| 来源类型 | Article
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| 规范类型 | 评论
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| Working Lunch: Frum the Right |
| Eli Lehrer; karina-rollins
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| 发表日期 | 2003
|
| 出版年 | 2003
|
| 语种 | 英语
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| 摘要 |
David Frum, a Harvard educated lawyer, is one of the most iconoclastic and out-
spoken pundits in Washington. From an almost universally admired book about
the culture of the 1970s to a sometimes snarky, always perceptive, daily journal for National Review Online, his writing has won fans all across the political spectrum. Between 2000 and 2002, Frum served as a speechwriter in the Bush administration. Currently, he is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His next book—the first major memoir to come out of the Bush White House—will appear in the first week of 2003. He spoke with TAE senior editors Eli Lehrer and Karina Rollins inhis office at AEI.
TAE: What’s your assessment of how well President Bush is doing on the war on terror?
Frum: He has probably fallen below the standard of perfection but we don’t ask for perfection. The country has a degree of foreign policy consensus unlike anything that any living person has ever seen. Although I’m sure there will be many setbacks and disappointments along the way, I think he has brought the war to the enemy. He will successfully destroy the terror regimes and he will track down and find and kill the authors of the September 11 attacks.
TAE: You have a new book coming out in January called The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. Can you tell us about it?
Frum: The book is a character sketch of President Bush, told from the point of view of someone who got to know him only at the time of the election. I had not worked on his campaign, I hadn’t had a connection with him beforehand, I had absolutely not expected to be working for him. I had a lot of hesitation about taking the job. So the book is a story of him, but it’s also a story of how one person changed his understanding of Bush and came to feel respect for this President as the right man for this job in this time.
TAE: Do Americans have the backbone for an extended war on terror, and will they be willing to make sacrifices?
Frum: Yes! Emphatically yes. In many ways the sacrifices and risks that are going to be demanded of them during the war on terror are much less than those demanded of them during the Cold War. President Bush is asking Americans for about 4 percent of the gross domestic product for defense and security. During the Cold War they paid, at various points, two and a half times as much. The risks are nothing like the risks Americans faced between the 1950s and 1980s, when their cities were targeted by weapons of megadeath. Americans have proven themselves superbly resilient, very patient, and very brave.
TAE: You recently wrote that, “September 11 killed the race card in the U.S. and has made it more patriotic in general.” How steadfast is this patriotism? Many would say that the newfound unity after 9/11 has already begun to crumble.
FRUM: The mood after 9/11 was so exalted and so unusual. Obviously, you cannot live forever in that kind of intense patriotism. We had to get back to politics as normal in which the actions of the government are constantly held up to scrutiny. As to race, I think you see that the two African-American candidates who tried to get ahead by unscrupulous means—Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard—were both repudiated in primaries in overwhelmingly black districts. They were replaced by other liberal Democrats but not people who are not into the racial nationalism that McKinney and Hilliard tried to appeal to.
TAE: You wrote in another recent article that the Muslim community in North America must be “the first line of defense against Islamic terror.” But will this happen? The Yemeni community in Buffalo turned in six terror suspects, but it split their whole community. What other evidence is there to believe that Muslims in the U.S. will, indeed, be this first line of defense?
Frum: I didn’t say they will be. I said they must be. I am somebody who does not believe in the “Conflict of Civilizations” explanation of this war. The evil ideas of Osama bin Laden have as much Western as Eastern provenance. That Muslims have moved to the West means that they like things about the West that are deeply connected to Western values. Choices are going to have to be made. We have to jettison this multiculturalism of the 1990s that says “All beliefs are equally valid; all cultures and all ways of doing things are just as good.” We do need to reaffirm what we believe in. |
| 主题 | Uncategorized
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| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/working-lunch-frum-the-right/
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| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
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| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
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| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/238241
|
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Eli Lehrer,karina-rollins. Working Lunch: Frum the Right. 2003.
|
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