SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010 DAVID S. BRODER
No tea parties for McCain A
s Republican leaders assess a Tea Party movement that has both ener- gized and polarized their ranks,
John McCain takes a generally benign view of the political landscape — but clearly comes down on the side of the tra- ditional establishment rather than with the young rebels. Iwas eager to catch up with McCain af- ter his searing summer experience of hav- ing to fight for renomination to a fifth term against former Arizona representa- tive J.D. Hayworth, a spiritual ally of the Tea Partyers. So the first week that Con- gress was back at work, I sought out Mc- Cain. Having buried the talk-show host un- der $21 million of TV ads and 37 town meetings, McCain now faces only a mini- mal general election challenge from Tuc- son City Council member Rodney Glass- man, a Democrat. But when I remarked that McCain must
be reveling in the freedom that has come to him at age 74, he demurred, saying, “I’m comfortable, but I still have responsibili- ties.”
When I asked what goals remain, he
spoke immediately of the economy — nev- er his strong suit but the overriding con- cern for his constituents, who are suf- fering from high unemployment and one of the worst foreclosure epidemics in the country. Next, national security — a longtime
preoccupation for the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, espe- cially the unfinished engagements in Af- ghanistan and Iraq and the growing threat from Iran. “And,” he said, “I hope I’ll have the op-
portunity to spend some time helping and mentoring the next generation of Repub- licans who are ready to move in here.” This led to his reminiscence of 1980, the year that provided entree to Washington for McCain and many others of his gener- ation. The key to that election, he said, was the erosion of Jimmy Carter’s person- al leadership with the Iran hostage crisis and the rebellion of liberal Democrats against the White House. “Now the voters still like Barack Oba-
ma,” McCain said, “but they have come to disagree with his policies” — so the door is again open to newcomers. It was only when McCain began de- scribing his plans for the coming cam-
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paign and his hopes for the Senate that it became clear where his influence will be felt in the struggles emerging within the GOP. I got no sense that McCain will lead the
charge against the Tea Party forces. When I asked directly whether he saw their suc- cess in primaries in Delaware, Alaska, Ne- vada, Kentucky, Colorado and other states as a threat to the GOP’s viability, he said no. After all, Sarah Palin, the Alaska gov- ernor he elevated to national prominence and who campaigned for him in Arizona this summer, has been part of many of those victories. But when I asked where he’d be cam- paigning outside Arizona this fall, he mentioned not one of the Tea Party win- ners. Instead, the Senate candidates who can expect a visit from him are Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Carly Fiorina in California, Mark Kirk in Illinois and Rob Portman in Ohio. All are convention- al, business-oriented Republicans, none of them remotely anti-establishment. And when discussing the next genera- tion of stars he hopes to mentor, he start- ed with Ayotte and Fiorina and added Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, his sidekick on many Senate trips to Iraq. Nothing was said about the other senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, who has come to match Palin as the champion of underdog Tea Partyers. But McCain added two Democratic senators, Tom and Mark Udall, from New Mexico and Colo- rado, respectively, reminding me that in a previous generation, Mo Udall — their fa- ther and uncle — had taken the young Mc- Cain under his wing. McCain has not failed to notice that the same polls that forecast Republican gains in November also show less public confi- dence in the GOP than in the Democrats. Why? “In part, it’s the Bush hangover,” he said, “and we haven’t given the voters much of an idea of what we’d do. We need four or five clear proposals.” Because of that Republican infirmity,
McCain said, a post-election Obama could hope for a positive response if he emulates the post-1994 Bill Clinton and reaches out to Republicans for support in the next Congress. Looking back on Obama’s fail- ure to connect as the 111th Congress winds to a close, McCain said, “It never happened this time, but it still could.”
davidbroder@washpost.com
POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
MICHAEL GERSON
Childish thoughts in the Tea Party
With his recent criticisms of Delaware
Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell on Fox News, Karl Rove kicked up a contro- versy. His critique of O’Donnell was gran- ular and well-informed. Rove has taken O’Donnell to task for her checkered fi- nancial past, her history of litigiousness and paranoia, her misleading statements about her educational background. These facts may not be disqualifying for office, but they indicate a flawed, inexperienced, perennial candidate on the model of Alan Keyes.
While Rove’s critique was tough, the re-
action in parts of the conservative blogo- sphere has been unhinged. Michelle Mal- kin wrote that it “might as well have been [Keith] Olbermann on MSNBC.” Mark Levin pronounced Rove at “war against the Tea Party movement and conserva- tives.” “In terms of the conservative move- ment,” wrote Dan Riehl, “we should not simply ignore him, but proactively work to undermine Rove in whatever ways we can, given his obvious willingness to un- dermine us.” This reaction is revealing — and dis- turbing — for a number of reasons. First, it shows how some conservatives
view the business of political commen- tary. Deviations from the party line are not permitted.
