Another Phyllis Schlafly Recollection

After I wrote and published my blog post about the late Phyllis Schlafly a few days ago, I recalled two other interactions that I had about her.  These interactions converged around a particular issue: the U.S. Patriot Act.

It was my third year at Harvard Divinity School.  The school year started with the horrible events of September 11, 2001.  The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001.  And I learned that Phyllis Schlafly and the American Civil Liberties Union—-two organizations that rarely agreed on anything—-were united in their opposition to the Patriot Act, fearing that it would threaten the civil liberties of American citizens.

That made sense to me, as a conservative, since such a position was consistent with conservatism’s suspicion of government.  Shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, during the Presidency of Bill Clinton, a number of conservatives were concerned about the anti-terrorism legislation that was being proposed, fearing that it would be a pretext for the government to threaten people’s civil liberties.  Would not such a position coincide with opposition to the Patriot Act?  And yet, there were many conservatives who supported the Patriot Act, since they believed that 9/11 changed everything, and they thought that the Patriot Act was necessary for national security.

I was eating dinner at a restaurant in Cambridge, and I was talking with an elderly lady.  Somehow, we got on the topic of politics.  I told her that I was a conservative Republican.  When I told her that I had problems with the Patriot Act, she said, “You’re not really a conservative.”  Then I told her that Phyllis Schlafly was against the Patriot Act, too.  The elderly lady had a look of disgust on her face, which was not surprising, considering that Cambridge was a liberal Democratic area, and most of the people there who knew who Phyllis Schlafly was probably had a negative opinion of her.  Still, the lady seemed pleasantly surprised that Phyllis Schlafly was against the Patriot Act: it’s as if the lady was thinking that even a broken clock can be right twice a day!

As the years went by, I came to embrace the Patriot Act.  I figured that it would protect the United States, and I considered it to be a success on the part of President George W. Bush, in terms of keeping the country safe.  President George W. Bush was a polarizing figure at the time, and I wanted to side with him rather than his liberal critics.  I tended to swallow his agenda whole, as a result.

What was ironic was that, one night during Bush’s second term, I was watching Phyllis Schlafly on C-Span, when the telephone rang.  It was someone from the left-wing Move-On.org!  He was asking me to oppose George W. Bush’s wiretapping program, and I was telling him off.  I was saying that we need to keep the country safe.  He was responding that the best way to oppose terrorism was to stand by the U.S. Constitution.  The conversation became friendlier near the end.  I told him that I was a lost cause, that I was right-wing, and that I was watching Phyllis Schlafly when he called.  He obviously did not approve of her, but we ended the conversation cordially.  After I hung up the phone, it dawned on me: on the particular issue that we were debating, Phyllis Schlafly would probably agree with the Move-On.org person rather than me!

I decided to Google “Phyllis Schlafly Patriot Act” tonight, just to see if there was evidence that she opposed the Patriot Act.

In this September 18, 2002 column, she stated: “The Administration demanded and Congress passed without reading, the USA PATRIOT Act. Its principal operative section expands the power of the federal government for surveillance of Americans without proper search warrants, as required by the Fourth Amendment.”  Progressives will undoubtedly be appalled by other things that she says in that column, but they can find common ground with her on that statement.

In this June 14, 2005 Washington Times article, we read that Phyllis Schlafly opposed renewal of the Patriot Act.  This was 2005, which was well into George W. Bush’s Presidency.  Even after a polarizing 2004 election that pitted left against right, Phyllis Schlafly criticized a salient aspect of President George W. Bush’s agenda.

Whether the Patriot Act was a good idea or not, I do not know.  There is a part of me that believes that wiretapping may be necessary for national security, and that those who are innocent need not fear their phone calls being overheard.  (Michael Moore would disagree!)  Still, I have to respect conservatives who go against other conservatives by questioning the national security state.  They follow their heart and stand for what they think is right, rather than being caught up in fear and hysteria.  On the Patriot Act, at least, Phyllis Schlafly was  such a conservative.

UPDATE: In this April 8, 2003 interview, Phyllis Schlafly said the following about the Patriot Act: "I think there are problems with it, but nobody really knows how it’s playing out. I do think the government should go after these potential terrorists. There are 70,000 people--aliens who have been ordered deported who the government can’t find--I think they ought to go out and find them. But again, the real problem is at the border. Unless the government takes steps to keep out people who hate us, we’re in real trouble. Under the Ted Kennedy visa lottery, 50,000 people from nonwestern countries are let into this country every year. This includes all the countries that sponsor terrorism."

Book Write-Up: Keynes Hayek, by Nicholas Wapshott

Nicholas Wapshott.  Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.  New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.  See here to buy the book.

John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek were economists who profoundly impacted the twentieth century, and whose influence is still present today.  In Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, Nicholas Wapshott discusses their economic views, their personalities, their relationship with each other, and their influence.

Keynes was a British economist who believed that the government should attempt to create full employment through public works programs.  He also supported low-interest loans for businesses and tax cuts to stimulate demand.  For Keynes, if people had more money in their pockets, then they would spend more, and that would stimulate the economy.  While Keynes thought that the government should resort to deficit spending in slow times to improve the economy, he believed that the government in prosperous times should step back and focus more on paying off its debt.  For Keynes, the government spending a lot in prosperous times could contribute to unnecessary inflation.  Keynes’ thought influenced the Presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  Even Presidents who shied away from Keynesian principles in their rhetoric—-such as Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush—-still had policies that could be described as Keynesian, at least partially.

Hayek was  an Austrian economist, and he was skeptical of Keynesian principles.  For one, Hayek thought that giving low-interest loans to people and businesses that did not save enough could prove disastrous, for what would happen when the loans stopped coming?  Would the businesses go belly-up?  Second, Hayek feared that Keynesian policies were inflationary in their support for deficit spending and artificially stimulating demand.  According to Nicholas Wapshott, Hayek was averse to inflation, having experienced its negative effects in Austria.  And third, Hayek did not support Keynes’ belief that the government should seek to influence or tinker with the economy.  For Hayek, the government should stay out of the economy in times of slowdown or catastrophe and allow it to arrive at a state of more equilibrium.  Hayek also believed that the economy was too complex of an animal for the government to successfully shape, meaning that government influence could have unforeseen, and potentially negative, consequences; for Hayek, prices were the best indicator of what consumers wanted and what the market was willing to produce, and they were the ground at which consumers and producers found agreement.  Moreover, in his influential, and controversial, book, The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argued that government attempts to command the economy could lead to totalitarianism, for, if the government could control people’s economic livelihood, what else could it control?  Hayek appealed to Nazi Germany as an example of the kind of danger that he was warning about.  Hayek was marginal for some time because people were enamored with Keynes, plus Hayek’s economic works could be pretty abstruse.  The Road to Serfdom gained Hayek more fame and renown, but it also alienated him from academia due to its controversial nature.  Yet, Hayek would have a profound influence on Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and later the Tea Party movement in America.

To associate Hayek with the political right would be too simplistic, however, for a variety of reasons.  Hayek was supportive of the government having social programs for society’s vulnerable, and he also embraced some form of national health insurance.  At the same time, Hayek was very libertarian in areas and did not think that Reagan and Thatcher went far enough (even though Thatcher practically worshiped the ground that Hayek walked on!).  Hayek was rather critical of conservatism on account of its nationalistic impulses.  Although Hayek and Milton Friedman overlapped in supporting less government, there were differences between the Austrian school of which Hayek was a part and Friedman’s Chicago school.  Hayek focused on microeconomics, whereas Friedman believed that society could influence the economy by regulating its money supply; for Friedman, the Federal Reserve could stimulate the economy by increasing the money supply, but it should not do so too much lest it cause hyper-inflation.  And Ayn Rand considered Hayek’s work to be rubbish (for some reason)!

In addition to describing their economic thought, Wapshott paints a picture of Keynes and Hayek as people.  Keynes for a long time had homosexual relationships, yet he fell in love with a Russian ballerina.  Keynes was a compassionate man: he hated war, he thought that the Treaty of Versailles harshly punished Germany, and he wanted everybody to have a job.  Keynes could also be intimidating and make people feel inadequate, and yet, as Wapshott states, Keynes was open to changing his mind and admitting when he thought he made a mistake.  Hayek was the sort of person I wanted to root for, for he had somewhat of a rags to riches story, in terms of his journey from relative obscurity to growing influence.  That gives a lot of us hope, doesn’t it?

There were parts of the book that I found particularly interesting.  For one, Wapshott said that Dwight Eisenhower put into effect Keynesian principles, but he did so by appealing to national security: let’s build a national highway system, because that will allow us to transport military supplies during the Cold War!  Second, Wapshott referred to Hayek’s response to a critic.  A critic was pointing to Sweden as an example of a country that had strong government influence in the economy and yet was prosperous and far from authoritarian.  Hayek responded that Sweden was prosperous because it was untouched by World War II, and he argued that there was less freedom in Sweden than many may think!  Overall, the critiques of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom were intriguing to me, for the claim that large government influence in the economy could lead to authoritarianism, or even totalitarianism, is widespread in conservatism and libertarianism (or such is my impression).  Some critics of Hayek argued that this would not be the case in countries that had strong democratic traditions; some contended that the private sector, too, could be rather authoritarian.

