Kissinger Is Accused
By Soviet on Mideast

MOSCOW, Dec. 29 (AP)—A Soviet commentator charged today former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger had slowed the pace of negotiations for a Middle East settlement with his "notorious" brand of diplomacy.

A commentary by a senior analyst
Yuri Kornilov in the official Tass press
agency said a recent article written
by Mr. Kissinger for Time magazine
"attempts to distort the essence of the
U.S.S.R.'s Middle East policy."

"As is well known, ti was Kissinger
who was the creator and initiator of
the so-called step-by-step diplomacy in
the Middle East," Mr. Kornilov said.
"Were it not for this diplomacy, Middle
East events would have most probably
developed along a far more favorable
channel and today perhaps we would
have already been witnesses to fruit-
ful work in Geneva to achieve an all-
embracing settlement of the conflict."

The commentary echoed previous
Soviet charges that the United States
was pushing hard for a separate Egype-
Israeli peace agreement—and said Mr.
Kissinger's article served that end.

Exorcising Kissinger's Ghost

Washington.

WHEN President Carter's na-
tional security adviser, Zbig-
niew Brzezinski, was under fire from
American Jewish activists not long
ago for allegedly disfavoring Israel,
he said to me as we chatted in his
cluttered White House office:

"Don't forget the kind of criticism
Henry Kissinger faced. Many of the

By Stanley Karnow

things that are being said about us—
more specifically about me—were
said about him. Today he is revered
by the Jewish community for having
strengthened Israel's security.

"I hope that three years from now some people will also say that what we are doing, that the kind of security we have created for Israel, will prove more durable than that won by repeated conflict."

The interesting feature of that
statement, in my view, was not Mr.
Brzezinski's predictable pledge to
stand by Israel. It was his recollection
of Mr. Kissinger's experience as for-
mer President Nixon's security advis-
er and later as secretary of state.

For it seems to me to underline
the extent to which the Carter ad-
ministration's approach to foreign
policy is still being shaped in Mr.
Kissinger's shadow.

This is not to suggest that Mr.
Carter's foreign affairs team is trying
to imitate Mr. Kissinger. On the con-
trary, the two regimes are quite dif-
ferent.

Mr. Kissinger ran a one-man show

in which issues that bored him, such
as Latin America, were simply swept
under the rug. This administration,
in contrast, is extremely pluralistic,
with decisions flowing from all levels
in every direction on a wide range of
topics.

Mr. Carter is obsessed with detail,
and he reaches many conclusions
himself. But he consults constantly
with Mr. Brzezinski, Vice President
Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance and others, and they in turn
rely heavily on their staffs.

Under Mr. Kissinger, therefore,
there was a single party line, and all
that anyone knew came from one
source—Mr. Kissinger. Under Mr.
Carter, policy-making is spiced by
variety, with the result that the ad-
ministration often seems to speak
with several voices.

Mr. Kissinger personified secrecy
— in keeping with his concept of di-
plomacy as an elitist exercise, in the
tradition of Metternich and Bis-
marck, his Nineteenth Century he-
roes. The Carter style is so-called
"open-mouth diplomacy," dictated by
by the populist notion that everything,
or nearly everything, ought to be told
to the people.

The Carterites are persuaded, of
course, that they are performing bet-
ter than Mr. Kissinger did, and they
cite their sincerity, candor and regard
for morality in foreign affairs. But
time and again, I find, they seem to
be looking over their shoulders and
measuring themselves against Mr.
Kissinger.

When they decided during their
early days in office to promote a com-

prehensive settlement on the Middle
East, for example, they sought to ex-
plain the move by claiming that Mr.
Kissinger would have done the same.

They try to justify their failure to
make any headway with China on the
grounds that neither did Mr. Kissin-
ger. Nor, they say, would he have
made any more progress in U.S. rela-
tions with the Soviet Union or with
the European allies.

At the same time, they betray a
certain admiration for Mr. Kissin-
ger's methods, especially in crisis
management.

Recently, reconstructing a con-
fused Middle East episode in which
the White House, the State Depart-
ment and Congress were all at odds,
one senior official told me: "That
wouldn't have happened if Kissinger
were here. He understood that every-
thing matters—that you don't take
the first step, even a telephone call,
without covering all the bases."

Looking back, some administra-
tion experts nostalgically recall Mr.
Kissinger's extraordinary grasp of
certain subjects, like arms control.
For sheer knowledge, they say, Mr.
Brzezinski is no match.

Many of these specialists also
point out that Mr. Kissinger had un-
usual strength because he both form-
ulated and negotiated policy. Under
Mr. Carter, policies are devised in
committee, and Mr. Vance, who
usually plays a small part in the proc-
ess, is sent out to negotiate, some-
what like a salesman.

There is in the administration,
too, a yearning for someone like Mr.
Kissinger who can explain foreign

policy to the public in his soothing,
mellifluous, authoritative and some
times deceptive manner. During the
Middle East war in 1973, for in-
stance, Mr. Kissinger masterfully
parried questions about the decision
to put U.S. forces on a worldwide
alert by promising to tell all the next
week. We are still waiting.

A few months ago, when the ad-
ministration move to join the Soviet
Union in a common Middle East
peace program provoked protests, I
suggested to a ranking State Depart-
ment official that a public explana-
tion might have prevented the out-
cry.

"That's what Kissinger would
have done and it would have
worked," he replied. "But can you
imagine Vance in front of the camer-
as delivering a lecture? He's too up
right to attempt to sway public opin-
ion, which may be one reason why we
have trouble mobilizing domestic
support."

That comment, incidentally, is
borne out in the opinion ratings A
recent Harris survey gave the admin-
istration a 52-per-cent negative for
its handling of foreign affairs. Mr.
Kissinger, on the other hand, was
regularly voted America's "most ad-
mired man."

Eventually, the administration is
going to have to exorcise the ghost of
Mr. Kissinger. And it will be able to
do so, I think, when it scores a re-
sounding foreign policy success—
which it has clearly been unable to
achieve until now. Meanwhile, he will
continue to haunt this city.

[L.C]

BS
1219

[10]

THE W

Clayton Fritchey

# The Mideast Opening
—Courtesy of Kissinger

There appear to be no legitimate grounds for Moscow's charges that the daring demarche of President Anwar Sadat sprang from U.S.-Egyptian collusion, but in a larger sense it is fair to say that Sadat's bold decision to go it alone can be largely traced back to the canny and farsighted diplomacy of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

While the whole world now marvels at the courage of the Egyptian leader in breaking with Arab partners over his mission to Jerusalem, it should be kept in mind that this historic step would probably not have occurred had there not been an earlier and riskier break with the Soviet Union, whose lavish military and economic assistance kept Egypt going for 20 years.

It is no secret that Sadat had long distrusted the Russians and was eager to free himself from dependence on them. Yet he temporized for years until, emboldened by confidence in his "dear friend Henry" and Henry's promise of compensating American support, he finally drew himself up on March 14, 1976, and denounced the Russian-Egyptian Friendship Treaty. Since then, he has been increasingly his own man.

Considering that a good many commentators, including myself, had occasion to criticize Kissinger for U.S. misadventures in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, this might be an appropriate moment to acknowledge that events have proved he knew what he was about in the Middle East.

After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Kissinger's famous "shuttle diplomacy" inspired widespread skepticism. Nonetheless, out of it came our rapprochement with Egypt after 20 years of alienation. Above all, Kissinger's patient diplomacy with Sadat finally produced in 1975 the separate interim peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, which, like the current friendly dealings between those old enemies, aroused a storm of protest in Russia and Syria and worsened Egypt's relations with them.

Gerald Ford, then President, hailed the adoption of the Kissinger plan as "a great achievement... one of the most historic of this decade." In light of what is now happening that doesn't sound quite as grandiloquent as it did two years ago.

My own view at the time was that Sadat had "moved Egypt away from its old moorings beyond the point of no return." Syria charged that the accord "froze" the Egyptian front and added up to "a de facto and contractual pact

ending up the state of war." In its fury, Syria turned out to be almost prescient.

In addition to accepting two separate agreements with Israel worked out by Kissinger, Sadat approved a number of political and economic measures that moved Egypt steadily away from the Soviet orbit and toward the West.

When this culminated in the Egyptian leader's abrogating his friendship treaty with Moscow, he pointedly said that in the search for peace "the United States now holds 99 per cent of the cards," a statement he repeated only a few days ago.

Kissinger responded, with Ford's strong approval, by going to Congress to plead for and get both economic aid and military equipment for Egypt. Ford felt that Sadat's independent course had earned an "implicit commitment" from the United States.

Some in Congress, however, were impressed by the skepticism of witnesses like Prof. Uri Ra'anan, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, who also attracted attention with a widely quoted article in Commentary magazine, which said in part:

"There is convincing evidence, largely ignored by Western observers, that the notion of a 'final' or irreversible shift by Cairo away from the U.S.S.R. and into the arms of the U.S. is, to say the least, highly premature, and that within a reasonable span of time (and irrespective of Western actions) Egypt and the Soviet Union may once again be vibrating in harmony."

Fortunately, Congress was more impressed by the testimony of Kissinger, who said, "It is our belief that President Sadat's policies are genuine," an assessment that has been handsomely borne out in recent days in respect to Russia.

"The Russians have never played a constructive role," the Egyptian President said last Wednesday. "They didn't want us to make any settlement in this part of the world, and they don't want this problem to be settled now."

Two years ago, after accepting the Egyptian-Israeli interim peace pact, Sadat said he was making a calculated "gamble on the future," based on the pragmatic view that "Israel is an established fact... it is a reality. If some want to bury their heads in sand, I am not one of them... The destruction of Israel is mere talk that does not represent the truth." And that's pretty much what he told the Knesset on his visit to Jerusalem a few weeks ago.

©1977, Newsday

... While Psych Prof Defends It

[LC]

To the Editor:

I would have written sooner on the issue which prompts this letter, but I have been abroad since August. I should also say that, as president of the Georgetown Chapter of the A.A.U.P., I am obliged to address the issue, although I am reluctant to say or do anything which might summon

the forces of virtue to another defense of the witch-hunt.

Your columns—not to mention the walls and doors of our campus—have given considerable space to those who oppose the appointment of Henry Kissinger to the faculty of the S.F.S. Some of this space has been devoted to vituperative, slander-

ous, and utterly reckless characterizations to a member of the Georgetown faculty. The fact that Professor Kissinger is or has been a public figure cannot excuse efforts to smear his name with easy and repugnant epithets; nor can it permit a suspension of every canon of fairness and civility. Academic freedom did not win its war with the enemies of unfettered inquiry so that it might surrender itself to their children. And were we to introduce a "morals test" as a condition of academic appointment, those who have been so-righteous and agile in their tasteless assaults would hardly be expected to pass. Indeed, they are the disease they seek to cure.

