The New Republican: Where do we go from here?

What kinds of compromises should liberalism make? Must advocates of domestic reform and liberty join foces with foreign entities that oppose those things, simply because they see "the Government" - our government - as a common enemy?

Harking back to the days of the Americans for Democratic Action (renamed from the Union for Democratic action) Peter Beinart's very fine article in the December 13, 2004 print issue of The New Republic provides a postmortem for the Kerry candidacy and a sobering assessment of American liberalism's future. Quoting ADA member Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (who attended the seminal 1947 Willard Hotel conference to "save American liberalism"):

Free society and totalitarianism today struggle for the minds and hearts of men. ... If we believe in free society hard enough to keep on fighting for it, we are pledged to a permanent crisis which will test the moral, political and very possibly the military strength of each side. A "permanent" crisis? Well, a generation or two anyway, permanent in one's own lifetime."

Beinart contrasts these words from The Vital Center with the ideology of today's MoveOn: "Like the [soft liberals] of the early cold war, MoveOn sees threats to liberalism only on the right. And thus, it makes common cause with the most deeply illiberal elements on the international left."

He also makes the important point - again drawing from the lessons of the Cold War - that "while in a narrow sense the struggle against totalitarianism may divert resources from domestic causes, it also provides a powerful rationale for a more just society at home. During the early cold war, liberals repeatedly argued that the denial of African American civil rights undermined America's anti-communist efforts in the Third World. This linkage between freedom at home and freedom abroad was particularly important in the debate over civil liberties."

The cold-war-era debate lies at the root of the split between the very different liberalisms of TNR and The Nation: following the 1948 defeat of the leftist (and Communist sympathizer) Henry Wallace, "The New Republic broke with Wallace, its former editor."

Michael J. Totten covers this article, citing a letter published in Andrew Sullivan and advising today's liberals to take a strong stand against terrorism and fascism.

Every conflict involves compromises. In prosecuting the war on terrorism, for example, our Government must sometimes make pacts with such unsavory players as Pakistan, Syria, and even France. And on the home front, we must sometimes strike deals with parties we don't especially care for, in order to obtain a greater benefit to our cause.

Even magazine editors must make such trade-offs. Back in May 2000, Heather A. Findlay, editor-in-chief of Girlfriends, announced to her readers: "In the eyes of some, Girlfriends sold its soul. Last year, we sold advertising space for the first time to a tobacco company ..." Findlay, who had "watched five queer publications go out of business just since January", had to make a difficult decision between a "pure" magazine and one that could pay its bills; she chose the latter. I can't fault her for that.

The New Republic, too, has made some interesting choices in the advertising it hosts. For some months now, they've been hosting an occasional feature called "TNR/ON", administered by one Joan Daly and billed as a "symposium on public policy". (For you non-classicists, "symposium" is a Greco-Latin word meaning "advertising supplement".) Past installments of TNR/ON have featured analyses on "America's Energy Crisis" (brought to you by the Nuclear Energy Institute) and "Securing the Nation's Energy Supply" (courtesy of the American Gas Association).

But by far the most important topic of debate in these forums is Saudi Arabia - sponsored, the magazine drolly informs us, by "The People of Saudi Arabia". And so it happens that you cannot read Peter Beinart's article without flipping past a four-page special on "The Future of the U.S. - Saudi Partnership" ... sponsored by, well, you know who. For good measure, there's also a two-page testament to that same Kingdom's "Ongoing Progress, Enduring Change" on pages 20 and 21.

Now the case of TNR advertising for Saudi Arabia is not like the case of Girlfriends advertising for RJ Reynolds. It is more like Girlfriends carrying an ad for the Family Research Council. In fact, it is worse than that, because the "panel" featured in the Saudis' propaganda piece includes two of TNR's most distinguished editors, Lawrence Kaplan and Leon Wieseltier.

