Comments on Brooks on Kristol

And oh the comments on Brooks's paean to Irving Kristol, obviously his favorite mentor.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/22brooks.html

Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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Three Cheers for IrvingBack to Article »
By DAVID BROOKS
Irving Kristol thrust himself into every ideologically charged battle of his age, but he was able to pick a side without losing his clarity.
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1.
George Neal
Steilacoom, WA
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
Nice job! It's always a pleasure to read of someone who has a bias, but is non-ideological and pragmatic. Thansk for so many insights into people I rarely read about!
Recommended by 43 Readers
2.
soso
Canada
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
Finally, the shackles locking the minds of decent conservatives is off.
Recommended by 10 Readers
3.
RoughAcres
New York
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
wow... first President Obama on David Letterman, and now this.Nice listening to/about people who THINK for a change.Thanks.
Recommended by 27 Readers
4.
Barbara
NY
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
A nice tribute, but it breaks what you state was Kristol's practice. Where's the scrutiny and the skepticism?
Recommended by 19 Readers
5.
Matthew
Portland, OR
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
It is a pity Irving Kristol's ability to rationally analyze and compromise wasn't passed on to many of his political heirs.
Recommended by 120 Readers
6.
Tim Connor
Wheaton, IL
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
It is particularly fitting that David Brooks would defend the man who made the following statement:"Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…"David Brooks is the greatest modern practicioner of using apparent earnestness to mask systematic misrepresentation to justify the often inexcusable behavior of his patrons and benefactors --who happen to be the same powerful interests served by Iring Kristol.I have news for you David. We are held accountable for our actions. And you cannot be forgiven if you do not repent.
Recommended by 413 Readers
7.
Ortrud Radbod
Antwerp, Belgium
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
Irving Kristol was a reactionary right wing revanchist. Don't sugar coat him, Brooks. Don't even try.
Recommended by 306 Readers
8.
Richard Bowes
Manhattan
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
For what it's worth Edmund Burke was Anglo Irish.
Recommended by 15 Readers
9.
MNW
Connecticut
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
Somehow I think Irving Kristol would approve of the following comment from an enlightened Norwegian.A Real Socialist StateAs a Norwegian, looking at the U.S. health care debate from the outside, I cannot help but laugh sometimes. It seems like the word “socialism” has become a swear word. In Norway, we just re-elected a “socialist” government. That does not mean that we live in a communist state. We have full-fledged capitalism over here, and we are just about the richest country in the world, per capita. But we have chosen to let the state supply world class health care to all inhabitants.To allow private insurance companies to let private profit maximizing decisions get in between a patient and a doctor is close to unethical for us. In Norway, you get the same care no matter if you are a homeless drunk or the C.E.O. of one of the biggest companies. And that’s how it should be. They say that the measure of a country’s success lies in how it treats its most unfortunate citizens.— Gjert MyrestrandYour hero would approve of your climbing aboard, Mr. Brooks. Have a nice day.
Recommended by 438 Readers
10.
mickster
Seattle, WA
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
There seems to a confusion on the right. Buckley is dead, Kristol is dead. How to separate out the kooks from the conservatives.We now have Rush, Oreilly, Beck, Hannity as radio/tv talking heads angling for very large amounts of money 50million+ dollars. Competing to be most outrageous. I can say something every more farout and outragreous than you. Vieing for market share and massive dollars for just running one's mouth that pleases the right wing in its current ephemeral form changing moment by moment, hour by hour. The race amongst the pundits seems to be who say the most outrageous thinkg about obama. The audience is open, wide open let the bidding start with the clain that obama want's to destroy this country. Yes start fro here. Its important to note that nothing can be said about obama that will unbelievable to the right wing true believers.
Recommended by 107 Readers
11.
Southernlight
Australia
September 22nd, 2009
6:53 am
RIP Mr. Kristol. Our world loses its light yet again....Thanks for the column Mr. Brooks. It was inspiring.
Recommended by 25 Readers
12.
Jim
New York
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
If Mr. Kristol was indeed able to see the flaws in his belief systemn and was therefore not an idealogical purist what happened to his followers? Somewhere along the line they must have been asleep during his lectures on the values of improving the human condition. That is unless you count improving the Human condition of a priviliged few at the expense of the many.
Recommended by 123 Readers
13.
Basil Marasco, Jr.
Rochester, NY
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
Mr Brooks, I've often wondered if the purpose of becoming as well-educated as you are is to be able to know the difference, for example, between what is "creative" and what is "destructive", or at least what is "creative in most cases" and likewise destructive.I now suspect that the purpose of SOME students' education is to develop a talent for fusing antonyms together in order to debilitate the real meaning of each and so leave a debate muddled beyond usefulness or benefit.Does the concept of "destructive creativity" lend itself to mathematical evaluation? Can an example of it be proven to be clearly more destructive than creative? Or vice versa? Or is it just a beguiling little phrase that comes in handy when suggesting that the American middle class--between the post-war boom, the benefits of the New Deal, and organized labor--had just gotten too secure? That a "job for life" was the flawed element of our market economy and that the education gotten between the ages of 5 and 18 should never have been considered sufficient?Pray tell, what is "destructive creativity"? Why not devote an entire column to it, complete with history (if any), definitions (preferably free of ambiguities), and examples. Above all, I'd like to know how to avoid the "destructive" part of it.
Recommended by 89 Readers
14.
Thomas W.
Germany
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
Are the 'conservative predispositions of the people' the predispositions of those in constant terror that the majority will find out that the majority has been taken for a ride, and who, as a result, cannot quite bring themselves to believe in democracy, while at the same time praising democracy and trying hard to bring it to other failed states?If Irving Kristol indeed favored the insurance view on governmental activity in labor markets, health and life insurance and retirement benefits, then he was a very innovative and progressive thinker indeed - discovering what Bismarck knew and what the german conservatives knew after WWII, and what the founders of the state of Israel knew.I sincerely doubt that the final analysis is in on whether it was The Grand Inquisitor or his counterpart who understood better what it means and takes to not be a schmuck.
Recommended by 21 Readers
15.
vballboy
Highland NY
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
I wish you condolence for losing an admired intellectual leader of neoconservatism.That said, while fiscal restraint in government spending appears a primal focus of modern neoconservatives, I am still baffled at how supposed neoconservatives quietly let the Bush Administration commit America to years of spending for an unnecessary Iraq War and GWOT. This long term, some would even say endless, commitment requires spending hundreds of billions every year which does not sit well with me in the greater context of fiscal conservatism.How is spending on near-endless war morally or ethically acceptable whereas spending on certain other political ideologies considered heinous? The spend-thrift logic is not clear on this...
