The Nation's Pulse
Rusthoven, PeterJ.
no longer described European politics, for the principal political struggle had ceased to be between Right and Left. The political battles before 1941, on the contrary, were fought between two...
...This single insight does much to make the jumbled politics of those years intelligible...
...The political battles before 1941, on the contrary, were fought between two Rights...
...Ford strike out in watered-down Harry Truman fashion at an obstreperous Congress--reflect on whether Ronald Reagan was not in fact the one candidate concerned with and speaking to matters of transcendent significance in this Presidential year...
...When everything that appears in the Times is so hilarious, he asked, where is there room, or need, for Punch...
...There is one Cesar Paladion, who "reaching into the depths of his soul...published a series of books that expressed him utterly--without over-burdening the already unwieldy corpus of bibliography or falling into the alI-too-easy vanity of writing a single new line...
...But by and large, I enjoy the type of commentar~and discussion engendered 30 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 by the Reagan candidacy...
...I do not believe that the Republican Party, to which I happen to belong, has been "captured" by a narrow band of extremists...
...This act, Domecq is quick to remind us, constitutes no mere theft but the greatest work of descriptive criticism ever penned...
...For no sooner have they penned these witty little essays than the objects of their derision, the mock artistes of their wildest imaginings, have become hopelessly obsolete...
...Thus did Oscar Wilde disclose the dark secret of the Modernist aberration in the arts...
...But there is one type of issue which is seldom discussed...
...Now I did not and do not regard Ronatd Reagan as some kind of savior...
...What phantasm from this, Borges' second Book of Imaginary Beings, can compete with Chris Burden, who has nailed himself to the hood of a Volkswagen, had himself shot at, stuffed into a foot locker, and immersed in water until he fainted, and has crawled bellydown through a street strewn with shattered glassmall in the name of Art...
...For Ronald Reagan spoke to this nation, with an eloquence that springs only from the deepest and most serious conviction, about those issues which I believe should be the first concern of civilized and responsible men...
...What, I ask you, would H. Bustos Domecq make of him...
...and for Antarctica A. Garay, whose "concave sculpture" consists of rubbish configurations to be appreciated by contemplating the spaces between them...
...And of course, pundits devoted a great deal of their time and attention to attempted analysis of the final impact of Reagan's candidacy, focusing on whether and how greatly the Republicans were "split," whether and how far Reagan had "pushed" Ford to the Right, and on whether and how much the party itself, already a minority, had been "captured" by its own more conservative elements...
...All that is there, and more...
...We have also witnessed in our lifetimes a steady erosion within this country of those institutions such as church and family which form the foundations of our own freedom and prosperity...
...and I confess to a certain wistful regret that Ronald Reagan will not be on the ballot this November...
...the refried fiction of William S. Burroughs...
...And that, of course, is the problem of satire today...
...Having said that, I must confess that my own thoughts on Ronald Reagan's campaign for the Presidency have little to do with the kind of political and even historical features described above, interesting and important as those features may be...
...Loomis, a poet whose entire works consist of six oneword poems...
...Then there is F.J.C...
...and what so distinguished Ronald Reagan, among the many who sought and the two who still seek our votes this bicentennial year, was that he alone addressed a set of concerns that involve the fundamental role of this nation as a free Republic and as a constitutional moral order--in a world where Republics are few, freedom is scarce, constitutions are ignored, and morality is rarely seriously considered...
...In short, for anyone who wishes to have a deeper understanding of the twentieth century, this book is indispensable...
...But now that Ronald Reagan has ceased-probably forever--to be a candidate for this nation's highest public office, I hope you will indulge me a few words on what in my view set his candidacy apart...
...Never in history has a candidate announced his running mate before the convention, as Governor Reagan did in selecting Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his VicePresidential choice...
...Those who cherish the label "intellectual" are wont to dismiss conservatives as simplistic, unsophisticated, and decidedly unintelligent souls...
...Ford less articulate than the norm, but I suspect that the choice made by the electorate on this occasion will not prove significantly less informed than in the past...
...Remembering Reagan ful challenger been so close to winning as was Reagan--out of a total of 2,259 delegates, he fell only 60 votes, or less than 3 %, short of victory...
...and I do not propose to abandon that editorial policy here...
...And although all Presidential campaigns yield reams of journalistic coverage, few can match the Reagan candidacy in terms of the amount or intensity of media commentary it generated...
...It is this which I hope to remember of the 1976 campaign...
...It has become a commonplace of modern political criticism that Presidential candidates do not sufficiently discuss the "issues"--a charge which I believe is largely a red herring...
...Theirs--the idea seems to be--is not to reason why, theirs is just to buy, buy, buy...
...American citizens are, for the most part, genuinely concerned over such matters as the economy, foreign policy, government spending, taxes, and all the rest...
...I realize as well that The Alternative is not in the business of endorsing candidates for public office...
...how people fared in the neutral countries...
...The footnotes, which fill the bottom of virtually every page, are important and lively, and should be read...
...the ineffable silence of John Cage...
