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The Nation's Pulse
McCain’s Stagecoach
What is the matter with everybody?
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…
What, I ask you, is the matter with everybody? The Democrats claim we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. This is ridiculous, but what is even more ridiculous is that otherwise educated people seem to be letting it pass.
We are the freest, most dynamic economy on earth. We have a
problem because we allowed leftist demagogues to stick up bankers
and force them to let shiftless rabble become homeowners,
simultaneously (and not coincidentally) adopting a gimme-gimme
ethos that by definition was insatiable, anti-civic and selfish.
To the extent we allowed our own moral fiber to turn brittle, we
can say the fault is certainly not in our stars — after all, in
the rest of the world, the vast majority of honest hard-working
people consider themselves lucky if they have indoor plumbing and
would like nothing better than to trade their problems for ours
— but in ourselves.
Not only liberals but conservatives too are at fault for
neglecting the fundamentals. Conservatives grew complacent and
fat, thought the battle of ideas was over. It is never over, any
more than the fight for freedom. However, differences between
conservatives and liberals are huge. Conservatives are sickened
by the related threats to our free market system and our national
security. Liberals by all evidence are sick of America as we have
known it, and fat as they may be, they are on a roll, seem to
have the wind in their sails and a clear game plan.
So conservatives stand by and let the nonsense being spewed about the causes of our present difficulties pass. We form the best engineers, the best managers, the best research physicists, the most life-saving organ-repairing health-sustaining doctors and the proof is they all come here, not only those yearning to be free (who still come) but those yearning to be doctors, physicists, engineers. And we have a problem? That is what liberals say, and in this campaign season the conservatives seem unable to deliver the response. You get all manners of clever responses (on this page for example, or the Wall Street Journal’s legendary editorial page), but they apparently get no further. The Obama machine marches on. It is not impossible that self-described communists and America-haters will be in the highest circles of government in a few months.
How could this be?
We took things for granted. There was too much money. All kinds of reasons. Anyhow, it comes down to this: in 2008 we have the same problem Irving Kristol identified 20, 30 years ago — we don’t have a leadership class that reads Joseph Schumpeter, or for that matter that reads anything. They don’t defend themselves. They don’t fight back. They don’t fight.
They let everything pass.
John McCain is a fighter. That is why he is the best chance of a party that fought, but not enough, to defend its record. How many Washington-based wise guys ran for the tall grass as soon as the going got tough in Iraq? How many ran for their mothers’ aprons as soon as we ran ourselves, by our own inability to resist and fight back against creeping demagogic socialism, into a credit crunch? My gosh, credit crunch, savage war of peace — can’t we explain these things … and fight back? What happened to all those millions spent since the “conservative resurgence” to “fight the war of ideas”?
Although John McCain is a fighter, he is a nice man. I know: I’ve heard about his temper and his grudges. So what? I have a temper and I’ve known myself to hold grudges and I’ve even grudged myself for them. Don’t hold grudges, my teacher Saul Bellow used to say to me, watching me steam, they’ll get in the way. In the way of what? I asked with exasperation. What you’re good at. What you should do.
It seems to me that until he won the primaries and began coasting to the formal nomination, John McCain understood he had to do what he should do. Then instead of steaming up and converting that energy into leadership, he ran out of steam.
More exactly, he ran into Republican political operatives and clever as these men and women are, they seem reluctant to let McCain be himself and take the battle to the enemy.
EVEN AS HE SAID the American elites — the producers of wealth — must learn to defend themselves, Irving Kristol wryly noted, and this was not especially original, that they would simultaneously sell their enemies the rope with which said enemies would hang them (this actually comes from Lenin, and was used as the title in a quite good essay in Commentary by Carl Gershman, who a few years later went to Washington and went to sleep, a symptom of the problem we are staring at). The enemies in question might be their own offspring. Viz. Bill Ayers, the son of one of the richest men in Chicago, and indeed viz. most of the Weather Whatsis and the other '60s radicals, though they were not all in the same league, moneywise, as the Ayers family. For that matter, Obama himself is a child of American privilege, which is why it is so easy for him to rail against the machinery (free markets and free men) and the talent and the know-how that make privilege possible.
It is not just us — Dostoevsky saw it all very clearly, as Harold Rosenberg (for example) made you see in his seminars on the great Russian master. But we take this farther faster because we are the first modern country.
And the one on which the modern project — freedom — depends. If we fail, there goes the last, best hope on earth.
About the Author
Roger Kaplan, a Washington-based writer, covers the Middle East and Africa (and tennis) for The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (18) | Leave a comment
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james wilson| 10.20.08 @ 9:34AM
You delude yourself also, for the McCain fish is rotting from the head. He is not receiving bad advice, he is giving it. And no one more ignored the principles of James Madison than Theodore Roosevelt. He softened us up for Wilson, and then FDR. Yes, they would admire each other.
