Updike on LBJ Derangement Syndrome

Elsewhere in this issue, Christopher Caldwell pays fine tribute to the “writerly power” of the late novelist John Updike, the attribute for which he will chiefly and justly be remembered. THE SCRAPBOOK would like to put in a word as well, though, for Updike’s honorable behavior as a public man during the Vietnam war, which distinguished him then and now from so many of his peers, and which has been neglected in the obituaries.

Exhibit A was Updike’s reaction to a June 1965 “White House Festival of the Arts,” which the invited intellectuals decided was an occasion for them to stamp their feet over LBJ’s Vietnam policy in the president’s own drawing room, as it were. As Joseph Bottum recounted in these pages a few years back:

Exhibit B would be the letter to the editor from Updike, published in the New York Times on September 24, 1967, “Writers’ Opinions on Vietnam.” An article a week earlier about the book Authors Take Sides on Vietnam had characterized Updike (along with the English writers Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Rupert Croft-Cooke, Roy Harrod, and Auberon Waugh) as the only scribes among the 259 included in the volume to be “unequivocally for” the war.

Updike was hardly for the war, and after spelling out his many equivocations, he memorably dissented from what might be termed LBJ Derangement Syndrome, precursor to the Bush Derangement Syndrome of more recent vintage. “I differ, perhaps, from my unanimously dove-ish confrères,” he wrote,

in crediting the Johnson Administration with good faith and some good sense. Anyone not a rigorous pacifist must at least consider the argument that this war, evil as it is, is the lesser of available evils, intended to forestall worse wars. I am not sure that this is true, but I assume that this is the reasoning of those who prosecute it, rather than the maintenance of business prosperity or the President’s crazed stubbornness.

I feel in the dove arguments as presented to me too much esthetic distaste for the President; .  .  . even the best of the negative accounts of our operations in South Vietnam, such as Mary McCarthy’s vivid reports or Jonathan Schell’s account of the destruction of Ben Suc, [place] too much reliance upon satirical descriptions of American officers and the grotesqueries of cultural superimposition.

The protest seems too reflexive, too pop; I find the statements, printed with mine, of Jules Pfeiffer and Norman Mailer, frivolous. Like W.H. Auden, I would hope, the sooner the better, for a “negotiated peace, to which the Vietcong will have to be a party,” and like him feel that it is foolish to canvass writers upon political issues. Not only do our views, as he says, “have no more authority than those of any reasonably well-educated citizen,” but in my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.

FDR TV

It began last September, when CBS’s Katie Couric sat down to talk with vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden about the economy. As usual, Biden was emphatic: Today’s leaders (translation: George W. Bush) should take their cue from Franklin Roosevelt when responding to financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed,” Biden told Katie, “Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ”

At the time, THE SCRAPBOOK was nonplussed. Surely, we reasoned, Katie will take a moment to correct a confused Senator Biden–and the footage will become viral video as the nation laughs at another Biden goof.

But that didn’t happen. As we now know, of course, Katie was preparing for her armed confrontation with Sarah Palin, and didn’t have time to set Biden straight. For we’re certain that Katie knows that Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t president when the stock market crashed in 1929–Herbert Hoover was in the White House–and that Roosevelt never “got on television” to give America some straight talk about the economy because there was no television (as we know it today) during his 12-year presidency.

Then, it happened again. A few weeks ago a New Yorker writer named George Packer lamented that President Bush never “explained to the public what was really going on [in Iraq], no euphemisms, no cheerleading, just get on TV regularly, maybe with a map like FDR during World War II, and level with the American people.”

Once again, THE SCRAPBOOK’s memory was jogged: Remember when everybody in the neighborhood would gather round the old DuMont in the living room of the Packer house–their first set, the one with the big plastic knobs and antenna–and watch FDR remove his pince-nez and take out his pointer, and show us where the troops had landed on Omaha Beach or describe the Battle of Guadalcanal?

Of course not. Franklin Roosevelt never appeared on television as president, or at any other time, and he never gave a speech “with a map”–although once, in a radio address during World War II, he did give listeners a moment to “get out your maps” as he described the global situation. While THE SCRAPBOOK doesn’t expect Biden or Packer–or, perhaps especially, Katie Couric–to have a sophisticated knowledge of history, we do believe they should get their facts straight before trashing George W. Bush with invented memories about FDR the TV Star.

Snow Business

Every new president takes office pledging a new, improved relationship with Washington, D.C.–the city, not the political culture–and Barack Obama is no exception. His pledge, in particular, has been especially welcome, since he won 94 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia last November.

But then came Washington’s first ice/snowstorm of the season last week, and the closing of local schools for a day. This is a perennial debate in the nation’s capital, where many transplanted Northerners and Midwesterners believe Washingtonians are needlessly spooked by the sight of snowflakes. Somewhat to THE SCRAPBOOK’s surprise, President Obama counts himself among them.

“My children’s school was canceled today,” he sarcastically carped to reporters, “because of what–some ice?” Warming to the subject, so to speak, he added: “We’re going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town.”

This unexpected snark from the occupant of the White House did not go down well with the locals. As some were quick to point out, icy streets are a peril for school buses. And as others more pointedly pointed out, Malia and Sasha don’t trudge through the drifts to the private Sidwell Friends School, nor does the first lady strap them into the family station wagon and brave the elements. They are escorted by a block-long entourage of SUVs, motorcycle cops, glowering security agents–and snowplows, if necessary.

Better yet, from THE SCRAPBOOK’s standpoint, Sidwell’s associate headmaster, Ellis Turner, matched the president’s sarcasm with his own: “No question, the president is right,” he admitted in an email message to the Washington Post. “The next time it snows, we would like to invite him to help us make the decision. His involvement will make it much easier to explain to our students why they won’t be able to spend the day sleeping and sledding.”

Then came the coup de grâce, invoking Obama’s alma mater in the bright blue Pacific: “Or, I suppose Sidwell Friends could merge with Punahou, move our classrooms to Hawaii, and never worry about the weather again.”

Undoubtedly, Turner is even now being “interviewed” at Secret Service headquarters.