Critical Mass

By Daniel Gelernter

On Wednesday May 16, 2007 I was honored to attend the third annual Norman Podhoretz Lecture, hosted by the great New York-based neo-conservative magazine, Commentary. My record of attendance at the Commentary Podhoretz Dinners has been perfect so far, and in writing this piece I am deftly positioning myself as the unofficial Commentary Dinner Chronicler, who sees all and writes about everything he thinks he understands.

On the afternoon of the impending dinner, I carefully prepared myself by installing the Gentleman’s outfit and the Conservative’s battle gear – in this case a gray suite and a yellow tie. At 4:00 my family piled into our hired car to make the traditional journey from suburban Connecticut to the Union League Club, 38 East 37 Street on Park Avenue.

After a two-and-a-half-hour drive, we arrived at the correct awning and stepped through the heavy, brass-and-oak revolving door into what were now familiar surroundings. I reported last year that I had discovered, on looking into the club’s billiards room, that “the balls at the first table seemed somewhat under-sized.” The author is now happy to report that this unusual set-up was most likely an instance of the game called “snooker,” or, as my English friend who explained it to me says, “snooo-kah.”

So much for athletics; it was time to locate the cocktail reception. After a short elevator ride we stepped out onto the third floor, where we were instantly reassured that we had found the right place by the presence of Commentary’s editor, the all-around wonderful guy and Neo-Conservative par-excellence, Neal Kozodoy. We exchanged greetings, and went to find our seating name-cards (a considerable part of the excitement of the Comentary Dinner is discovering where and with whom you’ll be sitting). I was happy to learn that my brother Josh and I would be sitting together, along with a good friend from Yale, Miss Eliana Johnson, daughter of Powerline Blogger Scott Johnson. She’d graduated from Yale the year before, so I was looking forward to pumping her on the subject of life after college.

We gradually made our way into the large, carpeted reception hall, where more than two-hundred fellow Conservatives were already milling about. I recognized some faces – we’d met Mr. Hertog, one of Commentary’s biggest supporters, on the way in, and I saw Norman and John Podhoretz, Ambassador John Bolton (who would give the keynote speech that night) and a recognizable fellow I couldn’t quite place (it suddenly came to my brother a little later – Scooter Libby). By and large, however, I was surrounded by the unknown (to me) faces who create and own the New York Conservative scene. Of the two categories of people in attendance (important people and children of important people) I was in the latter category.

We were happy to locate Miss Johnson, who introduced us to a friend of hers from work named Adam (my mind has already surrendered his surname to the ravages of time) and we spent much of the reception in this happy little conversational circle. (My brother had meanwhile been borrowed by Ricky Greenfield, who wanted him as a free-lance writer for the Connecticut Jewish Ledger). I spied another Yalie, Aaron Rothstein, with whom I eat frequently at the Yale Hillel and who is, like me, both a rising Junior and the son of a Commentary writer.

Although there were a number of past and present Yalies floating around – not to mention Ambassador Bolton himself – I was looking out in particular for Mr. Bolton’s daughter, “JS” Bolton, one of my best friends at school, as well as a colleague in Yale’s sole bastion of conservatism, the Tory Party of the Political Union. But JS did not seem to be around. I eventually worked up enough courage to ankle over to her father (whom I’d always wanted to meet) and introduce myself. This required a few moments of standing around in a strategic position – since it is necessary, before besieging a keynote personality, to gradually sidle up to him while simultaneously pretending to be wrapped up in the surrounding conversation. Eventually I managed to thrust my hand resolutely forward and remark that I was a friend of his daughter at Yale, which is a step up from being an ordinary member of the fan club. Ambassador Bolton took the introduction in his friendliest manner, and even asked what year I was in. This gave me in turn the ask if his daughter were coming, to which he replied that he was wondering the same thing. (They were supposed to be there already).

This was a mystery, but nonetheless within the grasp of the panacea of my era, the cellphone text message. I dispatched a quick note to JS’s cell (trying all the while to appear business-like) and shortly got the reply that Mrs. and Miss Bolton were still on the train, because Amtrak (motto: “Mediocre, but Poorly Priced”) had struck again.

The Union League staff showed up promptly at seven o’clock with their four-tone dinner-bells to urge the crowd back on the elevators to head down to the banquet hall (second floor). This is my favorite part of the club because of its impressive display-cases full of toy soldiers. We were a little ahead of the crowd coming in for dinner, and thus had to form a makeshift conversational circle to prevent premature entry into the dining hall.

The time to move in being reached, I confirmed once again that I was assigned for table 29, and took care not to repeat my mistake of the two previous years, which is to sit facing the wrong direction and thus be forced pay attention to the speakers at the cost of letting my dessert melt. My brother Josh sat next to me and we chatted for a while about the impressive array of Conservatives – Josh is, in particular, a tremendous fan of Scooter Libby and was dying for an introduction, which I thought he might get given the proper combination of luck, skill and daring. Meeting important people is like driving a race car, except there are no cash prizes and it is significantly more dangerous.

