Charitable Diversion?

Yesterday, President Bush announced that predecessors Clinton and Bush would head an effort to raise private funds for tsunami relief in southeast Asia. The three presidents, their entourage, and the press then visited four embassies of southeast Asia nations to express America’s sympathy for the recent natural disaster. This has all been reported matter-of-factly in the press. Am I the only cynic who sees in these actions more blatant self-interest than humanitarian sensitivity?

President Bush had a couple of problems. He had been criticized by former President Clinton, among others, for offering little funding for the tsunami relief effort and for being slow even to do that. (One is reminded of the bewildered Bush reading with a group of toddlers for several minutes after he had learned about the 9/11 attacks on the United States.) Even after the President had increased the U.S. pledge to $350 million, we still found ourselves playing second fiddle to a generous Japan. Bush may well be benevolent by nature, but he faces massive Federal deficits that will be exacerbated by the developing quagmire that is the Iraq war, as well as by the Income Tax and Social Security giveaways that seem even closer to his heart. Spending more billions in southeast Asia wouldn’t help.

The solution, of course, was to pass the buck to the private sector, thereby getting credit for what the American people would do, while keeping the cost off-budget. It is not clear why President Clinton signed on to this project, though perhaps he thought that doing so would enhance his own reputation for selflessness. The American people, even without nagging from past or present presidents, are showing their usual generosity in the wake of the tragedy, and it is not clear that the Clinton-Bush effort will raise substantially more money than would have been raised anyway by existing relief organizations.

As for a gaggle of presidents, advisors, reporters, and photographers invading one’s embassy for a photo op, what ambassador wants that? Wouldn’t a private, personal telephone call from the President communicate more genuine human concern? Such a call could even have been mentioned in a White House press release. Of course, it would have produced no footage on the evening news.

Reflection on the Recent Election

November 2, 2004, was a sad day for me. When it became obvious the next day that President George W. Bush had been elected, I wrote the following message to the e-mail list of Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh (PEP). I am PEP’s president.

Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.

— 1 Peter 5:8-10 (NRSV)

I am profoundly sad today, and I suspect that many in Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh feel as I do. Even supporters of George W. Bush—a group that most certainly does not contain me—must have reservations about yesterday’s elections. Although both the popular and Electoral College votes will be closely divided, the vast interior of the country is, to borrow a term from Maureen Dowd, Bushworld. Democrats cling to the continental fringes—the Northeast, part of the Upper Midwest, the West Coast, and Hawaii. Florida, whose residents surely favored Gore in 2000, is today blood red. Republicans continue to be a slim majority, yet rule with arrogant swagger. Bush has failed utterly to be a uniter and not a divider. And, yet, we appear to be condemned to another four years of his polarizing “leadership.”

Putting aside my fear that neither the United States nor the world can survive another four years of Republican rule without some as-yet unknown global calamity, I am worried by the widely remarked phenomenon that the Bush victory—and I assume it is a victory—is driven by “moral values.” Apparently, 80% of people interviewed in exit polls who cited “moral values” as their top concern voted for Bush. This appalling statistic is a challenge to all Christians who are not conservative Evangelicals. I fear that, in the popular mind, God is a Republican. This is a situation we must change, lest the years ahead see a spiritual and intellectual return of the Dark Ages.

Whatever our immediate goals in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Episcopal Church, or even the Anglican Communion, we, with other Christians in the country, must represent Christ’s message as one of love toward God and of our fellow brothers and sisters. Christianity needs to be recognized in the popular imagination as a religion whose message is not necessarily one of literal adherence to a simpleminded reading of the ancient texts. I want to be proud, not embarrassed, to call myself a Christian. I want others to join me on the Christian journey, a difficult path whose twists and turns are not always obvious and whose borders are often ambiguous, rather than sharply delineated. I want people to recognize that “moral values” are not a fixed checklist so much as a set of principles and a process for applying them. Chief among those principles is love and the example of it we have in Jesus Christ. We achieve our moral vision by engaging our entire selves—mind, body, and spirit—in the quest for God’s plan for us. Prayer, study, reflection, and listening are elements of the journey, as is action, but not simply reflexive action that mistakes self-interest and prejudice for God’s will.

