Camelot And Sacred Cow–Tipping

May 7, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Entertainment, History, Media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, TV, U.S. History, UK Politics | 2 Comments 

Whatever his obvious faults and flaws, it is somewhat understandable that Richard Nixon would ruminate about how Jack Kennedy got away with a lot during his assassination-shortened presidency. And there is no doubt that the 37th President of the United States saw all of the “Camelot” hype as mythology born of cynical public relations. While Nixon was being criticized for conducting a purported “Imperial” presidency by the likes of Arthur Schlessinger (a pro-Kennedy historian), he no-doubt resented the cult of personality that survived his old rival’s violent death.

RN would be 97 today—JFK would be 93 in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to envision the forever-young Kennedy as an old man, though we saw Nixon live into his 80s. They were friends at first, with Nixon the early-on transcendent figure. Then came the rivalry marked by increased and enduring bitterness. But it was always more complicated than that.

Americans too young to remember either man have been taught the party line that Kennedy was a great man and Nixon was a bad man. JFK was the hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis—Nixon was the villain of Watergate. JFK had charisma; Nixon had no charm—and so it goes.

The truth is actually quite different.

The History Channel is moving forward with production of an eight-part mini-series scheduled to air next year called, The Kennedys. Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) will play JFK and Katie Holmes will play Jacqueline. The producer is a man named Joel Surnow, who is the creator of the highly successful and soon to expire series, 24.

Surnow is also reputed to have politically conservative tendencies (Gasp! Horrors!). Reportedly, the upcoming dramatic portrayal of the years of the New Frontier will include material about some of Kennedy’s flaws—and the guardians of his image are mobilized to “stop the smears.”

I say it’s about time that popular culture is exposed to the truth about the man behind the Camelot myth—before fact is fossilized.

The John F. Kennedy who will be portrayed in the new series will, reportedly, be a real life character—warts and all. And some of those warts had the potential to morph into cancer. In fact, there is a credible case to be made that had Kennedy lived beyond that fateful fall day in 1963, and managed to be reelected in 1964, he may not have survived a second term, legally and politically. That’s right. As Hugh Sidey suggested before his death in 2005—the same Hugh Sidey, who as an editor at Time Magazine during the Kennedy years, was also a Camelot insider—JFK’s various and sundry moral, ethical, and judgmental, pecadillos might very well have led to his actual impeachment.

Was the Kennedy administration a Watergate waiting to happen?

Possibly this new mini-series will popularize information that has long lain dormant in histories that are hardly read anymore. All the pieces of the puzzle are long established matters in the public domain—hiding in plain sight, but obscured by the powerful rays of cultish brilliance. But finally, those pieces are being assembled in a way that may accurately characterize a man who was likely guilty of actions much worse than what brought Mr. Nixon down in 1974.

From the improper use of the FBI in matters of surveillance and investigation in matters not at all related to national security, to misuse of the Secret Service, to his affair with a mistress of a major crime boss with its attendant compromises, Mr. Kennedy played by his own rules against the backdrop of the last gasp of an age of media mercy. He lived on the edge, from his monumental sexual addiction, to his experimentation with illicit drugs, to his dependence on substances that, while not illegal, seemed grayish—John F. Kennedy’s time was running out. People were always covering for him (some of the same ones still are). But was it only a matter of time before someone broke rank?

If Watergate taught us anything, it was that it is hard to keep a lid on a big story—even in the White House.

The story of Jack’s faults is, though, more than the tale of a bad boy—he may very well have compromised national security. Mr. Kennedy’s fascination in 1963 with an unfolding scandal in Great Britain likely had to do with the fact that he was beginning to worry about his own bailiwick. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s government was then being rocked by a sex scandal involving one John Profumo, the Minister for War, and a notorious woman named Christine Keeler who had at least two boyfriends: Profumo and a Soviet naval attaché named Yevgeny Ivanov. And there were other women.

Why would this discomfit JFK? Well, because he had been flying rather close to the same kind of flame at the time. In fact, among the “other women” involved in the British scandal were two trollops, Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny. Both had been involved “romantically” with Kennedy. So it was quite possible that the scandal that eventually led to MacMillan’s government being voted out in 1964 might have by that time tarnished the name of the President of the United States.

Interestingly, while John F. Kennedy visited the United Kingdom and broke bread with MacMillan one Saturday in the summer of 1963, a story was beginning to break stateside. It appeared briefly in the New York Journal-American (Hearst paper) and spoke cryptically of “a man who holds ‘very high’ elective office” who was involved with some of the women being mentioned in the Profumo matter.

The story was pulled after one edition following pressure from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

But beyond this, there was actually another “bimbo” problem plaguing JFK, and this one had to do with a German girl by the name of Ellen Rometsch. Said to strongly favor actress Elizabeth Taylor, she was a 27-year old prostitute who regularly “serviced” Mr. Kennedy in 1963.

Rometsch was from East Germany and had been a member of the Communist Party and many thought she was, in fact, a spy. She was paid by JFK for sex and participated in what could only be described as orgies in the White House pool. The party girl visited Kennedy at least ten times that spring and summer. When confronted by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, about the fact that Rometsch was likely a spy, Bobby Kennedy worked feverishly to have her deported—and she was soon en route to her homeland behind the Iron Curtain.

The story went away, but not all that far away. Less than a month before Kennedy’s fateful trip to Dallas, one Iowa newspaper broke a story: “U.S. Expels Girl Linked to Officials.” In the article was the tidbit that this woman had been involved with “some prominent New Frontiersmen from the executive branch of the government.” But those were the days before White House reporters went for the jugular asking tough questions.

Why is any of this important now? It matters simply because there tends to be a measure of selective amnesia when it comes to iconic figures. If a myth better serves current political purposes this trumps truth.

Had John F. Kennedy lived and had his shortcomings been investigated and written about with Woodward-Bernstein-like passion, he may not have been reelected in 1964. And if he did manage to win that race, and investigators did their jobs, JFK might very well have been impeached or brought to the place of resignation.

Then again, that may be fantasy, because it was unlikely that Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post in those days, and inbred Kennedy crony, would have allowed any such story to go forward. At any rate, it all went away that sad November day and we are left with a legend that does history, not to mention the American people, a disservice.

Stephen Kronish is the screenwriter for upcoming mini-series, The Kennedys, and he insists that they are “not out to destroy the sacred cow.” But as Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency, recently wrote:

In an age when Americans periodically swoon for imperial presidents, a little sacred cow-tipping would be a public service.

The Most Enduring Legacy Of Nazi Hate

April 23, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, History, Islam, Islam and the West, Israel and Palestinians, Middle East, Presidents, U.S. History, UK Politics, War on Terror | 6 Comments 

On February 1, 1944, two unlikely allies in the United States Senate—Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Robert Taft (R-Ohio)—introduced a resolution that caused shockwaves around the globe. Their initiative advocated American support for “free and unlimited entry of Jews into Palestine for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.” This was a bold move and one that put the Roosevelt administration on the spot.

Nearly five years earlier, the British government had released a White Paper on the issue of Palestine—one that largely abandoned the Jewish people in that region. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and during the period of the British Mandate they had been largely supportive of Jewish migration to Palestine and the idea of a Jewish state there. In essence, the White Paper changed all of that. It advocated severe limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine—this at a time when European anti-Semitism was reaching critical mass.

The gang in Berlin was pleased.

