Lewis Lapham's Mad World

Lapham's Mad World

Newsweek's Howard Fineman, the magazine's political beat reporter, isn't obnoxiously ideological. There's little doubt that he favors Democrats, but far more important to this pedestrian journalist is the thrill of elections and internecine Beltway squabbles. A scoop or correct prediction?not to mention more television appearances?trumps the implications of a turnover in a state's legislative makeup any day. Unlike many of his colleagues, I doubt Fineman gets into a lather about SUVs, "hate crimes," Kofi Annan's nonexistent backbone or President Bush's long-ago dealings with Harken Energy.

Currently, Fineman's immersed in the 2004 presidential election. In a Nov. 27 MSNBC website dispatch, he handicapped the potential challengers to Bush and came up with this remarkable conclusion: it's possible the President, despite his current high approval ratings, could lose the White House a bit less than two years from now. As usual, his article is pockmarked with cliches explaining why so many men lust for the Democratic nomination. He writes: "Democrats are eager to run against [Bush] in 2004. Why? Because they know something his father learned, and that the current President Bush shouldn't forget: A year is a lifetime in the turbulent world of politics. He's aced his exams so far?exceeding expectations that I always knew the Washington Establishment had set too low. But now comes the hard part."

Next comes the litany of landmines that will determine whether Bush is reelected: Iraq, the economy, further terrorist attacks in the United States and a Republican-controlled Congress that apes Newt Gingrich's ill-fated agenda in the mid-90s. Thanks for the tip, Howard. Obviously Bush is cognizant of his father's snoozy campaign against Bill Clinton in '92?he was there, buddy?and knows an American disaster abroad or another recession will probably send him back to Texas.

But what Fineman and other reporters refuse to acknowledge is that the political landscape doesn't remotely resemble that of a decade ago. The NYC/DC massacre on Sept. 11, 2001, was nothing short of this century's Kristalnacht. Mixed in with the exponential rise of anti-Semitism both domestically and abroad is the new possibility of a war waged against the U.S. by religious fanatics that is unlikely to abate for at least a decade. It's the opposite of the Cold War's conclusion; whereas the Soviet Union's collapse was a momentous victory for democracy and changed much of the world, today's unprecedented terrorism war won't stop with the inevitable overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

What happens in Iran is just as consequential in the Mideast, and Saudi Arabia's day of reckoning, once that cabal of double-crossing despots has exhausted its usefulness, will arrive in due time. "Regime change" is a phrase the administration has expediently backed away from in recent months, but the Saudis will have to cooperate with Bush unless they develop a taste for oil on their cornflakes each morning.

Fineman's superficial sketches of presidential aspirants John Kerry (recipient of Joe Klein's requisite imprimatur in the Dec. 2 New Yorker), Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean, Joe Biden and John Edwards aren't really objectionable. (Although tort-lawyer Edwards is an interesting case: he may be forced to run for president rather than face a difficult Senate reelection campaign in North Carolina.) Read the Newsweek correspondent's cover story three months from now and he'll probably present a completely different scenario; it's not as if readers will recall what he wrote four weeks before Christmas this year. In fact, it's unlikely Fineman himself will be remembered in three decades.

So if Fineman's report?and I don't mean to imply he's the only hack reporter on the campaign trail; dig up a snapshot of John McCain's 2000 "Straight Talk Express" and you'll see his equally head-in-the-sand colleagues?is harmless, you can't say the same for the Big Thinkers who share their wisdom in any number of periodicals.

Consider Lewis H. Lapham, editor of the once-respected but now musty Harper's. This effete Manhattan creature is an example of the left-wing bias in the media that is currently being debunked by pundits who just can't fathom Bush's popularity or the Democrats' drubbing in the midterm elections last month. In Lapham's December "Notebook," he castigated the Democrats who approved the President's war resolution.

