Hoover Digest, 2014, No. 1, Winter

The Economy
Politics
The Constitution
Health Care
Science
Education
Foreign Policy
Syria
Turkey
The Arab Spring
China
HOOVER DIGEST RESEARCH AND OPINION ON PUBLIC POLICY
H OOVER DIGEST 2014 N O. 1
RESEARCH AND OPINION

O N P U B L I C P O L I C Y
2 0 1 4 N O. 1 W I N T E R
North Korea
Interview: Tom Wolfe
History and Culture
Hoover Archives
2014 . NO. 1
T H E H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y

2014 NO.1 WINTER
T H E H O OV E R I N S T I T U T I O N
S ta n f o r d U n i v e r s i t y
Hoover Digest
Research and Opinion on Public Policy
2014 no. 1 winter
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On the Cover
A 1917 poster that seems to say let there be
light actually says something more prosaic:
let there be coal. The light-bulb image,
stylishly painted by top-tier commercial
artist Coles Phillips, offers a conservation
message courtesy of the short-lived US Fuel
Administration, which set out to control how
Americans bought, moved, and used fuel
supplies during the war. The agency was a
child of the search for scientific efficiency in
government management, a recurring theme
among regulators. See story, page 180.
Deputy Director,
Davies Family Senior Fellow
richard sousa
stephen langlois
Senior Associate Directors
david davenport
donald c. meyer
Counselors to the Director

ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS
christopher s. dauer
colin stewart
eric wakin
eryn witcher
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS
denise elson
jeffrey m. jones
noel s. kolak
visit the
HOOVER INSTITUTION
online at
www.hoover.org
Contents
HOOVER DIGEST 2014 N O. 1 W I NTE R
T he E conomy
9
Let It Grow
The evidence is in that steeper taxes and overregulation fail to boost
incomes and ease inequality. By john b. taylor.
12
Capitalisms Nine (and More) Lives

Like Karl Marx, present-day doomsayers hail every crisis as the
death knell of capitalismand, like Marx, theyre wrong. By
gary s. becker.
16
Debt Ceilings and Distractions

The real problem? The uncontrolled growth of federal spending. By
gary s. becker and edward paul lazear.
19
Breaking Bad Bargains

Will the administration ever learn? Neither stimulus spending nor
the redistribution of income creates jobs. By richard a. epstein.
25
Myths of the Financial Crisis

The damage was done, and the worst outcomes averted, before President
Bush even left office. By keith hennessey and edward paul lazear.
32
The Detroit Cure

Dr. Johnsons remark at the prospect of being hanged is just as true
of the prospect of municipal bankruptcy: it concentrates the mind
wonderfully. By jonathan rodden.
Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1
37
The Treasurys Long Game

Extending the maturity dates for government debt would literally
buy time. By john h. cochrane.
Po l itics
41
A President for All Seasons

There was nothing fleeting about the legacy of Ronald Reagan,
and conservativesof all peoplemust never forget that. By
henry r. nau.
47
Less Talk, More Wisdom

The last round of GOP primary debates was less enlightening than
exhausting. Lets make the next round betterby making it shorter.
By bill whalen.
The Constitution
52
A Nation of Laws?
Certain public officials have begun defying laws that theynot the
courtsconsider unconstitutional. By david davenport.
H ealth C are
57
Its Own Worst Enemy

Congress failed to prevent ObamaCare from taking effect. But its
not too late for damage control. By lanhee j. chen.
60
The Doctor Wont See You Now

As the new federal program seeks to limit Americans access to specialists and medical innovations, primary-care doctors will become
ever more scarce. By scott w. atlas.
67
The Great Unraveling

The Affordable Care Act was never going to be affordable.
By charles blahous.
S cience
71
Free the Modified Mosquitoes!

A lab-grown mosquito can help prevent a serious diseaseif a misled
public doesnt squash it. By henry i. miller.
E ducation
75
Higher Grades, Higher GDP

The stronger the student performance, the more prosperous the nation. By eric a. hanushek and paul e. peterson.
79
Dont Cheat Your Kids

Attention, parents: if your kids attend a lousy school and all you do
is shrug about it, youre part of the problem. By michael j. petrilli.
Foreign P o lic y
83
Best Frenemies
Nations have interests, not friends. Neither the Syrian war nor the
Snowden case should deter the United States from working with
Russia. By elizabeth cobbs hoffman.
S y ria
88
How to Breed Atrocities

Wars such as the Syrian conflictirregular, undeclared, ideologicalall but inevitably give rise to a particular sadism and brutality.
By victor davis hanson.
92
Humpty Dumpty in Syria

With or without outside intervention, nothing will put Bashar alAssads tyranny back together again. America should plan accordingly. By thomas h. henriksen.
96
Return of the Bear

Russia is back in the Middle East. How did we let this happen? By
tod lindberg.
108
Would an Attack on Syria Be a Just War?

War isnt always diplomacy by other means. Sometimes its a moral
imperative. By robert p. george.
113
The Road to Damascus

Passivity toward Syria isnt buying the United States time. Its permitting forces that oppose us and our values to strengthen and coalesce. By reuel marc gerecht.
T urke y
117
Colliding Currents
Ataturk, Erdogan, and the battle for the Turkish soul. By
fouad ajami.
T he A ra b Spring
125
A Long and Trying Season

The Arab Spring has settled one question: the Muslim world does
want representative government. It also showed that democracy there
has far to go. By frederick w. kagan.
131
For the Copts, Disaster and Diaspora

The Arab Spring is forcing Egypts Coptic Christians out of their
homeland and into the world. samuel tadros on the destruction of
an ancient community and culture. By mark l. movsesian.
C hina
137
Great Wall of Corruption

How the curse of corruption limits and diminishes the miracle of
economic growth. By michael j. boskin.
N orth Korea
142
Crazy Like a Fox

Nice to have, suicidal to use: the bizarre logic of Pyongyangs nuclear
arsenal. By walter russell mead.
I nterview
148
Wolfe at the Door

Tom Wolfes latest novel, Back to Blood, is a portrait of present-day
culturesprawling, lurid, hilarious, repellent, compelling: More
than anything else, I just love all these people. An interview with
peter robinson.
H istory and Cul ture

157
King and the Dream

Martin Luther Kings dreamto be judged by the content of ones
characteris still just a dream. By thomas sowell.
160
A Dream Derailed
Kings fight for justice has been transformed into governmentsponsored distortion of labor, housing, and education. By
richard a. epstein.
H oover A rchives
167
The Last Communist

Mieczysaw F. Rakowski, the last Communist prime minister of Poland, sought to repair communism by reforming it. Instead he reformed it right out of existence. By andrzej paczkowski.
180
On the Cover
T H E E CO N O M Y
Let It Grow
The evidence is in that steeper taxes and overregulation fail to boost
incomes and ease inequality. By John B. Taylor.
In 2012 a debate raged about whether economic growth and job creation
had been abnormally slow compared with previous recoveries from recessions in the United States. In the year that ended last June, the growth rate
declined to 1.6 percent over the past years 2.8 percent, so now the debate
is no longer about whether. Its about why.
The poor economic policies of the past few years are a reasonable explanation for todays weak economy. Fiscal policy has at best provided temporary stimulus before fading away with no sustainable impact on growth.
More costly and confusing regulationsincluding the many mandates
in the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Acthave reduced the
willingness of firms to invest and hire. The Federal Reserve has employed
a variety of unconventional and unpredictable monetary policies with not
very successful results.
The administration and its supporters are not about to blame the slow
recovery on their own policies, or those of the Fed. Instead, President
Obama and his supporters have been talking about an economy that
grows from the middle out, as he put it in Galesburg, Illinois, in July. The
fashionable middle-out view blames todays troubles on policies that took
root in Ronald Reagans administration.
John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the
Hoover Institution, the chairman of Hoovers Working Group on Economic Policy
and a member of Hoovers Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy, and
the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University.
The 1980s and 90s experienced a declining trend in unemployment

rates, milder and less frequent recessions, and a lower inflation rate
all of which disproportionately benefited people with middle and lower incomes, especially compared with the 1970s. These decades were
also characterized by widening inequality. The reason? Washington,
as Obama asserted in Galesburg, doled out bigger tax cuts to the very
wealthy and smaller minimum-wage increases for the working poor.
Weak economic growth today, according to the middle-out view, is the
consequence of a wider distribution, or dispersion, of income (more at the
upper end). This growth in inequality, the argument goes, is the consequence
of tax cuts since the 1980s, a trend toward deregulation (that actually began
under the Carter administration), and fewer targeted federal programs.
The key causal factor of the middle-out view is that a wider income distribution slows economic growth by lowering consumption demand. Savings rates rise and consumption falls if the share of income shifts toward
the top, according to middle-out reasoning, because people with higher
incomes tend to save more than those with lower incomes.
The data for the recovery since mid-2009 do not support this view. The
5.4 percent overall savings rate during this recovery is not high compared
with the 8.4 percent average since 1960. It is relatively low compared to
past recoveries, such as the 9.3 percent savings rate during a comparable
period during the recovery in the early 1980s.
Moreover, data do not support the view that tax cuts in the past thirty
years are responsible for the widening income distribution. According
to the Congressional Budget Office, the distribution of market income
before taxes widened in the 1980s and 90s by about as much as the distribution of income after taxes.
The middle-out view fails to explain the weak economy and high
unemployment today. It also fails to explain the strong economy and low
unemployment in the 1980s and 90s.
Widening income distribution can be a concern, however, especially if
it signals reduced income mobility and a growing inequality of opportunity. Consider data collected by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez for
the upper 10 percent and the lower 90 percent of the income scale. From
the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, real income growth was
10
strong for both groups and there was relatively little change in the distribution of income.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the growth of real income slowed dramatically for both groups, coinciding with the terrible economic policy of that
period. Income growth sped up in the 1980s and 90s but was faster in the
upper-income group than in the lower-income group. This is the period
of the widening of the distribution. According to the latest data collected
by Saez, real income of both groups has recently stagnated.
What caused the differential income growth in the 1980s and 1990s?
Research shows that the returns to education started increasing in the
1980s. For example, the wage premium for going to college compared
to high school increased. But the supply of educated students did not
respond to the increase in returns. High school graduation rates were
declining in the 1980s and 90s and have moved very little since then. Test
scores of American students fell in international rankings. With little supply response, the returns to those with the education rose more quickly,
causing the income distribution to widen.
Greater economic freedom, the key policy trend of the 1980s and 1990s,
did not spread to large parts of the education system. That remains true
today, although increased accountability and freedom to choose schools in
some states such as Florida and Texas shows what can and should be done.
The policies favored by those with a middle-out viewhigher tax rates,
more intrusive regulations, more targeted fiscal policieswill not revive
the economy. More likely they will perpetuate the weak economy we have
and cause real incomesincluding for those in the middleto continue
to stagnate.
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. 2013 Dow Jones & Co. All rights reserved.
New from the Hoover Press is Government Policies

and the Delayed Economic Recovery, edited by Lee E.
Ohanian, John B. Taylor, and Ian J. Wright. To order, call
800.888.4741 or visit www.hooverpress.org.
11
T HE EC ONOM Y
Capitalisms Nine
(and More) Lives
Like Karl Marx, present-day doomsayers hail every crisis as the death
knell of capitalismand, like Marx, theyre wrong. By Gary S. Becker.
Karl Marx saw every major depression in the nineteenth century as the
final crisis of capitalism that, because of the systems internal contradictions, would usher in the era of socialism and communism. Alas for
Marx. Each time he was proved wrong when the end of these depressions
was often followed by an even stronger capitalist surge.
Something similar has taken place during the past few major world
financial crises. The Asia crisis led to a book in 1998 by eminent financier
George Soros titled The Crisis of Global Capitalism, although eventually
he retracted his forecast that this was the major crisis of capitalism. The
collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting financial crisis and Great
Recession created a robust market for collapse-of-capitalism forecasters.
Public televisions well-respected NewsHour questioned whether capitalism is dead in 2008. That same year the Guardian in Britain had an
article that billed its premise as not the death of capitalism, but the birth
of a new order. The free-market model has been discredited and now its
champions are panicking at what might emerge in its wake.
Gary S. Becker is the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution and a member of Hoovers Working Group on Economic
Policy and Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy. He is also the University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago. He was
awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992.
12
In 2009 the Financial Times commissioned a series of articles with very

different viewpoints, most pessimistic, on the future of capitalism in the
wake of the financial crisis. Kevin Murphy and I had the most optimistic
article in this series, too optimistic for its critics, with the title Do not let
the cure destroy capitalism. We stressed, among other things, that
in devising reforms that aim to reduce the likelihood of future severe
contractions, the accomplishments of capitalism should be appreciated.
Governments should not so hamper markets that they are prevented from
bringing rapid growth to the poor economies of Africa, Asia and elsewhere that have had limited participation in the global economy....The
Great Depression induced a massive worldwide retreat from capitalism
and an embrace of socialism and communism that continued into the
1960s. It also fostered a belief that the future lay in government management of the economy, not in freer markets. The result was generally slow
growth during those decades in most of the undeveloped world, including China, the Soviet bloc nations, India, and Africa.
In taking stock at this point of what happened now that the crisis is
over and the recovery is under way, it has become clear after considerable
uncertainty that capitalism has mainly won out, and those calling for radical
changes in the world economy have been defeated. To be sure, regulation
of banks has increased through greater capital requirements, scrutiny of pay
practices, and various other ways formulated in the Dodd-Frank Act and
other laws Europe and elsewhere. But the main investment banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others are still big, profitable, and very active,
and quasigovernmental companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may
be forced to cut back their extensive and unwise activities.
Outside the financial sectors in the United States and Europe, capitalism is more prominent than ever. Country after country is reducing
the scale of its public enterprises and expanding the scope of the private
sector. For the first time in almost seventy years, Mexico has opened its
oil and other energy sectors to greater participation by private firms. The
new leaders of China have expressed dissatisfaction with the performance
of public enterprises, and have called for greater participation by private
firms in many sectors, including financial markets.
13
14
Illustration by Taylor Jones for the Hoover Digest.
The formerly mainly socialist government of Rwanda, a very poor

nation, has been encouraging private companies to increase their role in
the economy. India is trying to reduce its many labor-market and other
regulations so direct foreign investment will increase and Indias own private firms will expand their activities. On the other side of the ledger,
nations like Venezuela that have conducted a war on the private sector
have seen poverty grow and economies stagnate.
The reason behind these recent pro-capitalist activities is that more
and more countries have realized that despite its many flaws, capitalism
is the only system yet devised that brings hope of lifting the masses out
of poverty and creating a robust middle class. Most people realize this,
and have prevented political leaders from using the reaction against
capitalism brought on by the financial crisis to try to radically transform a system that has brought so much wealth and health to the peoples of the world.
Reprinted from the Becker-Posner Blog (www.becker-posner-blog.com).
New from the Hoover Press is Issues on My Mind:
Strategies for the Future, by George P. Shultz. To order,
call 800.888.4741 or visit www.hooverpress.org.
15
T HE EC ONOM Y
Debt Ceilings and

Distractions
The real problem? The uncontrolled growth of federal spending. By
Gary S. Becker and Edward Paul Lazear.
The wrangling in Washington over the debt ceiling never gets around to
considering this proposition: maybe debt ceilings are a bad idea, because
they may lead to increased spending.
A debt ceiling may seem like a good way to constrain out-of-control
government, by focusing attention on the federal deficit and the resulting
debt increase. (For the record, the United States debt recently surpassed
$17 trillion.) But that focus draws attention from the underlying problem: too much spending.
Debt ceilings also provide a false sense of security. Borrowing will never
get too far out of hand, the thinking goes, because the ceiling will cap
it. Yet the US debt hits the debt ceiling time and again because the federal government runs chronic deficits. This addiction to overspending has
Gary S. Becker is the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution and a member of Hoovers Working Group on Economic
Policy and Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy. He is also the University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago. He was
awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992. Edward
Paul Lazear is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, chairman of Hoovers Conte Initiative on Comprehensive
Immigration Reform, and the Jack Steele Parker Professor of Human Resources
Management and Economics at Stanfords Graduate School of Business.
16
forced Congress to raise the debt ceiling more than ninety times during
the past seventy yearsfifteen times since 1993 alone.
The financial burden of the federal debt depends not only on the size
of the debt but also on the interest paid. The product of the level of the
debt and the interest rate determines the government revenue needed to
service the debt. The low interest rates on federal debt (and other debt)
during the past decade have made it easier to service even a growing debt.
Were interest rates to rise, the debt-service burden would increase, which
in turn would mean that either higher taxes or more borrowing would be
required. Additional borrowing adds to the debt.
The debts burden on the economy can be gauged by its relation to
gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office projects that
the debt-to-GDP ratio will remain above 70 percent for the next decade.
This is well above the 39 percent average over the past four decades. In
2007, before the recession began, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 36 percent.
This debt ratio grew rapidly during the past five years, partly because federal spending increased greatly and partly because tax revenues were low
during the recession and weak recovery.
Debt ceilings provide a false sense of security.
Fundamentally, the growing US debt is a manifestation of the expanding size of government. Focusing on the deficit is a distraction from this
concern. Since deficits can be reduced either by cutting spending or raising taxes, both liberals and conservatives can agree on the value of reducing deficits while strongly disagreeing on how to reduce them.
Liberals want to raise taxes to cut deficits, while conservatives want to
lower government spending. Yet the substantial growth in federal spending during the past fifty years under both Democratic and Republican
control of Congress and the presidency suggests that the many debt ceilings during this period did little to reduce the size of government.
Furthermore, the almost-ubiquitous deficits during the same period
suggest that the ceiling has not been effective even at controlling the deficit. The debt ceiling may result in a harmful complacency. If members of
Congress believe they will always have another shot at spending control,
17
they may be more lax when authorizing government spending in the budget process or, more recently, through continuing resolutions.
There is evidence at the state level of how harmful this kind of behavior can be. Many states are required to have balanced budgets, but the
growth in spending and the size of state governments continues apace.
During good times, when tax revenues are high, states balance their
budgets by spending at the high levels consistent with large revenues.
When times get tough, it is difficult if not impossible to eliminate programs initiated during the fat years. Instead, the states resort to budgetary
gimmicks like delaying shortfalls until next years balanced budget.
If Congress members believe they will always have another shot at
spending control, they may be more lax when authorizing spending.
Better than a debt-ceiling rule would be one that controls spending

directly, not the debt that results from it. The specifics are less important
than the general principle, which is that spending growth should be limited
in a way that brings government outlays back down to historic ratios relative
to GDP. This would place the attention where it belongs: on spending, rather than on the difference between outlays and receipts. Increased spending,
coupled with even larger increases in taxes, might bring the deficit down,
but it would damage economic growth and well-being.
The relief when the country avoided what was a very unlikely debt
default will be short-lived. Congress should concentrate on the continuing growth of government and its consequences for future generations.
Available from the Hoover Press is Conserving Liberty,

by Mark Blitz. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
18
T H E E CO N O M Y
Breaking Bad Bargains

Will the administration ever learn? Neither stimulus spending nor the
redistribution of income creates jobs. By Richard A. Epstein.
Job creation has slowed to a trickle, in the words of many a headline.

Only 88,000 new jobs were created last March, for instancea feeble
number accompanied by the good news that the jobless rate, which
counts as unemployed only those actively seeking work, had dropped
from 7.7 to 7.6 percent.
The real news was the separation of nearly half a million people from the
workforce. Labor-force participation has shrunk from about 67.3 percent
in early 2000 to about 63.3 percent today. A crude first approximation of
the real unemployment rate would add back at least four percentage points.
A more accurate estimation of the actual unemployment rate would also
account for those individuals who were out of the market by 2000 in part
because of impediments to market performance that were already in place.
With weak numbers like these, the political discussion has continued
to focus on job creation and economic growth. How should these goals
be accomplished? On All Things Considered, I heard E. J. Dionne advise
the Federal Reserve to keep its foot on the accelerator, opening the cash
spigot and keeping interest rates at their historic lows. At the same time,
the rest of the government should put worries about the deficit asideor
Richard A. Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution and a member of Hoovers John and Jean De Nault Task
Force on Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity. He is also the Laurence A.
Tisch Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a senior lecturer
at the University of Chicago.
19
so the argument goesby increasing public expenditures funded in part

through higher taxes on the top 1 percent of earners. David Brooks rightly
disparaged that prescription, but still was unable to identify the big structural change he hoped would turn the economy around.
M is s h ap en T ax Po li cy
President Obama had, of course, no doubts on what should be done. In
his view, we should double down on the same policies that he has championed since coming into office. The president has renewed his call for
capping the charitable deduction at 28 percenta dreadful ideaeven
as he tries to steepen the level of progressivity of the income tax. In addition, he unveiled a proposal to slash the amount of money that individuals
can keep in their tax-deferred retirement accounts. Additional taxation is
likely to further retard the creation of jobs and wealth by shrinking the
size of the largest pool of private investment funds in the United States.
Thats not all. The tax systems high progressivity drives endless political
efforts by well-heeled interest groups to exempt themselves from this bold
new order. Businesses chafing under their heavy tax burden are directing
their attention to the people in Congress who pull the levers of power.
High on that list is Max Baucus (D-Montana), the longtime head of the
Senate Finance Committee, which has a lot to say on both the revenue
and spending side of the budget. The New York Times reports that some
twenty-eight of his former congressional aides are now registered tax lobbyists, as are many former staffers of such influential operatives as Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Charles Schumer (D-New York).
The essence of a sound tax policy is to make it unprofitable for tax
lobbyists to skulk around Washington.
But have no fear, says Sean Neary, a Baucus spokesman. Neary assures
a wary public that the senator often rejects proposals from his well-connected supplicants and that all of his decisions are based on the merits.
Just what merits decide which set of special benefits should be granted
and which denied? Neary is not at a loss for words. Every vote has to
answer one question for him, and that is: how is it impacting Montan20
ans? It is harder to know where the greater corruption lies: is it in Baucuss explicit decision to put the welfare of the tiny number of Montanans
ahead of that of the remaining 99 percent of this nations citizens? Or does
it lie in the delusive confidence that so benighted a senator can figure out
just which of the endless special deals is worthy of his support?
Each and every form of labor regulation distorts the operation of
competitive markets.
Baucus has it all backwards. The essence of a sound tax policy is to

make it unremunerative for tax lobbyists to skulk around Washington to
obtain or preserve special benefits. But the more that tax policy becomes
progressive, the more it starts to resemble Swiss cheese, which incentivizes
lobbying for still other loopholes.
The feared tax cliff of January 2013 was in fact just one of a large array of
tax hills, valleys, and detours, all of which reduce or postpone investments
from businesses that dont have the foggiest idea what the tax picture will
look like once a deal surfaces. The concealed costs of this tax uncertainty
are very large. The only antidote is to flatten the rates and broaden the base,
which is antithetical to the Obama mantra of redistribution first.
u n l e a s h t h e labo r marke ts
Like Dionne, the president may think that stimulus from the Fed can offset
his tough tax-reform proposals. Forget it. We have tried stimulus programs
for more than four years now, and the results are anemic growth levels tied
to a reduction in both the capital stock and the income levels for much of
the population. Over the past dozen years, economic growth has averaged
about 1.7 percent per year; business investment is about 0.8 percent per
annum; family income is down about 8 percent; and the labor market has
been stagnant. More stimulus programs cannot undo the malaise.
Stimulus programs introduce yet another degree of uncertainty into the
overall picture. The lower rates that help businesses hurt consumers, especially retirees living on fixed incomes. No one should buy into the Keynesian
delusion that the current malaise stems only from shortfalls on the demand
side. No one should think that choosing between austerity and deficits will
21
move the needle much one way or the other. Current uncertainty hurts
both the demand and the supply side, thereby driving down economic productivity and increasing the deficit. The losses here really matter.
Let us assume, for example, that the Obama policies have chopped 2
points off growth per year, which is roughly the difference between the
1.5 percent growth we have had and the 3.5 percent growth he promised.
Compounded over the four-plus years of his presidency, the total growth
decline comes out to about 11 percentno small amount in an overall
economy of about $15 trillion. No matter how one slices these numbers,
stagnation always follows from massive redistribution.
Redistribution and stimulus will not create jobs. So what will? To
answer David Brooks, the best big structural change needed to create
jobs is a massive liberalization of labor markets. The logic here is simple
enough. Each and every form of labor regulation distorts the operation
of competitive markets. For example, the minimum-wage law cuts off
opportunities for people to enter the labor
market at the lowest rungs. Remove
22
the regulationsincluding the full range of antidiscrimination laws and

employer mandates, especially on matters of health careand the labor
market will start working more efficiently to create jobs and wealth.
It would be wise for Washington to take note of a recent statistic, reported
in the Wall Street Journal, that the unemployment rate for people between
sixteen and twenty-five now officially stands at about 16.2 percent, a figure
that rises above 22 percent when accounting for young people who have given up or postponed the search for jobs. Historically, new entrants into the
workforce have always been most vulnerable in downturns. The minimum
wage is the obvious, but by no means the only, culprit. Raising it across the
board will only make matters worse for the young people in our country.
These losses are disastrous for the long-term health of a nation. The
want of a first job means that young workers do not get the experience
and skills that allow them to obtain a second, better job. It means that the
level of transfer payments has to rise, which, in turn, imposes higher tax
burdens on the economy to replace the lost income.
C LEA NING HOUSE

In the face of all this dislocation, the United States could achieve a major
reduction in total government expenditures by scrapping one program that
costs a small fortune to administer while making matters worse
economically. The correct approach would be
23
to fire every worker who administers the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
and supply each of them with a one-year severance package that will allow
them time to re-enter a labor market that is sure to expand without the
benefit of their destructive oversight.
Uncertainty hurts both the demand and the supply side.
Such labor-market reforms would be blocked, of course, by the single

most regressive force in American politics: the large, politicized union sector,
which does more harm in the political arena than it does at the bargaining
table. The great shame of President Obama is that owing to his incredible
intellectual rigidity, he has not developed the economic wisdom or political
courage to ditch, even in his second term, this group of supporters.
The president will administer none of this stiff medicine. When you
ask the wrong questions, you are likely to get the wrong answers. To the
president, the right question to ask is: which form of government intervention can do most to improve the economy? The one answer that he
will not accept is deregulation, which, in both the long and the short run,
is the only solution to the current woes.
What the president seems determined to impose on the American people is a grand economic bargain that marches us down the road to economic stagnation or worse. His policies of increased regulation will continue to stifle productive labor markets and his redistributive programs
will continue to shrink the capital base. Both of these policies will only
shrink the overall size of the pie, so that the whole country suffers. This
nation deserves far better, but the prospects are glum that it will get it.
Reprinted from Defining Ideas (www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas). 2013 by the Board of
Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Case against the
Employee Free Choice Act, by Richard A. Epstein. To
order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.hooverpress.org.
24
T H E E CO N O M Y
Myths of the Financial

Crisis
The damage was done, and the worst outcomes averted, before President
Bush even left office. By Keith Hennessey and Edward Paul Lazear.
More than five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a host of
misconceptions about the ensuing financial crisisranging from why it
began to who led the responsepersist. In order for policy makers to
avoid repeating mistakes, the record of who took what actions, both during and after the crisis, must be set straight.
We know this territory well: we were President George W. Bushs
two principal economic advisers at the White House during the crisis
period. We saw the crisis firsthand and were involved in the policy decisions. Each of us has continued to analyze what happened and tried
to evaluate objectively how the federal government responded. Most of
the responses to the financial crisisdistinct from those designed to
deal with the recession and recovery that followedoccurred in 2008,
under President Bush. President Barack Obamas role was not to address
the financial crisis, but instead to handle the ensuing financial cleanup,
financial policy reforms, and the severe macroeconomic recession under
way when he took office.
Keith Hennessey is a lecturer at Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business. Edward Paul Lazear is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution, chairman of Hoovers Conte Initiative on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and the Jack Steele Parker Professor of Human
Resources Management and Economics at Stanfords Graduate School of Business.
25
THE HOUSIN G C R ASHAND OTHE R D OMINOES

