From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 4:01 P.M. EST

Bob Bartley, RIP
Today brings very sad news for us at The Wall Street Journal: Robert L. Bartley, the paper's editor emeritus, died of cancer this morning. He was 66. Bartley, who retired as editor of the Journal at the beginning of this year, spent more than 30 years at the helm of the Journal's editorial pages. "During that time," the New York Post editorialized the other day, "he and his staff forcefully--and successfully--challenged the political status quo."

Bartley won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1980, and a week ago today President Bush announced his intention to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the citation the president called Bartley "a champion of free markets, individual liberty, and the values necessary for a free society," whose writings "have been characterized by profound insights, passionate convictions, a commitment to democratic principles, and an unyielding optimism in America."

In June 2000 Bartley revived the "Thinking Things Over" column, previously written by three of his predecessors: Thomas F. Woodlock (as "Thinking It Over"), William Henry Grimes and Vermont Royster. Bartley planned to keep writing for many years: On "assuming the editor's personal vehicle," he wrote: "Anyone who thinks it a prelude to early retirement should know that back in Iowa my father, at 92, is just now debating whether to give up keeping his own house and mowing his own lawn."

His Nov. 10, 2003, column, which turned out to be his last, celebrated a conservative resurgence in the culture wars, exemplified by CBS's decision to drop its mendacious miniseries "The Reagans." The CBS decision and other "straws in the wind," he concluded "suggest the time is now ripe for [the media] to think a bit more about depicting events in a fair and balanced way."

Bill Murchison, paying tribute to Bartley in a column published just yesterday, offered this reflection: "The First Amendment does not confer on us freedom for freedom's sake; rather it is for the sake of allowing varied brains to wrap themselves around important ideas, not to mention totally unimportant ones. This obligation necessitates idea entrepreneurs of Bartley-like qualities."

Bartley was as forward-thinking about technology as he was about political ideas. He more than anyone else was responsible for the creation of this Web site in 2000 and of this column, whose format he suggested as we were developing plans for the site.

One comforting aspect of the Internet is that at a time like this, the condolences come at the speed of light. Thanks to those readers who've written; we'll quote just one, Dan Friedman:

I was a bit shocked and very saddened to hear about Mr. Bartley's passing. As you know, I'm a habitual e-mail kvetch, but he engaged me now and then and took some of my comments seriously. Over Thanksgiving I sent something out and he replied briefly via his Blackberry. Looking back, he must have been either at home or in the hospital and very ill. There aren't too many people like that, in journalism or anywhere else, and now there's one less.

Our colleagues at the Journal will have more reflections on Bob's life and career in the days to come. He was a wonderful man to work with as well as a journalistic legend, and we're sure going to miss him.

Don't Know Much About History
Looking somewhat deranged, Al Gore took to the stage yesterday to endorse Howard Dean and declare liberated Iraq a "quagmire." He was "veritably barking"--those the words of the New York Times, not us--when he announced: "That war it is not a minor matter to me. I realize it's only one of the issues, but my friends, this nation has never, in two centuries and more, made a worse foreign policy mistake."

Reader John Steele Gordon offers these comments:

Wow. The worst ever and the game's not even half over. I wonder where Al Gore would place the following foreign policy mistakes:

  • A year after refusing to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, the government's sole borrowing mechanism and fiscal agent, Congress declared war on the one country in the world, Great Britain, capable of attacking the United States. By March, 1813, we were dead flat broke and the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, had to go hat in hand to Stephen Girard, the richest man in the country, and beg him to guarantee a bond issue or we'd have lost the war right then for lack of money to pay the army. The following year, the British burned Washington, D.C., the only time foreign troops have occupied a part of the continental United States.

  • Although the United States was the only Great Power that was strengthened, rather than exhausted, by World War One, and thus the only one capable of providing strong leadership, Woodrow Wilson refused to compromise in order to get the US to join the League of Nations and as a result, we largely withdrew from world affairs, except for sponsoring quixotic treaties like the Washington Naval Treaty and the Kellogg Briand Pact (which outlawed war; Germany and Japan both signed it). The lack of real US leadership in the postwar era, made World War II nearly inevitable.

  • We thoroughly mismanaged the Vietnam War, sticking with a failed strategy and a failed general until we lost the home front and thus the war.

Is Gore really ignorant enough to believe that the liberation of Iraq is the worst American foreign-policy mistake in history? Or does he just think the American people are ignorant enough to believe it?

