I was in college when the last social order went out, the WASP establishment, labelled "the Episcopacy" by one of my Harvard classmates. The bluebloods had screwed up bigtime with Vietnam, and had a series of scandals, from the assassinations to Watergate. Hillary Clinton was a staffer to the joint committee that brought down Nixon. Me and my Jewish homeboys at the Harvard Crimson newspaper all resented the exclusive ancien regime, and couldn’t wait to climb into the turrets…
Making way for the Meritocracy, a social order based on talent, excellence and achievement. My people did great. There had been quotas against Jewish inclusion in the old days, as my father remembers, now there were none. When Clinton became president, he appointed two Jews to the Supreme Court and had the most philosemitic presidency in history, according to David Frum, who was one of the Jewish cadre in Clinton’s successor administration, George W. Bush, which was meritocratic to the degree that it depended on Jewish brains, Jewish talent. The neocons arose in part out of hatred for quotas; I remember…
We modeled ourselves on the old establishment, and we could be parochial. The blind spot in the meritocracy has always been the Israel question. The meritocracy just doesn’t get it. Young Jews do; but not the establishment Jews. Yesterday on New York’s WNYC, host Brian Lehrer was skeptical of former spook Michael Scheuer‘s statement that the U.S. has to change its policies in the Middle East. Lehrer wondered whether distancing ourselves from Israel is not a form of appeasement to terrorists. Thus even liberal media Jews decline to confront the Israel-based component of the foreign policy disaster of the last seven years. When Scheuer was off the air, Lehrer’s pledge-drive partner, Bob Henley, a reporter, championed NPR’s coverage of Abu Ghraib and other Bush-Cheney tragedies. The vibe was, Bush and Cheney are the evil ones responsible for this Iraq debacle. Once again giving the neocons immunity– because they are part of the meritocracy, and they are our bad guys. They built the "parallel establishment," Jacob Heilbrunn wrote in his book.
The WSJ reports that Hillary’s desperate fundraising has been eased somewhat by the happy coincidence that AIPAC is having a meeting in Washington at the same time as her finance director is out drumming. Israel-focused hawks are all over Hillary’s campaign. Her establishment is continuous with the neocon one that Heilbrunn described; and this is why she has never fully renounced her Iraq war vote.
Obama’s movement is about a new social order. It is about multiculturalism, excellence without elitism, affirmative action, and even black assimilation. Obama is mixed-race, and home-schooled by his white mother for a time, and an Obama administration would be a melting pot. The message is that parochialism of any sort is hurting the world. His calls for change have made Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations anxious. Young Jews are not. They are embracing the new mood. Watch for the generational split to yawn, when it’s Obama vs. McCain, and the Jewish hawks follow Lieberman into the arms of the Republicans.