Although the causes of the downturn will be debated for years, the closest
thing to a consensus view is that the crisis was initiated by a strong flow
of funds, beginning in 2003, from developing economies into developed
economies. The flow into risky assets drove down credit spreads, making
high-risk investment cheaper than it had been in the past. As a result,
in the mid-2000s, risk taking increased dramatically, especially in the
housing market. Subprime loan growth between 2003 and 2005 was one
important example of this, but it was not unique. Construction of new
housing units peaked at about 2.2 million per year in late 2005, almost
50 percent higher than its historic average. Eventually supply of housing
exceeded demand and housing prices fell. Housing-related financial assets
like mortgage-backed securities declined sharply in value, leading to losses
by both households and financial institutions. Many financial firms that
had placed highly leveraged, highly correlated bets by holding these assets
now neared insolvency.
Although the dam broke in early September 2008, contrary to popular
belief, Lehmans failure did not cause the crisis. Many events preceded it,
and most of those that followed had nothing to do with Lehman. Lehman
was an exacerbating factor, but it is important more as a significant symptom of the broader crisis than as a cause of subsequent events.
Recall that a week before Lehmans failure, the Dow Jones Industrial
Average had already declined nearly 3,000 points from its pre-recession
peak, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, near bankruptcy, were placed
into conservatorship. The labor market lost 1.1 million jobs from April
to August 2008. Merrill Lynch was near collapse and was rescued by a
government-subsidized Bank of America purchase. AIG was on the verge
of failure and was saved only by an emergency infusion of $85 billion
from the Federal Reserve. Washington Mutual and Wachovia were in deep
distress and avoided insolvency only through their acquisition by JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, respectively. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
asked the Fed to become bank holding companies so that they could take
advantage of Fed lending facilities. Iceland, quite independent of events in
the United States, was experiencing its own financial disaster because of its
central role in the carry trade, while Britain, Ireland, and Spain faced their
26
own housing and bank problems. The sum of these events, even without
Lehman, constituted a major financial crisisall coming together in September 2008.
In the mid-2000s, risk taking increased dramatically, especially in the
housing market.
People continue to misunderstand not only the causes of the crisis

but also the response. The financial crisis had ended by the time President Obama took office in January 2009, a fact largely obscured by
the Obama teams rhetorical blurring of the late-2008 financial shock
and the ensuing macroeconomic recession. Almost all policies enacted
to stem the financial crisis occurred during the autumn of 2008, while
Bush was still president. It is possible to criticize the actions the Bush
administration and the Fed took to deal with the crisis, and many do.
But it is not possible to question that these actions were taken before
Obama became president.
T A RP A N D ITS ALLIES
What exactly did the Bush administration do to stem the crisis? Perhaps
the most important action was the creation in October 2008 of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which quickly helped to recapitalize
the financial sector and prevented what could have been the complete
disappearance of financial intermediation for many years. The Treasury
Department also temporarily guaranteed money-market mutual funds,
stopping the institutional run that had begun in mid-September. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteed senior bank debt, restoring confidence to overnight bank lending markets and bringing bank-tobank lending rates back to normal levels. Finally, Fed liquidity, coupled
with a variety of new Fed financing mechanismsthe Commercial Paper
Funding Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, and the
purchase of housing-related assets created or guaranteed by Fannie or
Freddiehelped fill in for failing financial markets. These actions likely
ended the financial crisis, even though they did not prevent the economy
from entering a deep recession.
27
By January 2009, the latter challenge had fallen to Obama. Its true
that the economy continued to sink for the first six months of his first
term, but, to Bushs credit, there were no crisis-like shocks after the nearcollapse of the major American auto companies in December 2008. Furthermore, it was Bush who decided initially, for good or ill, to save those
companiesTreasury made short-term loans to Chrysler and GM that
28
December. Obama extended those short-term loans and forced Chrysler

and GM into government-dictated bankruptcies in the spring of 2009,
but absent Bushs actions, there would have been no GM or Chrysler
remaining when Obama took office.
Many of the decisions Bush made during the crisis were aimed at avoiding false negative errorsthe failure to do something that seems wise
only after the fact. The TARP and auto bailouts are examples. Some argue
that those steps were unnecessary and that the financial sector would have
quickly recovered if the government had not acted. If this is correct, then
support to financial institutions and the auto industry cost taxpayers a net
$5 billion (far less than many expected) and created a problem of moral
hazard. All of us in the administration, including Bush, worried that these
actions were excessive interventions of government that would create a
bad precedent. But Bushs greater worry was that we would later regret
failing to take action at all.
Had the TARP not existed, it is possibleand, in retrospect, we think
likelythat major components of the financial sector would have disintegrated. Coupled with the shock to the economy of losing more than one
million jobs in the auto industry and related sectors, the effect could have
been to create another Great Depression. During crises, both the likelihood and the cost of false negative errors are often too great, providing the
rationale for aggressive action.
All of us, including Bush, worried that the interventions would create
a bad precedent. But Bushs greater worry was that we would regret a
failure to act even more.
In 2008 many analysts assessed the risk of too big to fail solely as
a contagion problemthe risk that one large failing financial institution might cause others to fail. If one domino falls, it will topple the
others, and conversely, if the first domino remains upright, the others
will not fall. In 2008 AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac posed the
greatest contagion risks. To avoid contagion risk and prevent these
failing firms from causing even greater damage, Fannie and Freddie
29
were put into conservatorship, and the Fed lent $85 billion (and later,
more) to AIG.
At the same time, it was important not to overlook underlying factors
common to many financial firms. We can contrast dominoes with popcorn. When popcorn is prepared old-style, oil and corn kernels are placed
in the bottom of a pan, heat is applied, and the kernels pop. Were the
first kernel to pop removed from the pan, there would be no noticeable
difference. The other kernels would pop anyway because the heat, the
fundamental structural cause, is still being applied. Nor does one kernel
popping cause others to follow. To deal with a popcorn problem it is necessary either to turn down the heat or to make the lid strong enough to
prevent popcorn from jumping out of the pan.
Obama did inherit a shrinking economy severely weakened by a severe
financial shock, and it takes time to recover. But this fails to explain the
unusually slow growth after his policies took effect.
The TARP was a popcorn strategy, using a systemic approach to reduce

the heat. After initially announcing that the TARP would be used to buy up
housing-related financial assets that had declined in value, the Bush administration changed direction and used TARP funds to recapitalize the financial sector, in effect reinforcing the lid of the pan. The goal was to strengthen
the financial firms so they could survive the shock and thereby prevent a
collapse in intermediation that would cripple the rest of the economy.
The lesson of the TARP is that it is important to look not just for contagion risks but also for more fundamental common causes. Preventing
unstable dominos from toppling may be insufficient or result in mistargeted policy solutions.
S T U B B O R NLY SLOW G R OWTH

It is fairly easy to demonstrate that the actions taken in fall 2008 mitigated
damage and prevented a devastating systemic financial collapse. It is much
harder to show that the actions taken in 2009 and later have strengthened
a recovery that is slower than any since the Great Depression. Obama
30
did inherit a shrinking economy severely weakened by a severe financial

shock, and it takes time to recover from such a shock. But this fails to
explain the unusually slow growth rate after his policies took effect. Neither the slow growth since then nor the ongoing weakness today can be
attributed to a shock more than five years in the past.
Absent Bushs actions, there would have been no GM or Chrysler left
to save when Obama took office.
Despite numerous government-bloating actions, including a nearly $1

trillion increase in government spending, the recovery has posted average
annual growth rates of only 2 percent. In contrast, the US economy recovered much more rapidly from the Great Depression. In 193436 and again
in 1939, the economy grew at 10 percent annual rates after two severe contractions. Now, more than five years after the most recent crisis, the labor
market also continues to struggle. Two million fewer people are working
today than before the recession began, and that ignores the fact that the
working-age population is more than thirteen million larger now than then.
The financial shock and severe recession were bad enough, but the slow
recovery is doing just as much damage to living standards because it has
been sustained over a longer time frame. Now it falls to the members of
the Obama administration to explain why, five-plus years after the financial crisis, the economic recovery is still so slow, and what can be done to
accelerate economic growth and job creation at last.
Reprinted by permission of Politico (www.politico.com). 2013 Politico LLC. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Taylor Rule and

the Transformation of Monetary Policy, edited by Evan F.
Koenig, Robert Leeson, and George A. Kahn. To order,
31
T HE EC ONOM Y
The Detroit Cure

Dr. Johnsons remark at the prospect of being hanged is just as true
of the prospect of municipal bankruptcy: it concentrates the mind
wonderfully. By Jonathan Rodden.
Is the Detroit bankruptcy a new beginning, or the beginning of the end?

This question can be posed not only about Detroit itself but about the
wider implications for states and municipalities.
A common narrative is that Detroit has exposed a festering insolvency
crisis in US municipal public finance, with implications that eventually
will rival those of the European debt crisis.
An alternative interpretation has received far less attention: a high-profile bankruptcy might be exactly what is needed to avoid a European-style
outcome and put the municipal sector on the right path.
As long as the federal government and the states continue steadfastly to
avoid bailouts, Detroit and other recent bankruptcy cases might produce
positive rather than negative externalities for the municipal sector.
The municipal insolvency problem is quite real. For decades, it has
been too easy for elected officials to use unrealistic pension accounting
and offer unfunded future benefits to their employees. In many cases,
officials tried to postpone the day of reckoning through ill-advised dalliances with Wall Street.
Moreover, subsidized by tax breaks and perhaps comforted by the
notion that states or even the federal government cannot tolerate default,
investors have eagerly snapped up municipal debt.
Jonathan Rodden is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor
of political science at Stanford University.
32
But to the major playerspublic-sector unions, elected officials, and

bondholdersDetroit sends a powerful signal: this game is over.
First, public employees now realize that empty promises of future benefits will leave them empty-handed. Heretofore isolated voices advocating realistic pension accounting assumptions or, better yet, a transition
to defined-contribution plans, will gain valuable allies, perhaps among
public employees themselves.
Second, hoping to avoid the ignominy of Detroit, elected municipal
officials might think twice about offering unsustainable benefit sweeteners
or postponing the reckoning through risky refinancing techniques. States
might re-examine the boom-bust pattern of intergovernmental grants to
municipalities that starve them of funds during recessions.
Third, investors in municipal bonds who perceived an implicit guarantee are surely updating their assumptions. Naturally, bondholders are
arguing that the implications will be catastrophic if they are not made
whole, warning of dramatic across-the-board increases in borrowing costs
for all municipalities in Michigan and beyond.
Detroit sends a powerful signal: this game is over.
This claim assumes that investors are so unsophisticated that they (1)
badly overestimated the probability of bailouts, (2) misunderstood Chapter 9, or (3) mistakenly believed that the primary responsibility of an
emergency manager is to protect creditors.
Recent experience indicates that bond markets are neither so myopic
nor so ill-informed. In the wake of the Jefferson County bankruptcy,
yields for Alabama municipalities rose slightly and temporarily, and creditworthy jurisdictions found healthy demand.
The same is even true in California in the wake of Stockton, where city
officials are explicitly attempting to place pensioners ahead of bondholders in the bankruptcy process.
In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and now Detroit, creditors have
absorbed the lesson that even emergency managers appointed by Republican governors can skip bond payments or propose large haircuts to
protect taxpayers.
33
34
The recent bankruptcies are reinforcing the same lesson for politicians,
public employees, and bondholders: it is best to think of US municipalities as boats that must float on their own bottoms. Unsustainable fiscal
arrangements will eventually fall apart, and the stakeholders cannot avoid
losses.
In truly insolvent municipalities whose only hope was a bailout, this
realization will hasten default or bankruptcy. In well-managed municipalities, it should make no difference. However, in a third class of municipalities on the brink, let us hope that recent events can bring elected officials
and public-sector unions to the bargaining table with a newfound urgency
in the shadow of bankruptcy.
More municipal defaults and bankruptcies are on the horizon. Yet this
outcome is far from the worst-case scenario in which a fiscally troubled
state government, like that of California or Illinois, cannot resist the

temptation to protect municipal pensioners or (more likely) bondholders
by issuing ad hoc bailouts.
This would create a severe moral hazard problem and eliminate incentives for reform, precipitating solvency crises at the state levelwhere
there is no bankruptcy procedure upon which to fix expectationsthereby raising the probability of cascading federal bailouts.
This European-style outcome can be avoided. In the early days of the
Greek crisis, Germany could not tolerate default because too much debt
was held by large German banks. Given the diversity of municipal debt
ownership, federal or state governments will not be compelled to bail out
individual cities to save crucial financial institutions.
35
Unlike European bond markets on the eve of the crisis, municipal credit
markets in the United States are quite sophisticated in their differentiation
of the credit quality of different issuers, and market actors are unlikely to
be caught off-guard by the next default.
Lets hope that recent events bring elected officials and public-sector
unions to the bargaining table with a newfound urgency.
And finally, many US states have a secret weapon that was unavailable
to Europe: bankruptcy itself. In the states that allow municipalities to
avail themselves of Chapter 9, harried governors need not choose between
disorderly defaults and bailouts: they can wash their hands and call upon
a rule-bound judiciary.
In short, bankruptcy is not a problem but a multifaceted solution.
Reprinted by permission of Investors Business Daily. 2013 Investors Business Daily Inc. All rights
reserved.
New from the Hoover Press is Bankruptcy, Not Bailout:

A Special Chapter 14, edited by Kenneth E. Scott and
John B. Taylor. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
36
T H E E CO N O M Y
The Treasurys Long

Game
Extending the maturity dates for government debt would literally buy
time. By John H. Cochrane.
Sooner or later, the Federal Reserve will want to raise interest rates. Maybe
this year. Maybe when unemployment declines below 6.5 percent. Maybe
when inflation creeps up to 3 percent. But it will happen.
Can the Fed tighten without shedding much of the record $3 trillion
of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities on its balance sheet,
and soaking up $2 trillion of excess reserves? Yes. The Fed can easily raise
short-term interest rates by changing the rate it pays banks on reserves and
the discount rate at which it lends.
But this comforting thought leaves out a vital consideration: monetary
policy depends on fiscal policy in an era of large debts and deficits. Suppose that the Fed raises interest rates to 5 percent over the next few years.
This is a reversion to normal, not a big tightening. Yet with $18 trillion
of debt outstanding, the federal government will have to pay $900 billion
more in annual interest.
Will Congress and the public really agree to spend $900 billion a year
for monetary tightening? Or will Congress simply command the Fed to
keep down interest payments, as it did after World War II, reasoning that
Fed independence isnt worth that huge sum of money?
John H. Cochrane is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the AQR
Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor ofFinance at the University
of Chicagos Booth School of Business.
37
This additional expenditure would double the deficit, which tempts a

tipping point. Bond markets can accept fairly big temporary deficits without charging higher interest ratesbuyers understand that bigger deficits
for a few years can be made up by slightly larger tax revenues or spending
cuts over decades to follow. But once markets sense that deficits may be
unsustainable, and that bond buyers may face default, restructuring, or
inflation, they will demand still-higher interest rates. Higher rates mean
higher deficitsleading to a fiscal death spiral.
Many economists think the tipping point starts when total government
debt (federal, state, and local) exceeds 90 percent of GDP. We are past that
value, with large state and local debts, continuing sclerotic growth, and a
looming entitlements crisis to boot. This, not the balance sheet or other
monetary or institutional constraints, will be the Feds quandarycan the
monetary authority really dare to risk a fiscal crisis?
The obvious answer is to fix the long-run deficit problem, with the
reform of runaway spending and entitlement programs, and a pro-growth
tax policy. So far that is not happening.
Still, the Fed and the Treasury could buy a lot of time by lengthening
the maturity of US debt. Suppose all US debt were converted to thirtyyear bonds. Then, if interest rates rose, Treasury would pay no more on
its outstanding debt for thirty years. And if the country couldnt solve its
fiscal problems by that time, it would deserve a Greek crisis.
Alas, the maturity structure of US debt is quite short. I estimate that
our government rolls over 40 percent of its debt every year, and 65 percent
within three years. (I account for Federal Reserve holdings and coupon
payments and use market values.) Thus the fiscal impact of higher interest
rates will come quickly.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, shopping for a mortgage, understand this trade-off.
Mr. Smith: Lets get the adjustable rate, we only have to pay 1 percent.
Mrs. Smith: No, honey, that is just the teaser rate. If we get the thirty-year
fixed at 3 percent, then we wont get kicked out of the house if rates go up.
Amazingly, nobody in the federal government is thinking about this
trade-off. Instead, each agency thinks only for itself.
The Fed is still buying long-term bonds in an effort to temporarily
drive down long-term interest rates by a few basis points. It has conclud38
ed it can survive the loss in mark-to-market value of its bond portfolio

that higher interest rates will imply, when they come, by suspending
its customary interest-rebate payments to the Treasury. If the Treasury
was counting on that roughly $80 billion per year, that is Treasurys
problem. If higher rates cost the Treasury $900 billion a year, that is
Congresss problem.
Many economists think the tipping point starts when total government
debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP. Were past that now.
The Treasurys Bureau of the Public Debt controls the maturity of

federal debt issues. It has been gently borrowing longer in response to
low long-term rates, but not enough to substantially alter the governments interest-rate risk. The bureau also views its job narrowlywhich
is to finance whatever deficits Congress determines, not to take actions
that mitigate future deficits. Congress and the administration are busy
with other matters.
Ironically, the Feds buying and the Treasury bureaus selling have
neatly offset, leaving very little change in the maturity structure of debt
in private hands.
What to do? First, the Treasury and Fed need a new accord to decide
who is in charge of interest-rate risk, most likely the Treasury, and then
grant it clear legal authority to manage that risk. The Fed should then
swap its portfolio of long-term bonds for a portfolio of short-term Treasuries and forswear meddling in the maturity structure again.
If the country couldnt solve its fiscal problems over thirty years, it would
deserve a Greek crisis.
Second, the Treasury should seize its once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

to go long. Thirty-year interest rates are at 2.8 percent, a sixty-year low.
Many corporations and homeowners are borrowing long to lock in low
funding costs. So should the Treasury.
You may complain that if the Treasury borrows long, then long-term
rates will rise. If so, it is better that everyone knows that now. It means
39
that markets arent really willing to buy long-term government debt, that
the 2.8 percent yield is only a fiction of the Feds current buying, and that
it wont last long anyway. Better fix the fiscal hole, fast.
You also may argue that 2.8 percent long-term debt is more expensive
than 0.16 percent one-year debt. There are two fallacies here. First, the 2.8
percent long-term yield reflects an expectation that short rates will rise in
the future, so the expected cost over thirty years, as well as the true annual
cost, are much closer to the same. Second, to the extent that long-term
bonds really do pay more interest over their life span, this is the premium
for insurance. Sure, running a restaurant is cheaper if you dont pay fire
insurance. Until theres a fire.
A much longer maturity structure for government debt will buy a lot
of insurance at a very low premium. It will buy the Fed control over monetary policy and preserve its independence. If Fed officials realized the
risks, they would be screaming for longer maturities now.
But we dont have long to act. All forecasts say long-term rates will rise
soon. As the car dealer says, this is a great deal, but only for today.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Road Ahead for

the Fed, edited by John B. Taylor and John D. Ciorciari. To
40
PO L I T I CS
A President for All

Seasons
There was nothing fleeting about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, and
conservativesof all peoplemust never forget that. By Henry R. Nau.
Politics do not stop at the ballot box. Elections and presidents are evaluated and ranked for decades afterward, and these evaluations in turn motivate and influence future elections. Many of these evaluations take place
in the academic world, which decides which presidents to focus on and
which presidents succeeded. The media and political pundits pick up and
echo these judgments.
Not surprisingly, conservatives lose this legacy battle. Think about it:
which Republican presidents in the twentieth century compare, in the
public eye, with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, all legacy Democratic presidents? Possibly Teddy Rooseveltbut
not Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, or Richard Nixon. Not even
Ronald Reagan, possibly the most consequential president of them all.
Reagan is ignored in the liberal academic world. No nationally known
authors or scholars study him as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. studied Franklin
Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Robert Caro serialized Lyndon Johnson,
and David McCullough venerated Truman. Since Reagans death, despite
Henry R. Nau, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a professor of political science and international
affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.
His most recent book is Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy Under
Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (Princeton University Press, 2013).
41
Limited government. This issue should be a slam-dunk. It is the legacy

issue for Republicans. Since the time of Thomas Jefferson, Republicans
and their forebears have stood for limited governmentnot small government per se but government limited relative to civil society. The reason
42
Jeff Malet Photography
voluminous new documents that reveal Reagans mastery as president, the

academic world shuns him.
Even worse, conservatives lose the legacy battle in contemporary politics. Reagan is marginalized not only by Democrats but also by Republicans. In recent months one conservative pundit after the other has
called upon the Republican Party to get over Ronald Reagan. Critics say
he was a man of his times but the times have changed. Limited government, low taxes, personal responsibility, family values, strong defense,
secure borders, and standing by oppressed people around the world are
out of date.
The American people want compassionate and effective, not limited,
government, according to these critics; they want people to pay their fair
share of taxes; they are tired of military interventions abroad; they embrace
immigration whether legal or illegal; and they expect other countries to
be exceptionalist just as America is exceptionalist, picking up the falling
banners of freedom as America pulls back from the world.
Meanwhile, Democrats stand behind their legacy presidents. When
have you heard Democrats say they have to get over Franklin Roosevelt?
Or when have you heard Democrats say that the policies of the 1930s
Social Security, massive government fiscal spending, welfare programs,
especially national health careare no longer relevant? Democrats
understand the legacy game, and because Republicans dont, Republicans compete with Democrats on Democratic turf: how can government be made more compassionate and effective, more sympathetic
to women, more generous to immigrants, more self-effacing in foreign
policy, and more modest about the virtues of our own democracy and
US leadership in the world?
Dismissing the Reagan legacy would be a monumental mistake. The
idea that Reagans heritage is obsolete does not hold water. Lets look at the
Republican legacy in each of the contested areas.
A banner at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland,
features Ronald Reagans face.Reagan rallied the country to build the economy, rebuilt its
defenses, countered Soviet theater nuclear arms, negotiated to reduce offensive and expand
defensive arms, backed freedom fighters to counter Soviet interventions, and widened participation in the free-market world economy.
is simple. Civil society, not government, is the wellspring of liberty. Free

individuals take care of themselves through families, neighborhoods, markets, churches, and local communities. Then they take care of government. And if they cant take care of themselves, what right do they have to
take care of others? Jefferson memorialized this point in his first inaugural:
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
Of course, government should be effective. But civil society with competition is much more effective than bureaucracy without competition.
And the last thing we want, if we care about freedom, is an effective government that is large. Hence limited government is more relevant than
ever: under the Obama Democrats, central governments share of GDP
has jumped from 19 percent to 25 percent.
43
Compassionate government. This is also a no-brainer. If you have any

government at all, it should be compassionate. No one quarrels with that.
But is it compassionate to encourage dependency by bringing more and
more citizens onto the governments rolls? Thats the point about makers
and takers. All Americans support some taking, for the poorest and neediest. But do we support a government that celebrates taking, as Obama did
in his second inaugural address?
Definitely not. We celebrate a government that creates incentives for
people, churches, corporations, and local communities to make their own
way and then to take care of others, a government that makes the private
sector fair and nondiscriminatory but does not replace it. Its not in the
interest of the common good to create a national, one-size-fits-all health
care program; rather, its an admission of defeat that free people cant
improve a private health care system that already serves the needs of many
and can easily provide for the few who cant help themselves.
Womens issues. Republicans have no reason to be embarrassed. Yes,
there are some politicians who embarrass themselves, but they exist on
both sides of the aisle. Indeed, Democratic presidentsFDR, Kennedy,
and Clintonhave more troublesome histories with women than Republican presidents. Here, again, Reagans legacy stands out: he created an
economy that in three decades, from 1980 to 2010, churned out fifty million new jobs; women (and immigrants), many coming into the workforce
for the first time, filled those jobs.
This economic boom, during which the US and world economies grew
steadily at over 3 percent a year (and that includes the recession years of
20089), is Reagans greatest legacy. It was built on lower taxes, sound monetary policy, less regulation, and freer trade. Democrats discredit these policies for promoting greed and inequality, but at the same time they celebrate
the economic prosperity of the Clinton years. But Clinton did little more
than confirm Reagan policies of limited government and free trade (in the
North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization).
This is proof positive of how consistently Republicans lose the legacy battle.
Immigration. No single issue is said to be more responsible for the
Republican defeat in 2012 than immigration and the Hispanic vote. And
44
facts are facts: Hispanics soundly rejected the Republican candidate. The
confusion is about why. Its not because Republicans are anti-immigrant;
its because theyre for the rule of law. Immigrants come to this country
because its laws are reliable and grant greater and more-equal opportunity
to more nationalities, races, and religions than any other country. But
what if immigrants take their first steps into this country while breaking
the law? Dont they destroy the very country they wish to adopt?
Democrats like to celebrate the economic prosperity of the Clinton years,
but Clinton did little more than continue Reagans priorities of limited
government and free trade.
Thats not to say that immigration laws have always been fair. But
change them if you dont like them. And if you break them, expect to
pay a price (a fine on parents to gain legal status) and dont ask for special
advantages over those who obeyed the law by standing in line for citizenship. A country that enforces its laws, at the border as well as within the
business community, is precisely the one that attracts immigrants in the
first place. It may be tough love, but it is better than the Democratic alternative of false love, which draws immigrants into a dependency society
that kills initiative and bankrupts the country.
National security. Ronald Reagans understanding of force and the US
role in the world is also meaningful today. Remember the 1970s, when
the Soviet Union deployed theater nuclear weapons (SS-20s) in Eastern
Europe, established naval bases in Vietnam, sent military advisers and
arms to Angola and Mozambique, supported wars of liberation in central
and South America, and invaded Afghanistan? At the time America was
in retreat, suffering a loss of exceptionalist will because the Vietnam War
had worn the country out.
What did Reagan do? Against considerable domestic and foreign
opposition, he rallied the country to grow the economy, rebuilt its
defenses, deployed weapons to counter Soviet theater nuclear weapons,
backed freedom fighters to counter Soviet interventions in the Third
World, negotiated with the Soviet Union to reduce offensive and expand
45
defensive arms, and widened participation in the free-market world

economy.
Is any of this legacy relevant today? That I have to ask is further proof
that Republicans are losing the legacy battle. Once again the American
economy is sagging, and America is retreating because the public is worn
out by Iraq and Afghanistan. The president declares that American leadership is no more exceptional than French or British leadership, and hence
we can lead from behind and wait for others to step up as America steps
backin Syria, North Korea, Iran, and elsewhere.
Do we support a government that celebrates taking, as President Obama
did in his second inaugural address?
It may work for a little while, but it will never last. Every time America
has pulled back from the world, the world has turned on it. Think of
the retreat after World War I; the attack on Pearl Harbor eventually followed. After World War II, amid UN hopes for cooperation with the
Soviet Union, came the Berlin blockade. And after Vietnam, the Soviet
deployment of SS-20s and invasion of Afghanistan followed. As America
retreats today, war is not receding in the Middle East or South Asia, it is
merely coiling itself to strike again, both at home and abroad.
The Republican legacy on all these frontssize of government, job
growth, womens and immigrants rights, and global leadershipis overwhelmingly powerful. How can that legacy be obscured? Conservatives
have a lot more to think about than just the last election.
New from the Hoover Press is Perjury: The HissChambers Case, third edition, by Allen Weinstein. To
46
PO L I T I CS
Less Talk, More