Democratic Fault Line
Last month The New Republic published what turned out to be a prescient piece by Ryan Lizza, which concluded by essentially predicting yesterday's Gore-Dean espousal:

The two men have a strained history, but lately Gore is sounding more and more like Dean. His three most important speeches since leaving office have been harsh attacks on President Bush's Iraq policy and his abuse of the Patriot Act. The two most recent were delivered before MoveOn.org, the Internet network for grassroots liberals, which is overwhelmingly pro-Dean. Some suspect that, just as Dean went outside the Beltway and built his own high-tech grassroots army to bypass the sclerotic D.C. establishment, so is Gore. It's not a bad way for him to exercise influence in the party, if he wants to make a potential endorsement more powerful or if he still harbors hopes of running for president in 2008. "The rest of the Democratic infrastructure is controlled by the Clintons," says one top Democrat.

Perhaps Gore would not endorse the former Vermont governor (though Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, says "they talk relatively regularly"). Regardless, he'll have to choose sides, because the Democrats are splitting into two parties: the party of Clinton, and the party of Dean.

Lizza's insight is that the Dean campaign represents a backlash not only against President Bush but also against President Clinton. "Three years after Bill Clinton left office, he and Hillary still control what remains of a Democratic establishment," Lizza writes: Their man, Terry McAuliffe, continues to run the Democratic National Committee, despite his failure to deliver the presidency in 2000 or congressional gains in 2002. "The best and brightest of the Clinton administration" are now ensconced in new liberal think tanks and in the campaigns of Joe Lieberman, John Edwards and Wesley Clark--but not Howard Dean.

"Dean, by contrast, has come to represent the party's anti-establishment forces," writes Lizza. He "built a grassroots army first--in part by bashing D.C. Democrats and their disastrous 2002 election strategy. . . . This evident schism is not just about Dean's opposition to the war--or even his prospects in the general election. It's a turf war to decide who will control the future of the party."

More evidence that battle lines are being drawn comes from this Associated Press dispatch about Sen. Hillary Clinton:

"I remember back in December of 1991 when my husband was I don't think above 4 percent in the polls," said Clinton, speaking after a housing conference in Manhattan. "Through the months of the primaries and the caucuses, there was a hard-fought battle and it finally ended in June of 1992 when Bill clinched the nomination. He was running third behind President Bush and Ross Perot. So I want to see how the process plays out." . . .

When asked if she was stung by Gore's criticism of Democrats who backed the Iraq war, Clinton, who voted for the war resolution, answered a chilly "no."

Wesley Clark, meanwhile, "told reporters in New Hampshire he'd consider tapping [Mrs. Clinton] for running mate."

One curious aspect of this schism is that it appears to have very little ideological content, except perhaps on the issue of the Iraq's liberation (which Deanies uniformly decry, while there's a range of opinion among Clintonites). Both sides are represented among unions, and even among centrist "New Democrats."

Why did Gore decide to throw in with Dean, instead of with the man whose administration he served for eight years? It's personal, Lizza suggests: "Immediately after the Florida recount was decided in 2000, Gore's senior aides were purged from the DNC and Clinton's were installed. Some ex-Gore staffers are still bitter about the coup, and several express admiration for what Dean is doing."

With Democrats embroiled in internecine warfare, the Republicans' prospects would seem to be very good indeed. Yet it's not clear that either the Clintonites or the Deanies have a winning strategy for their party. Clintonism worked wonderfully for Clinton, getting him elected twice--but the party's losses in 1994, 2000 and 2002 suggest that Clintonism doesn't work without Clinton at the top of the ticket. The Dean approach has the advantage, for now, of not having failed--but at a time when national security is the most important issue facing the country, a stridently antiwar candidate does not look like a good bet for November.

The Dean movement may come to an ignominious end, if he is the nominee, Bush beats him in a landslide, and the Dems end up taking big losses in Congress too. In that case, the party may come to see Clintonism as its only hope--and the question for 2008 will be whether Hillary is enough of a Clinton to duplicate her husband's success.

Paul Simon Dies
No, not the singer, but the phlegmatic former senator, whose 1988 presidential campaign is remembered by about a dozen political junkies. Simon perished yesterday, a day after undergoing open-heart surgery. Before going under the knife, Simon performed his last political act, endorsing Howard Dean. Because he lived in Illinois, Simon may still be able to vote for Dean.

What Would We Do Without Dean's Democratic Rivals?
"Dean's Democratic Rivals Say 2004 Race Not Over"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 9

One Man Can, and His Name Is George W. Bush
"Democrats Ask: Can Anyone Stop Howard Dean?"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 10

This Just In
"Dems Criticize Bush, Omit Facts Sometimes"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 10

Sentry of the Century
"Hundreds of American soldiers [in Iraq] owe their lives to the prompt action of a 23-year-old sentry," London's Daily Telegraph reports:

In the faint pre-dawn light Specialist James Ross saw a car, its headlights on, accelerate towards his guard tower at the entrance of the Talaafar military base, near Mosul.

The vehicle had already cleared the first line of defence, barrelling over a coil of barbed wire 80 yards away and was heading straight down a corridor of crash barriers.

