Mark Steyn - Dutch Courage

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 6/07/04 | Mark Steyn

[kattracks]

All Saturday across the networks, media grandees who’d voted for Carter and Mondale, just like all their friends did, tried to explain the appeal of Ronald Reagan. He was “The Great Communicator”, he had a wonderful sense of humour, he had a charming smile…self-deprecating…the tilt of his head….

All true, but not what matters. Even politics attracts its share of optimistic, likeable men, and most of them leave no trace – like Britain’s “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, a perfect example of the defeatism of western leadership in the 1970s. It was the era of “détente,” a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this grubby evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, Francois Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives,” too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.

Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.

At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who’d plunge us into Armageddon. Everything you need to know about the establishment’s view of Ronald Reagan can be found on page 624 of Dutch, Edmund Morris’ weird post-modern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:

‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: APPLAUSE.

What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost’s poem on the subject, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lines, which he surely holds in memory…

Only now for the first time I see This wall is actually a wall, a thing Come up between us, shutting me away From you ... I do not know you any more.

Poor old Morris, the plodding, conventional, scholarly writer driven mad by 14 years spent trying to get a grip on Ronald Reagan. Most world leaders would have taken his advice: You’re at the Berlin Wall, so you have to say something about it, something profound but oblique, maybe there’s a poem on the subject ... Who cares if Frost’s is over-quoted, and a tad hard to follow for a crowd of foreigners? Who cares that it is, in fact, pro-wall - a poem in praise of walls?

Edmund Morris has described his subject as an “airhead” and concluded that it’s “like dropping a pebble in a well and hearing no splash.” Morris may not have heard the splash, but he’s still all wet: The elites were stupid about Reagan in a way that only clever people can be. Take that cheap crack: If you drop a pebble in a well and you don’t hear a splash, it may be because the well is dry but it’s just as likely it’s because the well is of surprising depth. I went out to my own well and dropped a pebble: I heard no splash, yet the well supplies exquisite translucent water to my home.

But then I suspect it’s a long while since Morris dropped an actual pebble in an actual well: As with walls, his taste runs instinctively to the metaphorical. Reagan looked at the Berlin Wall and saw not a poem-quoting opportunity but prison bars.

I once discussed Irving Berlin, composer of “God Bless America”, with his friend and fellow songwriter Jule Styne, and Jule put it best: “It’s easy to be clever. But the really clever thing is to be simple.” At the Berlin Wall that day, it would have been easy to be clever, as all those ’70s detente sophisticates would have been. And who would have remembered a word they said? Like Irving Berlin with “God Bless America”, only Reagan could have stood there and declared without embarrassment:

Tear down this wall!

- and two years later the wall was, indeed, torn down. Ronald Reagan was straightforward and true and said it for everybody - which is why his “rhetorical opportunity missed” is remembered by millions of grateful Eastern Europeans. The really clever thing is to have the confidence to say it in four monosyllables.

Reagan was an American archetype, and just the bare bones of his curriculum vitae capture the possibilities of his country: in the Twenties, a lifeguard at a local swimming hole who saved over 70 lives; in the Thirties, a radio sports announcer; in the Forties, a Warner Brothers leading man...and finally one of the two most significant presidents of the American century. Unusually for the commander in chief, Reagan’s was a full, varied American life, of which the presidency was the mere culmination.

“The Great Communicator” was effective because what he was communicating was self-evident to all but our dessicated elites: “We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.” And at the end of a grim, grey decade - Vietnam, Watergate, energy crises, Iranian hostages – Americans decided they wanted a President who looked like the nation, not like its failed government. Thanks to his clarity, around the world, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments. Most of the Warsaw Pact countries are now members of Nato, with free markets and freely elected parliaments.

One man who understood was Yakob Ravin, a Ukrainian émigré who in the summer of 1997 happened to be strolling with his grandson in Armand Hammer Park near Reagan’s California home. They happened to see the former President, out taking a walk. Mr Ravin went over and asked if he could take a picture of the boy and the President. When they got back home to Ohio, it appeared in the local newspaper, The Toledo Blade.

Ronald Reagan was three years into the decade-long twilight of his illness, and unable to recognize most of his colleagues from the Washington days. But Mr Ravin wanted to express his appreciation. “Mr President,” he said, “thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the Communist empire.”

And somewhere deep within there was a flicker of recognition. “Yes,” said the old man, “that is my job.”

Yes, that was his job.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Steyn is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.

[goldstategop]

The Gipper did his job. It doesn't get any better than that.

[I. M. Trenchant]

Steyn is mistaken in what he says about detente. Reagan practised detente to the hilt in his negotiations with the U.S.S.R. The first thing Reagan did when he became president was to assure the U.S.S.R. that it had nothing to fear from the U.S. Reagan's summits with Gorbachev were not unlike Nixon's 'kitchen debate' with Khruschev in the mid-1950s, the principal difference being that Khruschev had ascended the ranks by his having been the 'butcher of the Ukraine' whereas Gorbachev had no such baggage. In both cases, Reagan and Nixon made it plain that the economic might of the west, most especially of the U.S., would ultimately triumph in the Cold War. The notion that anyone ended the Cold War is a problematic one since here are many more communists in the world now than ever before -- in China. Even in 'democratic' Russia, recent polls indicate that Stalin is still seen in a positive light by 25% of the Russian population. Just as Nixon, as President, had to deal with Mao, the butcher, in order to get the 'ball rolling', and later, as an emissary of Bush I's administration, with Deng, a relative moderate compared to Mao, at the time of the Tiananmen Square, we are now in an era in which there is detente between the western democracies and China, with the expectation that a 'Chinese Gorbachev' will eventually emerge.

