Who Let the Dogs In? (56 page)

“It’s one of those inevocable [that’s what the transcript says] signs of autumn,” said Novak on
Crossfire.
“Year in and year out, we get the inevitable boomlet to give Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize. The admittedly incompetent president, who is supposed to be a terrific ex-president. Well, this year they slipped up and actually gave him the Peace Prize. So we are giving the peanut man from Georgia something else: our ‘Quote of the Day.’ ”

(They then run a clip of Carter being modest and amusing about getting the call from Sweden that morning. “I thought it was some joker who was calling,” he says.)

Novak continues: “You know, James, the Nobel Peace Committee’s been making mistakes on that prize, giving it to people like Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho. But Jimmy Carter’s one of the biggest mistakes. He’s the guy that was for the communists in Nicaragua and Fidel Castro in Cuba.”

James Carville, rendered speechless for once, finally stammered: “You know . . . I . . . It’s stunning that you would sit there—here’s a man who’s one of the most deeply religious people, goes around building houses for poor people, goes all over the world on his own time, monitors elections, tries to resolve disputes. I mean, what is it about people getting along that so irritates and aggravates you?”

“Ask Bill Clinton,” Novak replied. “He couldn’t stand him because he was bothering him all the time he was president.”

“Maybe he’s irritating to some people, but he’s a great man,” said Carville. “This guy, he gives his heart. He believes in these things. And I don’t understand what’s wrong with Jimmy Carter.”

Novak: “He screws up everything he touches.”

Maybe the exchange was worth it, just to hear Novak cite Bill Clinton as an authority on anything. Clinton and Carter have had a famously cool relationship ever since President Carter dumped a bunch of Cuban Mariel refugees on then-governor Clinton, who lost his next election largely because of all the trouble they caused.

Jimmy Carter needs no defense from me. The man is enough to give Christianity a good name. Following the Christian doctrine of works as well as faith, he has done immeasurable good in the world, and no mean-spirited attack from a petty pundit can diminish him.

The only reason I bother to note Novak’s nastiness is because it left such a bad taste with me. I was traveling on the West Coast that day, and all through the airports and in cabs and hotels, people were saying to one another with real pleasure: “Jimmy Carter got the Nobel Peace Prize. Isn’t that nice?” A genuine piece of good news in a world with little of it lately. It isn’t necessary to agree with Carter on everything to think he deserves the Peace Prize. Even the right-wing
Wall Street Journal
managed a negative editorial on what it feels are the inadequacies of Carter’s approach without demeaning the man or his accomplishments.

The implicit criticism of President Bush in the Nobel Committee’s selection (made explicit by the chairman) should not detract from this recognition of how long and how hard Jimmy Carter has worked for peace and human rights. I think he is an invaluable asset to the nation. Like Nelson Mandela, he has unique stature, and wherever he goes to help with an election or to try to work out a problem, he is welcomed and listened to. In this season when the dogs of preemptive war are running loose, it is good to hear Carter pointing out the obvious: that we would be better off working with the rest of the world to disarm Saddam Hussein rather than annihilating his whole country.

Not only do we still not have answers to basic questions about invading Iraq—why now, how are we going to pay for it, and what do we do when we win?—but it also seems to me the tragedy in Bali is further evidence that we need to concentrate on al-Qaeda. We’re sure not finished with them, and it’s dangerous to take our eye off that ball.

Now that President Bush has submitted to the formality of getting a resolution through Congress and urged action in the U.N., apparently we are all supposed to forget that he announced initially he didn’t need to do either one. It’s as though administration officials think they’re characters in the
Men in Black
movies: All they have to do is take out one of those little silver jiggers to zap our memory.

October 2002

Dick Cheney

V
ICE
PRESIDENT
CHENEY’S
Christmas card this year not only offers best wishes in this holiday season but also bears the following quotation from Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention: “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” Food for thought there: a heavy meal, in fact.

Interpreting what the Lord intended by one thing or another has always been a dicey pastime. Ten years ago, we had one of those outbreaks where lots of people do ridiculous things and then claim it was because the Lord told them to. That was the summer a family of twenty people from Floydada, Texas, got naked, piled into a GTO (five kids in the trunk), and drove to Vinton, Louisiana, where they ran into a tree. Surprised hell out of the Vinton cops to see twenty nekkid people get out of one car. The family said the Lord told them to do it. There was so much of that kind of thing going around, I developed a theory about a dangerous Lord impersonator being on the loose.

I’m not saying that either Cheney or Franklin has heard from a Lord impersonator, but just for starters on this empire biz, it was the Roman Em-pire that crucified Jesus. Then your Turkish Empire, not too tasty. Your Mo-guls, ditto. Aztec Empire, fairly liberal on human sacrifice. Of the colonial empires—French, Dutch, British, Portuguese—all were contenders for the title of Worst Ever at different times and in different places—but I think the crown probably goes to the Belgian Empire under King Leopold, believed to be responsible for the deaths of ten million Africans when the entire Congo was Leopold’s private plantation.

