A Separate Peace - WSJ OpEd article

[Martrae]

America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned.
by Peggy Noonan
Thursday, October 27, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It's harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

I'm not talking about "Plamegate." As I write no indictments have come up. I'm not talking about "Miers." I mean . . . the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn't think so.

But this recounting doesn't quite get me to what I mean. I mean I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming.

Let me focus for a minute on the presidency, another institution in trouble. In the past I have been impatient with the idea that it's impossible now to be president, that it is impossible to run the government of the United States successfully or even competently. I always thought that was an excuse of losers. I'd seen a successful presidency up close. It can be done.

But since 9/11, in the four years after that catastrophe, I have wondered if it hasn't all gotten too big, too complicated, too crucial, too many-fronted, too . . . impossible.

I refer to the sheer scope, speed and urgency of the issues that go to a president's desk, to the impossibility of bureaucracy, to the array of impeding and antagonistic forces (the 50-50 nation, the mass media, the senators owned by the groups), to the need to have a fully informed understanding of and stand on the most exotic issues, from Avian flu to the domestic realities of Zimbabwe.

The special prosecutors, the scandals, the spin for the scandals, nuclear proliferation, wars and natural disasters, Iraq, stem cells, earthquakes, the background of the Supreme Court backup pick, how best to handle the security problems at the port of Newark, how to increase production of vaccines, tort reform, did Justice bungle the anthrax case, how is Cipro production going, did you see this morning's Raw Threat File? Our public schools don't work, and there's little refuge to be had in private schools, however pricey, in part because teachers there are embarrassed not to be working in the slums and make up for it by putting pictures of Frida Kalho where Abe Lincoln used to be. Where is Osama? What's up with trademark infringement and intellectual capital? We need an answer on an amendment on homosexual marriage! We face a revolt on immigration.

The range, depth, and complexity of these problems, the crucial nature of each of them, the speed with which they bombard the Oval Office, and the psychic and practical impossibility of meeting and answering even the most urgent of them, is overwhelming. And that doesn't even get us to Korea. And Russia. And China, and the Mideast. You say we don't understand Africa? We don't even understand Canada!

Roiling history, daily dangers, big demands; a government that is itself too big and rolling in too much money and ever needing more to do the latest important, necessary, crucial thing.

It's beyond, "The president is overwhelmed." The presidency is overwhelmed. The whole government is. And people sense when an institution is overwhelmed. Citizens know. If we had a major terrorist event tomorrow half the country--more than half--would not trust the federal government to do what it has to do, would not trust it to tell the truth, would not trust it, period.

It should be noted that all modern presidents face a slew of issues, and none of them have felt in control of events but have instead felt controlled by them. JFK in one week faced the Soviets, civil rights, the Berlin Wall, the southern Democratic mandarins of the U.S. Senate. He had to face Cuba, only 90 miles away, importing Russian missiles. But the difference now, 45 years later, is that there are a million little Cubas, a new Cuba every week. It's all so much more so. And all increasingly crucial. And it will be for the next president, too.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with friends about the sheer number of things parents now buy for teenage girls--bags and earrings and shoes. When I was young we didn't wear earrings, but if we had, everyone would have had a pair or two. I know a 12-year-old with dozens of pairs. They're thrown all over her desk and bureau. She's not rich, and they're inexpensive, but her parents buy her more when she wants them. Someone said, "It's affluence," and someone else nodded, but I said, "Yeah, but it's also the fear parents have that we're at the end of something, and they want their kids to have good memories. They're buying them good memories, in this case the joy a kid feels right down to her stomach when the earrings are taken out of the case."

This, as you can imagine, stopped the flow of conversation for a moment. Then it resumed, as delightful and free flowing as ever. Human beings are resilient. Or at least my friends are, and have to be.

Let me veer back to the president. One of the reasons some of us have felt discomfort regarding President Bush's leadership the past year or so is that he makes more than the usual number of decisions that seem to be looking for trouble. He makes startling choices, as in the Miers case. But you don't have to look for trouble in life, it will find you, especially when you're president. It knows your address. A White House is a castle surrounded by a moat, and the moat is called trouble, and the rain will come and the moat will rise. You should buy some boots, do your work, hope for the best.

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

And--forgive me--I thought: If even Teddy knows . . .

If I am right that trolley thoughts are out there, and even prevalent, how are people dealing with it on a daily basis?

I think those who haven't noticed we're living in a troubling time continue to operate each day with classic and constitutional American optimism intact. I think some of those who have a sense we're in trouble are going through the motions, dealing with their own daily challenges.

And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem.

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks.

That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

[Arlos]

Interesting article. I wanted to comment on one small piece of it, that of americans having lost their trust for their government.

