state to meddle (the only consigned to the ash heap of history. Writing in Commen- exception being the bedroom—so long, of course, as tary, Ben Domenech worries that the “rise of socialism— you’re not smoking in bed). Contrary to what you may real socialism” means that we will need to relearn the hard read in certain conservative fundraising letters, our lessons of the 20th century “by repeating the errors of socialists are not Communists. socialism here.” Nor are they socialists. Real socialists want the govern- Yet a red dawn is not really upon us. Whatever brand ment to seize the means of production—the factories, the machines, the land. They want an economy in which there David Azerrad is the director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center is no private enterprise, everyone works for the state, and for Principles and Politics and the AWC Family Foundation fellow the state runs the economy. “Socialized production upon a

at the Heritage Foundation. predetermined plan,” as Engels once described it. NEWSCOM

22 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 It is true that our “socialists” want the government to majority of the population understands a word differently heavily regulate the economy. As a result, certain industries than it was once understood, they either are ignorant will effectively be converted into public utilities (health of its original meaning or the meaning of the word has insurance under Obamacare). Others will have to be regu- changed. In this case, it’s probably both. lated out of existence (coal plants if the left has its way). The A more recent Reason-Rupe survey found that millenni- government will also need to subsidize particular sectors als who view socialism favorably think it means being kind, of the economy (solar energy) and operate its own corpora- or in the words of one respondent, “being together.” It is tions (Amtrak and Freddie Mac). worth remembering that the current occupant of the White This sure isn’t Adam Smith’s natural system of liberty. House, who calls himself a progressive and not a socialist, is But it’s not Soviet socialism either. It is really just a con- fond of saying that “government is us” and that “kindness tinuation of liberalism by the same means. In theory and covers all of my political beliefs.” in practice, American-style “socialism” and liberalism are That same survey found that millennials associate indistinguishable. This explains why neither Democratic socialism with a more expansive welfare state where “the National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz nor government pays for our own needs,” to quote another Hillary Clinton have been capable of explaining the differ- respondent. In other words, whatever we’re now doing— ence between the two. except more of it. The goal here is not the Soviet Union but Both Bernie’s “socialism” and Hillary’s liberalism Scandinavia (or at least the liberal concept of Scandinavia, understand themselves in opposition to a caricature of which is considerably more progressive than reality). capitalism as sink-or-swim, you’re-on- The United States already pro- your-own Social Darwinism. Both want vides generous benefi ts to the elderly to preserve all the government we now A recent survey (40 percent of the federal budget) have—and add some more. And both found that and the non-elderly poor (22 percent realize that it is much more effi cient to millennials who view of the federal budget). Our social- have the state compel the private sector ists, led by Bernie Sanders, want to to do its bidding than have it run every- socialism favorably fi ll the gap and take care of everyone thing itself. think it means being else. They are clamoring for Euro- This may in fact be the one great les- kind, or in the words pean-style middle-class entitlements son that our left learned from the collapse of one respondent, to provide all citizens “free” benefi ts of Soviet communism. Our liberals and ‘being together.’ like health care, day care, paid leave, socialists are in favor of an awful lot more and college. government involvement in the economy, Appealing as this may sound to but their goal is not to have the state actually own and liberals and the young, real socialists are not taken in by operate factories and corporations. That’s why, for exam- it. The Socialist Party USA’s current presidential candi- ple, they are in favor of single-payer Medicare-for-all and date, Emidio “Mimi” Soltysik, for one, is not on board the not single-employer VA-hospitals-for-all. B-Train: “To me, Sanders sounds more like a progressive It’s not that they have any principled objections to Democrat/social Democrat,” Soltysik explained to the the nationalization of industry. They just have found that Socialist, the party’s offi cial publication. “I don’t see him subsidies, mandates, and regulations will get you where putting forth a socialist proposal. I’m not seeing him talk you want to go more effectively. The Soviet Union had about workers owning the means of production.” shortages. We don’t. In fact, from an orthodox Marxist perspective, Under this hybrid system, the capitalists can hang watered-down socialism, which aims to improve the lot of on to the means of production. But they must play by the proletariat without calling for revolution, is a sham. In the rules of the EEOC, OSHA, and the EPA, pay their his 1888 preface to a new English edition of The Commu- employees a living wage, provide them with health insur- nist Manifesto, Engels denounced those “most multifarious ance, and subsidize their contraceptives. And, of course, social quacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed they must pay their “fair share” of taxes. to redress, without any danger to capital and profi t, all Polls confi rm that most Americans do not understand sorts of social grievances.” socialism to entail the nationalization of industry. A 2010 CBS/New York Times poll found that only 30 percent of f our socialists have much more in common with LBJ Americans defi ned socialism in that fashion. Among mil- and Walter Mondale than they do with Marx and lennials, who express the greatest support for socialism, I Lenin, why have they adopted such a loaded word to that number drops to 16 percent. When the overwhelming describe themselves?

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 23 The 2008 fi nancial crisis may be the key to understand- the fi nancial crisis or the economy really starts growing ing this semantic shift on the left. Though its causes were again, “socialism” will remain popular in America. complex, the left didn’t waste any time blaming it on its The fact that this socialism has more modest ambitions straw-man caricature of capitalism. than its Marxist counterpart should not detract us from the “This fi nancial crisis is a direct result of the greed and threat it poses to free markets. The challenge is not to force irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall the state to privatize the companies it owns (though selling Street for years,” Barack Obama explained in September a lot of the land it owns out West would not be a bad idea). 2008. “It’s the result of an economic philosophy that says We need to disentangle the private sector from the suffocat- we should give more and more to those with the most ing grip of the administrative state. and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else; This may sound like an easier task, but in a certain a philosophy that views even the most common-sense reg- sense, it isn’t. Our government exercises its control over ulations as unwise and unnecessary. And this economic the economy in a much more subtle way than in a socialist catastrophe is the fi nal verdict on this failed philosophy.” regime. Its footprint is harder to detect. No one can truly Obama didn’t need to name that failed philosophy. measure the toll that the government takes on the economy. Everyone knew what he meant. In the absence of a simple, More important, statism, bureaucracy, and rampant conservative counternarrative, the crash became synony- cronyism are largely concealed from the public eye in our mous with capitalism. This allowed “socialism” to present nominally capitalist economy. This allows the govern- itself as the reasonable alternative to unregulated greed, ment to shift blame to the private sector when things go especially for a generation that had no fi rsthand memories wrong, thereby justifying ever more stringent regulations. of the Cold War. Then came the polls asking respond ents The mess bequeathed to us by Freddie Mac and Fannie to choose between capitalism and socialism as the two Mae is blamed on everyone but the state and leads to the alternative ways to run an economy. passage of Dodd-Frank. In this regard, our newfangled Unless conservatives succeed in dislodging from the American “socialism” is more pernicious than the social- national consciousness the idea that capitalism caused ism of yore. ♦ Capital Markets: Our Fuel for Growth

By Thomas J. Donohue When we talk about capital markets, we small businesses can continue to provide President and CEO are talking about banks, angel investors, retirement products for employees; stop U.S. Chamber of Commerce venture capital, and consumer financial the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s products—any form of financing that efforts to eliminate pre-dispute arbitration In an interview at the U.S. Chamber of businesses need to grow. What happens if clauses, which reduce unnecessary litigation Commerce’s 10th Annual Capital Markets the gas is cut off? It’s simple: No risk means and lawyers’ fees; push the Financial Stability Summit, Charles Schwab President and CEO no new factories, stores, or jobs. Oversight Council to improve transparency Walter Bettinger said under today’s regulatory Smart regulation ensures everyone and create designation off-ramps for those environment there would be “no possible has clear rules of the road and a level being targeted as systemically important way” to start a business like Charles Schwab. playing field. But simply layering new financial institutions; and improve small Think about that. Our financial regulatory regulations on top of old ones will not work. businesses’ access to capital. system is so burdensome that an entrepreneur Policymakers must make the system work One of the most important things we can today couldn’t build a great company better for everyone. How? First, they must do is defend capital markets from destructive like Charles Schwab. This is a stinging make the Federal Reserve more transparent political attacks. How policymakers treat indictment and a threat to our economy. and accountable. An independent Fed is our capital markets will determine whether Today many policymakers, regardless of necessary to develop stable monetary we have an economy that spurs job ideology, see the financial services industry policy devoid of political interference. Yet growth, investment, entrepreneurship, and and our capital markets as little more than as a regulator, the Fed leaves much to be innovation. Anyone who denies that and a system of tricks and traps. They say banks desired. For example, unlike other agencies, attacks our financial services industry and and financial services providers are bad it does not publish an economic analysis for our capital markets for their own political actors and must be shut down, broken up, notice and comment when drafting rules. advantage will hear from us. or regulated into submission. The Fed must abide by the same principles They are wrong. Capital is the fuel of as other regulators. free enterprise, and capital markets provide Policymakers also must fix the Labor the fuel for our engine of economic growth. Department’s proposed fiduciary rule so that www.uschamber.com/abovethefold

24 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Clueless Capitalists What has happened to the traditional reservoir of support for America’s market economy?