"I knew it wasn't one of our guys--it was either me or him," said Spc Ross, who began firing his machine-gun in a last-ditch attempt to stop the car entering the compound, where 300 soldiers were just waking.

Spc Ross, from Kentucky, fired almost 100 rounds before the car, pitted with bullet-holes, came to a stop. A second later, the vehicle blew up.

CBSNews.com reports this under the headline "Iraqi Suicide Attacks Fall Short"--but a Google News search shows that most other news outlets are reporting this as if it were a victory for the enemy.

Weasels Need Not Apply
A memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz lists 63 countries whose companies are eligible to bid for Iraq reconstruction contracts. Among those not making the list are those nations that refused to join the coalition that liberated Iraq, including Canada, France, Germany and Russia.

"The European Union said Wednesday it would examine whether the United States violates world trade rules with its decision to bar countries that opposed its war in Iraq from bidding for $18.6 billion worth [of] reconstruction contracts," the Associated Press reports.

But opposing Iraq's liberation is not the only political reason countries are excluded from the list. As Ha'aretz notes, Israel also did not make the list, presumably as a sop to Arab rejectionism toward the Jewish state. If the EU-niks want to show that they're motivated by principle rather than greed, they ought to protest Israel's exclusion as well as their own.

'Human Rights Activists'
Check out the lead paragraph of this Knight Ridder dispatch:

Human rights activists are worried that Iraqi war crimes tribunals--which could be approved as soon as Wednesday--will be a kangaroo court in which victims will seek retribution against their former persecutors.

These people are worried that victims of human rights abuses will bring the perpetrators to justice? If so, calling them "human rights activists" is downright Orwellian.

Senator Underpants
For $15 each, Sen. Barbara Boxer's re-election campaign is offering "classic boxer shorts" emblazoned with the candidate's name. It strikes us that campaign underwear may not be the most effective way of advertising one's political affinity. Besides, if a senator is going to engage in eponymous marketing, why can't it be Mike DeWine?

Life, the Onion Imitate Each Other
We owe the Onion an apology. Yesterday's item about Colin Powell naming blues great James Brown "secretary of soul and foreign minister of funk" suggested that the secretary of state had beaten the satirical newspaper to a joke. As it turns out, Powell was imitating a story that ran in the Onion Oct. 28, 1999:

CHOCOLATE CITY--After months of ceaseless debate, including last week's record 76-hour filibuster slap-bass solo from Senate Rubber Band Minority Leader Bootsy Collins (D-OH), the National Funk Congress is no closer to resolving its deadlock over the controversial "get up/get down" issue, insiders reported Monday. . . .

"The time has come to face facts: To move forward, we've got to get on up, and stay on the scene, like a sex machine," said Brick House Majority Leader James Brown (G-GA), one of getting on up's most vocal supporters. "Say it loud: Only when we have gotten up offa that thing will we, as a nation, finally get back on the good foot."

But the Onion was imitating life, too. Snopes.com reports that in 1986 Brown's wife, Adrienne, "tried to beat traffic charges by claiming she was entitled to diplomatic immunity for being married to the 'ambassador of soul.' "

Yeah, but Who'll Stand Up for the Little Guy?
"Giant Workers Facing Layoffs"--headline, Web site (Washington), Dec. 10

And No Jokes About TPing a Tepee!
American Indian groups often complain of the insensitivity of sports teams called Indians, Chiefs, Warriors, Redskins, etc. Well, how about this: A consumer product uses as its motto a passage attributed to the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy: "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

The product? Seventh Generation Bathroom Tissue.

Forbidden Fruitcake
The Canadian Broadcast Corp. reports from Montreal that "the federal and provincial governments have contributed close to $700,000 for a series of studies at McGill University in which a psychiatry professor is offering people $500 to use cocaine."

But Canada takes a less tolerant approach to some other substances, reports Canadian Television: "According to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, fruitcakes are being banned because they are notoriously difficult to identify on the X-ray scanners used to inspect air travellers' luggage."

If Dennis Kucinich needs to get from Toronto to Ottawa, he'll just have to take the bus.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Barak Moore, Thomas Conway, Edward Schulze, Arnold Nelson, Rosanne Klass, Shelley Taylor, Fred Furia, Robert LeChevalier, Bernard Levine, Michael Hopkovitz, Nick Eckert, Aaron Gross, Richard Haisley, Yitzchak Dorfman, Mark Schulze, Joel Goldberg, David Beebe, Yehuda Hilewitz, Michael Segal, Michael Hutchison, John Eremic, Erik Velapoldi, Douglas Bridges, Charles Weigle, Lee Hammond, Eric Akawie, John Palchak, Catherine McMillan and Lois Koenig. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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