Aside from the clear violation of both the letter and the spirit of A.A.U.P.'s principles of academic freedom, the attacks on Professor Kissinger take for granted answers to just the sort of questions which tutored rather than common minds. examine. The ultimate status of Professor Kissinger's record as Secretary of State will be determined by scholars after the relevant course of history" has unfolded. The ultimate status of his soul will be judged by powers rather more formidable than even the spokesmen for S.O.A.K. In the interim, the American university might wisely attempt to reclaim its historic mission which was forfeited a decade ago during the celebration of piety. We begin the reclamation by urging our colleagues and students not to give in to that "complex" named after Jocasta's naughty boy and second husband; by encouraging them to leave purges to those with a whim for it; by asking them to raise the national taste rather than consolidate it.

Yours sincerely,
Daniel N. Robinson
Professor

## Pollster Protests Report

To the Editor:

Regarding last week's article concerning the on-campus poll on abortion which the GU Right to Life Committee sponsored, I feel that an injustice was committed against both the Committee and the student body as a whole. The Right to Life Committee submitted both the poll results and an analysis of the same. Unfortunately, the editorial staff chose to delete very important findings which were significant to an accurate understanding of the poll results.

One such deletion was the fact that 12% of the 950 surveyed were not sure or had never thought about when the life of a human being begins. Interestingly enough, only 3% of this group was unable to determine how to legislate on the abortion issue.

Furthermore, from the biological point of view there is no question as to when the life of a human being begins. Fifty-two per cent affirmed this by stating that life begins "at conception, when the sperm fertilizes the ovum." However, when called upon to justify their decisions, the finding that half the campus believed that "it can't be determined by science" is significant.

The contradictions are self-evident. Denying the fact that the fertilized ovum is a human being and then opting for legislation in favor of abortion appears plausible, but it is erroneous. However, recognizing human life and then condoning abortion is not only deplorable but irrational.

Henceforth, my statement regarding "the major discrepancy in the poll results is the students' conservative stand on the biological issues and their lenient stand with regards to legislation" was insufficiently and unfairly documented. I would ask that the editorial staff have greater regard for stating the facts as presented.

Sincerely,
Sharon Hefferman
President of the G.U. Right to Life Committee

Editor's Note: We believe that your statement adequately stressed this contradiction, anything more would have been gratuitous.

## "Inconsistent" Birth Control Policy

To The Editor:

The announcement that the administration will not interfere with Vital Vittles' plans to sell prophylactics represents an increased awareness of student needs and desires on the part of the administration. However, the policy of allowing Vital Vittles to sell this particular birth control device is inconsistent with the policy of refusing to allow the student health center to prescribe or dispense the Pill, the IUD, or the diaphragm to females for birth control purposes. The administration is apparently

only willing to permit an externally funded organization which rents space from the University to dispense birth control devices. Does this mean that the administration will consider renting space to an organization such as Planned Parenthood, so that women, too, can rightfully obtain these birth control devices on campus? Renting space to such an organization would absolve the administration of all sin since it could not be accused of using University funds to dispense birth control devices on campus would not con-

done sexual activity any more than allowing Vital Vittles to sell prophylactics does. The University could then cover its rear and provide a needed service at the same time.

In any case, if the administration does not like this proposal, I hope at least it would not interfere with a suggestion that Vital Vittles also sell foam along with the prophylactics. The two methods combined are much more effective than either one is alone.

Joni Siegel
SLL '78

With this issue THE HOYA completes its Fall Semester publishing schedule. THE HOYA will resume publication on Friday, January 20, 1978.

THE HOYA staff would also like to thank our composers-Evangelos, Jerome, Mary, Neal and the crew of Graftec. for their patience during our weekly get-togethers. Thanks are also extended to Mr. Pernell, Kim and the printing staff of the Northern Virginia Sun.

Good Luck on Exams and Happy Holidays!

### THE BOARD OF EDITORS

Mark McAdams, Editor-in-Chief

Michael MacPhee, Managing Editor

Mike Lindquist, Sports Editor

Joel Szabat, Assistant Sports Editor

Lou Moffa, Arts Editor

Zac Casey, Photography Editor

John Zimber, Accountant

Rev. Edward Bodnar, Moderator

Kathy Mead, Copy Editor

Stuart Fleischman, Advertising Manager

Rick Hornstein, Business Manager

Greg Kitsock, Associate Editor

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NEWS MEDIA

Street. The government is changing the rules of the securities industry. Profits are shrinking, and many of the proudest old names are merging to stay alive. Last week, two prominent members of "Our Crowd," 127-year-old Lehman Brothers and 110-year-old Kuhn, Loeb & Co., announced that they would do so, too.

**Merger Mania:** The merger wave began in the early 1970s, with shaky markets and the flight of individual investors, and accelerated in 1975 when it became inescapable for many firms. That year, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered an end to the industry's fixed commission rates. Able to negotiate commissions with their brokers, large institutional investors demanded enormous cuts, thus lopping off huge chunks of profitable revenue for many firms. As a result, the New York Stock Exchange's membership list has declined from 577 to 480 firms since 1971, and the 25 largest now account for two-thirds of the industry's revenues.

Both Lehman and Kuhn, Loeb might have survived and even prospered independently, but the marriage makes sense. It means they can pool their capital to support higher costs, and the new firm — Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb Holding Co., Inc. — would combine Lehman's trading capabilities, stature in the money markets and position in domestic investment banking with Kuhn, Loeb's deal-making prowess overseas. With $60 million in capital, compared with Kuhn, Loeb's $18 million, Lehman would hold seven of ten seats on the new executive committee; Peter G. Peterson, Lehman's 51-year-old chairman and president, would run the firm, retaining his current titles, and 73-year-old John M. Schiff, head of Kuhn, Loeb and grandson of the legendary Jacob H. Schiff, would be honorary chairman.

**'Sense of History'**: The merger, says Peterson, also weds "two firms whose sense of history and center of gravity are very similar." Founded by three brothers who emigrated from Bavaria to Montgomery, Ala., Lehman remained principally a cotton brokerage until the turn of the century, when the family moved into corporate finance. Lehman soon counted among its clients such giants as Sears, Roebuck, F. W. Woolworth, R.H. Macy & Co., B. F. Goodrich and Campbell Soup.

Kuhn, Loeb, in contrast, was founded in 1867 as a dry-goods business by two German-born brothers-in-law; within a few years, Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb established their banking business, but it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that their firm achieved prominence. By then, Loeb son-in-law Jacob H. Schiff was in charge—and in time, he became the only financier in America to rival J. P. Morgan. While non-family management has run Lehman for years, the Schiffs remained in control of Kuhn, Loeb all along—until last week, when Jacob's grandson bowed to the new exigencies of a changing Wall Street.

—MICHAEL RUBY with PAMELA LYNN ABRAHAM in New York

## Hoisting Anchor

"I had money and I had fame," mused NBC's John Chancellor last week. "But the last thing I wanted to be was a 65-year-old anchor man. So I decided it was time to take control of my life." Chancellor also decided to lay to rest three months of rumors that he was about to be dropped as co-anchor of NBC's nightly newscast. Fed up by the speculation, he called his staff together last Thursday to announce that he was indeed hoisting anchor—but entirely of his own volition.

While negotiating a new contract last summer, said Chancellor, he had privately asked NBC to shift his duties

Robert R. McElroy—Newsweek

Chancellor: Taking 'control of my life'

eventually to those of thrice-weekly commentator and roving correspondent. "I was about to turn 50," he explained. "That had something to do with it." Now he was taking his employer up on their agreement because, as Chancellor put it, "all the gossip has forced my hand."

Not everyone thought it was quite that simple. NBC's newscast had been running second to CBS's Walter Cronkite show through virtually all of Chancellor's seven years at anchor. As some insiders told it, NBC was growing as weary of that record as Chancellor was of his job. Still, the network was not willing to see him move elsewhere. Chancellor let it be known that he was interested in inheriting the mantle that Eric Sevareid of CBS was due to shed, and NBC handed him a chusy ten-year contract to keep him from defecting.

Even so, the catalyst for last week's

announcement may well have been Chancellor's failure to outhustle his competitors during Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace mission to Jerusalem. Both Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters beat Chancellor to lining up interviews in Israel with both Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin.

**Blame:** NBC News president Lester Crystal called reports that he had chewed out Chancellor for his Mideast performance "untrue and ridiculous." That may well be so, but as Chancellor himself acknowledged, "I don't have to get bawled out to sense that NBC was unhappy about not getting those interviews first. But if anyone would get blamed, it

would be some of our news executives." That view is shared by NBC reporters in Washington, who could not understand why the New York office didn't heed their suggestion that Henry Kissinger—who is under contract to NBC—be used to help set up a Sadat-Begin exchange.

A more troublesome question is what TV's Mideast scenario says about the changing nature of broadcast journalism. Chancellor is a solid, widely respected newsman who, in 25 years at NBC, worked his way up from lowly news writer to crack political and foreign correspondent. But he lacks the international celebrity—and clout—enjoyed by Cronkite and Walters. While freely conceding admiration for his two rivals' one-upmanship, Chancellor voices a concern shared by many colleagues: "If politicians try to exploit the stardom of certain people in TV, that's very bad for our business."

**Who's Next?** There seems to be a sharp division among NBC's hierarchy over the choice of Chancellor's successor. Insiders say that some of the so-called "West Coast crowd" never thought Chancellor possessed what they term "anchor magic." Others say that younger executives appear to lean toward Tom Snyder, the "Tomorrow" show's flashy, controversial host. Traditionalists within the news division, however, favor "Today" host Tom Brokaw.

One man who will have a voice in the decision is the network's new president, Robert Mulholland, who seems high on Brokaw. "He understands what he is reporting, and viewers can tell," says Mulholland. Brokaw and Chancellor are longtime buddies and seem cut from the same conservative cloth. Thus the choice between a Brokaw and a Snyder comes down to whether NBC wants to change not merely its newscast cast, but its basic notion of what an anchor man should be.

—HENRY F. WATERS with BETSY CARTER in New York and LUCY HOWARD in Washington

98

Newsweek, December 12, 1977

[LC]

Washington Whispers.

