Not Another Best-of-the-Year List
D. G. Myers 2011-12-08The annual lists of the Year’s Best Books are a rite of literary journalism — a vacuous rite, if you ask me, by which critics make themselves the shills of the publishing trade. (Not that I don’t participate as eagerly as anyone else!)
’Tis the season, too, for shopping guides. COMMENTARY herewith offers a different kind of shopping guide. COMMENTARY writers and friends of the magazine were asked to recommend a novel for holiday buying or reading — their personal favorite, their personal secret. It’s an eclectic list (I’ve only read five of the titles myself), but every book on the list is something you will want to hunt down as quickly as possible. Supplies are going fast! Remember: there are only 17 shopping days left until Christmas! Here is a good place to start your wish list for that hard-to-please reader in your family or your bed!
The books are arranged alphabetically by author, with the recommender’s name in bold afterwards, followed by his or her comments.
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008). Matthew Ackerman, Middle East Analyst for The David Project and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
Enlightening take on modern India. Great anti-hero narrator with a superb voice. Man Booker prize winner.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1951). Omri Ceren, author of Mere Rhetoric and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
A briskly written but sweepingly comprehensive survey of the constitutive vagaries in the human condition: the ebb and flow of empire, the ever-present specter of civilizational decline, the indeterminacy of social progress, and — despite these fundamental challenges — the ability of carefully crafted institutions, designed with careful attention to human imperfection, to preserve knowledge and transcend history. Also the series has spaceships and eventually robots, and is one of the most entertaining reads in existence.
John Bellairs, The Face in the Frost (1969). Michael Weingrad, director of the Jewish Studies program at Portland State University and author of “Why There Is No Jewish Narnia”:
I have a soft spot for this gothic-comic tale of two not-terribly-powerful wizards and the lurking menace they must face. It’s no Lord of the Rings, but it is a confection of horror and whimsy perfect for a fireside evening.
Romain Gary, The Life Before Us (1975), trans. Ralph Manheim (1978). Erika Dreifus, author of Quiet Americans:
I can’t say anything about the translations into English, but this is quite likely the funniest sad novel I’ve read, in any language. At the novel’s core: the relationship between its first-person narrator — a young boy of Arab descent called Momo — and the elderly Jewish ex-prostitute (also an Auschwitz survivor) who is responsible for his care. I’d read nothing like it before it was assigned in a class 20-plus years ago, and I’ve read nothing like it since.
William Gay, Twilight (2006). William Giraldi, author of Busy Monsters:
Gay had the title before a Mormon housewife filched it for her prudish vampires. Owing much to Faulkner, O’Connor, and McCarthy at his bloodiest, Gay’s gorgeously wrought novel is a human-horror story so depraved it will remind you why you’re afraid of the dark.
Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2005). Seth Mandel, Assistant Editor of COMMENTARY:
As we mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union while Russians are protesting in the streets of Moscow by the thousands to call for free and fair elections, Grushin’s first novel has a new relevance. Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov, the title character, gave up a life as a talented underground artist for the mindless comfort of an apparatchik’s career, the salary it comes with, and the stability of having a family with his beautiful wife. But the plot takes place as Gorbachev begins unintentionally deconstructing the rigid society Sukhanov gave up his dreams for, his family emotionally and physically abandons him, and he is haunted near to the point of madness by his past, as it comes rushing back in the form of vivid daydreams and the excruciating sense of nostalgia and regret that he can no longer hide from.
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005). Linda Chavez, author of Unlikely Conservative and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
Haunting and touching in equal measure. As in Remains of the Day, Ishiguro once again creates characters who live in a world not of their making, but who are forced by circumstance to make choices that reveal the complexity of the contemporary moral landscape. In this case, Ishiguro places his story in a not-too-distant future in which medical science has made it possible to prolong life indefinitely for some, but at the cost of devaluing it for the unfortunate others upon whom the scheme rests. The prose is sparing but packs an emotional wallop uncommon in today’s fiction.
