Flashback: The Unfriendly Attempt to Take Over Quaker Brings O’Neill to the Rescue.

[More than 50 years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].

The 1980s was a decade of unprecedented hostile takeovers. For years there had been rumors that The Quaker Oats Company would be taken over. Free market purists would welcome that as a healthy sign of a rambunctious free market—but for those of us who regarded the company as a surrogate parent, we were less than enthusiastic. And especially so when it appeared that a lustful attempt to grab our fair young Quaker maiden came from the Brascan people in Canada…a reputedly unsavory offshoot of the Seagram’s people in New York. The Brascan people were extraordinarily antsy of publicity because one of the founding members of the family had been involved, purportedly, in smuggling guns into South Africa as part of some venture or other. Their shyness encouraged me.

Accordingly, I hired a former Director of the CIA, William Colby, to head up a research study privately on the company. He returned with a not too good bill of particulars. Whatever the difficulties were, Brascan was very shy, very timid about press attention. They wanted to grab Quaker by romancing the stockholders as soon as possible. Getting to know Colby was rewarding for me. His subsequent death—not having anything to do with this—was mysterious. His body was found in a drifting rowboat with his fishing tackle arranged meticulously. Death from a major heart attack, they said. But the rank and file of the CIA was infuriated at him for giving, too precipitously it said, the details on the “family jewels.” His heart was stopped all right—but from natural causes? It has never been fully explained.

The more my superiors studied the situation he less sanguine they became. But what to do?

I decided that it would be interesting to at least try to rise above principle for a corporation that was resolutely free-market. The elements of fair play seemed to hold sway here. Canada had a foreign investment review board which would have to pass judgment on any attempt from a foreign country’s business to acquire a Canadian company. The U. S. had no such animal but, gaining permission from my leaders, I convened a small think-tank to draw up a philosophical rationale for legislation in this country which would apply the foreign investment review concept to our country. There was absolutely no possibility of such an animal being accepted by the free market-oriented Reagan administration, however—but that didn’t bother me. I rationalized that if legislation could be introduced and hearings convened, news media accounts of such legislation and invitations extended to foreign companies would be a no-no for Brascan. But by no circumstances could it be regarded as a “Quaker Oats” bill. It would have to be a bill introduced by protectionist, largely Democratic sources with the media nonexistent in this country but trumpeted in Canada where it might dissuade a very shy Brascan from its takeover of us.

The private think tank was convened in the famous M & M club and involed an economics PH.D, Douglas Lamont, who headed the business department of Roosevelt University, a few lawyers…and—who else? My old friend…now not so warmly my friend but still accommodating…Bill Geimer who worked for me at the Commerce Department, who worked to help devise the National Advertising Review Board (which still exists I am pleased to note by a recent story in the “Wall Street Journal”), who worked on the abortive wage-and-price control fiasco of President Nixon. Geimer was probably the most resourceful lawyer I had ever met and have ever met.

They sat down…a group of free-market economists cum semi-protectionists and Geimer…and wrote legislation that would install a foreign investment review board for the United States. When it was perfected, I took a copy to Washington, calling ahead to my one ace-in-the-hole, the Speaker of the House, Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, the repository of a laudable TV documentary which we financed partially…and the hugely disappointed prospective honoree of a gala event at Ford’s Theatre that was cancelled by a twittering executive at WGBH-TV who had frightened everybody out of their shoes and wits by alleging that he would blow the whistle on a “nefarious” scheme that was not nefarious at all. At the conclusion of that madcap escapade, O’Neill had said: “Tommy, I’m so indebted to ya. Whatever you want within reason I will do.”’ Okay.

Once more the huge walnut doors opened as I approached and walked through the sub-chambers, past rows of secretaries and eager, lean young lawyers and interns, into the sancto sanctorum where the Speaker dwelled. He was hugely glad to see me and had our scotch and a light evening dinner scheduled.

As I sat down, I recalled that when I had asked him why he chose Quaker as the signatory to his film, he said that because it would not do to have Exxon or Mobil Oil…and added: “Tommy, Quaker is…why, it’s a piece of the American flag!”

Thus I told him that his piece of the American flag would be shortly bought by Canada’s Brascan because this country did not have what Canada had taken pains to have—a foreign investment review board. He saw the point quickly—that if the Congress were to pass a board, Reagan would veto it. He added: “See, Tommy? Your buddy down there…” and he jerked a thumb toward the White House.

I said, “well, Tip, actually, I’m not interested in seeing it pass because I am free market. But I am interested in having the bill introduced and get a hearing. Then I’ll be able to see that the media in Canada attends the hearings and that just subtly…not overdone, of course…but subtly the name Brascan can be brought up by certain members of the committee.”

He said, “that we will assuredly do. But first, let me try something that may save all of us time.” He called in his secretary and asked her what the schedule of events were for foreign embassy parties in Washington. All foreign embassies had cocktail parties of one sort or another and would be delighted to have the Speaker attend. The Speaker chose not to attend any of them because he was bored by foreign policy. She checked, came back with a list. It developed that the Canadian embassy had a regular series of seminars and cocktail parties—the first cocktail party held to honor a visiting Englishman in a week.

He said, “can this wait a week?”

I said, no but I’d appreciate your visiting the embassy while at the same time we introduce the bill. He agreed. He invited me back the next morning.

Then as I sat by his desk, he got Rep. John Scheuer (D-N.Y) on the phone and told him frankly…to my horror…what the plan was.

“I want this legislation that I have here introduced by you, John and that it be referred to your subcommittee. This is something for me personally, you understand. I want you to take the lead in it. What? You’re free market. The hell with that. Okay, you promise? I want you to make a statement when this thing is introduced that it’s high time that the United States receives the same protection as the foreigners have for their companies. What the hell, if I wanted to buy Brascan I couldn’t now, could I? Damn right I couldn’t. What kind of goddamn sense is that? I think it’s a real issue for our labor boys. Dingell I’m thinking of. And others. Send a guy over here to pick up this legislation. My man, a personal friend, Mr. Roeser will be in touch with you.”

I knew then that we had to move the think tank to Washington—so we did. We set up camp in the Madison Hotel (where else?) and a team of experts wrote Scheuer’s introduction speech. I met with some labor union guys O’Neill sent over and we got them willing to testify. After three days we had a pretty good little left-wing protectionist thing going. Just to make sure, I checked in with the smartest one of all, Tommy the Cork. I ran it by him. He suggested a number of people to testify and of course said that we’d have to write their scripts…which we did. I wanted more than just the labor union guys so I got Ralph Nader’s assistant, to testify for a consultancy.

As we worked in Washington, the time came due for O’Neill to go to the Canadian embassy. His secretary called them and said that the Speaker of the House was going to attend. They were ecstatic. They called in more people from Canada to meet him and the reception was dolled up into a first-rate dinner. O’Neill came to the cocktail party exceedingly well fortified—not just with our data but with drinks he and I and Geimer partook of in his office.

Geimer sneaked into the reception as a solo, unassuming guest. His report said O’Neill with full panoply arrived in what seemed to be a dour and grumpy mood. He accepted a drink…then complained that it was too light…got another one and when the Canadian ambassador nervously expressed gratitude for him attending, said this:

“Well, I gotta tell ya…I am not very goddamn happy.”

Oh, why not Mr. Speaker?

“Ya see, in this country we have businesses that mean near and dear to us—like a piece of the American flag. One of `em has to do with me because I have been eating oatmeal for breakfast for more than sixty years. The Quaker Oats Company is…do you get me?...is a piece of the American flag!”

I don’t understand sir, what is the trouble?

“The trouble, my good friend, is that you goddamn people are buying this company right out from under the people of the United States. And I tell you, I’m going to fight it tooth and nail. You guys have a foreign investment review board which prohibits our people from buying any of your companies. Now we don’t have one because all this time I thought we were friends. But the Brascan people…and I mean to find out just who they are…the Brascan people don’t care about our American flag! Well, let me tell ya, if ya want to be a good friend of this Congress you will tell the Brascan people that I don’t like them stealing a piece of the American flag. And I’m going to start an investigation that may well call your foreign minister and your economic minister and I don’t care who else. Now that I finished this drink, I’m going to go but I just wanted you to know..all of you here…that this battle has just begun! Goodnight all!”

As he stormed out, Geimer said the Canadian ambassador gave a low whistle to himself and left the party immediately to place a call to Ottawa.

In the meantime, back at the Madison, we were putting the finishing touches on the committee hearing…writing the congressman’s introductory statement as well as the questions for him to ask when the hearing would convene.

Ah, thus proceedith the cause of benign international affairs. More anon.

Flashback: Tommy the Cork Brews His Own Guatemala Revolution in Behalf of United Fruit with the Help of the Dulles Boys. A Rather Grim Outlook for the Country—but He Dies As Reagan Takes Over, with Hope.

[Fifty plus years of politics written as a memoir for my kids and grandchildren.]