He writes: "The sergeants-at-arms didn't take the trouble to dress up the occasion with a slaughter of sacrificial goats or the presentation of a bull to Apollo, but the subtext of the vote could be understood as a submissive prayer: Our president is a Great General; he will blast Saddam Hussein and rescue us from doom. To achieve this extraordinary mission he needs extraordinary powers, so extraordinary that they don't exist in law. The barbarians are at the gates, but our general is all-knowing, and he sees what we cannot. Great is Caesar; God must be with him."

I swear that this actually appeared in Harper's and not The Harvard Crimson.

Further exhibiting his delusions, the sort that would send a less well-dressed man to the loony bin, Lapham continued: "War was never easy and not to be lightly undertaken, but catastrophe loomed on both the far and near horizons, and who could doubt that Saddam must be destroyed? Not Citigroup or ExxonMobil; not the New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News or USA Today."

But Lapham's a man of the people, and he didn't come upon the crux of this absurd essay by merely pecking at his word processor, while sipping an aged scotch or bourbon, in complete isolation. Echoing the nitwits who couldn't believe that Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan won the presidency because no one they knew voted for them, Lapham spoke with a number of people about the coming confrontation in Iraq. Surprise! The pollsters and voters were all wrong!

"[I]n New York during the months of September and October I could find little trace or sign of the militant spirit presumably eager to pat the dog of war. Not once in six weeks did I come across anybody who thought that the President had made a coherent argument in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Whether at a lunch with film producers in Greenwich Village or at dinner among investment bankers overlooking Central Park, the commentary on the President's repeated attempts at explanation invariably descended into sarcasm."

Have no fear, however, for Lapham points out that he consulted citizens in California, Connecticut, Virginia and Oregon during his travels and everyone agreed with the learned editor that Bush is, as one Canadian official recently said, a "moron." This surprised Lapham, that people outside his circle of acquaintances could be so enlightened. After all, he writes, "Given my long confinement in [Manhattan's] spheres of literary influence, I don't know many people who admire President Bush or who feel anything but loathing for the reactionary scholars who teach him lessons in geography. In New York I expect to hear Bush compared to Little Lord Fauntleroy or Bernie Ebbers, and I take it for granted that nearly everybody else in the conversation shares my own low regard for the corporate-management theory that informs the making of American foreign policy."

Two "voices in the wilderness"?probably from San Francisco or Portland?made a particular impression on the man who dines with investment bankers overlooking Central Park. The first said: "Why must the security of every other nation in the world be subordinated to the comfort of the United States." Why, indeed? Never mind that 3000 Americans were slaughtered 15 months ago, or that the DC metro region was paralyzed by a deranged pair of Al Qaeda sympathizers, but where is the evidence that the "security" of other countries is being compromised by America's military action? Afghanistan, for example, has yet to stabilize, but can anyone say, in a sober state of mind, that the Taliban's removal was a bad thing?

Perhaps Lapham's "voice" belonged to Rep. Barbara Lee.

The second comment is more troublesome: "If Bush means what he says about a war on terrorism, why doesn't he begin by disarming the Arab and Israeli terrorists in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip?" If the inclusion of the word "Arab" were omitted, one might believe that Lapham had broken bread with Pat Buchanan or Alex Cockburn.

Traitors

Hard to believe, but the Democratic dominoes keep falling as the party, and its media enablers, remains entrenched in a late-90s time warp. Judging from Al Gore's comments on his never-ending book tour and Paul Krugman's New York Times columns last week, Sen. Tom Daschle looks perfectly sane in comparison.

Let's start with Krugman, the Princeton professor who moonlights for Howell Raines at the Times. This is not a man to trifle with: no less an authority than Nicholas Confessore, writing in December's Washington Monthly, that bastion of exquisite nonpartisanship, dubs Krugman "the most important political columnist in America." The legions of Thomas Friedman groupies must've gasped upon seeing Confessore?who also writes for the troubled American Prospect?had chosen Krugman as the columnist who "is essential reading for the Age of Bush," but there you have it.

