SUMMER BOOKS — Pages 46-62

July 9, 2024 • $7.99

Restoring America’s
Economy
The Debt Interest
Albatross
REP. BLAKE MOORE — P.16

2025’s Big Tax Fight

ROBERT VERBRUGGEN — P.17

Bye-Bye, Bidenomics
EJ ANTONI AND DAVID DITCH — P.18

Fixing Social Security

SEN. BILL CASSIDY — P.19

Industrial Policy Folly

SCOTT LINCICOME — P.20

Beefing Up
the Military
TOM ROGAN — P.21

Democratic Lies
EDITORIAL — P.1

Biden’s Debacle
HUGO GURDON — P.6

The Anti-Biden
Uprising
W. JAMES ANTLE III — P.28
 Editorials
What else are Democrats two competent candidates. National se-
curity has been put at risk now that vi-
cious and opportunistic adversaries such

lying about? as Russian President Vladimir Putin and

Chinese President Xi Jinping have seen
how weak Biden really is.
The exposure of the Democrats’ lie
about Biden’s health raises two questions:

J
What else are they lying about — in truth,
une 27, 2024, will go down in po- ly probing, detail-oriented, and focused.” almost everything — and who is really
litical history as the day one of the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Biden running the White House? On the first
biggest lies ever was thoroughly “is at the top of his game.” Sen. Chris question, the most obvious answers are
exposed. For months, even years, Murphy (D-CT) claimed he had “watched immigration and the economy. The Biden
Democrats and their media allies President Biden run circles around senators administration denied for years there was
have not only denied that President Joe inside the Oval Office.” And not to be out- a crisis on the southern border until sud-
Biden has lost the mental capacity need- done, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) claimed denly, in January, it admitted there was
ed to perform on the greatest stage of Biden “has a photographic memory” and is one but that it was all Trump’s fault. And
politics, but they have viciously attacked “sharper than anyone I’ve spoken to.” on the economy, Democrats are still trying
anyone who had the temerity to suggest Now, these Democrats are singing a dif- to claim everything is great, even as cars
otherwise, going as far as telling voters ferent tune, or perhaps they’re crying uncle. and homes become more unaffordable ev-
that what we were all seeing with our own “Biden looks like the caricature that con- ery day and consumers post record-high
eyes were “cheap fakes” and “Russian servative media has been painting. There credit card debt spending.
disinformation.” were no clips tonight. You saw it before your On the second question, the answer is
But now, after 90 minutes of debate eyes.” Yes, we did see it. We’ve been seeing the activist operative base of the Demo-
with former President Donald Trump, the it for a long time. It was never a “caricature” cratic Party. That is who has been running
world knows the truth: Biden is not fit created by conservative media. It was the the country as Biden has rapidly checked
mentally, as his many pauses, blunders, truth. It has been the truth all along. out. This cohort of radical operatives is far
and simply incoherent sentences demon- The damage Democratic Party elites to the left of not only the average general
strated on June 27. and their media allies have done to their election voter but also of the average Dem-
There is some pushback from the party and the country is incalculable. ocratic primary voter. Biden is slipping
Biden campaign — a weak and unconvinc- Democratic primary voters have been de- away and easy to manipulate. The only
ing effort to blame the night on a cold. But nied an honest choice about who should difficulty is covering up the fact that he has
Biden’s failures went far beyond a nagging represent them in the general election. All lost it, and they managed to pull that off
cough. A sore throat does not explain why voters have been denied a choice between far longer than many thought possible. 
he bragged, “We finally beat Medicare,” or
why he rambled on about brothers raping
their sisters when asked about abortion,
or why he claimed that the Border Patrol
union endorsed him when those charged
with enforcing our nation’s immigration
laws despise Biden’s catch-and-release
policies with every ounce of their being.
These moments were devastating for
Biden because they reinforced what any-
one who has been watching the president
already knew. Until the debate, Democrats
were afraid to say what they knew about
Biden’s health. So afraid were they to ad-
mit the truth that they made outlandish
claims in the other direction. Here are just
a few.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed
Biden is “better than he’s ever been.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas said Biden was “sharp, intense-

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 1

EDITORIALS
November is months away,
but people are already
voting with their feet
V
oters don’t get to choose
whether they want to live un-
der Republican or Democrat-
ic Party rule for almost four
months, but people are already
voting with their feet, they have been for
years, and their choice is clear: people
overwhelmingly want to live in Republi-
can-run states.
The latest data come from the Inter-
nal Revenue Service which released the
most current migration data on June 27.
The data come from taxpayers’ 2022 tax
returns and show how many taxpayers
moved between each state in 2021.
The five states that gained the most
people and the most income from new
people coming to their state were Florida,
Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina,
and Tennessee. On net, Florida gained
245,000 people and $36 billion in adjust-
ed gross income, Texas gained 181,000
and $10 billion, North Carolina gained
83,000 people and $4.6 billion, South
Carolina gained 70,000 and $4.8 billion,
while Tennessee gained 61,000 and $4.7
billion.
These are all solidly Republican states
with all but North Carolina led by a Re-
publican governor. And even North Car-
olina has a centrist Democratic governor
kept in check by Republican majorities in
the state House and Senate.
Now this data does not reflect pop-
ulation gain from new tax filers. This is
purely based on existing taxpayers who
moved from one state to another. And so
if there were states that gained taxpayers,
there would have to be states that lost
taxpayers, and those states are Califor-
nia, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts,
and New Jersey.
California lost 307,000 people and
$23.8 billion, New York lost 223,000 peo-
ple and $14 billion, Illinois lost 87,000
and $10 billion, Massachusetts lost
2 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
45,000 people and $4 billion, while New
Jersey lost 37,000 and $5.3 billion.
All of these loser states are run by the
Democratic Party, some uninterrupt-
ed for decades. Some Democratic Party
apologists have argued in the past that
similar numbers only reflect people mov-
ing from the cold Northeast to warmer
Southern states. But this does not explain
why California is the biggest loser state
of all. No one has ever left California be-
cause of bad weather. Ignoring the party
that controls the government, California
is the most beautiful place in the world
with the world’s most temperate and en-
joyable climate. Something must be really,
really wrong with California’s governing
party for so many people to be fleeing the
state so fast, and taking their income with
them.
Democratic Party-controlled states
are terrible places to live because the
interest groups that control the Demo-
It is not that
Republican-run states
are perfect. There
is corruption and
bad decisions are
made occasionally,
but at least the
primary elections
are not controlled
by government
union bosses whose
allegiances are always
to government union
employees and never
to the average citizen.
cratic Party make life unaffordable for
middle-class families. The environmental
groups that fail to implement expensive
taxes and mandates at the federal lev-
el succeed at the state level. As a result,
all of the Democratic states listed above
have above-average gas and residential
electricity prices, with California having
the highest costs of all. Environmental
groups also make building new homes
next to impossible with all of the required
environmental reviews, zoning, and clean
energy mandates for construction materi-
als and appliances.
Not only are housing and energy costs
absurdly high in Democratic Party-con-
trolled states, but the services delivered
by these states are all terrible as well.
Government unions in every one of the
five states above are more powerful than
the environmentalists, and the purpose
of all government unions is to enrich their
members at the expense of taxpayers
while delivering as few actual services as
possible. Why do all the governors of the
Democratic states send their children to
private schools? Because they know the
teachers unions have made the public
schools places they do not want to send
their children.
In order to pay for all of the inefficient
and corrupt government union sala-
ries, Democratic-controlled states also
have to raise taxes far higher than states
without government unions. This makes
it enticing for businesses to leave high-
tax, bad-service Democratic-run states,
for low-tax, efficient-service Republican
states.
It is not that Republican-run states are
perfect. There is corruption and bad deci-
sions are made occasionally, but at least
the primary elections are not controlled
by government union bosses whose alle-
giances are always to government union
employees and never to the average
citizen.
Voters across the country have a
choice this November: the higher taxes,
higher energy costs, and higher housing
unaffordability of the Democratic Party,
or the low tax, low energy costs, better
housing affordability of the Republican
Party. Many voters aren’t waiting. Their
choice is clear. 
JULY 9, 2024
Volume 30, Number 24
Editorials
1 What else are Democrats
lying about?
2 November is months away,
but Americans are already
voting with their feet
Letter From the Editor
6 Free speech and Biden’s debacle
Your Land
7 Race Has Nothing To Do With
US Swimming Dominance «
Trump Shows Biden How to Order
a Sandwich in Philadelphia «
Gen X Had Children and Became
Republican« Dr. McB Reminds
Democrats, She, Not Voters, ‘Will
Decide Our Future’ « O’er the Land
of the AC
11 The Week That Was
Features
12 Why Voters Are
Rejecting Bidenomics
It’s not just vibes, it’s higher prices
and a flood of spending
By Brian Riedl
16 The Debt and Interest Albatross
By Rep. Blake Moore
17 2025’s Looming Tax Fight:
A Chance to Help the
Working-Class Family
By Robert VerBruggen
4 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
18 Time to Free America 44 Tiana’s Take Buried beneath
from Bidenomics Biden’s terrible debate performance
By EJ Antoni are even worse tax plans
and David Ditch
19 Social Security Is In
Worse Shape Than It Looks
By Sen. Bill Cassidy
20 Dark Clouds on the US
Industrial Policy Horizon
By Scott Lincicome
21 Restoring America’s
Military Industrial Base
By Tom Rogan
Features
24 Slouching Toward Europe
Americans should instead
pursue policies for a
better economic future
By James Rogan
28 Biden’s Post-Debate Collapse
A historically bad performance
has the president’s reelection Summer Books
campaign hanging by a thread
By W. James Antle III 46 A Defense of Book Collecting
49 The Editors’ Summer Books
Washington Briefing
51 Give ’Em Enough Belt
31 Loud-mouth politics:
Biden needs to campaign 52 A Grand Tour of Kafka
like it’s 1987
54 Come What May
34 How to avoid future East Palestines
55 Don’t Bet on America’s
36 African Eyes on the Illiberal Heart
US presidential election
57 Constitutional Lore
38 What caused the Biden-era
illegal immigration spike? 59 Column Punk
40 The plan to end the war in 61 On Honor Levy and the
Ukraine without a victory Literary Game
Business Obituary
42 Where’s that news coming from? 63 Kinky Friedman, 1944-2024
Journalism in the age of bots
COMING NEXT WEEK 64 Crossword
« What’s Next for GOP?
ON THE COVER: Illustration by
« French Counterrevolution
Jason Seiler
HUGO GURDON: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Free speech and Editors

Biden’s debacle
Editor-In-Chief Hugo Gurdon
Managing Editor Chris Irvine

I
News Editor Marisa Schultz
Commentary Editor Conn Carroll
s free speech facing its Waterloo? The fight’s outcome will be “the Executive Editor (Magazine) W. James Antle III
nearest-run thing you ever saw,” as the Duke of Wellington said of Content Strategy and Growth Editor Jessie Campisi
the original battle. Managing Editor (Magazine) David Mark
Policy Editor Joseph Lawler
The Supreme Court dodged the issue recently when Jus-
Investigations Editor Sarah Bedford
tice Amy Coney Barrett and a 6-3 majority, including three Demo- Breaking News Editor Max Thornberry
cratic appointees, dismissed Murthy v. Missouri on a technicality. Congress & Campaigns Editor David Sivak
Plaintiffs were ruled to lack standing because they didn’t show spe- Digital Engagement Editor Maria Leaf
Life & Arts Editor (Magazine) Nicholas Clairmont
cific federal arm-twisting led a given social media platform to stanch Production Editor Joana Suleiman
news on a particular subject. This lack of what Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Editor Hailey Bullis
dissenting, called “a series of ironclad links” means no accountability Trending News Editor Heather Hamilton
Associate Breaking News Editor Keely Bastow
yet applies to White House officials who bully platforms to censor con- Night News Editor Conrad Hoyt
servative sites that contradict official propaganda. Homepage Editors Tim Collins and Peter Cordi
It invites Democrats and the Washington bureaucracy to keep shut- Chief Web Producer Stacey Dec
Deputy Commentary Editor Quin Hillyer
ting down “misinformation,” which to them means any evidence or ar-
Restoring America Editors Kaylee McGhee White, Tom Rogan
gument contradicting the official orthodoxies they peddle to the public. Contributors Editor Madeline Fry Schultz
But while the court was failing to draw bright lines against censor- Design Director Philip Chalk
ship, the House Small Business Committee was doing oversight, follow- Deputy Editor (Magazine) J. Grant Addison
ing up a Washington Examiner scoop that exposed a State Department Columnists & Writers
grant of $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index, a malevolent Senior Columnists: Michael Barone, Paul Bedard, Timothy P. Carney,
outfit that concocts a blacklist to steer advertisers away from conserva- Byron York
Senior Writers: Barnini Chakraborty, Jamie McIntyre, Mabinty Quarshie,
tive news sites. Salena Zito
Washington financed an effort to inflict financial harm on media Staff Reporters: Jack Birle, Mike Brest, Christian Datoc, Kaelan Deese,
companies, including the Washington Examiner, that have the temerity Gabrielle Etzel, Joel Gehrke, Luke Gentile, Anna Giaritelli, Jenny
Goldsberry, Zachary Halaschak, Emily Hallas, Gabe Kaminsky, Brady
to publish stories the Left dislikes. Our offending “disinformation” was Knox, Naomi Lim, Elaine Mallon, Cami Mondeaux, Asher Notheis,
an accurate report on data showing conservative married women are Ross O’Keefe, Ashley Oliver, Annabella Rosciglione, Samantha-Jo
happier than liberal unmarried ones. This truth is dangerous only to the Roth, Rachel Schilke, Breccan Thies, Ramsey Touchberry, Nancy Vu,
agenda of left-wing forces rushing to wreck civilized norms including Haisten Willis
Commentary Writers: Zachary Faria, Tiana Lowe Doescher, Jeremiah
marriage. Our reporting is not false or dangerous to the America most Poff, Christopher Tremoglie
people want — quite the reverse. Contributors: T. Becket Adams, Daniel Ross Goodman, Dominic Green,
One line of our reporting that for several years has been dismissed Daniel J. Hannan, Graham Hillard, Rob Long, Jeremy Lott,
John O’Sullivan, Philip Terzian, Peter Tonguette, Tevi Troy,
as misinformation is about President Joe Biden’s manifest infirmity, his Robert Woodson
failing powers, which were brutally exposed in a debate against former
President Donald Trump on June 27. Design, Video & Web
Senior Designer: Amanda Boston Trypanis
Even before Biden entered the White House in January 2021, it was Production Designer: Tatiana Lozano
clear to unbiased viewers that he would be incapable of doing the most Designers: Barbara Kyttle, Julia Terbrock
demanding job in the world. Honest news organizations said so loudly, Web Producers: Robert Blankenship, Emma Johnson, Zach LaChance,
lucidly, and repeatedly. Alexis Leonard, Chris Slater, Robert Stewart
Director of Video: Amy DeLaura
The truth we spoke to power was denied by White House officials, Videographers: Justin Craig, Arik Dashevsky, Atlantis Ford,
by the leadership and rank and file of the Democratic Party, by the Shaan Memon, Natasha Sweatte, Stefan Suh, and Timothy Wolff
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eral news and entertainment media. These are the people who employ MediaDC
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 Trump Shows Biden How to Order
a Sandwich in Philadelphia P. 8 
Gen X Had Children and Became
Republican P. 9  Dr. McB Reminds
Democrats, She, Not Voters, ‘Will
Decide Our Future’ P. 10  O’er
the Land of the AC P. 10
Race Has Nothing To Do With
US Swimming Dominance
F
or most people, the first thing
that comes to mind when
seeing a picture of the U.S.
Olympic swim team should
be excitement for a group
of athletes who get to live a lifelong
dream.
But for a group of ever-bitter lib-
erals, there is a problem with the U.S.
MICHAEL CONROY/AP
Olympic swim team: It is too white.
The U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials
concluded Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadi-
um in Indianapolis, and the roster
of U.S. athletes who will swim at the
2024 Paris Olympics was finalized.
A longtime swimming power-
house, the United States’s swim team
features stars such as Katie Ledecky,
Lilly King, Regan Smith, Caeleb
Dressel, Bobby Finke, and Ryan Mur-
phy, alongside a number of newcom-
ers who will surely make their mark
on Olympic history.
In a post on X, Georgetown Uni-
Katie Ledecky gets
ready for the Women’s
800 freestyle finals
on June 22 at the US
Swimming Olympic
Trials in Indianapolis.
versity law professor Janel George
claimed the legacy of Jim Crow and
segregation is the reason that so
many people on the team are white.
“When people say that Jim Crow
was so long ago, it’s important to
remember the lasting effects of seg-
regated spaces — like segregated
swimming pools — and the contin-
ued impact across generations,” she
wrote, sharing a picture of the team.
“This visual reflects that legacy.”
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 7
YOUR LAND
Now, it should be noted that there are
a couple of nonwhite swimmers on the
team. Simone Manuel, an Olympic med-
alist from the last two games, will return
to swim the 50 freestyle and participate in
a relay, while University of Texas standout
Shaine Casas will make his Olympic de-
but in the 200 individual medley.
While George is correct that Jim
Crow was not all that long ago, the im-
plicit nature of her remark is that the
U.S. Olympic swim team is discrimi-
nating against black swimmers and she
would rather have a more racially diverse
team than the one who can win the most
medals.

The development of highly
competitive swimmers and
the breadth of talent in
the U.S. is so robust that
multiple swimmers who
competed at the trials
missed out on a spot on the
team but would otherwise
have had a legitimate shot
at winning an Olympic
medal.
8 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
But this Georgetown law professor
would never make the same remark
about the U.S. Olympic track and field
team, which is overwhelmingly non-
white. Nor would she say the same about
the basketball and tennis teams, two oth-
er sports that have a history of segrega-
tion but have a number of black athletes.
There is a saying that the U.S. Olympic
swim team is the hardest team to make in
the world. Only two athletes from a single
nation are allowed to compete in each indi-
vidual event, and there are only four swim-
mers on each of the seven relay teams,
many of whom come from the roster of
athletes who made the team in an individ-
ual event. In 2024, the U.S. Olympic team
has a total of 46 swimmers, 20 women and
26 men, with a number of athletes, includ-
ing Ledecky, Smith, and Dressel, qualifying
to swim multiple events.
The development of highly competi-
tive swimmers and the breadth of talent in
the U.S. is so robust that multiple swim-
mers who competed at the trials missed
out on a spot on the team but would oth-
erwise have had a legitimate shot at win- Trump Shows Biden
ning an Olympic medal. It could easily be
argued that the U.S. Olympic Swimming How to Order
Trials are, in some events, more competi- a Sandwich in
tive than the Olympics.
Swimming doesn’t discriminate by Philadelphia
race. It discriminates only against those
who don’t touch the wall first.
L
—By Jeremiah Poff ast Saturday, before a campaign
rally at Temple University in Phil-
adelphia, former President Donald
Trump showed President Joe Biden how
to make sandwich ordering great again
— at least in Philadelphia.
Trump stopped by the famous Tony
and Nick’s Steaks, a counter service shop
in South Philadelphia known for its roast
pork sandwiches and cheesesteaks, be-
fore he headed to his rally. Growing up
in South Philly, I have been to the sand-
wich shop a thousand times. Yet seeing
Trump visit there made it all the more
memorable.
Trump’s appearance and subsequent
sandwich order were in stark contrast
to the frail, meek, and mild disposi-
tion Biden exhibited when he ordered
a sandwich at a Wawa when he visited
Philadelphia earlier this year. The two
visits could not have been more differ-
CHRIS SZAGOL A/AP
ent. Trump showed Biden how to order a
sandwich properly in Philadelphia.
For those unaware, various reports
showed the “spontaneous” moment

Republican presidential candidate former
President Donald Trump greets customers and staff at
Tony and Nick’s Steaks on June 22 in Philadelphia.
Biden entered a Wawa in Philadelphia to
order a sandwich and a milkshake. Yet a
behind-the-scenes video showed that the
whole thing was actually scripted and re-
hearsed ahead of time. It was shown to
the public as if it were a random act. It’s
emblematic of the lack of authenticity
and dishonesty that is an integral part of
Biden and his administration. Recall that
Biden used a fake White House set for
television appearances earlier in his term.
Comparatively, Trump’s visit was un-
rehearsed. It was genuine, it was natu-
ral, it was all the things people love about
Trump. He greeted fans, patrons, the
shop’s employees, and people just pass-
ing by. He arrived to chants of “U-S-A!”
and shook people’s hands. Trump even
asked the people for their opinions on
who should be his running mate. Unlike
Biden’s aristocratlike sandwich order,
away from the common folk, Trump ap-
peared more natural and common, with
a down-to-earth persona.
While Biden’s visit was blocked off
from anyone around him, Trump went
into a crowd of everyday people to or-
der his food — a true man of the people.
While Biden needed assistance to place
his order, Trump ordered his own food
and then gave a $500 tip to the shop’s
employees. Dozens of people cheered
and adored Trump. Not one person did
so for Biden.
“It was just unbelievable,” said Nicky
Lucidonio, owner of Tony and Nick’s
Steaks. “He was talking to people, you
know, they’re asking questions. He’s
answering them. He’s signing hats. He
signed everything.”
“We’re all taking pictures with him.
What a great man, you know? We’re all
here rooting for him,” Lucidonio said.
“You know, this November, we gotta get
him in.”
—By Christopher Tremoglie
Gen X Had Children
and Became Republican
F
ormer President Donald Trump’s
strongest base of support in the
general election, if you divide voters
up by age, appears to be Generation X.
Trump leads President Joe Biden by
19 points among those ages 45 to 65,
roughly Gen X, while the race is within
the margin of error for boomers, millen-
nials, and Generation Z.
The extraordinary generation gap has
spurred endless speculation and recrim-
ination among very online millennial
pundits.
One simple explanation is that Gen X
isn’t all that Trumpy but that it has very
good real-world reasons to support the
Republican Party over Biden’s Demo-
cratic Party.
YOUR LAND
Gen Xers got jobs, paid off student
loans, got married in their 20s, and had
children. This isn’t just a story. It’s the
facts. The average age at first marriage in
the early 2000s was about 25 for women
and a bit higher for men — meaning the
average Gen Xer was married with a job
within a decade of leaving school.
The birth rate was higher in the late
1990s and the early 2000s, when Gen X
was the bulk of the baby-makers. Once
the millennials entered their mid- to late
20s, the birthrate fell and kept plummet-
ing. Births have fallen almost every year
since 2007 and are now down more than
16%.
So the people who became grown-
ups in a normal way are Republicans
now. Trump expanded our child tax
credit, and under him, the economy was
really good, with nearly no inflation.
Millennials, to their discredit, have
always cared more about national poli-
tics — they care more about other peo-
ple’s business, families, and communities
than they ought to and are less interested
in forming families or being involved in
their neighborhood than they ought to be.
“I guess Donald Trump as the end
point of Gen X nihilism makes sense,”
very online millennial liberal pundit
Matt Yglesias concluded.
If you think life is about what happens
on NPR and CNN and in Congress, then
MADE BY JIMBOB.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 9
YOUR LAND
yes, folks who care mostly about
their family and neighborhood look
like nihilists.
Sure, Trump made politics cra-
zy, but under him, the economy
was more normal. If you wanted to
mind your family and your job, the
Trump era was better than the Biden
era. The worst part of the Trump era
was the nonsense forced on us by
Biden’s party and defended by Biden
to this day: the lockdowns and school
closures.
Biden’s party took over school
boards, closed schools for a year, and
abandoned regular curricula in ex-
change for preaching racial determin-
ism and transgenderism.
So maybe it’s that simple: If you
want a normal life of family, communi-
ty, and work, you are more likely to be
Republican, and the folks most likely to
be parents are the most likely to desire
normality.
—By Timothy P. Carney
Dr. McB Reminds
Democrats, She,
Not Voters, ‘Will
Decide Our Future’
W
hile her husband was holed up
in Camp David as Democratic
Party kingmakers worked over-
time to resuscitate his imploding reelec-
tion bid, first lady Jill Biden reminded
the world that she is indeed the power
behind the throne and, more important-
ly, why she will push the president, come
hell or high water, to Election Day.
In her third Vogue magazine cover
since Joe Biden’s inauguration, beating
the First Lady record previously set by
Michelle Obama, a monochromatic
Dr. McB stares off contentedly into the
distance, like an airbrushed Lenin or
designer-dud-clad Mao. Days after for-
mer Presidents Barack Obama and Bill
Clinton made clear that Democrats are
stuck with the incumbent even after a
debate performance that can be mostly
kindly described as a borderline medical
emergency, the first lady in white is em-
bossed with her own sordid reminder:
“WE WILL DECIDE OUR FUTURE.”
Petrified by the presumption that a
real journalist would uncover the actual
10 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
First lady Dr. Jill Biden on the cover of
the August edition of Vogue.
story of the consummate socialite pull-
ing off a real-life Weekend at Bernie’s but
with the presidency, the hagiographers
at Vogue stick to the shallow depths of
hackneyed sartorial studies — “She
looks like she’s ready to party, and in a
way, she is—these are her people” — and
peddling the party line that “democracy
is on the line.”
The problem for the Bidens is that
voters agree, and increasingly and for
good reason, voters across the aisle view
the party in power as the greater threat
to our democratic process. In a national
CBS News poll after the debate, voters
agreed that both Biden and former Pres-
ident Donald Trump were equally dan-
gerous to democracy, despite Biden’s
previous lead on the issue. Even be-
fore the debate, swing state voters gave
Trump an 11-point advantage on the
question of protecting democracy.
Alas, that is a consequence of the
Democratic Party quite literally cancel-
ing state primaries until Biden, with 99%
of delegates secured, revealed he could
not spar against Trump without falling
on his face, let alone against Russian
President Vladimir Putin or Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Jane O’Meara Sanders, the wife of the
socialist senator-turned-Biden loyalist
Bernie Sanders (I-VT), likened Dr. Jill to
former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In
reality, Biden is likely more of an Edith
Wilson type. Careful not to let facts get
in the way of the narrative, Vogue omits
the first lady’s reported full-time job of
cordoning off the president from staff
before sunrise and after sundown. (Med-
ical professionals have a word for octo-
genarians incapable of retaining their
faculties after the sun is down.)
Instead, the plain old professor Jill
of Vogue is a mere mannequin, a still
rather pretty older lady who excels at
the abstract — “advocating” and cam-
paigning, holding the hands of strang-
ers, telling them “please” and “thank
you.” But a picture is worth 1,000
words, and the magazine’s cover star,
complete in a $2,820 Ralph Lauren
dress, can’t lie: Joe Biden will remain
president because that is what Jill
Biden has decided.
—By Tiana Lowe Doescher
O’er the Land of the AC
T
he Summer Olympics are when the
United States flexes its superiori-
ty over every other country in the
world, including our European friends.
This year, the festivities are starting be-
fore the Games even begin.
The U.S. Olympic team will be bring-
ing air conditioning units to the Olympic
Village for the Games in Paris, which “un-
dercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon
emissions,” according to the Associated
Press. After all, you do not get to be the
best Olympic country on the planet by
letting your athletes stew in non-air-con-
ditioned venues in the summer. Greatness
doesn’t sleep at 79 degrees Fahrenheit.
That is especially true when the
outrage is unfounded. The U.S. is not
the only country providing its athletes
with AC for the Games (Britain, Germa-
ny, and Canada are among those doing
the same). And 74% of France’s energy
production comes from nuclear energy,
which, of course, does not produce car-
bon emissions. Maybe California Dem-
ocrats will force ineffective sacrifices on
its residents to pretend they are saving
the planet, but that is why they are lead-
ing a failing state into the ground and not
the greatest Olympic program of all time.
American athletes will be well rested
and well cooled and hopefully on their way
to yet another dominant performance over
world-worst polluter China in the process,
JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP
because that is what America is all about.
You can keep your pretentious climate
slacktivism, and we will keep our gold
medals and crisp, cool air conditioning.
—By Zachary Faria
The Week That Was
STAT OF THE WEEK QUOTE OF THE WEEK

150 million We have our problems like

According to the National Hot Dog and
Sausage Council, an estimated 150 million everywhere, in the country
hot dogs are consumed across the country
on July 4th. That’s enough hot dogs to
[and] in the world, but we
stretch from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles are still, as far as I’m
over five times.
concerned, the greatest
thing that there is.
So, it deserves to
be celebrated.
— Singer and songwriter Smokey Robinson, who was part of
A Capitol Fourth, the nation’s official Independence Day concert
in Washington, D.C.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK // ALLEN J. SCHABEN / LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hundreds of patriotic bicyclists cruise down Main Street during the 5th Annual Huntington Beach Locals 4th of July Bicycle
Cruise in advance of the annual Independence Day parade and fireworks in Huntington Beach, California, July 2, 2024.