Perhaps our mission statement is too narrow, our audience too restricted. We are Christians, and our job is to represent Christ to the world. That world is very different from the one in which he walked two millennia ago. We would do well to ask ourselves the question often asked, though perhaps poorly answered, by conservative Christians: What would Jesus do? Let me put that another way: Were Jesus in the White House, would his agenda be that of George W. Bush? The answer to that question is obvious to me. We need to make it obvious to others.

Lower Manhattan

Recently, I saw a news segment on television about a Dick Cheney campaign event at the Statue of Liberty. The correspondent said something about the changed view of Lower Manhattan from Liberty Island since the destruction of the Twin Towers. For the first time, it struck me that "Lower Manhattan" has taken on a somewhat different meaning since the events of September 11, 2001.

Is “Both” Really Necessary?

In a news story on NPR this morning, a reporter read the following sentence (or something close to it): “Both of the planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I considered writing to NPR yet again to protest this manner of using “both,” but I decided to post a comment on my Web log instead. Obviously, my previous letters to NPR on the overuse of “both” have been to no avail.

I admit that the reporter’s sentence is neither false nor ungrammatical. It is true that plane A disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane B. It is equally true that plane B disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane A. The question we must ask, however, is whether only one of these assertions could possibly be true. The obvious answer is “no.” The relation disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of is clearly symmetric. Near simultaneity is a shared property of two events and cannot be attributed exclusively to one or the other. Particularly on the radio, where brevity is surely a virtue, the sentence should simply have been: “The planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I suspect that whoever composed the sentence, however, was unconsciously using “both” as an intensifier, stressing that the crashes constituted an extraordinary coincidence.

The redundant use of “both” is common. Here are a few more examples: “Both drug stores opened near one another.” “Both boys were of equal height.” “Both speakers shared the podium.” “Both phenomena have a common origin.”

“Both” is nonetheless a useful word that is not always redundant. Consider these sentences: “Both drug stores opened is the suburb of Bethel Park.” “Both boys are 5 ft. 2 in. in height.” “Both speakers were on the 2 o’clock program.” “Both phenomena are caused by magnetic fields.”

Independence Day Thought

Driving home from an Independence Day party and a subsequent outing to view the fireworks sponsored by Mt. Lebanon Township, I reflected on the day, which had included a sermon on political freedom versus Christian freedom and a class that focused on Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who wrote the first Book of Common Prayer. In our class, I expressed the view that separation of church and state was among the greatest and most beneficial innovations of the Founding Fathers. At the time, I was thinking of the many people, including Archbishop Cranmer, who were burned or beheaded in a sixteenth-century England in which church and state were inextricably entwined. On the drive home, however, my thoughts were more abstract and more analytical: separation of church and state denies to the state the imprimatur of the church and denies to the church the power of the state. The effect, in a society generous in its grant of rights to a free people, is to encourage the honesty and integrity of both church and state.

I hope your Independence Day was a good one.

Senate Indecency

Permit me to point out an irony that has been noticed by others, but which is simply too good not to mention.

Last week, Vice President Dick Chaney apparently told Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy “fuck you” on the floor of the Senate during a group photo session. Chaney told Fox News, “I felt better after I said it. A lot of my colleagues felt what I said badly needed to be said.” No doubt!

Both houses of Congress recently voted to allow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to raise fines for indecency on broadcast radio and television to $500,000 (House) or $275,000 (Senate) per incident. (Apparently the word “fuck” is, in all contexts, deemed indecent.) As disrespect for free speech and willingness to ponder to the basest of voter prejudices knows no party, the votes were lopsided and bipartisan.

The Senate should fine the Vice President to show that, in fact, its vote was completely sincere.

Surprising Old Usages

I have been reading Richard H. Schmidt’s wonderful book Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality. Schmidt describes the lives and writings of 29 notable Anglicans, beginning with Thomas Cranmer and ending with Desmond Tutu. For each Anglican writer, he also provides excerpts to help the reader gain a sense of that person’s work firsthand.

Schmidt treats his subjects chronologically, and, since I have only begun reading the book, I have been encountering some old text. This slows my reading somewhat but isn’t otherwise much of a problem. Every so often, however, I am stopped in my tracks by a word that clearly means something different from what it would mean in a modern context.

