On a golfer and a dictatorship; unleashing American energy; the meaning of conservatism; J.D. Vance vs. Barry McCaffrey; the curse of music; and more
Phil Mickelson is one of the greatest golfers of our time, and of all time. He is also a very, very interesting personality. He always has interesting things to say, and is a great interview. The guy’s a thinker. You may not like what he’s thinking — but he’s thinking.
He is now in hot water. Sponsors are fleeing him. What’s the deal? Mickelson flirted with taking part in a new golf league, funded by the Saudis. Why? He wanted to gain leverage over the PGA Tour, in order to achieve some reforms on the Tour he thinks are necessary, or desirable. He told an interviewer, “They’re scary motherf***ers to get involved with.” He was talking about the Saudis. “We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”
So, “knowing all of this, why would I even consider it?” Consider hopping into bed with the Saudis, that is? “Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”
When these remarks were made public, the world came down on Mickelson’s head. His longtime sponsor KPMG, the accounting giant, dropped him with special speed. Talk about being in bed with the Saudis: KPMG has three offices there.
Mickelson’s chief sin, it seems, is to have blurted out the truth about the Saudis. That discomforts everyone else in their bed. You and I may not like Phil’s tactics — his Machiavellian ways. But I like the fact that he knows who the Saudis — who the Saudi rulers — are.
Don’t let the hypocrites smother you, Phil.
• Sometimes you want to write a piece, but someone else does it for you — and when that someone else is Kevin D. Williamson, all the better. I was planning to write a piece saying, basically, “Unleash American energy, for heaven’s sake.” KDW has done so in a piece headed “Time to Take the Brakes Off the U.S. Energy Industry.” Yes. “Past time,” as politicians say.
Very soon, we will leave fossil fuels behind us. We are in transition. “But while we’re waiting . . .” (I have quoted Fats Waller. He used this line, in a song, with wonderful, sly bawdiness.) We need more energy self-sufficiency, and we need it now. The oil-and-gas industry is ever cleaner. The footprint of the industry is ever smaller. Its methods are ever more ingenious.
As David Frum once said to me, “Schoolchildren of the future will marvel that the world once ran on an oozy black substance from under the ground.” That day is coming. But we should not deny ourselves what we need in the meantime.
“Unleash Chiang!” Remember that one? It was a slogan of the anti-Communist Right in the early Cold War. Bush the Elder used to say it when he was about to uncork a big serve, on the tennis court. “Gonna unleash Chiang.” I say, today: Unleash American energy.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman from Georgia, spoke at the America First Political Action Conference. This was a pro-Putin, Hitler-friendly jamboree. I wrote about MTG and the conference last week. The Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, has said, “There’s no place in our party for any of this. This is unacceptable.” Oh, yeah? How to prove such a thing? McCarthy has endorsed the opponent of Liz Cheney in the Wyoming GOP primary. So, obviously, he is not averse to trying to unseat his own members. Would he endorse a GOP opponent of MTG’s?
But that might get him in trouble with the “base” — right?
• One of the great questions of recent years — and over the centuries, of course — has been “What’s a conservative?” I took up this question in an essay a couple of years ago: “‘Conservative’: A Term Up for Grabs.” I generally stay out of the definitional wars, but sometimes I reenter the fray, or at least comment on it.
I was quite interested in what Matt Schlapp had to say. He is the head of the American Conservative Union, and the head of CPAC. He said to Steve Bannon, “We are no longer conservatives, we are Americans who love our founding.” So, that’s good news, bad news. If Schlapp doesn’t want to call what they are doing at CPAC “conservative,” fine with me. But a desire to preserve and further the American founding is the very definition of an American conservative. So says George F. Will. And that sounds right to me.
So . . . an impasse.
• Speaking of Bannon: He told his listeners, “Ukraine’s not even a country. It’s kind of a concept.” He added, “It’s just a corrupt area that the Clintons turned into a colony where they can steal money out of.” This is the kind of thing poured into the ears of Americans day after day. But is it as effective now as it was even a week ago?
Bannon reminds me of J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, who said, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” In fact, he said it to Bannon — on Bannon’s show.
Les beaux esprits se rencontrent.
On Twitter, Barry McCaffrey responded sharply to Vance — harshly:
JD Vance is a shameful person unsuitable for public office. His comments are those of a stooge for Russian aggression.
Vance, for his part, responded,
Your entire time in military leadership we won zero wars. You drank fine wine at bullshit security conferences while thousands of working class kids died on the battlefield. Oh, by the way, how much do you stand to gain financially from a war with Russia, Barry?
That is pure, 200-proof populism. It’s almost all there: Fine wine. Conferences (like cocktail parties). Working-class kids. How much do you stand to gain financially from a war? Huey Long and Father Coughlin would grin in admiration.
McCaffrey responded,
Well. Two of those kids who served were my children. Two more are now serving … grandsons. And…. I don’t drink wine.
As others pointed out, McCaffrey almost lost an arm in Vietnam. He received three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, and two Distinguished Service Crosses. And “Your entire time in military leadership we won zero wars”? Leading the 24th Infantry Division in the Gulf War, McCaffrey delivered the famous “left hook.” It was in all the papers. Maybe Vance is too young to have heard of it.
At any rate, does there come a point at which populist rhetoric is so extreme and so mendacious, it loses its appeal to voters? I really don’t know. I hope so.
A footnote: In 1999, I interviewed McCaffrey, and he brought up a young congressman from Ohio — Rob Portman. “I hope he’s president of the United States in another twelve years,” McCaffrey said. “He’s one of the finest public servants I’ve met in America.”
Portman is now a senator, not running for reelection. It is his seat that J.D. Vance, Josh Mandel, and the others are campaigning to win. Portman represents a GOP that is dead and buried. We’ll see how long the current style and temper can remain in the saddle.
• I’ve been doing a fair amount of writing about Ukraine and Russia. I will offer some links, for those interested: “Notes on the Catastrophe.” “The Spirit of Snake Island, Etc.” “Wrestling with Hell.”
• For the music-minded, I have some links. Here is my “New York chronicle” in the current New Criterion. I also have three opera reviews — of Don Carlos, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Tosca. All of these performances were at the Metropolitan Opera. Before Don Carlos, the Met chorus sang the Ukrainian national anthem. In 2015, after the terror attacks in Paris, the chorus sang the Marseillaise.
Allow me to quote the last sentence of my Don Carlos review:
Chances are, I was not the only one in the audience who thought of the boss in the Kremlin when Rodrigo said to Philip, “O King, beware that history does not say of you: he was another Nero!”
• Early on Monday morning, I was in Rockefeller Center (New York). I’m talking 6:30. Reason: I was giving commentary on a morning TV show. You know how the early morning is very still, very quiet, very peaceable? In the lobby of Rock Center, there were very few people (naturally). Yet rock music, or pop music of some sort, was blaring out of speakers. It was so . . . incongruous, I thought, and wrong. I also thought: “Americans are terrified of quiet. There can be no quiet, ever. Not in a restaurant, not in a gym, not anywhere.”
Okay, that’s my Grumpy Old Man act. But, in fairness to me: I have felt this way since I was a child.
• In the Atlanta airport, I saw a woman whose shirt had an amazing message: “Self-love is so gangster.” I’m just tickled (as we’d say in my native Midwest) by that statement.
Have a good day and a good weekend, my friends. Later on.
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