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 11

 Why voters are rejecting
BIDENOMICS
It’s not just vibes — it’s higher prices and a flood of spending
By Brian Riedl

H
eading into a ers could possibly be so displeased with would be moderate, prudent, bipartisan,
bruising re- soaring prices, spiraling interest rates, deficit-focused, or even willing to listen
election fight, massive budget deficits, and stagnant to economists instead witnessed the es-
President Joe wages. Biden correctly reminds voters tablishment of a highly political, parti-
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GET T Y IMAGES

Biden faces
an abysmal
38% approval
rating on the
economy. Yet
the White House and much of the me-
dia blame the voters for failing to un-
derstand how good they’ve had it since
2021, with pundits and cable TV hosts
trying to solve the mystery of how vot-
that he inherited a difficult economy.
However, his aggressive spending and
regulations proceeded to drive inflation,
interest rates, and federal debt even high-
er than necessary.
The economic tone of this adminis-
tration was set in its first 50 days with
the enactment of the $1.9 trillion Amer-
ican Rescue Plan. Any voters still hold-
ing out hope that a Biden White House
san, and quite ideologically progressive
administration.
The new administration began craft-
ing the American Rescue Plan before
the ink had even dried on a $900 billion
stimulus law signed by former President
Donald Trump weeks earlier. With this
federal spending flooding an economy
that was already beginning to recov-
er and reopen from the pandemic, the

12 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024

Congressional Budget Office forecast
that the 2021 economy would perform
just $420 billion short of its $22 trillion
capacity. However, the over-caffeinated
White House responded by shooting a
$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan ba-
zooka at this $420 billion output gap.
This swollen package of bailouts, give-
aways, and pent-up Democratic wish
lists included $350 billion to bail out
state budget deficits that did not actual-
ly exist, a bloated union pension bailout,
and a decade’s worth of additional fed-
eral school funding. The White House
then bought broader public support with
child tax credits, unemployment insur-
ance bonuses, and yet another round of
taxpayer rebates.
Economists across the spectrum,
including prominent Democrats Larry
Summers and Jason Furman, warned
that the American Rescue Plan was a
massive overreach whose steep cost
would trigger inflation, with Furman
adding, “I don’t know any economist that
was recommending something the size
of what was done.” Unfortunately, the
White House ignored the economists.
Democrats had built a (false) narrative
claiming that the slow recovery from the
earlier Great Recession had been driven
by insufficient federal spending, and the
White House was committed not to re-
peat that “mistake.”
However, even these economic policy
arguments took a back seat to raw poli-
tics. Democrats refused to negotiate or
compromise even one inch with Republi-
cans because they treated this Christmas
tree bill as their reward for sweeping the
2020 election and their turn to match
the GOP tax cuts with their own budget
buster — although Republicans at least
spread the cost of the 2017 tax cuts over
a decade, while most of the American
Rescue Plan’s exorbitant cost would be
packed into a single year.
And so, on the 50th day of his presi-
dency, Biden signed into law the Ameri-
can Rescue Plan — the most expensive
spending bill in decades. As predicted,
most of this spending ended up totally
unnecessary, agencies and governors
had no idea how to spend all of it, and in-
flation spiked exactly as warned, reach-
ing 9.1%.
This persistent inflation has become
the albatross weighing down Biden’s
economic agenda. The president’s de-
fenders correctly note that some modest
degree of inflation was inevitable due to
the earlier pandemic spending hiking
demand in an economy in which sup-
ply, constrained by business shutdowns
and supply chain breakdowns, simply
could not keep up. But this is precisely
why economists warned it would be eco-
nomic malpractice to add another $1.9
trillion in federal spending that the econ-
omy could not absorb. According to the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco,
the president’s actions added 3 percent-
age points to the inflation rate.
Even as inflation soared to 1970s
rates, the Biden administration refused
to take responsibility. At first, the White
House dismissed inflation as “transi-
tory,” and then it became a punch line
for releasing a video bragging that “the
cost of a Fourth of July cookout in 2021
is down $0.16 from last year.” When in-
flation became too persistent to dismiss,
the White House shifted to scapegoating.
It blamed COVID-19 and then “big meat”
and then termed it “Putin’s price hike.”
Biden even blamed 2021 inflation on a
Russia-Ukraine war that did not begin
until 2022. He claimed that spending
trillions more through “Build Back Bet-
ter” would somehow reduce inflation.
Finally, over the objections of the White
House’s own economists, Biden settled
on blaming corporate greed for inflation.
Of course, corporations have always
been profit-maximizing, and the presi-
dent never explained how such behavior
suddenly became inflationary beginning
in 2021. While the White House cycled
through various scapegoats, prices rose
a total of 20%, costing families more
than $10,000.
America’s stubborn
inflation rate remains
near the top of Western
developed countries
in 2024. And as prices
climb, the public’s
mortgage, auto, and
credit card debt and
delinquencies, which
temporarily declined
due to large pandemic
stimulus payments, are
once again climbing.
In other words, the White House
treated inflation as a communications
challenge to message with talking points
rather than an economic problem to
solve with disinflationary policies. Even
after declaring that “I have made tack-
ling inflation my top economic priority,”
Biden continued sacrificing inflation re-
duction at the altar of higher liberal goals.
He enacted trillions more in inflationary
spending hikes. He attempted a $400 bil-
lion student loan bailout that was merci-
fully shot down by the Supreme Court.
Unions were given inflationary tariffs,
“Buy American” rules, and Davis-Bacon
prevailing wage mandates. Regulations
raising the cost of economic develop-
ment were tightened. Even a semicon-
ductor bill that was supposed to reduce
production costs instead hit producers
with expensive child care and wage man-
dates that raised costs and prices. By the
time Biden unveiled a $2.3 trillion Build
Back Better proposal, even congressio-
nal Democrats had seen enough and dra-
matically scaled it back.
Unfortunately, the damage has been
done. Once inflation begins, it is ex-
tremely difficult to stop because busi-
nesses continue to raise prices and
wages in anticipation of inflation con-
tinuing. Even rising worker compensa-
tion has not kept up with rising prices
since Biden took office. Those on fixed
incomes have been hit the hardest.
The harder the president pushes
the inflationary gas pedal with spend-
ing and regulations, the harder the Fed
must slam the brakes with higher inter-
est rates. The result has been mortgage
rates leaping past 7% at the same time
that home prices have surged. Accord-
ingly, the monthly mortgage on a newly
purchased median-priced home has dou-
bled, from $1,109 to $2,235, since Biden
took office. And like the proverbial de-
mand for “more cowbell,” the president’s
solution to inflation has been even more
inflation, responding to these soaring
house prices by proposing a $10,000 tax
credit for homebuyers that would only
push up demand and housing prices
even further.
Consequently, America’s stubborn in-
flation rate remains near the top of West-
ern developed countries in 2024. And as
prices climb, the public’s mortgage, auto,
and credit card debt and delinquencies,
which temporarily declined due to large
pandemic stimulus payments, are once
again climbing.
Not all economic news is bad. After
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 13
a sluggish start, the S&P 500 is up 43%
over the president’s 3 1/2 years in office.
Lower earners have seen larger wage
gains than high earners. The economy,
while sluggish, has managed to avoid
falling back into recession. The unem-
ployment rate has fallen back to below
4%, matching the impressive pre-pan-
demic levels.
Not surprisingly, the White House
has wildly exaggerated its role in this
good news. The president claims to have
personally created 13 million jobs since
he took office and describes himself as
the most accomplished job creator in
history. Such boasting not only ignores
that the private economy, not politicians,
creates the vast majority of jobs, but it
also ignores that most of this recent job
growth resulted simply from the econo-
my reopening after the pandemic. Clos-
ing the economy, reopening it, and then
taking credit for people returning to em-
ployment is akin to turning the lights off,
then back on, and then claiming to have
invented electricity.
Moreover, the quickly falling unem-
ployment rate, while impressive, was
also driven by the inflationary overheat-
ing of the economy. One cannot take
credit for the faster job growth without
also owning the painful inflation that
those same policies brought.
And while inflation has been dread-
ful, Biden’s most lasting economic leg-
acy may be his historic spending and
debt binge. Trump had already signed
legislation that cumulatively added a
The Senate and House passed a full-year $1.5 trillion federal funding bill to ward
off a possible government shutdown while also providing Ukraine with aid
to respond to the war with Russia, March 2022.
14 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
modern record of $7.8 trillion to 10-year
deficits, only half of which was pandem-
ic-related. Apparently inspired by his
predecessor, Biden’s first 20 months saw
him sign, or mandate through executive
order, $4.8 trillion in new 10-year costs,
including the aforementioned American
Rescue Plan and enormous student loan
bailouts.
The spending spree was finally
stopped when lawmakers and voters
screamed “enough!” First, the backlash
to surging inflation led even Democrat-
ic lawmakers to kill the president’s $2.3
trillion Build Back Better proposal. Then,
voters elected a Republican House to
take away the president’s credit card.
Despite all of this spending and debt,
Biden absurdly claims to have reduced
budget deficits. After temporary pan-
demic spending spiked the budget deficit
from $1 trillion in 2019 to $3 trillion in
2020 and 2021, the president points to
the scheduled expiration of that spend-
ing in 2022 as a historic spending cut. Es-
sentially, the president drastically spiked
spending in 2021 with the American Res-
cue Plan and then treated the subsequent
expiration of his own spending spree as
a historic spending cut. This gaslighting
was rebuked by even the fact-checkers at
the Washington Post with a rare “Bottom-
less Pinocchio” rating.
The president’s true fiscal record
is more dire. The CBO-projected bud-
get deficit over the 2021-31 period has
leaped by $5 trillion since Biden took
office. Last year, the budget deficit, ex-
cluding the canceled student loan bail-
out, doubled from $1 trillion to $2 trillion
— an unheard-of $1 trillion deficit surge
for a growing economy in peacetime. At
7.5% of gross domestic product, last year
saw the largest budget deficit in Ameri-
can history outside of temporary emer-
gencies such as wars and recessions.
Interest costs alone have jumped from
$352 billion in 2021 to nearly $1 trillion
this year and are projected to approach
$2 trillion annually within a decade.
Biden has not only pushed this bor-
rowing spree, but he also stubbornly op-
poses attempts to rein in deficits. Even as
projected Social Security and Medicare
shortfalls leap from $650 billion this year
to $2.2 trillion a decade from now, driv-
ing nearly all of the projected escalating
budget deficits, Biden pledges to block
all serious reforms to rein in these costs
or even avert Social Security’s scheduled
trust fund insolvency within a decade —
unfortunately, Trump shares his biparti-
san position. Biden’s budget proposes a
massive $5 trillion in new taxes over the
decade, but nearly all of these revenues
would be plowed back into new policies
rather than deficit reduction, thus mak-
ing future deficit reduction more difficult
by having to start from an even higher
tax level.
Biden also tries to have it all ways on
the extension of the expiring 2017 tax
cuts. He pledges that Trump’s “tax cut
is going to expire” and even assumes all
such tax increase revenue in his budget
— while also contradictorily promising
not to let any taxes rise above today’s lev-
els for the bottom 95% of earners.
Voters cannot be blamed for noticing
these escalating prices, soaring budget
deficits, elevating interest rates, and
special interest giveaways. Overreaching
on the American Rescue Plan and then
relentlessly pursuing inflationary spend-
ing, regulation, and trade restrictions
may cost Biden reelection in the same
manner that inflation and overall incom-
petence doomed the earlier presidency
of Jimmy Carter. Voters not only refused
to reelect Carter, but such inflation and
interest rates scarred a generation and
induced four decades of Fed inflation
hawkishness. If Biden shares Carter’s
electoral fate, his flawed economic stew-
ardship should serve as a lesson to future
SUSAN WALSH/AP PHOTO
political leaders. ★
Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute. Follow him on X:
@Brian_Riedl.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 15
 Let the
Rebuild Begin
A Washington Examiner symposium
The Debt and
Interest Albatross
Rep. Blake D. Moore
A
s we celebrated the Fourth of
July last week and reflected on
the past, present, and future
of our nation, I was remind-
ed of something Thomas Jefferson once
wrote: “It is incumbent on every genera-
tion to pay its own debts as it goes.”
This is a fiscal imperative and moral
obligation that has gone ignored at our
own peril. Today, the fastest-growing
part of the federal budget isn’t infra-
structure, education, healthcare, or even
defense. It is the interest payments on
the national debt itself.
These hidden expenses have be-
come a fiscal albatross, an ever-present
weight around the neck of the economy
and a burden that is draining growth
and opportunity. Congress must play
a central role in educating the public
about this existential threat to our econ-
16 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
omy, national security, and way of life.
The nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office reports that the United
States will spend $892 billion on inter- The new CBO economic
est payments this year — up 153% since
outlook issued in June
President Joe Biden took office. This
situation has decayed so rapidly that, projects $22 trillion in
for the first time in our history, interest
payments now exceed what we spend deficits over the next 10
on our national defense. At this point,
we spend more only on Social Security
years. As a result, an
than anything else. It is as inconceivable estimated 60 cents of
as it is indefensible.
The new CBO economic outlook is- every dollar borrowed
sued in June projects $22 trillion in defi-
cits over the next 10 years — more than
will go to interest.
all our cumulative borrowing between –Blake D. Moore
1789 and when Biden took office. As a
result, an estimated 60 cents of every
dollar borrowed will go to interest.
If a family had to borrow that much
just to pay interest on their accrued debt,
they would not be able to pay for other jected to hit $35 trillion soon, growing
priorities, such as education, homeown- by $1 trillion every four months.
ership, or travel. Over time, it would be- In Utah, we know how to budget re-
come harder and harder for this family to sponsibly. Just three months ago, Utah
stay above water. was named the best economy in the na-
That is precisely America’s gloomy tion for the 17th consecutive year by the
fiscal reality. The national debt is pro- American Legislative Exchange Council.
Elected leaders in Utah understand how to steward our resourc-
es and enact pro-growth policies that lower prices and drive in-
novation. These are the values I am bringing to Washington on
the House Budget Committee.
My committee colleagues and I have a responsibility to
communicate with our constituents and clearly explain this
financial bind so we can rally support and create change. We
are working on a three-pronged effort to raise public aware-
ness, mobilize constituent support, and drive legislative action
against deficit spending.
Through oversight hearings and roundtables, Budget Com-
mittee members have been proactive in working with experts
and stakeholders to spell out the dangers of this level of borrow-
ing and interest payments. We have directed the CBO to provide
full analyses of the fiscal implications of government policies,
such as Biden’s open border policies. And in my district in Utah,
I’ve convened a Debt and Deficit Task Force to put together a
framework of solutions for our federal budgeting process, mod-
eled after Utah’s successful efforts.
Washington must address the interest albatross. If we don’t,
we risk forcing the next generation to inherit a national economy
ridden with debt, decline, and diminished opportunity.
However, the needle will never move without building
public support for change. That’s why my colleagues and
I are sounding the alarm about our unsustainable fiscal
path and communicating, convening, and cajoling all in-
terested parties about the need for solutions.
So, as we celebrate our freedoms this month, let us
also commit to forging a path to realizing our fiscal in-
dependence. We must heed Jefferson’s warning and act
decisively to ensure that we do not burden future gen-
erations with the consequences of our inaction. To-
gether, through hard work and a renewed sense of
urgency, we can safeguard the American dream
for generations to come.

Blake D. Moore is a U.S. representative for

Utah and the vice chairman of the House
Republican Conference. He serves on the
House Budget Committee and Ways and
Means Committee.

2025’s Looming
Tax Fight:
A Chance to Help
the Working-Class
Family
Robert VerBruggen

N
ext year is going to see an epic showdown over tax
policy. Many provisions of Republicans’ 2017 tax law
are set to expire, and most people’s taxes will go up if
Congress doesn’t step in.
Of special interest to parents, and to Republicans’ growing
working-class base, will be how the final compromise treats

Illustration by Jason Seiler July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 17


The earned income
tax credit brutally
punishes working
parents for being
married. Want
thousands of
dollars? Don’t marry
someone who works.
Unsurprisingly, some
single parents make
exactly that choice.
–Robert VerBruggen
A single mother and welfare
recipient with her daughter, 2, in
Portland, Maine, 2016.
marriage and children among the less
well-off. Getting this right is the key to
supporting families without forgetting
the lessons of welfare reform.
The 2017 tax law doubled the child tax
credit, making it now worth up to $2,000.
Without congressional action, it will be
halved again, though the old exemptions
for dependents will also return.
The CTC is designed to refund par-
ents’ income taxes and, for lower earn-
ers, reimburse some of their payroll-tax
burden as well. It isn’t sent as a check to
parents who don’t pay taxes at all, and it
“phases out” for the extremely well-off.
Today’s CTC thus supports parents
by significantly reducing their tax bur-
den, and it also supports work — be-
18 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
cause one must work and pay taxes to
benefit. But the Left, and even parts of
the pro-family Right, have sought to re-
move that latter guardrail.
Giving the benefit even to nonwork-
ers, or making it “fully refundable,”
would destroy the work incentive built
into the CTC. This is out of step with
what people say they want.
Lawmakers should resist such pro-
posals and be skeptical of smaller steps
in that direction, such as giving out the
CTC based on work in either of the past
two years, rather than just the year for
which taxes are being filed. (A bill cur-
rently before Congress, though it looks
unlikely to pass before the election, takes
this approach.)
Instead, the CTC should largely be
continued as it is today, though it should
automatically increase with inflation,
which doesn’t currently happen.
Beyond that, lawmakers looking to
boost help for families should look at a
different policy: the earned income tax
credit.
Like the CTC, the EITC is given only
to those who work and focuses on parents
(though nonparents can receive a small
benefit). But unlike the CTC, the EITC
sends checks to workers in excess of the
taxes they pay — and it phases out as par-
ents rise through the middle class, instead
of only for the wealthiest taxpayers.
This structure makes it a powerful
incentive to work and a strong, focused
support system for working-class fam-
ilies. But there’s one huge problem: the
EITC brutally punishes working parents
for being married, as I recently pointed
out in a Manhattan Institute report.
Say a parent with two children earns
$35,000, and the parent’s romantic
partner earns the same amount. If the
couple is unmarried, the parent will re-
ceive around $4,000 this year. Married,
the couple will receive nothing.
Want thousands of dollars? Don’t
marry someone who works. Unsurpris-
ingly, some single parents make exact-
ly that choice. A 2016 study found that
“single mothers who expect to lose
earned income tax credit benefits upon
marriage are 2.5 percentage points less
likely to marry their partners and 2.5 per-
centage points more likely to cohabit.”
The status quo’s astonishing de-
pravity, however, presents an extremely
attractive option for those looking to re-
store and help the working-class family.
Addressing this marriage penalty would
provide additional funding specifically
for folks of modest means who (a) are
married, (b) work, and (c) have children.
And it does so not by creating a special
benefit just for them, but by addressing a
bias against them in the current system.
There are numerous options for ad-
dressing this problem, which will come
with varying price tags. For example, the
EITC could be based on the income of
the higher-earning spouse rather than
the couple’s total income, or policymak-
ers could allow married couples to sub-
tract part of their second income. Given
the country’s dire fiscal straits, policy-
makers should not expand benefits be-
yond what their eventual compromise is
able to pay for.
This thorny issue combines tax bur-
dens, family policy, and the parties’
evolving political constituencies. The
looming expiration of a major tax law is
going to force Congress to deal with it
in a polarized environment. Next year’s
fighting won’t be pretty. But it can result
in a durable compromise that supports
working families.
Robert VerBruggen is a Manhattan
Institute fellow.
Time to Free
America from
Bidenomics
E.J. Antoni & David Ditch
T
BRIANNA SOUKUP / PORTL AND PORTL AND PRESS HERALD / GET T Y
his Fourth of July felt particular-
ly ironic. We celebrated the an-
niversary of America’s Founding
Fathers declaring independence
from a monarchical ruler, yet we find our-
selves in a similar situation today.
While the Founders risked every-
thing to free the country from tyranny
and succeeded in doing so, President
Joe Biden has reversed their advances in
liberty. His stifling regulations, disregard
for constitutional order, and massive
subsidization of the activist Left mean
that people remain burdened by the
whims of the chief executive.
 In 2021, Biden inherited an econo-
my that had largely recovered from the
COVID-19 pandemic, with annual infla-
tion at a mere 1.4%. He and his allies in
Congress proceeded to launch a cam-
paign of reckless “stimulus” spending
and economic micromanagement on a
scale that King George III could have
never imagined.
The Biden administration’s execu-
tive actions and administrative choices
have cost more than $700 billion. In just
3 1/2 years, the gross national debt has
increased by more than $7 trillion, or
roughly $53,000 per household. The
annual interest payments alone on that
debt are now more than $1 trillion.
Hardworking people are paying a
heavy price for the Bidenomics agenda,
which unleashed the highest inflation in
40 years and forced up interest rates.
Prices have risen so fast under Biden
that despite the average worker’s weekly
pay increasing more than $150, that larger
paycheck buys about $40 less. For the typ-
ical family with two parents working, this
lost purchasing power is the equivalent of
losing almost $4,300 in annual income.
Adding insult to injury, higher inter-
est rates have increased borrowing costs
on everything from mortgages to credit
cards, and from student loans to auto
loans. The deadly combination of high
prices and higher interest rates has caused
the total cost of purchases to explode.
For example, the monthly mortgage
payment on a median-price home today
has increased 120% since January 2021.
The typical family’s lost purchasing
power from inflation and higher bor-
rowing costs have together cost them the
equivalent of almost $8,000 in annual
income. Bidenomics has dug quite a deep
hole for the average person’s finances.
If this sounds bleak, remember that
there were many dark moments for the
fledgling United States during the Rev-
olutionary War, but the American spirit
held firm for years despite those difficul-
ties and persevered to victory.
Similarly, it will likely take years to
undo the damage caused by Bidenomics
and remove Washington from the center
of economic life.
Congress is primarily responsible for
Prices have risen so
fast under Biden that
despite the average
grams, and trillions of dollars in spend-
ing authority. worker’s weekly pay
A serious examination of federal ac-
tivity reveals many opportunities for
increasing more than
streamlining. $150, that larger
The more than $1 trillion per year in
transfers to state and local governments, paycheck buys about
for instance, not only leads to mountains
of waste but also centralizes power in
$40 less. For a typical
Washington in ways that go against the family with two
nation’s founding principles — and often
the 10th Amendment. parents working, this
Congress should also rein in spend-
ing on special interest handouts, pork
lost purchasing power
projects, and agencies that promote is the equivalent of
the agenda of the activist Left. Remov-
ing wasteful and unnecessary spending losing almost $4,300
would be a necessary first step toward a
responsible federal budget.
in annual income.
In turn, significantly lowering federal –E.J. Antoni & David Ditch
deficits would reduce inflationary pres-
sures in the economy and make it easier
for interest rates to come down to earth.
That would allow families to finally catch
up with the higher cost of living that is
the main hallmark of Bidenomics.
In 1776, the cause of freedom in the
New World meant winning indepen-
dence from Great Britain. For America’s
semiquincentennial in 2026, it will mean
winning independence from Washing-
ton’s failed economic agenda.
David Ditch is a senior policy analyst, and
E.J. Antoni is the Richard F. Aster fellow,
at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M.
Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.
Social Security
the alarming statistic that the total cost
Is In Worse Shape of Social Security insolvency has bal-
looned to $615 trillion in nominal dol-
Than It Looks lars — yes, trillion. That’s a nearly $100
trillion increase in debt from three years
Sen. Bill Cassidy ago. We cannot afford to wait and see
how much higher that number will go.

setting federal policy and deserves much
of the blame for what has occurred over
the last three years. The Biden admin-
istration, for example, could not have
implemented most of its radical agen-
da without having access to hundreds
ISTOCK
T
he rot runs deeper than we
thought.
In May, the public received
another update from the Social
Security trustees confirming that the So-
cial Security Trust Fund will be insolvent
That $615 trillion accounts for the
cost of paying benefits and interest on
the debt the United States would accrue
if we allow Social Security to go insolvent
and deficit-spend to keep it afloat over
the next 75 years. This underscores both

of federal agencies, thousands of pro- in nine years. But buried in the data was the severity of the problem and the need

