Counting Our Blessings: Reflections on the Future of America

...The Pulse of Politics maintains, quite plausibly, that there are cycles in politics as in everything else, and that certain political types show to best advantage if they come along when the pendulum is swinging in the right direction...

...B O O K R E V I E W S T h i s volume is a collection of I4 essays written over the past six years and originally appearing in, among other magazines, the American Scholar, Commentary, the New Yorker, and the Public Interest...

...Waiting for me on my return was a troika of new books to review on campaigning, the inspired gift of this very magazine...

...Barber's theory...

...Most of the company and conversation matched the service...

...Barber, for all his study of politics from the sidelines, simply does not understand what makes voters, parties, politicians, and administrations tick--not that their clockwork ever has functioned 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980...

...Not that many days later, having vowed to avoid the Democratic Convention in New York at all cost, I received a last minute invitation to plug my book, The Candidates-1980, on a New York television show...

...Many liberals and many Democrats are comfortable with the new development in our history, by which the federal judiciary (in particular the Supreme Court) has been a signifcant agent of social change...

...The staff consisted mostly of young trainees, all smiles but not exactly what you could call adept...

...The trend in education that Moynihan deplores is cvcr more towards government monopoly, which, he says, is "not more appropriate to liberal belieF' here than in any other field...

...There are those--again liberal, again Democraticiwho may fairly be said to worship at the altar of the C o u r t ' s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of that clause, which is (in J u s t i c e Hugo Black's words in Everson) that neither a state nor the federal government can " s e t up a church . . . pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another...

...Seated in a revolving "drinking pod" one afternoon (and feeling rather like a frog or an alien life form) I actually saw one unfortunate fellow guest served a gin and tonic with two Gibson onions instead of a lime twist...

...Bloomington, Indiana minutes, thousands of New Yorkers milled around the blocked-off area, sweating profusely and, most of them, pointing to the wrong ledge on the wrong building, while I viewed them askance from the air-conditioned comfort of O'Neal's, washing down ossified shrimp with overpriced Dutch beer...

...there editing the GOP Platform...

...Human r i g h t s , " he says, " i s the single g r e a t e s t weapon we have for the ideological defense of libe r t y . " It is thus not only a moral but a political, in the sense of pragmatic, cause, a cause fundamental to our s e l f - i n t e r e s t , our survival as a nation...

...With touching absurdity, in hindsight, Dr...

...The bulk of his book is canned history, the story of past campaigns and past presidencies tailored to fit Dr...

...Not always, however, are the academic and the politician both found in Moynihan...

...For example, in one chapter Moynihan seems d i s t u r b e d that ".Joseph Schumpeter's gloomy prophecy that liberalism will be destroyed through the steady conquest of the private sector by the public sector bids fair to come true in the United States...

...For this his parents sent him to college...

...Judged by chance encounters in elevators, cocktail lounges, and corridors, they weren't really bad people --just a little dumber, glummer, sloppier, and smellier than their Republican counterparts in Detroit...

...Moynihan notes that the "plain and unambiguous meaning" is that "Congress will not establish a national religion" and rightly judges that "the establishment-clause decisions are an intellectual s c a n d a l " (although not all of them, since Moynihan approves in passing of Engel v. Vitale, which prohibited public school prayer...

...Interestingly, Moynihan asks this question in r e s p e c t to-the C o u r t ' s decisions regarding the establishment clause of the First Amendment, starting in Everson v. Board of Education (1947...

...Counting Our Blessings is a reminder, even if the convention speech is not, that there is a liberal Democrat who differs intelligently, and compellingly, from the standard Democratic fare: Carter, Kennedy, and all the rest...

...L e t ' s begin with the authors of the three tomes in question...

...For 90 I I | ! I I t There opportunity America...

...Even when I get my wish, it's in the worst possible way...

...But to rid the Capitol of this fever Moynihan only says we need to "achieve a steady state of government," counsel that points out the goal but neglects to say how to get there...

