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Meeting the 2050 carbon reduction goals in the Waxman-Markey bill will require 180 new nuclear power plants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. However, expanding nuclear energy on this scale requires other policy changes. Whether producing electricity for a high standard of living, economic growth or to power plug-in hybrid cars, nuclear energy should be part of our future electricity supply.
• American nuclear energy technology is a ready solution to climate change • Nuclear energy facilities do not produce greenhouse gases while generating electricity • 104 U.S. reactors already produce 72% of all low-carbon electricity
• We should also develop solar, wind and other Founding Member, The Climate Registry renewable energy sources • Nuclear energy produces more electricity 24/7 Nuclear. Clean air energy. nei.org than any other low-carbon source Contents September 28, 2009 • Volume 15, Number 2
2 Scrapbook ...... The Sound Bites and the Fury 5 Correspondence ...... Recipes, Yale & more 4 Casual ...... Katherine Eastland, heiress 7 Editorial ...... There’s No Free Health Care Articles
8 Obama Caves to Iran Again ...... BY STEPHEN F. H AYES
11 A Stab in the Back Canceling the missile shield betrays our allies ...... BY JAMIE M. FLY
12 Double Jeopardy Two freed Swedish jihadists get right back to the terror business ...... BY MICHAEL MOYNIHAN
13 The ‘Consumer Protection’ Racket Democrats try another intrusion into health care ...... BY DAVID GRATZER
15 The Post-Postracial Presidency What we learned at the teachable moment ...... BY JONATHAN V. L AST
Features
17 Ted’s Last Hurrah ...... BY ANDREW FERGUSON The authorized version of the Kennedy myth receives one more installment.
26 Obama’s Middle East Gambit ...... BY PETER BERKOWITZ There are far greater obstacles to peace than the Israeli settlements.
Cover: Jason Seiler Books & Arts
28 The Tell-Tale Artist Edgar Allan Poe turns 200 ...... BY BROOKE ALLEN
31 Home at Last Which metropolis may claim the peripatetic Poe? ...... BY SHAWN MACOMBER
35 Death in Coyoacán How the long arm of Stalin liquidated Leon Trotsky ...... BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
37 Talk Isn’t Cheap When ‘free speech’ undermines the First Amendment ...... BY MARY GRABAR
38 Venetian Rivals The glory of artistic competition among the masters ...... BY JOSEPH PHELAN 40 Parody ...... Rep. Wilson’s apology is not accepted.
William Kristol, Editor Fred Barnes, Executive Editor Richard Starr, Deputy Editor Claudia Anderson, Managing Editor Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Robert Messenger, Senior Editors Philip Terzian, Literary Editor Stephen F. Hayes, Matt Labash, Senior Writers Victorino Matus, Assistant Managing Editor Matthew Continetti, Associate Editor Mary Katharine Ham, Jonathan V. Last, Staff Writers Michael Goldfarb, Online Editor Kari Barbic, Katherine Eastland, Assistant Editors John McCormack, Samantha Sault, Deputy Online Editors Emily Esfahani Smith, Editorial Assistant Philip Chalk, Design Director Carolyn Wimmer, Executive Assistant Kristina Baker, Design Assistant Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, Tucker Carlson, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, David Frum, David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Brit Hume, Frederick W. Kagan, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Tod Lindberg, P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, Contributing Editors Terry Eastland, Publisher Peter Dunn, Associate Publisher Nicholas H.B. Swezey, Advertising Director Catherine Lowe, Marketing Director Robert Dodd, Canada Manager Patrick Doyle, West Coast Manager Don Eugenio, Midwest Manager Melissa Garnier, Canada Manager (Montreal) Joe Gerace, Mid-Atlantic Manager Perry Janoski, Book Publishing Manager Rich Nordin, D.C. Manager Catherine Daniel, Advertising & Marketing Manager Kathy Schaffhauser, Finance Director Taybor Cook, Offi ce Manager Andrew Kaumeier, Staff Assistant Advertising inquiries: Please call 202-293-4900 or visit www.weeklystandard.com/advertising The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, is published weekly (except the fi rst week in January, third week in April, second week in July, and fourth week in August) at 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505, Washington D.C. 20036. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offi ces. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 50108, Boulder, CO 80322-0108. For subscription customer service in the United States, call 1-800-274-7293. For new subscription orders, please call 1-800-283-2014. Subscribers: Please send new subscription orders and changes of address to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 50108, Boulder, CO 80322-0108. Please include your latest magazine mailing label. Allow 3 to 5 weeks for arrival of fi rst copy and address changes. Canadian/foreign orders require additional postage and must be paid in full prior to commencement of service. Canadian/foreign subscribers may call 1-850-682-7644 for subscription inquiries. American Express, Visa/MasterCard payments accepted. Cover price, $4.95. Back issues, $4.95 (includes postage and handling). Send let- ters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505, Washington, D.C. 20036. Copyright 2009, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. The Weekly Standard is a registered trademark of Clarity Media Group. www.weeklystandard.com The Sound Bites and the Fury
HE SCRAPBOOK couldn’t make returned, uglier than before and no the first time in 40 years, with these Tthe recent march on Washington, longer subject to the minimal restraints choice words: where hundreds of thousands of Ameri- inherent in a national electoral cam- cans arrived in the nation’s capital to paign”—as he invoked a frightening Some thoughts on those angry voters. petition their elected representatives image of rampaging yahoos in their Ask parents of any two-year-old and about fiscal restraint, criticize Obam- “tea-partying, town-meeting-disrupt- they can tell you about those temper acare, protest higher taxes, and promote ing, pistol-packing” fury. Somebody tantrums: the stomping feet, the roll- a variety of allied causes. In fact, we were named Lydia DePillis, a New Republic ing eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that feeling a little sorry for ourselves—hav- reporter-researcher (translation: young the anger controls the child, and not ing missed all the fun—until we read pup who has to work on Saturday) the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the various accounts of the event in the reported-researched to her readers that the anger and channel it in a positive media, which instantly cheered us up. “On Saturday, September 12, America way…. The voters had a temper tan- You could tell the march was a roar- threw a gigantic temper tantrum in trum last week [and] the nation can’t ing success by the deliberate attempt Washington, D.C.” be run by an angry two-year-old. among the chattering classes to mini- At which point, THE SCRAPBOOK felt mize its size, misrepresent its message, the shock of recognition. Temper tan- and cast aspersions on the many thou- trum; where had we heard that before? True enough, but who is the parent sands of citizens who participated— And then it struck us: Who can forget here, and who is the angry two-year- peacefully, happily, and with consider- the immortal observation of the late old? THE SCRAPBOOK has always had able effect, according to the polls. Peter Jennings, the onetime ABC-TV a suspicion that certain segments of Anger was the representative slur. news reader, who summed up the 1994 America’s left wing have misgivings Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker congressional elections, which returned about democracy—dissent, popular was his usual poetic self—“the fury Capitol Hill to Republican control for sovereignty, checks and balances, free speech, all that stuff—and that the exercise of these democratic principles is an affront to those who, by virtue of their virtue, know what is best for us. What They Were Thinking Take the New York Times, for exam- ple. Thomas (The World Is Flat) Fried- bSO PERFECTLY FIRM AND man is enraged by America’s messy LUSCIOUS THAT ) KNEW ) WAS political system, with its balance of GETTING MY MONEYfS WORTH power and universal suffrage and "UT ENOUGH ABOUT MY LOVE McCoys and Hatfields who dare to ques- FOR CANTALOUPES .OW AS ) tion the pronouncements of the White WAS SAYING ABOUT THE BUDGETb House or, say, the New York Times. The spectacle of our popular democracy is so almighty frustrating to Friedman, in fact, that he wrote a column extolling the “one-party autocracy” of the Peo- ple’s Republic of China which, despite its 60-year record of tyranny, political repression, and the slaughter of tens of millions of Chinese, “is led by a reason- ably enlightened group of people” who are doing what Friedman would like to do to America. To paraphrase Peter Jennings, while it might be the job of parents to
LANDOV teach children to control their anger
2 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 Scrapbook
“and channel it in a positive way,” few The homeowners in the neighborhood ers and evangelicals, conservative and Americans regard the exercise of their banded together and, with the help of liberal, all proclaimed her a heroine. basic rights as “anger,” and fewer would the Institute for Justice, fought back. They were right,” Quin Hillyer wrote choose Thomas Friedman or even Over the years one of the developers in the Washington Times. “Beth Rickey, Lydia DePillis as their “parent.” ♦ was sent to prison for doling out bribes; perhaps more than any single person, a city councilman went to jail for accept- helped stop the meteoric political rise of Good News from the ing them. A shady trial judge found in neo-Nazi David Duke.” favor of the town and the developers, Even after facing death threats, Garden State only to be unanimously overturned on Rickey exposed Duke’s odious views by appeal. But last week, after 14 years of secretly taping and releasing his racist small group of homeowners in battle, the homeowners achieved total and anti-Semitic statements made dur- A Long Branch, N.J., has been fight- victory. The town withdrew its eminent ing public speeches and private phone ing to keep their houses since 1995. domain filing, signed an agreement not calls with Rickey. She then founded the That’s when the city government began to seek another one, and will also pay a Louisiana Coalition Against Racism working with a private developer on portion of the homeowners’ legal bills. and Nazism (LCARN), which helped a massive redevelopment project for And the developer has been ordered to defeat Duke in the 1991 Louisiana Long Branch. The developer promised to repair the damage it’s done to the governor’s race. to bump up the town’s tax base; the neighborhood over the years. As Hillyer wrote, “LCARN’s town promised to declare the necessary Sometimes you can fight city hall. ♦ research, political ads and publicity land blighted and help the developer efforts against Duke eventually gar- seize land via eminent domain. (The nered international acclaim. The orga- entire ordeal was chronicled in “Razing Beth Rickey, 1956-2009 nization hounded Duke at every step. New Jersey,” February 13, 2006.) he country owes a debt of gratitude And finally, just in the nick of time in Long Branch itself was no prize— Tto conservative Republican activist 1991, Duke’s balloon popped. [Gover- the town had indeed fallen on hard Beth Rickey, who died September 11 at nor Edwin] Edwards ended up win- times. But the neighborhood the devel- the age of 53. “There had been a time, ning by a monumental landslide, 61.2 opers wanted to raze was one of the last back in the early 1990s, when journal- percent to 38.8 percent. Duke never well-kept, middle-class parts of town. ists and academicians, Jewish lead- recovered politically.” ♦
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 3 with care. He worked to support his family, of course, but also to raise the Casual profi le of those early buildings. If there was one thing Buck hated, it was the THE EYES OF TEXAS sight of them “destroyed either by neglect or by progress,” as a friend of his wrote. In 1965, the Sons of the Republic of y grandmother East- work and leafed through it for the fi rst Texas bestowed on Buck their highest land liked to talk, and time since childhood. There, in Buck honor for upholding the state’s cultural she considered it her Schiwetz’s Texas, I revisited his litho- heritage: They made him a knight of duty to share family graphs, etchings, drawings, and water- the Order of San Jacinto, founded by Mhistory with me, her only grandchild. color sketches of the Lone Star State. Sam Houston in 1843 to gather and So whenever we visited her down in I fi rst heard of Buck from my grand- acknowledge the sons who had sacri- Hillsboro, Texas, she and I would sit at mother in the room where the portraits fi ced for a greater Texas, at the time an her kitchen table in chairs stiff as pews, hung. She’d beckon me to sit beside her independent republic. and she’d speak late into the night. on the white chintz couch, and we’d go Buck worked hard for what he I was too young then to appreciate through the book page by page. achieved. In school he took on extra her tales of soldiers from the American Knowing my bent for art, she tasks and was the art editor of his high and Texas revolutions and the Civil War thought I’d like Buck. Maybe I’d even school yearbook, The Longhorn. After or of belles like Lillie Lee Lipscomb. take after him and become the next college, he worked for various compa- But I could tell she nies, among them Hum- loved her subject, and ble Oil (now Exxon). her energy charmed me. Once he retired, he rose I liked the way her tiny at fi ve in the morning cowbell earrings rang and drew for 8 to 10 whenever she shook her hours. When he faced pepper-colored curls troubles—among them or stomped her foot to alcoholism and the loss make a point. It seemed of his studio and work to me delightfully pecu- to a fi re—he pressed on, liar that she had such resolving to create more a vivid romance with than he had before. the past. In her mind Looking through people didn’t die with Buck Schiwetz’s Texas, I the grave; they kept on, noticed some things in looming large in her La Lomita, near Madero his pictures for the fi rst imagination. time: men in fedoras on When you went into her house, with chronicler of Texas buildings, bluebon- their way to and from the offi ce, long- the pecan trees out back, the fi rst thing nets, and coffee-colored longhorns. It nosed cars parked outside courthouses, you saw were oil portraits of William would have been a supreme achieve- inky crosshatching borrowed from the Harrison “Howdy” Martin and his ment in her estimation. She wholly Saturday Evening Post, and dozens of wife Martha Gallimore, her grandpar- agreed with a line from the inside fl ap Roseate Spoonbills caught up in the ents. They had died before her birth, of the book jacket: “No state has ever ecstasy of fl ight. And then there are the but she knew the details of their lives received a more beautiful token of place names jutting out like elbows— in full and kept their letters, as far back devotion from a son than the one E.M. Varner Plantations in Brazoria County as their courtship in the late 1860s. I Buck Schiwetz has given to Texas.” and Zorn House in Seguin. And there, suspect she talked to their likenesses Buck, like my grandmother, cared on page 95, is the Hill County Court- when others weren’t around. for things of historical significance. house in Hillsboro, still standing in my One of her favorite characters from He rendered iconic buildings but grandmother’s hometown. our family tree was Edward Müegge preferred the ones that weren’t well I try saying all those names aloud, “Buck” Schiwetz—pronounced Shuh- known—what he called “the unher- but I’m a Washingtonian, and my ver- witz—who married Howdy’s grand- alded buildings.” He sought out stray sion sounds fl at. Martha Leila Martin daughter, Ruby Lee Sanders, in 1926. courthouses, like the one crumbling Eastland’s voice, I recall, had just the Buck was an artist who worked as an in Helena, and the oldest churches of right lilt. ad man and freelanced on the side, and every denomination, then drew each the other day I took down a book of his brick, stone, plank, and blade of grass KATHERINE EASTLAND
4 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 You deserve a factual look at . . . Mr. Netanyahu’s Offer (II)
Are the objections of the Palestinians justified?
In our previous hasbarah message (#117, “Mr. Netanyahu’s Offer [I]”), we told of the Netanyahu’s government’s willingness to allow a Palestinian state to arise alongside Israel in Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) and in Gaza. Not surprisingly, he attached certain conditions to this offer, all of which the Palestinians totally rejected. The objections that we discussed previously referred to the “settlements,” the demilitarization of the new state, and the “return of the refugees.” What are the facts? do the over 1 million (approximately 20% of Israel’s In addition to those conditions mentioned above, Mr. population) Muslims that live in Israel as full citizens, with all Netanyahu’s offer of a state for the Palestinians in the “West the rights and privileges of their Jewish fellow citizens. Bank” and in Gaza included two further requirements: One, Nobody seems to object that, for instance, Iran designates that Jerusalem remain the undivided capital of Israel and two, itself as an “Islamic Republic.” For the Muslim world to that the Arabs recognize Israel to be the Jewish state. recognize Israel as the State of the Jews would simply be An Undivided Jerusalem. Before the end of the 1967 Six- recognizing reality. Day War, during which the Israel defense forces reconquered It has to be clear to every student of modern history that the Jerusalem from the Jordanians, claims to Jerusalem being a Palestinians, if that were their real goal, could have had their Muslim city were rarely if ever own state since at least 1937, asserted. Jerusalem had always “Here is another chance for the Palestinians following the Peel Report. There been a city in which many have been many opportunities religions and nationalities lived to have their own country... Chances are since. The most important of side-by-side. It was only after overwhelming that, once again, they will those was the 1948 decision of the old city was back in Jewish reject the outstretched hand....” the United Nations to partition hands that the Muslim Arabs the country west of the Jordan declared their desire to wage River into a Muslim and a “jihad” (holy war) to bring the city into Arab possession. Jewish state. The Jews eagerly accepted the proposal, which The notion to call Jerusalem an Islamic holy city has only the Arabs utterly rejected and instead invaded the nascent come about in modern times, especially after the Arabs lost state of Israel with the armies of five of their countries. There the city to Israel in the Six-Day War. It has now gained have been many other opportunities since, all of which the currency by dint of constant repetition. Basis of the claim is Muslims have rejected. One must come to the unhappy that Jerusalem does indeed contain an Islamic holy site, the conclusion that to create a state is not the ultimate goal of the Temple Mount, sacred to both Muslims and Jews. But Palestinians. The ultimate goal always has been and continues Jerusalem has for centuries been the capital of the Jewish to be the destruction of the state of Israel. people and has been the capital of Israel since its founding. It Mr. Netanyahu’s offer of allowing a Palestinian state to be is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible. There is not a created and to exist along Israel is a most generous offer. No single mention of it in the Koran. parallel can be found in the annals of world history. It is Israel is the State of the Jews. Mr. Netanyahu insists that abundantly clear that the “conditions” accompanying Mr. Israel be recognized as the Jewish state. But such recognition Netanyahu’s offer are more than reasonable. Surely, after is obviously only a formality. Israel was established as the decades of open hostilities and the recent bitter example of Jewish state by the Balfour Declaration, by the League of Gaza, it should go without saying that the newly formed state Nations, by the United Nations, by the consensus of the world, should be totally and reliably demilitarized. It should be clear and by the facts on the ground. The reason that the Muslims that the “settlements” – about 300,000 Jews in a sea of over 3 do not wish to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is that it million Arabs – cannot be an obstacle to peace, since the over would supposedly prejudice the rights of the Muslims and 1 million Arabs living in Israel are not considered a problem. perhaps members of other religions who live in Israel. But It should be clear that the “refugees,” which have swelled from that is nonsense. Regardless of what it is called, everybody the original 650,000 to allegedly more than 5 million, should understands that Israel is indeed the State of the Jews, and so be settled in the newly to be formed state of Palestine. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life and Jewish yearning for over 3,000 years. There is no reason why it should not remain the undivided capital of Israel. And, of course, Israel is a Jewish state. Everybody understands that, whether the Muslims do or do not wish to accept it. Here is another chance for the Palestinians to have their own country and to live in peace and in prosperity alongside Israel. But chances are overwhelming that, once again, they will reject the outstretched hand that is being offered.
