I wouldn't think that many NewGathering readers read George Will very regularly, but if I may, I recommend you read this column from a few days ago on the Trump Administration's bringing on John Bolton.
Most of the news coverage of Bolton's nomination that I've seen has focused on what it says about turnover at the White House - the revolving door spinning like a house fan - along with some snarky yet perceptive comments about the correlation between whom the president trusts and their affiliation with Fox News. Will calls attention to what policies Bolton may bring to the table, and offers some astute reasons to worry. He calls out that Bolton was strongly in favor of the Iraq War and still today is wholly unrepentant about it.
The shadow of Vietnam (which Will also invokes) has hung over our politics for 50+ years. I wonder whether the invasion of Iraq will have a similar effect for the Gen Xers. The Iraq War was approved on a somewhat bipartisan basis, including, if I'm not mistaken, by a Senate that at that time had a Democratic majority. There were conservative voices that opposed it, but that wasn't reflected in Congress (and certainly not the White House). I recall it as a strange and worrisome time - it seemed that war fever gripped our leaders. Catholic social teaching's misgivings about war - even the just-war tradition, which contemplates the possibility of a war being declared justly, couldn't be pressed into service to countenance the invasion of Iraq - were raised by some voices, but didn't seem to be heard.
I've never avoided the butler to the Midwestern upper class, as Will has been called, and I even wrote a nearly all-favorable review of his book Statecraft As Soulcraft. But we get him only once a week down here, and I didn't get this one.
ReplyDeleteWill includes "intelligent and educated" among the qualities he says Bolton has and Comrade Donald doesn't The Wharton School won't want to hear the second. And, as for the intelligence, it strikes me that Trump's problem isn't want of intelligence, it is lack of control. I mean, he often acts on matters about which he knows nothing (e.g., tariffs), but that is not because he is dumb; it's because he is compelled to act because acting is more manly than knowing.
What is certain is that Bolton elevates to the level of principle some of Comrade Donald's most brutal impulses. The restraints are all coming off the executive branch. It's going to get harder and harder for Congressional Republicans to keep looking the other way, not that they won't try.
And speaking of his enablers, the Stormy weather and new female accusers, plus Comrade Donald Junior's divorce, have got to be making it harder for the Family Values Christians to stay in this walking sand trap.
Trump will love Bolton. The guy is practically a straight up killer.
ReplyDeleteWill has had a number of unflattering editorials about Trump. I always took them as evidence of the Country Club Republicans looking down on the hoi polloi, you can start more fires with money and the right connections than Tiki torches, and without all that unseemly yelling and vulgar sloganism, eh, what?
Will's criticism of Bolton is interesting re our current hot wars given that he thought it was all a great idea at the time. For the last several years, he has changed his position, and felt we were duped by Cheney. Which we were.
Good that he recognizes his mistakes, I guess.
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ReplyDeleteThe coverage in the Washington Post has not just focused on the turnover at the White House. The WaPo carries several conservative columnists, not just George Will, whom I read regularly.
ReplyDeleteWill was a #NeverTrump Republican. He resigned from the GOP after Trump was nominated. Columnists Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, and Tom Nichols of the Naval War College are all conservatives who are strongly opposed to Trump and the current GOP management on the Hill. These conservative oped writers argue, correctly, that Trump and his minions on the Hill are not "real" conservatives. They are simply politicians without real conviction, ready to hop on the Trump bandwagon if it means they keep their jobs.
Here are some of the columns, as well as some of the news stories about Bolton in the Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-korea-worries-about-the-return-of-john-bolton-and-his-hawkish-views/2018/03/23/4adc68aa-2e6c-11e8-911f-ca7f68bff0fc_story.html?utm_term=.745d67806e9d
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-korea-worries-about-the-return-of-john-bolton-and-his-hawkish-views/2018/03/23/4adc68aa-2e6c-11e8-911f-ca7f68bff0fc_story.html?utm_term=.745d67806e9d
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/add-another-zealot-to-the-white-house/2018/03/22/08f5034a-2e33-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?utm_term=.96895b7f2703
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/03/23/reaction-to-bolton-stunned-worried-horrified/?utm_term=.8b99837a6ed8
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/03/23/john-bolton-is-dangerous-but-trumps-inept-white-house-might-restrain-him/?utm_term=.49b952f3d70e
Some of the best criticisms of Comrade Donald -- a/k/a/ shooting fish in a barrel -- are by conservatives. The source of my pension split its op ed columnists physically in half -- From the Left & From the Right (pure pandering to the nutsos) just about the time Comrade Donald emerged from the brow of Vladimir Putin. The From the Lefts have been predictable, but the From the Rights attacks on Trump have been downright interesting. My favorite is Michael Gerson, but Kathleen Parker is good, too. Even Charles Krauthammer, who is consistently obtuse, has piled on the tenant of Mar-a-Lago. So many conservatives who take their conservatism seriously spotted the man who refuses to pay as a phony and four-flusher, ideologically as well as financially, from the start.
ReplyDeleteHe did beat their 15 favorite candidates in the last GOP primary :-)
DeleteRight. But over the sputtering bodies of Gerson, Parker, Jonah Goldberg, Max Boot and others who used to be wrong a lot (by my lights) but intelligent, informed and worth arguing and (occasionally) agreeing with. They knew this Russian-sponsored vulgarian was not One of Us if "us" were the heirs of the American conservative tradition.
DeleteThat much of the media went into the tank for the eyeballs, and that the other 15 were flabbergasted by the unprecedented effrontery of the man really says more about him than about people who thought they were still in the America they grew up in.
I see Trump's winning the GOP nomination in a similar way to a corporate raider hedge fund raising havoc with a corporation. The raiders don't have to have a majority of the shares. All they have to do is have more than any other single shareholder. We've seen it happen in our state with as little as 11%. The Trump base just had to do better than any other single faction backing one of the other 15.
DeleteKatherine, I agree. Trump's ascension in the GOP has been described many times as a hostile takeover.
DeleteThe fact is, he out-politicked the pro's. He identified a voter segment and put together a service offering called "Donald Trump" that appealed to that segment more than the other 15 brands on offer.
The National Review refused to endorse Trump, bless their tiny cold hearts. Somewhere along the line, Tucker Carlson, who was WFB's fair-haired boy, went to the dark side on Fox.
ReplyDeleteI always read conservatives. How else do you find out what they're thinking. I also read Trump's tweets ... which may be why I'm seeing the doc for BP again this week.
National Review articles tend to not be as extreme as the National Review blogs. I'm getting so I won't even read those.
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