Capitol Ideas/Mealy Mouths
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS MEALY MOUTHS by Tom Bethell I was going to say something about 1 the Administration's arms-forhostages trading, but by the time this comes out, a month from now, everything will no...
...Brzezinski added that he was "personally never persuaded that we needed [the new weapons' for military reasons...
...T have said it before and I will say it 1 again: Reagan's Achilles' heel as President has always been his soft heart...
...The question is, why haven't the liberals seen through this...
...Their man" is in the White House—don't rock the boat by criticizing him too much...
...Likewise, the Joint Chiefs find a natural ally in the ABM treaty...
...Reagan told Wallop that the Joint Chiefs were opposed to the idea...
...Of course, these last meals always turn out to be extra meals because the "diet" of arms control never materializes...
...It encourages the State Department in its- persistent delusion that it can moderate not only U.S...
...Reagan has many fine qualities...
...responded by placing Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe because (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski): "I was persuaded reluctantly that we needed [them' to obtain European support for SALT [II]," then a candidate for Senate ratification...
...But of course there is something else-another reason why the liberals persist in pinning their hopes on arms control...
...Arms control is not really meant to reduce arms...
...So there has been this tacit agreement all round not to point out THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 11 that the strongman has no epaulets...
...The arms control process thereby created an entirely new deployment of nuclear arms on both sides in Western Europe...
...It is in reality intended as a "process" whereby the U.S...
...D Tenn]helped the President get the MX, on the grounds that if Reagan got a good last meal of strategic missiles, he would head for the negotiating table...
...None...
...Even Paul Warnke came out against it...
...Mary McGrory of the Washington Post came closest to doing so, using the same "meal" metaphor...
...Did someone say he should do something...
...Unfortunately, however, President Reagan listens to the Joint Chiefs, believing them to be reliable advocates of a strong defense, without realizing that for them "strong" means "old...
...As we used to say in Hollywood when I was a labor negotiator . . . How's that again, listen more to George Shultz, ignore the right-wing ideologues, do something about this terrible arms buildup, a peril to our children and to all mankind...
...But in showing himself to be so easily distressed by what his enemies say about him, Reagan has shown weakness, I fear...
...In the nineteenth-century transition from sail to steam nostalgic admirals would have found in arms control a useful ally-convenient for keeping their full-rigged men-o--war in the fleet and keeping the despised dreadnoughts out...
...It was interesting to see Lesley Stahl on CBS TV expressing a feigned dismay at Reagan for saying, first, that he would break the SALT II limits, then vacillating on the promise, for all the world as though she were thesoulmate of Richard Perle, hardlinerin-residence at the Pentagon...
...I think in order to dispel this false image Reagan has gone overboard trying to show what a compassionate man he is—thereby demonstrating his vulnerability, to bullying and giving the Democrats a golden opportunity to move to his right: probably the only way they can be elected in 1988...
...Didn't he give a tough-sounding speech last month...
...Here we go then, no no no, you've got me all wrong (no more nukes, did the man say...
...Can't fault that...
...But I gave him the slip in my recent globe-trotting and now I have taken refuge at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, where I will be a "media fellow" for several months...
...Conservatives have been reluctant to point all this out because for the most part they are satisfied with small favors...
...military procurement to Soviet consent...
...In the twentieth century the 1972 ABM treaty threatens to obstruct an even more momentous transition from offensivemissiles to missile defenses...
...Incidentally, your Washington Correspondent has written so little about Washington lately that I gather your Editor-in-Chief sent the truant officer after me...
...The U.S...
...Alexander Cockburn asked in the Wall Street Journal if the news media "lapdogs will at last become watchdogs...
...But an unflinching will of steel is not among Reagan's presidential qualities...
...Uh . . . Hello, is that Mr...
...Guys, guys, now now Sam, stop shouting okay...
...Meanwhile, the press is going to have a lot of fun criticizing Reagan for doing what they in fact wanted him to do—namely, demonstrate more compassion...
...The Soviet intermediate range SS-20 missile aimed at Western Europe was a product of arms control (designed to circumvent SALT I limits on strategic, or long-range, missiles...
...Then we will be able to write about Current Events rather than Timeless Topics...
...Nevertheless, we're forever told that he is this hardline, uncompassionate, hawkish, Hooverish, right-wing, and so on ruler...
...CAPITOL IDEAS MEALY MOUTHS by Tom Bethell I was going to say something about 1 the Administration's arms-forhostages trading, but by the time this comes out, a month from now, everything will no doubt look very different...
...They are not at all enthusiastic about strategic defense...
...Okay, fellas . . . We should renew the process, did someone say...
...Certainly this can be imputed to one or two of his better-known arms-control advisers...
...This piece is threatening to turn Timeless at any moment with a discussion of arms control, so get ready to prop your eyelids open...
...T he case that an endless arms control process creates an arms buildup is a fascinating one, and irrefutable, I believe...
...Thus the arms control process is like a never-ending Mardi Gras in preparation for a Lenten regime of reductions that never arrives...
...Hard to keep them all straight...
...Beautiful...
...Uh, weli how was it again...