This message has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. Gerardo Joffe, President 118 To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org HISTORY REVEALS ITSELF. From Jefferson's famous Capitol to Poe's famous prose, history is around every corner in Virginia's Richmond Region. Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial 2009
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In Richmond, Edgar Allan Poe Poe Bicentennial Package grew up, fell in love, married, $369 plus tax for 3 days/2 nights . 2 nights at the Linden Row Inn with valet parking wrote his first poems, and began . 2 passes to a two-hour Poe-themed Segway tour his literary career. As the world of Richmond . celebrates Poe's 200th birthday, 2 tickets to St. John's Church . 2 tickets to the Poe Museum experience Richmond through . Edgar Allan Poe tote bag with Poe Memorabilia his eyes. To make a reservation, please call 1-800-348-7424 or visit www.poe.lindenrowinn.com. EDITORIAL There’s No Free Health Care
ive President Obama credit for persistence. And to 22 percent of the state’s population, and access to the stubbornness. And lack of imagination. He public plan has been capped. Gdeclared again last week that his health care plan In Massachusetts, “universal” coverage was enacted in “will slow the growth of health care costs for our families 2006 along with a requirement that everyone be insured and our businesses and our government.” And this historic or pay a fi ne. (By 2009, the fi ne was up to $1,068.) Again, achievement will be accompanied by a dazzling array of the claim was made—a claim Obama repeats—that costs new medical benefi ts that everyone will receive—guaran- would decline once everyone was covered. Today, 97 per- teed by law. Okay, you’ve heard this before. But that’s the cent of Massachusetts citizens are covered, the highest rate president’s story, and he’s sticking to it. in the country. But costs have soared to the point the New The question is, why? Does he think we’re stupid? His York Times characterized them as “runaway.” Spending on argument has failed to persuade a sizeable majority of the the state’s health insurance program has risen by 42 percent. American people precisely because they’re not stupid. They A major cause shouldn’t have surprised anyone: The newly understand the laws of addition and subtraction. When you insured have fl ooded doctors’ offi ces for medical care paid offer more—much, much more in this case—of a good, it’s for by others. Now Governor Deval Patrick, a close ally of going to cost more. Somebody has to pay for it. Yet Obama Obama, wants to impose cost controls. says we’ll all be paying less, and that includes businesses The Tennessee experiment began in 1994 with one and government. thought in mind: curbing the rise in health care costs. If he could actually pull off this feat, he would indeed be TennCare was established to cover everyone either on Med- the One we’ve been waiting for. But he can’t. This is appar- icaid or unable to obtain insurance. Rather than bend down- ent whenever Obama explains where the “savings” will ward, the cost curve has steeply climbed. In a decade, spend- come from. They’re from eliminating “hundreds of billions ing surged from $2.5 billion to $8 billion. To cope with this, of dollars” in waste, fraud, and abuse (WFA) in the health the state is cutting the TennCare rolls and reducing benefi ts. care system. Surely, he knows better. Everyone in Washing- The program still consumes a higher share of the state bud- ton recognizes these savings are imaginary. They’re offered get than any Medicaid program in the country. with a wink. They never happen. President Reagan prom- Meanwhile in Congress, there’s a new strategy for fi nanc- ised to slash WFA in the 1980s. The result: zilch. Where ing Obamacare: Tax the health care industry. This, too, is Reagan failed, Obama is not likely to succeed. bound to drive up costs. Take the $4 billion annual tax the Obama may be unaware, but there are three programs— legislation fashioned by Max Baucus would slap on the med- in Maine, Massachusetts, and Tennessee—currently test- ical device industry. Not only would it dampen research into ing his idea of get-more-pay-less. The evidence is already innovative technology, it would raise the price of medical in: Expanded health care coverage costs more, an awful lot equipment. The higher costs would be passed on to hospitals more. There are no known exceptions. and doctors and patients, leading inevitably to higher insur- The test cases mirror Obamacare in one way or another. ance premiums. The president hasn’t voiced an opinion on In 2003, Maine decided to cover the uninsured by expand- this idea, though he’s praised Baucus for producing a bill. ing the state’s Medicaid program and creating a govern- Obama is stuck. He is promoting his health care plan ment-run “public option” to provide health insurance with as a money-saver because that’s what pollsters tell him the subsidized premiums. Controls on hospital and doctor costs American people want to hear. But it’s plain to nearly every- would lead to reduced premiums and savings for everyone, one that Obamacare would be just the opposite. There is a without tax increases, or so it was claimed. Five years later, way out: Propose a reform plan that would credibly curtail “the system that was supposed to save money has cost tax- the growth in health costs. Such a plan exists. The presi- payers $155 million and is still rising,” the Wall Street Jour- dent need only ask Republicans for a copy of it. nal reported. Meanwhile, Medicaid enrollment has doubled —Fred Barnes
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 7 ers “without preconditions” appeared to be toughening Obama his approach just a little. The words were conciliatory and intended to signal a shift from Caves the Bush administration, but he added a condition. The next day Bill Neely of Britain’s ITV News reported to Iran the response from the lead- ership in Iran. “Obama’s is the hand of Satan in a new Again. sleeve,” explained Hossein Shariatmadari, spokesman for BY STEPHEN F. H AYES Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. “The Great Satan now has a black face.” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine- jad wasn’t impressed either. “If it’s like the past and America is bully- ing us then there will be no new era between us,” he said. Obama has spent the interven- ing eight months attempting to convince Ahmadinejad and Iran’s clerical leadership that he is not a bully. Despite these efforts—and in some ways because of them—the Iranian leadership remains fi rmly in power, more radical and more dan- gerous than ever. The Obama admin- istration’s short history of relations with Iran is a picture of weakness. On March 19, in a videotaped peace greeting, Obama offered best wishes on the celebration of Nowruz—the Iranian New Year—to “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Obama spoke of a “season of new beginnings” and said
My administration is now commit- ted to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the interna- tional community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect. erhaps the most discussed pas- “To those who cling to power sage in Barack Obama’s Inau- through corruption and deceit and the In a speech the following day, Khame- P gural Address was his peace silencing of dissent,” he said, “know nei dismissed Obama’s overture. offering to dictators and leaders of that you are on the wrong side of his- “Change in words is not enough, rogue states. tory; but that we will extend a hand if although we have not seen change in you are willing to unclench your fi st.” words, either.” He accused Obama Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The man who had campaigned of following the “crooked ways” of
THE WEEKLY STANDARD. on direct meetings with rogue lead- George W. Bush. GARY LOCKE
8 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 The Obama administration’s of Iran, White House press secretary posed negotiations were called to response was to step up its efforts. In Robert Gibbs said: “He’s the elected address: Iran’s nuclear program. an early April meeting with European leader.” After the outcry, Gibbs The fist was still clenched, and diplomats in London, Undersecre- amended his statement.) the Obama administration clasped tary of State William Burns formally The Iranian regime did not appre- it anyway. “We’ll be looking to see if declared that the United States would ciate the forbearance. In his fi rst pub- they are willing to engage seriously participate in face-to-face talks with lic speech after the disputed election, on these issues,” said State Depart- the Iranians, and the P5+1 negotiat- Khamenei falsely claimed that Obama ment spokesman P.J. Crowley, with- ing group (made up of the permanent had been supporting the Iranian oppo- out obvious irony. The meeting is set members of the Security Council and sition and wondered how he could for October 1. Germany) conveyed the invitation to reconcile the hostility towards Iran Last week, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Tehran. There was no response. So with the conciliatory letter of May. a top press adviser to Ahmadinejad, in early May, Obama wrote a letter Throughout the summer, the Ira- was asked about news reports that the directly to Khamenei to express his nian regime arrested, persecuted, and United States had offered to sell Iran desire for an amicable resolution of in some cases killed the vocal critics Boeing planes as a gesture of goodwill. the disagreements over Iran’s nuclear of the sham elections. The Obama He mocked the reported overture: program and an end to the decades of hostility between Iran and the United The offer for an economic deal such States. In early May, Obama wrote as selling Boeing planes with the aim Still no response, though later of establishing bilateral ties is derived a letter to Khamenei to from an inhuman and materialistic that month, Iran tested a solid-fuel express his desire for an view towards other nations. We con- rocket capable of hitting Israel and sider no value and nobility for such the U.S. bases in the Middle East. end to the decades of relations. Although Iranian leaders have long hostility between Iran and claimed that their nuclear program He added that Obama “is held cap- is peaceful, Ahmadinejad celebrated the United States. There tive by extremist Republicans and the successful test at a campaign was no response, though has been very unsuccessful with rally by declaring: keeping George Bush’s ideas out of later that month, Iran the White House.” In the nuclear case, we send them a tested a solid-fuel rocket message: Today the Islamic Republic capable of hitting Israel bama’s kindheartedness is dan- of Iran is running the show. We say gerous. It requires his admin- to the superpowers, “Who of you dare and the U.S. bases in the O to threaten the Iranian nation? Raise istration to ignore an uncomfort- your hand!” But they all stand there Middle East. able fact: Iran is the world’s foremost with their hands behind their backs. state sponsor of terror and its regime is committed to killing Americans in And that is precisely what Obama administration said little and contin- both Afghanistan and Iraq. did when the Iranian regime brutally ued to insist that the United States For years Iran has been providing put down protests that had arisen fol- wanted to engage Iran. lethal aid to terrorists in Iraq. Briga- lowing the rigged presidential elec- Iran finally answered the invi- dier General Kevin Bergner exten- tions on June 12. He initially refused tation for talks on September 9— sively detailed this support in a press to condemn the crackdown to avoid fi ve months after it was fi rst prof- briefi ng in July 2007. The Qods Force upsetting the Iranian regime. Only fered. The response—two days after of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in after international broadcasts began Ahmadinejad declared that his particular, provides weapons and running the grisly scenes from the country “will never negotiate” on training to a variety of terrorist orga- streets of Tehran on a loop, and fol- nuclear weapons—was almost farci- nizations—or “special groups”—oper- lowing strong denunciations from cal. The ten-page document offered ating in Iraq: several European leaders, did Obama to talk about a wide variety of issues, speak out against the escalating vio- including “elevating the weight and Funding and training of the special lence. Still, the White House never position of environmental issues in groups started in 2004. The Qods supported the courageous opposition the international relations” and the Force supplies special groups with leaders for fear of “meddling” and “enhancement of ethical and human EFPs, machine guns, rockets, sniper never challenged the bogus results considerations and their full obser- rifl es, rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs. Iraqi special groups are trained of the election. (At one point, in vance in international mechanisms, in one of three training camps inside response to a question about whether ties and practices.” Conspicuously Iran and are operated by the Qods the U.S. government recognizes absent from the response was any Force and supported by Lebanese Ahmadinejad as the legitimate leader mention of the issue that the pro- Hezbollah operatives.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 9 Bergner added: “Our intelligence Committee. In July, the Federation of means that Iranian weapons are being reveals that senior leadership in Iran American Scientists released a copy of used against American soldiers and is aware of this activity.” Blair’s answers that it had obtained their NATO counterparts. Former CIA director Michael through a Freedom of Information Among the disturbing fi ndings: Hayden was equally blunt in a speech at Kansas State in May 2008. “It is Iran has both long-term strate- gic and short-term tactical inter- the policy of the Iranian government, In February, Director of approved to the highest levels of that ests in Afghanistan and is not con- tent with merely maintaining the government, to facilitate the killing of National Intelligence Dennis status quo. In the short term, Iran Americans in Iraq.” Blair informed the Senate is primarily concerned with preserving And earlier this year, Lieutenant its national security and undermining General Austin Lloyd, the second- Intelligence Committee Western infl uence in Afghanistan, which ranking U.S. military offi cial in Iraq, that Iran is giving Afghan provides Iran’s rationale for providing select Afghan insurgents with lethal aid. said that U.S. forces had continued to insurgents ‘lethal aid.’ fi nd caches of Iranian-made weapons. . . . Iran has not altered its activities in Afghanistan over the past year as He said the discoveries “lead us to various Iranian offi cials describe the believe that Iranian support activity is Western presence as an occupation still ongoing.” Act request. The report has garnered and Iran maintains a hostile relation- The support for terrorists in Iraq is surprisingly little attention consider- ship with the West. Iran’s policy calcu- well known, but Iranian mullahs’ sup- ing the explosive claims Blair made. lation in Afghanistan currently empha- port for terrorists in Afghanistan has On page 12, he addressed the deadly sizes lethal support to the Taliban, even though revelation of this activity been less publicized. role Iran is playing in Afghanistan— could threaten its future relationship In February, Dennis Blair, the new supporting the Afghan government with the Afghan government and its director of national intelligence, pro- and the insurgents that seek to bring historic allies within Afghanistan. vided answers to a long list of ques- it down. This support for insur- Iran is covertly supplying arms tions from the Senate Intelligence gents—Blair calls it “lethal aid”— to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government. Shipments typically include small arms, mines, rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), rockets, mortars, and plastic explosives. Ta l - iban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful oper- ations against Coalition forces. [Empha- sis added]
On August 29, U.S. forces discov- ered a large cache of Iranian-made weapons in Afghanistan. According to the report by Fox News Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffi n, the cache included a large amount of C- 4 explosives, Iranian-made rockets, and EFPs—the “explosively formed penetrators” that Iran has been sup- plying to terrorists in Iraq. Sources also told Griffin that an Iranian- made rocket had been fi red recently at a U.S. base in Herat. Iran continues to enrich uranium, it continues to support terrorists, and it continues to suppress politi- cal opposition. None of that is sur- prising. What is hard to understand is the fact that Iran continues to dic- tate the agenda of international talks. Ahmadinejad is right, the Islamic Republic is running the show. t
10 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 A Stab in the Back
The launch of an Iranian Shahab-3 missile
Canceling the missile shield betrays our allies. speed up its efforts to develop long- range missile technology or acquire it BY JAMIE M. FLY from a country like North Korea. This shift in the intelligence com- resident Obama’s decision to deployment of a missile defense sys- munity’s assessment dovetails con- cancel plans for U.S. missile tem that has major implications for all veniently with the views of Ellen Pdefense sites in Poland and the of them.” Tauscher, the new undersecretary of Czech Republic is a knife in the back In addition to the geopolitical state for arms control and interna- for those countries. The implications implications of this concession to Rus- tional security and a former member of for U.S. security and the transatlantic sia, there are several major problems Congress, who earlier this year accused relationship are profound. Critics with the administration’s plan. supporters of European missile defense rightly note that the sudden announce- ¶ Questionable intelligence on Iran. In of “running around with their hair on ment Thursday sends a dangerous his announcement, President Obama fi re about a long range threat from Iran message to allies, both in Europe and stated that his decision was driven by that does not exist.” elsewhere, who rely on U.S. security an updated intelligence assessment ¶ Reliance on unproven technol- guarantees. of Iran’s missile programs. Accord- ogy. Obama and his Democratic col- Even those who agree with the ing to the White House fact sheet, the leagues on Capitol Hill have tradition- administration’s approach concede administration appears to believe that ally claimed that they support missile that the rollout was clumsy—middle it doesn’t need to worry about Iran’s defense, but only systems that are fully of the night phone calls and little prior possessing an ICBM capability until tested or “proven.” The problem for consultation. In July 2007, Senator around 2020. defenders of Obama’s decision is that Obama criticized his predecessor for In the wake of the intelligence com- the system they now support is exactly this very thing. The Bush administra- munity’s failures before the Iraq war what they accused the Bush system of tion, he said, had “done a poor job of and its mismanagement of intelligence being—unproven. consulting its NATO allies about the regarding Iran’s nuclear program, it is The White House fact sheet notes surprising to see the White House take that by 2020, the United States will Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the intelligence about Iran’s sensitive mili- deploy the SM-3 Block IIB “after Foreign Policy Initiative. He served in the tary programs at face value. It is naïve development and testing.” Even James offi ce of the secretary of defense and on the to believe that Iran, as it makes strides Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint
NEWSCOM national security staff in 2005-2009. in its nuclear program, will not also Chiefs of Staff, admitted on Thurs-
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 11 day that the technology is “still to be proven.” The ground-based intercep- tors the Bush administration intended Double Jeopardy to place in Poland were much farther along than Obama’s system. Again, President Obama is doing Two freed Swedish jihadists get right back precisely what Senator Obama found objectionable when he said, in 2007, to the terror business. “The Bush administration has in the BY MICHAEL MOYNIHAN past exaggerated missile defense capa- bilities and rushed deployments for political purposes.” ith a black baseball cap Persson—and a vague promise that the ¶ Exorbitant cost. The administra- pulled tight over a mop country’s intelligence services would tion has not stated what its four-phase W of stringy long hair and a keep a watchful eye on him—Ghezali approach will cost. General Cartwright patchy, close-cropped beard, Mehdi- was delivered to Sweden (on the gov- in his briefi ng did argue that relying Muhammed Ghezali looked more ernment’s private Gulfstream jet). The on SM-3 missiles is more cost effective like a Metallica roadie than a disciple Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter noted than using the ground-based intercep- of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He addressed that Ghezali had achieved “rock star tors intended for Poland because the the scrum of reporters status” upon return- individual interceptors are cheaper. in a clipped, heavily ing to his homeland, a What Cartwright did not mention is the accented Swedish and native victim of Amer- cost of the additional radars and bases, accused the American ica’s rapacious imperi- as well as development and testing. government of wrongly alism. And after two- Last year, the Congressional Bud- detaining him for three plus years in isolation, get Offi ce waded into the debate over years and “physically the emotionally fragile missile defense options for Europe and mentally” torturing former prisoner would and concluded that a sea-based SM-3 him. A book about his be happy to discover system—which the Obama adminis- experiences was in the “that a majority of tration plans to deploy during phase works; a documentary Swedes were glad that one—would cost $21.9 billion, much crew, cobbling together he was home.” more than the $12.8 billion for the a fi lm about American That his story was Bush missile shield. human rights abuses, threaded with head- had requested an audi- scratching omissions he announcement came prior to a ence; and his legal and inexplicable gaps Tfl urry of autumn diplomacy—the team was plotting a Ghezali in 2004 in chronology—the president’s upcoming bilateral meet- lawsuit against Donald years in Cuba were, ings with Russian president Dmi- Rumsfeld. It was 2004, and Ghezali apparently, not enough time to con- try Medvedev at the United Nations was a free man. coct a consistent narrative—seemed General Assembly and the G-20 in In late 2001, Ghezali, a Swedish to have little effect on his credibility. Pittsburgh later in the month, the national, had been detained during To his supporters, he was merely a bit October 1 sit down between Under- the battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, player in a larger morality play. But secretary of State William Burns and handed over to the American mili- even his most credulous supporters the Iranians, and the reconvening in tary, and sent to the detention facility winced when, during a press confer- Geneva of the START negotiations, at Guantánamo Bay. According to his ence in his hometown of Örebro, Ghe- in which the Russians have insisted lawyers, he was simply in the wrong zali offered the following opinion of that limits on U.S. missile defenses be place at the wrong time. Although he Osama bin Laden: “I don’t know him part of any new agreement. spoke none of the local languages, Ghe- as a person and therefore can’t pass President Obama seems to think zali told his captors, in the midst of the judgment on him. I don’t believe what that by making a grand gesture and Taliban’s retreat into the mountainous the Americans say about him.” downplaying the Iranian threat he hinterlands of Afghanistan, he had Sweden’s justice minister ruled out will garner good will from the Rus- crossed that country’s border with Pak- prosecuting Ghezali, and the story sians and the Iranians going into istan to study Islam. faded from the public consciousness. these talks, never mind the hurt feel- After an intense lobbying effort But in a country with a significant ings of long-time allies. More likely, by Swedish prime minister Göran Muslim minority, it was perhaps inevi- Iran, Russia, and a watching world table that the foreign ministry would will see this for what it is: a colossal Michael Moynihan is a senior editor fi nd itself in a similar situation again.