I think we can pretty conclusively point to where that happened, and who's fault it is: Nixon, and Watergate. I remember the furor about Monica during Clinton's Presidency, but in all honesty, there's just no comparison between the two. Clinton got his dick sucked and then wasn't completely truthful about it. Nixon organized a giant conspiracy with a un-governed intelligence apperat running out of the White House, that was engaged in completely illegal activities: breakins, wire tapping, even sabotaging the campaigns of opponents Nixon was worried about, by donig things like forging career-destroying letters on letterhead of the candidate and then "leaking" them to the media.

While I think it's patently obvious that there was backroom shady dealings since time immemorial, I think during Nixon's terms it got far beyond anything else we'd ever seen, and the public at large got absolute proof of what was going on as well. Once that happened, that innate trust was gone, period, and unfortunately there's just no getting it back. Just like when a delicate china plate is dropped and shattered into a million shards, there's no making it whole again, the american trust in the basic benificence of government is something I don't see ever returning.

We have come to expect fundamental dishonesty in our government, and are ready to believe (with good reason) just about any possible level of malfeasance. Honestly, I don't know how long a nation can endure when it has no faith in its government, but neither do I see any way of fidxing it short of radically changing the governmental process. I mean, distrust of government goes way back, Mark Twain once wrote "No one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session", but today we're at a whole different level of distrust.

About the only solution I can see (and I don't know how to bring it about) is to somehow make politics less the province of the super-rich. Right now, elections are all about who has the most money, usually in the form of personal fortune. Someone who is living paycheck to paycheck, no matter how bright and talented, has fundamentally 0 chance of ever getting elected to national office. This has lead to the growing feeling of disconnect between the populace and those that run the government.

About all I can think of to fix it would be to completely overhaul the election process. One possible method might be the following: Allow no spending of any personal or party money of any kind. Have a general fund of public money that is doled out equally to all candidates, and that money is the ONLY money that may be spent on campaign ads, etc. Everyone must pay the exact same advertising rates as everyone else (to prevent unfair advantage to someone who has a cozy relationship with a TV network, say), and you'd have to disallow advertising by PACs as well. This would theoretically put everyone on a mostly equal footing, and get a much broader range of people involved in the process. Obviously there are big holes in the idea, and it's very rough, but it'd be a start.

Anyway, I am not sure we're coming to an absolute ending, but I think we're coming up on a major transformation of society soon. I am not talking minor change, either, I'm talking change on the order of the change the US went during the civil war, say, where much was radically different before and after.

-Arlos

[Scoota McGee]

As a side note on Clinton... Halliburton is still raking it in from the contract he gave us for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Did you know we still have troops there? Thanks Bill

I do agree with your campaign spending cap idea though. To bad the lobbyists and PACS would never allow such a law to get passed.

[Eziekial]

I'm moving to Costa Rica as soon as I have 5 million in the bank.

[Captain Insano]

I'm moving to Costa Rica as soon as I have 5 million in the bank.

hahaha... I say the same thing to my biz partner all the time.

When my fortune is amassed I'm going to begin liquidating it and stuffing hard currencies and gold in reputable foreign banks/swiss banks etc out of touch of the American government.

I really really distrust the government in this day and age. The fact that they could push the Patriot Act through shows that they will go to any lengths to extend their power regardless of public opinion.

The fact that the American people aren't in outrage about current American policy just shows really how stupid our people as a whole have become.

Mark my words: The middle class is going to get slowly wiped out in this country. You are either going to be well off/elite or poor.

This is exactly what the government wants...When the people are poor they will do whatever the government desires so long as they receive a few crumbs from the government who fucked them over in the first place.

A lot of modern society's woes can be blamed on the baby boomer's, in my opinion.

These lazy fucks who couldn't get anything done in their lives make up the largest part of the voting public and are all for government aid, social programs etc and will sacrifice great personal freedom at the cost of a better drug prescription benefit....Thanks a lot you aging fucking assholes...Fuck us over so you worthless old farts can manage to live a little longer at the expense of your grandchildren.

All in all I hate the government in this day and age, I don't trust them at all and the fact that Americans as a whole are uneducated and/or too lazy to rise up against the machine in Washington says that things aren't going to get any better soon.

Something that no one has really touched on is the fact that when the people as a whole are doing poorly the rich have more opportunity than ever to get insanely wealthy...Think foreclosures, liquidation of assets, slave labor wages etc etc.

All I need is 20 million and a flat in Thailand.

[DangerPaul]

I'm moving to Costa Rica as soon as I have 5 million in the bank.