Recommended by 191 Readers
16.
AT Lardner
Granada, Spain
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
"Don’t fall for fantastical notions that have nothing to do with the way people really are"...hmmm, I am grateful that Irving Kristol knew (and, we are to surmise) David Brooks knows "the way people really are". Obviously a clear indicator of "detached attachment"...
Recommended by 23 Readers
17.
jcoyle
paris
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
As one who has learned much from Irving Kristol's writing, I would tend to sum up David Brooks's three sources of Kristol's excellence--ethnic, philosophical and moral--as a particular ability to see and absorb wisdom. Perhaps this is another way of stating his self-description as having detached attachment. Reinhold Niebuhr had a similar talent, the ability to distance himself from the world around him, seeing it more whole and clear, as if he were an historian writing about the distant past. All this leaves me wondering why many of Kristol's closest collaborators and followers in neo-conservatism--I think especially of Norman Podhoretz and Irving's son, Bill--seem not to have absorbed this distancing capacity and constant sense of the brokenness of humanity.Joseph S. CoyleParis
Recommended by 52 Readers
18.
OETKB
Reading, Ma
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
As John McEnroe is inclined to say, "You can't be serious." We see none of his disciples having the inclination to take the general public into consideration on any policy as you intimate. By your reckoning his son, William, should be trumpeting Medicare For All. From a purely business point of view it would serve the cause of open markets by providing more capital. Forget the 45,000 who die each year needlessly from lack of insurance or the over the top bankruptcies because people become seriously ill. Neocons start wars, deepen poverty, despoil the environment and take no responsibility for their actions. Even after abundant evidence their cloistered ideas don't work, it is somebody else's fault, and there is no adjustments in their thinking. Yes an influential political philosopher has died but let's not use his passing to idolize unsubstantiated ideology over critical thinking. May he rest in peace.
Recommended by 292 Readers
19.
audreygoodman
Cherry Hill, NJ
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
Three cheers to you, for emulating this giant in your own thought and writing. No matter how negative or positive you are about a government policy or economic plan, you can stand somewhat detached and point out its imperfections.This long-time liberal can agree with Irving on several things--that no policy or law can really change the way people think or feel, and that any system of economics or politics will have some overlooked or unintended negative consequences.Accepting the imperfections in human efforts as well as human beings is a big step in becoming mature. I'd hope that we could start getting there and stop yelling at each other sooner rather than later, but know I have to be patient about that too.
Recommended by 32 Readers
20.
Mike
ct
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
He wa an influential thinker who will be missed by many. My condolences to his family.
Recommended by 11 Readers
21.
Mark
ny
September 22nd, 2009
7:34 am
Kristol was an avid supporter of the invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy debacle in US history. Yet, somehow Mr. Brooks fails to mention this fact. We may forgive some mistakes but we cannot forgive one that has cost the lives of so many Americans and Iraqis and cost trillions of dollars. For this alone Irving Kristol was an abject failure, unworthy of the eulogy that Brooks gives him here.This country has to start dealing with facts.
Recommended by 348 Readers
22.
Jeff-for-progress
Washington, DC
September 22nd, 2009
9:45 am
Brooks is rapidly becoming the Dr. Joyce Brothers of American conservatism. It reminds me of the scene in Mel Brooks movie "High Anxiety," where before a conference of psychologists, Brooks (the Mel one), is the Director of the "Institute for the Very, Very Nervous," thanks Brothers, for giving them all "a very nice living." What one sees in Kristol's career is a pattern of economic opportunism. Which Brooks who has followed on the conservative gravy train has tried to paint here as a Profile in Courage.His disingenuous analysis also seems to be particularly self-serving, especially when he says: "So while others were marching to barricades, picking out bits of the truth that confirmed their own prejudices, editing contrary evidence and working themselves up a righteous lather, Kristol would adopt an attitude of smiling forbearance. He was able to pick a side without losing his clarity."Which reminds me of Brooks most recent previous column where he picks out a bit of truth about teabaggers getting lunch from Family Reunion people on the Mall and listening to soul music and coming to the conclusion that race had little to no relation to the opposition to Obama. I suppose Brooks identifies with the supposed Kristol forbearance in holding on to his economically lucrative views, without losing his clarity, from where his next paycheck was coming from. Hint: racism is seldom a black and white thing, but usually is triggered by a disproportionate amount of imappropriate passion given to an issue where the offender is the racial target. Yes, this sort of thing happens with blacks as well, as several episodes of inappropriate response that have occurred with Al Sharpton protests. But, Brooks, supposes that somehow his is the "neutral" point of view. Fat chance.Finally, E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post while acknowledging Kristol's sense of bonhomie, as Brooks does, noted that in a 1968 New Republic article ("Why I Support Hubert Humphrey") that he opposed Richard Nixon, for precisely the same reasons that the current crop of conservatives have become so ideologically distempered:"(T)o my mind, the election has already narrowed itself down to the choice between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon as President of the United States. These are the only two candidates who make a nationwide, "majority appeal" to the American electorate. In these pages, I need not explain why the prospect of electing Mr. Nixon depresses me. Suffice it to say that he appeals to the wrong majority to govern the United States in these times--a majority whose dominant temper will be sullenly resentful of the social changes we have been experiencing and impulsively reactionary toward the crises we shall inevitably be enduring."It would seem that Barack Obama represents the type of moderate liberalism that Hubert Humphrey did and that the current state of mean spirited racially tinged conservatism is reflective of "the wrong majority" sullenly resentful of the changes we have been seeing." However, this time Kristol had switched his allegiance since 1972 to the sullen resentful side of a wrong majority, and persisted in clear-eyed fashion, and to to oppose the right majority, which he once persuasively argued for. This hardly calls for three cheers, although Kristol's opposition to Joe McCarthy and his previous support for Hubert Humphrey might, in the spirit of not speaking ill of the dead, elicit one cheer. The other two cheers in the title, appears to me, David cheering for himself.
Recommended by 82 Readers
23.
Martin
Apopka, Florida
September 22nd, 2009
9:46 am
Hardly three cheers for Irving. As the literal father of William Kristol and philosophical father of the tragic neoconservative movement, the legacy of Irving Kristol one of death and destruction, corruption and war crimes. As an American Jew, I cannot be proud of any sort of link with this man.
Recommended by 166 Readers
24.
qualquan
Evanston
September 22nd, 2009
9:46 am
It is no surprise Brooks loved fellow Neocon Irvine Kristol. They both readily sacrificed America's interest in championing the horribly expensive budget and economy busting Iraq war based on transparent lies.
Recommended by 112 Readers
25.
roberto
toscana
September 22nd, 2009
9:46 am
quite a man! so what has gone wrong with his followers, the neo-con? could it be that the man was all and that his neo-con ideals were, shall we say, flawed and destined to be "manipulated" and leave a questionable legacy(!)salutiroberto
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Brooks -- On Irving Kristol

