The State of the Presidential Race

 Over the past two months the Democrats have risen from their severely depressed state of being in mourning over Joe Biden to an exalted manic state hailing Vice President Kamala Harris as their new savior. Last week’s very successful convention cemented Harris’ leadership in the party, and she is now a small favorite to win the election in November.  However, I would caution that the current manic phase can quickly turn once again to a depressive state.

 

The most important thing that happened at the convention was what did not happen. As many feared, including myself, the convention did not turn out to be a rerun of 1968. It went off flawlessly and Harris came out of the convention as a forward-looking optimist as opposed to Donald Trump’s backward-looking pessimism. Indeed, somehow the sitting vice president became the candidate of change and Donald Trump became the de facto incumbent. As I wrote in July, this will be the year of the anti-incumbent and if Harris can maintain her image as challenger she will win. ( See: Shulmaven: Incumbents Beware )

 

Further buttressing her position is that the propaganda organs  of the state (ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Facebook, and TikTok)  gushed over her acceptance speech. (See: Shulmaven: America's Party Line )  So craven have the mass media been is that their unqualified support for Harris has yet to pass the test of a single interview. In fact, Time magazine did a hagiographic cover story on her without an interview, truly unprecedented.

 

Meantime Harris’ economic proposals have drawn criticism from even normally left-of-center quarters. Her proposals for price caps on groceries, rent control and a $25,000 tax credit for new home buyers make little sense. Of course, Trump’s proposals calling for mass deportations, tariffs on all imports and executive branch control over the Federal Reserve are zanier than what Harris has proposed.

 

The critical tests for Harris will come when she actually has to do real interviews and the September 10^th debate with Trump where she is the presumptive favorite. If Harris is to maintain the mantle of change, she will have to successfully answer the following question: On, what policies do you differ with President Biden? My guess is that she will be hard pressed to answer that question which will leave a big opening for Trump.

My Review of Joseph Kanon's "Shanghai"

 Shanghai Dreams, Shanghai Nightmares

 

This is the third historical novel by Joseph Kanon I have reviewed. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Joseph Kanon's "Defectors: A Novel" and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Joseph Kanon's "Leaving Berlin: A Novel" )  Here the scene shifts from Europe to Asia where journalist Daniel Lohr is escaping 1939 Berlin via first class passage from Trieste to Shanghai. We learn later that Lohr had ties to the Comintern which would become useful. On the ship he as an affair with Leah Auerbach, another Jewish escapee from Vienna. Auerbach is received in Shanghai by a Jewish welfare agency aiding refugees from Europe. Also, on the boat was a Col. Yamada, a member of the Japanese secret police. We will see much more of him as the novel progresses.

 

Lohr’s trip was financed by his Uncle Nathan, a mobster from Berlin and the United States. He bailed from the U.S. after crossing the Mafia. Uncle Nathan puts Daniel in charge of running his new casino, The Gold Rush. He soon realizes that Nathan has partnered with two rival Chinese gangs in this venture that would ultimately put him in a crossfire.

 

As with his other novels Kanon gives us a real feel for the smells and the depravity of Shanghai as the international concessions await the full occupation of the Japanese. We also get a sense of the intrigue between the Japanese, the gangs, Chiang Kai-Shek’s government, and the rising communist movement. As with his other novels, Kanon tells the story with style and grace.

My Review of Percival Everett's "James"

 A Literate Runaway Slave on the River

 

Percival Everett has written an alternative version of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Instead of Huck being the central character, the protagonist is Jim, the runaway slave. While Jim in public speaks like a slave, in private he is James, a very literate man who communes with the likes of Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire. He has to keep himself from speaking like a man of letters because his owners and the public at large would become very suspicious.

 

The original Huckleberry Finn took place around 1840, Everett’s takes place in 1861. Similar to the original novel much of it takes place on a raft on the Mississippi around Missouri. We watch Huck and Jim fish, float on their raft, and run from slave hunters. The dangers on the river are apparent through unpredictable currents, river traffic and boats burning. Through it all Jim remains focused on his mission to free his wife and daughter who were sold to a slave breeder.