Interestingly, at the time of that 1939 White Paper, two men who would later strongly support the creation of the modern state of Israel saw things differently. Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons on May 22, 1939 “as one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier states of our Palestine policy,” and insisted that he would not “stand by and see the solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside.”
And here at home, Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri—who had no clue at the time that he’d be a major player on the world stage in a few years–also issued a forthright condemnation that was inserted into the Congressional Record:

Mr. President, the British Government has used its diplomatic umbrella again,(this being an unmistakable dig at Neville Chamberlain) …this time on Palestine. It has made a scrap of paper out of Lord Balfour’s promise to the Jews. It has just added another to the long list of surrenders to the Axis powers.

But instead of embracing the ideas put forth by Taft and Wagner in 1944, the White House, State Department, and other powerful entities in the government pulled out all the stops to make sure that the idea of proposing a homeland in Palestine for Jews went away. They did this even though they knew very well about the ongoing mass extermination of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

The standard answer to the obvious question as to why the Holocaust evoked little official response from our government until near the end of the war has been to cite “isolationism,” or “economic Depression,” or “xenophobia” in our nation. Presumably, the idea of doing anything overtly “pro-Jewish” was politically untenable—so goes the argument.

But a closer look reveals something else going on at the time—and ever since.

The most lasting legacy of the toxins that created an epochal global conflict is the fact that elements of Nazism in many ways survive to this day in Islamism. The short-sightedness of FDR’s cronies was corrected in part by his successor, a man of courage who chose to recognize the new State of Israel eleven minutes after its birth in May of 1948. But the question remains: Why did FDR and company not get on the bandwagon, even while millions of Jews were being slaughtered?

Sadly, the real reason has a lot to do with U.S. surrender to Nazi propaganda—its power and content.

Largely overlooked or dismissed in the years since is the fact that the Nazi propaganda machine, the distortion factory that shaped attitudes in Germany throughout the duration of the infamous Third Reich, had its most lasting impact far away from the boroughs and beer halls of Deutschland. In fact, Hitler’s nightmarish vision of ridding Europe of Jews was only the beginning of what he wanted to do—he wanted to extend The Final Solution to Palestine.

And he had been preparing the hearts and minds of the Muslim world for many years.

Jeffrey Herf, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, has written an eye-opening book about the effectiveness of Nazi ideas in the Middle East during the Second World War called, “Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World.” In it, he describes the Nazi campaign for the minds and hearts of the Arab world in great detail—particularly the Axis radio programs that ran in Arabic around the clock from late 1939 until March of 1945.

These broadcasts spewed venomous anti-Semitism and pushed every demagogic button imaginable. They were also highly effective. In fact, long after the last vestige of Nazi rhetoric faded from consciousness in Europe, the poisonous seeds planted back then are still bearing deadly fruit.
The mind-set that gave way to the Third Reich is very much alive and well in the Muslim world of the Middle East.

When those two senatorial strange-bedfellows offered their visionary resolution in 1944 about a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” were way ahead of the story. Mr. Herf has accessed a significant cache of transcripts and leaflets produced by the Nazis during the war—materials that have not been adequately examined—until now.

So back in 1944, any hopes a couple of well-intentioned voices in Washington might have had to garner widespread national support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine were dashed by forces largely influenced by the hate-speak of Nazi propagandists. Berlin, broadcasting in Arabic, referred to Taft and Wagner as “criminal American senators,” while announcing, “a great tragedy is about to be unfolded, a great massacre, another turbulent war is about to start in the Arab countries.”

And in phraseology that sounds eerily familiar to what we still regularly hear from Islamists, the Nazis described the stakes as kill or be killed:

Arabs and Moslems, sons of the East, this menace threatens your very lives, endangers your beliefs and aims at your wealth. No trace of you will remain. Your doom is sealed. It were better if the earth opened and engulfed everybody; it were better if the skies fell upon us, bringing havoc and destruction; all this, rather than the sun of Islam should set and the Koran perish…Stir up wars and revolutions, stand fast against the aggressors, let your hearts, afire with faith, burst asunder! Advance your armies and drive out the menace.

Bear in mind that this is a Nazi broadcast to the Arab/Muslims in Palestine. Of course, the relationship between Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, is well known and documented (see my article: “Hitler’s Favorite Jihadist”), but the broadcasts from Berlin to Palestine are just now beginning to be examined. And what is being found is further evidence that to refer to Islamists as Nazi or Fascist-like is no smear—or stretch.

The rhetoric broadcast to the Middle East 70 years ago is still being noised about—and even more pervasively and effectively. Back then, the attitudes it reinforced, complete with distortion, hate, and prejudice, caused U.S. officials, from FDR on down, to “go wobbly”—as Margaret Thatcher would say.

It is sadly clear that the most lasting impact of the Nazi propaganda machine is that murderous ideas espoused back then are alive and well in our day and age and still being used to threaten and kill Jews—while nouveau wobblers turn away.

What Can We Learn From Conservatism In Europe?

October 9, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Europe, Political Philosophy, Politics, Religion, UK Politics, economy | 1 Comment 

The speaker talked of dreams. He communicated a compelling personal narrative, including a description of profound pain. He also told his enthusiastic audience, “It’s time to shake things up!” A 43-year old rising political star clearly made a connection with the crowd – further cementing his leadership role over a party poised to bring change they believe in to the nation they all love.

His name is David Cameron and the moment described is his appearance and speech at the Tory (Conservative) Party Conference in Manchester, England yesterday. Most polls in the U.K. indicate a trend toward the Tories as the realm moves toward its next national election, which will most likely be held by the first week of June 2010.

The Conservatives have been out of power since 1997, when Tony Blair and the Labour Party gained control. These have been wilderness years. But the party is now re-energized and poised to pull off an electoral repudiation of many of the big-government trends of the past decade.

Ironic, huh?

Consider these nuggets from Cameron’s Manchester speech – and see if you don’t find yourself scratching your head and wishing America had a singular conservative voice to articulate a compelling vision for the future:

We will need to confront Britain’s culture of irresponsibility and that will be hard to take for many people. And we will have to tear down Labour’s big government bureaucracy, ripping up its time-wasting, money-draining, responsibility-sapping nonsense.

“It is government that has gotten us into this mess. Why is our economy broken?” he asked, “Because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt.”

“Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility. Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.”

He ridiculed “this idea that for every problem there’s a government solution for every issue, for every situation a czar…”

And – my favorite line of all:

Do you know the worst thing about their big government? It’s not the cost, though that’s bad enough. It’s the steady erosion of responsibility…we are not going to solve our problems with bigger government. We are going to solve our problems with a stronger society. Stronger families. Stronger communities. A stronger country. All by building responsibility.

Oh – and, “Complicated taxes, excessive regulations – they make life impossible for entrepreneurs. What are you doing to make it easier to start a business? Easier to take people on? What are you doing to make regulation less complicated? To make locating a business more attractive?”

OK – one more passage, then some comments:

The truth is, it’s not just that big government has failed to solve these problems. Big government has all too often helped cause them by undermining the personal and social responsibility that should be the lifeblood of a strong society. Just think of the signals we send out. To the family struggling to raise children, pay a mortgage, hold down a job. Stay together and we’ll give you less; split up and we give you more.

After a dozen years of Labour administration in the United Kingdom, one child in six is in a family where no-one works – the highest such rate in Europe. This is not due to job scarcity. These are cases where readily available welfare provisions have undermined the need and desire to work, even when jobs have been available.

