Frank’s Case Book

Most will remember that President George W. Bush was once the managing general partner for the Texas Rangers, a major league baseball team. Competition in sports is far less serious than real world conflict. However, at the risk of stretching a metaphor until it snaps, the case can be made that the habits, virtues, and disciplines associated with baseball may serve this President well now.

The comedian George Carlin once had a routine that compared baseball with football. Football, according to Carlin, is a militaristic activity where “the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault” while “baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game” played in a “park.”

Actually Carlin was wrong. Baseball is as fiercely competitive as football, but the rhythm, pace, and expectations are dissimilar. The differences between football and baseball in some ways mimic the differences between conventional war between massed armies and our present fight against global terrorism.

In football, intelligence, finesse and stealth can be important, but generally victory goes to the most aggressive, the biggest, and the strongest. For example, in World War II, the Americans did not defeat the Germans through cleverness or surgical military strikes as much as by out producing and overwhelming the Third Reich. Our productive capacity and population crushed the Nazis under its weight.

In baseball, the 162-game season is much longer than in football and endurance, patience, persistence, and focus are necessary virtues. No baseball team constantly dominates. Even the best teams loose about a third of their games. Defeats as well as victories punctuate ultimate success. Baseball, therefore, nurtures a constancy and devotion of spirit.

In the same way, the war with terrorism will be a day-by-day struggle with an adversary that will not succumb to force unless that force is wisely applied. Patience, and strength persistently used over months and years will test our endurance. Force and strength are important, but so are intelligence, guile, speed and boldness. Perhaps the 50-year victory over Soviet communism in the Cold War provides a model of low-key conflict carried on over a variety of levels. The War with the Barbary Pirates in the early nineteenth century, not unlike our current problem with state-less terrorists, extended over 15 years.

This conflict with radical terrorists is certainly no game and the stakes are tremendous. The analogy here is not meant to trivialize, but illuminate. In one real way, Carlin was right. The goal in baseball as well as the ultimate goal in our current struggle is to be “safe at home.”

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.” — Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

As President George W. Bush crosses the Atlantic to consult with European allies, he brings with him a unilateralist view that is likely to rankle Europeans. Then again, it is hard to remember when Europeans were happy with Americans. Inherent in this tension is the self-interpretative view Americans have of themselves.

Americans have always identified themselves as special and exceptional, a chosen people, a symbol of freedom unto the world. America did not represent just another country or a piece of land, but a new opportunity to create a world unencumbered by the evil tyrannies shackling Europe. When Puritans landed in the New World they believed they were establishing a new order. John Winthrop, evoked Biblical symbolism (Matthew, 5:14) when he forecast that, “We shall be a as a City on a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us…” Perhaps none said it better than Thomas Paine who argued in favor of American independence by proclaiming that “We have it in our power to begin the world again.”

This American exceptionalism was expressed in the idea that the United States had a “manifest destiny” to occupy North America. In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan staked out America’s divine right of “…manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given for us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federaltive development of self government entrusted to us.” Though pursuit of this destiny often proved an excuse for cruelty to and devastation of indigenous peoples, in its most noble embodiment if meant confident fidelity to American aspirations for freedom and individuality.

For the first years of American history, American exceptionalism meant from a practical standpoint the separation of the United States from the rest of the world while it engaged in internal development. Americans traded with the world, but did not engage it politically. We were too good to be sullied by European intrigue. This attitude changed with the World Wars and the Cold War when American uniqueness proved the difference between post-war prosperity and a long descent into darkness.

After only 90 years of existence, it was not clear whether the United States would survive at it strove to expunge the stain of slavery. At times this confidence in American exceptionalism wavered. During the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression or even during the doldrums of the 1970s, America seemed in decline.

This American confidence and self-identity as a chosen people elicits admiration and anger, particularly from Europeans out of which much of the American tradition has emerged. Much of the world admires American prosperity while at the same time tries to console itself with the notion of moral superiority over the United States. Europeans disapprove of us because they cannot stand the fact that they love us so much.

Europeans love to ridicule the United States for its crassness, but hunger for American music and movies. Europeans fancy themselves as the stewards of western culture and a caring society, but lack the creativity of American culture and suffer under the burdens of their welfare states. Europeans lecture Americans on economics, while capital continues to flow from Europe to the United States. It must be infuriating for Europeans to proclaim concern for workers, while they labor with double-digit unemployment rates, while freer markets in the US produce low unemployment rates. Europeans neglect to support a US place on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, while the commission finds a place for China, Libya, and the Sudan.