 

Through Everett we witness the everyday horrors of being enslaved. There are whippings, rapes, and the daily indignities of kowtowing to their masters. To me the book started slow, but after a while I caught up with its rhythm and humor and became thoroughly engrossed in the adventure.

America's Party Line

 In a recent article in The Free Press Niall Ferguson wrote that “We’re All Soviets Now.” (See: https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now)  Among the notions he discussed were our gerontocracy elite, declining health care for the average citizen abetted by alcohol and opiods, and the rise of the DEI apparatchiks. However, he left out another crucial factor. In America we have a party line that appears little different from the days of Pravda and Izvestia.

 

All you have to do is to look at the shifting party line on the Democratic nominee for president. Six months ago, President Biden was at the top of his game and fully capable of serving another four years. Then of a sudden in June, he was a doddering old fool who had to go. Once Biden withdrew there was to be a contested mini-primary, but in a day or two Kamala Harris became the anointed one. It would be enough to get a dedicated Kremlinologist’s head spinning.

 

With the exception of Fox News and a few heterodox media outlets, the media now speaks as one by being all-in for Harris and through it all Donald Trump, the new Trotsky, has to remain in exile from power. Although being anti-Trump remains the media’s lodestar, I would not be surprised that with respect to Kamala Harris, the fickle party line will yet again shift a few more times.

My Review of James Graham Wilson's "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan"

A Man of Action

 

Where is Paul Nitze when we need him? Paul Nitze engaged in national security policy for every president from Roosevelt to Reagan. The lesson he learned from Pearl Harbor carried through his entire career and that was in order to defend the United States, the United States had to be stronger than any potential aggressor. His policy was the essence of peace through strength.

 

James Wilson’s biography fully discusses Nitze’s professional career from being an investment banker in the 1930’s to being a tribune in the highest councils of government on national security affairs.  Nitze modeled himself on what he called “men of action.” They included his first boss Clarence Dillon, Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. While working for Clarence Dillon at the Dillon Reed banking firm Nitze was involved in putting together the Cal-Tex agreement which sent middle eastern oil to Asia and the financing of the Triboro Bridge.

 

As war clouds loomed in 1940 Nitze followed his mentor at Dillon Reed, James Forestal into government. He could well afford to work in government because of his wife’s wealth and his own personal investments. During World War II he worked on the strategic bombing survey and after the war he found himself at the State Department working under George Kennan. In 1950 he succeeded Kennan as the Director of Policy Planning. There he authored the now famous NSC-68 memorandum which called for a massive defense build-up wrapped in American values. The build-up would come with the onset of the Korean War a few months later.

 

In the mid-1950’s he would switch parties and became a Democrat because of his disagreement over Eisenhour’s massive retaliation strategy and his thinking was very influential in the Kennedy campaign of 1960. Nitze was in the room when during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nitze thought Kennedy’s policy only worked because the U.S. had superior forces relative to the Soviet Union. That advantage would erode away in the 1960’s and turn into a severe disadvantage in the 1970’s. Though now a Democrat, Nitze participated in arms control negotiations under Nixon. He was respected by hawks across the aisle.

 

When not in government during the Nixon-Ford era he found a home at the Johns-Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, which is now named after him. His interns there included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who would soon become real players in the Reagan Administration and beyond. His contribution to the arms debate in the 1970’s was his leading role in the Committee on the Present Danger which anteceded the Reagan military build-up of the 1980’s.

 

Reagan hired him as an arm control negotiator and in 1982 he had his famous walk in the woods with his Soviet counterpart, Kvitsinsky. Although nothing came of it at the time, it was a percussor of all of the arms control agreements that would follow. In the 1980’s Nitze was far too suspicious of Gorbachev and overestimated Soviet strength. He didn’t realize how much the Soviets feared Reagan. ( See: Shulmaven: My Review* of Sergey Radchenko's "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Bd.........." )Nitze wasn’t perfect, but he got most of the big things dead right. Further his brittle personality kept him from being either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, although he served admirably in both departments. Wilson has done us a real service in writing Nitze’s biography at this time. We surely need someone like him today. 

