Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency/Reagan
Cannon, Lou & Jordan, Hamilton
Each person has direct communication with the ideal, whether it be God or nature; no one should be subject to control either by direct coercive authority, as in hierarchies, or by indirect...
...This reviewer doesn't happen to share that opinion...
...Hamilton Jordan Quoted on tour, October 1982 Let me tell you about those grapes: they were sour anyway...
...B 102 Indianapolis, IN 46250 29 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983 itself and, to the matter at hand, of Ham Jordan's labored effort to make high melodrama of low political comedy...
...Memoirs like Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency work from the premise that readers, swept up in the high melodrama of life in the West Wing, will forget such incidentals...
...Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...11 c4 her but 1.-.ur...
...Am I unfair...
...With Jordan in print and Jody Powell in galley proofs, can Cyrus Vance's cri de coeur be far behind...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Belief in liberty rather than equality cannot help but make acceptable the differences of strength, talent, and will which are as natural to the social as to the biological order...
...Thus, it may well be that the Great Communicator, while he enjoys the power and perks of life in the West Wing, has better things to do with his life...
...Which comment, in this admittedly biased reviewer's opinion, is a synoptic appraisal of the Carter Administration LibertyPiess LibertyClasszcs Introduction to the Study of The Law of the Constitution By A. V. Dicey Forward by Roger E. Michener Dicey's classic study of the British Constitution and the rule of law was first published in 1885...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983...
...arc 0.1 P1,tirsge and h nd111.E i n-•1 a dsd, In:luud is nut ri1Li l Mr s S us ir..t Zip L I I-: 1, u...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Jr + Qjitilaf, r-t V4 h•rw Guxard Jtidd1 1kti D' F'eilng f~ Marai,m r0 GC4KE 0 O rw I I fI DEATH PENALTIES: THE SUPREME COURT'S OBSTACLE COURSE Raoul Berger / Harvard University Press/ $17.50 Walter Berns IFI.•J.s wt nd me I hr alai I I• IL...
...Reluctant to make painful choices, sectarians adopt a recognizable strategy-building up the state bureaucracy to secure redistribution while simultaneously denying it authority...
...Most people," Jordan tells us, "saw Amy as a freckled-faced little girl growing up in the White House...
...Thus, Jordan would have the reader take him seriously when he relates, with a straight face, the reason why he and other members of the Carter entourage had misgivings about their boss's hilarious fluff during his 1980 presidential campaign debate with Ronald Reagan...
...For those who think they know all there is to know about the triumphs and vicissitudes of the 1976 and 1980 Reagan presidential campaigns-the rise and fall of John Sears, the night Gerald Ford almost became Ron's running mate-Cannon's book offers fresh This latest of Raoul Berger's books is not likely to provoke anything like the reaction that greeted his Government by Judiciary...
...Here was Flem Snopes come to the nation's capitalsmug, truculent, a political hustler enjoying if not his White House job, then its perquisites...
...then the Press Secretary's...
...As Berger could have WalterBerns is a Resident Scholar at anticipated, the book was widely reviewed and almost as widely de the American Enterprise Institute...
...There is always the President's, of course, telling us of his ordeal of power, loneliness of decision, awesome responsibility, etc...
...Published in 1977, some years after the Court had used material based on previously untapped sources...
...ar r reason ride faL'.rrrirla...
...Or & r your ct+pti- til Chi% 12, page re por t and make up your own mind ;iIn,1i 1 SoviL' l in Eli ra tion of I he freeze m+a+'c mrnl...
...He has not left the world the way he found it...
...No publisher was heard to bid, for example, on Crisis: The Last Year of the Benjamin Harrison Presidency...
...But did he enjoy the power and perks of life in the West Wing...
...Atomic Freer-e," by Rat L Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac_ The Iss-acs in•deplh feature docurntnts the Sovrci invulvemeni its the nuclear Freeze r' 'ement, and firsi appca red in the J u nc I '?IQ i s *ue oI The A m 4'rir Fr _Spi•c:carrot_ Since then 4 he arl iclti' ha...