...His lack of interest in the exercise of power is in itself ambiguous: personally admirable and yet professionally dangerous...
...Albert Gore Jr...
...Reagan took the "no nukes" slogan and put it right on the table for Gorbachev to gobble...
...We heard immediately from Mrs...
...No heel he...
...foreign policy but also Soviet foreign policy...
...Beautiful for the Pentagon, right...
...Now perhaps we can begin to understand why, as Secretary of the Navy John Lehman said a month or so ago, the world's leading advocates of arms control are the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, one of the very few men in Congress who understands the dangers of arms control, recently urged Reagan to proceed with the deployment of Strategic Defense, thereby catching up with the Soviets...
...Mostly, of course, Reagan has responded to media hectoring by adopting a strategy of capitulation...
...The foregoing extracted from Strobe Talbott's book, Deadly Gambits...
...Are weeping hostage families to visit him in the Oval Office, seeking his intercession on behalf of their loved ones...
...By embracing the ostensible goal of the arms controllers, Reagan showed it to be a goal very few people want to reach...
...In view of the Reykjavik outcome, perhaps we should give Reagan credit for a certain Machiavellian cunning, nonetheless...
...I think, for example, he let Michael Deaver put him in this Iranian mess by okaying the promotion of the unqualified Robert McFarlane to the NSC post...
...In a conversation last summer with the genial Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, I used the Never-Ending Mardi Gras metaphor, and he reacted as though it were a novel view of arms control...
...Furthermore, arms control is intended to freeze the technological status quo...
...I am told by a fellow fellow at Hoover that Sen...
...Ron and Nancy should turn off the television set in the White House because there too you get to know the families, and it seems that Reagan just can't say no to a tearful plea...
...Besides, conservatives, too, have preferred to think of Reagan as a hard-liner...
...Jimmy Carter's arms control director, Warnke today takes time out to advise Gov...
...The "Luddite" nature of arms control is rarely understood, although Brzezinski, oddly (for he is a supporter of strategic defense), remarked on "This Week With David Brinkley" (October 12) that "any really good [arms control] agreement has to have . . . genuinely effective impediments to modernization...
...Why, a couple of years back, did the Israeli government swap literally hundreds of Palestinians, terrorists among them, for just three Israeli soldiers...
...Stahl, of course, wanted to illustrate the point that Reagan's "foreign policy is in disarray...
...You're on for next week...
...Well, bring them in...
...Nor was Richard Perle, hardliner-in-residence...
...Why do they continue to support a "process" which yields such a perverse outcome...
...With what effect...
...Thatcher and our normally timid allies: Hey, wait a minute, they said, we like those nukes because if you take them away then maybe we're going to have to increase our defense budgets...
...It seems to bother him immensely that there are in this world people who don't like him and who willfully misconstrue his motives...
...No one commented on the self-defeating nature of such a strategy...
...Go back to Geneva...
...Gorbachev...
...It's like saying you have put on ten pounds so now you can safely go on a diet...
...Because senior Israeli officials made the mistake of meeting with and getting to know the families of the three soldiers...
...In response, sensible watchdogs who know their Pavlov will jump up in his lap and offer a few rewarding licks before jumping off to growl anew...
...It's not hard to see why yesteryear's strategists with names like McNamara and Bundy are eager to preserve the strategic balance of the previous generation...
...Say hello to this Gorbachev...
...Which is why we're hoping your Editorin-Chief will perform another prodigy, wave a magic wand, and turn this into a weekly magazine...
...And herein lies its danger...
...and the Soviet Union get together and, above all else, agree: agree to marginal adjustments and small changes, the effect of which is not to change the military balance but to steer Soviet policy (sometimes called Soviet "behavior") into more "moderate" directions, and simultaneously to subject U.S...
...Give the man a break...
...They say we should get together and have a friendly chat . . . Iceland it is, then...
...Later I may divulge some secrets about this mysterious, powerful, influential "hotbed" of reaction and Reaganism, but for the moment I will confine myself to the observation that Stanford University is a nice place to visit, the campus is like a country club, and the sun shines every day...
...And in a way it is, too, but only because Reagan has surrounded himself with advisers who spend the day worrying about the evening news...
...Partly they haven't really thought it through, I suspect...
...More than anything it is his penchant for compassion that has exposed his presidency to peril...
...Yet think about it...
...Mario Cuomo on foreign policy...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 13...
...And, Lehman 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 added, this is just as true in the Reagan Administration as it was in the Carter Administration...
...As a House member, Sen...
...This distress may be private virtue, but it is public vice...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...By golly, here was the opportunity to show that he wasn't the hard-hearted Ray-Gun so mendaciously advertised by the Leftist International...
...As for poor old Ronald Reagan and the Iranian deal, his daughter Maureen put her finger on it some time ago when she said the media had it all wrong about her dad—he was really rather a soft-hearted fellow, never could say no, wouldn't hurt a fly, and his children always could get whatever they wanted out of him...
...How many arms controllers blew the whistle on Reagan for saying, as he did several times before Reykjavik, that it was his arms buildup that had brought the Russians to the table...
Vol. 20 • January 1987 • No. 1