# Kissinger's Caustic Comments... CIA's Tidbits
## For Carter... Why Ham Jordan Went to Panama

Republicans in Congress who keep in touch with Henry Kissinger find him privately caustic in his criticism of Carter Administration officials who handle foreign affairs. The former Secretary of State is quoted as describing those beneath the top echelon as "McGovernites"—a reference to Senator George McGovern's dovish views.

Sudden death at age 59 of Assistant Treasury Secretary Laurence Woodworth, the Administration's chief strategist on tax reform, all but assures no overhaul of tax laws in 1978. Woodworth's long personal friendship with key lawmakers while he was a congressional staff member gave him enormous influence on Capitol Hill.

The way diplomatic sources in the Mideast see it, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin faces a revolt by leading political figures in and outside his Government if he does not shift from his hard-line position and make significant concessions to President Sadat of Egypt in current peace talks.

CIA Director Stansfield Turner, regarded as lukewarm to clandestine operations till now, has discovered that President Carter—like most of his predecessors—is intrigued by details about foreign governments and leaders gleaned by James Bond-type spying.

Carter's economic advisers are counting on a major shot in the arm for business next spring when an unusually large number of people will be getting tax-refund checks on 1977 returns from the U.S. Treasury—4 of every 5 taxpayers receiving an estimated 37 billion dollars.

It is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the President's national-security adviser, who is the driving force behind the White

House decision to make a major issue now of the build-up of Cuban troops in Africa.

Real reason for the visit of top presidential aide Hamilton Jordan to Panama in early December: to assure strong man Omar Torrijos that Carter is not losing his nerve on the canal treaties, intends to push them through the Senate despite opposition.

Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, is determined to launch an antismoking campaign early next year in the face of strong opposition from the White House, the Department of Agriculture and influential Congressmen from tobacco-producing States.

Lawmakers trying to hammer out an energy-bill compromise claim the delay is largely due to what they describe as a "contest of wills" between Senators Russell Long, who often takes the industry point of view, and Henry Jackson, who sides with consumers.

Robert McKinney, Chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and a Naval Academy classmate of Carter's, is a sure bet to move on to a higher post in the Administration—perhaps Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

So gloomy is the outlook for the Russian economy in 1978 that some U.S. firms in Moscow are preparing to shut down their offices and pull out of the Soviet market.

Political analysts look for a bitter clash, with implications for party unity, in the struggle now shaping up between fellow Texans George Bush and John Connally for the 1980 Republican

presidential nomination. Says one expert: "They're working on the same crowd."

Dock workers in U.S. ports may refuse to handle cargo on ships to or from South Africa in protest of that country's mistreatment of black trade-unionists. Though of doubtful legality, this tactic has been used in the past by American longshoremen against Soviet shipping.

Look for Carter to let Cabinet members announce more of the Administration's new programs from now on. The President feels he has become overexposed by making virtually all policy statements himself and will put his own prestige on the line only for major undertakings.

Hungarian-Americans claim that their widespread protests lie behind the delay by Carter in returning to Budapest, as promised, the Crown of St. Stephen, ancient symbol of Hungarian independence. But the White House insists it is not having second thoughts, and will deliver the crown once Hungary's Communist leaders assure that it will go on public display.

A battle between politicians' sons is shaping up in next year's Democratic primary for a suburban Minneapolis House seat now held by a Republican: Hubert Humphrey, Jr., vs. Michael Freeman, son of former Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman.

Anger of Ernest Boyer, U.S. Commissioner of Education, against bureaucratic jargon reached the boiling point when he complained to a colleague about an incomprehensible sentence in a publication his office was about to issue and was told: "Oh, yes, we'll have to laymanize it."

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Dec. 19, 1977

5

Washington Whispers.

Behind Kissinger's Shift on Israel ... No Cramping
Bert Lance's Style ... Mondale's Growing Clout

Public statements by Henry Kissinger that tend to favor Israel—in contrast to his even-handed comments while Secretary of State—are seen as confirming reports that Kissinger is interested in running for the New York Senate seat held by Republican Jacob Javits, should Javits retire in 1980. Jewish voters are a potent force in New York.

The tax-cut plan studied by President Carter over his Thanksgiving holiday at Camp David calls for lopping millions of taxpayers off the rolls. Proposed, too: an across-the-board cut in rates, including a reduction in the top-bracket rate from 70 to 50 per cent.

Loss of his job as Budget Director and continuing investigations of his financial affairs haven't cramped Bert Lance's style a bit. He visits Carter regularly at the White House to dispense economic and political advice; is staging a $1,000-a-couple Democratic fund raiser in Atlanta on January 20 at which the President will speak, and lectures around the country at $4,000 to $5,000 a crack.

Frustrated with the advice that he is getting from the Government's own economists, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal personally is contacting business experts around the country to ask for fresh ideas on how to curb inflation. Being made clear by Blumenthal: He wants practical ideas, not academic theories.

Insiders report that Carter is getting so uptight about news leaks from the White House that he is reducing the number of aides invited to key meetings in the Oval Office.

Officials at the Justice Department say that chances are now better than 50-50 that Tongsun Park, key operator in the

South Korean bribery scandals, will return to the U.S. to testify about lawmakers to whom he made payoffs.

Carter's advisers tell him that unless he can swing public support behind the Panama/Canal treaties quickly enough to allow a Senate vote early next year—well in advance of the November congressional elections—he might as well forget about Senate action until 1979. In the works: a presidential "fireside chat" on television in January or February to whip up sentiment for the treaties.

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare's probe of physicians and pharmacists who abuse medicare and medicaid programs soon will be expanded to cover a wide range of other medical practitioners—including dentists, optometrists, hospitals, nursing homes and laboratories.

Once the White House sets a new schedule for Carter's postponed world tour, the President intends to go through with it even if Congress still is working on his energy program. A second delay, aides feel, would be too embarrassing overseas.

Cited as evidence of Walter Mondale's growing importance to Carter: It is the Vice President who is supervising preparation of the Administration's broad strategy in 1978 for approval by the President—including domestic programs, foreign policy, travel and political planning.

Even veteran junketers in Congress are shaking their heads over disclosure that Representative William Ketchum (Rep.), of California, held up work on the important Social Security bill so he could take a taxpayer-paid trip to Africa and the Middle East.

It's now all but certain that Carter will override Joseph Califano, his Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and split off part of the agency to form a new Department of Education and Human Resources.

Some Army commanders are complaining that the large number of women in their units is damaging military readiness. Says one official: "In some units, up to 30 per cent of the women are pregnant at a given time."

Associates say that Peter Flaherty is not happy in his job as Deputy Attorney General and is considering quitting soon to run for Governor of Pennsylvania next year. Flaherty is a former mayor of Pittsburgh.

Top-level employes at the new Department of Energy are irate over an order that they disclose the names of all organizations—including churches and scouting groups—to which they, their spouses and dependents belong, so that the Department can decide if any conflict of interest is involved.

Circulating in the White House is a memo comparing Carter's first-year record as President with that of John Kennedy—noting the close election victory, the ambitious proposals to Congress with few major triumphs, the dip in popularity with the public. Stressed, too, is Kennedy's rebound in popularity during his second year in office.

Computerization of the Social Security Administration's vast operations is no guarantee of quick results, as a Midwestern Senator recently found out. The agency told him that it had approved a constituent's claim, but no money could be paid out until the typing pool could get around to the paper work in another month or two.

8

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Dec. 5, 1977

FROM: **ENCOUNTER** December 1977

AMERICAN
CHRONICLE

Intellectuals
in Politics

*By Theodore Draper*

"INTELLECTUALS IN POLITICS" immediately raises two questions: What intellectuals? What politics?

Instead of trying to define these terms, which are so broad and loose that they defy exact definition, I prefer to start by name-dropping. To begin with, the names are Woodrow Wilson, Raymond Moley, Patrick Daniel Moynihan, Henry A.

Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. These names indicate the type of American intellectual with which I will be largely concerned. Three things can be said about them immediately. They went into politics, full-time or part-time, after they had established themselves professionally as intellectuals. The intellectual in politics is most often the professor in politics. And politics here does not refer merely to the realm of ideas or intellectual influence; it requires actual service in government. There are other types, such as intellectuals in revolutionary politics, but they are so different that they need a quite different approach.

The late Richard Hofstadter wrote an admirable book called *Anti-Intellectualism in American Life* (1963), much of which dealt with anti-intellectualism in American politics. He may have chosen anti-intellectualism rather than intellectualism because he thought that the former had

deeper historical roots. Intellectuals in American politics are, in fact, a relatively recent phenomenon, limited almost wholly to the present century. Their history remains to be written.

IN THE 18th and early 19th centuries, from Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, the United States had intellectual politicians rather than intellectuals in politics. The distinction is important. The intellectual politician is a type of politician; the intellectual in politics is a type of intellectual. One makes his career in politics; the other comes to politics after making an intellectual career. The most happy reconciliation between intellectualism and politics was achieved by the intellectual politicians in the first half century of American life. It was not to be approached for another century.

Beginning with the Jacksonian Era in the 1830s intellectualism and politics drifted apart. Despite a few notable exceptions, intellectuals considered politics alien, politicians considered intellectuals politically useless. The historian George Bancroft, served as Secretary of the Navy and Minister to Great Britain and Germany. Edward Everett, a professor of Greek at Harvard University, was later Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and US Senator. Henry Cabot Lodge was an assistant professor of history at Harvard before becoming a Senator. One 19th-century President, James A. Garfield, not one of the most distinguished, was for a short time, a teacher of classics and president of Hiram College, a small institution in Ohio. With one exception, these careers signified no trend. The exception was a tradition even in the 19th century of appointing intellectuals to diplomatic posts. But Presidents varied even in this respect, and it was at most a marginal affair.

THE INTELLECTUALS' DISTASTE for politics was, for most of the 19th century, matched by the politicians' disdain for intellectuals. An intellectual-political movement, known as "the genteel reformers", arose in the post-Civil War period but had little success. A Tammany Hall boss in the last quarter of the 19th century put the case against intellectuals in politics in this way:

> "Some young men think they can learn how to be successful in politics from books, and they cram their heads with all sorts of college rot. They couldn't make a bigger mistake. Now, understand me, I ain't sayin' nothin' against colleges. I guess they have to exist as long as there's bookworms, and I suppose they do some good in certain ways, but they don't count in politics."¹

It is said that the first—or one of the first—American uses of the term "intellectual"

¹ Richard Hofstadter, *Anti-Intellectualism in American Life*, p. 187.

To avoid damaging your magazine cut out along this line.