On Nov. 26, Krugman, an economist, raged, raged against the dying of the Democratic stranglehold on American politics. He wrote: "Last week the Bush administration announced new rules that would effectively scrap 'new source review,' a crucial component of our current system of air pollution control. This action, which not incidentally will be worth billions to some major campaign contributors, comes as no surprise to anyone who pays attention to which way the wind is blowing (from west to east, mainly?that is, states that vote Democratic are conveniently downwind).

"But this isn't just a policy change, it's an omen. I hope I'm wrong, but it's likely that last week's announcement marks the beginning of a new era of environmental degradation."

Goodness. I wonder what Krugman will offer next week when he breaks out the tarot cards and divines another apocalyptic decision from the Bush administration. I fear eliminating the double-tax on dividends would result in the discovery of Krugman's body in the bowels of Princeton's Firestone Library.

Three days later, the Times' leading conspiracist joined Gore in his revival of Hillary Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. The former vice president, who voted for the first President Bush's Gulf War but now finds action against Saddam Hussein reckless, gave an interview to The New York Observer in which he said there was a "fifth column" in the media's ranks. I'll get to Gore's wacky analysis?his equivalent of Richard Nixon's '62 press conference after losing California's gubernatorial contest?but first to Krugman.

He wrote, in reaction to the Observer's Josh Benson's career-advancing scoop: "This week Al Gore said the obvious. 'The media is kind of weird these days on politics... and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking [odd words coming from Gore], part and parcel of the Republican Party.'

"The reaction from most journalists in the 'liberal media' was embarrassed silence. I don't quite understand why, but there are some things that you're not supposed to say, precisely because they're so clearly true.

"The political agenda of Fox News, to take the most important example, is hardly obscure. Roger Ailes, the network's chairman, has been advising the Bush administration."

Krugman goes on, and on, with an ominous prediction of how media conglomeration is a threat to democracy, discounting the Internet, bemoaning the declining "influence of print news" [a debatable point] and wailing that now Americans "get [their] news from AOLTimeWarnerGeneralElectricDisneyWestinghouseNewsCorp."

Krugman's paranoia is contradicted, in some measure, by an article in Monday's New York Times. Jim Rutenberg writes: "For decades, public interest advocates have successfully argued for stringent limits on the number of newspapers, radio stations and television outlets that a company can own.

"They have summoned images of Citizen Kane, or worse, Big Brother, warning that without strict regulation a few powerful corporations could take control of political discourse while homogenizing entertainment and defanging news. But the advocates are now facing an issue that is much more complicated because despite consolidation, media choices have expanded exponentially through technology. Now the typical American can watch Britain's BBC News, among others, on television and choose from tens of thousands of news Web sites, from Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, to The Times of India, based in New Delhi. As a result, federal regulators are questioning whether fears of corporate media domination have become obsolete."

But I'll stop here to make an indisputable point: Paul Krugman is a liar.

Roger Ailes, whose conservative Fox News hardly carries the combined influence in Washington of CBS, NBC, ABC, the Times and Washington Post, has not "been advising the Bush administration." As was widely reported, in reaction to Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, Ailes wrote a letter to Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. End of story. You can debate whether that was a prudent decision or not, but unless Krugman can provide evidence to the contrary, which he doesn't, Bush doesn't consult Ailes.

Which brings us to Krugman's soul brother Al Gore. I agree with New Hampshire's Sen.-Elect John Sununu that the man of 18 disguises won't run for president in 2004. Speaking on the Nov. 23 broadcast of Capital Gang, Sununu said: "Gore is not going to run for president in 2004, because he'll only have one more chance to run for president, and his choice is going to be to run in 2008. What he's doing is consolidating liberal interest groups, those that have a strong influence in the primary process, reinforcing his credentials. He's against extending the tax cuts, making them permanent. He's trying to oppose the president and his initiatives in Iraq. He's...taking positions for nationalized health care. So he's consolidating that base. He'll make a decision that he's not going to run. But at the same time, in consolidating the base, remain a player in the run-up to 2008, and even remain a player in the selection of the nominee for 2004."

