A Conversation With Lewis Lapham

Photos by Chris Shonting INTERVIEW BY BLAKE BAILEY Lewis Lapham is one of our most distinguished editors and essayists. Called “a connoisseur of the perfect word,” he was editor of Harper’s magazine for almost 30 years, assuming emeritus status in 2006 to start his own journal, Lapham’s Quarterly. Contributors to the current (spring 2008) issue include Ben Franklin, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and the Notorious B.I.G. Lapham’s many books include Money and Class in America (1988), Waiting for the Barbarians (1997), Gag Rule (2004), and Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration (2006), in which he makes a cogent case for impeaching our present blockhead in chief. Something of an aristocrat himself, Lapham would seem an unlikely liberal. His great-grandfather founded Texaco, his grandfather was mayor of San Francisco, and his father was a shipping tycoon; while the United Nations charter was being drafted at the San Francisco Opera House in 1945, the ten-year-old Lapham “was passing canapés to Jack Kennedy and Molotov and Alger Hiss,” as he recalls. Motivated, perhaps, by a sense of noblesse oblige, Lapham has devoted much of his career to exposing the more unsavory aspects of his own heady social class. “I know the ethos of the American oligarchy of which young Bush is a servant,” he remarks. “He’s an agent of the selfish greed that usually overtakes a fat and stupid oligarchy.” Vice: What led to your decision to leave Harper’s and start Lapham’s Quarterly? Lewis Lapham: It’s something I wanted to do for years. I did a prototype of the quarterly in 1997 for the History Book Club, which they published as a book. It did quite well. They published it first as their own book and then it was bought by St. Martin’s and I think that, between the two editions, it sold at least 15,000 copies. That was very encouraging. But I also had a great deal of fun doing it. It’s called The End of the World and you can find it at St. Martin’s or Amazon. In your essay “The Gulf of Time,” you mention the surfeit of “prioritized” and “context-sensitive” information and deplore the lack of a broader historical context. Could you discuss how Lapham’s Quarterly addresses the problem? My hopes for the journal are to bring the notion of the historical perspective into people’s minds. When I was at Harper’s, I would get articles and essays, and one of the things that I always encouraged the writers to do is to put in some kind of historical background. In other words, set it in context. I mean, things don’t just appear out of nowhere. Our journal is clearly not comprehensive or academic. It’s simply meant to open the door to the historical consciousness. To bring to bear the perspective of history is not only fun but also very comforting. If you can imagine that people have been here before and will be again, you become part of a bigger self. Somewhere you mentioned Aristotle’s point about there being a cycle whereby an oligarchy becomes rancid and gives way to tyranny, which in turn devolves into anarchy, and then turns into some form of democracy, and then oligarchy again, and so on. Do you think such cycles are inevitable? If so, why go to the trouble of trying to alter them via the marketplace of ideas? [laughs] I’m not sure I can alter them. But perhaps people can take that idea and say, “Well, if that’s true, maybe we should do something to at least forestall the coming of the next cycle, or at least know what we’re in for and learn to live with that.” The only thing we can really change, of course, is the past. And to re-perceive the past in a way that is useful to us in the present helps to give us maybe a different or better idea of how to proceed further. Do you think George Bush is the worst president in history? I wouldn’t know that. I don’t know enough history. I would certainly say that he’s the worst president in my experience. I’m old enough to go back to having voted for Eisenhower, so that’s a fairly large number of presidents. I was alive when FDR was president, but I was ten when he died, so I didn’t really get a sense of him. But I would say that, to my knowledge, or in my lifetime, Bush is the worst. You’ve mentioned the favorable response to your essay “The Case for Impeachment.” What was the tenor of the negative responses, if any? There really wasn’t much negative. The negative was that it was a pipe dream, and it was foolish, and that impeachment never was going to happen and I was not wise to the ways of the world in Washington. And from the National Review side, another example of “dreaming-idiot liberal nonsense.”

