RUTHFULLY YOURS

At a press conference at the G-7 summit in Japan on May 26, President Barack Obama declared that world leaders are “rattled” by Donald Trump, “and for good reason. Because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe.”

This statement is remarkable not only for its eccentric syntax and convoluted logic. Obama assumes that 226 million Americans eligible to vote this year should take note of the fact that his G-7 colleagues—Messrs. Hollande, Trudeau, Abe et al—are unnerved, shocked, or put off by the Republican candidate, and that this should influence their decision next November. It should not: the election is an American affair, and it is offensive to suggest otherwise. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 could have made the same argument, yet for all their faults they sensed how impertinent it would have been to do so . . . but those were different times.

Obama’s statement is additionally irritating in view of the fact that three of his eight fellow-summiteers are unelected. Socialist Matteo Renzi is the third successive prime minister of Italy to be appointed through backroom deals in the country’s parliament; the last real “leader” to be elected to that post was Silvio Berlusconi, back in 2008. Luxemburger Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, was nominated by the European Council in 2014 and duly confirmed by the “European Parliament,” an institution chronically devoid of democratic legitimacy. In that same year, former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk was appointed president of the European Council by the Council itself.

All three belong to the postnational, globalist elite class, so it is normal that they support Hillary Clinton. It is equally unsurprising that Obama cherishes their opinions. It is scandalous, however, that he expects to cajole American voters into taking those opinions to heart when deciding on who should be their next chief executive. Does Obama seriously expect us to assume that his fellow-“world leaders” are “actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe”?

One of my better moments as a manager came early in my first job as editor of a small newspaper, one that, as it turned out, was still (in the early 21st century) using a DOS-based publishing system dating from the first Reagan administration. My deputy editor offered to set aside an afternoon to instruct me in the eccentricities of the old system, and assured me that I should be able to master it in a short time. I had the old system, DOS terminals and all, in the dumpster by the end of the day.

Training the staff to use a modern desktop-publishing system wasn’t easy — the median age of my staff was about 58, and many had never used a mouse before — but it got done. The process was helped along by my publisher, who, foreseeing that the necessary technological changes might meet resistance from the staff, offered some helpful advice: “Fire them all.” As it turned out, I had to fire only one of them.

Oddly enough, I’d faced a similar problem training young editors in India in the late 1990s. The Indian upper class today is very technologically sophisticated, but at the time, my trainees, who came almost exclusively from well-to-do families, had a significant handicap: Most of them did not know their way around a computer keyboard, because they’d always had servants to do their typing for them. In Delhi, you could find professional freelance typists working outdoors, in the shade of a tree, with a manual typewriter on a folding card table. If you needed to fill out an official document such as a lease, you just walked down to the corner and had it done.

Technological change is a part of cultural change, and vice versa. I am in my early forties; when I try to explain to a colleague in his twenties that there was no web when I was in high school, that e-mail was an exotic thing reserved to hardcore nerds, and that only very rich people had mobile phones, I get that look that says: “That’s funny, Grandpa! Tell me more about the Dark Ages!” I feel like I should be talking about how we walked to school in eight feet of snow, uphill both ways.

Technological change becomes more difficult as you get older and the decreasingly elastic brain resists learning new things. I might write that you know you’re middle-aged when you dread an operating-system update rather than getting excited about it, but I suspect that we are only a few years away from people wondering what an operating-system update is, as though you were talking about something truly ancient, like a card catalogue or a fax machine.

It takes incentives to get people to embrace change and to put out the effort to do the work necessary to accommodate it. In the case of my newspaper staffers, there was a little bit of carrot (at least some of them understood that the acquisition of current skills would improve their future job prospects), but it was mostly stick, the threat of losing their positions and having to look for other work.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is 68 years old and not known as a technological sophisticate, went to extraordinary lengths to set up an offsite e-mail operation in the toilet of some obscure mom-and-pop firm in what seems to be, even by the account of the remarkably gentle State Department report, a fairly straightforward effort to avoid ordinary oversight. The attorney and commentator Mark Levin, among others, has made a fairly persuasive case that this is illegal, a violation of the Federal Records Act, which contemplates up to three years in prison for anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office.”

