“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” ~ Eric Hoffer
“There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.” ~ John Locke
Even if it’s old news it is still puzzling. Rudolph Giuliani addresses the National Rifle Association to mend fences. If you want the Republican nomination you need these folks, and he had a lot of explaining to do. When he was mayor in New York, he was all for gun control. He was party to the suit to go after the manufacturers of handguns – hold them partially liable when someone is bumped off in Brooklyn. On the Charlie Rose show he said the NRA was full of extremists. But now things have changed and he needs these people. How does he explain those things now?
He said 9/11 changed his view on these matters. Now he thinks people should be armed. No one asked him if he thought that if everyone in lower Manhattan on that day had a small thirty-eight and they all aimed them at the sky, together, and fired, simultaneously, the two jetliners could have been brought down before they hit the towers. He wasn’t saying that. They knew what he was saying – he now knows everyone should pack heat, as the world is a much more dangerous place than anyone could even imagine, and anyone could be a killer. That’s just the way it is – 9/11 changed everything. Of course it did. When he was mayor he always showed up at the Gay Pride parade and walked along for a few blocks. Not now. Everyone is the enemy.
But the odd thing was that phone call from his wife – his cell phone rang in the middle of his speech and he stopped and chatted with her. Watch the video. No one expected that. Was it planned? If so, what was the thinking? The audience didn’t seem that surprised, or even much annoyed. That’s life in America these days. Laura may call George in the middle of his address to the nation as he announces our new war with Iran had started. You never know.
But it was rude, and the audience had some right to feel insulted (and some did), so you needed an explanation –
Giuliani also addressed a cell phone call he took from his wife, Judith, last week during his speech to the National Rifle Association…
“And quite honestly, since Sept. 11, most of the time when we get on a plane, we talk to each other and just reaffirm the fact that we love each other,” he said.
It seems there’s an all-purpose explanation here. Giuliani is a bit of a one-trick pony, but then, his one trick seems to be working. John Fund at the Wall Street Journal isn’t buying any of it however. Fund of course is a big-time conservative, you see him on Fox News and CNN all the time, and too he gained some notoriety back in 2002 after a former girlfriend, Morgan Pillsbury, said he used to beat the crap out of her. Be that as it may, he’s not impressed with Giuliani’s habit of taking phone calls from his wife in the middle of presentations (some have counted forty times so far) –
Mr. Giuliani’s deputy press secretary Jason Miller told me the NRA incident was definitely not a stunt. Instead it was a “candid and spontaneous moment” that would humanize the tough-guy former mayor with voters.
Nice try…. The fact is that people inside the Giuliani campaign are appalled at the number of times their candidate has felt compelled to interrupt public appearances to take calls from his wife. The estimate from those in a position to know is that he has taken such calls more than 40 times in the middle of speeches, conferences and presentations to large donors.
… [Giuliani] admitted he had taken calls from his wife “before in engagements, and I didn’t realize it would create any kind of controversy.” That’s hardly possible. Giuliani staffers say he has been warned over and over again that the phone calls are rude and inappropriate and have alienated everyone from local officials to top donors to close friends.
It seems “rude” matters after all. People like a little respect, even if just a little.
Kevin Drum here tries to work this all out – “It’s obviously nuts, but nuts in what way?”
Follow his five suggestions as to what is really going on, starting with the first – “First way: Rudy genuinely doesn’t realize that taking a phone call in the middle of a speech is rude. But this suggests a lack of emotional intelligence so stunning that even I don’t think Rudy is capable of it - and that’s saying a lot.”
Okay, toss that out and try this – “He knows it’s rude, but has somehow convinced himself that it’s a political winner despite the repeated entreaties of his staff.” And that may be possible of course. It shows that no one can tell him what to do or not do. You decide whether you want that in a president. He may be betting you do.