How long, you must wonder, did this lunch at the Madison Hotel take to digest the entire history of Thomas Corcoran the (a) presidential staffer. (b) first White House liaison ever to the Congress, (c) conservative anti-Communist who befriended Chiang Kai-shek through Claire Chennault and his lovely wife, later widow; (d) friend of LBJ who got him elected to the Senate through chicanery and contact with Justice Hugo Black, (e) lobbyist for United Fruit who wanted to knock out a tyrant in Guatemala…and so on? Answer: pretty long but I knew fairly well the story from his legend and just nudged him a bit. You’ll notice I’m not putting him in quotes although I have `em, in respect to a pledge made to a man dead since 1981; the summary quotes will come later.

John Foster Dulles named a Corcoran buddy to supervise the plan to dump the Guatemala dictator (“Operation Success”), William Pawley who had worked with Corcoran and Chennault to set up the Flying Tigers. A rebel “liberation army” funded by the U. S. was set up and trained in Nicaragua. The Guatemalan dictator got wind of it; Tommy worked with the Dulles boys to set up a radio “Voice of Liberation.” One of the operatives assigned to him was E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame. The dictator seeing the odds of the U. S. government rallying forces to defeat him tried to stimulate the Guatemalan army but key officers told him they could no longer support him, so he hightailed it into Mexico.

From that point, Guatemala installed a pro-Western government which was anti-communist and pro-United Fruit. Then Tommy went back to making a rather mundane but exceedingly affluent living, dabbling in conservative foreign policies with the aid of Anna Chennault.

“It’s very important that we continue this [anti-communist] activity after Nixon is gone,” he told me. “Understand, Nixon isn’t very damn good. He’s duplicitous and has no ideals. But I worry that the Democrats are veering to the Left and that won’t do us any good at all.”

Later I touched base with him when Gerald Ford was president.

“He’s so non-ideological he doesn’t realize the stakes,” he said. “Too much time in the House where he ran the minority. There’s a kind of psychosis that creeps up on veteran House members who are in the minority as long as Jerry has been. Willing to avoid fights, take the leavings that fall from the table.”

But later when I talked to him about Jimmy Carter, he was morose. “This is the first time in my lifetime that I look at this guy and say how the hell did you get there? I fear he’s the symbol of a weakened United States. Look at his statement about `an inordinate fear of Communism.’ He should be back shelling peanuts.”

Ronald Reagan was his cup of tea. He sought manfully to try to be a player but the old heart wouldn’t hear of it. He died on Pearl Harbor Day, 1981. The funny thing is that some biographers call him a crook. Why I don’t know. He was a brilliant political player…willing to take risks…believing in absolutes. Since his death there has been no one like him. And sadly, maybe there never will be.

Personal Aside: Put God First Before Country: A Lesson for All.

God First.

Stephen Decatur raised his glass as a toast in 1816 and said: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be right; but our country, right or wrong.”

Later Carl Schurz, the first German-born leader of either party, amended it in an address to the U. S. Senate, saying, “Our country right or wrong. When right to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”

I agree with Schurz—and like a popular priest orator of a few days ago, I believe a role for Catholics is to follow the dictates of God before those of popular Americanism. In the case of abortion, for instance, there is no doubt in my mind that the Supreme Court made a woeful mistake on January 22, 1973 when it announced “Roe v. Wade”. From that time on, I have been a strong dissenter to that policy.

On the issue of Iraq, however, I don’t accept what comes across in some philosophical treatises—that the doctrine of preemptive war is wrong. Not always. If you look at it closely, almost all wars engaged in by the United States were preemptive…starting with the Revolution at Lexington and Concord with “the shot heard `round the world.” Certainly the War of 1812 was initiated by us to further solidify our liberty and to react against the impressments of U. S. seamen. The Mexican War was directly initiated by us—no doubt about it. Then Congressman Lincoln believed the war was immoral. Should we return California and Texas to Mexico as a result? I think not.

The Civil War or the War Between the States? It is an even go as to whether it was launched by the north as preemptive or the south as preemptive. The Spanish-American war definitely was preemptive on our part and unjustified. World War I was a great disaster in which we had no business participating. Our entry was preemptive; no doubt about it. The American people did not want to be involved in World War II. Roosevelt maneuvered so as to cause us to enter the war—thus it was preemptive on our part. Had we stayed out, however, probably the West would have been destroyed by the battle between two giant tyrannies: Nazism and Communism. Whichever won would have been stronger than heretofore and probably the future of the West would have been destroyed. Ergo I come to the terrible conclusion that (a) we entered the war preemptively and in doing so, Roosevelt committed a grievous sin but (b) probably in the long run it was fortuitous that we entered it.

This is hideously ambiguous but probably the right answer.

As far as Iraq is concerned, I think the preemptive nature of it is very important because as Bernard Lewis has said: it is the first time that the forces of terrorism have been rocked back on their heels…with the result that thus far—and it may end tomorrow—we have not been attacked again on our soil.

Therefore I believe that the time will come…and I will live to see it…when George W. Bush will be regarded as one of the greatest presidents by the very nature of his being unwilling to bend to popular winds. I am more sure of that than I have been of many things in my long life.

Personal Asides: “Sun-Times” Puts Out Word to Columnists—Be Tougher, More Confrontational…Ethics in Journalism 101: Whatever You Do, Don’t Help the Police…Church Bulletins…Message to Lawrence.

Be Tougher, More Confrontational…

The uptown edition of the “National Enquirer”…aka the “Sun-Times”… has just put the word out to all its opinion columnists and Op Ed writers that they should hype up the confrontation in order to appeal to younger, less literate, readers whose wrists trail on the ground when they walk upright…bored as they are with a recitation of facts and savor polarized accusations with the plea that these make their reading more interesting. Obediently, Mary Mitchell has turned up the juice and it will be revelatory to see who follows suit. The code name is controversy, get it? Sells papers even if it diminishes dispassionate reasoning. Andy Greeley won’t need this admonition as he already qualifies.

The edict will separate the columning beasts of burden from those who will resist to keep their honor…a newspaper ordering frenzied responses and incivility to be purveyed by those who want to bring rationality to the table. And they have the gall to exult that they’re free from tyranny now that Conrad Black is on the way to jail. I don’t recall hearing that either of the two crooks ordered vindictiveness and acerbiquity to sell papers.

In the meantime, the Michael Cooke execrable taste offensive continues with his Sancho Panza, one Doug Elfman…the poison tester-taster for the boss, the forgettable liberal TV critic who, working for someone named Amanda Barrett, wallows in muck. Saturday had him writing about a HBO attraction that is so disgusting this family web-site won’t reproduce it (it appeared on page 14’s Showcase on July 15 although be sure you wash your hands after you get through reading; remember to take a Tums to cause your stomach stop regurgitating and a lozenge to purify your breath).

....neither Snitch nor Stoolie Be.

All the while, Amy Jacobson has now acknowledged committing the “sin most foul” (apologies to MacBeth). She has…gasp!...shared some information gleaned from Craig Stebic with the…ugh!...police! This is unforgivable. Since the 1960s the media have insisted they are not just separate from the law but above it. You remember that famous journalistic roundtable of news executives including Peter Jennings who when confronted with a case study of having advance warning of a Viet Cong attack on U. S. troops…whether to tell the troops or continue dispassionately to record the story, voted to dispassionately record the story—thus signifying that journalism is neither pro-patriotic nor committed on one side or the other in war coverage.

This canon has grown to eschew any cooperation with the police authorities looking for clues to solving murders. Cultivation of news is a moral-free zone and must not be tainted by cooperation with justice. Thus doth Amy Jacobson worsen her case. A number of self-appointed news “ethicists” are tsk-tsking her actions…far worse than appearing in a bikini at a murder suspects home and taking a dip in the pool. Just don’t contaminate the antiseptic journalistic ethics pool by being a snitch for the police.

No wide-eyed unsophisticate, Amy advertises that her thus undisclosed info could be available to the TV station that is interested (for a consideration). Only WGN and Fox haven’t hired her yet.

Church Bulletins.

Colleen Dolan, the Big White Hair, Big Mama spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, is an accredited member of the Cook county Democratic elite having been recruited for her post by Chancellor Jimmy Lago aka the best Democratic precinct captain in recent party history. She is the wife of Circuit Court Judge Francis (Frank) Dolan, is a South Sider whose maiden name was Hartigan. No, she is not a relative of Neil or the prestigious Democratic Hartigan clan on the North Side who have had ties to the national Democratic party; she comes from the South Side Hartigan people who run an automobile dealership (and worked on the promotion side of the “Tribune”)—but never fear, these Hartigans have been similarly enrolled in the Democratic party for generations (no one becomes a Chicago judge without Dem approval).

Dolan is remembered for her dismissive remarks to the press that Father Dan McCormack’s charges were for assault of children and not rape…Ask not why Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got asked to keynote the…ahem…non-partisan…fund-raiser for Mercy Home for Boys & Girls when all top staffers of the archdiocese plus Fr. Scott Donohue…a once lefty seminarian in the radical hey-days of the Church who then fought against wearing clerical garb… are in sync on Democratic politics. Not a Republican or independent in a carload among policy-makers at the Archdiocese. The fact that the Dems are the abortion party, the gay rights party, means nada because leaders of that party comprise the leadership also …clerical and otherwise…of the Catholic archdiocese.

