Editorials/Truman Betrayed/First Children
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
.......................................................................................................................................................................... E D I T O R I A L...
...It is a mystery...
...If Americans held to Euripides' maxim that the sins of the fathers are made flesh in the writhings of the children, the American presidency would not be the revered institution that it is, but rather a source of embarrassment comparable to America's curious epicurism toward Wonder-bread...
...But others must recognize that to be judged by 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 the brats would be a personal disaster...
...I suppose there are brassy Americans pleased to be judged by their children's fine manners...
...Reagan would simply squander political capital if he mounted a high profile offensive on the issue...
...Authoress Davis will not even divulge her presidential ballot...
...aid equal to about half of all the aid that we gave to Somoza during his entire sixteen-year reign...
...Its foreign policy has represented a break with the bipartisan foreign policy of the postwar era and a denial of reality...
...For once he invested it, and the political dividends should appear in due course—perhaps in 1988...
...Particularly in foreign policy he is at one with Presidents from FDR to Gerald Ford...
...Actually the preeminent reason that we do not judge adults by their children is that adults have little influence on them...
...The solution to the Sandinistas' anti-American, anti-democratic regime is for the United States to give anti-Communist Nicaraguans the tools to achieve Nicaraguan freedom...
...How is thething possible today...
...Actually neither of the Nixon children has ever betrayed a base or stupid motive, though both endured the most excruciating times...
...The actual tally of yeas and nays was far less important than the framing of the issue...
...Mainstream Americans know this...
...border...
...Americans insist on seeing their would-be Caesars surrounded by the kids and the little lady no matter how artless or grasping they might be...
...Poor Mr...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S...
...It is fantastic to imagine thatthere is any such thing as "public opinion" on such an issue as aid to rebel forces fighting or perhaps hiding in the jungle 2,000 miles away from the U.S...
...The fauna of Capitol Hill can be very excitable...
...Actually his success issues from the easily observable fact that he embraces the values and the goals of a wide range of Americans, past and present...
...Thus the Wirthless Strategy would advance the liberal agenda in the guise of preserving the President's political capital...
...Barnes never failed to see its cogency...
...And Buchanan was urged to depart public life lest his intolerance bring out the little creep in us all...
...Now Democratic party chairman Paul Kirk is attempting to bring the party back to the center...
...When this argument was employed by friendly liberals in the past, Mr...
...There they were making perfectly unexceptional arguments for providing $100 million in aid to anti-Communist Nicaraguans, and suddenly there was outrage...
...A pollstered President is a weather vane, not a leader...
...Had some of our Presidents been free to file for divorce from their kids, the presidency might be even more revered...
...That has, admittedly, pretty much been the Republican strategy since the New Deal...
...All that the White House has said is: if you are not part of the solution to that problem you are part of the problem...
...Then came the issue of aid to the Contras fighting the Nicaraguan Communists, and at that point we learned something about the President's Miser-in-Chief...
...Richard Nixon's character has been exposed to more scalpel work than any other American in history, yet those who mark him down as a knave have to account for the exemplary behavior of his children...
...There are other reasons, of course: various medical advances, the pop-top aluminum can, dozens of con-genial deodorants...
...The whole idea of representative democracy is that the people elect a President to do such worrying for them, and to take action if necessary...
...Consider the recent embarrassment suffered by White House communications director Patrick J. Buchanan and his beloved boss...
...Ever since 1960s idealists of radical disposition maneuvered their way into the hierarchy of the Democratic party, that party has been notably out of touch with the American mainstream, particularly on foreign policy...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Aristotle taught that children should be kept away from all that is base and violent...
...Did Tricia or Julie appear on late night television in her underwear...
...The question that occurs to me is: How can someone as politically astute as Reagan have hired someone as politically obtuse as Wirthlin...
...This is particularly true for many American Presidents, as recent publishing events make poignantly obvious...
...Nonetheless, aided and abetted by Cuba and the Soviet Union, they transformed Nicaragua into a garrison state and flattened the economy...
...What is unfortunate is that parents still have to live with their children, though they might be developing stupendously offensive habits and ideas...
...He accumulates political capital by the bagful, but he is reluctant to spend it...
...Now he is angry...
...Public opinion" on an issue as remote from everyday lives as contra aid can only be created by leader-ship...
...It was only during the FIRST CHILDREN The ancient Greeks were often judged by the quality of their children...
...He wants American influence to stay at home...
...In the past we have given those tools to others...
...Nor did he "spend" it...
...Perhaps the reason that we do not judge Presidents by the children they sire is that of all the presidential children to pass through the White House in recent years the finest have been the children of Richard Nixon...
...Everyday the rude advances of modern life encroach upon a shrinking habitat of existential bliss...
...Then come the luridities: books best left unwritten, business deals of the utmost indelicacy, statements fit for an idiot...
...As Churchill wrote of Asquith, his children are his best memorials...
...E D I T O R I A L S...
...The electorate beckons and the creatures on the Hill grow irritable...
...However, no presidential candidate who kept the kids incognito would ever wholly win the public trust...
...Last month's uproar over following traditional American policy of aiding "free peoples resisting attempted subjugation" demonstrates the struggle facing him...
...Patrick] Buchanan and [Richard] Wirthlin," Robert Merry wrote in the Wall Street Journal c:i March 5. "Mr...
...Today if Americans were to be measured by their children's records—school records, hygiene presidency of Jimmy Carter that high government officials broke with traditional American foreign policy and spoke of getting America on the "right" side of worldwide revolution, that is to say getting America on the side of anti-Western power-grabs...