How about this? It must be true love – “He and Judy are literally so enthralled with each other that he can’t stand to shut off the phone for even a few minutes. If he were 17 I might buy it. At age 63 it suggests codependency issues so severe he ought to be on medication.”
Or it could be he’s pussy-whipped – “Judy has told him in no uncertain terms that he’d better take her calls 24/7. Rudy is so terrified of her that he’s given in on this.” That too is possible.
What Drum finds most plausible is this – “He’s so enormously full of himself that he doesn’t think the ordinary rules of common courtesy apply to him.”
Of course – he wants the presidency, and that has been the model for the last six years. It all fits together. And it’s so very American – ask any European adult, or more precisely ask someone French, from a culture where decorum and courtesy still seems to matter quite a bit. Or ask German Chancellor Merkel. He’s promising more of the same – indecorous rudeness. What’s not to like?
You don’t like the idea of our leader acting like a spoiled, rude, entitled kid? There are alternatives. Over at the conservative National Journal, Jonathan Rauch says Joe Biden is the only “grownup” in the Democratic presidential race because he has a plan for Iraq. You know the plan – create a federal state with separate Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite regions and a central government that has only limited responsibilities, distributing oil revenue, guarding the borders and not much else. Rauch loves it, even if he sees the problems –
Even an inexpert Washington columnist can come up with a dozen reasons the Biden plan might fail. What if Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds can’t agree on a regional framework, or on a revenue-sharing deal? What about Baghdad and other mixed areas? What if the autonomous regions go to war? What if the Shiite or Sunni region degenerates into intrasectarian chaos? What if Iran colonizes the Shiite region?
A conversation with Biden’s aide yielded answers that were plausible but iffy. The more relevant answer, however, is the one Biden gave in a speech at the Brookings Institution [PDF] in February: “To those who disagree with my plan, I have one simple question: What is your alternative?”
And of course Kevin Drum lays into that –
That’s not relevant. It’s fatuous. The fact that all of the other alternatives in Iraq are bad doesn’t mean that Biden’s alternative is good. It just means that all the other alternatives are bad. So let’s recap those alternatives: First it was the movement conservatives who had a plan to make Iraq into a flat-tax paradise. It didn’t work. Then it was the democracy promoters, who thought purple fingers would do the trick. It didn’t work. Then the key talking point changed to security: “When they stand up, we’ll stand down.” It didn’t work. Then it was the surge, designed to provide breathing space for political reconciliation. It didn’t work. Now it’s “soft partition.”
But the plain fact is that support for Biden’s version of federalism has no support in Iraq and no support within the region. The only people who like it are disillusioned Americans desperate for something that maintains the fiction that America is somehow in control of Iraq’s fate. But regardless of whether we were ever in control, even at the start, we certainly aren’t now. We simply don’t have the leverage to force regionalism on Iraq, not even if we - figuratively or otherwise - “get allies and neighboring countries on board, and lock Iraqis in a room.”
In short, this is delusional and dangerous, and rude of course. Just consider the delusions –
The first is that we have to do something because if we withdraw from Iraq the Middle East will inevitably end up in a massive region-wide war. In fact, there’s little empirical evidence to support this apocalyptic view. The second is that we can force partition on unwilling actors. But what makes us think so? We haven’t been able to force action on a wide variety of much simpler issues. The third is that if we did somehow force partition, the results are likely to be better than simple withdrawal. Unfortunately, the arguments on this score are as simplistic as the ones that preceded all our previous plans. In reality, civil war is neither more nor less likely in a federal Iraq than in a unitary Iraq.
This is just another map-drawing exercise of course, and hardly “grownup,” as Drum argues. And it is kind of rude, isn’t it? We do presume a lot.
That seems to be the issue Anne Applebaum explores in Why Don’t They Like Us as Much as They Used To? Her thesis is unusual – The United States has lost its aura of competence. That’s a problem.
