This issue: February 13, 2012 (Vol. 17, No. 21)

It’s Not  (Only) the Economy . . . and We’re Not Stupid

BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

"It’s the economy, stupid,” was a useful slogan for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. Of course, it wasn’t really true. The Clinton campaign was about much more than the economy. It was about “ending welfare as we know it,” for example, and putting government on the side of those who “work hard and play by the rules”—all of this part of a broader redefinition of the Democratic party away from the failed liberalism of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. And the collapse of the Bush administration in 1992 was also, as it happens, about much more than the economy, which was in fact coming back strong in the fall of that year.

Since then, we’ve seen an epic Republican collapse in 2006. That happened despite pretty good economic ...

Obamacare vs. the Catholics

The administration’s breach of faith.

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

On the last weekend of January, priests in Catholic churches across America read extraordinary letters to their congregations. The missives informed the laity that President Obama and his administration had launched an assault on the church. In Virginia, Catholics heard from Bishop Paul Loverde, who wrote, “I am absolutely convinced that an unprecedented and very dangerous line has been crossed.” In Phoenix, Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote, “We cannot​—​we will not​—​comply with this unjust law.” In Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik wrote that President Obama had told Catholics, “To Hell with your religious beliefs.” Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria asked his flock to join him in the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, which concludes: By the Divine Power of God / cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits / who prowl about the world ...

Über Alles After All

Europe’s German future.

BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

Last week Germany reclaimed its status as the leading power in Europe. In the two years since it became apparent that Greece was, essentially, bankrupt, there have been dozens of emergency meetings of the countries that use the common European currency, the euro. Most of the euro-using states believe that Germany—with a booming industrial economy, vast trade surpluses, a reputation for fiscal probity, and a history that makes it reluctant to reject the counsel of France—ought to cover the bill. Germany has long argued that Greece must become competitive again by selling off state assets and cutting government handouts. More recently, Germany has added another demand—that EU authorities be empowered to discipline Greece and other delinquent countries. At the Brussels summit on January 30, the Germans won. 

Philip the Good

The royal consort as hero.

BY TRACY LEE SIMMONS

Last April’s wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, ubiquitously covered from Westminster Abbey by every medium from satellite to iPhone, served up a reminder that even we in this constitutional republic, where all are equal, can always be counted on to get caught up with the lives of those who are a good deal more equal than others.

This proves especially true of British royalty, whose rituals of continuity and, even more, decorum offer up an object of contemplation raised a bit above pop stars and celebrity criminals. While the coming crop of princes and princesses gives us the faces of the future, Philip Eade’s new biography explores the bumpy early life of one of the less visible yet markedly more ...

Dancing with Wolves

Joseph Epstein, bitten buyer

BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN

I knew a man who allowed his wife to buy the family car, a fact that always astonished me, and still does. Dealing with car salesmen, if I may say so and still elude the charge of sexism, is man’s work. Only men can be so stupid as to get caught up in the hopeless game of trying to defeat car salesmen in getting the best deal possible. This ritual of buying a car, which I myself have recently gone through, I call Dancing with Wolves, and only a man can be so foolish as to think he is likely to come away unbitten. 

I once wrote a short story that had a car salesman among its characters. I gave my salesman the name Sy Bourget (né Seymour Bernstein) and ...

First, I’d Like to Thank the Academy .  .  .

The Scrapbook has a well-documented weakness for acknowledgments. No, not the virtue of gratitude or the practice of recognizing indebtedness in general. We refer to those explanatory paragraphs, usually appended to the end of a book, where authors traditionally thanked the various libraries and archives they had consulted.

Except that, what really keeps The Scrapbook entertained is the fact that nowadays Acknowledgments are veritable Oscar-award-winning orgies of recognition. They are, in truth, prime specimens of what we might call the self-infatuation of the baby boom generation. Today, a typical Acknowledgments page will not just thank the ...