Author: Richard Cohen

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Richard Cohen’s Last Column

Richard Cohen

I’ve been lucky.

In February 1968, I came down to Washington from the Columbia University Gaduate School of Journalism to do some research, stopped up at The Washington Post, and walked out with a job. A week later, for reasons I never understood, I got a raise. After graduating in June, I started work, and now, 51 years later, I am about to stop. This is my final column. I think I’ve earned that raise.

In 1976, eight years after I started, I was offered a local column. Ben Bradlee, the executive editor, made the offer at a lunch I had requested so I could tell him I was quitting. A rival news organization had offered to make me its White House correspondent. But before I could resign, Bradlee upset my plans. I never got around to quitting and never told Bradlee I had intended to.

I was lucky.

Bradlee asked me to show him five sample columns. Instead, knowing I need the juice of a deadline, I wrote one the next day and gave it to the city editor. “I’m the new local columnist,” I brazenly told him. “Check with Bradlee.” He never did.

The next day, my column was in the paper.

I was lucky.

Back then, I wrote three columns a week — an exhausting but exhilarating schedule. Little by little, I broadened my scope until, in Bradlee’s telling, he picked up the paper one day and discovered that I was in Beirut. By fiat, he moved me from the Metro page to the A Section and, later, at the insistence of the publisher, to the op-ed page. I wrote what I wanted from where I wanted, and not once did the publishers ever tell me what to write or what not to write. On occasion, though, Katharine Graham offered some constructive criticism. Once, at a formal lunch for the new Russian ambassador, she strode purposely across the dining room to tell me that my column that morning “was a real piece of s—-.”

“Don’t hold back, Katharine,” I responded. “Tell me what you really think.”

She laughed.

There were no better bosses than the Grahams — and, more recently, Jeff Bezos. I roamed the world on their dime. Flying into Cairo for the first time, I looked out the window. A sandstorm obscured the pyramids, but I envisioned them anyway and could not get over the fact that I was being paid to see them. What fools the Grahams were. I would have done it for nothing.

Back in 2017, I helped produce a documentary for HBO on the life of Ben Bradlee. HBO called it The Newspaperman, and I thought, how wonderful, how apt. That was Bradlee and, with the same permission he gave me to write a column, I take that appellation for myself as well. It is, I think, the highest of callings, and I never wanted to be anything else. You go to work and someone pins an imaginary badge on you and deputizes you to go forth and discover life, ask questions, turn over rocks, and, in the case of a column, think so hard it’s physically draining.

I had grown up reading the once-liberal New York Post. It was a brave, scrappy paper with great, iconoclastic writers, particularly its columnists. I gorged on Murray Kempton, Jimmy Cannon, and Pete Hamill. I read them all, envied them all, and wanted to be like them. Later, I became a copyboy for the New York Herald Tribune and noticed that reporters were required to read the paper. They got paid for it. Amazing. Professional ballplayers must feel the same way. Imagine getting paid to play a game!

That first day at the Post, I was assigned a desk next to Carl Bernstein. We became fast friends and so, like a barnacle on a ship, I attached myself to him and Bob Woodward, going through Watergate with them. Earlier, I watched in awe and pride as the Post risked all sorts of legal and financial penalties to publish the Pentagon Papers after The New York Times had been enjoined from doing so. This was one great newspaper that I had just walked into. Again, what luck!

Now, it is over. I have written books and screenplays and will continue to do so. My girlfriend and I are going to Paris for a month, and we’re getting a dog. I will have time to walk it now. I will miss newspapering, but I know I had the best it ever had to offer.

I was very lucky indeed.

This is Richard Cohen’s last column for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Netanyahu: Trump’s Doppelganger?

If you are a Democrat — or anyone — opposed to Donald Trump, you can look back at the 2018 midterms for optimism. Democrats flipped 43 congressional seats, some in districts that had voted for Trump, and exit polls suggested that suburban women and those with more than a high school education had had quite enough of the bumptious bigot in the White House.

Richard Cohen

If you are pro-Trump, you could look at an entirely different race for hope: the re-election last month of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. He was Trump before Trump. The similarities are striking. Both men cater to the religious right — and do so with a hypocrisy that would fell lesser men. Trump, once vigorously pro-choice, is now vigorously anti-choice. The position is so new to him that, during the 2016 campaign, he said that women who undergo abortions should be punished. Trump, who occasionally lacks nuance, quickly backtracked.