sign of U.S. weakness. t at Reason magazine. In 2007, the Swedish government BERTIL ERICSON / AFP/ GETTY IMAGES
12 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 interceded on behalf of 17-year-old Safi a That Ghezali and Benaouda had, Hultén, author of a sympathetic book Benaouda, a Stockholm native and con- for a second time, been arrested on about Ghezali, saw his most recent vert to Islam, after she was arrested and terrorism charges provoked little soul- arrest as a case of double jeopardy: “He jailed by the Ethiopian military, then searching from Sweden’s anti-Ameri- has already been cleared from these battling Somali Islamists. Ethiopian can intelligentsia. Jan Guillou, a best- suspicions once.” Those whose suspi- offi cials told Sweden’s foreign minis- selling spy novelist and popular pun- cions are piqued by a former Guantá- ter, Carl Bildt, that Benaouda had fl ed dit, shrugged that Ghezali’s “strong namo inmate rearrested in Pakistan Somalia after the defeat of the Islamic political interest in Islamist activism” with an explosives belt and $50,000 Courts Union, on whose behalf she was is understandable, considering the in cash, Hultén believes, can only be accused of waging jihad, and had been time he spent in an American “con- motivated by “xenophobia.” detained with other fi ghters after cross- centration camp.” (It is perhaps worth The Swedish government is pro- ing the border into Kenya. noting that Guillou’s record of politi- ceeding with extreme caution, tell- According to the Stockholm-based cal prognostication is rather unimpres- ing reporters that little can be done newspaper Aftonbladet, Swedish dip- sive. He wrote a book in 1977 praising on behalf of those currently detained lomats engaged in “discreet meet- the “stable” regime of Saddam Hus- in Pakistan. It doesn’t help that a ings with the Pentagon, tribal leaders, sein, arguing that the conditions in Swedish citizen, Oussama Kassir, was and African government offi cials” to the prison at Abu Ghraib surpassed recently sentenced to life in prison secure her release. Benaouda’s mother, those in Sweden’s notoriously indul- by a court in New York, convicted chairman of the Muslim Council of gent penal system, and predicting that of attempting to set up an al Qaeda Sweden, wrote that her daughter was by 2000 Iraq’s economy would outpace training camp in Oregon. questioned by members of the CIA most countries in Western Europe.) A bit of unsolicited advice for the and beaten by guards—accusations Without irony, Ghezali’s attorney Obama Justice Department: If the amplifi ed by the Associated Press. reminded the public that he “has trav- Swedish government demands Kassir’s After her release, Benaouda went fur- eled in that region previously, and he release, be sure that he serves out his ther, claiming that she was tortured has an interest in the region.” Gösta full sentence. t in custody, a measure “planned and orchestrated by the Americans or other western interrogators.” The claim ensured her permanent victim status in Sweden. The cases of Ghezali and Bena- The ‘Consumer ouda—frequently invoked in the Swedish media as examples of Amer- ica’s tyrannical war on terror—were Protection’ Racket unrelated. There was no indication that the two had ever met or that they belonged to the same Scandinavian Democrats try another route to government- cell of Islamic militants. But the two innocents abroad, curious students of controlled health care. BY DAVID GRATZER fundamentalist Islam, would soon fi nd each other. he Democrats have a new mes- Congressional Democrats are hop- According to reports in the Swed- sage to justify a massive gov- ing to make this issue into a major one. ish media, Ghezali and Benaouda Ternment intrusion into health They are holding hearings this month were arrested last week in Pakistan— care: “consumer protection.” and hauling in insurance executives together, travelling with a multina- They once suggested that rules for a grilling about their business prac- tional group of extremists—having aimed at toughening the oversight of tices. The House Subcommittee on crossed the border from Iran on their health-insurance companies were just Domestic Policy went fi rst last week, way to the al Qaeda stronghold of footnotes in the debate about health with two days of hearings. Chairman Waziristan. Pakistani sources claim care. But when the president spoke to Dennis Kucinich opened the proceed- that the group was carrying $50,000 in Congress last week, he listed activities ings by stating: “Corporate bureaucrats cash, maps indicating Western embas- that will be “against the law” front and may put profi ts before people, thereby sies, and—every religion student’s best center. “What this plan will do,” he becoming as noxious as disease itself.” friend—an explosives belt. One of the said, “is make the insurance you have The House bill tabled in July is full suspects, according to a report in the work better for you.” of attempts to expand the government’s Swedish newspaper Expressen, chewed role in regulating health care compa- up the SIM card of his cell phone before David Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow nies. There is some good in the draft he was taken into custody. at the Manhattan Institute. legislation, including a proposal to stop
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 13 insurers from cutting coverage (known residents can buy a similar policy for to regulate the insurance industry and in the industry as “rescission”) without $3,100. One key difference: Wisconsin determine what is a reasonable insur- clear proof of fraud and limits to “caps has only 34 mandates (and they tend to ance plan to sell on the national health on coverage,” which means that a be less expensive than the Empire State exchange (the only way for the unem- patient in active treatment for, say, can- variety). In Massachusetts, new state ployed, the self-employed, and small cer, can’t suddenly be cut off because laws broadening coverage produced businesses to buy coverage). Hidden of an insurance company’s preset limit rising premiums. Why did prices rise, in the House bill is a committee to take on lifetime spending. But the bill also despite the expansion of the insur- into account “health inequities.” includes plenty of ideologically based ance pool? The 52 insurance mandates If these reforms pass, America will rules that micromanage every health- imposed by the state legislature. Only be a lot like New Jersey. The Gar- insurance policy. It even adds a process 10 states have more. den State has a slew of mandates and to create more rules without congres- enforces community rating. For a 25- sional debate. With support for the year-old man living in New Jersey the Regulations of coverage are known premium on a basic insurance policy in health circles as mandates. They public option faltering, is more than fi ve times what it would require an insurance company to cover Democrats are using be if he lived in Kentucky. A few years common—and sometimes not so com- ago, an insurance coalition pointed mon—procedures or specifi c patient ‘consumer protection’ out that it was cheaper for a family of populations. They add billions to the as the rationale for four in New Jersey to lease a Ferrari on cost of insurance within state markets. regulating the insurance a monthly basis than to buy a family Politicians like mandates because health care policy. they make them look tough on the market—the next-best Obamacare would leave us with always unpopular insurance compa- route to Washington- too many rules, which would crush nies. But the results are bizarre: Under innovation and add unnecessary costs New Mexico law, “oriental medicine” controlled health care. with little benefi t. This, though, may (their phrase) must be treated like con- be just what the Democrats have in ventional medicine in any insurance n his congressional address, the mind. For years, they have hoped to plan. New Mexico mandates that cir- I president called for an end to the dis- shift millions of Americans into a cumcisions be covered as well as off- crimination against people with preex- Medicare-for-all type program, and label use of medications and naturopa- isting conditions: “Many other Amer- at the core of Obamacare is such a thy (a type of holistic medicine). icans who are willing and able to pay public-option proposal. With sup- Other states require that providers are still denied insurance due to previ- port for it faltering, Democrats are cover acupuncture (11 states), osteopa- ous illnesses or conditions that insur- turning to regulating the insur- thy (22 states), and social workers (27 ance companies decide are too risky or ance market as the next-best route to states). And legislators have done the expensive to cover.” Ending this prac- Washington-controlled health care. same for types of care—dental anes- tice sounds sensible. The problem is What Americans want is a health thesia (31 states), surgical second opin- the prescription: community rating, insurance marketplace that is reliable, ions (10 states), and hair prosthesis (10 which would force insurance compa- affordable, and compassionate. Con- states), to name but three examples. nies to charge everyone the same pre- gress needs to stop looking for villains The provider groups, like acupunc- mium, regardless of age or health. and introduce simple reforms to fos- turists, lobby hard for these mandates. Community rating attacks a legiti- ter responsible competition. The most And, ironically, it’s the big insurance mate problem, and it’s not surprising effective remedy is also the simplest: companies that thrive since they are that 15 states require it. But, at the Allow people to purchase health insur- best able to deal with the complexities state level, it has priced younger and ance across state lines. Consumers of regulations and pass on the costs. healthier people out of the market. could shop around and select a policy It’s not surprising that the number Johns Hopkins’s Bradley Herring and that best meets their needs—not the of insurance mandates has exploded. the University of Pennsylvania’s Mark political interests of their state legisla- In the 1960s, there were a handful on Pauly analyzed the effects of com- tors. Those with chronic illness will the books; in 2008, according to the munity rating on insurance in a 2006 still struggle to obtain coverage, but Council for Affordable Health Insur- paper. Their conclusion: It raised the subsidized insurance pools—those ance, the number was 1,961. number of Americans without cover- used in Minnesota could serve as a There is a clear loser in all this: peo- age by as much as 7.4 percent. model—can tackle this problem. ple trying to get coverage. States with And this could be just the begin- Democrats think they have a win- fewer mandates do a better job of con- ning. The House bill creates several ning message by touting the impor- trolling premiums. A basic health plan mandate-generating committees. Bod- tance of consumer protection. But just in New York (with 51 mandates) costs ies like the Task Force on Clinical Pre- who is going to protect the consumer a family over $12,000 a year. Wisconsin ventive Services would have the power from the government? t
14 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can The Post-Postracial stick around, when yellow will be mel- low, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace Presidency what is right,” people laughed, think- ing it was a charmingly homespun trib- ute to the end of the race issue. But the fi rst black president has What we learned at the teachable moment. been anything but postracial as chief BY JONATHAN V. L AST executive. His fi rst major piece of legislation, the $800 billion stimu- arack Obama is, you might have speech, telling predominantly black lus bill attached racial considerations heard, America’s fi rst postracial audiences, “That’s what they do. They to some of its largesse. In Febru- Bpresident. In his celebrated try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you.” ary, Obama’s attorney general, Eric speech to the 2004 Democratic conven- During the presidential campaign, Holder, said in a speech to Justice tion, he assured viewers that “There’s Obama made noise about how McCain Department employees that Amer- not a black America and white Amer- and Republicans were going to attack ica is “a nation of cowards” when it ica and Latino America and Asian him for his race. After the McCain comes to discussing race. Obama dis- America; there’s the United States of campaign ran its “Celebrity” ad, sug- avowed Holder’s choice of words, but America.” And, early in 2007, he hum- gesting that the Democratic nominee later told the New York Times, “We’re bly acknowledged that was famous for being famous, like Paris oftentimes uncomfortable with talk- ing about race until there’s some sort In the history of African-American of racial fl are-up or confl ict. We could politics in this country there has always probably be more constructive in fac- been some tension between speak- ing up to sort of the painful legacy of ing in universal terms and speaking in very race-specifi c terms about the slavery and Jim Crow and discrimi- plight of the African-American com- nation.” When a vacancy opened on munity. By virtue of my background, the Supreme Court, Obama nomi- you know, I am more likely to speak in nated Sonia Sotomayor without even universal terms. pretending that she was the most impressive liberal legal mind avail- Lots of people agreed. Everyone from able. Her primary qualifi cation was Newsweek to the New York Times com- her “life experience” which made her mended Obama for his “‘post-racial’ a “wise Latina.” approach” and the manner in which he Another of Obama’s hires was “transcended race.” Even George Will now-departed Van Jones as the “green cooed about the political implications jobs czar.” Jones was forced to spend of the Obama’s “transcendence of con- more time with his family because he fi ning categories.” Hilton and Britney Spears, Obama showed sympathy for a group which Yet Obama was never as postracial as suggested that the ad was a racial prov- believes that the Bush administra- advertised. Despite its charms, Obama’s ocation. “What they’re going to try to tion was complicit in 9/11. But Jones’ fi rst memoir, Dreams from My Father, is do is make you scared of me,” he said. background as a community orga- fi lled with racialist moments—from his “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. nizer and radical environmentalist attraction to Jeremiah Wright’s church He’s got a funny name. You know, he was just as disturbing. He founded the to the admission that he once broke up doesn’t look like all those other presi- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, with a girlfriend because she was white. dents on those dollar bills.” At an which made a business out of launch- Even during the presidential cam- earlier rally, Obama was even more ing race-based complaints against the paign, Obama would occasionally lapse explicit: “They’re going to try to make San Francisco police department in into race-consciousness. The week you afraid. They’re going to try to make the late 1990s. Shortly before Obama before the South Carolina primary, the you afraid of me. He’s young and inex- appointed him, Jones explained envi- fi rst contest with a substantial number perienced and he’s got a funny name. ronmental racism thus: “White pol- of black voters, he worked a direct ref- And did I mention he’s black?” luters and white environmentalists erence to Malcolm X into his stump It was a successful strategy, and when are essentially steering poison into the Reverend Joseph Lowery used the the people-of-color communities Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at benediction at Obama’s inauguration because they don’t have a racial-jus-
ASSOCIATED PRESS / ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO ASSOCIATED THE WEEKLY STANDARD. to pray, “We ask You to help us work tice frame.”