BY IRWIN M. STELZER by capitalism is a sort of honey pot, and the game for a political leader is to fi gure out how to dip into it. Per- arl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and Irving Kris- haps it takes getting elected to a high offi ce; or establish- tol have two things in common. All three rec- ing a seemingly charitable foundation; or getting in a K ognized the extraordinary ability of market position to dole out favors and collect IOUs to be cashed at capitalism to produce goods, services, and wealth. And just the right time; or linking all of the above and shaping they hoped, believed, and feared, respectively, that capital- it into a single large spoon with which to do the dipping, ism contained the seeds of its own destruction. leaving no trace, as our colleague Daniel Halper lays out in The time may have come when detail in Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious these keen observers of the capital- Rebuilding of a Political Machine. ist system are being proved right. To Ted Cruz capitalism is a Not because the state will have wonder, as indeed it is, but also taken over all the means of pro- a merciless Darwinian process duction and distribution, as Com- that requires, among other things, munists and socialists would have deportation sans pitié, taxing it—or merely the “commanding what workers buy rather than the heights of the economy,” as Lenin incomes of the wealthy, abolishing would have it. The state no longer the sensibly porous but neverthe- needs to own the means of pro- less useful fence that assigns some duction and distribution in order territory to religion without mak- to control the economy, allocate ing it a key feature of democratic capital to whatever purposes the government, and featuring disdain state deems most desirable, and set for the political process that under- prices, including the price of labor. pins capitalism but requires prag- To do that, it needs three things: a willingness to use regu- matic adjustment and, dare I say it, compromise if it is to lation as a tool of control; the power to tax and subsidize; continue to play that role. and a decline in the acceptability of capitalism, especially To Bernie Sanders, perhaps the most transparent of the among the classes that have in the past benefi ted from its lot, capitalism is a system to be changed by a “revolution.” enormous productive power. No, not the bloody sort practiced by his socialist prede- Donald Trump sees capitalism as a system in which cessors when he was honeymooning in the Soviet Union. businesses succeed by buying the approbation of poli- And no, not one engineered by dispossessed horny- ticians in power, no matter which party. Dollars buy handed sons of toil seeking to be freed of their chains, but access to those in positions to confer favor, no matter by a young army of privileged college students who should their beliefs. Doing business requires something other be forgiven for they know not what they do, owing to the than the best product at the best price; it requires favors absence of courses in Western civilization and an appalling from the people in a position to grant them. His candor lack of interest in the work of the Founding Fathers. on the subject is not an adequate defense. Hillary Clin- In short, no need to seek among the various aspirants ton takes a different view. The great wealth produced to the leadership of our nation anyone with a belief in cap- italism as it has until recently been understood: a system Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY in which individual producers compete to offer individ- STANDARD, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson ual consumers the best product at the best price, stay-

Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London). ing within the law while doing so, a law that introduces VIA FLICKR BADLYRICPOLICE,

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 25 into the system noneconomic social values agreeable to a detail how the power to tax and subsidize has become the majority of the population. No need to hope that we will power to destroy capitalism’s ability to provide consum- fi nd such a one as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a vigorous ers with the goods and services they crave. Consumers interventionist but one who sought to save, not destroy, want cheap electricity; government wants expensive wind capitalism by making markets work better to produce machines and solar installations. So it pays well-connected goods and jobs, and distribute essential benefi ts such as businessmen to build such facilities, using taxes on con- electricity and decent housing more widely. Or a John F. sumers to fund that wealth transfer. Government thinks Kennedy, who understood that the purpose of tax policy we should drive electric vehicles, so it takes money from was to keep the goose laying golden eggs. Or a Ronald the paychecks of middle-class workers and hands checks Reagan, who understood that government is more often to those wealthy enough to afford $85,000 Teslas. Govern- the problem than a solution, and that it could better pro- ment thinks you should smoke less and is probably right, vide solutions by making the sup- so it raises taxes on cigarettes ply side of the economy more supple and bans smoking within several rather than by artifi cially manipulat- Today, a sales clerk hundred feet of federal buildings ing the demand side. All in their own while the former speaker of the way, and in all probability well aware in a department store House contentedly puffed away of what they were doing, were seeking lives better than most in the offi ce provided him by tax- to preserve capitalism, by reforming it of her customers did in payers. Travelers are willing to if necessary. the middle of the last pay for more parking at airports, Some overstepped at times, some century. If some jobs but cannot express that prefer- fell asleep at the switch at times and ence with hard cash because poli- were too timid to deploy the tools at paid more than others, ticians have reserved spaces for their disposal, but none sought what no matter: With hard themselves rather than bid and Trump, Clinton, Cruz, and Sanders work a man (mostly men, pay for them on an open market have in mind for us: a stint in offi ce then) could earn enough and taxes travelers to make up for that has no consistent understanding to live decently and to the lost revenues needed by air- or fondness for the traditional under- port operators. pinnings of America’s functioning help his children do even That this creates cynicism capitalist system. better. That was then, there is no doubt. That politi- No need here to detail the many and this is now. cians’ personal behavior and ways in which government has used its ethical bent removes them from power to regulate by replacing capital- the ranks of possible defenders ism’s market with rules, despite the fact that the problems of the capitalist system is equally certain. Which is the could be met by greater, rather than less reliance on prices. least of our problems. More damaging to the sustainabil- Consumers are content to have their electricity made by ity of that system is the behavior of the corporate sector. burning coal, yet instead of making them pay for the envi- The deeds of the fi nancial sector are well known: lavishly ronmental impact we will simply regulate the industry out rewarding the very executives who were not so long ago of existence. Consumers make it clear in the market that bailed out by taxpayers; slipping in charges for services they prefer large to small, European-style vehicles, but that consumers neither want nor knew they were being manufacturers are instead told what mix of the two they charged for; foreclosing on loans of men and women must turn out. Consumers want to buy health insurance serving overseas in the military to protect the livelihoods policies that do not have premiums infl ated with reim- of the bankers ordering the foreclosures. bursements for services they neither want nor need, but But there is more than the banking sector putting people regulation prohibits the sale of such policies, which insur- off the system. High-tech billionaires, many of them major ers would dearly love to make available to consumers who contributors to the party in power, demand and get more would dearly love to buy them. Homeowners who were visas to allow them to import high-tech workers from abroad led to believe that in a free-market capitalist system their after engaging in a conspiracy not to compete for domestic homes were their castles fi nd that government can snatch workers, thereby keeping salaries down and depressing the those homes away to permit developers to build parking supply of Americans who might, were wages set in the mar- lots or shopping malls in order to increase the tax revenues ket rather than in Silicon Valley intercorporate communica- of the government that did the house-napping. tions, be available for those jobs. Hedge fund entrepreneurs, Equally, there is little need here to lay out in painful surely in the top .001 percent of earners, work the corridors

26 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Chorus of the disaffected, from Puck magazine (1897): ‘The Poor Man, The Socialist, The Dissatisfi ed Laborer, The Populistic Farmer, The Demagogue, The Chronic Idler, and The Struggling Professional Man’ of power to arrange to have their compensation taxed as if it to use it. Today, a sales clerk in a department store lives were capital gains and not income, something that offends better than most of her customers did in the middle of even Donald Trump, perhaps because he was too busy set- the last century. If some jobs paid more than others, no ting up a university to have time to open a hedge fund. Gen- matter: With hard work a man (mostly men, then) could eral Motors’ inattention to quality results in deaths in cars earn enough to live decently and to help his children do manufactured during a time when it was operating with a even better. Public schools worked well, and the bright- taxpayer bailout. Drug companies, clearly entitled to profi t est could get a decent education even if they were the from their wonderful research, go a step further and prevent poorest, witness the brilliant products of New York City’s the reimportation of drugs they are willing to sell at lower public universities. prices to Canada. That was then, and this is now. Capitalism continues to produce a cornucopia of goods and services that makes apitalism has always had its discontents. But the life ever-more satisfactory. But as Robert Gordon argues vast majority of Americans accepted it, warts in his interesting The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the C and all, because it produced a dazzling array of inventions of 1870-1970, notably the internal combustion goods and services at reasonable prices, while at the same engine and electricity, had a far greater positive impact on time distributing income in a way that made those goods the living standard of Americans than the current innova- widely affordable. Air conditioning, refrigeration, wash- tive output of Silicon Valley. That is debatable, but what ing machines—not to mention the electricity that pow- is not is that the quality of the public goods that made ered them—became available to almost all Americans, in America a land of opportunity has declined: I ask read- the case of electricity with a major assist from a govern- ers of a certain age to compare the public educations they ment now dedicated to making it more costly for them received with those on offer in Baltimore, Washington,

