The prez abroad, Ashcroft does it again, Powell the Perfect, &c.

February 22, 2002 9:20 a.m.

ometimes I can’t help gushing about this president, and I feel especially gushy when he’s abroad: He represents us superbly, in my view, standing for American principles, and Americanness. He combines strength, logic, self-confidence, compassion, universalism, boldness, and fun. I was never prouder of him — more pleased about him, is a better way of saying that — than when he went about Europe in his first year in office, explaining the need for missile defense and inviting others to join us — though saying plainly that we’d go it alone if we had to, as protection from nuclear attack was rather important. It’s a cliché to say that Bush became an impressive leader, an impressive commander-in-chief, after Sept. 11. I must say — pat, pat — I thought he was before.

In South Korea, Bush did something that sent shivers down my spine. He mentioned seeing a nighttime satellite photo of the Korean peninsula, which showed the South “awash with light” and the North completely dark. Said Bush, “We want all Koreans to live in the light. . . . My vision is clear. I see a peninsula that is one day united in commerce and cooperation, instead of divided by barbed wire and fear. Korean grandparents should be free to spend their final years with those they love. Korean children should never starve while a massive army is fed. No nation should be a prison for its own people.”

Jimmy Carter was called the “human-rights president.” Mainly he called himself that. Well, there was never more a human-rights president than Ronald Reagan, who was never called that. And this one, George W., is clearly a human-rights president too, reaching to the deepest and best yearnings of people worldwide.

And while I’m on it, I just want to record the eye-blinking fact that Kim Dae Jung is head of state in South Korea. This may not mean much to the very young, but when I was growing up, learning about politics, Kim was in a jail cell, as the country’s most prominent dissident, opposing an authoritarian dictatorship. And here he is — head of state, like Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, and Lech Walesa.

I’m feeling sort of soft and fuzzy (don’t worry, it’ll pass): Sometimes the good guys win.

I mentioned Bush and missile defense. For many years — a couple of decades — liberals and other smarties warned that the end of the ABM Treaty would be the end of the world (basically). So, Bush ended the treaty — and: hardly a peep, from anybody. This is in part because the Russians barely protested. And it’s hard for Democrats and others to be more pro-Russian than the Russians. Or at least it should be. Joe Biden seemed much more indignant and offended (for the Russians) than Vladimir Putin. Must have embarrassed Biden et al., on some level, you would think.

James Schlesinger, former secretary of everything — in an Elliot Richardsonesque way — reminds one of all this in a refreshing op-ed published in the Washington Post.

How do I love Paul Wolfowitz? Let me count the ways, or one way, this time: In a speech the other day, he said, in the words of a New York Daily News item, that the U.S. “will consider hitting first and asking questions later to prevent future terrorist attacks.” Wolfowitz’s own words were: “We’ve already lost enough Americans; we’re not going to lose any more by hesitating.”

I’ve said it before, ladies and gentlemen: It was important that George W. Bush won the election.

John Ashcroft is in trouble again, for waxing religious. In a recent speech, he said, “The call to defend civilization from terrorism resonates from a deeper source than our legal or even our political institutions. Civilized individuals — Christians, Jews, and Muslims — all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator. . . . All people are called to the defense of the Granter of freedom, and the framework of freedom He created. . . . And this is our responsibility: The guarding of freedom that God grants is the noble charge of the Department of Justice. It is a cause in which all people may participate.”

The usual suspects, of course, went nuts. Which leads me to wonder: What do they think of Americans and American speech in, say, the first 100 years of our existence, Jefferson through Lincoln? Are they embarrassed? Do they consider those Americans un-American? Or do they just think we’ve . . . outgrown it?

I sort of dislike Internet ping-pong, in which one website reacts to another, and on and on. I usually avoid it. But a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and let it not be said that I have a little mind. I have a medium-sized mind.

A lot of people aren’t crazy about our stance against McCain-style campaign-finance reform (we’re agin, big time), and Andrew Sullivan is one of them. I would like to quote him, only because he writes so clearly:

“What anti-reform conservatives need to understand is that the current system — so beloved of their nemesis Bill Clinton — has led to a profound cynicism about government.”

Oh, we “anti-reform conservatives” understand that, all right (and, by the way, we’re not “anti-reform,” we’re anti-McCain reform, favoring a different, liberalized form of campaign finance). It’s just that we believe that politicians like John McCain and their allies have convinced many people that their government is irredeemably corrupt, that their politicians are puppets of monied interests. (Actually, people, loving incumbents, tend not to believe that their own representatives are puppets, just others’.)

Sullivan continues:

“People understandably believe — and the legislative process lends credence to the notion — that their representatives are bought and paid for. Not literally, in every case. I don’t buy the idea that every corporate donation corrupts everyone who receives it. But structurally, the corruption is clear, and loaded against ordinary citizens and in favor of unions and corporations.”

The public perception is wrong, or at least faulty. Interests give money to those politicians who are congenial to them. Interests normally don’t give money to change politicians’ minds. The NRA donates to pro-gun politicians; the gun-controllers donate to anti-gun politicians, and so on — that’s America, just like the boys in white wigs imagined.

