The New Useful Idiots
Episode Notes
Transcript
Eliot’s road trip continues but Eric welcomes syndicated columnist, Bulwark Policy Editor, and host of the Beg to Differ Podcast Mona Charen. They discuss Mona’s 2003 book Useful Idiots describing the left’s Cold War and post-Cold War passion for anti-anti Communism and indulging in apologetics for Communist regimes including the Soviet Union, the PRC, Cuba, and others in search of a utopian socialism that never quite met expectations and ended up excusing some of the world’s worst human rights violators. They discuss the honorable tradition of cold war liberal anti-communism embodied by Harry Truman, Hubert Humprey and Henry Jackson and the alt-right’s attraction to and apologias for Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Vladimir Putin’s Russia in pursuit of a critique of contemporary America. They touch on the ongoing Republican debate on foreign policy, the Republican Party’s historic tradition of isolationism, the role of Wendell Wilke and Arthur Vandenberg in constructing a Republican internationalism and the prospects for a return to a Reaganaut foreign policy. They talk about the responsibilities of Reagan Republicans to call out the authoritarianism of Trumpism and Trumpists. Finally, Mona gives the speech Joe Biden should give to persuade the American people to continue supporting Ukraine and to give himself a political boost.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by
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the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. I’m Eric Edelman, I’m counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments and a Bulwark contributor and a non resident fellow at the Miller center. My normal partner in all things strategic, Elliot Cohen is traveling and will report back on his travels next week. But I’m joined today by a very special guest, the Bulwark own Mona Charen, the policy editor of the Bulwark, a syndicated columnist. The host of Beg to Differ, the Bulwark Secret Podcast, and the author of many books and not just many books, but many good books.
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She’s the author of do gooders, sex matters, hard right, and a book that particularly wanna talk to her about today. Beautiful idiots. Mona, welcome to shield of the Republic.
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It’s a privilege to be here, Eric. I’m a huge fan of shield of the Republic, which I listened to faithfully and learned a lot from.
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Well, thank you for that, and thank you for joining us today. As I’ve told you in the past, useful idiots was a very important book for me. I remember reading it, while I was the US ambassador to Turkey and two thousand three to two thousand five time period. It came out in two thousand three. And it talked about a particular kind of homegrown anti Americanism, that helped me a lot because I actually think anti Americanism starts at home.
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And, is picked up by, our adversaries overseas. Tell our listeners a little bit about useful idiots and the folks you profiled during the cold war before we move on to today’s useful idiots.
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Right. So What spurred me to write the book, was that during the, immediate aftermath of the West’s victory in the cold war. When the USSR basically folded its tent, pulled down its flag, said we’re done, The Berlin Wall came down. It was an unambiguous, victory for the forces of liberty and the defeat for the communist world. Obviously, there are still regimes, that that maintain fealty to communism, so they’re not all gone.
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But it was a huge epical moment. And, and what I noticed was that there was a certain amount of revisionism that was taking hold in the US where people were saying, oh, yes, you know, like, for example, in the Clinton years, people were saying, yes, back during the Cold War, we were all on the same page. We were all cold warriors. We all were, pulling our wars in the same direction. I thought, well, hold on.
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That’s not true. That’s not how I remember it. And in fact, you know, the subject of whether we were even on the right side in the Cold War was a matter of deep dis division in our society. And there were people who, were extremely anti communist, and I think it’s no surprise to any of your listeners that, there were people who went kind of, you know, who were who were a little bit crazed on the subject of finding communists under every bed. There was the McCarthy phenomenon.
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So there were people who went too far on the side of anti communism, and that Then there were people who went too far in the other direction on the side of being, if not pro communist and some were, but, but anti anti communist. So that was the posture of, I think, big chunks of the, Democratic Party. During the cold war. They, after Vietnam, but, it won’t go into too much detail, but Basically, there was a big, divergence within, liberal opinion after Vietnam. Many, many people decided that not only was the Vietnam war intervention on our part, a mistake, which I think most of us agree with.
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But, but the entire struggle against communism itself was was misbegotten. And so there was a huge fight within, a huge domestic fight in the United States between those like the Reaganites who wanted to support forces of freedom around the world who wanted to do whatever we could to, hamper the goals of the worldwide communist movement and that was basically the position of the Republicans. And the position of the Democrats was actually no, some of some Democrats took that view, to be clear. But many more took the view that no. No.