We were especially happy when Eliana Johnson and her friend Adam joined us, since we then had what was essentially our own littler dinner-table clique. As I turned my attention to the food situation I noted what I can only presume to be a great personal triumph and proof of the power of the press, which is namely that the salad which I had poked fun at rather aggressively in my previous two pieces on the Commentary Dinner had been replaced with a new and improved version. As proud as I am of this accomplishment (if it is my accomplishment) I hope that Commentary won’t take it amiss when I say that I do not want this to be remembered as the pinnacle of my literary career.

We were joined at our table by five more guests, including Robert Peach, an editor and contributor to Commentary’s online blog and magazine “Contentions,” and a friend of his who was shortly to graduate from MIT (it turned out we had a mutual acquaintance who is now a grad student and daily attendee of the orthodox minyan at Yale). We had a very nice group, and, despite the level of ambient noise, were able to hear (and sense when it was too loud to hear) a large amount of high-quality conspiratorial Conservative chit-chat mixed together with your average dinner-table talk. I will even confess that I thought the dinner was actually good – though I am not sure what the implications are of acquiring a taste for haute-cuisine, and am afraid it will lessen my opinion of hamburgers.

When the dessert arrived it turned out to be a non-melting type – a miniature chocolate mousse cake decorated with a tiny flourish of gold-leaf (which I gathered was edible). It was at this point that a tapping on water glasses signaled that the feature event was about to begin. The entire room turned its attention to the podium at the front. I figured that this left me free to turn my attention to a very attractive young lady in a blue dress sitting at the table next to mine. I should explain that a Conservative gentleman is not in his element at Yale. When he is suddenly immersed in an atmosphere that includes (attractive and well-dressed) Conservative ladies, he is in danger of not devoting his full attention to the business at hand. This is defensible inasmuch as it can be called “thinking about the big picture.”

As the room got quiet, and I thought about the big picture, Neal Kozodoy took the podium, and introduced himself and Norman Podhoretz, then Ambassador Bolton, and then the man who would be introducing Ambassador Bolton, who was none other than “the master diplomat and explainer of our time” (or words to that effect): Henry Kissinger. Mr. Kozodoy’s words about Ambassador Bolton were particularly entertaining, as he discussed Mr. Bolton’s struggle to survive the insinuation (first) that he was a Neo-Con, and (second) that he a Jew. Though both assertions have often been denied, we were more than happy to welcome him to the center of Jewish Neo-Conservatism. Mr. Kozodoy pointed out that his own denials on Ambassador Bolton’s behalf didn’t help any more than the Ambassador’s own – one might say “Es vet helfen vi a toiten bahnkes” (and he advised us to ask a Yiddish-speaking neighbor for the translation, which is, literally, “it will help like blood-cupping on a dead body”). Mr. Kozodoy’s speech also included a well-deserved accolade to Scooter Libby, which was got a standing ovation.

Mr. Kozodoy then yielded the podium to Henry Kissinger who opened in his wonderful, deliberate, heavily accented manner by making clear his great affection for Norman Podhoretz (a man who came to his attention by “attacking me from very conceivable direction”). Mr. Kissinger prepared to introduce Ambassador Bolton by way of telling us that he was forced to do something he had never done before, and that we, as the audience, could therefore consider ourselves as participating in an historic moment: “I have to admit that I was wrong… When Condi called me and told me they were thinking about appointing John, I thought that there might be better candidates. I also thought that he might not be that well received at the UN. The second part turned out to be true actually.” But he had to admit that Ambassador Bolton had indeed been the right man – and a very fine man – and that it was an honor for him to introduce his keynote speech at the Norman Podhoretz Lecture.

Ambassador Bolton stepped to the lectern amidst another standing ovation to deliver an excellent, solidly Conservative speech (of course we expected no less). He pointed out the central importance of Bush’s 2002 “axis of evil” speech, where the President very clearly stated that America will deal with threats, and that despite the inevitable timidity of other governments, we will do what we have to to protect ourselves. The Left is never in favor of confronting threats, such as the great modern problem of nuclear proliferation. The Left wants an alternative, but cannot think of one.

Ambassador Bolton defended the policy of regime change, first by focusing on Iraq. It is vital, he said, to separate Iraq into two distinct questions: first, were we right to depose Saddam? Second, have we conducted ourselves well during reconstruction? Even if we have not, it does not follow that we wrong to invade. WMD is not the issue – Saddam was a murderous dictator and his regime an ipso facto threat the United States. There is no question that were right to remove him.

We must learn from past missed opportunities, the two greatest examples being fascism and communism – when we could have acted (for example) to assassinate Hitler but didn’t; where we could have crushed the fledgling Soviets but were too indifferent to act. The first Gulf War is another good illustration – failure to depose Saddam the first time around has cost us plenty.