In terms of which economic perspective I agree with more—-Keynes or Hayek—-I will say that I can understand Keynes’ logic more than that of Hayek after reading Wapshott’s book.  There are still gaps in my understanding of Hayek’s thought.  I can understand Keynes’ rationale that giving people more money to spend will stimulate demand, and that it is better to give people public sector jobs to do useful work than for them to be on the dole.  At the same time, Keynesian policies can be risky, in my opinion: the government is going into debt, with the hope that the debt will somehow improve the economy and pay for itself down the road.  That is not a sure thing.   Keynesian policies can also be inflationary if they stimulate demand without also trying to increase supply.  The existence of stagflation in the 1970’s—-high unemployment and high inflation—-makes me wonder if perhaps Hayek was correct in saying that there are so many considerations when it comes to the economy, and so we cannot package everything into a neat Keynesian package of cause and effect.  And yet, I liked Wapshott’s quotation of someone who said that we are all Keynesians in foxholes: that, in times of economic catastrophe, few politicians want to let nature take its course, but they would prefer for the government to do something to stimulate the economy.

I was surprised to learn that I had already read another of Wapshott’s books: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage.  The book had long been in my mind as an excellent book, on account of its stories and discussion, but the name of the author was not in my mind.  I was glad to read another of Wapshott’s books.

Nixonland 5: A Godly Leader?

On page 173 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein states the following about Republican politician George Romney, who was the father of Mitt Romney, the Republican who lost the 2012 Presidential election:

“[George] Romney, a Republican who kept on getting elected in a Democratic state (he called America’s cult of rugged individualism ‘nothing but a political banner to cover up greed’), was a media darling.  The Mormon bishop with what Jules Witcover joked was a ‘full head of silvering Presidential hair’ made great copy: he didn’t work on Sundays.  He fasted before big decisions.  His granddad had fled with three wives one step ahead of the polygamy laws.  A new book of personal reminiscenses of JFK had just come out.  ‘The fellow I don’t want to run against is Romney,’ it reported him saying.”

What tanked George Romney’s Presidential ambitions was his statement that he had been brainwashed into supporting the Vietnam War.  Not only did that make him look weak, but many people may have thought that Romney was a phony after they heard that statement.  After all, one observer noted, Romney continued to publicly support the Vietnam War even after the time that he said he had concluded that he had been brainwashed about it!

But I can identify with why Romney was such a darling, and with how his religiosity actually contributed to his political stature.  My guess is that, in the eyes of many, being religious is an indication that one takes matters seriously—-that one takes morality and human worth seriously.  That is very attractive to me.  And yet, I can’t say that all politicians’ religiosity is attractive.  For example, I do not care for how many evangelical conservatives seemed to equate genuine Christian commitment with political support for George W. Bush.  George W. Bush said that he looked to his heavenly Father rather than his earthly father for advice on Iraq.  In my opinion, he should have consulted his earthly father rather than giving the impression that God was the source of his decision to wage the Iraq War.  Moreover, the haste with with he got us into Iraq arguably contradicts the virtues that one can associate with religiosity: gravity and carefully weighing one’s options in prayer before God so as to make the best decision and to minimize harm to human beings.

Jimmy Carter’s religiosity was attractive when he first ran for President.  Here the country was, recovering from the stench and corruption of Watergate, and this church-going man came along and gave the impression that he would clean up Washington.  But his religiosity may have gone sour, a bit.  I think of his sermonizing against greed.  People in those hard times did not want to hear a sermon, but rather they longed for hope and encouragement.

In 2008, I thought that Republican Mike Huckabee’s religiosity was attractive.  He appeared to be a kindly man.  He was a pastor.  And he manifested a concern for the poor and illegal immigrants, something that I did not see too often among Republicans.  But, in my opinion, Huckabee became a right-wing shrill, one whose religiosity amounted to encouraging evangelical conservatives’ whiny persecution complex more than empathy or concern for the marginalized.

Personally speaking, I would like a President who fasts and prays—-not to the exclusion of learning, mind you, but as a way for that President to humbly acknowledge his or her limitations and the gravity of decisions.  But something else that attracts me is intelligence: I like for Presidents to display some intelligence on the topic of religion.  I don’t know if President Barack Obama fasts and prays, but I have been impressed by his thoughtful insights about religious issues.

The Final Days 4

In this post, I'll share a couple of passages from The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as well as a passage in Richard Reeves' President Nixon: Alone in the White House.  The topic is Richard Nixon's introversion and how he preferred not to deal with people.

On page 31 of The Final Days, we read: "Haldeman was so concerned about this predilection of Nixon's to retreat into himself that he spent the days immediately before and after his resignation as chief of staff trying to find his own successor.  The new White House chief of staff had to be someone who would oppose Nixon's preference for dealing with paper rather than people.  He had to be capable of presenting to the President a full range of options for each decision, of knowing how and when to ignore Nixon's intemperate orders."

On page 37, we read: "The President would not deal directly with people or events.  He preferred papers: memos didn't talk back, didn't push him."

And on page 12 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves states:

"He had learned how to act.  Nixon had memorized his lines, as he had memorized hundreds of pieces of music in order to play the piano----all of them in the key of G.  He was not a natural; it was all hard, lonely work.  He also memorized entire speeches, working alone from notes, then throwing away the paper.  He did the same thing with conversations, working from little scripts he committed to memory.  He once said of himself: 'I've found a way to do it.  I'm a reader, not a buller.  Most of the boys at the law school had long bull sessions about cases.  I studied my cases alone.'"

So end the readings!

I'd now like to comment about where I identify with these portrayals of Nixon, and where I differ.

1.  I prefer to communicate via e-mail rather than person-to-person.

2.  At the same time, I find that I learn things better by listening to people speak rather than through reading books.  Because of my social struggles, I tend to lean more heavily on reading books.  But I find that I learn things that change my outlook, and that I remember things a lot longer, when I hear them spoken by another human being.  This is true in terms of attending classes, and also having conversations with colleagues.

3.  At the same time, classes and conversations only skim the surface of any given topic, and that's why it's important for me to learn by reading----since there is a lot more information out there in books and articles.

4.  I find that person-to-person interaction with colleagues makes me more familiar with resources that are out there, whereas I probably would not be as familiar with these resources all on my own.  Is this because, on my own, I'm not sure what exactly I should be looking for----I don't know what to google to access what may help me?  That's probably part of it.

5.  There are times when I prefer to learn by snuggling up with a book.  But there are other times when I would prefer for people to summarize something for me, so that I don't have to plow through a document and do heavy-duty analysis.  On some level, I can identify with different Presidents' modes of operation (as I understand them, based on what I have heard or read): Richard Nixon preferring to read, Ronald Reagan wanting briefer documents or movies that conveyed information, Bill Clinton digesting policy books and picking the brains of intellectuals, and George W. Bush preferring to be briefed.

6.  One reason that I like to read is that the book or article does not answer me back.  I have problems with being challenged in person-to-person interaction because I am not quick enough on my feet to respond to what people say to me.  Of course, one can be challenged online, as well, in online discussions.  I don't particularly care for that, either, even though I have to admit that I have learned from such discussions, and have modified my views in response to some of them (while my views have hardened in reaction to others of them).  I'm all for learning, but not so much within a context in which I can take things personally: when I can lose face, or be considered stupid or inferior.  Consequently, I'm all for reading and hearing different perspectives----by reading books, or listening to radio programs, or watching YouTube videos----in a manner that does not involve my interaction with a human being who can talk (or write) back, when I can simply read, and make my own evaluation of what I just read.

7.  Some may criticize my post here, saying that I should adapt to the world, rather than expecting it to adapt to me.  I'm all for that, on some level, but I think that it's all right for me to take a look at my strengths and my weaknesses, so that I can use the former, while compensating for the latter.  Moreover, over the years, I've heard so many students bellyaching about their learning styles in classes, so I don't feel guilty talking about my own learning styles.  If others can do that, why can't I?

President Nixon: Alone in the White House 18

On page 572 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves says the following:

"What America did not seem to want was the aid Nixon had pledged to Vietnam, both South and North, in the peace agreement...[E]ven J. William Fulbright said aid should not be considered until after impounded domestic funding was released by the President...[Newsweek] quoted a Republican leader in the Senate as saying privately: 'It won't wash.  How can a senator support cuts in hospital, flood and education spending at home and then vote money for the same thing in Hanoi?'"

The conflict between domestic and foreign policy has perplexed more than one Administration.  That Republican Senator wondered how a Senator could support cuts in government spending for hospital, flood, and education, while voting to increase spending on those very same things in Vietnam.  Well, more than one person asked during Hurricane Katrina how our government could get supplies so quickly and efficiently to Afghanistan, but not to people suffering from the effects of Katrina.  More than one person has asked how the U.S. Government under President George W. Bush could spend money on universal health care in Iraq (see here), while opposing the notion that health care is a right here in the U.S.  And Richard Nixon, in No More Vietnams, argues that President Lyndon Johnson held back from waging the Vietnam War aggressively because he was trying to safeguard his Great Society legacy.

