No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War
Max Boot 2013-03-18The tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War has occasioned a lot of interesting and anguished appraisals. For those of us who supported the decision to invade, all such occasions present a chance for reflection on what went wrong—and right—and whether our backing for the war effort was misbegotten. Most of those who initially supported the decision to go to war—including our current secretaries of state and defense—long ago disowned their early hawkishness. For my part, I have resisted the urge to “repent,” as critics of the war effort would have it.
I should make clear that, unlike some supporters of the war effort, I would not have backed the invasion if I had known what we now know—that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. There were, to be sure, secondary reasons to act, in particular the desire to implant a democracy in the middle of the Middle East. But, while I am a firm believer in democracy promotion, I don’t believe that its spread justifies exposing our soldiers to danger unless there is an overriding threat to our own security. In the case of Iraq, it was almost universally believed prior to the invasion that such a threat existed: not just the CIA but the Mossad, MI6, and every other allied intelligence agency agreed that Saddam had WMD. Heck, even his own generals believed it—Saddam out-bluffed himself.
That’s why there was so much support in this country for the initial invasion—more support, it is worth recalling, than there was for the Gulf War precipitated by Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait. I feel no shame in being part of the 75 percent of Americans who believed at the beginning that this was a war worth waging. I am equally satisfied to have been part of the minority (roughly 40 percent of those surveyed) who continued to support the war even as it was going badly in the years from 2003 to 2007.
While I can understand why so many jumped off the bandwagon when it started to roll into a ditch, I believe this was fundamentally a short-sighted decision designed to assuage the conscience of erstwhile war-supporters at the cost of doing even greater damage to American interests. Just because we made lots of mistakes in the early going in Iraq doesn’t mean we could have simply left while the country was collapsing into civil war. The result would have looked like Syria today, only the U.S. would have been directly responsible for unleashing all that mayhem. That would have been an immoral and costly mistake.
Having started a war, we had an obligation to see it through to a satisfactory conclusion. Just because the war turned out to be a lot harder and bloodier than anyone could have imagined at the outset doesn’t mean we could have simply abandoned it—any more than we could have abandoned the Civil War when the Union armies did not win a quick victory at First Bull Run or abandoned the Second World War after the setbacks of Pearl Harbor and Kasserine Pass.
Of course, you may retort, it is easy for me to say that—I wasn’t one of the soldiers on the frontlines at risk of death and dismemberment. That’s true, although, unlike many war opponents, I did visit Iraq regularly to see conditions for myself. Admittedly I came as a (relatively) coddled visitor—not as a frontline grunt. But at least it did give me a chance to ask soldiers for their own views of the war. And while some wondered what it was all about, the majority of military personnel I spoke to were against immediate withdrawal because they knew the chaos that would result.
The real proof of military attitudes lay in the fact that, although the army had trouble recruiting during the worst years of the war (which also happened to be boom years back home), retention remained strong, especially in frontline combat units exposed to the most risk. U.S. troops are volunteers; they can vote with their feet if they no longer want to serve; and while some were there involuntarily because of “stop-loss” orders, most remained ready to fight, even if they were fighting primarily for their buddies and their unit rather than for some grand conception of Iraqi democracy.
Was their sacrifice worthwhile? From today’s vantage point, unfortunately, the answer looks increasingly to be “no”—but it did not need to turn out that way. The “surge” of 2007-2008 reduced violence by 90 percent and set Iraq on track to become a functional democracy. Alas, President Obama did not show much commitment to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would have kept American forces there past 2011. The result is that U.S. influence in Iraq has plummeted while Iranian influence has soared. Left to his own devices, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is acting in increasingly sectarian fashion that is alienating the Sunnis and allowing al-Qaeda in Iraq—virtually defeated by 2009—to spring back to life. In short, we have managed to squander many of the gains that U.S. troops fought so hard to achieve during the long, bloody years of war.
But all is not lost yet. Thanks to its oil revenues, Iraq has a robust economy with some of the highest growth rates in the world. Nor is it entirely lost to the West, as Maliki’s willingness to have the CIA train his counter-terrorism forces indicates. There is still a chance, however scant, that Iraq will meet the fondest hopes of invasion supporters who wanted to establish a new democracy. It is just not as big of a chance as it was a couple of years ago.