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 27 New York, and other major cities affl icted with teachers’ o, as Lenin once asked in another context, what unions, kids coming to class from appalling housing proj- is to be done? It would be diffi cult to argue that ects and fatherless homes. And it is these public goods on Sthe solution lies in a new attitude from the self- which the middle class, with its incomes stuck, although seeking political class, members of which believe that at reasonable levels by historic standards, must rely as it the long run is the time until the next press conference pursues the American Dream, which, despite reports to and the very long run the time until the next election. the contrary, still lives, although its hold on life is more Rather, the answer must come from those who benefi t tenuous than it once was. most from American capitalism, but whose benefi ts are That is only in part because the marginal addition to the determined by a system of corporate governance that is quality of life by the latest app is less than the addition of seriously in need of repair that would turn over power electricity. It is because Americans are less willing to accept to the shareholder-owners of the companies: CEO com- the distribution of the bounty of capitalism as fair. Here is pensation in owner-run companies is well below that where both progressives and conservatives have much to characteristic of companies where pliant boards selected answer for. Progressives, with their thousands upon thou- from a roster of friends of the CEO set pay and perks. sands of regulations, have stifl ed growth, leaving the pie Note that few resent our self-made billionaire entre- much smaller than it need be. But conservatives, by focus- preneurs: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, ing until recently only on increasing the size of the pie— Larry Page, and the late Steve Jobs—these men are more greater incentives to innovation, freer trade, constraints on capitalist icons than capitalist running dogs, to borrow trade-union work rules—ignored just how that pie is to be a phrase from the rulers of China’s 1.4 billion souls, sliced. Yes, freer trade probably increases global effi ciency; it including 3.6 million millionaires. In Irving Kristol’s also forces unskilled Americans—unskilled in part because formulation, these are “real person[s] . . . who took per- the education system failed them—to compete with $1-per- sonal risks, reaped personal rewards, and assumed personal day Asian labor while conservatives extol the virtues of free responsibility for [their] actions.” And there seems to be trade. And placing the burden of enhancing growth on mon- little anger at LeBron James, or Steph Curry, or other etary policy, which increases the value of assets held by the sports millionaires. better-off at the expense of the value of savings and pensions If corporate compensation could be made legitimate held by the less-well-off, adds to inequality and loss of faith by relating it broadly to performance, profi ts, and atten- in capitalism. tion to the public interest, and if businessmen could Fortunately, Americans complain, and worry, and understand that (Kristol again) “the populist temper and note that the incomes of the counties around our nation’s the large corporation coexist uneasily in America,” they capital, populated by lobbyists, bureaucrats, and poli- might take a different view of many important issues. ticians, are among the highest in the nation, but so Increased minimum wages set by legislatures might far are inclined to stick with capitalism if not with the seem no more artifi cial than executive compensation set entrenched political class. During the Great Depression, by friendly directors. Trade agreements that enhance the when poverty was rampant—real poverty, not lack-of-a- prospects of exports might be examined for their impact fl at-screen-television-set poverty—and the unemploy- on more vulnerable American workers. Demands that ment rate hit 25 percent, Americans continued to believe consumers be protected from misrepresentation might that a responsive government, rooted in democratic seem more reasonable in light of recent history in, say, capitalism, would be more in their interests than the the banking and auto industries. The long-run survival other models on offer—national socialism in Germany, of the system that sustains them might be seen to require fascism in Italy, communism in Russia. After World restraint, the recalibration of moral compasses to point War II, when the head of General Motors, then the sym- in the direction not of what an executive can get away bol of American economic prowess, professed that what with, but towards what Adam Smith called “the fortune was good for his company was good for America, cyni- of others.” cal guffaws were at a minimum. And when America was If that noble thought is not enough to make our cor- called upon to protect not only itself but most of the rest porate chieftains weigh the effect of what they do on the of the world from Communist imperialism, its citizens probability of the survival of market capitalism, perhaps were willing to bear any burden, meet any hardship, an appeal to self-interest will. Let them survey the polit- support any friend in the cause of freedom. Now, cor- ical scene with a cold eye, and ask where they will be porate America is more tolerated than revered, and any if populism, for which I have great regard, turns really candidate suggesting that we bear a burden in the cause nasty, driven by a sense that the current system has to be of freedom is quickly retired from consideration. destroyed if prosperity is to be more equitably shared. ♦

28 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Books&Arts

Detail from ‘The Age of Reptiles’ (1947) by Rudolph F. Zallinger, Peabody Museum America on Exhibit Yale’s Peabody and the birth of museums. BY AMY HENDERSON n House of Lost Worlds, Richard Jefferson, Peale was fascinated by the Conniff fi lls an instructive gap in House of Lost Worlds New World environment. And like the story of how and why Ameri- Dinosaurs, Dynasties, Jefferson as well, he shared the 18th can museums were invented. The and the Story of Life on Earth century’s view of the New World as a by Richard Conniff Icreation of Yale’s Peabody Museum of virtual tabula rasa of civilization com- Yale, 352 pp., $35 Natural History is a tale encompass- pared with Europe and wondered: ing all three subjects of the subtitle, What came before? What are the build- with the most delicious being the drag- gration of New World fl ora and fauna ing blocks of this vast continent? down drama of how dynastic maneu- as “smaller” and “weaker” than Old Peale began to collect and display vering helped spark the museum to World specimens, instructed Lewis specimens from western expeditions life. Rooted in the age of Darwin, the and Clark to collect animal and plant at his Philadelphia home. The col- Peabody’s origin is a creation story life on their western expedition. In the lection burgeoned, and in 1802, his itself about the survival of the fi ttest. large foyer of Monticello, he displayed “museum” took over the top fl oors of Natural history was the fi rst focus animal skins, skeletons, and plant Independence Hall. The Quadruped of museum life in America. Thomas specimens that proclaimed the New Room was populated by specimens of Jefferson, infuriated by the French World’s vitality. bigness (bison, elk, and grizzlies); the philosophe Comte de Buffon’s deni- Charles Willson Peale, preemi- Long Room had over a thousand bird nent portrait painter of the Founding varieties, insects, minerals, fossils, and Amy Henderson is a historian emerita at the Fathers, was also the acknowledged coins; the Marine Room had a huge

National Portrait Gallery. founder of museums in America. Like hammerhead shark and various sea MUSEUM PEABODY