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 15 Obama’s Justice Department has pied with race and quotas. (He worked who were charged with voter intimi- also been quite keen on racial justice. in the civil rights division during the dation at a polling place in Philadel- The president’s budget requested an Clinton years before entering Mary- phia last November. (Video surfaced 18 percent increase for the department’s land state politics.) In 2003, as a coun- of the thugs harassing voters and civil rights division for the express pur- cilman in Montgomery County, Perez brandishing a weapon.) After consult- pose of hiring more lawyers to work pushed for quotas. “We have made ing with another senior offi cial at Jus- the racial discrimination beat. During great strides in attracting minorities tice, King decided to downgrade the the Bush administration, the offi ce had to the county within the last 30 years,” charges against the Black Panthers. shied away from the blanket pursuit of Perez said at the time. “We need a Obama’s most celebrated presiden- racial discrimination law, choosing to workforce in the Department of Fire tial moment of race consciousness tackle individual discrimination cases and Rescue Services that refl ects the came this summer when he eagerly as they arose and focusing on other diversity of the county.” injected himself into the dispute kinds of crime, including human traf- The reason Perez was so concerned between Harvard’s Skip Gates and the fi cking and religious discrimination. was that 46 of the 48 members of the Cambridge police department. Asked Holder told the New York Times that the fi re department’s recruiting class that about the incident in which a white civil rights division was now “getting year were white. The class was chosen police offi cer arrested Gates, Obama back to doing what it has traditionally based on an aptitude test, in which said the offi cer had acted stupidly and done.” Namely, sussing out “disparate the white applicants scored highest. added, “What I think we know sepa- impact” violations in housing, employ- “These statistics are unacceptable,” rate and apart from this incident is that ment, lending, voting rights, and other Perez said. “But I have confi dence that there’s a long history in this country of areas of American life. we can get back up to the original num- African Americans and Latinos being Obama’s nominee to head the divi- ber of minorities in the department, stopped by law enforcement dispro- sion, Tom Perez, is certainly preoccu- and develop a comprehensive plan to portionately. That’s just a fact.” After recruit diversity.” the offi cer in question was defended Three years later Perez published an by numerous black colleagues, a “beer article in the University of Maryland’s summit” ensued with Obama, Gates, THE Journal of Health Care Law and Policy the offi cer, and Joe Biden—heretofore in which he argued for a more rigorous totally unconnected with the affair— quota system as part of medical school called in as racial ballast. SURVIVOR’S admissions. Perez’s stated goal was not Shortly before the summit, Obama just to buttress the current affi rmative- had spoken to the NAACP, where he GUIDE action regime, but to erect a new system claimed that while discrimination FOR THE of quotas should the diversity rationale may be at an all-time low, it’s still a eventually run afoul of the Supreme terrible burden: OBAMA ERA Court. He proposed an “access” ratio- nale: Since minority doctors tend to I understand there may be a tempta- serve minority patients, medical school tion among some to think that dis- quotas weren’t just important for crimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there would-be minority doctors. Not having probably has never been less discrimi- quotas for minority medical school stu- nation in America than there is today. dents would create a disparate impact I think we can say that. for all minority patients. But make no mistake: The pain of Perez’s confi rmation has lingered discrimination is still felt in Amer- in the Senate, but the acting head of ica. [Applause.] By African American the civil rights division, Loretta King, women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color has already fi led 10 amicus briefs in and a different gender. [Laughter.] private discrimination lawsuits. In By Latinos made to feel unwelcome July, she sent a memo to all federal in their own country. [Applause.] By agencies calling for more aggressive Muslim Americans viewed with suspi- enforcement of Title VI regulations— cion simply because they kneel down forbidding discrimination by federal to pray to their God. [Applause.] By our TODAY! gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, SignSi up agencies. King encouraged “each still attacked, still denied their rights. federal agency to examine anew all [Applause.] Visit us online at aspects of its compliance program.” weeklystandard.com The highest-profi le matter to come It would be nice if our fi rst postracial across her desk is the case of three president would begin the postracial New Black Panther party members phase of his presidency. t
16 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 Rose Kennedy and her youngest son Ted at his wedding reception, 1958 Ted’s Last Hurrah The authorized version of the Kennedy myth receives one more installment
BY ANDREW FERGUSON as it did while he was alive; in the arguments his name goes mostly unmentioned, even on the Senate fl oor, where h my,” said Dorothy Gale, waving off you might think his passionate bellow could yet be faintly the candy-colored cloud that trailed heard but apparently isn’t. Flags fl ew at half-mast but only some departing witch, “people come briefl y. The crowd that gathered at his grave has thinned. and go so quickly here.” As it was in And his long-awaited memoir, True Compass (Twelve, Munchkinland, so it is in Washing- 532 pp., $35.00), a book that was meant to reaffi rm his rep- ‘Oton, D.C. Less than a month has gone by since the death— utation and carry it far into the future, was released last I guess we’re supposed to say “passing” nowadays—of week, stillborn. Edward Kennedy, one of the capital’s most celebrated Not everyone would have predicted such a fate for (by residents, and already he seems a fi gure from a weightless Washington standards) such a formidable fi gure, especially past. The current campaign to reform the nation’s health in the ranks of those for whom predictions are daily meat, care system was expected to draw new drafts of inspira- our talky-talky journalists. No sooner had the sad news tion from his, um, death, but it limps along pretty much leaked from Hyannis Port than they were on the air and in print working to establish their intimacy with Ted Ken-
GETTY IMAGES Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. nedy, with a strenuousness that suggested that a Churchill,
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 17 a Roosevelt, a de Gaulle, or some other eminence with his- episode of drug addiction or sexual assault among this lat- torical staying power had just clocked out—I mean passed. est generation would scarcely rouse even the most desper- It seemed impossible that the infl uence of such a man, at ate tabloid. So True Compass may well be the last chance once so human and so larger-than-life, would so quickly the Kennedy family will have to place before the public its recede. One columnist said Kennedy had once taken the own version of its history, here seen through the life of its time to recommend a doctor for his ailing son—the com- greatest generation’s youngest son. passion, unprecedented. Another recalled how he, as a young reporter who “didn’t know nothing,” managed to snag an actual interview with the senator for his newspaper, any accidents of fate conspired to place so great the Washington Post—the generosity, unheard of. Another a burden upon Ted’s unlikely shoulders. In said that in one of their many interviews Kennedy had Mcontrast to his elder brothers, Joe Jr. and Jack, shown only moderate interest in abstract philosophy but Teddy was not bred or reared for greatness. He was the baby could cite provisions from a bill he had advocated for two of the family, the apple of his father’s eye, and his moth- years—the legislative mastery, hard to believe. er’s … well, it’s unclear, from his telling, what role he played The same awe launched this memoir and rushed it in Rose Kennedy’s world. Ted’s undoubtedly genuine and into print. It is a product of the great Kennedy apparat, often touching expressions of love for her contrast starkly the on-retainer network of publicists, backbenchers, scrib- with, as we say in Washington, the facts on the ground, at blers, private investigators, academics, secretaries, archi- least as you fi nd them here. Having deposited her ninth vists, gag writers, and all-purpose gofers that still survives, and fi nal child with her team of nannies, and fed up with in greatly attenuated form, 90 years after old Joe Kennedy her husband’s wild and ostentatious extra-marital rutting, put it together from his bottomless bank account. Ted Ken- Rose took to traveling the world for months at a time, until nedy didn’t write his memoir, of course—getting words on looming war made grand tours inconvenient. Her punctili- paper has always been a job for the apparat, at least since ousness—she scheduled the subjects of her family’s table John Kennedy proudly accepted a Pulitzer Prize for Pro- talk, and furnished each child with background reading fi les in Courage, which was written by Ted Sorensen (who to study before dinner—could veer into something darker. still, at 81, has yet to complain; a profi le in clamming up). She was quick to reach for the coat hanger when she spied True Compass draws from interviews done by researchers any infraction of her elaborate rules, and after the thrash- at the Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project at the ing she would lock the smarting kid in a darkened closet University of Virginia. That material was supplemented for good measure. Ted’s schooling was at the mercy of her by more recent interviews with Kennedy and his subordi- extravagant whims. One time, when he reached third grade, nates, and from a hamper of “personal notes” that—who she enrolled him in a new school, unaware that its classes knew?—the senator had been jotting down for the last were only for seventh graders and up—and she left him busy 50 years. there, to “sink or swim.” To stitch it all into coherent sequences of sentences (This is as good a point as any to address the touchy and paragraphs the apparat hired one of the country’s subject of aquatic metaphors, with which Kennedy’s premier overwriters, the biographer and TV essayist Ron memoir overfl ows. A man whose public career was nearly Powers, a babbling brook of prose so rich, gorgeous, lumi- ruined by his role in the drowning of a young woman nous, ennobling, uplifting, oceanic, swept with the mys- would have done well to steer clear of them—and to tell teries of sea and sky, that it places him in the pantheon his ghostwriter to watch out too. Yet here they are, all where dwell the greatest Kennedy ghosts: your Sorensens, over the place, starting with the epigraph from a play your Goodwins and Shrums, the artisans who gave us “the by Eugene O’Neill. It reads in part: “I lay on the bow- work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, the sprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume dream shall never die” and much else. You read a sentence under me … I became drunk with the beauty and singing like this from True Compass—“Taking the tiller has steered rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—actually me away from nearly unendurable grief across the heal- lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea …” The ing waters on the long hard course toward renewal and apparat used to be more careful than this.) hope”—and you realize, damn, it’s that same old trumpet Teddy’s brothers, like all big brothers, were alternately summoning us once again. Blow, Ron, blow. affectionate, protective, and sadistic, though the age What True Compass is, then, is the authorized version, difference between them—Jack was 15 years older than rendered in the patented Kennedy style. With the endless Ted—meant that Joe and Jack, and later Bobby, were often multiplication of grandchildren and great grandchildren, absent from home, pursuing the strict regimen of study, the family blood thins and so does public interest; another travel, work, and whoring that their father had arranged
18 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 for them as a preparation for the climb to power. Several of how this authorized version sails right past the rough times Ted mentions his childhood loneliness, shuttled from patches of the family history, whether it’s his father’s boot- one boarding school to the next, and there’s poignancy legging, Jack’s philandering, or Bobby’s wiretapping. Teddy to go along with his wistful memories of family good will acknowledge that unfl attering “stories have been told,” times (scenes that might have been plucked from a PBS which gives him credit for candor, and then he’ll ignore the documentary: touch football on the lawn, the glistening stories, which gets him off the hook. Sound beyond, the windswept hair, the gleaming teeth …). “The seat was being held by a good man named Benjamin The best description of Ted’s place in the family came from Smith,” Teddy writes. “The story has been told that Smith’s one of Jack’s mistresses, appointment was arranged who explained it this way specifi cally to clear the way to Burton Hersh, an early for me in 1962: he’d agreed biographer: “The old man to ‘hold’ the seat until I would push Joe, Joe would was old enough to run at push Jack, Jack would age thirty; then he would push Bobby, Bobby would step aside.” Sounds like a push Teddy, and Teddy cynical power play, doesn’t would fall on his ass.” it? But that’s not what hap- His role as family mas- pened at all, he assures cot might have doomed us. “The truth is more him to haplessness. Reach- complex.” ing young adulthood, he Indeed, the truth is so became the fi rst Kennedy complex that Teddy never in three generations to gets around to telling it. drink in quantity, and he He follows this passage treated it like an ancestral with a lengthy and interest- obligation. The family ing—and completely irrel- enrolled him in Harvard evant—detour through and he got kicked out for Massachusetts politics and cheating on an exam; he his brief tenure as a gov- swanned around Europe ernment attorney. The next with B-level starlets and thing we know, 30 pages the second cousins of low- later, the detour abruptly ranking royalty; he went ends and Teddy is in the to law school at UVA and Senate, “the appointed impressed his classmates Benjamin Smith having most by driving fast cars The Kennedy men stepped aside.” You won- and nearly destroying the der where poor Ben has house he had rented from a kindly professor. When his been for the last ten thousand words. The truth, novices may brothers began their rise in politics, he was eager to help be interested to learn, isn’t too terribly complex. Like the but was instead dispatched to distant provinces to charm man said: Smith’s appointment was arranged specifi cally to voters and stay the hell out of trouble. Little Lord Fauntle- clear the way for Teddy in 1962, until he was old enough to roy become Fredo Corleone. run at age 30. It was a typically vulgar exercise of the family’s To learn much of this family history you have to read sense of entitlement, backed by political muscle, and good between the lines—or, better, you have to read other essen- man Smith, a family footman, simply faded from the Ken- tial Kennedy texts, such as Garry Wills’s The Kennedy nedy story, having done his duty. Imprisonment, to supplement the useful but highly selec- tive account that True Compass offers. After Jack was elected president, in 1960, the family decided to give his Senate eddy was in the Senate chamber when he got seat to Teddy as a reward for good behavior and an intro- word of President Kennedy’s murder. From duction to the family business. The account in True Com- Tthis calamity, and from the trauma of Bobby’s pass of how Teddy got to the Senate is a masterpiece of sly death fi ve years later, the Teddy that most Americans
GETTY IMAGES misdirection and exquisite omission. It serves as a model knew emerged. Beyond his own grief, Kennedy admits,
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 19 he fretted for his political future, and any Kennedy “Succinctly as I can,” he offers “the list of [JFK’s] great watcher will sympathize. The Senate seat that had been accomplishments: championing the American landing on bequeathed to him by his family was his for as long as the moon [championing means: giving speeches about]; he wanted; Massachusetts voters would do as they were building the political foundations of the Civil Rights Act told. But what would Kennedy himself do with it? The [as opposed to passing the Civil Rights Act]; standing fi rm purpose of the brothers’ pursuit of power had been the in the Berlin crisis and during the Cuban Missile Cri- acquisition of power. There had been no Kennedy polit- sis [having provoked the former and running the risk in ical program to enact, no Kennedy principles to evange- the latter of getting us all killed]; creating the Alliance for lize. The family was utterly uncontaminated by ideology Progress; bringing us the test ban treaty and the beginning of any kind. Without the brothers, what then was left to of the end of the cold war.” The Alliance for Progress? pursue? The closest any Kennedy had come to ideological pas- sion was the late-blooming idealism of Bobby. Accord- ing to official family nar- rative, the middle brother went to Appalachia in the years after Jack’s death, recoiled at the poverty he saw there, and came back quoting Aeschylus. But this is thin soup for a philosoph- ical legacy. Teddy was bereft. In his memoir he refers often to his love of politi- cal philosophy. Yet he never bothers to demonstrate it by explaining why, beyond mere convenience and lack of anything else to do, he chose to throw the family Chappaquiddick the day after, 1969 name behind the new liber- alism that became the reign- It is here that Teddy’s life assumes what historical sig- ing ideology of his party—thanks in large part to him. nifi cance it has, for he became a kind of pointer on the path For our own convenience we can call it 1970s liberal- the Democratic party followed from 1968 on. There was ism. It had only a superfi cial resemblance to earlier edi- nothing in the family history to suggest that Teddy would tions, and its traces are still with us. Kennedy himself never become the liberal he became after the death of his broth- let it go, even through the milk-and-water moderation of ers—or to suggest the kind of liberal he would become. The the Clinton years. It entails an obsessive concern with the old man had been a New Dealer, urban-ethnic division, but redistribution of wealth, the imposition of federal control he loathed the welfare state. He was also an America First over ever more distant reaches of American life, the raising isolationist and, after the war, a proud booster and friend of abortion to the level of secular sacrament, anti-anti-com- of Joseph McCarthy—a friendship that Bobby sealed for munism, multiculturalism, quasi-pacifi sm, and—the ism eternity by naming the Tailgunner the godfather of his that undergirds all the others—a fi erce, unyielding mor- fi rst child, Kathleen (future lieutenant governor of Mary- alism, according to which any adversary who opposes the land). Running for president Jack was more hawkish than isms listed above is not merely mistaken but depraved. his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon. As president Kennedy’s embrace of this moral exhibitionism had he zigged and zagged. He wanted to nationalize the steel its diffi culties, practical and otherwise. First, it betrayed industry and cut marginal tax rates on the rich by 20 per- the image of intellectual poise and cool detachment that cent. He founded the Peace Corps and tried to blow Fidel had made Jack attractive to large numbers of voters. More Castro’s head off with an exploding cigar. Teddy tries ret- important, Teddy was heatedly testifying to the largeness rospectively in his memoir to impose some philosophical of his heart even as his “personal failings”—as he called
order on this presidential dog’s breakfast, but it’s no use. them in his occasional public acts of contrition—became PRESS ASSOCIATED
20 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 impossible to ignore. Bellowing on the Senate fl oor about another 15 or 20 years and their achievements will match the meanness, duplicity, cruelty, power-hunger, hypocrisy, Kennedy’s. The talky-talkies won’t notice, though. and general indecency of Republicans, he was simultane- Kennedy was a tireless promoter of his reputation for ously understood by the public to be a negligent husband, bipartisanship, what he calls in his memoir “my abiding a serial adulterer, a liar, and a drunk. Maybe the moral impulse to reach across lines of division during my career.” exhibitionism in his political life was compensation for the The aisle-reaching came and went with the political seasons. rapacity of his private life. It certainly saved him with the It fi rst appeared in 1980, when the Senate, for the fi rst time many Democrats who continued to lionize him. in Kennedy’s career, fell into the clutches of Republicans, Not every liberal or every Democrat went along, of whose cooperation Democrats suddenly required if they course. Feminism was one ism that Teddy underesti- were to continue leading the country along its forced march mated—but only at fi rst. In a brave and resounding essay, toward human perfection. With a few exceptions, Kennedy published in the Washington Monthly in 1979, Suzannah before 1980 had been as willing as any majority member to Lessard drew a straight line from the family’s insatiable muscle aside the minority. Yet he really did believe, as he hunger for power to the many, many “semi-covert, just says in his memoir, that “we were elected to do something.” barely personal and ultimately discardable encounters” Something, anything. His faith in governmental activism with anonymous women that Teddy was famous for. Other was a huffi ng, puffi ng engine that knew no rest. He wasn’t feminists, including Wills, took up the theme. Teddy going to allow a Republican electoral victory to stand in the responded by energetically adopting causes dear to his way. And so, for example, he happily conspired with the critics, especially by dropping his previous reservations fi rst President Bush to pass the draconian Americans with about an unlimited abortion right. On paper, anyway, he Disabilities Act and, with the second, the disastrous No became a raging feminist. The “personal failings” contin- Child Left Behind education reform. In the proponents of ued, however, and in the end, when he challenged Presi- “big-government (or compassionate, or national-greatness, dent Carter in 1980, they cost him the prize of a presiden- or kinder, gentler) conservatism” he found the useful idiots tial nomination. A Helen Reddy party would not tolerate he needed. He knew, as they did not, that any expansion of a Rat Pack nominee. federal power would in the end work to his advantage and that of his ideological heirs. They could always rewrite the details later. he paradox between private Teddy and public Teddy Though of course it’s his last, True Compass is not Ted disappeared once he married his second wife and set- Kennedy’s fi rst book. In the late 1960s he got out a col- Ttled down to a routine of domesticity and hard work. lection of his speeches; it slipped into obscurity after a The moral exhibitionism was still there, needless to say. It’s magazine rudely pointed out that Ted’s speechwriters had scattered throughout his memoir, as when he complains cribbed passages from speeches they had originally written about opponents who “continue their long-standing habits for Bobby, which had already been collected in book form. of spurning the poor, the helpless, and the hungry—espe- And 1979 brought us Our Day and Generation. It wasn’t cially hungry children.” (That last clause, about the “chil- much more than a photograph album of various Kennedys dren,” must be pure refl ex: Did he think the bad guys were in poses of playfulness or purpose, in sorrow or in sunlight, slipping food to the parents on condition they not share garnished with more squibs from the speechwriters. Even it with the kids?) Meanwhile, he gained a reputation as a so you could tell the book was a certifi ed Kennedy produc- great legislator and, less predictably, as a model of bipar- tion. It carried an introduction by Henry Steele Commager, tisanship. His commitment to “getting things done” and one of the great American historians of midcentury. The “crossing the aisle” were the two qualities that our talky- foreword was written by Archibald MacLeish, perhaps the talkies mentioned incessantly after his death, in an implicit era’s foremost middlebrow man of letters. rebuke to the bumptious ideologues that are alleged to be It is striking that the apparat could muster nothing so ruining Congress today. classy for True Compass. The ranks of retainers have run The list of legislative accomplishments attributed to thin. Times have changed. The night is far spent. Pub- Kennedy is indeed long. It’s also infl ated by celebrity and lished as it is without blurbs or imprimaturs of any kind, longevity. His decades in the Senate guaranteed that he it seems naked almost, stripped of all ceremony and left would have lots of chances to pass bills, and his fame guar- to stand or fall on its own. And if it falls, what are we to anteed he would get primary credit for bills that got passed conclude? That perhaps the cause doesn’t endure after all? whether he deserved it or not. Any number of sitting sena- That the work may not go on? That the dream, whatever tors have been as energetic and effective. Give Richard it was, may not survive the dreamer, because the dreamer Lugar, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus—even Orrin Hatch!— was himself the dream? t
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 21 Obama’s Middle East Gambit
There are far greater obstacles to peace than the Israeli settlements.