More Sullivan:

“[The new legislation] also makes complete political sense for Bush. The unconstitutional parts of the bill will almost certainly be voided by the Court; Bush himself is adept at raising hard-money; and his move to the center will be solidified. He should hold firm, ignore Rush and NRO, and sign a bill if one reaches him.”

Talk about cynicism! You’re president and you sign an unconstitutional bill in the hope that the courts will bail you out, by declaring what you know to be unconstitutional, in fact, unconstitutional? Bush himself can outraise his opponents in hard money? He should feint to the center? That’s why he should ignore Rush Limbaugh and National Review?

Just as I suspected: We anti-“reform”ers are the idealists. We are standing on principle here. Ain’t we pretty?

Every year, the American Enterprise Institute gives a dinner in Washington, which features a lecture by a Heavy. The dinner is a formal affair — complete with dancing — and is attended by le tout -wingery. Some people refer to it as “the conservative prom.” Heavies doing the lecturing over the years have included Presidents Ford and Reagan, Paul Johnson, Henry Kissinger, Irving Kristol, Carlos Salinas (oops), and Alan Greenspan (who used his lecture to warn of “irrational exuberance” ).

This year’s Heavy was one of the Heaviest, though he is in fighting trim: That’s Norman Podhoretz, longtime editor of Commentary and one of the major literary and political influences in this country. You have heard me go on about N. Pod. before: He had much to do with my political education, broadly speaking, and if you don’t like the result, you might as well blame him as much as anybody. I first noticed his name — believe it or not — when I was a youngster reading Richard Nixon’s book on Vietnam. It was in a footnote, leading us to Podhoretz’s own book about Vietnam (called, straightforwardly enough, Why We Were in Vietnam). And that led me to Commentary, and that was pretty much the ballgame.

If you haven’t read Podhoretz’s memoir My Love Affair with America, you should really stop reading this column right now and do so. Also, you may remember that I wrote in a previous column about N. Pod.’s three hours on C-SPAN with Brian Lamb (that was a Booknotes program). I met a man at the AEI dinner who said that he had watched that program five times — that’s 15 hours of listening (isn’t my math impressive?). Having seen the show, I can understand that.

The theme of Podhoretz’s AEI lecture — found here — was that the anti-war, and anti-American, Left needs to be guarded against: still. Back in Vietnam days, this Left was very small, almost negligible, numerically. But it succeeded in doing big, awful things. “It blew and it blew and it blew the house down.” It tipped the culture, it tipped the war, it tipped policy — and we were worse off for it.

There seems little danger of that presently, because most Americans are on board, despite grumblings by Norman Mailer — one of Podhoretz’s ex-friends, as explained in yet another magnificent Podhoretz book, Ex-Friends — and other kooks. But Podhoretz warns that from these little, fringy grumbles can grow large, ruinous roars, scaring us away from a rightful path. One ought to be alert to those who would demoralize us — not criticize American efforts legitimately, but confuse and demoralize us, illegitimately.

Needless to say, not everyone has embraced the Podhoretzian point of view. Some say he’s too dark, too shaped (or misshapen) by the horrid 1960s and ’70s, not hep to the new times and the new mood. “After September 11, everything changed.” I wonder. At a minimum, I welcome Podhoretz’s caution, and think of the old Reagan ’84 commercial about the bear in the woods. “Some people say there is no bear, that it’s a figment of our imaginations. [I’m paraphrasing.] But isn’t it better to be armed, prepared, just in case?” What could it hurt? Besides which, as regular readers well know, I, as a product of Ann Arbor, Mich., am all too aware of the power of the anti-American Left, a potency absurdly out of proportion to this group’s actual numbers.

Podhoretz doesn’t want a repeat. Neither do I. The war has been “easy” so far, to the extent that any war, with its casualties, can be easy. The Gulf War was “easy,” too — the anti-war and anti-American Left barely had time to develop, despite the cries of “No Blood for Oil!” The new war may get harder, messier. And then . . . Yes, no harm in being on guard.

Dumb of me, I know, to get irritated by Mary McGrory, the veteran liberal columnist in the Washington Post. But she had a column yesterday that I couldn’t help gagging on. It was a typical column, one that praised Colin Powell as an adult among children, as the only sober, cautious presence in an administration of hotheads. (By the way, who’s the one who chose that secretary of state? Oh, yeah: George W. Bush. But he never gets credit, from the Powell-lovers, for having done so.)

Writing of Iraq, she spoke of the country that “so many of the hawks in Washington want to invade if they don’t have to go themselves.” That is one of the great, nauseating, confused lines of this kind of Left; Mark Shields talks that way all the time too. “You want to go into Iraq [for example], but you’re not willing to go yourself. How dare you! Shut your mouth unless you’re prepared to strap on a gun.” Yes, maybe the president should send Laura Bush, or perhaps the twins, if he doesn’t have time to fight, hand to hand, himself.