Second, the ferocity of this criticism in-
dicates a growing arrogance. Tea Party purists, on the Internet and elsewhere, clearly believe their ascendance makes other elements of the conservative move- ment unnecessary. If Tea Party activists believe they can win in a political coali- tion so pure that it doesn’t include strong, mainstream conservatives such as Karl Rove, they are delusional. And they are hurting their own cause. Third, some conservatives seem to dis-
play special venom for those who are “compromised” by the experience of actu- ally winning and governing. Rove, ac- cording to Malkin, is an “establishment Beltway strategist.” Actually, he is a for- mer high-level policy aide to the presi- dent of the United States and the primary author of two presidential victories. This does not make him always right. But it means he has had responsibilities bigger than running a Web site. In Tea Party theory, inexperience is it- self seen as a kind of qualification. People such as O’Donnell are preferable to peo- ple such as Rove, because they haven’t been tainted by public trust or actual achievement. This is the attitude of the adolescent — the belief that the world began on his 13th birthday. It is also a sign of childish political thought.
U.N. goals must omit abortion
by Chris Smith OMARA GARCIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Fidel Castro at an event for his newest book in Havana on Sept. 10. GEORGE F. WILL
Castro reboots F
idel Castro, 84, may have fail- ing eyesight but he has no- ticed something: “The Cuban
model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” So, the secret is out. And there is no joy among the alumni, if any still live, of the golden days of Les Deux Magots. That Paris cafe, now a tourist
magnet, was where, before and af- ter World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre and kindred spirits compared notes on life’s emptiness and the American menace. Of the latter, a major newspaper, Le Monde, edito- rialized on March 29, 1950: “Coca- Cola is the Danzig of European Cul- ture.” (Ancient history: Danzig was the Polish — Germany thought Ger- man — city that was a flash point in the approach of the war.) For advanced thinkers, Castro was a happy harbinger of, among much else, “direct democracy.” He came to power on Jan. 1, 1959, and the next year Sartre arrived to ex- plain, in the manner of Parisian in- tellectuals, the Meaning of It. As everyone attuned to the Zeit-
geist then was — college students who owned black turtlenecks; afi- cionados of foreign films (not “movies,” heaven forfend) — Sartre was an existentialist. A critic called existentialism the belief that be- cause life is absurd, philosophy should be, too. But Sartre’s pilgrim- age took him, with Castro, into Cu- ba’s countryside. There they stopped at a roadside stand for lemonade and an epiphany. The lemonade was warm, so Cas-
tro got hot, telling the waitress that the inferior drink “reveals a lack of revolutionary consciousness.” She said the refrigerator was broken. Castro “growled” (Sartre’s approv- ing description) that she should “tell your people in charge that if they don’t take care of their prob- lems, they will have problems with me.” Instantly Sartre understood “what I called ‘direct democracy’ ”: “Between the waitress and Cas- tro, an immediate, secret under- standing was established. She let it be seen by her tone, by her smiles, by a shrug of the shoulders, that she was without illusion.” Half a century later, Castro seems to be catching up with her. He who proclaimed at his 1953 trial that “History will absolve me” may at last have lost the most de- structive illusion of modern poli- tics, the idea that History is a prop- er noun. The idea was that History is an autonomous thing with an unfold- ing logic that, if served by a van-
Why Iran won’t respond to sanctions I
by Ray Takeyh
n an autumn ritual, Mahmoud Ah- madinejad once more arrives in New York this week. The Iranian presi-
dent’s usual media tours and bombastic speeches are likely to be sprinkled with hints of moderation on Iran’s contested nuclear program. On his sixth trip to the United Nations, Ahmadinejad is likely to find an international community more confident that its forceful economic sanctions have finally made Tehran ap- preciate the cost of its belligerence. A closer look, however, reveals that the cal- culations of Iran’s principal protagonists —Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — are largely unaffected by mounting financial penalties imposed by the West. After three decades of wres- tling with the Islamic Republic, Wash- ington and its allies still fail to realize that they are not dealing with a conven- tional nation-state making subtle esti- mates of national interests. The essence of Washington’s approach
is that confronted with a choice of debilitating isolation or rejoining the community of nations, Iran will even- tually make the “right” decision. The Is- lamic Republic, however, is too wedded to its ideological verities and too sub- sumed by its rivalries to engage in such judicious determinations.
