"Tack On, O Ship of State"
Fein, Leonard
TACKON, O SHIP OF STATE CAMPAINGS RUMINATIONS LEONARD FEIN There are, in this difficult political season, some advantages to being an editor. The job provides the perfect out when you're asked to...
...A strong and aggressive Russia, a weak and submissive America—bad for Israel...
...Self-demeaning promises of future friendship with Iran...
...Yesterday's inadequacies cannot be redeemed by today's excesses...
...Pressed for an explanation, they tell me that Bush is tough: he'll know how to deal with the Russians...
...Yes, the Soviet Union is Israel's most dangerous enemy...
...The news among Jews, of course, is that so many are beating around Bush...
...there is no more profit to be had from those policies today than there was yesteryear...
...The growing number of Bush-persons reflects, I suspect, a general disenchantment with the Kennedy-Carter choice more than it does a response to Mr...
...Bush is thought to be a moderate...
...Several people I count as friends are among his most active supporters, and in the kind of continuing informal poll we all seem to be conducting this year, I find pro-Bush sentiment rising considerably among my acquaintances...
...Where, oh where is the commitment to an energy policy the absence of which has brought us to this sorry state...
...For reasons that are not at all clear, Mr...
...yes, the Soviet Union is brutish and noxious, a loathe-some threat...
...Carter has so defined it, and the definition appears to derive more directly from the hills of New Hampshire than from the mountains of Kabul...
...Bush is not—not yet, at any rate—the issue...
...But all that does not make our sudden lurch into macho petulance an improvement...
...Based on such an assessment, we have now come to welcome policies which we would, scarcely a decade ago, have denounced as manifestly war-mongering...
...I fear our President's penchant for sudden conversions...
...Dulles inflicted upon us some years back...
...But massive military aid to Pakistan...
...And as for Brown...
...Carter is the issue...
...It's a handy alibi, and this year, any alibi is welcome...
...Disenchanted with what the Democrats are offering, one searches for a moderate Republican...
...Bush's merits...
...It's difficult to feel the familiar quadrennial excitement...
...Afghanistan is the most serious crisis since World War II only because Mr...
...But sophistication too easily becomes sophistry...
...Where is the promise of a future more pacific...
...These two issues—toughness with the Russians, goodness with Israel—are closely linked in the consideration of those who would be politically sophisticated...
...It surely cannot be thought sophisticated to insist that America regress to the sterile policies which Mr...
...yes, the Soviet Union has chosen to be the enemy of the Jewish people...
...Carter's sudden transition from somewhat confused moderation to a policy of guns and bluster offers no such hope, no such promise, no such strategy...
...No, none for Connally, which says something about the circles in which I travel, and/or about the circles in which he travels...
...And President Carter now seeks to lead us—or is it to follow us?—to places from which there is no easy return and in which there is no solid reward...
...It's the candidates, not the stakes, that make us drowsy...
...It is no longer enough for a candidate to offer the routine endorsement of Israel's safety...
...The next President will preside at an especially critical juncture in our history...
...a Russia contained, an America resolute— good for Israel...
...Be that as it may, I find the Jewish response to Bush more interesting than the candidate himself...
...You wrap yourself in journalistic "objectivity," whatever that means, and the discussion is ended...
...Yes, our policy towards the Soviet Union these last few years has been naive...
...But most of my friends are either shaking their heads in despair or shrugging their shoulders in indifference...
...The sophisticate knows that the issue of Israel's security will be resolved not on the ground of the Middle East, but in the struggle between the Superpowers...
...I was prepared to accept all that long before Afghanistan...
...No extra wheat, no high technology, no fun and games in Moscow next summer—I accept all that...
...Not that the election doesn't matter...
...Where is the hope in such policies...
...I know that among my friends there are Bush enthusiasts, Kennedy enthusiasts, Carter supporters (I have encountered no Carter enthusiasts, although I'm told they do exist), Anderson enthusiasts, and, here and there, people who get excited by Baker, Ford, even Reagan...
...A foreign policy that careens from revelation to revelation is stillborn again and again...
...The job provides the perfect out when you're asked to endorse a presidential candidate...
...He is also thought to be well-prepared for the job, having held a number of senior positions in government—none, so far as I can recall, with any particular distinction...
...such excesses promise a miscarriage of equal proportion and...
...What sort of policies are these...
...And he's good on Israel...
Vol. 5 • March 1980 • No. 3