There is something viscerally repulsive about the spectacle of Jewish intellectuals whoring themselves for the Saudi princes. There is something revolting about a liberal, Washington-based magazine playing host to representatives of the same regime that furnished the West with Osama bin Laden and the majority of his psychopathic murderers.

To be sure, Wieseltier poses some tough challenges, both to the Saudi regime and to his fellow liberals: "I think that the President has got it essentially right when he believes that freedom is not just a matter of American morality, but also a matter of American security. ... I warn you that when I hear phrases like 'Islamic liberalism' or 'Islamic democracy,' the adjective makes me nervous, because Islamic liberalism to me sounds like 'Islamic algebra' or 'Islamic physics'. There is no such thing. There is only physics. There is only algebra. There is only democracy."

Even in this vile setting, Wieseltier manages to shine. But of course it is the voice of "realism" that must have the last word: "... that transformation is occurring rather gradually, but that it need occur; and finally, that America's role in this process, like it or not, will be a minimal one."

At the risk of stating the obvious, let me state the obvious.

Wieseltier, Kaplan, Lippman and the others have obviously managed to retain some of their integrity here, as the foregoing Wieseltier quotes (and others) abundantly demonstrate. But it is impossible to know what they did not say, or could not say, or said without being quoted in the "edited transcript" published in the pages of The New Republic. It is similarly impossible to know what effect those Saudi dollars are having on the content of the magazine.

We do know that the Saudi regime is actively involved in a propaganda campaign directed at the West, and specifically at the United States. As reported earlier at Dreams Into Lightning, the Saudi regime has employed a public relations firm called Qorvis - which is now under FBI scrutiny - to burnish its image in the US.

The indispensable Little Green Footballs covered Qorvis back in 2002, here, and here in 2003. And finally, Judith's post at Kesher Talk provides this interesting little detail about one Qorvis contract:

Qorvis' representation agreement that it filed with Ambassador Prince Bandar has an interesting wrinkle. The firm agrees to tell the Saudis about any foreign client that approaches it for representation during the contract period. QC also agrees that for two years following termination of the Arab account, QC "will not accept any engagement with any client that would be deemed adverse to the interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

I don't know, and I don't really care, which PR firm abetted the Saudis in their usurpation of the once hallowed pages of The New Republic. Once, strong liberals might have had in TNR a forum to challenge - rightly or wrongly - some of the Bush administration's more questionable policies, such as its accommodationist stance toward Saudi Arabia. But not now.

I began writing The New Republican because I saw that my favorite liberal magazine, like American liberalism itself, was heading down the wrong track. Now, I fear, that process is irreversible. I've just received a notice in the mail that my subscription to TNR is about to run out; I will let it. The New Republic has nothing more to say to me, and I have nothing more to say to them. This will be the last installment of The New Republican.

"The New Republican" - complete series

The New Republican: Ipse Dixit

The liberal magazine The New Republic has come up with a new reason for voting against Bush: he's not a good conservative.

Well, any port in a storm. Of course, it's not a new observation either. Back in August, a liberal friend e-mailed me an article from the New York Press by William Bryk, titled The Conservative Case Against Bush.

Now The New Republic takes its turn (October 25, 2004 print issue: "Conscientious Objector" by Michael A. George, p. 20.) The tactic is a pretty familiar one: "See, one of THEM doesn't like him either." You give your case more impact (the thinking goes) by bringing out a real live one of whatever group it is you're targeting. If you want to attack Israel, you bring out a real live Jew to condemn the Jewish state (a ploy that too many real live Jews are willing to go along with). And if you want to attack Bush, what better way than to produce a real live conservative who will come out and say ... what?

He'll say that Bush is no conservative.

Well, hell, I coulda told you that.