Dave Kattenburg, Foxy Lady: Truth, Memory and the Death of Western Yachtsmen in Democratic Kampuchea (2011). Bethany Mandel, Social Media Associate for COMMENTARY:
It’s a book about nine Westerners who stumbled into Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era, and who met an untimely death alongside thousands of Cambodians in the main torture prison. The story follows the author’s journey through four continents as he uncovers the story of the men who died and watches the trial of the man who ran the prison. There’s plenty of books out there that tell the story of Cambodians in the Khmer Rouge time, but this is a relatable story of people who accidentally became part of history in a tragic way.
James Kirkwood, There Must Be a Pony! (1960). John Steele Gordon, author of An Empire of Wealth and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
Kirkwood was the son of silent movie stars Lila Lee and James Kirkwood, Sr., and the novel is a more or less thinly veiled memoir. It is often very funny and sometimes achingly sad. It isn’t easy growing up the son of famous people, who always tend to be self-absorbed, especially if their careers are on the wane. Kirkwood wrote several other novels worth reading including Good Times/Bad Times and P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as the co-author of the book of A Chorus Line.
A. M. Klein, The Second Scroll (1951). Ruth R. Wisse, author of The Modern Jewish Canon and Jews and Power:
In 1949 the Canadian poet A.M. Klein went on a fact-finding mission to see what was left of the Jews in Europe, Morocco, and Palestine. The Second Scroll, his only published novel, is a fictional account of such a journey, cast as a modernist epic in a high literary style to transmit the magnitude of the Jewish renewal. We were not present when Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, but Klein feels he was there during an exodus and ingathering of no less consequence. This book is spiritual-intellectual red meat for readers who may have tired of their diets of minimalism, irony, and polymorphous perversity.
György Konrád, The Case Worker (1969), trans. Paul Aston (1974). Patrick Kurp, author of Anecdotal Evidence:
I still remember Irving Howe’s review in the Times. I reread Konrád every few years, including earlier this year. I don’t know a better novel about children, disability, madness, the animal in man. Gorgeously written, even in translation.
Janet Lewis, The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941). D. G. Myers, author of The Elephants Teach and LITERARY COMMENTARY:
In the 16th-century French Pyrenees, a husband returns after an eight-year absence much changed. His wife loves him with joyful passion until she begins to suspect that he is an imposter, and turns against him. A tragedy that could not end otherwise than it does, Lewis’s novel shows that there are some human desires that are stronger than erotic passion — and among them is the desire to remain faithful. (A fuller account is here.)
Candia McWilliam, What to Look For in Winter (2010). Sam Schulman, a contributor to COMMENTARY:
A 53-year-old Scottish novelist begins to lose her sight through blepharospasm — being unable to open one’s eyelids. With three children, all with different last names, of two fathers, and a handful of novels — her presiding genius is Sybille Bedford — she has lived through writing, and reading. Now she can only read books on tape, and she dictates this memoir:
I am six foot tall and afraid of small people.
I am a Scot.
I am an alcoholic.
There is nothing wrong with my eyes.
I am blind.
I cannot lose my temper though I am being helped to. . . .
I exude marriedness and I am alone.Those are her compass bearings. Here is a typical sentence, describing the contents of her mother’s workbasket: “The pinking shears were so heavy and specific that they lived in a holster in the sewing chest with the button box, the cotton reels and the Kwik-unpik, a natty hook for the slashing open of stitches mainly to ‘let things down,’ or to ‘let things out,’ terms perhaps now unknown outwith the psychotherapeutic context.” One of the great books.
George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (2011). Jonathan S. Tobin, Senior Online Editor of COMMENTARY:
The latest installment in the brilliant fantasy series that inspired HBO’s Game of Thrones. But these novels are not what you’d expect from the genre since they’re beautifully written and filled with fascinating, complex characters.
Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (2002). Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
A Catholic priest who shares my offbeat sense of humor recommended Lamb to me a few Christmases back when we were both lecturing at an army base around the holidays. With tongue-in-cheek, Lamb explores the childhood of Jesus Christ through the eyes of childhood pal Biff. The story is wickedly funny, but also respectful. After a run-in with the Romans in Galilee, Biff and Jesus (or Joshua as he was known) set out on an epic adventure to track down the Three Magi — all adherents of Eastern religions. Their journey takes them to Afghanistan, China, and India, where their interactions not only illuminate Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism — but also answer such age-old questions such as why Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas.
Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country (1948). Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
Because it’s a book of unusual power, deeply moving and at times lyrical, with vivid characters. Because a great novel emerged out of a great (and real) tragedy and injustice, apartheid in South Africa. And because it reminds us that there is enough hating already in our lands and that the dawn will come, as it has come for a thousand centuries.
Jack Pendarvis, Awesome (2008). Mark Athitakis, author of American Fiction Notes:
A book of more recent vintage, which didn’t get a fair shake since its publisher essentially collapsed when it came out. It’s a riff on tall tales that satirizes modern-day narcissism.
Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire (1998). Joseph Epstein, author of Gossip and Fabulous Small Jews:
An historical novel about the Spartans at Thermopylae that is brilliantly written, richly detailed, and, friends who are classical scholars tell me, has historical accuracy.
Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside (1972). Andrew Fox, author of The Good Humor Man:
Silverberg offers telepathy as a metaphor for any tremendous gift or personal ability which distorts all the other aspects of a person’s selfhood, or causes his full personhood to atrophy. David Selig, Silverberg’s protagonist, who is slowly losing his ability to read other people’s minds, an ability he has relied upon his entire life to the virtual exclusion of any other talent, is a science fictional Bobby Fischer, a prodigy whose extraordinary ability in one narrow realm has benighted the lives of those closest to him and helped twist David into a despicable human being. David’s slow, painful coming to terms with the approaching death of the only thing which has ever made him special stands, along with Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, as one of science fiction’s finest achievements in the portrayal of loss and bereavement.
Honor Tracy, The Straight and Narrow Path (1956). Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
A cruelly, wildly funny tale of Irish village life told from the point of view of an innocent visitor who wants to be charmed by the comprehensive inefficiencies of the insular, alien culture into which he has thrust himself, but finally ends up longing to exterminate all the brutes. Though she is now remembered (if at all) as a “humorist,” Tracy’s wit was far sharper and more penetrating than that bland word would suggest, and The Straight and Narrow Path, her second and best novel, is one of the smartest portrayals of cross-cultural confusion ever to see print.
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (2011). Rick Richman, author of Jewish Current Issues and a contributor to COMMENTARY:
A book about an IRS Regional Examination Center and its trainee, “David Foster Wallace,” who goes through boredom-survival training to cope with the endlessly tedious work. The Pale King is a meditation on overcoming the apparent pointlessness of life, by a person tragically unable to survive it even at the pinnacle of his success as the most extraordinary writer of his generation. (A fuller account is here.)
COMMENTARY readers are encouraged to add their own quirky and idiosyncratic recommendations by means of the comment thingamajig below.
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Not Another Best-of-the-Year List
Must-Reads from Magazine
Democrats Are Being Outmaneuvered
Flirting with incoherence.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-26
A fair scoring of the Trump presidency’s first year would have to hand 2017 to Democrats. The opposition party exploited the Trump-led GOP’s mistakes and excesses and translated them into victories both on Capitol Hill and at polling places around the country. But that was then and this is now. Democrats remain married to tactics that have not served them so well in the New Year. Democrats are not winning this moment. They don’t know it yet.