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The most important thing is to, is to negotiate arms control agreements and just make sure that this conflict doesn’t become a World War. That was their big priority, and they believe that arms control led to peace, which is debatable. In fact, I don’t believe that. And then finally, there were people, and I these are the ones who I called the useful idiots. And by the way, that’s term of art.
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It’s, it not a phrase that I originated. It was traced to, Vladimir Lennon, who supposedly said that the Liberals in the West would be useful idiots for their cause. And so there were people in the Democratic party sort of on the left and part left part of the Democratic party who went beyond, believing in arms control, they were real cheerleaders. For these different communist regimes around the world. And so first, it was Russia.
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Then when the Russians engaged in purges and, mass deaths. They moved on to China. And when China was no longer the bright young thing, they moved on to Cuba. Fair play for Cuba committee. And then on to nicaragua, we call them the Sandelistas, the people who traips down there to, to to to praise these regimes.
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And, so in a nutshell, that was what my book was about. It was about the people who deluded themselves out of ideological affinity into overlooking the really horrendous, severe, human rights abuses and aggression, and, you know, just crushing of the human spirit that went on in these regimes, they they managed to overlook all that because they were broadly on the left. And it was, and so, this book provides chapter and verse. I I quoted them. I and and I I was trying to call them to account because they turned out to be so wrong, and the very people in those regimes, once they got a chance, once they were able to vote, or once they were out from under the the, heavy, militarized, you know, the use of force in those regimes to keep, to keep the population at bay.
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They, they voted for democracy. They voted for for liberty and for a more Western way life. So that’s a very long winded answer to your question.
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I wanna pull on that thread, Mona, of, ideological self delusion, that you spoke about, you know, no enemies, on the left because I think there’s some lessons perhaps for those of us on the right today about what happened to those folks you described on the left. I mean, the the other tradition you’ve described in essence in the book and just now in that beautiful capsule summary you gave, anti anti communism. And there was also a tradition in the Democratic Party. I mean, actually, I came out of that tradition before I became a Republican. Which was the tradition of liberal, anti communism.
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It was a tradition, you know, I think represented by Harry Truman, when he ran in nineteen forty eight against a left wing Democratic candidate, Henry Wallace, who had been Roselt’s, vice president before Truman, it was represented by Ubert Humphrey, in the nineteen fifties and and scoop Jackson. And there was a whole wing of the Democratic party that essentially said these communist ideas are beyond the pale and can’t be, you know, countenanced in in our politics because they’re fundamental.
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Including including loom sorry. Let me just interrupt. Sure. One quick including union leaders like George Mimi.
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Yes.
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They were a very critical part of the anti communist liberal
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—
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Absolutely.
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Consensus. And
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the, yes, the effort to to kick the communist out of the, out of the CIO. And that was a very important part in my view of how and why the United States was successful in the cold war. Because not only did it it represent a policing by those on the center left of the extremists who would apologize for totalitarianism but it also represented, an ability to galvanize others in the west to stand up for for democracy and and freedom in, efforts like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was funded by the CIA, but provided a space in Europe, where the left was ascendant after the defeat of fascism in in Europe and World War two, to regroup and repair and create a kind of center right politics that, and center left politics that could hold the totalitarians and communists at bay. So I wanna come back to that in a minute because I think there’s some lessons for those of us on the right to learn. But, kit, yeah, what is it do you think that draws people on the alt right or the new right today?
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To engage in the kind of apologetics for Putin and for Victor Orban in Hungary that liberals, you know, on the left engaged in for, Stalin and the whole litany of, subsequent communist regimes that you just walked through. I mean, they were always celebrating, you know, the next pure socialist triumph that would, you know, then immediately, you know, evaporate until they could find the next one. But what drives people on the right to do this?
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Yeah. Well, I’ll come to the right in a second. But what one of the things one of the patterns that I’m sure you were call is there’d be a new communist, you know, there will be a revolutionary movement in some country. Right? And so the first thing that would be said is that the communists were part of a broad coalition with a lot of other groups right, which would actually be true.
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Right? And, and therefore not to worry, but then there would be the coup. And usually backed by the Soviets and sometimes the Chinese, right? So then they’d be the coup, and then they would say These aren’t the communists are not the ones who’ve succeeded here. These are, you know, great agrarian reformers.