I seem to have been writing articles about conservatism all my life. Not quite, but almost. The first such article for which I was paid appeared in print in 1969 in the Swinton Journal (which, not at all coincidentally, was the first magazine I ever edited.) The article had the uninviting title “The Direction of Conservatism,” and in it I advocated educational vouchers, road pricing, flexible exchange rates, and many other good things from the handbook of classical liberalism. It had quite an impact too. When a second article on flexible exchange rates appeared (“Set the Pound Free” — I had a gift for headlines), Edward Heath, then Tory leader, forbade all the MPs in the parliamentary party from even discussing the topic in the future. Poor Ted. After that it was almost inevitable that as prime minister he would himself introduce floating rates, as he did in an early Euro-currency crisis.

From the Swinton Journal I jumped onto the Daily Telegraph as a parliamentary sketch-writer, producing four comic weekday columns on the previous day’s proceedings in the House of Commons, from 1972 to 1979. In that capacity and later ones, I lived through the Heath revolution (followed swiftly by the Heath counter-revolution), the (Enoch) Powellite revolution (aborted), the Thatcherite revolution (blocked and delayed by “the Wets” in numerous petty rebellions), the eventual establishment of the Thatcher Terror, its overthrow after a decade by notables from the Wet-Europhile leadership class, then the slow, grey disintegration of the party during the John Major interregnum, the long years of exile under the Blair-Brown usurpation, and, finally, Restoration! under the triumphant Tory banner of Modernization. And all that was before I arrived in America and National Review to encounter Buckleyites, Birchers, neos, paleos, tea-partiers, RINOs, and now Monty Trump’s Flying Circus.

So I’ve seen all the heterogeneous groups, hyphenated and unhyphenated, of the vast right-wing conspiracy (Anglosphere, Eastern division) – Heathites, Powellites, Thatcherites, Wets, Dries, permanent revolutionaries, consolidators, Majorettes and modernizers, and the pipes and drums of the Royal Cameronian Trimmers. Most of these people hated each other in relays, and they held wildly differing views on most important subjects. But they all managed to stay with relative cordiality in the same political party for all their political lives. Despite their bitter internecine quarrels, they kept buggering on (in the grand old phrase), and as a result the Tory party survived intact through it all, recovering from its disasters, rising to new successes under Thatcher, and falling to new disappointments under all the other leaders.

It is possible, as some predict, that its present civil war over the Brexit referendum will finally break the Tory party’s tensile unity. The history of Toryism is full of party splits, realignments, breakaways, and mergers. If the Tories split on this occasion, they will likely pause, regroup, and reunify (perhaps joining with UKIP), as they have done in the past, and as the Canadian Conservatives did under the redoubtable Stephen Harper. Great political parties and great movements of ideas sometimes die, but they rarely fade away. They are tough old beasts that fight from the stomach as much as from the head. And they certainly never die of anything as ephemeral as shame.

So give me a break! Stop yattering on about th­­­­e death of Republicanism or the terminal crisis of conservatism. They’re not even in the intensive-care unit. This is not their finest hour, perhaps, but they will survive.

But what will they survive as? Both Trump admirers (broadly defined) and Trump detractors (ditto) see Republican and conservative establishments reeling before a hostile takeover by an invasion of populist Vikings and Visigoths who have come from nowhere under the banners of “No Entitlement Reform” and “America First” nationalism. Peggy Noonan celebrates this; Jonah Goldberg will resist it just short of in perpetuity.

But the main truth here is that this invasion doesn’t come from outside. It is an invasion mainly of people who have been in the ranks of conservatism all along. It is understandable if most commentators haven’t fully grasped this, because the invasion is led by Donald Trump, who does come from outside both movement and party and who, as Camille Paglia noted in a very different context, makes a very fetching Viking (“bedecked with the phallic tongue of a violet Celtic floral tie . . . looking like a triumphant dragon on the thrusting prow of a long boat” — wow!). But the more we look at who votes for The Donald, the more they look like people who have voted Republican in the past. As Michael Brendan Dougherty, echoed by Ross Douthat, points out, they may belong disproportionately to the working and lower-middle classes, but they also belong to the Republican-voting sectors of those classes. (They were voting in GOP primaries, after all.) And if common observation counts for anything, it is the lower social end of the Republican electorate where conservative views are most often to be found (though less on finance, say, than on crime.)