...CRISIS: THE LAST YEAR OF THE CARTER PRESIDENCY Hamilton Jordan / Putnam / $16.95 REAGAN Lou Cannon / Putnam / $18.95 Vic Gold Read I he American Spectator re pwrt tho.1 has the ti B Nightly News Today Show New York Times and many olhcrs in a pother...
...Should he come with equipment-and where do you want to meet?' "I tried to think of an inconspicuous place...
...makes them susceptible to redistributive measures...
...I can still see him swaggering into a downtown Washington restaurant one Saturday evening, tie at half mast, beer can in hand, surrounded by a blown-dry and bouffant coterie of good of boy sycophants and their ladies...
...Absolutely not, he now assures us...
...the first quote from Keats on fanaticism), we come better to understand the consequences of the sectarian social vision: in order to live a life without authority, it is necessary to destroy what cannot be perfected...
...I,.•lul...
...r 1 3 Ft1.l,irl...
...1 1r-c MK x111...
...to say on the subject credible...
...What Nisbet wishes is an intermediary position between hierarchy and equality...
...been Lhw 'W hjecl of a White House press corderence, as x-elI as numeraus national newspaper articles and telesi.Lon sham's...
...Boa 1%'4_ 81twminguon...
...I air • P 11 11u1 I1h-_ ILI...
...Mil 1+* Fried man...
...Along the way (viz...
...Only in the White House of the Carter years could such a "scenario" have been played'out, and only in the Supermedia• Age could a stilted apologia for the most banal quadrennial in American history be palmed off, at $16.95 a copy, as a serious contribution to public understanding of those events which, as Walter Cronkite used to say, alter and illuminate our times...
...L4 iy`s m M liveLy and in1a'rr'.ting x fir'r' lead t.5 c.py iFn ths'-w and many o(her Lirpies...
...It is Reagan's achievement that he defined the ground of political discourse of both his governorship and his presidency," writes Cannon...
...Let it also be noted that Washington, in addition to being a city filled with "people who are trying to make a comeback," has over the years suffered more than its share of transient hacks who might euphe mistically be called poseurs...
...on the other, they can weaken the market forces to which they are opposed...
...They don't have any identity anymore, other than "She was a member of the Ford administration, " or "He was a member of Nixon's Cabinet...
...no one should be subject to control either by direct coercive authority, as in hierarchies, or by indirect submission to market forces...
...Say, write a book...
...I never want to go back...
...the most egregious of whom are those arrogant boors who, while constantly railing against the sham of the city and its inhabitants, stay their leave until the last hors d'oeuvre disappears, the bar shuts down, and the hostess hands them their coats and moves them toward the door...
...4TFrr F dlscnlh ,tnnu enrr, I.wi• - 52 511...
...And that's fine for them, but not for me...
...No, the sole remedy for this pathology is the introduction and diffusion of individual liberty as a sovereign value...
...h,11Jr~ n'3 TV + . J1-1.51h H viler fen WhllrakrTC•hambcn.and .11,ter If im • ' Toni Wti7I...
...He has set the agenda on most issues, outlined the priorities...
...then the Children's...
...They didn't know how smart she was, and quoting her on nuclear war sounded contrived...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Other than small-gauge po litical gossip, what could Jimmy Carter's erstwhile chief of snuff pos sibly contribute to anyone's under standing of our national body politic...
...This potential contradiction explains the perennial split among sectarians between social democracy and decentralization, between accepting some authority as the price for reducing inequality or choosing the route we now call "small is beautiful," thus tolerating some competition in order to avoid further restriction on individual behavior...
...INsUr incumbent Administration's worst media enemies would concede, nothing of the sort could ever come to pass...
...1-i.1...
...then the Alter Ego's...
...Stan, I would like to have someone from the Agency who works in disguises meet me this afternoon...
...rJ11am • Arll4•nrin Women a'I IFr r, Ki ingcr . 4In M'J,u•S 1crti ak La J111 I P.G_ Wadelwrse r.' 112 I S1!I , l`%F11 •tr.ir...
...My chalk Far 3 is pnskrwd...
...less euphemistically, phonies...
