Ask Not . . .
EMERY, NOEMIE
Ask Not . . . John McCain belongs to our oldest political party-the party of Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan-the Patriot party. BY NOEMIE EMERY Who is John McCain, and what is his...
...The patriot theme is always appealing, but this time there is a sense of greater hunger in the air...
...The first man in a long time to suggest that it isn't has been John McCain...
...This was always important, but it now seems more vital, in view of what has emerged in weeks past...
...But FDR worshiped his Republican cousin...
...Ask not...
...American citizenship is a gift and a duty, and service a privilege...
...To some ideologues, this is more than sufficient, but history shows that it is not enough to inspire a party, enlist public support, or form a governing majority for very long...
...BY NOEMIE EMERY Who is John McCain, and what is his magic...
...And always, they Ask not...
...When McCain attacks Clinton, he doesn't sound vengeful, or petty, or like a moralist trying to impose his religion on others...
...But is this really enough...
...Gore's spokesman cheerfully condoned this behavior...
...McKinley was decent...
...They are stoic and reticent...
...There is a blemish to actively heal...
...Has anyone noticed that McCain can call Clinton a liar, and Democrats cheer him...
...To deny this is to shirk one's duty to God and country...
...For years, it appeared Al Gore would be the "clean" Clinton, embodying the policies without the moral deficiencies, and therefore a plausible national leader...
...it is also a cause and a principle...
...and go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard...
...Grandfatherly" was the worst pejorative John Kennedy could make himself say about Ike...
...There is a kind of conservatism that conflates nationalism of any kind with invasive big government, and wants only to be let alone...
...There is not merely a status quo to invigorate...
...There is a kind of liberalism that disowns the idea of American virtue, resists the idea of American mission, and insists people only have needs, not duties...
...He is supremely self-seeking, in every conceivable sense...
...Something, or some combination of things—the history, the Hanoi Hilton, the wit, the irreverence, the long reputation for dissing his party—has made him an agent through which moderates, independents, and even some liberals are willing to channel their anger...
...Bob Kerrey is the John McCain of the Democrats...
...They may womanize, but are chivalrous towards and protective of women...
...and abroad, world leadership and the defense of order and freedom...
...Reaganesque" tax-cutters who talk of nothing else never reach their man's magic...
...No one in his right mind would call McCain a "prude," or "repressed," or "jealous" of Clinton...
...Daring themselves, they tend to draw violence: Three were shot and died from it (Hamilton, and the two Kennedy brothers...
...But Teddy Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers are harder to categorize, responding to instincts of varying provenance...
...Hamilton was a hero to Theodore Roosevelt, whose only regret was that his own Spanish-American war was so negligible...
...offer blood, toil, sweat, and tears...
...Few presidents have reached historic stature without being in it...
...The trumpet summons them, to the great crusades, long twilight struggles against evil empires, against great depressions, against complacency, against sloth and indolence, and even against fear itself...
...They enjoy being part of generations of whom much is demanded...
...He made more of a fuss over a minor knee injury than FDR ever did about polio...
...Different as all these men may be in party and temperament, they have many things in common...
...Pursuit of this cause requires, at home, a guarantee to all of access to success, wealth, and power...
...He is as without shame as he is without courage or conscience or honor...
...The TR-JFK ethic is that no obstacle is too great to be surmounted, and that people should want to do things that are difficult...
...two were shot and recovered (TR and Reagan...
...And they draw backers who are also eclectic, creating coalitions that defy reason and gravity...
...He does not lead citizens but rapacious consumers, whose sense of grievance he tries to exaggerate...
...without it, no party can govern too well or for too long...
...Ask what your country can do for you, and then ask for more of it...
...Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt were intensely partisan figures, men who defined, and were loved by, their parties...
...He bombed other countries to take our minds off his troubles...
...How does one flush out Al Gore and Bill Clinton...
...Somehow McCain has found the voice that Republicans were looking for throughout the protracted impeachment and trial, and could never really get right...
...Bill Clinton is the un-patriot...
...Traditional terms don't explain the stampede...
...The four charismatic presidents of the 20th century all belonged to this party, and have antecedents and cousins...
...Churchill was a hero to John F. Kennedy, whose favorite programs—the Peace Corps and space race—were designed wholly to rouse an esprit de corps in the populace...
...They have high codes of public and personal honor...
...Such men are drawn to the armed forces, and to battlefield similes...
...On the other hand, they often meet fierce resistance, from both left and right...
...Patriot wannabes frequently founder, mistaking the message for mission...
...He has put his own interests above those of his country, over and over...
...Hoover and Carter were inept, but decent...
