A Kristol Clear Thanksgiving
We had a very nice Thanksgiving, as I trust all of you did. Every year, I’m reminded what a fine American holiday it is, and I must say it’s reassuring that Thanksgiving remains as popular as it does. After all, its theme is gratitude, not a prominent feature of today’s American popular culture. And yet we still have the sense that there is a time to express gratitude, to give thanks, interrupting (if only briefly!) our usual getting and spending and accusing and complaining.
As I’ve said before, I’ve always thought that the two great American holidays, July 4th and Thanksgiving, form an appropriate pair of bookends, The first celebrates an assertion of human freedom and independence; the second acknowledges the limits of what we can choose or control. Accordingly, Thanksgiving is our preeminent family holiday, while July 4th is our outstanding civic holiday. Together, they form a rounded view of political life, indeed of human life.
On a more prosaic note, we had a very good time seeing family, catching up on things, not doing too much work, eating well, and watching football (sorry, University of Michigan fans–what a heartbreaker! You still have the best fight song, though). We stayed at a Dolce hotel near the relatives we were visiting the one night we were away–have any of you ever frequented that chain? It was a perfectly nice hotel, but decades ago some enterprising salesman sold them the weirdest shower soap dispensers I’ve ever seen. This is always good fodder for discussion at the Thanksgiving dinner table when one’s trying to avoid politics. Which we didn’t avoid–since, really, what’s a lively conversation that doesn’t include politics? Illustrating the dictum that all politics is local, however, we did spend more time discussing how much worse the Trump presidency would make New York’s traffic than its effects on America as a whole.
Speaking (as we were for a minute there) of the Michigan-Ohio State game, I do want to note that it’s nice that some of these minor “rivalries” are played soon after Harvard-Yale, to try to keep some interest in college football alive after The Game has come and gone. And of course it’s always mildly interesting to see who’ll get to lose to Alabama in the playoffs. Or whether Alabama will go down unexpectedly, à la Hillary Clinton, to an Ohio State… Clemson or Washington team determined to make college football (as opposed to ‘Bama’s de facto pro team) great again? Anything’s possible in this year of Trump….
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Death of a Tyrant
Fidel Castro’s death provided an interesting diversion during the Thanksgiving weekend. Or the reactions to his death did. I tweeted Saturday morning, “Seeing who’s fawning over a dead dictator and who’s not is a good guide to which political leaders & commentators to respect, and which not.” And so it’s worth taking a look at the reactions, on the one hand, of freedom-lovers like Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton and Mike Pence, and on the other, of Jimmy Carter and EU head Jean-Claude Juncker and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau’s fawning statement quickly became notorious online, and spawned an amusing Twitter competition for brief mock Trudeau eulogies, #TrudeauEulogies.
More broadly, though, the conservative reaction to Castro’s death was reassuring. For Donald Trump and, perhaps, some of his appointees notwithstanding, the belief among conservatives that America should stand for freedom around the world seems to remain very strong. It’s now so unfashionable to embrace any version of George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda that people don’t always volunteer this belief. So I think it may be time for some of us to make a more comprehensive case for it, freer of the immediate post-9/11 context. I think I’ll be writing about this more in the next weeks and months. I’m tempted even to make a case for American “liberal empire”–with the emphasis on liberal, so it’s clear America’s role is based on the consent of the citizens of other countries and is designed to help them achieve full self-government. But using the word “empire”, if only to shock the left (and parts of the right) into thinking a bit, may force a real debate. And I don’t see why one should rule out resuming the growth of the American nation, a constant of American history until 1960, one that played a huge part in making American great but also keeping it free. Why not go beyond helping the Cuban people achieve freedom and self-government–which we should certainly do? Why not offer them statehood if they wish?
Just a thought to provoke some debate…
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The New Trump Administration
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to take shape, and in sometimes promising ways. The two leading contenders for secretary of defense appear to be retired Marine General Jim Mattis and Senator Tom Cotton, both of whom would be terrific. (For one of many fine profiles of Mattis, see here.) The exemplary retired Marine General John F. Kelly also seems to be under consideration for state or homeland security; here’s Aaron MacLean’s profile of him last year in TWS. Any combination of these three would be great–and, knowing Mattis some, I would point out that he’s had to be a diplomat in many of his commands and that he’d be an excellent Secretary of State if Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani succeed in, so to speak, knocking each other out.
Let’s hope for the sake of the nation that Trump ends up with a strong and capable team to which he listens that can deal with the big national security challenges we face. All members of his team, by the way, would benefit from the wisdom of our frequent contributor, Elliott Abrams, one of the most capable veterans of the Reagan state department and the Bush national security council staff. My conversation with him, on how the incoming administration might think about the challenges it faces and how it might organize itself to deal with them, is here.
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Jack Reacher
I’m partway through Night School, the new Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. Much as I’d like to further discourse in this newsletter, I’d better get back to the book so I can finish it today. Otherwise I won’t be able actually to focus on work this week. Child isn’t perhaps the greatest novelist or even thriller writer of our time. But I’m not sure there’s anyone whose books are harder to put down. So I’m picking it up again.
But don’t worry. I still haven’t read the new Harry Bosch mystery The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly. So I will have something to take on the cruise (which if you’re free the week after this, you can, I’m told, still sign up for.) It should be a fun time, with lots of discussion of what to expect from the new Trump administration. And some Caribbean weather in December never hurts….
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