Those who support spending money on programs abroad, while not supporting the spending of more money on similar programs at home, could perhaps argue that they're not supporting foreign aid programs just because they are nice people.  Rather, they're doing so because those other countries that they want to support have a strategic importance.  I'm not certain that they argue this, but I can imagine it.  Perhaps they would have a point about those countries' strategic or geopolitical significance, and yet I still can't help but ask: Why are certain programs acceptable for people in foreign countries, but not for people in the United States?

The thing is, do we have to choose between foreign aid and domestic programs?  There are times when we do feel that we have to choose.  I remember watching the West Wing, and President Jed Bartlet told Zoey's French boyfriend that the reason the U.S. does not spend as much money as France on domestic programs is because the U.S. is spending money protecting Europe!  Do we have to choose?  Well, if universal health care actually saves money, as some progressives like to argue, maybe we can have our cake and eat it, too.  I don't know.

President Nixon: Alone in the White House 9

On page 287 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves states:

"If that deficit spending would entice more private spending, by both corporations and consumers, then the Republican president was now ready to buy into the pump-priming theories of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, patron saint of liberal economists and big-spending politicians.  But that did not change the fact that most of the men around him were still conservatives who had always seen inflation as the true devil."

When I read this, I thought about the West Wing episodes, "Memorial Day" (from Season 5) and "NSF Thurmont" (from Season 6).  In these episodes, President Jed Bartlett and his Chief-of-Staff, Leo McGarry, are on different pages on how to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  In Bartlett's earlier days in the White House, Leo was his mentor when it came to foreign policy, for President Bartlett was not as experienced in that field.  By the end of Season 5, however, President Bartlett had his own ideas about the Middle East, and Leo recognized that it may have come to the point where President Bartlett might not value his counsel, for the two of them were on different pages.

This reportedly occurs in real life, too.  President George W. Bush supposedly relied on Vice-President Dick Cheney's counsel on foreign policy in the early days of his Administration, but it got to the point where the two of them diverged.  Cheney supported strikes on Syria, for example, whereas President Bush did not.  I've even read talk that Bush was briefly considering replacing Cheney with Senator Bill Frist!  On certain issues, Bush and Cheney were on different pages.

I read an article recently about how Christians become apostates (non-Christians).  One factor that the author mentioned is that the Christians surround themselves with non-believers, such as atheists or non-Christian Jews.  That may be a contributing factor, but I think that there are many cases in which it's the other way around: that a person becomes uncomfortable with the Christian faith, due to intellectual doubts or other factors, and that person then finds that he or she does not quite fit into the Christian community anymore.  That person then seeks out people who are on the same page.

Reinventing Richard Nixon 5

On page 126 of Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession, Daniel Frick states:

"In the first months of 1991, when the United States led a UN coalition of forces to free Kuwait from an invading Iraqi army, George H.W. Bush, flushed with 89 percent approval ratings in a New York Times/CBS News poll, boasted, 'By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.'"

I was in Junior High School during the first Gulf War.  What the above passage brought to my mind was the fact that I grew up when the United States was recovering from the Vietnam War.  I grew up in the 1980's, which some present as a time when people were either reinterpreting or trying to forget what happened to the United States in Vietnam.  But people around me did not forget.  The TV shows that I watched were set in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.  Family Ties featured Steven and Elise Keaton, who were both flower children during their younger years.  And Highway to Heaven had a couple of episodes about people recovering from Vietnam: one was about a veteran who had been paralyzed in that war and was having difficulties getting dental coverage from the VA, and another was about a father whose Missing-in-Action son was found to be dead, and Jonathan and Mark were encountering challenges as they tried to raise money for a scholarship fund in the son's name.

On a personal level, my Mom would tell us about the military draft, and the very concept (quite frankly) scared me.  My Dad also occasionally talked about the draft lottery.  I also had teachers who were in college during the Vietnam War.

I guess that we as a country were still recovering from Vietnam when the 1991 Gulf War broke out.  And yet, then again, we were probably getting more accustomed to military intervention.  Reagan sent troops to Grenada, and there was Bush I's invasion of Panama.  But I don't think that those things completely alleviated the fears that many Americans had.  I wasn't old enough to be drafted, but I felt a sense of relief when President George H.W. Bush said on television that the soldiers in Desert Storm would be all-volunteer.

We ended up winning the first Gulf War, and more than one person heralded the end of Vietnam Syndrome----the fear that we had of interfering in other countries because that could lead us to become embroiled in a situation like the Vietnam War.  But were we truly healed?  I know that I was afraid when I was in college and there was discussion about the U.S. intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo.  Although the positive outcome (for the U.S. at least) of the first Gulf War led many to support George W. Bush's Iraq War----Sean Hannity, after all, predicted that the U.S. would win, and the liberals would then be applauding the returning troops because "Everyone loves a winner"----there were a number of protests against the impending war.  Largely, they were by people who hated George W. Bush.

I reflect on my experiences growing up when America was recovering from the Vietnam War.  And yet, I was an actual adult when we were in other wars: the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I wonder what impact those wars have on young people, or will have on succeeding generations.

Nixon in Winter 7

My latest reading of Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter was about Nixon's discussions regarding the Gulf War in the 1990's.  I have two items.

1.  Why did Iraq invade Kuwait?  I appreciated Monica's background information on page 218:

"The foundation for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was laid during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran.  By the war's end, in 1988, Iraq owed more than fifty billion dollars to other Arab states and Western banks.  Kuwait had lent Hussein fifteen billion dollars, and most of the borrowed money was spent on augmenting Iraq's military machine.  Hussein had demanded that Kuwait write off its massive war loan to Iraq and help increase the world price of oil by not pumping in excess of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quotas.  This excess, coupled with a general international oil glut, had lowered world prices and had, according to Hussein, caused Iraq to lose fourteen billion dollars in oil revenues.  He went searching inside the Kuwaiti border for oil, claiming that the reserves belonged to Iraq."

A lot of the information that Monica presents here overlaps with what conservative Charley Reese said in a November 18, 1990 column, even though Monica and Reese probably had different viewpoints about the Gulf War (my hunch is that Monica supported it, whereas I know that Reese was against it).  Both talk about Kuwait releasing oil into the market in a manner that would reduce the price of oil, thereby hindering Iraq from getting the oil revenue that it needed to recoup from its 1980's war with Iran.  And both mention the idea that Kuwait took oil reserves that belonged to Iraq.  Monica appears to be skeptical that this was the case, but Reese out-and-out states that "the Kuwaitis had advanced the border farther north and begun to take Iraqi oil."  Reese argues that Kuwait was acting so boldly because it realized that it would be backed up by the United States, as part of a strategy to destabilize Iraq's government.

Reese's column was in my local newspaper when I was a kid.  I remember that November 18, 1990 column as the first time that I encountered a different perspective on the Gulf War.  Granted, I was already aware that there were people who were against Operation Desert Shield.  They claimed that the war was about oil, and they expressed apprehensions about another Vietnam.  But Reese was the first person I read who explained Saddam Hussein's side of the story in terms of his invasion of Kuwait.

2.  A question that I have asked a couple of times on this blog is whether or not Nixon would have supported the Iraq War under President George W. Bush (see here and here).  My impression from reading Monica's account of her discussions with Nixon about the first Gulf War is that Nixon indeed would have supported the Iraq War.  Monica doesn't address this topic, of course, since this book was published in 1998, before George W. Bush was even President.  But she states that Nixon wanted for President George H.W. Bush to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and that Nixon called upon Bush to do so.  She also narrates that Nixon thought that Bush I and his Secretary of State, James Baker, were not acting quickly or decisively, but were spending too much time relying on diplomacy.

A 1988 Presidential Debate (Among Primary Candidates)

On YouTube, I watched a 1988 Presidential election debate that was moderated by Tom Brokaw.  Or, actually, it was two debates: it alternated between a debate among the Democratic primary candidates, and one among the Republican primary candidates.

It's definitely worth watching!  Here are intelligent people engaging in a wonkish discussion of the issues.  Usually, they're tactful and respectful to each other, and, when they have an opportunity to ask another candidate a question, they are simply giving the other candidate a chance to express his point-of-view on an issue, rather than attacking.  But there are some attacks: Al Gore asks why Dick Gephardt voted for the Reagan tax cut, Al Haig quizzes George Bush about Bush's possible role in Iran-Contra, etc.

There are also some surprises.  Pete Du Pont is defending his proposal for private Social Security accounts, which George Bush, Bob Dole, and Jack Kemp attack.  This was ironic, considering that Bush's son, George W. Bush, would be a major proponent of private Social Security accounts as President.  Then there was the exchange about school choice between Pete Du Pont and Pat Robertson.  Du Pont is defending school choice, and Robertson responds that he's for it, too, as long as it does not discriminate against the poor and minorities.  I was impressed by Robertson's sensitivity to this issue, since it has been widely held that the religious right originated from an attempt to defend private schools from policies against racial discrimination.  But I probably shouldn't be too surprised by what Robertson said, since he did spend his early days in ministry in the inner-cities.