For example, addressing the intent of sacraments, Archbishop Cranmer writes: “Our Savior Christ hath not only set forth these things most plainly in his holy word, that we may hear them with our ears, but he has also ordained one visible sacrament of spiritual regeneration in water, and another visible sacrament of spiritual nourishment in bread and wine, to the intent that, as much as is possible for man, we may see Christ with our eyes, smell him at our nose, taste him with our mouths, grope him with our hands, and perceive him with all our senses.” Encountering that word “grope” is disconcerting. Clearly, it simply means handle or manipulate. The modern word is never used that way, and, I think, is being used less often to mean to reach or to search uncertainly (grope in the dark, grope for a word). The first meaning of “grope” that comes to my mind—and likely yours, I suspect—is, as The American Heritage Dictionary delicately puts it,“[t]o handle or fondle for sexual pleasure.” What an inappropriate meaning that would be in Cranmer’s sentence!

A confession from Lancelot Andrewes’ Private Devotions also contains a curious archaic usage. He begins (in the 1840 translation of John Henry Newman—Andrewes had a habit of writing in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew): “Merciful and pitiful Lord.” The word “pitiful” has the most obvious and straightforward meaning here—albeit a meaning lost to current usage—full of pity. The modern word, of course, means inspiring or deserving pity, perhaps due to some inadequacy. Andrewes, however, is hardly calling God inadequate!

Ground Zero Memorial

In a recent essay, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd attacked the eight finalist designs for a Ground Zero memorial. The pretty designs, she suggested, fail to capture the horror of the event they mean to memorialize. “The designs,” she said, “are more concerned with the play of light on water than the play of darkness on life.” If a memorial is to capture our outrage over the 9/11 attacks and not merely our sadness over our loss, Dowd’s point cannot be dismissed.

Dowd’s column set me thinking about my own experience of September 11, 2001, and my sense of having witnessed acts of pure evil. The image seared into my mind that day was of the burning towers, particularly of the second airliner crashing into the South Tower. I imagined a memorial of an airplane crashing into a burning building, with another burning building next to it, a kind of perpetual flame with attitude. As a public memorial, this idea seemed a bit too literal, and one that would fail to comment or provide insight into the event. It would nonetheless communicate the horror and revulsion felt by Americans that day and would overcome Dowd’s objection to the sterility, if not the banality, of the designs currently being considered.

Realism is out of favor in public art, of course, and one has to admit that the world has seen too many bronze warriors on horseback. Who can be unmoved by a work such as the Iwo Jima Memorial, however? True, this statue is modeled directly on the photographic record, but the event itself was so suffused with broader significance that the sculpture is immediately recognized as signifying more than simply the raising of a flag. Perhaps a slight change in point-of-view could yield an equally powerful public statement at the World Trade Center site.

Thinking about the problem, I was reminded of the poem I wrote about the atrocity, “Falling from the Sky.” An image in the poem suggested another approach:

The second plane penetrated the wall like a heavy object dropped onto a cake.

Was anyone staring out the window as it became larger and larger?

Could he see into the cockpit?

Was the pilot smiling?

Was he serene?

Imagine the following scene in life-size bronze. In the foreground is an office with desks and other office furniture. Workers are at their desks, standing, and looking out the windows in panic. Others face the viewer, seemingly carrying on their normal office duties. Beyond the windows is an airliner, positioned as it was an instant before impact. In the cockpit are three Arabs—a pilot looking serene, a co-pilot smiling, and a standing figure in back cheering on his colleagues. That would capture our sadness about the event, as well as our revulsion and anger. Add a reflecting pool or pillars of light or whatever abstractions are demanded by architectural sensibilities, and you have an effective Ground Zero memorial for the ages.

Back Again

I knew that I hadn’t written anything here in a long time, but I hadn’t realized that it had been four months! Actually, I had begun writing a number of essays during the period, but I never finished any of them.

I do have an excuse for neglecting my Web log (and many other things in my life). In early August, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention confirmed the election of the church’s first openly gay bishop, The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson. Needless to say, this was a controversal move. In fact, I had been tracking the comments of bishops about the election on Lionel Deimel’s Farrago, and it had become increasingly obvious that my own bishop, Robert W. Duncan, was the most vocal bishop opposing the election. This came as no surprise, though I was taken aback by the intensity of Bishop Duncan’s frequent pronouncements.