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No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War
Must-Reads from Magazine
Give Trump Backers What They Want
Noah Rothman 2016-04-25
It is a reflection of the desperation that has taken hold of the right’s anti-Trump forces that a new nonaggression pact between Senator Ted Cruz and Governor John Kasich initially moved some to irrational exuberance. As our Jonathan Tobin observed, the deal between the two campaigns is much more circumspect than early reports suggested. What’s more, it’s not at all clear that the deal’s signatories will abide by its terms or that it’s not already too late to prevent Donald Trump from winning the party’s nomination outright. The least compelling argument against the Cruz-Kasich alliance, though, is the notion that it would somehow be affirming the conspiratorial inclinations of the Trumpian fringe. To that concern, the response should be: so what?
Ahead of the critical March 15 primaries, it was Marco Rubio’s team that demonstrated what true collusion aimed at blocking Donald Trump looked like when they explicitly advised their supporters to back Kasich in Ohio over their own candidate. The Kasich campaign declined to return the favor. “We were going to win in OH without his help, just as he’s going to lose in Florida without ours,” wrote Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols. “At the end of the day, how do you tell your people that are for you to go vote for somebody else?” Governor Kasich added. “I’m not into a stop-Trump as much as I am be-for-Kasich movement.” This leopard’s spots remain frustratingly static.
Asked if his pact, in which Kasich agreed to cede the state of Indiana in exchange for a free hand in New Mexico and Oregon, extends to advising his supporters to back Cruz, Kasich essentially said it did not. “I’ve never told them not to vote for me,” the Ohio governor said. “They ought to vote for me.” It’s one thing to withhold campaign advertising or to signal to supportive outside groups that they should do the same, but these efforts don’t matter much if the candidates are still indicating to their supporters that nothing should change.
The terms of this confused and loose alliance are clearly still being worked out. It would, therefore, serve the public if the political press declined to make too much out of this early and tentative coordination. But to display this kind of circumspection would rob Donald Trump of a preferred narrative – one that he has been employing for weeks and which holds unique appeal to his supporters, in particular. That is the notion that he, and they, have been robbed.
It is the central conceit of the Trump campaign’s pitch to his supporters. He contends that their woeful lots in life are not of their own making. They have been sold out by selfish politicians in Washington, displaced economically by unfair competition from China and cheap labor from Mexico, and marginalized by a culture that values “political correctness” above “telling it like it is.” It only makes sense that Trump would ape the sense of victimization he encourages in his supporters.
Trump has signaled for weeks that the process of securing delegates at the convention is “rigged,” and that his imaginary delegate stores are being raided in places like Georgia, Louisiana, and Colorado. The truth is that the rules of the delegate selection process were written months ago, and all the campaigns agreed to them. Trump has simply been outmaneuvered. As metaphors go, this is an especially apt one. Even as Team Trump tries to correct for their early errors, they continue to behave in a self-defeating manner. Ahead of Delaware’s primary on Tuesday, the Trump campaign’s delegate outreach coordinator was apparently so threatening and heavy-handed that he created antipathy toward Trump among local GOP officials that did not previously exist.
Trump wasn’t a victim then, and he’s not a victim now. It remains to be determined whether or not the Cruz-Kasich pact will yield results for the Stop Trump movement, but the celebrity candidate isn’t waiting for results to feign great grievance. Those in the candidate’s core following who believe themselves to be persecuted would, of course, find this dubious narrative attractive. It is for that reason that some in political media see this maneuver as a fatal one for both Cruz and Kasich.
“‘Cruz and Kasich declare themselves establishment axis in an effort to confirm Trump conspiracy theories,’” observed the columnist Matt Bai. “Doesn’t seem brilliant to me.” “In the meantime, the new Cruz-Kasich-#NeverTrump united front gives Trump the opportunity not just to slam the system as rigged, but to offer the only positive message in the campaign at this moment,” observed the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. Here’s the thing: They were going to believe that with or without a Cruz-Kasich coordination effort.
Trump is right, in a way. The process is rigged; it’s rigged to favor the system’s winners. This is why it is Trump who controls 49 percent of the bound delegates so far despite winning just 38 percent of the popular vote. A movement that believes that 40 percent is a majority, or that they are being robbed out of their due because they don’t understand the process is – and there is no way to put this delicately — paranoid.