We must appreciate that “the exercise of diplomacy is not costless.” Time is always against us, so we cannot say, as some do, that we ought always to try diplomacy because ‘even if it doesn’t help, it doesn’t hurt.’ On the contrary, we need to focus on results, and to eliminate threats quickly and effectively.

“We have a very flawed instrument in the State Department.” Despite its being full of well-educated and dedicated men, it has not escaped some fundamental problems. The first is “clientitis” – diplomats who tend to advocate for whatever country they are assigned to, as opposed to being advocates for the United States. Many diplomats seem not to realize who their real “client” is. The second problem is “mirror-imaging” – the dangerous assumption that the people we are bargaining with are basically like us, are reasonable, and have the same ideals. This leads to an overly optimistic view of what negotiation and “reasonable” offers will accomplish.

Next, “moral equivalency”: when one country attacks another, the second country responds, the initial country attacks again, and so forth. This is simply called a “cycle of violence” without reference to the fact that one country is acting in self-defense and that the other is the aggressor. This does raise the notable question of what the proper level of response is: a year ago Hezbollah, operating from Lebanon, killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Israel invaded Lebanon in response. Some people claim that Israel used too much force, but what was Israel supposed to do? “Kidnap two soldiers and kill three and call it even?” It’s like suggesting that when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor we should just have sunk an equivalent number of their ships and stopped at that.

The last problem in today’s State Department today is the “triumph of process over substance”: paying too much attention to the order of speeches and what the seating arrangements are and so forth. It’s not to say that these things aren’t important – they just should not be the dominating concern. Ambassador Bolton went on to point out that regime change does not necessarily have to be accomplished via invasion – there are other methods, such as the use of covert forces to destabilize a government, which work well and that we should cultivate. Nor do we necessarily have to occupy an area to change its regime – we do not, after all, want to create an empire, we just want to remove bad governments.

“I am Burkean by nature, so lets get down to cases – who should we overthrow?”

(It was about at this point in the speech that Mrs. and Miss Bolton arrived. With a comment to that effect by the Ambassador, the audience applauded as the Amtrak-sabotaged family walked into the room to take seats at the front table.)

Ambassador Bolton enumerated his list of candidates for regime change (following Afghanistan and Iraq): Iran, where the people dislike the government and the situation is ripe for regime change – this might be a particularly good place for the covert ops approach. It is certain that we must act, since it is obvious that Iran isn’t going to be “chit-chatted” out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s is a fragile regime and could be vulnerable. Since they are the world’s number-one proliferators of anything they can sell for cash, we must address the problem before they sell someone a nuke – because now it’s only a question of when the right amount of money finds its way to the right North Korean bank account.

Cuba used to be worth our efforts at regime change, but it looks like the “actuarial tables” will take care of it for us fairly soon.

Sudan and Burma are often mentioned as possibilities but they should not be at the top of our list – they are not sufficiently dangerous to the US. Likewise Venezuala: Hugo Chavez has often been described as “Castro without brains” – he may be worth overthrowing in the future, but not yet. Syria is too dangerous – Israel has not attacked, which indicates that there might be more to loose than gain by targeting Syria in the short term. Instead we should concentrate on success in Iraq and supporting the democratic regime in Lebanon that Syria is trying to undermine.

Ambassador Bolton closed by saying that he didn’t really expect us to pursue regime change everywhere we should, but there is always “room to hope.”

The speech was followed by another standing ovation, and question time. I knew that my parents would be tired and prefer to get back home sooner rather than later (who wouldn’t?) but I was determined at least to say hello to JS. I muscled my way over to the front of the banquet hall – no mean feat, since half the room was streaming out to the post-dinner cocktail party and the other half was trying to engage some member of the Bolton family in conversation. I did manage to get in a few words to JS while my brother Josh successfully introduced himself to Ambassador Bolton. I would have stayed to chat with JS and other Yalies, but duty called and I knew it was time to go home.

I broke the Union League Club’s no-cellphone rule for a second time by calling our limo driver and letting him know we were ready for pickup. As I finished making this call in the club’s lobby the blue-dress girl and family (which appeared to be a red-dressed younger sister and their father) walked past me and out the door. I didn’t even have time to get her name or phone number, but I would obviously appreciate her sending me both so I don’t have to look for her at next year’s Commentary Dinner on the basis of a dress pattern, which is a changeable thing in women (and which men can’t remember anyway). I walked out the door with Ambassador Bolton’s admonitions about missed opportunities ringing in my ears.

We had a chance to say goodbye to Mr. Hertog, who was also leaving – he pointed out the basic refreshingness of hearing a man speak well and directly, as Ambassador Bolton most certainly had. The whole evening left one in a generally good mood. Mr. and Mrs. Hertog stepped into a rather striking white Lexus, and we crossed the road and climbed back into our hired sedan.

We arrived back at home an hour-and-a-half later (almost twenty-four hours ago to the minute, as I write this sentence). So now, with my compulsion to write satisfied and my duty to describe discharged, I bid you all good night.