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Margo Howard and Martin Peretz

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from: Martin Peretz

Full Disclosure

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2001, at 2:12 PM ET

Dear Margo,

I know that Republicans can't take criticism of their leaders. But I am not a "lefty sore loser" or anything like that. Maybe our readers won't care about my political history and you, God knows, have seen it up close. I am not a "Democrats can do no wrong" voter. During the last campaign, I was interviewed by the BBC and told them that I thought Bill Clinton was loathsome. Once on British radio, my remark perambulated back to the states, and my quote was widely repeated in the American media. I suppose this embarrassed my friend Al Gore, but it's how I felt (and still feel). In any case, while I've become more partisan after this election because of how brazenly it was filched, I do not believe, as the Psalmist would have it, that my right hand would wither if I pulled the Republican lever. In fact, I voted Republican several times in my life: for Bill Weld as governor of Massachusetts, for Frank Sargent in the same office, for anybody who ran against Joe Kennedy in my congressional district, for various Republicans for local offices against insufferably high-minded goo-goos. I actually voted for John Anderson not because I wanted him but because I didn't want Jimmy Carter elected to a second term. No one failed to understand that, when the New Republic endorsed Anderson, its editors were stating a not-so-subtle preference for Ronald Reagan over Carter. So I am innocent of the bias as charged. To finish out my history, I started out on the left. When Ted Kennedy ran for U.S. Senate when he was still in knee-britches, I voted for what was then called a "peace candidate," Harvard historian H. Stuart Hughes, the grandson of Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. I have not voted for a Kennedy since, although I've contributed to Kathleen Kennedy's campaigns for lieutenant governor of Maryland. She's a friend and a decent and wise woman, besides.

One of the facts the Republicans hated most about Bill Clinton was how slippery and dishonest--not to mention also calculating about maintaining his future political viability--in getting out of the draft during Vietnam. To tell you the truth, reading his various missives from Oxford was a nauseating experience. But that George W. did just about the same thing at just about the same time did not faze the Republican patriots at all. Now, we read that John Ashcroft also finagled himself a draft-deferrable job teaching business (through one of his God-fearing friends) during the Vietnam War. And the Wall Street Journal will certainly take umbrage at anyone who raises this issue against him. My wife has taught me that when people become fervent about a character issue, it's often to cover up one of their own failings. Maybe Ashcroft actually doubts the authenticity of his own love --of country. I happen to know and respect John McCain, and he's an exemplary patriot. As is Al Gore, who volunteered for service in Vietnam. Likewise my senator and friend, John F. Kerry, who was decorated for heroism in battle. Two Democratic politicians actually left limbs in Vietnam: Bob Kerrey, now president of the New School University in New York, and Max Cleland. The Republicans should stop pretending they have a monopoly on patriotism that is translated into actual military service, which, if you judge from the Vietnam-era behavior of some of their top leaders, including the president-elect, they most certainly don't.

There's no mistaking the fact that there is a deep cultural divide in America, and it is sometimes reflected in our elections. It is also reflected in our first ladies. I've met Hillary Clinton only once, and she did not like me. (I was one of those sizeable contributors to the Democratic Party who was never invited to the White House, even for a cup of coffee.) Of course, I didn't much like her either as you well know. I didn't like her politics, her haughtiness, and how she dispensed with friends. My guess is that, in her pursuit of the White House, she will not make waves. She will be very ordinary ... but with regal pretense. Tipper Gore would have been a stunner in the White House, doing her own important things--like detoxifying the idea of mental illness and raising the issue of wholesomeness in children's television programming--without impinging or poaching on her husband's agenda. But that was not to be this year. My guess is that we'll "re-elect Gore in 2004" and with him Tipper.

I've never met Laura Bush, and I've got no real impressions from her or about her from the campaign. So I am left with the Times' crack reporter Elaine Sciolino's account:

When she was 5, Laura Bush has told her friends, she lined up her dolls and pretended to be their teacher. Over the years, she has arranged her personal library according to the Dewey Decimal System, and has kept her record collections of 33's and 45's in mint condition and dust-free. As first lady of Texas ... she assembled thick scrapbooks of official and personal events, chose her Christmas card the previous February and wrote thank you letters within 24 hours of an event. Her clothes designer says that she arranges her shoes (in their original boxes) according to hue and has began to scan photographs of her wardrobe into a computer. Her architect says that she doesn't leave papers unfiled ... Her friends say that she scrubs and straightens to release excess energy. "Rock of Gibraltar," is how former President George Bush ... described her.



Barbara agrees. There's nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, maybe her organizational abilities will help her husband organize his mind. But, they've been married long enough for that to have happened already. So maybe it won't.

One of the not-so-subterranean themes of the last campaign was that the Democrats were somehow indentured to the people of the yellow peril because some Chinese and Indonesians had made contributions to the party. Well, this morning's Wall Street Journal reports that not only has a Lebanese businessman and his son each contributed $100,000 to the expenses of Dubya's inaugural, but also, more saliently that the businessman is actually deputy prime minister of Lebanon. This is tacky, not so much on Issam Fares' part (in the Arab world, politics is more--than routinely lubricated by money) but on the part of the Bushies. More on the Middle East later. On that topic, there is always more, at least from me.

Sorry to be so late in responding.

As always,
Marty

the breakfast table
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from: Martin Peretz

Full Disclosure

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2001, at 2:12 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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