This process was designed to facilitate the ascension of a Mitt Romney-type candidate to the nomination in a manner that allowed the nominee to avoid a prolonged primary fight. If Trump had invested the time and capital necessary to create an organization aimed at securing the nomination at the earliest stages of this process, that nomination would have already been his. Even without the architecture of a real campaign, Trump may only just narrowly be prevented from winning the delegates necessary to secure the nomination outright. For this set of circumstances, Donald Trump has only one person to blame. But he, like his supporters, have declined the opportunity to engage in some rather unforgiving introspection.
Only Donald Trump has a pathway to the nomination now prior to a second ballot on the floor of the Cleveland convention. Unless Cruz or Kasich intend to concede the nomination to Trump, they only have one way to force that outcome, and that is to coordinate their efforts. If that engenders in Trump supporters an even more aggravated sense of alienation and victimization, then so be it. Neither Trump nor his supporters are entitled to a particular outcome in this life – they must work for and earn their achievements. Conservatives used to understand that.
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William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
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Mark Steyn
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John Bolton
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Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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William Kristol on COMMENTARY
Please help us keep COMMENTARY strong
William Kristol 2016-04-25
COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been.
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Don’t Protect Terror Sponsors
Michael Rubin 2016-04-25
Over the past week, two big things have happened on the terrorism front. First, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that victims of several Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks could collect money from the Central Bank of Iran. According to CNN:
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in favor of victims of terrorism and their families in a 6-2 split, clearing the way for them to collect nearly $2 billion from the central bank of Iran. The court decided Congress had not exceeded its authority when it passed a law aimed specifically at securing such restitution. “(The law) provides a new standard clarifying that, if Iran owns certain assets, the victims of Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks will be permitted to execute against those assets,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the majority. “Applying laws implementing Congress’ policy judgments, with fidelity to those judgments, is commonplace for the Judiciary.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran, a country whose regime has neither apologized nor shown remorse for the hundreds of Americans who it and its proxies targeted and kill, has reacted with predictable outrage. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for example, denounced the Supreme Court ruling and promised that the United States “would be held accountable.”
At the same time, the Obama administration is proceeding in its efforts to declassify the 28 pages of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Report that reportedly delve deeper into Saudi involvement in the most devastating terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. Make no mistake; that declassification is about 15 years overdue. A bill is now working through Congress that would allow 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for the role of its officials in that day’s horrendous terrorist attacks. To this, law professors Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have penned an op-ed arguing against such measures. They write:
But the bill’s potential for harm extends far beyond bilateral relations with one ally. It would also violate a core principle of international law, and it would jeopardize the effectiveness of American foreign aid and the legitimacy of the United States’ actions in the war on terrorism. A nation’s immunity from lawsuits in the courts of another nation is a fundamental tenet of international law. This tenet is based on the idea that equal sovereigns should not use their courts to sit in judgment of one another. Many nations have tacitly agreed to limit immunity in specified contexts, such as when they engage in certain commercial activities. But apart from those exceptions (or where a binding treaty or Security Council resolution otherwise dictates), international law continues to guarantee immunity, even for alleged egregious crimes. No nation benefits more from this arrangement than the United States. It conducts far more diplomatic, economic and military activities abroad than any other nation. Were the sovereign immunity rule to weaken, the United States would be subject to many more lawsuits in foreign courts than any other nation and would become an attractive and high-profile target for politicized litigation designed to contest its foreign policy.
Bradley and Goldsmith make valid points, but 9/11 was no mere theoretical dispute over foreign policy. This was not Saudi vehicles parking illegally or paying maids below minimum wage. Rather, it was a deliberate attack on U.S. territory and the U.S. economy.
It is true that other countries might respond in kind to the United States, though most respectable countries would have far more to lose than gain from such actions, and the United States can afford to ignore less than respectable countries, think the Zimbabwes, Venezuelas, and North Koreas of the world. At the same time, it is worth considering the opposite: What is the cost of not holding to account those who perpetrated or facilitated an attack in the heart of New York City?