...But he must choose...
...or if V•oIJ wan...
...I had to be sure that this didn't happen...
...S I _75 tnr Qne $1 O.1X for ie 575.0D for one hundred f.150,(N) for rive hu rrdred 1 C'~tti 5i i Zip X3 MW Consider the case of Hamilton Jordan...
...In this way, for a time at least, rejection of authority and use of government to secure equality may be reconciled...
...The overwhelming commitment of sectarians to equality (how else could people live together if their foremost desire is to reject authority...
...dollars...
...Alas, poor Ham, we knew him all too well...
...Pie anw rush me reprints of "The CounleFfe it Nikcemikem: Ararnle Freerr...
...Author of a previous work on Reagan's early political years, Cannon with his latest book brings.his studies up to date, through the President's campaigns and the first year of the Reagan Administration...
...But in this Supermedia Age of overcommunication, apparently every administration, however irrelevant, is geared to produce, at a minimum, half-a-dozen additions to the devalued literature of American political science...
...uneuphemistically, as they say down in Georgia, political bullshit artists...
...What these critics have failed to understand about Reagan, writes Cannon, is that he "was not believable because he was the Great Communicator...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983 Remember, this is the same Hamilton Jordan who, in 1976, informed Playboy magazine that if the likes of Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski became members of the Carter Administration, Jimmy would just have to find himself a new Alter Ego...
...El Once, in a tasteful past, we were spared first-hand accounts of our presidential embarrassments...
...The last edition Dicey himself prepared was the eighth, which appeared in 1915...
...The individual can be free only when hierarchies and markets have been destroyed, thereby doing away with the forces of inequality...
...In sum, however, it is Cannon's thesis that for all his reputation as the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan is the most misunderstood American President in modern history-an amateur politician with a professional touch, consistently underestimated by his enemies...
...Respect for individual liberty makes it possible for human beings to live in and be aware of differentiation...
...yet there we find Jordan, pictured on page 160 of his diary of the last year of the Carter Presidency, walking with Cy and Zbig at Camp David, presumably pondering the hostage crisis and/or the Great National Malaise...
...11w Rlr.c handy ordci firrm J11d send For y Liar haLk 153UCS l idli...
...Indeed, he had no intention of staying on for another four years, even if Carter had been reelected...
...And while yrw sr`4' a t it_ send (+7r adithl i.,naLI...
...IN 114,O2...
...It sounded convincing...
...Vic Gold, author of PR as in Presi- More to the point, is anything he has dent, lives in Washington...
...el ualM tit...
...If the words have the ring of a political epitaph it is because Cannon is among those who believe Reagan will not choose to run for reelection in 1984...
...Nevertheless, Santayana's overworked maxim about the lessons of history to the contrary, can anything truly be learned by examining the burned entrails of American presidential history, circa 1976-80...
...L. Lf .i'U 0411 L 10 ift will...
...he was the Great Communicator because he was believable...
...it . Vol 11.'%IF: 15-11*92 01 M wheel FmK A } H041le F'r,+1l.t1 • .G F!L•J,g3II '. rJT 1Fnr 04 I tdanlk #• i li'• NC- NRCI e%chrc rk%' ui I..1F Kt'u7m%i% • ' I I igh 1 ife ].1r...
...No king, to paraphrase venerable advice, no bishop...
...Judge for yourself: "I left my office only once all morning, "writes Jordan, describing a key episode in his career as a hostage negotiator, "to call Stan Turner...
...E 5,1•n.1 hif y"ur ravwnlc Ihat•k i%kut3 Iwdaw...
...But, of course, as even the ' Sho4cf m...
...m You missing tiara issues at 7'hd' A r ia'rrr rlv t SJH•, rLu.F If yru rill al' ha v rill i5%t-d thoug4I• ~ IV '' pro~oYleg ssa, x bs 'illiarll F builder .. Judlr 3"ranni% VL3 fir.,fi, InFIm 1u r i i ER~ L " ' r' ys r idse...
...And if the answer is, Yes, let me ask: is it worth more than a footnote...