47

48

American Chronicle

appeared in a letter by the philosopher, William James, in 1899.² James used the term in a context that had a direct bearing on the American attitude toward intellectuals in politics. Commenting on the Dreyfus case in France, James sympathised with the French intellectuals' "aggressively militant" role and hoped that they would grow "stronger and stronger." But then he turned around and thanked God for an America in which "intellectuals"—he still thought it necessary to put the word in quotation marks—could stay out of all corrupting "big institutions", which he blamed for Captain Dreyfus's ordeal. Except for the American "party spirit", James believed, American sources of corruption were trivial compared with the European. He did not say so in so many words but he seemed to imply that American intellectuals should stay out of politics and instead "work to keep our precious birthright of individualism" and seek fulfilment in "free personal relation." His emphasis on "freedom from all corrupting institutions" must have included the political in view of his conviction that "the only serious permanent force of corruption in America is party spirit."³

NEVERTHELESS, it was at the turn of the century that the institutionalisation of intellectuals in American politics began. Its birthplace was the state of Wisconsin where, under the leadership of Governor Robert M. La Follette, the outstanding political figure of the Progressive movement, the first successful experiment in achieving a symbiosis between a university and a government was attempted. A comprehensive programme was worked out to put academic "experts" of the University of Wisconsin at the service of the state government. Scientists, engineers, agronomists, economists, historians, political scientists and the like were systematically called on for advice and information. The Wisconsin system was nominally non-partisan; in fact, it was the servant of Progressive politics which was the only kind of politics willing and able to engage in such an experiment. Thus the Wisconsin experience produced a familiar type of intellectual in politics —the reformer working for a reform movement.

² *Anti-Intellectualism* ..., p. 39. Hofstadter says that the term *intellectual* first came into use in France and was "soon exported—at the time of the Dreyfus case" (p. 38). This seems hardly likely in view of the fact that the *Oxford English Dictionary* has an English usage of the term as far back as 1652, and three perfectly recognisable uses in the 19th century, one by Byron in 1813.

³ *The Letters of William James*, edited by Henry James (1920), vol. II, pp. 100-101.

⁴ Arthur S. Link, *Wilson: The Road to the White House* (1947), pp. 149-50, 158.

⁵ *Anti-Intellectualism*..., p. 211.

THE NEXT GREAT STEP forward by an American intellectual in politics was taken by Woodrow Wilson. In fact, he took the greatest step forward that any American intellectual has ever taken—right into the White House. Wilson was an authentic intellectual if ever there was one—Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, President of Princeton University, author of basic works on the American political system. The story of how Wilson became a politician suggests the function sometimes reserved for intellectuals. When he was approached in 1910 to accept the Democratic nomination for Governor of the State of New Jersey, his stepping-stone to the presidency two years later, he examined his overworked conscience to find a good reason why he should give in to the temptation. He came up with the idea that "a new day had come in American politics." He interpreted the proposition, in effect, as the opening of a new era in American politics—the era of the intellectual in politics. Wilson later realised that he had naively deceived himself. His biographer notes that the New Jersey politician who masterminded Wilson's nomination "hoped to use Wilson as a respectable front behind which he could operate." It was not a role that Wilson could or would play, but he might never have started on his political career if some politician had not chosen him to play it.

I do not imagine that Wilson was the last intellectual whom politicians have intended to use as a "respectable front." But Wilson learned fast. One of the first things he had to do to win the governorship was to repudiate virtually everything he had stood for on the issue of trade unionism, which he had previously opposed.⁴ In short, he had to learn how to act like a politician, not an intellectual, to gain power. For better or worse, however, Wilson unlearned this lesson in the course of his Presidency. He was always more the schoolmaster than the politician. The more power Wilson had, the less he was willing to compromise—a trait attributed to his intellectualism but perhaps more attributable to his character.

Far more than Wilson personally, the First World War opened the political door to intellectuals.

"The war itself, ironically, raised many of them to heights of influence as no domestic issue could [Hofstadter observed]. Historians and writers were mobilised for propaganda, and experts of all kinds were recruited as advisers."⁵

They became so prominent that one Republican Senator protested, "This is a government by professors and intellectuals." He warned, not for the last time, that "intellectuals are good enough in their places, but a country run by professors is

American Chronicle

49

ultimately destined to Bolshevism and an
explosion."⁶ The high point of this academic
invasion came in 1919 when a group known as
"The Inquiry" was organised to prepare the
ground for American policy in the peace nego-
tiations. It brought together 150 scholarly experts
from many different fields, ranging from history
to ethnology, aided by a staff of several hundred
more of similar background.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR, then, might have been
the decisive breakthrough of American intellectel-
uals into political or at least governmental
service. They were welcomed in unprecedented
numbers and variety. Some lessons can be drawn
from this experience. One is that the first large-
scale incursion of American intellectuals into
political life needed a national crisis which united
the nation, including the intellectuals. The
second is that intellectuals were drawn into
government in large numbers when the functions
or responsibilities of government were enormously
enlarged. By vastly expanding the reach of
government in the economic and social as well as
the military sphere, the First World War temp-
orarily created a need to tap a new and sizable
reservoir of special training. Such a reservoir
for a quick, massive infusion existed only in the
universities and other schools. That a professor
was President did not hurt, but another war
showed that it was not necessary to have a
professor as President to produce the same result.

The First World War did not constitute the
decisive breakthrough because it was immediately
followed by national disillusionment and Wilson's
repudiation. The next administrations of Presi-
dents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover went back
to the older system of using intellectuals selectively
and even exceptionally. This War-time and post-
War experience introduced an aspect of intellectel-
uals in politics that has forcefully struck students
of the subject. It is the cyclical nature of the
phenomenon. This was the first time that
American intellectuals went in and out of the
revolving door of politics. For the first one
hundred and fifty years of the Republic, then, it
may be said that intellectuals in politics were not a
common commodity and had not established a
firm tradition. We can see gradual changes, but
they were more of degree than of kind. The real
breakthrough was still to come.

IT CAME WITH Franklin D. Roosevelt in
the 1930s. The story is familiar to students of

Rooseveltiana, but it is worth repeating for
what we can learn or relearn from it.

The intellectual breakthrough was a by-
product of Roosevelt's presidential campaign
before he was elected president. According to the
most circumstantial version, candidate Roosevelt
and his faithful factotum, Samuel I. Rosenman
were sitting around in March 1932 talking about
how to organise the campaign. Roosevelt was a
quick learner, but he had much to learn about
national problems and policies. As Rosenman
later recalled, he told Roosevelt that they ought
to get some people together "and see whether
we can come up with some answers or at least
some good new intelligent thinking, pro and con,
and some new ideas...." Whom did Rosenman
have in mind? Rosenman's answer suggests
something important about the whole
phenomenon:

"Usually in a situation like this, a candidate
gathers around him a group composed of some
successful industrialists, some big financiers, and
some national political leaders. I think we ought to
steer clear of all those. They all seem to have failed
to produce anything constructive to solve the
mess we're in today. Now my idea is this: why not
go to the universities of the country? You have been
having some good experiences with college profes-
sors. I think they wouldn't be afraid to strike out on
new paths just because the paths are new. They
would get away from all the old fuzzy thinking on
many subjects, and that seems to be the most
important thing."

Rosenman's version lends itself to a broad
generalisation about the necessary social con-
dition for such an intellectual breakthrough. "The
mess we're in today" was, of course, the greatest
economic crisis in American history.

A different kind of crisis had brought the
Wilsonian intellectuals into politics. TheOOSE-
veltian crisis was far deeper, implying the
bankruptcy of the whole social system, and the
successful industrialists, big financiers, and
national political leaders who dominated it.
Roosevelt as governor of New York had already
used professorial experts for specific problems
and projects. Rosenman wanted to use professors
to fill a general political vacuum—that was what
was new about it. The way was opened for the
early Rooseveltian intellectuals into politics not so
much because Roosevelt was so different at that
stage from previous American politicians but
because the period in which he wanted to become
President was so different. The economic crisis
was the midwife of the Rooseveltian break-
through for the intellectuals.

The first intellectual to be recruited into the
Brain Trust, Professor Raymond Moley of
Columbia University, did not like Rosenman's
version because it gave Rosenman too much
credit for the historic innovation. Moley's account

⁶ Senator Lawrence Sherman, *Congressional Record*,
(3 September, 1918) p. 9877.

⁷ Samuel I. Rosenman, *Working With Roosevelt*
(1952), p. 57.

50

American Chronicle

also lends itself to a larger consideration. The
real reason for the Brain Trust, according to
Moley, was Roosevelt's and Rosenman's extreme
limitations in national affairs. They brought in
the Professors because they had found them so
useful during Roosevelt's governorship and had
merely expanded the practice to broaden their
political education.⁸ No doubt the original Brain
Trust—which soon included Professor Rexford
Guy Tugwell and Professor Adolf A. Berle (both
of Columbia), with Professor Felix Frankfurter
(of the Harvard Law School) lurking in the wings
—started as a curious sort of private seminar for
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tugwell called it a
“course in socio-economics.”⁹ It thus served an
educational purpose for which professorial
intellectuals were particularly well fitted. Another
presidential candidate might not have been so
responsive. Nevertheless, it may be doubted
whether Roosevelt would have had the incentive
and patience to meet with the professors in long
night sessions if economic conditions had been
less ominous.¹⁰

THE LEARNING PROCESS, however, was not a one-way affair. One of Moley's admitted reasons for accepting the invitation to teach the future President was that the teacher was also going to learn—learn about politics from the inside or, as Moley put it, “satisfy my desire for wider experience in politics.” He was not the last professor who has dealt with politics in the classroom and has sought to increase his knowledge of politics in the back rooms. Max Weber said that “either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics.”¹¹ Many an intellectual has lived for politics before living off politics, and then managed to live both for and off politics.