Kamala Harris Fails Her First Test with VP Pick

Kamala Harris picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP cemented her identity as a San Francisco Bay liberal. She also demonstrated that she will have no backbone when it comes to standing up to the noisy and sometimes antisemitic Left of her party. By not picking Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania she lost all credibility in her election year conversion in support of fracking and by not picking Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona she lost her credibility on securing our southern border.

In picking Walz she got a big spending liberal who dawdled while Minneapolis was burning during the George Floyd riots of 2020 and his signing of an executive order in support of gender affirming care for minors she got a candidate who is to the left of Europe's social democrats on this issue. Oh, and one more thing, Walz only received 52% of the vote in his reelection in heavily Democratic Minnesota in 2022.

Harris had a real opportunity to move to the center with her VP pick. She failed miserably in this task and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans the best news they have had since Joe Biden left the race. If the Democrats had hopes of attracting Nikki Haley voters to there cause, those hope were dashed today.  

My Review of Maurice Isserman's "Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism"

Original Sin

Maurice Isserman, a man of the Left and a history professor at Hamilton College, has written an important history of the American Communist Party. Isserman tells two stories: one of misplaced idealism of those who supported labor rights and civil rights in support of a socialist America and the other of a group of Americans who bowed to every wind coming out of Moscow. The latter is the original sin of American communism by blindly following the party line coming out of Moscow which twisted its members into pretzels.

 

From the beginning in 1919 the American Communist Party was subsidized by “Moscow gold” to 1989 when Gorbachev finally cut them off. Isserman thoroughly recounts the changes in the party line from calling for outright revolution, supporting existing trade unions to supporting dual unionism, and with the rise of fascism in Europe working in a broad coalition of leftists to form the popular front. All that would come to an end with the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 calling World War II a capitalist war until the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941.  Of course, during the 1930’s American communists refused to believe that there was mass starvation in Ukraine and looked the other way as the purge trials in Moscow led to the deaths of their former heroes. Along the way we meet Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson and Dashiell Hammett, among others affiliated with the party.

 

If there are heroes in the book, they are those communists who helped build the CIO, Earl Browder, and Dorothy Healey.  Browder, who as leader of the party, actually changed the party to a political association to make it easier to participate in the normal political processes. However, his reforms went array when Moscow criticized him via what was called the Duclos letter in 1945. Within a year he was expelled. Isserman underplays the Duclos letter because it was a harbinger of the Cold War to come. His other hero was Los Angeles communist Dorothy Healey who was also a reformer, be she stayed with the party through Khrushchev’s 1956 speech condemning Stalin, the Hungarian revolt, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. She wouldn’t leave the party until 1972. This highlights the fact how hard it was for long-term members to quit; their whole lives were bound up in it. As an aside I was once acquainted with Healey.

 

I have three criticisms of Isserman. The first is that although he discussed the use of party members in the Soviet spying apparatus, he doesn’t show how deep the penetration was in the New Deal and in the role of the Rosenberg spy ring. He wrote that rank and file members were oblivious to the secret work those communists were involved in. I don’t think they were that naïve.

 

My second criticism is that he underplays the role of the Comintern’s American Commission which Stalin actually chaired. Theodore Draper, in his “American Communism and Soviet Russia” highlighted its importance. Simply put, under the orders of Stalin, such leading communist officials as Jay Lovestone, Benjamin Gitlow, and Bertram Wolfe were purged. That sent a message to the American party that the knee must be continually bent towards Moscow. Thus, there would be no Titoist party in America, meaning the party could not adapt to the unique conditions in America.

 

Third he doesn’t fully cover the Henry Wallace campaign in 1948, a campaign that run entirely by the Communist Party. ( See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Benn Steil's "The World that Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century" ) Today we would call that foreign election interference.

 

Those criticisms aside, Isserman has written an important book about a movement that enthralled more than a few Americans and far more fellow travelers. In a very real sense, the taint of Soviet Russia has haunted the American Left for decades. Isserman tells us in a very interesting way what went wrong.