My Blog Birth

An announcement to the blogniverous of the world:

I am probably much too old for this sort of thing, but I have decided to birth myself as a blogger. Some of my friends--some even older than me--have done it, so it seemed to me something to consider. I considered it, and decided to go ahead.  

Here is why. 

I am, I have to confess, a congenital blabberer. So I figured that if I blab in a blog, maybe I'll have fewer words left over to hurl at family and friends.  That'll make me a better listener--that, anyway, is my hope. 

More important, with a new administration begun, and me with lots and lots to say about it as it progresses from day to day, month to month, year to year, this blog will double as a sort of open diary, a memoir of the times in the making.  And I hope, I also confess, that after four or eight years, I might have the makings of a book from the blog raw materials I sketch out.

If this is my main reason for blogging, there are lesser ones, as well. As the editor of a well respected magazine situated in downtown Washington, DC, only about a mile or so from the White House, I am hardly isolated intellectually. Some of the most fascinating and stimulating writing around ends up on my desk one way or another. But the wise man, says the Talmud, is the man who knows how to learn from everyone--so the more interaction I can have with thoughtful people, the better. And if they live outside the proverbial beltway, even outside the country, so very much the better.  It can get stuffy inside interstate 495.

But that begs the question of who should, or might wish to, read Obamanation-The Newest Deal, which is what I have ended up naming this, since neither part of the name was available by itself. Obviously, this is a decision others will make, but I owe it to potential readers to describe myself, politically at least, so that those decisions will be more informed. I will try to be brief.

I am a 57-year old male, born in Washington, DC -- the old Columbia Hospital for Women -- grown up in the Commonwealth of Virginia when segregation still existed. An only child (sort of.....it's complicated), I have a wife and three grown children, and have had only one wife ever and intend no others. I have a social science doctorate from an Ivy League university (I can hear the rush to the door even as I type), but have never worked full-time for any university despite teaching here and there at several. Before my editorship at The American Interest magazine I was a State Department speechwriter, mainly for Colin Powell and briefly for Condoleezza Rice. I was not, however, a schedule C political appointment; that could not be since I am not and never have been a Republican.  Before that, I edited another magazine, and before that I was a staff member on a Federal commission (the Hart-Rudman Commission), and before that I worked at a think tank in Philadelphia and for only a short time just after finishing Ph.D. work, barely worth mentioning except that I learned a good bit from it, worked a little as a Senate staffer. 

I used to be a Democrat before around 1990, that day when most Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted against authorizing the use of force to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi aggression. (That was the last straw; I took out my little card and tore it to pieces. I considered mailing the pieces to Sam Nunn, but thought better of it, for he had given Senator Jackson use of the space I had literally sat in. So it would have been too churlish to do that, it seemed to me, besides which I was not angry at him so much as disappointed.) Rather, I was a schedule B appointment at the State Department, an "expert" hire, which, when applied to a speechwriter residing in Policy Planning, tells us all something about the state of the English language in contemporary America.  

As befits a political independent, perhaps, I voted this past November 4 for neither major party candidate. I wrote in instead the person who I thought would do the best job: Colin Powell, my former boss. It was between him and Bob Dylan. Dylan lost out, but I never play any Colin Powell record albums, so call it even. (I will explain later, in a future post, why I could not bring myself to vote for Obama or McCain.)

Labels are dangerous and often misleading as substitutes for thought rather than exemplars of it, but I promised to be brief so I have no choice. I am in the main a realist when it comes to international politics, a reluctant hawk in the sense that although I am in no principled way against the use of force in the national interest, I believe that the United States tries to do too much, with too much arrogance, too much self-absorption, and way too little capacity for either genuine strategic thought or forward planning. In domestic policy I am a cultural conservative for the most part, but more than left of center when it comes to issues of political economy. My father, may he rest in peace, was a Teamster and I grew up in a union household. Just can't help myself, I guess.

I have always been this way (well, since I was more or less an adult--say since the mid- to late 1960s); this is not a recent adoption to suit the times, and it is one of the reasons I never became a Republican. My conservatism--and I am conservative by temperament, not by ideology--is Burkean in character, not libertarian or moral-majority in nature. (If you do not understand these terms, you probably won't like this blog.) That's why my favorite columnist these days is David Brooks. 

Besides that, all you need to know about me is that I own a 1952 Cadillac (Fleetwood) that I wish was in better shape (oh, it drives fine, not to worry); an F-4 Gibson mandolin and a Martin D-35 guitar that I wish I played better; a stamp collection that I wish was more complete; a modest library of Jewish religious texts I wish I studied more; and a photo of Walter Johnson that hangs on the wall of my office. If you don't know who Walter Johnson was you can still read my blog, but you really ought to be ashamed of yourself. You don't have to go out to Rockville Cemetery every December 10 (his yahrzeit), but, well, never mind. So fair warning: at any given random moment, I may spice political commentary with references to automobiles, music, baseball and Lord-knows-what-else. There's just no telling.

That'll do it for now, save to present this little poem I wrote the other day. It's not very good, but I had some fun writing it when sleep escaped me, as it often does. If you don't like it much, I don't blame you. If you do like it, wow -- you can be my friend.  But your taste in poetry might be reckoned questionable.

Here goes:

                                        Madoff Made Off

Madoff made off with fifty billion dollars, 

Uncle Bernie sure burned `em, and that really bothers.

In affinity theft the man was a maven,

Seems he well understood the Cayman safe haven.

But he missed the plain logic of a Ponzi cascade:

To exit stage left before the police raid.

The judge slapped his wrist, which must have stung so

And bade him off, to his penthouse go.

Bernie's victims objected, but feared to shout out;

For the gentiles might twist what this was about.

The city of Shushan, it's written, once was confused;

Now we know why: No one san savvy the Jews.