If the political class had a theme song, it would be that old Toby Keith tune, “I Wanna Talk About Me.” Donald Trump knows the feeling, though of late he has been focusing on others. He wants to talk about Bill. He wants to talk about Hillary. He wants to talk about the 1990s, and Vince Foster, and Juanita Broaddrick.

He wants to talk about things that could help him win an election.

That Hillary Clinton today has a shot at the White House comes down to one reality: People forget. This is a politician utterly defined by scandal, and with more baggage than the carousels at Dulles International. She ought to be disqualified. And yet the Clintons thrive, the beneficiaries of forgetfulness. They’ve spent decades bulling through their messes, blaming their woes on right-wing plots, and depending on a fickle press and a busy nation to lose interest in their wretchedness. It works every time.

Yet Mr. Trump has a way of disrupting the status quo. He does this in part by behaving in ways most politicians wouldn’t or couldn’t. Unlike Republicans who may be wary of resurrecting the Clinton past, for instance, Mr. Trump is not afraid of being labeled “obsessive.” But there is usually a method to his madness. And his current let’s-campaign-like-it’s-1999 strategy has purpose—it’s part offense, part defense.

On offensive, Mr. Trump’s goal is to play off the soaring distrust Americans have in Mrs. Clinton by tying the past to the present. He wants voters to realize that the Whitewater land deal and Paula Jones aren’t dusty, closed chapters in the Clintons’ history. They are, rather, markers on a long continuum, one that begins with young Bill’s draft-dodging and continues today with mature Hillary’s private-email-server deletions and Clinton Foundation money-grubbing. And those scandals would accompany the Clintons back to the White House and define the next eight years, a prospect that Mr. Trump hopes will depress the entire nation.

“[W]hether it’s Whitewater or whether it’s Vince or whether it’s Benghazi. It’s always a mess with Hillary,” said Mr. Trump in a recent interview. CONTINUE AT SITE

The stunning news that the FBI has been investigating Virginia Governor (and key Clinton Machine operative) Terry McAuliffe for a year is widely seen as an ominous sign for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But a lot of tealeaf reading is necessary to figure out what is really going on.

CNN obtained the scoop:

Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, U.S. officials briefed on the probe say.

The investigation dates to at least last year and has focused, at least in part, on whether donations to his gubernatorial campaign violated the law, the officials said. (snip)

As part of the probe, the officials said, investigators have scrutinized McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a vehicle of the charitable foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton.

Now who might those “US officials briefed on the probe” be? People with political motives to leak this news. Four basic alternatives suggest themselves:

Someone who wants to damage the Hillary Clinton campaign and is anxious to open a new front in the public controversies over her political machine, including the Clinton Foundation.
Someone anxious to demonstrate that the ongoing FBI probe is serious, and that the Justice Department will not take a dive on pursuing the issues beyond the negligent handling of classified material.
Someone who wants to crate pressure on the Justice Department to act on whatever FBI referrals may be coming.
Someone wants to warn McAuliffe and his associates that they are under scrutiny.

None of these alternatives is good news for the Clinton Machine.

Hillary Clinton may be the weakest prohibitive favorite ever to run for the presidency.

She is generally given strong odds of beating Donald Trump in the fall, yet she is tied with him in the early going as she struggles to shake a 74-year-old socialist who persists in notching victories in the Democratic primary contest.

Armed with an impeccable résumé and pedigree, and an impressive campaign and fundraising apparatus, Hillary has it all — except a rationale for her campaign and the ability to excite voters.

The latter failing is made all the more striking by what has happened all around Clinton this year. She is bracketed in her own party and the opposing party by candidates who routinely draw crowds numbering in the thousands. Who are vivid and unmistakably themselves. Who have memorable catchphrases that capture their core message in a few words. Who are running crusades as much as campaigns.

If Donald Trump wants to make America great again, Hillary wants to keep it okay; if Bernie Sanders wants to incite a political revolution, Hillary wants to convene a task force to come up with options short of a revolution, to be studied closely for a decision at a later date. In an election season buffeted by gale-force winds of change, Clinton is the status quo rendered in the most stultifying, conventional fashion possible.

