The US election

White House freebooters

Christopher Hitchens

Washington Not many months ago, I was tossed and gored by Ambassador Jeane Kirk- patrick in the course of a television chat show. No shame in that, I was assured by kind and helpful friends. She's a real deadly professional. And indeed, whenever the Reagan administration is in a tough spot on foreign policy, it is the feline grace of La Kirkpatrick which it deploys on the major networks. She seems to exert an almost mesmeric effect on her questioners, and she has the gift, highly prized among politi- cians, of uninterruptability. Often and often, 1 have awoken before dawn with a replay of our discussion whirring in my head. But it fades like a ghost at cockcrow just as I am closing in with a devastating riposte. Picture, then, if you will, my sensa- tions at seeing the old girl put to rout the other night.

The occasion was the mining of Nicaragua's harbours. Before a most deferential and stuttering interviewer, the lady ambassador shuffled bits of briefing paper, stumbled over her cues, mistimed her famous pitying look and generally had her bluff called. Why had the United States told the World Court to get lost? Because it wasn't a proper court. Why, then, with the very greatest respect, had the United States had resort to it in the case of the Iranian hostages? Well, that wasn't the real point, which was that Nicaragua was behind all the violence in El Salvador. All the violence? Well, almost all. Not her best per- formance.

Mrs Kirkpatrick is not, however, running for office. Her job requires her to attend to various proprieties of international rela- tions. Not so the President, who unmasked his batteries the same week with far fewer apologies and euphemisms. Foreign policy, he said, was too delicate to be left to Con- gress. It was impossible for him to conduct business effectively with partisan barrack- ing from Capitol Hill. In a major speech, he came close to saying that dissent was disloyal. He certainly blamed the defeat of American arms in Lebanon on the House and Senate. His National Security Advisor, Mr Robert McFarlane, said that once a presidential decision on foreign policy had been made, members of Congress should only criticise it in private letters or in per- sonal meetings with Reagan himself. He did not say whether newspapers or private citizens would be permitted to pass com- ment on overseas matters, but his tone in- dicated that a period of silence on their part would also be welcome.

It would be glib to assume that this line is unpopular. A number of Americans feel that there is something not quite OK about

criticising foreign commitments — especial- ly if the lives of soldiers are involved. It's not that they think the President is above reproach; they just feel that he ought to be. Hence the queasiness and ambiguity which always accompany speeches and editorials about Beirut or Nicaragua. Hence, also, the feeling that Reagan may be on to something when he attacks the Congress as an un- wieldy 'committee of 535 people' which of its nature is hardly able to run a budget let alone a war or a sabotage campaign the size of a whelk stall. It is Reagan's clear inten- tion to run, this summer and autumn, against the political pygmies who have been hobbling American power and sniping at American commitments. Such a campaign could be very well received. So, why the unaccustomed nervousness of Mrs Kirkpatrick?

In the last few days, two of America's senior conservatives have come up with compelling arguments against White House control of foreign affairs. The first of these was Barry Goldwater. The second was Alexander Haig. Both men may have been speaking more truly than they knew, but both had an extraordinary impact on Reagan's simple and direct arguments.

In an astounding letter to CIA Director William Casey, written in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Com- mittee, Goldwater wrote as follows (his let- ter, by the way, began 'Dear Bill'): All this past weekend, I've been trying to figure out how I can most easily tell you my feelings about the discovery of the President having approved mining some of the harbors of Central America. It gets down to one, simple, little phrase: I am pissed off.

