Editorial / Bibo Ergo Sum
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
"Editorial / Bibo Ergo Sum" - Alexander the Great is back in the news, and unlike so many of the notables mentioned there, the late Macedonian politico owes his current celebrity not to the artistry of...
...And to Jimmy Carter we bid Godspeed, as he embarks on what I suspect may turn out to be a preaching mission to the Third World, where he will have ample opportunity to experience at first hand the high esteem in which our nation is now held as a result of his policy of apology and accommodation...
...Well done, Governor...
...Reagan should be severely on his guard against these people, who do not fully share his vision of America...
...America has had enough soap opera in the halls of government...
...And then there are those members of the children's rights movement who had hoped to bring the drinking age down to conform with the voting age where such d i s p a r i t y still exists...
...John Maxwell O'Brien...
...So too was the Hon...
...Robert Bauman, Republican from Maryland and a vociferous spokesman for traditional American values...
...It is an indication of how far along we have come in releasing rogues from responsibility for their roguishness that they would even suggest drunkenriess as their alibi...
...After all, if an 18-year-old is old enough to vote, he ought to be allowed the tools to make a sound choice...
...These are great days, proving once again that, despite the received wisdom about America's puritanical political expecby R. Emmett T y r r e l l , J r . tations, we really do not mind being represented by slobs...
...The revelations have s t i r r e d an enormous controversy...
...Scholars of the period are in a stew...
...4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 To offer sympathy to a wrongdoer is an act of common decency...
...Reagan and his problematical Fordites aside, now may well be the by Tom B e t h e l l time to undertake a brief diagnosis of the state of the nation...
...If we THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 5...
...Surely it does these reformers no good for some professor to be linking booze to the kind of antisocial behavior that characterized the late Macedonian's brief, albeit epic, career...
...Put more bluntly, just as Carter's great problem turned out to be his total docility in the face of capture by the determined forces of George McGovern, who were disappointed in 1972 but victorious by proxy in 1976, so Ronald Reagan may well walk into the Oval Office firmly surrounded by a squad of Jerry Ford leftovers eager to take up where they left off four years ago...
...The presidency today has all the meteorological force of a weather vane, and so one fears that Reagan really won't be able to do a great deal with the elements...
...What are the most serious problems facing the Reagan Administration...
...nothing more imaginative than the trust that a repudiation o f tax cuts will permit revenues to catch up with spending, then inflation will soar and Ted Kennedy or another of the left-wing Democrats will be on the presidential reviewing stand in January 1985...
...Finally, there is the budding alcoholics' rights movement...
...Ever since the news of Alexander's guzzling got out, a surprising number of pols have stepped forward to testify to their own struggles with the hooch...
...On what grounds does he expect his constituents to r e e l e c t h i m - - a sympathy vote...
...O t h e r s - - non-readers of The Congressional Record--imagine that it will be possible to cut government spending without first putting pressure on the spenders by cutting taxes...
...There alcoholism has been spoiling a lot of fun lately, and many a matutinal hangover must have been relieved when word spread that bibulosity has been the occupational hazard of statesmen going back to the fourth century B.C...
...Both of these convicted boodlers were nabbed in the Abscam investigation...
...I will submit myself," he rather artlessly declares, "to the judgment of the citizens of my district...
...Of these three rogues, Bauman is quite the most intolerable...
...The first of these problems is often said to be the decline in our national defenses...
...In the case of some, their trashy pasts and tearful confessions actually seem to have given them an advantage over their less wayward opponents...
...What of Reagan's prospects, as he begins to grapple with more problems and headaches than I would ever care to face...
...They ask that their constituents and fellow lawmakers let bygones be bygones...
...Return the melodrama to afternoon television, and return candidates like Myers, J e n r e t t e , and Bauman to private life where I shall gladly buy them all a drink and watch the fun...
...Less reassuring is the caliber of the people who are clustering around him...
...Alcoholism adds a human touch to t h e i r otherwise superhuman lives...