I was already an active member of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) when Canon Robinson’s New Hampshire election was ratified by General Convention. PEP soon found itself leading an effort to resist Bishop Duncan’s attempt to break with the Episcopal Church, and I became one of the leaders of this effort. A petition, two diocesan conventions, many press interviews, and a host of other activities later, I now find myself the first president of PEP. Alas, the fight for a diverse, welcoming Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pittsburgh (and, in fact, in the nation generally) goes on.

There is quite a story I could tell of PEP’s campaign against the ultraconservatives in the diocese and the Episcopal Church. Were I a compulsive blogger, I would have been telling this story as it happened. This would probably have required my completely giving up both sleeping and trying to make a living, so I will be only so appologetic for my lack of diligence. I suspect that I will eventually get around to telling the story.

Having explained why I haven’t written anything lately, I will promise to try to be more prolific in the days to come. It is, however, getting very near to Christmas.

Church and State in the Bush Administration

In a rare news conference yesterday, President Bush declared his opposition to the notion of gay marriage. He explained that his administration is looking into how gay marriage can be outlawed more effectively. The New York Times suggests that this may mean that, in spite of the existence of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, the Bush administration might sponsor a constitutional amendment to probibit legalization of gay unions. (See “Where Are the Politicians?”)

The President offered no explanation for his position, which is, no doubt self-evidently proper to many Americans. Moreover, he managed to mollify and offend gays in the same breath by expressing a need to “respect each individual” while explaining that “we are all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor’s eye when they [sic] got a log in their own.”

Mr. Bush’s biblical rhetoric, invoking the decidedly non-secular concept of sin, exposes his opinion for what it is—not a reasoned, public policy position, but an unexamined article of religious faith. Ironically, stories about the news conference are juxtaposed this morning with stories of the Vatican’s latest campaign against gay marriage. Once again, President Bush has wandered drunkenly over the line between church and state, oblivious that his strong religious convictions are not a legitimate rationale for legislative action.

Disconnect

It becomes increasingly clear that the Republican Party has a philosophy that is accepted by its acolytes, unencumbered, as Tom and Ray Magliozzi are fond of saying, by the thought process. This morning, for example, I heard an amazing sound byte on the radio from the House Budget Committee Chairman, Jim Nussle (R, Iowa). In all seriousness, he said, “Taxes that are left in the pockets of people who earned the money in the first place is [sic] not borrowed from the federal government. It’s left in the pockets of the people in the first place. Tax relief cannot cause deficits.” Of course, this is true in the same sense that a wing’s falling off an airplane does not cause the plane to crash, though that event, along with gravity, will usually do the trick. By Mr. Nussle’s logic, we could eliminate taxes completely without causing deficits. It is not, I suppose, his responsibility that the government necessarily spends money, and, lacking revenue, will run what most economists would call a deficit.

Congress (and the President, for that matter) needs to rely less on articles of faith, as does Mr. Nussle, and more on conventional logic.

More Ambiguity

I recently wrote an essay on ambiguity introduced into sentences because of the absence of commas (see “Commas”). I think this has made me more sensitive to liguinstic ambiguity generally. The latest instance I’ve noticed was in a television commercial for La Quinta Inns. I thought I had heard something like “stay three nights and get one night free,” though the company’s Web site says: “Stay 3 times. Get a night free!” Consider this latter offer. It suggests that you must register at a La Quinta Inn on three different occasions, but do you get a free night during your third stay, or does your free night come on the fourth or subsequent stay? One cannot tell from the slogan. In such cases, the ambiguity usually favors the vendor, rather than the customer. That is indeed the case here. After three stays, one earns a “free night certificate,” and the fine print explains that you cannot speed up your certificate earning by checking out and checking back in on the same day.

Cannot

I often see people write “can not” where they actually mean “cannot.” I have tended to dismiss this as a spelling error, but a sentence I encountered today made me look a little deeper into the matter. Here, I simplify that sentence: “We should do everything we can not to raise taxes.” In this sentence, we cannot substitute “cannot” for “can not”—the unrelated words “can” and “not” are juxtaposed rather by accident.