Hillary is hated without being interesting. Yes, the Republicans nominated a radioactive candidate, but only after a great upheaval forged by a highly entertaining figure who upset all prior conventions and norms. The Democrats are nominating an equally radioactive presidential candidate as the “safe” alternative of their establishment.

This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is written off by most pundits as a buffoon without a chance in the general election. Yet, Clinton’s campaign continues to be dismal, and is getting worse — to the point where the socialist Bernie Sanders polls better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton. How can that be?

At least eight reasons come to mind — several of them relating to Clinton’s innate character flaws and past scandals.

1) The E-Mail Scandal
Although the FBI has not finished its investigation and sent its results and recommendations to the Obama Justice Department, most of the media and public have learned enough about the e-mail/server scandal to conclude that had any mid-level State Department or intelligence-agency employee emulated Hillary Clinton’s use of a private unsecured server — along with serial denials and lying about such use — he would have been fired and prosecuted.

Hillary’s exemption so far hinges entirely on the fact that she is the Democratic party’s only viable presidential candidate; her indictment would send the party into crisis, given that the committed socialist Bernie Sanders would be the most deserving to inherit the nomination. So her Sword of Damocles swings with public opinion. What keeps Hillary out of jail, or at least a plea-bargain, is her political viability, first as the likely Democratic nominee, and second as a presumable winner over Trump. But take either likelihood away, and she de facto loses exemption and becomes expendable — a fact that is well known to her and which cannot be an easy reality to face each morning. She is beginning to resemble a Third World caudilla who knows that the minute she loses power, so too she loses her head.

2) The Clinton Cash Shakedowns
The Clintons left the White House broke, by their own admission, in 2001 and are now worth well over $100 million — lucre apparently predicated on the degree to which corporations and foreign governments believed that the phoenix-like couple would once again return to power, and would remain true to character as punishers of non-contributors and abettors of donors.

The couple founded the Clinton Foundation as a quid-pro-quo money-laundering enterprise designed to sell influence for cash and to keep Clinton, Inc., hangers-on and employees viable in between Clinton presidential runs. The key to the Ponzi scheme was that unlike Carter, Reagan, or the Bushes, the Clinton couple could dangle the idea that Bill was not term-limited by his eight years but could become reincarnated for another two terms under Hillary’s aegis — thus transforming what should have been an emeritus president into a retread with regenerative power to use the office to help or hurt the rich. It would require a suspension of disbelief to assume that companies or foreign governments gave millions of dollars to the Clinton initiative because they wished to help the poor and the sick. All benefactors knew that they were investing in influence, and the Clintons were selling it to the highest bidder in a way never true of any other presidential foundation. Never mind that such coziness with Big Money was antithetical to the progressive pretensions of the Democratic party and the Clintons’ own populist veneer. Each day over the next six months that there is a disclosure about yet another duplicitous donor or yet another pay-to-play scheme, so each day confidence in Hillary’s honesty and integrity erodes further.

Many are the facts that the national media refuses to address. One such fact is that concerning the pattern of violence that’s emerged on the part of the supporters of self-declared “socialist,” Bernie Sanders.

In addition to the fact that they conflict wildly with those held, traditionally, by Americans generally, socialists hold moral beliefs that demand the deployment of the overt coercion of others of those who don’t share those values.

Socialists, intent upon commandeering the resources in person and property of citizens, seek to militarize the countries on which they set their sights. The quintessential illustration of this in our own place and time is the multi-trillion dollar, decades-long redistributionist scheme launched by Lyndon Johnson and deliberately couched in the militaristic language of “war,” i.e. “the War on Poverty.”

But long before anyone had heard of Johnson, one of America’s most famous 20th century philosophers—an unapologetic socialist and self-styled pacifist—recognized that if socialism stood a chance of taking root, it had to appropriate both the language and organization of the “war regime.”

As far back as 1910, William James was writing that those states that were “pacifically organized” must “preserve some of the old elements of army discipline,” for “the war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues…are absolute and permanent human goods.”

Thus, they “must be the enduring cement[.]”

James insists that a “permanently successful peace economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy,” that in “the more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting” humans “must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.”