This was a conundrum at the heart of “Sovereignty Solution,” a book co-authored by Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane Lauchengco. They proposed generally that governments should be responsible for their citizens and note that sovereignty is both an honor and a responsibility. When a citizen of a country perpetrates an attack, then that country has a choice: shield its citizen or hold them to account. If a Belgian citizen sought to strike at the United States, Brussels would likely cooperate with the United States to bring that person to justice, even waiving diplomatic immunity if need be. When Iranian or Saudi elements sponsor terrorism, Tehran and Riyadh should have the same choice: Join with the United States to bring the perpetrators to account or shield them. If the latter, then the government of the country should assume responsibility. Sovereignty Solution is, of course, far more complicated but it really has been one of the most insightful and provocative books on statecraft of the decade
In the Supreme Court victory for victims of terrorism and their families over the Islamic Republic of Iran, the court deferred to Congress. Perhaps Congress and, more broadly, the White House should then work more to protect and advocate for American victims of terror rather than for those who shield the terrorists. If a country does not want to risk the consequences of its citizens attacking the United States, then it should damned sure put mechanisms in place to make sure that the money is expends on radicalism isn’t used for that purpose and that it doesn’t distribute diplomatic passports without recognition of the consequence of their recipients engaging in an act of war.
The United States should not treat Saudi Arabia unfairly, but if Saudi Arabia truly did wish to be an ally, it would recognize that it is their responsibility to bring to justice those of its employees or civil servants who contributed materially or in services to that fateful day.
Everyone worth reading avidly reads COMMENTARY. Can you afford not to?
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
Never again miss another issue or article. Not a subscriber yet? Join the intellectual club, today.
Unlock the rest of this article and all other COMMENTARY articles, including our entire archive dating back to 1945, and featuring so many classic, epoch-defining articles by some of the very best minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Hillary Clinton’s Confusion
Noah Rothman 2016-04-25
On Tuesday night, after a series of Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states weigh in on the Democratic primary race, Hillary Clinton will be in Philadelphia. There, following what she expects to be a statewide victory in Pennsylvania, Clinton will take to the stage of the Philadelphia Convention Center to celebrate her victory. The former secretary of state holding her election night rally on the same stage where she will likely accept her party’s presidential nomination in late July is some rather ham-fisted symbolism, but subtlety is lost on her more recalcitrant liberal opponents. The race for the Democratic nomination has been over for some time, but Bernie Sanders’ donors haven’t received the memo. On Tuesday night, the writing on the wall should be clearly legible to all. Then, Clinton can finally do what her allies have said she’s wanted to do for so long: pivot away from a divisive primary process and toward the general election. But when it comes to the former first lady, the gap between stated intentions and observed behaviors is vast. Clinton could have pivoted long ago, and she certainly could now. It seems, however, that the former secretary is not the nimble political animal her husband was, and she continues to struggle to understand the party she is seeking to lead.
It is hard not to laugh at the conundrum in which Hillary Clinton finds herself. She might be the luckiest politician in the United States. In modern times, no one about to receive a major party nomination has been more disliked or mistrusted than Clinton, save for one. The Republican Party’s suicidal impulse appears so strong that they are set to outdo the Democrats by nominating the most unpopular figure to ascend to a major party’s nomination in the modern era. Pity the general election voter who will be asked to ratify the irresponsible choices of the nation’s radicalized primary electorates.
Faced with the untenable choice of either Clinton or Donald Trump, principled small government advocates are forced into an uncomfortable embrace of the lesser of two evils. That is the choice Charles Koch appeared to make in an interview this weekend with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. One of the two billionaire industrialist brothers, who are also prolific contributors to libertarian causes, all but declared his willingness to surrender to Clinton if the GOP nominated Trump.
When asked what he thought about the rhetoric characterizing the GOP race and whether he believed Clinton would make a better commander-in-chief than Trump, Koch was less than committal. “It’s possible,” he said. “We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way.” Surely, Charles Koch did not mean to put everyone in a political bind with his perfectly honest appraisal of the state of play in the 2016 race, but that’s precisely what he did. With this statement, Koch undermined Trump’s already shaky conservative credibility, further exposed the opportunism of a Democratic Party that tried to turn him and his brother into archetypical conservative villains in 2014, and sacrificed the goodwill that Hillary Clinton has sought to develop among Sanders-backing progressives.
Clinton reacted to this note of tepid resignation from a political adversary in the most tasteless way possible. “Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote,” Clinton tweeted. Team Clinton’s calculation here is a transparent one: Even if Koch is just working through the final stage of the Kübler-Ross model of grief, to accept this non-endorsement might prolong the primary process. That calculation says much more about the atavistic, uncompromising socialism that is back in vogue on the left than it says about either Clinton or the Kochs.