I respected each candidate in these debates, for various reasons: Michael Dukakis' technocratic emphasis on balancing the budget, Dick Gephardt's defense of his vote for the Reagan tax cuts (he said that he feared that a recession was coming, and he also noted that the tax cuts went to the middle-income, too), Al Gore's criticism of the Reagan tax cuts as unequal, Jesse Jackson's description of the plight of the working poor, Paul Simon's support for government spending to bring people jobs, the other Democratic candidates' criticism of Simon's plan as pie-in-the-sky, Bruce Babbitt's lament about a company that paid its workers less while giving management huge bonuses, the Republican candidates who were concerned about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union, George Bush's humor and defense of Oliver North, Pat Robertson's sensitivity to the needs of the elderly when it comes to health care and nursing homes, the Republicans' debate over whether Social Security truly was solvent (Robertson and Du Pont said that it still had plenty of IOUs, while Dole and Bush said it was solvent), and the list goes on.  You can probably tell that I can admire one candidate for defending a certain position, and another candidate for attacking that very same position that the first candidate holds.  That's because I don't believe that issues, policy proposals, and people are totally right or totally wrong: in many cases, they have their advantages and their disadvantages.  There are plenty of shades of gray and dimensions of reality. 

In any case, you can watch the debate here.  Enjoy!

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 8

I have two items for my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.

1.  On page 224, Ambrose talks about Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan's appearance before the Senate's Ervin Committee, which was investigating Watergate:

"Committee counsel Sam Dash opened with some aggressive questioning about campaign tactics.  'What tactics would I be willing to use?' Buchanan answered Dash.  'Anything that was not immoral, unethical, illegal or unprecedented in previous Democratic campaigns.'  He produced facts and figures to show that the Democrats had written the book on dirty tricks in American politics.  His bold, dogmatic style, his indignation that the Democrats dared accuse anyone of unfair or unethical practices, his good looks and strong voice, quite overwhelmed the Committee.  Dash got him off the stand as quickly as possible.  Nixon watched the hearing and was elated.  He called Buchanan and invited him over for a little celebration.  At 6:30 A.M., Buchanan came into the West Hall, where the Nixons were waiting for him.  Pat gave him a hug and whirled him around in a little dance."

I was not alive during Watergate, but I watched that one part of Buchanan's appearance before the Ervin Committee on A&E's Biography, back when I was a college student in 1996.  Buchanan was running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States at the time, and he was doing quite well, which was probably why A&E did a Biography about him.  A&E's Biography showed a young Pat Buchanan responding to Dash's question about what campaign tactics he'd be willing to use, as Buchanan said, "Anything that was not immoral, unethical, illegal or unprecedented in previous Democratic campaigns".  If my memory is correct, Buchanan's response drew laughter!  The documentary was presenting this incident as an example of Buchanan's quick wit and rhetorical skill.  Later, the documentary was highlighting other assets that Buchanan demonstrated on the TV debate show, Crossfire: he was telegenic.  Buchanan definitely had a strong presence, as Ambrose and A&E's Biography noted.

Do I agree with what Buchanan said before the Ervin Committee?  Perhaps Nixon did well to argue that Democrats engaged in dirty tricks and wiretapping themselves, and thus had no right to get on their sanctimonious high horse.  But, as Ambrose said later in the book, this argument was having little effect on many Americans, who did not think that what Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson did exculpated Richard Nixon.
In any case, I liked this passage on page 224 because I tend to enjoy the times when underdogs have appeared before congressional committees and have ended up dazzling them, or (at the very least) dazzling many Americans.  When Oliver North appeared before Congress to answer questions about Iran-Contra, he impressed a number of people with his crisp military demeanor, to the point that many were heralding him as a national hero.  I watched Virginia's Republican convention in 1994 that nominated North as the Republican candidate for Senate, and a speaker glorifying North was saying that North appeared before the Congress, with the result that "they blinked."  (He meant Congress blinked.)

Then there was Condi Rice's appearance before the 9/11 committee.  Liberal newspapers were acting like she was about to be put on trial and interrogated.  But, in my opinion at the time, she really shined.  Even one of my more liberal relatives said that Condi "kicked butt" with her testimony.  And I liked when I heard on the news that President George W. Bush had watched Condi on television and thought that she did a good job.  Nowadays, my impression is that her performance is quite critiqued.  It's like Nixon's Checkers Speech in 1952: it was lauded by many in 1952 as an impressive performance, but after 1952 it was retrospectively deemed to be not-so-impressive.  What many today remember from Condi's appearance before the 9/11 committee was her statement that, prior to 9/11, there was a report about Bin-Laden preparing to attack inside of the United States.  Detractors were appealing to this statement to argue that the Bush Administration really dropped the ball on Bin-Laden, even though (if my understanding is correct) the report did not specify where Bin-Laden would strike.  (One could argue that the Bush Administration dropped the ball in other ways when it came to Bin-Laden, though.)

2.  I thought that something on page 232 was slightly humorous (though I can understand why some would think otherwise).  Carl Albert was the Speaker of the House during the Watergate scandal, and he would be President if Nixon was removed from office and did not have a Vice-President to take over.  The thing was, Albert did not want to be President.  Ambrose says that Albert "did not feel qualified and did not want to expose his personal life style to the glare of presidential publicity."  As an example of Albert's personal lifestyle, Ambrose notes that Albert "had just driven his car through a plate-glass saloon window."
Was Albert drunk when this happened?  I don't know, but this article does say that Albert was being treated for alcoholism during Watergate.

Incidentally, remember the Family Guy scene where Stewie and Brian were drunk and Stewie drove Brian's car through the saloon?  See here.

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 1

I started Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972.  This is the second of a three-volume series on the life of Richard Nixon.

Ambrose is such a gifted writer, that I could probably pick something on every page of his book and write a blog post about it.  But I'll focus on four items for today's post.

1.  The Foreword to the book had a couple of gems on the topic of memoirs.  On page 9, Ambrose says that Nixon's memoirs "are voluminous, detailed, sometimes almost embarrassingly revealing (certainly more so than any other President's memoirs), and usually reliable on statements of fact."  That was my impression, too, when I read the memoirs.  Nixon comes across as rather cynical and ruthless in his memoirs, and, even in his own account of Watergate, he does not exactly come off smelling like a rose.  At the same time, I think that Nixon also tries to portray himself as an empathetic, compassionate human being.  I tend to agree with Jules Witcover's statement in his book on Nixon's relationship with his first Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, entitled Very Strange Bedfellows, that Nixon in his memoirs depicts himself as a benign observer during Agnew's scandals, when Witcover argues that Nixon actually wanted Agnew out of office.

On page 10, Ambrose says: "No other Administration in American history has produced so much in the way of memoirs by the participants as the Nixon Administration.  The reason, at least in part, is obvious: in no other Administration did so many members need so much money for such horrendous legal fees."  I'm not sure if Ambrose is correct about the number of memoirs by an Administration's participants, since there were a lot of books by people in the Reagan Administration.  And, some time after this book by Ambrose, a number of big players in George W. Bush's Administration have written memoirs.  But Ambrose's comments on page 10 remind me that I have so many books to choose from when it comes to my Year (or More) of Nixon.

2.  After Nixon lost the 1962 California gubernatorial election and told reporters that they wouldn't have Nixon to kick around anymore, Nixon moved to New York City to work for a legal firm.  But, according to Ambrose, Nixon was not over when it came to politics, notwithstanding what he had told those reporters, for Nixon continued to hold press conferences, go to foreign countries, campaign for Republicans, form contacts, and write.  Nixon was one of the foremost critics of the Kennedy Administration.  By moving to New York, Nixon was trying to give the impression that he was truly over with politics, since New York was liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller's territory.  And yet, while Nixon was alienated from the state Republican party, he continued to associate with prominent Republicans in New York City who had worked in the Eisenhower Administration.  According to Ambrose, "These New York City Republicans...got [Nixon] into the best clubs, introduced him to the best society, sent business his way" (page 25).  Henry Kissinger remembers it differently, saying that Nixon was shunned by the elite in New York City, exasperating Nixon's feeling that he was "beset by enemies" (Kissinger, as quoted on page 25).  But Ambrose says that Nixon actually "turned down more invitations than he accepted", and that Kissinger's recollection was due to Kissinger's movement within "different circles" (page 25).

Nixon was solidifying and forming contacts, even in New York City.  Yet, according to Ambrose, Nixon also spent more evenings at home, spending time with his family and increasing his political and historical knowledge by reading books.

3.  On page 23, Ambrose quotes Nixon as saying in 1963: "Too many people today are gloating publicly because the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Communists are having an argument.  What they fail to realize is that this argument is not about how they can beat each other, but how they could beat us."
This was what Nixon was saying about the Sino-Soviet rift in 1963.  He would come to believe, however, that the United States should reach out to Red China and exploit its rift with the Soviets, out of a sense that the Red Chinese were too vulnerable to try to beat the United States.