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 29 creatures. All were carefully catalogued evolutionary theory that Charles Dar- tures had lived. The museum’s barren and intended to impart an understand- win had promulgated in On the Origin Great Hall became the canvas for a ing of science to Everyman. of Species (1859). In fact, Darwin wrote muralist named Rudolph F. Zallinger, The atmosphere was meant to be in an 1880 letter that Marsh’s discov- who created an “entire saga of time” both uplifting and entertaining: Peale eries “afforded the best support to the spanning 300 million years of life on charged admission for the public to theory of evolution” since his book had Earth. He created many other murals listen to learned professors giving been published. to contextualize the story and is per- lectures, but he also installed such George Bird Grinnell, who had haps best-known for the 1965 Time- crowd-pleasers as “moving pictures,” accompanied Marsh on that 1870 Life book Early Man, which contained semi-transparent and lighted moving expedition, went on to play a major a foldout in which Zallinger depicted panels depicting Western landscapes role in the growth of America’s con- “The March of Progress” from early that delighted audiences. He was a servation movement. In his own west- Pliopithecus to Homo sapiens. showman and clearly understood the ern travels as natural history editor of The Peabody Museum’s fame was idea of box offi ce appeal. Forest and Stream magazine, Grinnell even utilized in the classic screwball When Peale died in 1827, his sons noted the disappearance of the buffalo comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938), fea- took the museum over until 1842, when as the frontier expanded westward. He turing Cary Grant as a mild-mannered it was sold to P. T. Barnum. Barnum’s became a leading advocate for national paleontologist, Katharine Hepburn as American Museum was a popular mid- measures to protect the buffalo from a daffy heiress, and a leopard named century New York attraction that dis- slaughter, and for legislation that Baby. The plot involves the search for played (in his words) a conglomeration would bar uncontrolled mining across an “intercostal clavicle” (a nonexist- of “industrious fl eas . . . jugglers, living the Western landscape. He partnered ent bone in real life) and Cary Grant’s tableaux, gypsies.” Barnum explained with Theodore Roosevelt, then a New assembly of a Brontosaurus-like skel- in his autobiography, “It was my mono- York state assemblyman, to found the eton similar to one displayed at the mania to make the Museum the town Boone and Crockett Club—a group Peabody Museum. wonder. . . . [M]y ‘puffi ng’ was more of wealthy East Coast hunters who One of the leading fi gures in the persistent, my posters more glaring, my sought to protect Western wildlife. Peabody’s postwar history was S. Dil- pictures more exaggerated.” lon Ripley, an ornithologist who com- But at the same time that Barnum he Peabody Museum sponsored bined scholarship with a prodigous was creating museums as entertain- T an 1877 expedition to Colorado talent for raising money. He became ment, a more serious approach to dis- and Wyoming that discovered “mirac- director of the Peabody Museum in playing “lost worlds” was emerging in ulous” dinosaur fi nds: Huge skel- 1959 and stayed for fi ve years before the scientifi c community, and the story etal remains of Jurassic creatures were becoming secretary of the Smithsonian of Yale’s Peabody Museum was an unearthed, including the “thunder liz- Institution in 1964. Public access and important catalyst to this movement. ard” Marsh named Brontosaurus. These public education were key elements George Peabody was a philanthropist incredible discoveries revolutionized in the Ripley mantra, and as Conniff who believed in supporting education. fi eld and collecting procedures, gener- writes, “he wanted the Peabody to be a He had already helped fund Harvard’s ated a startling growth in paleontology source of excitement and to be talked Peabody Museum of Archaeology and as a science, and stimulated great pub- about.” Ripley’s time at the Peabody Ethnology when his nephew, the Yale lic interest. gave him a forum for developing “his professor of paleontology O.C. Marsh, The popularity of these dinosaur grand worldview and his sense of mis- convinced him in 1866 to donate discoveries also precipitated an infa- sion for museums everywhere.” $150,000 to establish a Yale Museum of mous Gilded Age scientifi c feud known At the Smithsonian, Ripley would Natural History. as the Bone Wars, a cutthroat rivalry add eight museums and seven research Marsh was a colorful fi gure whose between the Peabody’s Marsh and the facilities and, along with J. Carter specimen collections would form the Philadelphia paleontologist Edward Brown at the National Gallery of core of the Yale museum. His impor- Drinker Cope. As Richard Conniff Art, create a dynamic “new museum tant collecting began in 1870, when he explains, both men used their wealth age” rooted in scholarship but enliv- took a group of graduate students on a and infl uence to fi nance competing ened with showmanship. Explaining western expedition to Nebraska, where expeditions to procure fossils. By 1892, his philosophy in a 1984 talk at the they uncovered an ancient boneyard. the “Great Dinosaur Rush” launched Peabody Museum, Ripley said that Over the next decade, fossil remains by their feud had led to the discovery “something about the word ‘museum’ of early dinosaurs, horses, and camels of over 140 new dinosaur species, 32 of tends to make people feel very slightly would be shipped back to Yale by the which remain valid today. dreary, but this is not a dreary museum railroad-car-load. Marsh’s discovery In the 20th century, the Peabody and all museums, with my thinking, of what he called “birdlike Reptiles, Museum was in the forefront of creat- should be places of life and enjoyment and Reptilian birds” helped link birds ing displays that helped museumgoers and gaiety and fun because that is what to dinosaurs and bolstered the idea of understand how these skeletal crea- education is all about.” ♦

30 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 sharia courts to control the population. On December 6, 2014, a year and a B&A half after Yazbek’s last trip to Syria, the 74-year-old German journalist, pub- lisher, and former Bundestag member Word from the Ashes Jürgen Todenhöfer traveled from Tur- key to territory claimed by the Islamic Chronicling the collapse of Syria State. He was the fi rst Western journal- and the rise of the Islamic State. ist allowed into areas controlled by the Islamic State, and his journey is metic- BY KIP EIDEBERG ulously described in My Journey into the Heart of Terror. t is an ordinary summer day in Todenhöfer’s book, like many other northern Syria, in 2013. No bar- The Crossing fi rst hand accounts from inside authori- rel bombs fi lled with shrapnel My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria tarian regimes, has its limitations: It by Samar Yazbek that indiscriminately kill all translated by Nashwa Gowanlock is not always clear if the story unfolds Iliving things; just a few artillery shells and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp through the eyes of the author or the that no one pays much attention to. Ebury, 288 pp., $16.95 jihadists that are all too eager to serve as Suddenly a bomb hits close to a house his guides. He travels with a guarantee of where members of the Free Syrian safe passage from the offi ce of the caliph, Army are drinking tea. The men are My Journey into which is dominated by ex-offi cers from the Heart of Terror thrown violently to the ground. Then Ten Days in the Islamic State Saddam Hussein’s army and security they begin to laugh. by Jürgen Todenhöfer services. At every checkpoint, before “They never stopped laughing, Greystone, 288 pp., $26.95 every interview, he fl ashes the letter and these men,” writes Samar Yazbek in animosity quickly turns to camaraderie. The Crossing. “It was as though they It is all a bit too convenient. inhaled laughter like an antidote to In fact, it is hard not to suspect that death.” Yazbek, an outspoken critic of Todenhöfer is (or allows himself to be) Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was forced taken in by his jihadist hosts, who pose into exile from her homeland in 2011, with their M16s, sport Bayern Munich only to make several clandestine trips jerseys, play video games, and drink back to war-torn northern Syria in Pepsi. But thanks to the courage and 2012 and 2013. Her language is per- commitment with which he reports sonal and powerful. She describes acts from deep inside Islamic State territory, of horror that are almost too unbear- the reader is treated to some rare and able to process: corpses, crippled chil- intimate encounters with Islamists. dren, survivors clustered in shacks A car trip through IS-controlled ter- and hovels, constant airstrikes from ISIS in Raqqa Province, Iraq (2014) ritory with Jihadi John as driver and the sky. Abu Qatadah—also known as Christian “The only victor in Syria is death: were not strong enough and, ulti- E., a sandy-haired former IT special- no one talks of anything else,” she mately, lacked antiaircraft missiles to ist from the Ruhr—as tourist guide is a writes. “Everything is relative and protect the civilian population against surreal experience. Todenhöfer asks Abu open to doubt; the only certainty is Assad’s relentless bombing campaign. Qatadah if IS has anything to do with that death will triumph.” When better-armed and better-funded religion, and quotes the verse from the This is a powerful, moving, and Islamic extremists moved in, their Koran saying that whoever kills a per- often poetic account of a peaceful infl uence over villages and towns son unjustly has killed all mankind. Abu uprising that began with much prom- grew, and northern Syria gradually Qatadah calmly explains that all infi dels ise only to descend into bloodshed. fragmented into independent areas must die, and Shiite Muslims, as apos- She conducts long interviews with controlled by different rebel groups. tates, are no exception. “If they do not warlords, men from the Free Syrian By the time ordinary Syrians real- convert,” he says, “then they must die. Army as well as representatives of ized what was happening, it was too It sounds crass, but we do not care about the Islamic State. The armed people’s late. By 2012, a power vacuum had numbers. We have no borders, only front resistance brigades, as she calls them, spread across the northern part of that lines. The goal is world domination.” trying to defend their communities, country. It was quickly fi lled by the At the Syria-Turkey border, Toden- Islamic State and groups such as the al höfer watches as trucks fi lled with new Kip Eideberg is a writer and consultant Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, which set recruits arrive every 20 minutes. “I

in Washington. up a network of local informants and just could not believe the glow in their REUTERS