BY PETER BERKOWITZ tinians to renounce violence and develop their own politi- cal institutions, Israel to stop building in the West Bank, Tel Aviv and Arab states to assist the Palestinians and recognize asters of the art teach that subtlety, indirec- Israel’s legitimacy. Since the speech, however, much has tion, and on occasion misdirection are cru- been heard from the administration about the need for an cial to successful diplomacy. Perhaps, then, Israeli settlement freeze and little about Palestinian and President Obama is up to something shrewd. Arab state obligations. MWhen he took to the stage in Cairo in early June to address Muslims and discuss “the situation between Israe- Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the lis, Palestinians and the Arab world,” he called on Pales- Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
22 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 Obama in Egypt, will proceed to successfully negotiate a fi nal status agree- June 2009 ment that brings into existence a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that lives in peace with Israel, then he is dangerously deluded about the basic elements of the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict and the overall logic of Middle East politics. Either way, the hard truth is that, much as the settle- ments represent a formidable challenge to a peace agree- ment, other and intractable differences on critical issues separate Palestinians and Israelis. To make negotiations a top priority as the Obama administration appears to have done is to expend limited time and energy on what at best will be a sideshow. Meanwhile, real, if incremental progress toward the day in which Palestinians can establish a state of their own consistent with Israel’s national security interests depends on tasks to which the Obama administration has paid lip service but which it has done little to advance. These include improving dysfunctional Palestinian political institutions and political culture, building up the Palestin- ian economy, containing and defeating Hamas, cajoling or compelling Arab rulers around the region to assist the Pal- estinians and normalize relations with Israel, and, looming over all, countering Iran’s multipronged strategy—involv- ing the acquisition of nuclear weapons and sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas terror—to impose its brand of Islamic rule on the entire Middle East.
ccording to the generous interpretation, which informed Israelis following the comings and A goings of Middle East envoy George Mitchell and special assistant to the president Dennis Ross consider plausible, the Obama administration is well aware that the settlements are not the sole or even most signifi cant obsta- cle to peace. But seeking to set America’s relationship to the Muslim world on a new footing and needing Palestin- ian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas and Arab rulers on board for his ambitious plans, Obama has sought If something shrewd does lie behind the decision to to earn good will around the region by demonstrating his focus on Israeli concessions, then Obama and his admin- readiness to require painful concessions from Israel. istration are executing a dangerous gambit. It is likely If such is Obama’s gambit, it has thus far failed to bear to reinforce the false analysis popular among Palestin- fruit. No Arab ruler has come forward to propose a thaw- ians, Arabs, and European and American intellectuals, an ing of relations with Israel should Israel agree to freeze analysis reaffi rmed earlier this month in a Washington Post settlements. Fatah’s recently concluded Sixth General op-ed by former President Jimmy Carter: “A total freeze Conference was short on conciliatory statements and long of settlement expansion is the key to any acceptable peace on reaffi rmations of Palestinians’ right to engage in armed agreement or any positive responses toward Israel from struggle. And Hamas continues to attack Fatah for failing Arab nations.” to embrace jihad to destroy Israel. And if the high-profi le imposition of pressure on Israel Perhaps Obama will announce a breakthrough in is not a gambit, if the president believes that once Israel his September 23 address to the United Nations Gen-
NEWSCOM freezes West Bank settlement construction then the parties eral Assembly. The reopening of Israel’s tiny, unmarked
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 23 The settlement of Maale Adumim just outside Jerusalem trade mission in Qatar or a few meetings at the U.N. with taught to the Bush administration during the frustrated Arab leaders or the launching of a few cultural or schol- quest for a peace agreement that began at the 2007 Annapo- arly exchanges would be nice, but more than gestures will lis Conference. As in 1949, 1967, and 2000, Palestinians be necessary to build Israeli confi dence. Permission from are unprepared to make hard decisions and accept the Saudi Arabia for El Al passenger jets to fl y through Saudi painful concessions necessary to bring into existence a airspace en route to Asia would be a step forward. Palestinian state. The sort of action that is long overdue and almost People of good will and understanding on both sides certainly not slated anytime soon, say an invitation from of the confl ict have for several years recognized the broad the Saudis for the Israeli foreign minister to visit Riyadh, outlines of a fi nal agreement between Israel and the Pales- would be a momentous one. It might not instantly pro- tinians. Having in 2005 withdrawn from every last inch of duce crowds in Israel demanding substantial withdrawals the Gaza Strip and in the process removed 10,000 civilians from the West Bank, but it would transform public debate. from 21 settlements, Israel will, in exchange for “secure The sight on TV screens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem of an and recognized boundaries,” return most of the West Bank Israeli foreign minister shaking hands with his counter- territories that it seized in 1967 when Jordan attacked it part in the Saudi capital would spark enthusiasm for major during the Six Day War. The suburbs of Jerusalem and a concessions in a nation that has not ceased to yearn for few large settlement blocs will remain under Israeli sov- peace even as it has, with each passing year, grown more ereignty, but Israel will evacuate tens of thousands more resigned to persevering in the absence of a willing and citizens. Jerusalem will stay Israel’s capital, even as accom- able peace partner. modations will be made for Palestinian self-government But suppose Obama’s gambit, if gambit it is, pays in East Jerusalem. And, because if implemented it would off. Suppose Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spell the destruction of Israel, the Palestinians will need agrees to a settlement freeze suffi cient to bring Abbas to abandon their claim that all Palestinians—not merely back to the negotiating table. What then? Most likely the those who left or were forced out of their homes between
Obama administration will relearn the sobering lesson 1947 and 1949 during Israel’s war of independence, but NEWSCOM
24 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 the millions of their children and their children’s children tals, homes, and schools. Mahmoud Abbas is not a colos- living in Gaza, the West Bank, and in refugee camps in sal thief and may be devoted to pragmatic accommodation, Lebanon and Syria—have the right to return to Jerusalem, but he governs in the Arafat mold, and the PA has never Jaffa, and Haifa. had free and fair elections, and lacks clear laws, impartial It was an even more generous offer—including the dis- law enforcement, administrative effi ciency, and sound mantling of most of the settlements and Palestinian sov- fi nancial practices. ereignty over half the Old City of Jerusalem—that Ehud In late August, PA prime minister Salam Fayyad made Barak delivered to Yasser Arafat in July 2000 at Camp news by announcing his intention to concentrate on build- David. Rejecting the offer outright, Arafat proceeded a few ing Palestinian political institutions so that in two years’ months later to launch the Second Intifada and to release time, regardless of progress in formal peace negotiations, against Israel wave after wave of suicide bombers. While it the Palestinians would be in a position to declare their is unlikely that, if Obama administration-initiated nego- independence. No seasoned observer in Israel believes that tiations fail to yield an agreement, Abbas will launch a Fayyad can come close to preparing the PA for indepen- third intifada, little has changed that would allow him to dence on such a timetable. It is not that they doubt Fayy- sign the very generous deal rejected by Arafat, let alone ad’s competence or commitment. He has both and can the undoubtedly more restricted offer which would come certainly point to real successes. The West Bank economy from Netanyahu. is growing. The streets of Ramallah and Nablus are bus- A wide swath of Israelis in and out of the national secu- tling. The Palestinian security forces are gradually assum- rity establishment believe that Abbas does not want to go ing greater responsibility for maintaining internal security down in history as the Palestinian leader who yielded land and, in cooperation with the Israeli Defense Forces and or Jerusalem to the Jewish state. Abbas, they believe, will the Shabak (Israel Security Agency), have dealt Hamas a settle for nothing less than a return to the 1949 armistice series of setbacks. boundaries or Green Line, which would place the entire But one shouldn’t be misled. An American-trained Old City of Jerusalem under Palestinian authority and give technocrat, Fayyad has little grassroots support. The Pal- Israel indefensible borders. And Abbas has given no sign estinian legislature is powerless, and the Palestinian judi- that he is prepared to abandon the Palestinians’ uncom- ciary both corrupt and incompetent. Worse could be said promising belief in their right of return. Indeed, accord- about municipal government throughout the West Bank. ing to Giora Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National A decent criminal justice system will require years of Security Council, the right of return is not merely non- concentrated effort. In addition, much of the Palestinian negotiable for the Palestinians, but it and not a state of economy’s growth is due to massive injections of foreign their own has all along been the Palestinians’ main goal. aid fi nally reaching their target. Even so, unemployment remains high. Finally, while the Palestinian security forces, trained in Jordan by U.S. Lieutenant-General Keith Day- he inability of their leaders to compromise on cru- ton, have made impressive strides in the last few years, cial issues is only the beginning of the obstacles to they will need many more years of recruitment and train- T peace emanating from within the Palestinian peo- ing before taking over sole responsibility for maintaining ple. Even if their leaders were able to summon the cour- peace and order on their streets, let alone developing the age to compromise, the dozens of hostile Fatah factions wherewithal, should Israel security forces cease to operate show no signs that they could be persuaded or compelled around the clock inside the PA, to prevent the West Bank to go along. And there are more formidable obstacles to from becoming an armed Hamas camp posing intolerable implementation. threats to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Start with the lack of basic political institutions. Fif- A viable peace also depends on transforming the teen years ago Israel rescued Yasser Arafat from growing Palestinians’ poisonous political culture. Israeli experts irrelevance in Tunisia and, under the auspices of the Oslo argue that most Palestinians still don’t accept the legiti- Accords, brought him and hundreds of his fi ghters and macy of a Jewish state in the land of Israel. According followers to Gaza and the West Bank to preside over the to the estimates of senior security offi cials, perhaps 30 PA. Arafat proceeded—as he had in Lebanon and before percent of West Bank Palestinians are pragmatic like that in Jordan—to govern as a despot and bring chaos and Abbas and Fayyad, believing that Israel, despite its fun- anarchy. He stole most of the billions of dollars of foreign damental illegitimacy, is a regrettable fact with which aid that the United States and the international commu- Palestinians must learn to live. About the same number nity transferred to the PA between 1996 and 2004, billions believe that Israel is illegitimate and refuse to learn to that should have been used to build roads, factories, hospi- live with it. The remaining 40 percent or so are up for
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 25 grabs. Unfortunately, according to Reuven Berko—who an outdated document written by hardliners not refl ecting recently left the Israeli army after serving for ten years the inevitable moderation caused by the passage of time as adviser on Arab affairs to the chief of the Jerusalem and the acquisition of responsibility for governing. But this, police—PA-run schools, newspapers, and television are maintains Reuven Berko, is wishful and reckless thinking. tipping the balance by assiduously cultivating hatred of Hamas’s only reason for being, he contends, is the elimina- Israel and Jews. Berko, fl uent in Arabic, remarked sar- tion of Israel as a Jewish state. Its defi ning Muslim beliefs donically, “After watching 10 minutes of Palestine TV, I forbid it from giving up any part of the Waqf, or land once want to pick up a knife and fi nd a good Jew to kill.” ruled by Muslims, to non-Muslims, especially to Jews who under Muslim law are prohibited from governing them- selves in a state of their own. In other words, Hamas cannot, ven if Palestinian political institutions were reformed without ceasing to be Hamas, abandon the quest to reclaim and Palestinian political culture detoxifi ed, Hamas for Islam all the land that lies between the Jordan River and Ewould still present an insurmountable obstacle the Mediterranean Sea. to peace. Abbas only got serious about taking on the Ira- Nor is Hamas the only one obstructing peace between nian-sponsored terrorist group in 2007 after it conquered Israel and the Palestinians. Arab rulers, especially Ameri- the Gaza Strip and brutally murdered many of its Fatah can allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia, exercise effective vetoes rivals. Today, Hamas functions in Gaza not just as a terror- of their own. To offer concessions—on boundaries, on ist organization but also as the elected government and a Jerusalem, on the right of return—and survive the fury of military organization. And it aspires to bigger and better rival Fatah factions and the violent opposition of Hamas things. It is not out of sensitivity to Israel’s security con- while winning the support of ordinary Palestinians, Abbas cerns but because of Hamas’s aim to take over the PLO and would need a legitimacy that only can be conferred by the transform itself into the one genuine vehicle of Palestin- willingness of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak and Saudi ian nationalism that Abbas threw his support to the Bush King Abdullah to persuade their own peoples that Pales- administration’s efforts to bolster the Palestinian security tinian compromises with the Jewish state are in order. Nei- forces in the West Bank. Their success in fi ghting Hamas ther Mubarak nor Abdullah has shown much proclivity for in the West Bank has enabled Israel to reduce the number such leadership. of roadblocks and checkpoints, which has promoted com- The unwillingness of Arab leaders to lead does not merce and improved the quality of life for ordinary Pal- change the fact that peace between Israel and the Palestin- estinians. Hamas suicide bombers have not pulled off an ians is irreducibly a regional matter. Full normalization attack inside Israel for more than a year, and not a single of relations with Israel by Arab states may have to await rocket has been fi red into Israel from the West Bank. But a peace treaty with the Palestinians, but no lasting treaty the progress is fragile. will be possible that is not preceded by improvements in Even if PA and Israeli security forces make further the relations between Israel and Arab states. Interim steps strides in the West Bank to weaken Hamas, Abbas exer- should include reining in Al Jazeera—the popular Qatari cises no infl uence over Gaza and has little plausible claim news network that broadcasts a steady stream of vile anti- to represent the 1.5 million Palestinians living there. Con- Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda to the Arab world; sequently, should the Obama administration succeed in cleansing school systems around the region of textbooks relaunching talks, Abbas will be negotiating a separate that demonize Israel and teach that Jews are subhuman; peace for the West Bank. There too, however, Hamas has an releasing state-run Arab newspapers from the obligation effective veto. So long as the battle against Hamas requires to denounce Israel on a daily basis; and inviting Israel to Israeli security forces to operate freely within the West open offi ces and eventually embassies in Arab capitals and Bank—as, according to Israeli national security assess- then reciprocating. ments, it will continue to do so in the near and intermedi- Egypt can take another important short-term step ate terms—the PA cannot pretend to be a sovereign state. toward a viable peace between Israel and the Palestinians. There are those who favor giving Hamas a chance. If Recognizing the danger posed by an Iranian-sponsored treated with respect, if included in talks, if allowed to gov- jihadist government on its eastern fl ank, Cairo has begun ern in Gaza without crippling blockades imposed by the to improve security on the border it shares with Gaza Israelis and Egyptians, if given more opportunity to share and block the smuggling of Iranian weapons and Iranian authority in the West Bank, it will mature as a political trained jihadists through the Sinai Peninsula. But it needs organization and become a useful partner. According to this to do more. In the absence of dramatic improvements in argument, Hamas’s 1988 charter, which calls for permanent Egyptian border security, Israel expects that within a few jihad to destroy the state of Israel, should be discounted as years Hamas will be equipped with missiles that can reach