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Before he returned from vacation to plead guilty to child molestation of five boys which got him a sentence of five years in prison, Father Dan McCormack was on vacation, preparing for the ordeal. He is one of several priests who have shared a vacation house including a very High Up official (no, not the Cardinal)…a clear indication that there is room for forgiveness for priestly pedophilia in the archdiocese…even if the offender himself didn’t express contrition.

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Good news for the archdiocese authenticists comes from complaints by DePaul and Loyola authorities that Francis Cardinal George has been pressuring them unmercifully to obey the “Ex-Corde Ecclesia” letter from the Rome which tries to insist on legitimate Catholic teaching coming from so-called and highly advertised “Catholic” universities…and also from the pressure the Cardinal put on DePaul to sell its Barat College property to a cause other than enriching its coffers i.e. to the possibility of the creation of a truly Catholic college. It didn’t happen because there were no big contributors lined up for that purpose but the Cardinal’s heart was in the right place.

To Paleo Lefty Lawrence:

As the politics of Left and Right coincide with extreme paleos like you, keep on writing your missives in crayola and capital letters and having your keeper transfer them to this website. Saying I’m a traitor to party and hearth, God and country because I favor winning in Iraq, supporting the president as Commander-in-Chief, opposing instant Iraq pull-out and respect the constitutionally sanctioned pardon process and also support the continued existence of Israel, gives me a definite boost among those who think I’m too conservative on one hand and too liberal on the other. And don’t overdo it with the bananas your keeper shoves through the bars of your cage in that zoo.

Flashback: Tommy the Cork, Nothing if not Ambidextrous, Helps LBJ While Keeping His Ties to the Right.

[More than 50 years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].

We skimmed over the details at the Madison Hotel lunch, but you’d think helping Chiang Kai-shek, signing a formal agreement with the CIA to finance a private airbase which served Chungking, Kwelin, Luchnow, Nanking and Amoy would be enough…but Tommy was hired by Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas), a close friend who was running for the Senate in 1948, to convince organized labor in Texas that Johnson was more a friend of the unions than his primary opponent, Governor Coke Stevenson. Stevenson had criticized LBJ because he voted for Taft-Hartley. Stevenson was normally so conservative he said, when a black was lynched, “well, ya know them Negroes sometimes say things like that guy that git `em into trouble.” It was an anomaly that Stevenson was criticizing Johnson for voting for the conservative Taft-Harley act when Stevenson was decidedly the most conservative Texan state official in thirty years.

The first canvass after the election showed Stevenson won by 362 votes. Then with funny manipulating, by the time the results became official, Johnson was declared the winner by 17. When the judge invalidated the results and set a trial date, Johnson hired Tommy along with Francis Biddle, FDR’s old attorney general; Abe Fortas, Joe Rauh and Ben Cohen (Tommy’s old White House co-worker). They decided to take the case directly to the U. S. Supreme Court; Tommy met with Justice Hugo Black whom he was instrumental in naming to the Court. Black ordered Johnson’s name put back as Democratic nominee. Johnson decisively defeated Jack Porter, his Republican opponent in November. Stevenson still wasn’t through; he took the case to the Senate Rules and Administration committee. Tommy went to work again; he had a strong friendship with Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N. H.), the ranking minority member. Stevenson put up such a howl that the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover probed the Johnson camp for corruption. Tommy went to work on Hoover and Johnson was eventually cleared by Hoover of corruption and allowed to take his seat in the Senate.

Johnson said he owed everything to Corcoran.

Time now for some private employment. Tommy became lobbyist and general counsel to the United Fruit Company. A socialist became president of Guatemala who threatened to nationalize the company. Tommy visited the State Department and CIA and suggested the U. S. use United Fruit as an American base against communism—which it did. All the while, Tommy’s company, CAT (Civil Air Transport) set up its headquarters in Formosa (now Taiwan) to which Chiang Kai-shek had fled. He was instrumental in getting President Truman to declare support for Taiwan. Tommy was still working for United Fruit which was still worried about being nationalized, so he visited with Allen Dulles, the deputy CIA director who in private life had worked as a lawyer for United Fruit. They collaborated but the dictator confiscated United Fruit anyhow, offering a puny $525,000 for 209,842 acres of United Fruit land. Tommy was stiffed and remained so until Dwight Eisenhower came to the White House. Tommy discovered that his personal secretary, Anne Whitman, was married to United Fruit’s public relations director. To counter the dictator, Eisenhower named John Peurifoy as ambassador to Guatemala.

Tommy worked the phones and honed his contacts. Things brightened when John Foster Dulles succeeded Dean Acheson and Allen Dulles became head of the CIA. Both Dulles brothers had sat on the board of United Fruit’s partner in the banana monopoly and UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was a major United Fruit stockholder. Ike’s top army deputy, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith was moved to the State Department and told Tommy that he would like to work for United Fruit after he retired. Tommy said it would be a deal but first they had to overthrow the Guatemala dictator. Smith agreed and the first successful Eisenhower foreign policy initiative tied the Dulles brothers to Bedell Smith along with the CIA’s Richard Bissell. With Tommy running liaison, the U. S. financed a rebel “liberation army” which trained in Nicaragua. All was set in readiness to overthrow the dictator…though duly elected…president of Guatemala. Of which more later.

Personal Asides: With Chuck Hagel as a Litany of Conservatives-turned Liberal, It’s the Age-Old “Stand Tall in Georgetown” Seduction…Ronald Reagan’s Favorite CIA Story (as Retold by Ed Meese).

Hagel “Standing Tall.”

To one who has been involved in politics…covering it, staffing it, serving in governance and lobbying it since he was 25…and is going on 79 …each bracket of years brings new cases of “standing tall in Georgetown”—an unique liberal malady but which has great attraction to Republicans—which first reared its ugly head with the GOP in 1941. From 2000 until last year, it was John McCain. Now it’s Chuck Hagel. The pattern is so familiar that it makes me want to slash my wrists so as not to witness it again. But as self-slaughter is outlawed by the canons of God and man, I just have to grit my teeth and endure it and media to whom all is ever new because STIG always favors their liberal prejudices.

STIG or Standing Tall in Georgetown is the phrase invented by the newsman and novelist Allen Drury who covered the U. S. Senate for years for the “New York Times” beginning with the best novel ever written about Washington politics, “Advise and Consent.” It is the story of controversy over the Senate confirmation of a secretary of state, clearly inspired by the investigation of Alger Hiss. With Drury, novel surnames are pretty close—in this case, the secretary of state is named Robert A. Leffingwell but a similar Senate confirmation battle was fought over David E. Lilienthal, TVA chairman and head of the AEC under Roosevelt and Truman. The novels are written from a conservative and anti-communist point of view, surprising from a “New York Times” Washington bureau staffer.

Georgetown in Drury’s 1959 novel is the same Georgetown as exists today, the home of culturally literate, guilt-ridden and politically correct affluent white liberals who formulate much of the media agenda. If you are a repentant conservative and embrace liberal dogma supposedly heedless of what it will do to your career…because you are an idealist…you will (a) stand tall in Georgetown and be invited to its cocktail soirees and (b) thereupon get a huge bunch of favorable media attention in the main journals that excite liberals: the “Washington Post, “ “New York Times,” “Christian Science Monitor’ and powerful media interests in the east. That will enable you to catapult to the topmost stature overnight…being depicted as one who has “grown”…has become “mature through sobering events.” The intriguing thing is that while STIG gets adulatory coverage for its protagonists in the short-run, thus far all of them have failed to score with the subliminal object: the presidency.

STIG runs through all of Drury’s phenomenal political books which are sequels to “Advise and Consent”…and I have read them all…“A Shade of Difference” (1962), “Capable of Honor” (1966), “Preserve and Protect” (1968), “Come Nineveh, Come Tyre (1973) and “A Promise of Joy” (1975). In “Advise and Consent,” which won a Pulitzer prize, the character of Sen. Bob Munson is clearly Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), a Drury favorite. In the book, Munson resigns as majority leader out of conviction but is reelected to the post, identical to the case of Sen. Alben Barkley (D-Ky.) who stepped down in a fight with FDR but who was reelected by his colleagues. In the book, the suicide of Sen. Brigham Anderson resembles that of real-life Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-Wyoming). The fictional Anderson was fearful that his homosexuality would be uncovered by political enemies so he shot himself in his Senate office and died instantly; in real life, Hunt feared his political enemies would publicize his son’s homosexuality: he shot himself in his Senate office and lived for a short time. Whether Drury was a homosexual himself is not known, but he was a lifelong bachelor—“not that there’s anything wrong with that” as professional political correctionists were prone to say in “Seinfeld.”

In addition to conveying the utmost realism, the second book in the series, “Capable of Honor,” skews the media as only Drury, a knowledgeable reporter who knew all the vainglorious players could. There is Walter Dobius, a snide liberal political columnist. There is one Frankly Unctuous who resembles David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. It is here where the zest to stand tall in Georgetown is shown as politicians try to capture instant acclaim for changing stance and embracing as a matter of conscientious conviction long-held liberal ideas that have been current in Georgetown salons since FDR.

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John McCain was a regular STIG because he embraced campaign reform, dissed evangelical politics, supported global warming initiatives and generally criticized George W. Bush (while putting his pro-life credentials on the back burner). But when he started running again for president by trooping it up with conservatives in the 2006 congressionals, he lost the franchise; and now with his determination to…gasp!...WIN the Iraq War he is definitely persona-non-grata. His hawkishness on the War dispels any luster that may have come from support of amnesty with Ted Kennedy. So he is a no-no. Dead meat with those who value STIG.

Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, was in STIG until he decided not to run for president. He belongs in the Drury books because he is supposedly a straight arrow, coming from a solid conservative corn-stalk state who out of conviction grabs at the brass ring of popularity and basks in the glow of the big newsmagazines, the networks, the thumb-sucking big daily columnists and the wire services. Hagel’s big passion has been to become president. Not a chance now…because of STIG. And before Hagel, there was a long line of them.

Starting with the very first, Wendell L. Willkie, a Commonwealth & Southern utility executive and lawyer…born in Elwood, Indiana with a shaggy dark haircut falling carelessly over his forehead, who became a Republican to oppose New Deal public power monopolies. Willkie was a paradox, a former active Democrat who voted for Roosevelt twice and campaigned for him but who was drawn into the Republican fold by the alleged unconstitutionality of the federal government invading the private electric power field with the TVA. He became the darling of certain Republican newspaper publishers like the more liberal “New York Herald-Tribune” and the Cowles publications—newspapers in DesMoines and Minneapolis and “Look” magazine.

For a while he seemed to be a media darling, made so by the covert work of his gorgeous mistress who combined a powerfully sexual personality with powerful intellectuality, Irita Bradford Van Doren, the book editor of “The New York Herald-Tribune,” and the divorced wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Carl Van Doren after a 23 year marriage and three children. The affair which lasted throughout Willkie’s life was known by his wife as well as the media but covered up. Van Doren, a year older than Willkie and regarded as a great beauty, tutored him, got him to become conversant with books and literary palaver which paid off when Willkie scored big-time on the ranking network radio show that bewitched all intellectuals, Clifton Fadiman’s “Information Please.” She wrote Willkie’s key speeches and ghost-wrote many articles by him. Toward the end of his short life she was teaching him to speak from notes rather than from a script. She could never get him to stop eating cheeseburgers and fries, washing them down with chocolate malts—which killed him.

Willkie was slated to be a sure loser to FDR—but what got him closer to overtaking Roosevelt was the third term issue and…late in the campaign…Willkie’s announced opposition to the U. S. entering World War II, which he insinuated (correctly) that FDR was pushing. That stand united the Republican base behind him which until then had been faltering. Willkie got 44.8% of the popular vote to FDR’s 54.7% but the electoral vote was more lopsided—449 for FDR, 82 for Willkie.

Then, following his loss to FDR at age 48—with apparently many more years ahead of him in national politics--the husky Willkie became to change his political persona with Irita as his mentor as well as lover. He became an instant internationalist, traveled to key hot spots in the world, wrote a book “One World” (really Irita’s masterpiece) which promulgated the global creed and listened to friends of FDR suggest to him that he run for vice president in 1944 with Roosevelt. It didn’t work out. But as the media played up his “growth,” Willkie lost a sizable chunk of the Republican base and wound up repenting his old isolationist stand by describing it as “campaign oratory.” He lost the Wisconsin primary in 1944 heavily and was not well received by either party. But he stood tall in Georgetown with Irita at his side while the liberals believed that were he to become the GOP nominee in 1944, they would have nothing to fear regardless of who won the presidency: FDR or Willkie.

Then Willkie had a major heart attack and died before the 1944 election at age 52; his old running mate, Sen. Charles McNary of Oregon had died earlier making their deaths the first time in U. S. history that presidential and vice presidential candidates of the same party died before the end of the term to which they sought election (Irita Van Doren, his mistress outlived him by 22 years). Willkie was the first STIG liberal Republican “hero” to the media. But he was a man without a party, not unlike Benedict Arnold after his defection whose last wish was to be laid out in a coffin in his old Continental Army uniform of general.

A late-blooming STIG was Theodore Roosevelt, who, returning from Africa and longing to return to the presidency he gave up by deciding not to run again, lost the 1912 GOP presidential nomination, switched to the Progressive party, stood very, very tall in Georgetown but lost to Woodrow Wilson. His last act was to try to convince Woodrow Wilson (who was standoffish and definitely not STIG) to send him to World War I as a general with a detachment. No luck. Wilson wasn’t that crazy.

Others who STIG have included…

Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, defeated by Willkie for the 1940 nomination, who first ran in 1940 for president as a conservative then decided to Stand Tall in Georgetown, running for president in 1944 and 1948, losing both times; Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, who embraced internationalism, becoming a founding member of the UN Charter, running for the presidential nomination in 1948, 1952, for governor of Pennsylvania and mayor of Philadelphia, for president again in 1968 and for congressman in Minnesota in 1980, losing all attempts. Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (R-Mass.), a former conservative who was the toast of Georgetown’s salons, then lost reelection; ran for the presidential nomination and lost it. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.), a former conservative who sought the Republican nomination in 1948 and lost it but who switched to suit the fancy of a prominent and wealthy Republican woman with whom he was enamored. . Sen. Wayne Morse (R-Ore.) who was celebrated for his liberalism, switched to independent and then Democrat.

Then came the big howitzer, Rep. John B. Anderson (R-Ill.), who started as a conservative, cast a deciding vote on House Rules to send the civil rights bill of 1968 to the floor; was elected chairman of the House Republican Conference, became co-author of a campaign reform bill with Rep. Morris Udall (D-Utah), ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, lost it, became an independent and ran for president later that year but was frustrated by the rules of campaign finance which he had written; became a Democrat and is now in private life. Sen. Charles H. Percy, whose campaigns had been favorable to Israel, switched to an “even hand” and even anti-Israel position which was pleasing to Georgetown; he lost reelection to Paul Simon, who by opposing Reagan’s tax cuts STIG. Rep. Paul (Pete) McCloskey (R-Calif.), a decorated veteran of the Korean War who challenged President Nixon in the 1972 Republican primaries as an opponent of Vietnam. He later became a Democrat.

Mayor John Lindsay of New York, renounced the Republican party and ran for president as a Democrat. Senator Lowell Weicker saw his chance to STIG by becoming a vociferous—almost manic—critic of Richard Nixon on the Watergate committee, then parlayed it to an extremely liberal position on almost every issue. He was defeated by Joseph Lieberman; Weicker then became an independent and was elected governor but never obtained the presidential nomination in either party which he sought. Rep. Paul Findley (R-Ill.) started out as a moderate Republican, serving on the House Foreign Affairs committee. For a long time he got no attention, then he became a vociferous critic of Israel and booster of the Palestinians. He was embraced as a hero and STIG. Not for long; another House member, Dick Durbin, with a fairly conservative downstate voting record (including pro-life) beat him and then moved quickly to the left in the Senate where he STIG by attacking alleged U. S. “abuse” of suspected terrorists at Abu Grib and Guantanamo (although careful to support Israel).

Sen. James Joffords (R-Vt.) left the Republican party, became an independent, voted to organize the Senate for the Democrats and was revered as STIG for a time. In Reagan’s time, David Stockman who espoused supply-side economics, split with it when he became budget director and leaked ammunition against Reagan to the “Atlantic Monthly.” Thus as a former economic conservative who now embraced tax hikes, he was celebrated for STIG. He was “taken to the woodshed” and ultimately left the Reagan administration, becoming head of a Wall Street investment banking firm, then indicted for irregularities and is now standing trial.

All these were at one time or another Stood Tall in Georgetown. Now cometh Chuck Hagel. He started out as a conservative, somewhat riskily so. Elected to the Senate, he was the freshman who made the greatest impression on his colleagues. But, seduced early to STIG, he got favorable press and widespread TV exposure for his “independent stands” and because the most acerbic critic of George W. Bush and Iraq in the Senate. Then he broadened it to gain widespread publicity as a foe of President Bush on multifarious issues, ranging past the Iraq War to global warming to commuting Scooter Libby’s jail sentence. Hagel, warming up to widespread media attention from his dissent with Bush, indicated he would run for president. Then he invited the media to a huge news conference in Omaha where he said he would announce his decision on a presidential run. All the media were in attendance and the Senator announced that he would not run—which started a run for the exits as the media wanted desperately to get out of Omaha and back to Washington, D. C. with many a softly expressed oath under their breath. Now Hagel will face the fight of his life in a primary contest with the Republican attorney general.

Ergo: the record is clear. You can stand tall in Georgetown if you are a conservative who turns liberal and recant your past beliefs. But the luster is short, the time on the stage is brief and once discarded you’re never revived. Also, don’t imagine the publicity…widespread TV, radio and news magazine color stories…will propel you to the presidency. It has never worked that way with the electorate which historically has suspected turncoats. Still, there are several Republicans standing in line to be anointed. One is Mark Kirk, the Republican congressman from Illinois who has all the credentials: he was for winning in Iraq and has caved since his race on the North Shore was so close. But it is unlikely he will make the STIG cut. If the trickle of applicants runs low, maybe he’ll be accepted with the past turncoats. Past turncoats.

As indeed they have all been. Whose character have been rightly suspect.

Reagan’s CIA Joke.

At the Heritage Foundation’s Chicago get-together Thursday at the University Club, former U. S. attorney general Ed Meese told this story as one of President Reagan’s favorites.