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 31 eyes,” he writes. “They felt like they were coming to a promised land, like they were fi ghting for the right thing.” B&A The would-be jihadists are carefully documented and screened: What are their weaknesses? Who can be black- High Anxiety mailed into remaining with the group? Which addictions can be exploited? The The anguished vision of Edvard Munch Islamic State operates like any other well-organized intelligence agency dur- and his school. ing wartime, with informants placed in BY DANIEL ROSS GOODMAN strategic locations. In Mosul, the largest city occupied hy don’t men and by IS, Todenhöfer meets many Europe- women really like Munch and Expressionism Neue Galerie, New York ans. These are young men and women one another nowa- through June 13 who, frustrated with life in the West, days?” asks Connie have been lured to the Middle East by ‘Win Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Like D. H. promises of adventure and the good Lawrence’s creation, the ground- the ever-present specter of death— life. (Recent research shows that the breaking Norwegian artist Edvard emerge in startling fashion through vast majority of people who join IS Munch (1863-1944) also felt let down his highly personal, extremely origi- and other jihadist groups are recruited by the ignis fatuus of true love—that nal paintings and innovative prints, by family and friends; radicalization elusive will o’ the wisp that too often many of which can now be viewed at hardly ever occurs in mosques.) Toden- this superb exhibition. höfer paints a picture of a vibrant city Organized in partnership with the full of life, where a curious sense of Munch Museum of Oslo, the exhibi- normality reigns. The stores are open; tion concentrates upon Munch’s affi n- the streets are full of people; father and ity with (and decisive impact upon) sons enjoy raisins, ice cream, and coffee German and Austrian Expressionists. as they stroll around the ancient streets. It displays not only Munch’s work but It is like any Western city—except that that of those he infl uenced, from Egon 1.5 million people are brutally con- Schiele to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, trolled by no more than 15,000 jihadists. Oskar Kokoschka, and Max Beckmann, At the end of his journey the façade persuasively arguing that Munch was starts to crumble. Todenhöfer tries on “the father of Expressionism.” a suicide vest; but when he examines There are few fl aws to be found the trigger, the young fi ghters standing here, but if one wishes to quibble, per- around him quickly put an end to the haps the organizers could have made demonstration. Fear overcomes bravado. clear just how distinctive Northern These are two very different fi rst- European art was—with its depictions hand accounts from behind the bor- of nature as fraught with peril and its ders of the Islamic State. Above all, portrayal of the human as a helpless Samar Yazbek bears witness: The Cross- creature fated to live in an inhospita- ing is a personal account of her devas- ‘Puberty’ (1894-95) ble landscape—from the traditions of tated homeland, a chronicle of how Classicism (predominant in Southern Syria has systematically been “hanged, fails to guide its followers to the Europe) and even Impressionism (pre- drawn and quartered.” Jürgen Toden- arcadia of lasting bliss. Munch’s pes- dominant in France), in which humans höfer’s reportage is, at times, tediously simism about the possibility of fi nd- are at home in a placid and serene nat- admonitory but provides a fascinating ing everlasting love—his troubled ural world. Moreover, despite a helpful account of people little understood in views of sexuality, his persistent and informative timeline of Munch’s the West. He sets out to understand life melancholy, his expressive use of life, the show is not arranged chrono- among the jihadists and returns with line and color to transfi gure nature, logically. We come to The Scream a stark warning: The Islamic State is illustrate emotion, and convey inner (1895) at the end of the exhibition, “much stronger and much more dan- psychological realities, his unshak- as if all of Munch’s other works were gerous” than the West realizes. And able existential anxiety centered upon appetite-whetting attractions and The regardless of who is dropping the Scream is the piping-hot feature pres- bombs, the civilian population is suf- Daniel Ross Goodman is a writer entation—which, undoubtedly, it is. fering unimaginable horrors. ♦ and rabbinical student in New York. This gives the impression that The

32 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Scream represents the culmination of a wave of Sadness—I paused, tired to bucked you up for a while, then left Munch’s career, when in fact it came Death. Above the blue-black, fjord and you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It midway through his journey. Viewers city, Blood and fl aming tongues hov- was as if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was may be led to believe that Munch’s art ered. My friends walked on—I stayed fraying out to nothing. grew darker and more anguished as behind—Quaking in Angst—I felt the his life progressed when, in fact, after great Scream in Nature.” No one would have agreed more receiving treatment in Copenhagen Or as Connie refl ects in Lady Chat- readily with these sentiments than Law- for a 1908 breakdown, his art became terley’s Lover: rence’s contemporary Munch, for whom progressively brighter, cheerful, even All the great words . . . were can- the human being was an anguished, life-affi rming, a fact most prominently celled for her generation: love, joy, anxiety-ridden, sexually tormented exemplifi ed in Sunbathing (1914-15), an happiness, home, mother, father, creature, at home nowhere in nature, oil painting of nude bathers frolicking husband, all these great dynamic and—like the war-torn Europe of words were half dead now, and dying in a pleasant, sunny, Gauguin-like par- from day to day. . . . As for sex, the D. H. Lawrence and Edvard Munch’s adise. Its exuberant use of lush, vivid last of the great words, it was just a lifetimes—dying from day to day, colors has none of the pessimism and cocktail term for an excitement that fraying out to nothing. ♦ melancholy that characterize much of Munch’s mordant earlier work. Still, despite Munch’s emergence B A from the dark forest in which he’d been & lost, he never found the straight path that might have granted him a modi- cum of peace. He never quite shook off Life Within Lives the constant consternation that pierced Who reads—and who writes—biographies, and why? his heart with forebodings of loneliness and death. So it’s appropriate to look BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN closely at The Scream, not only as one of modern art’s masterpieces but as the defi ning masterwork of Munch’s career. hen I come upon an published writing. He wrote back to We see The Scream in a small, nar- artist, a philosopher, a say that he would be pleased to help row, dimly lit chamber, giving us the scientist, a statesman, me in any way he could, though he feeling that we’ve entered a chapel, an athlete I admire, I would prefer I put my liberal politics almost a private confessional, in stark fi Wnd myself interested in his or her back- in mothballs and promise never again contrast to the wide, spacious room in ground, which is to say in their biog- to use the word “explicate.” which Kirchner’s Street, Dresden (1908) raphy, in the hope of discovering what Three great facts, or so I thought, and Schiele’s Man & Woman (1914) are in their past made possible their future dominated John Dos Passos’s life. displayed. It is a fi tting space for this eminence. I fi nd it more than a touch The fi rst is that he was born a bastard, iconic image, a painting of an agonized diffi cult to understand anyone so incuri- but— an interesting twist here—an prayer from the depths of the soul. ous as not to have a similar interest. upper-class bastard, the son of a man The screamer is a ghostly, Nos- I have myself written scores of who was a successful American lawyer feratu fi gure of death-in-life, a living biographical essays, but never a full- and of a mother who was a Virginian memento mori, an animated Yorick’s blown biography. I once took a pub- of high social standing. He, John Dos skull perched on a rail-thin fi gure. lisher’s advance to write a biography Passos, went to Choate under the name In the background, two boats can be of the American novelist John Dos John Madison, and thence to Harvard. vaguely discerned amidst the swirl- Passos, a fi gure now slowly slipping The second fact is that he wrote a, if ing, hallucinatory lines and lurid col- into the vast limbo inhabited by the not the, Great American Novel, U.S.A. ors that encircle the spectral fi gure, once-famous but now nearly forgot- by title, a work using modernist tech- seemingly trapped in a feverish dream. ten. I was 32, Dos Passos was then 73, niques to explore the pressures that Perhaps the shipboard dream was the and would die a year later. After I had society puts on men and women of all premonition of the horrors of the two signed my contract, I wrote to inform social classes. It is a book that, when world wars, much as the plague had him that I hoped to write his life and I fi rst read it at the age of 19, greatly arrived from Asia by boat, spread by sent him some samples of my own moved me. The third fact is that Dos rats stowed on mercantile vessels. The Passos underwent a strong political best description of The Scream comes Joseph Epstein, a contributing editor, is the conversion, from a man who in 1932 from the artist himself: “I was walk- author most recently of the forthcoming voted for William Z. Foster, the Com- ing along the road with two friends,” Frozen in Time: Twenty Stories. This is munist candidate for president, to a wrote Munch, “the sun was setting— adapted from a lecture given at a recent man of deeply conservative principles the sky turned blood-red. And I felt conference on biography at Hillsdale College. and views. The work of the Stalinists

