Read this article in yesterday’s Washington Post and see if, like me, you feel nauseated by the end of it. The Post has unearthed a tiny little paper trail about the way sleazeball lobbyists in Washington do business. It’s basically about the shameless use of contacts to buy legislation. Ralph Reed is one of the least inhibited of the bunch. “We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan,” Reed writes in an Oct. 23, 2000, memo, that reads like a manifesto for political prostitution. “In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom.” Thanks, Ralph, for that little lesson in civics. But what else did we expect from Reed and his ilk? Perhaps they agree with the positions they’re lobbying for. Perhaps they don’t. At $380,000 for a consulting fee, the rights and wrongs of something are not exactly pertinent, are they? Almost as worrying is that Karl Rove clearly helped Reed get this lucrative position. He must surely have known that Reed would be paid substantially; and that, unlike others, he’d be expected to deliver. So indirectly, the Bush campaign was oiling the wheels for a massively corrupt corporation for strategic political reasons. It’s depressing; and it’s routine. I just hope Reed spares us in future any religious uplift about his role in politics and the importance of virtue in public life. This kind of activity would make anyone feel disgusted by what our political system has become. And it tells you everything you want to know about Reed’s integrity that he didn’t even feel the need to respond to the Post with a defense of his own actions.
IN TRANSIT: I’ll be flying back from London today (Monday) so forgive the light dish. But don’t miss the book club discussion which starts (with my first post) this morning.
THE BOOK-CLUB BEGINS: My first post on Robert Kaplan’s “Warrior Politics” is now up. We lucked out on the timing. In the Washington Post yesterday, Steve Mufson, reveals that Kaplan was brought into the White House as long ago as March 2001 to chew the fat about the state of the world. So much for the notion that this president is incurious or uninterested in foreign affairs or history or the intricacies of his job. Here’s Mufson’s account of the meeting:
Bush had plenty of other things on his agenda the day of Kaplan’s visit. The president was to meet the Japanese prime minister to smooth over the accidental sinking of a Japanese fishing boat by a U.S. submarine. Later that week, touting a policy of “realism,” the administration would reproach a Chinese vice premier over religious freedom and expel dozens of Russian diplomats in a tit-for-tat over espionage allegations. But first, Bush wanted to discuss “Eastward to Tartary,” a sequel to Kaplan’s influential “Balkan Ghosts,” a sobering political history that Clinton’s aides said he read before deciding not to intervene in Bosnia. Bush, soon to embark on his first presidential visit to Europe, wanted to hear what Kaplan had to say about the stability of Romania and Bulgaria. “Tell us what you think, that’s why you’re here,” Bush said. For 45 minutes, he and Kaplan talked, while Rice, NSC director of European affairs Daniel Fried and White House chief of staff Andrew Card mostly listened.
I had no idea about this when I picked “Warrior Politics” as our first book, and it’s typical of Bush and Kaplan to keep it quiet for so long. But it seems all the more relevant now. We’ll be reading and then talking with someone who has obviously influenced the current president. Maybe we will get an insight into how Bush is thinking at this critical moment in world history.
WILL HUTTON ON AMERICA: A little learning is a dangerous thing. In yesterday’s Observer, key New Labour “thinker” Will Hutton loses it over America’s international leadership. However, as even Hutton must now be aware, the problem with opposing American belligerency toward Iraq is the same as with the opposition to taking on the Taliban. Virtually no one in their right mind can describe the Iraqi regime as anything but dangerous, unstable and potentially capable of the use of weapons of mass destruction against the West. Since this is the central issue, it is odd that Hutton would simply ignore it. But he does. Instead he writes that Tony Blair
is reported to have said privately that ‘if we can get rid of Baghdad, we should’, a devastatingly naive remark which so far stands uncorrected. This is the traditional British view that insists we stick close to the US.
Actually, it’s the traditional British view that it’s probably sensible to protect yourself from a dirty nuclear bomb. Hutton then goes on to wax hysterical about a tiny intellectual cabal that allegedly runs the United States, and is based around the views of one Leo Strauss. It’s clear Hutton hasn’t read any Strauss, or he wouldn’t come up with the following near-unhinged account of his alleged politics. Straussianism, according to Hutton,
unites patriotism, unilateralism, the celebration of inequality and the right of a moral élite to rule into a single unifying ideology.
Huh? This is the kind of thing that would get a C on a freshman college paper. And Hutton’s evidence that the entire American establishment is acquainted with a largely unknown, if highly intelligent, political philosopher? Here it is:
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of state for defence pushing for an early invasion of Iraq, is a Straussian. So is John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, who has legislated for military tribunals both to try and execute suspected terrorists beyond the rule of law. Straussians build up the military capacity of the nation while invoking the Bible and the flag. This is not prejudice; this is a coherent ideological position.
Sorry, Will. I’ve read a lot of Strauss and this half-baked attempt to lump everything a British socialist dislikes about America into something called Straussianism isn’t a coherent ideological position. It’s a prejudice.
The Dish 