Recovering from Obama
First, let me thank my colleague Jim Swift for pinch-hitting for me last week. He expressed concern at the end of his pinch-newsletter that, upon reading it, I might “indulge in the Trumpian impulse to say ‘You’re fired!'”Au contraire. Jim did such a good job that I’m inclined to have him substitute more often. Which would be an example of one maxim of whose truth I’ve grown increasingly convinced over the years: No good deed goes unpunished.
Meanwhile, however, I’m back, un-tanned, un-rested, and un-ready for the last six weeks of the presidential campaign. One of many unfortunate effects of watching these two appalling candidates every day is that their awfulness can obscure the fact that our current president has done so much damage in his two terms in office. Digging out of that hole would be tough enough; digging out of a 12-year Obama-Clinton or Obama-Trump hole will be tougher still.
In any case, our excellent cover story this week, by Steve Hayes and Tom Joscelyn on Obama’s emptying out of Gitmo, and the dissembling that’s accompanied it, offers one count in the indictment of President Obama. Elliott Abrams’s very interesting editorial on Obama’s new aid agreement with Israel provides another.
But for a more thorough account of the damage Obama has wrought, let me recommend last week’s special issue of the Washington Examiner, “The Obama Legacy.” It’s all available online, and is all worth reading. But I’d especially mention Philip Klein on the effects of Obama’s big government agenda at home and Reuel Gerecht on Obama’s failure of leadership abroad. Do, however, read the whole thing.
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Reconstruction or construction?
I mentioned the task we’ll face of digging out and repairing the damage of 12 years of Obama-Clinton or Obama-Trump. But it really won’t be a matter of digging out, or repair, or reconstruction. It’s probably better to think of the task ahead as one of new building, because the institutions and habits one wants to reconstruct will have been so damaged they will need to be built (again anew). Which means a more radical approach will be needed if we are to rebuild–there, I’m slipping again into a characteristically conservative formulation; let’s say build–the nation we deserve in the 21st century. I’m sure we’ll spend a lot of time writing about this over the next four years at The Weekly Standard, as will our friends at The Washington Free Beacon, National Review, Commentary, National Affairs, and other magazines, websites, and think tanks involved in our common enterprise.
My tentative formulation of a sufficiently bold agenda suggest that we plan for liberal empire abroad; a liberal polity and a free society at home; liberal education for some, and civic education for all. As my intentionally provocative terms suggest, I’m tempted to think that, with the left having embraced “progressivism” and parts of the right “populism,” one could even restore the good name of “liberal” if not “liberalism” over the next few years. But these are all thoughts that will need to be developed, to say the least, and by thinkers deeper and more far-seeing than I.
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Up on the web
Meanwhile, if I may say so myself, we’ve had a ton of good material up on the website the last couple of weeks. The pieces have ranged from Alice Lloyd infiltrating the Democratic National Committee headquarters and talking to young Bernie Sanders supporters grudgingly making phone calls for Hillary Clinton, to Chris Caldwell explaining the political implications of the recent clashes between native Germans and the young Middle Eastern “refugee” population in Germany. And then there was Jenna Lifhits reporting on a planned anti-Israel event sponsored by Democratic House member Sheila Jackson Lee, to be held in a Capitol Hill meeting room; Jenna’s reporting eventually got the event cancelled. And Andy Ferguson offered a characteristically devastating update on the latest “national conversation” prompted by our taxpayer-funded betters at the National Archives.
All of this might have you asking some existential questions. If so read the most recent advice column from Matt Labash, who’s getting rather philosophical these days. Elsewhere in the non-political realm, Jonathan Last has a terrific appreciation of the great American tennis player Andy Roddick–so terrific that both Roddick himself and his supermodel wife tweeted out a link to the piece. And speaking of appreciating the finer things in life, my colleagues Vic Matus and Eric Felten have launched a new and most entertaining web video series on the history of presidential cocktails, with a twist: You can submit your own appropriate cocktail recipes for the candidates.
I mention all these fine contributions (and there are many more!) as a way to suggest say that you may want to make sure to visit weeklystandard.com
I’ll close by mentioning another of the recent contributions, my friend Douglas MacKinnon’s poignant appreciation of one of my favorite writers, the late comic mystery novelist Donald Westlake (who honored us with a short non-fictional contribution to THE WEEKLY STANDARD). Doug is himself a fine writer, but the piece is far more than a standard, well-written tribute. It’s…well, you judge. Here’s an excerpt:
At eight years of age, I read my first “big” book, The Wizard of Oz. We were existing in a car at that time and the book thankfully took me from that car to Oz and beyond.
From that moment on, I knew words would be my salvation and read everything I could get my hands on.
Recently, while in the middle of a move-happily voluntary, this time-I came across a box of old papers. Buried down at the bottom of that box were four spiral-bound notebooks. I had not seen them for years, but knew instantly what they were and more importantly, what they represented.
Within the pages of those notebooks were forty thousand or so words that comprised a novel I wrote at the age of 17.
It was meant to be a “comic-crime” novel and my teenage homage to the author who by then, had managed to give my young mind page after page after page of the most clever and escapist fun I had ever experienced.
At 12 years of age, I had discovered an author by the name of Donald E. Westlake. I was at our local library at the time-they didn’t stay local for long as we were evicted thirty-four times by the time I was seventeen-and on a table, was a book titled The Fugitive Pigeon.
The title itself made me smile. So I sat down and read the first page. I was still reading the book when they started to shut off the lights and kick me out of the place.
Many people today know Mr. Westlake because of the fifteen or so films they made out of his books-Point Blank, The Hot Rock, Cops and Robbers, The Outfit and Payback just being a few-from academy award nominated screenplays like The Grifters, or because of his never-got-up-on-the-right-side-of-the bed anti-hero “Parker,” written under the pseudonym “Richard Stark.”
But for me back then, I knew and loved the work of Mr. Westlake because [of] his heart-of-gold sort of criminal common men who, if they didn’t have bad luck, would have no luck. The writing was not only exceptional, but to this day, the most laugh-out loud hilarious prose I have ever read.
My young mind needed a break in the worst way, and I found it in spades with Westlake’s seemingly endless collection of ne’er-do-wells trying to beat life just around the edges and finding even that low-bar goal much tougher than anyone with even a hint of luck could expect….
From twelve to seventeen years of age, I had read hundreds of thousands of words written by Donald E. Westlake and smiled, laughed, and winced with and in sympathy for the characters with each and every word.
At 17, I may not have known much, but I did know enough to realize that thanks to [the] immense talent of Westlake and the power of his words, I had been given the then priceless gift of what amounted to an “eight count” in boxing. His words gave me just enough time to gather my senses on the mat before jumping up for the next round of hay-makers life was about to land on my chin.
I guess it was during one of those mini-vacations on the mat that I wondered, “What if I could give that gift to someone else? What if, thanks to my own words, I could relieve someone of their mental or physical pain for a few hours or a few days?”
With that thought and aspiration planted firmly in my seventeen year-old mind, I walked to a local store, bought four cheap notebooks and proceeded to handwrite my own “comic-criminal” novel….
Seeing those old notebooks-which are now on a shelf in my home office-reminded me that not only was Mr. Westlake the best ever in this genre, but that I will forever be in his debt.
Read, as they say, the whole thing. And then—of course—go off and read some Donald Westlake.
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
