FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010
MICHAEL GERSON
Moral failings and mercy
cles — part carnival, part moral lesson. The modern equiv- alent is the political sex scandal. The latest, though by no means the worst, concerned former U.S. representative Mark Souder of Indiana, who admitted an affair with a staffer and resigned from office. Souder, a social conservative who supported abstinence education, was jeered for hypocrisy. There was a moment of national mirth. Then Souder packed up his office and left town. The carnival moved on. My problem is, I know Mark Souder. Years ago, he was
O
my first boss on Capitol Hill, when we both worked for Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana. I found Mark to be deeply religious, highly intelligent and slightly neurotic. The answer to any question was likely to be detailed, exhaustive and lengthy. When we first met, Mark was charged with giving me an
overview of Indiana politics. He paused a moment, then began, “Let me start with the glaciers . . .” And Mark was decent to me. Not long after I started working there, my fa- ther died suddenly. Mark drove from Washington to Atlan- ta to attend the funeral. I won’t forget. Mark later became a thoughtful congressman, carving out a serious role on drug policy. He did his job with care and stubborn integrity. He was not a bright-burning politi- cal meteor, but he was the kind of man worth having in the House.
So what does sexual conduct have to do with the qual-
ifications for public service? It is the question raised by the cases of politicians such as John Edwards, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton. In practice, we make certain distinctions. There is a difference between breaking a vow out of weakness and smashing it out of malice. Sexual be- havior can reveal our shared foolishness. Or it can reveal coldness, compulsion, cruelty, exploitation, arrogance and recklessness. Who can deny that these traits of character are potentially dangerous in a political leader? But while sexual conduct is not irrelevant, it is also not
everything. I have known politicians who are cold, arro- gant, reckless — and faithful to their spouses. And I have known politicians who have been unfaithful and served the public well. Moral conservatives need to admit that political charac- ter is more complex than marital fidelity and that less sen- sual vices also can be disturbing. “The sins of the flesh are bad,” said C.S. Lewis, “but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patron- izing and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, com- peting with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Dia- bolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self- righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.” Yet moral liberals have something to learn as well. The failure of human beings to meet their own ideals does not disprove or discredit those ideals. The fact that some are cowards does not make courage a myth. The fact that some are faithless does not make fidelity a joke. All moral stan- dards create the possibility of hypocrisy. But I would rather live among those who recognize standards and fail to meet them than among those who mock all standards as lies. In the end, hypocrisy is preferable to decadence. What we really need is to combine high moral standards with humility. When “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was first published, the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to a friend: “You are certainly wrong about Hyde being overdrawn; my Hyde is worse.” In every life — apart from saints and psychopaths — there is a chasm between our intentions and our conduct. All hu- man journeys are part pilgrimage, part farce. Whenever we mock moral shoddiness, laziness and frailty, we mock into a mirror. This recognition should lead toward the most un-
derrated of the moral virtues: mercy. Yes, people are baser than their highest ideals. They are also nobler than their worst moments. This does not make the distinction be- tween base and noble impossible. But it makes a little grace appropriate.
michaelgerson@washpost.com
POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
E.J. DIONNE JR.
Why Artur Davis lost in Alabama
By far the most stunning result in all the primaries so far this year was the overwhelming defeat of Rep. Artur Davis in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for governor of Alabama. Davis, who was trying to become the state’s first African-American chief executive and once had a big lead in the polls, was trounced by State Agriculture Commis- sioner Ron Sparks, 62 to 38 percent. Davis is a smart, charming and independent-minded politician. From the beginning of his career, he had al- ways run against his state’s African-American political es- tablishment. In this race, he refused to court the state’s major African-American political organizations. It turned out that given the enormous role played by black voters in Alabama Democratic primaries, this hurt him badly. The Birmingham News’s Chuck Dean reported that Davis ran well behind in many predominantly black counties, and even lost at his own polling place. Davis made a classic political mistake: He was running to the center (or right) to court moderate and conserva- tive white voters for the general election before he had se- cured his own party’s nomination. “And it is so clear now that Davis’s gamble failed miserably,” Glen Browder, a for- mer congressman, told Dean.