...At least, I comforted myself, it will all be over once I board the Eastern Shuttle to Washington...

...Political ideas," hc says at one point, "in order to be viable, must be simple...

...Almost certainly Moynihan would be embarrassed to have this speech appended to his book, in which is found this maxim by Michael Oakeshott: "To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise...

...COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS: REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICA Daniel Patrick Moynihan / Atlantic/Little, Brown / 112.95 Terry Eastland Supreme Court may be counted on to defer...

...For example, in an excellent analysis of the political significance of the t a x - c u t movement that started with Proposition 13, Moynihan points out that what has gripped "New Class" b u r e a u c r a t s in Washington is a " f e v e r " - - t h e fever of spending inflation-generated surpluses...

...Moynihan's treatment of the establishment-clause decisions demons t r a f e s his ability to identify and explain a problem, and his tuition tax-credit proposal is an effort (via legislation) at solution...

...Barber went on to predict that, if Carter had any problem, it would be accomplishing too much, not too little: Like t h e o t h e r active-positive P r e s i d e n t s , his c h a r a c t e r - b a s e d t r o u b l e s are going to s p r i n g from an e x c e s s o f an active-positive virtue: t h e t h i r s t for r e s u l t s . . . . Well, with a record like that, you can imagine how many splendid, fresh insights Dr...

...On the whole, they're more interesting than the books...

...In an earlier work of his, The Presidential Character, he glowingly predicted that Jimmy Carter, that most characterless of men, would be an "activepositive" president, fondly asserting: I believe he will t u r n out to be a p l e a s u r e d P r e s i d e n t , f i n d i n g , as did FDR and HST and JFK, t h a t life in the Oval Office can be f u n . . . . _9 I doubt it, but, if Carter has been a "pleasured" president, the pleasure has been all his...

...There is also the fact of Moynihan's s t a t u s - - a n d he is proud of this status--as a liberal and a Democrat...

...The only break from convention monotony during my two-day stay in New York was a purely local entertainment--a botched suicide attempt from the Avon Building...

...is the author of The Candidates--1980...

...Assured destruction is the kind of idea that wins acceptance in a faculty seminar...

...In "The Politics of Human R i g h t s " he argues that human rights should not be "depoliticized," as they were in the Carter administration, because" they are something more than than the basis for " i n t e r n a t i o n a l social work...

...Very simply, Moynihan says the sort of things one does not expect of someone carrying these identifcation cards...

...Barber is an intelligent academic whose main problem is that he desperately wants to fit square politicians into round theories...

...A former IV/site House Aide to two Presidents, he writes frequently on politics, history, and the arts for American and overseas journals...

...Readers of Movnlhan's last book, a Dangerous Plate...

...Regis, the Waldorf, et al.--were full and I ended up with a room in a Sheraton that, mirabile dictu, turned out to be the headquarters for the Georgia delegation...

...He has no view on which should be official doctrine, or so he says...

...The Plaza, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, is one of those towering, surreal modern hostelries with a lot of water and vegetable matter making up for the absence of paneling and skilled ornaI * I I I mental handiwork...

...But Moynihan is nevertheless concerned to ask, "What do you do when the Supreme Court is wrong...

...Barber's new book must contain...

...The next day at lunch, when a friend asked for an iced coffee he was met with a blank stare from the busboy followed by an incredulous, "What's dat...

...The concern of the remaining seven essays in Counting Our Blessings is foreign affairs, where Moynihan shows himself in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, who argued for "the elevation of the individual, the differentiation of each...

...An afternoon to cherish...

...It's just coffee with ice in it," my friend replied_9 And, sure enough, about ten minutes later, the busboy returned with a cup of coffee in which three forlorn ice cubes were fighting a losing battle for survival...

...It meant spending two days in New York City in the middle of the Convention...

...Let us hope that's not always so: After all, trying to defend the Carter administration's foreign policy is to try something of the difficulty of sculling across the Atlantic without oars...