...a principle, but not a program...
...And ours...
...The line begins with Alexander Hamilton, glory-hound and super-nationalist, who, when he failed twice to gloriously die for his country, still worked out a way in which he could...
...His mode is to focus on the small glitch and call it a crisis, so that he can step in to cushion still further the already soft edges of boomer life...
...He does not fit neatly in the right-to-left spectrum, but is de facto head of the Patriot party—a dominant force in American politics, though one that is not easy to explain...
...Gore, of course, lied, and denied it...
...The great defining moment of this campaign may prove to have been the incident in New Hampshire, when a happy clique of Gore supporters (including the governor's husband) splashed mud on Bob Kerrey, and called him a cripple...
...Al Gore is Bill Clinton...
...He dodged the draft, consciously, because he feared danger...
...But that was before the Gore campaign revealed itself as one of staggering lies and rhetorical thuggery...
...They rendezvous with destiny, and live in shining cities on hills...
...He has a pattern of picking on powerless women, and then trying to slander or threaten them...
...They do not whimper when faced with torture or polio, Addison's or Alzheimer's...
...It has no health-care plan, no tax proposal, no 10-point programs...
...It is not even precisely a party, but a force that moves from one party to the other...
...People who complain that McCain and his fans skirt this issue or that seem unaware of the possibility that this time pride is the issue, and subsumes all the rest...
...Ted Kennedy dropped the family torch when he turned into a mere gimme liberal...
...They thrive under challenge and pressure and stress...
...Patriot themes can serve the interests of liberal or conservative programs: They can fuel an arms build-up (the mission is to save and spread freedom), or a spate of new social spending and programs (the mission is to end human misery...
...It is astonishing that after years of waiting for the left and the center to turn on Clinton, some conservatives are convinced it's a liberal plot when they do...
...But it never did...
...He is supremely self-seeking, in every conceivable sense...
...They have flair, courage, humor, and a sense of drama...
...It now appears plain that Gore is not Clinton Clean but Clinton Continued...
...Kennedy, brothers under the skin...
...And the un-Clinton is John McCain...
...and one—Franklin Roosevelt—was shot at, and missed...
...Patriot themes can overcome traditional political divisions: Columnist Jack Newfield, an RFK acolyte, compares McCain to Reagan and to Bobby Clinton is as without shame as he is without courage or conscience or honor...
...63.FDR's ally in war was the ultimate glory-hound, the half-American Winston S. Churchill, who had the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" sung at his funeral...
...But in Bill Clinton, we have one of the least decent men in American history, and possibly one of the least patriotic people in the whole country...
...This was not a problem for his fifth cousin Franklin, who faced crises so grave that he aged 30 years in his 12 years of service and died a frail old man at Noemie Emery is afrequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...On every character test of the patriot, he is its antithesis...
...It also transforms traditional concepts of demographic and voting blocs...
...John F. Kennedy looked up to Churchill, his father's political enemy...
...Through the centuries, it has passed back and forth between the two parties, making the one it inhabits the governing force in the country...
...At their extremes, liberalism and conservatism both edge off into selfishness, being about the dispersal—in tax cuts, or welfare—of purely material benefits...
...On the down side, they can fly off the handle, have lapses of judgment, and exaggerate crises, or even invent them...
...Churchill, the honorary English member of the Patriot party, famously observed that nothing is more exhilarating than to be shot at and not hit...
...But it does have a platform, and these are its planks: America is not merely a country...
...It is typical of the Patriot party that it breaks up and rearranges partisan lines...
...a concept adaptable to various creeds...
...and who gave the whole movement its signature slogan: Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country...
...He sounds like a patriot, appalled at what has been done to debase his country...
...the stroking and stoking of many small appetites...
...His politics, too, are based on self-interest...
...This type tends to transcend ideology...
...The political theme of the Clinton-Gore era is that no annoyance, no matter how trivial, should have to be endured...
...Reagan loved the ur-Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...McCain does not seem "mean," or "obsessed," or a "partisan" figure...
...After the stardom and deaths of the two elder Kennedys, many young Democrats brushed their hair, brushed their teeth, walked on the beach with their coats off, and waited for lightning to strike them...
...Ronald Reagan was hands-off on domestic policy (few libertarians belong to the Patriot party), but rates inclusion because of his foreign endeavors: He cleaned up the last part of our century-long international nightmare, as FDR, his hero, had earlier cleaned up the first...
...This puts him in line with an eclectic political brotherhood of TR, FDR, Reagan, and the two elder Kennedys...
...It is an idea, but not an ideology...
Vol. 5 • February 2000 • No. 22