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Right? Then when they began to take money from the Soviets and cut shut down the press, the protesting press, and and, you know, a press the churches and so on, then they would say, well, you know, if the US hadn’t been so hostile, these people would not have been forced into the arms of So it’s so on. I mean, isn’t that wasn’t that the the pattern again and again and again? It was always somehow the fault of, somebody other than the people who were, then the protagonists themselves.
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It’s what led Jean Kirk Patrick famously to, you know, describe the Democratic Party and, that met in San Francisco in nineteen eighty four as the blame America first party.
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Exactly. Exactly. So, so it is a fascinating thing now. So perhaps I need to write, a sequel to usefulness. And this time, focus on the right because so much of the so many of the tendencies are similar.
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So you see now Well, you saw then this, desire to find a country out there that was the kind of you know, fantasized, socialist, utopia. That would, by contrast with the US, show that, you know, it’s possible to have pure equality and to have, you know, people’s democracy and this play, you know, and so on. And because of that, the credulity was just amazing about places. I mean, Robert share, I think was his name, even waxed eloquent about North Korea for a while. Mino, it was just it was their their their credulity knew no bounds.
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There was a lot of revolutionary tourism that was going on.
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There that’s right. Paul Hollander, wrote, book called Political pilgrims where he, you know, described these people traipsing off to to find joy. And and, you know, they, they, at as we were saying a second ago, you know, they they would fall out of love with one regime like Cuban, and, but find another one a few years later and, and, and not learn their lesson about the fact that the way you judge a they were very sympathetic to countries that were hostile to the US, because they did blame America first. But, but, the critique of them was, well, why don’t you judge them by how they treat their own people? Rather than how much they hate the US.
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Maybe that’s a better guide to finding, whether a country is worthy of admiration. Well, so now you have, the political tourists on the right. You’ve got John Sullivan, former, former editor of National Review Magazine, who now lives in, Buddhist part time. And is the head of something called the Danube Institute. Where does the Danube Institute get its money, well from Victor Orban’s government?
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And he has become, you know, a a cheerleader for Orban. And you’ve had CPAC inviting Orban to speak, and then, also holding one of their conferences, in Hungary. You’ve had, Rod Drer, an intellectual, a writer for the American Conservative. You’ve had, Let’s see. So Rob Amari, heading over there.
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Patrick Denine, Chris Demuth. Yoram Hazzoni Jordan Peterson.
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Tucker Carlson.
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Tucker. And most importantly, yes, Tucker Carlson. Making pilgrimages to Hungary and lauding the regime there. And again, doing exactly what I was identifying had been done by leftist, in earlier decades, with left wing regimes, you know, ignoring all of the all of the unflattering facts about the regime that they are lauding. And, I I wrote this down.
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I thought it was great. Somebody wrote a a response to, Tucker, somebody who who was a Hungarian. And he said, He said that, you know, dear mister Carlson, he said, you desperately want to believe that somewhere on this planet there exists a Christian conservative Disneyland. And, and that’s really, that’s that’s so well put. And, of course, the critics point out, well, you know, Orban is, is repressing free speech.
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He is corrupt. He is in league with Putin. He is, you know, a very unreliable ally of the United States. And, and he is, you know, he he is not far from, you know, this this Christian utopia. It’s, it’s quite a repressive place that unfortunately has taken a d a a u-turn You know, it had been a communist country.
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It then went through a period of reform, and it was heading in the right direction. And now under Orban, it’s it’s taking a u-turn. And heading back to being a repressive country of the right wing variety instead of a left wing variety.
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Yeah. I feel this keenly personally having been, you know, the US ambassador to Turkey and watched, Erdogan take this authoritarian turn and and It was already visible and outlined when I was there, and now, of course, very visible in the way he has, run the country for the last the last twenty years, but it strikes me as I was listening to you, Mona, that history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. You know, this is once again, sort of, you know, sort of ideological blinders leading, people to apologize for regimes that they are holding up as models in response to their own critique of of of home, of the United States.
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Yes.
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And and, you know, if you believe, you know, in American carnage that the that the US is going through terrible moment and that religion is, you know, being, persecuted in the United States and that you know, everything is, going to hell in a handbasket and that, you know, Victor Orban’s hungry or even worse Vladimir Putin’s Russia are these havens for Judeo Christian values and conservative values and anti lgbtq, etcetera. You know, that can lead you, you know, to to this kind of inverted apologetics that you see coming, and it’s so it’s no surprise that, you know, Tucker Carlson now is a regular feature on, you know, nightly Russian, television propaganda broadcasts. But moreover, it, you know, there’s a fundamental problem with all of this, which is if you look for instance at church attendance in Russia or Hungary, and compare it to the United States, we are still by far a more religious country with more religious self identified religious believers in in polling than either of those places.