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 19


The total cost of Social
Security insolvency
has ballooned to $615
trillion in nominal
dollars — yes, trillion.
That’s a nearly $100
trillion increase in
debt from three years
ago. We cannot afford
to wait and see how
much higher that
number will go.
–Sen. Bill Cassidy
A woman opposed to privatizing
Social Security holds a sign at a
rally in New York, March 31, 2005.
to stop burying our heads in the sand.
When the Social Security Trust Fund
is depleted in nine years, current law dic-
tates an automatic 21% benefit cut for all
current and future retirees. Congress can
avoid this cut by deficit spending, but it
should pursue a strategy to make the
program sustainable and fairer. We need
a comprehensive plan that avoids mas-
sive benefit cuts or tax hikes and avoids
putting us on the road toward $615 tril-
lion in additional debt.
A Senate working group I’m leading
has a proposal that accomplishes both.
Our “Big Idea” creates a new fund sepa-
rate and independent of the Social Securi-
ty Trust Fund. This new fund would invest
$1.5 trillion in financial markets, just like
a normal pension fund, and hold it and all
20 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
dividends in escrow for nearly 75 years.
Assuming historically average market
return, our “Big Idea” covers about two-
thirds of Social Security’s shortfall, includ-
ing the borrowing costs. The remainder
can be addressed without raising taxes on
seniors or decreasing their benefits.
In addition to this, our proposal
would repeal the Windfall Elimination
Provision and Government Pension Off-
set, create work incentives, and even ev-
ergreen the Social Security Trust Fund.
Fixing Social Security is a math prob-
lem that will take political will to tackle.
We know the longer we wait, the less
favorable the math becomes and the
more painful it will be to fix. This isn’t
hyperbole —we’re seeing the effect in
real time. Investing now may save our
country, and taxpayers, $615 trillion in
debt down the line. That seems like a
worthwhile investment for almost any
reasonable American.
Bill Cassidy is a U.S. senator for
Louisiana and serves on the Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions
Committee.
Dark Clouds on US
Industrial Policy
Horizon
Scott Lincicome
I
ndustrial policy is back in Washing-
ton, D.C., and its supporters are al-
ready crediting it with an American
manufacturing “boom.”
In one narrow sense, they have a
point: Shortly after Congress and the
Biden administration authorized tril-
lions of dollars in federal subsidies for
renewable energy and semiconductors
under the Inflation Reduction Act and
the CHIPS and Science Act, U.S. man-
ufacturing investment and construction
increased significantly.
Two other matters, however, show
why these trends are less promising than
they appear and why people should wor-
ry that the subsidies, and protectionism,
supposedly fueling a U.S. manufacturing
renaissance will repeat America’s long
history of industrial policy failure.
First, the recent increase in U.S.
manufacturing investment must be put
into context. Before the CHIPS Act and
Inflation Reduction Act were enacted in
2022, market factors had pushed compa-
nies to reconsider semiconductor supply
chains. Private demand for, and invest-
ment in, green energy was soaring. And
several major U.S. projects had also
been announced. It’s thus unclear how
much manufacturing spending has been
caused by, instead of just coincident
with, new U.S. industrial policies.
Furthermore, recent increases in in-
dustrial spending are still a relatively
small percentage of total private invest-
ment, making up just 3.6% of private
investment in the first quarter of 2024,
and 0.6% of the United States’s GDP.
The spending might still be important,
but it’s not currently the economic game
changer it is often made out to be.
Indeed, actual U.S. manufacturing
performance — employment, output,
orders, and capacity utilization — has
been flat since mid-2022. Private sur-
veys have been pessimistic, and 2024
projections are now softening. Maybe a
“boom” eventually arrives, but it is just
as likely we’re again seeing what critics
of targeted tax credits, subsidies, and
tariffs have long cautioned: They don’t
generate sustainable, long-term growth
but instead redistribute existing resourc-
es to favored companies at a net loss to
the U.S. economy.
Second, we must also consider the ac-
tual return on these investments.
When the government showers pre-
ferred companies with trade restrictions
and trillions of taxpayer dollars, the pol-
icies will inevitably produce something.
The real question is what, exactly, all that
government support is getting us.
Is it generating dozens of innovative
and globally competitive American fac-
tories and a strong U.S. economy? Or
will it produce a few narrow successes
and many other failures — not just un-
finished projects but entire industries
dependent on government support, plus
unintended and unseen costs elsewhere?
DON EMMERT / AFP / GET T Y
Today, it is too early to say, but there
are already warning signs here and
abroad — ones we’ve seen before.
Here at home, the cost of building,
staffing, and starting production at
subsidized facilities has skyrocketed
 thanks in large part to supply-side bar-
riers, such as environmental permitting
regulations, tariffs, Buy American Act
restrictions, and immigration backlogs.
High costs and other unforeseen prob-
lems have also now delayed or canceled
many semiconductor, electric vehicle,
and solar projects, even some in which
construction had begun.
Just as worrying are initial signs that
factories eventually completed in the
U.S. will not produce cutting-edge tech-
nologies that compete globally without
open-ended government help. Solar
panels, for example, still cost more in
the U.S. than they do abroad, even with
billions in subsidies and multiple rounds
of tariffs. The industry’s solution? It’s
seeking even more tariffs.
Finally, politics is again distorting
industrial policies’ implementation. So-
cial policies such as free child care and
diversity initiatives have been attached
to CHIPS subsidies. Inflation Reduction
Act dollars have been disproportionate-
ly funneled to swing states. Companies
have openly complained about slow and
complicated bureaucracy, and invest-
ment uncertainty has increased in the
run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
These and other matters remind us
there’s a huge chasm between celebrated
investment announcements and actual,
productive factories. They also show the
risk that today’s industrial policies pro-
duce small benefits at a massive cost —
both the usual budgetary overruns and
the diversion of finite taxpayer and pri-
vate resources away from better targets.
There are also concerns abroad be-
cause subsidies here have prodded the
European Union, Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, India, China, and others to of-
fer subsidies of their own — thousands
of new industrial policy measures, likely
worth trillions of dollars. If history is any
guide, this uncoordinated and predict-
able “global subsidy race” could generate
gluts and trade wars that would under-
mine the very domestic investments U.S.
industrial policies are trying to encour-
age. In the end, almost everyone would
be worse off, especially developing coun-
tries that can’t afford big subsidies and,
in the case of “green” goods, the envi-
ronment itself.
In sum, American industrial policy
TIMOTHY D. EASLEY / AP
has long faced challenges that limit its
effectiveness and inflict unintended eco-
nomic and geopolitical damage. It’s too
soon to conclude that we’re following
the same path today, but signs do point
Actual U.S.
manufacturing
performance has been
in that direction. This doesn’t mean that
Congress should just sit back and watch flat since mid-2022.
things unfold, simply hoping its tril-
lion-dollar gamble pays off. Instead, it
Maybe a ‘boom’ will
should repeal the industrial policies and come, but it is just
implement the long list of proven tax,
trade, regulatory, immigration, and oth- as likely we’re again
er reforms that free marketers have long
recommended to boost strategic indus-
seeing what critics of
tries and address strategic challenges. targeted tax credits,
Subsidies and protectionism, howev-
er, still aren’t on that list. subsidies, and tariffs
Scott Lincicome is the vice president of
have long cautioned:
general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. They don’t generate
Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.
sustainable, long-term
growth but instead
Restoring redistribute existing
America’s Military resources to favored
companies at a net loss
Industrial Base to the U.S. economy.
Tom Rogan
–Scott Lincicome
D
etermined to subjugate Tai-
wan under Chinese Com-
munist Party rule, China is
building warships and weap-
ons at a vast pace and scale. Our military
— and economy — simply is not ready.
If Taiwan falls, the American alli-
ance structure in the Pacific will suffer
a potentially deadly blow. China will be
able to compel the political obedience
of Japan and the Philippines by hold-
ing their trade flows at risk. Both those
countries are U.S. treaty defense allies.
A cauldron of melted steel is
Taiwan’s fall will mean the destruction of
emptied at a plant in Ghent,
the world’s most advanced semiconduc- Kentucky, July 31, 2018.
tor chip manufacturer, TSMC, or, even
worse, China’s assumed control over that
manufacturing behemoth and the critical
international export industry it provides.
It’s clear that Chinese President Xi
Jinping is deeply serious about securing The United States is not prepared for
Taiwan sooner rather than later. He has this fight. Too few are willing to admit this
told the People’s Liberation Army to be truth and prepare for it. But others, such
ready to effect a successful invasion of as the Marine Corps and Air Force Secre-
the island democracy by 2030. Xi views tary Frank Kendall, have greater courage.
that objective as the most critical test of Speaking last September, Kendall
his leadership and a matter of destiny posited, “If we were asked tomorrow to
for the CCP. go to war against a great power, either
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 21

The inadequacy of
the defense industrial
base looms large.
Today, just about
every surface warship
and submarine
under construction
is delayed. Costs
are also exceeding
estimates, sometimes
very significantly. In
addition, a shortage of
construction facilities
and skilled workers
means that certain
vessels are having to
be prioritized to the
detriment of others.
–Tom Rogan
The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in
Kittery, Maine, Sept. 8, 2021.
Russia or China, would we be really
ready to do that? And I think the answer
is not as much as we could be, by a sig-
nificant margin. And we’ve got to start
spending a lot of time thinking about
that and figuring out what we’re going to
do about it.”
The inadequacy of the defense in-
dustrial base looms large. The prob-
lem here isn’t simply America’s present
incapacity to build enough of what is
needed but an incapacity to do so ef-
ficiently and on budget. Any serious
22 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
agenda to restore America’s economic
strength and prosperity must address
this industry’s failures.
Take shipbuilding. In 2024, the U.S.
Navy’s combatant surface and subma-
rine forces are too small. And with China
in mind, the problem is getting worse. As
the Center for Strategic and Internation-
al Studies notes, “The [People’s Libera-
tion Army Navy] operates 23 destroyers
launched in the past 10 years compared
with 11 operational U.S. destroyers. ...
China’s productive advantage is reflected
in the relative ages of active Chinese and
U.S. ships. About 70% of Chinese war-
ships were launched after 2010, while
only about 25% of the U.S. Navy’s were.”
Some of these PLA warships, such
as the Type 055 air defense cruiser, are
highly capable and able to rival their U.S.
counterparts. Chinese anti-ship ballistic
missile platforms are also highly ad-
vanced, able to force U.S. carrier strike
groups to operate far further from Tai-
wan than would be ideal. Put simply, the
U.S. needs more destroyers, submarines,
and long-range anti-ship/land attack
missiles — and it needs them now.
The central U.S. challenge in fixing
this growing imbalance is the need to
bolster the defense industrial base. To-
day, just about every surface warship
and submarine under construction is
delayed. Costs are also exceeding esti-
mates, sometimes very significantly. In
addition, a shortage of construction fa-
cilities and skilled workers means that
certain vessels are having to be prior-
itized to the detrimental delivery time
frame of others. But there are also insuf-
ficient penalties imposed upon defense
manufacturers that exceed budgets while
failing to deliver on time. All of this must
be addressed.
For starters, Congress should appro-
priate funds to construct new shipyards.
Congress should also authorize grant
programs providing college/education
tuition relief to engineers and machin-
ists who work in the defense industrial
space for at least five years. The presi-
dent and Congress should also provide
legal cover to allow for nonunion labor
in shipbuilding construction. These re-
forms would help to address the short-
age of skilled workers and the incapacity
to build more ships.
The Biden administration or a second
Trump administration should also ramp
up bulk purchases of Joint Air-to-Sur-
face Standoff Missile-Extended Range
and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles and
Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition
bombs. Current inventories of these cru-
cially valuable weapons would likely last
only one week of war with China.
Finally, the U.S. should entertain na-
val construction contracts from close
allies such as Japan and South Korea,
which have shown themselves able to
do what we cannot and build excellent
warships on time and on budget.
Accountability also matters. Where
admirals and generals in charge of pro-
curement decisions and construction
efforts fail to deliver, they should be
relieved. Too often, these officers and
civilian Pentagon officials are reluctant
to impose consequences on powerful de-
fense contractors for their cost overruns
and delays. Sometimes this reluctance is
informed by a desire to take up lucrative
positions with those same companies
on retirement. Other times it is a result
of congressional cronyism. But the im-
portance of organizations such as Naval
Sea Systems Command (responsible for
overseeing warship construction) can-
not be overstated.
So also must political leaders be held
accountable by the media and voters.
We need far less legislation of the kind
offered by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI),
for example, which makes it harder and
more expensive for the Navy to buy criti-
cal shipbuilding materials at lower costs.
We also need less cronyism in defense
procurement decisions. Too many oth-
erwise defense-knowledgeable members
of Congress such as Reps. Rob Wittman
(R-VA) and Kay Granger (R-TX) support
the retention of worse-than-useless war-
ships because doing so helps their local
economies. This prevents the military
from diverting resources to programs
that might actually help defeat China in
any future war.
Top line: If America wants to be ready
to fight and win a war with China over
Taiwan, we better start acting in that
pursuit. If not, we better mentally pre-
pare ourselves to lose the most political-
ROBERT F. BUKAT Y / AP
ly defining war of the 21st century. ★
Tom Rogan is an online editor and
foreign policy writer for the Washington
Examiner.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 23
 Slouching
toward Europe
Americans
should instead
pursue policies
for a better
economic future
By James Rogan

24 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024

A
mericans need less
“have a nice day” and
more “strive hard.”
Tolerance of medioc-
rity and an openness
to slouching through
each day is not the
route to productivity growth. It’s the
path to Western European-style eco-
nomic stagnation.
The United States is the world leader
in advanced technologies and possess-
es the world’s most productive econo-
my. But the U.S. economy is built on the
quicksand of the federal debt. The federal
debt, owned by the public, is now equal
to about 100% of gross domestic product,
or $100,000 per person. It’s a dangerous
path to go down.
France’s political and economic sys-
tems are being tested in part because of
excessive government debt. French equity
and debt markets are in turmoil because
of an upcoming national parliamentary
election and because France’s national
debt is unsustainably large. France is thus
a loud siren for the U.S. Each 1% increase
in the cost of borrowing for the federal
government raises the debt service cost
by 1% of GDP, or almost $300 billion. Like
France, the U.S. is borrowing to service
existing debt.
That is not sustainable. And things are
getting worse. The nonpartisan Congres-
sional Budget Office has just revised its
forecast for the federal deficits. The CBO
put it plainly, “The deficit will equal about
7.0% of GDP in fiscal year 2024 and 6.5%
in fiscal year 2025. Moreover, for the next
decade deficits will average over 5%, sig-
nificantly more than the 3.7% that deficits
have averaged over the past 50 years.”
President Joe Biden bears significant
blame here. He has embraced Modern
Monetary Theory. He thinks deficits
don’t matter. Biden is using federal debt
to increase dramatically the size of the
federal government and to create a Euro-
pean-style welfare-nanny state. Biden has
grown the government by 10% or more in
less than four years.
The correlation is clear. As the gov-
ernment grows, economic growth slows.
Over the past 15 years, U.S. share of global
output has increased slightly. The share
of global output as generated by the Eu-
ropean Union and Great Britain has de-
creased slightly. Europe is falling behind
the U.S. and the other major economies of
the world. Today U.S. GDP is almost 45%
larger than the GDP of the free countries
of Europe.
Washington Examiner illustration; Getty Images
What explains this divergence?
For a start, Europe chooses statist
economic policies, including a compre-
hensive regulatory regime. Biden and
many Democrats seek to emulate Europe.
But to achieve the goals of a strong econ-
omy, not burdened with excessive debt,
not suffocated by regulations and without
unnecessary government interference in
the daily lives of responsible citizens, the
country must return to first principles.
The foundational principle is to
restore economic freedom. Enable
Americans to decide what to produce,
what to consume, and what to buy and
sell. Choose capitalism, not statism and
government-led industrial policy. Ameri-
ca was founded on the principle of liberty,
and capitalism provides invisible struc-
tures so people are free to choose how to
live their lives.
Government policy should be directed
toward strengthening the market econo-
my, not state-directed mandates as are
common in Western Europe. That goal
can be achieved through deficit reduc-
tion, comprehensive tax reform, a root
canal on the administrative state, and a
renewed focus on government-funded
research and development.
The deficit looms large here. The U.S.
economy is operating at full employment.
But the federal deficit is 7% of GDP. Out-
side of the coronavirus pandemic, the
deficit has never been this high in a time
of near or full employment. Deficits have
Profit and investment
are fundamental to
economic growth.
Western Europe
has turned its back
on capitalism. The
consequences are
clear: The people of
Europe become poorer.
But profit is not a dirty
word. Profit should
be cheered. Profit
drives investment,
and investment drives
productivity gains.
exploded under Biden, but the underlying
driver of the deficit is entitlements: So-
cial Security, Medicare, other mandatory
spending, as well as interest on the debt.
The public loves entitlements. And there
is no political will to reduce them.
But the federal government must pay
for the debt it has accumulated. And rising
deficits push interest rates higher, raise
the cost of capital for business, reduce
investment, lower long-run productivity
growth, and make the American dream of
homeownership a mirage for many.
Ultimately, entitlement reform will be
necessary. Most people receive more in
Social Security and Medicare benefits than
they pay in to the trust fund systems. A 1%
increase in the employee contribution to
Social Security and Medicare would close
the deficit gap by about 1% of GDP. But
raising the employer contribution would
be a tax on employment. It is better to tax
entitlement than employment. We should
not emulate Europe where mandatory tax-
es on employment can reach 40%.
Still, the U.S. social welfare system
has already largely eradicated real pover-
ty. The research of Bruce D. Meyer and
James Sullivan shows that, at most, 1%
or 2% of the U.S. population lives in true
poverty as measured by consumption.
When the markets force reform, Congress
should look to reduce entitlement bene-
fits for the wealthiest people, reform the
bloated Social Security disability outlays,
and increase eligibility ages across the
board. Discretionary spending restraints
and civil service reform would also pro-
vide for greater accountability and effi-
ciency in government.
But so also is comprehensive tax re-
form important. That means some hard
choices. For one, the U.S. should insti-
tute a 5% value-added tax on all goods
and services. That would raise about 1%
of GDP each year. Fixing the deficit will
not be pain-free. Politicians with courage
and common sense could persuade the
public that a VAT is necessary to restore
fiscal sanity. Sell the new tax as a tariff
on excessive consumption. But a small
VAT is not enough to bridge the structur-
al deficit, which is about 5% of GDP. To
reduce the budget deficit to 2% of GDP,
more revenues are necessary.
At the margin, tax loopholes can be
closed. A consumption tax can be imposed
on the extremely wealthy so that they can-
not avoid income and estate taxes by bor-
rowing against appreciated assets.
The combination of sensible tax, spend-
ing, and entitlement reform would reduce
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 25
26 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
 the deficit from the current 7% of GDP
toward revenue balance. Restoring fiscal
sanity would lower borrowing costs for the
federal government and for all households.
Americans could dream again.
But tax reform is not enough to pre-
vent the U.S. from becoming a European
social welfare state or a nanny state like
Denmark or Sweden, where top marginal
tax rates reach 56% and higher. Very high
marginal tax rates reduce incentives and
cause legal tax avoidance. The adminis-
trative state must be rolled back. Exces-
sive regulation imposes a clear tax on
business. Regulatory costs account for
1.34% of the country’s total wage bill, or
almost $150 billion a year. Through regu-
lation reform, employers would be able to
raise wages and undo some of the effects
of higher entitlement contributions.
Profit and investment are fundamental
to economic growth. Western Europe has
turned its back on capitalism. The conse-
quences are clear: The people of Europe
become poorer. But profit is not a dirty
word. Profit should be cheered. Profit
drives investment, and investment drives
productivity gains.
Because of low corporate taxes, the
U.S. is attracting strong foreign direct
investment. Western Europe is deindus-
trializing. European manufacturers are
turning to the U.S. because the U.S. has
not fully embraced “green zealotry.” Cor-
porate taxes should not be raised when
the renewal of the provisions of the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is debated in
2025. Investment surged because of the
TCJA. Capital was repatriated. Wages
rose. The effects of the corporate tax re-
forms on the deficit were de minimis.
The struggle to dominate the technol-
ogies, goods, and services of the future
will also be key. U.S. policy should es-
pecially support investment in research
and development. Fifty years ago, the
federal government funded two-thirds
of the country’s R&D spending. Today
the private sector finances over 70% of
R&D. Entitlement spending has crowded
Restoring fiscal sanity
would lower borrowing
costs for the federal
(ALEX BRANDON/AP)
government and for all
households. Americans
could dream again.
President Joe Biden holds up a copy of the Republican Study Committee's fiscal
2024 budget proposal as he speaks about the economy in Largo, Maryland, in 2023.
out government-funded R&D. The private
sector is not going to invest in moonshot
technologies, but the government can.
Look at what the Trump administration
achieved with Operation Warp Speed, the
rush to secure COVID-19 vaccines.
Reallocating federal spending from
welfare to R&D would be greatly ben-
eficial. Congress should also eliminate
Biden’s green energy subsidies and redi-
rect those monies to fundamental R&D.
Prominent economists recently conclud-
ed that government-funded R&D is key to
productivity growth, point-blank stating:
“A declining public sector role in
R&D has coincided with a slowdown in
productivity growth and a stagnating
standard of living for most Americans. …
Research demonstrates that after about
8 years, increases in federal government
appropriations for fundamental research
and development programs productiv-
ity starts to significantly and steadily
increase.”
In plain language, government-funded
R&D jump-starts productivity and long-
run shared prosperity.
People matter, too. Uncontrolled
immigration is bad for America. Biden
waited too long to make any effort to
secure the border. But the evidence is
overwhelming: Controlled immigration
is great for America. We should secure
the border while keeping the door open
for those who self-select for grit and hard
work. Policy should encourage immigra-
tion to the U.S. of the best and brightest
from overseas. Immigrants are respon-
sible for 36% of innovation in America.
Immigrants self-select for intelligence, for
determination, for grit, and for hard work.
Winning the race for artificial intelli-
gence dominance is equally critical. The
EU is suffocating AI with regulations. The
U.S. must reject that approach. AI could
increase long-run productivity growth in
the U.S. by 0.5% to 1%. If realized, such
increases would have a profound effect on
national welfare and the long-run trajecto-
ry of the budget deficit. The CBO observed
that without any tax increases or spending
cuts, “if the productivity of labor and cap-
ital in the nonfarm business sector grew
0.5 percentage points per year more quick-
ly than CBO projects, federal debt held by
the public in 2054 would be 124% of GDP
not the 211% currently projected.”
Top line: Future deficits could be al-
most halved by the full realization of AI.
But the data centers that power AI require
vast amounts of energy. Researchers proj-
ect that AI energy demand will soar from
3% of national energy consumption to
8% by 2030. That matters because green
energy is too expensive and is not yet a
24/7-ready fuel. The U.S. has a strong com-
parative advantage in fossil fuels. Europe
has turned its back on fossil fuels. That de-
cision is hollowing out the economies of
Western Europe. Absurdly, however, Biden
has said he wants to eliminate fossil fuels.
That is nihilistic. We must instead rush
to develop AI and power that transforma-
tive technology with America’s cheap and
abundant fossil fuels.
The U.S. has great potential to contin-
ue dominating the global economy and
providing increased living standards to
its citizens. But unless bold leadership is
forthcoming, we risk replicating Europe’s
economic rot. 
James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service
officer who later worked in finance and law
for 30 years. He writes a daily note on the
markets, politics, and society.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 27
BIDEN’S
POST-DEBATE
COLLAPSE
A historically bad performance has the president’s
reelection campaign hanging by a thread
By W. James Antle III
B
e careful what you wish
for, goes the old saying,
because you just might
get it. This truism may
have upended the 2024
presidential campaign
before either major par-
ty’s nomination convention has even
taken place.
President Joe Biden wanted an early
debate, largely conducted on his terms,
that would give him time to recover if he
faltered. But when Biden set out his de-
bate challenge, he sounded confident the
matchup was his to lose.
“Donald Trump lost two debates to me
in 2020,” Biden said in a video posted on
X on May 15. “Since then, he hasn’t shown
up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he
wants to debate me again. Well, make my
day, pal.” No interruptions, no live studio
audience, no conservative moderators, no
28 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
problem, all starting on June 27.
Trump, the former president and pre-
sumptive Republican nominee, made his
day. The debate was a disaster, and now
Biden’s presidential campaign is hanging
in the balance. Many Democrats now con-
cede the 81-year-old incumbent’s age is a
problem and that they don’t think he can
win. The restrictions that were meant to
disadvantage Trump imposed discipline
on him and he turned in a commanding
performance. But Biden largely imploded
on his own.
After an apologetic but energetic rally
in the battleground state of North Caroli-
na and a weekend spent licking wounds,
with a little family blame-the-aides game
thrown in for good measure, it looked like
Democrats had stopped panicking and de-
cided to circle the wagons around Biden.
It was just one bad night, they kept telling
reporters and cable television news hosts.
Former President Barack Obama,
in many ways still the real leader of the
Democratic Party, came to his erstwhile
understudy’s defense. “Bad debate nights
happen. Trust me, I know,” he wrote on X
in a nod to his loss in the first debate with
Mitt Romney in 2012. “But this election is
still a choice between someone who has
fought for ordinary folks his entire life and
someone who only cares about himself.”
That was in public. “But for months,
Obama has shared with Biden and friends
his deep concerns about Trump’s political
strengths and the real possibility he is re-
elected in November,” the Washington Post
reported days later. “In December, during
a private lunch at the White House, Obama
discussed the need for Biden to empower
his campaign apparatus, suggesting he in-
stall a more senior level decision-maker at
the Wilmington headquarters.”
First lady Jill Biden posed for a Vogue
 President Joe Biden struggles during the CNN presidential debate on June 27, 2024, in Atlanta.
cover spread the weekend after her hus-
band suffered the most lopsided debate
loss in general election history. The story’s
lede wasn’t exactly textbook messaging for
combating a populist political opponent:
“If you want to know what power feels like,
try to get yourself driven around in a mo-
torcade. … It’s as if the world is holding its
breath. For you.”
In a post-debate addendum to the puff
piece, the first lady told Vogue her family
“will not let those 90 minutes define the
four years he’s been president. We will
continue to fight.” The editor’s note add-
ed, “Whatever happens in the weeks and
months between now and November, it is
Dr. Biden who will remain the president’s
closest confidant and advocate.”
That was little comfort for Democrats
looking for a viable path forward and
instead seeing finger-pointing and ex-
cuse-making. The initial explanation for
Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Biden’s weak showing was that he had a
cold, which made his throat hurt and his
voice hoarse. But his arguments against
Trump were as bad as he sounded. Biden
also decamped to Waffle House afterward,
where he glad-handled and showed little
outward sign of illness.
Then came leaks that Biden was over-
prepared for the debate, with longtime
aides such as Anita Dunn and former
White House chief of staff stuffing his
head full of facts and figures rather than
letting Joe be Joe. This was one of the de-
fenses made of Ronald Reagan after he
had a subpar first debate against Walter
Mondale during his reelection campaign
in 1984. Reagan, who left the Oval Office
nearly five years later at a younger age than
Biden entered it, was the oldest person
ever to serve as president at the time.
Except Biden was given six days at
Camp David to prepare. The White House
cleared his schedule, as it has done ahead
of other big moments in his presidency,
including the State of the Union address
many Democrats had hoped would put age
concerns to rest. The result didn’t make
it seem like Biden had been cramming.
He was unaware that Snopes had rated
claims about the “very fine people” Char-
lottesville Trump quote. Biden mangled
a promising answer about abortion, his
strongest issue in the midterm elections
two years ago, into a mumbled mess about
illegal immigrants not being the only peo-
ple committing rape in the United States,
in the meantime highlighting the murder
of a young woman by an illegal immigrant
and the broader border crisis, one of his
weakest issues.
Biden’s next rationale for his debate
drubbing was to blame his busy travel
schedule. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said
at a fundraiser in McLean, Virginia. “I de-
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 29
cided to travel around the world a couple
times, going through I don’t know how
many time zones — for real, I think it 15
time zones. ... I didn’t listen to my staff.”
But Biden had been back for 12 days by
the time of the debate and had spent the
week leading up to it in Camp David.
If this messaging didn’t accentuate
Democratic concerns about their puta-
tive standard-bearer, the sight of Hunt-
er Biden at White House meetings had
them even more perplexed. The business
dealings, trading on the family name, and
drug use of the president’s son have been
a scandal for years. The younger Biden is
now a convicted felon, a label at the cen-
ter of the Democrats’ campaign against
Trump.
Then came the polls. The Biden cam-
paign had warned the post-debate num-
bers might be bad. “If we do see changes
in polling in the coming weeks, it will not
be the first time that overblown media
narratives have driven temporary dips
in the polls,” Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote
in a June 29 memo, rattling off a series
of negative headlines about Obama’s de-
bate loss to Romney. The campaign later
released internal polling showing Biden
still behind Trump, albeit narrowly.
One major difference with Obama in
2012 and Reagan in 1984, aside from the
extent of the defeat, was that Biden was
already trailing pre-debate. The week
after limping out of his Atlanta, national
polls came out showing Trump’s lead had
grown to as much as 6 points. Polling was
then leaked from a Democratic firm pur-
portedly showing Biden losing in all the
battleground states and close or trailing
in several others not previously deemed
to be close.
The dam has yet to break, but fissures
are showing. Congressional Democrats
are going public with their concerns about
Biden’s electability. Rep. Jared Golden (D-
A Reuters–Ipsos poll
finds that a third of
Democrats want Biden
to drop out of the
race. A USA Today–
Suffolk University poll
determined 41% of
Democrats want Biden
replaced.
30 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden greet supporters at a Waffle House
after the presidential debate on June 27, 2024.
ME), whose district has gone for Trump
in the last two presidential elections and
whose whole state may now be in play in
November, wrote an op-ed saying it was
just fine for democracy if the former pres-
ident returned to power. At this writing,
two dozen House Democrats are prepar-
ing to ask Biden to step aside if unspecified
improvements are not made soon.
Former top Obama adviser David
Axelrod laid out the Democratic dilemma
shortly after the debate ended on CNN.
On the one hand, he warned his Republi-
can co-panelists, “If, for whatever reason,
there is a change at the top of the tick-
et, you guys are in trouble with Donald
Trump.” But making that change won’t be
easy.
“This isn’t the ‘60s, OK?” Axelrod said.
“Voters choose the nominee. He is the
nominee, only he can decide whether he’s
going to continue … this is a guy with a lot
of pride who believes in himself. The idea
that he’s going to say, ‘You know, I had a
bad debate, I think I’m going to walk away
from this.’ I find it hard to believe.”
It isn’t the ‘60s, and Democrats have
bad memories of their last contested con-
vention in Chicago in 1968. (Their sitting
president, Lyndon Johnson, had bowed
out after a close call against Sen. Eugene
McCarthy in the New Hampshire prima-
ry.) There are, however, options desperate
Democrats may explore.
Democratic delegates are technically
not bound to their candidate of choice,
according to rules that permit them to “in
all good conscience reflect the sentiments
of those who elected them.” Veteran Dem-
ocratic operative Elaine Kamarck argued
in her 2016 book Primary Politics that this
language “leave[s] open the possibility
that future conventions could overturn the
verdict of the primaries and save a party
from defeat in November.” A Reuters-Ip-
sos poll found that a third of Democrats
want Biden to drop out of the race. A USA
Today-Suffolk University poll determined
41% of Democrats want Biden replaced.
It would take a higher percentage of the
more than 3,900 delegates committed to
Biden to abandon him for his replacement.
It takes 1,976 to win the nomination. If no
one can secure the nomination on the first
ballot, the more than 700 superdelegates,
mostly elected officials and other import-
ant Democratic leaders, can then vote.
Their support would be critical to either
Biden’s survival or the selection of some-
one else.
Vice President Kamala Harris has start-
ed polling slightly better than Biden in the
aftermath of the debate, though CNN
found she and others frequently floated
as Biden substitutes still trail Trump. She
has been unpopular for most of her term,
leading many Democrats to want to pass
her over for the top spot or replace her
entirely as well. In that scenario, they eye
either Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) or a
swing-state option such as Gov. Gretchen
Whitmer (D-MI). (Both have said they are
committed to Biden.)
But campaign finance experts believe
Harris could keep the money Biden has
raised, a big advantage now that Trump
has begun enjoying fundraising success. At
most, the Biden war chest could be trans-
ferred to other Democratic entities not ful-
ly under the candidate’s control if another
nominee is chosen. Harris might also have
more democratic legitimacy than a person
who was never part of the process at all, an
important consideration given that Demo-
crats have framed the election as a defense
of democracy.
None of this has ever happened before.
No major party presumptive nominee has
withdrawn or been toppled at this late
date. Biden would like to keep it that way.
Biden entered the debate trailing
EVAN VUCCI/AP PHOTO
Trump. Now he may lose Democrats, too.
That’s not what he wished for 
W. James Antle III is executive editor of the
Washington Examiner magazine.
 Congress P. 34
Politics P. 36
White House P. 38
National Security P. 40