26 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 Tel Aviv, and Israeli soldiers will have to undertake another style show trials. All the while, as the Obama administra- military incursion into Gaza to destroy them. tion has apologized to it, reached out to it, and covered for it, Iran has continued to enrich uranium. Earlier this month, Tehran announced it would not discuss or consider ceasing he picture is not pretty, but progress toward peace its nuclear program. And when, in the face of a September can be achieved. Given the unbridgeable issues that 24 deadline to resume talks or face another round of inter- Tdivide the Israelis and Palestinians and the enor- national sanctions, Iran agreed to wide-ranging discussions mous obstacles to implementation should the unbridgeable but excluded the subject of its nuclear program, the United be bridged, the Obama administration needs to abandon its States promptly agreed, with scarcely a word of displeasure, naïve and arrogant belief that it can bring peace by dictat- to an October 1 meeting. ing top-down solutions. Instead, it should take a page out of Since, as masters of the art teach, subtlety, indirec- the community organizing tradition in which Obama was tion, and on occasion misdirection are crucial to successful educated and for the near term concentrate U.S. pol- icy on assisting Fayyad’s efforts to develop Palestin- ian political institutions and the economy. Make no mistake: Political and economic development in the West Bank is not a distraction from the peace process but crucial to con- structing the conditions under which Palestinians can one day govern them- selves and Israelis can live within secure and recog- nized borders. And because of the threat that Hamas poses to development efforts and to Israel, and because Iran funds, trains, and equips Hamas and strengthens Hamas’s stature by fan- Palestininian prime minister Salam Fayyad and German foreign minister ning the fl ames of Islamic Franz-Walter Steinmeier inaugurate a street paving project in Jenin, 2008. extremism around the region, making the curbing of Iran’s infl uence a center- diplomacy, perhaps there is more to the president’s concil- piece of American foreign policy equally is essential to the iatory ways with Iran than meets the eye. But occasionally peace process. diplomacy calls for candid, precise, and public pronounce- That Obama has nothing positive to show for eight ments. Just now it would build Israeli confi dence, com- months of engagement with Iran sets back the quest for mand the attention of waverers among the Palestinians, peace between Israel and the Palestinians. While he has and provide a much-needed teaching moment for the inter- been waiting patiently, the world’s leading state sponsor national community if the president of the United States of terror has been busy expanding its conventional arsenal, were to lay the groundwork for October 1 discussions with crushing democratic dissent, and pursuing nuclear weap- Tehran by insisting that Iranian sponsorship of Hamas (and ons. In February, Iran launched the Omid, its fi rst locally Hezbollah) terror has no place in the civilized world. If the produced satellite. In May, it launched the Sajil, a missile president were prepared to back up such words with deeds, with a range of more than 1,200 miles. In June, it rigged a it would promote international order, reassure our Arabian presidential election and violently broke up peaceful public Gulf allies, and substantially improve the prospects of peace
ASSOCIATED PRESS ASSOCIATED demonstrations. In July and August, it conducted Soviet- between Israel and the Palestinians. t
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 27 Books&Arts
An 1841 illustration for ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ KEAN COLLECTION / GETTY IMAGES
28 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 The Tell-Tale Artist Edgar Allan Poe turns 200
BY BROOKE ALLEN
dgar Allan Poe, whose bicen- Balzac, Dickens, Titian, Tintoretto, now so popular that they have come to tennial we celebrate this year, Wagner, and yes, Poe—have always take up a large portion of every book- holds a troubled and unique known. Poe’s undoubted fl ashiness store and library: horror, science fi ction, place in our national literature. served his thematic purposes well. and detection. Jules Verne and H.G. EOn the positive side he has main- Madness, alienation, and mankind’s Wells declared the indebtedness of their tained a popular appeal, right into our long love affair with morbidity were work to tales like Narrative of A. Gordon own time, that few if any writers of his his subjects, and he didn’t mind Pym and “The Balloon-Hoax,” while era can match. Middle school and high admitting to being more than half in the classic detective story is entirely school kids still go to Poe’s famous sto- love with easeful death, to mangle a constructed upon the outline provided ries for chills and thrills, and recite his line from his favorite poet, Tennyson. by his Auguste Dupin stories, with the poems for the pleasure of his gruesome His elaborate stage sets were admit- Dupin-narrator-police chief triangle images and seductively dramatic versifi - tedly just that—stage sets, summed up memorably reproduced in Holmes-Wat- cation. I have noticed that Poe is the only succinctly by his biographer Jeffrey son-Lestrade and Poirot-Hastings-Japp. classic American writer taught at school Meyers as “gloomy landscape, crum- No writer with such an enormous whose work my own teenage daughters bling mansion, somber interior, sor- legacy spanning low, middle, and high have enjoyed without qualifi cation. rowful atmosphere, terrifi ed narrator, art can be written off as merely juvenile The problem, of course, is that this neurasthenic hero, tubercular heroine, or vulgar. Perhaps it is most fruitful to popularity among adolescents has opium dreams, arcane books, prema- see Poe as a brilliant generator of arche- tended to fi ll the high-minded with ture burial, oppressive secrets, tempes- types. As with so many major artists, the aesthetic distaste. Henry James’s snide tuous weather, supernatural elements, psychic membrane between his ego and put-down has stuck: “It seems to us return from the grave and apocalyptic his id appears to have been unusually that to take him with more than a cer- conclusion.” permeable, his access to the peculiarly tain degree of seriousness is to lack seri- Once we have stripped away all this potent magic of the dream-life extraordi- ousness one’s self. An enthusiasm for décor, what do we have left? Allegories, nary. The famous fi rst line of “The Tell- Poe is the mark of a decidedly primi- largely, of the individual’s alienation Tale Heart” is emblematic of his entire tive stage of refl ection.” And Aldous from society, which was why Poe was body of work: “True!—nervous—very, Huxley famously used Poe as exhibit to prove so important and infl uential very dreadfully nervous I had been A in his infl uential essay “Vulgarity (more so than his actual skills would and am; but why will you say that I am in Literature”: “To the most sensitive seem to warrant) for succeeding gen- mad?” Echoed again and again, from and high-souled man in the world,” he erations of writers. Literary movements Dostoevsky’s Underground Man to commented, “we should fi nd it hard to throughout the second half of the 19th Camus’s Meursault, this was a clarion- forgive, shall we say, the wearing of a century and the early years of the 20th call for the prophets of modern alien- diamond ring on every fi nger. Poe does would claim Poe as honorary godfa- ation. After all, as the narrator of Poe’s the equivalent of this in his poetry; we ther: the Symbolists, the Decadents, “Eleonora” argued, “the question is not notice the solecism and shudder.” the Pre-Raphaelites, the Freudians, yet settled, whether madness is or is not Is there any justice in this charac- the aesthetic art-for-art’s sake school. the loftiest intelligence—whether much terization of Poe as a sort of literary Dostoevsky, Kipling, Conrad, Melville, that is glorious—whether all that is pro- Liberace? Perhaps Huxley was a little Mary Shelley, Nabokov, Mallarmé, found—does not spring from disease of too high-souled himself; vulgarity is Valéry, and many others were strongly thought—from moods of mind exalted at a sin against taste rather than against infl uenced by him; so of course was the expense of the general intellect.” art, as greater artists than Huxley— Baudelaire, who took it as his personal Taken up by Freud and countless artists as various as Shakespeare, mission to turn Poe into a greater fi gure others, this theme permeated 20th-cen- in France than he had ever claimed to tury thought, fi nally becoming a little Brooke Allen is the author, most recently, be in his native land. overworked. But science appears to of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical And almost incredibly, Poe provided have demonstrated that there is indeed Founding Fathers. the basic inspiration for three genres a connection between madness, or at
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 29 any rate bipolar illness, and creativity. “I hold that a long poem does not Another debatable tenet Poe insisted It doesn’t necessarily follow that mad- exist,” he insisted. “I maintain that upon was that “beauty is the sole legiti- ness is a desirable state. Baudelaire the phrase, ‘a long poem,’ is simply mate province of the poem.” He main- a fl at contradiction in terms. . . . and others have ascribed Poe’s terrible There are, no doubt, many who tained that “that pleasure which is at life and death to his being too fi ne and have found diffi culty in reconcil- once the most intense, the most elevat- sensitive to withstand the crass com- ing the critical dictum that the ing, and the most pure, is, I believe, mercialism of his world, but this is pure ‘Paradise Lost’ is to be devoutly found in the contemplation of the romanticism. Poe was a severe alcoholic admired throughout, with the abso- beautiful.” Is this true? Plenty would lute impossibility of maintaining from a family of alcoholics, and he was for it, during perusal, the amount argue with it. Poe separated beauty also a singularly self-destructive char- of enthusiasm which that critical from truth and passion: acter, insulting or letting down almost dictum would demand”—for “men Now the object, Truth, or the sat- everyone who tried to do him a favor. do not like epics, whatever they may say to the contrary.” isfaction of the intellect, and the Perversity was his middle name. object Passion, or the excitement Of course he knew this, and of the heart, are, although wove it into his art. In his fi c- attainable, to a certain extent, tion he explored the irrational in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in impulses that guided his life, fact, demands a precision, what he called in “The Black and Passion, a homeliness (the Cat,” “this unfathomable long- truly passionate will compre- ing of the soul to vex itself.” His hend me) which are abso- ire tended to be as inexplicable lutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is as that of the narrator in “The the excitement, or pleasur- Cask of Amontillado,” who able elevation, of the soul. never explains just what “inju- ries” the hapless Fortunato He took this principle to had committed to merit his its fullest extent, anticipating grisly fate. l’art pour l’art by glorifying the Though he created indeli- “poem per se—that poem which ble fi ctional and poetic images, is a poem and nothing more— Poe was surpassed by many of this poem written solely for his admirers; he was a master the poem’s sake.” Correspond- of the moment, the image, ingly he considered a didactic the impression, and could not poem “no poem at all,” and have carried off the “sustained lost no opportunity to express effort” (a value, and a term, he scorn for his contemporaries, affected to despise) necessary Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price dramatize the Transcendentalists, refer- to produce a work as complex ‘The Raven,’ 1963 ring to them as the “Frog- as Crime and Punishment or pondians” and characterizing even A Study in Scarlet. Poe’s aesthetic At best, he maintained, an epic can Massachusetts literary life as a “spirit of strictures, expressed throughout his lit- only be “a series of minor poems,” and mixed Puritanism, utilitarianism, and erary journalism, may have been held he thumbed his nose at the critics’ ten- transcendentalism.” in earnest; then again, they may have dency to be impressed by “sustained No—beauty was the only justifi cation been formulated to justify the only sort effort”: length and quality have noth- for poetry, and when Poe tried to come of work of which he was temperamen- ing to do with one another, he said, up with a defi nition for poetry, he was tally capable, and to elevate his own and the whole only amounts to a list of constrained to call it “The Rhythmical style of writing at the expense of others. parts. This is ridiculous, tantamount Creation of Beauty.” His truly amazing (Poe was one of the most considerable to saying that the Taj Mahal is noth- account of how he came to write “The critics of his era; modern readers can ing more than a random collection of Raven,” included in his essay “The Phi- fi nd all of his journalism in the Library walls and doorways; that he did not losophy of Composition,” would seem to of America’s volume of his essays and always hold to it is demonstrated by support his theories. Here he admits to reviews.) his enthusiasm for Dickens’s early having chosen subject, meter, rhythm, Brevity, for example, he asserted as novels, but his own work refl ects it everything with the sole intention of essential to great art: a poem or a piece faithfully—or perhaps the critical enhancing beauty, of which the supreme of fi ction should be short enough to be position was formulated in favor of his development is melancholy. The process read at a single sitting so as to main- own artistic limitations, for he found of composing “The Raven” (if he is to be tain unity, the “vital requisite in all it impossible to construct and fi nish a believed), so far from being “inspired”
works of Art.” full-length novel. in the true Romantic fashion, is almost AP PHOTO
30 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 laughably technical, with Poe cheerfully admitting to having selected “o” as “the B A most sonorous vowel” and “r” as “the & most producible consonant”—hence Nevermore, “a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the full- Home at Last est possible keeping with that melan- choly which I had predetermined as the Which metropolis may claim the peripatetic Poe? tone of the poem.” His subject, too, was BY SHAWN MACOMBER chosen deliberately, the death of a beau- tiful woman being “unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” Easy to laugh; but it should be remembered that Poe’s own mother had died young and beautiful, and that his beloved young wife was at that very moment in the process of expiring from tuberculosis. Another poetical ideal to which Poe clung tenaciously and which might account for some of his own limitations was his belief that “the indefi nite is an ele- ment in the true poiesis,” and that “a sug- gestive indefi niteness of meaning, with the view of bringing about a defi nite- ness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect” is the desideratum. Again, this is a principle we see richly illustrated in Poe’s imaginative writing; again, the Ed Pettit (Philadelphia), Jeff Jerome (Baltimore), Paul Lewis (Boston) author’s insistence on it shows the limits of his technical abilities. Indefi niteness Philadelphia obsessed with Poe’s “erratic and het- is appropriate for a brief poem or story; hat would Charles eroclite existence” and “the alcohol for a “sustained effort” (a necessary Baudelaire have made on his breath that could have been lit endeavor, Poe’s protestations notwith- of the scene at the Free with a candle.” standing) it is not enough. Library of Philadel- Yet here, in Poe’s bicentennial year, Poe’s aesthetics and critical stan- Wphia one frigid evening last winter, several hundred Americans passion- dards were too narrow, but they were the building’s lower-level auditorium ately joined a tussle over the deceased infl uential in their day and turned out fi lled to capacity for a boisterous author as if he were a newly single to be remarkably prescient of the sort debate among representatives of three cheerleader a week before prom— of aesthetic ideals that would predomi- American cities—Baltimore, Boston, cheering some arguments, serving nate for more than a century after his and Philadelphia—over which should up catcalls at others, reciting stanzas death in 1849. They apply very little to lay claim to the legacy, if not the of “The Raven” en masse with little the current scene; we have passed into bones, of Edgar Allan Poe? prompting. There have been tough an extremely didactic phase both in lit- After all, in an overwrought 1859 words of late from living critics: Algis erature and criticism, and the “sustained essay, the French poet and critic Valiunas, in a recent Commentary essay effort” is, if anything, overvalued today. wailed that “Poe and his country entitled “No to Poe,” wrote that while What on earth would Poe the critic were not on the same level.” Indeed, the “maniacal frivolity” of his work make, for example, of the modern fash- Baudelaire inferred that, for Poe, “the may “take on a cast of deliquescent ion for encyclopedic metafi ction? As an United States was nothing more than solemnity,” it is “by no means seri- imaginative writer, he would certainly a vast prison through which he wan- ous.” But surely, the Great Poe Debate be pleased by the esteem in which he is dered with the feverish unrest of one of 2009, as it was dubbed, would chas- still held, and still more gratifi ed by his who was born to breathe the air of a ten the ghost of Baudelaire, even if the towering reputation in France. For as he purer world,” a nation fi lled with “sar- Postal Service’s new Poe commemora- once admitted in his typically unbut- donic and superior” ninnies overly tive stamp failed to do so. toned fashion, “My whole nature utterly Then again, perhaps not. It was revolts at the idea that there is any Being Shawn Macomber is a writer easy enough to imagine Baudelaire
TIM SHAFFER / REUTERS in the Universe superior to myself!” t in Philadelphia. painting his face with a—sardonic?