...THE PASSING OF THE BUCK Whatever the next four years may bring, we all surely owe Governor Reagan an immediate and heartfelt round of applause for bringing to an end Jimmy's dismal reign of Wimpery & Peanuttery...
...he is going to continue to campaign for reelection...
...In some cases, their shining goal is merely to balance the budget by allowing taxes to rise...
...Bauman has been fighting back the hedonistic hordes for years, and now it turns out he was juicing with them after hours...
...John W. Jenrette, Democrat of South Carolina...
...Here I confess to a tiny suspicion in the corner of my mind that it might have been more enjoyable to watch Carter continue to grapple with them...
...Reagan himself is undoubtedly a man of sound instincts...
...I was intoxicated...
...their struggles against the jug lend romance to the legend that they present to a spellbound electorate on Election Day...
...Moreover, in an age when all sorts of u n f o r t u n a t e circumstances supposedly free us from personal responsibility for our rascality, booze, it appears, is seen as a plausible alibi on Capitol Hill...
...In the first place, it seems to me that all those warhead and missile enumerations, comparative dollar/ruble expenditure totals, defense-as-percentage-of-GNP measures, and so on, mean very little, if anything...
...Alcoholism is his excuse for soliciting sexual delights from a 16-year-old boy, an adventure suggesting that the Hon...
...Like college boys on the morning a f t e r a dozen beers and a costly joyride, these distinguished lawmakers are now seeking to excuse their actions on the grounds that they had taken aboard a little too much firewater...
...But I wonder if this is really as serious as some imagine...
...Consider the three congressmen who have most recently sought exoneration on the grounds of alcoholism...
...As was shown in the Cold War years, most liberals can live with big defense spending...
...Writing in the current issue of Annals of Scholarship, O'Brien has revealed that Alexander, the youthful conquerer of the ancient world, was, like it or lump it, a common drunk...
...It turns out that dollars provide us with a misleading, and often destructive, method of quantifying problems and their solutions...
...Yet, you can be sure that O'Brien's researches brought rejoicing on Capitol Hill...
...Americans of Macedonian descent are irritable...
...BIBO ERGO SUM Alexander the Great is back in the news, and unlike so many of the notables mentioned there, the late Macedonian politico owes his current celebrity not to the artistry of clever public relations hacks, but to his own audacity and to the p e r s e v e r i n g scholarship of Prof...
...to return him to the House of Representatives is an act of frivolity bordering on the infantile...
...They want to retain their seats in the House...
...Is this not asking rather a lot from voters to whom in the past he has pledged a higher standard of conduct than is regularly practiced by his opponents...
...How I would like to have heard the learned conversations in the Senate Cloakroom as the solons speculated on the role internal lotions have played in history...
...Apparently alcoholism is a danger that every statesman must court in pursuing the people's business, and many seem convinced that Adapted from RET's Monday column in the Washington Post...
...I was drinking FBI bourbon," explained a petulant Michael ("Ozzie") Myers, Democrat from Pennsylvania...
...There they will continue the noble business of pork-barreling and distributing enough favors to their constituents to ensure r e e l e c t i o n . This is modern American statecraft...
...Then there is the most egregious of this bibulous trinity, the Hon...
...Perhaps more important, even if there is a growing imbalance in the Soviets' favor, there is absolutelY, no constituency in this country for blocking a remedy to the situation...
...As a prominent conservative, the Hon...
...Today he wants to use their permissive ethic to exonerate himself...
...If, in the realm of domestic policy, we see Tom Bet/sell is The American Spectator's Washington editor and a Washington editor o f Harper's...
...I n the past few weeks, no fewer than three congressmen have claimed strong drink as t h e i r excuse for lapses in bribery, conspiracy, and pederasty...
...Indeed, I would go so far as to say that he has qualities of greatness rarely seen in the White House...
...Bauman shares more than one of Alexander's indulgences...
...The more serious danger, both in relation to the military and all other national problems, is the ever-growing habit of thinking of solutions in terms of additional dollar expenditures...
...What is more, there is a host of other contrite scamps, men who promise to sin no more, running for high office in the land...
Vol. 13 • December 1980 • No. 12
