MAKE MARCO GREAT AGAIN JOHN MCCORMACK AUGUST 20 / AUGUST 27, 2018 $5.99 On the Front Lines of the Trade War TONY MECIA on the ups and downs of an Iowa metal shop ANDREW EGGER on the anxieties of Missouri farmers WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM THIS IS A COMBINED ISSUE. THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE WEEKLY STANDARD WILL APPEAR IN TWO WEEKS. Contents August 20 / August 27, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 47 2 The Scrapbook An amazingly inept fact check, team spirit, & more 5 Casual David Skinner’s shiners 6 Editorials ‘Very Standard’? • A Tale of Two Cultures 8 Comment Manafort Agonistes BY ANDREW FERGUSON 2 Brett Kavanaugh and the problem of hyperpartisanship BY PHILIP TERZIAN The virtues of concentrating the mind BY BARTON SWAIM Articles 12 Sow Tariffs, Reap Retaliation BY ANDREW EGGER Farmers are the first to feel the squeeze 15 Trump Tower Tales and Tweets BY ERIC FELTEN The meeting that launched a thousand controversies 17 Labour’s Jewish Problem BY DOMINIC GREEN 15 Jeremy Corbyn and the uses of idiocy 19 Wrestling with the Speakership BY HALEY BYRD Jim Jordan’s bid to succeed Paul Ryan Features 21 Footsoldiers in a Trade War BY TONY MECIA In an Iowa metal shop, the booming economy is hiding the effects of Trump’s tariffs 27 Rubio Goes Nationalist BY JOHN MCCORMACK Meet the new Marco . 31 Rick Perry’s Unlikely Third Act BY MIChaEL WARREN Can a high-profile former governor find happiness as a hardworking energy secretary? 34 Breaking the Climate Spell BY RUPERT DARWALL Getting out of the Paris Agreement was just the first step on the road to energy realism Books & Arts 38 The Fashion of This World BY CATHERINE ADDINGTON Godly garments and high couture at the Met 27 41 The Mom Crunch BY NAOMI SChaEFER RILEY In the sequel to ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It,’ teens and tech collide 42 Vladimir Voinovich, 1932-2018 BY CATHY YOUNG The dissident writer’s remarkable life 43 Chance of a Lifetime BY B. D. MCCLAY Taking control by giving it up 45 Sunlit Second Acts BY AMY HENDERSON Three women remaking their lives in Tuscany 46 Angry Kitsch BY HANNah YOEST The sudden fame of Jon McNaughton, painter of populist rage 38 48 Parody Area college launches Mediocre Books program COVER BY DAVID CLARK THE SCRAPBOOK Fact Check: It Depends! he fact-checking industry has tendentious hairsplitting. But you T grown tremendously in recent would be wrong. The Trumpian asser- years, and mostly for good reason. tion that moved the PolitiFact’s scru- Half-truths, outrageous rumors, and tineers to action? This one: “In the outright fabrications are common second quarter of this year, the United enough without the Internet. They States economy grew at the amaz- are ubiquitous online. When fact- ing rate of 4.1 percent.” PolitiFact’s checking is well done (by, for instance, objection wasn’t to the data—the Glenn Kessler at the Washington economy really did grow at 4.1 per- Post or THE SCRAPBOOK’s fave, our cent in the second quarter—but to the WEEKLY STANDARD colleague Holmes adjective: amazing. Lybrand), it aids the intelligent read- “This is a strong showing in the er’s capacity to negotiate the sea of cases with extravagant oratory, one- context of recent history,” PolitiFact’s online confusion. sided arguments, over-the-top exagger- Louis Jacobson writes, “and the But it’s often done poorly—and, ation, and only occasionally outright highest since the third quarter of as Mark Hemingway has ably docu- lies. It’s a place where fact-checking can 2014. But most economists would not mented in these pages over the years, help, but a bit of flexibility doesn’t hurt. use the word ‘amazing’ to describe with absurdly obvious political bias. All this came to mind this week it.” Remarkable, maybe. Impressive, Among the worst offenders: PolitiFact, when we read a PolitiFact entry on one perhaps. But amazing? Come on, which in 2012 served as a de facto arm of Donald Trump’s recent remarks. Mr. President! of the Obama reelection campaign. The You might think this fact-checking Jacobson’s final assessment on trouble with fact-checking political watchdog would have an abundance Trump’s statement: “Strong, but not claims is that politics is a highly rhe- of material to work with from the amazing.” Our assessment of his fact torical sphere: Participants make their 45th president without resorting to check: amazingly dumb. ♦ get the nominations of the Green, Fusion for Dummies Libertarian, and Working Families lection season is upon us, and you parties. Evidently Smith’s genius E know what that means—idiotic consultants weren’t aware of the trickery dreamed up by campaign state’s “sore loser” law that bans can- hacks and political consultants. didates from running in a race in Consider: New York election law which they’ve already lost a primary. allows candidates