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 31 superior?—smirk as La Salle pro- 1849, unceremoniously carted off in him most—especially while imbib- fessor Ed Pettit, proprietor of the to a hospital by members of his own ing certain spirits, a not-uncommon authoritative, quirky blog “Ed & family unwilling to tend to him. occurrence. Poe, echoing Hamlet, Edgar: My Adventures in the Cult of When a hospital doctor told Poe a described the pestilence incarnate of Poe,” bounded into the auditorium day later that he’d “soon be in the “The Masque of the Red Death” as in a boxer’s robe bearing the slogan company of friends” again, Peter having “out-Heroded Herod,” and he “Philly Poe Guy” to the strains of the Ackroyd reveals—in his fi ne, brief knew of whence he imagined, just as Rocky theme, waving a shovel and bel- biography Poe: A Life Cut Short—that the self-control issues Poe dreamt up lowing that he had come “not to bury Poe “broke out into an agony of self- for William Wilson (“Men usually Poe but to unbury him.” Pettit’s later reproach at his degradation” and pro- grow base by degrees. From me, in an addendum that he “would love to tested that “the best thing a friend instant, all virtue dropped bodily as exhume his wife and mother-in-law, might do for him was to blow out his a mantle”) could have been derived too” and Boston College professor [Poe’s] brains.” from the write what you know dictum. Paul Lewis marching in with a campy None did. Poe died anyway. Only When Henry Wadsworth Longfel- gait behind a giant plush raven on a four mourners attended the three- low failed to respond to Poe’s charges stick, quite possibly would have set minute funeral service. Poe’s grave against him of the “most barbarous class of literary robbery,” Poe went ahead and composed “an imaginary riposte to his own charges under the name ‘Outis,’ or ‘Nobody,’ simply to continue the public debate for a little longer,” Ackroyd notes. Poe was, in other words, ornery enough to quarrel with himself. Poe’s affection toward this contem- porary cadre might also be tempered somewhat by his robust literary ego. Well, of course they love me. Evidence? Well, there were his assured takes- one-to-know-one-fl avored rumina- tionson brilliance: “To appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced,” said Poe, the same critic who once bragged, “I intend to put up with nothing I can put down”—a category defi ned widely Interior of the Poe House, Philadelphia to leave early supporter James Russell Baudelaire choking on his cheese. was unmarked. “Poe was a perpetual Lowell wondering if Poe sometimes Granted, there were aspects of the orphan in the world,” Ackroyd muses. mistook “his phial of prussic acid for debate of which Poe himself would “All the evidence of his career, and of his inkstand.” have likely disapproved. For example, his writing, suggests that he was bound Compare this vast inventory of scath- the Poe impersonator got big laughs by ropes of fi re to the fi rst experiences ing critiques with Poe’s pronouncements by feigning imperious indignation of abandonment and of loneliness.” on his own work: When Poe encountered at jokes about his marriage to his How long Poe would have remained an acquaintance shortly after fi nishing beloved (13-year-old) cousin, Virginia enamored of his new-found 21st- “The Raven,” he confi ded, “I have just Clemm. He might also have lamented century friends is less than certain. written the greatest poem that was ever that the fi nal verdict was determined Maybe the fanfare would frustrate written.” (His friend’s response? “That by voice vote: “Democracy is a very him. “Either the memory of past bliss is a fi ne achievement.” Well, what would admirable form of government,” he is the anguish of today or the ago- you say?) once famously quipped, “for dogs.” nies which are have their origin in He pitched his treatise on the uni- Nevertheless, such an adoring the ecstasies that might have been,” he verse, Eureka, to publisher George reception might well have warmed wrote in “Berenice.” P. Putnam as a book that “would at the reanimated heart of a man who Not to mention, in his own day, that once command such universal and was traumatized by his mother’s neither acolytes nor benefactors held intense attention that the publisher early death, and left this world in a Poe’s esteem very long. He could be might give up all other enterprises,
lonely, broken stupor in the fall of dreadfully cruel to those who believed and make this one book the business LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
32 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 of his lifetime.” (It sold 500 copies the Bostonians have no soul”) and, noting a week and pay starvation wages.’ Oh, fi rst year—somewhat short of Poe’s Boston’s relatively recent interest in we love Poe. We supported Poe. The optimistic estimate of one million.) honoring Poe, faddishly labeled him- hell they did! Before they claim his legacy they should get down on their More than once during his life, Poe self the candidate of, yes, “change you knees and beg his forgiveness. insisted he would either “conquer or can believe in.” die.” The “perpetual orphan” man- Alas, riffs and allusions were not aged to do both. going to carry the day against two In short, Lewis said fi nally, Baltimore Jeff Jerome, longtime curator of the Poe scholars. Lewis fell back on a and Philadelphia had “chewed him up Poe House in Baltimore, took a front- counterintuitive argument—since the and spit him out.” Here moderator Gro- runner approach to the debate. He other two panel cities had primarily ver Silcox felt obliged to dive into the (fi guratively) gripped Poe’s bones like “inspired [Poe’s] work by torturing fray, ringing the miniature Liberty Bell a politician, clinging to a slim-but- him” and the only city with “a legiti- that served as the timer. solid lead in the polls. Gentle ridicule mate claim to Poe’s legacy” was the “I have to be honest with you, of the pretenders to the throne and an Paul,” Silcox said, “what you just appeal to tradition were the hallmarks described we look at as a compliment of his attack. Only four mourners in Philadelphia.” Actually, in build- Poe had Baltimore roots stretching attended the three- ing the case for Philadelphia’s owner- back to a grandmother who “made ship of Poe in a 2007 article, Pettit had trousers for Lafayette’s troops” while minute funeral cited the city’s mid-19th century . . . the general was encamped in the attributes (“race and labor riots, pov- city, Jerome said. The author was service. Poe’s grave erty and crime,” “a stinking effl uvia of originally buried in his grandfather’s corruption and decadence,” “brazen plot. It was in Baltimore that Poe was unmarked. grave-robbers”) as integral. composed his fi rst horror story, “Ber- “Poe, if we defi ne him by his macabre enice.” (“Premature burial, grave “Poe was a works,” Pettit wrote, “felt right at desecration, mutilation—it was a fun home.” story!” Jerome enthused.) The curator perpetual orphan He was not so blunt at the debate. allowed that there had been little ini- in the world,” Peter Emboldened by the hometown crowd in tial fanfare for Poe’s resting carrion in his quest to prove Philadelphia the “cru- Baltimore. Since the writer was rein- Ackroyd muses. “All cible of Poe’s creative genius,” the pro- terred in 1875, however, the city had fessor held forth with a grandiloquent “stepped up to the plate” and honored the evidence of his theatricality. him better than anyone else, from the “Baltimore hath told you Poe is “Poe Toaster” who has left three roses career, and of his theirs,” he began. “If it were so, it were and a half-bottle of cognac on Poe’s a grievous fault and grievous they shall grave on the author’s birthday every writing, suggests be when I answer them.” Pettit scoffed year since 1949 to its NFL team, the at the idea that Poe and Baltimore “go Ravens. that he was bound together like crab and cake,” and com- Boston’s Paul Lewis had a more by ropes of fi re to pared Poe’s time in Baltimore to Babe diffi cult task and conceded as much Ruth’s Red Sox years. straightaway, contemplating aloud the fi rst experiences “Philadelphia is where Poe had his his “underdog” status and kinship greatest seasons as a writer,” Pettit said. with Daniel Webster, “an earlier Bos- of abandonment “Baltimore? That’s just Poe’s minor ton orator” called to “argue his case league team.” Pettit reeled off some of against the Devil himself in front of and of loneliness.” Poe’s Philadelphia-impressive curricu- an audience of the damned.” lum vitae: “The Fall of the House of Before the debate, Lewis distrib- one “he didn’t live in much of the Usher,” “The Gold-Bug,” “The Pit and uted postcards with a Boston-centric time he was a professional writer.” He the Pendulum,” “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe timeline (sample entry: “Novem- said, Pettit also questioned Baltimore’s ber 1848: Poe attempts suicide in a motivations for reinterring Poe in more Boston hotel, thus settling for all time For these guys, it’s all about ‘Well, prestigious digs in 1875 (“Years later Poe the question of where he wanted to be Poe lived here,’ ‘Well, Poe worked becomes famous and Baltimore says, buried”) alongside abridged quota- here.’ They don’t want to talk about ‘Hey isn’t that famous guy buried in one tions (“We like Boston. We were born the quality of his life in these cities. of our cemeteries?’ ”) and only briefl y there” but omits “and perhaps it is When they recognized his genius, addressed Lewis’s case (“Boston? Please. when these cities saw what he could just as well not to mention that we are do, they thought, ‘Hmm, here’s an Poe was only born there because that heartily ashamed of the fact. . . . The editor. We could work him 80 hours was the city his pregnant actress-mother
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 33 happened to be performing in when she Willis White once complained that accept the claim of another, and Poe isn’t went into labor”). Poe’s work might be a bit “too hor- around to express a preference. Hence, Pettit acknowledged that his dream rible.” Poe responded that it was sim- another appropriate narrator quote, this of appropriating Poe’s body in order ply “the ludicrous heightened into the time from “The Fall of the House of to, as he wrote, “reinter it under the grotesque: the fearful colored into the Usher.” fl oorboards at Seventh and Spring Gar- horrible: the witty exaggerated into I was forced to fall back upon the den”—i.e., at Philadelphia’s lovely Poe the burlesque: the singular wrought unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, National Historic Site—“or brick it into out into the strange and mystical. You beyond doubt, there are combinations the wall” was, despite the shovel on the may say all this is bad taste.” of very simple natural objects which table, quixotic. “We all know his body Poe was, it seems, not entirely opposed have the power of thus affecting us, still will never really be moved, so let’s claim to a little histrionic hamming. the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. his legacy,” Pettit said. Further, in “The Gold-Bug” the nar- There were moments of testiness. rator ponders the puzzling situation Moreover, not everyone wants to be Pettit kept ribbing Jerome with not- around him, and ruminates that “The part of the debate. Although Poe self- so-thinly-veiled suggestions that identifi ed as a Virginian, and Poe might have lived and thrived lived in Richmond longer than had Baltimore not mysteriously any other city, Edgar Allan Poe in gotten hold of the author on Richmond author Chris Semtner his fateful, truncated 1849 trip said that he was content to leave to New York, and, when Lewis sparring over the author’s spiri- bragged that Boston’s Mayor tual residency to others. Thomas Menino had issued a “Poe was opposed to provin- proclamation in honor of the cialism in writing and life,” he Poe bicentennial, Jerome shot explained by phone from his back sarcastically, “How can we curator’s offi ce at Richmond’s top that?” Poe Museum, a cornucopia of “You could keep your mayor inventive exhibits and collections out of jail,” Lewis said. alongside an “Enchanted Gar- Oh, snap! Still, the brouhaha den” shrine to Poe which, inci- ended with the debaters express- dentally, you may reserve to wed ing their admiration for one your own Ligeia. another. Everyone hyped their “He wanted to compete on the own Poe events—symposiums, world stage. He would probably theatrical productions, imperson- love that people are still arguing ator visits, lectures, page-a-day over him, and if it gets people to calendars, Poe-themed antholo- read his work—that’s the best gies, etc. Free Library of Phila- way to honor his legacy, really. delphia employees handed out But I’m not sure he’d like to be brochures for its own exhibit, pigeonholed into one city as if which included rare manuscripts, he was a local sports team or had Charles Dickens’s “Raven”- limited appeal.” inspiring stuffed raven, letters, Original burial place, Baltimore Instead of joining the Poe and even a lock of Poe’s hair. Wars, the Richmond museum Philadelphia had run away with the mind struggles to establish a connec- held a Victorian séance with a Poe debate, but no one seemed particularly tion—and, being unable to do so, suffers impersonator, stayed open on his birth- surprised or dejected by the outcome. a species of temporary paralysis.” If argu- day for a full 24 hours, toasted the man In Eureka Poe posited “diffusion from ing legacy helps contemporary readers with champagne, and presented new Unity, under the conditions, involves a contextualize the work, or piques their exhibits of rare Poe daguerreotypes and tendency to return into Unity—a ten- interest enough to fortify them with the another on the author’s infl uence on dency ineradicable until satisfi ed.” So patience to delve into Poe’s somewhat graphic novels. it was on this night as well. antiquated syntax, that’s all well and And yet, despite his offi cial neutral- If it had been a more pedantic, less good enough. ity, Semtner did have a proposition for good-natured debate, would there Unlike the mystery in “The Gold- his fellow Poe fanatics. “In the true spirit have been a more conclusive result? Bug,” though, there is no real possible of Poe,” he said, “the different groups Ironically, the lighter atmosphere resolution to the Poe Wars. Pettit’s sports honoring his memory should not fi ght may have been a better tribute. South- team metaphor is apt: No booster of any amongst themselves, but should unite to
ern Literary Messenger editor Thomas one city will ever have the perspective to attack Longfellow.” t ROB CARR / AP PHOTO
34 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 made his peace with Stalin in the decades B A after Trotsky’s death, and, following this & course, he paralleled the action of most of Trotsky’s surviving loyalists. The Trotskyist movement today consists Death in Coyoacán mainly of uncritical enthusiasts for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and, until his How the long arm of Stalin liquidated Leon Trotsky. death, Slobodan Miloševic. But the faults in Deutscher are per- BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ceptible only to a handful of initiates: One hesitates to use the term special- n 1939, while Stalin and Hitler thoroughly discredited. In today’s Rus- ists, since after Deutscher little origi- were allied against the demo- sia his name is barely known, particu- nal in English on the subject has been cratic West, the predecessor of larly among the young. His books are written on the basis of primary sources. the House Committee on Un- unread, out of print, or issued here and Patenaude himself is a researcher at IAmerican Activities, and its chairman, there, in various languages, by obscure the Hoover Institution at Stanford and Texas Democratic congressman Martin political sects. And yet his name remains has availed himself of resources held Dies, sought testimony from one of the vivid in modern history. At one end of there. Trotsky papers are also kept at world’s leading authorities on Soviet an equally low spectrum of memory, he Harvard, which Patenaude visited, and Communism. But the is recalled as the victim at the International Institute of Social witness was living out- Trotsky of an attack by a Soviet History in Amsterdam, which he did side the United States, Downfall of a Revolutionary agent wielding, it is said, not. (Russian archives, which must and a visa to cross the by Bertrand M. Patenaude an ice-pick. (In reality, be extensive and defi nitive, have not HarperCollins, 384 pp., $27.99 border and appear before the fatal weapon was a been opened to scholars.) Patenaude’s the committee was mountaineer’s climbing work so closely echoes Deutscher’s, denied him. Less than a year later, the axe.) At the other end, he is viewed as except for trivial details, that a reader prospective witness had been murdered an inspiration for neoconservatism—an is entitled to ask whether there is much in a brutal, fl amboyant manner. equally garbled association. that is really new to say about Trotsky. The man who desperately wished to Bertrand Patenaude’s new book is not Far from being a biography of the man, “name names” to the House committee a biography, although it comes with a Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary is was Leon Trotsky, exiled in Mex- a kind of adventure-cum-mystery ico. Although his death had been story, focusing on Trotsky’s Mexi- ordered by Stalin since the mid- can exile and assassination. 1930s, the invitation to appear before This chronological emphasis the committee—where Trotsky is understandable, since if today’s intended to disclose the full extent readers know much about Trotsky, of Soviet fi nancing and control of it typically has to do with his love Communists in America and around affair with Frida Kahlo, the Mexi- the world—must have made his kill- can Communist artist and latter-day ing even more urgent to the Russian feminist icon. And the story of the dictator. Certainly, had the exile been killing itself is both fascinating in its allowed to answer the committee’s convoluted preparations and lurid in invitation, today’s common wis- its outcome. dom about communism in America, Until the murder of John F. Ken- The Trotskys arrive in Mexico, 1937 about the House Committee on Un- nedy 23 years later, the assassination American Activities, about testifying blurb from Misha Glenny claiming that of Leon Trotsky was the most famous before it, and even about Leon Trotsky it “gets closer to Trotsky’s essential char- such act of the 20th century. Or at least, himself, might be very different. acter than any of the vast tomes devoted the best-known with a background Or perhaps not. The continued—or to him in the past.” What vast tomes are comprehensible to most of the world, better, revived—discussion of Trotsky those? The only full-length biography, since the 1914 double shooting of the is mysterious. The Bolshevik political admittedly vast in its extent, is Isaac Habsburg crown prince Franz Ferdi- doctrine he adopted only months before Deutscher’s trilogy—The Prophet Armed, nand and his wife in Sarajevo was a the Leninist revolution of 1917 has been The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Out- murky affair when it happened—and to cast—still in print after more than 50 those who remember anything about it Stephen Schwartz is the author, most recently, years. Although Deutscher’s Trotsky has (and they are few outside the Balkans), it of The Other Islam: Sufi sm and the its failings, they are mainly ideological. remains surprisingly opaque.