It has to do with the CIA which at one point in Reagan’s first term decided to send a covert spy to Northern Ireland to melt into the Irish Republican Army and remain hidden until the CIA would send an emissary over to Ireland to contact him with utmost secrecy. They picked a CIA agent of Irish derivative named Murphy. CIA Director Bill Casey personally instructed Murphy. He was to proceed with utmost caution and secrecy to Ireland and infiltrate the Army, remaining conspicuously loyal but drawing conclusions which he would send back to the U. S. to help the nation mold its policies toward the Irish fanatics. On a rare occasion, Casey said, a CIA operative would come to Murphy’s hometown to look him up…and would frequent certain places of public gatherings. When he thought a man could possibly be Murphy of the CIA the operative would casually say, “it’s a nice day today—but tomorrow will certainly be better.” Then the CIA mole Murphy would identify himself and they would get together for a debriefing.

Two years passed and the CIA sent the operative to a small Irish town. The operative strolled into a pub, ordered a glass of stout and inquired of the bartender if he knew any Murphys in the area.

“Yes indeed,” said the bartender. “There’s a Murphy who is a cobbler; a Murphy who’s a plumber. A Murphy who is an electrician…and…” he added, “my name is Murphy as well.”

The agent looked around, lowered his voice and said to the bartender, “it’s a nice day today—but tomorrow will certainly be better.”

The bartender said, “Oh, you mean Murphy the Spy. He’s due in here in about an hour.”

Personal Asides: Something (What is It?) is Delaying the Fred Thompson Announcement…Character is at Stake with Republican Senate Defectors…Yes, It is the One, True Church.

That Certain Something.

First he was supposed to announce around the 4th of July. Now he’s supposed to announce in August. Who? Fred Thompson. Why the delay? I don’t think it involves a television contract. Given that he has expressed so strongly his determination to run, it would be a little strange for something of that nature to come up. I wonder if it’s not more personal than that. The delay has all the earmarks of strategists trying to flush out negatives…either allay them or prepare an answer to them…before they appear. Well, what kind of negatives? Nothing that have surfaced thus far are serious: lobbying for Jean-Bertrand Aristide or Planned Parenthood. Nothing of that sort. It would have to be more serious.

Delays of this sort are usually caused by consternation over how to deal with problems involving personal rectitude. There have been a flurry of self-propelled stories about his post-divorce bachelorhood where the candidate said he chased around and the girls who chased him always caught him. Nothing wrong with that but it smacks of attempted self-inoculation.

You can bet the delay isn’t because they can’t find a finance chairman, or a campaign manager or something like that.

Character is at Stake.

The Republican senators want to pull the plug on Iraq before the mid-September report comes on the effectiveness of the surge show not just a weakening of resolve but lack of character. They are the usual suspects except for one…one whom I have long admired…Norm Coleman of Minnesota who was an extraordinarily good mayor of St. Paul, a former Bobby Kennedy Democrat who outdebated Walter Mondale (although concededly that is no big trick as Ronald Reagan, then approaching his dotage did it in 1984).

To others, the defection of John Warner, ranking Republican on Armed Services is alarming. Not when you know him. Not really.

Probably the ranking opportunist and co-captor of the John Kerry Prize for Gold Digging is Warner of Virginia. He was born in D. C. and went to St. Alban’s. Very important to him. You think the Chinese revere their ancestors? Try talking to John Warner. He will tell you his Virginia lineage which he hopes you believe is patrician but is not; they are about as distinguished as you can find in Virginia but like Sargent Shriver the money went bye-bye before Warner was born. His grandparents lived in Amherst county, Virginia; his father was a field surgeon during World War I and operated while bullets were whistling around; that a great-uncle served in the Confederate army and lost his arm in the Battle of the Wilderness, that he—Warner—volunteered for both Army and Navy in 1944 at age 17 (he’ll add that he is one of five World War II veterans in the Senate: Stevens of Alaska, Inouye of Hawaii; Akaka of Hawaii and Lautenberg of New Jersey) and with the Marines in Korea —which means he has had one salutary benefit to his character. He is grandiloquent and a tad effeminate if you look at him a certain way.

Aside from his laudable military record, Warner convinced himself that the only way he could make it big time was to romance some wealthy women--=which he did, being a gigolo, playing tennis with the right people, especially heiresses, a guy with fashionably shaggy hair and a phony kind of Virginia accent. He scored big time by marrying a Mellon granddaughter which got him a mansion in Virginia horse country while he worked as an assistant U. S. attorney. The dough enabled him to make sizable contributions to the Republicans until the marriage fizzled because Warner was inattentive, always eyeing another opportunity. He used the Mellon dough to become secretary of the navy under Nixon but when the marriage ended and he was on his own, he cast about but the women he dated were, while wealthy, nothing like a Mellon.

Then he found Elizabeth Taylor fresh from her sixth marriage (five if you don’t count Burton twice who served 1964-74 and 1975-75. In Taylor Warner found somebody who had more money than he (not a Mellon but not bad) and also a celebrity status which he used to have her escort him to events in 1978 in Virginia when he sought the Virginia GOP’s nomination for U. S. Senator. Virginia has the convention system and unfortunately Warner ran second, narrowly missing the nod. But the winner, Richard Obenshain, died in a private plane crash (nobody checked the engine and Warner wasn’t fiddling around at the private air strip that day). Warner was chosen because the wealthy matrons of Virginia wanted Taylor to drink with them (she could drink them and Warner under the table) at their private gatherings and tell outrageous stories of Hollywood with everybody’s ears hanging out to savor the gossip. Taylor was also a lot more liberal than Warner who had planned to be a conservative to fit in with Virginia’s lofty style. She got him to be pro-choice which endeared him to the wealthy Virginia matrons but lost him the hard-edge Virginia conservatives. Upshot: Warner won with only 4,700 votes. Thereupon, Warner squired Taylor with him across the country as he made Republican speeches, using her celebrity for prominence and dough so the next time he ran he made it easily.

In 1982, Taylor skipped out on him in order to do some serious drinking without his manufactured patrician distraction and disapproval (she was becoming a liability because now she couldn’t hold her liquor and would tell the matrons things about Warner they shouldn’t know).

Warner with no need for another wife, having used up two, began his concentrated rise up the ladder to chairman of the Armed Services committee. He could handle the rest himself, crafting a moderate record in Virginia, blessing the memory of the now sodden Taylor who convinced him to be a pro-choicer since it was the popular thing to be. As he’s not a dumb bunny, he proved to be hard-working and fairly conversant on the issues, although he looks at them through a hugely self-interested prism. He became ranking Republican on Senate Armed Services but no sooner had the Republicans won control of the Senate than Strom Thurmond who would not die put in a claim for chairman and, of course, outranked Warner (since Thurmond seemingly could hearken back to the Blackhawk War; and was actually a paratrooper under Ike on D-Day). So Warner graciously…grinding his teeth all the while…allowed the dotty old gentleman to accede to chairman of the Committee.

I would see the two of them walking down the corridors to the railcar that delivered them to the Capitol, Warner holding the geezer’s arm tightly, pulled up almost under his chin…and it occurred to me—as I am sure to him—that if somehow he could get the ancient babbling solon to miss a step in his late 90s, the chairmanship would pass to him. Then thankfully one day while having his diaper changed by the Senate surgeon, Thurmond groaned that maybe it was time for him to pass the baton to Warner…which the surgeon, a Virginian, passed on to Warner. Then became one of the funniest episodes in Senate history…relayed to me by a Thurmond aide who overheard it.

Warner said something like this: “Mr. Chairman, have you ever had a desire to step down? I don’t mean out of the Senate but as Chairman?”

Thurmond: “Huh? Step where?”

Warner, speaking louder: “I say, have you ever had a desire to turn the chairmanship over to a younger man?”

Thurmond: “Eh? Yes. But what younger man? Where would I find him?”

Warner: “Well, I am younger.”

Thurmond: “John, you’re 71. That’s not young.”

Warner (privately enraged): “Well…it’s twenty years younger than you, Mr. Chairman!”

Thurmond: “Well, that’s true.”

A long pause.

Thurmond: “John…”

Warner: “Yes…”

“I forgot what I was going to say.”

“We were talking about the chairmanship.”

“The what?

“The Chairmanship of Armed Services!”

“What about it?”

“I say we were—oh, forget it.”

My staffer friend came to Warner’s rescue. One day the old man told Warner that he had a brilliant idea…not Warner, Thurmond.

“And what is that?” asked Warner breathlessly.

Just then Thurmond’s secretary, beauteous, came in with a glass of water and a vial of pills, saying, “Time for a toddy!”

Warner told my staffer friend: “Joe, I believe I am going mad. Either that or have a stroke and the sonuvabitch will outlive me. I’m sure of it!”

Somehow the idea was communicated and Warner became chairman.

************

But for a consummate opportunist, gaining the chairmanship was only the latest vista. While he struggled to wonder what else he could do, he inadvertently did some interesting and valuable things. In early 2001, before 9/11 he created an Emerging Threats subcommittee to dwell on terrorism and chemical and biological as well as cyberwarfare. He got a new lease on life with 9/11 where he could appear with frosty irrelevance on television. But always fearful that he would miss a step with ever-changing opinion, he has been a pinwheel of relativism. Thus he has become a kind of joke to many reporters; it was expected that as soon as the Iraq War got unpopular in northern Virginia, he’d become a dove. As so he is. He’s eighty now and spends his time wondering how to catch up with the latest opinion trends which he reads voraciously.