[samtheman]

This section has to be properly formatted to be appreciated:

At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who’d plunge us into Armageddon. Everything you need to know about the establishment’s view of Ronald Reagan can be found on page 624 of Dutch, Edmund Morris’ weird post-modern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:

‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: APPLAUSE.

What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost’s poem on the subject, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lines, which he surely holds in memory…

Only now for the first time I see This wall is actually a wall, a thing Come up between us, shutting me away From you ... I do not know you any more.

[samtheman]

Ooops. Here:

At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who’d plunge us into Armageddon. Everything you need to know about the establishment’s view of Ronald Reagan can be found on page 624 of Dutch, Edmund Morris’ weird post-modern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:

‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: APPLAUSE.

What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost’s poem on the subject, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lines, which he surely holds in memory…

Only now for the first time I see
This wall is actually a wall, a thing
Come up between us, shutting me away
From you ... I do not know you any more.

[samtheman]

And now that it's properly formatted (so it's easier to see which are Steyn's words, which are the words of the Morris moron, and which are the words of the quoted poem), I propose a thought experiment:

Imagine we are in a poetry appreciation class in a university. And the assignment is: choose a poetic passage that comes closest to capturing the meaning of the Berlin wall.

The Morris Moron would have deserved (though probably not received) a big fat F. His first poetic choice (as Steyn points out) was actually from a poem praising walls. And his second choice, was a passage saying that the worst thing about the wall is that we can not "know you any more".

Wrong. In the case of the Berlin wall we knew EXACTLY what it was there for and what was going on on the other side.

So first he quotes a pro-wall poem (which the average university professor would probably approve of) and then he quotes a poem that labels the problem one of understanding.

The Morris Moron couldn't even choose the right poem. In two attempts.

If you happen to be reading this, oh Morris the Moron, would you care to proffer a third try?

[samtheman]

We need a new word:

morris (v): to completely miss the meaning of a story while covering it in print or media.

Example: The major networks consistently morris the war in Iraq.

[KeyWest]

All of Eastern Europe would disagree with you.

Reagan did bring down the Soviet Empire, and it was not détente that was practiced before him, it was appeasement and fear. Many on the left in this country thought the Soviets had a system of government that was admirable and ours contemptible. Just look at the current Cuban apologists and the anti-war movement.


Reagan turned that all around. He supported a massive military buildup, Solidarity, the afghan war, contra rebels, missiles in Europe, Granada, etc., all opposed by many in the dem controlled congress. That is not détente. That is war by other means.

[redgolum]

Once again, Steyn gets it!

[maica]

I like it: to morris


There were actually some comments this weekend about Reagan being a difficult person to know since Edmund Morris had spent 30 years trying to 'know' him, and couldn't quite do it

What logic!

[Huck]

Morris is so wrong it's scary. Missed opportunity? How about classic line never to be forgotten?

[I. M. Trenchant]

The modus operandi for dealing with the Soviets was, and still is, in the case of China, detente. We have no disagreement about the fact that Reagan (and Nixon) are the two U.S. presidents most revered as the architects of the Soviet withdrawal from eastern Europe -- not only in eastern Europe (my wife fled Estonia during the Soviet takeover following WWII) but also in western Europe. Nixon and Reagan agreed, fully, on the agency to be used to contain and ultimately defeat the Soviets in eastern Europe: first, the Nixon-Brezhnev summits and later, the Reagan-Gorbachev summits.

Nixon's best-selling book, The Real War, which was published just before the first Reagan presidency, dealt, in part, with what the U.S. response should be in the event the Soviets 'cheated' on the agreements reached during detente (in the Nixon-Brezhnev summits), and Reagan implimented the U.S. response (the stick: increased military spending), BUT in the course of his summits with Gorbachev he also stressed, at Reykjavic, the carrot (disarmament) -- so distressing to many U.S. (and European) conservatives. The fact that this strategy worked so well with the Soviets is the reason it is now being pursued with China.

The impeccable credentials of Nixon and Reagan as hardline anti-Communist Cold Warriors were what made the pursuit of detente with China and the Soviets possible. It is seldom mentioned that, prior to Nixon's first presidency, there were no meaningful negotiations between the U.S. and the major Communist powers. Dulles and Ike made tentative moves in that direction, but never succeeded, and, in spite of their best efforts, JFK and LBJ failed miserably because they were unable to project U.S. power as Nixon and Reagan could: JFK's one meeting with Khruschev in Vienna led to wrenching crises in Berlin and Cuba, and LBJ's meeting with Kosygin in Glassboro was a dud.

In brief, because even their political opposites in the U.S. trusted Nixon and Reagan would not sell out U.S. interests, they had no misgivings about allowing them to engage in high-level negotiations with the Soviets and China. And because the Communists knew they were dealing with anti-Communist hardliners, they knew it is was in their own best interests, in Churchill's famous phrase, "to jaw, jaw, jaw rather than war, war, war." To wit, summitry, the agency of detente, was a viable modus operandi under Nixon and Reagan. Ironically, the fruits of the labours of the two most important U.S. architects (there were European contributors of course: Willie Brandt, Helmut Schmidt) were gone before success in eastern Europe was realized under Bush I.

[KeyWest]

Agree. Nice summary. It is all in the word, détente, and its implementation, not definition.