Wisdom
The last round of GOP primary debates was less enlightening than
exhausting. Lets make the next round betterby making it shorter.
By Bill Whalen.
For all the second-guessing and armchair quarterbacking associated with

presidential elections, theres no debating that the Republicans ambitious
schedule of primary debates turned into a headache for the party out of
power in 2012.
At various times, stages were overcrowded with candidates jockeying
for airtime, second-tier hopefuls received artificial lifts thanks to the free
national exposure, and the partys front-runner found himself in the awkward position of balancing the competing interests of red-meat studio
audiences and the more-thoughtful folks watching at home.
In all, the GOP held twenty sanctioned debates in the 2012 cycle. But
add in other venues where rivals gathered and the actual count is twentyseven debates over the course of forty-three weeks. The first gathering was
the first Thursday in May 2011, with only five Republican hopefuls in
attendance. The last debate was on the first Saturday in March of the
following yearthe third of the so-called Huckabee forums hosted by
the former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate.
That may not sound so awfulone debate every eleven days, on average. Only it didnt work that way. Five Republican debates occurred during a seventeen-day span in November 2011. Four more transpired over a
Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
47
twelve-day stretch in December 2011, with yet another four going down
during a nine-day stretch in January 2012.
In simplest terms, its overkill. And kind of nonsensical, as Stuart Stevens (Mitt Romneys chief strategist in 2012) has noted: We pick a president with three general-election debates, but it takes twenty debates to
understand that maybe Ron Paul wants to blow up the Federal Reserve?
A more deliberate schedule would minimize the impact of those
The GOP isnt at a point where its officially cut back on the number of
debates. But it has decided who can participate. At last years Republican
National Committee gathering in Boston, delegates resolved to boycott
any 2016 presidential debates sponsored by CNN and NBC should those
two networks go forward with projects on the life and times of Hillary
Clintonin the RNCs words: extended commercials promoting Secretary Clinton. (The Hillary Clinton projects have since been canceled.)
Moreover, the RNC said it would require future Republican debates to
have appropriate moderators and debate partners. What would happen
to candidates who bucked the edict is anyones guess: it could be anything
from a slap on the wrist to Dean Wormers double-secret probation.
The hope is that the RNC goes a step further than warning CNN and
NBC and pushes the reset button on the entire debate process. Toss out the
rest of the national news organizations that had a role in the 2012 debates:
Bloomberg, CBS News, CNBC, CNN, CNN en Espaol. Instead, leave
the debates to local media. Too many of the national organizations hunt
and think in packsand, though theyll never admit it, they dont like the
GOP agenda.
Second, devise a more modest schedule, something along these lines:
Debate one: Have all announced candidates gather at the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library to discuss their priorities. With all due
respect to the nations other fine Republican presidential libraries, every
Republican hopeful wants to be the next Reagan, so why not have the
conversation on the same grounds as the great mans resting place?
48
one-percenters who gummed up the works in 2012.
49
Debate two: As the GOP field will have its differences over what it
means to be a Republican in 2016the size and reach of government,
our commitments overseas, rejuvenating the party, etc.take the conversation to the one-stop shop for all things Great Emancipator: the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Here, have the talk about where the party of Lincoln stands 150
years after his passing.
Debate three: After two forums contrasting their differences, lets give
the candidates a break and let them take turns swinging at the same
piata: the awfulness of Washington. The RNC could sponsor such a
debate. Viewers note: of all the debates, should there be a GOP winner
in the fall, this one would produce the most failed promises.
Debates four and five: The goal of the man or woman who holds the
most important job in America is to keep us safe and help us become
more prosperous. So lets devote one debate strictly to foreign policy,
perhaps at a service academy. As for an economics-centric debate, why
not the Detroit Economic Club, given that citys recent bankruptcy and
the debate over the reasons for that tragedy?
It takes twenty debates to understand that maybe Ron Paul wants to
blow up the Federal Reserve?
So thats five debates, which could run every other week, from the third
Tuesday in October 2015 (October 20) to the third Tuesday of the following month (December 15).
What then?
After the holiday season and the calendar turning over to 2016, the
RNC could bring the early primary states into the mix. But with the following caveats: (1) each state gets one debate; (2) sponsorship is limited
to local party and media; (3) no state can hold a debate more than a week
or ten days before it votes; (4) debates are limited to one a week (the
RNC deciding on a first-come basis); (5) after Iowa, New Hampshire, and
South Carolina, the debate state is off-limits to candidates who failed to
finish at least third in any of the contests.
50
Potentially, this could address two concerns. First, it would force the
RNC to move back the Iowa vote from the same early start as in 2012
(January 3). Second, a back-loaded debate schedule minimizes the impact
of those one-percenters who gummed up the works in 2012.
Would such a system actually work? Probably not. Media and interest
groups would do their best to lure candidates into unsanctioned forums.
Besides, candidates starving for money or attention would probably risk
incurring the RNCs wrath in exchange for the free publicity.
Still, the Republican National Committee has to realize it has a problem, and its time to go on a diet. There were seven GOP primary debates
in 1988. Eight years later, they nearly doubled, to thirteen. In the 2012
cycle, the total soared to twenty sanctioned debates (actually, twenty-seven
candidate encounters, nearly quadruple the number in 1988).
Thats runaway growth in a candidate entitlement program. For the
party that espouses less government, why not less debate exposure?
Reprinted from the Hoover Institution publication Advancing a Free Society (www.advancingafreesociety.
org). 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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51
T HE C ONS T IT UT I ON
A Nation of Laws?
Certain public officials have begun defying laws that theynot the
courtsconsider unconstitutional. By David Davenport.
Some months ago, a court in Pennsylvania ordered a county registrar

to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This official had
decided to contravene state law, based on his belief that the law is unconstitutional, and had issued more than a hundred such licenses which other
public officialsmayorsthen used to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. The legal challenge brought by the Pennsylvania Department of
Health, which has overall responsibility for marriage laws and licensing, is
loaded with constitutional, legal, social, and marital consequences, all of
which deserve careful consideration.
The governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania have exchanged political blows over whether that state law banning same-sex marriage should be
defended in court and, if so, who has the responsibility to do that. The attorney general says Pennsylvanias 1996 law stating that marriage is between a
man and a woman is wholly unconstitutional and she will not defend it,
even though the recent Supreme Court decision in Windsor v. United States
said states were free to make their own decisions about gay marriage.
This follows on the heels of the decision by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) in the years before the US Supreme Court determined that the
David Davenport is counselor to the director and a research fellow at the
Hoover Institution. His latest book, co-written with Gordon Lloyd, is The New
Deal and Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (Hoover Institution Press, 2013).
52
law is unconstitutional. Similar questions arose in the recent case involving Californias Proposition 8: that states governor and attorney general
declined to defend the law because they felt it was unconstitutionalwith
the remarkable result, handed down by the Supreme Court, that no one had
standing to defend that part of the California Constitution in court.
A virus seems to be spreading among public officials, creating delusions
that any one of them may unilaterally decide a law is unconstitutional
and decline to follow or defend it. Setting aside for a moment the issue
of same-sex marriagethe dispute could be over environmental laws or
gun control or taxesis it really the case that a single federal, state, or
county official is free to judge the constitutionality of a law and decline to
execute, enforce, or defend it? Are we no longer what founder (and second
president) John Adams called a government of laws and not of men?
W H A T H A P P ENE D TO CHE CKS AND B ALANC ES?

A unilateral decision by a public official not to follow or defend a law
he or she considers unconstitutional is a constitutional problem. One of
the safeguards built into our constitutions, whether federal or state, is a
separation of powers among the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. Each branch has a purpose and generally no
branch alone can make law.
By the same token, no single branch, save the judicial, should be able to
undo a law. This is part of the controversy surrounding President Obamas
decision to suspend aspects of ObamaCare, which a member of the executive branch should not be able to do to a law passed by the legislature and
signed by the president. It smacks of exactly the sort of monarchical power
the founders sought to avoid.
The only branch of government able to declare a law unconstitutional
on its own is the judiciary. Judges have legal and constitutional training
and experience that is not required of those in the executive branch. Judicial procedure allows for extensive testimony, a day in court for both
sides, and a deliberative weighing of the evidence.
Even so, the judiciarys power to declare a law unconstitutional troubles
us from time to time, such as when the legislature and president overwhelmingly support a law that a single federal judge strikes down. This is
53
why the California case was so disturbing. In the end, when the states governor and attorney general would not defend the law, and the US Supreme
Court found that no one else had standing to defend it, the decision of
a single federal judge that the law was unconstitutional became the final,
unappealable result. No matter which side of Proposition 8 you were on,
it should be troubling when nearly 7 million Californians vote something
into the state constitution that is voided by a single judge without appeal.
A more specific constitutional problem with public officials who will
not enforce or defend laws is the conflict with their own oaths of office.
Virtually all executive branch officials take an oath to support and defend
the constitution and the laws of their jurisdiction. For example, the governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania both solemnly swear that I will
support, obey, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the
Constitution of this Commonwealth and that I will discharge the duties
of my office with fidelity.
One could perhaps parse these words like a trial lawyer, but your average citizen would believe that these two officials were agreeing to support
and defend the laws, in the same way that most of us were taught to follow
the laws or else change them, according to the legal system.
No single branch of government can make a law, and only one branch
the judiciaryshould be able to undo one.
In fact, if a public officials responsibility vis--vis a particular law is

only to carry it out, his duties are then considered ministerial, leaving
no room for interpretation or disagreement. One of the issues in the case
of the Pennsylvania registrar of wills is whether his duties with respect to
marriage licenses are purely ministerial. Similar cases before the supreme
courts of California (2004) and Oregon (2005) found officials who issued
marriage licenses to have only ministerial responsibilities, such that their
only choice was to carry out the law as written, not to object to it on constitutional or other grounds.
Again, a similar argument has been made with respect to the president
and ObamaCarethat once the law was passed and signed, the presidents
duty was simply to execute it, leaving no room to suspend or even delay it,
54
since specific dates of execution were clearly incorporated into the law. It
would be difficult to conceive of an issuer of marriage licenses having much
discretionit is really a matter of checking boxes and issuing papersbut
this is part of the argument the Pennsylvania court must resolve.
D ENIE D I T S D AY IN COUR T
The responsibility of legal officers such as attorneys general to defend the
law can be more fully appreciated in the context of legal duties and the
legal system more broadly. A cardinal principle of the legal profession is
that everyone deserves representation and a day in court. This is often
stated as the attorneys duty to defend even the most unpopular client.
The legal system does not depend on each attorney making his or her own
individual judgment about the guilt or innocence of each party, but rather
relies on the cumulative effect of everyone in the system doing his or her
job at the highest possible level.
This is why a lawyer doesnt find it unethical to defend a guilty client.
He knows that the system works only if even a guilty party gets the best
possible representation, as well as the most vigorous prosecution, and that
judges and juries are prepared to do justice in the end. The system works
only when each participant does his or her part. In the case of gay-marriage legislation, let the law be attacked by those who find it discriminatory, but then let it be defended by those elected or chosen and sworn to
do so. Then the legal system as a whole, not one individual, is able to do
justice. All of this is circumvented when those charged with the duty to
defend refuse to play their part.
Beyond the constitutional and legal arguments, allowing public officials
to make their own unilateral decisions about constitutionality creates policy
chaos. In Pennsylvania, for example, no one knows whether same-sex marriages performed against state law, but under licenses issued by a county, are
legal. And, of course, all sorts of personal and legal questions flow from that
uncertainty, multiplied by the number of such marriages performed.
When the California Supreme Court told the mayor of San Francisco
in 2004 that he could no longer issue licenses for same-sex marriages in
violation of state law, part of the courts order was that illegal marriages
already performed were null and void and that the records had to be corHoover Digest N 2014 No. 1
55
rected to reflect that. One can only imagine the number of public officials
who might disagree strongly with a particular law and find a reason, constitutional or otherwise, not to enforce or defend it. Again, regardless of
which side of a law one supports, this approach to public policy invites the
very chaos and lack of dependability and stability that the law is designed
to prevent. It simply cannot stand.
The legal system works only when each participant does his or her part.
Allowing public officials to avoid their duty to defend the laws also weakens the legal system. In Pennsylvania, for example, the attorney general
refused to defend a wholly unconstitutional law while the governor was left
to defend it on the grounds that all laws are presumed to be constitutional
and are to be defended. This dissonance among senior officials about the
validity of state law hardly inspires respect and confidence in the legal system.
In California, the consequences are even worse. Now that it has been demonstrated that a single judge can negate a ballot initiative on which millions
of dollars and thousands of hours were spent and which was passed into law,
Californians confidence in a system they have held near and dear for over a
century has been shaken. If state officers will not defend a law, or cannot be
forced to, the law should provide a mechanism for its own defense.
The ultimate question is whether we remain a government of laws and
not of men. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Courts restraint of a
county official who disobeyed a law he considered unconstitutional was
far from the last word on this essential matter.
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Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry,
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56
H E AL T H CAR E
Its Own Worst Enemy

Congress failed to prevent ObamaCare from taking effect. But its not
too late for damage control. By Lanhee J. Chen.
Its charitable to say that Republicans didnt win the battle last fall over
ObamaCare, as House Speaker John Boehner conceded. Those who
insisted the Affordable Care Act must be defunded ended up with only
a token concession from Democrats: a requirement that the secretary of
health and human services certify that those receiving the acts government subsidies to purchase health insurance are actually eligible for them.
But did Republicans tactics permanently compromise their ability to capitalize on the deeply flawed rollout of ObamaCare, and what
many analysts (myself included) believe will be its deleterious impacts
on the US health care system? Not necessarily. Republicans can still use
ObamaCares failings to their advantage, but it will require a disciplined,
realistic approach. And it means recognizing the impossibility of largescale changes to the law while Barack Obama is president.
The agreement in October to reopen the federal government and raise
the debt limit made it inevitable that we would find ourselves back in
this situation before long. The temptation among some conservatives
particularly those who fought to defund ObamaCarehas been to make
extravagant demands of Democrats in exchange for either keeping the
government open or raising the debt ceiling. The tactic didnt work last
fall, and it wont work next time. President Obama and Senate Democrats
have made it clear that they are not only unwilling to compromise on
Lanhee J. Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and teaches public
policy at Stanford University.
57
broader Republican demands to delay or defund the law but also unwilling to budge on more limited changes, such as delaying implementation
of the individual mandate or putting off some tax increases that help fund
ObamaCare. Republicans would be wise to completely decouple the debtceiling and government-funding issues from their efforts to alter or eliminate ObamaCare.
Second, the best way for people to see how bad the health care law will
be is, in many respects, to get out of the way. Two of the Obama administrations most prominent (and politically popular) promises about the
lawthat it would reduce health insurance premiums and that people
who like their coverage can keep itwill continue to go unfulfilled.
Avik Roy and his colleagues at the Manhattan Institute have estimated,
for example, that twenty-seven-year-old men who were able to purchase
basic health insurance plans before ObamaCare will pay, on average,
almost 100 percent more for similar plans this year. Similarly, twentyseven-year-old women will see their premiums increase an average of 55
percent. The news isnt much better for forty-year-old men and women,
who will also see substantial increases in their premiums this year because
of the law. Other studies have similarly concluded that ObamaCare will
drive up premiums not only for individuals purchasing insurance, but also
for many small employers who provide coverage to their employees.
The ObamaCare critique must be about the law in its entirety: the harm
to our health care system and the higher costs to pay for the benefits the
law claims to provide.
A number of additional provisions threaten to displace millions of

Americans from the health care coverage and doctors they know and like.
This is because ObamaCare gives employers financial incentives to scale
back or terminate coverage, and it places additional coverage mandates on
individual health insurance plans that will result in narrower networks of
providers and hospitals, or the elimination of existing plans.
Finally, Republicans must remain focused on the damage that will be
done by the entirety of the law rather than trying to engage the presi58
dent and his allies on individual components of it. Some components of

ObamaCare are very politically popular, such as the blanket restriction on
insurers denying coverage to those with pre-existing medical conditions
and allowing children up to age twenty-six to remain on their parents
health insurance plans.
Some conservatives tried to make extravagant demands of Democrats in
exchange for keeping the government open or raising the debt ceiling.
That tactic doesnt work.
Republicans must not get bogged down in debates about the merits of
individual elements of the law. Instead, the critique must be about the law
in its entirety: the negative impact it will have on our health care system
and the way in which it substantially increases costs to pay for the benefits
it claims to provide.
The GOP squandered a golden opportunity last fall to focus the American people on ObamaCares shortcomings and the ways in which its
implementation and rollout has stumbled. Republicans will again have
opportunities to describe, demonstrate, and highlight just how bad the
law is. If they play their cards right and bring public pressure to bear on
the president and other supporters of ObamaCare, they might actually
force Democrats to consider the wisdom of standing behind a law thats
clearly failing.
Reprinted by permission of Bloomberg. 2013 Bloomberg LP. All rights reserved.
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59
H EALT H C ARE
The Doctor Wont See

You Now
As the new federal program seeks to limit Americans access to
specialists and medical innovations, primary-care doctors will
become ever more scarce. By Scott W. Atlas.
Health spending is again rising rapidly, and once again the projected
increase is directly attributed to President Obamas Affordable Care Act
(ACA). New government estimates from the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) project that starting this year, when the ACA
implements its major provisions, annual growth in national health spending will accelerate to 6.1 percent. This acceleration specifically results
from the ACAs expansion of Medicaid and the laws subsidized insurance
exchanges, according to Health Affairs.
Moreover, payment for Americas health care, and therefore control of
the medical care itself, will become more centralized to the federal government. By 2022, the CMS estimates, government will finance 49 percent
of total national health expenditures, totaling $2.4 trillion, 63 percent of
which ($1.5 trillion) will come from the federal government. This government dominance doesnt even count the less-visible fact that 80 percent
or more of private insurance reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals
are based directly or indirectly on Medicare.
Regardless of the fundamental absence of a true free market in US
health care, and despite the added ObamaCare regulations that increase
Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution and a member of Hoovers Working Group on Health Care Policy.
60
barriers to consumer-driven competitive pricing of insurance and medical

care, we can rest assured that advocates of wholly nationalized health care
will still blame the increasing costs of the US system on the so-called free
market.
Even more disconcerting is another misguided assertion sure to come:
that advanced medical technology and specialist care are leading culprits
of high costs and need to be limited by government policies. Medical care,
of course, has changed dramatically since the primary-care-dominated
system of the past, and has changed for the good. People live longer and
with less disability. Life expectancy for sixty-five-year-old Americans has
increased 50 percent since 1950, as mortalityparticularly from heart
disease and strokehas plunged. These advances are, to a great extent,
the result of specialty care and medical innovation: sophisticated diagnostic technology, novel drugs, new biomaterials, safer minimally invasive
devices, and a host of others. As medical care has become far more complex, specialty care has been the key to improved survival and decreased
pain and suffering.
By 2022, government will finance an estimated 49 percent of total
national health expenditures, or $2.4 trillion.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the secretary of health and human services emphasized this in the 33rd annual
Health, United States report, declaring that advances in medical technology continue to transform the provision of health care and lengthen and
improve quality of life. Indeed, it is difficult to argue with the CDCs
conclusion that advances in medical technology...have improved our
ability to monitor, prevent, diagnose, control, and cure a growing number
of health conditions.
Demographic changes are expected to add even more importance
to specialist care. Demand will rise along with an explosive increase in
the numbers of elderly patients who harbor societys three most burdensome diseases: heart disease, cancer, and stroke, all of which necessitate specialists and the most advanced medical technology. Separate
from any primary-care shortage, the Association of American Medical
61
Colleges estimates a physician deficit of 124,000159,000 across all

specialties by 2025.
CR O W D IN G OU T SPECIALIST CAR E
Despite the unquestionable contributions of specialty care and a need
for specialists that will exceed their growthas projected by Health and
Human Services itselfthe Obama administration has initiated a significant shift in prioritization to generalist care at the expense of specialist
care. The administration and the ACA promote increasing payments to
primary-care providers, necessarily taking it away from specialists, the very
doctors who actually have training in using expensive tests, complex technology, and novel treatments. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a seventeen-member appointed government agency advising Congress, has already recommended cuts in reimbursements specifically to
specialist doctors. In this recommendation, Medicare fees for non-primary-care services would be reduced by 5.9 percent each year for three years,
totaling 16.7 percent, and then frozen for the rest of the decade. After a
decade, this amounts to a cut of about 50 percent in specialist incomes,
assuming a 3 percent inflation rate.
As medical care gets far more complex, specialty care has been the key
to improved survival and decreased suffering.
ObamaCare also stifles innovation in medical devices with punitive

taxes while restricting access to important specialty-care interventions
and services. Beyond suffocating the health benefits from such devices,
threatening this specific sector is highly counterproductive to our economy. The ACAs medical-device excise taxon revenues, not just profitsis already destroying high-paying jobs for Americans and moving
them overseas. By some estimates, the ACA will cause a loss of forty-five
thousand jobs in the United States. On top of the significant cuts for
technology-based specialty procedures already proposed by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the new law also creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) with unprecedented power to
reduce payments to doctors. The secretary of health and human services
62
will be required to implement these changes, which neither Congress

nor the judiciary can overrule.
And even though language in the law prohibits overt rationing of
medical care, the de facto rationing that will result from the IPABs sole
mission of cutting payments to doctors and hospitals, likely to target medical technology and imaging at first, is undeniable. Even Howard Dean,
former governor of Vermont and former chair of the Democratic National
Committee, recently warned that the IPAB is essentially a health care
rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and
determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what
price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do
not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will
perform them.
W HER E A R E THE D OCTOR S?

On the other hand, it is undeniable that more access to primary care is
essential to accommodate the enormous increase in elderly Americans on
the horizon and the consequences of the ACA. ObamaCare, in theory, will
add about 30 million more nonelderly to the insured pool by 2022, including 17.5 million to Medicaid by 2016. The increased demand for health
care services will also stem from the promise of free screening as well as the
broad coverage required by the laws minimum essential benefits, often for
services many people would not purchase by choice. The projected additional 15 million to 24 million visits to result from the law indicate that an
additional 4,307 to 6,940 primary-care physicians will be needed by 2019.
This increase would be in addition to the projected increases of between
44,000 and 46,000 doctors needed within the next ten to fifteen years to
meet future primary-care demand even without the ACA.
These projected deficiencies become more problematic when another
reality is considered: the diminishing supply of primary-care doctors. For
many years, the best and brightest medical trainees have opted to pursue
specialization in fields that employ the technological advances and discoveries that make medicine an intellectually satisfying and financially
rewarding career. Beyond the trend toward specialization, more and more
doctors, particularly those involved in primary care, are fleeing the everHoover Digest N 2014 No. 1
63
increasing regulations by forming independent concierge practices so

they can manage their patients effectively and without the burden and
expense of the growing government role. According to the American
Academy of Private Physicians, the United States had about 4,400 concierge physicians in 2012, a 25 percent increase from 2011. The countrys
largest network of concierge doctors, MDVIP, with about 560 affiliated
doctors and 200,000 patients in more than forty states, has seen a 200
percent increase since 2007. More doctors are expected to transition to
concierge practices, specifically because of the ACA.
Even Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee,
warns that the IPAB is essentially a health care rationing body.
And lets admit one more reality. Even though more Americans will be
labeled insured under ObamaCare, even more doctors plan to refuse government insurance and its unrealistically low payments. This extends beyond
the roughly 36 percent who already dont accept new Medicaid patients,
including 58 percent of internists and more than a third of cardiologists,
neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, family practitioners, gastroenterologists,
and urologists, according to Jackson & Cokers survey in 2012. In addition,
more than 20 percent of primary-care doctors refused to see any new Medicare patients (only 4.5 percent refused new privately insured patients); in
2012, a full 25 percent of all doctors said they did not accept new Medicare
patients. No wonder 29 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who were looking
for a primary-care doctor had trouble finding one, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. And these problems existed before the
recently proposed pay cuts or IPAB price limits.
Meanwhile, more than three million seniors will be turning sixty-five
every year for the next two decades, becoming newly eligible for Medicare
at an average rate of 11,000 a day. Instead of improving access to care, the
Affordable Care Act will do just the opposite.
ME D I C INE F O R THE FUTUR E

With the appropriate vision, the system can meet the predicted demand
for primary care. Policy makers first must understand the changed role
64
of primary care in this era of technology and then shift it to widely available, lower-cost health care workers. Most primary care now involves routine tasks, many of which could be performed adequately without the
extensive training of doctors. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants
could undoubtedly monitor blood pressure, maintain prescriptions, check
blood results, perform routine physical examinations, and diagnose common outpatient ailments, and when necessary consult with more highly
trained doctors.
Second, lets capitalize on the growing momentum of retail outpatient
clinics and help them expand. According to a 2011 Rand study, the use
of retail medical clinics in pharmacies and other settings increased up
to tenfold between 2007 and 2009. Accenture projected the number of
retail health clinics will grow 2530 percent annually in the coming years,
roughly doubling from 1,400 in 2012 to 2,800 in 2015: This will significantly help to address capacity constraints at hospitals and [primary care
providers] by fulfilling 10.8 million visits per year and moving patient
visits to relatively less expensive retail clinics will save approximately $800
million per year. And we are already beginning to see major medical centers such as LSU, Henry Ford, UCLA, and others recognize the value of
retail clinics and forge partnerships with them.
Even though more Americans will be labeled insured, even more doctors
plan to refuse government insurance and its unrealistically low payments.
In the end, the ACA and its supporters rely on antiquated thinking of
an era long past. Restricting the use of advanced care and technology that
modern medicine requires while naively prioritizing primary care at the
expense of specialist care is precisely the wrong prescription for improving
the quality of health care and jeopardizes the gains of recent decades. The
better way to realize advances in medical care is to accelerate the education
of specialist physicians and reward them for their invaluable extra years
spent training. We must keep attracting top students into medicine, for
they represent the future and are needed more than ever.
Second, innovation in medical technology should be encouraged by
immediately repealing the excise tax on devices and then streamlining
65
burdensome regulations that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in money and timeregulations that have already shifted jobs, clinical trials, and
device development offshore.
Third, primary-care access should be increased and made more affordable by facilitating the expansion of simple outpatient clinics in retail
settings and allowing care delivery by non-physicians, such as properly
trained nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
Instead of restricting state-of-the-art medical care based on an antiquated model dominated by primary-care doctors, we must look to the
future for a new paradigm where we promote and leverage technological
advances for serious diseases while increasing access to affordable routine care.
Special to the Hoover Digest.
Available from the Hoover Press is Reforming Americas

Health Care System: The Flawed Vision of ObamaCare,
edited by Scott W. Atlas. To order, call 800.888.4741 or
visit www.hooverpress.org.
66
H E AL T H CAR E
The Great Unraveling

The Affordable Care Act was never going to be affordable. By Charles
Blahous.
Advocates marketed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to the American public as a way to bend the cost curve of soaring health care costs downward.
But despite its supporters hopes, the 2010 legislation was fiscally reckless,
markedly increasing the governments already-unsustainable health spending commitments at a time of record deficits. More than three years later,
the fiscal harm stemming from the ACA is as bad asand even worse
thanmany experts predicted. The problem lies with the nature of the
law itself, promising trillions in new government benefits while relying
on dubious financing mechanisms. These problems were not only foreseeable, they were indeed widely foreseen.
Even before the president signed the ACA into law, nonpartisan analysts demonstrated that the belief it would reduce federal deficits was
based on a misunderstanding of government accounting. The ACAs projected savings from Medicare payment reductions were in effect being
doubly committed: once to extend Medicare solvency and a second time
to fund a massive coverage expansion. Both the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) and the Medicare Chief Actuary alerted Congress to the
problem at the time. By counting projected savings only once, my own
subsequent study demonstrated that the ACA would add roughly $340
billion to federal deficits in its first decade.
Charles Blahous is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and one of two
public trustees for the Social Security and Medicare programs.
67
The reality was always likely to be worse than that estimate. The positive case for the ACAs financial integrity hung on two improbable outcomes: that all of its cost-saving provisions would work exactly as hoped
while none of its spending provisions would cost more than envisioned.
Yet CBO warned at the time that many of the laws cost-saving provisions
might be difficult to sustain, while the Medicare Chief Actuary also
warned that projected savings may be unrealistic. My own conclusion
after the laws passage was that the proceeds of such cost savings cannot
safely be spent until they have verifiably accrued.
My study demonstrated that the Affordable Care Act would add roughly
$340 billion to federal deficits in its first decade. The reality was always
likely to be worse.
No sooner was the ink dry on the ACA than these warnings began to
prove correct. Many of the laws financing mechanisms started to unravel,
while pressure mounted to expand its new spending programs. One of the
first provisions to bite the dust was the CLASS long-term-care program,
suspended in 2011 because of its financial unsoundness. This wiped out a
revenue source counted on to produce $70 billion during the first decade
to help finance the ACAs coverage expansion.
The 2012 US Supreme Court decision further complicated the laws
financing. The original idea under the ACA was that states would expand
Medicaid while more-generous federal subsidies provide for others to buy
health coverage from newly established exchanges. But the court rendered
Medicaid expansion optional for states, thus giving them an incentive to
let the federal government shoulder the entire cost of subsidizing moregenerous insurance coverage for those above the poverty line. Many states
are now taking advantage of this latitude, most likely increasing federal
costs for the exchanges.
Another of the ACAs important financing sourcessupposedly
capable of delivering $140 billion in revenues over ten yearswas the
requirement that employers offer affordable coverage to workers or pay
a penalty. But last year the Obama administration announced it would
68
not enforce this requirement during its statutory implementation year

of 2014.
Labor leaders recent appeal to expand ACA health-exchange subsidies
to multi-employer plans is but one example of a cost-escalating dynamic
that many of us predicted. As I observed in 2012, The ACA creates a
horizontal inequity between two hypothetical low-income individuals;
one who purchases insurance via an exchange receives a substantial direct
federal subsidy, whereas one who receives employer-provided insurance
(ESI) does not. This differential treatment could well lead either to the
second individuals moving into the health exchanges (thus increasing
participation rates) or to the federal government expanding low-income
subsidies to those with ESI (increasing costs).
The Obama White House correctly informed labor leaders that it
lacked authority to provide them with these subsidies, but the political
pressure to change the law will not end there. Indeed, we have already
seen some subsidies expanding beyond the ACAs original construction,
for members of Congress and their personal staffs.
The ACAs finances further depend on a new tax on medical device
manufacturers, estimated to raise $29 billion in 201322. Pressure is
building against this tax, with the Senate having cast a nonbinding vote
of 79-20 last March in favor of repeal. This issue also became a rallying
point during recent congressional debate over the continuing resolution.
Also of uncertain fate is the ACAs Independent Payment Advisory
Board (IPAB)the unelected board charged with implementing policies
to hold down Medicare costs with minimal congressional interference.
Strong bipartisan opposition to IPAB persists, and as of this writing there
is no sign of anyone even being nominated to serve on it.
The Congressional Budget Office now projects that merely delaying
ObamaCare implementation for one year would save $36 billion.
Finally, there are the ACAs most dubious financing sources. These
include a new 3.8 percent unearned income Medicare contribution
(UIMC) and a new tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans. The
income thresholds for the UIMC are not indexed for inflation, so under
69
the law most workers would eventually be subject to the taxover 80

percent of workers within seventy-five years, according to the Medicare
trustees. Past experience with legislation overriding other nonindexed
taxes like the alternative minimum tax demonstrates why projections
of escalating UIMC revenues should be taken with a hefty grain of salt.
So, too, with the so-called Cadillac-plan tax, designed to hit more and
more health insurance plans over time, an outcome that organized labor
is determined to prevent.
The problematic nature of the ACAs finances is such that CBOs latest
long-term budget outlook singled out its implementation as one of the
biggest sources of future fiscal strains. Through 2038, CBO attributes 35
percent of the cost growth in federal health programs to population aging,
40 percent to general health inflation, and an additional 26 percent to the
implementation of this single law. CBO now projects that merely delaying
ACA implementation for one year would save $36 billion.
Partisans point fingers over the reasons for the ACAs financial unraveling, but the actors in this drama are too diverse to blame any one person
or group. The task now facing both supporters and opponents is to take
the steps necessary to prevent further fiscal damage, by scaling back the
ACAs spending commitments before millions become dependent on benefits that the government is not in a position to pay.
Reprinted by permission of Real Clear Markets. 2013 RealClearMarkets. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is Healthy, Wealthy, and

Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System, second
edition, by John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel
P. Kessler. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
70
SCI E N CE
Free the Modified

Mosquitoes!
A lab-grown mosquito can help prevent a serious diseaseif a
misled public doesnt squash it. By Henry I. Miller.
People have a right to be ignorant. Just as we can choose to damage our

health by overeating, smoking cigarettes, and neglecting to take prescribed
medications, we can also choose to remain uninformed on policy issues.
Perhaps ignorance makes sense sometimes. According to economists,
rational ignorance comes into play when the cost of gaining enough
understanding of an issue to make an informed decision relating to it
outweighs the benefit that one could reasonably expect from doing so. For
example, many who are preoccupied with family, school, work, and mortgages may not consider it cost-effective to sift through a mass of ofteninconsistent data to understand, say, the risks and benefits of nuclear
power, plasticizers in childrens toys, or the Mediterranean diet.
The deluge of conflicting data relating to various foods costs and benefits exemplifies the challenge inherent in making informed decisions. In
a recent study, Jonathan Schoenfeld and John Ioannidis found that despite
the media hype, scientific claims that various foods cause or protect
against cancer are frequently not supported by meta-analysis (analysis
of pooled results from multiple studies). As Ioannidis put it, People get
scared or they think that they should change their lives and make big decisions, and then things get refuted very quickly.
Henry I. Miller, MD, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and
Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.
71
72
Poster CollectionHoover Institution Archives
People are particularly likely to exercise their right to ignorance

rational or notwhen it comes to issues of science and technology. A
2001 study sponsored by the US National Science Foundation found that
roughly half of the people surveyed understood that Earth circles the sun
once a year, 45 percent could give an acceptable definition for DNA,
and only 22 percent understood what a molecule was.
In 1995, the cosmologist Carl Sagan expressed concern about the trend
toward a society in which, clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline...we slide,
almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness. More recently,
British polymath Dick Taverne warned that in the practice of medicine,
popular approaches to farming and food, policies to reduce hunger and
disease, and many other practical issues, there is an undercurrent of irrationality that threatens science-dependent progress, and even the civilized
basis of our democracy.
Indeed, while people are entitled to believe in horoscopes, trust in crystals
to bring good luck, or buy into quack medicine, such junk science becomes
a serious threat to society when it is allowed to influence public policy.
Consider, for example, the response recently by some activists in Key
West, Florida, to efforts aimed at stemming the spread of dengue fever, a
serious, potentially life-threatening disease, which reappeared in the area
in 2009 after being absent for more than seventy years.
Using genetic-engineering techniques, the British company Oxitec has
bred new varieties of the mosquito species that transmit dengue fever. The
new mosquitoes contain a gene that produces high levels of a protein that
stops their cells from functioning normally, ultimately killing them. As
long as the modified male mosquitoes are fed a special diet, the protein
does not affect them. When released, they survive just long enough to
mate with wild females, passing along the protein-producing gene, which
kills their offspring before they reach maturityresulting in the speciess
elimination after a few generations.
After receiving the needed approvals, Oxitec worked with local scientists to release the modified mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands and in the
Juazeiro region of Brazil. According to the published accounts of these
experimental releases, the approach was highly effective, reducing the
A World War IIera poster emphasizes the danger of mosquito-borne

malaria. Dengue fever, another serious disease carried by mosquitoes,
has reappeared in Florida after an absence of more than seventy years
but scientists have turned the tables by developing a mosquito strain that
could help eradicate the insect that transmits dengue.
73
infected mosquito population by 80 percent in the Cayman Islands and

by 90 percent in Brazil. The company is awaiting approval from Brazils
health ministry to implement this approach as a dengue-control policy.
While similar releases in Florida are years away, some locals have already
reacted forcefully. One activist gathered a hundred thousand signatures on
a petition to oppose using the mosquitoes in eradication efforts. But her
concernsWhat if these mosquitoes bite my boys or my dogs? What
will they do to the ecosystem?have no scientific basis, and thus reflect
voluntary ignorance. With a little research, she would have discovered that
male mosquitoes do not bite, and that the released mosquitoes (all male)
die in the absence of their special diet.
In fact, the experimental releases revealed no detectable adverse effects
of any kind. But presenting the facts in a reasonable manner, as Florida
mosquito-control authorities have been trying to do, has not been enough
to change opponents minds. Unfortunately, those who choose ignorance
are immune toor simply prefer to ignorereason.
Why are so many people afraid of so many things? Cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat identifies several factors, including the success of the
environmental movement; a deep-seated distrust of industry; the publics
insatiable appetite for stories related to health, which the media duly cater
to; andnot leastthe striking expansion of the fields of epidemiology
and environmental health sciences and their burgeoning literature.
Allowing ignorance to drive public policy constitutes a serious threat to
scientific, social, and economic development.
Reprinted by permission of Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org). 2013 Project Syndicate Inc.
All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is To Americas Health:

A Proposal to Reform the Food and Drug Administration,
by Henry I. Miller. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit
www.hooverpress.org.
74
E D U CAT I O N
Higher Grades, Higher

GDP
The stronger the student performance, the more prosperous the
nation. By Eric A. Hanushek and Paul E. Peterson.
Americans are aware of public educations many failuresthe elevated

high-school dropout rates, the need for remedial work among entering
college students. One metric in particular stands out: only 32 percent of
US high school students are proficient in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. When the NAEP results are put on the
scale of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the
worlds best source of information on student achievement, the comparable proficiency rates in math are 45 percent in Germany, 49 percent
in Canada, and 63 percent in Singapore, the highest-performing independent nation.
The subpar performance of US students has wide ramificationsand
not just for individuals. On an individual level, of course, the connection
between education and income is obvious. Those with a college degree can
Eric A. Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of Hoovers Koret Task Force on K12 Education. Paul
E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of Hoovers
Koret Task Force on K12 Education, and the editor in chief of Education
Next. He is also the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and the director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.
They are the authors, with Ludger Woessmann, of Endangering Prosperity: A
Global View of the American School (Brookings, 2013).
75
expect to earn over 60 percent more in the course of their lifetime than
those with a high school diploma, according to census data. But there is
a nexus between educational achievement and national prosperity as well.
According to our calculations, raising student test scores in this country
up to the level in Canada would dramatically increase economic growth.
We estimate that the additional growth dividend has a present value of
$77 trillion over the next eighty years. This is equivalent to adding an
average of 20 percent to the paycheck of every worker for every year of
work over this time period.
We can no longer expect to grow by retaining the talent attracted to
colleges and universities from abroad.
Where do such astronomical numbers come from? Students of human

capital have long known that a countrys growth rate is connected to the
skills of the workers. And it has recently become apparent from our analysis of differences in growth rates among countries between 1960 and 2009
that the skills that count are reliably measured by standardized tests of
math and science such as PISA and NAEP.
We have analyzed all the well-vetted international tests given to students since the 1960s in fifty countries for which test-score information is
available. Adjusting for a countrys initial GDP (since it is easier to grow
fast when you start at a low level), the differences in long-run growth rates
are mainly accounted for by differences in cognitive skills as measured by
these international tests.
Between 1960 and 2009, the extra-rapid growth of some countries at
the top of the achievement distributionsuch as Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kongcan be readily explained by their students very
high test scores. Their growth was almost 2 percent per year higher than
would be expected if they had had only average achievement. Countries at
the bottom of the achievement distributionsuch as South Africa, Argentina, the Philippines, and Peruhave suffered from the weak growth that
their failing education systems predict. Their growth was almost 2 percent
less per year than would be expected had their student test scores put them
at the world average.
76
The US economy grew two-thirds of a percent faster per year for this
period than would be predicted by its students mediocre test scores. This
performance reflects a number of historic advantages. The US economy
is built on open markets, secure property rights, and generally favorable
tax rates; a higher-education system at the top of the world; and favorable immigration policies that permitted highly skilled people to enter.
But these relative advantages are declining as other countries emulate our
institutions and practices.
In the future, US growth will depend on the skills of its citizens, and
currently those skills are not competitive with those of other countries.
This nation can no longer expect to grow by retaining the talent attracted
to colleges and universities from abroad, as other nations are offering foreign students much broader opportunities and US immigration policies
are becoming more uncertain.
Assuming that historic trends in all fifty countries in our analysis apply
equally to the United States, its GDP growth rate would be boosted by
about three-fourths of 1 percent a year if student test scores in math rose
by 40 points higher on international tests, to the level attained by Canadian students. Three-quarters of a percent a year seems small, but it generates an amount five times our current GDP of $16 trillion.
To get a sense of the magnitude of these numbers, consider that the
Congressional Budget Office estimated that $4 trillion of potential GDP
was lost between 2008 and 2012 as a result of the recent recession. Thats a
big numberbut only a hint of the long-term price of nearly $80 trillion
the country pays for a low-performing educational system.
We estimate that the additional growth dividend of raising student test
scores has a present value of $77 trillion over the next eighty years.
How can US student achievement be boosted? Notably, the average number of years students are in school has little impact on economic growth,
once student test-score performance is taken into account. If you arent
learning anything at your desk, it doesnt matter how long you sit there.
Nor is more money the answer. The United States spends on average
$12,000 per pupil in grades K12, one of the highest amounts in the
77
world. Among US states, increments in spending per pupil between 1990

and 2010 show no correlation with changes in student performance.
In Wyoming and New York, spending levels per pupil climbed at one
of the fastest rates without getting any extra gains in student achievement
over this time period. Florida was among the most rapidly improving
states, even though inflation-adjusted state expenditures per pupil hardly
changed. It matters more how the money is spent than how much is spent.
Expensive but ineffective policies such as class size reduction, while valued
by current school personnel, have not raised achievement. Better accountability, more school choice, and market-based teacher compensation and
retention policies can, on the other hand, boost achievement without adding materially to school costs.
If you arent learning anything at your desk, it doesnt matter how long
you sit there.
Nationwide, the biggest economic gains will come many years after
school improvement takes place, a fact that probably helps to explain the
reluctance of the political class to commit itself to genuine school reform.
Confronting the power of teachers unions and other vested interests is
politically costly. But the failure to improve the education system is more
costly still.
Available from the Hoover Press is Failing Liberty 101:

How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared
for Citizenship in a Free Society, by William Damon. To
78
E D U CAT I O N
Dont Cheat Your Kids

Attention, parents: if your kids attend a lousy school and all you do
is shrug about it, youre part of the problem. By Michael J. Petrilli.
Editors note: Allison Benedikt wrote an article in Slate titled If You Send
Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. This is Michael Petrillis
response.
You are a bad person if you send your children to a failing school (unless
you have no choice). Not bad like murderer badbut bad like sacrificing-your-childs-future-while-not-actually-doing-anyone-else-any-good
bad. So, pretty bad.
I am an education-policy wonk; Im also judgmental. It seems to me
that if every single parent sent every single child to the best possible
school available, public schools would improve. This would not happen
immediately. It could take generations. Some children might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual
common good.
So, how would this work exactly? Its simple! Everyone needs to put
pressure on our public schools for them to get better. Not just lip-service
pressure, or I-might-pull-my-kid-out pressure, but real flesh-and-bloodoffspring pressure. Your local school stinks but you send your child there
anyway? Then its badness is just something you object to in the abstract.
Michael J. Petrilli is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, and executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute. His latest book is The Diverse Schools Dilemma: A Parents Guide
to Socioeconomically Mixed Public Schools (Fordham, 2012).
79
Your local school stinks and you send your child elsewhere? If enough
parents act like you then you are doing everything within your power to
make it better.
And parents have a lot of power. In many under-resourced school districts, its the mass exodus of parents that has finally forced officials to
make necessary changes. Everyone out. (By the way, banning neighborhood schools isnt the answer. We need a moral adjustment, not a legislative one.)
Pick the best fit for your child. Let other parents do the same.
There are a lot of reasons why bad people send their kids to failing
schools. Yes, some do it out of laziness or out of loyalty to a long-standing
family tradition. Others literally have no choice, as they cannot afford
private schools and because teachers unions have blocked all other routes
of escape.
I believe in public education! you might say. I understand. You want
the best for your community, but if you can tell your public school is bad
then youre not doing anybody any good by propping it up with your
childs attendance (and tax dollars). You might believe that yours is the
exact kind of family that can help your bad public school become less bad.
This is naive. Your child will not learn as much or be as challenged as she
could be. Dont let anyone tell you to live with that, especially if she is
gifted. The world needs her to fulfill her whole potential.
I went to excellent public schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade.
My high school offered numerous AP classes, and over four years I read
many excellent books. I even played soccer. This is not bragging! I left
home well prepared for college, and thanks to that preparation, I left college after learning a lot there too. Im not saying that my precise educational route is the right one for everyone. But I am grateful that I attended
good schools, and I want that for everyone.
By the way: my parents didnt send me to these great schools because
they believed in public education. They couldnt have afforded private
schools very easily, so they chose to live where we lived based on the
schools. Take two things from this on your quest to become a better per80
son: one, your child will probably do fine without the best, but two, the
best you can afford is surely what you should aim for.
Also remember that theres more to education than whats taught. As
wonderful as my schools English, history, science, social studies, math,
art, music, and language programs were, going to school with poor kids
and rich kids, black kids and brown kids, smart kids and not-so-smart
ones, kids with superconservative Christian parents and other upper-middle-class Catholics like me, was its own education and life preparation. (I
went to school in suburban St. Louis in the 1980s, home to the nations
largest desegregation program, so my school enjoyed a certain amount of
racial and socioeconomic diversity that other affluent suburban schools
did not.)
But if your local public school doesnt uphold the values you teach at
home, thats a big problem.
Many of my (morally bankrupt) friends send their children to failing
public schools. I asked them to tell me why. Here is the response that most
stuck with me: We wanted to live in the city, and these are the schools
that are available to us, and that we can afford. And attending school
with poor children will be a special experience for our kids. I get it: you
want to keep enjoying nightlife and a short commute and you think your
kids will do fine. You like your schools diversity, hate the suburbs, and
figure you can provide whatever enrichment your son or daughter needs
at home. Maybe your involvement will make the school a little better.
Maybe your childs large vocabulary will rub off on his or her peers.
Dont let anyone tell you to live with a bad school. The world needs
children to fulfill their whole potential.
You know who else wants to believe those things? Scores of social
scientists and a deluge of do-gooders. But heres another thing: whatever
you think your children needdeservefrom their school experience,
dont assume that the parents at the nearby public-housing complex
want the same. You want something warm-and-fuzzy and uber-progressive? They want something back-to-basics and akin to a Catholic education. You want more art and music and time for exploration and free
81
play? They want a focus on reading and math and extended time for the
fundamentals.
If you send your kids to school with their kids, you are likely to use
your energy, power, and money fighting to change your school in ways
that you prefer but that might actually do less-advantaged children
material harm. You might find yourself taking resources away from what
they need mosta content-rich curriculum, a strong focus on reading
and math, a firm approach to disciplineand hurting their life chances
in the process.
Dont just acknowledge your inner consumer, listen to it. Pick the best
fit for your child. Let other parents do the same. Everyone will be the better for it.
Reprinted by permission of National Review Online. 2013 National Review, Inc. All rights reserved.
New from the Hoover Press is The Best Teachers in the

World: Why We Dont Have Them and How We Could,
by John E. Chubb. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit
82
F O R E I G N PO L I CY
Best Frenemies
Nations have interests, not friends. Neither the Syrian war nor the
Snowden case should deter the United States from working with
Russia. By Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman.
Anyone who ever worried that Barack Obama might not be Made in the
USA should take comfort from his quintessentially American response to
Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to give temporary asylum to
Edward Snowden: pouting.
Democratic and Republican presidents alike tend to believe that if
other countries dont act like our friends, then they must be our enemies. This attitude creates unrealistic expectations that slow the healing of
old injuries and subverts the potential for a meeting of minds on critical
issuessuch as Syrias chemical weapons arsenal.
Its a truism that nations have interests, not friends or enemies. This may
sound cynical, but interests act like lighthouses on the rocky shores of foreign policy. In a storm, they help governments distinguish between what
they must do to survive, and what they might wish to do if seas were calm.
It is deeply in the interest of the United States to engage other countries in umpiring the peace of the worldand thereby make itself less of a
target. Russia has an equal interest in helping Syria, its neighbor and ally,
out of the messy corner into which President Bashar al-Assad has painted
himself. Moscow also needs to contain the regional damage that could
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Dwight E. Stanford Chair
in U.S. Foreign Relations at San Diego State University. Her most recent book is
American Umpire (Harvard University Press, 2013).
83
TI ME A N D T RA DE
History shows that Russia is neither Americas permanent ally nor our
permanent enemy. In the nineteenth century, czarist Russia was the closest
thing the United States had to a friend. In the Civil War, it alone of the
great powers offered succor to the Union, and shortly afterward Moscow
sold Alaska to the United States in preference to Great Britain, which
controlled adjacent Canada.
In contrast, parliamentary England was the closest thing we had to an
enemy at the time. The United States came to blows with Britain in 1812,
narrowly averted another fight in 1861 over the Trent Affair, and sued Her
Majestys government in 1872 for aiding and abetting the Confederacy.
How did we overcome the propensity for suspicion and irritation
between Washington and London that dated to the American Revolution
of 1776? How might we overcome the same propensity toward conflict
with Russiawhich dates to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and now
bedevils cooperation?
Time really does heal most wounds. Especially if we dont pick at them.
So it would help if we gave trade relations the chance to build an interdependence that is mutually beneficialas it has been in the past.
Interests act like lighthouses on the rocky shores of foreign policy.
The United States was extremely protective of its independence from

Great Britain for at least a hundred years after the Revolution. Anything
Britain did that reeked of bossing us around prompted demands for retaliation by both Congress and the White House. Americans were acutely
sensitive to British high-handedness and, in the parlance of the times,
loved to twist the British Lions tail or at least thumb their noses at him
whenever possible.
In this respect, the farsighted policies of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton are instructive. Despite clashes that led many in Congress
to advocate a trade war with Britain in 1789 and a naval showdown in
84
AFP/Getty Images/Fabrice Coffrini
otherwise spill into Putins backyard. We can and should work together,
letting our interests rather than our passions guide us.
World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy (left) presents Russian negotiator
Maxim Medvedkov with a T-shirt during a press conference in 2011 in Geneva. Russia had
just secured the first of two approvals for its membership in the WTO. It succeeded in 2012
after a nineteen-year campaign.
1794, Hamilton advocated trade relationsand peacethat would allow

America to prosper in the long run.
Better to swallow a little pride than a lot of grapeshot, Hamilton reckoned. As a consequence, British investors underwrote Americas industrialization over the course of the nineteenth century. And then the United
States stood at Britains side through two terrible world wars in the next.
The Cold War between Washington and Moscow ended barely twenty years ago. Healing it means refusing to interpret minor differences as
major ones. Our biggest beef with the former Soviet Union was its oppressive control of Eastern Europe, its threat to expand into Western Europe,
and its nuclear-powered aim to bury the United States.
All that is gone. Russia is now getting the big things right in its foreign
policy, and its on this that US policy makers should focus. Russias goals
85
and actions no longer require US troops at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

Putins cooperation on anything else is gravy.
In the words sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters back in
World War II, we need to ac-centuate the positive, e-liminate the negative...and dont mess with Mister In-between.
HOLD IN G OU R T EMPER
We also shouldnt be surprised that Russian leaders sometimes look for
simple ways to salve national pride, considering the bruises with which
they exited the Cold War. When Putin flaunts Russian independence by
sheltering someone on our most-wanted listwhich he has a perfect right
to do, according to the customs of sovereigntyit makes no sense to let
him get a rise out of us.
For much of US history, Americans were acutely sensitive to British
high-handedness.
And on those occasions when he exercises constructive leadershipas

he may have with his following up on Secretary of State John Kerrys
offhand remark about Syrias chemical weaponswe ought to applaud as
loudly as if the gesture had come from Germany or Japan, other onetime
enemies. If Putin actually persuades Syria to get rid of its chemical weapons, Americans should be the first to compliment Russia and the last to
complain about anyone stealing our thunder or glory.
Skillfully managing flashpoints like these is imperative. Yet in the long
run there arent a lot of shortcuts to consistent amity. Trade is the surest
road. This is demonstrated not only by Americas experience with Britain
but also by Frances relationship with Germany and Japans with China.
Between 2009 and 2011, US exports to Russia rose by 57 percent, ameliorating our negative balance of payments, while total US-Russia trade
increased more than 80 percent. In 2012, Russia joined the World Trade
Organization and signed an agreement with the United States to respect
our intellectual property. We still buy far more than we sell, which means
that Americans are excellent customers for Russians, who have a grow-
86
ing incentive to stay on our good sideproviding that we dont make it

humiliating for them to do so.
There arent a lot of shortcuts to consistent amity. But trade is the
surest road.
This is the big story about US-Russian relations, not Snowden, nor
whether or not Putin cooperates with Obama, or any president, on each
and every regional issue. That just aint gonna happenand expecting it
only makes foreign governments want to twist our tail harder.
Reprinted by permission of Reuters. 2013 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is State of

Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the
State Department, by Kori N. Schake. To order, call
87
S Y RIA
How to Breed Atrocities

Wars such as the Syrian conflictirregular, undeclared, ideological
all but inevitably give rise to a particular sadism and brutality. By
Victor Davis Hanson.
A prominent Syrian rebel commander with the nom de guerre Abu

Sakkar recently appeared on YouTube cutting open the chest of a dead
government soldier, pulling something out of itthe heart or perhaps a
lungand taking a bite. Abu Sakkar claimed that such cannibalism was
an appropriate psychological payback for the crimes of Bashar al-Assads
troops, who have recorded videos of their own atrocities. I swear to God
we will eat your hearts and your livers, Abu Sakkar promises.
Barbarity is commonplace in the Syrian war. More than eighty thousand
Syrians have been killed since the Arab Spring arrived in March 2011, and
unknown numbers have been tortured and maimed. Many expected that
Assad would follow the relatively rapid demise of fellow Arab kleptocrats like
Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gadhafi in Libya, and Tunisias Zine
el-Abidine Ben Ali. But buoyed by Russian arms, Iranian money and agents,
and Hezbollah terrorists, Assad has hung on as more than a million Syrians
have fled the country. Atrocities and counter-atrocities growand the world
wonders why Syrian fighters seem especially prone to premodern brutality.
The truth is that atrocity is common in war, ancient and modern. King
Xerxes had the slain Spartan hero Leonidas decapitated after the Greek
defeat at Thermopylae and his head impaled on a stake. One of the most
chilling passages in William H. Prescotts classic history of the ruthless
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution.
88
Spanish destruction of the Aztec empire is the sight of sixty-two captured

conquistadors atop the Great Pyramid at Tenochtitlan in ceremonial garb,
ready to be sacrificed by having their hearts torn out.
The habit of Vlad III, prince of Walachia, of impaling his captured enemies
inspired Bram Stokers Dracula. E. B. Sledges brilliant World War II memoir
of island fighting in the Pacific, With the Old Breed, cites incidents of loppedoff genitals. And while Sledge makes the case that the Japanese were more
prone to mutilating the dead than were the Americans, he saw enough barbarity among his fellow Marines to leave him depressed over human depravity.
LET H A L INGR ED IENTS

Some wars are more likely to see routine sadism of the Syrian type than
others. The humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib stirred revulsion
among the American public, but on historys scale of atrocities it was not
remotely in the same league as what occurred during the Rwanda genocide in 1994, the Iran-Iraq War or the Soviet fighting in Afghanistan during the 1980s, or the Balkan nightmare of the 1990s.
One way to ensure brutal cycles of violence is to prolong fighting.
Mubarak was toppled quickly. Had he turned the army against the protesters and incited a civil war, the grotesque episodes we see in Syria might
have become commonplace in Egypt. The Six Days War of 1967, in
which Israel fought back against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, lacked the horrendous violence of the drawn-out conflict in South Lebanon between
Israel and Hezbollah, the PLO, and others that lasted from 1982 to 2000.
Unconventional and undeclared fightingmarked by terrorism, insurgency, and Mogadishu-like irregularsare also force multipliers of atrocity. Professional soldiers, while adept at industrialized brutality, are still more likely than
rebels or militias to accept a rough code of conduct. During trench warfare or
armor-led attacks and counterattacks, civilians were not as likely to be targeted
or to take up arms. World War I was far more lethal to American troops than
was the much longer Philippine insurrection between 1899 and 1913. Yet the
latters primitive slaughter outraged the American people in a way that even the
horrendous machine-gunning in Belgium and France had not.
Other criteria also influence the levels of atrocity. Consensual societies
are more likely to hold their soldiers accountable, given a free electorate
89
and press. The Allies firebombed civilian centers during World War II, but
setting up anything like Hitlers industrial death camps would have been
virtually impossible, even if the Allies had, unthinkably, been so disposed.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was no liberal reformer, yet even the shadow of a Reichstag in 1914 Germany made imperial soldiers less likely to torture and
maim than were their sons in the totalitarian-driven Third Reich.
Finally, war is a loose abstraction that can include everything from the
Falklands campaign (a fight between two bald men over a comb, in the
90
famous quip of the Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges) to the horrific
fourteen-year Japanese on-and-off war in Manchuria that eventually saw ten
million perish. When the struggle is not prompted by an uninhabited rocky
island, a disputed border, or a soccer match, but rather involves medieval
Christian Crusaders versus Muslims for the religious future of the Middle
East, the fate of the American or Australian frontier, or the extinction of
millions in Europe, these total wars can become totally barbarous given that
the alternative to victory is not defeat, but often extinction or slavery.
SYR IA N C RU CI BLE
The Syrian war meets many of military historys criteria of barbarism. We
are witnessing another year of fighting, marked by roving bands rather
than a formal duel between uniformed soldiers squared off on either side
of no-mans land.
One way to ensure brutal cycles of violence is to prolong fighting.
Neither sideif there are indeed two sides, rather than four or fiveis
democratic. Both Syrian soldiers and militias know there is scant chance
of postwar punishment for their barbarism. The killing is not merely over
the future of Syria: it is also a religious struggle between Shiite and Sunni
Muslims, framed by a parallel fight between Baathist authoritarianism and
theocratic Islamism.
The losers surely expect something worse than defeatall they need to
do is remember Hafez al-Assads 1982 massacre of rebels in Hama and the
citys near-razing to sense what might await. There will be more Abu
Sakkars before this savage war is over.
New from the Hoover Press is Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah:
The Unholy Alliance and Its War on Lebanon, by Marius
Deeb. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
91
S Y RIA
Humpty Dumpty in
Syria
With or without outside intervention, nothing will put Bashar
al-Assads tyranny back together again. America should plan
accordingly. By Thomas H. Henriksen.
President Obamas declared red line was crossed when elements

within Bashar al-Assads dictatorship used chemical weapons against
their own people. But crossing the threshold for American intervention in the Syria conflict did nothing to clarify the proper US response.
The president spoke of a shot across the bow to Assad. Administration officials ruled out anything approaching regime change. Soon it
became clear that first Britain, Americas closest ally, and then the US
Congress would not support even the presidents most circumscribed
proposals for military action. And then Russian involvement sparked
a diplomatic effort, still playing out, to force Assad to dispose of the
weapons peaceably.
The debate over what to do in Syria must not limit itself to tactical and
political considerations alone, important as they are. Strategic goals are
imperative.
All of the White Houses hesitancy and caution is predicated on avoiding what its previous occupant wrought by fighting two wars in the greater
Middle Eastin Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a course of action, or rather
inaction, enjoys high approval in most nationwide polls. But will Americas standoffishness prove sound in the longer run?
Thomas H. Henriksen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
92
The acid test for any Syrian operations should be whether they further
American and Western interests, which include countering Irans malevolent ambitions and checking the expansion of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist
networks. Tehran is deeply committed to Damascus as a satellite and land
corridor to its proxy Hezbollah, the terrorist movement based in Lebanon.
In turn, Hezbollah props up Assads rule, while destabilizing the Levant
and threatening Israel and US Arab allies. It is hard to see an unchecked
Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis acting to stabilize the Middle East.
As the bloody Syrian civil war has persisted, it has acted as a magnet,
attracting young men from far and wide who aspire to be jihadis and to
construct a strict Islamic state. Such an enterprise will in time turn its
attention and violence on the West. Earlier US intervention, when the
political and military tides ran strongly against an on-the-ropes Assad,
could well have forestalled the flood of extremist elements who now
plague the country. It is prudent to recognize these realities and to tailor
a strategy to contain and combat the spread of Iranian belligerency and
Islamist terrorism. Such an endeavor must take account of the looming
realities in the irreparably broken Syrian state.
At this juncture, it seems that the Syrian conflict will result in a permanently fractured state much like the former Yugoslavia, where during the
1990s the postWorld War I artificial construct broke up along religious,
ethnic, and nationalistic lines. What will the post-Syrian territory look
like? An outline is emerging.
Will Americas standoffishness prove sound in the longer run?
The Syrian northeast is home to a Kurdish enclave, whose people make

no secret of the desire to join their brethren in Iraq and other Kurdish
islands in Turkey and Iran.
The rump state of Damascus and lands to the west and north, which
are populated by Alawites (a Shiite offshoot), will stay tight with Tehran
for security and sectarian reasons. One explanation for the Assad regimes
desperate resort to poison gas stems from its goal to cleanse the Damascus suburbs of rebels so as to consolidate its hold on lands surrounding
the capital. Such actions portend an Assad goal to endure in a shrunken
93
A Syrian girl sits in a playground swing at the Mrigb al-Fuhud refugee camp in Jordan. The
camp is expected to house twenty thousand people. More than a million Syrians have fled
the conflict in their country and sought shelter in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon.
statean objective similar to the one pursued by Serbias Slobodan Milosevic when he gave up his greater Serbia ambitions in a collapsing Yugoslavia.
Other sectors of the disintegrating Syrian entity (like Yugoslavia, it was
thrown together after the First World War) include ministates populated
by the Sunni peoples who make up some 70 percent of the country. These
communities differ on the degree of Islam that they want in their lives.
Some are more secular than others. Some of these groups have a mania
for rigid Islamic rules. Such differing religious orientations have led to
intra-Sunni clashes among religious moderates and extremists, as foreign
fighters have flocked in and exacerbated religious tensions in their pursuit
of a restored Islamic caliphate. There is a better-than-even chance that AlQaeda-linked militants will take up violence against Westerners and the
West in the future.
94
Nothing will put the Syrian state back together again. Nor will the
present disengagement in Syrias affairs further Americas confrontation
with Iran or its fight against Al-Qaeda-style terrorist operatives. Instead,
a realistic assessment of this emerging checkerboard of political entities
compels American policies and military operations to buttress the polities
that the United States can align to its strategic vision.
Polaris/Paulo Nunes dos Santos
What will the post-Syrian territory look like? An outline is emerging.
Limited actionsairstrikes, air-exclusion zones, covert assistancecan

spare America another full-scale intervention and occupation in the Middle East. Washington is already utilizing such limited military engagement
in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa to beat back Al-Qaeda affiliates. Far
better to assist local allies and proxies for the defense of American interests
and allies in this new Thirty Years War than stand aside in the vain hope
that it will resolve itself in a manner conducive to American and Western
priorities.
Reprinted by permission. 2013 Guardian News and Media Ltd. All rights reserved.
New from the Hoover Press is Taking on Iran:

Strength, Diplomacy, and the Iranian Threat, by
Abraham D. Sofaer. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit
95
S Y RIA
Return of the Bear

Russia is back in the Middle East. How did we let this happen? By
Tod Lindberg.
For decades during the Cold War, US policy sought to minimize the role
of Moscow in the Middle East. As the Soviet Union weakened dramatically in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so too did its capacity to influence
events there (and in many other places). So matters have stood since. A
pretty good question, then, is why on earth the Obama administration
seems to be inviting a Russian resurgence in the Middle East.
The first-term Obama initiative to reset relations with Russia was
probably worth a try. If a dose of conspicuous American respect could lead
to progress with Russia on matters of mutual interest, all to the good. And
indeed, the policy arguably bore certain limited fruit: an agreement that
further reduces nuclear stockpiles (though not one without its critics);
cooperation over Afghanistan; restraint in terms of Russian cooperation
with Iran (specifically, Russias support for sanctions and its nondelivery
of the advanced S-300 air-defense system Tehran sought in order to complicate military options against its nuclear programs); an abstention on
the UN Security Council resolution authorizing all necessary measures
to protect Libyan civilians from the last gasp of Muammar Gadhafis effort
to stay in power.
But Vladimir Putins Russia never really responded to the reset by opting for a constructive role in international politics. Since Putin emerged
at the top of the post-Soviet political heap, Russian foreign policy, such
as it is, has mainly seemed to be driven by a combined sense of nostalgia,
Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
96
grievance, and resentmentRussia with a chip on its shoulder over the

loss of an empire and the supposed abuse inflicted upon it by the United
States in its period of weakness.
Putins autocratic tendencies are of a piece with his posturing on behalf
of a strong Russia. Has there ever been a world leader who so likes to be
photographed bare-chested? Yet he has always seemed a little too insistent
in delivering his message that Russia is back.
On the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, he proclaimed his country
an energy superpower, as if this were some hitherto undiscovered category
of greatness in international politics. Now, if there were such a thing as
an energy superpower, Saudi Arabia would surely be one; but, of course,
Saudi Arabia is anything but a superpower, notwithstanding its oil riches.
And thanks to shale oil and gas in the United States as well as crumbling
Russian energy infrastructure, it looks as if its the United States that will
be adding the significant new dimension of energy self-sufficiency to its
already considerable national power.
Russian foreign policy, such as it is, has mainly seemed to be driven by a
combined sense of nostalgia, grievance, and resentment.
Russia has its nuclear arsenal and the external security such a capability provides. It is, in some sense, untouchable even by greater US power.
Hence the skepticism with which Moscow greeted Obamas proposal in
his Berlin speech for further deep cuts in nuclear weapons.
Yet the notion of a Russian grand strategy that the United States has
anything to fret about has long been far-fetched. The biggest problems
Russia causes are exactly where you would expect to find them: in countries bordering Russia in the old Soviet space and in countries that have
ties with Moscow going back to their status as client states during the
Cold War.
INE F F E C T U AL NO MOR E
Russia has been especially active where the United States and its allies
have been divided or acted hesitantlya problem that did not begin with
Obama. For example, NATO was divided at its 2008 summit on whether
97
98
to extend an invitation to Russias neighbor Georgia to take the next step

in its bid to join the alliance. Its unclear whether doing so would actually have prevented Russia from responding to provocations in ethnically
Russian breakaway Georgian regions in August of that year by sending
in an invading force. Putins hatred for Georgias then-president, Mikheil
Saakashvili, was personal and deep. But Germanys insistence that Georgia receive something less than a definitive path to NATO membership
was just an early example of an attempt to assuage Russian concerns that

ended up backfiring. And even here, Putin lacked the will (or perhaps
the capacity?) to send Russian tanks all the way to Tbilisi and reunite
Georgia with Russia by force.
Western policy toward Ukraine has also been less than a model of
coherence, as the United States and the European Union have swung
from excessive optimism over the countrys future to self-defeating pessimism. Nevertheless, Ukraines future independence is not seriously in
doubt. Russia seeks and maintains influence there, but influence has
not crossed over into the kind of dominance the Soviet Union
exerted over neighbors.
Obama didnt improve cohesion among US
allies in his first term with a ham-handed effort
to cancel a missile-defense system scheduled
for deployment in Poland. One gets the
impression that senior officials in the
Obama administration regard the
security concerns our Central and
Eastern European allies voice
about Russia as overblown. They
may well be. But the American
dismissal of such concerns only
99
serves to exacerbate them, which in turn encourages all the wrong tendencies within Russia. Once again, though, Russian weakness and fecklessness
have protected us from major consequences of our miscues.
But in Syria, it looks as if Russian weakness and fecklessness may finally
be meeting their match in a race to the bottom with US weakness and
fecklessness. Maybe the Obama administration has at last figured out that
a vacuum where US leadership should be can lead not only to further
humanitarian disaster but also to adverse strategic consequences. But its
remarkable how long the administration has blithely watched the erosion
of our position in the Middle Eastand with what equanimity it has
allowed Russia to once again become a consequential player acting against
US interests there.
Russias marginality in the Middle East has been a constant since 1990
91, the time of the first Gulf War. George H.W. Bush actively and successfully cultivated the cooperation of the last Soviet general secretary,
Mikhail Gorbachev, in presenting a united front of opposition to Saddam
Husseins conquest and attempted annexation of Kuwait. The result was a
sequence of UN Security Council resolutions demanding Saddams withdrawal and culminating in the authorization of member states to remove
him by force if necessaryalong with the mobilization of a large military
coalition legitimated by the United Nations and led by the United States.
The Soviet Union did not contribute military assets, but Bush and his
national security team, led by national security adviser Brent Scowcroft
and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, worked assiduously to keep
Gorbachev on their side diplomatically while resisting all Soviet entreaties
that they thought would weaken the coalitions position against Saddam.
The notion of a Russian grand strategy that the United States has
anything to fret about is far-fetched.
In retrospect, Gorbachevs sometimes noble, sometimes hapless efforts

to cope with the terminal crisis of the Soviet Union give the impression of
a man trying to ride a tiger. Some forward-thinking senior Soviet officials
seemed genuinely to have supported his position at the side of President
Bush. But not all. Yevgeny Primakov, Gorbachevs special envoy for Iraq,
100
was on the hunt from the outset of the diplomatic maneuvering for a facesaving out for Saddam. His frantic maneuvering in the days before the commencement of the ground war in February 1991 eventually persuaded Gorbachev to approach Bush with a proposal to defer the ground campaign in
response to supposed concessions from Saddam. The response from Bush
and his team was a diplomatic but firm no: Saddams only way out must
be full compliance with all the provisions of the Security Council resolutions demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal.
Russian weakness and fecklessness have protected us from major
consequences of our miscues.
And that was that. Gorbachev went away empty-handed, unable to

force an outcome more to his liking. The Soviet capacity to influence
events against the wishes of the United States in the biggest international
crisis in ten years or more was nil. Within a year, the Soviet Union itself
dissolved, its influence in the Middle East having predeceased it.
Gorbachev did not, however, bolt on the coalition effort. He grumbled,
but he acquiesced. And this has largely been the pattern of Russian-American relations on matters of high policy ever since.
KEY A B S T ENTIONS
Russia opposed military action against Slobodan Milosevics Serbia to prevent ethnic cleansing and atrocities in Kosovo in 199899, and used its veto
power to refuse to allow a UN Security Council resolution authorizing military action. When NATO decided to go ahead anyway, Russia denounced
the move, but if Milosevic harbored the impression that the Russians were
going to come to his rescue (which he may have), he eventually became
disabused of the notion and capitulated. The main angle of Russian maneuvering was for participation in the follow-up peacekeeping mission. Russia
aspired to a sector of its ownand was denied it by NATO.
Russia was nominally opposed to the 2003 Iraq War but supported
Security Council Resolution 1441, in November 2002, giving Iraq a final
opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations and promising
serious consequences for the failure to do so. The United States expected
101
Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to veto any moves in the

United Nations that might aim Syria toward the ouster of the Assad
regime. In regards to the Syrian fighting, Russias geopolitical pattern of
two decadesdenounce but acquiescehas clearly been broken.
102
Reuters/Maxim Shipenkov
to but couldnt obtain a second Security Council resolution in early 2003

containing explicit authorization for the use of military force against Saddams regime; the big problem then was not Russia, but France. And of
course the United States was prepared to act on its own authority anyway,
about which Russia could or would do nothing of consequence.
Similarly, Russia did not like the idea of NATO enlargement, especially
into formerly Soviet territory, namely the Baltics. But was Russia willing
to, for example, act covertly to destabilize Lithuania in the hope of derailing US enthusiasm for its inclusion in the enlargement round in 2004?
No, it wasnt (or couldnt).
More recently, Russia was hardly enthusiastic about coming to the rescue of Libyan civilians as forces loyal to Muammar Gadhafi closed in to
crush the rebellion andif Gadhafis own words were to be believed
exact reprisals on a mass scale. Certainly Russia was not in favor of toppling the Gadhafi regime. But Russia and China did voluntarily subscribe
in 2005 at the United Nations World Summit to the principle of the
responsibility to protect: that if a state fails to act to protect its populations from atrocities (or perpetrates atrocities), the international community acting through the United Nations may do so. And so Russia and
China abstained on Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized
the use of force to protect Libyan civilians.
When NATO exceeded the explicit UN mandate by continuing its air
campaign in support of the opposition until Gadhafi fell, the Russians
protested loudly that they had been hoodwinked; they would never have
allowed 1973 to go through if they had known NATO intended to topple
Gadhafi. Given that the leaders of France, Great Britain, and the United
States had all publicly declared that Gadhafi had to go, its difficult to
credit Russia with sufficient naivet not to have known that the Security
Council resolution was providing cover for regime change. Putin, though
he occasionally strikes a pose of wounded innocence, is no ingnue.
IN VOKING T HE UN CHAR T ER
But then came the beginning of the protests in Syria. The demonstrations
against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began peacefully in March 2011.
Many Syrians were expecting Assad to respond by broadly opening the
103
political system. He chose instead to suppress the protests by force, opening

fire on civilians first in Daraa in April. Thus was born the Syrian rebellion.
The White House has run its Syria policy in a fashion that maximizes the
influence of its least constructive partner.
The United States began to press for action at the United Nations, but
no resolution was forthcoming as the death toll mounted. A year into the
rebellion, in April 2012, came the only resolution the Security Council has
ever passed on the crisis, a toothless expression of support for a cease-fire
and the diplomatic mission of special envoy Kofi Annan (a mission Annan
would abandon as hopeless a few months later). About a month before, a
UN official had placed the civilian death toll at about nine thousand.
Russia, along with China, professed to have learned a lesson from the
Libya experience. Moscow promised to veto anything that might set Syria on a path toward the ouster of the Assad regime. The Russians have
made good on that threat four times, most recently last June by vetoing
a British-drafted resolution condemning attacks on civilians in Qusayr.
The United Nations issued a new estimate of casualties of the civil war,
placing deaths at around one hundred thousand, including combatants
on both sides. The number of civilian deaths is in the scores of thousands,
with millions displaced internally and over a million having fled across the
border to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraqi Kurdistan.
Moscow and Beijing have been unyielding in their cynical claim to be
issuing their vetoes in order to uphold the principles of the UN Charter. As the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, piously noted in June
2012, These purposes and principles include respect for the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of a state and the obligation not to interfere in
the internal affairs of sovereign states. Lavrov, in short, would like to
leave international relations about as they were at the time of the Treaty
of Westphalia.
The purpose of the UN Charter, at least notionally, was certainly not to
allow states to slaughter their civilian populations with impunity. The charter gives the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance
of international peace and security in the hope that the body will act when
104
necessary, as is certainly the case in Syria. The international element is obvious: refugee flows, even leaving aside the responsibility to protect.
So Moscows behavior has been reprehensible and also newly uncooperative. The pattern of two decadesdenounce but acquiescehas been
broken. Whats more, the Russians have gone much further than mere
rhetoric. They have actively been supporting Assad, selling him arms,
providing military advisers, and making a show of their presence in the
region. Syria is home to Russias sole remaining naval base outside the territory of the former Soviet Union, at Tartus. Russia conducted an elevenship naval exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean not far from the Syrian
coast last year, the biggest such Russian exercise since the fall of the Soviet
Union. It has provided Syria with antiship missiles, believed to be operational now out of Tartus.
But by far the most troubling show of support for Syria was the Russian
foreign ministrys announcement last May of a contract to supply Assad
with the S-300, air-defense technology far more advanced than anything
Syria deploys. This is a system Russia has repeatedly been talked out of
delivering to Iran, largely on the grounds that Israel would move militarily
to prevent its deployment. After word of the plan (half-baked though it may
be) to deliver the system to Syria came out, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu paid a visit to Putin during which he reportedly urged Putin not
to make good on the S-300 deal. Israel would certainly act to take out the
system before it became operational in Syria. The US State Department has
also expressed strong opposition. After considerable confusion about exactly
what the status of the deal isincluding an apparently erroneous report
attributed to Assad that the system had already arrivedPutin weighed in
to say that though a deal to supply the S-300 to Syria had been reached
some years ago, Russia had not fulfilled it.
Moscow and Beijing cling to their cynical claim to be upholding the
principles of the UN Charter.
The S-300 is no giant-killer. On the other hand, officials from the

Obama administration have asserted time after time that Syrias existing
air defenses are much tougher than those Gadhafi had in Libyasup-
105
posedly evidence of the difficulty of imposing a no-fly zone in Syria that

would spare civilians some of the worst of Assads assaults. Yet it seems
implausible in the extreme that the US military is unprepared to defeat
existing Syrian air defenses, especially given Israels demonstrated ability
to conduct loss-free airstrikes on Syrian military targets. These cautionary
notes seem to have a lot more to do with bolstering a position of US inaction than an honest assessment of military capabilities.
Russia didnt like the idea of NATO enlargement, especially into former
Soviet territory. But was Moscow willing, for example, to destabilize
Lithuania to derail US enthusiasm? No.
Nevertheless, even the rumor of the arrival of the S-300 was sufficient
to elevate the perception of the importance of Russia in the Syrian conflict.
Secretary of State John Kerry began scrambling to convene an international
peace conference on Syria, at which Russia would take a leading role. If this
sounds like conventional 1970s-era diplomacy at its worst, thats because it
is. Henry Kissinger spent much of his career in and out of office trying to
shut down calls for such a Mideast peace conference with Moscow, on the
grounds that the most likely outcome would be an increase in the Kremlins
influence in the region and the isolation of Israel. The world has changed
considerably since then; this equation, not so much.
A DOOR LE F T W ID E OPEN
Ultimately, the Obama administration has been conducting its Syria
policy in a fashion that maximizes the influence of the least constructive
partner we have to work with. The United States spent a couple of years
trying to address Syria through the Security Council, where Russia readily blocked action with its veto. Although President Obama himself said
two years ago that Assad must go, a sentiment he reaffirmed in March
2013 with Netanyahu at his side and in May with Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his side, the United States has done nothing of
consequence to increase pressure on Russia at the Security Council by
showing Moscow we have other options.
106
Meanwhile, we have talked up Assads dubious capacity to deter us,

which only encourages his favorite arms merchant, Putin. The prospect
of Russian arms sales changing the military balance in the Middle East
is now before us, and with it an increase in the likelihood of conflict.
Our delay in responding may also have given Russian military advisers
an opportunity to take up positions that are potentially in harms way,
further complicating our options. And then came the secretary of state,
hat in hand, hoping for Moscows good offices at an international peace
conference.
There is no good reason for any of this. If the idea was that Russia
would get out of the way of constructive action on Syria, as it so often has
chosen to do before, the administration should have recognized that its
premise was erroneous two years ago. It didnt take the Clinton administration very long to figure out that it needed a bypass around the Russian
veto over Kosovo. One hopes the idea wasnt that tens of thousands of
Syrian civilians are expendable because we need Russia on board for our
UN diplomacy over Irans nuclear program.
Without quite realizing what we were doing, our non-response to Assads
atrocities opened a door for malign Russian influence of a kind that we have
avoided for more than two decades. It remains uncertain whether Putin has
the nerve to walk through it, but its his call. If he doesnt, it wont be for
want of opportunity we have created for him. The president himself has
declared, Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security
interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States. Syria is a textbook example of how failure to act in response to atrocities can leave a vacuum in which our national security interests are at serious risk.
Reprinted by permission of the Weekly Standard. 2013 The Weekly Standard LLC. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is Living with the UN:

American Responsibilities and International Order, by
Kenneth Anderson. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit
107
S Y RIA
Would an Attack on
Syria Be a Just War?
War isnt always diplomacy by other means. Sometimes its a moral
imperative. By Robert P. George.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, the eminent University of Chicago scholar who died
last year at age seventy-two, was a little lady from a small town in Colorado who became a giant in the field of political philosophy. She gained
her stature not by conforming to the orthodoxies of the modern academy,
but by frequently offering compelling reasons to reject them.
In a milieu dominated by secularism, she embraced religious faith, in
the end becoming a Catholic. Defying the radical feminism of the 1970s,
she rejected abortion as the taking of innocent human life and defended
marriage as normative for sexual conduct.
Of all her academic heresies, however, none was more upsetting to
Elshtains colleagues than her support for aggressive military action against
terrorist organizations and, a decade ago, her defense of the war in Iraq.
Having written about the politics and morality of war since the beginning
of her career in the 1970s, Elshtain insisted that Americas conflict with
Al-Qaeda was not a matter of international law enforcement, as some
insisted. It was a war.
Terrorists, and states that support them, are not merely engaged in
criminal activities; they are our enemiesin the same way that Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were our enemies in World War II. As she wrote
Robert P. George is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of
Hoovers Boyd and Jill Smith Task Force on Virtues of a Free Society.
108
in her 2003 book, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power
in a Violent World,
With our great power comes an even greater responsibility. One of our ongoing responsibilities is to respond to the cries of the aggrieved. Victims of
genocide, for example, have a reasonable expectation that powerful nations
devoted to human rights will attempt to stay the hand of the murderers.
Just-war theorists believe in doing what we can, in a prudent manner, to
prevent mass murder by evildoers.
That did not mean that force is always justified or that no rules apply.
Elshtain was a believer in, and a leading interpreter of, the tradition
known as just-war theory. This tradition does not propose pacifismthe
view that the use of force is inherently unjustifiable. On the contrary, justwar theory says that in the face of unjust aggression, nations sometimes
have a duty to use military force. They are also obligated to fight with all
legitimate means to winto defeat the enemy and halt its aggression.
Elshtains view of war was fully in line with her general view of politics as a morally serious business. Any military action should be about
advancing the common good and establishing principles of justice and
human rights.
Beware the sin of cynicismthe failure to treat politics, and war, as a
morally serious business.
Because Jean was my friend and frequent collaborator, I have been asked
more than once in recent days: what would Jean Elshtain have thought
about Syria? Would she have supported President Obamas proposal to
launch limited attacks to punish the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons? Or would she have opposed the presidents positioneither
because the administration has failed to make a solid case on just-war
principles justifying military force, or because pinprick strikes to punish
the regime without destroying it are too weak a response to its gross violations of human rights?
109
110
I do not know and would not presume to guess. But Elshtain would
not have accepted the isolationist idea that the use of poison gas or other
means to murder innocents is none of Americas business. She recognized
that a powerful and prosperous nation bears great moral responsibilities
that transcend its borders.
For just-war theorists, that doesnt mean that the United States is the
worlds policeman. It also doesnt mean that military force is always the
proper means for protecting human rights, or even that we are always
justified in imposing by force what we regard, however rightly, as fundamental principles of justice. But it does mean that we should, working with other freedom-loving nations where possible, do what we can in
a prudent manner to prevent mass murder by
those George W. Bush accurately described,
after the 9/11 terror attacks, as evildoers.
Elshtain recognized, howeveras have just-war theorists going back to

Saint Augustine through the modern popesthat even when force is used
in a just cause there are additional requirements that must be met. Critically
in the debate over Syria intervention, these include
the likelihood of
improving,
111
and not worsening, the situation for the people of Syria and other potential
victims of undeterred tyrants or violent extremists. Another concern is proportionalitythe requirement that the collateral damage inevitably caused by the
use of force not be so great as to render the use of force disproportionate and
unfair to the innocent.
One of our ongoing responsibilities is to respond to the cries of the
aggrieved.
These judgments in any particular case will depend on careful empirical assessments of the facts. The sin, either way, is cynicismdefined here
as the failure to treat politics, and war, as a morally serious business.
For Elshtain, Democrats and Republicans alike are obligated to lay
aside political concerns about whether their votes will protect or harm the
standing of President Obama. The lawmakers must deliberate the use of
force on the merits. She would also be quick to note that the same moral
duty falls on the president.
Available from the Hoover Press is Jihad in the Arabian

Sea, by Camille Pecastaing. To order, call 800.888.4741
or visit www.hooverpress.org.
112
SY R I A
The Road to Damascus

Passivity toward Syria isnt buying the United States time. Its
permitting forces that oppose us and our values to strengthen and
coalesce. By Reuel Marc Gerecht.
When President Obama declared that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad

must step aside more than two years ago, many believed that it was only
a matter of time before the United States intervened on behalf of the rebels battling the regime. That seems increasingly out of the question. The
growing power of hard-core Islamic radicals among the rebels has made
the White House, and many in Congress, look upon the Syrian opposition with little enthusiasm. Instead, Washington focuses on the charade
of trying to relieve Assad of his chemical weapons, as if that will have any
effect on the civil war.
America ignores the rebels at its peril. Yet on the left and right, antiinterventionists argue against American airstrikes, or any serious military
aid, because such assistance would abet Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists. Perhaps what these anti-interventionists dont realize is that the president
and Congress may have already done their part to create the most deadly
Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.
Social order in the Muslim world depends, as it so often does elsewhere,
on older men keeping younger men in check. In Afghanistan in the 1990s,
the Talibans medieval moresa zealously crude form of village Pashtun
ethicsgained the high ground because older men and their moderating
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributor to the Hoover Institutions Herbert and
Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order and a
senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
113
social structures had been obliterated over three decades by Afghan communists, Soviets, and civil war.
Urban culturethe core of Islamic civilizationwas wiped out. The
elites of the countrys primary ethnic groups, who had been based in the
bustling, literate, Persian-speaking culture of Kabul, went into exile or
became brutal warriors. Heartless men bred by battle embraced Osama bin
Laden, a Saudi-born Sunni militant. Bin Ladens vision of jihad against the
United States easily melded into the Talibans localized jihad against Ahmad
Shah Masoud, the Sunni Tajik commander who formed the Northern Alliance and kept the Taliban from conquering all of Afghanistan.
Its not too late for the United States to influence the war in favor of
rebels who are not bent on an Islamist state.
To be sure, Syrian Sunni culture is vastly more cosmopolitan and urbanized than Afghan Sunni culture. Syria is where Arab Bedouins first became
polished men of arts and letters and transformed Byzantine architecture
into a Muslim motif that defined Islamic elegance for centuries. But the
shocking satellite photos of a constantly bombarded Aleppo, the center of
Sunni Syria since the tenth century, ought to warn us how quickly society
can be transformedno matter how sophisticated.
Though Arab Syrian nationalism is more solid now than when it was
born ninety years ago, it isnt nearly as deep as Syrians Muslim identity.
And in times of tumult in the Middle East, Islamand the ancient
divide between Sunnis and Shiitescomes to the fore. Shatter Syria into
fragments, and radical Islamists who appeal to a higher callingjust
as they did in Afghanistanare guaranteed to attract young men who
yearn for a mission beyond their destroyed towns and villages. There
may be as many as a thousand Sunni rebel groups scattered across Syria,
stocked with such fighters.
The Taliban played on tribal sentiments while always appealing to a
post-tribal, Muslim conception of state. The Islamist fighters in Syria
appear to be following the Talibans playbook. Loyalty among these men
isnt ultimately based on family, tribe, town, or even country, but on the
supremely fraternal act of holy war.
114
We dont know what the recuperative power is for Sunni Syrian society.
If Assads manpower reserves can hold out for another year and a half, Syrian Sunni society could be beyond help.
In such a Hobbesian world, radical Sunni groups that promise stabilityof security, home, and private propertycould win over a
popular base that would be very difficult to dislodge. This was how
the Taliban was initially welcomed into Pashtun towns that were shellshocked by war.
Right now, the three seriously radical, armed outfits in SyriaJabhat
al-Nusra, the Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
likely have no more than fifteen thousand fighters among them, according
to a study of the Syrian opposition by the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. Thats less than 15 percent of the oppositions forcestoo
small a number to consolidate power and rule a post-Assad Syria.
That may be the only good news out of Syria: its not too late for the
United States to influence the war in favor of the rebels who are not bent
on establishing an Islamist state.
Washington seems paralyzed by the fear of US weaponry getting into
jihadist hands, which is why it has held off on doing more than having the
CIA train rebels in Jordan. To make a real difference, the CIA will have to
get involved inside Syria, but it wont take a lot of personnel to monitor
supply lines and figure out who is using US weaponry.
Shatter Syria into fragments, and radical Islamists who appeal to a higher
calling are guaranteed to attract young men who yearn for a mission, just
as they did in Afghanistan.
If the United States is able to save Syrian Sunni society from the cancer
that Assad has created, Western air power will be required to neutralize the
regimes huge advantage in artillery and chemical weapons, which Assad
will surely keep in reserve, despite any pledges he makes to the United
Nations. The weapons provided through CIA covert action would probably be insufficient to knock out the regimes huge inventory of Soviet and
Russian heavy weaponry.
115
But if the United States continues to do nothing other than entertain

the chemical-weapons disarmament theater orchestrated by Russia, the
West will surely rue Americas passivity. Hard-core holy warriors wont
leave Americans alone because the United States has declined to fight.
Thats the painful lesson of the 1990s. Contrary to what the president has
suggested, the United States doesnt get to declare that the battle against
Islamic radicalism is over.
One thing is certain: the anti-American Sunni Islamic militancy in
Syria is now hotter and more magnetic than the latent jihadism that came
to power with Mullah Omar and the Taliban in 1996. In the early 1990s,
when the Talibans ideology was gestating in Pakistani religious schools
and the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, hardly a soul at CIA headquarters
paid any attention to the region. It was far away, the Soviets were gone,
and Americans, it was said, were fatigued from their Cold War exertions.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Wave: Man,