Not even the most optimistic Republican could have anticipated the reaction that markets and large employers have had to the first significant overhaul of the tax code in over 30 years. Since that bill was signed into law on December 19, firm after firm has announced its intention to share the windfall with its employees in the form of raises, bonuses, and 401(k) hikes. Manufacturers ranging from Chrysler to Apple are repatriating capital and factories they had parked overseas. Even the minimum wage is on the rise for several major employers, including Walmart and financial institutions like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
Democrats had argued that the Republican tax code reform plan would benefit only the wealthy and, despite the strong economy and tight labor market, corporations were unlikely to reinvest their new capital. The Democratic message has not adapted along with changing conditions. They feel obliged to undermine the good news surrounding tax code reform, but they’ve gone about it in a spectacularly tone-deaf fashion.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the $1,000 bonuses that a variety of firms had provided their employees in the wake of tax code reform amount to “crumbs” and “pathetic” gifts designed to purchase cheap loyalty. Rather than invest in their employees, she added, these firms should “invest in infrastructure.” Pelosi later called these bonuses and wage hikes “cute,” but ultimately insulting to the American worker because they are not commensurate with the advantage corporate tax reform provides employers. “Some of them are getting raises, and the rest are getting crumbs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed. When “you spread $1,000 over the course of the year,” former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz pondered, “I’m not sure that $1,000 (which is taxed, taxable) goes very for almost anyone.”
If the Democratic Party is trying to convince voters that the GOP is detached from the concerns of average Americans, demonstrating you have no idea how far $1,000 goes is a bad way to go about it. For a family making the median household income (as of September of last year), $1,000 is more than 20 percent of their monthly income.
Democrats might hope to trade on lingering antipathy toward the tax bill they successfully fomented in the run-up to its passage, but the narrative that worked in December is going to start yielding diminishing returns. The headlines speak for themselves; even just the anticipatory effects of this tax bill are not being enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy. The longer Democrats ask voters to believe them over their lying eyes, the more they will find that they are only preaching to the converted.
Similarly, the GOP has boxed the Democratic Party in on the issue of immigration reform.
On Thursday night, the White House revealed the outlines of what amounts to a skinny immigration reform package. The one-page memo outlined a plan to provide a pathway to citizenship not just for the roughly 700,000 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which expires in March, but some 1.8 million DACA-eligible immigrants—approximately half the estimated population of immigrants who were taken into the U.S. as minors. In exchange, the White House requested $25 billion for security at both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Furthermore, the White House requested curbs on family migration, limiting the extended family that these formerly illegal immigrants could bring with them into the U.S.
This is a reasonable initial offer. The administration, having just secured an unambiguous victory over Democrats following a failed legislative gambit that resulted in a brief government shutdown, could have pressed their luck. Instead, the White House barely budged off its initial request for border security funding. Meanwhile, the administration made a big step toward resolving the status of nearly two million illegal immigrants, which has enraged some in the president’s immigration-hawk base. In fact, the White House reportedly had a difficult time trying to sell immigration restrictionists on the plan. “Lots of them hate the proposal,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan related. Mark Krikorian, the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, summed up his fellow hawks’ thoughts succinctly: “Time to start burning your #MAGA hats.”
But for all the administration’s overtures toward Democrats, the responses have been hyperbolic and inflexible. Senator Dick Durbin said Trump had taken DREAMers “hostage” and was on a “crusade to tear families apart.” “The White House is using Dreamers to mask their underlying xenophobic, isolationist, and un-American policies,” wrote Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Pelosi called Trump’s proposed restrictions on extended family unification represent “an unmistakable campaign to make America white again,” which aligned with sentiments in the liberal grassroots. A statement by the activist organization United We Dream called Trump’s immigration proposal “a white supremacist ransom note.”
This means Democrats are again handing the keys over to the party’s activist base just days after the party’s activists drove them into a ditch. Democrats spent months insisting that they wanted a “clean” bill to restore long-term funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). When they got it, they voted against it—sacrificing their claims on CHIP in the process. Now, the White House has made a good faith attempt to find common ground on DACA, only to be called racist for the effort. This is a remarkably short-sighted and parochial strategy.
By insisting that $1,000 constitute “crumbs” and giving citizenship to nearly 2 million illegal residents is racist, Democrats are flirting with utter incoherence. These claims might enliven their base, but they risk turning off every other sentient voter capable of an objective thought. Moreover, unreasonable polemics have a habit of activating the opposing side’s partisans at a time when reliable Republican voters have been staying away from the polls. The risks of the Democratic Party’s present course seem to outweigh the rewards.
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Integrity Matters
Conspiracies kill credibility.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-25
For Republicans, the Trump presidency has been one long test of faith. The truest believers in Trumpism are compelled to demonstrate their commitment to the cause by publicly defending obvious falsehoods with as much zeal as they can muster.