The New Republic could have told you that, too, and in fact they did. Back in March of 2003, TNR published a magnificent issue on the topic of "Liberalism and American Power" (March 3), which included Lawrence F. Kaplan's piece on p. 21, titled "Bush, closet liberal." Now Robert George discovers that "initiating a war to 'liberate' an entire region far from our shores can hardly be called a conservative cause." (Mr. George might want to review Leon Wieseltier's helpful guide to political debate in the November 1 TNR, where Wieseltier explains, "you do not refute a proposition by putting inverted commas around it." But I digress.)

The conservative case against Bush is fair enough (if a bit familiar, by now, to anyone who's actually been awake for the last couple of years): he's certainly no fiscal conservative; the Patriot Act scarcely qualifies as "small government"; and, oh yes, conservatives don't launch wars of liberation (or "liberation" if you prefer). Well, for the sake of argument, let us agree that Bush stands guilty as charged.

So what does this real live, real conservative do, now that he's realized he cannot vote for Bush? He doesn't say whether he's voting for Kerry, or staying home. "Of course," he adds, "a conservative can still cast a libertarian vote on principle."

This business of voting "on principle" is a fine bit of chutzpah from the magazine that rails, yet again, against the "irresponsible" Ralph Nader on p. 12 of the very same issue (Ryan Lizza, "Sole Influence"). The Nader article is unitntentionally revealing: Lizza writes that "From Moveon.org to the Howard Dean campaign to the liberal blogosphere to Air America radio to new think tanks sprouting up around Washington, D.C., an entire network of exactly the kind of activists that Nader has long praised is suddenly being born. Their singular goal is to defeat Bush." Exactly: they lack a coherent vision, unifying principles, or any positive ideology; their singular goal is "to defeat Bush."

President Bush has succeeded in retaining as much popular support as he has - despite some highly controversial decisions - precisely because he appeals to a wide variety of Americans: traditional conservatives, neoconservatives, centrists, and even liberals. Bush's supporters may differ on a host of less important issues, but they are united, both in principle and in practice, on the things that matter most. His opponents are united only in the fact of their opposition to Bush; so it is inevitable that the single uniting symbol for them is their presidential candidate: that perfect vacuum of a man known as John Kerry.

The New Republican: Columbia Flashback

Are you a fan of the print media? I know I am. I love the internet, but it will never replace the ease, reliability, authority, and permanence of traditional publishing. Just yesterday I lovingly unpacked my 1973 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; it's now sitting on the shelf right above my OED. I expect to use both on a daily basis.

And magazines! If you're a magazine lover, you know what I mean: the only thing harder than schlepping around a lot of old magazines, is throwing them out.

So it was quite a pleasure, last week, to unearth some old copies of The New Republic, some going back ten years. ("CNN Wrecked Television News"? Who knew?) And sitting before me now is the June 3, 2002 print issue, open to Michael Crowley's illuminating article "The Makeover". Back in the summer of 2002, in the heat of primary season, two rivals for the Democratic nomination crossed paths in Columbia, South Carolina - and, for one magic moment, shared the spotlight:

"... As they stand side by side beneath a dreary exit sign, Kerry looms over Edwards by several inches. He also overwhelms his adversary rhetorically. After Edwards delivers some brief and subdued words to the crowd, Kerry whips them up with a furiously ideological stem-winder that makes Edwards grimace as if he were suffering a sudden migraine. Afterward there is much speculation that Edwards was irked at having to share the stage with Kerry, not least because of their striking height difference - a difference Kerry's backers love to dwell on.

It's a small, perhaps petty, triumph. But these days the Kerry camp will take whatever it can get. For, in a sense, Kerry is the anti-Edwards. Where Edwards has become the darling of the national media, Kerry can't seem to catch a break. His press clippings record 18 years of journalistic wisecracks about his ego, his looks, and his self-promotion."

Crowley explains that the goal of Kerry's makeover is to dispel his image as an aloof, narcissistic aristocrat. The candidate himself allows that "I haven't really reached out to or met a lot of people in the press until the last couple of years." But his very aggressiveness highlights "a degree of personal manifest destiny and self-love rare even among politicians. Indeed, his biography suggests an almost liofelong grooming for power."