Netanyahu, too, traffics with the extreme religious right in a Trumpian manner. He is a confessed adulterer, twice divorced and thrice married, who has made a deal with the ultra-orthodox: Support me, and I’ll support you. This is Politics 101, except that, in Netanyahu’s case, it means alienating not only Israeli liberals, but the bulk of American Jewry as well. Still, American Jews don’t vote in Israel.

But for anti-Trump Americans, the most ominous similarities are the circumstances that gave Netanyahu his fifth term: security and a flourishing economy. Israel’s unemployment rate is low, around 4 percent, a bit worse than America’s (3.6 percent), but nothing compared with, say, France’s (8.8 percent). Israel’s economy is booming, and its high-tech sector is Silicon Valleyish in dynamism.

As for security, the blunt fact is that, under Netanyahu, Israel has been relatively safe. Of course, he is not solely responsible, but as American presidents do when the economy booms, he takes the credit. The occasional terrorist incident is swiftly dealt with — often with entirely appropriate disproportionate retaliation — and no one suggests that Netanyahu will not always be as tough as necessary. He has been wounded in combat, and his bravery is without question. It’s there that the similarity with Trump ends.

But Trump, too, has a booming economy. Unemployment is low, inflation is low (maybe too low), and things are going swimmingly in some of the very areas he marginally carried in 2016 — no erosion there, it appears. James Carville’s admonition — “It’s the economy, stupid” — is no less relevant today than it was in 1992.

Of course, security is not the concern for Americans that it is for Israelis. No rockets rain down on Los Angeles, as they recently did in Israel from Gaza. But Trump has done his level best to compensate. He has raised the immigration issue into one of national security. In Trump’s mentality, the country is under siege. Criminals and maniacs are breaching the borders, taking jobs from Americans, women from their men, and, on Fox News, the very brains of on-air performers. He stands, like the Colossus of Rhodes or a scowling crossing guard, turning back the hordes of the undeserving invaders.

Trump has struck a similar — and much more rational — pose when it comes to China. The details of the tariff fight are certainly important and might eventually produce economic woe, but in the meantime, Trump comes across as strong — the first American president in a long time to stand up to the Chinese. If there is another country that seems more villainous than China to the American imagination, it could only be places like Syria or Venezuela.

To Americans, China is a dystopic place of eerie and omnipresent surveillance. It steals our intellectual property and cheats on trade agreements. There could be no better adversary.

With their growing economy and a determination to take their rightful place in the world, they have the look of winners and seem determined to replace America as the globe’s preeminent power. Maybe recklessly, Trump is standing up to them. It may not be sound trade policy, but it’s sound presidential politics.

There’s bad news for Trump, though. The GOP’s extreme position on abortion is not likely to woo back those well-educated suburban women who went missing in the last election. And Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior is robbing many Americans of a good night’s sleep. But for the moment, the two fundamentals of presidential politics — the economy and national security — remain promising for him. They worked for Netanyahu, and they just might for Trump.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Who Are These People?

I am a stranger in my own land. I read the newspapers in puzzlement. Who are these people mentioned as Democratic presidential candidates? Oh, sure, I know Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker and Kamala D. Harris and some of the others, but the other day I came across the names of John Delaney, Seth Moulton, and Tim Ryan — I already forgot another who was named — and stopped: Who? Running for president, the story said. The story did not say why.

Delaney ought to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year. He is the very personification of the new kind of presidential candidate. He’s been a successful businessman — health care and such — and was a member of Congress from Maryland. But rather than take the traditional next step — seek the governorship or move up to the Senate — he decided to head straight for the White House instead. He’s officially been a candidate since July 2017 — not that anyone has much noticed.

This is something new under the political sun, and it is not, in my estimation, a good thing. Take Delaney. Soon, he will have spent the better part of two years preparing for a life on the road as a salesman, but not necessarily for the Oval Office. The same holds for many of the other 21 Democratic declared candidates.

Something is wrong. Something is broken. The primary system, designed as a reform, has been reformed to the point of absurdity. In the Republican Party, it managed to produce a nominee who turned out to be Fred Trump’s idiot son, Donald. He only occasionally won a majority of the votes in the 2016 primaries. In a field of 12 candidates, his pluralities won him the nomination.

It is always instructive to read Theodore H. White’s classic, The Making of the President 1960. It is the tale of how John F. Kennedy secured the Democratic nomination and won the presidency. Supporting roles were played by certain big-city political bosses, particularly Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago and boss of the mighty Cook County Democratic machine. By the time of his death in 1976, he had been Chicago’s mayor for 21 years, a record broken only by his son.