The Brain Trust did not long remain an
informal educational institution. Politically, its
key members served three main functions—as
idea men, as talent scouts, and as speech writers.
These functions have continued to be typical of
those intellectuals whom we might call “general-

ists.” Roosevelt himself once defined the Brain
Trust's role in these words:

> "You study the problems, work out the best answers you can, and bring them to me, Don't mix in politics—it is unpleasant, sometimes a dirty business. Leave that to me."¹²

The tasks of intellectuals may also seem more
glamorous from the outside than from the inside.
Moley later complained that he was called to
work on a speech "just as I'd be called in if I
were a plumber and a pipe needed fixing."¹³
Tugwell referred to himself as an "errand boy."¹⁴

THE EARLY BRAIN TRUSTERS had grave misgivings about switching from Professor to Politician. Moley fervently protested that he had no intention of giving up his intellectual freedom, his aspiration to be accepted "on the basis of what I had to say, rather than because I was part of a governmental machine", and his conviction that "honest teaching and writing about public affairs precluded not only White House cup-bearing and administrative paper-shuffling, but party goose-stepping"—before being prevailed on by Roosevelt to give them up. Tugwell had a similar struggle with himself. When he first considered the prospect of an official post in Washington, he told himself that "from professor to the government is a great transformation." He also reflected: "If I am in the administration, I'll have to make endless compromises—a far different position from that of critical observer...." But he soon capitulated and went to Washington. Berle held out the longest. He told a colleague that "all of us can be a good deal more useful hoeing our own row than monkeying with obscure under-secretaryships or commissionerships." Incidentally, Berle used to write letters to the President addressed to "DEAR CAESAR." Roosevelt once replied that he did not mind being called Caesar but hated being thought of as *Napoleon*.

The Rooseveltian Brain Trust as such was relatively short-lived. Raymond Moley, the key figure, defected from the New Deal in 1935. He disagreed on a matter of high policy, and I suppose his case might be taken to mean that intellectuals cannot be trusted to be unconventionally loyal to politicians, at least not as much as other politicians. Rex Tugwell, next in line, became the chief whipping boy of the anti-Roosevelt opposition; the attacks on him were easily as disgraceful as any later unleashed by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Not the least reason for Tugwell's vulnerability was his status as a professor and intellectual. By 1936, Tugwell had become such a political liability that Roosevelt did not try to save him. His case may illustrate another function of intellectuals in politics—as

⁸ Raymond Moley, *After Seven Years* (1939), pp. 5–6.

⁹ Rexford G. Tugwell, *The Democratic Roosevelt* (1957), p. 218.

¹⁰ These meetings are vividly described by Moley, pp. 20–21, and Rosenman, pp. 63–64.

¹¹ "Politics as a Vocation" (1918), in *From Max Weber* (ed. Gerth & Mills, 1947), p. 84.

¹² These words were said by Roosevelt to Berle but intended for the entire group. See Adolf A. Berle, *New Republic*, 7 March 1964, in *Navigating the Rapids 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle* (1973), p. 114.

¹³ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., *The Coming of the New Deal* (1959), p. 549.

¹⁴ Bernard Sternsher, *Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal* (1964), p. 308.

American Chronicle

51

scapegoats and sacrificial lambs. A. A. Berle stayed out of Washington until he accepted an appointment as Assistant Secretary of State in 1938 but lasted only about half-a-year in that office. (His real political career came somewhat later, a circumstance which enabled him to last longer and go further than the other two.)

So the political careers of the most famous early Brain Trusters were not too promising. Nevertheless, much more was happening during the first Roosevelt years to intellectuals lower down on the scale. Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., described the New Dealers in terms of the following occupations—"they were mostly lawyers, college professors, economists, or social workers." Lawyers had long had a virtual monopoly of the American government, but college professors in second place—that was something new. Presumably some of the economists as well as the social workers were intellectuals, too. The Brain Trust received most publicity but it was only the tip of the New Deal's intellectual iceberg. The Moleys and Tugwells played for big stakes and eventually lost; many others, less well known or less exposed, came and stayed. The larger influx had a more stable structural foundation; the New Deal brought into existence a whole series of government agencies and bureaucracies devoted to public works, social security, energy and reclamation, and reforms in many other fields. New agencies and new policies demanded new people and new capabilities. If professors did not get most of the new jobs, their students did.

THE NEW DEAL, HOWEVER, was only the first stage of the Rooseveltian breakthrough for the intellectuals. As the New Deal waned, the influence of its intellectuals declined. But for the Second World War, the United States might have gone through another cyclical movement of intellectuals in and out of government favour. The War completed the process which the New Deal began. With or without the New Deal, the War would have brought in intellectuals en masse. The First World War had already shown the way, but it had not gone so far because it had not lasted long enough (for the United States) and had not ended with the assumption of American responsibility for the fate of the world or at least the Western world. American intellectuals supported the Second World War with greater unity and enthusiasm. The new War agencies swallowed up thousands of older and younger intellectuals. Well over a hundred new agencies of the executive branch were formed during the course of the War.

Many of the post-War intellectuals were infected with the political virus in these agencies, never to recover. The distinguished politicised intellectuals who came out of the Office of Strategic Services (or O.S.S., predecessor of the C.I.A.) could easily staff one or more good-sized universities.

The War and its aftermath produced a new type of American intellectual in politics. The earlier variety had almost always been brought in to advise on domestic policies, such as financial reform or criminal justice. "The Inquiry" of Wilson's day had been devoted to foreign affairs, but it had not been given an opportunity to do much beyond preparing documents and memoranda for the peace negotiations; and it had not been able to perpetuate itself.

Now a new breed of politicised intellectuals appeared—the foreign-affairs intellectuals. What had been a fairly small field became a minor industry with branches in international politics, international economics, international arms proliferation and control, foreign aid, area specialisation, and the like. Exotic fields could attract hundreds of specialists virtually overnight and flourish as long as the government or foundations were willing to subsidise them. If anything more were needed to reinvigorate the War-time and post-War boom in the procreation, care and feeding of politicised intellectuals, the Truman Doctrine of 1947 and the Marshall Plan of 1948 came just in time. They enabled large numbers of American intellectuals to fan out all over the world at government expense, scattering their largesse and advice far and wide. It was also a time for some to learn the difference between Meursault and Montrachet. All this has nothing to do with whether the War, the Doctrine, or the Plan were good or necessary; most American intellectuals thought they were. What is more to the point for our purpose is that they provided the political, structural and material foundation for the new breed of intellectuals. A different kind of United States was needed to produce a different kind of intellectual in politics. The rise of the United States as a pre-eminent world power was a necessary condition for the rise of the intellectual as an eminent political force in the United States.

NEVERTHELESS, THE PENDULUM continued to swing. The upsurge of McCarthyism in 1950 and the defeat of Adlai Stevenson by General Eisenhower for the presidency in 1952 gave intellectuals in general and politicised intellectuals in particular a feeling of rejection if not persecution. Writing in the midst of the Eisenhower period, C. Wright Mills did not consider intellectuals to be part of "the power élite",

52

American Chronicle

barely bothered to discuss them at all and then
only to dismiss them contemptuously as "hired
men."¹⁸

Towards the end of Eisenhower's administra-
tion, a survey of opinion of social science pro-
fessors showed that most of them were convinced
that the professoriat was not "much appreciated"
by businessmen and congressmen.¹⁸ In 1959,
Professor Seymour Martin Lipset was impressed
by the self-pity and the self-image of low status
among intellectuals, neither of which he believed
was justified by the evidence. Other indications
supported a more optimistic view. By 1958, of
the 14 US Senators who had taught in some
college or university, nine might be classified as
professors, a higher percentage than ever before.
One writer claimed that the Eisenhower admini-
stration employed more professors than the New
Deal had ever done. In 1959, one of the most
astute observers, Professor David Riesman, held
that the status of intellectuals was "good and
getting better." And soon after the end of the
Eisenhower years, the one authority on the
American Establishment revealed that "the
presidents and senior professors of the great
Eastern universities frequently constitute them-
selves as *ad hoc* Establishment committees."
Since he also confessed that the only thing we
can apparently know about the Establishment is
that it exists, it was not altogether clear just
what importance should be attributed to these
self-constituted committees. Still, even to be
mentioned in such high and mighty company
suggested that the status of some university
presidents and senior professors had risen
spectacularly despite all the pessimism and
discontent of the Eisenhower period.¹⁷

AN ARTICLE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST, owing to
the future career of its author, appeared in 1959.
It was called "The Policymaker and the In-
tellectual" and was written by Henry A. Kissinger,
at the time of publication a Lecturer in Govern-
ment at Harvard and already knowledgeable
from personal experience about the vicissitudes
of intellectuals in politics.¹⁸

Kissinger thought that a case could be made
even then that "in some respects the intellectual
has never been more in demand" by policy-
makers. As much autobiographical as anything

else, most of the article was a cry of pain at the
way policymakers mishandled and misunderstood
intellectuals. Kissinger's catalogue of
woes was revelatory—

"the intellectual is rarely found at the level where decisions are made.... It is the executive who determines in the first place whether he needs advice ... he [the intellectual] is asked to solve problems, not to contribute to the definition of goals ... in short, all too often what the policy-maker wants from the intellectual is not ideas but endorsement."

The great problem for the intellectual, according
to Kissinger, was to decide whether to participate
in the political process as an intellectual or as an
administrator. If he chose the role of intellectual,
it was essential for him

"to retain the freedom to deal with the policymaker
from a position of independence, and to reserve the
right to assess the policymaker's demands in terms
of his own standards."

Kissinger in 1959 had already had a good deal of
experience dealing with policymakers from a
position of independence which, in practice,
meant staying out of the administration and
dispensing advice to those in both parties who
asked for it. The Kissinger of 1959 still thought
like an intellectual in politics; it took ten more
years and the temptation of office to make him
more like an intellectual politician. As one reads
the 1959 article, one is not sure that the earlier
Kissinger would have approved of the later
Kissinger.

In any case, the cyclical theory as interpreted
by Professor Arthur Schlesinger put the 1950s
on the downward swing. It may well be, however,
that the cyclical theory operated, but on a
higher and higher plane. Thus the Eisenhower
period was a letdown from the heady Roosevelt
and Truman years but still represented an
advance over pre-Roosevelt times. Another
possibility is that intellectuals in politics do not
count other intellectuals who have the wrong
kind of politics.

Professor David Riesman proved to be right. It did not take long for the political status of intellectuals to get better, indeed, better than ever. When John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, he was not the intellectuals' first choice. Most of them preferred Adlai Stevenson and distrusted Kennedy. By winning over two of Stevenson's most important intellectual backers (Arthur Schlesinger and John Kenneth Galbraith), Kennedy turned the intellectual tide in his favour. They preferred to pick a winner, an urge not conspicuously characteristic of previous generations of liberal intellectuals. In fact, the Republican presidential candidate, Richard M. Nixon, tried to stigmatise the Democrats as "the

¹⁸ C. Wright Mills, *The Power Elite* (1956), p. 351.
¹⁹ Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, Jr., *The Academic Mind* (1958), p. 12.