4.  On pages 34-35, Ambrose describes how the U.S. saw itself, and how a number of others saw the U.S., right after World War II:

"American moral superiority was based, above all else, on the heritage of World War II.  At the end of the war, America's prestige had never been higher.  The U.S. had provided the tools and the men to save Europe and Russia from Hitler and his Nazis.  The U.S. had driven the Japanese out of China, Indochina, Burma, Korea, the Philippines.  The U.S. had given the Philippines independence, without forcing the Filipinos to wage a war of national liberation to achieve it.  America had asked for nothing for itself in return.  Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietminh in Vietnam at that time, hailed the Americans as the true friends of the oppressed of the earth.  So did such dissimilar men as Charles de Gaulle, Churchill, and on one occasion even Stalin himself.  In a world full of hatred, death, destruction, deception, and double-dealing, the United States at the end of World War II was almost universally regarded as the disinterested champion of justice, freedom, and democracy."

What got my attention was that Ho Chi Minh, and even Stalin himself at one time, regarded the United States as a force for good.  I have my doubts that this was the sum-total of their views on the United States, though.

Beyond Peace 3

In a blog post that I wrote on Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, I speculated about what Richard Nixon would have thought about President Bill Clinton's policies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  In a post that I wrote on Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment, I wondered what Nixon's stance would have been on President George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

In reading Nixon's 1994 book, Beyond Peace, I see that Nixon was actually alive when Clinton was pursuing strategies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  On Somalia, Nixon pretty much thought what I speculated that he thought: he believed that U.S. intervention into Somalia was a mistake, but that America's withdrawal from the country conveyed weakness.

On Bosnia and Serbia, I was right that Nixon believed that the region was important to U.S. interests, presumably enough to justify American intervention.  But what I learned in Beyond Peace was that Nixon considered Clinton's policies in that region to be a mistake.  Nixon says on pages 153-154:

"From the beginning of the war [in the former Yugoslavia] there have been excesses on both sides, but the cycle of violence began as a result of Serbian aggression against other former Yugoslavian republics----aggression for which the United States and its allies have consistently and repeatedly failed to exact a price.  As early as 1991, along with a number of other observers, I called upon the United Nations to lift the embargo against the victims of Serbian aggression.  The United States, the United Nations, and the European Community vacillated, equivocated, orated, condemned, and ultimately did nothing to counter effectively the Serbian onslaught...It is unfortunate that the United States did not take action in this protracted struggle until it was forced to do so by a public reaction to bloody images on television."

Essentially, Nixon says that Clinton, the UN, and the European Community were dithering in response to the Serbian aggression against the former Yugoslavian republics.  Nixon's criticisms remind me of former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's critique of U.S. policies on the region in her 2007 book, Making War to Keep Peace.  And they also call to my mind the movie The Special Relationship, which is about President Bill Clinton's relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  In this movie, Blair publicly challenges Clinton to take more action on Kosovo, in a time when President Clinton is hesitant.

Nixon says on page 154 that the West would have intervened sooner to help Sarajevo had the people of Sarajevo been primarily Christian or Jewish, and his implication appears to be that the West was slow to act because of Sarajevo's large Muslim population.  In a time when elements of the right-wing have become frighteningly Islamophobic, in terms of condemning moderate Muslims and lumping them together with radical ones, this 1994 statement by Nixon makes me proud of him (whether or not it is entirely fair).

What puzzles me, though, is Nixon's statement on pages 154-155: "The siege of Sarajevo can have a redeeming character only if the West learns two things as a result.  The first is that enlightened peoples cannot be selective about condemning aggression and genocide...The other lesson is that because we are the last remaining superpower, no crisis is irrelevant to our interests.  If the United States had been willing to lead, a number of steps short of the commitment of ground forces----for instance, revoking the arms embargo----could have been taken early in the Bosnian crisis to blunt Serbian aggression.  Our failure to do so tarnished our reputation as an evenhanded player on the international stage and contributed to an image promoted by extreme Muslim fundamentalists that the West is callous to the fate of Muslim nations but protective of Christian and Jewish nations."

It's not that Nixon's sentiment by itself puzzles me: of course the United States should be concerned about genocide.  But it puzzles me in light of what Nixon wrote in Seize the Moment, and even in Beyond Peace.  Nixon appears to maintain that the U.S. should be selective about when it will intervene militarily----that it should do so only when its own interests are involved.  Saying that the U.S. should intervene to stop genocide (if that is what Nixon is suggesting on page 154) strikes me as a departure from that.  And, when he says that "no crisis is irrelevant to our interests", that makes me wonder if that's a blank check for us to interfere militarily anywhere there is a crisis.

Now onto the issue of the Iraq War under George W. Bush.  What would Nixon have thought about that?  On page 121 of Seize the Moment, Nixon criticizes German firms for being "the principal contractors for Saddam Hussein's network of hardened command bunkers."  That makes me think that, had Nixon been alive when Germany was refusing to back up the U.S. on the Iraq War, Nixon would have joined the conservative voices who argued that Germany was doing this on account of the business that it was doing with Iraq.  But would Nixon have supported the U.S. overthrowing Saddam Hussein and undertaking the task of nation-building?  I don't know.  Nixon in Beyond Peace seems to support regime change in Iraq, but here's the strategy that he advocates: "We should actively support the main opposition to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress, as it seeks to force Baghdad to open up its political system.  We should offer Jordan increased economic incentives and a major role in the Arab-Israeli peace process as encouragement to turn off the spigot of trade until Saddam Hussein falls from power."  That's different from the U.S. directly overthrowing Saddam.  But, as I said in my last post on Beyond Peace, Nixon was open to changing his mind when he felt that situations changed.

The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years 14

For my write-up today on The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952, I'll use as my starting-point something that Irwin Gellman states on page 394.

"In late July 1950, Nixon attended the annual Midsummer Encampment at the Bohemian Grove, an extraordinary gathering of influential and powerful American males presided over by Herbert Hoover.  Nixon was profusely grateful for the invitation: 'It was one of those rare experiences of a lifetime, and clearly apart from any political consideration, I wouldn't have missed it for anything.'  He made many contacts, had a chance to meet potential backers, and attended a luncheon at which Ike was present."

To hear a different opinion from Nixon about the Bohemian Grove, see here!  And see here for wikipedia's article on the group.

When I was growing up, I read books and articles that said that there was a conspiracy among elites to create a one-world government.  I read Newswatch Magazine, Des Griffin, Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice Not an Echo, Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, John Birch Society publications, and other works.  I can't paint all of these works with the same brush, for they differed among each other: Schlafly, Allen, and the John Birch Society, for example, did not criticize Zionism.  Moreover, Schlafly one time said in her Phyllis Schlafly Report that the influence of the kingmakers at the Republican National Convention ended with Ronald Reagan, whereas the John Birch Society and others have contended that globalists were actually influential in Reagan's Administration.  (At the same time, I should note that Schlafly herself was a critic of some of George W. Bush's policies, believing that they undermined U.S. sovereignty.)

Nowadays, the Bohemian Grove comes up in conspiracy-theory circles as one of the elite groups that wants a one-world government, or new world order.  Do I think that there's something to that?  Well, I don't buy into how some conspiracy theorists have conceptualized the conspiracy.  The John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly, for example, associated the conspiracy with liberalism and Communism (even though John McManus of the JBS wrote an anti-William F. Buckley book).  But Gellman states on page 400 that conservative Republican Robert Taft attended the Bohemian Grove, and Schlafly lauds Taft throughout her A Choice Not An Echo!  Moreover, while Nixon in Congress supported strengthening the United Nations, he had some views at the time that were at odds with how some conspiracy theorists have defined the beliefs of the conspiracy: Nixon disagreed with the United World Federalists' support for world government, seeing that as unworkable (Gellman 271-272).  And Nixon supported a proposal by Herbert Hoover (who presided over the Bohemian Grove) to "reorganize the United Nations without Russian participation" (Gellman's words on page 300), since Nixon did not care for Russia "constantly exercising the veto power" (Nixon's words).  Nixon and Hoover apparently were not for a Communist one-world government!

I think that it's a mistake to assume that the elites who gather at CFR meetings, Trilateral Commission meetings, Bilderberger meetings, or Bohemian Grove meetings all share the exact same ideology.  Margaret Thatcher reportedly attended Bilderberger meetings, yet she stood for Great Britain's sovereignty against European unification.  Ronald Reagan had Trilateralists and CFR people in his cabinet, but he opposed the Law of the Sea treaty.  I have a friend who likes to identify the CFR members who are liberals: does he realize, however, that John Bolton, who was a critic of the United Nations, was himself a member at one time of the Council on Foreign Relations?

At the same time, I don't rule out that elites have interests, including the accumulation of power.  Moreover, I doubt that it's entirely a good thing when elites gather together in secrecy.  I doubt that they're all pushing some sinister agenda----they may just want a forum where they can speak freely, without their words being jumped on by the press.  But that does not mean that everything they're doing is good, either.  Plus, I think that there is a sense in which elites being around each other and supporting each other's interests can detach them further from us non-elites, and the shroud of secrecy inhibits us from evaluating what they are doing, which is important in a democracy.

