| PRETENSIONS TO EMPIRE: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration Lewis Lapham New York: The New Press, 2006 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-59558-112-9 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-59558-112-X | 288pp. | HC | $24.95 | |
Lewis Lapham is the author of five books, and co-author on four others.1 One of his books (his first?), With the Beatles, grew out of his experiences as the only American journalist invited to the compound of Marishi Mahesh Yogi where such 1960s pop icons as the Fab Four, Donovan, and Mia Farrow sat at the master's feet in search of enlightenment.
This book too has a little of the flavor of a memoir, as Lapham recounts personal experiences among such conservative institutions as the Bohemian Club as well as those of a more liberal character. It collects a series of essays written between August 2002 and March 2006.2 In those 29 essays, Lapham traces the pattern of the Bush administration's general incompetence and its particular disregard for the Constitution. Lapham's evaluation, buttressed by extensive research and personal testimony, touches on topics including the Medicare prescription bill, Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, and of course the war in Iraq. It culminates in the 18-page essay titled "The Case for Impeachment." Each essay leads off with a relevant quotation.
Lapham makes his case with well-supported argument and well-controlled passion. This is no exclusively anti-Bush or anti-GOP diatribe, nor a paean to the downtrodden Democrats. Lapham is an equal-opportunity lambaster; his words tar Democrats, the media and the American public as well as Republicans. But, in keeping with his subtitle, his strongest indictments are reserved for the latter. Here's one sample:
It is with acts of vandalism that juvenile delinquents proclaim their manhood, and what else is the Bush administration's record over the last five years if not a testimony to its talent for breaking things—the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the loss of respect for America nearly everywhere in the world, a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 scrapped for a $412 billion deficit in 2004, the country's economic future consigned to foreign creditors, the ever accelerating dissolution of the American political union into separatist factions of race, religion, gender, and social caste. Endowed with the same temperament as Billy Carter and Roger Clinton but luckier in the sum of their allowances, President Bush and his clique came to power in Washington with little else in their well-groomed heads except the one big idea central to two generations of Republican speech-making: that government is by definition a homeless shelter. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and for the last twenty years a rabid source of radical Republicanism, simplified the political science for the listeners of NPR's Morning Edition in May 2001: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Just so, and with language added by Norquist's admiring friend and ally, Karl Rove, the Bush administration speaks for the kind of people who assign no value even to the idea of government, find no use for such a thing as an American res publica. Why should they? What's to learn? Everybody who is anybody in Houston or Palm Beach knows that government is a trailer park for deadbeats who can't afford to hire their own servants, furnish their own police protection, hire cheap Chinese labor, pay their taxes in Bermuda. Government is worth owning for the same reasons that one might own a gambling casino or a brothel, a financially rewarding enterprise staffed with quick-witted pimps and can-do waiters. If government is undeserving of respect, worthless except as a means of money-laundering, then why go to the trouble of hiring well-qualified people to collect the taxes and sit in the chairs? What needs to be done that can't be done by one's college roommate, tennis partner, brother-in-law, former secretary, personal lawyer, or golfing buddy? Adults spoil the fun. They remind the young heirs that government is a matter of long-term maintenance, a learning how to see, know, and care for other people. The lesson follows from the recognition that the national security doesn't consist in a handsome collection of military uniforms but in the health, well-being, and intelligence of a democratic citizenry. The jeunesse dorée don't stoop to maintenance; they find it tedious and boring, not glamorous, apt to take time away from thinking about one's hair. Adults also give offense by not picking up on the importance of teenage loyalties (in the club or out; with us or against us); also by reason of their sometimes trying to tell the truth, which in the Bush administration is a cause for summary dismissal—former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill cashiered for having had the effrontery to inform Mr. Bush that money doesn't grow on trees, General Eric Shinseki, former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, promptly retired because he told Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that his video-game war in Iraq would require the participation of several hundred thousand American troops, Bunnatine Greenhouse, competition advocate for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, reduced in rank for saying that the KBR oil swindle in Iraq was "the most blatant improper contract abuse I have witnessed in the course of my professional career." – Pages 249-250 |
Lapham is a gifted essayist. His writing demonstrates a mordant wit well-suited to skewering the pretenses he deplores. References to popular culture such as Conan the Barbarian and The Lord of the Rings enliven it (although he occasionally uses them a bit too fancifully for my taste.) His opinions are clearly stated, sensible, and (in most cases)3 backed up by solid research (as when he points out that public-sector overhead for medical care is 1.4 percent — versus 9.5 percent in the private sector facilities touted by the Bush administration.) All of this makes the book well worth reading. Its principal defect is its spotty indexing. For example, both Peggy Noonan and David Gelernter are mentioned on page 22. Noonan's name is indexed; Gelernter's is not. (Neither is the Bohemian Club.) The names of Robert Bork and Rush Limbaugh also appear on page 22, but those names are indexed only on other pages. There are few grammatical errors. I give it my top rating and would consider it a keeper.
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