Thus, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer endorsed the claim that Trump drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” an assertion he now regrets defending. Thus Trump campaign officials contended that crime in America is trending up, not down, contrary to federal statistics, and then credited Trump for ending a crime wave that never existed. Thus, the administration wasted federal resources establishing a legally dubious commission designed to ferret out the millions of illegal voters who supposedly robbed the president of a popular vote victory, only to quietly dissolve under the weight of its own contradictions. Thus, Trump’s fans in conservative media latched onto the odious theory that a 27-year-old DNC staffer’s tragic murder was, in fact, a political assassination; payback over his alleged role in leaking files to WikiLeaks, which conveniently absolved Russia of culpability for the hacking of Democratic targets in 2016.
This was all so much bunk, but these claims were based on grains of truth. Of course, violent crime remains a problem, particularly in the nation’s gang-plagued urban centers, and violent crime has recently been on the rise. Voter fraud is not a myth, Democratic claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The WikiLeaks hacks and Russian active measures targeting U.S. institutions is not a partisan issue; Republicans, too, were reportedly victims of cyber espionage by Russian sources. These are real issues that desperately need sober and serious advocates who command enough authority to be heard over the partisan din. Sadly, the president seems to demand that his allies sacrifice their credibility amid conspicuous displays of loyalty. This administration would rather have unflinching soldiers on its side than accuracy and trustworthiness.
Of all the scandalous sacrifices of authority in the Trump era, “text-gate” might be the worst of the lot, if only because of the collateral damage it has wrought. In the frenetic effort to cast a preemptive veneer of doubt over whatever Robert Mueller’s probe may find, Trump’s advocates across the Republican political spectrum grasped onto the December revelation that a member of that probe—a ranking official formerly with the FBI’s counter-espionage unit—had shared anti-Trump text messages with his mistress. Upon that discovery, Agent Peter Strzok was reassigned from the Mueller probe and dumped into the FBI’s purgatorial human resources department to languish. Since he served on the probe for fewer than two full months, it is likely that Strzok’s influence was limited. Still, the discovery of an anti-Trump voice in the independent investigation provided the probe’s critics with a way to discredit the investigation, and many jumped at the chance.
The discovery that thousands of text messages between December 2016 and May 2017 had gone missing added a tantalizing element of mystery to the nefarious allegations of bias in the Mueller probe. Was the entire Bureau in on this operation? What could have been said? After all, the suspect text messages that hadn’t been deleted were seriously disquieting. In 2016, Strzok texted his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, about his intention to have an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won the White House. Later, it was revealed that Page stated her intention to form a “secret society,” presumably, of like minds.
Senator Ron Johnson alleged that this society was “holding secret meetings off-site,” according to an informant. Rep. Bob Goodlatte insisted that the texts “illustrate a conspiracy on the part of some people” to undermine the president. “These are the elements of a palace coup that was underway to disrupt President Trump,” claimed Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
You didn’t have to be a professional cynic to think that it was unlikely for FBI counter-intelligence operatives to be plotting the sabotage of a presidency on their government-issued cell phones. A review of all the text messages Strzok sent, including the mitigating material, further undercut the idea that he was an anti-Trump saboteur wrecking the administration from within. But lawmakers threw caution to the breeze, and they surely regret it today. When ABC News discovered the infamous “secret society” text, it was exposed as entirely banal. Republicans like Johnson have since backed off the claim that Strzok and his mistress were engaging in anything other than playful bluster.
This was a credibility sapping debacle, and no one should be more livid at the Republicans who sacrificed their honor to it than those who believe in limited and good governance. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes allowed himself to be used last year by the White House to corroborate the president’s baseless claim that he was personally spied upon by Obama-era law enforcement officials. As a result, he sacrificed his credibility and was forced to recuse himself from Russia-related investigations. But there was a FISA warrant granted to investigate the Trump campaign, and no one knows the extent to which flimsy and political evidence was used to grant that warrant. Trump administration officials were swept up in that surveillance, and subsequently “unmasked” by unknown sources when the transcript of that reconnaissance was improperly related to journalists. That, too, is an abuse of power about which only Republicans seem to care. These are serious causes that require equally serious advocates. Unfortunately, those advocates are all busy throwing their integrity away so that Trump can win a news cycle or two.
