CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence AN ARGUMENT FOR REALISM Robert Kagan uses his review of James Chace’s biography of Dean Acheson to launch another attack on “realism” (“How Dean Acheson Won the Cold War,” Sept....
...I never thought that journalism was much deserving of reputations anyway—my mother still thinks I play piano in a whorehouse...
...Short—if you count 23 minutes, at an average speaking rate of 200 words per minute, short...
...BRING ON PRESIDENT GORE Tod Lindberg’s almost-thorough analysis omits the biggest Gore issue: the certain continuing fallout from the campaign-finance scandal (“Dare to Do Nothing?,” Sept...
...He could easily have mentioned air crashes, the Los Angeles riots, or a young girl from Belfast whose father had been shot in the Troubles whom I took into the Oval Office to meet Bill Clinton, as examples of my dispatches from these shores...
...This phone conversation was overheard at my home by one Michael O’Regan, a journalist and media consultant to Anthony Pratt, a billionaire in New York who specializes in paper-recycling, possibly that used for your Page Six...
...Moreover, would I lie to my paymasters that he was willing to be photographed if he wasn’t...
...What elitism is it that drives a young-fogy talking head to be “embarrassed” because his tortured prose is put into the language of everyman...
...1) I am not the New York correspondent for the Daily Mirror...
...3) It was made clear to Master Tucker that a photographer would be calling him later to take a picture of him for the piece that would go into the Sunday Mirror under his byline...
...Economists are correct to point out that investors would, in fact, be taxed under the plan at the corporate level...
...So realists do not act as if they have been faxed a common and detailed set of talking points on the issue of the day from central headquarters, but rather simply share a series of concerns and general attitudes...
...THOMAS E. TYLER PHILADELPHIA, PA FLAT-TAX PARLOR TRICKS John Hood raised some valid political objections to otherwise sensible provisions of the flat-tax proposal (“Tax Reform: Fantasy & Reality,” Sept...
...But he is wrong to imply that the issues in the realist-liberal debate are simple and wrong to say that any disagreement among realists means that “realism is a hollow concept, useless for analyzing American policymaking...
...GIDEON ROSE NEW YORK, NY ON BOOMERS Christopher Caldwell’s article on the revolting generation of 1968 does not go as far as we need to if we are to understand the non-phenomenon of that ostensible political movement of the 1960s (“1968: A Revolting Generation Looks Back,” Sept...
...Our tedious, but apparently endless national pastimes of whining and consumption have more to do with an inability or unwillingness to live directly than with generational differences...
...He made movies, wrote books, drank, loved, thought, and took his life in 1994...
...Under a straight flat tax, stock dividends are untaxable, so if the investor’s income is paid in dividends, it is only taxed at the corporate level...
...That the movement would necessarily be “based on nothing,” as Caldwell now argues, Debord recognized in 1967, when he published the first of his theses in The Society of Spectacle...
...The most relevant objection relates to the fact that under the flat tax, rich “coupon clippers” appear to pay no federal income tax...
...Because he is suddenly talking to an audience of millions— 6 million people read the Sunday Mirror...
...7) He should think himself lucky that I called him an “expert commentator...
...Good...
...The result may be messy, and Kagan may see it as “useless for analyzing American policymaking,” but it is probably less so than his implicit alternative, which I take to be an approach that privileges questions of principle instead of power...
...Ultimately, if nothing else, the Republican National Committee should churn out grainy, black-and-white ads reminding the electorate of LaBella and Freeh’s unanswered memos...
...The difference is that their deliberations might yield recommendations of dubious value, since they will be only distantly related to how most nations—including ours— have actually behaved throughout most of history...
...5) “Pretty embarrassing,” he finds, to “write like this...
...All that once was directly lived has become mere representation...
...They fight among themselves all the time about how to define and balance competing American interests in individual cases, what the precise consequences of alternative policies are likely to be, and what degree of risk policymakers should tolerate...
...JAMES J. KRAMER HOUSTON, TX THE SPEECH THAT WASN’T What a pity that Paul Begala’s inspiring and historic words are now lost forever (SCRAPBOOK, “The Mea Culpa Speech Clinton Rejected,” Aug...
...He’s a right loony—he’ll say anything...
...Hood observes that the fact that the investor would not be taxed at the personal level leaves the flat-tax proposal wide open to leftwing demagoguery...
...With a bit more paperwork, each investor’s share of corporate taxes paid could be included on his or her individual tax returns...
...I am a freelance writer who called Master Tucker on the day in question representing the Sunday Mirror, and told him so...