That grown-up people who are given columns in the Washington Post are capable of thinking that way — that it’s basically illegitimate to advocate a military action unless you’re going to don fatigues yourself — is amazing.

Equally amazing is the “Thank God for Powell” theme. That anyone could hold people as learned, experienced, and patriotic as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleezza Rice to be hicks with itchy trigger fingers . . . again, amazing. Those three — just to stick to those examples — are as civilized and humane as anyone Mary McGrory or Mark Shields will ever meet.

Ah, race and the Oscars: an eternal theme. Julia Roberts says that she feels guilty, wrong, having an Oscar (or two) when Denzel Washington doesn’t have one — out of the sheer racism of the Academy, according to Julia. Here we go again. A black actor (for example) is nominated, and pressure mounts for his victory: If he doesn’t win — if some other actor does — it’s an act of racism. This way, the Academy can’t win. Spike Lee says, when his movies are shut out, “We wuz robbed,” by racists. When other movies are shut out — they’re just: shut out, I guess. Voted against. Someone — or lots of someones — liked another movie better.

I’ll be writing more on this subject. The American dilemma is still a dilemma. In the meantime, maybe Julia Roberts could give Denzel Washington one of her statuettes, easing her guilt somewhat.

A final word: She did the worst thing that could possibly be done to Washington: racialize (further) the Oscars. He is just a nominee for Best Actor. Now some loudmouth bubblehead has made his category a racial test case. Great.

Sen. Jim Jeffords (I, Vt.) is going to raise funds for Democrats in this election cycle, we’ve learned. This says a lot about his Big Jump. The annoying thing is he didn’t go whole hog, didn’t make an honest man of himself, by signing up with the Democratic party — instead declaring himself an “independent” and throwing the Senate to the Democrats, by voting with them for control of that chamber. I’m all for politics, believe me. No dewy eyes here. But I’m for politics without sanctimoniousness and posing and pretending and preening — in other words, for politics without Jeffordsism.

I do hope every California Republican — at least every California Republican conservative — is ready to pull the lever for Bill Simon Jr. in the upcoming primary. Former mayor Riordan wouldn’t govern as a conservative, and it seems doubtful he would beat another liberal, the incumbent, Gray Davis. Simon is a principled man who is — as liberals might put it — “non-threatening” (meaning, he doesn’t come off like me: He’s gentle, sweet, handsome, with a twinkle in his eye). Fear not a Simon nomination. Look forward to a Simon governorship.

All right, the weather is spring-like here in New York, and I’m feeling giddy, which leads me to feel a little sophomoric: I just read the headline “Gumbo Forces New Orleans Airport Evacuation.” This is a terrorism story, serious business, but come on: How many times has gumbo in New Orleans forced evacuation? Buster Holmes used to be closed down periodically by the health department (and I can taste the jambalaya there now). Did it ever get closed down permanently?

As regular Impromptus-ites know, I love speech, and slang, and regionalisms, and resent the homogenizing of American English. Everywhere you go, people talk the same. Everywhere you go, the food is the same, too, which is “a whole ’nother” issue.

But not all is lost. Where I’m from, the girl or guy behind the counter, after you place your order, says, “For here or to go?” Always. Religiously. Here in New York, they tend to say, “To stay or to go?” I don’t know if this is an immigrant thing — an English as a Second Language thing — or a New York thing, but it’s very definitely a thing. Today, at my Subway (the sandwich shop, not the underground), the girl said, “Stay or go?” I have a hard time forcing myself to say “To stay” or simply “Stay,” when I want to say, “Here.” The New York way is nicely parallelistic: “To stay or to go,” two infinitives. But I will forever hear, in my Michigan head, “For here or to go.”

Hey, I never promised that every Impromptu would be deep — even that any would be.

But speaking of depth, lots of it: I heard from many, many people who had known Gen. Vernon Walters in some capacity, responding to my remembrance of him. Just went to show me that he had the same effect on a great many others that he had on me: to be bowled over by a patently great man.

I also mentioned, in that previous column, my interview with Maritza Lugo, the Cuban human-rights heroine just exiled, and some readers were kind enough to ask when and where the piece that resulted would appear. It will appear in the next National Review, under the title, “I Can’t Just Do Nothing.” I will also continue to report on and quote from this woman, who has much of importance to say — more than can be jammed into a single, shortish magazine piece.

Okay, I’m out. Have a fabulous — a fabulous, as Bush would say — weekend, y’all.

Isn’t it interesting that Bush says “fabulous” constantly? We used to think of this as a gay word: a gay word almost exclusively. Maureen Dowd and other hotshots are constantly twitting Bush for being “out of touch with the culture,” by which they mean Sex in the City, etc.: urban, New York-L.A. pop culture. If Bush were more in touch with “the culture,” he’d probably avoid “fabulous,” knowing that it is identified — stigmatized, if you like — as a gay adjective.

That’s (part of) what I love about Bush. He just doesn’t care — he’s his own person. He probably likes Judy Garland without embarrassment, too! And I wonder what he thinks of the Merm!

And has he seen Bea Arthur’s latest show, and . . .

Okay, I’ll quit now, like I said.