Thus…the Statesman.

One, Holy and…

Earlier this week the Vatican reaffirmed that the Catholic Church is the one, true church even if elements of truth can be found in separated churches and communities. This displeased secularists most of all—not Protestants or Jews particularly in my experience…because is those skilled in religious dialogue, they have come to understand the Catholic position.

The document, “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church” was signed by William Cardinal Levada, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and “approved” by Pope Benedict XVI before publication. In a minor matter, it settles the role of Levada who as archbishop of San Francisco was one of the more liberal prelates; his appointment to Ratzinger’s old job was criticized by authenticists as a case of the Vatican wobblies.

Not so. Whether Levada is himself a wobbly is immaterial; the man who “approved” the document is the Pope who is his own best theologian and who, for Catholics, cannot err on doctrines of faith and morals. While theologians will argue whether or not this falls into the area of infallibility, the practical assumption is that it does. And it says what it means but is nowhere as tyrannous or autocratic as the Associated Press has implied.

The first sign of disunity within the church that Jesus Christ founded came in the First Century when Clement I asked the people of Corinth: “Do we not have one God, one Christ and one Spirit of grace poured out upon us? And is there not one calling in Christ?” He and other popes laid down the fundamental truth that is gospel for all us Catholics. The Church claims possession of the fullness of God’s revelation. Sure it seems one-sided and is—as truth is. But it was Pius X,…now a saint but then as now regarded as a tough old bird by modern standards…who informed the Protestant-sponsored international conference at Edinburgh in 1910 which launched the present ecumenical movement this: “The elements of faith in which you all agree are numerous and are common to the various Christian bodies and then can serve as a point of departure for your discussion”—meaning “this is a work in which we in our day may well cooperate.”

This said, Christ chose twelve apostles and sent them, as He had been sent, to teach and government, to serve and sanctify the believers. He appointed Peter their head and His vicar on earth. He made known to them all things that He had heard from the Father. He determined through Baptism those who would believe would be incorporated into the body of the Church. And before He died, He instituted at the Last Supper the sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist.

Certain fundamentalist Protestants take the words of Christ reported in Matthew 16:18 after Peter confessed the divinity of Christ: “Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church” and maintain that through mistranslation Christ’s meaning was garbled in Greek. What Christ meant, they say, was that He, Christ, would be the rock, not Peter. Hence, they say, why did He use the Greek name “petros” which means a small stone instead of “Petra” which means an immovable foundation? The answer they say: Peter was no sure foundation. The answer is that Christ did not speak in Greek, nor Hebrew which was reserved as a sacred language but Aramaic, the common language of Palestine at the time. In that language, the word for “rock” is “kepha.” Or “thou are Kepha and upon this kepha I will build my Church.” When Matthew’s gospel was translated from Aramaic to Greek, there was the problem because unlike Greek, Aramaic’s “kepha” has the same ending whether it refers to rock or is used as a man’s name.

What the fundamentalists are saying is that Peter was, recognizably, a weak man, who denied Christ three times who was the first link in the papacy. So: a weak link. To them it is a scandal that Christ would not choose as His vicar, a weakling rather than the strongest. But that’s what gives us hope! God seems to enjoy working through the lowly and weak to confound the mighty…as He chose to be born in a stable rather than a palace. I can tell you it is a comfort to me when I report of the earthen vessels that constitute my church’s bishops. You can’t not believe the Church is divine when you see some of these guys, believe me. And it is a great comfort.

Personal Asides: Ever Wonder What Bob Creamer is Doing Since Jail? Training Young People to Campaign for Obama…Pulido, Martire and Franks on “Shootout” Sunday.

Robert Creamer.

Robert Creamer, the husband of U. S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill) who was sentenced to jail for running a community group and paying himself big bucks while banks held the bag, has been teaching a group of young (mostly) volunteers for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, I am exclusively revealing today.

Nothing wrong with Creamer earning a living. Indeed not long ago he surfaced as a registered lobbyist working against the Senate confirmation of UN ambassador John Bolton, paid by the George Soros-funded “Open Society Policy Center.” But the idea of a convicted felon who kited checks lecturing the supposedly idealistic Obama campaign on how to raise money and get elected is a bit much.

Creamer taught at “Camp Obama,” a week-long summer camp last month held at the presidential candidate’s office in Chicago for campaign interns and volunteers—just a few blocks away from the federal court where on August 31, 2005 he pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud and failure to pay federal taxes…on charges brought by U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. He admitted in his 18-page signed plea agreement that he wrote checks on accounts that lacked funds and did so repeatedly as he moved money from one account to another in three banks. He had a multiple group of organizations that received money, the best known being the “Illinois Public Action Council” a left-wing group on which his wife, Jan Schakowsky, was a board member while the manipulating was going on. She was already in Congress when he pleaded guilty; she was not charged.

Creamer’s retention to instruct the Obama for President campaign is probably the most revelatory hint that the hopeful, idealistic, whimsical message floated by the candidate is mere vapor obscuring a cynical operation…unless, of course, the Obama people had no idea of Creamer or what his past represents.

Creamer’s being hired by the Obama campaign to instruct interns and volunteers in political organizing, abuses of which sent him to jail is ironic. Sen. Obama has been notable among the presidential candidates for crusading in an effort to “bring hope to our people.” He has been chairman of the Senate Ethics committee. How Creamer ended up instructing the Obama workers when his notoriety has been so prominent in Illinois is anyone’s guess. And whether he still continues to work on the Obama payroll is still speculative. One would imagine that David Axelrod, the top Obama strategist, should have seen Creamer’s hiring as a red flag.

Creamer, one of the more expansive radical lefties in Illinois, admitted he moved money from one account to another in three banks in 1997, playing what bankers describe as the “float” and thus making them believe that the accounts had more money in them than they actually did. In addition, Creamer admitted that he had opened two other check kiting schemes which took place in 1993 and 1996. His guilty plea also involved failing to collect $1,800 withholding tax from an employee of his political consulting firm. When he pleaded guilty, Creamer still flourished the rhetoric that led many well-intentioned volunteers to his multiple organizations. “The burning desire to create an organization that empowered ordinary people led me to make serious errors in that organization’s finances,” he said.

U. S. Attorney Fitzgerald wanted to send Creamer to jail for four years and three months. “This isn’t a one-time shot,” this is serial violation of the law in multiple respects,” said Fitzgerald’s office. Creamer’s attorney argued for probation because he spent a lifetime fighting “for social justice and broke the law so he could keep fighting for the causes he believed in.” Also being sure that he was adequately paid, with a six figure salary, while he crusaded for social justice. The prosecutor in Fitzgerald’s office, Joe Ferguson, said Creamer acted like he was above the law and continued his illegal activities even after a visit from the FBI, that he never took responsibility for his actions. Creamer’s attorney called him the most admirable client he ever represented—which stirred some comment about the nature of the other clients.

A breathless report of Camp Obama written by Mark Wiznitzer was posted yesterday, July 11 and appeared originally on http://my.barackobama.com/page /community/blog/markwiznitzer. It is the story of a 57-year-old man who by his own statement was surrounded by young people who were thrilled to be instructed by seasoned campaign strategists, one of whom was Creamer. He spoke on the subject of “Campaign Culture”—a topic on which by his imprisonment he could reasonably be called an authority.

“Our first substantive session on Campaign Culture was led by Bob Creamer of the Strategic Consulting Group,” wrote Wiznitzer. “He provided an information-packed presentation starting with a general theory of campaigns, getting a candidate elected, what makes a great campaign, the targeting of `persuadable’ and `mobilizable’ voters, application of quantitative approaches and different forms of messaging and research.”

After Creamer’s presentation, the group was instructed in campaign fundraising and subsequently heard presentations by several people. “John Kupper, partner with campaign consultant David Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe in AKP Media led off the morning of June 5 with a discussion of the Obama for America message. Subsequently, a campaign deputy director explained the role of Obama’s policy staff.” The presence of Axelrod would almost certify that the veteran strategist would know—or should have known—that Creamer was discussing his view of “Campaign Culture.”

Questions have been raised about the Creamer conviction as to how much Rep. Schakowsky knew about the check kiting and income tax fraud given that she is his wife, was his partner in political operations and served on his board of directors. The couple, experts in articulating a populism that is infectious to the left, sought to keep Creamer out of jail because of his supposedly idealistic mission. But the judge maintained that “ordinary people get caught for not paying taxes…and end up going to jail.”

Her husband’s conviction hasn’t crimped the style of Rep. Schakowsky who has regularly criticized the Bush administration’s supposed failing in ethics—and she often receives warm civic accolades as she did some years ago from the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Creamer guilty plea, conviction and sentencing was pushed on the far-back burner by the Chicago news media, giving it a cursory write-up but believing Rep. Schakowsky should not be blamed for the financial irregularities of her husband notwithstanding that she was on his board of directors.

Pulido…Martire…and Franks.

