Recently, I had the pleasure to interview Louis Auchincloss, one of the great American novelists, and undoubtedly the greatest American novelist of power, money and politics. He was almost constitutionally incapable of talking about the war in Iraq but he did draw some interesting parallels with Vietnam, and specifically, the class of patrician who "pushed" that "disgusting" war. The following extract is from my profile of Auchincloss in the Sept 22nd Financial Times:
"I used to say to my father," he says," 'If my class at Yale ran this country, we would have no problems.' And the irony of my life is that they did." He pauses before invoking a 20th-century American foreign policy who's who: "There was Cy Vance, Bill Scranton, Ted Beale, both Bundys, Bill and McGeorge -- they all got behind that war in Vietnam and they pushed it as far as they could. And we lost a quarter of a million men. They were all idealistic, good, virtuous," says Auchincloss, "the finest men you could find. It was the most disillusioning thing that happened in my life."
Auchincloss has struggled to understand just how their shared patrician background could have produced this disconnect. And the answer would appear to be that wars are lost, if not always made, on the playing fields of New England. "Bill Bundy and I shared a study at Groton, and one day he came in from a football game, and I said: 'Who won?' and he said: 'We lost,' and then he burst into tears. You cannot lose. Groton cannot lose. That's what they believed in, no matter what," explains Auchincloss. "They all would have all been willing to die, if they hadn't already been in high positions. They believed America cannot lose. We stand for every virtue and right that's in the world."
For more, including his excretory dismissal of the Bush family, read "The Irony of my life." But if you are a political junkie, his 1980 novel, The House of the Prophet, whose protagonist is based on Walter Lippmann, is an indispensable meditation on the motivations and failings of the political pundit and public intellectual class.
The USA's so called elite discover cynacism far too late in life-if they ever become aware of any sort of cynacism-to use it as a guide in their careers.
Look at how every autumn VANITY FAIR has a list of "The New Establishment," with largely the same people year after year being presented as triumphant newcomers. (How long can you be the New Establishment without simply becoming the Establishment?) It's like the millions of middle-aged baby boomers who still pretend to be young!
Every democratic nation gets the elite it deserves.
Act I: Bumpkin somehow stumbles into the domain of wealth,power, and privilege.
Act II: Elitists who inhabit that world feel threatened by the interloper; they scorn and undermine him in an attempt to destroy him.
Act III: Bumpkin turns the tables on elitists and prevails, thanks to down-home goodness and folksy wisdom.
Every American mutt has had this fantasy, and no producer has ever gone broke staging it for the masses--even an inferior telling of the myth like "King Ralph" turned a tidy profit.
It's why Reagan and Elvis were and are so popular with the average hayseed; they looked to be living the fantasy. With Reagan, it was a fraud, an elaborate and cynical role—the folksy "aw shucks" president out of Frank Capra. Elvis was the real thing: He actually was a Beverly hillbilly.
Trevor
Thanks for your fascinating comments. One of the things that frustrated me enormously (as someone who switched from English literature at the undergrad level to history at the grad level) is how dismissive so many critics have been of Auchincloss's subject material. Too upper class, too rich, too obscure. Yet the social history that he effectively has created in his fiction seems to me of vital interest. Would that there was a novelist of his caliber to limn the Yale of the Vulcans! On a separate note, what significance do you give to the Prep tradition of "muscular Christianity"? Is the blended ethos of the sports field and the alter still alive today?
That is the real tragedy as more lives are lost in quest for the "win" column as opposed to what is right or safe for the troops.
Sadam was trying to force the Saudi's to increase the price of Oil. They resisted and he attacked. Their "WHITE SLAVES", as the Saudi's refer to the Americans, came to thier rescue.
Now the Saudi's want protection from Iran who has the same desires as Sadam.
So the WHITE SLAVES go off into a never ending battle.