...The contemporary painter, composer, filmmaker, and novelist, ever jealous of his privileged position, has increasingly excluded the public from his bizarre rites...
...Domecq sings comparable dithyrambs to Hitario Lambkin Formento, the author of a lengthy treatise on Dante, who "after Alan Crawford is special assistant to Senator James L. Buckley of New York...
...the early films of Andy Warhol...
...Governor Reagan's campaign for the Republican nomination has to date been far the most intriguing feature of this year's battle for the Oval Office, and will no doubt prove a focus for political study and discussion for some time to come...
...Purely as a political story, it was a fascinating tale, and the most suspenseful in many years...
...for Jose Tafas who, with photographic fidelity, painted cityscapes of Buenos Aires, only to blacken them completely with shoe polish...
...Domecq has slight reservations about one of them, "Beret," which "suffers from a certain coldness,...perhaps attributable to the demand it makes on the reader of having to learn French...
...Each of the illegitimate sons of Dada whom Domecq praises is inadvertently proven a fraud, and, as the reader makes his way through this little book, Domecq's own repugnant character--literary hanger-on, press agent for the avant-garde, eager of drinks, and windy bore--is devastatingl} revealed...
...All of this precious befuddlement Borges and Bioy-Casares serve up with a superb sense of irony: allusions to imaginary artists abound, insufferable pedantry is played upon with admirable delicacy...
...the Governor's campaign certainly had an impact on the choice being made by American voters this year, and although that impact is as yet indeterminate, it is well that it should be noted and considered in the avenues of public discourse...
...Most of that commentary focused, of course, on the actual race for the nomination and its political implications...
...His discussion of the Jews and their tragedy is especially fine, pointing up the invincible air of moral superiority that Communism acquired as a result of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews, a superiority that today bolsters leftist dictatorships (at the expense of rightist regimes) all over the world...
...Such a critic is H. Bustos Domecq, the alleged author of these Chronicles, a diverting collection of self-serious essays on mock artistes...
...But reflect for just a moment, if you will--as you watch Mr...
...and today, governments which have slaughtered more human beings in the last fifty years than Adolf Hitler ever dreamed of are thriving over half the globe...
...But no superlatives can adequately convey Domecq's adoration for Santiago Ginsberg, who imparts special connotations to everyday words ("mailbox" in a Ginsberg poem means "accidental, fortuitous, incompatible with a cosmos...
...and there can be no doubt that Ronald Reagan has, over the last nine months, borne the full brunt of this subtle and often not-so-subtle scorn from most of the media and almost all of academe...
...The defeated candidate himself wondered out loud whether a few more days in Ohio--which went 91-6 for Ford at the convention after a primary in which Reagan, with almost no campaigning, polled well over 40% of the vote--might have made the difference...
...A spoof of this kind is thus impossible, and therein lies the failure of this book...
...No one else has so persuasively described the dwarfing of the Left in the thirties...
...We can take solace in the fact that Borges is not one of them...
...Now I realize that this is not the stuff of hard-nosed political commentary, and that self-consciously pragmatic readers might scoff at such a focus...
...At that moment, the nation's 38th President secured the endorsement of his party to be its standard bearer against Democrat Jimmy Carter in the Republic's 48th Presidential election...
...In this section Lukacs' marvelous analytical powers play over a variety of disciplines and subjects...
...how coffee consumption changed...
...Moreover, to my ears, talk of "cynicism" and "betrayal" in Reagan's choice of running mate sounds rather offkey, coming as it does mainly from those who normally extol the virtues of balanced tickets, and who are forever urging supposedly "narrow-based" and "unelectable" conservatives to broaden their appeal by seeking liberal alliances...
...But I believe Richard Schweiker may well have been right in saying, on the morning following Gerald Ford's nomination, that Americans had lost their chance to have the best leader ever presented to this generation...
...Not in recent memory has the unsuccessPeter Rusthoven is an Indianapolis lawyer...
...Nonetheless, one fears that Borges and Bioy-Casares have undertaken the impossible...
...Where is the place for Antarctica A. Garay when, in our colleges and universities, students create "environmental sculpture"--piles of dirt which wash away with the rain...
...and come November, voters have a workable idea of the practical, political, and philosophical alternatives being presented them...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Peter J. Rustboven On August 18, 1976, at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Governor Arch Moore of West Virginia announced that the delegates from his state cast 20 of their 28 votes for the Presidential nomination of Gerald R. Ford...
...and at that moment, the nine-month campaign of former California Governor Ronald Reagan--the most serious challenge to a sitting Chief Executive from within his own party since James G. Blaine denied the nomination to Chester Alan Arthur in 1884--came to an end...
...Paladion, we learn, "granted his name" to such works as The Pathfinder, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Eclectic Reader (2nd Series), and a rendering in Latin of De Divinatione...
...To be sure, I find myself in disagreement with much of the consensus of opinion as outlined above...
...Where, indeed, we might ask, is the place for Bustos Domecq when we already have the likes of Parker Tyler, Jonas Mekas, and Andrew Porter...
