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Show _ TheSalt LakeTribune TribuneOPINION _Tuesday,November27, All Optimism, Realism MakePerfect Partners in Modern Foreign Policy CHICAGO — While I was back in mybeloved hometown forthe holiday, myold friend Jean unwittingly gave mea valuable clue to the odd shifts on foreign policy currently rocking our two political parties. of her husband, Don, an accomplished professor, she said at onepointin our conversation, “One of Don's manygood qualities is that he is leaders suchas,first, Jimmy Carter GEORGIE ANNE GEYER and thenBill Clinton, its foreignpolicies becameutopian rather than ide- alistic and impractical rather than realist - Rather thant classic liberal, the leadership becameleftist. It also developed the defeatist idea, in our big cities with crime and _.welfare, for instance, that once a tendency in society was present it could never be changed. The mantra after every failure, whether Somalia or Haiti, be- such an optimist.” Then she paused andadded uncertainly, “But he’s a realist, too.” It struck melaterin thinking about these words — andaboutthe dramatic changes in this Republican administration’s acts in the wake of 9/11 — that we have the optimist/pessimist thing all wrong. Optimism andrealism,for instance, are not antithetical at all; in fact, they go together like UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE came, “Well, wetried.” This mentality would have seen — and vehicles to carry through their objectives. It wasn’t always this way, surely not with the Republicans we have known. Until this administration, which foreign week, as massive numbers oftribes- policy men in Afghanistan shifted sides out changesin both the Republicans and of realistic interest. This mentality In fact, that congruence can help explain why this administration has the Democrats, it was the Democrats would haveactuallybelieved the Taliban fighters when they vowed to “fight to the death.” (Historically, remarkably few peopledo.) it,”for the simple reasonthat they are realists who understand the need to use imperfect but realizable means illuminated gun to grasp the heady scenesoflast Thanksgiving and turkey. beenso successful in this fight against terrorism. Essentially, they are optimists who are confident they can “do has in fact, did see — the Taliban's domination of Afghanistan as irrevocable. This mentality could never have be- whohistorically have been identified with optimismand idealism. We saw that in World Wars I and I and in such domestic watershed missionsascivil rights. Butthe old Republican foreign policy mentality would have addressed Afghanistan even more incapably. The staid and rigid old Republicans But when leadership of the Democratic Party passed to more pacifistic would have addressed the threat only in terms of traditional militaryfor: mulation; they would: have interpreted it predominantlyin terms of oil and minerals and attempted (unsuccessfully) to impose a government enhancement of WILLIAM F.BUCKLEY ever-so- lic policy. Another reasonis the gratification of curiosity active and latent, human and maybe UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE on Nixon — President Nixon, unfriendly desert state in West Africa, but the dazed guest in the Oval Office was the prime are published for the first time hadto get it right fromthestart,” he told mein severaldifferent wordings. with a new deftness There really is no new “doctrine” for what theyare doing. The doctrines of Republican administrations in the 1980s use only overwhelming |force, always have an * and sustain “zero have fallen bythe wayside, wherein truth theyalways belonged. —andwith sucha sudden change in tz Those doctrines were imposed from that one aboveintheyears afterfailure; these ideas are being generated outofarealismthat bubbles upfromthe bottom andfromwhateanbe done. cannot yet be sure exact! iy whereits principles are coming from. In fact, I am not sure its protagonists quite know. is Myfriend Jean got it right, although she wasn’t quite awareofit: Optimism and realism go together,in At the MarineBall recently, I asked this of Vice President Dick Cheney. He answered only, “Well, we all argue in this book,” Reeves discloses in his notes. These segments, Only after well fense Don Rumsfeld. He, too, hesitated. Then hestressedthat theyrealized they had no room for mistakes. “We mind-boggling. This groupis certainly still present in the Republican Party (the big in dustrialists and growers, someof the neo-conservatives and the overeager Republican young). But the leadership of the Bush ad. ministration is handling this