...Realism can be seen as either a prescriptive approach to foreign policy (nations should act from considerations of power and material interest) or a descriptive one (nations generally do act this way, and if they do not, they pay a price because international politics is a dangerous and unforgiving game...
...They would pay taxes, and it would say so right on their tax returns...
...But no matter—those great stories he mentioned were all true and— just fancy that—there were millions who wanted to read them...
...This accounting sleight-of-hand goes to the heart of the charge that under a flat tax “rich people would not pay taxes...
...Dull—I agree...
...What it does do is serve as a kind of litmus test, proof of the kind of person poor, virginal Master Tucker likes to deal with—or rather not...
...On the Friday night when I needed to get someone in Washington—and quick—to interview for this piece, I called the Associated Press office and told them I needed someone “right wing” who doesn’t mind having a go at Clinton...
...4) “Ignoring the message” and going out for dinner says more about Master Tucker’s manners than anyone calling from London, especially as he voiced no objection to having his photo taken...
...He neglects, or ignores, an atypical but central figure of the movement, Guy Debord, who no doubt learned from Jacques Ellul...
...How many people read THE WEEKLY STANDARD, apart from Newt Gingrich and his dog...
...If Republicans partake of the political backbone now so generously being provided them by Bill Clinton, they will have little to fear from President Gore...
...I presume that he must be embarrassed at being thought of as common, because there is no argument in Master Tucker’s piece that he disagrees with the sentiments he expressed against William Jefferson Clinton...
...I can live with my reputation, but I wager that Carlson will be crying into his Brooks Brothers handkerchief if he thinks the big boys, the real journalists, have such a high opinion of him...
...And I do take shorthand, unlike most American journalists...
...If Janet Reno buckles under the pressure to appoint an independent counsel for Vice President Gore, then he will be a significantly weakened candidate in 2000—especially if Republicans make significant gains in the House and Senate this November...
...If it were, we would eventually (after the inevitable legal battles and endless appeals) be able to hear the actual words with which the president rejected the Begala draft...
...And I never once stooped to the levels of the Washington Post, that tawdry rag, which recently mentioned the sex in the White House in all its lurid detail...
...Wouldn’t it be wonderful if President Nixon’s Oval Office recording system were still operational...
...probably by an intern whose name no one in the White House now remembers...
...But since you Americans are so concerned with accuracy, perhaps you will now indulge me in putting the record straight on numerous points...
...WARREN HOPE HAVERTOWN, PA MORE FLEET STREET DAYS It’s a moot point who should be dismissed for the insomnia cure that is Tucker Carlson’s piece “My Fleet Street Days” (Casual, Sept...
...Why...
...In the current system wealthy investors who own stock are taxed both at the corporate and personal levels— double taxation...
...He is right to point out that the Truman administration used power to create a liberal postwar settlement, and he is certainly entitled to his beliefs about the appropriate role of moral considerations in current American foreign policy...
...LEONARD FROMM COLD SPRING, MN...
...His thought combines both the “lifestyle” and “socialist” wings of the 1960s movement, but goes farther than either by recognizing the “spectacular” nature of modern society...
...Debord never became a media star or crawled to a position of power and respectability like the protesters who graduated from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration...
...However, a simple modification of the proposal—without changing any of its substantive provisions— would blunt any charges that rich investors go untaxed by the flat tax...
...Those who find the theory convincing pay attention to certain kinds of issues and expect that certain kinds of actions will have certain kinds of consequences...
...2) “The interview was short and dull...
...6) The 200-plus words he expends at the beginning of the piece about my work is evidently an attempt to denigrate my reputation...
...You want Tucker Carlson at THE WEEKLY STANDARD,” replied the man at the other end of the phone...
...He and his confreres will inevitably spend a comparable amount of time debating how to define, reconcile, and implement competing moral and ideological principles in particular cases...
...Clearly...
...He is willing to testify—just like old Bill—before a grand jury about this fact...
...Come to think of it, even if those words had been recorded, they very well might have been erased, accidentally of course...
...The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles...
...ALLAN HALL NEW YORK, NY TUCKER CARLSON RESPONDS: Gingrich doesn’t have a dog...
...Debord, born in 1931, was not a member of the generation in question, but he was one of its intellectual leaders...
...In other words, properly understood, realism is a theory of the way the world works...
...The latter conception is the one favored by most realists themselves, and is the basis for their occasional prescriptive suggestions...
...My phone record backs this up...
Vol. 4 • September 1998 • No. 3