Sanders backers are not above grasping at straws, and they might see in Clinton’s comments an admission that he primary process is far from over. They’re wrong; it’s over. Clinton knows it, too. That’s what makes the former secretary’s refusal to adopt even a modestly magnanimous posture so bizarre. She might have easily declined to characterize Koch’s comments as an “endorsement,” which would have only been honest. At best, this was a backhanded compliment. It was Clinton who tortured this statement into a testimonial in her favor only so that she could righteously reject it. Her behavior is a revelatory window into how confused she has become by her own party, and by American politics in general.
The Clintons have watched helplessly over the course of the Obama presidency as the legacy they built for the Democratic Party was systematically dismantled and buried, unloved, by a resurgent progressive wing. The rehabilitation of the Democratic Party that Bill Clinton and his Democratic Leadership Council helped manufacture following the Carter-Mondale eras is today reviled by the left. Clinton spent much of the primary disavowing and criticizing the legacy of her husband, the most popular living former president. This is something she knows she has to do, but it’s not something she wants to do. Nor, frankly, do the Clintons truly see why it is necessary. The spectacle of Bill Clinton being compelled to “almost” apologize for calling the imprudent and maximalist Black Lives Matter movement imprudent and maximalist was a disheartening display. Theirs is a party the Clintons don’t understand anymore, but they know that its partisans must have enemies. So long as they can make sure those enemies remain outside the Democratic tent, they might stave off the fate that has befallen the Republican Party, which is on the precipice of civil war.
This moment was also a window into how Clinton will pivot toward the center as the Democratic nominee. Any nods toward national unity under her leadership will amount to a hollow feint. It is utterly unnatural for a figure so prone to bouts of paranoia, conspiratorial thinking, and clannish insularity to create a broad national coalition behind her candidacy. There will be no national unity under President Hillary Clinton. Nor will there be reconciliation in her administration. The Democratic Party’s need for enemies will not dissipate merely because they have held the White House for a rare three consecutive terms.
If Bill Clinton was, as Joe Klein called him, “The Natural,” Hillary is The Synthetic. Following her unexpectedly delayed coronation in July, Clinton will find a use for high-minded national unity. But its appeal will be in its temporary utility and not its intrinsic value. Competent politicians can disguise their motives so that you wouldn’t notice the difference. Hillary Clinton is not a competent politician.
Everyone worth reading avidly reads COMMENTARY. Can you afford not to?
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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Too Little, Too Late to Coordinate?
Jonathan S. Tobin 2016-04-25
Now they’re coordinating? That’s the question that the majority of Republicans who have been voting as well as hoping for a presidential nominee not named Donald Trump are asking today in response to the news that Ted Cruz and John Kasich have finally decided to coordinate their efforts in the remaining primaries. This will mean that Kasich will shut down his operation in Indiana leaving Cruz free to take on Trump there while Cruz will not try to compete in Oregon and New Mexico in favor of Kasich.
Trump, the target of this scheme, denounced the joint decision by Cruz and Kasich as an act of “desperation,” and for once, he might be right about that. But for now the questions we should be asking about it are, what took them so long and, more importantly, will it work?
One of the main stories of the 2016 Republican nomination race is how the various alternatives to Trump helped sabotage each other. It was clear to some of us as far back as last August that the large field of GOP candidates was competing against each other leaving Trump free to consolidate a plurality of voters who wanted an alternative to the rest. After his impressive wins in New Hampshire and Florida, it was even more apparent that stopping him required the shrinking number of remaining contenders to coordinate their efforts.
But that wasn’t possible. Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio were all competing for roughly the same group of voters and wouldn’t bow to reality until forced to do so. Bush dropped out after South Carolina. Ted Cruz, who thought he had the Christian conservative vote locked up until Trump started beating him in the South as well as the North, was similarly disinclined to work with other candidates. Though Rubio had what seemed like the best chance to beat Trump in Florida, Cruz and Kasich both competed there as well. That ensured a Trump victory. But Cruz and Kasich were not displeased since that forced Rubio out of the race.