Daley was a masterful politician, while not always an admirable man. His bigotry was ecumenical — blacks, Jews, etc. — and he was lip-read at the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention hurling f-bombs at Senator Abraham Ribicoff on the podium, calling him “you Jew son of a b——.” Yet, Daley served a purpose: He policed the Democratic Party.

Mayor Richard J. Daley

It is hard — actually, hilarious — to imagine some of today’s Democratic candidates coming to pay the required homage to Daley, and the mayor asking what, precisely, they had done to qualify for the most important job in the world. I can’t imagine what Beto O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg would say. They are both endowed with great appeal, sharp minds, a winning exuberance, and the promise of a political spring. But their political experience is thin and untested. Nice to meet ya, Daley would say in lieu of an endorsement. Okay, okay, the bosses were sometimes vile and sometimes corrupt. But they looked for winners, not ideological soul mates — and winning, as Vince Lombardi reminded us, “isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” This election, the only thing is defeating President Trump.

But the Democratic Party has opted for increased chaos. The supposedly contemptible superdelegates, unelected party functionaries, have been taken down more than a peg. They now cannot have the deciding vote on the first ballot, which means that, at the very least, they can sleep late.

For too many candidates, running for the nomination is a no-cost exercise in brand enhancement. They can stay in the House or the Senate or in serene unemployment and see if lightning strikes. I’m told that the supremely competent Senator Michael F. Bennet of Colorado has said that by running, he has nothing to lose. And he’s right. If he wins, he moves into the White House. If he loses, he stays in the Senate. Either way, his summers will be muggy.

I read political news, as I do the New York Post‘s unavoidable Page Six gossip feature. In the tabloid, many boldface names are only dimly familiar, sometimes because they are merely the children of the once-famous who, on their own, are mentioned only for entering and exiting rehab. It’s ridiculous that almost anyone can be a celebrity . . . or run for president. There ought to be a difference.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

No Job For Old Men: Sanders and Biden Shouldn’t Run

CREDIT: JB

The joke among people my age is that every dinner party starts with an organ recital: Who’s lost a gall bladder, got a new kidney, or maybe just replaced a knee? What’s the pain of the day, and who sleeps through the night? Charles de Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck, so the question for the United States is whether it should consider the age of likely presidential candidates who, statistics and experience tell us, stand a pretty good chance of foundering on the rocks of old age.

JB

Bernie Sanders talking to Minnesota, Michigan, and Tennessee delegations on convention’s final day

I’m talking Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Sanders and Biden are about the same age. Sanders is 77, and Biden 76, and because the next president will be inaugurated in 2021, I can say without fear of persnickety fact-checkers that both men will be almost two years older by then. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the next president of the United States will be well into his 80s before his first term is up. That’s a shocking figure.

Both men are now at about the age when the indomitable Winston Churchill started to hit the wall. He was a mere 77 when King George VI thought of approaching him to suggest he step down. Churchill did not — until a stroke forced him to. The argument here, of course, is that neither Biden nor Sanders lives a Churchillian life — no cigars, no whiskey for breakfast. On the other hand, they are not nearly as articulate.

Government statistics tell us that a man Biden’s age will live an average of 11 more years. He won’t, however, outlive Sanders, who is scheduled to kick five months later. These, though, are statistical averages, and neither Sanders nor Biden is anything of the sort. They are both white, middle-class by birth, and not likely to overdose on drugs, drive drunk, or get into a bar fight with someone wearing a MAGA hat, the dunce cap of our times. I am not sure if Sanders works out, but Biden sure does. I have been to the gym with him.

Vice President Joe Biden

But while looking good may be the best revenge, it isn’t the whole story. The brain ages. It slows down. It forgets. I know men in their 90s — Henry Kissinger comes to mind — who seem as sharp as they’ve ever been, but they are not the rule. It is not necessary to have great mental energy to get elected — President Trump is an intellectual sloth — but it helps. Old age can turn the delight in doing certain tasks into a plodding burden.

The old seek their own comfort zones. I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden thought Snapchat was a breakfast cereal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders thought Drake was the English pirate who defeated the Spanish Armada. (How’s that for being an influencer?) It’s fine not to know about these things, but it suggests an unfamiliarity with a world that is ever-changing. The zeitgeist is forever on the move. When you’re over 70, it may well have passed you by.

Of course, a president need not be intimately familiar with youth culture. But he ought to feel at home in the world and feel that the culture is his, that he need not have to pause to translate a thought into politically acceptable language. I don’t know if either Biden or Sanders feels that way, but if they don’t occasionally hanker for a Beatles tune, they already lack all memory.