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 33 in the Spanish Civil War, prepared to nous writings) because Cicero is one taken up with the fear of being dupes, kill the innocent to gain their ends, of the hundred or so key fi gures in and who always see the faults of oth- not only changed Dos Passos’s politics Western history and my ignorance of ers so plainly, are never anything but forever but turned such old friends as the details of his life is one of the many lukewarm friends and useless allies.” Ernest Hemingway against him. thousand gaps in my own knowledge Boissier describes Cicero’s brother A splendid biography of John Dos of that history. I read them because Quintus playing the “ungrateful and Passos was there to be written—but, one of the pleasures of biography is diffi cult part of younger brother of alas, I never wrote it. Life, in the form reading about men and women who a great man.” He provides portraits of demands too elaborate and dull to go played the game of life for higher and of leading female fi gures of the day, into here, intervened, and I was forced more dramatic stakes than one has including Clodia, the Lesbia of Catul- to that most odious act known to the oneself or is ever likely to do. I read lus’ love poems, of whom it was said professional writer: having to return my them also because they reveal Cicero that “she danced better than it was publisher’s advance. Others have since to be perhaps the fi rst example of proper for an honest woman to do.” written biographies of John Dos Pas- the intellectual in politics—he is the These observations on women are sos, but none, to my mind, altogether political intellectual par excellence—a capped off by the remark of Cato “that successfully. Dos Passos’s own fame is subject of long fascination to me, an the day they [women] become your perhaps now too far faded for anyone of intellectual not in politics. equals they will be your superiors.” high literary power to take on the task I hope you fi nd some of these of writing a fi rst-class biography of him. icero was a human type of the remarks about Cicero’s friends and Not that, let me add, at 32 I was myself Cgreatest interest: the man riven contemporaries as interesting as I do. likely to have been up to the job. I have by the division between his ideals and If you do, I trust the reason is that you come to believe that at the heart of any his personal ambition. He felt him- share my interest in human character fully realized literary work, apart per- self drawn to the Roman aristocracy and in that still, that probably per- haps from satire and parody and lyri- yet put off by its insolence; he felt petually, mysterious force behind it, cal poetry, is honoring the complexity the natural confl ict between the tem- human nature. “The proper study of of the subject; and in the case of John perament of the man of letters and the mankind,” as Alexander Pope had it, Dos Passos, I am fairly certain that I politician (for he was both). He was “is man.” If there is a more interest- could not have done so at that relatively alternately fascinated and disgusted ing subject than human character, I do early age. by politics, regularly retreating from not know it. Part of its interest derives A successful biography is, at a them to his library at his villa at Tus- from its bottomlessness, its inexhaust- minimum, one that conveys what the culum, then drawn back to the fray at ible variety. Why does one person, world thinks of its subject, what his Rome. He was a man who knew dis- despite all the disadvantages dealt him closest family and friends think of appointment in a mistaken marriage by the lottery of birth, survive, sur- him, and fi nally, crucially, and some- and tragedy in the loss of a beloved mount, and go on to achieve greatness, times most diffi cult to obtain, what he daughter when she was 30. He left a while another, with every advantage thinks of himself. I have lately read bibulous son, in whom the family line allotted to him, stumbles, falls, goes two excellent biographies of Cicero petered out. Attempting always to down? Biography is the most promis- (106-43 B.C.), one by the German clas- avoid extremes, longing for a return ing place to seek out the answers. sicist Manfred Fuhrmann, the other to the glories of the Roman Republic, Some people read biography to by the 19th-century French classi- about which he may have been guilty compare the subject’s life to their cist Gaston Boissier, and what makes of fantasizing, Cicero ended up being own. In the cant term, they “iden- both biographies especially good is killed by Marcus Antonius’ men, who tify.” One wonders, though, if this the large cache of 900 or so of Cicero’s nailed his severed head and the hands isn’t a crude way of reading biogra- letters that have survived along with that wrote attacks upon Antonius up phy. I read Peter Green’s biography another 100 or so letters from his in the Forum for all to see. of Alexander the Great, I promise correspondents. These letters reveal In Gaston Boissier’s brilliant biog- you, without once thinking of weep- Cicero in all the pride, fear, hope, dis- raphy, Cicero and His Friends (1897), ing because I had no more worlds to appointment, vanity, and grandeur of one is offered dazzling portraits of conquer. Nor did I identify when I a man engaged in Roman politics at such fi gures as the fi nancier Pom- read E.F. Benson’s Life of Alcibiades; the highest level. Written more than ponius Atticus, of whom Boissier instead, I marveled at the hijinks of a two millennia ago, Cicero’s letters, writes: “he was the most adroit man man who may have been the world’s marshaled into pertinent order by of that time, but we know that there greatest seducer and con artist. I brilliant biographers, bring him to are other forms of praise which are should have to be a fantast of the fi rst life in a far more intimate way than of more value than this.” Of Cicero’s water to imagine myself as even in any other fi gure in classical antiquity. protégé Marcus Caelius Rufus, Bois- any way comparable to such men. I read these biographies of Cicero sier writes: “Those cautious and clear- Identifying with historical fi gures (along with some among his volumi- sighted persons, who are entirely is reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov’s

34 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 remarking on the coarseness of iden- in none more than in the story called our destiny, made us succeed or fail, tifying with characters in fi ction. The “The Figure in the Carpet.” The nar- brought us contentment or depres- best readers, he felt, identifi ed with the rator of that story seeks to discover the sion. Galen Strawson, the English artist. By this I take it Nabokov meant animating force behind the work of an philosopher, in a chapter of a recent that when a character in fi ction gets older novelist he admires named Hugh book called Life-Writing, thinks oth- in a tight spot, don’t worry about that Vereker. Vereker allows that there is erwise, holding that life is what we character, worry instead about how the such a force—“It’s the very string that make of it, free fall, essentially pat- artist will get him out of it. One ought my pearls are strung on,” he tells the ternless, leaving us all in the condi- to read biographies in roughly the same narrator—but he isn’t about to reveal tion not of Persian but of shag rugs. spirit, with a certain sophisticated Is this so? If it is, does this not detachment; if worrying, then leave us little more than mere expending that worry not on the bugs in a vast rug of a design life of the subject but on the skill beyond all possible fathoming? of his chronicler, the biographer, About Henry James’s strange whose task it is to take the measure story one thing is clear: James sides of the person he is writing about not with his narrator but with his with reasonable exactitude and invented novelist Hugh Vereker. penetrating judgment, all going to In another, more widely known, form a persuasive portrait. story, “The Aspern Papers,” James Many years ago I read through writes with contempt about the the fi ve volumes of Leon Edel’s prying biographer ready to do biography of Henry James. As a anything to acquire the letters of a writer, I cannot say that I identi- long-dead famous poet—by some fi ed with James, a man infi nitely thought to be Lord Byron—from more subtle than I. But I did, I his now-elderly lover. Such is the like to think, take a few lessons want of scrupulosity on the part from Henry James. James wrote of the biographer that James has a story called “The Lesson of the the elderly lover in the story call Master,” in which a famous novel- him a “publishing scoundrel.” ist advises a young writer not to Late in life, Henry James marry because it will impede his burned a vast quantity of his let- art. When the wife of the famous ters, an act meant to discourage novelist dies, he turns round and any possible biographers of his marries the woman the young own life. An empty gesture, as it writer loves. Might the lesson here turned out, for so charming were be that the best advice is not to James Boswell: ‘No biographer has ever rendered James’s letters that everyone else take advice, at least in matters of his subject a greater service.’ saved those he sent to them, with the heart? the result that the University of Edel’s biography provides the best what it is. Another literary critic, a Nebraska, which is publishing all his account I know of the quotidian life man named George Corvick, claims extant letters, recently brough out its of the professional writer. The biog- after long effort to have discovered it, tenth volume of Henry James letters, rapher recounts James’s dealings with this repeated theme that turns up ever and this volume goes up only to 1880. editors and publishers, his hopes for so subtly in Vereker’s work, “some- James lived on to 1916. popularity and commercial success (“I thing like the fi gure in a Persian car- Leon Edel, who much admired can stand a great deal of gold,” James pet.” Before revealing it in a book he is Henry James, nonetheless could not once remarked, though little enough writing, Corvick dies in a carriage acci- resist Freudianizing him. Edel’s rather of it came his way through his writ- dent. He had revealed the great secret orthodox Freudianism mars but does ing); above all, his loneliness and the to his wife, but she, too, is not telling. not destroy his fi ve-volume work. He almost certain loneliness of anyone who Vereker himself dies, and the great does not lock James into an Oedipus chooses, as James did, the spectatorial, underlying force propelling his work is complex. But he does make great hay as opposed to the active, life. never discovered—which, one senses, out of what he takes to be the sib- Henry James was both fascinated is fi ne with Henry James. ling rivalry between James and his and repelled by biography. He him- The metaphor of the fi gure in the equally brilliant if utterly different self wrote a biography of the Ameri- carpet is wonderfully suggestive, older brother William, even hint- can sculptor William Wetmore Story. causing us to look into our own lives ing at homoerotic feeling for Wil- The biographical question plays out to discover if there is some repeated liam on Henry’s part. Was the rivalry

DE AGOSTINI / GETTY IMAGES in many of James’s own stories, and pattern or theme that has guided truly there? My own view is that the