The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years 7

My latest reading of Irwin Gellman's The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952 focused on the Alger Hiss scandal.  I'll go more deeply into the Alger Hiss scandal in my post tomorrow, for my latest reading brings up things that are explained in more detail or resolved in my next reading.  My next post won't be exhaustive, mind you, but I'll talk a little bit about the people involved in the Hiss incident, and perhaps I'll provide you with links in case you want to study the topic further.  Since the Alger Hiss scandal was a significant part of Richard Nixon's political career, I'm sure that it will come up again in my readings and blog posts for my Year (or More) of Nixon!

In this post, I'll highlight two items from my latest reading.

1.  As I said in an earlier post, inflation was a significant issue during the time that Richard Nixon was a congressman, which was when Harry Truman was President.  On page 192, Gellman states: "Nixon argued that the president deplored high prices, yet he proposed government housing, higher minimum wages, federal health subsidies, federal aid to education, larger Social Security benefits, and more money for the United Nations.  These pieces of legislation had to fuel inflation."

I've talked about inflation a lot on my blog, particularly the topic of what policies contribute to it.  This issue came up during the 1980 Presidential election, which was a time of high inflation, as the candidates accused each other of supporting policies that would be inflationary.

It seems to me that one can make the case that right-wing and left-wing policies could both be inflationary.  Conservatives believe that more government spending is inflationary, for a variety of reasons: it increases demand, for the government is spending more as a customer; the government may choose to raise taxes to pay for its increased budget, and companies pass the cost of higher taxes onto their consumers; and the government prints money to pay for its programs and its debt, and printing more money results in inflation.  Others have argued, however, that tax cuts fuel inflation, for they increase demand because people now have more money in their pockets to spend.  A number of conservatives maintain that the way to get inflation under control is to tighten the money supply, and, while that has sometimes worked, I wonder if even that can result in higher prices: a tight money supply entails high interest rates, so if companies are borrowing money in order to invest, wouldn't they pass on the cost of the interest rates to their consumers?

Supply-siders have maintained that certain tax cuts can combat inflation, by removing hindrances on investment and productivity.  That makes a degree of sense, for productivity is a way to combat inflation, since it increases the supply of goods and allows it to keep up with the demand.  But I don't think that tax cuts for corporations always result in lower prices, for some corporations may choose not to produce because they like the profits that the high prices are bringing them.  Some argue that this is why the tax cuts for the oil companies under President George W. Bush did not result in lower gas prices.

2.  I'll give you a little preview of my post tomorrow on Alger Hiss.  Essentially, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers were ex-Communists who were accusing people who served in the Franklin Roosevelt Administration (maybe also the Truman Administration) of being involved in espionage for the Soviet Union.  Truman attacked the House Committee on Un-American Activities, claiming that the Republicans in Congress were merely trying to divert attention from their own failure to tackle inflation.  On page 204, Gellman states that Nixon did not understand what "stopped [Truman] from investigating the legitimate charges brought out by Bentley and Chambers."  Later in the book, Gellman speculates that the refusal of the Truman Administration and Republicans in Congress to cooperate on the subversion issue set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy.  But, getting back to page 204, Gellman states there, as he quotes Nixon: "'The cover-up,' much on Nixon's mind in the fall of 1972, 'is what hurts you.'"

Ironic, isn't it?  But I guess that it's easier to criticize people in power than it is to consistently do the right thing once one is in power, when that right thing is inconvenient.

Clear and Present Dangers 4

I have two items for my write-up today on M. Stanton Evans' Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America's Government (copyright 1975).

1.  A significant point in my reading of Evans' book thus far has been that the Left has not been consistent in its stances on the distribution of power within the U.S. Government.  Prior to President Richard Nixon, prominent leftists supported a strong Presidency and a weak Congress, for they believed that the President should have the leeway to enact reforms, whereas they regarded Congress as slow and too tied to the status quo.  What's more, a number of liberals applauded Executive Privilege when the Eisenhower Administration used it to keep information from Senator Joseph McCarthy!  And, even during Nixon's Presidency, there were leftists who supported giving the President broad powers, such as the authority to implement wage and price controls.  And yet, with Watergate and other scandals in the Nixon Administration, many on the Left were bemoaning that the Presidency had become too strong and abusive of power, and they expressed support for greater congressional oversight.

Evans narrates that, during the 1930's, there were leftists who were critics of judicial review, since judges had overturned key aspects of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.  With the Warren Court, however, the Left was singing a different tune, and courts were even legislating from the bench, going so far as to mandate school bussing in certain regions of the U.S.

Evans' problem with the Left is that it supports a government of human beings rather than a government of law.  For Evans, the Left doesn't care which branch of the government has more power: it's just interested in its agenda getting passed!  Evans acknowledges that conservatives, too, have been inconsistent on the distribution of power within the U.S. Government, and he believes that the government's authority should be limited by laws.  According to Evans, if government authority rests on the whims of human beings rather than law, disaster can result, for what if the human being wielding power chooses to abuse it?

I wrestled some with this issue in my second post about Evans' book, so I won't do so here.  I'd like to ask a question, though: Where would (or did) Evans stand on the nuclear option during George W. Bush's Presidency?  Remember when Democrats in the Senate were hindering the confirmation of some of Bush's judicial appointments, and Republicans were calling for a nuclear option that would eliminate a filibuster and thus expedite the confirmation process?  What did Evans think about that?  On the one hand, Evans appeared to support a congressional filibuster in Clear and Present Dangers.  On the other hand, Evans on page 104 expresses concerns about judicial activism, in which the court sets policy rather than simply negating laws, and he states that "the Congress and the Presidency should have at their disposal means for limiting the court if, in extremis, such limits are required."

2.  Chapter 6 is entitled "The Growth of Government".  Evans argues that government spending is increasing massively and is becoming a burden on taxpayers, and not just the wealthy ones.  Evans will talk later about the issue of progressive and regressive taxation, and I'll discuss that tomorrow.  In my latest reading, however, Evans challenges a liberal argument that defense spending is the main problem in the federal budget, and that there would be more money to go around (for the poor and others) if the defense budget were cut.

Evans acknowledges that the defense budget has waste, but he does not believe that the defense budget is the main problem, for U.S. government spending on defense is rising at a slower pace than domestic spending, plus domestic spending takes up more of the federal budget.  Evans may have a point there.  You can see here a chart on U.S. Government spending for Fiscal Year 2010, and the defense budget makes up 20 percent (though the article raises other considerations, sometimes documenting its claims, and sometimes not).

Quite a few times, I've heard people on the Left say that welfare does not make up much of the federal budget, for, in terms of the federal budget as a whole, not a whole lot of money has been spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF).  That is true, but there is more to federal domestic spending than that, for federal domestic spending includes health care, education, public housing, job training programs, and the list goes on.  I would not propose abolishing these programs, mind you, but I tend to agree with Evans that, if we are concerned about the growth and the amount of U.S. government spending, then we cannot just expect for cuts in the defense budget to suffice.  In my reading thus far, Evans primarily focuses on how more government spending leads to a greater tax burden, but many of us can think of other problems that accompany more government spending: deficits, a higher national debt, etc.  I wouldn't revert to being a conservative over these issues, however, for I think that one can reconcile a leftist political orientation with fiscal responsibility.  After all, countries that have national health insurance spend less on health care than the U.S. does!  I don't have to support an inactive federal government to believe that the federal government should spend money wisely.

I liked something that Evans said on pages 110-111: "All of us stand in two different relationships to government spending: On the one hand we are, in some fashion or other, beneficiaries of what government is doing----if not in the form of subsidy, then in the enjoyment of some protection or service we consider essential.  On the other hand, we are all in a sense victims of the system, in that we must pay the bills through taxes or inflation or submit to other social costs imposed by the enlargement of government powers.  Politically speaking, the crucial question is which of these capacities is uppermost in our minds.  If most people view themselves as beneficiaries of what the government is doing, then it is reasonable to expect them to favor increased spending and official intervention.  If most people view themselves as victims of what the government is doing, then it is reasonable to expect them to favor less spending and official intervention.  The subjectively onerous tax level is that which causes the second perception to replace the first."

Evans goes on to argue that many Americans are seeing themselves as victims rather than as beneficiaries of government.  My guess is that there are good and bad factors behind that: there are many who feel overtaxed because, well, they are overtaxed, but there are also some who don't want to pay taxes to support the common good: public schools, parks, etc. I'm not talking so much about those who believe that there is a lot of government waste that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for, but rather those who don't care about public schools because their kids are not in public schools (to use an example).

But I can see Evans point: for people to support government spending, they have to believe that it helps them somehow----at the very least by making their society a better place.  A while back, I referred to economist Bruce Bartlett's statement that, in Europe, people don't mind higher taxes as much because they get what they're paying for, in terms of benefits (see here).  Similarly, I once heard a Canadian say that, even though he paid more taxes in Canada, he didn't mind that because at least he didn't have to worry about his medical needs there.  In my opinion, the U.S. Government has to work on taxpayers getting their money's worth, by ensuring that money is spent wisely and efficiently.  One reason that I like President Barack Obama is that he supports the government helping people, but he also has expressed a desire to eliminate governmental inefficiencies and waste, and in some cases he has done so (I think of Medicare).

