Spectator's Journal
SPEC TATOR'S JOURNAL An American Revenge A central question in the debate on American policy towards the Soviet Union is whether the U.S. should withhold from selling certain kinds of products in...
...Thus the threat of a revolt by the unfashionably-clad rather than the starving masses forced a desperate East German government to request a large shipment of jeans, which it has proceeded to sell at a hefty 149 German marks a pair (nominally equivalent to $74), both buying off and ripping off its citizens...
...To head off major social unrest...
...It is, moreover, a product notoriously in demand throughout the Eastern bloc: I am referring, of course, to Levi's, the world-famous denim pants made by Levi Strauss & Company...
...The chief benefit one gains after becoming a Very Important Communist is being able to buy capitalist products...
...Braestrup, who is now editor of the Wilson Quarterly, has in a letter to us elaborated upon one point in his book: No reviewer seemed to pick up-because I did not emphasize it sufficiently-the importance of LBJ's ambiguous behavior during, as well as before, the Tet attacks...
...No one-not even a socialist intellectual-wants to buy the products of socialist countries, except perhaps Polish hams or Russian caviar...
...A foreign policy based on jeans might do better than one based on a "respect for human rights...
...Ask most of the world what it thinks of American values and it sneers...
...And Hungary now has an agreement with Levi Strauss & Company to make the jeans in that country...
...In trying to win the hearts and minds of people around the world, some Americans have said that we should vehemently proclaim the virtues of democracy...
...Why, then, did the East German government pay $9 million for jeans...
...ask most of the world if it wants American jeans, and it cries "yes...
...Everyone wants to buy Japanese or German or South Korean cars, television sets, tape recorders, and record players...
...Hoover's Vice-President, Charles Curtis, was a Kaw Indian...
...should withhold from selling certain kinds of products in order to exert some influence on Soviet policy-especially human-rights issues...
...And American jeans...
...Nixon's response to the 1972 offensive by Hanoi was prompt and "presidential"-bombing, mining, etc...
...The significance of Levi's as a potential instrument of foreign policy becomes apparent if we consider the recent sale of almost 800,000 pairs to East Germany...
...According to the Los Angeles Times, scores of new-breed historians have been pouring into the 31st President's hometown of West Branch, Iowa, to sift through and re-evaluate the papers and files stored in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library...
...But Woodrow Wilson already tried that...
...Most East European countries spend their limited supplies of hard currency on basic industrial products, not such trivial consumer items...
...no panieensued in Washington, or in most of the press in 1972...
...Few today are aware," says Woods, "that Herbert Hoover was the father of the 8-hour day, of the hot school lunch.'' As far back as 1919, Hoover struggled for equal wages for women, and for Medicare and Social Security...
...There were other helpful factors in 1972 as well-no prior Nixon assurances of "progress," no surprise, no major GOP split on war policy...
...A. James McAdams Correspondence Peter Braestrup's Big Story, a fascinatingly well-researched account of the American press's coverage of the 1968 Tet offensive, was discussed in the December "Spectator's Journal" and is reviewed by W. Scott Thompson in the current issue...
...Williams recently read one of Hoover's speeches to an undergraduate class, without revealing its author, and' 'most thought it was either Jane Fonda or Bella Abzug...
...One revisionist study, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, has already been published...
...East Germans wanted the real thing, not an inferior, state-produced imitation...
...He even practiced "affirmative action...
...The dean of American New Left historians, William Appleman Williams, has outlined in his Contours of American History Hoover's forgotten "left" side...
...For two months, in effect, he did nothing "presidential" in response to the perceived crisis-leaving the field open to a cacophony of the press and his critics, and demoralizing his own administration and his supporters on the Hill...
...But there is another kind of American product that cannot be bought elsewhere...
...According to a New York Times report, East Germany had manufactured blue jeans of its own earlier this year, but the venture failed...
...Instead of trying to persuade them that socialism is not a good thing, we should say: "You can have your socialism, but then you must live with the products of socialism...
...Some American businessmen have complained that our restrictive policy on certain high-technology products is futile, since Russia can buy most such products elsewhere...
...The country was in turmoil-with widespread grumbling among young people and factory workers...
...and for those who style their socialism as democratic, just the possibility of a socialism without Gulags is more attractive than the actuality of a representative democracy that supports cold-hearted capitalism...
...And who wants to do that...
...Stephen Miller Forgotten Progressive The academic Left has a new and unlikely hero-Herbert Hoover...
...Also, according to Woods, Hoover deplored pollution and the excesses of big business...
...This re-examination of Hoover's life and work does not surprise Robert Woods, assistant director at the Hoover Library...
Vol. 12 • March 1979 • No. 3