In fact, “cannot” is the negative form of “can,” and the only thing that can be substituted for it directly is the contraction “can’t.” Consider this sentence: “We cannot raise taxes.” This sentence has the meaning either that we should not raise taxes or that we are incapable of raising taxes. But what happens if we substitute “can not” for “cannot”? We get this sentence: “We can not raise taxes.” This sentence might have slightly different connotations depending upon the context, but the basic meaning is nearly the opposite of one of the meanings of the corresponding sentence containing “cannot”—it means that not raising taxes is an option, but the implication is that raising taxes is an option, perhaps the most obvious or likely one.

Think carefully when next you are tempted to write “can not.”

Repartee

Seldom is conversation in real life as witty as it is in art. Occasionally, however, exchanges do occur naturally that deserve to be savored. Here are two examples.


I was staying at a motel outside Columbus, Ohio, recently and had gone to a nearby McDonald’s to gather some breakfast. Returning to the motel, I parked near the door and got out of my car holding a drink carrier, drinks, a bag of food, napkins, and straws. Two maids were entering the building just ahead of me. One, helpfully, held open the door. Intent upon providing further assistance and apparently thinking that I was cleaning out the car, asked as I approached, “Is that trash?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but I’m going to eat it anyway.”

I was not the party of wit in a conversation a few days ago. My heating and air conditioning company called to schedule a pre-season air conditioning inspection. The phone rang just after I had stepped out of the shower. I ran into the bedroom and answered the telephone. After introducing himself, my caller explained, “We’d like to come over to inspect your air conditioning.”

“When?” I asked.

“This morning, sometime in the next hour and a half.”

I knew I would need to move some things away from the basement air handler, and I had other plans for the morning, so I wanted to delay a visit. “Well,” I said, “I just got out of the shower, and I’m sitting on the bed without any clothes on,” perhaps disclosing more than was absolutely necessary.

“Are you planning to do that all day?” was the immediate reply.

We quickly agreed to an afternoon appointment.

Thought Experiment Redux

An answer has now been provided to the question I raised in “Thought Experiment” of February 24, 2003. NASA officials had insisted that the question of whether Columbia was fatally damaged was moot, as no rescue was possible. Associated Press reported today, however, that the board investigating the shuttle accident put my question to NASA, namely: had it been known that the shuttle was fatally damaged, could a rescue mission have been mounted? According to AP, “NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said he would have strongly considered sending Atlantis to the astronauts’ rescue, even if it meant losing another shuttle and crew.”

Random Thoughts on Iraq

The U.N. Security Council is about to vote on removing sanctions on Iraq. The resolution on the table has been revised to make it more acceptable to Russia, France, and others. It is to be hoped that this resolution moves forward the process of making Iraq whole. A big job is before us. Here are some random thoughts about it.

Why didn’t we immediately declare martial law in Iraq? There was surely no doubt that we would win the war because we couldn’t afford to lose it. (Had it been necessary to destroy the country in order to save it, we would have done that.) We therefore knew that we would have to maintain order, lest Iraq descend into anarchy. Unfortunately, we seem to have decided to cross that bridge when we came to it, and we assumed that rebuilding the government wouldn’t have to be done from scratch. We are now dealing with such foreseeable questions as the degree to which we will allow Baath Party members to be part of any future government. While we are figuring out what to do next, the country has been busily tearing itself apart and organizing religious parties that seek to create a new Iran (or Afghanistan). People should have been kept in their houses and, for the moment, prevented from demonstrating (and perhaps even from meeting). Arguably, we didn’t have enough troops to enforce martial law, and certainly didn’t have enough MPs. Why not? We are now sending troops home! The President seems eager to put a government in place in Iraq and to seem to be doing something about the deteriorating U.S. economy, so he can be re-elected in 2004. Will we install a government and leave, only to see it become an Islamic theocracy after a “decent interval”? Surely, we don’t want to see a Vietnam-like withdrawal from a war that we actually won!

