Wednesday, June 02, 2004

18 Years Later

In comments, reader Andrew led me to track down this Michael Kinsley column from the December 13, 1986 Times of London.

Washington British political scandals are about lust, the old saw has it, while American political scandals are about greed. This one is about power. Perhaps that's why it is being treated with such high seriousness. Indeed the only irritating aspect of the otherwise delightful collapse of the Reagan administration is the widespread insistence that we must all be poker-faced about it.

The approved attitude is to don the mask of tragedy: oh, woe is us, another failed administration, policymaking in disarray, etc. The Washington Post is second to none in moral dudgeon but nevertheless declares that anyone who finds the spectacle entertaining is 'reprehensible'.



Dear me. Am I really the only one here who is having a great time? Would I like to share the joke with the rest of the class? Or should any right-thinking person succumb to the fever of solemnity? No, upon tortured reflection, I've concluded that the case for glee remains compelling.

First, Washington types live for this kind of episode. The adrenaline is flowing like Perriers. Everyone, Reagan supporters no less than his opponents, is wandering around in a happy buzz induced by those oft-denounced but rarely eschewed twin intoxicants, gossip and speculation.

Secondly, 'disarray' is the essence of farce, and a banana skin tumble is just as funny when it happens to the National Security Council as to the Three Stooges. The arms-for-Iran episode has not lacked for pies in faces, missing trousers, stubbed toes, confused identities, mistaken embraces, role reversals, strange noises and other classic elements of lowbrow comedy. It's only human to laugh.

Thirdly, it's a healthy democratic instinct to enjoy seeing the mighty fall, and no one was acting mightier, especially since the 1984 election, than the Reagan administration. Democrats and liberals, beaten down after six years of Reaganism, have every right to wallow in schadenfreude.

Politics is not just a game, but it is a game. And if people are going to be scolded for cheering whenever their side scores or the other side fumbles, they will quite rightly confine their attention to professional football.

There are subtler pleasures to be had as well. It's delicious that contempt for democracy should have done Reagan in. For six years, democracy has been the biggest frustration of the president's opponents. It seemed to us, the carping critics, that this man was not terribly bright, not terribly thoughtful or well informed, not terribly honest, and in most other ways not up to the most important job in the world. But a large majority of people seemed not to mind. And so a consensus grew that if he lacked conventional mental and moral assets, he had some special magic.

Even Reagan's critics became superstitious about this alleged magic. They became afraid to say, or even to remember, that he's just an old movie actor. They came to believe that to criticize Reagan personally was to cut themselves off from the democratic life-force and condemn their souls to that circle of hell 'inside the Beltway' (Washington's ring road and a common metaphor for political insularity). Like knocking on wood or whistling past the graveyard, superstitious critics would preface any dissent from Reagan's policies with expressions of respect for him personally. One reason the president's political opponents are nervous about chuckling over his present predicament is fear that the magic monster is only asleep and the laughter will reawaken him.

So, democracy used to be Reagan's opponents' problem, but now it's his problem. As his standing plummets in the polls, he waves his magic wand in bewilderment, puzzled that the magic doesn't work. 'This is a Beltway bloodletting,' the told time magazine. What this pathetic remark reveals is that it is Reagan who is now trapped 'inside the Beltway,' isolated in a cocoon of advisers, cut off from the democractic life-force. And in fact the Contra war in Nicaragua has always been an inside-the-Beltway enthusiasm, which is what led to Reagan's difficulties in the first place.

'The Salvadoran guerrillas or the Sandinistis don't have to worry about all this when they deal with the Cubans and the Russians', a Contra leader complained to the New York Times. 'All this' refers to Congress, public opinion, the press, the law, and suchlike impedimenta. The Reagan administration, on whom democracy had lavished its greatest blessings, could not be bothered with democracy's inconveniences either.

So there's no need for gloom. Liberals and others who feared for their own faith in democracy can breath easy. Reagan's come-uppanace is democracy's salvation. It turns out that Lincoln was right: you can't fool all the people al the time after all. Dry those tears and repeat after me: Ha, ha, ha.