Clear and Present Dangers 2

In my latest reading of Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America's Government, M. Stanton Evans discusses and is critical of liberal justifications for expanding the role of the federal government, even though the Tenth Amendment limits the federal government's powers to those enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

These liberal justifications include the following: the argument that small government made sense in the Founders' time but since then we have learned that small government doesn't work because it leads to unfettered capitalism and thus the inequality of wealth, plus we live in a more advanced time; a liberal application of Article I, Section 8, which includes the Commerce Clause allowing the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, the stipulation that the legislative branch of the federal government can collect taxes for the general welfare, and the Necessary and Proper Clause permitting the U.S. Congress to enact whatever laws it deems necessary to carry out its enumerated powers; the Fourteenth Amendment, which Evans says has been abused to justify many examples of federal intervention in state and local affairs; and the notion that the U.S. Constitution is a living document.

In terms of Evans' critique of these liberal justifications, I'll only mention three points that Evans made:
First, Evans says on page 45 that conservative judges in the early 1900's deserve some blame for the abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment, for they appealed to that amendment to overturn "industrial regulations enacted by the states."  My guess is that, because the Fourteenth Amendment says that states cannot deprive people of life, liberty, and property, conservative judges maintained that states cannot impose industrial regulations, which (in their minds) undermined liberty and property.

Second, Evans critiques the notion that the U.S. Constitution is a living document by noting that it lays out a formal process for it to be amended, which (according to Evans) would be strange if its Framers believed that the U.S. Constitution was living and breathing and could be "changed from age to age merely by interpretation" (page 47). 

Third, Evans says on page 44 that "Most favored by the centralizing interest from the time of Hamilton on has been the phraseology in Article I, Section 8..."  This intrigued me because Evans was acknowledging that a liberal interpretation of Article I, Section 8 went back to the early days of the United States, as far back as the time of Hamilton.  Would that call into question the argument that some liberals have used that small government worked in the early days of America but has since become outdated, since there were some who did not care for small government even in the early days of the United States?

I started Evans' chapter entitled "The Power of the President".  In this chapter, Evans argues that, while a number of liberals have criticized President Richard Nixon for making the Presidency more powerful, liberals themselves----including some of the liberals who were criticizing Nixon----spoke highly of a strong Presidency when it came to Presidents prior to Nixon.  It's easy for ideologues to be inconsistent, to think that a strong Presidency is all right when it serves their ends, but not when it does not. Even today, there are people who criticize President George W. Bush for circumventing the legislative branch at times, even though President Barack Obama has done the same thing.

But, if the Presidency is given the power to do good, would it also have the power to do evil?  I think that this is a significant reason that libertarians support limited government.  Personally, I'd hope that the election process would keep leaders in check.  The danger there, however, would be that the majority could become a tyranny, which could potentially stomp on the rights of the minority.  Should there not be limits on government power, even if the majority wants for the government to have power that exceeds those limits?  I wrestle with this question.  I do think that a reason that government exists is to enact policies that promote the general welfare as well to stop wrongdoing that harms people.  Consequently, I have a hard time saying that it's an abuse of power for the government (say) to require everyone to have health insurance, and to stop health insurance companies from dropping people who get sick.  Are we on a slippery slope when we give the government the right to make those decisions, though?  Wouldn't we be on a slippery slope if we gave the government any power?  And yet, libertarians could then argue that this is why the government should respect the Constitution: it legally sets limits on government power by telling the government what it can and cannot do.

I'll stop here.

Clear and Present Dangers 1

I started M. Stanton Evans' 1975 book, Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America's Government.  You can read more about Evans here.  The reason that I am reading this book right now is that it will set the stage for my "Year (or More) of Nixon", in which I will blog through books by and about Richard Nixon throughout 2013, which is the one-hundredth year after Nixon's birth in 1913.

Why would blogging through Evans' book set the stage for my "Year (or More) of Nixon"?  For one, this book by Evans dates to 1975, which was soon after the Presidency of Richard Nixon.  Second, Evans had definite opinions about Richard Nixon: Evans didn't care much for Nixon's foreign policy or domestic policy, but he started to like Nixon when Watergate happened!  It will be interesting, therefore, to see how Evans addresses Nixon's Presidency.  And, third, I bought this book because it appeared to me to criticize the expansion of the Presidency's power and the decline of Congress, and that reminded me of a book by John Dean that criticized George W. Bush's Administration for expanding Presidential power.  It's interesting that what is considered right-wing and what is considered left-wing can vary with time.  You'd expect for conservatives, who claim to believe in less-government, to oppose a more powerful Presidency, but that's not always the case!

In my latest reading of Evans' book, at least four things stood out to me.  First, Evans says that he is challenging the liberal consensus that few in that day were challenging.  That intrigued me because, nowadays, a significant number of people challenge liberalism.  Back in Evans' day, however, that was probably not the case, at least not as much. Although I am rather left-wing, I happen to admire contrarians----those who challenge conventional wisdom.  That's probably why I played that role for so many years, even though people may not have thought that I was intelligent when I did so.

Second, Evans argues that the American system (the ideas of equality, limited government, opposition to tyranny, the value of the individual, etc.) is based on biblical rather than Greek values, and that liberals have tended to accept moral values while detaching them from their theistic roots.  Evans may have a point when he says that biblical values influenced the development of the American system.  At the same time, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the American system is entirely consistent with biblical ideas, for the Bible in some places is quite supportive of monarchy, stomping on the religious freedom of idolaters, and the fusion of religion with government (whereas Evans says on page 10 that the state in the Hebrew Bible is merely a "peace-keeping agency", not a "compact religious-political institution").  Conversely, there are liberals who root their liberalism in the Bible and religious beliefs, so I think that Evans is wrong to characterize liberals as people who detach ethics from religion.  Even if Evans can make a solid case that prominent liberals have done this, such a characterization disregards the many liberals who have not.

Third, Evans wrestles with the apparent inconsistency of liberals in supporting an active state that subordinates the individual to the common good, while maintaining an almost absolutist regard for certain rights, such as free speech.  Evans believes that there is a thread that ties all of this together, but, at the moment, I'm unsure what exactly he believes that thread is.  It will be interesting to see how he handles conservatism's inconsistency in supporting economic freedom but also restrictions in the social and cultural sphere.

Fourth, Evans talks about federalism and the Tenth Amendment.  I'll have to admit that the Tenth Amendment is a challenge to my liberal support for an active federal government, for Evans is probably correct to note that a number of Founding Fathers sought to limit the federal government's authority to certain enumerated powers, while reserving other powers to the states and the people.  I guess that the question then would be what powers the U.S. Constitution enumerates for the federal government.  Many liberals interpret the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution quite expansively, which means that they believe that the federal government can regulate, not just interstate commerce, but also whatever affects it (see here).  The Commerce Clause may have originally been intended to allow the U.S. government to regulate trade between the states, but liberals have a more expansive application of it.  Is this wrong?  Perhaps, in the Founders' time, what went on in an individual state primarily affected the state itself, and the Constitution granted the U.S. Government the power to step in when one state impacted another through commerce.  Nowadays, however, what goes on in one state can arguably impact the entire country.  Would that not necessitate a broader interpretation of the Commerce Clause? 

Take It Back 10: Health Care, Katrina, Community, and Closing

I finished James Carville and Paul Begala's Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future (copyright 2006).

My latest reading covered health care and Hurricane Katrina, then the book closed with a resounding call for communitarianism, even going so far as to praise Ronald Reagan for his optimism and faith in America.  Here are three items:

1.  The chapter on health care was good, overall.  It went into how the cost of treating the uninsured results in higher health care prices for consumers, the fact that the uninsured consist largely of people who work, and a proposal to allow people to buy into the same health care options that are available to federal employees.  According to Carville and Begala, this proposal works well for federal employees, for the "government gets to say which plans participate, then negotiates prices, covered services, and other standards for care", and the "health care companies" accept those requirements because they want the nine million government employees as customers (page 279).

I appreciated Carville and Begala's discussion about the pharmaceutical industry, though I wish that they had gone a little deeper.  Carville and Begala say that "Drug companies that invest in research should be able to keep their patents until they've made back the amount they spent on research plus a reasonable profit" (page 280). This is an important point because Carville and Begala are acknowledging that the profit motive plays a significant role in the development of new drugs.  A number of conservatives and Republicans have argued that such measures as allowing the importation of cheap prescription drugs and permitting Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices would discourage the pharmaceutical companies from researching and creating new drugs because those measures would reduce the companies' profits, thereby undermining the profit motive for research and development.  But Carville and Begala are sensitive to the role of the profit motive, and so they say that drug companies should be able to keep their patents on their drugs until they have made a "reasonable profit".