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Absolutely. And by a large margin, Look, one of the things that this reveals about the right is that, You know, and it does make me look back on some people on the right, not not people like you, and not people like Elliot and others, but Look at them and realize that, that the reason they were anti communist in the first place, maybe I misunderstood, okay, because I assume that the reason to be an anti communist is that they, are they they use violence. They don’t permit elections. They repress freedoms, every kind of freedom, religious freedom, social freedom freedom to move. They wouldn’t let people leave the country.
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It was a big prison, the USSR, asked Nathan Cheransky, who wrote a fantastic, prison diary, which, by the way, as I understand it, Navalny is now reading in prison. But, sheer no evil, I think it was called. Yes. And, but so, you know, but it turns out, that if if you’re the kind of person who can pivot from having been an anti communist to now being a pro Putin or pro orban person. Well, then it wasn’t the repression that bothered you.
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It was something else. Maybe it was, you know, the fact that, these places were anti religious. Or that they, you know, the the old communist regimes, or that they were, you know, against the rich, or at least they claimed to be where they had their own Nomen Kaltura as we know. You know, the when when people express admiration, whether they’re from the right or the left, for regimes that are repressive. They are not good Americans.
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Right? Because to be a good American, you have to adhere in my judgment. And yes, I am being judgmental. You you have to respect our constitution, our way of life, our liberties. And if you’re willing to apologize for any regime that doesn’t respect those liberties, in the name of, you know, getting one over on, you know, your domestic opponents.
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Then then you’re showing you’re not really dedicated to the principles that this country is founded upon and should be most proud of.
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Couldn’t agree more, and I think that leads very naturally into a discussion of the how one should frame the debate that’s going on in the Republican Party even now over the twenty twenty four presidential nomination with regard to American foreign policy. I mean, both you and I served in the Reagan administration. I think we both consider ourselves proud reganoffs and and cold warriors. And what I see going on in the Republican primaries, I find both kind of mystifying to in one sense, but also depressing, which is to say that candidates who are advocating for this kind of, you know, admiration of Putin and hostility towards Ukraine in the current conflict. Like Donald Trump, like Vivek, Ramaswamy, like Ron DeSantis account for roughly eighty three percent of the Republican, primary electorate according to polls.
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And those candidates who in the first debate spoke out strongly for Ukraine and critical of this sort of neo isolationist, trend and in favor of the kinds of things you know, that you and I would have found, you know, sort of the mainstream Republican approach for the last forty years, peace through strength, build up of American, you know, defenses, but willingness to negotiate at an appropriate time those candidates, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and and Chris Christie, as vigorous as they’ve been. And by the way, Chris Christie in the let even in the last few days, on television, have been very vigorous in his defense of democracy and and arguing passionately the United States needs to stand up to, authoritarian aggressors who are, seizing territory of their neighbors. But the three of them represent something like, you know, in the aggregate, thirteen to fifteen percent of the party. What what’s going on here? Do you think?
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And and, you know, how should we think about it?
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Well, not wanting to read too much into any particular snapshot in time, but let’s think back on that debate for a second because I do think that it’s emblematic something of the moment we’re at because I think the, I think the cement is still wet. In terms of where Republican opinion is gonna go about our world role and about Ukraine and so on. It is trending No question. In a in a worrisome direction, very worrisome. I’ll add to what you said.
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I was looking at a poll that said, sixty two percent of Democrats back additional funding for Ukraine, compared with just twenty eight percent of Republicans. So that’s that’s where things have trended. This is down very dramatically from, eighteen months ago when, Putin first invaded and Republicans were, strongly in favor of aid to Ukraine. So it’s it has dropped off quite a bit. But at that debate, you saw, the crowd kind of, you know, at first, they were, you know, they cheered Ramaswamy with his really absurd and and, patronizing and demagogic appeals to ridiculous positions.
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Like, you know, we’re gonna let, we’re we’re gonna map out a deal with Putin and, you know, he he’s gonna promise to cut off his relations with China and in return. We’re gonna give him parts of Ukraine. I mean, the whole thing is just separate postures. But the crowd was sort of energized by Ramas Swamy, they liked what he was saying, but then when Nikki Haley schooled him, They cheered for her too. And so that’s what I mean by the cement is wet.