...Because of my work, I never went out socially, nor did I try to become part of the Washington scene...
...Whatever the judgment of historians, Reagan has made a difference...
...i nil .end i I I h VIFU r t•hs•L I. 1FC mIIins-L• 5Tr1Jcr Flea%e..c L,1und t•'II n'w or i4urnt IS rlanua rti I hr,' u* h Deco nFbr4 1902) aL 35 treh...
...In subsequent editions he tried to take account of intervening constitutional developments...
...If we had only known of the freckled-faced little girl's grasp of thermonuclear strategy and Soviet geopolitical aims, all might have turned out for the better and Jerry Rafshoon (Carter's Alter Image) would not have been driven to remark, on hearing the Amy line, "It's so bad that it's funny...
...Nisbet views egalitarianism as the handmaid of collectivism...
...I'll have him cleared and taken to the White House barbershop -it's closed on Wednesdays . . . ' " Had enough...
...Jordan went to Washington anyway...
...Remember that Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid caper...
...Other hierarchical institutions are less likely to be respected when government is reviled...
...All right, so Mr...
...The very word is intended as a blinding distraction to the reality of the Carter years, a period when comic rubes held barbecues atop the West Wing roof and the Leader of the Free World could reveal to his countrymen that in matters of nuclear dimension he had no better counselor than his pre-teen daughter...
...Tell him to come to the South Gate...
...Ham, it goes without saying, is the one without the tie...
...Despite my later image as a playboy, I spent most of my first year at the White House working twelve to fifteen hours a day...
...Like his hero Roosevelt, he has tried to lead the nation in the direction he thinks it should go rather than follow it in the direction he believes it is going...
...Lou Cannon, though he deals with his subject matter from the outsidelooking-in, succeeds in making such a contribution in Reagan, the most definitive biography to date of the man who relieved Jordan and his boss of the onerous burden of enduring Washington for four more years...
...Is that possible?' "'Of course, Ham...
...IN I'll -` . XJMY the Amendment to strike down public school segregation and malappor tioned legislatures, Government by Judiciary demonstrated that the Amendment's equal protection clause was not intended by those who wrote and ratified it to affect either school segregation or voting (to say nothing of how or where votes are counted...
...that is,-in the time frame covered by Jordan in his selfserving memoir of the terminal year of the ministry of the Parson from Plains, when the author was serving as point man in both the Iranian hostage negotiations and White House efforts to meet the Kennedy presidential primary challenge...
...On the contrary, confined to its proper sphere, bureaucracy is essential for fulfilling state functions...
...i nd n1a71x of r . ' 'bim r alter f as•urllC wri Ices_ Toa n,a'y b c, wiLhuul {lur SP-Etla1 arl ides nn Sot in mfil I ririurm nr the niLliC ear frerra' mn'cmfinr, why JknL4'ricjin w orn.c n make Iwacw Wers, a nd radical ProlCraLa ME 1!3m...
...All of which happens to be patent revisionist bullshit, unless one is of a mind to think that posing back-toback with Jody Powell for a Rolling Stone cover is the mark of a workaholic presidential aide who craves privacy...
...W r mu st -.a rill y 4)U t hai SOmc ISSL1cs are sin linliled supply beCiU SC Of realer demand...
...Now White House correspondent for the Washington Post, Cannon is universally recognized as journalism's preeminent Reaganologist, having covered his subject since the days in California when Governor Reagan was being dismissed by his critics as a Hollywood flash, all glitter and no depth...
...This LibertyClassics volume presents that edition rather than later posthumous editions in which Dicey's own work was further updated by an editor...
...The personal initiative Nisbet prizes cannot come without individual entrepreneurship and the social institutions he respects cannot come without hierarchical authority...
...t,nrt Of...
...Hamilton Jordan, let it be noted, has better things to do with his life...
...I was not a public person, nor could I think of myself as one," writes Jordan, disingenuously explicating why he came to be a Presidential Alter Ego who got no respect...
...To say that there is too much bureaucracy is not necessarily to say that hierarchy is inherently evil...
...But what about their increasing reliance on state power...