Basically, Mr. Cameron was challenging his party – and the nation – with a logic that could only be missed by the clueless or members of the Nobel prize committee (pardon the redundancy), that “the more we as a society do, the less we will need government to do.” He is championing an idea whose time has come once again: personal responsibility.

I am not sure what the Tories plan to do for a slogan in the upcoming election (and campaign cycles in Britain are mercifully shorter than those here in the U.S.), but I might suggest either, “Yes, We Should,” or “It’s The Responsibility, Stupid!”

David Cameron is what might be called over there a “liberal conservative.” And if that seems similar to what was once here called “compassionate conservatism,” there is actually only a partial connection. The conservatism of Cameron and company actually combines elements of limited government (British style, of course) and social libertarianism. In other words, the total Cameron package would not resonate with many American social conservatives, myself included. But much of this is a reflection of the state of culture at large in the U.K., as well as across Europe. Church attendance patterns are far different than those in America. And evangelicals in particular do not make up a large percentage of the population; merely a fraction of what we see here at home.

The same is true in Germany, where Angela Merkel was recently re-elected Chancellor, presiding over a government that is described as “center-right.” She is referred to, at least by some detractors, as a Margaret Thatcher-like “Iron Lady.” The trend is away from liberal-socialist economics and back toward greater fiscal conservatism. Again, as is the case in Britain, being more conservative in Germany has little to do with American-style social conservative issues, and for the same reason: The larger culture is secular, less religious, and therefore more “libertarian” when it comes to personal behavior.

Then there is France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy leans more center-right than anyone in recent memory. Again, it’s quite obvious that any form of cultural or social conservatism is not a big deal there, either.

Now, curiously, in Canada – which seems to have elements of European and American political dynamics – Prime Minister Steven Harper is an evangelical Christian (his background is with the Christian and Missionary Alliance). He has been described as “inspired by two British Christian thinkers: C. S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge,” and has strong ties to social conservatives in the realm.

This analytical detour now complete, I come to my point. Conservatism is resurgent in many Western democracies. Sure, in some places it looks a little different than its American counterpart, particularly on social/cultural issues. But that has more to do with the fact that in those nations there is no strong evangelical church itself to speak of.

On the other hand, here in the United States evangelicals are somewhat stronger. Therefore, resonant issues (such as abortion) are always either on the table, or scrambling for a rightful place. It’s a voting bloc that may make some uncomfortable, but an important bloc, nonetheless.

Some dismiss the conservative trend in Europe as irrelevant to American politics at this time because of the absence there of any social conservative agenda. But those who do so are missing the obvious. There would be a relationship (awkward, or otherwise) between economic conservatism and cultural conservatism in those nations, as well, if there were more resident evangelicals. They are not a factor in Europe because it’s been a very long time since there was any statistically significant evangelical-type movement or revival.

The lesson for all conservatives is that the ideas of limited government, personal responsibility, and strong families resonate across the board.

The lesson for evangelicals is to cultivate and maintain a commitment to see that the spiritual condition of our churches and communities never becomes European. The fact is that any movement can fall from foothold to footnote in one generation.

What Happened To First Do No Harm?

September 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under International Affairs, Terrorism, UK Politics | 1 Comment 

If I may be allowed to quote a very wise fellow (and a very insightful observer of the passing scene) regarding the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds:

Reading the medical report that led to al Megrahi’s release leaves a layman less than convinced that, while unquestionably terminal and undoubtedly in a bad way, he may not actually be knocking at death’s door within the three month time frame required by the compassion regs. There is a link to the relevant “Progress Section” of the report here under “Multimedia.”

On Sunday the Telegraph reported:

Medical evidence that helped Megrahi, 57, to be released was paid for by the Libyan government, which encouraged three doctors to say he had only three months to live.

The life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time, or less, to live.

Megrahi is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. Two of the three doctors commissioned by the Libyans provided the required three-month estimates, while the third also indicated that the prisoner had a short time to live.

This contrasted with findings of doctors in June and July who had concluded that Megrahi had up to 10 months to live, which would have prevented his release.

Professor Karol Sikora, one of the examining doctors and the medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, told The Sunday Telegraph: “The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans].

“To start with I said it was impossible to do that [give a three-month life expectancy estimate] but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that.” He said that he and a second doctor, a Libyan, had legitimately then estimated Megrahi’s life expectancy as “about three months”. A third doctor would say only that he had a short time to live.

This weekend it was reported that Megrahi was moved out of an emergency care unit in Tripoli.

Nixon and “The Kennedy Promise”

June 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

In a recent post I related an anecdote featuring the late Anglo-American journalist Henry Fairlie and referred to the collection of his essays, Bite The Hand That Feeds You, edited by Newsweek’s Jeremy McCarter and published by Yale University Press this month. Here is the introduction to the book, which briefly tells the story of Fairlie’s tumultuous career, with some quotes well representing the acuity of his intellect and the grace of his style. McCarter also has a site with further information on the writer.

(I was greatly interested to learn from McCarter’s introduction that in the spring of 1973 President Nixon gave then-Governor Ronald Reagan a copy of The Kennedy Promise, Fairlie’s expert dissection of the latter-day Camelot legend – and still, though long out of print, one of the half-dozen essential books about the 35th President.)

The European Unrest

June 13, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Europe, Presidents, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

In April I posted here about a column in the London Evening Standard by the Oxford historian Dominic Sandbrook, who drew comparisons between the Watergate era and the scandals now swirling around British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His article was entitled (presumably by a Standard editor): “Vengeful, brooding and secretive – will Brown become our own Nixon?”

This week Douglas Davis at World Politics Review raised the same question, except in the present tense. He cited as evidence the awful performance by Brown’s Labour party in the elections for the European Parliament and for local councils last weekend. In the weeks since the British papers began publishing countless articles describing the abuse of public funds by various members of the House of Commons, it has been obvious that the public in the UK has been in a throw-the-rascals-out mood.

This was made very evident in the results last weekend. Labour received 16% of the vote in the council elections, its worst electoral performance since 1915 (when it was the third-largest party after the Liberals and Conservatives), and got 15.3% of the vote in the European Parliament polling. However, the Conservatives did not fare that much better, getting 27%. The two parties that gained substantially were Nick Griffin’s vehemently anti-immigration British National Party (which got 7% in the council elections and 8.5% in the European Parliament vote, picking up two seats there) and the United Kingdom Independence Party, made up mainly of former Conservatives who favor Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, with 17%, and raising its total in the European Parliament to 13 seats.

Davis’s comparison of Brown to Nixon is rather brief, and confined to one paragraph:

But if Blair has the charisma of Bill Clinton, Brown is a Nixon doppelgänger: a darkly brooding obsessive, unable to acknowledge his own shortcomings, while nurturing grudges and permitting — if not actually instigating — dirty tricks and smears against his enemies, real and imagined.

Whether or not Gordon Brown’s personality is that close to Richard Nixon’s, there’s not that much of a resemblance when it comes to the ballot box. In the 1974 Congressional elections, held just three months after RN’s resignation, the Republicans indeed performed poorly – securing just 40% of the vote on a nationwide basis, losing four Senate seats to the Democrats (in 34 contests), and losing 48 House seats – but the overall results were not as catastrophic as what has hit Labour. Six years later, in 1980, the GOP won the White House and the Senate. Unless Labour can quickly produce another leader with the charm and vote-getting skill of Tony Blair, it could be in the wilderness for decades – or vanish permanently.