That was incredibly shortsighted. Yet both Cruz and Kasich were still operating under the assumption that if they were left alone against Trump, they would win. Yet neither was prepared to accept the fact that neither of them would ever bow out in order to let the other prevail. So they both stayed in and even began expending resources on trashing each other. This was incredibly frustrating to the majority of Republicans who wanted to stop Trump, but both Cruz and Kasich were in business for themselves.
Given the vast differences between the two, this was understandable to some extent. To Cruz and his supporters, Kasich’s mainstream appeal was anathema. For Kasich, Cruz’s hard line Tea Party tactics were equally appalling. But while they were bickering over who should be the alternative to Trump, the celebrity real estate mogul continued to gain ground. By the end of March, it was obvious that the only way to stop Trump was for both Cruz and Kasich to get as many delegates as possible in order to deny the frontrunner a first ballot victory clearing the path to an open convention. The path forward for the non-Trumps was obvious and became more so with each passing week in March and April. But their egos, as well as their differing mindsets, prevented them from agreeing to a simple division of labors that would allow whichever of them had the best shot at stopping Trump in any state to have a free hand.
What changed their minds?
Perhaps it was the Trump landslide in New York that put him back on track for the nomination after Cruz’s win in Wisconsin seemed to make an open convention a more likely scenario. Perhaps, too, it was the way many establishment Republican figures seemed to be acting in the last week as if they were ready to make their peace with Trump. As is always the way with primaries, the notion of Trump’s inevitability is not only causing some politicians to jump on the bandwagon, it’s also influencing some voters to be inclined to back a winner rather than to cast a protest vote.
Faced with another day of Trump victories in Tuesday’s remaining Northeastern primaries — especially in Pennsylvania where both Cruz and Kasich have been active — they had no alternative but to make the informal deal that became known last night.
Is it too late to make a difference?
The answer to that question is probably. After tomorrow, the frontrunner will be in such a strong position that for many Republican officials, the choice won’t be so much Trump or non-Trump as it will be Trump or chaos. Even if he gains the support of only a minority of the unbound delegates yet to declare their allegiance, Trump is going to very close to the 1,237 he needs for a majority and a first ballot win. While a few setbacks in May and June may make it harder for him to get to his goal, the likelihood is that he is so close that it is inevitable that he will get the votes he needs.
Moreover, the coordination between Cruz and Kasich will give Trump another talking point that will help him fire up his disaffected and angry followers. After spending the last two weeks ranting about the Republican nomination system being “rigged” against him, expect him to spend the coming days carrying on about the “collusion” between his opponents.
It doesn’t matter that his claim that he is being cheated is yet another flat out lie. In fact, the system is, if anything, geared to help him, as its object is to enable any frontrunner to consolidate support. He has a higher percentage of delegates than votes, not the other way around. But to Trump’s fans, his sense of grievance and their often irrational resentment against party leaders, including principled conservatives that have fought President Obama tooth and nail for more than seven years, is such that they will buy any falsehood that passes his lips. That’s why he might still be able to beat either Cruz or Kasich even if he is forced into a one-on-one matchup. That’s because although their voters may dislike Trump, many of them might prefer him to either Cruz or Kasich.
But though it is far too little and much too late, the Cruz-Kasich deal shouldn’t be dismissed. If it helps, as it should, Cruz beat Trump in Indiana, it will give new life to the stop Trump movement and raise the odds, if only slightly, of a contested convention. The same is true of California. If the two work together to divide up the state in such a manner as to allow them to win more of the 53 individual congressional districts where the delegates will be allocated, it will also make Trump’s push for 1,237 that much more difficult. The prospect of a wipeout of Congressional Republicans if Trump is matched up with Hillary Clinton is still a factor that may convince more GOP voters to vote strategically in order to to get a contested convention.
The problem with the stop Trump movement is that there has never been a single alternative around which the party could rally. That’s still true, and it may, in the end, lead to Trump’s nomination. But by working with rather than against each other, Cruz and Kasich are at last showing that they have their priorities right. Had they done this a month ago, Trump might be in bigger trouble than he is. But for all of his fake cries of foul play, the belated move at least gives Republicans some small hope that they can prevent their party from being hijacked by a populist con man.
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“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
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Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
Never again miss another issue or article. Not a subscriber yet? Join the intellectual club, today.
Unlock the rest of this article and all other COMMENTARY articles, including our entire archive dating back to 1945, and featuring so many classic, epoch-defining articles by some of the very best minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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