Goldwater went on to describe the mining as 'an act of war'. He was furious at having been told to deny it when he was certain to be detected in a deception which he had no

part in framing, and he actually went sonar f as to say: 'Bill, this is no way to ru

railroad.' Diehard supporters of the Reagan

position may say, and do say, that this is just the kind of congressional antourpropre which they' can do without. But a PdlieY which can do without Barry Goldwater is a

policy which has to be kept from just about everybody but the John Birch Society. And

it would be hard to convince even (one

might say especially) a John Birch Congress that foreign affairs was none of its concern• The second witness against the President was his first choice as Secretary of State, the

granite-jawed, unstable figure of General Alexander Haig. In his recently published and deeply self-serving memoir (Caveat Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy) the General describes in some detail the

hole that is Reagan's foreign hell-

policy tearn. External evidence exists to support Halg's diagnosis, which is one of an asylum for freebooting egos. Here he is, for exalnPle' on the White House Falklands brouhaha,

where he was repeatedly tripped up by a

well-known feline: Caveat:

Ordinarily, when a President, after hear-

ing the arguments on both sides in a con- tested issue, adopts a policy, an advisor who disagrees has the option of closil ranks or resigning. That Mrs KirkPattiel'

chose to keep on pushing her own vie! should not be taken to suggest that she

had departed from honourable practice: because the concept of closing ranks had no meaning to the President's aides. The General's written prose is as leaden as his spoken word. But his meaning is clear. The executive is as faction-ridden and as opportunist as the legislature.

clearly, a little further on, that 'the populist instincts of the White House staff,

adjust appearances to shifts in public IN and opinion, were the real cause of the Pro; blem.' That could almost be Reagan an McFarlane denouncing the short-tertn, Haig's depiction of Caspar W

manoeuvres of the Congress. So coulcls quick to 'tendency to blurt out locker-room op

i" nions in the guise of policy'. But the fact re,,, He states mains that Reagan will run on -a `e:abl:irilgetr"." back' ticket against the Democrats this year, and the contradictions in his position will neither deter him nor, on available evidence, very e, er nervous.

his political 013"

WhenmStates po rtahnat has five ov e remember

United

studying electoral evidence, it's a five hour difference between Alaska and Hawaii on the western end to Maine an . Florida on the eastern one. This means that in. theory the results of a presidential el.ec" Mee rrizobneers tshpaatn n the United lion can be declared by clever television analysts before everybody has had a chance to vote. It also means that the results of.a presidential election can be declared practice before everybody has had a chap to vote. This actually happened in 19.8_„: when Ronald Reagan was anointed in prime time before the polls had closed in the wes'

This Year, the outcome of Democratic Primaries has been announced on the box before voting has even begun. A key topic for all bores, then, is the McLuhanite one: 18 the democratic process a mere media event?

It has to be said that some bizarre and regrettable things happened last time. One exhaustive survey has it that registered voters in 1980, hearing the firm projections of a Reagan victory, were six per cent less likely to vote in the east, nine per cent less likely in the south, and an amazing 12 per cent less likely in the west. The Democrats say that, though this may not have made anY difference to Carter's chances, it could have cost them two congressional seats Which they lost by a handful. Less ominous- ly' small party candidates such as the Liber- tarians did stupefyingly well, getting over I I Per cent of the Alaskan vote and posing the question: what might people not do if their eyes were not fixed on the two-party Pendulum? Congressman Timothy Wirth is consider- ing legislation to ban 'exit polls' — the 1111111. questioning of electors as they leave the booth, and the raw material of the notorious 'bandwagon effect'. Mike Royko, greatest of Chicago columnists and the man who currently makes life hot for Rupert Murdoch in that city, has suggested deliberate lying to exit pollsters as a way of messing up the odds and confounding the experts. Recent votes suggest that his advice has been well received. The best story of all concerns Pat Caddell, the doyen of pollsters and the man behind the Hart cam- paign. After George McGovern's earsplit- ting defeat by Richard Nixon in 1972 (where the luckless Senator only won Massachusetts) Caddell brooded for a while. Once Nixon had been disgraced, he took a poll asking people how they would vote if the election was held again. In every state, the voters replied that they would take McGovern. Just for fun, in three states he asked them how they had voted in 1972. They had voted Democratic, every one. Cognitive dissonance in the American elec- torate is a subject which the specialists have only nibbled at.