The emergence of the British National Party, with its popularity based in voter reaction to the large number of Islamic immigrants in the UK, is a disturbing sign. As Tony Blankley, former editorial-page editor of the Washington Times, points out in this column, even in its heyday in the 1930s Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was never able to win any local elections – and never competed for Parliamentary seats in a general election. But the BNP, besides the European Parliament seats mentioned, now has won council seats in Lancashire and Leicestershire. Though the party’s publicity nowadays plays down its origins in the 1980s as an unabashedly racist organization, the BNP continues to have ties with bigots overseas – some of them as notorious as James von Brunn, the accused murderer of a guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who is known to have attended several fundraisers for the party in Virginia in recent years.

However, as Tony Blankley points out in his column, the increased vote for the BNP last weekend was paralleled across Europe, as anti-immigration parties of varying ideological stripes won increased shares of the vote in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Austia, Hungary and the Netherlands. The enthusiasm for President Obama that echoed across the continent last year seems distant now; what happened in the European Parliament elections suggests that his conciliatory address to the Muslim world in Cairo is not finding its counterpart at the polls. Whether this trend will continue into general elections in these countries remains to be seen.

More About The Story The New York Times Missed

May 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, UK Politics, Watergate | 3 Comments 

It’s been four days since an article by Richard Pérez-Peña in the New York Times told the story of how Robert M. Smith, a reporter in that paper’s Washington bureau, learned from FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray in late August of 1972 something about the larger story behind the Watergate burglary of two months before, and dutifully notified his superior, Robert Phelps. The article further explained that what seemed to be a chance for the Times to catch up to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Washington Post coverage failed to pan out because the day after notifying Phelps, Smith left the paper to begin studies at Yale Law School and subsequently became an attorney, never returning to journalism, while Phelps completely failed to put another reporter on the story and now offers no excuses, not least because, at age 89, he can hardly remember what happened.

So far the preponderance of newspaper commentary on this story has come from Britain, where many of Fleet Street’s finest profess to be completely flummoxed about how the Times could let this story slip away.

It should be pointed out, however, that it is not unknown for members of the Fourth Estate across the pond to miss a big story for reasons that might perplex an American colleague. I remember reading a tribute to the late Henry Fairlie by one of his colleagues on Fleet Street, whose name I forget. The journalist described an occasion in the early 1950s when he was covering a Labour Party conference in the company of Fairlie, who in those days was regarded by his peers as the foremost political reporter in the kingdom.

During a break in the conference’s proceedings, the two reporters repaired to a bar for refreshments. There, they spotted two men engaged in activity of a romantic sort in a dimly-lit corner. “I could almost swear that poof looks like Tom Driberg,” the reporter observed, referring to Labour’s leading gray eminence of the period, who was widely rumored to be homosexual at a time when to act upon such a preference was a felony in the UK.

“You would be well justified in such an oath,” said Fairlie in his slightly formal manner, “because that is Tom Driberg.”

The reporter, in his 1990 tribute, remarked that had he seen Driberg up to such activity in, say, a remote hallway of the hotel where the conference was being held, he would not have hesitated to report a story that would have shaken Labour’s establishment to its very foundations. But since he and Fairlie were off-duty for the moment, they simply sat and wondered at the indiscretion of Driberg’s actions, and so the politician’s proclivities went unreported. (It’s worth mentioning that next month Yale University Press will publish Bite The Hand That Feeds You, an anthology of Fairlie’s essays for British and American publications, edited by Jeremy McCarter.)

One thing worth mentioning about the Times article is that the paper was not only scooped on Watergate as it describes, but that the Times was scooped - twice – on reporting being scooped.

In a comment appended to Michael Calderone’s post on this subject at Politico.com, NPR ombudsperson Alicia C. Shepard, author of Woodward and Bernstein: Life In The Shadow of Watergate, observes that in her book, published in November 2006, she referred to Robert Smith’s learning about Donald Segretti’s involvement in Watergate and Smith’s telling the Times about this in August 1972 – and although the book was rather widely reviewed, the passage about Smith seems to have escaped everyone’s notice at the time. Shepard states that she did not learn about this from Robert Phelps, but she does not specify who told her. My guess is that she might have heardthe story from Smith himself.

And in a post at the Sidney Hillman Foundation’s site, Charles Kaiser, formerly of the Times, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal, reports that some time back, after learning that Phelps would write about the Watergate story that got away in his memoirs, Smith wrote an op-ed telling his side of the story, and submitted it to the Times. There was no reply to his submission and Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of the Times, says that the paper has no record of the op-ed’s having been received.

So Smith submitted his account instead to the American Journalism Review, which scheduled the piece for its June-July issue but this week posted it on its website in the wake of Pérez-Peña’s article.

What Smith has to say is rather interesting. While he was at Yale Law, he says he read the Times every morning during that fall semester of 1972, looking for anything indicating that the paper’s Washington reporters were following up on his lead. He found nothing. (Indeed, the Times didn’t start moving on Watergate until Seymour Hersh took it up in January 1973, just when James McCord wrote his much-publicized letter to Judge John Sirica.)

Smith also has this very interesting story to tell:

At some point, an editor at the Times called and asked me to come back to the paper. I thought it over for a couple of days, and decided not to. In my mind, it was the story of the century versus the intellectual experience of my lifetime. And I had already given a major breakthrough on the story to the Times.

But I did offer to make a telephone call. I called Pat Gray.

He did not call back.

This seems to suggest that the editor was calling Smith to ask that he get back to work on the Watergate story. But when did this happen – before or after January 1973? And who was the editor?

Smith’s comment about “the story of the century vs. the intellectual experience of my lifetime” is noteworthy. In the fall of 1972, investigate reporting had little of the prestige it had as soon as a year later, after Woodward and Bernstein’s book All The President’s Men was published, not to mention its allure after the ATPM film was released in 1976. So Smith’s decision, in the context of the time, is not quite as inexplicable as it probably appears to the thousands who went to journalism school in the wake of “Woodstein’s” rise to fame (or to just about any British reporter, who takes it for granted that he or she is immeasurably the superior of almost any barrister or solicitor in the land).

And it’s worthwhile to speculate what would happen if a young reporter, a day away from entering law school, came across a colossal story like Watergate now. Would the reporter drop academic plans just like that? Or would he and she start thinking about just how long and how well-paying a career in journalism, in today’s America, would be, compared to a career in the law, and do what Smith did – go off to the lawbooks and more or less forget about the scoop?

Mr. Obama’s Enchanted And Selective Righteousness

May 1, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Ethics, History, Intelligence, News media, Obama administration, Republican Party, Terrorism, UK Politics, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

It was some enchanted event. While Dr. Seuss-like journalists lobbed sophomoric softballs President Obama’s way last Wednesday night, Mr. I-Never-Met-A-Teleprompter-I-Didn’t-Need managed to unintentionally juxtapose two polarizing issues in an ironic and upside down way. He was right about what he said. But answer “B” better fits question “A,” and vice versa.

After answering the predictable torture question: “I would not torture in a jail; I would not torture with a pail,” the president later was asked about the issue of abortion. He gave what could only be called a “tortured” response (pun intended). He spoke of how those on the pro-choice side of the issue “make a mistake when they – if they suggest – and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and there’s (sic) no other considerations.” He went on to describe the matter as “an issue people have to wrestle with” and that it is a “moral issue and an ethical issue.”

Or it might be called a case of selective righteousness.

He’s clear cut and dogmatic on the correctness of his view about not using “enhanced interrogation techniques” even in circumstances that might obtain life saving information from really, really bad people. But he’s “aw-shucks-it’s-a-real-toughie” about ending the life of the most innocent and precious.