God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East, by Reuel
Marc Gerecht. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
116
T U R KE Y
Colliding Currents
Ataturk, Erdogan, and the battle for the Turkish soul. By Fouad Ajami.
I write before my scheduled departure from Istanbul, this bewitching and

overwhelming city. It is morning, the sky is brilliant blue, the color of
the waters of the Golden Horn. The famed postcard silhouetteHagia
Sophia, Sultanahmet, the Suleymaniye Mosquemakes it achingly difficult to depart. For the days I spent here, I had been unable to settle down
to record what I had seen.
I had arrived in Istanbul from Iraqi Kurdistan, and its two principal cities, Suleimaniyah and Erbil. I had been prepared for Kurdistans exertion,
and for a break in Istanbul. The reverse had happened: there was peace in
Kurdistan, shopping malls and swanky hotels in Erbil, and the charm of
the town of Suleimaniyah, still doing its best to keep urban sprawl at bay.
It was moving to see what the Kurds had done: where a feared fortress of
the old regime once stood, there was now a park: Azadi (Freedom) Park,
with playgrounds and open-air dining.
The Red Prison in Suleimaniyah, a notorious torture center, is now a
museum. On the floor above the suffocating prison cells there are displays
and installations of Kurdish culture: the bright, colorful dresses of women,
the old rifles, the simple reproductions of daily life. Across the street, the
men and women of todays Kurdistan bring to life the green and landscaped lawns of a nearby restaurantsmiles and conversations animating
the neatly arranged tables under the stars.
Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-chairman of
Hoovers Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
117
Ataturk severed Turks ties with the Islamic world to the south and east.
He told them salvation lay westward, and they were not about to be
herded back into the past.
There were two women in bikinis, taking in the sun on the lawns of the
park in proximity to the mosque. Bebek, admittedly, was not Turkey, but
it is a piece of it. Bebek was not hiding its loyalties: Turkish flagsbright
red, with the star and crescentadorned the local park. The flags had a
superimposed portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with his military kal118
Barak Su/Creative Commons
After this tranquillity, it was Istanbul that was beset with political troubles. An Istanbuli friend had sent me a message that reached me in Kurdistan, advising me to stay away. It was hard to get around, he said (it is
hard in the best of timesIstanbul traffic is a nightmare), and he knew
that the larger neighborhood of Taksim Square would be my destination.
I pushed on with my plans.
The protests had given Taksim a kind of revolutionary aura. My friend
was right with his advice. The protesters had inflicted their damage, brick
pavements had been dug up on the approaches to Taksim, barricades had
been erected, cars torched and overturned in the confrontation between
the police and protesters. The troubles had begun on a Friday; I arrived,
with my wife, on Monday. Routine has its power, the desire to return to
familiar corners in an unfamiliar place. No sooner had I unpacked than I
set out for Bebek, a tony neighborhood on the Bosporus.
The expensive, smart shops and the young, trendy mothers playing
with their children in Bebek Park were pleasantly unremarkable. The
revolution had not come here. The Bosporus was enchanting, and the
wonder of the big ships from everywhere so close to the boardwalk never
ceases to amaze. A small mosque stood right next to a caf where outdoor
seating accommodated a young and hip clientele. The muezzin calling the
believers to midday prayer as everyone went on with their routine was a
reminder of the genteel ways of Turkish Islam. No enforcers turned up
to herd this smart set into the mosque. Islam here had to contend with
modernity.
MODERNITY: Women wrap themselves in a flag bearing the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
during protests last June in Istanbul. Turkey is being fought over by the partisans of two
men: Ataturk, the legendary founder who died in 1938, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the new
claimant. At stake are Turkeys identity, its place among the nations, and the nature of its
public life.
pak, on them. This elegant crowd was Ataturks progeny. He had forged
them; he had severed their ties with the Islamic world to their south and
east; he had told them that salvation lay westward; and they were not
about to be herded back into the past.
The return from Bebek back toward Taksim was what I had been
warned against. Our driver did his best, but was thwarted at every turn.
He navigated the impossibly steep hills and narrow streets, always meeting debris and blocked access. He gave it up, let us out, and we made our
way toward Taksim. There was no menace, only young people eager to
give directions; many of them were methodically picking up and clearing away the trash and crumbled metal remnants of the barricades that,
no doubt, they and their friends had thrown together there just the day
119
before. It was a commentary on the earnestness and orderly temperament of the Turks.
If comparisons had been made between Tahrir Square in Cairo and
Taksimand indeed there is a running debate on this questionTaksim
was by far a more genteel affair.
In Tahrir, no fewer than 850 people perished; hooligans on horseback
and camels attacked the protesters; a police sniper had a specialty: he shot
his victims in the eye.
In the best of worlds, a compromise would be struck between the rival
visions of Ataturk and Erdogan. But Erdogan has polarized the country.
None of that in Taksim. A stylish woman in a red dress provided an

iconic image: a policeman directed a blast of pepper spray toward her
and it sent her long dark hair flying horizontally as she turned away. Say
what you will about the Turkish state and the obtuseness of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this isnt the Arab world, with its malignant
hatreds and the estrangement between the rulers and ruled. Erdogan may
be a stubborn man, at heart an authoritarian, a prude in a fairly modern
society, but the rules of the game are determined by the ballot box.
The minority cannot rule the majority, Erdogan proclaimed as he
set out to face down the protests. The one thing Erdogan believes in is
the ballot box, Cengiz Candar, a noted Turkish columnist, one of his
countrys most astute cultural interpreters, observed to me. He and his
party have won three elections since 2002, and this has given him a sense
of political entitlement. He is convinced that the great mass of the population is with him. It was the ballot box that enabled him to curtail the
power of the military in Turkish political life. And it was with the ballot
that he broke the power of the white Turksthe social and economic
elites who had been dominant for a long time.

By accident, I found myself in the middle of a boisterous demonstration making its way up Istiklal Street, from Taksim. The crowd wasnt
120
particularly young, as I had assumed it would be. There were middleaged men and women and young people alike. They held aloft the Turkish flags with the arresting image of Ataturk. This crowd made clear
the fault lines of this struggle: Turkeyits identity, its place among the
nations, the nature of its public lifeis being fought over between two
men, the legendary founder who died in 1938, and the new claimant
who rose out of a tough Istanbul neighborhood to position himself as
the republics second most consequential leader. In the best of worlds, a
compromise would be struck between these rival visions. But Erdogan
has polarized the country.
In every way, Ataturk was the nemesis of what Erdogan stands for.
Where Erdogan is severe on drinking and alcohol, Kemal was addicted
to raki, the countrys anise-flavored liquor. In fact, Ataturk died of cirrhosis of the liver at age fifty-seven. He was a military officer and a
conqueror, and he took drinking as a manly prerogative. Erdogan has
all but called Ataturk a drunkard, and that kind of blasphemy was not
well received by a population raised to a tradition of reverence for the
founder.
Ataturk, it should be recalled, sought nothing less than the extirpation
of the old cultural order: he abolished the old Ottoman order and declared
a republic; he abolished the caliphate; he outlawed the fez and the turban;
he shifted the calendar from the Muslim to the Christian era; he changed
the alphabet from Arabic script to Latin letters; and he declared null and
void the provision that Islam was the religion of the state. No Westernization program was more ambitious. He saw himself as a man of the
Enlightenment, and Turkey was to partake of Western culture. He was no
democrat. He lived by an authoritarian creed: For the people, despite the
people.
This isnt the Arab world, with its malignant hatreds and the estrangement
between the rulers and ruled.
No wholesale purging of a culture can be totally successful. Ataturk

died in 1938, with his creed ascendant, but Islam never exited the stage.
It went underground, and was to reappear in the 1990s. The officer corps,
121
the guardians of the Kemalist temple, did not have the country to itself.
Political Islamists made their presence felt, and a military coup against
them in 1997 did not do the trick.
The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, and the mosques
Five years later, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political party were
carried to power via an election. Two big electoral victories were to follow. Erdogan had prepared for his ascendancy: he had been a great success as a mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. He was blunt and courageous.
The military had sent him to prison for his open advocacy of political
Islam. The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, and the
mosques our barracks, he famously declared. If Kemalism was the civic
religion of the republic, this driven man was determined to glorify the
Ottoman past.
The crisis broke out upon Turkey when Erdogan made public his intention to uproot a small park in Taksim and rebuild an Ottoman barracks
there. Neo-Ottomanism was a frontal assault on the Kemalist edifice that
had been in place since the founding of the republic in 1923.
Erdogans way broke with another central tenet of the Kemalist creed.
Ataturk had severed the ties with the Arab states; there was nothing
in that Arab world that interested him. Several years into his political primacy, Erdogan took a plunge into Arab politics. He became one
of the Syrian dictators most outspoken critics. He opened the borders
of his country to a large refugee population from Syria. He put forth
the Turkish exampleIslam and a successful economyas a model for
Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya to follow. There was genuine zeal in his panIslamism.
Ataturk died in 1938, with his creed ascendant, but Islam never exited
the stage.
Last May, he spoke of a Turkish role in the world, beyond the confines
of the nation-state. We are not like other states. We are not a state that
122
Mstyslav Chernov/Creative Commons
our barracks, Erdogan famously declared.
APPEAL: A protester approaches police in Ankara, Turkey, during demonstrations in June

2013. Samuel P. Huntington memorably dubbed Turkey a torn country: one that is possessed of a single, predominant culture which places it in one civilization but its leaders
want to shift it to another civilization.
will keep quiet to protect its interests. Today, they are saying prayers for
us. They are praying for us in Gaza, Beirut, and Mecca. This is the massive
responsibility we are shouldering.
Several days later, on May 11, two car bombs exploded in the town of
Reyhanli, in the southern province of Hatay, killing fifty-one people. This
is, alas, the sad norm in Beirut, Baghdad, and Damascus. But this was new
in Turkey. There remains in a majority of Turks unease about the Arab
world, and a desire to stay away from its furies. The neo-Ottoman calling
was not a popular endeavor.
Erdogans Syria policy remains distinctly unpopular among his people. In one recent poll, only 27 percent of those surveyed supported the
governments Syria policy while 54 percent opposed it. His inability to
pull President Obama into the struggle for Syria was politically devastat-
123
ing. Erdogan had staked much on his ties to Obama. The passivity of
American policy left Erdogan facing the aversion of the Turkish people
to Arab quarrels.

In his landmark book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order (1996), the late Samuel P. Huntington memorably dubbed Turkey
a torn country. A torn country, he wrote, is possessed of a single, predominant culture which places it in one civilization but its leaders want
to shift it to another civilization. The process of identity redefinition is
never easy, he warned. The public will have to be willing to acquiesce in
the redefinition of identity and the host civilizationthat of the West
will have to be willing to take in the convert.
Kemalist Turkey had given the process of redefinition its all. But the
rise of Erdogan, his belief that Europe is an ailing continent, and his nostalgia for the Ottoman past offer evidence that the trajectory of torn
countries is never simple or straightforward.
New from the Hoover Press is The Syrian Rebellion, by

Fouad Ajami. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
124
T H E AR AB SPR I N G
A Long and Trying

Season
The Arab Spring has settled one question: the Muslim world does
want representative government. It also showed that democracy
there has far to go. By Frederick W. Kagan.
The Arab Spring is a series of events of truly world-historical importance. It has already reshaped the Arab world and the Middle East more
fundamentally and more rapidly than any event in the past several centuries. Even the emergence of the modern Arab states after the fall of
the Ottoman empire was more protracted and gradual. The suddenness
and scale of the events of the past three years has a disruptive and transformative power all its own, and the outcome of that transformation is
far from clear at this point. It is, in fact, highly contingent on a series of
unpredictable events and interactions within the Arab world, between
the Arab world and the wider Middle East community, and with external powers, including especially the United States.
Two things are already clear, however. The world as we knew it before
the Arab Spring is gone and will not return. And the nature of the order
that replaces it will have profound and lasting impacts on the entire world.
S T R U G G LIN G FOR AUTONOMY

The Arab world has had very little experience in governing itself over the
past few centuries. The Ottoman Turks had taken control over almost all
Frederick W. Kagan is a member of the Hoover Institutions Working Group on
the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict. He is the Christopher DeMuth
Chair and director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
125
Arab communities by the end of the sixteenth century and continued to

exercise suzerainty over, if not actually to rule, the Arabs until the nineteenth. As Turkish control over Arab lands broke down, however, other
imperial powers stepped in, especially the British and the French during
the nineteenth century. The first modern Arab states emerged after the
end of the First World War and the Ottoman empire as various Arab communities achieved independence, often through revolutions against either
the Ottomans or Western empires or sometimes both.
The crisis of Arab governance in the twentieth century was not a consequence of any innate inability of Arabs to govern themselves, but rather a
reflection of several centuries of imperial and colonial rule during which they
were not allowed to do so. When they finally did establish their own states and
systems of government, they found themselves without indigenous consensus
on what those states should look like and how they should be ruled.
It is far too strong to say that all Arab states are imperial inventions with
no significance to their peoples, who are thought to yearn for the elimination
of those states and the reunification of the entire Arab world under a single
dominion. The specific Arab states that exist today emerged during conflicts in
which the inhabitants of those states took an active role. The Arab revolt against
Ottoman rule enabled the House of Saud to gain control of much of the Arabian Peninsula by military conquest in the 1920s and fashion of it a state more
or less to the liking of the Saudis. Egyptian and Iraqi rebellions at about the
same time led to the formation of states that also saw themselves as being the
modern incarnations of ancient empiresthe pharaonic empire in the case of
Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires and kingdoms in Iraq. Although some
Egyptians and Iraqisalong with Arabs in other newly emerging states
believed strongly that the parceling out of the Arab lands was wrong, engines
of nationalism were often stronger than the drive of pan-Arabism.
That is why nationalist leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt
(who was also a pan-Arabist), Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Hafez al-Assad
in Syria were able to gain traction and popular support among at least
some of their peoples. But the strength of the Hussein and Assad regimes
resulted in large part from the support that the minority groups they represented (Sunni Arabs in predominantly Shia Iraq in Saddams case, Alawites in predominantly Sunni Syria in Assads) had received from colonial
126
rulers precisely because they were minorities. Their leaders were willing
to exchange loyalty to foreign powers for support against internal rivals
whom they could not otherwise have defeated. Arab nationalism in the
Levant and Mesopotamia, therefore, rested on minority rule.
It also rested, fundamentally, on secularism. Only the Saudis justified
their rule on a religious basis, both because the House of Saud had been
inextricably intertwined with the Wahhabi clergy since the eighteenth
century and because it felt the need to defend the Saudi kings position as
custodian of the two holy mosques in religious terms.
Its not true that all Arab states are imperial inventions with no
significance to their peoples.
Nasserite Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, and the sui generis Gadhafi state
in Libya all fused elements of nationalism, socialism, and militarism into a
noxious but effective basis for powerall of which saw Islamism as a threat
to the continued strength and even existence of their states. None of them
went as far as Ataturk did in Turkey in attacking the very role of Islam in
their societies, but all of them marginalized religion, often violently and
brutally. This secularism generated (or exacerbated) rifts within these societies both because it conflicted with the beliefs of many Arabs and because
religious groups and societies had played important roles in the liberation
struggles that brought the secularists ultimately to power in the first place.
Almost all the Arab world had come to live under Arab-ruled states
without imperial or colonial interference in their government by the
1960s. It is only in the past four decades or so, therefore, that political debate among Arabs has of necessity centered on how Arabs are to
rule themselves rather than how they are to interact with foreign masters,
oppressors, or exploiters. That debate, moreover, did not proceed from
any consensus on the role of religion in government. Arabs have had to
work through these issues, which preoccupied the European peoples for
at least fifteen hundred years, in half a century. It should surprise no one
that they have not found it easy to do so.
The Arab Spring resulted from the confluence of a number of drivers.
Islamists, both political and violent, have been attacking the legitimacy of
127
128
secular Arab states since their foundations. They have tried, and in some
cases succeeded, to seize the opening presented by the Arab Spring to
advance their agendas peacefully or by force, but they did not create the
opening. The most important driver was the sheer ineffectiveness, corruption, and repressiveness of the targeted regimes combined with a belief
that change might be possible. The importance of the second piece was
demonstrated by the rapidity with which the Arab Spring spread once it
became clear that change really was possible.
Democracy may be discredited in the eyes of this generation of Arabs
because it is so easily undermined and so apparently ineffective.
But change to what? There continues to be disagreement among Arabs

about how they should rule themselves. Islamists won elections in Egypt
and Gazaand even in Iraq, Nuri al-Malikis Dawa Party is one of the most
Islamist of the nominally secular parties and has been dependent on support from overtly clerical groups. Tunisians appear to be working cautiously
toward an accommodation between more moderate Islamists and secular
groups. Islamist groups have also remained marginalized in the halting (and
quite possibly halted) process of state-reformation in Yemen. And the Egyptian militarys removal of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi had strong, although far from universal, popular support (which
is not to say that it was legal, right, or an acceptable form of political change).
A C H AN C E F OR DEMOCR AC Y
One thing that is clear is that Arabs in general do not see representative
government as an alien import incompatible with Islam. All the revolutions in the Arab world since 2011 have in common the installation of
elected governments in place of dictators. Some Arabists would have had
us believe that democracy would never and could never take root among
Arabs, and, furthermore, that Arabs as a people did not desire it. That
view appears unquestionably to have been discredited. Arabs as a people
certainly do want it, participate in elections in larger numbers than Americans when given the chance, and are in many cases willing to fight and die
for it, with or without foreign assistance or intervention. If that principle
129
emerged as the central result of the Arab Spring, it would certainly be an

important step forward for stability, humanity, the rule of law, and many
other important human values in the Arab world.
Alas, it remains unclear if this will be the outcome. Arab leaders have
undermined the validity and appeal of democracy in, for example, Egypt,
where the military unseated an elected (if incompetent and in many ways
malign) government after one year, and in Iraq, where Maliki has been
steadily undermining the rule of law and the validity of elections. Libyan leaders, abandoned by the international community (and the United
States) after the intervention that helped bring them to power, have struggled to create a state that can function at the most basic level. The state in
Yemen (elected in a plebiscite with one candidate) is already well down
the road to failure. There is real reason for concern that democracy will
be discredited in the eyes of this generation of Arabs because it is so easily
undermined and so apparently ineffective at governing.
Violent Islamists, of course, are seizing upon every opportunity to argue
that current events prove that democracy is a violation of Allahs will. Bullets, not ballots is their slogan in Egypt and elsewhere, as they argue that
only violence and unlimited brutality of the sort in which they specialize can
bring effective and just government to Arabs. Most Arabs have proven
remarkably resistant to this argument, despite the obvious problems they
have encountered on their rocky road to representative government. But
should this vile and violent Islamist view prevail, the outcome would be dire
not only for Arabs, who want and deserve better, but for the entire world.
Subscribe to the Hoover Institutions online journal Strategika (http://www.hoover.org/taskforces/
military-history/strategika), where this essay first appeared. 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is Israel and the

Struggle over the International Laws of War, by Peter
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130
T H E AR AB SPR I N G
For the Copts, Disaster

and Diaspora
The Arab Spring is forcing Egypts Coptic Christians out of their
homeland and into the world. Samuel Tadros on the destruction of
an ancient community and culture. By Mark L. Movsesian.
A new book by Samuel Tadros, Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Hoover Institution Press, 2013), compellingly
explores the profound challenges that face the Coptic Church today. The
author kindly agreed to answer some questions about the history of the
Coptic Church, its important contributions to Christian thought and life,
and its conduct during the Arab conquest and under Muslim rule. He
described how the liberalism of the twentieth century actually injured the
church and why Anwar Sadat, whom the West lionized, was a problem
for Egypts Christians. Moving to the present day, he also explained why
the Arab Spring has been such a disaster for Copts and spoke about the
churchs prospects in Egypt and abroad.
Mark L. Movsesian, CLR Forum: Sam, lets begin with some background. Although the Coptic Church has millions of faithful in Egypt10
percent of the population, according to most estimatesand an increasSamuel Tadros is a research fellow at the Hudson Institutes Center for Religious
Freedom and a Professorial Lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Motherland
Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Hoover Institution Press,
2013). Mark L. Movsesian is the Frederick A. Whitney Professor of Contract Law
and the Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. Johns University (N.Y.).
131
ing worldwide presence, most people in the West know very little about it.
Who are the Copts? What are the salient features of Coptic Christianity?
Samuel Tadros: The lack of knowledge about the Coptic Church is regrettable yet quite understandable. The Coptic Church has been isolated from
the rest of Christendom since AD 451. The word Copt is derived from the
Greek word for Egypt, itself derived from the pharaonic word for it, so in a
sense the word Copt means Egypt. The word, however, is specifically used
to refer to Egyptians who refused to embrace Islam throughout the centuries
and remained Christian, maintaining their ancient faith and rituals. Theologically, the Coptic Church belongs to a group of churches called Oriental
Orthodox, which includes the Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian Orthodox, and
Syrian churches. Those churches rejected the decisions of the Council of
Chalcedon regarding the nature of Christ.
Movsesian: You discuss the important role the Coptic Church played
in Christian history, especially in the early centuries. What do you think
qualifies as the churchs most important contribution, historically? Would
it be its defense of Trinitarian theology? Monasticism?
Tadros: The three most important contributions of the Coptic Church
can be summed up in the names of three men: Origen, Athanasius, and
Anthony. Origen, more than anyone else, attempted to reconcile Greek
philosophy with Christian theology. The Catechetical School of Alexandria was instrumental in giving Christianity a ground to stand on intellectually against pagan attacks. Athanasius, as he himself declared, stood
against the world. The contributions of other church fathers, such as the
Cappadocian fathers, are important in the defense of the Nicene Creed,
but Athanasius carried the greatest burden. Cyril the Great follows in
the same path with his anathema against Nestorius. Finally, Anthony the
Great, as the founder of monasticism, made an invaluable contribution to
Christianity. Many of the early Western fathers such as Jerome traveled to
Egypt to drink from the wisdom fountain of the desert fathers.
Movsesian: Describe the Coptic Church in the world todayits relations with other Christians, for example.
Tadros: Nineteen fifty-four is the year when the Coptic Church came out
from its historical isolation by attending the World Council of Churches
in Illinois. The late Bishop Samuel championed ecumenical relations and
132
his efforts eventually led to the Coptic Church opening up to the rest of
Christendom. The Joint Theological Declarations with Rome in 1973,
and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in 198990, have opened the doors
to the dream of a true unity in Christ.
Movsesian: You discuss the debate among historians about whether
Copts initially welcomed the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century. The Copts would have had reasons, of course, as they were being persecuted by Byzantine Christians and might have seen the Arabs as deliverers. Could you describe this debate? Do you have a view?
Many of the early Western fathers such as Jerome traveled to Egypt to
drink from the wisdom fountain of the desert fathers.
Tadros: More than just among historians. The question is being contested in the public sphere, as a tool in shaping a current identity and
narrative. For Egyptian nationalists, this claim would form the foundation
of the national unity discoursethe eternal harmony of the two elements
of the Egyptian nation, Muslims and Copts. Islamists would portray
the story as one of rescue. Had it not been for the Muslims, the Coptic
Church would have been destroyed at the hands of the Byzantines, they
argue. Copts of course have increasingly rejected this narrative, stressing
the atrocities their ancestors faced at the hands of the invadersthis is
part of building the Copts modern uniqueness.
Movsesian: You state a few times in the book that Copts constituted the
bureaucratic class under Islamic rule. Could you please explain this?
How can we reconcile the fact that Copts were so important to Muslim
government with their subservient status as dhimmis?
Tadros: Coptic civil servants became indispensable to Muslim rulers.
Under the Fatimid caliphate, Coptic civil servants rose to great prominence. The power they exercised became a source of envy for the mob
under the Mamluks. It was precisely the prominence that Copts achieved
in contradiction to their supposed humiliation and subjugation as dhimmis that created the catalyst for the brutality of the onslaught on Copts
during Mamluk rule. Of course, many rulers attempted to humiliate the
Coptic civil servants and get rid of them, replacing them with Muslims,
133
but those attempts largely failed. They were simply too good at what they
did for the ruler to get rid of them. But the pressure on them led many to
convert to keep their privileges.
Movsesian: You trace the current crisis for Copts to the liberal nationalism of the twentieth century. By encouraging Copts (and other Egyptians)
to think in terms of legal equality, liberalism exposed Copts to a serious
backlash. Could you explain this?
Tadros: I wouldnt put it that way. The Coptic predicament was that,
according to the national-unity discourse proclaimed by the liberal
nationalists, all Egyptians were unitedbut that discourse was contradictory, for it identified two distinct groups, Muslims and Copts, who were
then united. As such, Copts were viewed as a collective body. One could
not escape his Coptism even if he wanted to. On the other hand, liberal
nationalists rejected the Coptic claim to exclusivity. Coptic identity was
a threat to the Egyptian identity the liberal nationalists formulated, as it
claimed the pharaonic past exclusively for itself. The liberal nationalists
thus became anti-Coptic. Not anti-Christian. Coptic identity had to be
crushed. Copts had to be banished from the public sphere as a community. Any Copt entering the public sphere had to shed his Coptic identity.
Movsesian: One of the most surprising parts of your book is its evaluation
of Anwar Sadat. In the West, Sadat is seen as sort of a progressive hero, the
man who made peace with Israel and sought to suppress Islamism. But you
say he strongly opposed Coptic rights and in fact used the Copts as a kind of
scapegoat to mollify Islamist sentiment. What is your view of Sadat?
Coptic civil servants became indispensable to Muslim rulers.
Tadros: It would be a mistake to attribute his actions to idealism or

principles. At heart, he was a pragmatist. He recognized that the Nasserite
model had failed and could not be maintained. He understood that Israel
was not going to disappear and that peace was the only route to regaining
Egypts land. He had no stomach for Nassers delusional ideas about the
country and its capabilities. He never aimed for creating a democracy in
Egypt. His views on society were much more corporatist, stressing village ethics and styling himself as not head of state but village elder. His
134
endorsement of the rise of the Islamization of the country put him at

odds with a Coptic pope insistent on defending his people. Sadats greatest crime is that he, more than any other ruler of Egypt, threatened to
destroy the countrys sectarian social fabric with his attacks and accusations against the Coptic Church.
The liberal nationalists became anti-Coptic. Not anti-Christian. Coptic
identity had to be crushed.
Movsesian: You argue that the Arab Spring has been a disaster for Copts.
Why? And why has the Coptic Church taken such a public position in
support of the militarys ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Tadros: The Arab Spring emboldened Islamist movements on the
national and local levels. The removal of the states constraints allowed
Islamists to dominate national politics and, more important, to enforce
their vision on society on a local level, with Copts paying the heaviest
price. The collapse of the states repressive arm, the police, gave the mob
free rein. As a result, we have seen the continuation of previous patterns of
discrimination as well as the emergence of newer ones.
The Coptic Churchs choice to support the military coup was of course to
be expected. President Morsi was hardly inclusive in his rule. He clearly indicated that he cared less what befell Copts. Their concerns in the constitution
were ignored, he never made any reassuring gesture towards them, and under
his rule, the Coptic cathedral in Cairo, the very center of Christianity in
Egypt, was attacked for hours by thugs and the police. Copts recognized that
under the Muslim Brotherhood they would become second-class citizens.
Movsesian: You state that as Copts spread around the world, largely
because of persecution in Egypt, they are learning how to be diaspora
communities. Could you describe this process?
Tadros: Coptic immigration began in the Fifties. When Pope Shenouda became pope in 1971, there were two Coptic churches in the United
States, for example, but when he died in 2012, there were 202. In total,
the Coptic Church today has more than 450 churches in the West. This
presence is being reinforced by a huge new wave of immigration after the
Arab Spring.
135
As a result, the challenges facing the church are colossal. First, the
church needs to balance its attention and services between old and new
immigrants. New immigrants are expecting not only spiritual services but
also material ones. They expect homes, jobs, and lawyers to help with
asylum. The very culture of the new immigrants is different from that of
Copts who have lived most if not all their lives in the West.
But above all that, the church is faced with a challenge like no other
in its history, pertaining to its identity. What does being Coptic actually
mean when you are living in Missouri or North Carolina? How can the
church maintain not only the new immigrants Christian faith but also
their Coptic identity?
Movsesian: One of the great themes in Coptic history, you write, is the
dual dynamic of decline and survival. I think its fair to say that your
book ends on a sad note, with an emphasis on decline rather than survival.
What do you think are the prospects for Copts in Egypt and abroad?
Tadros: I think the dual dynamic continues, except this time with a geographical separation. Inside Egypt, the church is facing immense pressure.
The attacks on churches on the fourteenth of August were the largest in
the countrys history since the fourteenth century. But outside Egypts
borders, the Coptic Church is blossoming. The church now has half a million followers in sub-Saharan Africa, where the fact that the Coptic
Church is an African one and not tainted with colonialism is a huge plus.
The Coptic Church today is becoming a universal church with followers
in all corners of the world. Who would have thought fifty years ago that
we would be talking about Coptic churches from the Caribbean to Japan
and from Sweden to Fiji?
Reprinted by permission of the Center for Law and Religion (CLR), St. Johns University School of Law (N.Y.).
New from the Hoover Press is Motherland Lost: The

Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity, by Samuel
Tadros. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
136
CH I N A
Great Wall of
Corruption
How the curse of corruption limits and diminishes the miracle of
economic growth. By Michael J. Boskin.
The trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China: the corruption and abuse of power by some government and
party officials. Until he fell from power, Bo, a former Politburo member
and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of thirty million people, was a
potential candidate for Chinas ruling seven-member Politburo Standing
Committee. Now he faces life in prison, convicted of bribery, abuse of
power, and embezzlement.
Bos trial occurred at a critical moment for China. Millions of rural
Chinese flood into the countrys cities in search of employment every year,
but Chinas export-led growth, which previously masked the macroeconomic costs of corruption and excessive state intervention, is slowing. As
China enters an era of more subdued growth amid increased competition from other low-cost countries, this damage will become increasingly
apparentand increasingly destructive.
An economically successful China is more likely to be stable and geopolitically constructive; a China beset by serious economic problems would
be far less so, and, as the first developing economy to become a global
Michael J. Boskin is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of
Hoovers Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy and Working Group on
Economic Policy, and the T. M. Friedman Professor of Economics at Stanford
University.
137
The resources devoted to seeking government favors would be far more

valuable if redirected to producing goods and services.
Chinas future prosperity requires restricting government officials

administrative discretion, reducing state-owned enterprises power and
subsidies, and strengthening the rule of law by developing an independent judiciary. But these reforms imply a change in culture and incentives.
Some officials use their considerable discretion in granting licenses, permits, and contracts to solicit favors and side payments. The fortune accumulated by Bos wife (reliance on proxies, especially relatives, is a common
138
power, could even become a source of systemic risk. Chinese manufacturing assembly is integral to global supply chains for many products. Moreover, China is the largest holder of US Treasury securities (aside from the
Federal Reserve), has significant euro holdings, is likely soon to become
Americas largest trade partner, and looms large in trade with many European and Asian economies.
Research reveals that strong enforcement of property rights and stable,
predictable, and non-confiscatory tax and regulatory regimes are essential
to long-run economic prosperity. The key to Chinas reform, and what
the Chinese people want most, is John Adamss government of laws, not
menevenhanded administration of reasonable laws, not special favors
for the connected few. Indeed, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei echoed Adams
(and Adam Smith) when he proclaimed that resources should be allocated by prices and markets, not government officials.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said a crackdown on corruption is a
top priority, and that unless it reaches both tigers (higher-ups) and flies
(lower-level officials), there may well not be another orderly leadership
transition of the type that brought him to power last year. Indeed, reducing corruption is essential if China is to join the small list of developing
economiesJapan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
that have escaped the middle-income trap that ensnares most developing countries and prevents them from attaining advanced-economy status.
More than the unseemliness and capriciousness of many officials behavior, this is what is really at stake in Xis anticorruption campaign.
139
tactic of corrupt officials everywhere) highlights the opportunities for the

well connected to get ahead. Many Chinese, regarding this as just the way
things are, behave accordingly.
To be sure, rent-seeking and favor-dispensing corruption exist to some
degree everywhere, but they are more widespread in developing than
developed countries and in resource-rich and/or centrally planned economies than in capitalist democracies. The time and other resources that
individuals and firms devote to seeking government favors would be far
more valuable if redirected to producing goods and services.
Some promising anticorruption ideas have successful antecedents in
Chinese history, from the Ming Dynasty to modern Hong Kong. Under
the Ming Dynasty, the emperors officials came from other provinces and
were frequently rotated. To protect Chinas central bank from local political pressure, reformist Premier Zhu Rongji, on my and others advice in
the 1990s, reorganized the Peoples Bank of China along regional lines,
similar to the Federal Reserves district banks.
An amnesty could be granted, conditional on financial disclosure and a
fine for unexplainable wealth, for all but the worst behavior.
In Hong Kong, corruption was so pervasive as late as the 1970sif

your house was on fire, the fire department demanded payment before
pumping water!that an independent anticorruption commission was
appointed specifically to investigate and prosecute both public and private corruption. Hong Kong greatly reduced corruption and improved
administration with an amnesty, pay increases, and financial-disclosure
requirements for officials.
Chinas current leaders should revisit these precedents. A truly independent judiciary will take time to establish, but some judges can be
appointed and paid byand report tothe central government rather
than local officials. And, as in Ming China, judges and other officials
could be rotated every few years.
Likewise, as in Hong Kong, an amnesty could be granted, conditional
on financial disclosure and a fine for unexplainable wealth, for all but
the most egregious behavior, thereby leaving the past behind. At that
140
point, judges and government officials pay could be raised to competitive

levels, which would weaken the incentive to continue corrupt practices
particularly if officials must regularly file financial-disclosure statements
and are penalized for withholding information.
The recent willingness of ordinary Chinese to condemn corruption
publicly is a harbinger, one hopes, of real anticorruption reforms from the
countrys new leadership. An independent judiciary, financial disclosure
by government officials, and other independent institutions have been
essential to limiting and forestallingthough not fully eliminatingcorruption in the United States and most other advanced capitalist democracies. That is a lesson that China needs to learn far more quickly than some
members of its entrenched elite will find comfortable.
Reprinted by permission of Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org). 2013 Project Syndicate Inc.
All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Struggle across

the Taiwan Strait: The Divided China Problem, by Ramon
H. Myers and Jialin Zhang. To order, call 800.888.4741
or visit www.hooverpress.org.
141
N O RT H K OREA
Crazy Like a Fox

North Korea is an unusually horrible state, but its quest for nuclear weapons is not irrational and the gains it hopes to achieve from possessing them
make a certain amount of sense. It will not be easy to persuade or compel
Pyongyang to give up this program; from a North Korean perspective, the
nuclear program is far and away its most successful venture.
The question of security for North Korea is a complicated one. There
is a strong xenophobic streak in Korean culture north and south of the
DMZ; without a strong and deep sense of national identity it is likely
that Korean culture would have disappeared centuries ago. North Koreas
leadership doesnt trust anybody, including Beijing. A nuclear deterrent is
the ideal weapon for a state that believes that even its allies cant be trusted.
Much of the analysis of North Koreas nuclear program looks at it in
relation to Japan, South Korea, and the United States. From that perspective, the weapons program gives the North the security of a nuclear deterrent and the ability to sell concessions on its weapons program for badly
needed aid and support.
Nuclear weapons are the only crop that Pyongyang has really learned to
grow, the only export it can produce in a region where export-led growth
strategies have long been the norm. The nuclear industry is, from the
regimes point of view, an ideal choice. It is heavily dependent on the state,
closely tied to the power structure, and it produces economic as well as
Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs
and Humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest.
142
Militant Photo CollectionHoover Institution Archives
Nice to have, suicidal to use: the bizarre logic of Pyongyangs nuclear

arsenal. By Walter Russell Mead.
AT THE FRONTIER: Visitors in an observation tower on the south side of the Korean border
look down to where US and South Korean troops confront North Korean soldiers. North
Koreas nascent nuclear weapons program induces the United States and its allies to make
repeated offers of aid and assistance, and gives Pyongyang the power to produce political
crises in the region almost at will.
security benefits that the current regime could not easily achieve by alternative methods.
Whether considered economically or politically, the nuclear industry
brings substantial benefits to the regime. Fear of Pyongyangs nuclear program gives North Korea leverage over Japan. The program has induced the
United States and its allies to make repeated offers of aid and assistance.
The nuclear arsenal gives North Korea the power to produce political crises in the region almost at will, and it is an industry that keeps on giving.
Each year Pyongyang can demand more aid and support in exchange for
entering into talks about its weapons programs, agreeing to slow down
143
FAMILY AFFAIR: In this undated photograph from a North Korean

magazine, Kim Il Sung, right, founder of the North Korean state, looks
over a model of Pyongyang with his son and heir, Kim Jong Il, left. The
third generation of the Kim dynasty, represented by Jim Jong Un, now
144
rules North Korea. Nuclear weapons strengthen the regimes hand in

domestic propaganda, providing valuable confirmation of its claims to
have transformed North Korea into a leading world power by virtue of
juche, or self-reliance.
145
production, allowing inspectors to visit new sites, or whatever else happens to be on the Western shopping list.
The North Korean nuclear program keeps hostile states at bay and
imposes a sort of tributary status on them.
The domestic benefits are also very large. Politics still exist in even the
most totalitarian of societies, and the nuclear program provides valuable
confirmation of the regimes claims to have transformed North Korea into
a leading world power. The nuclear weapons program is seen as concrete
evidence that juche, the concept of radical self-reliance that is at the core
of North Korean ideology, works in the real world. The weapons program, shabby as it is by international standards, with failing satellites and
low-tech nuclear detonations, is the regimes greatest success. It would be
difficult to think of any other program that could achieve results this substantial without in some way threatening the tight grip that the immediate
circle around the Kim family holds on this unhappy society.
The North Korean nuclear program keeps hostile states at bay and
imposes a sort of tributary status on them, even as it contributes to the
consolidation of the regimes control at home. It provides immense psychological benefits to the rulers, who can measure their power by the
fear and caution with which the United States, Japan, and South Korea
approach Pyongyang. The perceived success of the weapons program in
strengthening North Koreas hand abroad becomes a powerful theme in
the regimes domestic propaganda.
Nuclear weapons are the only crop Pyongyang has really learned to grow.
Chinese and other leaders have sought to wean the North Korean leadership away from this approach by pointing up the benefits of integration
into the regional and global economy. China desperately wants North
Korea to adopt the economic reforms that helped build modern China.
From the point of view of the North Korean leadership, this approach
has never seemed particularly attractive. It is hard to speculate on their
thought processes from outside, but it would appear that to the Kim fam146
ily, it is better to own 100 percent of something very small than to own a
substantial minority stake in something much larger.
North Koreas nuclear arsenal, small and simple as it is, offers it yet
another important benefit: insulation against Chinese pressure. Although
Beijing is nominally a North Korean ally, in reality the interests of the
two states are distinct. For North Korea, its nuclear program both reduces its dependence on Chinese security guarantees and gives it the ability
to make provocative diplomatic moves that can plunge the entire region
into crisis. North Korean saber rattling can and does create major headaches for China even as it intensifies Japans drive toward militarization
and periodically drives Seoul closer to Washington and Tokyo. Chinas
repeated failures to control its obstreperous client reduce Chinas regional
prestige and damage its interests. North Korea appears to have learned to
use the threat of such incidents to extort greater aid and less-conditional
support from China.
For North Korea, even a small nuclear arsenal is an effective policy tool.
It offers security for the regime at home and abroad, helps consolidate
Kim family rule, and keeps both friends and enemies at bay. One would
not expect such a valuable tool to be negotiated lightly away, and so far the
North Koreans have held tightly onto what they presumably believe is the
most valuable asset they possess.
Subscribe to the Hoover Institutions online journal Strategika (http://www.hoover.org/taskforces/militaryhistory/strategika), where this essay first appeared. 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
New from the Hoover Press is The Nuclear Enterprise:

High-Consequence Accidents: How to Enhance Safety
and Minimize Risks in Nuclear Weapons and Reactors,
edited by George P. Shultz and Sidney D. Drell. To order,
147
I NT ERVIEW
Wolfe at the Door

Tom Wolfes latest novel, Back to Blood, is a portrait of present-day
culturesprawling, lurid, hilarious, repellent, compelling: More
than anything else, I just love all these people. An interview with
Peter Robinson.
Peter Robinson, Uncommon Knowledge: A phrase pops into the

head of Edward T. Topping IV from out of nowhere: Everybody...all of
them...its back to blood! Religion is dying...but everybody still has
to believe in something....So, my people, that leaves only our blood,
the bloodlines that course through our very bodies, to unite us. La raza!
as the Puerto Ricans cry out. The race! cries the whole world. All people,
all people everywhere, have but one last thing on their mindsback to
blood! In all of American letters only one writer could have produced
that passage, which comes from his latest novel.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Tom Wolfe received his undergraduate
degree from Washington and Lee University and a doctorate in American
Studies from Yale. He is the author of classic essays such as Radical Chic
and more than a dozen books, including the nonfiction works The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff and the novels The Bonfire of the
Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. Mr. Wolfes latest
book is a novel set in Miami, Back to Blood.
Tom, this is the point at which I ordinarily say to guests, Thank you for
joining us, but since were in your apartment, thank you for inviting us in.
Tom Wolfes latest novel is Back to Blood (Little, Brown, 2013). Peter Rob
inson is the editor of the Hoover Digest, the host of Uncommon Knowledge,
and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
148
Tom Wolfe: It was nothing.

Robinson: Back to blood. Religion is dying; back to the ethnic group or
tribe as a source of meaning. Did the theme interest you firstthis notion
of back to bloodor did you say to yourself: Miami, theres a bustling,
boisterous town, and then begin to sort out the theme from the location?
Wolfe: This idea of back to blood hit me at least five or six years ago.
You can see right now there are so many people who essentially have
become atheists. And
Nietzsche predicted
all of this when he
said, God is dead.
That was not an
atheist manifesto but
a warning. He said
that educated, wellto-do people no longer believe in God. Hes writing in 1885, but he predicted that in the twenty-first century would come the total eclipse of
all values. He said that would pain us a lot more than world wars of the
twentieth century. And I think people are not simply going to go off in
some chaotic way. Theyre going to look for something to moor themselves
to. And I began to see it more and more as believing in their bloodlines.
Robinson: Let me quickly try to convey some flavor of Back to Blood.
Nestor Camacho is the central character, a young Cuban police officer.
Nestor engages in heroic exploits: he saves a Cuban refugee from falling
to his death; he subdues a drug dealer who is trying to choke a fellow cop.
Every exploit is so misunderstood and so twisted that, instead of being
viewed as a hero, he is seen as a racist and a traitor to the Cuban people,
and the chief of police yanks him off active duty. Magdalena, his girlfriend,
breaks up with Nestor first to take up with Norman Lewis, a psychiatrist
who is a sex-addiction expert, and then to take up with Sergei Korolyov, a
Russian criminal. Set pieces include a yacht regatta that turns into a floating orgy, an art sale to frenzied billionaires, and a criminal investigation in
a retirement home filled with aggressive old ladies on walkers.
John OSullivan, reviewing Back to Blood in National Review: Tom
Wolfe long ago declared a preference for great, teeming, socially pan-
149
THE W RI T E R A T W OR K
Robinson: How does Tom Wolfe do it? One summer evening a couple of
years ago on Long Island, when you were working on Back to Blood, you
and I had dinner. And I made a terrible mistakethe wrong question to
ask a working writerbut I said, How did the days writing go? And
your face fell. You said it was a struggle, that writing had never gotten
easier for you, and that the only thing that was different these days was
that you could lift your gaze from your desk to the bookshelf and see dozens of books with your name on the binder and say to yourself, Wolfe,
youve done it before, you must be able to do it again. You must have
been having me on.
150
Firing Line CollectionHoover Institution Archives
oramic novels. This preference is probably shared by most readers. That

ensures that it will be viewed with distaste...by most critics. Why the
big canvas?
Wolfe: I devoutly believe that life is determined by two things: not just
your own psychological makeup and your own hormonal makeup and the
rest of it, but by the fact that youre going to intersect with society. I think
the individual is vertical and society is the broad plain, and youre going
to change when you intersect with society, whether you want to or not.
There is no way to understand individuals, particularly today, without
understanding the society around them. A lot of people just dont agree.
Were influenced by the Frenchthe psychological novel.
Robinson: The precious, the interior, one person seated in the roomright.
As you talk, Im thinking of Trollopes great novel, The Way We Live Now, and
the emphasis in your view would be on we. If you want an accurate picture,
it has to be a big one. Only the wide-angle lens captures the truth.
Wolfe: In my opinion the great period of the American novel was 1893
when Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was writtento 1939, with Steinbecks
The Grapes of Wrath. In that period, you have Faulkner, Lewis, Dreiser
with a great novel, Sister Carrie, my namesake Tom Wolfe, and Zora Neale
Hurston. Theyre all realists. And some of them hate the United States,
and some of them are maybe sympathetic. But they all want to get down
on paper every last detail of this extraordinary country. And that stops all
of a sudden after the Second World War.
William F. Buckley (left) interviews Tom Wolfe in 1975 about The Painted Word, Wolfes
exploration of the absurdities of the modern art world. Wolfes provocative works include
The Bonfire of the Vanities, I Am Charlotte Simmons, From Bauhaus to Our House, and A
Man in Full.
Wolfe: No, it is the hardest work I can think of, even though supposedly
its coming off the top of your head. Because I think it has to be journalistically based; it has to be sound reporting. But just simply putting the
words together is a very tough business, and I find that the only thing that
really works is a quota system.
Robinson: Can you take us through a day of composition? What time
do you get up?
Wolfe: I always try to be at my desk at 9:00. I never am. Its more like
10:00, and I have to finish the quota or I cant do anything else.
Robinson: Whats your quota?
Wolfe: Ten triple-spaced pages of typed material; it comes out to about
twelve hundred words. I found out totally by coincidence that was Dickenss daily output.
151
Robinson: Really? I was going to say thats twelve times Nabokovshe

was happy with a hundred words a day, as I recall. So how long would it
typically take to finish the days quota, or does it vary?
Nietzsche predicted all of this when he said, God is dead. That was not
an atheist manifesto but a warning.
Wolfe: It varies wildly. If I finish early, I just take the rest of the day off.
And if it takes into the night, I will work into the night. And of course this
supposes that Ive got all the material ready, because in writing a novel I do
just as much reporting
Robinson: Lets take Back to Blood. How many trips to Miami?
Wolfe: At least a dozen, maybe more. The longest were for a month.
John Timoney, then the chief of police in Miami, is a good friend of mine,
and he was extremely helpfulthat was a plus. I just started working the
way I usually do: meet one person, and if you can get along with that
person, get into their milieu. Thats the way I found Hialeah, which is the
real Little Havana now.
Robinson: A slightly impudent question. Dont you suffer from a
particular form of the Heisenberg principle: that to observe something
is to change it? How do you stroll into Hialeah in a white suit and
capture it?
There is no way to understand individuals, particularly today, without
understanding the society around them.
Wolfe: Well I dont go in a white suit, but I do wear a necktie, and thats
enough to set off alarms right away. What the hell is this guy doing? Is
he repossessing somebody? I went to a strip clubthere are one hundred
and forty-two in greater Miamiand I noticed that there was not a single
other male in the whole place with a necktie, not even the people at the
box office. And Im sitting there beginning to watch this show, and a man
came up and said, Youre Tom Wolfe, arent you? And I said, Well, yes,
I am. Wait until people hear about this, he says. I was a little worried
because you cant get out of watching pornography by saying, Well, Im
152
doing research. Nobody will believe that. But nothing ever happened
because if anybody in a strip club starts giving the names of people who
are at the strip club, theyre in deep trouble.
Robinson: So, do you fill notebooks? Youre at the strip club, then you
return to the hotel youre staying at and sit down and begin a kind of
stream-of-consciousness note taking? Sights and sounds? How does this
work?
I went to a strip clubthere are one hundred and forty-two in greater
Miamiand I noticed that there was not a single other male in the whole
place with a necktie.
Wolfe: Well, it was a little awkward to take notes in the strip club. Before
I go to sleep, I try to record everything I can because the memory decays
very rapidlyand the little details that are good for writing are the first
things to go. So thats the way Ive always worked, and it ends up being
just like the long pieces of journalism Ive done.
V A LUES
Robinson: In Back to Blood, at the regatta that turns into an orgy, Norman
Lewis, the sex-addiction therapist, says to Magdalena (Im paraphrasing
now): If we stay here all night, youre going to see people behave as they
behave in conditions of complete freedom; no rules. Theyll behave like
bonobosyoull see animal-like behavior. And to him this is thrilling.
And you note: Magdalena felt more than depressed. Something about
it made her afraid. Now John OSullivans comment: Wolfes vision of
[present-day] America is eerily similar to the Rome of Antiquity before
Constantine. Where that antiquity was pre-Christian, this New Antiquity
is post-Christian. Its original brand of Protestant Christianity no longer
influences it. The WASP elites no longer even pretend to believe....It is
a world of fear, superstition, and constant insecurity. So this boisterous,
exhilarating book is a portrait of the apocalypse?
Wolfe: Not in my mind, but Ill go along with him on this business of
constant uncertainty. And I think its very striking. If you think of the
153
mating habits in this country of people in general today, it is expected at

every level of society, bottom to top, that a boy and a girl datingto use
a loaded termare going to be having at it right away, if not immediately
then by the second date. Thats as far as they can go without breaking up,
and so they now go everywhere in the world together, theyre not married,
and some of them are quite young. And its just a given that theyre going
to be kicking the gong around. Now thats a complete change from the
way things were fifty years ago.
Robinson: So the constant insecurity comes in.
More than anything else, I just love all these people. Like in The Bonfire
of the Vanitiesthese investment bankers and people going wild on
marketsthey catch my eye and Im transfixed.
Wolfe: The past fifty years have been very hard on women, I think.
When I wrote I Am Charlotte Simmons about college life, the rule then
was four dates. If the girl had not come across in four dates, the guy
gave up. And the next thing I knew, it was two dates. And the last
time I looked into it, a couple of kids said to me, What do you mean,
dates?
Robinson: Nestor Camacho is the one character who behaves honorably throughout Back to Blood. Edward T. Topping IV is a coward.
Religion is dying, says Edward T. Topping to himself. And yet Nestor
thinks to himself, I always believed that there is a righteous God. And
you titled the final chapter, which is about Nestor, The Knight of Hialeah. What are we to make of Nestor in this world in which values are
dissolving? The character whom you place at the centerand toward
whom to the extent that you as the author tip your hand and demonstrate your sympathiesis a man of strength, bravery, chivalry, and
faith. So the book may contain an orgy at sea, but its still the work of a
Virginia gentleman.
Wolfe: Its purposely a picture of what I would consider a sterling character. And look at the reward he gets for his honesty and his bravery. Hes
frustrated over and over again, but hes true to himself.
154
Robinson: Youre a modernist in all kinds of ways, but your heroes are
manly men: men of faith and bravery whom the world spurns and abuses
and yet they continue on. So Tom Wolfe is saying Nietzsche may have
been right, values are dissolving, but stick with them. Is that right?
Wolfe: Well, I didnt see it as a message. I see it as somebody who
refuses to buckle under to what everybody else is doing. The same was
true of my character Conrad Hensley in A Man in Full. And I never
really thought of it as a purposeful device, but like Nestor, he does show
the failings of other people. They wouldnt do the kind of things that he
does. But more than anything else, I just love all these people. Like in
The Bonfire of the Vanitiesthese investment bankers and people going
wild on marketsthey catch my eye and Im transfixed. This is a rather
wild period in no small part because a lot of conventions and values have
been dropped.
Robinson: All right, Back to Blood and freedomlibertythe central
American value. And here is a scene in which Magdalena breaks up with
the sex-addiction expert. Quoting Magdalena: I cant believe I let you
do that. And I spent two days trying to persuade myself that this is sexual
freedom; freedom, oh my God. If I want to drown myself in the well of
excrement, its liberty. So to what extent is Tom Wolfe in Back to Blood
a Jeremiah warning readers against permitting liberty to become mere
license, and to what extent is Tom Wolfe an extremely stylish scribe just
reporting what he sees?
Were at the edge of the total eclipse of all values.
Wolfe: I have not brought that level of profundity to the act of writing.
Its not meant as any kind of warning, but it does describe decadence.
Theres a lot of that around. Were at the edge of the total eclipse of all
values. Its beginning to happen, and it happens first with formal, moral
niceties such as boys and girls not living together before marriage.
Robinson: Last question. When we talked on this program a few years
ago, I asked you if you thought the twenty-first century would be another
American century. You remember Henry Luces famous essay after the
Second World War saying the twentieth century was the American cen-
155
tury. And Tom Wolfe replied, The next six centuries will be American
centuries. Do you still feel that way?
In a way the whole so-called Arab uprising is a cry of anguish because
they made a wrong turn at the Enlightenment.
Wolfe: I do, because we dont really have any opposition. Everybody is

worried about the Arabs at this moment. You cannot run a modern army
with people who cant read; you just cant do it. Too much is dependent
on instructions that are in one way or another in print. In a way the whole
so-called Arab uprising is a cry of anguish because they made a wrong turn
at the Enlightenment. They didnt go in for all of these things; it was not
by chance that the British were the first avant-garde in the sciences, medicine, everything. Its because they had kicked out the Church of Rome
thanks to Henry VIIIs love life. And that established the idea that its OK
to rebel, to protest, to be a protestant. And that led to this great opening
up of what we now call the Enlightenment. I really think that in these
Islamic countries theyre angry that things didnt go that way. I dont think
its a religious thing.
Robinson: So they still have values, and were experiencing the eclipse of
all values, but well still win?
Wolfe: They definitely have valuesno question.
Robinson: Tom Wolfe, author of Back to Blood, thank you.
Wolfe: Thank you.
156
H I ST O R Y AN D CU L T U R E
King and the Dream

Martin Luther Kings dreamto be judged by the content of ones
characteris still just a dream. By Thomas Sowell.
The Martin Luther King holiday this month, following the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and Kings memorable I Have a
Dream speech, is a time for reflectionssome inspiring, and some painful and ominous.
At the core of Doctor Kings speech was his dream of a world in which
people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content
of their character.
Judging individuals by their individual character is at the opposite pole
from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees,
college students, or political figures.
Yet manyif not mostof those who celebrate the I Have a Dream
speech today promote the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based on skin color.
How consistent Martin Luther King himself was as he confronted the
various issues of his time is a question that can be left for historians. His
legacy to us is the I Have a Dream speech. What was historic about
that speech was not only what was said but how powerfully its message
resonated among Americans across the spectrum of race, ideology, and
politics. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted in
Congress for both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965.
Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public
Policy at the Hoover Institution.
157
To say that that was a hopeful time would be an understatement. To

say that many of those hopes have since been disappointed would also be
an understatement.
There are people today who talk justice when they really mean
payback.
There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there
has also been much retrogression, of which the disintegration of the black
family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social
pyramid.
Many peopleespecially politicians and activistswant to take credit
for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger
proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the twenty years before 1960
than in the twenty years afterwards. But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black
family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination.
Many hopes were disappointed because those were unrealistic hopes to
begin with.
Economic and other disparities between groups have been common for
centuries, in countries around the worldand many of those disparities
have been, and still are, larger than the disparities between blacks and
whites in America.
Even when those who lagged behind have advanced, they have not
always caught up, even after centuries, because others were advancing at
the same time. But when blacks did not catch up with whites in America
within a matter of decades, that was treated as strangeor even a sinister
sign of crafty and covert racism.
Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job
skills are crucial, and the government cannot give you these things. All it
can do is make them available.
Race hustlers who blame all lagging on the racism of others are among
the obstacles to taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What does that say about the content of their character?
158
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was pending in Congress, my hope
was that it would pass undiluted, not because I thought it would be a
panacea but, on the contrary, because the bitter anticlimax that is sure
to follow may provoke some real thought in quarters where slogans and
labels hold sway at the moment.
But the bitter anticlimax that did follow provoked no rethinking.
Instead, it provoked all sorts of new demands. Judging everybody by the
same standards was now regarded in some quarters as racist because it
precluded preferences and quotas.
Civil rights were necessary but far from sufficient.
There are people today who talk justice when they really mean paybackincluding payback against people who were not even born when
historic injustices were committed.
Last year the nation witnessed a sensationalized murder trial in Florida,
on which many people took fierce positions before a speck of evidence had
been introduced, basing their views about the people involved on nothing
more than the color of their skin.
We have a long way to go to catch up to what Martin Luther King said
fifty years ago. And we are moving in the opposite direction.
Reprinted by permission of Creators Syndicate (www.creators.com). 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc. All
rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is Barbarians Inside

the Gates, and Other Controversial Essays, by Thomas
Sowell. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.
hooverpress.org.
159
H I S T ORY AND C U LTURE
A Dream Derailed
Kings fight for justice has been transformed into governmentsponsored distortion of labor, housing, and education. By Richard
A. Epstein.
The crowd that witnessed Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream

speech had gathered in the summer of 1963 to protest the dangerous
state into which race relations had fallen. Kings memorable address
was part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and
its solemn cadences ring as powerfully today as they did then. No one
who heard it could forget its powerful assault on segregation, the demise
of which no respectable personNortherner or Southernermourns
today. No one should forget that Kings speech was a major catalyst in
moving a still-reluctant nation to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The praise heaped on the speech should not, however, blind us to the
difficulty of reconciling the two major goals of the March on Washington.
A campaign for both jobs and freedom will ultimately have to choose
between them.
King did not use the word jobs once in his speech. But he did insist
that this nation redeem its promissory note to all citizens of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And he keenRichard A. Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution and a member of Hoovers John and Jean De Nault Task
Force on Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity. He is also the Laurence A.
Tisch Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a senior lecturer
at the University of Chicago.
160
ly recognized that freedom and the universality of rights are necessarily

paired. He focused on two burning issues of the time: voting and public
accommodations, which eventually became Title I and Title II of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, respectively.
But he went astray in saying that we can never be satisfied as long as a
Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has
nothing for which to vote. The two problems could not be more distinct.
Excluding an individual from the polls by virtue of race is a denial of
what King rightly called citizenship rights. It is easy to think of a legal
remedy that could be introduced against formal prohibitions against the
right to vote, just as it is easy to envision ways to dismantle legal barriers
to entry into labor markets. In one stroke the new laws would expand
opportunities for all citizens and shrink the size of government.
No one seems concerned that unskilled minority workers will be denied
their first, critical opportunity to get a job.
But wanting some particular political agenda to come before a state legislature does not have those simple virtues. There are thousands of agendas
from which to choose, and there is no reason to believe that all people of
any race or group should unite behind any of them. It is a treacherous
businessand one easily derailedto try to create a single substantive
agenda that people of all races and from all walks of life should support.
A LON GE R STR UG G LE IN THE WOR KP LAC E