...The last essay on foreign affairs concerns the SALT process, which Moynihan calls (even more correctly in retrospect) a "policy in ruins...

...Moynihan answers his question~ upon which little has been written, by describing a "hierarchy of responses": debate, litigation (a way of educating the courts as to how the Supreme Court has been wrong, if not finally causing that court to reverse itself), and congressional legislation (to which the Terry Eastland i.s the editor of the Greensboro Record editorialpage and the co-author, with William J. Bennett, o f Counting by Race...

...One gets the feeling that Dr...

...Nothing is better for a writer's morale than working on a document that will be widely ignored and universally forgotten within weeks, and the wellintended blundering of the novice personnel at the Detroit Plaza added to the fun...

...IE] Sarkes Tarzian Inc...

...This summer, for example, I managed to dodge the Republican Convention in Detroit, but only after spending eight days Aram Baksbian, Jr...

...Every four years something goes wrong...

...But in another chapter he seems equally disturbed by recent efforts to decrease the federal government's take of the gross national product...

...THE PULSE OF POLITICS: ELECTING PRESIDENTS IN THE MEDIA AGE James David Barber / Norton / $14.95 HOW TO WIN VOTES: THE POLITICS OF 1980 Edward Costikyan / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich / $12.95 PLAYING TO WIN: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO POLITICS JeffGreenfiled / Simon and Schuster / $11.95 Aram Bakshian J r. Every four years I promise myself that I will avoid the conventions, and sit out the campaign...

...No end of suffering in this vale of tears...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 27 Damage limitation, by contrast, is instinctive--the idea of defending oneself is easy to grasp...

...This essay on SALT, like the other essays on foreign affairs, contrasts sharply with the speech Moynihan delivered at the Democratic convention in New York last month, when he applauded SALT II and praised President Carter's foreign policies...

...Ho, ho, ho...

...It is pleasant reading, but hardly revelatory...

...but his sympathies seem clearly to lie with damage limitation, and against MAD...

...Moynihan is aware, and displeased, that through these decisions the courts have been "imposing on the country their own religious v i e w s . " In so doing, they have provided constitutional excuse for those who, like P r e s i d e n t Carter, would argue against legislation Moynihan himself is co-sponsor of, legislation which would grant tuition taxcredits to parents with children enrolled in non-public (and thus perhaps church-affiliated) elementary and secondary schools...

...They deserve wide a t t e n t i o n , and not simply because the writing here, as in all of Moynihan's work, is witty, informative, passionate, and, above all, intelligent...

...It suffers, as do all collections of essays addressing a variety of subjects, from occasional inconsistencies...

...He thus assumes that the Supreme Court can be wrong, and he usefully reminds us, in the words by which Lincoln reminded Stephen Douglas of the very same point, that a decision by the Supreme Court is not a "thus sairh the I.,~rd...

...Nevertheless, Counting Our Blessings does manage to present a fair number of c o n s i s t e n t l y argued themes...

...But even if SALT II now appears to be a dead document, the essay takes on new importance in light of the Carter administration's recent decision strategically to threaten not merely the Soviets' cities but also their nuclear bases...

...Not only that, but all of the decent old hotels--The Dorset, The Plaza, The St...

...Maybe it was the muggy Manhattan weather, or their mood of unhappy resignation at the prospect of having to vote fi~r Jimmy Carter again...

...Moynihan assays the differences between the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine that underlays SALT and the unsuccessfully (in the 1960s) competing doctrine of "damage limitation...

...Similarly, Moynihan, pleadin~ for comprehension of the fact that liberals cannot continue to believe that the production of wealth is one thing and its distribution by the state another, fails to i n s t r u c t us on just how we must "establish in our political culture a concern for economic development...

...will find a familiar Moynihan in these essays, as he argues the importance of ideas in political affairs and pleads the causes of liberty and human rights in a world increasingly hostile to liberal democracies generally and to the United States in particular...