What about OPEC? We have at least four reasons to ignore OPEC and its quotas. The first reason, of course, is that the OPEC cartel restrains free trade. (Could the WTO move against OPEC? I don’t know.) Second, we need all the funds we can get to rebuild Iraq, and maximizing oil revenue seems to be the way to get them. Third, selling more oil at lower prices will lower the cost of gasoline in the U.S. This is good for Americans and would seem to be a great boon to Mr. Bush’s election prospects (well, that isn’t a good thing). Finally, if the Iraqi deals with Russia are honored—they should be, as should all Iraqi foreign debt—telling OPEC to go to hell will result in more revenue for the Russians. They need the money, and this will buy the U.S. some goodwill. Spurning OPEC will confirm the suspicions of everyone who thought this war was all about oil, but even those people will reap benefits. Of course, the President may not want to offend OPEC because doing so will be unpopular in Arab countries and because Big Oil probably secretly likes OPEC (doesn’t mind it anyway), which keeps prices relatively stable.

The administration has a genuine problem of deciding how much authority it can allow the U.N. to have in Iraqi affairs. The need to improve our reputation among the world’s nations argues for giving the U.N. a significant role in rebuilding Iraq, yet American wariness is not simply paranoia. In fact, the Oil for Food program was run badly, resulting in illicit gains for Saddam Hussein and for unscrupulous foreign “merchants.” We will be tempted to take responsibility for the “important” tasks ourselves (installing a government) and to leave the less glamorous tasks to the U.N. (food relief). We justifiably will be chastised for this. Perhaps a more ideal division of labor would be for us to manage everything, farming out some work to others, and to have the U.N. monitor everything. Responsibility for some tasks would be assigned to the U.N. As manager, we would oversee this work, but some other country should assume the external monitor role. The smart money is not on my plan.

In the short run, no truly democratic process in Iraq is going to produce the outcome we would prefer, namely a western-style liberal democracy. Our government is not acting as if it believes this, however, which is worrisome. For appearances’ sake, we are eager to get an indigenous government (or a quasi-indigenous one, if exiles are to be involved) up and running, so we can extract ourselves sooner, rather than later (by September 2004, say). This approach is not promising. Imposing a constitution, as MacArthur did on Japan (see “The Next Battle for Iraq”) might work, though Iraq is not the homogeneous nation that Japan was after World War II, and the lawgiver’s task is arguably more difficult. I recommend instead temporary military rule and a lot of education. For now, no program of education is in sight.

Constituent Services

Three weeks ago, I sent e-mail messages to my congressman, to my own senators, and to Republican Senators Snowe and Voinovich, who were objecting to the size of President Bush's tax cut proposal. To each, I expressed the view that, as far as tax cuts are concerned, less is more, and my preference would actually be to rescind the massive cuts enacted at the beginning of Mr. Bush’s term. Today, I received my first letter in response to these messages. It was from Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

As most people know, Mr. Santorum is one of the most partisan, right wing ideologues in Congress. I did not expect him to be much affected by my message, but I wanted him to know that this constituent, anyway, did not agree with him. From experience, I know that Senator Santorum answers his mail. In fact, I received a 2-1/2 page letter. I expected that this would be something of a standard letter—no senator has time to compose 2-1/2 pages of personal response to every letter received. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for the senator’s response. The letter began:

Thank you for contacting me regarding congressional and presidential efforts to strengthen American’s economy. I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views.

This is a fair opening. The senator then provided 11 paragraphs of explanation of how he and President Bush are working to bring the benefits of the President’s tax cut proposal to the people. The letter concluded with:

I appreciate hearing your specific comments on the current condition of the economy, and as the 108^th Congress continues I will be sure to keep your views in mind. If I can be of further assistance to you on this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to call on me again.

Nowhere does the senator acknowledge that I expressed a view diametrically opposed to his own. A reader of his reply might reasonably conclude that I had written a letter in praise of his enlightened leadership and wise policy positions. Obviously, Senator Santorum does not give a damn about what any constituent thinks. Did anyone in his office even bother to tabulate my note as a dissenting one?

The senator is in good company among Republicans, of course. Like President Bush, Senator Santorum knows what he knows and has no need to measure his views against reality. Also, like President Bush, he could learn a thing or two about respecting—or evening pretending to respect—the views of others.

[Senator Rick Santorum figures in another of my essays. Read Rick’s Fix in Commentary.

Chicken or Egg?