Crowley notes that Kerry is aware of his image problem - but, as with everything else about himself, a little too aware of it, and we get the impression he's trying just a little too hard to prove he's a regular guy. As an unnamed Democratic activist says, "It's the rebranding of John Kerry ... that arrogant jerk you've heard so much about is really just a regular guy."

Ah, but John Forbes Kerry has a secret weapon. And what, you ask, might that be? I'll give you a hint: It starts with a V and ends with "nam."

When I asked Kerry whether he worries that Republicans might find a way to use that old footage of Michael Dukakis riding absurdly in a tank against him, he grew defiant. "If they want to put up an image of Mike Dukakis in a tank," Kerry replied, his eyes narrowing, "I'll put up an image of me on a boat in Vietnam."

And Vietnam isn't only an answer to Kerry's ideological vulnerabilities; it's an answer to his characterological ones as well: Out-of-touch, selfish rich kids didn't risk their lives in the jungles of Vietnam. ...

Indeed.

The New Republican: Mirror Image

Continuing its valiant attempt to portray the Democratic party as viable and relevant, The New Republic offers us a glimpse inside the Democratic National Convention in the August 2 and August 9, 2004, print issues.

In the August 2 issue (TRB, p. 6), Peter Beinart offers his thoughts in advance of the Democratic and Republican conventions. "The two parties' conclaves are shaping up as mirror images of one another", he writes. Citing the lineup of moderate and even liberal Republicans slated to speak in New York (John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Rod Paige, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Zell Miller - oh, wait, he isn't even a Republican), Beinart explains that this is evidence of the GOP's "ideological insecurity".

This is quite interesting, because it was Beinart who told us just two weeks earlier that John Kerry displayed "true self-confidence" by choosing the sharply contrasting Edwards for a runningmate. (Edwards, to whom the party's left wing, "represented by groups like MoveOn.org", "gave their hearts" once bereft of Howard Dean.)

But if Beinart can manage a wry sneer at the Republican convention, he can't conceal his outright worry over the prospect of this year's Democratic event. "If Bush Republicans lack ideological self-confidence, the Kerry Democrats may have too much of it," he says uneasily of a "shockingly realistic picture of what the Democratic Party really is. And that means liberalism is on tap virtually every night."

"I doubt the Kerry campaign tried to stock the podium with liberals. They simply chose the people in the party with mass appeal, great promise, or both. ... And, unsurprisingly, it produced a convention roster that looks - and sounds - like the Democratic Party." That, Beinart says, is the problem: he contrasts this year's convention with earlier events in which "each [speaker] represented the party not as it was, but as it might have been had liberal interest groups not exercised such control over the nominating process."

If Peter Beinart wrote in blogspeak, he'd say: "What's up with all these f***ing moonbats?" Or something like that.

The DNC will present an "admirably honest" picture of today's Democrats. "But just because it's honest doesn't make it wise." So Beinart says of the Democratic Party; but looking at the GOP, Beinart discerns a left-of-Republican-center lineup that can only mean "a party unwilling to reveal its true face to the nation." So which is it, Peter?

What really worries the Democrats is that the upcoming Republican convention just might be the "true face" of the Republican Party: one that values principled individuals and inclusive organizations; one that sees tolerance and responsibility not as opposing, but as complementary; one in which unity is born of diversity. This is why so many former Democrats are now Republicans.

Are the two conventions - and by extension, the two parties - really "mirror images" of one another? In some ways, yes: the Republicans have become the party of responsible change, progress, and human rights; while the Democrats have become the reactionary, anti-democratic party, now reduced to defending third-rate dictators.

But the symmetry is not complete. Many of the positive changes that liberals of the last generation fought for have become part of the mainstream. Other battles, like gay rights, have yet to be won, but now enjoy support within the Republican party, where conversation on such issues is most meaningful. What do the Democrats have left to offer? Very little - only the rhetoric of dissatisfaction.