to run for office On August 4, the South Carolina under multiple party labels. Thanks Libertarian party voted against Smith to the state’s “fusion candidacy” laws, as its nominee—meaning he’s now a smaller party—say, New York’s Inde- lost a primary and may be ineligible to pendence party—can endorse a Demo- run in the general election. The Smith crat or Republican, and that candidate party ballot line with, for example, campaign insists his name was “with- appears on the ballot as its nominee. Rep. Chris Collins, who has called drawn” before the vote, but neither the The upside for the smaller party is that the governor “a bully, a blackmailer, timing nor the legality of the alleged if it garners more than 50,000 votes, and an extortionist.” Also on the withdrawal is clear at this point. it has a guaranteed place on the next Independence line will be congres- The practice of fusion candida- election cycle’s ballot. The upside for sional Republicans whom Cuomo cies is a deliberate attempt to take the candidate is that his or her name is trying to defeat by funding their advantage of the dumb and the unin- appears on the ballot more than once. Democratic opponents. formed—people who vote for a candi- New York statehouse candidates It’s not just New York. The strat- date because they see his or her name of both parties do the same thing, egy of fusion candidacies is practiced listed more often than others. There’s as a report in the New York Times in some other states, too, though per- no evidence that it even boosts the can- pointed out, with the weird result haps not as competently. In South didate’s overall numbers, but consul- that Governor Andrew Cuomo will Carolina, Democratic gubernato- tants get their clients to do it anyway. appear on the same Independence rial candidate James Smith tried to We suspect Smith will find a way to LLAMA: BIGSTOCK 2 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD AUGUST 20 / AUGUST 27, 2018 stay on the ballot in November, but it would serve him right if he couldn’t. ♦ Patronizing the Revolutionaries n Europe and North America, I museums just can’t win. It takes wealthy people and large corporations to keep them operating, but left-wing artists and intellectuals don’t like wealthy people and large companies. It’s a tough spot to be in, but the Design Museum in London might have seen this debacle coming. The museum this summer hosted an exhi- bition titled “Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18” featuring politi- cally themed works of graphic artists, from Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster depicting Barack Obama to various Women’s March posters and a gram- matically problematic sign reading “It’s not about me, it’s about we.” The exhibition purported to explain “how graphic design and technology have played a pivotal role in dictat- ing and reacting to the major politi- cal moments of our time.” We’re not sure how something could play a piv- otal role in dictating and reacting to a series of major moments, but we’re reasonably certain that if you’re a museum and you feature the creations of a lot of left-wing artist-agitators, you’re asking for trouble. The trouble came when the artists featured in “Hope to Nope” heard, according to the New York Times, “that the Design Museum had rented called attention to their moral supe- expecting a showdown, but the its atrium to Leonardo, one of the riority. A hat-trick! museum staff had politely packed world’s largest aerospace The graphic art- up the items awaiting retrieval— and defense companies, for ists decided not just to whereupon the artists felt obliged a drinks reception in July.” ask that their works be to remove the artworks from their They “expressed shock when removed; they showed packages in order to display them to they learned about the recep- up to remove them waiting photographers. tion, and asked for their themselves. On the If you’re in London, the exhibition works to be removed from morning of August 2, continues until August 12, sans the the museum.” a little posse of artists works of a few ungrateful twits. ♦ It must be a blissful world arrived at the museum where such a thing is shock- holding placards bear- ing, but the offended art- ing the words “THE Disband the Team ists got more out of it than REVOLUTION s THE SCRAPBOOK the only one who’s shock: Not only did they WILL NOT BE I grown weary of the word team used get their work exhibited; PATRONISED” and where it doesn’t belong—outside the they earned media attention “#NopeToArms.” world of sports? For a year or two after ALISDARE HICKSON about the exhibition and Evidently they were Olympic teams were called Team USA AUGUST 20 / AUGUST 27, 2018 THE WEEKLY STANDARD / 3 or Team France, it was cute to refer to Why is everything now a “team”? your company or office as “team” this We wonder if it’s an attempt to or that.