I find myself constantly asking what has happened to the Democrats. Where is the Loyal Opposition? Is everyone in the party brain dead? Do Democrats no longer have any ideas of their own? Why don’t they just come out and say that George W. Bush is a reckless cowboy who stole the Presidency, conducts foreign policy with the subtlety of Attila the Hun, who is running the country for the benefit of his rich cronies, and who doesn’t give a damn about the average American or about civil liberties? Isn’t this obvious to anyone who isn’t in a coma?

Joe Klein, in his latest report in Time, “How to Build a Better Democrat,” has some good suggestions to help Democratic candidates get noticed (recapture the flag, lose the frown, kill the consultants). He neglected to point out the Catch-22 that seems to restrain the Democrats, however. They are reluctant to criticize President Bush because he is so popular. But Mr. Bush’s popularity is enhanced by the fact that there are so few credible, national voices opposing him. When the opposition party does not take on the President, people conclude that our leader must be doing things right and deserves our support. The result is that his popularity increases, and the Democrats become ever more timid. By the time George W. Bush ruins the country, there may not even be a Democratic Party to pick up the pieces!

The Democrats should immediately begin a program of truth telling. When the President does or says something of which they approve, they should say so. In this case, some measure of the President’s popularity may actually rub off on them. When the President does something damnable, however, his policies should be attacked unmercifully. Democrats will take some abuse for this from the Republican right, from the columnists, and from the radio talk show hosts. Eventually, however, people will begin listening to that wee small voice in their heads that has been telling them all along that something is seriously wrong in the land, that perhaps the nakedness of the Emperor is really an indication that he has no clothes on. Especially should the Democrats not let President Bush get away with claiming the moral high ground when he is being most partisan, while accusing the Democrats of partisanship whenever they express even the mildest disapproval.

What comes first, decreased presidential popularity or an atmosphere in which it is easy to criticize the President? The answer is the former. Unless the Democrats are willing to attack a popular President, however, that President will remain popular, and neither expressing dissent nor winning elections will become any easier.

Bucking the Odds

President George W. Bush’s dramatic tail-hook landing on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln for a “victory” speech has been much criticized as an expensive political stunt. Surprisingly, the President has avoided the abuse heaped upon presidential candidate Michael Dukakis some years ago after that candidate donned military uniform and helmet to pilot a tank. The consensus then was that Mr. Dukakis merely looked silly. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, has been accused of looking too military in a country where civilians are supposed to be in change, but he otherwise played his Karl-Rove–scripted part quite well.

Allow me to offer another objection. I believe that the President of the United States needlessly (and recklessly) endangered his health and safety by landing as he did on the Abraham Lincoln (and perhaps by training for the landing as well). Mr. Bush apparently felt that the risk was acceptable, given the potential political gain. Citizens, however, can reasonably have a different view. The trauma associated with presidential injury or death is simply too great to justify taking unnecessary chances with a President’s life.

George W. Bush has led a charmed life. His family name has given him opportunities that ordinary people seldom get, even if, unlike Mr. Bush, they work hard for them. His father’s friends have always been there to bail out Mr. Bush from his business failures. And his stubborn political determination has won him victory after victory—including the capture of the Office of the President itself—when any rational evaluation of the odds would have indicated caution.

On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush dodged yet another bullet. Some day, however, his luck will run out. When that happens, I pray that it is Mr. Bush, his family, and the Republican Party, not the citizens of the United States or the inhabitants of the planet, who will pay for his exalted sense of invincibility. In the end, probability cannot be denied. If the President continues to bet the farm at every turn, his eventual downfall is assured.

All New

Have you noticed that television networks have taken to describing upcoming episodes of their shows as “all new”? (For example, “an all new ER.”) What does that mean? Have we unknowingly been watching programs containing stock footage and scenes aired previously, that is, shows only partly new? Perhaps “all new” is supposed to mean “new to everyone,” a distinction necessitated by NBC’s introduction of the slogan “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you” of a few years back.

Actually, “all” is probably just a meaningless intensifier dreamed up by some PR type trying to be original. That “all new” episode of ER no doubt uses the same actors playing the same characters on the same sets as earlier ones and is produced by the same people and filmed by the same crew. All new? Hardly!