Campaign

Loud-mouth politics:
Biden needs to campaign like it’s 1987
By David Mark

Then-Senator Joe Biden speaks as he stands

with his wife Jill Biden after announcing
his candidacy for president in Wilmington,
Delaware on June 10, 1987.

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 31

WASHINGTON BRIEFING
The then-senator shot
his mouth off in that
losing presidential race.
It might be the only
thing to save him now.
By David Mark
T
he first time Joe Biden ran for
president, it was hard to shut
him up, which contributed to
his early departure. Now run-
ning his mouth may be the pres-
ident’s one way to save his job.
Biden faces that kind of politically ex-
istential choice after his widely panned
June 27 debate performance against
former President Donald Trump, the
2024 Republican nominee-in-waiting.
Throughout the 90-minute-plus faceoff
in Georgia, Biden’s voice was soft and
raspy, and he spoke with little vigor or
energy. Biden, 81, further stumbled over
prepared lines meant to reinforce his
administration’s accomplishments over
3 1/2 years.
Shortly after the disastrous per-
formance, talk among Democrats
turned to a possible replacement nom-
inee, which would be needed if Biden
dropped out. There’s no reason to
think Biden will leave, as he’s craved
the presidency his whole adult life.
And he sought it twice before win-
ning: in the 1988 cycle, as a precocious
44-year-old Democratic senator from
Delaware, and 20 years later, when he
did well enough in primary debates to
grab the attention of the eventual Dem-
ocratic nominee and future president,
Sen. Barack Obama, who made Biden
the ticket’s understudy.
It was in that first, Reagan-era pres-
idential race, though, when Biden was
at his most loquacious. Biden wasn’t
even halfway through his 36 years as
a senator. But he already had a reputa-
tion as somebody who liked to talk and
talk and talk. To the point that Capitol
Hill reporters on deadline would have
to politely step away and tell the yam-
mering senator from Delaware they
32 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
Sen. Joe Biden
(D-DE) gestures at
a news conference
on Capitol Hill on
Sept. 17, 1987.
had to run off and write their stories.
And C-Span’s video archives are full of
Biden’s long-running speeches, on the
Senate floor, at Democratic Party fund-
raisers, and in other venues.
Biden’s mouth also turned out to be
his worst enemy at the time.
SELF-INFLICTED
POLITICAL WOUNDS
Biden launched that first presidential
campaign in June 1987 and ended it in
September. His forced exit is remem-
bered for revelations of plagiarism on a
paper at Syracuse University’s College
of Law in the 1960s, as well as having to
confront a leaked video showed Biden
reciting a speech by British Labour Par-
ty leader Neil Kinnock nearly word for
word, without attribution.
But Biden was already sliding by the
time those plagiarism stories hit. Done
in by his big mouth.
Biden said to a New Hampshire voter
that summer, “I think I probably have a
much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.”
The senator added, “I’d be delighted to
sit down and compare my IQ to yours if
you’d like.” Not exactly a way to show hu-
mility and respect for voters’ judgment.
And Biden, testing his presidential
message in February 1987 before a New
Hampshire audience ahead of his cam-
paign launch four months later, mused,
“When I marched in the Civil Rights
Movement, I did not march with a
12-point program. I marched with tens of
thousands of others to change attitudes.
And we changed attitudes.”
Advisers at the time had to remind
Biden gently that he had not marched
during the Civil Rights Movement.
Facing a wave of unfavorable press
coverage, Biden quit the presidential pri-
mary race before any Democratic nomi-
nating contest votes were cast.
COVER: WASHINGTON EXAMINER PHOTO ILLUSTRATION; GEORGE WIDMAN/AP FILE PHOTO
FLOCK TO THE MEDIA AND
EMBRACE THE SPOTLIGHT
That long-ago, arrogant Joe Biden offers
a road map for a 2024 comeback against
Trump. Biden could use his debate di-
saster to become much more open to
media interviews and public interaction.
As president, Biden has done fewer in-
terviews than his modern predecessors
of both parties, by far. And his White
House press office pushes back aggres-
sively on any journalist suggestion that
Biden is too old and infirm to run again.
ABOVE: JOHN DURICKA/AP
Biden could, in theory, throw off the
rhetorical shackles imposed by his han-
dlers and seek out interviews with jour-
nalists and meetings with voters in any
venue that will have him. That wouldn’t
be difficult, of course, since he’s presi-

dent of the United States and can com-
mand audiences on a whim.
Biden could take it upon himself to
do multiple television interviews ev-
ery day. To be sure, he would stumble
at times and appear old and frail. That
would have to be priced in with this
kind of strategy, and his press shop
would need to just roll with embar-
rassing moments and answers by the
president.
I know I’m not a young
man, to state the
obvious. I don’t walk as
easy as I used to. I don’t
speak as smoothly as I
used to. I don’t debate
as well as I used to. But
I know what I do know:
I know how to tell the
truth. I know right from
wrong. And I know how
EVAN VUCCI/AP
to do this job.
–President Biden
President Biden
speaks at a campaign
rally in Raleigh, North
Carolina on June 28.
Part of such a strategy would be ac-
knowledging his age, as Biden would be
86 at the end of a second term. Still,
Biden could constantly compare him-
self to Trump, his repeated rival from
2020, who faces sentencing on July 11
after being convicted in Manhattan on
34 New York state charges related to
hush money payments made to a porn
star with whom he’d had a brief affair.
There’s some polling evidence inde-
pendent and undecided voters have
moved away from Trump since the
convictions.
“I may be old, but I’m not a criminal
like Trump,” Biden could say.
In a sense, Biden already has gone
down this path. On Friday, June 28, the
afternoon after his embarrassing debate
performance in Atlanta the previous
night, Biden confronted the concerns
swirling around him at a rally in Raleigh,
North Carolina.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state
the obvious,” he said to a crowd of peo-
ple cheering. “I don’t walk as easy as I
used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I
used to. I don’t debate as well as I used
to. But I know what I do know: I know
how to tell the truth. I know right from
wrong. And I know how to do this job.”
If that’s the first of many such
self-confessional statements that’s used
as a contrast with Trump, it could be part
of a comeback. If it’s a one-off, Biden is
likely doomed.
‘STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS,’
PART 2?
This kind of ask-me-anything strategy
has been used before in modern pres-
idential politics, to varying effects. In
the 2000 Republican primary fight.
Sen. John McCain pioneered it with
his “Straight Talk Express” bus trips.
On long rides through New Hampshire
ahead of its first-in-the-nation primary,
McCain held court on all topics journal-
ists wanted to ask him about.
McCain fell short in that presidential
bid against the eventual GOP nominee
and White House winner, then-Texas
Gov. George W. Bush. But the precedent
for candidate openness was set.
Even Trump adopted that “I’ll talk to
anyone, anytime” strategy for the ear-
ly part of the 2016 Republican primary
fight. It seems strange now, but until
about February 2016, reporters could
get Trump on the phone, or talk to him
in person, with little problem. His Trump
Tower assistant in New York would sim-
ply patch a call through.
That openness ended as Trump
picked up delegates toward the Republi-
can nomination and increasingly sparred
with journalists. Yet there’s no reason
Biden couldn’t adopt such an approach,
even if it took a bit more planning due
to Secret Service precautions and al-
ready having a day job as president, jug-
gling any number of crises, foreign and
domestic.
There’s no assurance any of this
would work for Biden. Trump and his
supporters will make sure to remind
voters, repeatedly, about Biden’s age and
poor debate performance. Still, it’s an
opportunity for the president to be the
Joe Biden of his earlier political incarna-
tion. And hope that 37 years after shoot-
ing off his mouth, he can do it again, with
voters this time not turned off by his ar-
rogance but assured by his lucidity and
coherence. ★
David Mark is managing editor of the
Washington Examiner magazine.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 33
WASHINGTON BRIEFING
CONGRESS
How to avoid future East Palestines
Congress may consider mandating a minimum crew
of two railroad workers per train and granting
additional rail regulation powers to Pete Buttigieg
By Jeremy Lott
T
he agency investigating last
year’s 38-car train derailment
and fire near East Palestine,
Ohio, has begun teasing out its
findings, with the final report
coming later in July.
The National Transportation Safe-
ty Board found plenty of blame to go
around in the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment
of a Norfolk Southern freight train. For
instance, that famous plume of vinyl
chloride that forced the temporary evac-
uation of about 2,000 nearby residents
and triggered warnings of environmental
devastation? That didn’t have to happen.
The possibly quite dangerous vinyl
chloride in the train’s derailed tank cars
“remained in a stabilized environment”
and was “unable to undergo polymer-
ization, a potentially dangerous chemi-
cal reaction, until those tank cars were
34 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
A Norfolk Southern
freight train passes
through the stretch
of track in East
Palestine, Ohio on
June 12 where on Feb.
3, 2023 a Norfolk
Southern train
derailed.
deliberately breached with not passing on information
explosives” as part of the that could have kept the de-
on-site responders’ “vent railment from becoming a
and burn procedure,” the made-for-TV disaster.
agency’s findings state. NTSB agency head Jen-
Moreover, “On-scene nifer Homendy slammed the
temperature trends did not railroad in a field presenta-
indicate that a polymeriza- tion in East Palestine on June
tion reaction was occurring NTSB agency head 25, claiming that Norfolk
and postaccident examina- Jennifer Homendy Southern had tried to under-
tions confirmed this.” mine her agency during the investigation.
The NTSB’s findings point one finger This spooked some investors. The
at the Ohio firefighters for allowing this company’s stock fell from $228.16 the
GENE J. PUSKAR/AP; SUE OGROCKI/AP
and a fatter finger at the railroad com- day before the presentation to a low of
pany. The local, mostly volunteer fire- $208.43 the day of.
fighters lacked proper training, and the The Association of American Rail-
electronic communications were a mess, roads is taking a cooperative and concil-
the agency found. iatory approach toward the agency.
As for Norfolk Southern, the com- “Railroads implemented substantial,
pany is faulted for dribbling out infor- industrywide improvements in response
mation, giving bad information, and to the NTSB’s initial findings,” said Mi-
chael Rush, senior vice president of AAR
Safety and Operations, in a statement.
“With the final report, railroads will care-
fully evaluate key learnings and determine
next steps to meaningfully advance safety.”
The AAR pledged to work with the
agency “to aggressively phase out DOT-
111 tank cars,” which are the weaker cars
that allowed the initial fires in East Pal-
estine, “from hazmat service,” among
other things.
CONGRESSIONAL SHOWDOWN
COMING?
Whether the railroads will be so concil-
iatory to proposed congressional fixes
is another matter. Based on the findings
and recommendations already spooled
out, the final report may give them some
fodder to push back.
“The probable cause finding was un-
surprising, a failed bearing that overheat-
ed,” Marc Scribner, transportation policy
analyst for the Reason Foundation, told
the Washington Examiner. “The NTSB
found that more research is needed on the
performance of hot bearing wayside de-
tectors and their use in order to determine
whether any changes ‘would produce a
significant safety improvement.’ This ne-
cessitates thorough technical, risk, and
cost-benefit analyses before proceeding
to a potential regulatory response.”
“In contrast, the stalled Railway
Safety Act blindly imposes an arbitrary
15-mile spacing mandate for wayside de-
tectors without requiring any analysis,”
Scribner added.
He called on lawmakers to “heed the
call of NTSB’s experts that any new reg-
ulation be justified by careful analysis of
the evidence.”
Other political matters will include
whether or not Congress will mandate a
minimum crew of two railroad workers per
train and how much additional power the
body wants to hand to the transportation
secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to regulate rail.
Many Republicans argue that the
crew was a nonissue in East Palestine
and that the crew requirement is simply
a handout to railroad unions. Some have
signaled distrust of Buttigieg as well.
Those concerns have managed to
hang the Railway Safety Act up in the
Senate, in which support is short of a
filibuster-proof majority. Yet this is an
election year when the phrase “do some-
thing!” tends to take on new urgency.
To that end, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX),
who chairs the House Transportation
Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines,
and Hazardous Materials, sent up a tri-
al balloon. Nehls plans to introduce a
somewhat union-friendly railroad bill,
but not before he reads the final report,
he told Politico.
[The Washington Examiner sent sev-
eral questions to his office about Nehls’s
reaction to the NTSB findings, as well as
his legislation, but did not hear back by
press time.] ★
Jeremy Lott is a contributor for the
Washington Examiner.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 35
WASHINGTON BRIEFING
Politics
African eyes on the US
presidential election
It’s easy for Americans to forget the effect their
national elections have on distant countries
By John Scott Lewinski
Q
ueen stands looking out over
the Tanzanian plains facing
west — pondering the fate of
the United States and what that
destiny will touch on her peo-
ple. Like many sub-Saharan
Africans, she’s confused by the severe
political divide in the world’s most pow-
erful nation and worried about how the
election and its aftermath will affect the
country of her birth.
“We appreciate America and are
grateful for the money they bring to our
country,” Queen said. “But it’s concern-
ing not to know what’s going to happen in
a country that has such influence on the
rest of the world.” She’s the manager at
Little Chem Chem, a safari camp in Kwa
Kuchinia, Tanzania, where Westerners
come to reconnect with the wild and get
the rare opportunity to see elephants,
wildebeest, Thomson’s gazelle, cape
buffalo, zebra, impala, giraffe, and
baboons — all in a single day, if they’re
lucky.
While caught up in the endless
partisan warfare waged during every
presidential campaign season, it’s easy
for the U.S. population to forget the
36 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
effect national elections have on dis-
tant countries and people like Queen, a
name given by a father who cherished the
arrival of his firstborn.
“From what we see here in Africa,
America is very divided,” she explained.
“I sometimes wonder how a country that
has so much wealth and so many gifts can
have so much conflict. I wonder why they
can’t find a way to enjoy the lives they
could have and be grateful for all the good
they can do in the world.”
Salum is an expert guide and
wildlife expert working alongside Queen
at Chem Chem and Little Chem Chem.
He’s able to spot a lioness hiding cubs
in tall grass from 50 yards away before
serving as a translator for warriors of
the Maasai as they teach visitors Afri-
can homeopathy. He wishes nothing but
the best for his American guests, hoping
prospective visitors across the world
appreciate the value of peace.
“Living with each other and living with
the wildlife here, I think we learn how im-
portant it is to live in harmony with each
other and with nature,” Salum said from
the front seat of his safari car. “It is import-
ant for us to live together in peace here, to
A man sits next to
a bicycle near Lake
Manyara National
Park in Tanzania.
stay united, and to work together because
we are preserving both the wildlife and the
tribes of our country.”
Salum made clear his belief that
only unity will allow Tanzania to grow
in the future, stressing his opinion that
internal peace clears the way for maxi-
mizing his country’s potential. He quietly
inferred that Americans should consid-
er similar points or risk their world-re-
nowned quality of life.
Tanzania remains a socialist coun-
try with a governing philosophy differ-
ent from the more libertarian ambitions
of America and the U.S. Constitution.
However, working Africans wonder
if ample freedom and the potential
for endless opportunities overwhelm
Americans’ sense of community —
pitting them against one another.
At the mobile tented camps Legendary
Expeditions operates around the Serengeti
plains under the proud shadow of Maasai
Mara mountain, Nohu serves as a veteran
ADAM JONES/DANITADELIMONT.COM/NEWSCOM
guide, lending his enthusiasm and expert
eye to his nature drives by escorting visi-
tors and their cameras out into the bush.
He acknowledged that his home coun-
try had severe tribal wars in the past but
pointed out his people moved past those
conflicts to unite the nation’s resources.
“There were wars between the
Maasai and other tribes more than a
century ago,” Nobu explained. “But the
 different tribes across the country live
in peace today, trading between their
villages. We understand that unified coun-
try benefits us all. We see the fight between
old men like Biden and Trump, with the
people taking sides, and question what
that will mean for the future.”
While every nation has its own internal
issues across Africa and around the world,
countries competing on the global stage,
for the tourism dollar in the case of Tan-
zania, keep one eye on the U.S., its politics,
and its economy for indicators of what the
future global economic scene holds. Like
a rock tossed in a pond, if the American
economy takes a dip or a war begins to
rage elsewhere, the ripples wash over oth-
er countries and their economies.
African nations seem particularly
wired into American status as the State
Department reports an annual total U.S.
contribution of $8 billion to the continent
overall. With that in mind, Grace, a manag-
er at Mwiba Lodge at the south end of the
Serengeti National Park, yearns for a more
NICK DALE/DESIGN PICS INC.
peaceful and predictable political environ-
ment across the Atlantic.
“To us, the U.S. seems unstable,” Grace
said. “We have seen our share of corruption
here in our country and throughout Africa,
but I am surprised at how much we see in
American politics. Because Americans help
[the people of Africa] a lot with investments
that aid our schools and our development,
watching the U.S. struggle inside itself with
political corruption and mistrust makes us
worry about how all of that will change our
economy and our lives here.”
While she avoids talking politics
with safari guests during her duties,
Grace isn’t afraid to weigh in on the U.S.
election when pressed about the Nov. 5
contest between President Joe Biden and
his vanquished 2020 Republican rival, for-
mer President Donald Trump.
“I look at the job President Biden is
doing, compared to his predecessor, and
I think he is doing [a] good job,” Grace
added. “For me, I think he’s the right guy
for the U.S. around the world because
he seems more able to get along with
other countries. I wish he could bring
Americans together the way we have
united 125 tribes across Tanzania. In my
opinion, beliefs amongst Americans are so
different now, we wonder if there is any-
thing that could ever bring them together.”
Just outside Mwiba Lodge at a
makeshift camp set up for guests to
enjoy an African evening’s quiet by
firelight, Nohu sat in the captain’s chair
of a specially built Land Cruiser and
watched the sunset over the Serengeti.
He couldn’t help but compare the natural
world he sees every day to the hustle and
strife filling American cities more than
8,000 miles away.
“Americans teach us so much about
technology or finances or medicine,”
he said. “But I wonder if we could
teach them something about peace and
moving past their tribal wars.” ★
John Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in
Milwaukee.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 37
WASHINGTON BRIEFING
WHITE HOUSE
What caused the Biden-era
illegal immigration spike?
Never have people seen anything
like the recent surge of unauthorized
crossings from Mexico into the US
By Christopher C. Hull
T
ulsa, Oklahoma, police recent-
ly arrested a thrice-deported
Salvadoran illegal immigrant
for the rape and murder of Ra-
chel Morin, a mother of five,
found dead in August 2023
on a Bel Air, Maryland, trail. Yet within
days of the suspect’s June 14 arrest, and
his extradition back to Maryland, Pres-
ident Joe Biden had issued a potential-
ly unconstitutional amnesty for nearly
500,000 additional aliens and waived
deportation of 350,000 more.
Critics noticed. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-
AR), called Biden’s amnesty a “sham,” not-
ing that “rolling out this unlawful order for
mass amnesty as the country mourns the
death of Rachel Morin at the hands of an
illegal migrant is a disgrace.” Stephen Mill-
President Biden speaks about an executive order at the White House in Washington
on June 4. Biden unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on
migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as the White House tries to
neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of the November elections.
38 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
er, an immigration point man in former
President Donald Trump’s White House,
dubbed the Biden policy an “unconstitu-
tional amnesty to illegal aliens during a
border invasion.” The former president
and 2024 Republican nominee-in-waiting
charged that “Biden is preparing to give
MASS AMNESTY to hundreds of thou-
sands of illegal aliens” and called the move
“unsustainable.”
Let’s step back from the rhetoric on
both sides and examine the historical re-
cord. It shows a rise in illegal immigration
is nothing new.
On one hand, illegal immigration has
spiked before. U.S. Border Patrol encoun-
ters with illegal immigrants at the southern
border broke a million for the first time in
1954, likely because of the Bracero Pro-
gram to facilitate Mexican workers during
World War II, then dropped sharply after
a crackdown. Encounters reached nearly
1.7 million in 1987, peaking just after Pres-
ident Ronald Reagan signed the Immigra-
tion Reform and Control Act. That 1986
law granted amnesty to 2.7 million illegal
aliens, and illegal entries dropped again as
the prospects for legal status diminished.
Before 9/11, encounters reached al-
most that same level, plunging again when
America locked the door after the Jihadi
strike. Encounters hit a half-century low of
under 311,000 in 2017 due to newly elected
Trump’s early policies and the perception
of toughened border security enforcement.
But illegal entries rose again later in the
Trump administration before the corona-
virus pandemic hit.
On the other hand, never have people
seen anything like the illegal immigration
surge under President Joe Biden. From the
Trump-era low, encounters screamed up
over 2.3 million in 2022, a million-alien in-
crease in just half a decade and a spike of
666%. By this measure at least, the Biden-
era increase in illegal immigration is liter-
ally unprecedented.
What caused this Biden-era illegal im-
migration spike? Biden’s recently signed
“Proclamation on Securing the Border”
names at least five specious explanations.
First, Biden’s order says “failing regimes
and dire economic conditions afflict many
countries” — and some of those are even
in the Western Hemisphere, it points out
helpfully. Second, says the order, violence
linked to transnational criminal organiza-
tions has displaced substantial numbers of
people — in Latin America, in particular.
Third, the coronavirus pandemic, or, rath-
er, the crisis caused by the unprecedented
steps taken in reaction to it, “upended so-
cieties around the globe.” Fourth, natural
disasters have forced people from their
homes. Fifth and finally, the illegal alien
spike “is also the direct result of the Con-
gress’s failure to update an immigration
and asylum system that is simply broken.”
That said, none of the factors Biden cit-
ed adequately explains the historic illegal
ALEX BRANDON/AP
alien incursion under his administration.
For instance, there may be failed regimes
in the Western Hemisphere, but the num-
ber of free countries in the world has ac-