He’s got his upside downs all mixed up.

As he talked about the torture issue, President Obama waxed reflective and cited an article he had recently read quoting Winston Churchill during the ferocity of the blitz as saying, “We don’t torture.” The president suggested that “Churchill understood – you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s – what’s best in people. It corrodes the character of a country.”

“Well” – as Ronald Reagan might say while flashing his contagious grin – “There you go again, Mr. President.” Articles and blogs can make good reading (this one, for example), but I suggest that Mr. Obama might be better off spending some time with an actual full-length biography of the rotund Briton. Presumably he’d have to dispatch an aid to a bookstore for such a volume. Likely all Churchill references in the White House during his predecessor’s administration have been sent back to London in a crate marked, “Churchill Bust and Books – Yes, We Don’t Need.”

You see, while Mr. Churchill may have uttered a choice opinion or two on torture, he was known to change his mind on occasion (even his party). He also could wrap the truth in a riddle or enigma. Bear in mind that he was the guy who said famously, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” The kind of war being waged in the 1940s was vastly different from our current experience. In other words, ticking time bomb analogies don’t really work when looking at back then. The bombs were always ticking – and falling. Duh.

Yet, there is evidence that, in fact, torture did go on as part of the British World War Two effort. There is the story, for example, of The London Cage, a special operation run by MI19 (they were tasked with getting vital information from prisoners of war), housed at the posh Kensington Palace Gardens. Written reports based on information in the National Archives across the pond tell of more than 3,500 men being “processed” through the highly secretive “torture center,” even while Churchill was opining against torture.

How intense were interrogations in the “cage?” One written complaint found in the archives – from a German journalist who had also spent sometime under Gestapo “supervision” – talked about how much better he was treated by the German police. Do the math.

What is interesting though, is that Winston Churchill was the consummate warrior who regularly expressed a willingness to do what was needed to win a battle or war. Another example of his “whatever it takes” approach was when he, filled with fear that the Germans were working on a biological weapon, tried to persuade Uncle Sam to develop an extensive germ warfare program in 1942.

Churchill also contemplated the idea of trying to bring the war to an end in 1944 via bombs that would release anthrax, only to be disabused of the notion by his generals. And, of course, there is the strange case of Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s crony, who jumped out of a plane over Scotland on a mysterious mission, only to be rebuffed by the Prime Minister who quipped, “Hess or no Hess, I’m going to watch the Marx Brothers.”

How cool was he?

Later though, Churchill – who desired to keep Hess’ presence and purpose away from a surprisingly powerful “peace party” – one that sought to oust him from 10 Downing Street – had Hess locked up for the duration of the war. Think: Gitmo for one.

Therefore, Mr. Obama quoting Winston Churchill to try to bolster his argument is akin to George W. Bush citing Ward Churchill to defend his record.

As Charles Krauthammer writes, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – while certainly something that makes all decent people uncomfortable – can and should be permissible under two narrowly specific circumstances: the proverbial “ticking bomb,” and to glean information that will save lives. To take this option off the table is at best naïve and at worst foolish. At any rate, whatever Churchill said about torture, does anyone at all acquainted with the history of those days really believe he meant it – or that his enemies believed him?

President Obama has it all backwards. The taking of innocent human life via abortion should be the black and white moral issue that helps define national righteousness. It’s torture that should be “rare, but legal.” This would make for a better and safer world.

A Look Back At RN’s 1969 European Visit

April 18, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, China, Europe, History, International Affairs, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Roger Morris, who was a National Security Council staffer in 1969 and 1970, and who later published a massive study of Richard Nixon’s career up to 1952, made two more contributions this week to “100 Days,” the group blog in which historians compare events that took place in the first hundred days of other presidencies to those of the Obama Administration.

Morris’s posts – which don’t mention President Obama’s European trip last month at all – concern RN’s visit to Europe in early 1969. They focus on his memorable meeting with France’s President Charles de Gaulle (who was, at that point, less than a year away from retiring from politics, though no one could have anticipated it at the time) and on his amiable talk with Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Wilson after the latter had named John Freeman, a frequent and bilious critic of RN, as Ambassador to the United States. (Thanks to RN’s offer to let bygones be bygones, Wilson became a great fan of the 37th President and was one of the first to welcome him to the UK when he visited in the late 1970s.)

But even as Morris’s account of RN’s first Presidential trip overseas demonstrates how effectively he ushered in a new era of engagement with Europe after Lyndon B. Johnson’s comparative neglect of that continent, the historian draws some rather suspect conclusions. He notes that RN listened to De Gaulle’s advice concerning Vietnam but did not follow it (but doesn’t add that Nixon paid keen attention to De Gaulle’s recommendations about extending the hand of friendship to China). This leads Morris to claim that RN’s trips overseas throughout his Presidency -including the groundbreaking PRC and USSR visits – were “fleeting exercise[s] in politics and public relations, rather than the statesmanship he sought to prove,” and that they did no more than reinforce policies that had alreadly been decided.

This claim is hardly supported by the historical record. While it’s true that the agreements between the PRC and the US that constituted the Shanghai Communique were carefully negotiated before RN traveled to that city, it made an enormous difference to Sino-American relations that he was there to sign it. The handshake with Zhou Enlai at the airport was a milestone that went far beyond public relations. Many other examples from RN’s 5 1/2 years in the White House could be mentioned.

However, it’s good to see that in the more than 50 comments appended to Morris’s posts, there are many expressing their appreciation of RN’s achievements during his trips abroad.

Is Gordon Brown The British Nixon?

April 15, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under History, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, UK Politics | 2 Comments 

When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister just a few years ago, he enjoyed an somewhat extended honeymoon with the British press and public. There was some degree of sympathy for the Scottish politician because it was well-known why he’d had to wait so long to reach the top of what Benjamin Disraeli called “the greasy pole.”

Brown entered politics at about the same time as Blair, and, as every schoolperson in Albion knows, the two young backbenchers, early on, came to an agreement that Blair, with his particular blend of charm and amiability – what we Yanks would call “people skills” – was the one who should be the first to attain leadership of the Labor Party and then to enter 10 Downing Street, while Brown would serve as his second-in-command and then succeed him. (Such arrangements don’t really happen in America; try to imagine RN stepping aside to let Nelson Rockefeller be the nominee in 1960 because the New York governor was better liked by the “right people,” and agreeing to be in the vice-presidential spot with an option to seek the big prize in 1968.)

And so it came about that Brown, after over a decade of waiting, reached the pinnacle of his career. But in the last year, especially with the onset of recession in the UK and a number of messy domestic scandals, Brown has steadily sank in the estimation of voters, and even more so with the press.

Today, the London Evening Standard features a column by Dominic Sandbrook, the eminent Oxford historian whose books include a biography of Eugene McCarthy and a study of the 1960s in England, and who wrote one of the most perceptive assessments of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland last year. The article is entitled: “Vengeful, brooding and secretive – Will Brown become our own Nixon?”

Sandbrook primarily draws comparisons between Watergate (specifically Charles W. Colson’s activities in 1972) and Brown’s use of political operatives to undertake what some of the Tory pundits on Fleet Street are calling “dirty tricks.” He refers to both Brown and Nixon having intellects far above the usual run of politicians, but when the historian refers to RN’s achievements in foreign policy during his first term, he appears to be well aware that nothing in Brown’s career comes close to approaching the opening to China or the SALT agreements – or, indeed, the major domestic accomplishments such as the environmental initiatives of 1971. However, as an example of how the 37th president is seen by overseas intellectuals nowadays, the article’s worth a look.