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/22brooks.html?hp

Kristol -- Always Worth Reading

As always I hold my nose when reading him, but...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/opinion/19kristol.html

Kristol -- Withering as Usual

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12kristol.html?_r=1&hp

Kristol -- Deserves Careful Study

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/opinion/01kristol.html

Kristol

Op-Ed Columnist
Admit We Don’t Know
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/opinion/24kristol.html
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By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: November 24, 2008
“In my view it has to be between five and seven hundred billion dollars,” proclaimed Senator Charles Schumer Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” The “it” is the economic stimulus package the new Congress intends to send to the new president, Barack Obama, in January.
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The truth is, Schumer hasn’t a well-grounded view, or even a well-informed clue, as to how large the stimulus package “has to be.” I’d be amazed if he could give a coherent explanation of why it should be $500 billion to $700 billion instead of, say, $300 billion or $900 billion. On TV, he simply invoked the authority of “most economists,” who, according to Schumer, “say, to make this work, you need about 5 percent of G.D.P., which would be $700 billion.” Nor do I think Schumer could begin to explain why a demand-side stimulus package oriented toward employment, infrastructure and consumer spending will “work” in dealing with an economic crisis whose origins seem to be in the collapse of a housing bubble and the deleveraging of overstretched financial institutions.
Now I hasten to add — wait a second, Senator Schumer, put down the phone, no need to call me at home this early in the morning! — that I don’t mean to pick in any way on Chuck Schumer, who is surely among the more economically literate members of Congress. It’s not as if his colleagues have a better understanding of what has happened, or of what should be done. And it’s not as if the rest of us do.
In his interview, Schumer appealed to the authority of economists. Economists still do have considerable sway in our public life — even though it doesn’t seem that a large number of them have been particularly prescient in warning about, or strikingly persuasive in explaining, the current economic situation.
In any case, the Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee also weighed in Sunday on television and said: “I don’t know what the number is going to be, but it’s going to be a big number. It has to be. The point is to, kind of, get people back on track and startle the thing into submission.”
So a key member of Obama’s economic team hopes a big federal spending number will “startle the thing into submission.” That’s reassuring. On the other hand, it’s not as if the analysis of many conservative economists is much more persuasive. At least the liberals, being more or less Keynesians, tend to agree on what should be done. The more idiosyncratic conservatives tend to be all over the lot. But, basically, it seems to me, we’re all flying blind. The markets are spiraling down, and our leading experts don’t have much of a clue as to what to do.
Given that, one has to welcome the expected appointment to senior positions in the Obama administration of economists like Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jason Furman, Peter Orszag, and Goolsbee himself. They’re sober and competent people who know we face a real crisis — and who, importantly, may be more willing than many of their colleagues to adjust their thinking early and often.
Indeed, one hopes they’re not too invested in the findings of the economics profession of which they’re such distinguished products — because one suspects many of the conventional answers of that profession aren’t much applicable to the current situation. After all, wasn’t it excessive confidence in complex economic models and sophisticated financial instruments on the part of people well educated in modern economics that helped get us into the current mess?
So I hope the best and the brightest who will be joining the new president will at least entertain the possibility that a lot of what they think they know is wrong. I trust they’ll remember that successful economic policies in the past have pulled together elements from unlikely sources, and that they’re as likely to find wisdom from reading political economists like Friedrich Hayek or Joseph Schumpeter, or Keynes himself, as from poring over the latest academic paper in a peer-refereed economics journal.
During his two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama has often cited Abraham Lincoln. Well, it turns out Obama could be taking over the presidency at something more closely resembling (though still far short of) a Lincolnian moment than one would have expected. And it was Lincoln who wrote, in his second annual message to Congress, in December 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
I’ve worked in government. It’s hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew. But Obama and his team will have to think anew, and those on the outside who wish to help will have to think anew too, if we’re to have a chance of rising to this daunting occasion.
Paul Krugman is off today.