Most presidents were in their 50s when elected — mere youths by today’s standards. Most lived many years after leaving office. (Jimmy Carter, at 94, has been out of office for 38 years, a record.) John F. Kennedy was the youngest ever elected at 43, and Trump the oldest to be elected to a first term at 70. The rule here is that there is no rule.

Still, “September Song” has to precede “Hail to the Chief.” It is the lament of an old man for a young woman. It is about the passage of time, about how “the days dwindle down to a precious few.” It is about lost opportunities, about summer turning to autumn, and “one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.”

Biden and Sanders have waited too long. A pledge to serve only a single term would not reverse the clock. It would only hobble the president, making him a lame duck before his time. Of course, the ultimate decision is their own, but they have to know they will probably decline. If they don’t think so, they have gotten old without getting wise.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Call Out the Pences

I have a question for those Republicans who, along with Democrats, demand the resignation of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam for the abhorrent photo that appeared on his page in his medical school yearbook: If bigotry is repugnant, why not demand the resignation of Vice President Pence for his ugly views on homosexuality? And while they’re at it, why not insist that Pence’s wife Karen resign her position at a school that discriminates against gays and lesbians?

I can guess their answer: The Pences are deeply religious, and their views on homosexuality are based on their religious convictions. To this, I say, so what? The Bible was used to justify slavery, and in my own time, racists cited this or that biblical passage to assert that racial segregation was precisely what God intended — the “curse of Ham” or the “mark of Cain,” both used to add biblical authority to the rantings of bigots. The mark or the curse is now on the Pences, who share views that in our nation’s history have caused much suffering, including violence.

The other thing Republicans would be sure to say is that racism is different than “mere” anti-gay bias. Yes, indeed. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. Virginia is the state that once led the nation in number of slaves. The inhumanity of slavery is difficult to fathom. It’s more difficult still to comprehend that great men — Washington, Jefferson, Madison … you know the names — not only condoned it, but benefited from it.

Later came slavery’s progeny — the Jim Crow era. I am talking of everything from the absurdity of segregated state parks to the barbarity of lynchings. In Atlanta in 1899, a black man was mutilated and then burned, with portions of his body distributed among the crowd. The man’s name was Sam Hose. He was probably innocent of murder but not, of course, of being black.

The destructive power of blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes in that yearbook picture cannot be underestimated. But let’s ponder, too, the harm of hateful homophobia. It has taken countless lives over the years, caused huge suffering and, like racism, persists to this day.

Homophobia is a staple of the racist right — Nazis, white nationalists, and other adherents of mindless goonery — and, at times, results in the murder of gay and transgender people. In 2017, 20 gay, bisexual, or queer men were murdered in hate crimes, an increase of 400 percent from the previous year. The problem is hardly going away. And, infamously, in 1998, Matthew Shepard, was beaten, tortured, and left to die because he was gay. Last year, his ashes were interred at Washington National Cathedral in a ceremony presided over by a gay Episcopal bishop, with music provided by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.

And when racial hatred and homophobia are combined, the results can be particularly disturbing. Last week, singer and actor Jussie Smollett was attacked in Chicago by two men who allegedly yelled anti-gay and anti-black epithets.

Pence has long been criticized as being hostile toward LGBTQ issues. He has linked same-sex couples to a “societal collapse” and even once seemed to support conversion therapy, which is a form of torture. A vice president who has expressed such intolerance is a dangerous model.

In certain corners of the right-wing media, criticism of Karen Pence for recently taking a job at the Immanuel Christian School in Springfield was denounced as nothing less than religious bigotry. After all, the argument went, the school is a Christian school, ultraconservative and ultratraditional, and is entitled to teach according to its deeply held beliefs. No doubt. But while the United States has traditionally given religion wide berth — and still does — lines have been drawn. Utah was not admitted as a state until the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy.

No one is advocating a law requiring Immanuel Christian to practice tolerance, either in its pedagogy or its hiring practices. But the First Amendment that guarantees the school’s rights also gives us the right to criticize. It is simply wrong to foster a belief that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are immoral.

I have been torn about Northam — about whether a single yearbook photo negates a lifetime of tolerance. But I am not torn about Mike and Karen Pence. They are figures of consequence, and their bigotry — regardless of their religious justification — has to be confronted.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

We Are Not Great Again

CREDIT: Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

Okay, America, are we great again yet? Are we respected throughout the world? Are the Chinese quaking in their boots as we hike tariffs? Has Saudi Arabia come clean about murdering a Washington Post columnist after covering up the atrocity so clumsily that you could almost see blood dripping from the hands of the crown prince?