¹⁷ *Daedalus*, Summer 1959, p. 469. *New York Times*, 9 November, 1958. John Fischer, *Harper's*, March 1958, p. 18. *Daedalus*, p. 492. Richard H. Rovere, *The American Establishment and Other Reports, Opinions and Speculations* (1962), pp. 8-9.

¹⁸ *The Reporter*, 5 March 1959, pp. 30-35.

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53

party of Galbraith and Schlesinger and Bowles" —not a bad score for the intellectuals, if only it had been more accurate. This line of attack showed that intellectuals were still functioning as political whipping boys. In Schlesinger's view, Kennedy himself was a latterday intellectual politician "as politicians go"—possibly fainter praise than was intended. Schlesinger also explained why the intellectuals had changed their attitude towards Kennedy from cold to hot —"their gradual recognition of his desire to bring the world of power and the world of ideas together in alliance."¹⁹ A better diagnosis of the passion for politics by Kennedy's intellectuals would be hard to find; it suggests that the older faith in the power of ideas had given way to the newer preference for power and ideas. Kennedy's closest aide, Theodore C. Sorenson, claimed that Kennedy had appointed to important posts a higher proportion of academicians (including 16 Rhodes scholars) than any other President in history and even more than any European government had ever done. Sorenson also boasted that Kennedy's appointees had written more books than the President—a fast reader at twelve hundred words a minute—could read in a four-year term.²⁰ One dreads to think how long it would have taken a President like Eisenhower to read the same number of books.

THE WHITE HOUSE WAS NOT the only source of political advancement for intellectuals in the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s. A former Rhodes Scholar, Representative John Brademas of Indiana, has related how he was told to play down his Harvard-Oxford background when he first ran for office in 1954. Four years later, his local backers were urging citizens to "vote for Brademas because he has a fine education."²¹ By the mid-1960s, almost a seventh of the members of the US Senate were former professors.²² It may be said without exaggeration that professors, ex-professors, and would-be professors were all over Washington—in the White House, in the bureaucracy, in Congress and congressional staffs, in almost all levels of government.

THEN THE CYCLICAL THEORY began to work again. President Lyndon B. Johnson had inherited many of Kennedy's intellectuals, but

they could never be as happy with Johnson as they had been with Kennedy, if only for stylistic reasons. It is hard to imagine Johnson concluding an informal talk with representatives of national organisations by reading to them Blanche of Castile's speech from *King John*, beginning with the words:

"The sun's o'ercast with blood; fair day, adieu! ..."²³

Johnson's intellectuals were enormously productive during his first two years of domestic reforms; the Viet Nam war destroyed him politically and isolated them morally. One historian of the period asserts that the defection of "liberals and intellectuals"—it is sometimes hard to tell them apart in the literature—finished off Johnson as a party leader and forced him to abdicate.²⁴ For once, a President needed intellectuals more than they needed him.

LYNDON JOHNSON LOST the intellectuals; Richard Nixon never had them. Nixon would have had trouble with intellectuals even if he had not been Nixon. He was a Republican, and intellectuals have been allergic to Republicans at least since the New Deal. Nixon even had trouble giving away jobs to well-known intellectuals. Those few who took them felt as isolated and embattled as if they had decided to sacrifice themselves in a lost but somehow necessary cause. Indeed, the best of Nixon's intellectuals accepted his call to duty because he was the President and had a right to summon them to serve the country, not because they were particularly fond of him. Professor Kissinger was notoriously dubious about Nixon's qualifications before proximity in the White House made him change his mind. After Nixon's disgrace, the intellectuals who had enjoyed his favour in better times felt that he had betrayed them—not that they had betrayed themselves. What disturbed them was Watergate, not Viet Nam. In a sense, intellectuals never had so little and yet so much power as under Nixon—so little because most of them did not want it from him and so much because they could now take it or leave it.

It is too soon to say much about President Carter's intellectuals, except that they are all over Washington again. By this time, intellectuals seem to have pre-empted some key governmental positions—Assistant for National Security Affairs, Science Adviser, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers among others. Academic economists have done especially well in the Carter administration. If we may trust that high authority, Professor Galbraith, a hard man to please, President Carter has appointed no

¹⁹ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., *A Thousand Days* (1965), p. 109.

²⁰ Theodore C. Sorenson, *Kennedy* (1965), p. 246.

²¹ *The Intellectual in Politics* (ed. H. Malcolm Macdonald, 1966), pp. 103–104.

²² Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., *The Crisis of Confidence* (1969), p. 79.

²³ Schlesinger, *A Thousand Days*, p. 725.

²⁴ William L. O'Neill, *Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s* (1970), p. 146.

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fewer than four "professional economists of full
academic qualifications" as Secretary of the
Treasury, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of
Labor, and Chairman of the Council of Econ-
omic Advisers.²⁵ It may be surmised, however,
that presidents have been turning to professional
economists not merely for their academic quali-
fications but because they enable them to avoid
appointing a businessman who might annoy
labour or a labour official who might annoy
business. The new Science Adviser, Professor
Frank Press, recently declared that "Jimmy
Carter doesn't have the fear of academics and
intellectuals" that several previous Presidents
are said to have had.²⁶ Presumably we will now
find out whether intellectuals are better off when
they are not feared.

BY NOW, THE SUB-SPECIES which Dr Ralf Dahrendorf, Director of the London School of Economics, recently called "the important group of those who 'straddle' academia and decision making" has been recognised internationally. The latest and most conspicuous straddler is Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dr Kissinger's successor in the White House. The typical straddler is most frequently found in research institutes such as the Brookings Institution of Washington, D.C., whose members must sometimes be confused about whether they are coming from or going into the government. Straddlers have become so indispensable in the modern state that we may soon have, according to Dr Dahrendorf, a Social Science Research Council institute for policy research and a more modest "LSE Brookings" in Britain as well as a "European Brookings" and a "Third World Brookings."²⁷ Professor Brzezinski prepared for his present position by straddling in not one but two such organisations—his own Research Institute on International Change (originally Communist Affairs) at Columbia University and his brainchild, the "Trilateral Commission", in which he first attracted the attention of Governor Jimmy Carter and vice versa. Straddling has now been institutionalised to such an extent that it must be considered the highest form of life among intellectuals in politics.

SOME DEEP STRUCTURAL CHANGES must
have taken place in American society to
account for the change from the 19th century,

when intellectuals were alienated from American
politics and politicians from intellectuals, to the
latter half of the 20th century, when a kind of
symbiosis has taken place between intellectuals
and politics. These changes are not uniquely
American but they have probably gone further
in the United States than anywhere else.

One of the deepest aspects of the change is the
shift in perspective from the past to the present.
The native habitat of scholars used to be the past;
real scholars did not go beyond 1789 or, in
extreme cases, the Renaissance or even the
Middle Ages. A few such purists remain but
they are a vanishing breed. The cult of the
present has almost replaced the cult of the past.
When intellectuals go into politics they go into
the world of the present, the pragmatic, the
manageable. As a result, fields such as economics,
political science, and sociology, which are
themselves concerned almost wholly with the
present or recent past, make the most fertile
breeding grounds for intellectuals in politics.
Such intellectuals do not have to jump from the
past to the present; they jump from the study
of the present to the practice of the present—
and then jump back to the study of their own
practice. The university has become a pre-
paratory school for government, and govern-
ment has become the ultimate in post-professorial
education. Professor Moynihan is an extreme
case in point. He spent 13 of the 20 years between
1950 and 1970 in government. Reflecting on this
background, he has confided that "as a teacher
I find these experiences are the largest store of
knowledge on which I have to draw...."²⁸
Teachers have long taught politics; some now
teach their own experiences in politics. It becomes
virtually impossible to draw a line between in-
tellectual work and political work.

THE FIELDS I HAVE MENTIONED are not the only
ones which have made this temporal leap. They
at least were always located mainly in the present.
But what shall we say of the transformation
that has taken place in anthropology? When I
went to school it was still thought to be the study
of primitive societies. Not long ago, however, I
sat next to a young woman studying at a large
American university. I politely inquired what she
was doing. "Anthropology", she said. "And
what kind of anthropology?" I asked. She replied
she was doing a dissertation on one of the "new
towns" that have sprung up in the United States
—so new that it is still not quite finished. The
anthropologists, having exhausted or having
been expelled from the society of primitives,
have invaded the society of the present, thus
creating an awkward situation for the sociol-
ogists, who presumably should take revenge by

²⁵ Esquire, May 1977, p. 70.

²⁶ *New York Times*, 2 May 1977.

²⁷ *The Times* (letter), 4 August 1977.

²⁸ Daniel P. Moynihan, *The Politics of a Guaranteed Income* (1973), p. 13.

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moving from the present to the past. We are
obviously in the presence of an intellectual
transmutation that goes far beyond politics but
is particularly conducive to participation in
politics.

Sociologists know when they have a good
thing and have no intention of giving up their
stranglehold on the present. An American
sociological journal recently asked a group of
sociologists what they expected from the Carter
administration. Some replies were euphoric.
Congress, one experienced practitioner jubilated,
"is increasingly dependent on the products of
social science research." Some Congressional
committee reports are stuffed with it. The
executive branch increasingly finds that it can
hardly get along without sociological research.

"In learning to live with an all-volunteer army, for example, the army is calling on social scientists to study how to deal with race and sex. The Army Corps of Engineers is calling on social scientists to help it understand the impact of its projects on communities. The State Department needs socio-logical research not only for briefing foreign affairs officers, but also in administering Agency Inter-national Development programs...."

Another sociologist lamented that the govern-
ment was driving out "the amateur in the social
science business" by supporting large-scale
research institutions which

"are geared to the major consumer—the govern-
ment—... understand the cost guidelines... know
how to do business in Washington."

He was, however, somewhat cynical about the
outcome—"the bulk of academics will be used
as window-dressing for the proposals that are
written." Another professor thought that "the
long latent lust for being close to power—or at
least the trappings of power", which gripped
academics and intellectuals during the Kennedy-
Johnson years, and went underground with
Nixon and Ford, was staging a comeback with
Carter. He looked forward to the emergence of
a new type of "born-again" social scientist,
committed to political action with "open political
values." A fourth foresaw the evanescence of
"a good many of the former reservations about
government funds and consultancies, expressed
in academia with such fervour in the late 1960s
and 1970s." Well-known scholars were worrying
that the government would not lavish enough of
its largesse on the academic community. "Gone,
apparently, are all the qualms." Here, apparently,
is a new generation of intellectuals awaiting its
turn at the political trough.²⁹

THUS FAR I HAVE EMPHASISED the intellectual
shift from the past to the present. Intellectuals
who go into politics, however, make an even
greater leap in time. After all, intellectuals almost
always work for politicians—and politicians
live in the present for the future. I am always
astonished at the kind of questions that govern-
ment officials and politicians ask. What they want
are prophets, not historians. Politicians are
always worried about policy—what to do to
meet this-or-that problem or eventuality. They
want to know what is going to happen if they
take this action or adopt that strategy. Policy
is the politician's game, and policy is future-
oriented. Intellectuals cross an invisible line
into politics whenever they get into policy.
Yet it is at that point that they really begin to
interest politicians, who may listen patiently to
the background of a problem but wish desper-
ately to get to the foreground.

