Here's an irony for ya: Yesterday, the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang, the Asian epicenter of the Axis of Evil. It was the selfsame day that Senators Obama and Clinton held their 20th debate.
In a previous dust-up -- back before The Narrowing when we had Kucinich and Gravel to liven things up -- Obama was attacked by Senator Clinton for his willingness to sit down with dictators who oppose the United States. She blasted him as jejune, puerile and naïve, asserting that she was too steely and experienced to let herself be manipulated for propaganda purposes by tyrants.
While that contretemps already seems like ancient election history -- our 24-second news cycle having already absorbed, in its amoeba-like fashion, New Hampshire flyers, Somali fashion statements, fairy tales, Lyndon Johnson and Jessie Jackson -- I want to return to the subject because the Philharmonic's appearance has vivified the issue.
By all accounts, the concert was a success and is already being compared to Leonard Bernstein's and the NY Phil's trip to Moscow in 1959 during the ice-age of the Cold War. Dvorjak, "An American In Paris," The Star Spangled banner and the Korean folk anthem "Arirang" were played. (I used to frequent a Korean restaurant on West 56th Street called Arirang. Who knew I was eating at the equivalent of the God Bless America wine bar?)
Afterwards, the North Korean audience gave a five-minute standing ovation, the musicians waved back and turned weepy, journalists swooned and suddenly we could hear ourselves mouthing the same platitudes about the North Koreans that we used to say about Russian Commies: they're people just like us, they love their kiddies too, if only we had more cultural exchanges we'd have a better chance at peace.
Now back to Senator Obama's willingness to sit down with Kim Jong-il. Essentially, what he was saying is that part of the role of the president of the United States is to act as a visible representative of the American people as well as the American government. That he views part of his future job as taking the heart, soul and strengths of the American people to the rest of the world. That the presidency is, institutionally and at its best, a vehicle for cultural exchange, a manifestation of the fact that while governments can be in violent disagreement, other channels of communication are necessary and useful.
Strained rhetorical comparisons -- "Would he have sat down with Hitler?" are just silly. Kim Jong-il has already shown himself to be bribeable; last year he took $250 million in exchange for shutting down his nuclear weapons program. And although there are some remaining issues around denuclearization, conversations are being held, there is a dialogue. (If you ask me, Jong-il could have gotten more when you consider that it costs around $250 million for each day of our Iraqi misadventure. And consider how expensive nuclear arms inspectors are -- all those steak dinners, penthouse suites, bomb-sniffing prostitutes.)
Kim Jong-il is an evil guy, for sure. He starves and imprisons and deadens the lives of his people. But make no mistake, his iron hand wasn't sanitized or velvetized by the proceedings. On the contrary. It was clear that the Korean schoolchildren who flanked Philharmonic members on stage -- and sang a Korean version of Jingle Bells -- weren't allowed to talk to the press. And, as the Boston Globe noted, "The finale was a song and dance number called "We are Faithful Only to General Kim Jong-il" that included lyrics such as "You make us happy. You safeguard our happiness". That kind of self-unaware dictator speak -- it sounds like a gloss on Mel Brooks -- isn't exactly a great brand statement for North Korea.
None of the proceedings, in fact, were good global PR for Mr. Jong-il; the media attention reminds the world that he is one of a shrinking band of crackpots. And that's clearly a collateral benefit of the trip, and further validation of the benefits that accrue to any efforts to crack the door on a tightly shut nation.
The truth is, Kim Jong-il is more preposterously evil than he is transcendentally evil (I'm misusing the word in honor of John McCain, who, when speaking of Islamic jihadism as a "transcendent challenge," surely doesn't mean a challenge that, "In Kant's philosophical system {exceeds} the limits of experience and is therefore unknowable except hypothetically.)
Indeed, North Korea is a closet capitalist nation. As I have previously written in these pixels: "In 2002, Kim Jong-il declared that 'money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities.' By that calculus, the ability to make nuclear weapons is a commodity that can (and probably should) be monetized."
Barack Obama's debate response to what Wolf Blitzer smugly thought was one of his best gotchas, was the correct one, and Senator Clinton's was wrong. And their disagreement wasn't just about foreign policy strategy. It's a microcosm for why his campaign is succeeding so brilliantly and she's struggling, and for why he would be by far the better president. Her caution, her wonkish calibration of the geopolitical fine points, her miscalculation of who would benefit from the "propaganda" calculus, reflect her approach to her campaign and to governing.
Experience, through her prism, is an imprisoning force. It's the enemy of the bold, the direct, the appetite for "bold experimentation" in the words of FDR. When Hillary Clinton talks about what she's learned from her experience with her disastrous health care program, one wonders how she can take such massive pride in her massively bad judgment? She spins her defeat as an example of how tough the health care industry is, but the truth is that her approach, her solution, and her inability to sell them to the American people made life very, very easy for the lobbyists.
Senator Obama's willingness -- even anxiousness -- to engage our enemies isn't because he is silly enough to think he can win them over. He knows that if he meets with Kim Jong-il at some neutral spot -- or heaven forfend, went to North Korea itself -- it would be a bold step that would signal America's overwhelming self-confidence. It would be just the kind of propaganda victory we need.
And there is some fascinating historical precedent for this, the famous Nixon/Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" back in 1959. Yes, Nixon went to Russia before he went to China, and remember back then they had hundreds of missiles pointed at us, vs. Kim's and Ahmadinejad's arsenal of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And if you read their exchange at the link I've graciously provided, you'll see that by no means was Nixon co-opted by the Nikita into an unwitting tool. Given how much trouble Senator Obama got into for referencing Reagan, I'm reluctant to drag Dick into this, but the example is instructive.
One last thing. I can't resist quoting President Bush's press secretary, who was unable to find anything remotely positive to say about event.
"I think at the end of the day we consider this concert to be a concert, and it's not a diplomatic coup," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Let me remind you that not long ago, Ms. Perino confused the Bay of Pigs invasion with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I guess she is one child who was left behind.