A threesome is scheduled to appear on my “Political Shootout” Sunday on WLS…because of the possibility that one of the members may not make it because of travel difficulties…but I imagine all three will be there. They are Roseanna Pulido, Ralph Martire of the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability and State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock.) Franks will be returning from Washington, D. C. where he will have met with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Cllinton. Pulido who is director of Illinois Minuteman has been identified as a one-note spokesmen against illegal immigration…but this time I told her she must broaden her vista and take up the cudgels as a spokesman of conservative principles on a vast array of topics such as the inability of the legislature to craft a budget, state spending and other topics. She is allowed to make one sentence…that is one sentence…on illegal immigration which if she exceeds a hook will reach out. But she is a talented spokesperson and I want to see her broaden herself beyond this one topic.

Ralph Martire is a seasoned, expert on budget matters who denies he’s a hemophiliac liberal and so I will accept it—but he is a very good guest with a hefty intellectual ballast. Jack Franks is a spiritual son of mine notwithstanding we disagree on politics…most of the time. Well, make that some of the time.

Personal Asides: At Least One Rationale for the Amy Jacobson Dip in an Alleged Killer’s Swimming Pool…News Flash: The “Sun-Times” is “Returning to Our Liberal…Roots”!

Jacobson.

A friend reminded me…and now that I think about it I agree with him…there’s a good explanation for the story that broke yesterday about Channel 5 NBC Chicago reporter Amy Jacobson swimming in a backyard pool of Craig Stebic, the estranged husband of a missing Plainfield woman…and not the one that the wise-guys are smirking about. I don’t know Jacobson or Stebic, of course, but it strikes me that the difficulty…which got Jacobson fired…amounts to the difference between boys and girls. I’ll bet the $15 Timex watch I’ve been wearing since 1989 that she is a hotdog journalist who has been trying to get a national news break by cozying up to the family.

The difference between boys and girls in the news industry is this. A guy journalist can fraternize all he wants with Stebic, have a beer with him and probe his inner thoughts, hoping for the guy to make a slip and allow him to break the case. Dangerous but it’s done a lot. In Minnesota there was a wife killer named T. Eugene Thompson who was walking around free while the authorities were trying to put together a case against him. In that interim a friend of mine from a wire-service…a hotdog…ingratiated himself into Thompson’ good nature and would have drinks with him, sympathizing with his predicament but all the while listening for any clues that would give my friend a national story. The difference here is that Jacobson is a woman…an attractive one from all available evidence…and was probably doing the same thing.

While fraternizing with a murder suspect is, if not common, at least not unheard of in the news business among guys, it is evidently a no-no when a female reporter seeks to become chummy with a murder suspect…for the reason that she is a female and he a male. Yes, swimming in his pool is rather extreme but essentially I will bet this was her intention. I don’t think she should have been fired because of it—a simple reprimand would do. And this hiring a Northwestern journalist professor to look at the tape and talk about ethics is over the top. The only ethics involved should be not to get paid or reimbursed in any fashion for pursuing a story.

If you tell me otherwise and I’m wrong, you can have the 28-year-old Timex.

The Return to Liberalism for the “Sun-Times.”

To a newspaper reader with no sense of history or contemporaneousness…in essence one who is like the central character in “Groundhog Day”…the announcement by the new editorial page director of the “Sun-Times” that henceforth the newspaper will be liberal and of “working class roots” will seem strikingly innovative. But to those with a sense of history beyond the day before yesterday will find Cheryl Reed’s testimony as full of holes as limburger cheese.

First of all, the idea that liberalism is a new departure for the “Sun-Times” is outrageous. Its forebear, the “Chicago Sun” was created by Marshall Field III as a liberal counterweight to the conservative “Tribune.” The Chicago “Times” was always a liberal, Democratic paper. When they were combined….after the “Sun” found it couldn’t compete with the “Tribune” alone…the collaboration became a worthy if not entirely successful competitor. It was a liberal paper for almost all its life except for a brief interregnum when Rupert Murdoch bought it…and had to sell it shortly thereafter for economic reasons. Since then the paper has been outwardly liberal. During the time it was run by the two crooks, it was less liberal but still markedly differentiated from the “Trib.”

After the two crooks, the paper took such a leftwing turn as to jar one’s neck out of its socket. And this during the Steve Huntley reign as the purported…ahem…conservative editorial page editor. There wasn’t a single issue that Huntley espoused as editorial page editor that wasn’t liberal. Not a single one. It endorsed gay marriage, pushed abortion and lefty social issues to the farthest extreme. Now Huntley tells us he has been a conservative all along with the exception of abortion…but his editorials and selection of Op Eds could have fooled us. Let us say that the food editor’s views on economics and runaway free immigration don’t mix well with even certain tenets of responsible liberalism. Father Greeley’s views about God being a woman…his dissent from the Church he publicly flouts to the edification of the paper’s liberals… are never conservative and often weird. Jesse Jackson writing that whitey has to do more to help him and his fellow victims is not only abjectly liberal but denunciatorily so…insisting that whitey has to do more to help us poor blacks!

And now the paper is going to strike off on another tack and become…gasp…liberal?

That is why this writer has continued to accurately describe it during the Cruickshank-Cooke era as the “Democratic party’s newspaper of record.” It has become the uptown edition of the “Reader”…once sans the soft porno, now with it thanks to Brother Cooke. And Ms. Reed tells us that she is now going to make it a liberal paper! Messrs. Cruickshank and that arbiter of good taste Cooke told her not to be “conservative.” Well, she won’t she’ll be liberal. But pray tell what will you do to distinguish it from the Huntley regime—endorse out and out infanticide, make homosexual appreciation mandatory in the schools…an income tax hike and an immediate pull-out from Iraq? How can she do that and reflect the blue-collars who by all odds have been the ballast of traditionalist society?

Ms. Reed has an impossible assignment. If she wants to make it a working class newspaper instead of the version of the “National Enquirer” which thanks to Cooke it is today, she’ll run into trouble if she makes it more liberal. Working class is not liberal. Rhapsodizing over who has mammary enlargements is not working class. If she will make it working class, she should hire a full-time columnist like the paper once had—Dennis Byrne—whom they let go for unspecified reasons in their so-called “conservative” mode. She would have the paper endorse working class, union-oriented issues, but also traditional social ones, probably take a conservative tack on immigration, lead a fight to lower property taxes for the working class in Chicago, oppose Daley’s abuse of TIFs and give a searching look to the Olympics boondoggle by taking a look first at what it did to…and for…Atlanta…and a greater emphasis on tougher crime control. That’s working class stuff, Ms. Reed. The stuff you’ve inherited is white wine and brie.

Your prescription…suitable for “Groundhog Day”…can’t work. You’ll be back to peddling paperback steamy romances before the leaves start falling. If you’re lucky.

Personal Asides: Frank Nofsinger Wins…but Eric Zorn Has a Challenge….Jack Franks May be Third Guest on My Radio Show Sunday…The GOP’s Blago “Impeach” Nonsense…Fr. Greeley and the JFK Disneyworld Fantasy.

Nofsinger.

Connecticut contributor Frank Nofsinger wins the “Goodnight, Irene” trivia. One winning line: “Gonna take another strong downtown.” Another: “Gonna jump in the river and drown.” Many others sent the right words including Rich Manak. Good show.

“Trib” columnist and blogger…who originally got me excited about blogging (which he possibly deeply regrets)… Eric Zorn answers the trivia and submits one of his own…another verse from “Goodnight, Irene.”

“Stop your ramblin’, stop your gamblin’/

Stop stayin’ out late at night/

Go home to your wife and family/

___________________________.

To which from memory I submit: “And stay by your fireside bright.” Maybe wrong.

Eric also asks a question which I can’t answer. “The Weavers” who sang (I think I’m right about this) the first Goodnight, Irene song also sang a song “I’ll see you in my dreams” which was bowdlerized from “I’ll get you in my dreams” but introduced by…..whom? Got me.

Jack Franks.

State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) may well be on “Political Shootout” Sunday night but his plans are uncertain. He will be in Washington, D. C. to meet with Sen. Hillary Clinton in connection with his becoming chairman of the Illinois Hillary Clinton for President campaign. As Jack is also a key member of the Illinois House…chairman of the Government Affairs committee…chairman (so named by Mike Madigan) of the Committee of the Whole…he has a lot to do—but his plane may just arrive back in Chicago from Washington on Sunday to enable him to participate in the WLS show (8 p.m.). If he can make it, I’ll have three guests instead of the usual two—the others being arranged even as we speak.

GOP “Impeach”.

Just because the Democrats cannot govern is no reason for the Republicans to make themselves appear to be opportunists and worse…by introducing bills for Governor Blagojevich’s “impeachment.” Unless they want to make themselves look more ridiculous than they already do…since they—outside of Tom Cross—have not come out with an alternative budget or counter-proposal of any sort to the governor’s positions except to wring their hands and chorus that everything looks awful.

The Illinois liberal Democratic government is non-functional but there is one thing worse than that—an Illinois liberal Democratic government that is functional under the regime of Governor Pat Quinn…who (a) knows what he’s doing and (b) makes a much better case for his lefty philosophy than does Blagojevich.

JFK Disneyworld.

