Walt and Mearsheimer's ideas re the Israel lobby are increasingly becoming the conventional wisdom. Some day the culture will look back on the vituperation and obloquy of last year as so much sputtering. A sign of the restoration: The Harvard Political Review quoting Walt re lobbyists:
Yet to ban the social gatherings that permit lobbyists and elected
officials to mingle would be ineffective for the same reason that the
Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act failed to produce
meaningful reform. The law failed because it did not address the two
sources from which lobbyists derive their disproportionate influence:
money and personal relationships. Professor Stephen Walt of the Harvard
Kennedy School explained that the biggest obstacle in overcoming the
influence of lobbyists “is the well-entrenched role that money plays in
U.S. elections, which gives various interest groups an easy way to
influence the behavior of politicians. This will not change until there
is serious campaign finance reform, such as a complete federal funding
of elections.” Complete federal funding would certainly signal a death
knell to the lobbying industry, but it is highly unlikely that it could
muster sufficient support to pass Congress.
officials to mingle would be ineffective for the same reason that the
Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act failed to produce
meaningful reform. The law failed because it did not address the two
sources from which lobbyists derive their disproportionate influence:
money and personal relationships. Professor Stephen Walt of the Harvard
Kennedy School explained that the biggest obstacle in overcoming the
influence of lobbyists “is the well-entrenched role that money plays in
U.S. elections, which gives various interest groups an easy way to
influence the behavior of politicians. This will not change until there
is serious campaign finance reform, such as a complete federal funding
of elections.” Complete federal funding would certainly signal a death
knell to the lobbying industry, but it is highly unlikely that it could
muster sufficient support to pass Congress.
The key phrase here is author Gabriel Unger's class i.d.: Class of 2011. He's a sophomore. He's interested in the future, not calcified old constructs.
Walt's restoration will only occur if he pursues credible theses, and using language carefully.
Certainly; he can use Witty's posts as a model of clarity and credibility.
Witty, let me ask you a simple question: What would you have done as a young (non-Jewish) German in 1939? When you answer, please keep in mind that it is 1939, not 2008.
I don't have a clue as to what you are talking about.
I disagree with your opening phrase, that Walt/Mearsheimer's thesis is becoming conventional wisdom.
What specifically are you referring to?
They made a number of points, with conflicting implications.
The most suggestive was that the Israel Lobby "distorted" American foreign policy. The word "distort" indicates that there is some "natural" foreign policy, a static definition.
American policy is the result of dialog, dialectic, same as any other.
If debate was suppressed, why not hold the suppressors accountable for that: the republican Congress, and the republican administration heads.
"Complete federal funding would certainly signal a death knell to the lobbying industry, but it is highly unlikely that it could muster sufficient support to pass Congress."
Well we know the answer to getting federal funding thru congress….BWTTGASO.
Or wait till the lobbies turn Washington to ashes anyway.
"The most suggestive was that the Israel Lobby "distorted" American foreign policy. The word "distort" indicates that there is some "natural" foreign policy, a static definition.
"American policy is the result of dialog, dialectic, same as any other."
Yes, but in the absence of the the Israel lobby our government would put the interests of its own citizens ahead of those of Israel.
Re: "Witty, let me ask you a simple question: What would you have done as a young (non-Jewish) German in 1939? When you answer, please keep in mind that it is 1939, not 2008."
Posted by: charles Keating | August 12, 2008 at 01:56 PM
"I don't have a clue as to what you are talking about."
Posted by: Richard Witty | August 12, 2008 at 02:27 PM
——
Does anyone need anymore to see what type of human is Richard Witty? If not, go, send your sons and daughters of to the Middle East to keep this type of human alive. I'm sure he would not give anything for you or your children… But, go ahead, that's the American Dream.
The Sins of their fathers
Interesting Charles, thanks. A name to watch out for: Tanya Gold.
walt and mearsheimer and Alexander Solzhenitsyn….
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis119.html
Many Western liberal intellectuals were infatuated with Stalin’s brute power and didn’t want to know about their idol’s crimes. The French leftist thinker Jean-Paul Sartre even refused to admit the gulag existed.
Revealing the truth about the Allies’ role in supporting Stalin and his crimes would undermine the whole bogus mythology of World War II that has become the state religion for the political right in North America, Britain and Australia.
Those who considered the Jewish Holocaust a unique historical crime were not eager to bring attention to Stalin’s genocide lest it diminish or dilute their own people’s suffering.
Yes, and so Solzhenitsyn was banished from the ivy league, and Kissinger had Ford ignore him, etc; not to mention, his final big book on 200 years of Russian-communist-Jewish relations remains on unpublished after 7 years, though Solzhenitsyn is a Noble Prize winner.