But then Carville and Begala criticize drug companies for being "hell-bent on keeping their patents" and for seeking to inhibit cheaper "generic versions of the same drug from coming to market" (page 280).  According to Carville and Begala, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a bill to prevent the gaming of the patent system, even as Republicans sought to restrict competition against the pharmaceutical companies.  This bill passed when the Democrats controlled the Senate.  I wish that Carville and Begala had gone deeper by explaining how they could support patents as a way for pharmaceutical companies to make a profit, while also not wanting for the patent system to be abused.  What exactly is abuse of the patent system?  Is it the pharmaceutical companies trying to hold onto the patent longer than they are permitted?

Another beef that I had with this chapter: Carville and Begala talked about how a Toyota plant chose to locate in Canada on account of Canada's national health care system, rather than in the U.S., where Toyota would provide employees with costly health insurance.  That's a good point, but Carville and Begala appear to stop short of advocating a single-payer system, the sort of system that attracted Toyota to Canada.  This issue is arguably relevant to Obamacare, as businesses in the U.S. are reducing workers from full-time to part-time status so that they don't have to pay for health insurance.  Leftists have contended that the big businesses are merely using Obamacare as an excuse for their own failures, and they may be correct on that.  But, in my opinion, a single-payer system is better for businesses than is requiring big businesses to provide health insurance to their employees.  

2.  The chapter on Hurricane Katrina was about how President George W. Bush failed to provide sufficient funds for the levies (since money was going instead to the Iraq War) when he was warned that this sort of policy would be disastrous, and how Bush appointed inexperienced political lackies to FEMA, whereas Bill Clinton had appointed competent and experienced professionals.  One of my conservative relatives once told me that Bush should not be faulted for failing to provide sufficient funds for the levies because Bush didn't know how bad the hurricane would be, or if there would even be a hurricane, but Carville and Begala narrate that Bush was warned that his policy could have ill effects, that "Bush's own federal government designated a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three 'likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country'" (page 284), and that there had been another hurricane earlier in the year.

I tend to agree with my conservative friends and relatives that others besides Bush dropped the ball on Hurricane Katrina----there were the local authorities that failed to use buses to help people to evacuate, for example.  But I still think that Bush failed to provide adequate leadership during that disaster.  I wonder if things have gotten better, in terms of the federal government's management of natural disasters.  President Barack Obama has been praised for how he handled Hurricane Sandy, but there are still people who complain about FEMA, and who say that they are not getting enough help.

3.  On communitarianism, I agree with Carville and Begala that we should try to see society in terms of "us" and not just "me".  Carville and Begala contend that Republicans tend to support a mindset of "What's in it for me?" (my paraphrase), but a number of conservatives and Republicans would come back and say that Democratic policies themselves engender this sort of attitude by creating an entitlement society in which people receive free stuff from the government.  I think that Democrats do well when they combat this narrative----when they show that it benefits society as a whole when people don't go broke because of medical bills, when people can receive a decent education, etc. 

I'll close this post by saying that I prefer Carville and Begala's self-reflection after the Democrats lost to how a number of Republicans reacted after Obama's defeat of Mitt Romney.  There were many Republicans who reacted to their loss by portraying the majority of voters in the election as moochers, who merely voted for Obama because he was giving them stuff from the government.  Even when Republicans lambasted this narrative, they did not appear to be overly authentic, for how often did they question this narrative before Romney lost?  Moreover, I'd say that the view that many Democratic voters are moochers is widespread among Republicans.

Carville and Begala, by contrast, did not seem to look down on those who voted for Bush in 2004.  You could say that a number of Democrats did look down on those voters, seeing them as duped by Republicans, who spoke to their values on wedge issues while undercutting their economic security.  But my impression was that Carville and Begala did not have that attitude (though they did recommend What's the Matter with Kansas?).  Rather, they acknowledged that Democrats had to work on showing that they were not hostile to the values of those middle-class and lower-income people who voted for Bush.  And Carville and Begala were authentic about this, for they talked about the place of God, guns, and the military in their own lives.  I did not always agree with their policy analysis, but I appreciated their outreach to American voters who differed from them politically.

Take It Back 9: Taxes

In my latest reading of Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future (copyright 2006), James Carville and Paul Begala talk about taxes.

Carville and Begala criticize Republicans for supporting a lower tax burden on upper-income people, and a higher tax burden for those who are not upper-income.  They give examples.  First of all, there was a bill, passed in 2004 with overwhelming support by both Republicans and Democrats, that gave generous tax-breaks to corporations while reducing the per child tax credit for families making under $10,750 a year.  Second, on pages 260-261, Carville and Begala talk about aides to President George W. Bush who sought to "shield interest, dividends, and capital gains from taxation, and expand tax breaks for business investment", while possibly "eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance" (Carville and Begala here are quoting from a November 18, 2004 article in The Washington Post).  Third, Carville and Begala state that President George W. Bush and the Republicans supported cutting taxes that affect the wealthy, such as the federal income tax and the estate class (when the estate tax, according to Carville and Begala, really only impacts a small number of people, the very rich), while opposing a reduction in the payroll tax, which particularly impacts those who are not upper-income.

Carville and Begala admit that Republicans have run with the theme of simplifying the tax code, something that Carville and Begala believe that Democrats, too, should actually talk about.  But Carville and Begala maintain that Republican proposals for simplifying the tax code will make things worse, not better.  A flat tax, for example, would get rid of taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains, and inheritance, which in many cases affect the rich, while it would keep the taxes that middle-class people pay (payroll, sales, property, and excise taxes) and also hit the middle-class with an income tax (Dick Armey proposed twenty percent).  The national sales tax, according to Carville and Begala, would also shift the tax burden to the middle class.  Essentially, Carville and Begala believe that Republicans support a tax code that is biased against work.  On page 264, they contrast those who "work for a living" with "someone whose money comes from sitting on his rear end and cashing dividend checks." 

Carville and Begala refer favorably to the Center for American Progress' tax-reform proposal.  This proposal would treat "all forms of income alike" (Carville and Begala's words)----capital gains, dividends, wages, tips, interest, etc.  Those making up to $25,000 a year would pay 15 percent, those making between $25,000 and $120,000 would pay 25 percent, and those making over $120,000 would pay 39 percent.  The payroll tax would be abolished for working people, yet employers would pay it, and it would not be capped at $90,000 a year.  The Alternative Minimum Tax, which even hits the middle-class because it was not indexed for inflation, would be eliminated.  The per-child tax credit would be retained, expanded, and increased, and it would be extended to "folks who make as little as $5,000 a year" (Carville and Begala's words on page 265).  And $30 million in loopholes that corporations and the wealthy use will be closed.  As Carville and Begala say on page 264, Democrats should "shift the debate away from the old charge that Democrats are for higher taxes and on to the more relevant and salient debate over who pays."

Here are some of my reactions:

1.  I agree with Carville and Begala that it's simplistic to make a blanket assertion that Democrats are for higher taxes, whereas Republicans are for lower taxes.  I don't necessarily concur with every argument that they made to support that point, however, for their statement that a flat tax would retain sales and property taxes seems to ignore that the sales and property taxes are not federal and thus the U.S. government has no jurisdiction over them (though, as Carville and Begala note, people should be able to deduct their state and local taxes off of their federal tax returns), plus there is a history of conservative opposition to property taxes and support for the per-child tax credit.  But I find Carville and Begala's overall point to be sound, especially since a number of Republicans (including John McCain) supported raising the tax on employer-provided health insurance.  My impression is that Republicans are sometimes very revenue-conscious when the revenue is coming from the middle-class, but they are quick to support tax cuts on taxes that the upper-income pay.  See my post here.

2.  I have some issues with Carville and Begala's apparent disdain for investment (or so it comes across to me, and I'm open to correction).  Does not investment build companies and create jobs?  Why not, therefore, support tax cuts for business investments?  Carville and Begala, in talking about a national sales tax, refer to proponents' point that it would encourage savings and investment.  People wonder why we should cut taxes on the rich, when they would just sit on their money.  Well, them sitting on their money may entail them putting it into stocks, which builds companies.

3.  And yet, I am intrigued by the Center for American Progress' proposal that all sources of income should be taxed progressively.  Rather than, say, raising taxes on capital gains and dividends, why not just take income in its entirety and impose a rate on that?  I have questions about this proposal, though.  First of all, would that amount to an increase or a decrease in taxes on capital gains and dividends?  I can see it being an increase, since capital gains and dividends would then be treated as income.  On the other hand, I can picture it being a decrease, since there's a rate that taxes one's entire income----and that income is not just from capital gains and dividends but from other things as well.  Second, would not CAP's proposal increase the tax burden on lower-income people, since they would pay 15 percent?  Or would the deductions, such as the per-child tax credit, wipe that tax out?

4.  I've heard Republicans and conservatives argue that the per-child tax credit for the lower-income is technically not a tax cut for the reason that the lower-income do not pay taxes: thus, it's not a tax cut, but money from the government.  And Republicans and conservatives have used this as an argument against the per-child tax credit for the lower income.  I don't know enough about this issue to comment.  I think that it's a good idea for the lower-income to get some relief, or help, however.