tually risen during Biden’s time in office.
Likewise, certainly dire economic condi-
tions afflict some countries today, but the
overall number of countries with negative
economic growth has plunged from 216
to just 17 as the world recovered from
Biden-style COVID-19 policies. Moreover,
though the number of people displaced by
economics, COVID-19, disasters, TCOs, or
other factors worldwide has indeed soared
from 20 million the year of Biden’s election
to 29 million today, only 363,000 of them
want asylum in the United States, up a pal-
try 7% over the same period.
Similarly, yes, what critics called
“COVID crazies“ cratered countries
worldwide — but thankfully the percent-
age suffering under a complete border
closure, for instance, has plunged precipi-
tously from 72% before Biden’s election to
21% after it. Last and likewise, Congress’s
failure to update an immigration and asy-
lum system that is simply broken has re-
mained unchanged not only throughout
the Trump and Biden administrations but
arguably since at least 1990. Therefore,
none of Biden’s excuses for the illegal im-
migration spike under his watch remotely
match the pattern of that spike.
No, the evidence points instead toward
Biden as the culprit in the Biden border
crisis. As a candidate, Biden signaled his
EUGENE GARCIA/AP
support for loosening border security,
pledging to undo Trump-era immigration
restrictions such as the “Migrant Protec-
tion Protocols,” popularly known as the
“Remain in Mexico” policy, the public
charge rule that deterred new immigrants
from relying on U.S. welfare programs, and
the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Candidate Biden promised to ex-
pand the arguably illegal Obama-Biden
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
illegal alien amnesty program, elimi-
nate restrictions on those from terror-
ism-linked and failed states claiming
refugee status, and generally “[welcome]
immigrants into our communities.” Fi-
nally, candidate Biden pledged to “com-
mit significant political capital to finally
deliver legislative immigration reform to
ensure that the U.S. remains open and
welcoming to people from every part of
the world.”
Newly elected Biden moved rapidly
to carry out that plan. On his first day
in office, he halted construction of the
wall, sent an amnesty bill to Congress in-
cluding a permanent DACA program for
645,000 aliens who entered the country
illegally as children, rescinded the Trump-
era travel ban on immigration from ter-
rorism-linked countries, and repealed a
2017 Trump executive order intensifying
U.S. interior immigration enforcement.
The next day, Biden’s Department
of Homeland Security began a 100-day
moratorium on deportation, ostensi-
bly to review policy, a move blocked
by a federal judge. Regardless, the next
month, Biden issued three executive or-
ders loosening asylum and immigration
Migrants seeking asylum line up
while waiting to be processed
after crossing the border in San
Diego, California on June 5.
rules at the U.S.-Mexico border, order-
ing a review with an eye toward ending
both the “Remain in Mexico” and public
charge policies. Unsurprisingly, therefore,
from under 72,000 monthly illegal alien
encounters at the southern border before
his election, they nearly tripled to 213,000
by July 2021.
The next year, Biden also ended the
use of Title 42, a public health authority
the Trump administration used to limit
cross-border movement during the pan-
demic, admitting explicitly, “It’s going to
be chaotic for a little while” at the south-
ern border. Fact check: True. That month,
illegal immigrant encounters hit a new
high, and by December 2023, they topped
300,000 a month for the first time in his-
tory, a 320% increase from before Biden’s
election — and up a towering 2,600%
from the Trump-era low.
This brings us back to Victor Antonio
Martinez Hernandez, the alien who had
crossed the border illegally three times
before allegedly raping and murdering
Morin. He’d been ordered deported a
fourth time — but if it ever happens, it
will come too late for Morin and her five
children. ★
Christopher C. Hull, Ph.D., is president of
Issue Management, a public affairs firm
that does grassroots and advocacy work
including on national security. He was
previously chief of staff to a member of the
House of Representatives.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 39
WASHINGTON BRIEFING
NATIONAL SECURITY
The plan to end the war in
Ukraine without a victory
‘I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,’
Trump says, ‘I want everybody to stop dying.’
By Jamie McIntyre
F
ormer President Donald Trump
has a secret plan to bring the war
in Ukraine to a quick conclusion.
Trump, the 2024 Republican
nominee-in-waiting, says he
plans to implement it even be-
fore he takes office, after beating Presi-
dent Joe Biden in their looming rematch.
“I will have that war settled between
Putin and Zelensky as president-elect
before I take office on Jan. 20,” the once
and very likely future president said at
last month’s debate with Biden. “People
being killed so needlessly, so stupidly,
and I will get it settled and I’ll get it set-
tled fast before I take office.”
Trump has kept the specifics of his
peace proposal close to the vest, but he’s
suggested that, like his promise to secure
the freedom of Wall Street Journal re-
porter Evan Gershkovich, it is based on
his personal relationship with Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
“I will have him [Gershkovich] out
very quickly, as soon as I take office, be-
fore I take office … literally as soon as I
win the election,” Trump promised at the
debate.
Trump’s been cagey about exactly
how as president he would force both
sides to the negotiating table, but he’s
openly suggested he would cut off U.S.
40 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
aid to Ukraine if President Volodymyr
Zelensky refused to make concessions
to Putin.
When asked directly, Trump has
avoided endorsing Zelensky’s vision of
victory, which would require Russia to
withdraw from all occupied territory,
including the Crimean Peninsula, and
Ukraine joining NATO.
“I don’t think in terms of winning and
losing. I think in terms of getting it set-
tled so we stop killing all these people,”
Trump said at a CNN town hall event last
May. “I want everybody to stop dying.
They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians.
I want them to stop dying.”
Trump’s idea is to pressure Zelensky
to cede Crimea and the Donbas border
region to Russia,” according to insiders
who spoke to the Washington Post in ear-
ly April.
“Privately, Trump has said that he
thinks both Russia and Ukraine ‘want to
save face, they want a way out,’ and that
people in parts of Ukraine would be okay
with being part of Russia,” the newspa-
per reported.
Coincidentally, just a few days lat-
er, the America First Policy Institute, a
think tank led by two Trump advisers,
published a little-noticed research re-
port fleshing out the kind of approach
they’d like to see Biden or Trump take.
“This should start with a formal
U.S. policy to bring the war to a conclu-
sion. Specifically, it would mean a formal
U.S. policy to seek a cease-fire and ne-
gotiated settlement of the Ukraine con-
flict,” said the white paper, authored by
retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former
Trump national security adviser, and
Fred Fleitz, who served as chief of staff
in Trump’s National Security Council.
“The United States would continue to
arm Ukraine and strengthen its defens-
es to ensure Russia will make no further
advances and will not attack again after a
cease-fire or peace agreement but would
also condition future American military
aid on Ukraine’s participation in peace
talks with Russia,” the document added.
To convince Putin to join peace
talks, the U.S. and other NATO nations
would “offer to put off NATO member-
ship for Ukraine for an extended pe-
riod in exchange for a comprehensive
and verifiable peace deal with security
guarantees.”
Kellogg spelled out the carrots and
sticks in blunter terms in an interview
with Reuters.
“We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to
come to the table, and if you don’t come
to the table, support from the United
States will dry up,’” Kellogg said. “And
you tell Putin, ‘He’s got to come to the
table, and if you don’t come to the table,
then we’ll give Ukrainians everything
they need to kill you in the field.’”
Putin shouldn’t need much convinc-
ing, given his forces are taking horrific
losses on the battlefield and that with
the proposed conditions, he would be
in a strong position to force Ukraine to
surrender the entirety of four regions
claimed by Moscow, one of his stated
preconditions for a peace agreement.
“The Ukrainian troops must be
completely withdrawn from the Do-
netsk and Luhansk people’s republics
and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions,”
Putin said, during a meeting with his
EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP
Foreign Affairs Ministry officials at the
Kremlin on June 14.
“As soon as Kyiv declares that it is
ready to make this decision and begin
a real withdrawal of troops from these
regions, and also officially notifies that
it abandons its plans to join NATO, our
side will follow an order to cease fire
and start negotiations will be issued
by us that very moment,” Putin said.
Zelensky who’s pushing his own
peace plan, promptly rejected Putin’s
conditions, comparing them to Adolf
Hitler’s demands for capitulation during
World War II.
“These messages are messages of ul-
timatum,” Zelensky said. “It’s the same
thing Hitler did.”
While Zelensky said Ukraine will
work with whoever is the U.S. president
next year, he’s worried that defeatism is
taking hold of the MAGA wing of the Re-
publican Party.
“Ukraine’s not winning that war,”
Trump argued at the June debate.
“They’re running out of people, they’re
running out of soldiers, they’ve lost so
many people. It’s so sad.”
Trump’s desire to wrap up the war
quickly is putting tremendous pressure
on Zelensky, who fears under Trump the
U.S. would be happy to write off large
portions of Ukraine to appease Putin.
“It is impossible to help Ukraine with
one hand and shake Putin’s hand with
the other,” Zelensky told the Philadel-
phia Inquirer in a June 24 interview in
Kyiv. “It will not work.”
“Everybody is still afraid that Rus-
sia can split apart, everybody is afraid
of what will happen to Russia without
Putin and whether it will stay as it is or
get worse,” Zelensky said, arguing that
U.S. half-measures, such as restrict-
ing Ukraine’s ability to use long-range
ATACMS rockets to hit deep into Rus-
sian territory, are giving Putin a free
hand to improve his negotiating position.
“Any step forward on our territory,
any occupation, any village even fully
destroyed is positive for them because it
is important for them to bargain as much
as possible,” he said.
Like many in his base, Trump believes
the U.S. is pouring good money after bad
to prop up Ukraine in a war it’s destined
to lose and that Zelensky is soaking the
U.S. and its allies in his quixotic pursuit
of glory.
“Every time that Zelensky comes to
this country, he walks away with $60
billion. He’s the greatest salesman ever,”
Trump has said on several occasions.
It’s an argument that resonates with
his base and is echoed by his most vocal
supporters, including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-
OH), who at this writing is still in conten-
tion to be Trump’s running mate.
“People who want us to put limitless
resources into Ukraine, they want us to
believe two things at once,” Vance said
on Fox News Sunday in April. “On the one
hand, they want us to believe the Ukrai-
nians are on the verge of victory in the
far eastern part of Ukraine. On the other
hand, they want us to believe that Vlad-
imir Putin is about to march all the way
to Paris. You can’t believe both of those
things at the same time.”
“It’s not that we don’t admire the cou-
rageousness of the Ukrainians — we cer-
tainly do. It’s that America is stretched
too thin. We do not have the industrial
capacity to support a war in Ukraine, a
war in Israel, potentially a war in East
Asia if the Chinese invade Taiwan,” he
said, repeating an argument he first
made at the Munich Security Conference
in February. “So America has to pick and
choose.”
Trump may see himself as master of
the “Art of the Deal,” but outgoing Es-
tonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who
has been tapped to be the European
Union’s top diplomat, has a warning for
Trump about Russian negotiating tactics
that she said date back to the days of So-
viet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
“Three things. First, demand the
maximum. Do not ask, but demand
something that has never been yours.
Second, present ultimatums, threaten.
And third, do not give one inch in ne-
gotiations,” Kallas said in an interview.
“Because there will be always people in
the West who will offer you something,
and then in the end, you will have one-
third or even one-half of something you
didn’t have before.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO
Kurt Volker argues for an alternative
strategy to counter Putin’s strategy of
grinding away at a war of attrition un-
til the West folds — find a way to make
Ukraine’s eventual NATO membership a
fait accompli.
“If we tell Vladimir Putin that Ukraine
cannot join NATO until after the war,
then that’s a message to Putin to con-
tinue the war,” Volker said in an inter-
view with Euromaidan Press.
“NATO can make a commitment to
Ukraine but also a public statement that
would be read by Russia that we would
help defend Ukrainian territory that
Ukraine controls,” Volker said. “So, no
more Russian seizure of territory, but we
would not engage to retake territory mil-
itarily alongside Ukrainian forces. That’s
a matter for Ukraine itself.”
Trump argues if anyone should be
doing more to help Ukraine, it should
be European countries, not the U.S., be-
cause “it has a bigger impact on them,
because of location, because we have an
ocean in between.”
It’s an argument that has echoes of
America’s isolationist sentiment before
its entry into World War II.
“Some of our people like to believe
that wars in Europe and in Asia are of
no concern to us,” President Franklin D.
Roosevelt said in a December 1940 fire-
side chat. “But the width of those oceans
is not what it was in the days of clipper
ships.”
“They tell you that the Axis powers
are going to win anyway, that all of this
bloodshed in the world could be saved,
that the United States might just as well
throw its influence into the scale of a dic-
tated peace and get the best out of it that
we can,” Roosevelt said.
“They call it a ‘negotiated peace.’
Nonsense! … Such a dictated peace
would be no peace at all. It would be only
another armistice.”
Ukraine already learned a hard les-
son about the value of Russian security
guarantees when, in 1994, it gave its nu-
clear weapons back to Russia in return
for a guarantee from Moscow that its
territorial sovereignty would never be
violated.
“A ceasefire is the best option for the
Russians so they can prepare for taking
even more,” Zelensky says. H
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Exam-
iner’s senior writer on national security.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 41
Artificial intelligence
Where’s that news coming from?
Journalism in the age of bots
Bad actors need to be countered by good ones,
with society deciding what eventually wins out
By Nick Thomas
B
ack in the good old days, a
president could be brought
down by telephone calls, ex-
ceptional “Deep Throat”
sourcing in underground
parking lots, and, of course,
extensive and dogged reporting.
Now, apparently, all we must do is
type in a few words, and stories can be
written in a matter of seconds by robots.
Woodward and Bernstein this is not.
Some of the more egregious examples
of inaccurate or downright untrue arti-
ficial intelligence-generated stories are
often the ones that make the headlines.
42 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
A German magazine, for example,
claimed to have interviewed stricken for-
mer Formula One driver Michael Schum-
acher and his family in person, and it
turned out to be completely AI-driven.
The Schumacher family successfully
sued the magazine for EUR 200,000, or
$215,000.
A San Francisco-based news outlet,
Hoodline, has passed all its content off as
written by real journalists where every-
thing, including the reporters, is generat-
ed by artificial intelligence. NewsBreak,
one of the most popular news aggrega-
tion apps in the United States with sus-
picious ties to the Chinese government,
completely fictionalized a story last
Christmas of a mass shooting in a ran-
dom New Jersey town generated solely
by artificial intelligence.
OPENAI AND NEWS CORP.
INK CONTENT AGREEMENT
Extreme examples aside, it may be more
appropriate to focus on the likes of a re-
cent agreement between OpenAI and
News Corporation, the owners of the
GETTY IMAGES
Wall Street Journal and the Times, among
other publications. Such agreements, and
OpenAI has made similar ones with other
publications such as the Financial Times,
are more likely to shape the future of jour-
nalism than clearly inaccurate fake stories
generated by bots.
The agreement was greeted with
large amounts of fanfare, at least by the
two companies involved.
“We believe an historic agreement
will set new standards for veracity, for
virtue and for value in the digital age,”
claimed Robert Thomson, chief execu-
tive of News Corp. “We are delighted to
have found principled partners in Sam
Altman and his trusty, talented team
who understand the commercial and
social significance of journalists and
journalism.”
“Our partnership with News Corp.
is a proud moment for journalism and
technology,” added Sam Altman, CEO
of OpenAI. “Together, we are setting the
foundation for a future where AI deep-
ly respects, enhances, and upholds the
standards of world-class journalism.”
Under the terms of the deal, OpenAI
will have access to News Corp. material
across a wide variety of the group’s pub-
lications for use in training its chatbots
and to help answer user questions.
Such an approach has not, howev-
er, been universally cheered. The New
York Times, in late 2023, for example,
sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing
the companies of effectively stealing the
work of its journalists for use in training
chatbots.
Federal regulators, too, are taking
note of such content agreements and
beginning to investigate whether they
are actually legal or not.
HANDMADE VERSUS AI
As AI increases its influence in journal-
ism, there could be a distinction between
what Ed Watal, CEO of strategy consul-
tancy Intellibus, calls “handmade news”
and AI-generated content.
While such AI-generated content
will be quicker to the page, there could
be delays in such “handmade news,”
news that journalists write from scratch
like the old days and don’t use AI to
generate any content. That said, such
from-scratch news may be a lot closer to
one of the fundamentals of journalism,
namely getting to the truth.
“The future of truth in journalism
may be ‘handmade news,’ it’s a day late,
but it’s true,” Watal said. “AI-generated
content may over time drown out good
journalism unless the AI algorithms are
trained to make the distinction between
AI-generated news versus handmade
news.”
As well as possibly eventually drown-
ing out traditional journalism, AI-gener-
ated news may not adhere to the same
ethical and investigative standards of
journalism generated by actual humans,
warned Sean Vosler, founder of Mov-
ableType.ai, a book publishing company
focused on AI. Bias and misinformation
may also be greater with AI-generated
content, he said.
However, such possible dangers also
come with clear benefits, Vosler said.
AI-generated content can reach a wider
audience and help journalists by provid-
ing better tools for fact-checking and
data analysis.
In an AI-driven age, human journal-
ists will continue to have a highly signif-
icant role to play, Watal at Intellibus said.
It’s just that their roles may change into a
more editing and curator-type play.
“The responsibility of the journalist,
however, stays with them as they contin-
ue to deal with the trade-off of speed ver-
sus accuracy,” he said. “Journalists will
still be the guardians of truth, reviewing
and approving the content that AI gen-
Human judgment and
accountability are
irreplaceable. Likewise,
news media must also
be accountable to
the editorial choices
they make — because
those choices have
consequences, too.
–Mary Beth West, senior strategist for
Fletcher Marketing PR
erates and doing handmade or AI-based
research to seek the truth.”
THE HUMAN TOUCH
However, AI will never be able to replace
the inherent value of human journalists
caring about the communities and soci-
eties they serve, said Mary Beth West, a
senior strategist for Knoxville, Tennes-
see-based Fletcher Marketing PR, busi-
ness consultant, and ethics expert.
“Such care matters. Its relevance is
evergreen,” she said. “Human judgment
and accountability are irreplaceable.
Likewise, news media must also be ac-
countable to the editorial choices they
make — because those choices have
consequences, too.”
AI-generated content is still a rela-
tively new reality, and it may just be too
early and even foolhardy to say exactly
what effects it will have on the future of
journalism. Much remains unknown.
The Times has been printed since
1785. Who’s to know whether it will still
be around in something approaching its
current form in 2085? But Vosler at Mov-
ableType.ai is confident it will.
“Institutions like the Times will en-
dure by integrating these technologies
responsibly and preserving the core
principles of journalism,” he said. “By
2085, we can expect a symbiotic rela-
tionship where AI supports and enhanc-
es the work of human journalists, rather
than replacing them entirely.”
Perhaps the safest thing to say is that
much will depend on bad actors and
good ones countering them. It will be a
societal decision as to what eventually
wins out.
“The primary driver of whether the
Times and other news media will still be
around in 2085 will be whether society’s
intellectual quality and discernment will
economically allow proper news media
to exist,” West said. “The onus is on us,
society at large.”
For the record, this article was com-
pletely handmade with no use of any ar-
tificial intelligence and written by a real
human. H
Nick Thomas is a writer based in Denver,
Colorado.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 43
BUSINESS
TIANA’S TAKE
Buried beneath Biden’s terrible debate
performance are even worse tax plans
P
resident Joe Biden’s slack-
jawed, rasping, floundering,
and all-around incoherent
dumpster fire debate perfor-
mance has drowned out any
iota of substance from the
news cycle in the aftermath. Not even
barbs about former President Donald
Trump’s pending criminal sentencing or
whether the soon-to-be 2024 Republican
nominee once had sex with a porn star
have penetrated the headlines, which re-
main solely obsessed with the senility of
our sitting president.
It’s the decrepitude and dotage that
Biden staffers have carefully concealed
by cordoning him off from public view
between sundown and sunrise. But it’s a
palpable and precipitous mental decline
that has consumed the Democratic Par-
ty in a panic, our allies abroad in grave
concern, and Americans across the spec-
trum in outrage that the commander in
chief has been asleep at the wheel.
All of this is to say that given the suc-
cessful distraction of Biden’s catastrophic
“style” in stumbling through the debate,
much less attention has been paid to the
dismal substance of his answers. Consid-
ering that Biden’s 90-minute meltdown
on June 27 effectively began when he
stammered only to brag outlandishly that
“we finally beat Medicare” in response to
queries about his fiscal policies, it’s worth
examining just how terrible Biden’s tax
and spending plans were when he actually
managed to explicate them.
Core to the Democratic Party’s overall
platform is the delusion people can have
their cake and eat it, too. Biden laid into
Trump for cutting taxes with the Tax Cuts
and Jobs Act of 2017, but he also prom-
ised to extend all the tax cuts that apply
to households earning under $400,000.
While Biden promised to “fix the tax sys-
tem,” he didn’t explain his current tax
proposal, instead attacking a straw man.
“We have a thousand trillionaires in
44 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
President Biden at the June 27 debate.
America — I mean, billionaires in Amer-
ica — and what’s happening?” Biden
rambled on the debate stage. “They’re in
a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2%
in taxes. If they just paid 24% or 25%, ei-
ther one of those numbers, they’d raise
$500 million — billion dollars, I should
say — in a 10-year period. We’d be able
to wipe out his debt.”
It should shock nobody that none of
the above is true.
The 8% lie that Biden has repeated-
ly touted refers to the tax rate on asset
growth including unrealized gains, such
as retirement plans and stock holdings
that haven’t actually been sold or liqui-
dated. In reality, Biden’s own Treasury
has conceded that our income tax system
remains highly progressive, with the top
1% of earners paying an effective 31.5%
tax rate on their total earnings, compared
to the 27% paid by the top decile of earn-
ers overall, the 10%-12% paid by average
earners, and the negative income tax rate
enjoyed by the bottom quintile of earners.
And Biden embracing the Bernie
Sanders tact of lying that billionaires can
simply foot the bill that he has expanded
by the trillions conceals the sheer scope
of the problem. Data from Forbes indi-
cate that the combined wealth of all the
billionaires in the country only amounts
to about $5.5 trillion, and that valua-
tion indeed includes unrealized gains
and holdings. Even if you liquidated all
the holdings of every billionaire in the
country, Soviet-style, and threw them in
the Gulag, that $5.5 trillion would cover
roughly two years of our existing annu-
al $2 trillion deficits, not a crumb extra
to pay for “child care” or “elder care,” as
Biden promised. (And it’s worth noting
that we do have a socialized elder care
system called Social Security, and Biden’s
current plan is to bleed it dry until bene-
fits are slashed by 21% in nine years.)
Biden’s actual tax plan doesn’t spare
those households earning fewer than
$400,000, and contrary to his claims
otherwise, the TCJA was progressive,
both in its immediate income tax relief
for lower-income earners as well as the
demonstrable downstream effect of im-
proved GDP growth.
The real problem, of course, is spend-
ing, not taxes. Individual income and
corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP
for 2024, at the height of the TCJA’s
implementation, is 8.6% and 1.8%, the
latter of which is the same as the aver-
age of the 40 years prior and the former
of which is higher than the historical
average. By contrast, outlays are dra-
matically departing from the historical
norm. Whereas federal spending only
consumed 21% of our annual econom-
ic output, that number soared to 22.7%
last year and 24.2% this year. As we rack
up this debt, the debt itself is becoming
more expensive, with net interest costs
up 42% from just last year and total in-
terest payments already outpacing what
we spend on our entire defense budget.
Blaming Trump’s tax cuts is easy, but
Biden’s real problem is one he refuses to
solve, lest Democrats admit we have an
GERALD HERBERT/AP
addiction to spending. ★
Tiana Lowe Doescher is an economics
columnist for the Washington Examiner.
Summer
Books

Illustration
July 9, by Dean MacAdam
2024 Washington Examiner 45
SUMMER BOOKS
A Defense of Book Collecting
S
ummer is the season for book lov-
ers: reading lists full of promising
debuts, time for breezy page-turn-
ers on the beach, fresh resolve to finish a
doorstopper classic like War and Peace.
Whatever literary delights await me, I
know they will include my ritual reading
of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, his
celebration of the season that starts in
the first paragraph:
“Summer gathered in the weather, the
wind had the proper touch, the breath-
ing of the world was long and warm and
slow. You had only to rise, lean from your
window, and know that this indeed was
the first real time of freedom and living,
this was the first morning of summer.”
But I don’t begin with those lines.
First, I marvel at the brilliant British
jacket design by Jeffrey Lies, a rural win-
ter scene transfigured into summer by
46 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
By Alan Levinovitz
a bottle of golden liquid. Then I turn to
the front free endpaper, which features
an exuberantly hand-drawn dandelion in
black Sharpie, along with an inscription:
“This dandelion with love is for Alan!
Ray Bradbury 4/24/09.”
And, although I make it beyond the
first paragraph, I must admit I never
finish Dandelion Wine. Not when I read
it for the first time as a young boy, not
when I read it last year, and, I expect,
not this year either. It’s strange! I loved
Something Wicked This Way Comes, and
the cover on my paperback copy of The
Illustrated Man needed to be taped on af-
ter too many rereadings. But somehow
Dandelion Wine loses me in the middle.
Which is totally fine. You see, in ad-
dition to being an avid reader, I am also
a collector. And as a collector, I under-
stand that loving a book means more
than loving the words it contains. Ob-
jects cannot be reduced to information.
They are bound up with their material
history. And the history of that Sharpied
Dandelion Wine is what makes it so im-
portant to me, even if I’ve never managed
to finish the story it tells.
One place to start the story behind
my copy of Dandelion Wine is with the
story of another book, Percy Bysshe
Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry. Like many
old books, the contents are available for
free online. Some sites provide informa-
tive scholarly introductions; others con-
veniently hyperlink each section. But to
be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t recom-
mend A Defence of Poetry. Aside from a
few lovely phrases, the essay is dated and
GET T Y IMAGES
somewhat pompous, and after I passed
my doctoral exams I don’t think I ever
reread the whole thing.