ASSOCIATED PRESS ASSOCIATED Road to Global Harmony. The onetime Trotskyist Deutscher had By contrast, the brazen killing of
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 35 an isolated and politically weak émi- Ruth. Sylvia worked in New York City’s document was none too worldly.) With gré, a hemisphere away from Moscow, welfare department with a Communist Sylvia Ageloff as his human passport, should have disabused anybody about named Ruby Weil, who went with Syl- he again visited the Trotsky house, and the “benevolence” of Soviet policies via on a trip to Europe. Sylvia, who was three months after the Siqueiros assault, and habits, especially since it occurred not known for her romantic history, was stood behind Trotsky as the latter sat in while the Stalin-Hitler alliance was in introduced to the suave and handsome his workroom and read through a politi- effect. But the capacity of Communists Mercader, who became her lover. cal essay Mercador had written. and their acolytes (then known as fel- The seduction of Sylvia Ageloff gave The assassin knew his job. He real- low-travelers) to ignore the reality before the Soviets access to their quarry. The ized that Trotsky could not resist the them has always been remarkable, and role of American Communists in the temptation to help form a writer’s work, constitutes another story entirely. conspiracy, and its main coordination by and would concentrate on reading, Patenaude’s narrative begins with the way of cities north of the border, cannot lowering his gaze and leaving his back arrival of Trotsky and his second wife be overstated. As Patenaude writes in his unprotected. Mercader struck his blow, Natalia Sedova, a daughter of the Rus- characteristically fl ashy (but in this case and after a night and a day in a Mexico sian nobility, in Mexico in 1937. White accurate) tone, “the road to Coyoacán City hospital Trotsky died. of hair and beard, he was 57 years old; led through New York City.” In reality, The assassin received a 20-year prison the nickname used by those who worked Trotskyism as an intellectual phenom- sentence, and on his release in 1960, his with him—“the Old Man”—was a ref- enon was also centered in New York, true identity was revealed by the writer erence to authority of the kind usually but the Stalinists there were more deter- Isaac Don Levine. Mercader went to granted military commanders or ship’s mined than their opponents, and they Moscow, where he was decorated with captains, rather than an indicator of age. had a specifi c agenda. the Order of Lenin, and honored as a (It was also considered a serious Hero of the Soviet Union. He died gaffe among his followers when in 1978, aged 64—four years older used by those who did now know than his victim when the assassina- him personally.) tion occurred in 1940. The passage to Mexico had The most interesting questions been long and tortuous. Expelled about Leon Trotsky have yet to be from Soviet Russia to Turkey in asked in any new book. It is not 1929, Trotsky was sent to France, enough to say that he was brilliant, following Soviet pressure, in 1933, or that he shared in responsibility then to Norway in 1935, and for the horrors of communism, or fi nally to Mexico two years later. that he defi ed Stalin unto death. He was welcomed by President He remained apart from the Bol- Lázaro Cárdenas, as well as by sheviks until three months before Diego Rivera and Rivera’s lover Trotsky, postmortem, August 20, 1940 their 1917 coup, and had been the Kahlo. He moved with his wife, most articulate critic of Lenin’s secretaries, and bodyguards into the So Patenaude’s recounting of these dictatorial methods. “Blue House” where Kahlo had grown grim events has a fi lm-noir feeling. What changed his mind? Could he up, in a small village then outside Mex- Trotsky and his ménage left the Blue simply not resist a ride on the train of ico City called Coyoacán. House, and moved a few blocks away, revolutionary power? He was sympa- Yet even with protection by the when tensions over the manipula- thetic to the United States, and expressed Mexican authorities, the end was nearer tive Kahlo alienated Rivera as well as a desire to live under Franklin D. Roos- than Trotsky might have realized. The Trotsky’s wife, Natalia. In May 1940 evelt rather than Lázaro Cárdenas. (He decision to liquidate him, wherever he the Mexican mural painter David had resided in New York before the could be found, had been made, and the Siqueiros led a party of Stalinist fanatics Bolshevik Revolution.) What attracted assassin, a Spanish Communist named in a machine gun attack on the new resi- him so strongly? At the end of his life Ramón Mercader, would soon undergo dence, in which Trotsky’s grandson was he expressed an unexpected sympathy intensive training for the assignment. shot in the foot; but Trotsky and Natalia for Zionism in the face of Nazi atrocities, Communists in the United States were escaped injury. and even read the Bible, which he had actively seeking targets for use as infi l- The Siqueiros attack remains some- been taught as a Jewish youth in Ukraine. tration shields in gaining entry to the thing of a mystery, and may have been He took to calling his adversary “Cain- Trotsky household. a feint intended to cover the penetration Stalin.” How would he have greeted the One of these unfortunate marks was of the group by Mercader; he showed up founding of Israel? And had he not been a Brooklynite named Sylvia Ageloff, for the fi rst time four days later. He now killed, would the Soviet Army ever have whose sister Ruth occasionally went possessed a fake identity as a Canadian rebelled against Stalin and returned him to Trotsky’s house to serve as a Rus- with the misspelled name “Jacson.” (The to command? Many thought that a real
sian-language secretary. Trotsky favored Soviet passport forger responsible for this possibility; Trotsky was not among them. GETTY IMAGES
36 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 As World War II began, Trotsky still with no new issues in Trotsky’s life, Not surprisingly, the Tinker parents clung to the idea that the Soviet Union and this volume is replete with errors were involved in antiwar organizations was socialist and, therefore, progres- indicating a hasty dependence on sec- and SDS. Although school authori- sive; but he also warned that if it did ondary sources. Ramon Mercader, for ties won the case in the federal district not reform in a democratic direction example, died in Cuba as an adviser court and appeals court, the Supreme after the war—he specifi cally called for to Castro, and not in Russia as Pat- Court famously declared that students an end to a single-party state—social- enaude intimates. Moreover, without and teachers do not “shed their consti- ism would have to be considered a access to the Soviet archives, Pat- tutional rights to free expression at the utopian fantasy. Most of his intellec- enaude has depended on unreliable schoolhouse gate.” tual adherents became conservatives memoirs which could well be Russian Since then, schools have altered disci- or neoconservatives: James Burnham, disinformation. His psychologizing is plinary practices to comport with Tinker a leading American Trotskyist, was often jejune: Patenaude declares that, and subsequent cases. Although bong a founder of National Review. Would when Trotsky was expelled from Rus- advocate Joseph Frederick did not pre- Trotsky have followed them—and how sia to Turkey, it “must have pleased vail, the threat of similar litigation hov- far? He was only 60 when he died in him” that the Soviet passport he was ers, inspiring costly preemptive mea- 1940. What would he have had to say handed described him as a “writer.” sures. Even the opinions of some con- in 1950? His widow Natalia broke with A new, critical, far-reaching examina- servative judges and counselors testify to the Trotskyists when they supported tion of the Trotsky conundrum—why the shift in tenor. North Korea in the war that began his name retains its prominence when For instance, Dupre notes the that year. She died in 1962. so many others are forgotten—remains “strange bedfellows” that Joe Frederick Unfortunately, Patenaude deals to be written. t attracted: the Christian Legal Society and the Liberty Legal Institute, which feared that a broad ruling would give B A politically correct schools the power to & restrain the speech of conservative stu- dents. This shift in focus testifi es to the radical change in the curriculum and Talk Isn’t Cheap atmosphere in our schools; conserva- tive students now need protection for When ‘free speech’ undermines the First Amendment. expressing opinions once considered BY MARY GRABAR “core values.” Conservative students also need pro- tection in our universities. There the teacher in [a democratic] The sheer fact that a student would pro- issue of “academic freedom”—for cer- community,” said Plato, “is voke school administrators and then sue tain members of the faculty—prevails, ‘A afraid of his students and fl at- over his (light) punishment tells how far and has been championed in such efforts ters them, while the students despise down the road to Plato’s anarchic state as the AAUP’s 1915 resolution against their teachers or tutors.” we have come—at least government infringement and the 1952 Among the fears beset- in our public schools. Wieman case against the requirement Speaking Up ting public school teach- The Unintended Costs of Free A law professor and that teachers sign loyalty oaths. But pro- ers today is the lawsuit Speech in Public Schools former schoolteacher, fessors have morphed from Justice Felix from a student—a devel- by Anne Proffi tt Dupre Dupre understands the Frankfurter’s characterization as “priests opment not anticipated Harvard, 304 pp., $29.95 motivation behind (and of our democracy” to a priestly class that by Plato. But since the consequences of) such seeks to control the speech of students, 1965 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Inde- lawsuits in schools that were instituted and the hiring, promotion, and publica- pendent Community School District, the for, as Thomas Jefferson envisioned, tion of colleagues. threat of lawsuits has become a fact of the “common people.” Jefferson’s con- It’s strange what parents might con- life in our public schools. In Speak- cern for an educated and principled sider “free speech.” But court decisions ing Up, Anne Proffi tt Dupre presents a citizenry required, as Dupre points since 1965, and the passage of the Civil compelling narrative, from that water- out, a set of “core values.” Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of shed case to the infamous Morse v. Fred- “Core values” were at issue in the 1976, made it easier for the father of erick (2007), where high school student Tinker case involving four students, ages Matthew Fraser to sue in 1986 on behalf Joseph Frederick sued his principal for 8 to 15. In defi ance of school rules they of his son, who had given a speech using ordering him to take down his 14-foot wore black armbands to protest Ameri- pornographic sexual metaphors to 600 of banner advertising “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” can involvement in Vietnam. But it was his fellow students. Emboldened teams the fathers who sued the school district of parents and students have jumped Mary Grabar is a writer in Atlanta. after their children were sent home: into other “free speech” arenas involving
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 37 student newspapers, book “banning,” the conundrum, and it is a particularly strating in the process how competition religious speech in the form of prayer, diffi cult issue when dealing with stu- inspires the achievements of even the and the Pledge of Allegiance. dents who are in the midst of gaining greatest artists. that knowledge and common sense What becomes evident, however, is and attachment to their country. At the start of the show we see two an unconsciously coordinated effort religious pictures, one by the young between the curriculum devisers and the Titian and the other by his teacher legal system, and between teachers and Tinker helped turn our schools Bellini. These are examples of a popu- parents. Since 1965 we have come to see into ideological debating forums that lar Venetian genre, known as a Sacra children as little adults—but without place adult burdens on children at the Conversazione, a “sacred conversation” the responsibilities. As teachers grant expense of the basic knowledge neces- among the Virgin, Child, and saints. more authority to students as “critical sary to function as good citizens. Par- Bellini’s panel has a ravishingly beau- thinkers” capable of resolving complex ents are often all too ready to protest tiful palette, but the holy protagonists issues, parents treat their children as on behalf of their children’s academic gaze out at us rather than at each other entirely capable and as worthy of free standing and to support them in dubi- and seem frozen, aloof, disconnected. speech rights as grown-up scholars— ous “free speech” issues. Yet, as we saw Titian, by contrast, invites us into and deserving of due respect and honors in this past presidential election, chil- a silent narrative. On the right, St. from their teachers. dren—many far too young to vote—are Dominic and the donor seem to have Justice Hugo Black’s assertion—“our subjected to political messages through just arrived, drawing the gazes of the Constitution assumes that the common bulletin boards, curricula, and class Virgin and Child toward the fervent sense of the people and their attachment discussion, and are made to perform supplicants. We see Titian building to our country will enable them, after songs, chants, pledges, and dances. on the broad and fi rm foundation of free discussion, to withstand ideas that We’ve gone from black armbands his teacher while developing a highly are wrong”—is applied prematurely to to Barack Obama song-and-dance rou- original way of conceiving and dra- children. Dupre notes: tines performed by starry-eyed children matizing his subject. We are especially under the appreciative gaze of parents taken by the handsome, idealized Saint Of course that assumes that the people have “common sense” or the education who would claim to champion their Dominic, and the sensitive face of the and cognitive skills to be able to sort “free speech” rights. Would Plato have donor qualifi es as an early Titian por- the wheat from the chaff. Therein lies foreseen that? t trait of distinction. For it was in the fi eld of portrai- ture that Titian marked out his claim B A to fame. With his magical ability to & paint men and women of high rank not as they were but as they wished to be, Titian endowed his sitters with the Venetian Rivals nobility, power, and dignity that a ruler must have but that may have eluded The glory of artistic competition among the masters. many of them in real life. He thereby BY JOSEPH PHELAN established the conventions of aristo- cratic and kingly portraiture. A prime example of Titian’s portrai- he 16th century—the supreme fi gure in Venetian art from ture is the closeup of the 74-year-old Cinquecento—marks the 1515 on. His extremely long life meant Paul III, the last of the Renaissance golden age of Venetian paint- that the younger painters Tintoretto popes, the reluctant reformer of the ing. Today the canvases (1518-1594) and Veronese (1528-1588) church, and the patron of Michelangelo’s ofT Titian, Tintoretto, and overlapped creatively and Last Judgment. Sitting on his throne, he Veronese may seem like Titian, Tintoretto, professionally with him for seems to have just turned to look at us the ultimate Old Mas- Veronese nearly 40 years. from atop a mountain of crushed velvet, The Louvre ter art, yet this exciting September 17- By signifi cantly group- his dark, arresting eyes full of reason exhibit (subtitled Rivals in January 4, 2010 ing two or three canvases, and the will to power. Renaissance Venice) aims to curator Frederick Ilchman After confronting Titian’s portrayal, show how contemporary these works has lovingly re-created, through care- one cannot conceive a more monu- once were: experimental, bold, and fully chosen juxtapositions, the heated mental, direct, or forceful image of even shocking. atmosphere of artistic creation in the this paragon of spiritual and worldly Titian (c. 1488-1576) was the 16th-century republic, showing how power. With this work, the artist won these younger men forged their own international fame the sort of which Joseph Phelan is the editor distinct painterly styles by responding had never before been conferred on an of Artcyclopedia.com. to Titian and each other, and demon- artist. Other great portrait paint-
38 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 ers such as El Greco and Velázquez tive to attend a show fi lled with the the artist an opportunity to create his learned a great deal from him, but it is constant parleys of painterly rivalry, own luminous female nude in a para- arguable if any later painter ever sur- they should be more than satisfi ed with disal setting. We notice the bald heads passed this portrait. the mythological nudes. Venice in this of the men hidden away in the left hand Titian’s mid-career success around period was famous for its courtesans corner only with some effort, but once 1645 with the international elite and prostitutes who numbered in the we do, we appreciate the dramatic bite opened up opportunities in Venice for thousands, making it the “brothel of of this calm-before-the-storm composi- younger men. First among these was Europe.” It is no surprise that highly tion even more. Tintoretto, whose smoldering self-por- sophisticated depictions of female The show ends with homage to the trait announces his arrival as an ambi- sensuality were fi rst developed there. late painting styles of our trio. Titian tious, confi dent risk-taker. While Titian While it was a Florentine painter, Bot- once again sets the highest possible brooded over his compositions for ticelli, who fi rst monumentalized the standard for his younger rivals. In his months and even years, Tintoretto mar- Renaissance female nude in the 15th Tarquin and Lucretia the aged master keted himself as a kind of anti-Titian, century with his Birth of Venus, it was returns to his great theme of eros to painting large canvases at great speed Titian and his short-lived colleague show its darkest dimensions. In what while cutting prices and even giving Giorgione who reimagined her as is undoubtedly the most brutal rape his work away to the various Venetian reclining, voluptuous, and earthly. scene in all large-scale paintings of confraternities that the Renaissance, he were so much a part of demonstrates how this the Serene Republic’s medium can rise to social network. the heights of tragic One of the important utterance previously patrons he sought out reserved for dramatic was the brilliant satirist, poetry. writer, and publicist Tintoretto offers an Aretino, offering this even more shocking close friend of Titian a composition, with the painting for his ceiling already-nude Tarquin with the self-referential ripping the necklace Flaying of Marsyas, a off his victim’s neck. learned and cheeky call- As Lucretia’s pearls ing card that announced fall onto the fl oor they his challenge to the become a metaphor for older master. her impending loss of As a way of further virtue, just as her tears differentiating himself, will be transmuted into Tintoretto began a long ‘Susanna Bathing’ by Jacopo Tintoretto (1555-56) jewels of honor. study of Florentine Tintoretto outlasted design, going so far as to display in his With his Danae, Titian’s magic abil- both his rivals by a decade and has the studio the motto “the draftsmanship of ity to turn paint into living fl esh is last word in this show. His Florentine Michelangelo, the coloring of Titian.” astonishing. The artist breathes new contemporary, the painter and his- Tintoretto’s Baptism of Christ, with the life into the ancient myth of the young torian Giorgio Vasari, called him the towering, muscular bodies of Christ princess and beloved of Zeus who is most extraordinary brain in the his- and the Baptist, is a brilliant example shut up in a high tower by her fear- tory of painting. His aged self-portrait of this synthesis. ful father. We apprehend the umber, is an uncompromising picture of an The arrival of Veronese 10 years soft gold, deep red, and cream tones exhausted old man whose mind con- later further turned up the thermostat of painting as an invitation to sexual tinues to rage. of the already hothouse atmosphere of desire, yet still are attracted to the indi- The rivalry of the Venetian golden the Venice art scene. The younger man viduality of the woman anticipating her age constitutes one of the richest chap- modeled himself on Titian, while the lover’s arrival in the form of soft golden ters in the history of art. Together, wily Titian used Veronese to undercut rain. Even his archrival Michelangelo Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese created the hated Tintoretto. From his youth, had praise for this work’s life-giving an unparalleled body of work, opened Veronese made his name as an opulent vitality when he saw it in Rome. up new avenues of aesthetic expression, colorist and he was to grow into the Responding to Titian, Tintoretto and forged a golden chain of infl uence master of enormous feast scenes painted produced his Susannah Bathing. The that runs from El Greco, Rembrandt, on canvas for the walls of refectories. biblical story of the virtuous wife slan- and Velázquez to Willem de Kooning
THE GALLERY COLLECTION / CORBIS If visitors still need an added incen- dered by two prurient old men offered and Lucien Freud. t
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 39 “Bitterly divided along party lines, the House formally rebuked Republican Rep. Joe Wilson Tuesday for shouting ‘You lie’ at Parody President Barack Obama during last week’s nationally televised speech to Congress.” —Associated Press, September 15, 2009
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009