Especially harmful was his decision to vote against
President Obama’s health-care bill. He was the only Afri- can American in Congress to oppose the bill and said his vote was a matter of principle. But principled or not, the vote estranged him from his own party — even from peo- ple sympathetic to him. It’s worth pondering that in the first electoral contest in which a vote on the health-care bill played a central role, it was a vote against the bill that proved harmful. Perhaps this tells us little about how the issue will play in this fall’s elections, which will obviously have a dynamic different from that of a Democratic primary. Nonetheless, I have a hunch that few Democrats who voted for the bill will be hurt by the stand they took. We know there’s in- tensity against the health-care reform among Repub- licans and conservatives. There may be a matching inten- sity in favor of reform among Democrats and liberals.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Those troublesome Jews
inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usu- al U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama ad- ministration dithers. But as Leslie Gelb, former presi- dent of the Council on Foreign Re- lations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self- declared enemy of Israel — a decla- ration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civil- ian territory. Yet having pledged it- self to unceasing belligerency, Ha- mas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Ha- mas from arming itself with still more rockets. In World War II, with full inter-
T
national legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 mis- sile crisis, we blockaded (“quaran- tined”) Cuba. Arms-bearing Rus- sian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is ac- cused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Ken- nedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from ac- quiring lethal weaponry. Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza — as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other hu- manitarian supplies are sent by Is- rael to Gaza. Why was the offer refused? Be- cause, as organizer Greta Berlin ad- mitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel’s inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas. Israel has already twice inter- cepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to
DAVID IGNATIUS
naled Israel and Turkey that the block- ade of Gaza should be loosened to al- low more humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinian population there. From the first news early Monday of
Nudging Israel toward a Gaza fix
T
he Obama administration, caught between two allies dur- ing this week of crisis, has sig-
the Israeli commando attack on a flo- tilla of Turkish relief ships, the White House has been trying to balance the interests of two prickly friends. The immediate aim, said a senior official, has been to “defuse the electricity of the moment” by freeing the ships’ pas- sengers and passing a U.N. resolution calling (in fuzzy language) for an in- vestigation of the raid. Beyond crisis management, admin-
istration officials have begun to urge Israel to use this incident to untangle the Gaza mess. U.S. officials hope Is- rael will take action on its own, before international condemnation grows any louder or another relief convoy tests the blockade. “The humanitarian aperture is not wide enough,” argues the U.S. official. “We need to convince the Israelis that not everything can be made into a weapon.” The Obama team recognizes that Is-
rael will act in its interests, but it wants Jerusalem to consider U.S. in- terests, as well. The administration has communicated at a senior level its fear that the Israelis sometimes “care about their equities, but not about ours.” This cautionary message — that Is-
rael must act as a more reliable and responsible partner — may be the most important one conveyed this week.
One issue on which the administra-
tion believes Israel would benefit from a more farsighted view is the in- vestigation of the incident. Israel has argued that this is a purely internal matter for the Israeli military, whose operations to enforce the Gaza block- ade were lawful and appropriate. But by defying calls for an interna- tional inquiry, the Israelis will com- pound their isolation. “They have an image problem, a perception prob- lem,” says the U.S. official. The White House hopes the Israelis will embrace some mechanism for an international probe — perhaps a French proposal for an inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Such a move would be in Israel’s interest, the administration believes. The trickiest problem in the first hours of the crisis was dealing with Turkey, whose leaders treated the commando raid as a pirate attack on Turkish citizens. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gen. Jim Jones, the national security adviser, met with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Then came a lengthy phone call between President Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Obama told Erdogan that “we need
to find a solution” for the Gaza hu- manitarian problem, according to a U.S. official. Erdogan is said to have agreed with the president that a good relationship between Israel and Tur- key was crucial for regional stability — and that Turkey didn’t want to see any further degradation. The Obama administration de-
serves credit for its repair work in the first days after the Gaza attack. But this is another example where the ad-
he world is outraged at Is- rael’s blockade of Gaza. Tur- key denounces its illegality,
blockade? Because, blockade is Is- rael’s fallback as the world system- atically de-legitimizes its tradition- al ways of defending itself — for- ward and active defense. (1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country sur- rounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopt- ed forward defense — fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Si- nai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.
Where possible (Sinai, for exam-
ple) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the terri- tory as a protective buffer zone.
Israel refuses repeated invitations to national suicide.
Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don’t have to fight them here. But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Is- raelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies — and therefore withdrawal, by re- moving the cause, would bring peace. Land for peace. Remember?
Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land — evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militariza- tion of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelent- ing rocket attack. (2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense — military action to disrupt, disman- tle and defeat (to borrow President Obama’s description of our cam- paign against the Taliban and al- Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew. The result? The Lebanon war of
2006 and Gaza operation of 2008- 09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and cal- umny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel’s defensive op- eration in Gaza while whitewash- ing the casus belli — the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war — effectively de-legitimized any ac- tive Israeli defense against its self- declared terror enemies. (3) Passive defense: Without for- ward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and be- nign of all defenses — a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearma- ment. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legiti- mation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abol- ished.
But, if none of these is permis- sible, what’s left? Ah, but that’s the point. It’s the point understood by the blockade- busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Na- tions, and by the supine Europeans who’ve had quite enough of the Jewish problem. What’s left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless interna- tional campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-de- fense. Why, just last week, the Oba- ma administration joined the jack- als, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a con- sensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weap- ons — thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deter- rence. The world is tired of these trou- blesome Jews, 6 million — that number again — hard by the Medi- terranean, refusing every invita- tion to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly pre- pare a more final solution.
charleskrauthammer.com letters@
OSMAN ORSAL/REUTERS
ne of the least attractive things about Homo sapiens is its habit of creating entertainment from the suf- fering of others. Hangings once were public specta-
Demonstrators in Turkey try to set fire to an Israeli flag on Monday.