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Like, public opinion hasn’t really gelled completely on the Republican side, and leadership right now makes a huge, huge difference. And I can’t say that I’m optimistic about the direction that it’s going because, first of all, that debate was among people who are not gonna get the nomination or in all likelihood of probably not gonna get the nomination. And it seems very likely that it’s going to be trump. And we know that he is, I’m not gonna use bad language, but he is, very fond of Putin. And, and in awe of Putin.
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So that’s, pretty clear what that would mean for you crane. If god forbid, he were to be reelected. But, and the other the other thing to say is that leaving the, you know, the the public is led by opinion leaders. And the way things are going on Fox and the other outlets of conservative opinion through Talk Radio and the internet and so on. The loudest voices, the Steve Bannons and others, is in a very authoritarian, friendly direction.
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And that seems to be the, where the wind those people have the wind in their sails. And the very fact that Rava Swamy, has, you know, gotten all of this attention and buzz as the the Trump wannabe, but as, you know, somebody who who’s foreign policy views are juvenile and, but extremely, autocrat friendly, tells you something about the, the base of the Republican Party now. And so it is, yeah, very, very scary.
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Of course, I mean, there’s a history here too, which is that, there always was a tradition of it was called isolationism. I’m not sure that’s exactly the right term. But the, Republican Party had a a strong wing. It wasn’t just Republican Republicans, by the way. Also some, liberal, democrats, so called progressive Democrats in the twenties and thirties who did not wanna be involved in in Europe’s affairs, thought the United States could stay out.
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Many of them advocated an Asia first policy rather than focusing on the storm clouds in in Europe in the late nineteen thirties. In nineteen forty, when Roosevelt ran for a third term, it looked for all the world, like the Republican nominee, was going to be Robert Taft, Mr. Conservative, the senator from Ohio, the Republican establishment at the time kind of intervened and and created a boom for Wendell Wilkey, who had actually been a Democrat, but was, a, actually an energy, executive at at the time, who was a a kind of internationalist and supported aid to the allies. This is before, Pearl Harbor and before Hitler declared war on the United States. Taff remained a very powerful force and the Republican Party, and that line of thought remained pretty powerful until Dwight Eisenhower came back from Europe as supreme allied commander in nineteen fifty two to prevent the Republican nominee from being Robert Taft, and and Eisenhower became the nominee.
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And that the sort of, that sort of isolationist current kind of was dormant, I would say, in the Republican Party, until twenty sixteen. I mean, others came, you know, there were Rand Paul seemed to and Ron Paul seemed to represent that current as well, but it was very
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Pap Buchanan.
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Pap Buchanan, but it was very much a minority. It really took Trump in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen to sort of really revivify, all of this. So, you know, there’s a kind of history to this that we shouldn’t, I think, gain say. But I guess it it then
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Could I just interrupt?
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Yeah. Please. No. Go ahead.
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Second just to say just to say that that Wendell Wilkey was one of the great heroes of American history in my opinion. It gets an unsung hero because at the price of his own political, fortunes, he he wanted to do the right thing, and he refused to demagogue the issue of giving aid to the allies. He was for it. He helped Roosevelt tremendously — Sure.
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—
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on that score. Yes. And, and, you know, he he died tragically quite young, but, anyway, he was, a heroic figure.
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Another figure, you know, I think is quite heroic was Arthur Vanderberg, who himself was, kind of of that Taphte isolationist, ilk, But after the impact of Pearl Harbor in World War II realized that in the modern world, that kind of approach just wouldn’t work and became a very important part of the founding of NATO and and and the creation of a kind of internationalist consensus both left and right that, you know, really helped guide the country through the cold war helped helped to win the cold war. Because although there were debates, of course, during the cold war, as you rightly said earlier, not everybody was, you know, agreed about how best to deal with, with the Soviet challenge, there was a very broad consensus in the country, that that allowed us to to win. So I guess, you know, one of my questions is Kinda, what is the responsibility of those of us on the center right? You know, seeing this pattern of of useful idiocy you know, now occurring on our side of the political house as it were. What responsibility do we have for sort of policing that.
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And I’ll add one other provocative thought. You know, I’ve said it before on the on the show, which is that you know, Leo Strauss famously said the argument at Hitler is always, you know, a bad argument. But I am reading, a biography of Hitler by Brendan Simms, the British historian. It’s called a global biography, which is really a misnomer. It it’s really a kind of ideological biography of Hitler, and it actually makes a powerful case that Hitler was, very focused on the United States and and and and the anglosphere in general, the British and the Americans, which is one reason why he declared war on us in, in nineteen forty one after Pearl Harbor.