In a speech in August, Khamenei once again confirmed his opposition to recon- ciliation with the United States. His rea- sons were neither illogical nor irrational: “The change of behavior they want — and which they don’t always emphasize on — is in fact a negation of our identity,” he said. Iran’s supreme leader appreci- ates that engagement with the United States is subversive and could under- mine the pillars of the Islamic state. Dia- logue, trade and cultural exchanges could, he understands, expose Iran to the unrelenting pressures of modernization and transform the revolutionary repub- lic into another state that sacrificed its ideological heritage for the sake of prof- its and commerce. The politics of resis- tance and nuclear empowerment, on the other hand, affirm Iran’s identity as a Muslim nation struggling against Amer- ican encroachment. Economic sanctions can hardly disabuse Khamenei of such well-entrenched animosities. The tragedy of U.S.-Iran relations is
that the most persistent advocate of dia- logue with America is Iran’s firebrand president. Yet Ahmadinejad’s calls for engagement stem from his delusions, not from clever cost-benefit assessments. Ahmadinejad has convinced himself that Iran is the leading power of the devel- oping world and has earned the right to negotiate directly with America on im- portant global issues. So he seeks sum-
guard of a discerning few who un- derstand its workings, ends in a planned paradise. Hence, as Czes- law Milosz wrote in “The Captive Mind” in 1953, communists be- lieved that the job of intellectuals was not to think but only to under- stand.
By saying what he recently did about the “Cuban model” (he said it to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic), Castro seems to have become the last person outside the North Ko- rean regime to understand how statism suffocates society. Hence the Cuban government’s plan to shed 500,000 public employees. This follows a few other meas- ures, such as the denationalization of beauty parlors and barber shops — if they have no more than three chairs. With four or more, they re- main government enterprises. Such is “reform” under socialism in a nation that in 1959 was, in a vari- ety of social and economic indices, one of Latin America’s five most ad- vanced nations, but now has an average monthly wage of about $20. Many hospital patients must bring their own sheets. Many thou- sands of Cuban doctors are work- ing in Venezuela, which is support- ing Cuba much as the Soviet Union did.
After the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 — perhaps the most feckless use of American power, ever — President Kennedy’s broth- er Robert called Cuba “the top pri- ority in the United States govern- ment — all else is secondary — no time, money, effort or manpower is to be spared.” Ever since, the rheto- ric has been fierce as both parties have competed for the votes of the 1.6 million-strong Cuban diaspora in America, especially in Florida, the largest swing state in presi- dential voting. For example, in 1992, candidate Bill Clinton prom- ised to “bring the hammer down” on Castro, who has survived the disapproval of 11 U.S. presidents. Today, the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba by means of economic em- bargoes and travel restrictions serves two Castro goals: It provides an alibi for Cuba’s social condi- tions, and it insulates Cuba from some of the political and cultural forces that brought down commu- nism in Eastern Europe. The 11th president, Barack Obama, who was born more than two years after Castro seized power, might want to rethink this policy, now that even Castro is having second thoughts about fundamentals.
georgewill@washpost.com
Millennium Development Goals agreed to at the start of the century and to recalibrate and recommit to more effectively achieve them by 2015. The overarching and noble goal is reducing global poverty. But the most compelling and achievable objectives — huge reductions in maternal and child mortality worldwide — will be severely un- dermined if the Obama administration ei- ther directly or covertly integrates abortion into the final outcome document. If the summit is sidetracked by abortion
A
activists, the robust resolve required at na- tional levels to deploy the funds needed to achieve the internationally agreed targets will be compromised. The risk is real. Sec- retary of State Hillary Clinton has said pub- licly that she believes access to abortion is part of maternal and reproductive health, thinking that runs contrary to the under- standing of the more than 125 U.N. member states that prohibit or otherwise restrict abortion in their sovereign laws and consti- tutions. Moreover, speaking before the House International Relations Committee in 2005, Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff for then-Secretary General Kofi Annan, said concerning reproductive health, “we do not interpret it as including abortion.” Clinton also calls pro-abortion nongovern- mental organizations “partners.” At the Group of Eight meetings in Cana- da this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harp- er rebuffed Clinton’s attempt to integrate abortion with initiatives to reduce ma- ternal mortality. He stated his opposition to funding abortions by saying: “We want to make sure our funds are used to save the lives of women and children and are used on the many things that are available to us, and, frankly, do not divide the Canadian population.” Millennium Development Goal No. 4 is reducing child mortality rates two-thirds from 1990 levels. It is clear that myriad cost-effective interventions need to be ex- panded to save children’s lives. These in- clude treatment and prevention of disease, as well as greater access to adequate food and nutrition, clean water, childhood vac- cinations, oral rehydration packets, antibi- otics, and drugs to inhibit mother-to-child HIV transmission. Similarly, unborn children desperately need care to optimize their health before and after birth. Healthy children start in the womb. Abortion is, by definition, infant mortal-
ity, and it undermines the achievement of the fourth Millennium Development Goal. There is nothing benign or compassionate about procedures that dismember, poison, induce premature labor or starve a child to death. Indeed, the misleading term “safe abortion” misses the point that no abortion — legal or illegal — is safe for the child and that all are fraught with negative health consequences, including emotional and psychological damage, for the mother. Talk of “unwanted children” reduces children to mere objects, without inherent human dignity and whose worth depends on their perceived utility or how much they’re wanted. One merely has to look at the scourge of human trafficking and the exploitation of children for forced labor or child soldiering to see where such dis- regard for the value of life leads. The long-neglected health of mothers is prioritized by Millennium Development Goal No. 5, which rallies the world to cut maternal mortality rates 75 percent from 1990 levels. We have known for more than 60 years
what actually saves women’s lives: skilled attendance at birth, treatment to stop hem- orrhages, access to safe blood, emergency obstetric care, antibiotics, repair of fistulas, adequate nutrition, and pre- and post-natal care. The goal of the upcoming summit should be a world free of abortion, not free abortion to the world.