As a result, intellectual trends and fashions
have been following political needs and condi-
tions. We now have, for example, an academic
field known as "public policy" or "policy
studies." In one branch of this field, a school of
thought interprets the making of foreign policy
largely in terms of "bargaining" between bureau-
crats in the government hierarchy. Whatever
we may think of this "Bureaucratic-Politics
model," as it is called, it is clearly an intellectual
child of the times. It reflects the preoccupation
of intellectuals with policy, in part because
intellectuals are increasingly called on to pro-
nounce on policy, in part as a result of their
increased experience with it.

Or consider the ups-and-downs of the field
known as "Area Studies." It shot up in the
1950s when the United States was drawn in—or
drew itself in—to virtually every area in the
world often without preparation, personnel,
or policy. For about a decade, no self-respecting
university could get along without "area special-
ists"—South-east Asia, East Africa, West Africa,
Middle East, Far East, Latin America, etc., or
any portion thereof. By the end of the 1960s,
area studies went into decline; many of its
former practitioners have turned to more prom-
ising fields. One reason for the popularity of
area studies had been the availability of funds
from the government or wealthy foundations;
as soon as these lost interest, the programmes
shrivelled. Another reason for their decline was
the growing reluctance of many areas, especially
in Africa, to let Americans, particularly anthro-
pologists, roam freely in villages, asking all
sorts of suspicious or outlandish questions—
from the point of view of the natives. The rise
and decline of Area Studies was at least as much
politically as intellectually motivated.

²⁹ Professors Jessie Bernard, George Sternlieb, Brady Tyson and William Glade, *Society*, May-June 1977, pp. 8-21.

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The same intellectual cycle of rise and decline has characterised Russian studies, Chinese studies, Latin American studies, and guerrilla-warfare studies—to name but a few. Government policy has not always been the main reason for such fluctuations. In the case of Russian studies, the New Left wave at the end of the 1960s was partially responsible for their decline by spreading the word that the Soviet Union had become conservative, unfashionable, boring. These academic trends behave like the stock market; their intellectual stocks go up and down depending on the public's interest and investment in them.

Other structural changes in society have also changed the role of intellectuals in government. In the past half century or so, three great proliferations have taken place, so familiar that I need only mention them—the proliferation of government, of the so-called knowledge industries, and of colleges and universities. Each of these proliferations produced a demand for more and more trained personnel, at least some of whom may be classified as intellectuals. By now the American government has become so pervasive that even the Carter administration, which came in committed to cutting it back, seems to be giving up in despair. The three proliferations add up to a new or at least a very different social order, for which no one has yet been able to come up with a good name. The most popular name—"the Post-Industrial society"—tells us what it followed, not what it is. A crisis in the social order brought American intellectuals into politics; a change in the social order has kept them there in larger and larger numbers.

**HOW IMPORTANT ARE** intellectuals in American politics?

The short answer is, I think, that they are generally as important as politicians want them to be. Intellectuals may have influence but they almost never have power. President Truman is supposed to have said: "I think intellectuals in government are great as long as there's an old pro to tell them what to do." Intellectuals may find this Trumanesque candour offensive or demeaning, but it comes out of long, hard experience and cannot be easily rejected. Politics demands 60-40 decisions, even 55-45, and in extreme cases 51-49. Politicians who cannot make such decisions do not get to or stay at the top. For intellectuals, such decisions may be agonising, often impossible. If the odds are so close, it is intellectually better to reserve judgment, wait for more evidence, report results

without prejudice. Thus it has become the accepted function of intellectuals in government to present the available options as fairly and fully as possible, but to let the "old pro" decide on which option to adopt. The way options are presented may influence the decision. Still, presenting is not the same thing as deciding, and responsibility goes to the political decision-maker, not the intellectual option-merchant.

On the other hand, intellectuals are not likely to do much good until they lose their awe for the "old pro."

The experience of Professor Schlesinger in the case of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs expedition in 1960 should be a warning to all intellectuals new to government. Arthur Schlesinger was officially designated a Special Assistant to President Kennedy without specific duties; he thought of himself as a "historian-participant", itself a new intellectual-political role. As a newcomer to the government, he was given the assignment of writing a White Paper to justify the attempt to overthrow Castro. It was a pretty good paper, but it had little relation to the political realities behind the enterprise: Schlesinger himself thought that the project was ill-conceived and privately expressed his opposition to President Kennedy. In the critical discussions at which the heads of the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Departments of State and Defense were present, Schlesinger said little. Later he explained why:

> "It is one thing for a Special Assistant to talk frankly in private to a President at his request and another for a college professor, fresh to government, to interpose his unassisted judgment in open meeting against that of such august figures as the Secretaries of State and Defence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, each speaking with the full weight of his institution behind him."

The fiasco changed all that. "The Bay of Pigs gave us license for the impolite inquiry and the rude comment", Schlesinger recalled, no doubt with grim satisfaction.³⁰ That was probably the last time he was overawed by anyone.

One of the things an "old pro" tells intellectuals to do is to write speeches for him. Professor Raymond Moley, the original Brain Truster, will probably be remembered most for inserting three words, "the Forgotten Man", in a campaign speech for Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1932. The phrase was not original with him; it had first been used in a different context by the sociologist, William Graham Sumner; presumably, however, it took an intellectual to remember the words in the first place. But would they have reverberated in the same way if Moley, the intellectual, not Roosevelt the politician, had spoken them in his own name?

Then there is Professor Galbraith who wrote a

³⁰ Arthur Schlesinger, *A Thousand Days*, pp. 249-55, 297.

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draft for the inaugural address of President Kennedy in January 1961. Kennedy seems to have used little more than one sentence. Galbraith later commented ruefully on the fate of his draft:

> "A ghost-writer is like an unloved dog in a poor family. He must be content with scraps."²¹

More than one intellectual has felt like an unloved dog in a politician's extended family. Still, intellectuals must get a great deal of satisfaction from ghost-writing—they do so much of it. It may well be the ultimate expression of the intellectual's role in politics—words, not actions; ideas without responsibility.

Intellectuals as idea men and as talent scouts—their two other favourite occupations—obey the same rules of the game.

INTELLECTUALS propose; politicians dispose. To be successful, the intellectual must often propose just what the politician wants him to propose. "I've been an adviser of the President", Professor Paul A. Samuelson, the eminent economist, recently confessed:

> "You sometimes have the impression that you call the shots, but as you think about it you realise that you are selected because your brand of moonshine, of snake oil, sits well on the scalp or in the stomach of the President."²²

To say that intellectuals have become important is largely to say that they have become important to politicians. To gain real power, the intellectual must become a politician. The only independent source of power in the American system comes from having a constituency, and most intellectuals have a constituency of one—themselves. Thus Senator Moynihan, after having suffered repeated frustrations in appointive offices, sought and won an elective office. His case suggests how really powerless—if real power is understood to be the power of decision—an appointed intellectual can be and what he can do about it. One sociologist was so elated by Dr Moynihan's election to the Senate that he celebrated it as the beginning of "a new era of seeking and winning office" by social scientists. In this latest of new eras for the intellectual in politics, "if social scientists want to, they may begin appointing the lawyers—a long overdue switch in roles."²³ One might almost imagine that the real struggle for power was between intellectuals and lawyers.

PROFESSOR-AMBASSADOR-SENATOR MOYNIHAN is one of our two most celebrated intellectuals in

politics. His career merits a little closer examination because he illustrates a number of different types of the species. For years he went in and out of university and government; in this phase, he was what may be called an "in-and-outer", which is what most intellectuals in government are. In this capacity, he set something of a record by impartially serving Presidents as different as Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in succession. Professional politicians must envy his survival rate; no politician has ever given a better exhibition of how to survive the downfall of at least two presidential patrons and come out on top on his own. As Senator, Pat Moynihan is presumably in politics to stay, though one cannot be sure of anything in his case—he recently referred to himself, perhaps jokingly, as a "displaced professor." In effect, he illustrates two paths of the intellectual—from in-and-outer to stay-in, and from the appointive to the elective.

The question arises whether Senator Moynihan is still an intellectual in politics. This question was implicitly raised by Mr James Reston, who holds the Chair of Political Commentary endowed by the *New York Times*. Mr Reston recently remarked that Dr Moynihan had markedly changed since he was elected to the United States Senate. Before putting on his senatorial toga (according to Reston) Moynihan "saw the world as a whole and was almost recklessly honest in defining America's widest possible interests." Now, as Senator from New York, Moynihan has been advocating a limitation on foreign imports on behalf of the hard-pressed garment industry in New York. As a result, Reston concluded sorrowfully, Moynihan is fighting for the interests of his particular rag-trade constituents and "defending their local, personal and political concerns", as he apparently would not have done in the old days when he could still afford to see the world as a whole and be almost recklessly honest.²⁴ Now (if we believe Mr Reston) Senator Moynihan has to see the world through the eyes of his constituents and be as honest as their interests will permit. Thus Moynihan illustrates the distinction between an intellectual in politics and an intellectual politician.

SENATOR MOYNIHAN figured in another recent incident which tells much about the difference between a pure-and-simple intellectual, an appointed intellectual, and an elected intellectual. The story is worth relating in some detail because it concerns two intellectuals in politics in the same field but cast in different roles.

Dr Moynihan went to work for President Nixon in 1969 as Assistant for Urban Affairs. His job entailed responsibility for drawing up a

²¹ John Kenneth Galbraith, *Ambassador's Journal* (1969), p. 16.

²² Interview in *Challenge*, March-April 1977, p. 31.

²³ Irving Louis Horowitz, *Society*, May-June 1977, p. 22.

²⁴ *New York Times*, 16 April 1977.