How would you characterize the true motives of the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq? Was there any idealism involved, or was it purely cynical? I think there was probably an element of idealism in it. I think the notion of bringing democracy to bloom like flowers in the deserts of Mesopotamia was probably part of the idea. I think also part of the idea was that we live in such a dangerous world filled with nuclear weapons that somebody has to step up to the standard of the old Roman Empire and impose something along the lines of a Pax Romana or Pax Americana on the world. Otherwise anarchists can appear with nuclear bombs in their suitcases and so on. The world is in need of a firm hand, and a hand that is also kindly and just, and who better than the Americans to be that hand? I think that in the minds of people like Charles Krauthammer or William Kristol and possibly in the mind of Bush there was something of that. I think there was also a good deal of cynicism in the motive. I think the notion of access to the oil reserves in Iraq was certainly part of the equation. I also think they thought they could do it easily. One of my relatives—my great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle—was a man named Henry Dearborn— He led the American invasion of Canada during the War of 1812. That’s right. They expected him to take Canada in a matter of months. And they thought that the Canadians would welcome him with flowers. It’s the same story! The Canadians, there are very few of them, they love us, they really want to be Americans, and we can take the place—it’s a cakewalk. Same speeches coming out of Washington, and they were in the orders that Madison sent Dearborn. Dearborn was in retirement. He’d been the secretary of war in both the Jefferson administrations. He was doing very well—he was a collector of customs in Boston, a magnificent plum of federal patronage. And suddenly—he’s in his 60s—and he’s appointed commander in chief of the American Army. There was no American Army in 1812—there are state militias, many of whom deemed the Canadians their good friends. He had a very hard time of it, but also that same notion that it was going to be an easy thing to do. So I think they [Bush et al.] thought the invasion of Iraq was going to be more like a Pentagon trade show. What, ideally, should our response to 9/11 have been? Would any military aggression have been justified? In Afghanistan, for instance? The mistake was to call it a war, I think. The War on Terror is war on an unknown enemy and an abstract noun. It’s like the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty. I think had we looked at it as a criminal matter, and not gotten so excited about war, it would have helped. A lot. It would have particularly helped if we had confined our police raid to Afghanistan. You’re awfully hard on the Clintons. Of Hillary, you’ve said, “I don’t have any respect or regard or hope for her.” Of Bill, you’ve said, “Another man of all seasons content to promote the ritual fictions of a sham democracy.” You also call them “bandits.” Would you elaborate a little? Well, I wrote a lot of columns about the Clintons when he was in office, and I guess my favorite description of him was as a piñata: You could hit him and anything would come out—scandal, gossip, friendship, a speech. I think of them as terminal narcissists. I can remember when Gore was running for office in 2000, he made a speech here in New York, and Clinton came to make a speech as well. It’s the middle of the summer, 2000, Clinton is talking to the entire New York media somewhere down at NYU. The entire speech was about himself. He didn’t mention Gore’s name once. And here we were supposed to be in the middle of an election that was important to win. I think of the Clintons as being out for only themselves. I still remember the photograph of the 16-wheeler truck that was pulled up in front of the White House when they departed, carrying with them everything that could be moved. Surely you like something about Bill—I mean, he does have some pretty lovable qualities. I think Bill was a tremendous talk-show host—I think of him the same way I think of Oprah. He’s a very clever politician. I’ve met him a couple times, and he’s the kind of person who can remember everybody’s name having only seen them once before. He’s formidable. But I don’t know what he’s about except the greater glory of Bill Clinton. Was he aware of the disparaging things you’d written? Did he respond to that in any way when you met? He didn’t respond to that at all. I’m not sure whether he was aware of it or not, but it was a White House dinner. You go through the receiving line and then there’s a dinner. I’d never met him before this point. It was right in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky story. It was like only two weeks old at the time, and the entire Hay Adams Hotel was taken over by the British press. Fleet Street descended like a flock of crows. People were searching through Washington for Monica’s underwear, and the only place in America that Monica was not discussed was at dinner at the White House. Never came up. It was raining and I had to get the last plane back to New York. So I stood in the receiving line to shake hands with both the president and Hillary, but the line was moving slowly, and time was running out, so I left. And just as I was going through the door out of the state dining