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 35 two brothers were so different in their the Larkin-Kingsley Amis correspond- and Mencken both, between comically mental makeup—the intellectual note ence and other of Larkin’s letters, expressed reactionary opinions and sounding most strikingly in William, Motion, with a great display of self- lives marked by gracious actions. the aesthetic in Henry—that rivalry virtue, convicts Larkin of misogyny, A fl agrant case of politics ruining wasn’t really at issue. They competed, racism, and the other standard charges biography is that of a Stanford profes- so to say, at different games: philosophy leveled in the court of political correct- sor named Arnold Rampersad in his for William, literature for Henry. Com- ness. This has since been set right by a biography of Ralph Ellison. I came to paring the two is rather like asking who recent biography of Larkin by a man the Rampersad biography, published was the better athlete, Michael in 2007, with a special inter- Jordan or Roger Federer. est, hoping he might solve a Leon Edel does show minor but genuine mystery remarkable restraint—for a for me. Many years ago, Ralph Freudian, that is—in not pry- Ellison invited me to join him ing into Henry James’s sex life. for lunch at the Century Asso- So far as is known, James never ciation in New York. I met him had physical relations with there on a sunny winter’s day at anyone, male or female. Antici- noon, and departed in the dusk pating those later biographers at 4:30 P.M. with the same happy and critics who would write glow as a boy I departed movie in a less decorous time, Edel, matinées. We talked about seri- considering the possibility that ous things, gossiped, told each James was homosexual, noted other jokes, laughed a great that there is no fi rm evidence deal. I enjoyed myself hugely, to suggest that Henry James believed Ellison did too, and ever engaged in acts of homo- departed the Century confi dent sexuality and lets it go at that. I had made a new friend of a Biographers who came after writer I much admired. Leon Edel, alas, have not. For some among them, James’s oon afterward I wrote homosexuality is presumed; Sto Ralph (as he now was his active pursuit of his true to me) to thank him for the sexual nature is assumed to lunch and an immensely enjoy- have been restrained only able afternoon. No answer. A by his timidity. (“The art of Ralph Ellison: ‘a man who later came to regret week or so later, I wrote to him the biographer,” James wrote, his own natural sociability’ again, inviting him to write for “that devilish art, is somehow The American Scholar, of which practically thinning: It simplifi es while named James Booth, who has shown I was then the editor. No answer. After seeking to enrich.”) The Master, a bio- Philip Larkin to be a more than decent an interval of another three or four graphical novel by the Irish writer man in his relations with women, the weeks, I wrote yet again to inquire if he Colm Tóibín, portrays homosexuality people who worked for him at Hull had received my earlier letters. Noth- as at the center of James’s life and has University Library, and everyone else ing. Puzzled, I wrote to him no more. him ogling handsome male servants. who ever encountered him. Had I so misperceived what I thought The problem here is not just a case of Years before this, something simi- the reciprocal pleasure of that lunch mistaken identifi cation, but the effect lar befell H. L. Mencken, who was also at the Century Association? this fi gures to have on skewing the brought in by the political correct- A few years after this, I had a letter interpretation of James’s novels and ness police, Anti-Defamation League from a reader of mine asking if I knew stories in a homosexual direction. division. In Mencken’s case, to the Ralph Ellison. He went on to say that Henry James, were he alive, would usual complaints of racism and sex- he and his wife had met Ellison and his have been appalled. ism, antisemitism was added. These wife at the Newport Jazz Festival, and Biography is, of course, subject to charges, too, turned out to be unjust. the four of them spent a most pleasing other skewings, in our time the politi- Mencken, such was the largeness of weekend together. Afterwards, though, cal not least among them. The politics his heart, married a woman knowing Ellison had answered none of his let- of the biographer, if he allows them into she was dying; he did so principally to ters. What, he wondered, as I earlier had his work, can have fatal effect. I fi rst bring comfort to her. Mencken’s best wondered, might have gone wrong? noted this some years ago in Andrew friends were, in fact, Jews. Dim-witted On the strangeness of Ralph Elli- Motion’s biography of Philip Larkin. biographers seem unable to decipher son’s behavior in these instances, Pro-

Humorlessly picking his way through the difference, as in the cases of Larkin fessor Rampersad, his biographer, sheds BEN MARTIN / THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION GETTY

36 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 no light. Instead, much of his attention determined not to waste further time Yet it took James Boswell to bring is taken up by fi nding Ellison nowhere on these newly made friends. Or so I him to life. Boswell held that, in his near so virtuous a man as he, Arnold have conjectured. biography, Johnson “will be seen as Rampersad, apparently is. Rampersad’s In his biography of Ralph Elli- he really was; for I profess to write, charge against Ellison, adding on to his son, Professor Rampersad not merely not his panegyrick, which must be being a bad brother and a poor hus- wrongly degraded a good man, but in all praise, but his Life; which, great band, is that (in Rampersad’s words) his biography’s pretense to defi nitive- and good as he was, must not be sup- Ellison’s life is “a cautionary tale to be ness (the work runs to 672 pages), the posed to be entirely perfect.” Boswell told against the dangers of elitism and book is likely to scare away other Ellison claimed that, in his book, Johnson was alienation, and especially alienation biographers for decades, which is a sad- seen “more completely than any man from other blacks.” ness and an injustice. To be defi nitive who has ever yet lived”—and he made What Ralph Ellison turns out has increasingly become the goal for good, I believe, on the claim. With all to have been guilty of is not hav- contemporary biographers. A defi nitive his gruffness, his blunderbuss conver- ing, so to say, got on the bus. He was biography, by current standards, leaves sation in which he often “talked for and remained an integrationist and nothing out. Straightaway one sees the victory,” his intellectual bullying, his thought the Black Power movement a impossibility of the goal—unless one acts of extraordinary Christian char- grave mistake. He insisted on the com- does a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, min- ity, Johnson emerges in Boswell’s Life, plexity of black experience in America, ute-by-minute account of a life, defi ni- fl aws and all, a moral hero. Without and refused to play the victimhood tiveness, defi ned as utter thoroughness, Boswell, Johnson would perhaps not game, refraining from the rhetoric of cannot be achieved. have found his prominent place in public rage and demagoguery. He was The greatest biography ever writ- the pantheon of English literature. an artist before he was a politician and, ten, James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, No biographer has ever rendered his in the realm of art, was an unapologetic which I reread within the past year, is subject a greater service than James elitist, believing in pursuing the best not defi nitive. For one thing, the book Boswell did Samuel Johnson. in Western high culture and African- largely shirks Samuel Johnson’s early The tendency of modern biogra- American folk culture to the exclusion life and concentrates on the 21 years phies, under the tyranny of the defi ni- of all else. He did not line up to praise during which Boswell knew Johnson, tude, has been for them to grow longer young black writers simply because roughly from 1763 to 1784, beginning and longer. This may have begun with they were black. Art, he held, was when he was 22 and Johnson 54. Nor Mark Schorer’s 867-page biography color-blind. Nor did he praise estab- has any biographer ever intruded him- of Sinclair Lewis, published in 1961. lished black writers (James Baldwin, self, in a biography, so completely as A recent biography of Bob Hope runs Toni Morrison) if he did not think Boswell did in his book about Johnson. to 576 pages, the fi rst volume of Gary them truly praiseworthy. Rampersad’s So much is this the case that some have Giddins’s biography of Bing Crosby charge fi nally comes down to what he claimed that the Life of Johnson is two to 736 pages, James Kaplan’s recent takes to be Ellison’s pernicious opin- for the price of one here, both a biogra- biography of Frank Sinatra to 992 ions, and the way one knows they are phy and an autobiography. pages, J. Michael Lennon’s biography pernicious is that they do not comport of Norman Mailer to 960 pages, and with his biographer’s opinions. he making of the Life of Johnson is, the fi rst volume of Zachary Leader’s Left to speculate upon what was Tof course, Boswell’s emphases on biography of Saul Bellow to 832 pages. behind Ralph Ellison’s odd behavior Samuel Johnson’s habits, his “infl exi- Why are these biographies so lengthy? toward me and (I gather) others he had ble dignity of character,” his ponderous They are so because of their authors’ charmed, I have concluded that Ellison physical presence—above all, his bril- mistaken ambition for biographical was a gracious and gregarious man who liant conversation, into which Boswell defi nitiveness. They not only want later came to regret his own natural often all but goaded him. Johnson was every word redeemable about but the sociability. In 1952, at the age of 39, he an extraordinary writer. The essays last word on their respective subjects. wrote Invisible Man, a novel that won from the Rambler are among the fi n- Along with being longer, contem- all the prizes and worthy acclaim of its est we have. As a biographer, his Life of porary biographies are less interested day. Although he lived on for another Mr. Richard Savage and The Lives of the in moral heroism (Samuel Johnson) or 42 years and produced two excellent Poets hold up splendidly. In “The Van- simple greatness (Alexander of Mace- collections of essays, Ralph Ellison ity of Human Wishes,” he composed a don, Thomas Edison) of the kind that never wrote another novel. How this poem that still lives. His Dictionary is aroused the interests of earlier readers. must have worn on him psychologi- one of the most impressive one-man Modern biographers labor in search cally one cannot hope fully to know. intellectual performances of all time. of secrets, often ones linked to sexual He would go out into the world, his Along with Matthew Arnold and T. S. behavior. Owing to Lytton Strachey’s natural charm easily making him Eliot, Samuel Johnson is one of the biographical essays in Eminent Victori- friends, and afterwards return to his three indispensable literary critics in ans (1918), modern biographers are as desk, the scene of decades-long defeat, all of English literature. frequently eager to demean as to exalt