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But if you look at the rhetoric that Simms, you know, walks you through as Hitler is becoming a a a powerful political figure in Germany in in the twenties and thirties. It is a critique of international finance capital, globalization, globalism, global elites. And for all of life, me, and I’m not suggesting that, you know, Josh Holly or JD Vance are Hitler, But if you listen to their arguments, you know, it it’s very similar in terms of the ideological tenure. And character to go back to the point you were making that this is not the kind of conservatism that, you know, that Ronald Reagan thousand that you and I grew up in in the in the Republican Party?
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It sure isn’t. By the way, my husband read that book. So, he told me about that that thesis about his, preoccupation with the US, which is interesting. I recently reread, the rise and fall of the third right, which is, really an amazing piece of history. And, and there are I’m sorry, but there are a lot of parallels.
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There just are. Right. You know, with people who who don’t really they don’t approve, and they think he’s crude and all of that. But, you know, he does make some good points, and You know, these people have been neglected and we have to listen to that, you know, all that stuff. So look, One thing is, you know, that in order to have influence, with people, you have to, you know, you have to have some common ground.
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So I try to my appearance at CPAC in twenty eighteen because I was over conservative. I tried to say, you know, look, we can’t criticize, you know, only Democrats for, you know, mistreating women and for me too episodes and all the rest of it. We have to be honest about those on our own side, or we’re gonna lack credibility. And I, and I couldn’t have said that if I had been a lefty, right? You can’t say that to CPAC audience.
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You wouldn’t have been invited etcetera. Of course, having done that once, I’m not gonna be invited back to CPAC, so I’m not gonna be in a position to
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It is a very courageous appearance, and it’s a badge of honor that you’re not being invited back.
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Well, well, yeah. Thanks. I I, you know, I I thank you for that. I agree with that. But, still, you know, you you have to find, those voices on the conservative side.
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That are brave enough to say the right things. So you need to elevate, the the Brad Rafhensburgers. The Ken Bucks, the, you know, the the the Gabe Sterling, all of the people And by the way, there was quite a long list of Republicans who, when it came to the twenty twenty election, including Mike Pence, who had they acted differently, we would been in a much more horrific constitutional crisis than what we faced on that day. So, Those people have to be, have to be lauded and elevated. And, you know, it’s it’s I to the degree that that you and I still have any credibility among, conservatives.
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You know, hopefully, you know, we can do our small, parts but, the problem is with this kind of, severe polarized thinking. And I’ve had this happen with even people in my own family where I was trying to argue them out of, support for Trump, and it comes down to the same argument all the time, which is, by the way, the same argument that you find historically as well. Which is they’ll say, well, yeah. I mean, Trump, no question about it. I don’t like him.
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They’ll say. And I wouldn’t want my kids to be like him. But when the other side is so extreme and so radical, you need a really vicious leader to take them on because the worst possible thing is for the left to get back in power. And, you know, that’s the way their minds work, and it happens on both sides. But At the moment, I feel very strongly that as much as I vehemently disagree with many things about the Democratic Party.
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And, and I I I think they’re misguided on many subjects. I agree. Particularly, I will say at the risk of getting a lot of hate mail. I think they are so wrong about the whole trans kids thing where I I think this is a big mistake that they’re heading down, but but When it comes to who poses a bigger threat to our democratic experiment, is it liberals or conservatives, it’s not it’s not a hard judgment. It’s conservatives.
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It’s the right. The threat from the right now is much more immediate and much more serious. And I don’t know how it’s how our country is going to do if Trump is reelected. I mean, I I really it’s almost
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It’s almost unthinkable. I but but on the other hand, you know, as one of my lines of work is nuclear deterrents. And as, you know, Herman Khan taught us, you have to think about the unthinkable. So it’s Yes. So it’s, it’s, and and JBL has been doing a, you know, a pretty good job of that and Charlie as well.
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In other parts of the of the sprawling bulwark empire. I, I take some heart In the fact that I as as we speak, I think, Mike Pence is giving a speech, about, populism versus conservatism. And while I think he’s, according to what I read in the press, he is not going to, you know, call out Trump by name. And, of course, he bears some responsibility for having like Chris Christie, normalized Trump. I think it’s a healthy sign, though, that he he sees this as a, sort of an ideological issue has to be taken on inside the party.