room, Clinton broke away from the receiving line and came over to me, shook my hand and said, “Lewis, if you hadn’t come to this dinner, it wouldn’t have meant anything at all.” [laughs] It was spectacular! You must have been charmed. Of course! The fact that he even knew my name, much less what I looked like… Had he said to me, “Look. If you’ll just step into the Oval Office for a moment and consider writing me a check for $200,000,” I probably would have written it. That he is the greatest money-raiser of all time is… I could well understand it. He has that kind of charm and I’m sure he could talk almost anybody into anything. Do you still think that Al Gore is just another “well-known brand name” of the American plutocracy like Bush? I’ve softened on the subject of Gore. I know I said that, and I know I thought that. I voted for Nader in 2000, but I think that was a mistake. I think had Gore been the president of the United States when 9/11 occurred, we would not be in Iraq now. I don’t know whether that’s just wishful thinking or not, but certainly the people that would have been around him in the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department wouldn’t have been the cadre of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney and those guys. You’re friends with Ralph Nader. What do you think of his persistent presidential aspirations? Do you think there’s something a bit quixotic and annoying about it? I think there’s something quixotic about it. I’m not sure it’s annoying because I don’t think he will do enough damage for it to be annoying. I admire the impulse, and I’ve told him this. I’ve said, “Ralph, why don’t you run for the Senate?” I think he’d be a strong voice. We have three branches of the government, and there aren’t very many real voices of conscience that are both eloquent and forceful in the Senate. So that’s my view on it. What did he say when you made the suggestion? He said no. He said it wouldn’t have enough effect. May I ask who you’ll vote for in the general election, given your druthers? Barring unforeseen accidents and further disclosure? Right. If the election were being held today [March 6, 2008]. If it were today, I’d vote for Obama. I think that there is at least a chance of some kind of energy being brought into our politics. I’m impressed by the kids that are excited by Obama, and the thought that politics matters. The thought that politics is, after all, what we make our freedom with. Freedom is not given by God, it’s given by our political structures. But does Obama have enough experience? He’s only been in the Senate for three or four— He may be insufficiently cynical to know how hard it is to move the furniture. On the other hand, there’s at least a chance of a different attitude toward politics—something not as cynical. That—to use his own phrase—words do matter. I am a person who is in love with words. I like writers and fine speeches, and Obama gives a marvelous speech. And I think words do matter. If he can bring some of that energy into our political life, all power to him. Besides, I don’t think anybody is sufficiently experienced to be president of the United States. Not even George Bush the First? With his résumé? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think anybody’s prepared for it. And you have to remember how young the people were in Philadelphia, how young Jefferson was when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. How young most of them were in Philadelphia in 1787. I think the best-prepared president ever—I read this somewhere—was Millard Fillmore. He’d been vice president and he’d been in the House of Representatives for ten years. He knew everybody. And I think he’d be on the short list of worst presidents. What do you say to ambitious young men who come asking you for introductions to Woody Allen or the doorman at Balthazar? Fortunately, I don’t know either Woody Allen or the doorman at Balthazar. But I am more than happy to introduce them to editors that I know, or anybody to whom they might make some professional connection. Your daughter married a prince, your son Andrew married former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney’s daughter, and your son Winston dates Amanda Hearst. Having yourself been born into considerable wealth and privilege, do you feel sympathy for those who are somewhat more obliged than you to clamber up the greasy pole? Oh yeah, sure I do. That’s the American story. It just depends which greasy pole. All poles are greasy. I was discussing this just yesterday on the radio with David McCullough in terms of his book on John Adams, which just aired as an HBO miniseries. Adams comes from a very, very humble background in Massachusetts—unlike Jefferson, who’s something of a Virginia slaveholding aristocrat with a taste for the refinements of Paris. All of the Founding Fathers are climbing a greasy pole of one kind or another, but the thing that possessed Adams was the idea of honor, of fame, of being a meaningful servant of the republic. He had a very strong notion of duty to what he construed to be the American idea. And so did Jefferson, although Jefferson was, in the context of his day, privileged. So was Washington. Washington was married to the richest woman in the colonies. And all through the Revolutionary War, the Bank of England continued to honor the payments due his wife. He also continued to order his clothes and pipes and Madeira and so on.