If America is great again, how come we grovel before a nation that needs us more than we need it? Tweet me an answer, Mr. President. But keep it short.

Has America reversed global warming by simply denying it? Are factory jobs up? How about iron and steel? The same. And coal mining — “beautiful, clean coal” in the hallucinatory words of the president? Not what it once was.

Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

President Trump

Is NATO stronger? Does America enjoy moral leadership? Would our allies rush to our aid, as they did after September 11, 2001? President George W. Bush’s grand “coalition of the willing” might be impossible to reassemble. President Trump has managed to unite Western Europe in one respect. All its leaders loathe him.

The president, like Gulliver, is being tied down by numerous investigations. The explanation is apparent even to Republicans. Trump is an immoral man, a chiseler and a liar and a deadbeat and a damned fool. His eccentric collection of aides are tiptoeing off the stage one by one, some to jail, some to ignominy, none to glory. And then, when they are gone, comes verbal abuse, sometimes in retaliation for a tardy admission of truth. Rex Tillerson said Trump does not read up to grade. For that, he got spitballed. “Dumb as a rock,” the president opined.

The mess is getting messier. Trump lies himself into one corner after another. Is there anyone in all of America who does not believe that Trump paid off two women for their silence? Whether these alleged payments were campaign finance violations or not is almost beside the point. We know the story. Trump is dirty and uses cash as a disinfectant. He thinks it can make any manner of sin go away. Maybe not this time, Mr. President. As with your former Atlantic City casino, you overpaid.

But blaming Donald Trump for behaving like Donald Trump is like blaming a scorpion for acting like a scorpion. The lie is his sting. He cannot help himself. He thinks only of himself because narcissism, like a sixth toe, is a condition of birth. There is no changing it. In the Trump White House, the president’s intense love of himself is about the only consistent policy.

But what about you, Chris Christie? I am talking of course of the former New Jersey governor who jumped from presidential candidate to Trump acolyte. Are you proud of what you did? Didn’t you see any of this coming? Didn’t you talk to any bankers or real estate people from just across the Hudson River? They wouldn’t do business with Trump. They don’t trust him. You knew all this but wanted a cabinet position anyway. What is the word for what you’ve done? It’s something like moral treason.

And you, Mike Pence. You won’t eat alone with any woman other than your wife, but you’d sup at Trump’s table, the womanizer, instead of the woman. Were you the only adult in Washington who had not heard the stories about him? What were you willing to do to advance your career? Is there a principle you hold dear?

I get it. Christie, Pence, and other Republican politicians — as well as financial figures such as Carl Icahn — had other considerations. Some wanted a conservative, anti-abortion judiciary; still others wanted lower taxes and fewer regulations. Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire head of the Blackstone Group, even said in 2016 that he preferred Trump because America needed a “cohesive, healing presidency.”

Trump, these savants thought, would grant all their wishes, and so they tossed the dice on a maniac, comforting us (or themselves) with the hope that once in office Trump’s inner Madison would emerge. Don’t worry, they said, he ran a business and, anyway, the solemnity of the Oval Office would sober him up. Didn’t Augustine of Hippo go from a libertine to a saint of the Catholic Church?

John F. Kelly’s leaving. Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster are gone. Michael Flynn sings, and Paul Manafort lies. The stock market is tanking for the usual reasons, but this one as well: Investors know that no one’s home at the White House. Trump’s a human pinball, ricocheting off events and emitting tweets like a rundown smoke alarm. We’re not great again. We’re drifting toward disaster.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Trump and the Jews

While visiting Poland in 1976, I heard about a book. It was called Anti-Semitism Without Jews: Communist Eastern Europe, and it was mentioned to me because the Jews of Poland, once numerous, had almost entirely been murdered — yet the hatred of them persisted. The title of that book popped into my head in the aftermath of the slaughter of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh by an anti-Semite. President Trump, not to mention Republicans in general, denied any connection between the shooting and the president’s rhetoric. They are either historically ignorant or moral cowards.

First, their ignorance. They do not appreciate that, in both style and rhetoric, Trump’s anti-Semitism, like that of Eastern Europe’s, is “without Jews.” He himself lacks the prejudice. He was born and raised in the resplendently Jewish city of New York. His daughter converted to the religion, and his grandchildren are being raised as Jews. His associates — once Roy Cohn and later Michael Cohen — have been Jews, and he is supported by major Jewish donors such as Sheldon Adelson, whose wife, Miriam, lost family in the Holocaust. Trump is not a Jew hater.

