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Margo Howard and Martin Peretz

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from: Martin Peretz

Dubya ... Left Behind?

Posted Monday, Jan. 15, 2001, at 7:22 PM ET

Dear Margo,

Everybody seems to be celebrating Martin Luther King Day in his own way. The president-elect observed the occasion by reverting to his campaign banalities about education. Don't leave a child behind, etc, etc.

The fact is that Dubya seems to have been left behind himself. I know that Mother Barbara's great cause is literacy. But there's no evidence that she made this son particularly literate. Here is a child of enormous privilege who hasn't uttered one truly challenging idea in the year and a half he's been on the national stage. And that's after going to Andover and Yale. His admission to these two elite institutions really constitutes flagrant cases of affirmative action. I'd bet that his scores were well below the median and the average of his class, and below the median and average of those admittee sons and daughters of the racial groups who Bush supporters think belong elsewhere. You mention Adlai Stevenson IV, a rather nondescript scion himself, but a Democrat. Well, the Bush people have now put out the story--and I presume it is true--that George W. is actually reading a book, a big book and serious book, besides. It's a biography of another presidential scion:John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams. But George is no John Quincy, as his father was no John Adams. We last encountered John Quincy Adams in the popular culture as an anti-slavery protagonist in Steven Spielberg's movie Amistad, the great saga of a slave mutiny on board a ship and the trial that ensued on our shores. Do I have to say much more about George W. not being very much like John Q.? Al Gore takes some comfort in the Bush-Adams analogy because it reminds people that the Tennessee senator who Adams defeated was Andrew Jackson, who went on to defeat Adams and to serve two terms in the White House. But Jackson was a very complicated man, a populist and a racist at once. But, as the great Yale historian C. Vann Woodward (about whose existence at Yale the Yalie George W. certainly knew nothing) has taught us, this was not an unusual combination. But back to Bush and MLK Day. With him at the ceremonies in Houston was Rod Paige, who has run the Houston schools for some time and is now slated to be Secretary of Education--a very good man, I am told.

Richard Cheney and Colin Powell both owe their present positions to having been in the seats of the mighty when Poppy took the country to war against Iraq more than a decade ago. The Republicans have had some fun pointing to the fact that Bill Clinton did nothing to remove Saddam Hussein from power during the last eight years. The fact is, however, that Poppy and Cheney and the big tough general himself (plus, of course, James "fuck the Jews" Baker) left Saddam in Baghdad when they could easily (and virtually without allied casualties) have sent him packing, perhaps into exile in sunny Libya. But they didn't, and he is still where they left him. Saddam is now tormenting the United States constantly. Reuters reported today that, on behalf of the suffering people of Iraq, he is now contributing $94 million to the poor people of America.

A serious reference: John Mearsheimer teaches military strategy at the University of Chicago. On the op-ed page of last Thursday's New York Times (Jan. 11), he published an article just about proving that there is nothing Israel could do to satisfy the minimal demands--which are also the maximum demands--of the Palestinians without endangering the security of the Jewish state. This article is so dispassionate and so persuasive that there is virtually nothing left to say about the topic. Of course, Bill Clinton has much to say about the topic. He wants a signed piece of paper that attests to the fact that Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat have accepted his view of their world. It is hard to understand why Arafat won't sign the document and harder to understand why Barak would. For Israel, after all, this formula would mean the forfeiting of literally all its strategic red lines. It is a design for disaster, sheer disaster. The doveish chief-of-staff of the Israel Defense Forces says that Clinton's design would leave Tel Aviv indefensible. Why would Clinton contrive such a scheme? I believe it is because he cares nothing about the merits of the issues or about the safety of the people whom he pretended to love--yes, love. What he wants is another chapter in the history books. But this one would be about a tragedy of his own making. Maybe you have already read my article about this in the January 15 New Republic. And maybe you haven't. This is not, however, a reading assignment.

Sorry to have written so late in the day. But I was stuck on a plane between New York and Boston, and the weather was ... well, it is February in the northeast corridor and not very pleasant.

As always,
Marty

the breakfast table
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from: Martin Peretz

Dubya ... Left Behind?

Posted Monday, Jan. 15, 2001, at 7:22 PM ET
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Margo Howard writes Slate's "Dear Prudence" column. Martin Peretz is a lecturer in social studies at Harvard and editor in chief and chairman of the New Republic.
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