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And and
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so I think that’s a, you know, a glimmering of some hope that, you know, maybe others will take up that mantle as well and and try and defend the more traditional. He’s doing it very explicitly as I understand as a defense of Reaganite, you know, sort of conservatism.
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And it is, it is a good thing. I don’t know how far it will go, but it is a good thing that on that debate stage, everybody except Ron DeSantis and Ram and Ramaswamy, said Well, eat well, no. Ron DeSantis did eventually say that Mike Pence did the right thing on January six.
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Right.
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Mike Pence was right to force the issue. And to make that because if the question was asked, and they sort of slid past it, and he made the math, you know, answer it again. And, And so, you know, that at least, at least is a marker of some kind. I’m, I’m not sure how how much dividends it Will Saletan also, again, you know, the it seems possible to me, that even though the Republican Party is circling the wagons around Trump, that this rally around the flag phenomenon is something that I don’t wanna I don’t wanna make predictions that I’m gonna have to eat let me let me be very careful how I phrase this. Look, there are millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans who do not know what Trump is accused of having done.
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They just don’t. They say, oh, they’re they’re after him. He they’re they’re they’re always after him. And, it’s all political, but that When they actually see the evidence that is presented at a trial, some of them may be seeing it for the first time. We’ll see.
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We certainly know that in terms of, like, this nightmare that we’re all worried about, whether he could get reelected, we know twenty percent of Republicans are telling pollsters. They will not vote for Trump. Period. So that’s If that holds true, that’s enough, perhaps, to pro prevent him from being reelected, though, by the way, it’s not enough for the democrat to win the popular vote. They have to win it by four or five points because of the electoral college, asymmetry.
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But, but then if you look at independent voters who decide our elections, they are much closer in their views to Democrats about how much they dislike Trump than they are to Republicans. So we have to, you know, that’s it’s cold comfort. It’s not much, but that’s what I’m, that’s what it may come down to.
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I was laughing at you, and you said you didn’t wanna have to, you know, eat some, you know, at some point in the future, a prediction made here on on shield of the Republic, I when I was serving in Moscow at the embassy back in the late eighties, which was a period of high pedestorica and we were going through the period of glossiness. A lot of historical revelations were coming out. A lot of documents were being opened, etcetera. And the joke was in in in the Soviet Union now. It’s very hard to predict the past.
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So Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah.
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Mona, you are, a former speechwriter, for missus Reagan, and and you just, you wrote a column last year, at the outset of the war in Ukraine, about the speech that, Joe Biden should give to the nation about this, fight and why it’s important to Americans. I noticed that you reposted it yesterday. On Twitter or X, whatever it is now.
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I think you reminded me.
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So, what, you know, now that we’re a year and a half into this, And some of us have, and particularly on shield of the republic, we’ve been banging away at the fact that the president has yet to really present the case to the American public. He has not made a full throated defense of, you know, the policy He hasn’t explained why it’s in the American interest to provide upwards of a hundred billion dollars in assistance, both military and, economic to Ukraine. He’s made all sorts of comments, you know, on the run to gaggles of you know, of news media folks, either getting on or off Air Force One or on a bike ride at Rehobeth. But he’s not done. You know, the sort of, prime time oval office address that at least I think is necessary.
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Maybe it’s, you know, not possible anymore because our media environment is so fragmented. You couldn’t be sure that all the networks would cover it, etcetera, etcetera. Maybe you can’t do that anymore the way president Reagan did, the way President Eisenhower and Kennedy and and, even John Or
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even George w Bush?
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George w Bush. I mean, you know, the so Maybe it’s not possible anymore, but I mean, I still think it’s necessary given that we’ve had another, you know, year plus since you wrote initially, what would you say in the speech? How would you how would you try to persuade the American public that what happens in Ukraine is terribly important for the future of American, peace and prosperity.
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Well, first of all, let me just say I find it utterly mystifying why Biden didn’t seize this opportunity greedily because, there is rarely an opportunity. There’s rarely a topic on which it is possible to be so presidential as giving an important address on a matter of international, you know, peace or war. I mean, that is where you are at the height of your powers as president and your influence as a world leader. And I would think he would want to, seize that. And, and own it, you know, stopping on your bike and we’re whole both and saying, you know, yeah, we’re gonna do it as long, we’re gonna do whatever we whatever take no.