But he has adopted or embraced the mind-set of an anti-Semite. He does not rebut the stereotype of the villainous rich Jew, that latter-day Rothschild, George Soros, who is seen as the deus ex machina funding the caravan of the desperate wending its way north from Honduras. In Soros’ native Hungary, where he escaped Adolf Eichmann’s roundup — more than 437,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz — Soros is literally the poster boy of all the standard anti-Semitic tropes, especially that of the amoral Jewish cosmopolite.

In the United States, the cliche of rootless amoral Jews has been replaced by a media with the same odious characteristics. Jews have long been associated with journalism — in 19th-century Vienna, the word “journalist” was analogous with Jew — and in 1941, Charles Lindbergh, a steadfast isolationist, made matters clear in a speech in Des Moines, Iowa. What he called “war agitators” consisted of three groups: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.” These “agitators,” he added, are “only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.”

Only crackpots talk that way today. But the fundamentals remain. In Trump talk, the media remains the enemy of the American people. It lies. It lies because it is evil. It lies because it is un-American. Trump relies on the predicate for this belief, which was established years ago when the three television networks and some major newspapers were controlled by Jews — and if Trump does not know this, anti-Semites sure do. Jews no longer control, but stereotypical “Jewishness” endures.

In the belief system of Trump and his followers, the media account for so much that is wrong with America. It is false for the sake of being false, and it is false in sneaky, underhanded ways. This is nothing new, of course. President Richard M. Nixon went after the press in a similar way, and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, made it one of his themes. But no administration has made media-bashing a matter of policy — not merely a way of rebutting criticism but a way of governing, of disestablishing truth and facts.

This is a kind of fascism or, the economic program aside, communism. The ruling party doesn’t have opponents or critics, it has enemies — “enemies of the people,” in this case journalism. The rhetoric strips the opposition of any standing, any legitimacy. It is not a party in temporary opposition. It is a party in permanent sedition.

Trump had been frank about his intention. Lesley Stahl of CBS News told an audience in May that Trump told her he wants to “discredit” and “demean” the media “so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.” But it’s far less clear that he realizes what encouragement he offers to conspiracy believers, of which anti-Semitism is the most adaptable and durable.

I don’t necessarily see the homicidal act in Pittsburgh as proof of a resurgence of American anti-Semitism. A far more certain danger is the validation Trump has offered those who believe in all sorts of conspiracy theories. In spirit and in essence, this is anti-Semitism that so far lacks only Jews. History, though, warns that the vacuum will be filled. It’s up to Trump and his morally dormant Republican Party to ensure that Pittsburgh remains a spasm of the awful past — and not a harbinger of an even worse future.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Unmatched Courage of Dr. Martin Luther King

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Not long after he had been freed from prison, the former deputy sheriff met me at the motel where I was staying. His name was Cecil Ray Price, and he had been convicted of sending three civil rights workers to their deaths. Their names — never to be forgotten — were Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney. This was Philadelphia, Mississippi, 11 years after the 1964 murders, and I recall it now because of what Price said about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Price had come face to face with greatness.

Michael Donahue

Carolyn Hill at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50th anniversary

“That Dr. King,” he said. “He had something. There was something about that man.” Price sat heavy on the bed. He had found a job working on a fuel-delivery truck, and he was grateful for that. He was appalled at what he had done and glad things had changed even though it was tough for his son, who was being hassled by some black kids in school. But the school was no longer segregated, and that was good, and the town was no longer so damp with hate, and that was good, too.

Looking back now, he could not believe how hard they had hated and how bitterly they had fought for a system that swiftly collapsed and nobody missed. Good riddance, Jim Crow. And then he mentioned King. He had met King when King had come to town to protest the murders and put up bail for an associate. King stood on the steps of the county courthouse and said, “The murderers of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner are no doubt within range of my voice.”

From behind him, King heard Price mutter, “You’re damn right, we’re right here behind you.”

Price had not pulled the trigger on the three, but he had arrested them, jailed them, and then handed them over to the Ku Klux Klan to be shot. He got six years for violating their civil rights.

I met King only once, but indulge me if I think I grasped the greatness Price saw: It was immense courage. Price had not read King’s speeches or fathomed the profoundness of nonviolence, but he was a man and he stood, like most men do, in awe of men who have conquered fear. That does not mean that King was never afraid. The vehemence of the hate he encountered in 1966 in Chicago deeply shook him. The crowds were big-city big, thick with Carl Sandburg’s onetime hog butchers, young men who mistook their white skin for achievement. King was shaken, “unprepared for the villainy he saw in the world,” as his friend Harry Belafonte says in the current HBO documentary King in the Wilderness.