Impugning law enforcement professionals in service to a political narrative is unconscionable. Republicans should be equally frustrated by the willingness with which their allies are so willingly discrediting themselves. If they don’t start vocally demanding better, Republicans will soon find themselves bereft of credible advocates. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves for that condition, of course, but that should prove no obstacle to finding a scapegoat somewhere.
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Nancy Pelosi’s Crumbs Will Power the Economy
A prisoner of the narrative.
JOHN STEELE GORDON 2018-01-25
Nancy Pelosi dismissed the bonuses associated with recently enacted tax cuts for middle-class individuals as “pathetic” and mere “crumbs.” For someone who lives in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco (the most expensive neighborhood in the United States), when not relaxing at her vineyard in the Napa Valley, the financial benefits associated with tax code reform are, to be sure, no more than rounding errors. But for the average citizen–a demographic the Democratic Party claims to represent–they are very real.
Forbes reports that, with the new withholding tables just out from the IRS, a family of four with an income of $120,000 a year will see paycheck increases totaling more than $3,578, or almost $300 a month. Even a single person with an income of $40,000 will have at least $1,023, or $85 a month, more to spend. For the citizens of “fly-over country” and the vast middle-class suburbs around major cities, if not for the denizens of Pacific Heights, that’s real money.
And Veronique de Rugy, an economist at the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank, sees a tightening labor market as at least partially responsible for the spate of bonuses and pay increases that immediately followed the passage of the tax bill. (Home Depot has just joined the list of companies giving bonuses to hourly workers). Wages have been stubbornly “sticky” during the slow Obama recovery, but that would change with a tight labor market. We’re at 4.1 percent unemployment right now, and 4 percent is considered full employment. Moody’s is predicting unemployment at 3.5 percent by the end of the year; a very tight labor market.
And Bloomberg expects the 4th quarter of 2017 to be the third in a row to see more than 3 percent growth in GDP, the first time that’s happened since 2005. (The figures will be out on Friday.) Since 70 percent of the economy is household consumption, and the disposable incomes of the middle class are going up and promise to go up further in coming months, the economy could grow at around 3 percent for the foreseeable future.
Oh, and Apple is bringing $252 billion in profits it has had parked overseas to this country (paying a tax bill of $39 billion in the process) and will “put some of the money it brought back toward 20,000 new jobs, a new domestic campus, and other spending.”
Even Nancy Pelosi would consider $252 billion in new capital to be invested in the American economy as real money.
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OK, So This Is What’s Happening with All the Probes
Podcast: The FBI, Mueller, and the infamous memo.
John Podhoretz 2018-01-25Text-gate. FISA-gate. Mueller-gate. FBI-gate. Unmasking-gate. What’s real? What’s nutso conspiracy theory? What’s to be concerned about? What deserves a fuller investigation? We try to sort this out on the second COMMENTARY podcast of the week. Give a listen.
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The Trump Standard Won’t Outlast His Presidency
A transactional relationship.
Noah Rothman 2018-01-24
Among the right’s moral majoritarian leadership, the ethical flexibility on display since the revelations involving Donald Trump’s alleged affair with an adult film actress is of Olympic caliber. This represents only the latest opportunity for the evangelical community’s leaders to jettison their credibility. Some leaped at the chance.
According to new reporting this month, Donald Trump allegedly had a consensual affair with a paid pornographic actress who went by the stage name Stormy Daniels in 2006, one year after marrying his third wife and just months after his son Barron Trump was born. Daniels consented to the release of an extensive 2011 interview in which she described the affair in explicit detail. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Michael Cohen, an attorney working for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about the affair. What’s more, he did so through a Delaware LLC to which Cohen was attached as the “authorized person” rather than a third party with some distance from the future president. This thing is pretty airtight.