When King spoke in 1963, he rightly stressed the removal of formal barriers that stood in the path of equality of opportunity for all citizens. But
executing this program turned out to be more difficult than one suspected.
Dismantling the barriers to full and equal service in public accommodations was quickly accomplished in the aftermath of the passage of Title
II of the Civil Rights Act. It takes little ingenuity to sell train tickets to all
customers and offer them transport on fair and nondiscriminatory terms.
Indeed, Title II was initially applied to counteract the deadly combination
of private violence and state domination that had kept these systems of
public accommodation effectively closed.
161
162
Yet the same strategy cannot work for employment. No one thinks that
jobs, like seats on trains, should be awarded on a first-come, first-served
basis at uniform wages. Labor markets, on both the supply and demand
sides, are defined by a huge heterogeneity. An extensive search process
must match the right worker with the right position.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act consciously imitated Title II, which
provided that all people are entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of
the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of
any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without dis-
crimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national

origin. In turn, Title VII decreed that
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise
to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation,
terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individuals race, color, religion, sex, or national origin....
Consistent with the universalistic spirit of 1964, Title VII quite consciously targets discrimination against any individual, and replicates the
163
same colorblind rule in employment that became the gold standard in

public-accommodation cases. But however noble its intentions, Title VII
misfired. At the time of its passage, a strong social consensus condemned
preferential treatmentlater rebranded first as affirmative action and
then diversityof minorities as an impermissible form of reverse discrimination. By embedding that judgment into the Civil Rights Act, Congress in 1964 tried to freeze its view of race relations concerning private
employers.
There are thousands of agendas from which to choose, and there is no
reason to believe that all people of any race should unite behind any of them.
But the race riots of the mid-1960s convinced most thoughtful supporters of Title VII that its colorblind approach was too slow to counteract the broad social unrest. So the gears started to turn: any individual
now meant only some individuals, and discrimination meant invidious
discrimination, so that the private sector could initiate much-desired
affirmative-action programs.
Title VII, as interpreted, turned out to be a mistake not only in what
it forbade but also in what it required. Having committed itself to ending
private-sector discrimination in employment, the legislation had to guard
against the risk of private circumvention of the law. The original legislation
thus sought to ferret out covert discrimination, without blocking the routine use of a professionally developed ability test provided that such test,
its administration, or action upon the results is not designed, intended, or
used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
No one thinks jobs, like seats on trains, should be awarded on a firstcome, first-served basis at uniform wages.
It was not to be. In the 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co.,
a clueless Chief Justice Warren Burger wrenched the word used out of
context, so that the 1964 act now strictly forbade the use of any such test
with an unintended disparate impact, unless it met some undefined test
of business necessity. Griggs has backfired, for the banning of these tests
164
has made workplace decisions less efficient and has increased the use of
statistical discrimination by employers.
As Jason Riley recently reminded us in the Wall Street Journal, once
employers cannot screen for individual ability, they revert to global judgments about the relative strength of black and white workers, which
throws needless roadblocks in the path of able minority workers.
The current inheritors of Kings civil rights movement, averse to a hard
look at their own programs, tragically work to resurrect the moral
outrage of 1963.
These statutory mistakes continue to haunt modern debates over civil

rights. The correct response to all these maneuvers is to repeal Title VII,
which should open up more labor opportunities at all economic levels.
But civil rights supporters continue to believe that the only antidote to
segregation is more big government, not market liberalization. The price
of that error is high.
R HET O R I C AND EASY TAR G ETS

On August 24, 2013, a somber and resentful liberal group took to the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial to reflect on the unmet promises of the past
fifty years. None of the participants could deny the amount of racial progress that had been made in the previous five decades, but they all lamented
the stubbornly slow rate of economic progress.
Predictably, no one brought up the failed liberal economic policies that
have contributed to the current impasse. House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi, however, was on scene championing a movement in Congress to
make the minimum wage a living wage, without asking whether such
an initiative would increase unemployment for unskilled minority workers denied their first critical opportunity to get a job (as it surely would).
These major missteps on employment laws have been replicated by equally aggressive congressional efforts to regulate private activities in education,
housing, and health care, where the scene is much more complicated than
it was in 1963. Managing race discrimination in complex markets requires
165
a real appreciation of how to link means with ends. The commitment to

strong government action against various forms of diffuse social evils always
consumes extensive social resources on compliance that could be better
spent on private job creation. The constant effort to increase the number
and size of transfer payments creates a political situation in which the search
for private gain further diminishes the size of the overall social pie.
The current inheritors of Kings civil rights movement never think
beyond the illusory direct benefits to their favored short-term target, ignorant of the powerful pressures that chew up their social agenda. Rather
than looking hard at their own programs, they tragically work to resurrect the moral outrage of 1963. So Julian Bond will say with a straight
face: We march because Trayvon Martin has joined Emmett Till in the
pantheon of young black martyrs. The movement does no better when it
denounces the recent Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder
as a virtual return to the Jim Crow practices of the precivil rights era.
The modern champions of the civil rights movement make these overwrought comparisons to earlier days because they know that the movement needs a fat target. The messy issues around labor, housing, and education fail to provide that target, but raise hard technical issues on which
these leaders have nothing useful to contribute. So the current economic
frustrations morph into a widespread uneasiness.
Al Sharpton and his fellow speakers at the Washington rally have forfeited any claim to the universal appeal of the I Have a Dream speech.
No matter their fervor, they cannot appeal to the sentiments of the country as a whole. Instead, on any questions of future reform, they have
become their own worst enemy.
New from the Hoover Press is Entitlement Spending: Our
Coming Fiscal Tsunami, by David Koitz. To order, call
166
H O O V E R AR CH I V E S
The Last Communist

Mieczysaw F. Rakowski, the last Communist prime minister of
Poland, sought to repair communism by reforming it. Instead he
reformed it right out of existence. By Andrzej Paczkowski.
Soon after the formation of the first communist state, Soviet Russia, the
belief arose that the system was in need of repair. None other than its
creator, Vladimir Lenin, who in 1921 proposed the New Economic Policy, first undertook the effort. However, the experiment was abandoned
several years later. During the decades of tyrannical reign of Josef Stalin
there were no new projects of change, but as soon as Stalin left this world,
reformist tendencies started to emerge almost continually.
The main sources of reform were located in the satellite states, but
repairmen also appeared in the Soviet Union itself. Examples are well
known: Oskar Lange and Micha Kalecki, Polish economists in 195657;
Soviet economist Evsei Liberman in the 1960s; Ota Sik and Aleksander
Dubcek, Czechoslovak reformers of 1968, who achieved the vision of
socialism with a human face; Janos Kadar and other creators of Hungarian goulash communism. These are only a few names from a long list.
More or less vocal repairmen appeared almost everywhere, following the
same direction toward rationalization of the economy as Lenin in 1921.
Sometimes, they would even succeed, like Deng Xiaoping in China. Still
to this day, where traditional communism exists, as in the Cuba of the
Castro brothers, there is talk of reform.
Andrzej Paczkowski is a professor of history in the Political Studies Institute
of the Polish Academy of Sciences. This essay was translated by Irena Czerni
chowska and Maciej Siekierski of the Hoover Institution Archives.
167
168
Poster CollectionHoover Institution Archives
Motives for proposing the changes were diverse. For some, a very important factor was the desire to expand freedom, or return to the democratic
young Marx. Most often, however, it was about the belief that the socialist economy was inefficient and incapable of keeping the promises inherent in the ideology. There were thousands of reformers; some of them
ventured beyond the framework of the system, became revisionists, or
even found themselves on the enemy side (the democratic camp). Most,
however, remained in the reform stage; many even retreated to orthodox
positions. In this large, diverse, and international cohort there were many
outstanding and well-known people, some of whom succeeded: they tried
to reform the system with such intensity that in the end they contributed
to its collapse.
One of these reformers was Mieczysaw F. Rakowski (19262008), the
last Communist prime minister of Poland and the last first secretary of the
Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party. It was Rakowski who on January 27, 1990, closed the final party congress and gave
the command: Escort out the party banner! The color guard solemnly
passed through a double row of delegates. Many of them had tears in their
eyes; perhaps Rakowski did as well, for he never imagined such an ending
when over forty years earlier he had joined the party.
F o rmati v e Ye ars
Rakowski was born in 1926 in Kowalewko, a village in western Poland.
His father was the owner of a fifty-acre farm, quite sizable by Polish standards, and he even employed a farmhand. He was a local leaderan activist in a pro-government political party (OZON) and also the village head.
Shortly after Polands defeat in September 1939 and the incorporation
of this part of the country into the Third Reich, the senior Rakowski
LOOKING BACK: Workers of the world, forgive me, reads a German political poster from the post-communist era that inverts Karl Marxs famous
call to arms. This poster was created by the Junge Union, the youth organization of Germanys center-right Christian Democratic Union, to mock the
defeated Communists and reject attempts to return to the Marxist path.
169
was shot by the Germans, along with some thirty thousand other Poles
teachers, civil servants, priests, lawyers, and policemendeemed a potential threat to Hitlers Germany. The family was expelled from its farm,
and until 1945 the young Rakowski labored in a factory in Poznan. He
was one of those Poles, then comparatively few, who welcomed the Red
Armys advance with double joySoviet soldiers not only drove the German invaders away, but their arrival also heralded social revolution. Then
only nineteen, he volunteered for the army because he wanted to avenge
the death of his father. But because he was bright and intellectually ahead
of his peers, he was sent to the school for political officers rather than to
the front. He graduated with distinction, and during the next few years he
indoctrinated the soldiers and members of the paramilitary organization,
Service to Poland, to which he was assigned.
Rakowskis magazine advocated not just the repair of an ailing
In 1946, before his twentieth birthday, he joined the Communist Party,

a result of both his growing infatuation with Marxist ideology and his
ambition to participate in public life. In 1949 the talented officer was
enrolled in a six-month journalism course, but instead of returning to the
army after graduating, he was assigned to work in the Central Committees press department, thus becoming a professional party functionary, or
apparatchik.
During 195255 he studied at the Institute of Social Sciences, a highereducational establishment of the Communist Party, where he completed
a doctorate. The institute was sometimes called a school for janissaries,
because its purpose was to produce functionaries absolutely loyal to the
ideology and the leadership. The real janissaries had been the fierce shock
troops of the Ottoman army; these graduates were modern officers of the
ideological front. On his own segment of this front, Rakowski was traveling into the provinces, supervising and instructing others on what one was
allowed to write about, and how to write on those subjects.
During the thaw after Stalins death, he experiencedlike many othershis first doubts and anxieties, but he did not express them in print.
170
Mieczysaw F. Rakowski CollectionHoover Institution Archives
economy but for a distinct, lasting expansion of freedom.
SOLIDARITY: Mieczysaw Rakowski (left) walks with Lech Waesa (holding

pipe), followed by Stanisaw Ciosek, the minister responsible for the trade
unions, in March 1981. Rakowski, deputy prime minister at the time, took
a hard line with Waesa and the unions. He still insisted that the party, not
Solidarity or any other mass movement, take the lead on reform.
171
A LINE T O T HE IN TELLI GENTSIA

In 1958 he was presented with an unexpected opportunity: he was
appointed editor-in-chief of the weekly Polityka, which was to serve as a
channel to relay the leaderships political line to the intelligentsia. There
have been occasional miracles on the Vistula, and this was yet another:
within only a few years, an unknown apparatchik with little journalistic
experience transformed the boring, ideological Polityka into a periodical
with broad influence, strong personality, and recognition beyond Poland.
MFR (as he styled himself in imitation of FDR or JFK) turned out to
be extremely talented, both as an author of numerous articles and books
and as an organizer. He was able to assemble a large number of outstanding writers and thinkerssome from outside the Communist Partyand
create a team of young, dynamic journalists (one of them was Ryszard
Kapuscinski, the famous Polish reporter, and later a writer with a global
reputation). The magazine achieved some major successes, such as releasing the first edition of the memoirs of Adolf Eichmann. Instead of being
a mouthpiece for the Politburo, Polityka became the main, persistent, and
eloquent voice of reform tendencies. Furthermore, it wasnt just about the
repair of an ailing economy, but also about a distinct and lasting expansion of freedom, and about democratization, if not in the entire state, then
at least in the party itself.
Rakowskis moral outrage remained confined to his private journals pages.
Public life depended on cold calculation, which required staying silent.
Rakowski was aware of the limitations he was subjected to and knew

that he was pursuing Orwellian doublethink. In April 1958 he wrote in
his secret personal journal: One must be able to violate ones soul. Several weeks later, after learning about the execution of Hungarian leader
Imre Nagy, he noted: Moral outrage prevails...over cold calculation.
172
Already he believed that the system should be improved, but he did not
believe that he had any tools to contribute to that effort. Besides, by working in the Central Committee he was stuck in the middle of the sluggish
political machine.
CHANGING TIMES: Rakowski greets Pope John Paul II in Warsaw in June 1987; to the left of the
pope stands General Wojciech Jaruzelski, first secretary of the Polish United Workers Party.
Rakowski and Jaruzelski worked together during Polands transition to post-communism.
Nevertheless his moral outrage remained confined to his journals pages,

unseen; public life depended on cold calculation, which required staying
silent.
Like many other supporters of reforms, MFR experienced alternating
periods of hope and disappointment. The latter were much longer, but
always inevitably gave way to emerging expectations. Initially fascinated
with Wadysaw Gomukas leadership, he quickly understood that he had
the nature of a doctrinaire autocrat. Later, he eagerly supported Edward
Gierek, only to decide after a few years that he was leading the country nowhere. Finally Rakowski bonded with General Wojciech Jaruzelski,
whom he saw as the man of the moment. Indeed, it was together with
173
A T o ug h P l ay e r
The situation changed in 1981, when the Communist Party, searching for
solutions to deep systemic crisis in Poland after the formation of Solidarity, decided on General Jaruzelski. Although never regarded as a reformer,
Jaruzelski took to his government none other than MFR. Jaruzelski needed someone dynamic and ambitious, popular at home and in the West,
with a strong intellectual base, and hungry for power.
As deputy prime minister, Rakowski turned out to be a formidable figure,
something Lech Waesa experienced the hard way.
In February 1981 Rakowski became deputy prime minister responsible

for the entire sphere called (following Marxs phrase) the superstructure:
propaganda, relations with civic organizations (including Solidarity), edu174
Jaruzelski that he ultimately led Poland, along with the other communist
countries of Eastern Europe (and the Soviet Union itself ), to enter the
stage of political transformation.
Rakowski did not have precise plans for reforms and rarely went into
details of the state he would like to see in Poland, but he thought that if
socialism does not find enough strength to reform the entire structure,
it will sooner or later vanish as an entity. Therefore he often provided specialists with an opportunity to express themselves, and, above all,
he created an important forum for intellectual ferment. Without taking
any government job, he was a major player on the Polish political scene.
He met frequently with members of the governing elite and sometimes
clashed with them, but always managed to come out unscathed. MFRs
position was largely determined by his international contacts, mainly with
politicians of the European social-democratic parties, but as a journalist
and intellectual he also met with leaders of the United States, France, and
Germany. It was only in Moscow that he was not welcome, because there
the term liberal was something of an invective. Still, he acted as a lobbyist. He already had a tool to formulate opinions and suggest ideashe
was doing it himself along with the journalists at Politykabut he took no
direct part in decision making.
CLOSING THE BOOKS: Rakowski delivers his final speech as first secretary of the Central
Committee, closing the last congress of the Polish United Workers Party. Having overseen
the dissolution of the system for which he had worked for so long, Rakowski fulfilled his
own prediction of decades earlier: that socialism built according to the Soviet model was
moribund.
cation, science, culture, etc. It is perhaps not quite right to say that he was
Jaruzelskis right-hand man, because this role had been assigned to those
who were preparing martial law, but to some extent he became the generals face. In any case, his was a face turned to the West and to Polish
public opinion.
He turned out to be a tough player, something that Lech Waesa, the
leader of Solidarity, experienced the hard way. MFR, still a Marxist believer, thought that only the party was capable of extricating the country from
the crisis and pushing it onto new, but still socialist, tracks. But first it had
to remove the main obstacle: Solidarity, an authentic and spontaneous
mass movement. In contrast, the party hard-liners, MFRs earlier rivals,
seemed less threatening. One must say that the deputy prime minister did
a great job, attacking and finding weak points in the enemy. At the same
time he tried to moderate Jaruzelskis most aggressive ideas because he
thought that narrowing the battlefront, attracting allies, and neutralizing
175
the undecided were better than blind striking, which intensifies negative
emotions and hatred.
Unlike Jaruzelski, for whom maintaining the monopoly of power was
most important, Rakowski had broader plans associated with martial law.
After all, MFR was a reformer, so he thought that creating something like
an enlightened dictatorship was possible and that it would force a deep
economic reform on the party and the apparatus of power, as well as on
the society. He assumed that if such reform were successful, it would cause
Solidarity to lose ground.
In October 1987 Rakowski sent Jaruzelski a lengthy memorandum in
which he noted that socialism has exhausted its creative force.
However, in 1985, Jaruzelski decided that stabilization had already taken place and that the state was no longer directly threatened, so he pushed
Rakowski aside. The whole party establishment was against the reforms,
and Jaruzelski had no intention of putting his own head on the block and
risking a revolt of the hard-liners. Besides, Jaruzelski was interested in
power, not reform. MFR thus went from being Jaruzelskis closest assistant
and adviser to a background figure. As deputy speaker of the parliament,
a position generously offered to him, he was more of a commentator than
a participant in key decision making.
Luckily for Rakowski, this state of affairs didnt last long. The economy was falling apart, and the West had no intention of showering
Poland with money or canceling any of the countrys debt. Perestroika broke out in Moscow, and instead of being a cure for the Soviet
Unions economic breakdown, it led to a situation where in Poland any
assistance from the Easteither financial or militarycould no longer be counted on. Experts, including those in the party, sounded the
alarm, recognizing as quite real the scenario of a social explosion that
even Solidarity would be unable to control and which could sweep
away Jaruzelskis team and end in bloody terror, whether revolutionary
or counterrevolutionary.
In October 1987 Rakowski sent Jaruzelski a lengthy memorandum in
which he noted that socialism has exhausted its creative force. MFR
176
considered it absolutely necessary to take emergency action and to recognize the existence of opposition as a natural part of the system.
E s c o rt ou t th e party banne r!
A year later MFR became head of the government, which summarily made
a number of fundamental decisions. The most important one was the law
granting full economic freedom for private individuals regardless of the
size of their enterprise. It looked, literally, like the beginning of capitalism.
Jaruzelski relied completely on Prime Minister Rakowski and accepted his
moves without hesitation because he believed them to be the only way
to save socialism, Poland, and his own grip on power. At the same time,
talks began with Solidarity, although Rakowski didnt take direct part, and
about which he was skeptical. Nevertheless, he stood loyally by Jaruzelskis
side, trying to break down the resistance of the hard-liners, for whom
negotiating with the enemy was incomprehensible.
In partially democratic elections of June 4, 1989a result of a negotiated compromisenot only did the Communist Party suffer a defeat but
MFR himself was not returned to parliament, after twenty years of holding a parliamentary mandate. In the new coalition government, the opposition activist, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, took the office of prime minister.
But Rakowski did not disappear from the scene. After Jaruzelski
stepped down from his party functions and assumed a comfortable position of president and referee, the sixty-three-year-old MFR became first
secretary of the Central Committee, traditionally an important and prestigious position. However, the party was in shambles, and when Europes
annus mirabilis of 1989 brought the Autumn of Nations and the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the partys fate was sealed.
No one is likely to build a monument to Rakowski. But he built himself
a monument of sorts: the systematic diary he kept for decades will be a
vital source on the history of communist Poland.
On one hand, this was a grim blow to Rakowskis ambitions. He had

ascended to the head of his beloved party, only to essentially lay it in its
177
TO THE FUTURE: Rakowski entertains Margaret Thatcher during the British prime ministers
visit to Warsaw in October 1989. Rakowski had lost his seat in parliament a few months
before, after twenty years of holding a mandate.
grave. On the other hand, it was the culmination of his long struggle
to reform the system, which, it turned out, could be reformed only by
liquidation. It was the realization of MFRs prediction from December
1970: socialism built according to the Soviet model was a moribund
formation.
Rakowski had ascended to the head of his beloved party, only to lay it in
its grave.
In the annals of history Rakowski will remain one of those who contributed the most to the collapse of the nondemocratic and inefficient
communist system, but he did not manage to save it even at the price of
178
complete overhaul. Probably no one will build a monument to him but

rather to those who fought against the system. However, MFR built
himself a monument of sorts. Beginning in April 1958, when he
embarked on the path to a major political career, he kept a systematic
diary. Ten already published volumes will be one of the most important
sources on the history of communist Poland. It is assured a high rank in
the citation index. The original of Rakowskis journal and a large collection of his other papers are available for research in the Hoover Institution Archives.
Special to the Hoover Digest.
Available from the Hoover Press is In Search of Poland:

The Superpowers Response to Solidarity, 19801989,
by Arthur Rachwald. To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit
179
On the Cover
The winter of 191718 was going to be hard. Harry A. Garfield, administrator of the new US Fuel Administration, confessed to an audience at the
Academy of Political Science in New York in December that we have winter
upon us, with our organization only just completed, with the coal only partially moved; therefore there is distress and apprehension.
Garfield (18631942), the late former presidents son and a friend of Woodrow Wilsons, was an early energy czar. Washington was worried about fuel
supplies as America went to war. The administration created Garfields new
agency to try to manage both domestic and military needs. All the steamships
and locomotives, factories and foundries, restaurants and movie houses, every
lighted billboard and department-store windowthey all used energy, and the
government was anxious that supply would meet demand. Meantime, through
public-information campaigns and a sprawling web of regulations, it struggled
to reduce that demand.
Part of the publicity campaign was this 1917 poster, painted by one of
the top illustrators of the day. It seems to say let there be light but also says
something more prosaic: let there be coal.
The Fuel Administration lived only briefly, from 1917 to 1919, but it
wrote a chapter in the long-running interrelationship between government
and business. The agencys career is also a story about government regulation
and howand whetherto manage markets.
Garfield had worked with Herbert Hoover on wartime food relief, and like
Hoover was among the Progressive coterie prominent in government. Garfield, like Hoover, was committed to corporate order, but wary of bureaucratic controls, scholar Robert D. Cuff wrote in a 1978 article. Garfields
new job was to negotiate just those shoals. As fuels chief he was called upon
to manage the collision between industry needs, war requirements, union
demands, and consumer clamor.
Coal production had risen enormously in the early twentieth century, he told
his New York audience, but so had the demands of the industrial life of the country. It disturbed him that some large enterprises had piles of coal while others had
none. There also had to be conservation. Echoing the contemporary enthusiasm
for applying efficiency to government, he boasted that the Fuel Administration
has called to its aid the best scientific and business brains in the country to answer
180
this great question of fuel administration. Garfield would later face

fierce criticism in Congress for how
he carried out that task.
What the Fuel Administration
tried to do was breathtaking. It fixed
prices for fuels and transportation. It
imposed a complicated schedule of
hours and days for when lights could
be lit. Electric signs, such as marquees
and display windows, had to go dark
after 11 p.m. It forbade offices to use
heat on Sundays and holidays and on
most days after five oclockwhile
conceding heat sufficient to prevent
freezing.
The regulations, many shortlived, went into great detail. How
much fuel florists could use to grow flowers. What the makers of bricks, sewer
pipes, tile, and beer were allowed to burn for light and heat. Even yacht owners and country clubs felt the pain.
But this was war. As soon as the war ended, so did the Fuel Administrationand shortly after that, Garfields government career. He returned to
his job as president of Williams College. Some business leaders applauded
the Fuel Administrations work and wanted to continue some type of industrial cooperation, with a federal role, after the war. Explicit government
control over markets and consumers would revive in a few years, on an even
bigger and more controversial scale, in the form of Roosevelts National
Recovery Administration.
From coals to Coles: commercial artist Coles Phillips (18801927),
painter of this bare, glowing bulb, was among the most sought-after illustrators of his day, known for his depictions of stylish, languid women. Some
art historians credit him, in fact, with inventing the pinup girl. Phillipss
commercial oeuvre included hundreds of magazine and book covers along
with ads for cars, hosiery, watches, sunscreen (all the better to show a model
in a bathing suit), and radiatorsbut apparently not light bulbs.
Charles Lindsey
181
hoover institution on war, revolution and peace
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182
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183
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was established at Stanford University
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The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was established at Stanford University
in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, a member of Stanfords pioneer graduating class of 1895 and the
thirty-rst president of the United States. Since 1919 the Institution has evolved from a library
and repository of documents to an active public policy research center. Simultaneously, the
Institution has evolved into an internationally recognized library and archives housing tens of
millions of books and archival documents relating to political, economic, and social change.
The Institutions overarching goals are to
Understand the causes and consequences of economic, political, and social change
Analyze the effects of government actions relating to public policies
Generate and disseminate ideas directed at positive public policy formation

using reasoned arguments and intellectual rigor, converting conceptual insights
into practical policy initiatives judged to be benecial to society
Ideas have consequences, and a free ow of competing ideas leads to an evolution of
policy adoptions and associated consequences affecting the well-being of society. The Hoover
Institution endeavors to be a prominent contributor of ideas having positive consequences.
In the words of President Hoover,
This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights,
and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic
systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity.
. . . The Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social, or economic action, except where local government or the people cannot undertake it for
themselves. . . . The overall mission of this Institution is . . . to recall the voice of
experience against the making of war, . . . to recall mans endeavors to make and
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The Economy

HOOVER DIGEST RESEARCH AND OPINION ON PUBLIC POLICY

H OOVER DIGEST 2014 N O. 1

RESEARCH AND OPINION

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Research and Opinion on Public Policy

2014 no. 1 winter

The Hoover Digest offers informative writing on politics, economics, and

The Hoover Digest (ISSN 1088-5161) is published quarterly by the Hoover

2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Chair, Board of Overseers

Tad and Dianne Taube

Senior Associate Directors

Counselors to the Director

HOOVER DIGEST 2014 N O. 1 W I NTE R

Capitalisms Nine (and More) Lives

Debt Ceilings and Distractions

Breaking Bad Bargains

Myths of the Financial Crisis

The Detroit Cure

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

The Treasurys Long Game

A President for All Seasons

Less Talk, More Wisdom

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Its Own Worst Enemy

The Doctor Wont See You Now

The Great Unraveling

Free the Modified Mosquitoes!

Higher Grades, Higher GDP

Dont Cheat Your Kids

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

How to Breed Atrocities

Humpty Dumpty in Syria

Return of the Bear

Would an Attack on Syria Be a Just War?

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

The Road to Damascus

A Long and Trying Season

For the Copts, Disaster and Diaspora

Great Wall of Corruption

Crazy Like a Fox

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Wolfe at the Door

H istory and Cul ture

King and the Dream

The Last Communist

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

The 1980s and 90s experienced a declining trend in unemployment

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

New from the Hoover Press is Government Policies

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

In 2009 the Financial Times commissioned a series of articles with very

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Illustration by Taylor Jones for the Hoover Digest.

The formerly mainly socialist government of Rwanda, a very poor

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Debt Ceilings and

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Hoover Digest N 2014 No. 1

Better than a debt-ceiling rule would be one that controls spending