Sununu's analysis makes sense: Gore, with all his bombast, is clearly raising his profile, but his extreme left-wing proposals make a rematch against Bush very difficult. More likely he's gambling that Kerry, Edwards or Lieberman will be a sacrificial lamb in two years, and that the second Bush term will be so conservative that his message will be given more credibility.

Gore's garbled fantasy that a "fifth column" has infiltrated the media in the form of Fox News, The Washington Times and Rush Limbaugh, who supposedly take marching orders from the Republican National Committee, has alienated even some of his most fervent fundraisers and supporters from the 2000 campaign. It's one thing to identify conservative commentators, but quite another to accuse them of treason, espionage and subversive acts against the government, which he presumably knows is the essence of a "fifth column."

The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman, while making no prediction whether Gore will run in 2004, summed up his quandary if he does. He writes: "Watching Al Gore make his re-entry into the public arena after nearly two years out of the public spotlight, I can say with confidence there is a substantial group of people who want him to run for president again in 2004. They're called Republicans.

"Mr. Gore says he hasn't made up his mind whether to try again. But his pronouncements already have the calculated, prefabricated quality that distinguishes campaign rhetoric from normal human speech.

"When he says, 'I think there is virtue in just taking an unvarnished position as to what the best solution may be, and let the chips fall where they may,' he brings to mind Richard Nixon walking on the beach in a suit and wingtips. How long, you have to wonder, did Mr. Gore spend coming up with that formulation? He can no more be unscripted and spontaneous in a political setting than Nixon could walk around in public shirtless and barefoot."

So who's the brains behind Gore's latest caper? I smell either consultant Chris Lehane or his longtime confidante Martin Peretz, the minority owner of The New Republic who still dreams of a job in a Gore administration. Rotsa ruck, Marty.

Casinos II

On Nov. 25 I contributed a short op-ed piece to The Wall Street Journal that summarized my disgust with Mayor Mike Bloomberg's prissy refusal even to consider legalized gambling?casinos, slots, the whole shebang?in New York City. Last Friday, Aaron M. Bernstein, of Port Washington, wrote the following letter to the Journal: "[Smith's proposal] that gambling be legalized in Manhattan is not really as radical a change as one might think. After all, it is already legal to play Lotto in Manhattan and that certainly is a form of gambling. Adding slot machines and casinos would be pretty much the same as a consumer-products company adding a product line extension." Applesauce.

The main benefit of a Las Vegas-style gambling setup in Manhattan is the tourism it would attract. Yes, a small percentage of customers would be hardcore gamblers, but the majority would come for the entertainment. You can envision a couple (or better yet for the tourist industry, an overseas group tour) settling down in a casino for three or four hours, winning or losing a couple of hundred bucks and then retiring to a nearby hotel. This clientele could reasonably be expected to frequent local restaurants, Broadway shows, retail outlets and sports events, which could dramatically improve the city's perilous economic condition. I don't think the same can be said by the locals who buy Lotto tickets at a bodega and then go home to cook dinner.

Instead, Bloomberg is set to impose a punitive 18.5 percent property tax in the city, lobby Gov. Pataki for a revival of the penny-wise, pound-foolish commuter tax, tolls on East River bridges, an MTA fare increase, all the while keeping the city's bloated bureaucracy in place. And this is a man who made his fortune as an entrepreneur.

It's true that Bloomberg defeated Democrat Mark Green by a tragic fluke?the endorsement of St. Rudy Giuliani in a general election marred by 9/11 put him over the top?and it's likely he never expected to win. Just another Golisano-like vanity campaign. But the man is now mayor, and it's not too much to expect him to put into practice his skills as a businessman that he campaigned on.

Unless Mayor Mike is visited by the ghost of David Dinkins, the recovery of New York City's economy will be jeopardized by his hasty and ill-advised reaction to the budget shortfall.