Kristol

Kristol -- he's always got to be read, however much I hate his positions. This historic analogy is worth a read for sure.


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George W. Hoover?
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/opinion/17kristol.html
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By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: November 17, 2008
Last week, assembled at Miami’s InterContinental Hotel for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association, the governors seemed cheerful. The G.O.P. had lost only one statehouse on Election Day. The prospects for a Republican pickup in Virginia in 2009 were decent, and good candidates were plotting runs in states like California, Pennsylvania and Ohio in 2010.
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There was even a sense of liberation in the air. For the last 14 years, there has been either a Republican Congress or a Republican White House, or sometimes both. Now the Republican governors are free of those heavy taps on the shoulder from their “betters” in Washington. So for these governors, this seems a moment of opportunity, in which their policies, their examples and their successes can help shape the future of the G.O.P.
The governors will be important. But there was an almost-never-mentioned elephant in the Versailles Ballroom (yes, that’s its name) full of Republicans: George W. Bush. For the hard fact is this: The worst financial crisis in almost 80 years has happened on his watch. The Bush administration will leave behind probably the most severe recession in at least a quarter-century. Fairly or unfairly, this will be viewed as George Bush’s economic meltdown.
If Republicans and conservatives don’t come to grips with what’s happened, and can’t develop an economic agenda moving forward that seems to incorporate lessons learned from what’s happened — then they could be back, politically, in 1933.
From 1933 to 1980, Republicans repeatedly failed to convince the country they were no longer the party of Herbert Hoover — the party, as it was perceived, of economic incompetence, austerity and recession (if not depression).
Only two Republicans won presidential elections in that half-century, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Both were able to take the White House only because we were mired down in difficult wars, in Korea and Vietnam. And Ike and Nixon were unable — they didn’t really try — to change the generally liberal course of domestic and economic policy. The G.O.P.’s fate on Capitol Hill was worse. The party controlled Congress for only 4 of those 47 years.
That’s what happens when a depression begins on your watch and when you can’t offer a coherent explanation of how and why it occurred and what you are going to do differently. That’s what happens when instead of having such an explanation, you spend decades in quarrels between pragmatic but unimaginative moderates who seek to be better tax collectors for the liberal welfare state, and principled but fanciful conservatives who hope for a wholesale rejection of that welfare state. And the fact that there were many successful Republican governors in those years didn’t much change the party’s status nationally.
Then there was a real moment of economic rethinking in the 1970s. Supply-side economics challenged demand-side Keynesians and austerity-minded conservatives by putting growth, entrepreneurship and incentives at the center of economic policy. Supply-side economics gave Ronald Reagan’s G.O.P. a new and different economic agenda in 1980, and Republicans were able to become a governing party.
Republicans and conservatives today face a similar challenge to that of 1976. A hawkish foreign policy, social conservatism and middle-American populism aren’t the problems. Those elements, as embodied on the Republican ticket by John McCain and Sarah Palin, produced a respectable 46 percent of the national vote — in the midst of an economic meltdown, with the Bush administration flailing and House Republicans rebelling and the Republican ticket lacking any coherent economic message.
I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.
And I don’t see why conservatives ought to defend a system that permits securitizing mortgages (or car loans) in a way that seems to make the lenders almost unaccountable for the risk while spreading it, toxically, everywhere else. I don’t see why a commitment to free markets requires permitting banks or bank-like institutions to leverage their assets at 30 to 1. There’s nothing conservative about letting free markets degenerate into something close to Karl Marx’s vision of an atomizing, irresponsible and self-devouring capitalism.
If conservatives do some difficult re-thinking in the field of political economy, they can come back. If they don’t — well, there were a lot of admirable conservative thinkers and writers, professors and novelists, from 1933 to 1980. But conservatives didn’t govern.
Paul Krugman is off today.

Kristol

This is his first column since the election, I believe. Pretty light.