You won't need that much, for less than $25k US you can get 100 acres near Jaco, it would cost you about $50k US to build a badass house and about $10k US a year to live down there. Think about $400k and a nice easy job of fishing or tourist shit and you are set. Believe me, I think about it once a month.

[labbats]

If I ever hit a wall in life where my wife leaves me, I have no money, etc.... I'm going to buy a six shooter, tuck it in my pants, and head south. Then I'm going to fly cocaine in some shitty Cessna and live like it's the last day on earth until it actually is. However, the odds of this happening are about 0.0001%, so I'll more likely be some snobby prick that lives in the suburbs and quotes Wine Spectator.

In all seriousness, the Wall Street Journal opinion page will sum up world events in a way no other news source can. It's addictive, and all that I really focus on as far as news goes. Brilliant publication.

[araby]

wrong thread move on, hi

[Captain Insano]

If I ever hit a wall in life where my wife leaves me, I have no money, etc.... I'm going to buy a six shooter, tuck it in my pants, and head south. Then I'm going to fly cocaine in some shitty Cessna and live like it's the last day on earth until it actually is. However, the odds of this happening are about 0.0001%, so I'll more likely be some snobby prick that lives in the suburbs and quotes Wine Spectator.

In all seriousness, the Wall Street Journal opinion page will sum up world events in a way no other news source can. It's addictive, and all that I really focus on as far as news goes. Brilliant publication.

which way is the journal slanted? I've been looking for a decent news source... All the main ones I know of are run by stalinistic communism loving hippies or jesus freaks.

[Vertigor]

WSJ slants to the right, especially the opinion page. It tends to slant more towards the economic (fat-cat), as opposed to religious (jesus-freak), right.

Peggy's article is a precursor. It’s the first step down the road to the reminiscing about the "Good Ole Days." You know how it goes: everything has gone to hell, so lets remember back to them Good Ole Days. Back when the troubly troubles we have now weren't so vexingly vexing.

Talking about the Good Ole Days is what conservatives do when they feel a bit overwhelmed. It’s analogous to when liberals feel overwhelmed and talk about whack-job conspiracies.

[labbats]

It's probably one of the least slanted newspapers around. I can't tell you how many times the captain has been reading the same news story in the USA Today, except his is titled "Delta Bankruptcy Immenent", where the WSJ simply says "Delta Looking to Cut Costs". Yes, it's semantics, but I don't care to have my mind made up before I even read the article.

The opinion section will have Senators, Yale professors, and CEOs with their own take on events. They will sum up a major news story in 6 paragraphs. Case in point was the brilliant insight in yesterday's newspaper into the whole CIA leak probe. It summed up the entire situation and gave all the inside angles to make it a completely different story than what's force fed to you on TV.

[Vertigor]

I like the WSJ too, it is very well written and rivals the New York Times in terms of craftsmanship. But it still slants to the right; don't smoke the same schwag you are dealing bro.

[Eziekial]

I would wager it's lean to the right is minimal. But for a truely unbaised publication I read The Economist. Great stuff.

[Minrott]

I hope the whole thing comes crumbling down. Wipe clean, fresh start. Exciting. Of course it won't. It will simply desolve into Ralf's prediction, and then will be decades of hard times for most people until they finally say "Enough!" and tear the walls down. People are funny. A poor life eeking out an existense is too good to give up for the chance of success.

See you in Costa Rica. Esta la negra en mi casa! Por que!?

[kaharthemad]

I think we are going to see a US infastructure collapse in our lifetime. Frankly I think alot of people will see this as a right wing did it or a left wing did it. Im looking at the pork fat in washington and thinking they all fucking did it.

This will sound unpatriotic and possible a few flames will insue but hear me out.

I think for the stability of this nation, it would have been better if that plane that went down in Penn would have arrived at the target. The destruction of capital hill would have forced the country to hire in new officials for the house and senate.

For once in about 30+ years we would have been able to bring in Statemen not politicians. Gone would be the lobbyists(at least for a while) and perhaps the government would have finally thought over the restructuring that this country so desperately needs.

It seems sad that this nation has been degraded to a point where this line of thought even comes up. I agree with Arlos that watergate is part of the problem and perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back. But there is more to this problem than that. I think you need to step back a few more decades as well. To the founding of income tax as we know it now, and the great blessing on coffin liners(old people) known as Social Security.



and yeah sorry my caffiene has not kicked in yet so this might be a bit jumbled

[Ouchyfish]

Nixon organized a giant conspiracy with a un-governed intelligence apperat running out of the White House, that was engaged in completely illegal activities: breakins, wire tapping, even sabotaging the campaigns of opponents Nixon was worried about, by donig things like forging career-destroying letters on letterhead of the candidate and then "leaking" them to the media.

You REALLY need to do more research on Clinton's wife, man.