The New Republican: "Edwards for Vice-President!" - TNR

Hey, guys, whatever works.

Unable to come up with a single solid reason for supporting John Kerry as a candidate for President, the editors of The New Republic have taken to extolling the virtues of a putative Vice President Edwards. Peter Beinart (July 19, 2004 print issue, p. 6) opines that Kerry's choice of Edwards shows "a trait rare among politicians: true self-confidence". In passing over lesser-known candidates, Kerry shows courage: "If Gephardt and Vilsack would have obscured Kerry's deficiencies, Edwards exposes them: He's a better speaker than Kerry; he's got a more compelling life story; he has a more powerful critique of the president. Unlike Gephardt, he clearly would use the vice presidency as a stepping stone. Unlike Vilsack, he enjoys an independent base in the party."

Edwards is a better speaker than Kerry ... hmmm, that's not saying much. Heck, Kerry is a better speaker than GWB, but Bush is funnier. Of course, maybe it's time someone took the spotlight off Kerry's own "compelling life story", especially as we find out that more and more of it is just that - a story.

But Beinart has to admit that Kerry's "confident" choice was really born of necessity: every poll indicated that Edwards as a running-mate represented Kerry's ONLY hope of launching a viable opposition to the incumbent George W. Bush. So in a sense, the Democratic Party is running Kerry and Kerry is running Edwards. Hence, "it is Kerry who is shifting his message in response to Edwards". This, according to Beinart, is further evidence of Kerry's invaluable "flexibility".

But the fact remains that the Democrats picked Kerry, not Edwards, to represent them in the contest for the highest office in the land; and in the coming general election, it is Kerry, not Edwards, whom the American electorate will be weighing against President Bush. The picture Beinart gives us isn't one of a strong yet broad-minded candidate who prides himself on an inclusive decision-making style; rather, it's one of a cynical attempt by a desperate Democratic Party to wrest political power away from its ever-more-restless rabble. As the gap between the DNC intelligentsia and the DU mob grows wider, the relevance of a Kerry-Edwards ticket will dwindle. A great vice-presidential candidate does not necessarily create a great presidential candidate - or a successful one.

Beinart ends with the curious claim that Bush's "vision of national security didn't change, even after September 11". Huh? That must be why all the political commentators have noted GWB's dramatic shift away from isolationist policy. As Big Pharaoh wrote, "I don't care about the past. Bush was born on September 11, 2001."

The New Republican: TNR Discovers Sudan

"Do something," the editors implore in the July 8/12 issue, referring to the Sudan crisis.

Well, some of us have been. I've just gone through all my back copies of TNR since April, and it appears the Sudan crisis has only just popped up on the magazine's radar. The editorial criricizes the Bush administration's alleged passivity during the past year, but does not cite any instances of TNR's voice being raised in outrage during that period.

The piece admits that "in recent weeks, the Bush administration has taken modest steps in the right direction," which may account for the editorial's timing. TNR has to say something, fast, before Bush steals the show altogether.

The editorial offers a number of strategies that might help: "To make sanctions effective, the United States should coordinate with its European allies" - hope springs eternal - "the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank." And while our own combat strength is fully committed elsewhere, "logistical and airlift support" might encourage some of those other nations to come on board with peacekeeping troops. (Well, it can't hurt to ask.)

The magazine suggests that a transfer of "even a fraction of the 2,000 American troops currently stationed in nearby Djibouti" could have a "dramatic psychological impact". And shortly after a gratuitous suggestion that "few in the Bush administration have ever shown much enthusiasm for using the US military to save African lives," the editors remember that "some 200 American ground troops helped end the violence in Liberia last summer."

"If President Bush wants to show the world that his moral rhetoric was sincere in Iraq, he now has his chance, in Sudan." I couldn't agree more. It's nice to know that The New Republic is finally catching up with President Bush.