crisis Reeves says, show Nixon ru- toring of the policies of Mauritius did Henry Kissinger succeed in slipping him a note: “wrong prime minister, wrong country.” “Excisions [from the CD-ROMofNixon's tapes] previously made for national security and privacy reasons // backbiting outside.” Several weeksago,I asked the same question Where wasthe conceptu. alizing behind these new policies coming from? of Secretary of De- ‘The idea that this group wouldcul. goonofsorts in the Indian into the president's hec- of public life as they affect pub- Alone in the White House — Richard Reeves delivers, as already noted in this space, an i from account of a inception to abortion, an account that might have been of a policy is decided upon, there is no turally understandthedifferences between a Taliban and a Tajik is truly friendly Mauritania,a laOcean. knowledge, our understanding of elements evena little inhuman. In his mostengrossing book minister times great disagreements — but once madeupoflocals with no backing but with whomthey, the Americans,felt comfortable. On Our Enduring Fascination With Nixon There are several reasons for studying minutiae in the lives of our presidents. The superior reason for doingsois the everything out, and there are some- minating on replacing the mayor of Washington, D.C., with a “white Alabama coonkiller,” and celebratingthe safe. landing of Apollo 13 by getting drunk and passing out in the middle of the afternoon. “But they also add to the understanding of policy.” Nixon contrived his own downfall, and his domestic policy was a farragoof statism and capitalist cliche. Foreign fact, because theyhaveto. policy he did care about. He lost Vietnam, whose fate, along as Nixon’s own, was sealed Watergate. His desperate ne public and subjective, closed in on himsothat, finally, this volumeso en: shows, he could not , except to abandonship. His resourcefulness no longer served him. Onlyafew months earlier he had addressedthe White House Correspondents Association. “Nixon got a couple of laughs, the biggestoneat the beginning when hesaid, ‘It is a privilege to be here . . . | suppose I should say it is an executive privilege.’ “When hegot serious, he pas tribute to David Lawrence, the founder of U.S. News and World Report, who had recently died. Nixonsaid, ‘David Lawrence, who was a charter member of this club 59 years ago, said to mea couple of years ago: “There is only one more difficult task than being presi dent of this country when we. are waging war, and that is to be the president when weare waging peace." ““What did you think of the Lawrence quote?’ he asked Haldemanlater. ““Appropriate,” was the answer. “‘T madeit up,’ Nixonsaid.” But he couldn’t make up a way to stay on as president. done by the dramatists of TV’s “West Wing,” except that everything that happens here ac- -}Sprint Store tually happened. It is the ar- rangement andselectivity by Reevesof the massive material on Nixon that makes the book tingle with excitement as we read about the most extraordinary man everto have occupied the White House. We learn that when Nixon The PCS Center Wherewireless becomes clear. was elected in 1968, President | Johnson put an Air Force One planeat his disposal, the very first use of which brought, as almost nothing else can to a president-elect, a substantive preview of the embodiment of presidential life. Just after take-off, thinking no one could see him — but through curtains , ye ke not quite drawn, someone did — Richard Nixon seized his wife, Pat, around the waist and twirled about laughing and Wireless wonderland. singing in his exultation, the culmination of the tortuous road from nominee for a congressional seat in California to president-elect of the United States. Majestic emoluments in a democratic society explain the perseverance of such as Richard Reeves, whoas he gives us history by grand design shows also the skills of the dowser, coming up with incident after incident that are trivia when examined discretely, but which add to the grand and complicated portrait. A bibliographic essay informs us that the complete tapes of Nixon cover approximately 2,800 hours ofconversation — critically rewarding to the Senate committee investigating grounds for impeaching the president, but not otherwise worth it for the lay reader: “The taped Nixon showslittle evidence of his brilliance.” Whatdo we makeof it all? _ What was the impact of seures? Reeves does not tell us, buthelets us in on what they were. We knewthat Nixon Save $200. Only at Sprint Stores. Make the Sprint Store yourholiday headquarters. 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