...He must put down one-issue enthusiasts in his party councils and Haight-Ashbury isolationists on the Hill, Democratic solons who envision leftist revolutionaries as poets and folksingers...
...The only catch is that every battle would be fought on terms accept-able to the liberals...
...Like boxers, politicians who duck fights soon lose the stomach for any fight...
...That way Reagan could "win" every battle...
...comes to mind, as does a recent president of Mobil corporation...
...She is a "militant vegetarian," which means, presumably, she throws food...
...Dur-i ing campaigns the kids are placed under the professional care of politicalconsultants, who unerringly transform them into presentable human beings...
...Pollsters should be barred from the .White House by constitutional amendment...
...But until a surgically created female gives birth, I do not expect to see the United States or any Western nation accepted into the happy fraternity of the revolutionary left...
...Wirthlin feared, could set the President up for a big political defeat...
...The thought occurs, perhaps in off years presidential political consultants might make excellent family counselors...
...But the obvious truth is that most Americans don't know very much about who is THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 II...
...After all, the arguments marshaled by the White House on behalf of aiding the contras are quite commonplace, and neither Buchanan nor the President should be restrained from observing the obvious: The Sandinistas are aggressively hostile to us and to anyone whom they perceive as an enemy whether that be a local Nicaraguan bishop, an independent journalist, or a non-Communist neighbor...
...Such an offensive, Mr...
...Since the family of FDR, at least, first families have abounded with embarrassments, and they keep getting worse (authoress Patti Davis, indeed...
...Family traditions and values are not passed on so parents cannot be held responsible for the values of their young...
...TRUMAN BETRAYED by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Wirthlin, please note...
...records, police records—many would suffer immediate loss of standing in the community and some would be advised to seek exile...
...Wirthlin, a longtime Reagan associate whose polling company Decision Making Information surveys public opinion for the President, argued that Mr...
...John P. McEnroe Sr...
...Fortunately Buchanan won that in-house debate and we had two very interesting weeks of political fireworks in Washington—perhaps in retrospect a key episode in Reagan's presidency...
...Doesn't Wirthlin know that most people have to go to work every day and don't have the luxury of worrying about such distant events...
...The next day the Washington Post's editorial began: "The House vote on aid to the Nicaragua contras is a bitter disappointment to President Reagan but not necessarily a conclusive defeat...
...The Wirth-less Strategy—favored by many of the people Reagan likes to have around him—is for Reagan to press his case only when there is a consensus behind it...
...No presidential pup in my memory has been a perfect ass until after father's election...
...CONTRA INVESTMENT by Tom Bethell A couple of months ago, M. Stan-ton Evans made the very good point that President Reagan has shown himself to be the political equivalent of a hoarder...
...A President who keeps a pollster anywhere near the Oval Office plainly imagines that the direction of leadership can be reversed...
...Well, there are those who believe that surgery can actually change one's sex, so I sup-pose it is possible to believe that oratory can change one's geopolitical role...
...The central players in last week's [White House] discussion were Messrs...
...Neither of the Nixon girls ever tried to promote herself by airing petty disagreements with the family or by writing trashy books...
...Such outbursts come with increasing frequency, placing tourists on the Hill in more peril than they imagine and making intelligent debate difficult...
...By forcing Congress to take sides on an issue defined (by Buchanan) as "whose side are you on," and as "standing with Ronald Reagan and the resistance, or Daniel Ortega and the Communists," the White House has marvelously clarified the political landscape and possibly exposed the Democratic party to danger down the road...
...It could indeed be momentous in the long run...
...Did either try to franchise the family name...
...Now that is sufficient reason for many of us to rejoice that we do.not live in ancient Greece...
...Kirk...
...American children are raised in schools that presume to teach them everything from nutrition to sexual pathology, on Little League playing fields, on dance floors...
...I do not mean that the issue is unimportant...
...On March 20 the House of Representatives voted down the aid package 222-210...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washing-ton Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Both men were building on the policies of the Truman Doctrine, established in March 1947 when President Truman declared to a joint session of Congress: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures...
...One of the regnant falsehoods in Washington is that Ronald Reagan's political success is owing to his incomparable charm and public relations wizardry...
...They present American interests with aserious problem...
...Neither a President nor any other parent has much influence on his children unless he is a most unusual sort...
...Its New Age addiction to negotiations was utterly impotent against our enemies today...
...American children grow up on their own unless they take teachers seriously, which is unlikely...
...Did the Secret Service ever have to protect us from them...
...Perhaps it is time to allow parents to divorce their children when they become incompatible or in other ways unwholesome...
...John F. Kennedy made them available in the 1960s as Dwight Eisenhower had in the 1950s...
...The Hon...
...Reagan did not squander political capital...
...Michael Barnes from the great state of Mary-land even conferrred upon Buchanan the ultimate malediction, McCarthyism...
...In the first year of their rule the Sandinistas were given U.S...
...Only by not fighting on the issue—Wirthlin's worth-less advice—would political capital have been frittered away...
...There is prime time television, and there are those gruesome shopping malls to which youths abandon themselves...
...Often the family is merely an assembling point for individuals with the same last names...
...Franklin Roosevelt gave them to the British in the late 1930s...
...Then, four years later, they can vote themselves a new President if they don't like what the old one has done, or failed to do...
Vol. 19 • May 1986 • No. 5