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G.O.P. Dog Days?
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10kristol.html
By William Kristol
Published: November 10, 2008
Just before midnight on Nov. 4, I wasn’t that worried.
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Sure, the election results had been bad — but they weren’t devastating. Obama wasn’t winning the popular vote by double-digit margins, as some polls had suggested he might. Republican losses in the Senate and House were substantial but not catastrophic. Obama was ahead of John McCain by about the same margin with which Bill Clinton defeated George Bush in 1992, and he would be taking over in January with similar Congressional majorities to Clinton’s in 1993.
Well, Newt Gingrich was able to lead a Republican takeover of Congress only two years later. And after his victory in 1976, Jimmy Carter had even larger Democratic margins in Congress. Ronald Reagan trounced him four years later, bringing with him a G.O.P.-controlled Senate and an era of conservative governance.
What’s more, this year’s exit polls suggested a partisan shift but no ideological realignment. In 2008, self-described Democrats made up 39 percent of the electorate and Republicans 32 percent, in contrast with a 37-37 split in 2004.
But there was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.
In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country. Conservatives and the Republican Party will have a real chance for a comeback — unless the skills of the new president turn what was primarily an anti-Bush vote into the basis for a new liberal governing era.
Those were my thoughts when, a few minutes into his victory speech, just after midnight, Obama told his daughters, “And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.”
I gulped.
Not out of my deep affection for dogs, fond of them though I am. But because while we’ve all known that Obama is a very skillful politician, he hasn’t until now been a particularly empathetic one. Competence plus warmth is a pretty potent combination. Suddenly visions of the two great modern realigning presidents — Franklin Roosevelt (with his Scottish terrier Fala) and Ronald Reagan (with his Cavalier King Charles spaniel Rex) — flashed before my eyes. Maybe a realignment could be coming.
Obama was, naturally, asked about the promised-but-not-yet-purchased puppy at his press conference Friday. (If one were being churlish, one might say that it was typical of a liberal to promise the dog before delivering it. A results-oriented conservative would simply have shown up with the puppy without the advance hype.)
Obama commented wryly that the canine question had “generated more interest on our Web site than just about anything.” He continued:
“We have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypoallergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me. So — so whether we’re going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.”
Here, in a few sentences, Obama did the following: He deepened his bond with every dog lover in America. He identified with every household that’s tried to figure out what kind of dog to get. He touched every parent with a kid allergic to pets. He showed compassion by preferring a dog from a shelter. And he demonstrated a dry and slightly politically incorrect wit by commenting that “a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.”
Not bad. It could be a tough four or eight years for conservatives.
It will be tougher yet if they underestimate Obama. His selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff suggests that Obama’s not going to be mindlessly leftist, and that he’s going to shape a legislative strategy that is attentive to Congressional realities while not deferring to a Congressional leadership whose interests may not be his own. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were both tripped up in their first two years by their Democratic Congresses. Obama intends for Emanuel to ensure that that doesn’t happen.
And Obama has the further advantage of inheriting a recession that will give him a very tough first year or two (for which he won’t be blamed), but that should be followed by a recovery well timed for his re-election bid.
So Obama will be formidable. But conservatives should welcome the challenge. It’s good for conservatism that conservatives will have to develop refreshed ideas and regenerated political skills to succeed in the age of Obama.
And it wouldn’t hurt for Governors Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal and the other possible 2012 G.O.P. nominees to begin bringing some puppies home for their kids.

Kristol

new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/opinion/03kristol.html
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By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: November 3, 2008
Barack Obama will probably win the 2008 presidential election. If he does, we conservatives will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism. Being conservative means never being too surprised by disappointment.
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But what if John McCain pulls off an upset?
I’m worried about my compatriots on the left. Michael Powell reports in Saturday’s New York Times that even the possibility of an Obama defeat has driven many liberals into in a state of high anxiety. And then there’s a young woman from Denver who “told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama’s performance in Colorado.” Well, what if Obama loses Colorado? Or the presidency? As a compassionate conservative, I’m concerned about the well-being of that boyfriend — and of others who might be similarly situated. I feel an obligation to help.
So let me tell liberals why they should be cheerful if McCain happens to win.
1. It would be a victory for an underdog. Liberals are supposed to like underdogs. McCain is a lonely guy standing up against an unprecedentedly well-financed, superorganized, ExxonMobil-like Obama juggernaut. A McCain upset victory would be a classic liberal happy ending.
2. It would be a defeat for the establishment. Obama’s most recent high-profile Republican endorser was D.C. insider Kenneth Duberstein. Liberals should be on the side of hard-working plumbers, not big-shot lobbyists — oops, sorry, big-shot strategic advisers and consultants. And Duberstein said that Colin Powell’s endorsement was “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on Barack Obama.” Doesn’t that comment embody everything that liberals (and many conservatives, including me) find creepy about smug establishment back-scratching and gatekeeping in America?
3. It would be a victory for the future. With President Bush’s approval rating at about 25 percent, a McCain triumph would mean Americans were making a judgment on two future alternatives, not merely voting on the basis of their resentment at the past performance of George W. Bush. It would mean voters were looking ahead, not back. Liberals should therefore welcome a McCain win as a triumph of hope over fear, of the future over the past.
4. It would be a victory for freedom. Obama supporter Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic writes that “tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency.” Liberals should be opposed to tyranny and genocide. Wieseltier also acknowledges that McCain “was splendidly right about the surge, which is not a small thing; and the grudging way Obama treats the reversal in Iraq, when he treats it at all, is disgraceful.” The surge advanced not only our national security but the cause of freedom in the world. Liberals should be votaries of freedom.
5. A McCain victory would be good for liberalism. Look at recent history. Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress begat Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress produced Newt Gingrich. Who knows what would follow a President Obama and a Democratic Congress? Here’s one possibility: President Sarah Palin.
So liberals shouldn’t be too upset at the idea of McCain winning. Could it happen?
It’s possible. What if the polls, for various reasons, are overstating Obama’s support by a couple points? And what if the late deciders break overwhelmingly against Obama, as they did in the Democratic primaries? McCain could then thread the Electoral College needle.
McCain would have to win every state where he now leads or is effectively even in the polls (including North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri). He’d have to take Florida and Ohio, where he’s about four points down but where operatives on the ground give him a pretty good shot. That gets him to 247 of the 270 votes needed.
McCain’s path to victory is then to snatch Pennsylvania (which gets him to 268), and win either Virginia, Colorado, Nevada or New Mexico (states where he trails by about four to seven points) — or New Hampshire, where he’s 10 points behind but twice won dramatic primary victories.
As for Pennsylvania, two recent polls have McCain closing to within four points. Pennsylvania is the state whose small-town residents were famously patronized by Obama as “bitter.” One of Pennsylvania’s Democratic congressmen, John Murtha, recently accused many of his western Pennsylvania constituents of being racist. Perhaps Pennsylvanians will want to send a little message to the Democratic Party. And that could tip the election to McCain.
It’s an inside straight. But I’ve seen gamblers draw them.
If McCain wins, think of this column as a modest contribution to cheering up distraught liberals. If Obama prevails, I’m confident there are some compassionate liberals out there who will do the same for hapless conservatives as they hobble out to the wilderness.

