THE WANDERER, SEPTEMBER 29, 2005
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
Advanced Conservative Studies
Rush Limbaugh argues that the Democrats should be
encouraged to move as far leftward as possible -- just
as, during the 2004 primaries, NATIONAL REVIEW hoped the
Democrats would nominate Howard Dean for president.
Now you might think principled conservatives would
want =both= major parties to be as conservative as
possible. And you'd be right. That's exactly what
principled conservatives do want, just as pro-lifers wish
both parties opposed abortion.
Why? Because to be principled means to place moral
norms before power and party interests. Make no mistake:
"Conservatives" like Limbaugh are Republican partisans
first, conservatives second. If a more leftist Democratic
Party helps the Republicans win elections, they reason,
that's just fine -- even if it allows the Republicans to
keep edging leftward, as it always does.
Which is why the Republicans today are about where
the Democrats were in the heyday of Lyndon Baines Johnson
(or, as I like to call him, Baneful Lyndon Johnson).
It's sobering to reflect that Johnson was in his
time the biggest spender in American history. But Bush is
running annual deficits that are larger than the =entire
federal budget= under Johnson. And he has yet to veto a
single act of Congress.
Bush is following Johnson's precedent; just as LBJ
promised both "guns and butter" -- war abroad and
socialism at home -- Bush isn't exactly counting the
pennies it will cost to pay for (among many other things)
a foreign war, expanded Medicare entitlements, and
cleaning up after every hurricane Mother Nature can throw
at us.
As I write, it appears that Galveston is about to go
the way of New Orleans; and this time Bush is determined
not to be caught flat-footed. At least not in the short
run; as for the longer term, that's unreal to him. The
evening news shows the immediate impact of hurricanes; it
doesn't show the steady swelling of the national debt
quite so vividly.
An old maxim tells us to "expect the unexpected";
but sometimes it appears that this president can't even
predict the inevitable. What's going to happen when all
the bills he's running up come due?
Are you sure you don't want to use that veto, Mr.
President?
Late Surprises
Though it won't make much difference, the Democrats'
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has announced he'll
vote against confirming John Roberts as chief justice of
the United States. He says Roberts falls short of the
high standards a nominee for the job should have to meet.
This is no doubt true, though in a sense Reid
probably doesn't intend, since no nominee can deserve to
hold such power for a minute, let alone a lifetime -- the
power to change the meaning of the U.S. Constitution
without control by the legislative branch, the executive,
or the voters. But the problem lies in the nature of the
office, not in Roberts.
On the other hand, Vermont's Patrick Leahy, who
unlike Reid is as liberal as all get-out, is supporting
Roberts's confirmation. Maybe both men figure it makes no
difference how they vote at this point, since Roberts is
a shoo-in. At his confirmation hearings, pinning him down
was like catching an eel while wearing boxing gloves.
The neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer
favors Roberts, partly because he is sure Roberts isn't
radical enough to vote to reverse Roe v. Wade.
Krauthammer agrees with the logic of the 1992 Casey
majority: Even if Roe was questionably decided (and
Krauthammer thinks it was politically "poisonous"),
overturning it now would be just as disruptive.
Maybe it would, but that's a political judgment.
Let's hope Roberts keeps his eye on the ball better than
that. The Court is supposed to rule on strictly legal
merits, not extraneous contingencies that may arise from
its rulings.
Since when does an unconstitutional ruling become
constitutional over time because things have changed? To
use the baseball analogy again, the crowd may riot if the
umpire calls the home team's runner out at the plate;
should the umpire have foreseen this possibility and
called him safe?
Since Roberts is now replacing William Rehnquist,
not Sandra Day O'Connor, and since he appears likely to
resemble Rehnquist as chief justice, Bush's next
appointment may well be the crucial one, deciding the
balance of the Court in years ahead.
Clare Asquith, Shakespeare, and the Catholic Question
A new book about Shakespeare is causing a stir:
SHADOWPLAY: THE HIDDEN BELIEFS AND CODED POLITICS OF
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, by Clare Asquith (published by
PublicAffairs). Conventional scholarship has generally
assumed (1) that "Shakespeare" was Mr. Shakspere of
Stratford, and (2) that he was noncommittal about the
political and religious controversies that raged around
him in Elizabethan England.
Asquith accepts the first of these beliefs, but not
the second. She argues that the plays and poems contain,
in highly coded language, his passionate Catholic
convictions.
I'd love to think so, but though I've only begun to
read her book, Asquith's scholarship doesn't inspire much
confidence. She calls HENRY V the Bard's "most conformist
play," ignoring its profoundly ironic treatment of this
national hero. As for the real author, the 17th Earl of
Oxford, as I'm convinced, she has ventured the opinion
that he was "illiterate."
I'm afraid that if Asquith calls anyone's literacy
in question, it's her own. Not only was Oxford widely
praised as poet and playwright in his own time (by the
great poet Edmund Spenser, among others); he left letters
and prefaces in elegant English, French, and Latin. He
was tutored by some of the finest scholars in England,
studied at Cambridge University and the Inns of Court,
and, during a two-week visit to the noted scholar Johann
Sturmius in Strasbourg, conversed entirely in Latin. Not
bad for an illiterate man.
Still, Oxford came from the old Catholic nobility,
whose titles long predated Henry VIII's revolution, so
it's just possible that she has inadvertently hit on
something. Stay tuned.
+ + +
SOBRAN'S takes a look at Christopher Hitchens, the
fierce former Trotskyist who now applauds the Iraq war.
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