Nevertheless, that pompous essay
is among the most precious books in
my collection, and I take it off the shelf
at least a few times each year. Like on-
line versions, mine was free, a gift from
the venerable bookman Doug Wilson,
onetime apprentice to Joseph O’Gara,
and the surviving owner of O’Gara and
Wilson Antiquarian Booksellers, where
he employed me for many years. Most
importantly, Doug Wilson is the person
who taught me that collectible books
are not replaceable vehicles for content
— like an e-reader — but rather unique
sites of enchantment.
“Alan, I have something special for
you,” he said one evening, hands flat on
the giant oak checkout counter, a bit of
bluish-gray paper peeking out from un-
derneath them. Our last customer had
just left with some serendipitous trea-
sure, and I was counting the cash in the
ornate antique register, ready to wind my
scarf and leave the warm bookstore for
the bitter cold of a Chicago winter night.
Doug removed his hands. Without
reading the title, I knew immediately it
was a Thomas Bird Mosher pamphlet,
one of many from a recently purchased
collection. Renegade publisher, design
genius, friend of Robert Frost and other
literary luminaries, Mosher rose to fame
at the turn of the 20th century, eventual-
ly printing over 400 delicately gorgeous
and affordable copies of his favorite
‘Summer gathered in the
weather, the wind had the
proper touch, the breathing
of the world was long and
warm and slow. You had
only to rise, lean from your
window, and know that this
indeed was the first real
time of freedom and living,
this was the first morning of
summer.’
SUMMER BOOKS
poems and essays, usually without per-
mission. His work was so exacting, his
passion for books so earnest, that most
authors didn’t mind. “A handsome pirate
is always half pardoned,” wrote his first
victim, George Meredith, who happily
accepted Mosher’s offer of a gift copy.
“Didn’t you say you were reading
this?” Doug asked, handing me “A De-
fence of Poetry.” I nodded, took the
book, and ran my index finger along the
indentations of the ornate red and black
design pressed into the coarse handmade
paper that covered the cardstock bind-
ing. It was remarkably well preserved
— I opened it to the title page: “Portland
Maine, Thomas B Mosher, MDCCCCX”
— for being over 100 years old.
“It’s yours,” Doug continued, “but on
one condition.” I paged slowly through
the tiny oblong masterpiece of printing,
cradling the spine so it wouldn’t crack,
spotting familiar passages. Poetry is in-
deed something divine. The greatest poets
have been men of the most spotless virtue.
“You have to keep it with the note,
always.”
A site of enchantment, made so by the
bookman’s spell. I have never broken it.
The note is with me now as I type this,
neatly handwritten in faded black pen on
a browned scrap of paper.
For Janet -
To take her mind
off the library and
filthy Slav Kids.
love
June + Gini
It hits hard every time. A lovingly
printed essay about virtue and wisdom,
thoughtfully gifted, with a surprise curse
tucked inside. What the hell, June and
Gini? How can such a nasty sentiment
coexist with such excellent taste? Are we
all just products of our culture, with sins
beyond the reach of poets to transform?
Does this note, in itself, disprove Shel-
ley’s thesis that beauty and poetry lead
us to goodness?
In auctions, “provenance” describes
the history of an object, which can be a
key factor in its sale price. Had June and
Gini gifted the essay to “Big Bill” Thomp-
son, their mayor of Chicago in 1915 and
a noted anti-Slavic racist, it would be
worth a good deal more. Well, worth a
good deal more to someone, but not to
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 47
SUMMER BOOKS
me. The provenance of my book — gifted
to Janet, left to her daughter, purchased
by Doug, and regifted to me — may not
have market value, but it transforms the
book, makes it a sacred object. The form
of the book (go ahead, judge the book by
its cover!) does something similar. There
is power in Mosher’s craft, like there is
in the note.
So too with every book in my collec-
tion: each has a different provenance,
a unique form, a distinct power of en-
chantment. I believe that all collecting
stems from this fundamental principle,
the recognition of books as enchanted
objects. For some, the most legible ver-
sion of enchantment is monetary value.
In this sense, my later printing of Robert
Frost’s North of Boston is the most magi-
cal book in my collection, because Frost
has inscribed it with the most famous
line of 20th century American poetry:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less travelled by.” (While
Frost routinely wrote out lines and oc-
casionally whole poems, he rarely did so
with “The Road Not Taken,” and a full
manuscript copy recently sold at auction
for $35,000.)
But the monetary value is simply rec-
ognition of the magic contained in the
object. Frost’s hand actually held the pen
that made those letters on the page I am
reading. Did he know he had written a
poem for the ages? That pop stars would
radically misread it, and teachers like me
would try to set the record straight? Was
he thinking about that as he wrote in the
book that is on my desk right now?
In general I am an idiosyncratic col-
lector, accumulating a motley mix of
whatever I love, instead of focusing on a
specific area like, say, 19th-century illus-
trated German children’s books, or high
spots in the history of science. The clos-
est I come to traditional collecting is my
100-plus Edward Gorey books, ranging
from his classic alphabet of children dy-
ing gruesome deaths to rare editions like
The Bug Book. I can’t get enough of this
opera-loving, fur coat-wearing, oddball
genius, the godfather of Goth and Tim
Burton.
Like Mosher, Gorey was meticulous
about book design, micromanaging ev-
erything from typography to dimension.
Collectors love him because he under-
stood books as enchanted objects, and
produced an overwhelming number of
limited signed editions — limitation of
48 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
quantity and signatures being two easy
ways to make enchantment legible.
But the most powerfully enchanted
Gorey in my collection — heck, the most
powerfully enchanted book in my collec-
tion — is a later, mass-market printing of
Gorey’s masterpiece, The Epiplectic Bicy-
cle, purposely misspelled. (I have a small
collection of foreign translations to see
how they deal with the nonsense word.)
It is not signed by Gorey. It did not belong
to anyone famous. The inscription reads,
“To Alan, Your first Gorey — the start of
our book collection together. Love, Par-
is.” Paris is my wife. She went abroad to
study in London when we were in col-
lege and bought it for me there, which is
why this particular copy is published by
Bloomsbury.
Gorey was a collector himself. His
Cape Cod house, now a museum, pre-
serves his eclectic acquisitions: count-
ers covered in river rocks, windowsills
packed with old blue bottles, and, of
course, an enormous book collection.
Gorey knew enchanted objects, and I
think he would forgive me if, were there a
fire, I rescued my first Gorey over any of
his other books — yes, even his incred-
ibly awesome signed, limited, experi-
mental interactive flipbook, Les Echanges
Malandreux (mine is No. 268/500).
Doug Wilson was not an author, but
he had a different way of enchanting
books. A crucial feature of O’Gara and
Wilson was our collection of ephem-
era, defined by the Ephemera Society of
America as “vintage printed or written
items which originally served some spe-
cific purpose and were not expected to
be retained or preserved, but which are
now cherished.”
Like many bookmen, Doug had an en-
cyclopedic memory of his inventory, and
when he purchased a book that fit per-
fectly with a piece of ephemera, he would
“marry” them. A vintage Spam coupon
goes into an old cookbook that features
Spam. A theater ticket to Shakespeare’s
Othello as a bookmark for a paperback
copy. And, of course, if any of his employ-
ees happened to find ephemera in a book,
no matter how seemingly insignificant,
we were forbidden from removing it.
I have inherited Doug’s love of ephem-
era, as well as his penchant for placing
it in books. My daughter’s handmade
Father’s Day cards are scattered like
magic seeds throughout my collection,
as are notes I’ve received from grateful
students. I rarely remember the spells
I’ve cast, which is part of the magic. Just
yesterday I pulled Maira Kalman’s And
the Pursuit of Happiness off the shelf and
found I’d enchanted it years earlier with
a $2 bill. (Jefferson! Who happens to be
from Charlottesville, where I live now!)
And now we are back to Dandelion
Wine, which all of this was meant to ex-
plain. Here’s how it happened: In 2008,
I was browsing a used bookstore in Chi-
cago and happened upon a curious title,
Folk Wines, Cordials & Brandies, by M.A.
Jagendorf. I flipped through it and was
about to put it down when I found a fold-
ed sheet of paper. A handwritten recipe
for dandelion wine!
Sold.
At home with the book and the rec-
ipe, I thought it might be time to revisit
Dandelion Wine. It had been ages since
I’d read it, and I looked online for a nice
copy. To my surprise, the jacket for the
British edition, in addition to being gor-
geous, looked a great deal like the jacket
for Folk Wines.
Sold again.
When my new old copy arrived from
England, I had a crazy thought. What if
I could find Ray Bradbury’s contact in-
formation online and tell him about the
recipe and how it inspired me to revisit
his book?
The rest is history. I put Dandelion
Wine, the recipe for said wine, and a
large self-addressed stamped envelope
into a package and sent it to Bradbury,
who’d told me he would be delighted to
see the recipe and sign it. Back came the
signed book, along with some Bradbury
ephemera. No recipe — he kept it. That’s
fine. All powerful spells require a little bit
of sacrifice.
So even if you don’t consider yourself
a book collector, I’d like to suggest an-
other item for your summer reading list.
Print out this essay, or maybe just a page
from it. Use it as a bookmark for what-
ever you happen to read in the next few
months, and then leave it there. That’s all
it takes for you to become an enchanter,
and I promise that someone, someday,
will be thankful for the spell you cast.
Alan Levinovitz is a professor at James Mad-
ison University, who specializes in the inter-
section of philosophy, religion, and science.
His most recent book is Natural: How Faith
in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful
Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science.

As you may have gotten from our lead essay, this Summer Books issue, alongside a rich compendium
of seven reviews of new titles, we are stepping away from the publication calendar to look at old books that
we return to. In the special Winter Books issue to come, you can look forward to recommendations from the editors
for great reads (and gifts) from 2024. But for now, I have asked the editors for stories about their most precious books,
great works but also totems that some of us at the Washington Examiner magazine keep with us to sit
on the shelf like old friends and, with any luck, pass down generations.
SCOOP
BY EVELYN WAUGH
E velyn Waugh’s novels are pierc-
ingly intelligent, acutely observed,
humane even when skewering pom-
posity and folly,
enormously fun-
ny, and delivered
in the most lu-
cid prose of any
20th-century
writer of English
literature.
I’m fortunate
to have a first
edition of Scoop,
Waugh’s brilliant
satire of colonialism and the journal-
ism not only of Fleet Street but also of
America — Washington Post newsroom,
take note. The central character, Wil-
liam Boot, works for the original Daily
Beast, from which today’s lamentable
publication gets not just its name but
perhaps also some of its vulgarity, even
if certainly not its left-wingery.
Published in London in 1938 by
Chapman and Hall, Scoop originally
sold for 7 shillings sixpence. But it has
become a collector’s item. My copy was
given to me by my wife, Meghan, as a
birthday present 25 years ago after an
antiquarian bookseller in New York let
Evelyn Waugh’s depiction
of Europe’s scramble
for Africa, including his
adumbration of Ishmaelia’s
constitution, is among
the most brilliant pieces of
sustained comedic writing
in our language.
THE EDITORS’ SUMMER BOOKS
— Nicholas Clairmont, Life & Arts editor
her know a copy had become available.
Written near the end of the colonial
era, it depicts a world anathematized
by our own. Today’s intolerant pre-
sentism cannot get past Waugh’s use
of derogatory racial terms that were
the accepted argot of his time. At my
recommendation, a Columbia Univer-
sity journalism teacher set Scoop as a
text for his students in 1989, thinking
as I did that every would-be journal-
ist should be made familiar with it.
His pupils reeled in horror, and nary a
smile flickered across their faces. But
at least they were given the chance. It is
unlikely that the book would be offered
to them today.
Waugh’s depiction of Europe’s
scramble for Africa, including his ad-
umbration of Ishmaelia’s constitution,
is among the most brilliant pieces of
sustained comedic writing in our lan-
guage; “It had been found expedient
to merge the functions of the national
defense and inland revenue … in two
main companies, the Ishmaelite Mule
Tax-gathering Force and the Rifle Ex-
cisemen with a small Artillery Death
Duties Corps for use against the heirs of
powerful noblemen … the general’s fly-
ing columns would lumber out into the
surrounding country on the heels of the
fugitive population and return in time
for budget day laden with the spoils of
the less nimble.”
Written three-quarters of a century
ago, Scoop still strikes chord after res-
onant chord amid the ideological hy-
pocrisy and media implosions of our
culture. Waugh’s work and my copy of it
are from another time. But its brilliance
is imperishable.
— Hugo Gurdon, editor-in-chief
‘A COMPILATION OF MY GREAT
GRANDFATHER’S SERMONS’
S ix years ago, my apartment flooded
and I was faced with what could only
SUMMER BOOKS
be described as a Sophie’s choice. I had
a relatively short period of time to save
either my extensive collection of records
or my books.
Despite grumbling to myself as I was
moving boxes at 3 o’clock in the morning
that I should simply get a Spotify account
like a normal person, the vinyl won. I’m
not even entirely sure my high school
yearbook survived and all the years later
can’t quite bring myself to check.
But I am not bookless. Among the
few I rescued was a compilation of my
great-grandfather’s sermons. He was
a Methodist minister, sharing both my
religion and politics (a diehard Repub-
lican who drove many miles to vote for
Herbert Hoover in his epically failed
reelection bid), though we differ on the
subject of Prohibition. (He was for it.)
Born in 1888, he lived long enough for
me to know him.
The compilation dates from 1922
to 1961, with a letter to the Balti-
more-Washington Conference of the
United Methodist Church written in
1980. A true itinerant preacher, he served
some 14 appointments over the course
of his ministry, often moving his family
around before settling into the house I
knew as my great-grandparents’ in the
1950s.
While some of the sermons were
typed out, many of them were jotted
down on whatever scraps of paper my
great-grandfather could get his hands
on (which, funnily enough, is how I did
my first writing as a child). There were
musings on John Wesley and prevenient
grace, the vices of greed and worldliness,
and the need to suppress one’s temper.
He tells the story of a woman who in-
formed her pastor that she sometimes
blows up but it passes quickly. Her pas-
tor replies that this also describes a ma-
chine gun.
I’m well pleased this collection sur-
vived the flood alongside Iron Butterfly’s
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
— W. James Antle III, executive editor
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 49
SUMMER BOOKS
TAKE THE TIME FOR PARADISE:
AMERICANS AND THEIR GAMES
BY A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI
T he late A. Bartlett Giamatti’s name
pops up every so often in news sto-
ries around a potential MLB reinstate-
ment of Pete Rose
nearly 35 years
after his banish-
ment from the
sport. It happens
more frequently
now that sports
betting is routine,
raising questions
about a double
standard for the
baseball’s all-time
hits leader, who agreed to the ban amid
evidence that he wagered on his own
team’s games as manager of the Cincin-
nati Reds.
Giamatti, MLB commissioner at the
time, usually plays a bit role as the “bad
cop” in the Rose banishment. A bureau-
crat of sorts, he otherwise didn’t get to
leave much of a stamp on the game as
commissioner since the heavy smok-
er fell dead from a heart attack a week
later.
The former Yale University presi-
dent and Renaissance literature schol-
ar did leave behind a memorable tome
about baseball, however: Take Time
for Paradise, his 1989 book published
posthumously. Dating myself here and
in an admitted humblebrag, I received
the book as an award the next year for
winning an English class essay contest
at my public high school in Pasadena,
California. The book holds sentimental
value for stoking my interest in making
a career as a writer and editor (some-
The author argues that
organized sport constitutes
a sort of religious ritual. We
do not seek immortality by
setting records, he says; it is
the communal experience
that is paramount. The
longing for this garden of
Eden, he suggests, draws us
to the ballparks.
50 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
times more successfully than others).
But it also offers life lessons for sports
enthusiasts and nonfans alike.
“Bart” Giamatti, as he was known
publicly, father of Academy Award-nom-
inated actor Paul Giamatti, peppered
the slim (109 pages) book with Greek
phrases. Take Time For Paradise alludes
to a variety of scholars from Aristotle
on who have philosophized on the idea
of leisure. The author argues that orga-
nized sport constitutes a sort of reli-
gious ritual. We do not seek immortality
by setting records, he says; it is the com-
munal experience that is paramount.
The longing for this Garden of Eden, he
suggests, draws us to the ballparks.
The fact that this was written by an
academic-turned-baseball commis-
sioner, not an athlete, has stuck with
me. Even at the time Giamatti wrote it,
sports were big business — and expo-
nentially more so now. But he offers a
romanticization of sports beyond the
big bucks’ contracts.
— David Mark, managing editor
ODYSSEY OF A FRIEND:
LETTERS TO WILLIAM F.
BUCKLEY JR. 1954-1961
BY WHITTAKER CHAMBERS
I n the summer of 2014, fresh out of col-
lege, I was hired on the same day along
with another guy named Nick to share
a job working for
a magazine run by
the now-colum-
nist for the Wall
Street Journal Wal-
ter Russell Mead. I
was a good liber-
al with, perhaps,
even some Marx-
ist leanings. The
other Nick and I
made an interest-
ing pair: He was a few years older, a grad-
uate of Oxford, and, more importantly,
a staunch conservative. Having grown
up in Manhattan, I had never really met
one of these, except perhaps in my own
imagination. There, they were ignorant
or outright nasty people with easily de-
feated arguments because, in my imagi-
nation, they were mere caricatures. But
now I shared a room and often a byline
with one every day, and we soon came to
be debating partners and warm friends.
Fast forward to today, where, as I
write this, I must look like a New York-
er cartoon caricature of a right-wing
magazine editor since I am writing in
a tuxedo perched over an old first edi-
tion of Odyssey of a Friend, a collection
of Whitaker Chambers’s letters to Wil-
liam F. Buckley from 1954-1961. The
book is a charming record of Cham-
bers wrangling his frustrations, with
Buckley’s help, after he worked to bring
Communist infiltration of the Amer-
ican government to light, eventually
blowing up in the massive Alger Hiss
case. In one favorite passage, we find
Chambers thanking Buckley for send-
ing him Camus to read, describing him
as “stunting in an intellectual glider
riding the currents of the tricky, upper
air.” Despite the high praise, he likes
another recommendation, of Herbert
Butterfield, presumably on the “Whig
Interpretation of History,” even more.
I found this copy in Blue Bicycle
Books in Charleston, South Carolina, on
a road trip a few years back. Inscribed
inside the front cover in red pen are the
words “To Mrs. Richard Hariman, A wel-
come to middle age from a senior citizen.
William F. Buckley.” I like to imagine it’s
in red pen because it’s editor’s pen.
The reason I am in a tuxedo is that
later today is the other Nick’s wedding
and this book is my gift to him for the
occasion. It’s only right, as through
the other Nick and an increasing cir-
cle of conservatives I’ve been lucky to
befriend, I’ve learned something in-
valuable — namely, that what I blithely
thought I knew from adolescence and
college as fact back in 2014 was a com-
bination of falsity, narrative that turns
out to be much more complicated than
that with further reading and thinking,
and, sure, fact. At the time I first start-
ed hanging around with right-wingers,
I would have rejected any information
from anyone who’d had anything to do
with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a scoun-
drel and ideologue who I now know
nonetheless worked on an identifiably
real issue. But over the last decade, I’ve
been lucky to lose lots of arguments
with conservatives.
Anyway, something else I have
learned as my own cohort enters its mid-
dle age is that by giving away a treasured
old book, you make it only all the more
precious.
— Nicholas Clairmont, life & arts editor
 SUMMER BOOKS

Chinese propaganda jargon. Therefore,

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban ahead of the Belt and Road
Forum in Beijing on May 13, 2017.
Sobolik forecasts that the BRI will con-
tinue in some form and threaten U.S.
interests.
To understand how the BRI fits into
Chinese foreign policy, Sobolik looks to
China’s imperial history. He contradicts
Henry Kissinger, who wrote that China
is “a satisfied empire with limited terri-
torial ambitions,” and Elon Musk, who
said China’s history suggests it is “not
acquisitive” and will not “go out and
invade a whole bunch of countries.” In-
stead, China’s history is full of imperial
conquests and ideology. According to
the concept of Zhongguo, China is the
Middle Kingdom, the central power

Give ’Em Enough Belt

with cultural primacy and civilization-
al hegemony. Past and current Chinese
leaders have combined this with the
By Mark Melton notion of tianxia, which implies China
should rule, as mentioned, “all under
heaven.” When outsiders refused to

D
uring Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s For example, Xi neutralized opposi- submit or become tributary states, the
visit to Europe in May, China and tion from the Association of Southeast Middle Kingdom resorted to coercion,
Hungary signed several agree- Asian Nations to Beijing building and but it also sometimes risked overexten-
ments, including a $2.1 billion rail proj- occupying islands in the South Chi- sion. Xi views the Chinese Communist
ect that will be part of the Belt and Road na Sea after some members received Party as the latest iteration of a long
Initiative. Announced in 2013 under BRI investments. Countries with BRI line of Middle Kingdom dynasties. This
the name One Belt, One Road, the ini- projects are also less likely to criticize worldview shapes what he thinks his
tiative has been central to Chinese for- human rights abuses against Uyghurs regime must do to survive.
eign policy, even though in Xinjiang and are more Wise U.S. policies could turn the BRI
the program has led par- likely to praise China’s into a liability for China. But the Biden
ticipants into debt traps supposed counterterror- administration seeks to cooperate with
and resulted in crumbling ism efforts there. Beyond the CCP while still competing with it,
infrastructure. Commen- its near abroad, China which Sobolik considers irresponsible.
tators have increasingly seeks to use investments Yet China hawks have also promoted
speculated about the BRI’s to achieve a primary ob- ineffective policies that are essentially
decline. But when Michael jective, reorienting Eu- defensive. They try to match the BRI’s
Sobolik, a senior fellow rope away from the U.S., largesse, but such efforts likely will fail
at the American Foreign through either the BRI or because Beijing is willing to spend more
Policy Council, talks with a “shadow BRI.” These extravagantly on its initiative than the
China experts on Capitol latter projects in the Unit- U.S. can match with competing efforts.
Hill, they often tell him ed Kingdom, Germany, Instead of targeting China’s strengths,
that the BRI is still the big- France, and elsewhere are Sobolik argues the U.S. should exploit
gest issue in U.S.-China not part of the BRI, but its fears and weaknesses, similar to how
relations. His first book, Countering they can exceed Chinese Washington once exploited the Soviets’.
Countering China’s Great China’s Great investments in BRI coun- During the Cold War, the U.S. sus-
Game: A Strategy
Game, succinctly describes for American tries such as Pakistan and pected the Soviet Union feared Ameri-
why the initiative is a Dominance Indonesia. ca’s bombers, so Washington tested this
threat to America and how By Michael Scott Through these efforts, theory in the 1980s, when the Pentagon
Washington can thwart Sobolik Xi is trying to build a net- acquired more B-1 bombers than it nor-
Naval Institute Press work of tributary states. mally would. Moscow responded by
Xi’s plans and win the new
240 pp., $29.95
JASON LEE - POOL/GET T Y IMAGE

Cold War. So even if the initiative developing new fighter aircraft and mis-
While the BRI helps squanders billions, for siles instead of nuclear weapons. Sobo-
Beijing resurrect trade routes and open Xi, it is worth the costs as long as it re- lik draws upon this lesson and suggests
new markets, Sobolik makes the case shapes the global order while convinc- America should find Beijing’s vulnerabil-
that its primary purpose is to shift the ing his people that the Middle Kingdom ities and force it to defend those flanks,
world’s strategic orientation away from rules over all under Heaven and that he which would weaken the CCP and divert
the United States and toward China. has the Mandate of Heaven, to use the resources away from its other priorities,

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 51

SUMMER BOOKS
such as invading Taiwan.
With these lessons in mind, Sobolik
proposes two policies for how the U.S.
can go on offense against China and the
BRI. First, the U.S. should dismantle
the BRI by going after its hub: Xinjiang,
where, according to both the Trump and
Biden administrations, the CCP is com-
mitting genocide against Muslim Uy-
ghurs. On a map, this region may look
remote and insignificant. But Xinjiang
is central to the BRI because overland
routes connecting China to Europe,
South Asia, and the Middle East pass
through it. Sobolik argues that the CCP
commits atrocities against Uyghurs to
pacify the region and prevent a separat-
ist uprising that could sever China from
important markets. The Uyghur Forced
Labor Prevention Act, which is designed
to halt the importation of goods pro-
duced by forced labor from Uyghurs and
other groups, is a good start. But the U.S.
could do more. Specifically, Washington
should use aggressive sanctions to target
entities that benefit from the trade that
passes through Xinjiang.
Second, Sobolik proposes that the
U.S. target the Digital Silk Road, the
BRI’s telecommunications component,
by chipping away at China’s Great Fire-
wall. This policy would leverage Amer-
ica’s technological prowess to make
China’s internet censorship more diffi-
cult and costly to maintain. It would also
expose the Chinese people to truths the
CCP wants to erase. This would target
China’s greatest fear, losing control of its
people and risking that they no longer
see Communist leaders as having the
“Mandate of Heaven.” Furthermore, the
U.S. would demonstrate to authoritari-
ans elsewhere that they cannot rely upon
DSR technologies to control the internet
or their people.
Despite its problems, the BRI will
not collapse anytime soon, as Xi’s trip
to Hungary demonstrated. Sobolik pro-
vides an excellent handbook for readers
who want to quickly learn how and why
this latest iteration of Chinese imperi-
alism threatens America. But even for
people who have followed the subject
for years, his analysis offers an import-
ant reminder about geopolitics: Defense
alone does not win cold wars, so America
will need to relearn how to go on offense.
Mark Melton is managing editor at Hud-
son Institute. His views are his own.
52 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
A Grand Tour
of Kafka
By Malcolm Forbes
I
n his biography of Franz Kafka, Max reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow
Brod declared that his friend never on the head, what are we reading it for?”
wrote a “single word” that was not A century on from Kafka’s death
“infused with a special magic charm.” at the age of 40 comes a new study of
Ever since the posthumous publication this singular author’s life, oeuvre, and
of Kafka’s work, work that only saw the far-reaching influence. Metamorphoses:
light of day because of Brod’s refusal to In Search of Franz Kafka is, mercifully,
carry out Kafka’s request to burn his no conventional biography. We don’t
manuscripts after his death, generations need one: Reiner Stach’s monumental
of readers have pored over the writer’s three-volume Kafka will remain defin-
every word, both to be bewitched by itive for quite some time. Instead, this
those magic charms and to search for new book by Oxford academic Karolina
meaning in them. Watroba takes a novel approach by ex-
For Kafka confounds, and we delight ploring how Kafka became Kafka and
in his many ambiguities and absurdities. why his writings have resonated with so
Why is Josef K. arrested one morning many people. To learn more about him
in The Trial? Why has Gregor Samsa and understand his readers’ responses
transformed into a monstrous insect in to him, Watroba embarks on a bold and
The Metamorphosis? And lively fact-finding quest
why isn’t K. accepted in that comprises travels
the village or admitted to across Europe, virtual
the eponymous building trips beyond, and deep
in The Castle? We follow dives into the pages of his
Kafka’s condemned men work.
and lost souls as they wan- Watroba’s journey be-
der and blunder through gins in Oxford, home to
nightmarish, labyrinthine the majority of Kafka’s
worlds of forbidding au- surviving manuscripts.
thorities and murky in- After perusing these so-
stitutions, wrestling with called “celebrity items” in
arbitrary rules, cruel the Bodleian Library’s col-
judgments, maddening lection, she describes how,
bureaucracies, and hostile Metamorphoses: in 1961, Malcolm Pasley, a
forces beyond their con- In Search of British aristocrat, picked
trol. We try to comprehend Franz Kafka up Kafka’s manuscripts
his protagonists’ predic- By Karolina Watroba from a bank vault in Zurich
aments and often end up Pegasus and drove them to Oxford.
256pp, $29.95
just as thwarted as they do. Watroba then reveals the
Kafka is open to differ- way The Metamorphosis
ent interpretations. For some, his novels can be repurposed or reevaluated to
and stories are funhouse mirrors offering chime with or make sense of contem-
warped reflections. For others, they are porary crises and upheavals. She reread
lenses to examine common concerns and the book during lockdown and traces
modern anxieties. Some claim his tales parallels between her plight and that of
grimly depict guilt, punishment, despair, Gregor Samsa. Finally, she analyzes Ian
alienation, and struggle. Others consid- McEwan’s 2019 novella The Cockroach,
er them blackly comic farces. One thing a Kafka-inspired reaction to Brexit, and
most admirers can agree on is that Kaf- argues that it is ample proof that “Kafka
ka’s self-styled “scribblings,” whether lu- still matters today.”
cid or opaque, have force and heft. As he Watroba’s chapter on Berlin contains
once wrote to a friend: “If the book we’re a fascinating section on the complexity
 SUMMER BOOKS

of Kafka’s linguistic and cultural identity.