What’s interesting is that, so far, Trump’s defenders are not following the president’s lead and denying that this affair occurred. As an entertainer and publicity seeker, Donald Trump made a virtue of his penchant for adultery. Jaws around the nation did not drop over the allegation that the president might not have been faithful to his third wife. These revelations do serve as another opportunity to check in with the religious right just to make sure they remain comfortable with the double standard they have reserved for Trump. And, yes, they’re still good with it.
In an interview with Politico, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins confessed that the community of moral leaders on the right gave Trump a “mulligan” for the debauchery in which he engaged before he became a political figure. He said that the religious right is “tired of being kicked around” by the left and are “glad” there’s “somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.” What about turning the other cheek, Perkins’s interlocutor asked. “You know, you only have two cheeks,” he replied.
Perkins is getting a lot of grief for that, but his honest assessment of the transactional nature of the evangelical community’s moral compromise is illuminating. “That support is not unconditional,” he said. “If the president for some reason stopped keeping campaign promises and then engaged in that behavior now, the support’s gone.” In other words, if Trump stops delivering for them in office, this community of formerly self-righteous moral scolds reserves the right to rediscover their principles.
Many have offered theories as to why these and many other evangelical leaders compromised themselves for Trump. Less attention has been paid to whether the moral majority’s acceptance of Trumpian turpitude represents a depressing new normal. Is this the standard of ethical degradation to which all will be held in the future? If Perkins’ admission is reflective of unspoken sentiments broadly shared on the right, the answer is no. Trump’s is a standard to which only the politically valuable are held.
There was some justified fear that the Trump standard was being broadly applied in November when the right’s moral gymnasts engaged in a collective defense of Alabama justice Roy Moore. They joined with the institutional GOP to ratify Donald Trump’s support for the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate despite his contempt for the law, the Constitution, and the credible allegations that he had abused underage girls. But once Moore lost, his utility was spent. As Breitbart’s Alex Marlow confessed, the accusations against Moore were credible, but the impulse to protect Trump—not Moore, per se—from his detractors was more important than moral rectitude. This, too, was transactional.
Conservatives might be tempted to retreat into a persecution complex. After all, defending Trump’s repeated indiscretions is a full-time job and one that the left seems conspicuously able to avoid. The Trump standard is the Bill Clinton standard, they might say, and it’s about time that Republicans held a mirror up to Democrats and their enablers in media. Stringent moral standards were shackles by which the right constrained itself, thus allowing the left to operate with impunity. Good riddance.
But the Trump standard and the Clinton standard seem reserved for presidents. Anthony Weiner, David Wu, and John Edwards did not benefit from the Clinton standard. Al Franken and John Conyers’ appeals to precedent didn’t salvage their political careers. Similarly, even in just the last 12 months, personal indiscretions were enough to cut short the political careers of Republicans like Blake Farenthold, Joe Barton, and Tim Murphy.
Some might push back against the notion that we can draw broader conclusions from these politicians’ experiences because Rep. Patrick Meehan and Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens have managed to hold on despite the sex scandals engulfing their careers. Their careers might withstand calls for their resignations; time will tell. But their experiences reinforce the fact that there really are no universal moral standards. There are only individuals. And the actions of those individuals are condemned or condoned as a result of calculated cost/benefit analyses, not morality. It was always ever thus.
If this doesn’t sound like cause for optimism to you, buck up. Presidential politics is unique because the stakes at the presidential level are so high. Both parties tend to reflect their titular leaders, but presidents are transitory figures. The Republican Party’s status quo ante was Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and so on; men of moral fortitude who had no stomach for conspiratorial thinking, nativist acrimony, or degeneracy. A reversion to the mean is perfectly imaginable.
If such a reversion is in the cards, no one who compromised their stated values in the Trump era should be allowed to forget the bargain they made. Yet this presidency has exposed a valuable truth: too often, ethical considerations are situational and conditional—particularly in politics. If American moral decline is going to be arrested, the country’s self-styled moral leaders must confront that fact and realize the extent to which they’ve contributed to the plunge.
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