KLMNO
R
A19
EUGENE ROBINSON
At BP, firing offenses
H
ow is it possible that BP chief executive Tony Hayward hasn’t been fired? At this
point, how can anyone believe a word the man says? If he told me my mother loves me, I’d want a sec- ond source. Hayward has apologized for his one lapse of candor — the now- famous whine last Sunday that “I’d like my life back.” It must be a nice life indeed: According to Forbes, Hayward’s total compensation from BP in 2009 was about $4.6 million. The Louisiana fishermen who’ve been put out of work by the oil spill are accustomed to getting by on considerably less. In a Face- book posting, Hayward said that his callous words “don’t represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don’t represent the hearts of the people of BP.”
Within hours, though, Hay-
ward’s foot was firmly lodged in his mouth yet again. The effort to con- tain the oil and keep it away from the Gulf Coast has been “very suc- cessful,” he told the Financial Times. “Considering how big this has been, very little has got away from us.” This sunny assessment came as television networks broad- cast images of oil-soaked Louisiana marshes, where hazmat-suited workers — who said they were un- der orders from BP not to talk to the media, on pain of getting fired — were trying to sop up the mess with what looked like rags, as if this were a gargantuan kitchen mishap. Meanwhile, mousse-like clumps of “weathered” oil were being washed onto beaches in Alabama, and au- thorities in Florida were watching the approach of a menacing, oily sheen. Scientists have not even be- gun to assess the potential long- term effects of the oil spill on hu- man health, marine life and coastal ecology. Carol Browner, the presi- dent’s chief adviser on energy and the environment, said that the Deepwater Horizon incident is al- ready the worst environmental dis- aster in United States history. Give yourself another pat on the
back, Tony. Adm. Thad Allen, who is direct- ing the response effort, is a nice guy — in terms of his public han- dling of BP, too nice. On Thursday, as BP proceeded with its latest at- tempt to cap the flow, Allen praised the company for providing several different camera views of the ac- tion on the sea floor. But for weeks, BP refused to make public any tele- vision images of the oil leak, and relented only under pressure from U.S. officials. Hayward’s statements about the
effort to plug the well have been consistently unreliable, and it hardly matters whether he’s being deliberately misleading or just overly optimistic. The giant con- tainment dome was going to work; it didn’t. The second, much smaller containment dome would do the job; it was never even deployed. The “top kill” procedure was surely going to stop the flow, and early in- dications, according to Hayward, showed that it was succeeding. Yet oil industry veterans such as T. Boone Pickens said the top kill was a long shot at best, and they were right.
ministration has been reacting to events that it should have tried better to control. The Gaza confrontation has been developing for weeks; ad- ministration officials reportedly cau- tioned Israel about provocative moves, but not emphatically enough to make a difference. U.S. officials were blindsided about the commando operation partly because they don’t spy on a key ally. Similarly, the Obama White House has been too reactive in its relation- ship with Turkey. A glaring example of this diplomatic drift is the Turkish mediation effort with Iran to revive an October plan for enrichment of urani- um abroad. Davutoglu thought he had Obama’s blessing for his shuttle diplo- macy, and the White House was given frequent updates. But when Turkey and Brazil announced they had clinched the deal, the administration did the diplomatic equivalent of shrugging its shoulders — and went ahead with plans for U.N. sanctions. One of the perverse secrets of Mid- dle East diplomacy is the importance of riding several horses at once. In the heyday of Henry Kissinger’s shuttle mediation, the Americans were the supreme masters of playing both sides of the street.
Obama has been talking about en-
gagement and mediation but without much to show for it. Instead, the ad- ministration has been responding to events rather than driving them. That won’t do. As former ambassador Chas. W. Freeman says in his collection of aphorisms, “The Diplomat’s Diction- ary”: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
davidignatius@washpost.com
And as for those giant underwa- ter oil plumes that scientists and journalists keep discovering? Hay- ward denies they exist. His posi- tion is that of a philanderer caught in the act by an irate spouse: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Since the explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon rig six weeks ago, BP’s stock has lost more than a third of its value. Two ratings firms, Fitch and Moody’s, have downgraded the company’s long-term debt, and es- timates of what it will cost BP to stop the leak and clean up its mess range from $3 billion to $30 bil- lion. All this happened on Hay- ward’s watch. Somebody, please, give the man his life back. But once that’s done, let’s turn our ire on the real villains. This ex- ercise will require a mirror. An accident such as the Deep-
water Horizon blowout was bound to happen sooner or later. There are nearly 4,000 oil rigs off the Gulf Coast, and those pumping most of the crude are in deep waters — where, as we now know, state-of- the-art safety procedures are inad- equate. President Obama’s morato- rium on deep-water drilling will last only long enough for some sort of technological band-aid to be de- vised. Then we’ll crank up the drills once again. We know that our dependence on oil is ultimately ruinous, yet we refuse to take measures — a mean- ingful carbon tax, for example — to ease it. Long after Tony Hayward answers for his sins, we’ll be paying for our own.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116