J.C. Ardoin| 10.20.08 @ 9:45AM
Good half-time speech, Coach! Let's rally! No time to point fingers, we'll look at the film later.
M. Tobias| 10.20.08 @ 10:18AM
I really enjoyed the article, but lets simplify this a bit. John McCain is what he is; a likable liberal populist who has proven that he is not a friend to Conservatives or conservative ideas. That is why his campaign nominated Sarah Palin as VP; to appeal to the Conservative base who would more than likely stay at home rather than vote for John McCain. If McCain had his own way, Joe Lieberman would be his VP. But this has never been a vote for, or against, John McCain. This is a referendum on the man anointed by the liberal media to lead this country, Barack Obama. That is why it is so crucial that he be vetted to the American people. As his background is explored, his apparent philosophical ideals exposed and his long-time associations illuminated; it becomes apparent that he feels very comfortable with Marxist-Leninist, black separatist, racially intolerant, anti-American ideas and the people who espouse them. This then is what it boils down to. Would the average voter rather have a kindly liberal populist or a Marxist, anti-American liberal socialist in command of this nation, with a predominately liberal Congress with decidedly socialist leadership?
OCPatriot| 10.20.08 @ 10:51AM
Oh, come on. I sat with two successful business-owners who were die-hard Republicans, and listened to them argue that supporting Bear Stearns was essential to keep the financial markets afloat. It reminded me of the joke that a Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged; now it's a Socialist is a Conservative who sees his markets collapsing. One of my best friends, another business-owner who believes devoutly in the Free Market, now says, "Yes, but sometimes government intervention is needed." These all were the people who believed in Unregulated Markets as the panacea, and if some people got hurt, lost their investments, went bankrupt, it was just the market realigning itself. That is, until it touched their personal investments and threatened their money. For all of those Senators and Congressmen, including McCain, by the way, who think the government runs ineffective programs, you might think them hypocrites when they live under and use the governments' wonderful medical insurance and the pensions given them when they retire, but, no, that's just a simple blind spot, right?
I’m getting more and more appalled at those who think the Democrats destroy businesses. Under Clinton, they enjoyed prosperity that was unparalleled. So continue to vote for George W. and George W’s clones, and all those who believe in unregulated markets until they get in trouble. Do any of you remember the Keating Lincoln Savings bailout and the havoc caused to our great financial system, and McCain's involvement in it? Or the Chrysler bailout?
J David| 10.20.08 @ 11:15AM
Mr Kaplan's "Half a conservative is better than none" theory is EXACTLY why the RINO Party is the RINO Party. There is NO SUCH THING as "partially conservative" anymore than being sort-of pregnant...you are conservative (not the oxy-moronic "neo-con")or you are NOT, period.
J David| 10.20.08 @ 11:17AM
As Vox Day puts it, "The only wasted vote this year is the one cast for the faux conservative Republican"
Avitar| 10.20.08 @ 11:40AM
In a normal year I would be quite pleased to vote against a Presidential candidate like John McCain. Of course in any normal year John McCain would be the Democrat nominee. This year is not normal. The money, at least a quarter of a billion dollars, is coming in from who-knows-where (in 1972 it turned out to be Cuban drug money) and driving the farhest left of the Democrat party forward. A vote against John McCain is a vote for "One-Man, One-Vote, Once" I am definately voting FOR Vice President Sarah Palin and if I vote for President John McCain in the same vote, at least I will get to vote for somebody else in four years.
Avitar| 10.20.08 @ 11:46AM
One item "Let Us Never Get into this Situation Again! If you are not register as a Republican at least a month before a primary you shouldn't be voting on who the Republican nominee will be.
Ark Ashamed of Bill| 10.20.08 @ 1:08PM
John McCain is clueless as to the socialist nature of the contemporary Democratic Party, as can be seen not only in this campaign but also in his long political career of getting in bed with the Left and spitting on conservatives. The times cry out for a leader, but the best the nominal conservative party could come up with was McCain.
OCPatriot| 10.20.08 @ 3:30PM
Gee, you got it right, Mr. Kaplan. McCain is a fighter. Yes, a dye-in-the-wool fighter. And, as a military man with a military upbringing, that's exactly what I would have expected from him, wouldn't you? So he transforms the whole world into a battlefield between him and his opponent. He sees everything as a battlefield. As evidence I offer his off-hand remark, "I'm going to whip Obama's a-- in the debate." Fighting words, indeed. The only trouble for Senator McCain is that running a country is not about fighting, it's about designing programs that intelligently deal with problems, implementing them, making sure people cooperate in that implementation, managing the proper funding of all of this, and making sure the outcome is what was wanted. Obama seems to offer the talents to do this, while McCain does not. Case in point is: What seems to be left out, in our fascination with the debate(s), in both individuals is (a) how they lead and organize people, and (b) how they analyze a situation and draw up a strategy to deal with it. Both are damned important in any Presidency. McCain's campaign seems disorganized and filled with lobbyists and neocons; he hasn't either put together a coherent plan or instructed someone else to do it for him. Obama appears to have formed a tight organization that now runs the Democratic Party and a wide flung field organization, and he or his supporters appear to have put together a coherent plan. Perhaps most telling is the article that described take over efforts; McCain preferred to wait till after he was elected to form a transition team; Obama apparently has one staffed and fully in place. This tells us a lot about the personalities of both McCain and Obama and how they handle things in this difficult time.