He was born in Prague, and he wrote in
German, but he can’t be pinned down as
Czech or German. “Even calling Kafka a
German-speaking Jew,” Watroba writes,
“is more of an approximation than the
full story,” as he studied Hebrew and
was familiar with Yiddish but wasn’t a
practicing Jew. Watroba points out that
his composite identity vexed him. “Am
I circus rider on 2 horses?” he asked in
a letter to his fiancée, Felice Bauer. On
a visit to his house in Berlin, Watroba
notes a plaque that describes him as
Austrian. On a pilgrimage to the New
Jewish Cemetery in Prague, she finds the
inscription on his gravestone in Hebrew
and German.
While in Prague, Watroba retraces
Kafka’s footsteps, taking stock of the
“touristic commodification” of him.
This ranges from intriguing muse-
ums, statues, monuments, and a huge
revolving head installation outside a
shopping mall, to the maligned World
of Franz Kafka (billed, laughably, not
as an exhibition but rather an “expe-
rience”) and cheap merchandise from
souvenir stores. This section is at its
Franz Kafka
best when Watroba employs city land- poses before
marks as springboards to wider and Kinsky Palace
more interesting discussion points. A on the square
commemorative plaque from 1965 leads of the old town
to a brief history of Kafka’s rediscovery in Prague.
in Communist Czechoslovakia after
being initially dismissed by one Soviet
critic as a “bourgeois fashion which will
pass.” A bridge Kafka could see from
his bedroom window prompts a dissec- Watroba’s field trips to places Kafka lived
tion of his short yet seminal story “The or visited don’t always yield insightful re- wook’s 2003 film Oldboy and Han Kang’s
Judgment,” followed by scrutiny of his sults. She sits in one Prague café Kafka 2016 International Booker prize-winner
strained relationship with his father. frequented and then in another he possi- The Vegetarian.
In another chapter, Watroba thrills at bly went to and each time brings nothing Watroba knows her limits: She
being given access to Kafka’s as-yet un- new to the table. We try in vain to share doesn’t set out to demystify Kafka or
published Hebrew notebooks. Among her amazement that someone called decode his enigmatic writings. Nev-
her findings is a loose page containing Kafka lives in the building where she is ertheless, by engaging with him and
a letter Kafka penned to his teacher in staying or her amusement at witnessing searching for his “afterlives,” she brings
1923. There is a sprightliness in his tone a flock of jackdaws, as the Czech word him into sharper focus. He is, for her,
as he highlights the “chaos” he feels for jackdaw is “kavka.” “the patron saint of creativity,” whose
when waiting for an important letter, but Otherwise, Metamorphoses is astute stories “cannot be ever fully explained
it is offset by a note of poignancy: “It’s a and entertaining. Watroba serves up a or assimilated but can be unfolded and
wonder that nobody turns to ash earlier winning blend of absorbing travelogue refolded in ever new combinations and
than they actually do,” writes a man who and rigorous inquiry. She excels with her constellations.” Kafka’s work gives us
was already dying from tuberculosis. forensic close readings and her unique a whole new way of seeing the world.
Watroba’s book has the odd flaw. take on the oft-used and much-misap- Watroba’s book gives us a whole new
Some of her sleuthwork is guesswork: plied term “Kafkaesque.” In her last sec- way of seeing Kafka.
Not every reader will be as excited as she tion, she goes off the beaten track and
is at establishing a “putative connection” skillfully demonstrates how Kafka’s in- Malcolm Forbes has written for the Econ-
between Kafka and another writer he fluence has spread to South Korea, with omist, the Wall Street Journal, and the
may or may not have read. In addition, various works informing Park Chan- Washington Post. He lives in Edinburgh.

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 53

SUMMER BOOKS

Come
What May
By Peter Tonguette

W
hen a biographer is confronted
with a reclusive or recalcitrant
subject, there are two ways to
proceed. One option is to charm, cajole,
or at least play along with the subject to
achieve cooperation. The other is to hec-
tor and pester the subject, and when the Comedian Elaine May in a bowling
subject shows some signs of interest, to alley on Feb. 4, 1961, in New York City.
refuse to let him or her dictate the terms
and thereby assure nonparticipation.
Unfortunately, the latter seems closer
to the approach of author Carrie Couro-
gen in Miss May Does Not Exist, her new I even say?” nail sketch of May’s harrowing upbring-
biography of Elaine May, the nimble-wit- This is not a promising admission for a ing, which is rushed through in a single
ted onetime partner of Mike Nichols in biographer. Courogen had alternate plans chapter. Born in Philadelphia in 1932,
the Nichols and May improvisational of attack, but they sound random and May was the daughter of talented but pe-
comedy team, shrewd writer (and rewrit- half-baked, including sending May post- nurious Yiddish theater performer Jack
er) of screenplays, and, above all, director cards, cookies, and $200 worth of scans Berlin and his formidable wife, Ida. The
of four of the meanest, most merciless of family documents. She also dialed a family of the former could not stand the
kind-of comedies ever made in Holly- lot of phone numbers and sent emails latter, so when Jack was felled by a heart
wood: A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, to dead accounts. Is this what Robert A. attack at age 47, Ida had to chart a course
Mikey and Nicky, and Ishtar. Caro would do? on her own. “All she had to her name
In addition to these things, May is also As it happens, Courogen did finally get was 76 cents, nearly $600 worth of pawn
something else: one of the a reaction from May, who, tickets with interest due in less than two
most notorious hermits in through an intermediary, months, and a traumatized child to sup-
show business who would agreed to furnish written port,” Courogen writes. How Elaine felt,
therefore require special replies to four questions or feels, about any of this is mostly specu-
handling by a biographer. provided that the resulting lation, so Courogen is forced to write long
Her interviews are fitful, Q&A was printed in full. paragraphs with assertions on the order
her public profile non- Yet, rather unforgivably, of the following: “By the time she was ten
existent, and her output Courogen fumbled at the years old, Elaine knew this to be true:
irregular. goal line when she balked People you love will leave.” And: “In real
Alas, judging by the ac- at May’s “edits of my ques- life, sometimes people just die, and there
count offered in a rather tions” and thereby gave is no understanding or explaining it.”
defensive prologue, Couro- May the chance to back The book intermittently comes alive
gen did not do enough, in- out. whenever Courogen includes the rare pre-
telligently enough, to lasso Instead, Courogen viously published comment or wisecrack
her subject’s involvement. had to go it alone — or, at by May about something in her life, such
Miss May Does Not
Since Courogen found her- least, without May. Yes, she as when she said, referring to her having
ED FEINGERSH/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GET T Y IMAGES

Exist: The Life and

self living, during the writ- Work of Elaine May, has done her homework, changed schools upward of 50 times as a
ing of this book, two blocks Hollywood’s scoured the archives, and youth: “I kept learning that Mesopotamia
from May on the Upper Hidden Genius spoken to May’s colleagues was the first city.”
West Side, she claims that By Carrie Courogen and even some close Relying on the help of her brother
St. Martin’s Press
she began to experience friends. But there is some- Louis, Ida and her daughter pulled up
400 pp., $30
constant May “sightings”: thing missing. May is repre- stakes first for Chicago and then for Los
women who might be May sented in quotes taken from Angeles. All of this is, by necessity, cov-
waiting to cross the street or buying gro- old, sometimes ancient, articles and inter- ered fleetingly. By page 17, Courogen is up
ceries. But Courogen can’t be sure which views, but she is not present in the here to Elaine’s first marriage — at age 16, she
Elaines were real and which were fake and now. She cannot clarify, elaborate, or married 19-year-old Marvin May — and
because she “never had the guts to say explain anything under discussion. the birth of her daughter Jeannie. By page
anything — because, really, what would A case in point is Courogen’s thumb- 18, the union is over, and May is plotting

54 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024


a return to Chicago, where, in time, she
will become associated with the Compass
Players and eventually Mike Nichols. This
abbreviated account of May’s formative
years alone keeps this biography from
being definitive.
Of course, the book gains consider-
able depth once May enters the public
eye with Nichols and May, which was
officially established in 1959. Courogen is
happy to trod anew on well-trod ground.
It is funny to read again an account of
May’s initial encounter with her future
comedy partner when she attended a Chi-
cago performance of Miss Julie starring
Nichols, at whom May shot contemptu-
ous glances. “This evil, hostile girl in the
front row staring at me throughout the
performance.”
It is electrifying to read of the tension
and brinkmanship inherent in their im-
provisational work. And there is certainly
pleasure in being reminded of the clas-
sic Nichols and May routines, including
the “Mother and Son” routine about a
self-pitying mother upbraiding her grown
son and its origins in an actual call Nich-
ols received from his own mother: “Hel-
lo, Michael. This is your mother speaking.
Do you remember me?”
Nichols and May, as a self-contained
performing duo, was a spent force by the
early 1960s, and Nichols proceeded to
become everybody’s favorite young film-
maker with instant-classic movies like
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The
Graduate. In 1971, May inaugurated her
own directorial career with the painfully
brilliant A New Leaf. She stars as Henrietta
Lowell, a profoundly inelegant, seemingly
unmarriageable heiress who is wed to a
pauperized murderer (Walter Matthau).
Painful brilliance would become May’s
stock-in-trade. In a cringe-inducing setup,
The Heartbreak Kid (1972) stars Charles
Grodin as an anhedonic man who cruel-
ly spurns his newlywed wife (May’s own
daughter Jeannie) but seems on the verge
of growing equally discontent with the
woman he left her for (Cybill Shepherd).
Even the epically unsuccessful, unfairly
loathed Ishtar (1987) has, at its heart, a
believably piteous dynamic: Warren Be-
atty and Dustin Hoffman are talent-free
singer-songwriters whose reverence for
Simon & Garfunkel is presented as the
summit of lameness.
Courogen covers these projects, and
the countless others that May wrote,
contributed to, or dreamt up, in abundant
but empty detail. Too often, her accounts
read like standard behind-the-scenes his-
tories. Yes, we understand that May’s me-
ticulousness and perfectionism led her to
keep producing excessively long scripts,
overshoot on the set while waiting inter-
minably for magic to happen between
performers, and spend endless hours in
the cutting room sifting through it all. But
why?
Courogen is left to make windy guess-
es: “If she could do as much as possible
herself, if everything could just be done
her way, then maybe she could beat them
at their game.” The book has a bit too
much dime-store psychology for a figure
as cutting and sardonic as May, who once
said, in describing her objectives in writ-
ing A New Leaf: “I wrote this movie script
that I wanted to sell for a lot of money so
that I could be richer.”
Above all, it’s a stretch to infer, as Cou-
rogen does here and there, that May was
in any way a victim of sexism in Holly-
wood. After all, the industry kept giving
her directing assignments despite her
genuinely eccentric working methods,
including, at one point, being accused by
Paramount of walking off with reels from
her then-unfinished film, the masterly
mob drama Mikey and Nicky. The indus-
try also compensated her handsomely
for doing uncredited rewrites of films
like Tootsie — whose star, Hoffman, said:
“Elaine is the one who made the mov-
ie work.” Plenty of male directors were
sidelined for making bombs or behaving
crazily. Just ask Michael Cimino. But even
after Ishtar, May recaptured her spot on
the screenwriting A-list, writing The Bird-
cage and Primary Colors for Nichols. And
in front of the camera, she co-starred with
Woody Allen in Small Time Crooks — and
essentially walked away with the whole
movie.
Would this book have been better if
Courogen had extracted that four-ques-
tion interview from May? Who knows?
Perhaps whatever May would have said
would have amounted to a kind of joke.
Then again, what if Courogen had estab-
lished a rapport with her frustrating sub-
ject? What if May had started...talking?
The door was ever so slightly ajar, but
Courogen failed to walk in. We are left
with a book that tells us both a great deal
and very little about its subject.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to
the Washington Examiner magazine.
SUMMER BOOKS
Don’t
Bet on
America’s
Illiberal
Heart
By Mike Watson
T
he picture neoconservative for-
eign policy intellectual Robert
Kagan paints in his new book,
Rebellion, is dark and foreboding. As
he sees it, a competition between lib-
eralism and anti-liberalism has “been
fought within the American system
since the time of the Revolution.” And
things are now coming to a head. Al-
though the present crisis “seems un-
precedented, the struggle that is tearing
the nation apart today is as old as the
republic.” No matter who wins the next
election, “the American liberal political
and social order will fracture, perhaps
irrecoverably.”
In Rebellion, Kagan attempts to de-
fine the anti-liberal American tradition
and describe the danger it poses to the
American way.
According to Kagan, the “sole func-
tion” of the founders’ liberalism “was
to protect certain fundamental rights of
all individuals against the state and the
wider community.” Once the colonists
decided to declare independence, they
jettisoned the English constitution and
adopted John Locke’s ideas of “natural
rights” and the “social compact.” They
created what Kagan calls “a rights-pro-
tection machine” and, since the found-
ers expected more people to enjoy these
rights over time, a “rights-recognition
machine as well.”
In his view, this was a radical de-
parture from all preceding forms of
government. He claims that “America’s
liberal Revolution was not the natu-
ral outgrowth of ‘Western’ culture,
the European Enlightenment, or even
the English constitution.” Nor was it a
“product of an Anglo-Protestant evolu-
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 55
SUMMER BOOKS

tion. Its origins are not to be found in between Americans but through every excesses and reversed many of them.
Christianity,” either. And the vast gulf American heart. Warren Harding was a disappointing
between the liberal revolution and the Moreover, the movements that have president, but he made good on his “re-
habits and thoughts of the people who made the most progress toward liberal- turn to normalcy” campaign pledge, as
undertook this revolution created an ism have often done so for other reasons did his successor, Calvin Coolidge. Ka-
anti-liberal backlash. than the ones Kagan says. For most of gan describes the 1920 election as “an
Kagan has a clearer definition for American history, freedom movements unprecedented attack against liberalism
liberalism than anti-liberalism. “The have drawn heavily from the Bible for and progressivism in all their forms,” but
core and beating heart” of anti-liber- inspiration. Northern and English evan- the evidence he cites is the resurgence
alism “was the slaveholding South,” gelicals sometimes made secular argu- of the Ku Klux Klan, which Wilson ad-
which transmuted into “the Southern ments about abolishing slavery, but they mired, and the 1924 Immigration Act.
Democratic Party and the conservative also cited Exodus 21:16’s prohibition on The Republicans did pass immigration
antiliberal white Protestant forces in man-stealing and other biblical texts. restrictions, but even Franklin D. Roo-
the Republican Party” after the Second The Rev. Martin Luther King’s Southern sevelt endorsed such measures. And
World War. To Kagan, “the American Christian Leadership Conference was when the Democrats nearly let white
conservatives’ fixation on ‘small gov- one of the most effective advocacy orga- supremacists who championed Wilson’s
ernment’ was inextricably tied up, first, nizations of the Civil Rights Movement. son-in-law overrun their 1924 conven-
with the protection of slavery, and then, Thomas Jefferson had a greater impact tion, nicknamed the “Klanbake,” they
after the Civil War, with the South’s ef- on American life than true secularists lost the subsequent election.
forts to preserve white like Thomas Paine be- This context makes the present situa-
supremacy.” So, anti-lib- cause he allied with Bap- tion seem less uniquely, republic-ending-
eralism manifests as be- tists, who opposed state ly dire than Rebellion suggests we should
lief in small government, churches to further reli- feel it is. Kagan fears that former Presi-
white supremacy, opposi- gious freedom rather than dent Donald Trump is a fascist and that
tion to immigration, and to make the government the various anti-liberal forces he identi-
allowing religion to have secular. fies, such as originalists and Christian
a prominent role in public Ironically, the closest nationalists, will pull the country in a
life. the United States came dark direction.
A closer look reveals to anti-liberal governance But, for one thing, Kagan’s opponents
that, in American his- was under Woodrow are much less coherent than he fears. Ka-
tory, liberalism and an- Wilson, whom Kagan de- gan laments that “Trump’s supporters
ti-liberalism are heavily scribes as a “progressive never criticize him or tolerate criticism
intermixed. For example, liberal reforming” pres- of him,” citing the controversies over
Kagan claims that advo- ident. Wilson was ex- COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines. But
Rebellion: How
cates of small government Antiliberalism Is tremely racist, even for his Trump’s own supporters have booed
usually have nefarious Tearing America time, and he hated black him at rallies for talking about Operation
ulterior motives, but ad- Apart – Again people and immigrants in Warp Speed, one of the best initiatives
vocates of big government By Robert Kagan equal measure. The Dem- of his presidency. Trump has maintained
Knopf ocrats’ reliance on urban his grip on the public imagination largely
often do, too. Most South-
256 pp., $26.00
erners were happy to machines forced him to because he listens and responds to his
trample on states’ rights to moderate his distaste for followers: After Warp Speed drew boos,
defend slavery, such as with the Fugitive immigrants in office, but his progressiv- he stopped talking about it.
Slave Act. Southern Whigs, such as the ism turbocharged his anti-black racism But even if Kagan were correct about
Louisiana sugar barons, tended to be since expert opinion at the time had co- the motives of the people he opposes,
the most vicious slavedrivers, the most alesced around eugenic theories of sci- American history shows a clear way
ardent oligarchs, and the biggest fans entific racism. Like his Southern Whig forward that avoids the breakdown of
of federal infrastructure projects: Hav- heroes, Wilson wanted unelected bu-
ing gained their wealth off other men’s reaucrats to dominate the government.
backs, they had no objection to enlarg- In the landmark “The Study of Adminis-
ing it the same way. Alexander Stephens tration,” he wrote, “What, then, is there
and his fellow ex-Whigs empowered the to prevent? Well, principally, popular
Confederate bureaucracy to become far sovereignty.” His fellow progressives To paraphrase
more heavy-handed than the American hoped bureaucracies would lead the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
government. The Northern Whigs, who ignorant masses to a brighter future, so
shared the Southern Whigs’ horror for as they saw it, purging the government
the line between liberalism
Andrew Jackson but little else, tended — and the American populace, to the and anti-liberalism rarely
to despise Catholic immigrants as much extent possible — of undesirable ethnic runs between Americans
as slavery. To paraphrase Aleksandr and racial minorities was merely good
Solzhenitsyn, the line between liber- government. but through every
alism and anti-liberalism rarely runs But people rallied against Wilson’s American heart.
56 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024

the country: prioritize some issues and
attract voters. Abraham Lincoln’s Re-
publicans picked up the remnants of the
anti-immigrant “Know Nothing” party
to win in 1860. Franklin D. Roosevelt
allied with white supremacists and em-
powered fascist sympathizers like Rex-
ford Tugwell and Hugh Johnson to get
his New Deal. Surely, if the threat to the
country was so great, Democrats could
break off parts of Trump’s coalition, who
are not nearly as bad as many of the New
Dealers, to save the republic. President
Joe Biden and his reelection campaign
seem unwilling to do that, though, even
to pick up the Latino and black people
who voted for former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in
2020.
Fortunately, there is another bulwark,
though it is one that Kagan deplores: the
originalists. They attempt to interpret
the Constitution according to what the
founders thought it meant, which Kagan
says is anti-liberal even though he be-
lieves that the founders were liberal. He
fears that “even the Republican-domi-
nated Supreme Court” cannot “be count-
ed on to assert independent authority”
if they would have to cross Trump. But
originalist justices already have ruled re-
peatedly against Trump at the Supreme
Court. The originalists have developed
their project over decades across all sorts
of presidencies, and there is no reason to
believe that they will abandon it for any
one politician.
Rebellion is a work of synthesis, and
it suffers from the academy’s near-total
ignorance of American religion and the
South. But it is bracingly argued and
thought-provoking throughout. Where
it is wrong, it serves as a record of how
the concerns of one historical moment
can cause us to notice, and not to notice,
key elements of prior eras in a way that
makes the present seem more special
and worrisome than it is. In reality, the
present usually seems special because
it is, well, present. If Trump’s presiden-
cy is affected by the stronger forces that
really propel American history, perhaps
a century from now, academics will write
as favorably of him as they do now of
Wilson. They, too, will have missed the
mark.
Mike Watson is the associate director of
Hudson Institute’s Center for the Future
of Liberal Society.
SUMMER BOOKS
Constitutional Lore
By Michael M. Rosen
‘T
he Constitution which we now litions in ways that drag us into common
present,” George Washington action even (indeed, especially) when we
wrote in 1787 after completing disagree.”
his duties as the presiding officer over Levin, the director of social, cultural,
the Constitutional Convention, “is the and constitutional studies at the Ameri-
result of a spirit of amity, and of that can Enterprise Institute (disclosure: I am
mutual deference and concession which a fellow), builds on his previous scholar-
the peculiarity of our political situation ship that emphasized the importance of
rendered indispensable.” repairing our fractured institutions. He
If it seems like the Constitution’s spir- identifies five frameworks the Constitu-
it of unity and accommodation has lately tion represents: scaffolding of law, insti-
eluded politicians, judges, and citizens tutions, policymaking, politics, and unity.
alike, it’s because it has. As he astutely notes, the
The last decade has seen first four frameworks tra-
a disturbing breakdown in ditionally serve as the fo-
norms, an erosion of insti- cal point of constitutional
tutions, and an unraveling study and practice, but we
of national purpose. Worse would do well to examine
yet, disputes over the Con- the final one closely. After
stitution itself have sharp- all, the very first sentence
ened our divisions, with of our founding covenant
partisan armies wielding exhorts us “to form a more
our founding document as perfect union.” Its very
a weapon, not applying it first word is “we.”
as a balm. The process of foster-
But happily, we have ing unity through con-
Yuval Levin to help us stitutional discourse,
American Covenant:
avoid despair, as he calm- How the Constitution embodied during the con-
ly, persuasively, and sys- Unified Our Nation — vention itself, entails sev-
tematically instructs us And Could Again eral “modes of resolution.”
in American Covenant, his By Yuval Levin First, Levin highlights the
splendid and timely new Basic Books role of competition, not
341 pp., $32.00
book aimed at restoring only in actual elections
America’s common cause. but between branches of
Calling the Constitution a “charter of government, between federal, state, and
unity,” Levin demonstrates how it “com- local authorities, and between the states
pel[s] Americans with different views themselves. The protection the First
and priorities to deal with one another Amendment accords to speech, religion,
— to compete, negotiate, and build coa- and association, for instance, spurs com-
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 57
SUMMER BOOKS
petition, respectively, in ideas, beliefs,
and interest groups.
Negotiation and compromise similar-
ly form a key component of the Consti-
tution’s blueprint for national solidarity.
“Neither party being able to consum-
mate its will without the concurrence
of the other,” James Madison wrote to
Thomas Jefferson, “there is a necessity
on both to consult and accommodate.”
Counter-majoritarian failsafes and a
preference for deliberation frustrate
impulsive policy upheavals and nurture
collaborative decision-making.
And finally, what Levin calls “pro-
ductive tension” helps us fashion dura-
ble and dynamic resolutions to difficult
problems. These dialectics between lib-
eralism and republicanism, centraliza-
tion and federalism, and individualism
and communalism, this ethos of “yes,
and,” provide the elan vital of our consti-
tutional system. Balancing often contra-
dictory virtues forces us to acknowledge
their benefits. Cultivating these habits
enables “citizens to act together when
they don’t think alike and, therefore ...
mak[es] civic unity achievable.”
Levin demonstrates how the framers
deployed all of these tactics at the con-
vention itself. By implementing federal-
ism and the separation of powers, our
Founding Fathers confronted without
resolving the pressing problems of their
day, such as slavery, individual rights,
and the tension between agrarian and
proto-industrial economic models.
By elevating Congress as the primus
inter pares of branches — “in republi-
can government, the legislative author-
ity necessarily predominates,” Madison
maintained in Federalist 51 — they es-
tablished within its walls what Levin
labels arenas of contention, coalition
building, and integration. By constrain-
ing the president’s powers while af-
fording him substantial freedom within
those limits, they invested the executive
with the requisite balance of energy and
stability. By limiting the role of the judi-
ciary to interpreting ambiguous statu-
tory provisions — “to liquidate and fix
their meaning and operation,” per Ham-
ilton in Federalist 78 — they provided a
political backstop, or what Levin calls
the “power to keep our system of gov-
ernment true to itself.”
And by harnessing to the broader
structure, however grudgingly, the ben-
efits of political parties — “useful checks
58 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
upon the administration of government,”
as Washington put it, that “serve to keep
alive the spirit of liberty” — they cur-
tailed their most pernicious character-
istics. Perhaps paradoxically, American
history has shown, Levin argues, how
“parties as institutions actually restrain
partisanship and moderate its ill effects.”
So, how have these venerable insti-
tutions, which have served the United
States so well for centuries, disintegrat-
ed? And more importantly, what can we
possibly do about it? Levin pinpoints
many progressive reforms enacted by
Woodrow Wilson as the root cause of
this erosion and all it entails. “When
those institutions break down, as a
number of them have in our time,” Levin
solemnly observes, “their deformations
become our deformations.”
So, how to repair Congress, the exec-
utive, the judiciary, and the major parties
in the service of unity? With respect to
Congress, whose “dysfunction is not an
irremediable reality,” Levin recommends
re-empowering congressional commit-
tees, revamping the budget process, re-
moving cameras from hearing rooms,
and enlarging the House (currently, each
member represents a whopping 745,000
citizens).
He also urges the executive branch
to rein in quasi-independent agencies,
to cease arrogating to itself legislative
powers, to deliver the State of the Union
in writing, and generally to exercise re-
straint. In contrast to the outsize public
role presidents play in contemporary
American politics, they “should self-con-
sciously fade just a little into the back-
ground of our national life.”
Moreover, he exhorts us to embrace
“a renewed judicial republicanism,” an
analog of sorts to the originalism doc-
trine that dominates the contemporary
judiciary. But this republicanism would
transcend the interpretive force of origi-
nalism by “prioritiz[ing] the work of the
legislature over the substantive prefer-
ences of judges,” by “valu[ing] steady
and effective administration,” and by
“grasp[ing] the importance of accom-
modative consensus building, social
peace, and the rule of law.” In short,
Levin calls on the judicial branch to pa-
trol the borders of our constitutional re-
gime more rigorously.
And he encourages a restoration of
political parties to their traditional role
as studied gatekeepers and stabilizing
buffers of factionalism. Unfettered par-
tisan primaries have “exacerbated our
sense that our society is bitterly divided
by persuading Americans that the loud-
est and most extreme supporters of each
party are the essence of that party.” The
ballast provided by robust party leader-
ship can reverse this ruinous trend, as
might ranked choice voting in primaries,
which tends to marginalize more polar-
izing contestants, and “fusion voting,” in
which smaller parties with ballot access
cross-endorse major party candidates.
But more fundamentally, we must re-
member what unites us. In Federalist 14,
Madison contended that people are “knit
together as they are by so many cords of
affection.” Here, our fifth president was
invoking the Aristotelian notion of civ-
ic friendship, of how citizens can differ
substantially in their philosophical and
political views yet nevertheless contest
and resolve those differences through
vigorous but open deliberation. Decen-
tralizing decision-making and lowering
the volume of debate can go a long way
as well.
However, we must take care to es-
chew the type of Wilsonian progressive
unity that elides differences. This early
20th-century school of thought, Levin
asserts, “sought a way to move Ameri-
cans to think alike, not just act together,”
and thereby bulldozed the diversity of
thought critical to a functioning repub-
lic. By subverting careful legislative bar-
gaining, this uniform approach “tends to
raise the stakes and the temperature of
our politics” and “has plainly exacerbat-
ed our divisions.”
It would, of course, be much easier to
implement a program of unifying reform
if our nation and its leadership were
populated by millions of Yuval Levins
— intellectually curious and good-faith
interlocutors genuinely committed to the
common good. Alas, everyday Ameri-
cans, including those officials to whom
we’ve entrusted our electoral support,
rarely live up to these ideals. But in
this elegant volume, Levin persuasively
points a way forward for us mere mor-
tals to clean up our republican hygiene,
inspired as we should be by the Consti-
tution, that supremely benevolent gift of
our founding generation.
Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer
in Israel and a nonresident senior fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute

J
immy Breslin was an archetype, a Breslin knew it, they barely make jour-
white ethnic working-class New nalism at all.
York journalist who spoke his
mind, stuck his thumb
in the eye of authority
municipal, financial, and
criminal, and found his
story in the people of his
city.
Except that archetypes
are supposed to be eter-
nal. It’s not just that cit-
ies change fast and New
York City changes faster
than most, or that white
MICHAEL BRENNAN/GET T Y IMAGES
ethnics in America’s big
cities have long been car-
rot-and-sticked out to the
suburbs by comfort and
crime. It’s that they don’t
make journalists like Bres-
lin these days. If by jour-
nalism we mean the job as
SUMMER BOOKS
Jimmy Breslin
in Costello’s
wine bar in
New York
in 1986.
Column Punk
By Dominic Green
artistry, Pete Hamill (1935-2020), also a
columnist and novelist.
Breslin (1928-2017) is remembered They say journalism is the first draft
as a columnist, especial- of history, but no writer keeps his first
ly for the New York Daily drafts. Unless, that is, he’s stockpiling
News. But he wrote for them for the chance to sell them to a
everyone else, as well as college archive. In our age of mass me-
writing crime fiction and dia, history is the second draft of jour-
biographies of Damon nalism. Most journalism is now online.
Runyon, Rudy Giuliani, The Pew Research Center reported in
and the 1962 New York May that a quarter of the online content
Mets. In 1947, the Daily published between 2013 and 2023 is al-
News moved 2.4 million ready no longer available. If you print it,
print copies a day and it will last.
was the model for Clark The Library of America prints to last.
Kent’s Daily Planet. That It takes journalism more seriously than
was some time ago. The most journalists do these days. The LOA
Jimmy Breslin: last great American tab- publishes superb collections of report-
Essential Writings loid is the Daily News’s age from the World Wars, Vietnam, and
By Jimmy Breslin, rival, the New York Post. the civil rights campaigns. It also pub-
Edited by Dan Barry Its past editors include lishes the selected A.J. Liebling, edited
Library of America by Pete Hamill; someone should edit a
Breslin’s peer in big-city
734 pp., $40.00
muckraking and deadline Hamill collection. Best of all is the com-
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 59
 SUMMER BOOKS
plete “Prejudices” of H.L. Mencken.
These will teach prospective journalists
far more than a master’s degree from
the Columbia School of Journalism,
and for only $75 rather than $119,659.
The Breslin collection is edited by
Dan Barry, a longtime columnist for
the New York Times. You get 73 columns
and long-form pieces, half of which ha-
ven’t been previously republished, and
also two book-length essays. Every
piece is excellent, but it’s not natural
to read journalism collections cover
to cover: the sympathetic way to do it
is one piece a day, like the real thing.
Breslin wrote as a social historian in
the style that came to be called New
Journalism in the ’60s: adopting the
novelist’s methods of characterization
and narrative, with the journalistic nar-
rator as a subjective participant. This
gets too rich for the digestion in large
servings.
The New Journalism is old hat now.
It was hard to do well (Tom Wolfe, Gay
Talese) and easy to do badly (Hunter S.
Thompson). Instead of striking at a tell-
ing nugget of truth — Breslin, attending
President Kennedy’s funeral, tracked
down the man who had dug the pres-
ident’s grave — its techniques have be-
come formulaic distractions, a washing
of authorial hands as they steer you to
a predetermined conclusion.
What’s striking now when you read
the old New Journalism is how soaked
its practitioners were in literary tech-
nique: the tricks of the trade that en-
gage the reader by piquing interest and
preserving uncertainty. This is why
Tom Wolfe has more in common with
Mark Twain than with Tom Friedman.
The management of social detail in Gay
Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is
how Balzac would have done it, had he
gone to Vegas.
New Journalism aside, Jimmy Bres-
lin was a master of the traditional ba-
sics that the hacks call the “lede” (the
opener) and the “kicker” (the closer).
No sane person would stop reading af-
ter this lede: “Her name is Joan and her
nationality is thief.” Or this: “Cassius
Clay landed a left jab and moved to his
right and then nothing much was hap-
pening,” which opens Breslin’s report
from Miami Beach on the Ali-Liston
heavyweight title bout of 1964.
These are in the laconic line of Hem-
ingway and Steinbeck, but Breslin spe-
60 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
cialized in the extended opener in the
mood of Damon Runyon:
“As this was the first subway ride in
days in which someone’s elbow was not
in my mouth, I was able to talk to the
person alongside me on the train from
Queens yesterday morning.”
Or Ring Lardner: “As it was with
the mother who went before her, the
last breath for the daughter was made
before an onlooker with frightened
eyes.” Six lines before the end, we are
told that the dying daughter’s name is
Rosemary Breslin. The onlooker is Jim-
my Breslin. By then, we are inside the
onlooker’s memory of the time when
both his wife and daughter were alive.
The kicker is “The mother took her
hand, and walked her away, as if to the
first day of school.”
Breslin sometimes extended his
openers into multiclausal scene-set-
ters from a short story: “When he was
in high school, his family moved down
from Philadelphia onto a farm a mile
outside of this town in southern Geor-
gia, right there by the Alabama line, a
town with the old Southern Railway
tracks still running through the middle,
with the town square and its pre-Civil
War courthouse and all the decent folks
on the east side of the tracks, the blacks
and the white trash on the other.”
The conversational phrasing (“this
town in southern Georgia,” “all the
decent folks”) anticipates the speech
of Breslin’s subject, a gay man dying of
AIDS. It’s a stylistic tightrope walk, and
easy to fall into sentimentality. Breslin
sometimes does. Sentimentality was
in character, the shadow side of the
hard-bitten, hard-drinking newsman.
Sentimentality is the shorthand of
compassion, and compassion was still
a virtue among journalists. When Nor-
man Mailer ran for mayor of New York
City, Breslin ran for the presidency of
the City Council. This, too, was senti-
mentality. But what is the point of life,
especially in New York City, if you can-
not try to be larger than it?
Breslin’s father was an absentee
drunk and piano player, Hamill’s a one-
legged clerk and factory worker. Hamill
left school at 15, then took some night
classes. Breslin attended college but did
not graduate. The profession had yet to
professionalize its workers by graduate
degrees and credentials. Journalists
learned the job because they were ama-
teurs in the true sense that word derives
from the Latin (amo, amas, amat): they
loved it. The big-city journalists wrote
about the world that had shaped them,
using the common language they shared
with their subjects.
Today’s journalists write in the same
ways, and that is the problem. Their
world is the Ivy League and the aris-
to-technocracy of the Acela class. Their
language is a managerial conspiracy
against the laity. The politician and the
bureaucrat manage society on the peo-
ple’s behalf. The journalist volunteers
to manage the people’s perceptions on
the politician’s behalf. The people who
talk about speaking truth to power are
speaking lies on their own behalf. There
is no news, only press releases.
Breslin would have slaughtered
these soft-handed, snobbish servants
of unearned authority — not least for
their sloppy writing. Breslin’s long-form
pieces unfurl with the same rigor as his
short columns. The Short Sweet Dream
of Eduardo Gutierrez (2002) reads like
Truman Capote with a heart. Breslin’s
investigation of the death of an illegal
immigrant from Mexico on a building
site in Williamsburg traces every skein
of the causality of an ignored tragedy,
from coyotes at the border to corrupt
building permits.
Nineteenth-century journalism
produced essayists such as Carlyle,
Emerson, Dickens, Twain, Wilde, and
W.T. Stead. Twentieth-century jour-
nalism produced eyewitness report-
ers and 800-word columnists, then
talking heads on TV. Twenty-first-cen-
tury journalism boiled it down to the
240-character tweet and the iPhone
clip. But the same cheap digital tech-
nology is now diluting the format back
to 19th-century scale via the endless
scroll of Substack. The long essay is
back, but you cannot ask an unfit man
to run a marathon.
It is cheaper now to write at length in
your own voice than it has ever been. All
it takes is daring, talent, hard work, and
a willingness to go it alone. The kicker
is:
These are the rarest qualities in the
world.
Dominic Green is a Washington Exam-
iner columnist and a fellow of the Royal
Historical Society. Find him on Twitter @
drdominicgreen.
 SUMMER BOOKS

On Honor Levy
and the Literary Game
By Alex Perez

I
never planned on writing about liter-
ary it-girl Honor Levy. I knew Levy
would get tons of press in the lead-up
to the publication of her
first book, the brilliantly
titled My First Book, mar-
keted as “A Most Antic-
ipated Book of 2024 by
Good Morning America,
W, Nylon, SheReads, and
LitHub.” So I wasn’t par-
ticularly interested in play-
ing a part in her masterly
publicity rollout. Levy, the
poster girl of the New York
City Dimes Square scene,
already had a built-in audience of fans
and all-important haters, the true drivers
of literary engagement. So it was all but
a guarantee that her book
would be a grand success.
I enjoyed sitting on the
sidelines and watching
her haters and her fans
battle on X. I giggled in
glee imagining her publi-
cist giggling in far greater
glee as the plan beautifully
played out. “You won’t get
me, you savvy publicist,”
I thought. Honor will not
dishonor me!
But here I am, writing about the pub-
licity machine behind My First Book,
writing about Honor Levy. Even her
name is literary gold. Did her parents
plan it? Were they in on it from the jump?
Perhaps I’m the greatest mark of all.
Still, for the few of us who still care
about literary matters, the subject of the
ins and outs of the publicity machine is
important to talk about. No matter how
we may feel about Levy or her work, it’s
always a good thing when a literary book
is being talked about. Sales for literary
fiction are continually plummeting while
editors who head literary imprints are
being axed. In this increasingly inhos-

My First Book
By Honor Levy
Penguin Press
224 pp., $27.00
MAT THEW DAVIS

Honor Levy

July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 61

SUMMER BOOKS
pitable environment for literary fiction,
Honor Levy’s My First Book is undoubt-
edly a success. How did she do it? Or, let
us pose the better question: how did they
do it? It was certainly a group effort.
It was always obvious that My First
Book was going to be hyped up, just as
it’s obvious which books would be pub-
lished to absolute silence. Not a single
review or profile or podcast appearance
for those literary losers. Maybe that’s
honorable, but they’re still losers in the
game. Anyone who has any sense of
what the literary tastemakers — agents,
publicists, magazine editors — prop up
can take a look at an upcoming books
list and easily predict which books
will get the full-court press and which
ones won’t even make it off the bench.
Anything written by an “it girl,” upper
class and writing about a coastal city,
will get coverage all over the place, the
pieces often written by the same writ-
ers, whose entire output is seemingly
propping up their friends. Books about
sad people of color, which appeal to the
overly female and progressive demo-
graphic that gobbles up literary fiction,
are also propped up. Everything else is
mostly ignored, leaving writers to fend
for themselves.
Levy built a following before her
book was published, which no doubt
made it easier to garner glossy magazine
publicity. Hers was an exquisite two-
week rollout, not a day going by without
an article and subsequent X hysterics.
As recent articles have stated, literary
publicists can cost upwards of $50,000,
which obviously means that only the
affluent can afford their services. The
publicity world, like the agenting and
media worlds, is small and incestuous,
with agents sometimes becoming pub-
licists and vice versa. That is to say that
it’s always the same 50 people, mostly
ladies, backscratching and boosting
each other’s clients (friends). It’s not
a coincidence that the same types of
books are profiled by the same maga-
zines. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just how
the literary game is played. If you’re a
debut author and want the big coverage,
you either need to befriend the publish-
ing clique or shell out major cash to one
of the publicists in the hope that they’ll
pull you into it. The other option is to
go full gonzo mode and shill your book
on the heterodox circuit and hope for
the best. That’s how the literary game
62 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024
is played in 2024 and will be played for
the foreseeable future.
For a literary book, and a book of
short stories, at that, to break out in the
manner My First Book has means that an
entire team of players must commit to
their roles until critical mass is achieved.
The obvious players include Levy, who
cultivated a following through her Wet
Brain podcast and her activity in the
early days of the Dimes Square scene.
Her publicists, who placed profiles and
interviews in all manner of glossies,
such as Vanity Fair and New York mag-
azine, certainly are worthy of MVP sta-
tus. Then you have the plethora of critics
who wanted that Levy rub, knowing full
well that generating clicks for her would
garner them that precious engagement
they all desire. It didn’t matter if a critic
panned or gave the book a rave, either
— Levy brought the readers. What’s im-
portant is that the critics get the pieces
out while the publicity train’s moving so
they can juice their numbers off the en-
gagement swell.
And then you have the unsung heroes
who are really driving engagement — the
haters. If I were a publicist, I’d pay some
decently sized X accounts to “trash” my
authors and drive engagement. But in
Levy’s case, the haters surely worked
pro bono. The haters have helped her
more than her fans and have certainly
expanded the scope of her readership
beyond the provincial literary sphere.
Before My First Book dropped, for ex-
ample, a hater on X derisively tweeted
out the beginning of the collection’s
opening story, “Love Story”: “He was
giving knight errant, organ-meat eater,
Byronic hero, Haplogroup R1b. She was
giving damsel in distress, pill-popper
pixie dream girl, Haplogroup K. He was
in his fall of Rome era. She was serving
sixth and final mass extinction realness.
His face was a marble statue. Her face
was an anime waifu. They scrolled into
each other.”
The post went viral, with thousands
of likes and hundreds of quote posts
— a glorious literary pile-on by the ag-
grieved and the jealous. Then you had
the sycophants, defending Honor’s
honor, certainly hoping that a “dissi-
dent” tastemaker or whoever saw their
defense of the Dimes Square princess.
It didn’t matter that Levy’s work was
being judged and trashed based on a
single paragraph from a single story —
what mattered was to get in on the en-
gagement. Everyone played their part in
the engagement-generating swirl. For a
short time, Levy brought together the
entire literary community, and for that,
she deserves credit.
It didn’t matter that Levy’s work was
being judged and trashed based on a
single paragraph from a single story —
what mattered was to get in on the en-
gagement. During the heavy press push
for My First Book, after every new Levy
profile or interview, the haters would
start up the engagement machine again.
We can’t know what, if anything, Levy
spent on publicists. But her haters and
sycophants, working harmoniously as a
literary community of desperation and
cringe, surely offered a priceless literary
service.
But is My First Book any good? Well,
it’s definitely a first book, which is to say
that it’s uneven and, on occasion, shows
flashes of brilliance. It’s forgettable, like
most first books, but that doesn’t mean
that there isn’t literary value in Levy’s
project. She’s been called the “voice of
a generation” by her fans, which isn’t
exactly untrue if by “generation” one
means the hyper-online milieu popu-
lated by Zoomers, in which memes and
“edgy” online lingo rule the day.
The collection’s widely derided
opener, “Love Story,” is probably the
best encapsulation of this hyper-online
world in which atomized young people
try dodderingly to forge connections.
Levy authentically captures the scene’s
lingo, and the story is funny and even
moving in the end. The hate directed at
Levy is less about the quality of the work
and more about the fact that she just so
happened to be the right person in the
right place and with the right friends at
the right cultural moment. Someone was
going to publish the first Red Scare-adja-
cent book and be labeled the voice of a
generation, and Levy just so happened to
be down there writing stories and pod-
casting. She beat everybody else to the
punch, and so, for better or worse, she is
the voice of that generation.
The literary game, of course, is rigged,
so one understands the hate directed at
Levy, who’s merely a symbol. But don’t
hate the player, hate the game.
Alex Perez is a fiction writer and cultural
critic from Miami. Follow him on Twitter
@Perez_Writes.

Kinky
Friedman,
1944-2024
Songwriter,
politician, and
adopted son of the
Lone Star State
By Peter Tonguette
I
f someone were to put the
populism of Donald Trump, the
unreconstructed libertarianism of
Ron Paul, the midlevel star power
of Jesse Ventura, and the Texas
twang of Ross Perot into a blender, Kinky
Friedman might just have emerged.
The singer-songwriter, man of letters,
adopted son of the Lone Star State, and
sort of serious political contender died on
June 27 at the age of 79.
Perplexed people looking for leading
indicators of the present political
moment could do worse than to take
a long hard look at the 2006 Texas
gubernatorial election. That year,
incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry
faced formidable challenges from not
only Democratic contender Chris Bell but
independent candidates Carole Keeton
Strayhorn and the already world-famous
Friedman.
Born in Chicago in 1944 to
psychologist Thomas Friedman and his
wife, Minnie, Richard Samet Friedman
(as he was then known) likely had little
conscious memory of his hometown:
While he was a very small child, his
parents, who were Jewish, pulled up
stakes for the Texas Hill Country. There,
they established a 266-acre camp for
children called Echo Hill Ranch, which
continues to operate to the present day.
He spoke of his upbringing with sincere
appreciation.
Perry managed to remain in residence
at the Texas Governor’s Mansion, but
Strayhorn and Friedman, between them,
amassed 30.5% of the vote. And, in a
larger, more profound way, the don’t-give-
a-damn outsider politics of Friedman
have utterly supplanted the play-it-safe
insider politics of Perry and his ilk. Can
anyone doubt that Friedman, had he
ERIC GAY/AP
somehow captured the governorship and
felt compelled to make a quixotic White
House run, would have fared better than
the notoriously bad presidential aspirant
Perry later did?
Long before he gave American
electoral politics a welcome kick in the
pants, Kinky Friedman had fashioned
a career out of giving American pieties
and platitudes a fulsome ribbing. In
his capacity as a cheeky, intentionally
offensive country-rock singer-
songwriter, Friedman sent up both his
times and his chosen genre.
“I was bar mitzvahed in Houston
and went to Hebrew school,” Friedman
said in a 2012 interview with journalist
Simon Marks. “I was raised as a Jew in
Texas, even though people on the East
Coast don’t think that’s possible.” He
added, “It’s a good thing to grow up in a
minority. ... It also makes a good artist or
author to be on the outside looking in.”
Friedman did stints at the University
of Texas, from which he received
a bachelor’s degree in 1966, and in
the Peace Corps. Then he found an
artistic outlet for his naturally acerbic
personality: country music that was
sometimes poetic, frequently profane,
and surprisingly popular. In his heyday
in the 1970s, Friedman brought his
ingratiating manner, Western garb, and
appealing voice to tunes with titles like
“Arsehole from El Paso” and “Get Your
Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in
the Bed,” the latter of which included
lines undoubtedly conceived with the
sole intention of inciting vitriol from
feminists: “Before you make your weekly
visit to the shrink/ You’d better occupy
the kitchen/ Liberate the sink.”
This sort of thing might be expected
to have a short half-life, and by the 1980s,
Friedman had begun the process of
diversifying his repertoire. He became
an unlikely specialist in quasi-comic,
semi-autobiographical mystery novels,
including Greenwich Killing Time (1986),
Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola (1993), and
OBITUARY
Armadillos and Old Lace (1994),
and his views on modern life
were given unfiltered expression
in a column for Texas Monthly. As
much as Fran Lebowitz, Friedman
became less known for any single work
of art, literary or otherwise, than for
incarnating a certain disaffected comic
persona.
It was this attitude of cynical
comic candor that Friedman brought
to his 2006 gubernatorial campaign,
which melded actual policy notions
(an inimitably Texas-style stew that
included legalizing marijuana and
beefing up border security) with the
more general aim of underscoring,
through his presence, the weaknesses
of the politicians around him. During
a debate with his fellow candidates,
Friedman defined “politics” this way:
“‘Poli’ means more than one [and] ‘ticks’
are blood-sucking parasites,” he said.
And, defending his outre language in past
public utterances, he said, “If you ain’t
offending somebody, you ain’t getting
anything done.” That Perry’s rejoinder to
Friedman, something about how “words
matter,” sounds so lame is a sign of how
Friedman-style bluntness has become
the coin of the realm.
Yet his pugnaciousness and political
incorrectness should not constitute his
entire legacy: Entirely unfaked was his
devotion to maintaining his parents’
camp, which focused on serving children
of military personnel who had lost their
lives, and to his dogs, one of whom he
named Winston Randolph Spencer
Churchill Friedman. (Entirely unfaked,
too, was his admiration, frequently
repeated, for the greatest of all British
prime ministers.)
In 2015, when he was promoting his
new album, The Loneliest Man I Ever Met,
I had the fun fortune of interviewing
Friedman by phone. His politics were, as
ever, ecumenical. “I wouldn’t mind voting
for, of the group, Ben Carson, Trump, and
Bernie Sanders,” he told me back then.
“You’ve got three men who I know are
not corrupt.” Other than that, though, he
was not optimistic. “They’re the Crips
and the Bloods, the Republicans and
Democrats,” he said. “And I like my idea
of limiting all elected officials to two
terms: one in office and one in prison.” 
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to
the Washington Examiner magazine.
July 9, 2024 Washington Examiner 63
CROSSWORD

Immunity 55 Virginia governor 41 Unaccompanied

Youngkin 43 Heretofore
By Brendan Emmett Quigley 56 Facts and figures 44 Didn’t delete
57 Medea rode on it 45 Do the Wright thing
            
58 Burgundy grape 48 Dart
   59 “Step ___!” (“Move!”) 49 City near Sparks
60 Canceled 50 Emanation
  
61 Vermont ski resort 51 Challenge for a barber
   62 Tennis’s Lacoste 52 It’s always dropped
 
63 Time to use headlights cheekily
53 Sponge cake ingredient
      54 Fleece
    55 Apple Maps feature

   
DOWN
   1 Ivory, e.g.
2 ___ City (Cairo district)
   
3 “House of the Dragon”
  knight Hightower
4 Impassioned
      
5 Elaborately decorated
   auto
6 “Out!”
  
7 Java neighbor
   8 Singer Guthrie
9 Sponsor’s purchase
10 Fortune
11 Hawkeye player
on “M*A*S*H”
ACROSS 25 Experimental 12 Drops from the sky
1 Falling flakes educational institution 13 Regard
5 “Dancing Queen” 31 Words to a kidder 21 Biblical brother SOLUTION TO LAST
quartet 33 Overfill 22 Settles in WEEK’S CROSSWORD:
9 With it 34 Vietnamese noodle 25 Sour sort CHEAP FAKES
14 Swearing-in words soup 26 Bar, at the bar 5 $ 7 ( ' 5 $ 0 , ' $ & 7
15 Stern 35 Monthly check 27 Stadium cheer , ' 2 7 2 2 * 2 1 ( ( 5 $
3 ( $ & + % 5 $ 1 ' < 6 ( ;
16 Filibuster 36 Butterfly relatives 28 Milky gems ( / 6 $ 6 7 , 1 2 ' (
17 ___ spumante 38 Diamond Head locale 29 Casual greeting 1 ( 7 6 & ( 3 + $ / 2 3 2 '
8 0 3 1 , 7
18 Unbelievable 39 Pal of Nancy 30 Dolt & + $ 3 ( 5 2 1 ( 7 $ & 2 6
19 Miss Hawkins 40 French bread 31 Tough test 2 2 + ( ' 7 % 6 & / 2 8 7
of Dogpatch 41 Divided 32 Prefix with spherical : ( , 5 ' & $ 3 ( + ( 1 5 <
6 / 2 ( , 1
20 One may be taken out 42 Tags on the road 36 Pondered & + $ 3 ( / + , / / 7 $ ) 7
with a new tech purchase 46 I-95, e.g.: Abbr. 37 Lode load + 2 / < ' ( 0 , = 2 2
$ 3 3 $ 3 & + ( 0 , 6 7 5 <
23 Morales of the screen 47 “Dear ___ Hansen” 38 Symbol of charity 0 ( + 0 $ . 2 $ 3 , ( & (
24 Put away 48 Armed revolutionary 40 Accord 3 ' $ 6 / $ 7 ' $ 1 & ( '

64 Washington Examiner July 9, 2024