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 37 their subjects. Strachey undertook to concubines, and a library of sixty-two izing of history—“Create a concept,” defl ate the Victorians, who, with such thousand volumes, attested the variety wrote José Ortega y Gasset, “and reality fi gures among them as John Stuart of his inclinations; and from the pro- leaves the room”—and the belief that Mill, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Dis- ductions which he left behind him, it human beings are invariably defeated raeli, and George Eliot, constitute appears that the former as well as the by the overwhelming forces of his- perhaps the greatest intellectual effl o- latter were designed for use rather than tory. Biography counters determin- rescence of any period in history. The for ostentation.” Ronald Syme himself ism, the notion of history being made book made great waves at the time of enlivens his history of The Roman Rev- chiefl y, or even exclusively, by irresist- its appearance and had a strong if not olution with dab biographical touches, ible tendencies, trends, and movements. necessarily salubrious infl uence in as when of a secondary fi gure named It reinforces the idea that fortune, acci- changing the nature of biographical L. Munatius Plancus he writes: “A nice dent, above all strong character can writing toward the iconoclastic. calculation of his own interests and an rise above the impersonal forces of Perhaps the best vantage for a biog- assiduous care for his own safety car- politics, economics, and even culture rapher is to admire his subject without ried him through well-timed treacher- to forge human destiny and change being chary of recounting his weak- ies to a peaceful old age.” the fl ow of history itself. For this nesses. A model of such a book, in my In the end, biography is one of the reason, and many more, I say, long own recent reading, is the Russian-born best safeguards against the conceptual- live biography. ♦ Henri Troyat’s Turgenev. Troyat, who also wrote biographies of Tolstoy, Push- kin, and Chekhov, brought his Turgenev A in at a mere 184 pages. The biography B& conveys a literary artist’s life and char- acter in a lucid and illuminating way. When one has come to its end, one feels Men of Steal that one knows Ivan Turgenev well and has a clearer view of his novels than for- After this, even Ed Wood might ask for a refund. merly. If anything is left out, one feels it BY JOHN PODHORETZ cannot have been essential. “The history of the world,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, “is but the biog- n Batman v. Superman, the raphy of great men.” Not everyone Caped Crusader and the Man of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice would agree. Sir Ronald Syme, who Steel try to kill each other. In the Directed by Zach Snyder wrote impressive biographies of Sal- sequel, they should team up and lust and Tacitus, is among those who Ikill the people who made Batman v. would not. “At its worst,” wrote Syme Superman. Its fi lmmakers and the exec- in The Roman Revolution, “biography utives who hired them run the gamut Batman is a vigilante, even though he is fl at and schematic; at the best it is from the unspeakably cynical to the has super-hearing and should be able often baffl ed by the hidden discords astoundingly pretentious without ever to tell from listening-in that Batman is of human nature. Moreover, undue bothering to take a pit stop at talent. a good guy. But he doesn’t. Why doesn’t insistence upon the character and They have violated the basic he? We’re not told why he doesn’t. exploits of a single person invests social contract by conspiring to drain The plot—I call it a plot just to history with dramatic unity at the the coffers of unsuspecting teenag- be nice, because it isn’t really a plot, expense of truth.” ers by telling said victims that they it’s more like stereo assembly direc- Biography and history are of course are going to see a movie rather than tions—kicks in when Superman saves not the same, and yet biography is what a promotional product reel for future his girlfriend Lois Lane from some many among us fi nd most enticing in promotional product reels. Vigilan- terrorists in Africa and, because of history: as when Tacitus writes about tism may be required. that, a whole village is wiped out. Poppaea, Nero’s second wife, that she Here’s what happens in Batman v. Why? We aren’t told why. possessed “every womanly asset except Superman. Batman becomes concerned But there are congressional hear- goodness. . . . To her married or bach- that Superman is a vigilante, which is ings to talk about reining in Superman. elor bedfellows were alike. She was a little like the guy from Death Wish During these hearings, the Capitol is indifferent to her reputation—insensi- being concerned that Mother Teresa blown up. Classic Superman villain Lex ble to men’s love and unloving herself. was ineffi cient at washing the feet of Luthor is the one who blows up the Cap- Advantage dictated the bestowal of the poor. Superman is concerned that itol. Why? We aren’t told why. Nobody her favors.” Or as when Edward Gib- in the world actually seems to care very bon writes of the emperor Gordian the John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, much that the Capitol was blown up. younger: “Twenty-two acknowledged is THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s movie critic. Why not? We’re not told why not.

38 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD APRIL 11, 2016 Superman (Henry Cavill) in half-profi le

Lex Luthor knows that Superman and Superman into fi ghting. Why? We there looked exactly like Ben Affl eck. is Clark Kent and Batman is Bruce don’t know why. He need not bother, It would be unfair to speak ill of Wayne. How? We aren’t told how. He since he has created a monster from the the acting of Henry Cavill, who plays also knows that a giant piece of kryp- planet Krypton in a giant tennis bubble Superman, since nothing Cavill does in tonite is in the South Seas. How? We in the middle of Metropolis. But instead this movie could be described as “act- aren’t told how. Bruce Wayne knows of housing tennis courts, it has a big ing.” Breathing, maybe. Possessing abs, this, too. How? We aren’t told how. He spaceship in it. Why? Here I think we’re certainly. Wearing glasses when he’s just doesn’t know that Lex Luthor is supposed to know why: It’s the same Clark Kent, defi nitely. Amy Adams the guy who found it. Why not? We’re ship that crashed at the end of the last plays his girlfriend, Lois Lane. Now not told why not. Superman movie, Man of Steel. Now, I she’s an actress, because she redefi nes Also, Wonder Woman is around. saw Man of Steel and I don’t remember “talking to a brick wall” in this picture She’s been missing from the world the ship crashing there. Why not? I can when she’s in scenes with Cavill—and stage since the end of the First World tell you why not: Because of the hun- she almost pulls it off. War, except that recently she used dreds of millions of brain cells I once And what of Jesse Eisenberg, who an ATM machine in France. Why possessed that have committed suicide plays Lex Luthor? He acts. Oh, how is Wonder Woman using an ATM in despair over the horrible comic-book he acts. He says two words and then he machine? We aren’t told why. And movies I’ve taken them to. twitches; then he says another word and why, all of a sudden, is she in Gotham I’m not saying that Batman v. suppresses a giggle and narrows his eyes. City? We don’t know why. And since Superman is a bad movie, but when He’s like Mark Zuckerberg crossed with when is Gotham City across the bay Ed Wood—the guy who made Plan the guy Daniel Day-Lewis played in My from Metropolis? We don’t know 9 from Outer Space—saw it in Purga- Left Foot beneath Meg Ryan’s Farrah since when. Lex Luthor is aware of tory, he said, “Really, there should be Fawcett hairstyle from When Harry Met her existence as well as the existence standards.” Nor am I criticizing the Sally. . . I won’t have what he’s having. of a bunch of other “mega-humans” performer who plays Batman; but There are setups during Batman v. because he has footage of them on his after the movie was over, I crossed Superman for at least fi ve more comic- laptop. How? We don’t know how. the street and went into a Lowe’s and book movies in the same vein. Some-

WARNER BROS. WARNER Lex Luthor manipulates Batman did notice that all the pieces of wood one. Please. Do. Something. ♦

APRIL 11, 2016 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 39 “National Enquirer endorses Donald Trump” —News item PARODY

APRIL 11, 2016