Kristol

I hate him but he has to be read. Just like I hate Rush Limbaugh but he must be listened to when I'm in the car on a long trip.

Op-Ed Columnist
Remember the Marne
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/opinion/27kristol.html
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By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: October 26, 2008
“My center is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I attack!”
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That’s the message supposedly sent by General Ferdinand Foch of France to his commanding general, Joseph Joffre, during the crucial First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. The French and British counterattacks succeeded. The German Army, after advancing for a month, was forced back.
Here in the U.S., after more than a month of Democratic advances, it’s the Republican center that’s giving way, and some on the political right who are in retreat. The Obama campaign is marching toward the biggest nonincumbent Democratic presidential victory since 1932, and the Democratic Party is fighting its way toward its best overall presidential and Congressional year since 1964.
Situation not-so-excellent. Time for McCain to attack — or, rather, finally to make his case.
The heart of that case has to be this: reminding voters that when they elect a president, they’re not just electing a super-Treasury secretary or a higher-level head of Health and Human Services. They’re electing a commander in chief in time of war.
The McCain campaign intends, I gather, to return to the commander in chief theme with an event in Florida Wednesday showcasing former secretaries of state and retired senior military officers. But why not showcase young Iraq vets instead? These young soldiers and marines can testify eloquently to the success of the surge that John McCain championed, and to the disaster and dishonor that would have followed Barack Obama’s preferred path of withdrawal.
As for the future in Iraq, the respected foreign policy analyst Michael O’Hanlon, a Democrat, endorsed Obama this past weekend. But O’Hanlon also wrote on Politico that Obama’s Iraq position is “extremely risky,” and that “getting all American combat forces out of Iraq by April 2010, a position he has held while we were losing the war, during the comeback phase, and now while we are winning, is very imprudent and I continue to hope and pray that he rethinks it.”
McCain could point out that hope is nice and prayer is good. But, he could ask: With respect to our national security, do we really want to elect a president on a hope and a prayer?
That has to be the substantive core of his closing argument. But style and tone matter, too. Last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll showed 64 percent of voters saying McCain is spending more time attacking the other candidate than explaining what he would do as president. Just 22 percent say the same of Obama.
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. McCain could order his campaign to pull all negative ads, mailers and robocalls.
For that matter, he might as well muzzle the campaign. McCain campaign senior staff members now seem to be spending more time criticizing one another than Obama, and more time defending their own reputations than pursuing a McCain-Palin victory. McCain should simply say that for the last week of the campaign, no staff member is authorized to speak to the media about anything beyond logistical and scheduling matters.
Then McCain and Palin can spend the final week speaking for themselves. They should throw themselves open full time to the media. Could the press coverage get worse? Next Sunday, McCain and Palin could divide up the talk shows. Sarah Palin live! Lots of people would tune in.
There could be one other big moment this week. Obama has bought a half-hour of television in prime time Wednesday. McCain and Palin could buy time Thursday night — giving voters some incentive to keep an open mind at least until McCain and Palin get to make their case.
Palin could speak first, reprising her fine recent speeches on women’s issues and special needs kids — speeches that got almost no press coverage. She could then introduce her running mate, reminding people of his heroism, and pointing out, as she does on the stump, that he is the only candidate “who has truly fought for America.”
As for McCain, he needs to speak about America’s greatness and its future; about how the ingenuity and toughness of the American people will turn around this financial crisis just as the ingenuity of General Petraeus and the toughness of his fighting men and women turned around Iraq; about how America’s spirit was not undone by a terrorist attack, and will not be undone by a financial mess; about how the naysayers will once again be proved wrong; about how America will emerge from its troubles stronger than ever and will win its battles at home and abroad.
McCain has a chance to close this election in a big and positive way. He has a chance to get voters to rise above the distractions and to set aside the petty aspects of the campaign. He has a chance to remind them why they have admired him, and perhaps to persuade them to vote for him on Nov. 4.
Would this turn things around? Unlikely. But why not take a shot?

Kristol

Kristol is probably right on the strategy he's advocating.


Op-Ed Columnist
How McCain Wins
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[McCain] has a chance. But only if he overrules those of his aides who are trapped by conventional wisdom, huddled in a defensive crouch and overcome by ideological timidity.
The conventional wisdom is that it was a mistake for McCain to go back to Washington last week to engage in the attempt to craft the financial rescue legislation, and that McCain has to move on to a new topic as quickly as possible. As one McCain adviser told The Washington Post, “you’ve got to get it [the financial crisis] over with and start having a normal campaign.”
Wrong.
McCain’s impetuous decision to return to Washington was right. The agreement announced early Sunday morning is better than Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s original proposal, and better than the deal the Democrats claimed was close on Thursday. Assuming the legislation passes soon, and assuming it reassures financial markets, McCain will be able to take some credit.
But the goal shouldn’t be to return to “a normal campaign.” For these aren’t normal times.
We face a real financial crisis. Usually the candidate of the incumbent’s party minimizes the severity of the nation’s problems. McCain should break the mold and acknowledge, even emphasize the crisis. He can explain that dealing with it requires candor and leadership of the sort he’s shown in his career. McCain can tell voters we’re almost certainly in a recession, and things will likely get worse before they get better.
And McCain can note that the financial crisis isn’t going to be solved by any one piece of legislation. There are serious economists, for example, who think we could be on the verge of a huge bank run. Congress may have to act to authorize the F.D.I.C. to provide far greater deposit insurance, and the secretary of the Treasury to protect money market funds. McCain can call for Congress to stand ready to pass such legislation. He can say more generally that in the tough times ahead, we’ll need a tough president willing to make tough decisions.
With respect to his campaign, McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House. McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.
I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday.
That debate is important. McCain took a risk in choosing Palin. If she does poorly, it will reflect badly on his judgment. If she does well, it will be a shot in the arm for his campaign.
In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, more important, the case against Obama. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.”
The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal. A few months ago I asked one of McCain’s aides what aspect of Obama’s liberalism they thought they could most effectively exploit. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton, and patiently explained that talking about “conservatism” and “liberalism” was so old-fashioned.
Maybe. But the fact is the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal. He also has radical associates in his past.
The most famous of these is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and I wonder if Obama may have inadvertently set the stage for the McCain team to reintroduce him to the American public. On Saturday, Obama criticized McCain for never using in the debate Friday night the words “middle class.” The Obama campaign even released an advertisement trumpeting McCain’s omission.
The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.”
So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness.