The Hug Felt Round The World

April 3, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, First Ladies, History, International Affairs, Michelle Obama, News media, Presidents, UK Politics | 1 Comment 

On Wednesday, President Obama and the First Lady visited Queen Elizabeth, who has now met every Chief Executive since Harry S. Truman (except for Lyndon Johnson, since she did not visit the United States during his term and he made only one brief visit to Europe during that time).

The highlight of this meeting came during a reception afterwards, when Her Majesty was seen talking to Michelle Obama and then putting her arm around her. The First Lady responded by putting her own arm on the Queen’s back and resting her hand on the monarch’s shoulder. Photographs, of course, were immediately taken, and within hours Britain and the rest of the world were abuzz about the royal “hug.”

Traditionally, visitors to Buckingham Palace and the other royal residences are advised not to touch the Queen – unless, of course, she elects to touch one first.

Variations from this rule have been few and far between. One notable example came in 1991 when HM visited Washington. After learning about a program to enable low-income households to buy houses, she ventured into that city’s Southeast section to meet one such householder, Alice Frazier. The 67-year-old cook, upon opening her door to find Elizabeth II, gave her the bearhug that, she said, all her visitors got. The Queen handled this variation on the usual decorum with aplomb, and the British press chuckled at this latest example of the unpredictable ways of Yanks.

But the next year when Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating put his around around HM, Fleet Street, along with the rest of Britain, was appalled, and the offending statesman was promptly dubbed “The Lizard Of Oz,” a nickname that followed him through the rest of his career.

And then, of course, there was the time in 1977 when Jimmy Carter visited London and kissed HM’s mother, the Queen Consort Elizabeth, on the lips. Though an article in London’s Daily Mail this week claimed that HM was tickled by this familiarity, the Queen Mum definitely was not, telling friends later that no one since her late husband George VI (who died in 1952) had ever done what Carter ventured to do.

The Daily Mail article (and one in the Daily Mirror) offers some interesting stories about meetings between the Queen and the Presidents over the years.

The Duke of Hazard

April 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Humor, International Affairs, UK Politics | 1 Comment 

Buckingham Palace courtiers walk on eggs when they’re around the bosses.  The Queen — because she’s the Queen.  And the Duke of Edinburgh — because they’re afraid of what he might say next.  The 87-year old prickly Prince is notoriously gaffe-prone.

Many Britons find it amusing; others find it refreshing; a few are genuinely offended; most, after all these years, pay him no never mind.

During a state visit to China in 1986, Prince Philip called Beijing “ghastly,” and told a group of British students that “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”

On a state visit to Canada he noted that: “We don’t come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.”

Reflecting on Chinese cuisine, he told a World Wildlife Fund dinner that: “If it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Chinese will eat it.”

At the height of the recession in 1981 he said: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”

He stirred some controversy with the observation that: “British women can’t cook.”

He congratulated a British student in Papua New Guinea: “You managed not to get eaten then?”

And he told a British tourist in Hungary: “You cn’t have been here that long, you haven’t got a pot belly.”

He asked a driving instructor in Scotland: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

Commenting on stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary on the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, he said: “It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking `are you all right – are you sure you don’t have a ghastly problem?’. You just got on with it.”

He asked singer Tom Jones:”What do you gargle with, pebbles?” and said that pop star Adam Faith’s singing reminded him of bath water going down a plug hole.

He inquired of some Australian aborigines:  ”Do you still throw spears at each other?”

When he met the president of Nigeria, who was dressed in a traditional robe, Philip said: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”

While looking at electrical equipment, the prince said its crude appearance seemed as if it was “installed by an Indian.”

 When a Kenyan woman gave Philip a gift, he was perplexed at her appearance. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?” he asked.

When he met Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is black and comes from Birmingham, “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?

When he met a group of deaf people in Cardiff in1999, Philip referred to the school’s steel band: “Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.”

Some of these, and others, have been collected in Duke of Hazard: The Wit and Wisdom of Prince.

Roads To Rome

March 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Faith, History, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Over the weekend, Newt Gingrich will be received as a convert into the Roman Catholic Church. The event is noted today on the Daily Beast by Christopher Buckley, in a column that is, alas, as smug as the photo that accompanies it (what was he thinking when he approved that snap to adorn his usually worthy, and always readable, contributions?).

Mr. Gingrich’s brain is a 24/7 phenomenon: Half the time, you sit there just dazzled, the other half you want to stuff a baguette-end in his mouth to make him shut up. In the old days, the church would have assigned their best man to the case—a Fulton Sheen. When Clare Boothe Luce, one of the notable Catholic converts of her day, was asked whom she wanted to hear her first confession, she replied, “Bring me someone who has seen the rise and fall of empires!” They don’t make converts like that anymore. Or maybe they do.

Newt Gingrich has certainly seen his own empire rise, and fall. Whether it will rise again is probably doubtful, but it will be interesting to watch. As to the substance of the thing: To paraphrase St. Thomas More, who lost his head over the non-granting of an annulment, I have no window to look into another man’s soul. (Unlike, say, George W. Bush’s ability to plumb the numinous depths of Vladimir Putin’s by looking into his icy blues.) It would be churlish in this Lenten season to suppose that Mr. Gingrich’s conversion is anything but deeply felt and sincere.

The stated reason for it is that he wishes to worship alongside his wife, who is described on her husband’s Web site as “a devoted Catholic.” To the extent her devotedness is assessed alongside her early relationship with the then-married Mr. Gingrich, it should be borne in mind that to be “devoted” is not the same as being “perfect”: She is “a member of the choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.” She has sung for a pope. And, to judge from her photos of a Barry Manilow concert in Las Vegas—you can view the slideshow for yourself—is a capable amateur photographer.

Across The Pond, PM Gordon Brown is not only seeing the fall of an empire, but is actually participating in it  (although in his case it’s technically the fall of the remnants of the once great empire whose liquidation Winston Churchill didn’t become the King’s first minister to oversee).  Mr. Brown has announced that HMG will pursue the repeal of the 1701 Act of Settlement, which discriminates (to put it mildly) against Roman Catholics by (among other things) excluding them from occupying the throne and forbidding them marriage to a monarch.

Back in the day there was at least a method to this madness, and  Philip Johnston supplies a concise a history of the Act of Settlement:

The Act of Settlement of 1701, was one of the final measures of the reign of William III and embedded the outcome of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689. It laid down that Anne, the daughter of the Duke of York, later James II, could succeed to the throne.

However, because she had no surviving children, it decreed that she must pass on the succession to her cousin Princess Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, granddaughter to James I. It states that no sovereign “shall profess the Popish religion or shall marry a Papist”. It also requires that any sovereign shall be in communion with the Church of England.

Queen Anne outlived Sophia of Hanover, so the crown passed to the Elector of Hanover, who became George I, bypassing the Stuarts, who had a better hereditary claim to the throne.

While it is seen as a gratuitous insult to Catholics, the main purpose of the Act was to entrench the concept of constitutional monarchy after the instability of the previous century. Dismantling the Act of Settlement would hasten the disestablishment of the Church of England, since it would open the way for a Catholic monarch.