King died in that wilderness. King’s last years were painful, lonely with worry for his life and for his reputation. As I watched this remarkable documentary, I scrutinized King’s face for even a hint of fear. I saw nothing. King thought J. Edgar Hoover was attempting to drive him to suicide by leaking details of his sex life. He knew he was on the target end of countless scopes mounted on countless rifles. He was a dead man walking, but he walked anyway, each day donning a bull’s eye. On the last night of his life, he rose from a sickbed to extemporaneously make a stirring speech that foreshadowed his death. “And I’ve seen the Promised Land,” he said. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

He was killed the next day.

Winston Churchill called courage “the quality which guarantees all others.” In King’s case, it guaranteed his adherence to nonviolence. It was a difficult, often enraging choice, but it presented white America with a moral challenge. Come be as good as I am, King seemed to be saying.

Morality begat morality. King was never going to be the equal of his opponents. He was always their better. Cecil Ray Price brought up Martin Luther King on his own. I did not ask about him. It seemed he wanted to tell someone that he had encountered a great man. Price had blood on his hands and hate in his heart when he met King, but he knew instantly that he had met his better. He saw then what we all see now. It has been 50 years, but the vision grows sharper, and King grows greater.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Trump: The Art of the Feel

On April 29, 1962, John F. Kennedy gave a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners. The president famously observed that his guests were “the most extraordinary collection of talent … that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Richard Cohen

Many years later, in 2007 to be exact, Donald Trump hosted an event in Los Angeles to launch his brand of vodka. At his table were his eldest son and his daughter-in-law — as well as Trump’s alleged mistress du jour and Kim Kardashian. Thomas Jefferson, likely, was not mentioned.

Of course, JFK had his own troubled relationship with virtue — he was, we now know, no slouch in the mistress department. But when it comes to a guest list, nothing in the annals of presidential biography quite compares to that L.A. event. It turns out, though, that the Kardashian phenomenon — she became famous that very year because of a leaked sex tape — has lasted longer than Trump Vodka. In retrospect, it’s a wonder she’s not president.

The account of the 2007 vodka event comes from The New Yorker, wherein the indefatigable Ronan Farrow tells the tale of Karen McDougal, Playboy‘s 1998 Playmate of the Year. McDougal claims she had an affair with the future president and, like another alleged Trump mistress, porn actress Stormy Daniels (who was also at the vodka party), got a payoff to guarantee her silence. McDougal says hers was arranged through American Media Inc. — the publisher of the National Enquirer — whose chief executive is Trump friend David Pecker.

Farrow is a careful journalist who last year helped expose Harvey Weinstein as an alleged sex thug. Along with The New York Times, Farrow transformed Weinstein from movie titan to rehab patient and set off a cascade of charges that threatens to take down more men than the 1918 flu pandemic.

Farrow’s latest article is solidly reported but hardly advances our deep understanding of Trump. The Wall Street Journal had earlier published the bones of this story. Still, the most attentive and apprehensive of Farrow’s readers have got to be that clutch of evangelical Christian leaders who endorsed Trump’s presidential bid and have stuck with him ever since. Their hypocrisy is being sorely tested. After all, McDougal appears believable. She handwrote a contemporaneous account of her alleged affair, which was examined by The New Yorker and found, as the lawyers say, dispositive. One can easily challenge her sanity — she actually liked Trump — but not her honesty. It’s impossible to read McDougal’s story and conclude that she was a one-off — or, if Daniels is included, a two-off.

According to Farrow, the admirably loyal Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard and, for a brief and shining moment, a White House aide, facilitated Trump’s assignations with multiple women. Are there others? I shudder at the thought. And so, I bet, do certain evangelical leaders who, having jumped into bed with Trump, must wonder who else is in it.

In a recent interview with Politico, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council and a frequent White House visitor, acknowledged the fuss around Daniels but gave Trump a “mulligan.” The past is past. In the present, Trump prays with Perkins and, most important, has proclaimed himself unequivocally antiabortion — and so, when his presidency is finished, will be the federal judiciary. This is the great trade-off: the lives of the unborn (in pro-life speak) for everything else — Daniels and McDougal and the bevy of women who alleged that Trump assaulted them and the Access Hollywood tape and the incessant lying and vulgarities. For all the grotesqueries past and present, a mulligan.