Kristol

Kristol -- his thinking got us into the mess, but still he writes well. Will McCain gamble, as suggested at the end of the article?

A Fine Mess
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22kristol.html
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By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: September 21, 2008
A friend serving in the Bush administration called Sunday to try to talk me out of my doubts about the $700 billion financial bailout the administration was asking Congress to approve. I picked up the phone, and made the mistake of good-naturedly remarking, in my best imitation of Oliver Hardy, “Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
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People who’ve been working 18-hour days trying to avert a meltdown are entitled to bristle at jocular comments from those of us not in public office. So he bristled. He then tried to persuade me that the only responsible course of action was to support the administration’s request.
I’m not convinced.
It’s not that I don’t believe the situation is dire. It’s not that I want to insist on some sort of ideological purity or free-market fastidiousness. I will stipulate that this is an emergency, and is a time for pragmatic problem-solving, perhaps even for violating some cherished economic or political principles. (What are cherished principles for but to be violated in emergencies?)
And I acknowledge that there are serious people who think the situation too urgent and the day too late to allow for a real public and Congressional debate on what should be done. But — based on conversations with economists, Wall Street types, businessmen and public officials — I’m doubtful that the only thing standing between us and a financial panic is for Congress to sign this week, on behalf of the American taxpayer, a $700 billion check over to the Treasury.
A huge speculative housing bubble has collapsed. We’re going to have a recession. Unemployment will go up. Credit is going to be tighter. The challenge is to contain the damage to a “normal” recession — and to prevent a devastating series of bank runs, a collapse of the credit markets and a full-bore depression.
Everyone seems to agree on the need for a big and comprehensive plan, and that the markets have to have some confidence that help is on the way. Funds need to be supplied, trading markets need to be stabilized, solvent institutions needs to be protected, and insolvent institutions need to be put on the path to a deliberate liquidation or reorganization.
But is the administration’s proposal the right way to do this? It would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency. Surely Congress can at least ask some hard questions about such an open-ended commitment.
And I’ve been shocked by the number of (mostly conservative) experts I’ve spoken with who aren’t at all confident that the Bush administration has even the basics right — or who think that the plan, though it looks simple on paper, will prove to be a nightmare in practice.
But will political leaders dare oppose it? Barack Obama called Sunday for more accountability, and I imagine he’ll support the efforts of the Democratic Congressional leadership to try to add to the legislation a host of liberal spending provisions. He probably won’t want to run the risk of actually opposing it, or even of raising big questions and causing significant delay — lest he be attacked for risking the possible meltdown of the global financial system.
What about John McCain? He could play it safe, going along with whatever the Bush administration and the Congress are able to negotiate.
If he wants to be critical, but concludes that Congress has to pass something quickly lest the markets fall apart again, and that he can’t reasonably insist that Congress come up with something fundamentally better, he could propose various amendments insisting on much more accountability and transparency in how Treasury handles this amazing grant of power.
Comments by McCain on Sunday suggest he might propose an amendment along the lines of one I received in an e-mail message from a fellow semi-populist conservative: “Any institution selling securities under this legislation to the Treasury Department shall not be allowed to compensate any officer or employee with a higher salary next year than that paid the president of the United States.” This would punish overpaid Wall Streeters and, more important, limit participation in the bailout to institutions really in trouble.
Or McCain — more of a gambler than Obama — could take a big risk. While assuring the public and the financial markets that his administration will act forcefully and swiftly to deal with the crisis, he could decide that he must oppose the bailout as the panicked product of a discredited administration, an irresponsible Congress, and a feckless financial establishment, all of which got us into this fine mess.
Critics would charge that in opposing the bailout, in standing against an apparent bipartisan consensus, McCain was being irresponsible.
Or would this be an act of responsibility and courage?