...I had been thinking a lot about my meeting with the Iranian contact and was worried to death that we would be found out, probably destroying any chance of implementing the scenario...
...Na me The Counterfeit Praeemakers...
...It's a city filled with people who are trying to make a comeback...
...If not, to put matters into perspective, imagine a situation in which James Baker-having been outfitted by the CIA in the White House barbershop-is dispatched overseas in dark glasses, a hairpiece, and false mustache, to conduct secret negotiations on behalf of Ronald Reagan...
...cr,Picx fLw Y L ur Eric rxh-ar1d cmcmirs...
...Lo gtl Cxrra L1tpw% 44 a fisorito Issue, place }YKIr nrdcr Inday and fill 1110 g1RS Ira }''.'ur KblIcL11on uP TAN- AmirriCd+t Sp('a•iefur...
...They are opposed to hierarchy...
...n W,n.riin Chuschlll • 4 H.1rl Pt^i1plr~~ • I V F'rinklln IJ...
...f11 011 N1xnLall PLLJIw,rt•I, rI, F'40 .I.Irip 1 1 wini dill those gaps...
...but the shrewd Washington political handicapper knows better than to dismiss lightly anything Lou Cannon has to say about Ronald Reagan...
...That was a study of the origins- of the Fourteenth Amendment and its transformation (or deliberatee distortion) by the Supreme Court...
...RL'drnrr, • K .'4m .W+ OF Jak%A w T1rr'.rrrnan • 10I.L'L'IIrr'L'L!}.xah1 • I I 1hL {..1.11!s 4;11-.1•.1f IjurwrRigh...
...T FI F A N1 ER IC'A N SPECTATOR I.k print Dcpari nit-nl...
...R.nMr1...
...Crisis...
...L•l,ct•y rd alho-fc...
...Hardcover $15.00, Softcover $7,00...
...ri • 5 J141rF i riikr..1n 141 Ofrr% Con9nM1n-er • ' Ronald ReagarF NJ' Ea naL, ( Irk 4Q m o +lU JIIf1If11, {'jret•r Nil F11cr1Kn l',Fl h• 1%%Uc irl t 1CFetsandr 5¢lrh.rnils1o Will: L:MF: I4-154J1 rl F I . D%:x1crou c? J minis rarlpe-k Ofrh u1 P1dIr.P1...
...While Dicey's discussion of British law is of interest in its own right, his discussion of the concept of the rule of law will be of at least equal interest to contemporary readers...
...I kill L IF: 11 7)m1' • 1 &Lh.%nh'In, *` N11e nlJ ii Mr11rr M 1 JI14hM1 0Y9ni11Y *1 Niik...
...Fearing that state power will overturn weakened sources of social support, he argues that [t]he only remedy for the poisons created by egalitarianism in a society is emphatically not ever-greater dosages of political redistribution of wealth in state, for such dosages worsen the disease, producing fevers of avarice and envy...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...Pity...
...On one side, they can hope to achieve greater equality in society...
...And the scene just described, mind you, occurred in the period after Jimmy Carter's eminence grits was said by the news media to have cleaned up his act as a rustic smart-ass...
...For as liberty encourages differentiation, so the free flow of differentiation in a social body puts a premium on liberty...
...Carried to its extreme, sectarianism becomes hyper-pluralism The saddest thing about Washington is all those people who live there in the past...
...Simpls law Ihi' for nI...
...LL is ereei pt,s.ible that a h (dlroroa I f rain our aw•ard.wmmnR edilnr, K. Fminer[ T;•rrell, Jr...
...Ah, so that was it...
...Ham, we were told in no uncertain terms, would take a walk...
...then the First Lady's...
...ti 4LI'ill 11 • l'+N • I 1.•rr, Brim n • 2 1}wwg1an M arf n hir • 1 In Inyl Ki I.ILII 04 F I C...
...not to forget the anguished memoirs that spin from the ghost-writers and word processors of disenchanted ex-presidential advisers...
...incessant demands on government for action but lack of support when trouble ensues-which is where Nisbet's book and this review end...
Vol. 16 • February 1983 • No. 2