mits with U.S. presidents in which the representative of the industrial West would, presumably, listen and concede to his mandates. After years of calling for such dialogue and writing meandering letters to Presidents Bush and Obama, Ahmadinejad perceives that through modest nuclear concessions, he could perhaps secure that cherished audience. Put simply, an egocentric president sur- rounded by deranged aides such as Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, his chief of staff, and Saeed Jalili, secretary to the Supreme National Security Council, is guided by misapprehensions that are largely impervious to economic pres- sures. Western advocates of sanctions com-
fort themselves by believing that even if Khamenei’s calculus is unaffected by pu- nitive economic measures, such efforts could still lead the conservative elite to defect from the party-line mentality. The merchant class, stressed by the loss of business opportunities, and conservative politicians uneasy about Iran’s growing isolation could press the supreme leader to embark on a realistic engagement pol- icy, this thinking holds. But the problem with this perspective is that in today’s Iran, parochial politics takes precedent over national interest. Conservative Ira- nian leaders such as Ali Larijani and Hashemi Rafsanjani are so concerned about Ahmadinejad’s self-aggrandize-
ment and attempts to impose his politi- cal hegemony on the system that they are unwilling to buttress his diplomatic gam- bits. Given that engagement with the United States would redound to Ah- madinejad’s advantage, the conserva- tives are unlikely to support it, even if they agree with its overall merit. For the near future, Iran’s interna- tional relations will be conditioned by the vagaries of the complex relationship between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, which means its policies are likely to be characterized by contradiction and in- consistency. Given the force of his per- sonality and the scope of his ambitions, Ahmadinejad may be able to force some concessions out of a reluctant Khamenei. But the compromises or agreements that Ahmadinejad may make with the West can still be reversed or violated. A politi- cal order overseen by a suspicious su- preme leader and featuring actors all fo- cused on their narrow political fortunes is unlikely to be tempered by Western blandishments of engagement or threats of sanctions. In the end, the only path out of this
paradox is to invest in an Iranian politi- cal class that is inclined to displace dog- ma with pragmatism. And that still re- mains the indomitable Green movement.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A recent landmark study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published in the British journal the Lancet in April is a great encouragement to gov- ernments that have been seriously address- ing maternal mortality in their countries. The study, confirmed by similar numbers in a World Health Organization report re- leased just this month, shows progress in the fight against maternal mortality; the number of maternal deaths per year as of 2008 has been reduced to 342,900 — or 281,500 in the absence of HIV deaths — some 40 percent lower than in 1980. And contrary to prevailing myths, the study underscored that many nations that have laws prohibiting abortion also have some of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world — Ireland, Chile and Poland among them. Implementation of the Millennium De- velopment Goals will cost tens of billions of dollars. Credible polls from CNN and Gal- lup show that huge majorities of Amer- icans don’t want their tax dollars used to pay for abortions. Including abortion in the U.N. Outcome
Document or in its implementation will undermine the Millennium Development Goals. Actions and programs to achieve the latter must embrace all of the world’s citi- zens, especially the weakest and most vul- nerable. We must affirm, respect and tangi- bly assist the precious lives of women and all children, including the unborn.
The writer, a Republican from New Jersey, is the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa and global health.
n army of health activists and world leaders will gather at the United Na- tions this week to review the eight
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