So you don’t have an “old money” bias? No, I’m entirely in sympathy—I’m not satiric about the supposedly vulgar nouveau riche. The nouveau riche are actually much more fun to be around than the faded gentry living on the memory of Pennsylvania Railroad in 1875, right? You’ve mentioned attending gatherings of the Bohemian Club. Did you consider yourself more conservative then, or what? Because the Bohemian Club is pretty notoriously right-wing. I went once and then took my name off the list of prospective members. My father was a member, my uncle was a member, my grandfather was a member, and so my name was entered on the waiting list at a relatively early age. I was in my late 20s or early 30s, and one has to become older to become a member of the Bohemian Club. I was in the queue, but then I went—it was either 1967 or 1968—and I was not impressed. Is it as wild and strange as I’ve heard, with people like Kissinger taking part in dirty skits? It has that element. I wrote about it somewhere, in my book about money and class. I think I devote a page to it. It did have those elements then, but my information is very old. They could go what they call “over the wall” to a small town on the Russian River that I believe was Monte Rio. It’s a resort for the sporting gentlemen in the company. And they would have ribald skits. It’s a large place—several thousand acres of a redwood grove, and it has a valley running through the middle of it, and in the woods there are a lot of different encampments. You belong to the Bohemian Club, but then you also become a member of a camp. It’s like becoming a member of a fraternity at college, and they’re all different. Some of them are musicians, some are card players, some are business executives, some of them like to drink. It kind of depends on which crowd you’re with. In your essay “Tentacles of Rage,” you mention that 40 million Americans earn less than $10 an hour, 66 percent of the population earns less than $45,000 a year, and that 2 million people—mostly black and Hispanic—are in prison. What general measures would you recommend to correct this ethos? Certainly the raising of the minimum wage. I would think that would be a good way to put money into the economy. I would get it over $10 an hour. And also, it’s a matter of education. The strongest resource of any country is its people, and so the money you can invest in their health and intelligence is money well spent. I would try to put money into the educational system, and that would mean paying teachers more. I would try to put money into some kind of a single-payer health-care system. Something more along the lines of the systems in place in France and Canada. Invest money in the infrastructure. It is, after all, a commonwealth, so clean water and a healthy environment are good for the whole common enterprise. This is actually the notion that Hamilton had in mind when he set up the first national bank, although he was entirely aware that many swindlers would take advantage of the assumption of the revolutionary debt. On the other hand, he was trying to put money into general circulation. In the same essay, you mention the right-wing foundations that have made “generous distributions of academic programs and visiting professorships.” What about the dominant left-wing ethos of most American universities? To what extent do you think the “monster of multiculturalism” really is a monster, insofar as it tends to underplay, say, the roles of Dead White Males in shaping western civilization? Do you acknowledge that there’s something of a left-wing bias on most American university campuses? I’m not so sure about that. I went to Yale from 1952 to 1956, and there was a big student demonstration, but it was pro-McCarthy! And that was the first student demonstration I ever saw. About 16 years ago, I went up to have a debate with Richard Brookhiser [a right-wing pundit/historian]. He’s a very smart guy. We were debating God and Man at Yale, Buckley’s thesis, and I was taking what would be called the liberal position. I lost. Part of that is because Brookhiser is a better debater than I am, but also part of that is because there is—at least at Yale—something profoundly conservative. I wrote a history of the college for the Yale Alumni Magazine’s 300th-anniversary issue. And I mean conservative in a good way—more of an Edmund Burke sort of conservatism than a Rush Limbaugh conservatism. Well, but in terms of teaching so-called liberal arts—for example, do you think that the importance of certain writers should be downplayed because of their supposed ideological positions? Just off the top of my head, there’s the argument that Joseph Conrad reflects a sort of racist colonialism… I don’t accept that view. I would teach Conrad and not teach some of the more dogmatic leftist writers. I guess your point about multiculturalism could be right, because my children all went to good prep schools and good colleges, and the assigned reading did have a politicized multicultural bias to it. That’s true. And I think that’s a bad thing. I think you should try to read literature and not tracts. The stuff that I’m trying to put into the history quarterly—I want it to be good writing. I want people to read Tolstoy, even if it’s only a little bit, or read Burke. I really don’t care if it’s left or right, if it’s well written. I think you learn from literature more than you do from sermons.