Fr. Andrew Greeley is just about alone among his generation for glorifying everything Democratic and finding anti-Catholicism lurking behind every sofa. A 78-year-old relic from the days when Catholics were ghettoized…called “fish-eaters” and “mackerel-snappers”…were thought to be insufficiently patriotic because they followed “the Pope in Rome”…he carries that memory painfully so it colors even the sensible things he has to do—which are seldom enough enunciated. The first time I met Greeley when we were both age 13 and he was going to Quigley, I realized that from the cut of his jib. As a man of 78 myself, I and many colleagues like me never felt we were ghettoized…in fact was very proud of the unique differences we had: i.e. the black smudge on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday…the abstention from meat on Friday…the sign of the cross which so many of us foolishly made as we came up to bat. Evidently Andy was pained by all this and his career has been to advocate that Catholics melt indistinguishably into the crowd. Now Catholics are indistinguishable in the crowd but rather than being glad, Andy is rubbing his scabs for the good old days of martyrdom when in his lopsided view we stood alone.

I’ve always thought Andy starts first as an Irishman…bitter at Britain and the Brahmins who treated the Irish as servants…then as a Democrat…bitter at Republicans and big business which he is in highly charged emotion believe are against Democrats—when in reality at least 50% of modern business executives are Democrats and liberals. Not to Andy. He is in his own pecularized time warp.

Friday, in his pathetic partisan offering last week masquerading as analysis, Andy instructs us of John F. Kennedy’s greatness…using a story in “Time’ as a guidepost. I don’t know what it said since I have long discarded “Time” as a reputable magazine…but Andy we will always have with us.

Friday, Andy started once again to deify JFK, the quintessential Irishman, Democrat and so-called martyr to the establishment. The concept is hilarious. It is a carry-through from the hagiography of the publicitors JFK had around him: Arthur Schlesinger the historian who became a courtesan in return for the dollies that the Kennedys left for him after they were sated…John Kenneth Galbraith, the economist who never spurned higher spending or tax hikes…Ted Sorenson who lectured for me at Northwestern who ghost-wrote and ghost-thought for the Master. They all got something out of it: Schlesinger the women discards…Galbraith an ambassadorship…Sorenson some fame and the appointment as CIA director from the most incompetent modern president, Jimmy Carter (which appointment he had to decline because his post-JFK radicality on Vietnam would have made him impossible to confirm).

Poor Andy carries the flame but he has received nothing. So he continues with a vision of JFK that is as realistic as Disneyworld…as fellow Chicagoan Joe Epstein phrases it yesterday in “The Wall Street Journal.” Here are the fallacious points that Andy makes about JFK.

1. Caution made him a great leader. That was caution all right on April 17, 1961 when he sent 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and armed by the CIA to invade Cuba at Cochinos Bay (Bay of Pigs). Invaders were told that U. S. forces would follow. They never came. Castro’s tanks and troops held them off at the sea making it impossible for them to make a beachhead on the shore. After three days of fighting, 1,100 survivors surrendered; we paid Cuba $53 million in food and medical supplies for their release. The JFK publicity machine blamed Eisenhower for it although it was executed by the Lost Prince of Camelot. The media were sold that this mistake sobered JFK and “made him grow in office. The Bay of Pigs emboldened the USSR to think JFK was a pushover…and so it built nuclear bases in Cuba capable of striking the eastern two-thirds of the U. S.

Thus the “Cuban Missile Crisis” was a direct result of the “Bay of Pigs.” The media was sold the idea that we were eyeball to eyeball with the Russians and they blinked. They removed the missiles in exchange for our pledge not to invade Cuba. Three months later we removed our missiles from Italy and Turkey secretly. This this nation believed…and still does…that JFK was the hero. Since we avoided a nuclear holocaust, he deserves credit—but that the Cuban missile crisis happened at all was due to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Our emergence without a war can be laid to Kennedy’s credit given that the threat in the first place came from Kennedy’s mistake at the Bay of Pigs. After goofing up foreign policy with the “Bay of Pigs,” JFK did become cautious: damn right. Cautious about everything—civil rights, the Berlin crisis of 1961 where the Soviets built the Berlin wall. He led by increments but for the Bay of Pigs.

2. Conservatives and Republicans condemned Kennedy for his “restraint.” Not so. I was in close touch with Rep. Walter H. Judd (R-Minn.), who, as ranking member of House Foreign Affairs, was the leading spokesman in Congress, having worked for him earlier. Republicans cooperated with Kennedy in verifying what was at one time a rumor” of the Cuban missiles. The first news of the missiles came not to the JFK White House but to Sen. Kenneth Keating (R-N.Y.) who, when he was in the House was a close ally of Judd. Keating and Judd made the news known to Kennedy and supported the White House efforts on the Cuban Missile crisis. As an assistant to the governor of Minnesota who was in close touch with Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who was preparing to run against Kennedy in 1964, the word was: don’t rock the boat while we are facing down the Soviets. Greeley’s charge that the GOP condemned JFK’s “restraint” is total Disneyland.

3. The establishment media never liked Kennedy, an Irish Catholic from Boston. Now that’s the height of ridiculousness, isn’t it? I guess this makes Andy feel good…the establishment was “after” Irish Catholic Kennedy and the Democrats in the same manner that Andy fancies they’re after him—an Irish Catholic Democrat. In his dreams. What a laugh! No modern president…FDR included… has had the benefit of such adulatory news coverage as Kennedy. Kennedy’s escapades with women were kept quiet by the “establishment media” as Ben Bradlee, later editor of The Washington Post, as he himself revealed in a book after Kennedy’s death. The idea that the establishment never liked Kennedy because he was a Catholic is Greeley’s fantasy. And the fact that the “establishment” is after Greeley who has become a multi-millionaire for his soft-core novels is another fantasy.

4. Kennedy would not have escalated the Vietnam War. No one knows but there is utterly no reason to believe that Kennedy…who escalated the troops in Vietnam from Eisenhower’s 750 to 16,000…was a closet dove.

5. “…[H]is behavior on those critical days in May, 1963 entitles him to the title of a great president.” Now what was that, exactly? It was the speech at the Wall: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin and therefore as a free man I take pride in the words `Ich bin ein Berliner.’” A memorable speech; brilliant, actually. But the speech while influential could certify that either president was “great.”

6. Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate was “grandstanding.” He means “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Neither Kennedy’s nor Reagan’s speeches were Gettysburg quality. But Reagan persisted against protest of nuclear freeze advocates (like Andy) and the heat he took by deploying Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe in December, 1983 despite critics like Andy. With the Soviet economy in a shambles, Gorbachev could not match Reagan’s push for Star Wars and other expenditures. In December, 1988 during a visit to the U. S. Gorbachev declared an unprecedented unilateral reduction in Soviet armed forces and vowed to withdraw significant numbers of tanks and troops from eastern Europe.

7. “It was this long tradition of restraint, of which the missile crisis was the high point, that eventually won the Cold War and not President Reagan’s grandstanding…” Oh, Andy, stuff a sock in it. The record of who won the Cold War is very clear and it wasn’t John F. Kennedy.

8. “Upon reflection, I realized that the country had fought a lot of wars, most of them against pushover enemies: Indians, Mexico, Spain, Panama, Grenada. But when the country stumbled into a war that it could not end quickly, the public lost interest and then rejected the war: Korea, Vietnam, Japan in 1945 before the bomb. Even the Revolution until the French came along.” Where do you begin? Wars against Indians were enduring and Americans stuck with it. The American people did not grow tired of the war with Japan before the bomb. The country was single-minded and if there was any controversy it was that we were concentrating on winning the war in Europe first rather than in Asia where we were attacked. The Korean War was undeclared by Truman and could even be called unwarranted in view of its history; it started off on an unpopular note but the people didn’t grow tired of it. On the contrary with the firing of MacArthur there was a great drive to win it stemming from Mac Arthur’s stem-winding speech to Congress. I will grant Vietnam became unpopular and Panama and Grenada were small voltage ones. So?

Finally…

10. Kennedy, whether he knew it or not, “was following the Catholic teaching on war—only when there is absolutely no other choice.” Well, that is unverifiable. The four conditions of “Jus Ad Bellum” which we learned in theology are 1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor…must be lasting, grave and certain. 2. All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. 3. There must be serious prospects of success. And 4—the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. Frankly, was our entry into World War II…with all the maneuvering FDR used prior to Pearl Harbor…concomitant to the four conditions? You’d have to stretch to justify 1 and 2 and 4 was highly specious.

By this dictum was Kennedy’s sending 16,000 men to Vietnam after Ike had sent 700 or so consistent? I think not nor do I worry particularly that it was not. The reigning philosophy articulated by the “domino theory” described by Eisenhower was that communist aggression anywhere was a threat to world peace. That isn’t covered by “Jus Ad Bellum” and Kennedy certainly didn’t hold back because it wasn’t. Other conditions don’t seem to apply.

Our problem is that with the war on terrorism, the “Jus Ad Bellum” does not apply and theologians should take into account the modern techniques of terrorism…the fact that those waging war on us are not combatants but terrorists as per 9/11. All of this would warrant a preemptive strike whenever or wherever it would seem prudent.

Aside from these things, hey, Andy did a good job.