Got it?  Repeal seems like a no-brainer in 2009 — but not so fast folks.  There are some constitutional road bumps (each of the Commonwealth countries would have to approve the change — and good luck herding those cats in a timely manner).  And there is, apparently, some question about the PM’s real commitment to the cause versus the garden variety grandstanding of which he is capable.  (Despite the PM’s campaign rhetoric, he apparently took no action until a LibDem MP (the controversial Dr. Evan Harris) launched a private members Bill in the House of Commons aimed at repealing the AOS.)

To say you are against the bar on Roman Catholics ascending to the Throne or opposed to male primogeniture in the succession is the easy bit. Doing something about it is hard.

Mr Brown is good at the easy bit. Before he became prime minister in July 2007 his aides let it be known that he wanted to do away with the Act of Settlement and that a major announcement would be forthcoming soon after he arrived in Number 10. There was, indeed, a statement about constitutional reform; but that big promised change did not materialise.

Then, in March last year, there was another flurry of briefings that Mr Brown was against this sort of discrimination and would do something about it.

He has duly got his headlines yet again today showing what a modern and progressive chap he is; but when is he actually going to do something? We are now told there might be discussions with Commonwealth heads of government later this year at their summit.

The Queen is head of state of 16 countries each of which must be consulted. But why has that not already happened? If the Government wanted these reforms the Queen would not stand in its way and neither would the Prince of Wales. Since the next three in line to the Throne are males, the succession issue is not going to arise in any case unless Prince William’s first child is a girl.

There would be a problem, however, if Prince William announced he wished to marry a Roman Catholic girl, thought his not in prospect either. So this is an issue that can be taken slowly; and Mr Brown knows that it must be because there are so many other interlocking bits of legislation (the Act of Union for one) that would have to be revisited. Parliament could be tied up for years trying to unpick the constitutional tapestry so painstakingly woven together over the centuries.

All of these consequences are problematic but can be overcome if that is what parliament and the people want. It would require political will, not continued posturing.

So, we have got the message Gordon. We know you think, as many people do, that it is bizarre in this day and age to state in law that the heir to the throne cannot marry a Catholic or that the first born of the monarch, if a girl, will not be Queen if there are sons as well.

But when this issue is next raised, let’s have some proper proposals for reform and not just another statement of intent designed to grab a headline.

The Brits Look At Jonathan Krohn

March 17, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, TV News, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Last week I wrote about the arrival of 14-year-old Jonathan Krohn as the newest and most unexpected spokesperson for the principles of the Right. Following a trip to Washington and New York, and a media blitz which saw him featured in the New York Times and on Fox News, CBS, and ABC, the youthful scourge of liberalism has returned to Duluth, Georgia, to resume his home-schooling, polish up his skill at writing op-eds, and practice his cello and banjo.

But Jonathan has now come to the attention of the British press, which looks at him in a different light than has been the case in this country. Many liberal bloggers, such as Matt Yglesias, compared him to Ben Shapiro, the UCLA student who, at the age of 17 in 2002, became the youngest columnist in the country with his right-leaning contributions to Townhall.com but who, despite publishing several books, so far has not approached the visibility of Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity or even Michelle Malkin.

But the authors of the articles about Jonathan that appeared last weekend in the Guardian and the Times compare him instead to William Hague. At the age of 16, Hague was invited to speak at the Conservative Party Conference in 1977. The schoolboy’s oratorical skill won the praise of many seasoned politicians there, not the least of whom was Conservative leader and future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Hague subsequently became president of the Oxford Union and then became, in turn, an MP, a member of the British cabinet, and head of the Tories, each time at a rather spectacularly young age. Unfortunately, his four years as Conservative leader ended with defeat at the hands of Tony Blair and the Labor Party in the 2001 election and he returned to the back benches, where he still impresses his contemporaries with his deft performances at Question Time and when addressing the Commons.

It’s probably true that if Jonathan were British, the particular skills he’s shown so far would offer a more direct route to the corridors of power, when he reaches manhood, than is the case in this land, where punditry seems a more likely profession than politics as such. But one thing seems likely: we’ll be hearing more from him in the future.

Update: When I wrote this on Tuesday night, NBC was the one network that had yet to feature Jonathan extensively.  But this morning the Today Show made up for that by showcasing the pint-size pundit in a four-minute segment.  Jonathan fielded questions from Al Roker, David Gregory, Nathalie Morales and Amy Robach with his usual assured demeanor.  Gawker’s Alex Pareene, who has made several posts about Jonathan which have steadily moved from dismissive ridicule to concern at the conservative wunderkind’s impact, was mightily perturbed this afternoon that Roker, when questioning the show’s guest, had spoken to him as one adult to another, rather than using his patented “ain’t he the darndest little fella” tone.  (And, to tell the truth, the seasoned Gregory treated him the same way.)  It may well be that our liberal bloggers will have Jonathan to kick around for quite a while longer – and their problem is that he’s likely to kick right back.

Jonathan Aitken To Revisit RN

March 11, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, UK Politics | 3 Comments 

One thing that becomes apparent if one’s followed the world of books for a while is that when the anniversary of a famed personality’s birth (or sometimes death) comes up, there are likely to be one or more volumes to mark the occasion.

In the world of literature, John Milton’s 400th birthday last year was marked with at least one major biography and several books about his poetry, and Samuel Johnson is receiving similar treatment this year for his 300th birthday. And the 200th birthdays of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln (which, as every schoolchild used to know, both fall on February 12) have been commemorated with dozens of new books in recent months.

January 9, 2013, will mark the 100th anniversary of the arrival of President Nixon, and this week news came of a major work planned to mark the event. The London Telegraph, in its “Mandrake” column, quotes former British cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken as saying,

“I’m planning to write a new life of Nixon to mark the centenary of his birth in 2013[...] The first book I wrote was Nixon: A Life, so it makes sense to revisit him for his anniversary.”

What Aitken probably said to the Telegraph’s writer was that his outstanding 1993 biography Nixon: A Life (the only such work published after RN’s presidency to receive the subject’s full cooperation, as I wrote here last week) was his first biography, followed by lives of Charles W. Colson and John Newton of “Amazing Grace” fame; his first book, A Short Walk On The Campus (co-written with Michael Beloff) was published in 1966.

But whether the planned book is a revision and update of Nixon: A Life or amounts to a completely new work (and with the release of the White House recordings and countless pages of documents unavailable when the previous book was written), this is indeed welcome news to anyone hoping to gain new knowledge and insights into RN and his presidency.

Bipartisanship or Groupthink?

January 29, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Book Review, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, History, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, U.S. History, UK Politics | 5 Comments 

“They could write like angels and scheme like demons.” This is how author Edward J. Larson describes two of our nation’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – in his book, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign.

Those wonderful and often cantankerous giants also grew to define the partisanship of their day. This difference of philosophy and policy was part of our national DNA just about from the beginning. Sure, there were always cries back then – as there are today – for the end of partisanship. Even General George “Father-Of-Our-Country” Washington feared the approach of party politics. But the partisanship he dreaded was the kind that would bring about change contrary to what he wanted. And there’s the rub.

It’s bipartisan if you agree with me. It’s partisan if you don’t.

Like it or not, partisanship has been part of our national fabric all along. And all Americans should fervently hope that we never actually see bipartisanship break out all over. For some reason, possibly naivety on the part of some, though maybe something more manipulative on the part of others, the cry of bipartisanship is the ultimate political trump card these days. Getting everyone to work and play together – to walk in complete utopian agreement – is seen as the ultimate political ideal.

It sounds nice. It feels good when political foes trade rancor for civility, and it makes sense on a certain level that people need to talk with, rather than at, each other. I get that. But is the current call for bipartisanship really little more than the glorification of something quite detrimental to effective governance?