The “they” in the title is a special group – our closest allies. This is not France or even Canada, “democracies that are part of the Western alliance but have never particularly warmed to the idea of US leadership, whether political or cultural.” She’s concerned with Britain, Poland, Germany, Italy and Holland. And we’re in trouble –
Since 2002, according to the newest edition of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends survey, support for “US leadership in world affairs” - that’s whether they want to follow our political lead, not whether they think we’re nice - has plunged by 30 percentage points in Germany, 26 percentage points in Italy, 24 percentage points in Poland, 23 percentage points in Holland, and 22 percentage points in Britain. More generally speaking, support for US leadership, which was at 64 percent across Europe in 2002, is now at 36 percent….
What’s this about? Applebaum reminds us that a few years ago she wrote about one set of data that broke down such numbers by education and income, and things weren’t so bad –
As it turned out, there were strong pockets of “pro-Americanism,” even in the most “anti-American” countries. In Europe, for example, it turned out that the upwardly mobile felt more warmly about American power than the establishment. Generally speaking, people confuse “anti-Americanism” with “anti-global capitalism,” those who dislike one generally disliking the other, as well.
That’s not true this time, and there’s a bit more that’s odd –
Most curious of all, though, is the fact that our friends’ faith in us has weakened just as their perceptions of potential threats are growing ever more similar to ours. True, more Europeans worry about global warming than we do, but the difference (85 percent vs. 70 percent) is not as great as one would think. And we all worry about everything else - international terrorism, a nuclear Iran, global epidemics - in almost equal measure.
So we’re all in this together, and they think we’re fools? There is a reason this should be so –
… it indicates that what our closest friends really dislike is not our traditional pushiness, our violent movies, or even our current president (though they don’t like him much, either), but our incompetence. A full third blame the perceived decline of the transatlantic alliance on the “mismanagement of Iraq.” Not the invasion of Iraq - the “mismanagement” of Iraq. Which makes sense. If you’re really worried about Iran, do you want to put your faith in the United States, the country that bungled Iraq? If you really care about Islamic fundamentalism, do you want to be led by the country that, distracted by Iraq, failed to predict the return of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan?
Ah, so we’re rude, pushy, think the rules of common courtesy don’t apply to us – AND we’re incompetent. Cool.
Applebaum suggest we add that we’ve been bad at looking after our allies over the past five years – “bad at thanking them or compensating them for military contributions to Iraq, bad at maintaining very basic pieces of public diplomacy, like student-exchange programs.”
But then she adds that NATO will not fall apart just because our president has been rude to his German counterpart or a few Britons don’t get scholarships. There’s just that other problem –
NATO will fall apart, however, if its American leaders are perceived as inept. And even if the surge works, even if the roadside bombs vanish, inept is a word that will always be used about the Iraqi invasion.
And yes, it does matter. There was, in fact, a “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, at least to start with. There wouldn’t be now, even though both the French and German leaders are more positive about the United States than their predecessors, even though most of our allies worry more about the Middle East than ever. Countries that would once have supported U.S. foreign policy on principle, simply out of solidarity or friendship, will now have to be cajoled, or paid, to join us. Count that - along with the lives of soldiers and civilians, the dollars and equipment - as another cost of the war. No one wants to be on the losing team.
It seems we’ve moved beyond “irritatingly rude.” “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” ~ Eric Hoffer
Yep.
Oh, and by the way, the Applebaum item appeared in Slate, and the editors have some suggested further reading. Jacob Weisberg argues here that “muddled thinking” from President Bush had “created a dangerous new cooperative dynamic among our enemies.” Richard Morgan here offers a survey of anti-American sentiment in Turkey – “Allies aren’t supposed to behave like this.” Daniel Gross here asks how Europeans can consume more American goods than ever while they claim to dislike their country of origin so much. Katie Roiphe here reconsiders the charges of “Anti-Americanism” against Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. And Christopher Hitchens here works out a definition of “anti-American,” one “nuanced enough to include both Pat Robertson and the European right.” Man, enough is enough.