...and it is this for which I personally wish to express my gratitude to the man my party chose not to nominate...
...The closeness of the final outcome led many to speculate that only slightly greater effort in the industrial Northeast might have pushed Reagan over the top...
...Not since Robert A. Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower fought it out over delegate seating credentials in 1952 has a convention begun without one candidate having enough firmly committed delegates to ensure a first-ballot nomination...
...yet it was Reagan alone, speaking just a few moments after Gerald Ford had accepted the Republican nomination, who reminded the nation in the most graceful and elegant language of the campaign that the question of survival is precisely what confronts it...
...And finally, though I deplore the present indulgence in apocalyptic rhetoric, The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 31 I believe it is no exaggeration to state that the next quarter-century may well determine whether this nation in fact survives...
...for Adalberto Vilaseco, who published the same poem repeatedly under different titles...
...the major candidates, with varying degrees of candor and straighfforwarSness, usually end up conveying a serviceable impression of how they stand on these matters...
...I cannot provide here a full summary of the type of matters I have in mind, but I ask you to consider the following: We have witnessed in our lifetimes a steady erosion of those systems of government and philosophy which cherish the ideals of human freedom and human dignity on which this Republic was founded...
...The Last European War is a big book (562 pages), divided into two parts--the first a fresh, concise, and illuminating account of the diplomatic and military course of the conflict from September 1939 to December 1941, and the other a much longer inquiry into "certain matters about the lives of five hundred million people of a continent during the war: how they lived, and what they thought...
...As long as there are writers such as Borges whose erudition, wisdom, and cultivation prevefit their even envisioning the last gasps of the Humanist tradition, all is not lost...
...But no matter...
...Usually, all sorts of issues are aired, however imperfectly, in our Presidential election campaigns...
...On a more practical ground, it is plausible to suggest that while Reagan did not win, his selection of Schweiker shook up the atready close delegate counts enough to keep his hopes alive going into the convention...
...No spasm of the avant-garde escapes Domecq's attention," none is unworthy of his praise...
...The Schweiker move also sparked endless discussion, most of it concluding that Reagan had taken a daring but nonetheless "cynical" and ultimately foolhardy gamble, "betraying" his conservative constituency in a desperate attempt to salvage personal ambition...
...mature reflection...did away with the introduction, notes, index, publisher's name and address, and gave to the printer Dante's work...
...Yet it was Reagan alone --amid a score of Presidential aspirants who in vague and halting tones spoke only at the periphery of such issues--Reagan alone who emphasized that such issues involved the center of our continued existence as a moral people, Reagan alone who made such issues a focal point of his campaign...
...Carter is more evasive and Mr...
...As Goldsmith reminds us, every absurdity may now have a champion...
...Carter go from coast-to-coast asking the nation to "trust him" and to "love," and as you observe Mr...
...Cicero's...
...and today, our perceptions on so basic an issue as the dignity of human life are sufficiently skewed that a hundred thousand unborn babies are tossed into the Hudson each year under the aegis of a newly discovered and supposedly Constitutional "right," while we debate in language of subtle sophistication whether and to what extent that same Constitution permits the "barbarity" of executing convicted murderers...
...Our age is so overflowing with absurdity," Malcolm Muggeridge once observed, "that it defies mockery...
...32 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976...
...Yet it was only Ronald Reagan--among a chorus of candidates seeking in various ways either to ignore this fact or to assure us that it entailed no discomfitting possibilities for our own welfare--only Reagan who echoed the warnings of Solzhenitsyn, only Reagan who made it a point to impress upon his audience that the survival of human freedom involves burdensome global responsibilities for this nation...
...If Chris Burden did not exist, I would defy Borges (or anyone, for that matter) to invent him...
...BOOK REVIEW The Chronicles of Bustos Domecq byJorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy-Casares / Dutton / $7.95 Alan Crawford "To be intelligible today is to be found out...
...It may well be that Mr...
...Now I am not opposed to discussion of this sort, and indeed find it rather interesting, as I suspect most politically interested and involved citizens do...
...thunders Domecq...
...Nor am I particularly despondent about the choices that remain at the polls this year, and I retain a residual faith both in our citizenry and in the workings of our system...
...Composed by the Argentine master Borges and his longtime friend and collaborator Bioy-Casares, this riotous spoof explodes the purveyors of Modernist nonsense in literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the deluded pundits who lend them respectability...
...Of Domecq's Universal Theater when there exist the Happenings of Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg...
...And so, as the contemporary artist has descended deeper and deeper into obscurity and incoherence, there have arisen the arbitores inelegantiarum, critical middlemen whose function is to inform the Great Unwashed why they should revere trash...
...Rather, what impresses me most in reflecting on his bid for the White House is that he spoke to the American people, with an eloquence and passion unmatched in our generation, about matters which go to the core of our being and our survival as a free Republic...
...And what Latin it was...
...Do you want to know what happened to religious belief during the war...
Vol. 10 • October 1976 • No. 1