But evangelical support for Trump has softened. Eighty percent of white evangelicals went with Trump in the general election, but by the end of last year their support was down to around 60 percent. Additional scandals may erode it further, but regardless, the once morally certain pro-Trump evangelical leaders stand exposed of a shocking cosmopolitan relativism. The best they can do is double down by, say, likening Trump to JFK.

What’s the difference? Glad you asked. Kennedy’s astonishing antics were neither known at the time nor acknowledged by religious leaders or other politicians. He got no mulligans. Trump, however, audaciously confronts. Just as he allegedly paid off women for their silence, he has effectively paid off the conservative religious movement and, for that matter, much of the Republican Party. A lifetime in real estate has taught him an invaluable lesson: Everyone has a price.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The GOP Goes Off the Rails

From time to time, the Republican Party goes off the rails. It did so back in the McCarthy period in the 1950s, when it either failed to stand up to the demagogic Wisconsin senator and/or cheered him on in the name of anti-communism. It did so just recently when it elevated Hillary Clinton from political opponent to absolute evil. And it is doing so now, by attempting to purge the FBI and the Justice Department of officials who, for some reason, are restrained in their enthusiasm for President Trump.

Senator Joseph Mccarthy

These Republicans see plots where others see only common sense and a dedication to duty. McCarthyism was a cure for which there was no disease. Domestic communism was no threat to America by the time Joseph McCarthy joined the Senate in 1947. To meet the threat, he first had to invent it. He proclaimed the State Department was rife with communists, giving precise numbers — sometimes 205, sometimes 57, sometimes 81. He was promiscuous in his accusations of treason, once blaming the entire Democratic Party. “Twenty years of treason,” he said.

Many in the GOP applauded. Many in the Democratic Party cowered. Things are far different now, of course. Breaking with tradition, Republicans have taken on the FBI, which — especially under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover — gladly served the needs of the GOP. Hoover passed classified information to McCarthy and his counsel, Roy Cohn, who in later years became Trump’s mentor and lawyer and was eventually disbarred before his death in 1986. Trump says he misses Cohn to this day.

Today’s McCarthy figure is not a mere senator, but the president. Still, the modus operandi is similar. McCarthy railed against communists in government, and Trump and his allies inveigh against something called “the deep state.” As it was in the 1950s, they allege that the government has been seized by some nefarious force and is the enemy of the people. What’s more, Trump is, like McCarthy was, a liar.

After a while, though, McCarthy, in the view of historian David M. Oshinsky — his A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy ought to be required reading — came to believe in his cause. An anti-communism that started out as political opportunism and a way to discredit Democrats became an obsession. Trump, however, believes in nothing. His intent is to derail the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller. Trump’s cause is Trump. So, what is it that has compelled other members of Trump’s party to jettison years of tradition — fealty to the FBI and respect for state secrets — and back the president?

Some of it has to do with political opportunism. The GOP is now the party of Trump. If he goes down, it goes down. McCarthyism was the product of seismic shifts in world events. In the postwar period, the Soviet Union expanded into Eastern Europe and successfully tested an atomic bomb, while communists also took control in China. Similarly, today’s nuttiness is more than a reflection of mere politics. It is the emotional and knee-jerk conservative reaction to unwelcome change.

During the McCarthy era, the Soviet Union’s colonization of Eastern Europe, its scientific successes, and the triumph of the Chinese communists were ascribed to treasonous conspiracies here. There was a smidgen of truth to that. The Soviet atomic program had indeed been aided by American and British traitors, but the Harry S. Truman administration had not “lost” China, as McCarthy and others charged. The Soviet Union was also not as scientifically backward as many Americans thought. It was capable of building an atomic bomb on its own.

Today, conservatives reel from jarring cultural changes such as the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage and tussles over who gets to use what bathroom. Competition from abroad and the encroachment of automation have cost jobs — while, at the same time, immigrants have become the functional equivalent of communists. To conservatives, the present feels unfamiliar and the future appears frightening. Something has gone wrong. Trump said he would make America great again — “again” being the past posing as the future.

Ultimately, McCarthy overreached when he attacked the Army, accusing it of harboring communists. Trump may have overreached by going after the FBI. McCarthy threatened to attack his fellow GOP senators if they opposed him. Trump intimates as much. Over time, however, McCarthy’s weird behavior put steel in the spine of his colleagues, and they turned against him. The GOP of today is acting like the GOP of old, and moderate Republicans are once again running scared. History can indeed repeat itself. McCarthy, an alcoholic, wrecked himself, but I wouldn’t count on Trump doing the same. This time around, the voters will have to act. Otherwise, political cowards will carry the day.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.