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plan for the reform of the welfare system. It took almost seven months for the Nixon administration to present Congress with a project, known as the "Family Assistance Plan", which provided for a guaranteed annual income. The plan was shot down in the United States Senate, and Dr Moynihan published a book in 1973 (The Politics of a Guaranteed Income) about the politics which had killed it. In that same year, Professor Henry J. Aaron put out a staff paper entitled *Why is Welfare So Hard to Reform?* for the Brookings Institution. Moynihan's book might have had the same title.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, Dr Moynihan as a member of the Democratic platform committee was instrumental in writing into the platform a commitment for an "income maintenance system", another form of his old guaranteed-annual-income plan. The newly elected Senator Moynihan also succeeded in getting a seat on the important Senate Finance Committee and in heading its Subcommittee on Public Assistance to consider the promised Carter reform of the welfare system. Meanwhile, Professor Aaron was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in charge of welfare. Thus the two authors of 1973 found themselves in different political positions in 1977.

On 25 April of this year, Senator Moynihan learned that the administration bill would not be ready by 1 May as he had expected and that only a statement of principles would be forthcoming by that date. The delay was sorely disappointing. It meant that his subcommittee would not be able to hold early hearings on the bill as he had planned. The urgency of such hearings was not apparent inasmuch as the Majority Leader, Senator Robert Byrd, had already put off welfare reform in favour of energy legislation for at least that session of Congress. In any case, Senator Moynihan blew up at the news of the administration's delay. In his wrath, he told reporters that "you can draft that bill in the morning"—the sort of bill which had taken him almost seven months to draft for President Nixon without getting Congress to approve it and which the Carter administration was expected to draft in only four months.

The chief culprit, according to Senator Moynihan, was Assistant Secretary of HEW Aaron. Referring to Professor Aaron's staff paper of 1973, Senator Moynihan exploded:

"This is HEW at it again. They produce wonderful books telling you why you can't do things."

²⁸ This story can be followed in the *Washington Post*, 26 and 27 April, 8 August 1977, and the *New York Times*, 26 April.

Senator Moynihan seemed to have forgotten that Professor Moynihan had also produced a wonderful book in 1973 telling why he couldn't do the same things.

After Senator Moynihan's public denunciation, Assistant Secretary Aaron was clearly in trouble. So Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Eileen Shanahan came to Assistant Secretary Aaron's assistance by announcing that the staff paper of 1973 no longer reflected the latter's views.

This cautionary tale shows how dangerous it is for intellectuals to write books before becoming government officials. But if they did not write books, how would they become intellectuals? There is no easy way out of this dilemma. We have here two former professors who, as intellectuals, were not so very far apart. As Senator and Assistant Secretary, however, they moved into positions of antagonism. The Senator forgot how embarrassing the written word had more than once been for him. The Assistant Secretary decided—or had it decided for him—that it was better to repudiate his book than endanger his job.

Three months later, the Carter administration finally produced its new welfare programme. Senator Moynihan immediately called it "magnificent, superbly crafted", without waiting for any hearings on the proposed bill by his sub-committee.²⁹

Senators, then, have political "muscle" and "clout." Assistant Secretaries do not. Senator Moynihan had himself been an Assistant Secretary not so long ago. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the roles had been reversed—if Senator Aaron had denounced Assistant Secretary Moynihan. Probably they would have acted out their respective roles in much the same way; the rules of the game put an Assistant Secretary at a disadvantage in confrontation with a Senator, especially the head of just the subcommittee that must pass on the Assistant Secretary's handiwork.

That less POLYMORPHOUS BUT even more celebrated intellectual in politics, Henry A. Kissinger, suggests another side of the phenomenon. The species is apt to suffer from a rare form of psychological conflict. As Secretary of State, Dr Kissinger lived with an acute case of this subtle affliction. In an interview with James Reston, Dr Kissinger said that he thought of himself as a historian more than as a statesman. For our present purposes, we may interpret this to mean that he thought of himself as an intellectual more than as a politician. As a historian, Secretary Kissinger explained, one had to be a pessimist or, to use his exact words, "one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy...."

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But as a statesman, he said, one had to be optimistic or, again in his own words, "one has to act on the assumption that problems must be solved...."³⁸ Who was the real Kissinger, the pessimistic historian-intellectual or the optimistic statesman-politician? One suspects that the real Kissinger thought of himself as an intellectual pessimist but felt that he had to pretend to be a statesmanlike optimist. In any case, Kissinger could not lose. If he succeeded, the statesman-politician was right; if he failed, the historian-intellectual was right.

Nor was this the only evidence of an unresolved conflict in Kissinger's intellectual makeup. On the one hand, he was forever calling for "concepts" in the formation of foreign policy. On the other hand, he insistently maintained that "nuances" were what really counted. He never explained how concepts can be crucial if nuances are all-important.

It may be objected that Dr Kissinger was an exception to the rule that appointed officials lack real power of decision. If he was an exception, however, no great generalities can be drawn from him. It is not yet possible to be sure just how exceptional he was throughout the eight years that he served under Presidents Nixon and Ford. We are most likely going to find out that he did what Nixon wanted him to do, and he did not do what Nixon did not want him to do, until the Watergate crisis of 1973. He became more and more independent of the presidency as the President came closer and closer to self-destruction. Kissinger was the product and beneficiary of an afflicted system. Yet he somehow contrived to be in and out of it at the same time. The sicker the system became, the more indispensable he appeared to be. He was its symptom far more than its cure.

In any case, it will take some time to disentangle Kissinger's publicity from his power. Favoured writers paid him back to the point of insanity. For example, one virulently anti-Israel book on the Arab-Israeli conflict (based in large part on some 25 interviews with Kissinger and two of his closest aides as well as on secret documents secretly leaked) told readers that "Kissinger was in real measure running the world" during the Yom Kippur war in October 1973.³⁷ The *whole* world? Brezhnev's Russia? Mao's China? Castro's Cuba? Even Indira's India? Still, one can only regard with awe an intellectual who was voted "the greatest person in

the world today" by the Miss Universe contestants in 1974.³⁸

I am inclined to think that Kissinger's power over the American media was greater than his power over anything else. I doubt whether future historians will agree with a court biography which was written with his help and which flattered him in these terms: "He is a professor who had been given the unique opportunity to put his theories into practice and to shape history."³⁹ The pre-Nixonian Kissinger had anti-détente theories but did not put them into practice; the Nixonian Kissinger improvised one theory of détente after another to suit his practice; the post-Nixonian Kissinger warned in effect that détente in theory was Soviet expansionism in practice, as demonstrated by the Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola. How much history was actually shaped by Kissinger has become more and more dubious as less and less of his handiwork remains. It looks as if the further we get away from Kissinger's accomplishments, the more insubstantial and ephemeral they appear to be. The more illusions a statesman inspires about himself, the more disillusionment he invites from future historians. The latter may even have trouble figuring out what all the excitement was about or what Kissinger did to earn it. As a shaper of history, Kissinger was most successful in shaping his own histrionics, not history.

Yet Kissinger's self-aggrandisement paid off in a little noted way. In the transition from the Nixon to the Ford presidency, Kissinger emerged as the critical element of continuity and stability. That President Ford should have had to announce without delay that he was keeping Kissinger in office testified to the independent role that Kissinger had achieved. Unfortunately, this feat was predicated on the degeneration and disintegration of the political régime of which he had been an integral part and to which he had lent some respectability. How he managed to save his political skin was a tribute to the political, not the intellectual, side of his personality. Whatever the reason or the means, he was thereby able to help the country though a dangerous moment. It may well come to be regarded as the time when he did the least and gave the most.

**W**HAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD for intellectuals in politics? The high point for the species was probably reached during the Kennedy years and for an individual by Henry Kissinger during the Nixon years. The intellectual component in the Carter administration is still large enough to indicate that there has been no great change for the worse. The ubiquity and complexity of the modern state assure a continuing

³⁸ *New York Times*, 13 October 1974.

³⁹ Edward R. F. Sheehan, *The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger* (1976), p. 38.

⁴⁰ Leslie H. Gelb, *New York Times Magazine*, 31 October 1976, p. 79.

⁴¹ Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, *Kissinger* (1974), p. 544.

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need for intellectuals—fully licensed, semi-, quasi- and pseudo-.

But American intellectuals themselves have changed. When they first invaded the government in large numbers, they were filled with self-confidence. The economists forged into the lead, setting an example of worldly success and mathematical precision. Much that happened in the other social "sciences" was imitative of or at least inspired by them. By 1973, the economists again led the way—in retreat. That year the new President of the American Economic Association, Professor Walter Heller, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, spoke for the profession when he said:

"Economists are distinctly in a period of re-examination. The energy crisis caught us with our parameters down. The food crisis caught us too. This was a year of infamy in inflation forecasting. There are many things we really don't know."

Such uncertainty still characterises the intellectual mood, and not only of economists. One of our best sociological minds, Professor Daniel Bell, has recently put into words what is common knowledge—"the social-science knowledge to design a proper health system, or a housing environment, or a good educational curriculum,

is inadequate."⁴⁰ If intellectuals cannot cope with these tasks, they are in much greater trouble than at any time since the great breakthrough almost half-a-century ago. The quantity of intellectuals in politics may not change much, but the quality of their work is being downgraded by the intellectuals themselves.

If the intellectuals do not watch out, they may bear out the low opinion of experts expressed exactly one hundred years ago by Lord Salisbury, who knew something of politics:

"No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust in experts. If you believe the doctors nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers nothing is safe."

He might have gone on to say: if you believe the intellectuals, nothing is right.

The difficulty is that there is no good substitute for "experts" and "intellectuals." If they are not to be trusted, who should be? They may not be trusted as much as before, but society and government are likely to be just as dependent on them in the foreseeable future. The reason is that the intellectuals are but the most articulate, self-conscious repositories of the accumulated learning and experience of a society. If the intellectuals are in trouble, they are not the only ones; the society is in trouble.

⁴⁰ "The Future World Disorder: The Structural Context of Crisis", in *Foreign Policy*, Summer 1977, p. 120.

## Cat-man to His Dog

What's appealing, and also boring, about dogs
Is that they're natural party members:
Faithful, true, but amoral in their loyalty
And readiness to savage the opposition.

They're born card-carriers, whether Fascist
(Like Hitler's alsatians) or Marxo-Fascist
Or just plain Tail-Wagger, their nature calls
For a membership symbol on their collar.

Properly trained, they will happily attack
On command, and are only obeying orders
When they salivate round frontier guards
Who set them on to cowering refugees.

My dog, you look wistfully over your paws:
Are you regretting a collective cause,
The fact that I belong to a party of one
And that you're missing some dirty fun?

Matthew Mitchell