Picking a Wal-Mart Mom

Kristol, what a joke:



Op-Ed Columnist
A Heartbeat Away

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David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, on “Fox News Sunday,” Sept. 7, 2008.
Actually, the Obama campaign is running (in part) against Sarah Palin. Her name will appear with John McCain’s on the ballot. She’ll debate Joe Biden on Oct. 2. And as the new kid on the block, she’ll continue to get substantial media coverage over the next two months.
Will that coverage continue to be as belittling of Palin as much of it has been so far? Probably. It’s not just that many in the media don’t like her politics and don’t identify with her socially or culturally. They’re offended that McCain picked Palin without, so to speak, consulting them. The establishment media take pride in their role as gatekeeper to our political process and social discourse.
So the gatekeeper media’s reaction has been: Who is Sarah Palin to suddenly show up on the national stage? We didn’t vet her. And we don’t approve of her.
Thus Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the venerable New Republic for the last 34 years, wrote a blog post Thursday while he was “still reeling from last night’s malign hysteria at the Republican convention. This is a rotten crowd, even the pious Christian Huckabee and certainly Mayor Giuliani and the aspiring vice president, Sarah Palin.”
Despite reeling from the speeches, Peretz was able to “give [Palin] her due: she is pretty like a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy’s.” He continued that it was “good to see that the Palin family didn’t torture poor Bristol, at least in the open.” And he concluded: “Yes, please God, do bless America and rescue us from these swilly people.”
No malign hysteria there.
The Obama campaign, which would like to get votes from some of these very Americans, isn’t going to follow Peretz down that rabbit hole. To the degree they have to address the Palin question, they’ll stick to the argument they made in their first reaction to the Palin announcement: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.”
According to Safire’s Political Dictionary, the “heartbeat away from the presidency” locution may date from 1952, when the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, attacked the Republican V.P. candidate, the 39-year old Richard Nixon, “who asks you to place him a heartbeat from the presidency.” A half-century before, William McKinley’s campaign manager, Mark Hanna, alarmed by the prospect of the 41-year-old Teddy Roosevelt as the V.P. nominee in 1900, is reported to have warned “that there is only one life between the Vice President and the Chief Magistracy of the nation.”
In neither case were voters moved by the “heartbeat away” concern. McKinley and Eisenhower both won easily.
Should voters be alarmed by a relatively young or inexperienced vice-presidential candidate? No. Since 1900, five vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency during their term in office: Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, Calvin Coolidge in 1923, Harry Truman in 1945, Lyndon Johnson in 1963, and Gerald Ford in 1974. Teddy Roosevelt took over at age 42, becoming our youngest president, and he’s generally thought to have proved up to the job. Truman was V.P. for less than three months and had been kept in the dark by Franklin Roosevelt about such matters as the atom bomb — and he’s generally thought to have risen to the occasion. Character, judgment and the ability to learn seem to matter more to success as president than the number of years one’s been in Washington.
Did McCain think Palin his very best possible successor? Perhaps not. Did Barack Obama think Biden the absolute cream of the Democratic crop? Perhaps not. They undoubtedly thought highly enough of their running mates to have confidence in their ability to take over their administration in case of incapacity or death. I think most voters will accept that basic judgment.
But — shocking to say! — both Obama and McCain also took political considerations into account in making their selections.
One thing McCain undoubtedly had in mind was Obama’s failure to pick Hillary Clinton. As The Times’s Patrick Healy reported Friday, “If the election remains close, the next president could very well be picked by what Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, calls ‘Wal-Mart Moms’ — white working women with children living in the exurbs and in rural parts of battleground states. ...”
McCain didn’t just pick a politician who could appeal to Wal-Mart Moms. He picked a Wal-Mart Mom. Indeed, he picked someone who, in 1999, as Wasilla mayor, presided over a wedding of two Wal-Mart associates at the local Wal-Mart. “It was so sweet,” said Palin, according to The Anchorage Daily News. “It was so Wasilla.”
A Wasilla Wal-Mart Mom a heartbeat away? I suspect most voters will say, No problem. And some — perhaps a decisive number — will say, It’s about time.

Worth a Read But Doesn't Go Very Deep

Op-Ed Columnist
Will Russia Get Away With It?
new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11kristol.html

By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: August 10, 2008
In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”
News Analysis: In Georgia Clash, a Lesson on U.S. Need for Russia (August 10, 2008)
“Unlikely” was an understatement. Georgians did not enjoy freedom again until 1991.
Today, the Vladimir Putins and Hu Jintaos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world — to say nothing of their junior counterparts in places like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea — are no more likely than were Soviet leaders in 1924 to be swayed by “moral influence.” Dictators aren’t moved by the claims of justice unarmed; aggressors aren’t intimidated by diplomacy absent the credible threat of force; fanatics aren’t deterred by the disapproval of men of moderation or refinement.
The good news is that today we don’t face threats of the magnitude of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Each of those regimes combined ruthless internal control, a willingness to engage in external aggression, and fervent adherence to an extreme ideology. Today these elements don’t coexist in one place. Russia is aggressive, China despotic and Iran messianic — but none is as dangerous as the 20th-century totalitarian states.
The further good news is that 2008 has been, in one respect, an auspicious year for freedom and democracy. In Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists in what they have called the central front of their struggle. This joint victory has the potential to weaken the jihadist impulse throughout the Middle East.
On the other hand, the ability of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to get away with murder (literally), and above all the ability of Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions effectively unchecked, are setbacks for hopes of peace and progress.
And there is no evidence that China’s hosting of the Olympics has led to moderation of its authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border, and now seems to be widening its war against Georgia more than its original — and in any case illegitimate — casus belli would justify.
Will the United States put real pressure on Russia to stop? In a news analysis on Sunday, the New York Times reporter Helene Cooper accurately captured what I gather is the prevailing view in our State Department: “While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.”
But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.
For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?
Incidentally, has Russia really been helping much on Iran? It has gone along with — while delaying — three United Nations Security Council resolutions that have imposed mild sanctions on Iran. But it has also supplied material for Iran’s nuclear program, and is now selling Iran antiaircraft systems to protect military and nuclear installations.
It’s striking that dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes — whatever their differences — seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies. So Russia helps Iran. Iran and North Korea help Syria. Russia and China block Security Council sanctions against Zimbabwe. China props up the regimes in Burma and North Korea.
The United States, of course, is not without resources and allies to deal with these problems and threats. But at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain.
When the “civilized world” expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis. Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?