In a recent essay, Charles Krauthammer argues that George W. Bush is tacking back to American unilateralism in part based on an American understanding of its own uniqueness and importance. Consult, be polite, but act in American interests. For example, while the Europeans have failed to ratify the Kyoto accords on carbon dioxide emissions, they are angry when President Bush states the obvious that the accords are dead. One might have thought that a 95-0 defeat in the Senate for the treaty would have been sufficient warning to Europeans, but it wasn’t. American explicit rejection of the Kyoto accords actually creates political cover for European governments reluctant to embrace the accords. European leaders get to criticize American at little political expense.

George Bush is pushing for missile defense, while Europeans, perhaps more vulnerable to missile strikes from rogue nations, fight what they see as renewed American militarism. Half the time they confidently assert that such a system cannot work and the other half of the time they fret that a protected America would disengage from European defenses.

America, under George W. Bush, refuses to have its interests forgotten in a faux multilateralism that ignores real issues and undermines American and in the long run European interests. What is generally good for the United States will benefit free nations everywhere. When you occupy the City on the Hill, many will be envious. Perhaps more will be inspired.

“Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing… You can’t lead a nation if you are ashamed of the leadership of your party. The Clintons are a terminally unethical and vulgar couple, and they have betrayed everyone who has ever believed in them.” — Bob Herbert, Liberal columnist for the New York Times, February 26, 2001.

Yawn… It is difficult to once again become outraged about former President Bill Clinton’s recent pardons. Perhaps I am just as spent as an elderly fire horse too old to respond just once more as a Clinton scandal rings the fire bell.

The pardon power is, and ought to be, part of the unfettered discretion of a chief executive. Pardon decisions must rely on the judgment of the executive. Elect an executive with a well-tuned conscience supported by a strong ethical base and you will reap gracious, thoughtful, and merciful pardons. Elect a different type of executive and you will be disappointed. Where’s the news? What did you expect? What did Bob Herbert and other Democrats think would happen if they, by their previous unflinching support, allowed Clinton to believe he was immune from the ethical constraints others must respect? It is hard to muster sympathy for the enablers.

Of course, there remain some Conservatives and Republicans who are not as spent as I am and are willing to pursue this scandal. But for me, interest requires something new or unexpected and so I grow bored. The trajectory of a Clinton scandal is so utterly predictable. We have lived through so many of them that it is now possible to generalize about Clinton scandal ballistics.

First, everyone is upset, even Democratic allies of Clinton. Second, Clinton supporters search for parallels, no matter how contrived or strained, of similar behavior by previous presidents. This strategy is designed to raise Clinton’s relative stature by dragging down the reputations of other occupants of the Oval Office. Third, Clinton supporters will give up defending Clinton’s behavior and claim that at least no law was broken. Or if a law was broken it’s not really important enough to punish the President in light of his progressive policies.

At the end, we are left with the distasteful notion that our only expectation of a president is that he remains in hyper-technical compliance with the law. Ethical or even respectable behavior is too much to expect. Or worse, we are saddled with the proposition that we can even ignore violations of the law if on balance we like a president. Relying on the phraseology of former Senator Patrick Moynihan, we will have “defined deviancy down.” But this is sad, old news. The latest pardon scandal is just one more example. Why get excited?

The only intriguing aspect of this latest episode is that since Bill Clinton is out of power, many of his former allies have miraculously transformed into his most vocal critics. Representatives Barney Frank and Henry Waxman, Senator Paul Welstone, and former President Jimmy Carter have all expressed chagrin and disappointment in Clinton’s pardons.

It is now clear that much of the defense of Clinton by Democrats during his term was his motivated by two feelings. The first is the principle that the enemy of my friend is my enemy. If Conservative Republicans were criticizing Clinton, there is a Pavlovian response among Democrats to defend Clinton. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the political prospects of Clinton were linked inextricably to Democrats in general. If Clinton went down in disgrace, all Democrats were likely to suffer in the polls. This was not an idle concern for Democrats. Political catastrophe was the punishment meted out to Republicans in the wake of the resignation of President Richard Nixon in disgrace. Guilt by association is not fair, but it often occurs in politics.

To some extent, Democrats have already paid a price for Clinton’s behavior. Al Gore lost the presidential election. With economic prosperity and relative peace abroad, but for the anvil of Clinton’s ethical problems dragging Gore down, Gore would have won by 10 percentage points. In the lament of Bob Herbert:

“[Clinton] has been president for eight years and the bottom line is this: For the first time in nearly half a century, the Republican Party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress.”

Perhaps part of the current venomousness by Democrats reserved for Clinton’s pardons represents pent up anger with Clinton. Democrats are exasperated at the Faustian bargain they accepted: Defend indefensible behavior by Clinton in order to rescue personal political fortunes. Now that Clinton’s political popularity is not so directly tied to other Democrats, their vision has considerably improved. No longer blinded by political ambition, it is now painfully clear to even highly partisan Democrats that the emperor has no clothes.