I’m talking about groupthink.

As President Obama and his new administration grapple with the complex issues before them, and try to find traction dealing with a surprisingly feisty, if not recalcitrant, Republican minority in Congress, they would do well to look in depth at the age of Camelot. But they should study the fall of 1962, not the spring 1961.

President John F. Kennedy learned a thing or two from the Bay of Pigs fiasco – an early failure for his administration. What he learned, he then applied when faced with Soviet missiles in Castro’s Cuba 18 months later. He learned how to listen to many different points of view – and to temper his approach based on what he was hearing.

Of course, I realize that the analogy falls short as completely relevant to the workings of partisan politics, but there is a basic idea that rings true. In scripture we are told: “in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” The best policies are those forged out of the give and take – the “iron sharpening iron” – of contrary opinions. And the iron doesn’t get sharp without sparks flying.

The wisdom we need is usually in those sparks.

I try to watch Prime Minister’s Question Time on C-Span, when I can. This is where Great Britain’s top elected official stands in the House of Commons and wages verbal war with friend and foe alike over current policies and practices. The best days for this exchange in recent years were back when Margaret Thatcher was PM, but even a journeyman like Gordon Brown can be entertaining.

Across the pond, their big political kahuna answers to other elected officials, the way our leaders occasional face a hostile press (though mainstream media hostility toward the White House is a rarity these days). I think we would have better leaders, if they had to actual debate their stuff directly with congress – at least on occasion. Photo-ops and handshakes aside, I wonder how much better a good, heated, executive-legislative argument might be for our national political health.

Some years ago, the late psychologist Irving Janis identified some of the symptoms of groupthink, and it is interesting how relevant they are in the face of a clarion call about bipartisanship.

Back in 1977, Janis observed that groupthink is indicated when there are illusions of invulnerability, the kind that are created when a particular policy or point of view is not help up to contrary and critical analysis. Also, unquestioned belief in the morality or superiority of the group making the decision breeds groupthink.

The tendency to stereotype those who oppose is also a sign that groupthink is hovering around, as is the practice of rationalizing warnings. The bottom line is that groupthink yields flawed fruit. It leads to bad decisions, sometimes even catastrophic ones.

Groupthink is an equal opportunity problem. It is not reserved solely for democrats, republicans, or independents. It rears its ugly head any time a group takes over, or gets comfortable in power, and loses the capacity for objectivity. And when there is a “we won/it’s our turn” mindset, groupthink is usually in the air. It is a most subtle and self-deceptive toxin.

How does this relate to the current mantra of bipartisanship? Well, it would be wise for President Obama to remember that, though he and his party did win, this should not be interpreted as a mandate to get everything they desire. If 46 percent of the people voted for the other guy and party, then trying to pull off an 80-20 policy deal might not be warranted.

True bipartisanship can only happen when the party in power reaches out in a way commensurate with the percentages in the most recent election. A mandate is not a blank check. The recent election suggests that any real stimulus plan should be about 55 percent democratic ideas and 45 percent republican contribution.

That would be actual bipartisanship.

The fact is that, since the days of Adams and Jefferson we have had this national tug of war between competing ideas about what government should or should not do. The pendulum has swung both ways several times in our history. The big government vs. little government, higher tax vs. lower tax, and interventionist vs. laissez faire debate has been our country’s persistent yin and yang struggle.

And that should never change. We are better because of that tension.

If bipartisanship means the end of debate and the ushering in of an unfettered liberal nationalist hegemony over the American way of life, then we will find ourselves on a slippery slope. Many believe we are already feeling gravity’s pull that way. The danger is the idea of surrendering liberty for the promise of financial security.

We might just wind up with neither.

Church, State, and the Economy Across the Pond

December 18, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Economic issues, Faith, Religion, UK Politics, economy | Leave a Comment 

Britain’s Prime Minister goes toe to toe with Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over the economy – particularly Brown’s stimulus package. The archbishop likens it to “an addict returning to the drug.” Read all about it in the Times Online.

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

November 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Obama administration, Republican Party, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

James Forsyth is the online editor of the (London) Spectator as well a regular blogger on the magazine’s Coffeehouse Blog.

His latest post is: “The Republicans Are Where The Tories Were In 1997“.

Mr. Forsyth draws four lessons that 2008 Republicans can learn from the mistakes the Tories made in and after 1997. For example:

The first Tory mistake the Republicans must learn from is the importance of accepting that the other guy won and is popular. The Tories thought Blair was a charlatan and many Republicans believe the same of Obama, but the country doesn’t: Obama’s post-election approval rating is 68 per cent. In this climate, the Republican National Committee sending out a slew of emails criticising each Obama appointment is pointless. The Republicans would be far better off keeping their powder dry. Then if Obama were to have an Ecclestone moment, the return of their guns to action would have more of an effect.

The Ecclestone scandal (Tony Blair was accused of thanking Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone for his million pound contribution to the Labor Party by exempting the sport from a tobacco ad ban) was the first speed bump in the freeway of media love and popular approval down which the newly-elected Blair government had been tooling to that point.

Mr. Forsyth illustrates each of his other prescriptions:

The second thing the Republicans should take from the Tory experience is the importance of patience.

Third, the Republicans must not be seduced by the turnout myth.

Finally, the Republicans should not send their best talent on a mission that is doomed to failure.

Many will find the definition of “a mission doomed to failure” —any attempt to regain the White House before 2012— a very hard saying indeed:

The position of Hague in 1997 and Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old governor of Louisiana, today are similar. Jindal is smart, acceptable to all wings of a divided movement and an appealing new face for a party that is trying to compete with a youthful opponent. But putting Jindal up in 2012 would be as much of a waste of talent as the Tories making Hague leader in 1997. Barack Obama has, like Blair, almost certainly won a two-term mandate, if for no other reason than the daunting number of states that the Republicans would have to flip to win back the White House.

Obama’s election has changed many things but America is still a centre-right country; the ideological composition of the electorate in 2008 was identical to what it was in 2004. But there is a danger that the rump Republican party becomes interested in talking only to itself, adamant that it represents ‘real America’ and that the rest of the country can go hang. (Palin has become a proxy in this debate; the attacks on her are so vicious because people know that she represents the most attractive face of this destructive tendency.) If that were to happen, it would see the centre of political gravity move to the left not only in America but also in Britain.

Palin Is The New Thatcher

October 3, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2008, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Kyle-Anne Shriver suggests that the small-town Palin possesses a similar sense of self-reflection that Lady Thatcher demonstrated in crediting her own success:

“I just owe almost everything to my father and it’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.”

What If? How Would We Do?

October 3, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Culture, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Lifestyle, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Last Sunday, as I shared my sermon with our congregation, I talked about the current economic crisis and reflected on the possibility of very difficult times ahead.

As I was speaking, my eyes fell on a man who is about 95 years of age. He was looking at me with eyes that seemed to say: “Pastor, you have no idea how bad an economic crisis can get.”

Of course, he is a Great Depression – and everything else – survivor. And I suspect that most of us need to find an octogenarian or two to talk to – someone who can show us the ropes.

In the same vein, I came across a column written by Max Hastings that came out a couple of days ago in the London Daily Mail. It’s entitled: New Age of Austerity. In the piece, Hastings reminds his readers that

“few of us, in our hugely privileged lives, have ever experienced the hard times we’re about to face.”

Here’s a link to “across the pond.”

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