megapotamus| 10.20.08 @ 4:30PM
Some will remember that Ws first act in office was.... anyone? Bueller? That's right... STEEL TARRIFFS! Gawd! For the cat above who sez the Reps are for free markets until THEIR money is on the line I am sad to say I see that as well. The absolute BEST outcome one could hope from all these plans, in the aggregate economy, would be for a shallower but longer slowing of growth. That is the most that can be accomplished with this crap of shifting money from pocket to pocket if luck and skill are yours. Well, I don't see those factors obtain so we have written a 700b check with nothing to show for it and that must finally be paid. I was briefly heartened that W told the Cong Dems to forget about another round of "stimulus". Holy frijoles, the guy has found his spine! Oh, sorry. He must have read the polls and spoken with Bernanke. MORE stimulus is a-comin'. Pathetic. The most important element of conservatism is its anti-socialism. That is it. Defeat socialism, the very notions and nostrums of socialism and all else will fall in train. Fail in that or (worst of all) indulge in socialistic endeavors that favor a precious demographic yourself and it is all over. Socialism will triumph in a land rush for the Treasury. Only collapse will remedy things then. Collapse is what Barack will inevitably bring. Can we skip that step? Maybe but McCain is not the guy to do it and I say that as a determined McCain voter.
David J| 10.20.08 @ 5:12PM
OC Patriot - One problem with your thesis. The USA has not had a "Free Market" since FDR and his "Great Society". Since then we have been dabling and wading around through this muck (regulations), attempting to keep parts of the market free. Now (occasionally) adjustment must be made because of Government sticking it's nose into the so-called Free markets. Fannie, Freddie, Acorn, and the mortgage meltdown (combined with laws forcing banks to make loans to people who could not repay them - thank's Carter for starting it, and Clinton for putting the Community Reinvestment Act on steroids). Government caused the mess, so their help is needed to help get us out... BUT as long as Dodd, Frank, and the Dems are in charge, the problem will not get fixed and we will continue to be in deep trouble.
Paul from Florida| 10.20.08 @ 6:37PM
OC, Get your history and facts right, no one here works for ACORN for $8 an hour. Free markets and free people started to decay with the rise of the first Progressives, back in the late 1800's. The notion they had was that a elite would be better to run things than the then unwashed mobs of Italians, Jews, Irish. The idea was to remove decision making and power and centralize it. This trend has been going on ever since. The financial and banking industries are the most regulated, non free markets in America. Further, land and real estate are also immensely regulated to some extents that you can not even paint your door without state permission. At one time skilled construction trades accounted for most of the labor cost of a home. Now it is lawyers and permits. ( Nice work for the churning regulators friends). So, what was the Democrat caused solution to housing cost that they increased beyond the workers income? Democrat financing! What's the next solution to the now problem with the the Democrat financing? Democrat funding to keep inflated, un real, above market prices higher! But what about the workers first priced out, now thrown out, now kept priced out? More taxes on the economy! Risnse/Lather/Repeate.
mnotaro| 10.20.08 @ 7:00PM
Obama’s “tax cuts” are going to put this nation into serious financial unrest. His left wing illuminati antics are going to cripple this nation for YEARS to come and his views on military spending and pulling out of Iraq are scary and the nation should wake up and be seriously worried! He is going to turn the US into a mess!
Jim in Idaho| 10.21.08 @ 4:00AM
Within the past few weeks, I ran into the comment that the guy in the White House makes a thousand decisions while he is putting on his socks, waiting for someone to answer his phone call, or brushing his teeth: decisions of which we will never be made aware. The question then becomes whose reputation and values are we going to be most comfortable with in making those decisions (on which so many decisions of which we WILL be made aware are based). Something to ponder.
J David| 10.21.08 @ 7:42PM
I won't be comfortable with either of the Soros-owned losers...and after one of them *wins*, he'll still be a loser, but the rest of us will be in on the loss.
Ms. Know| 10.30.08 @ 12:30AM
He not only have to run against the elitist illuminati, he has to run against the liberal biased media too. He has overcome worse, so don't count him out.