Of course, in the United States, we like to believe in American exceptionalism, to see ourselves as the Shining City on the Hill, a light and beacon unto all the world, and—as it says on that statue given us by our friends, the French—opening our arms to the world’s tired, hungry, and poor. We would naturally prefer to forget that the country was founded on genocide and slavery, but we have among us many nags and scolds who keep bringing it up, especially when we’re having one of our snits of American triumphalism.

All I am saying is I wouldn’t be all too sure about the Lord’s intentions regarding empire. Just a cheery Christmas thought brought to you by the vice president and me.

My favorite Christmas card this year says: “We wish you a Merry Christmas” three times on the front. On the inside it says, “AND a Happy New Year . . . or not . . . Depending on what the elves get for Christmas. After all, we wished you a Merry Christmas three times! Only Santa does this for grins.”

I have not heard of one good crèche fight this year. We can normally count on a peppy crèche controversy to add to the seasonal joy and festive cheer. This occurs when some citizen or public official suffering from an excess of Goodwill Toward Men puts up a religious symbol, often a crèche, on public property. Then the ACLU or somebody files a lawsuit, and everybody gets mad at everybody else, leading to slightly less Peace on Earth. As Ann Richards once observed of a controversial star on top of the Texas state Capitol: “Oh, I hate to see them take that down. This could be the only chance we’ll ever get to find three wise men in that building.”

My favorite Christmas visitor (so far) was the chief of the Pojoaque, New Mexico, Volunteer Fire Department. I love to hear true tales from the Pojoaque fire department (the time the food warehouse burned down and all the popcorn popped is a special favorite). The chief observes that they’re getting more and more calls from people who don’t have a fire, or even a raccoon in the house, but from people who are sick. The fire trucks come with EMTs (emergency medical technicians), who can handle any number of routine medical emergencies (if you can have a routine emergency) like a person in a diabetic coma or in need of a regular shot. The sick person then refuses to let the firefighters call an ambulance because the ambulance and the emergency room cost money, whereas the fire department does not charge. As a consequence, fire departments across the country are now becoming the front line for a medical system in increasing disrepair.

So if some homeless woman by any chance had a child in a stable in Pojoaque last night, most likely neither shepherds nor wise men were summoned, but instead volunteer firefighters. Which makes me very happy because I think volunteer firefighters are, by and large, a perfectly wonderful set of people. Merry Christmas to all.

December 2003

Dr. Liz Karlin

D
R
. LIZ KARLIN,
that lovely soul, dead of a brain tumor at fifty-four. Happened in a matter of a couple months. “Oh, you know Liz, she hated doctors,” said our friend Donna Shalala, who is now Secretary of HHS.

They called from Wisconsin and said, “Didn’t you know Liz Karlin, the abortion doctor?”

What a stupid way to remember Liz Karlin, one of the most life-affirming people I’ve ever run across. I knew her because ten years ago we went on a trek together in the Himalayas in northern India. Liz and I were tent mates, which is an awfully good way to get to know someone well over a short period of time.

We were all allowed one duffel bag on that trip, packed with nothing to spare. Liz brought a tiny bag for her own needs and a very large bag stuffed with medication for the people of the area. We were trekking in places where Westerners were seldom seen. (Who can forget the irremediably blond, blue-eyed Betsy Levin, with three cameras strung around her neck, being mistaken for a Japanese? What else could a person with three cameras be, thought the villagers.)

As we hiked through tiny mountain villages, all the little children would run out to greet us, lined up in rows, saying in their silver-bell-like voices, “Sa-laam, sa-laam!” I can’t even remember how Liz did this, but I think sometimes it was without an interpreter—she would say, “I am a doctor, bring me all the sick babies.” Can you say that in Jammu and Kashmir without an interpreter? I think Liz could.

And they would bring all the sick babies. It was an area where people heated with firewood but the chimneys didn’t work well, so the babies breathed in too much smoke. Liz would listen with her stethoscope and then diagnose, “pneumonia baby, pneumonia baby,” passing them down the line to this ridiculously unlikely crew of nurses she more or less instantly trained: Victor Kovner, the noted libel lawyer; Alice Rivlin, the economist now on the Federal Reserve; Carol Bellamy, a pol from New York; me, a journalist from Texas. And I’m here to tell you that when Liz Karlin told you to help a baby, you helped that baby, whether you’d ever helped a sick person before in your life or not.

I think we mostly gave them antibiotics—Lord knows how she ever got all those meds through customs—but the truly high entertainment was Liz Karlin then proceeding to talk with the mothers on what they should do so their babies wouldn’t get sick again. If you think there’s such a thing as a language barrier, you never saw Liz Karlin trying to save a baby. And don’t get the idea this was some kind of “Me Big White Medicine Chief” routine. Remember how she felt about doctors?