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That’s you know, trivializes it. Okay. So that’s the first thing I’m utterly mystified as to why he hasn’t seized it. And you’re right. It’s not gonna be the same as, you know, Reagan or or even Clinton giving a a a primetime address, not the same at all because of our different media environment, but it would still be covered.
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It would still get, a lot of attention. And it would it would appear in little clips on TikTok and, you know, Twitter and all the X, whatever. It would appear. And I also think it would have been a chance for him to make a point that is kind of ties in with what we were discussing throughout this this whole conversation. Namely, what do we stand for as Americans?
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Who are we? And he could have said, look, this is the face of autocracy. This is the kind of brutal invasion of another country just because you don’t think you, particular, Putin, don’t think it should exist as an independent nation. You couldn’t do that in a democracy. You’d have to persuade the voters that this was a good idea to send their sons to to such an adventure.
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But a but an autocrat can do it, and they do do it on a regular basis. And we, in the United States have certainly made our share of mistakes in our foreign policy, but we have also we also have a proud history of standing up for smaller weaker countries that are invaded by or oppressed by bigger, more aggressive neighbors. And that is one of our roles in the world is to be a beacon of liberty, to be the arsenal of democracy as we called ourselves in the Second World War, before we even got into the war. And, this is a smaller Democratic country. Yeah.
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Is Ukraine perfect? No. No country is perfect, but Ukraine is a western leaning Democratic country that is fighting for its very survival. It is being, the the the crimes that are being committed against it by by Russia are despicable, and it is our great honor and privilege to help the Ukrainian people to fight off this kind of aggression. And that is part of what it means to be, a leader of the free world.
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And that is a role that we have undertaken since the end of World War II. It’s in our national DNA. And I am proud to be continuing a tradition, you know, that began with Roosevelt and was upheld by Truman and Eisenhower and, you know, list them all. And, and that is part of who we are. And and, you know, and and we have rallied NATO around us.
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Putin thought he could stroy NATO. NATO was stronger than ever now, etcetera, etcetera. And, he might even throw in something, about how if you are concerned about China and what China’s plans are in the world, The very best thing you can do to ensure that China thinks that they’re, you know, that that this is the time to attack Taiwan is to, you know, allow Ukraine to go under. So for all of those reasons, for our own values and interests, and for world peace, and for, our concern about the threat from China for all of those reasons. We have to support Ukraine to the hilt.
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I’m voting for you, Mona. You know, just
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to just Here’s my website.
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You know, just just the crass political argument for doing it. You would think would would, you know, carry some weight in the White House. I don’t understand it. I mean, If you look at Biden’s polling numbers, they go south two years ago at the time of the totally shambolic catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now I know that they’re all convinced that they, a, made the right decision and, b, that they, you know, carried it off as best that could possibly be carried off, etcetera.
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But the politics of it are clear. The the Afghan withdrawal shattered his reputation with American voters for competence. And yet he has managed, I think, even with all my systems, and I’ve been pretty critical. The Ukrainian thing about as well as one, you know, could hope. I mean, it could have done more and, you know, faster.
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But all things considered, it’s gone better than one might have anticipated. Particularly after Afghanistan. So here was a chance to wash away some of the, you know, the, you know, the public view of him is incompetent. And I mean, by the way, I think he just didn’t do himself any service during his press conference appearances in, you know, August of, two thousand twenty one because he was so, wasp and testy and cranky, this would be an opportunity to kind of, you know, wipe a lot of that away and restore his reputation of competence and yet they don’t seem to be in the slightest bit of it and doing it. I don’t understand it.
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I don’t understand it at all. And, and, yeah, as you say, just purely as a crass political matter. You know, he he doesn’t need to do it, but after he gives a brilliant, you know, inspiring America as the leader of the free world speech, can have his assistance say. And by the way, you know, Trump is, is praising Putin, you know? That’s that’s your choice, ladies and gentlemen.
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Somebody who wants to lead the free world and stand up for freedom and fight vicious aggression and somebody who sympathizes with vicious aggression.
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Our guest has been the Bulwark’ very own Mona Charen. Mona, thank you so much for for joining us today. It’s been really fun having you. I hope we can have you back from time to time.
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I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to this ever since you
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and and and I hope that this prompts you to write a sequel, you know, volume two of useful idiots. I think I think we need it.
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I might have to. Thank you so much, Eric.
