May 16, 1994 $2.25 U.S./$2.75 Canada

RIGHT OF ,PASSAGE T f you judge the South African elec-

tion by the uerformance of those

l w h o administered it, it's hard not to see'it as a costly disaster that could well plunge the country into a PO- j ~IQ-WEQDUMT litical crisis. Major logistical foul-ups in i ANNA FELS the first two days meant that voting could 1

JANET MALCOLM'

not take place at nearly 30 percent of the !

stations in some regions, and there was 'DISCOVERY"NA "4 ,

a serious shortage of paper ballots. There were charges that hundreds of thousands of ballots were spoiled in the KwaZulu/ Natal area because of a shortage of the stickers adding the Inkatha Freedom Par- ty to the ballot.

But if you judge the election by the perseverance of millions who waited pa- tiently for the polling booths to open,

POETRY WINNERS \. '

then it's impdssible to see the process as anything but a victory for the will of the people. The soul of South Africa's transi- tion to democracy is to be found in those voters, many of them aged and infirm, who refused to budge when polling sta- tions failed to open. They had been wait- ing all their lives for this moment-noth- ing would deter them from making the "X" that signified their passage to"ful1 citizenship in the land of their birth.

The mood countrywide was peaceful, festive and in some areas jubilant, but more often serious and appropriately solemn. From illiterate rural women in destitute homelands to Johannesburg's well-heeled bourgeoisie, from edgy young township comrades to stolid Afrikaner farmers, there was an overwhelming sense of the historic moment. It was as if all South Afri- cans, black, white and p-

2 0

voting for the first "coloreds" alike, were :

time in their lives. 0 377536 II

May 16,1994 The Nation sinee 1865. 65 1

CONTENTS. > ,

Volume 258, Number 19

LETTERS 658 Managing Pols . Patrick Woodall 650 and Nancy Watzrnan

New Openings for Single-Payer Naftali Bendavid 649 Right of Passage 665 The “Social Responsibility” Gap: 651 Many Nixons Andrew Kogkind Sweatshops Behind the Labels Laurie Udesky 652 R.I.P., R.M.N. Gore Vidal

EDITORIALS 662 Rebuild the Coalition:

653 .One Last Hurrah Robert Scheer 653 Clinton & Co.: Credibility Trap David Corn

COLUMNS 654 More Awful News Calvin Dillin 655 Minority Report Christopher Hitchens 656 Subject to Debate Katha Pollitt

ARTICLES 657 Playing the Denial Game: ,

The Managed Care Scam I Suzanne Gordon and Judith Shindul-Rothschild

BOOKS & THE ARTS 670 Malcolm: The Silent Woman:

673 Prizewinning Poets-1994 675 Saramago: The Gospel According

To Jesus Christ rlan Staians 676 Hedrick: Harriet Beecher Stowe:

A Life Martha Sakfon 678 Television Lewis core

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Anna Fels

Illustrations by Randall Enos

Editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel (acting); Victor Navasky (on leave)

Executive Editor, Richard Lingeman; Associate Editors, Andrew Kopkind. Katha Pollitt, Bruce SHaplro, Micah L. Sifry; Lrterary Editors, Elsa Dixler, Art Winslow; Poetry>Edrtor, Grace Schulman; Managing Editor, JoAnn Wypijewski; Copy Chiefi Roane Carey; Copy Edrtor, Judith Long; Assist-

ALzapiedi, Steven Dudley, Marc Elliott, Emily Gordon, Eyal Press, John ant to the Edrtor, D e m s Selby; Interns, Michael Abowd ( Wmhrngton), David

Showalter, Sandy Wood.

Departments: d,-hitecture, Jane Holtz Kay; Art, Arthur C. Danto; Frctron, John Leonard; F i l m , Stuart Klawans; Music, David Hamilton, Edward W. Sad, Gene Santoro; Televrsion, Lewis Cole; Theater, Thomas M. D~sch; Bureaus: Washrngfon, David Corn; Europe, Daniel Singer; Budapest, Mikl6s Vhos ; Tokyo, Karl Taro Greenfeld; Southern Afrrca, Mark Gevisser. Corpo- rations, Robert Sherrill, Defense, Michael T. Hare; Columnists and Regular Contributors: Alexander Cockburn (Beat the DeviI), Christopher Hitchens (Minority Report), Aryeh Neier (Watching Rights), Elizabeth Pochoda (Readmg Around), Katha Pollitt (SubJect to Debate), Edward Sorel, Calvin Trillin; Contrrbutmg Edztors: Lucia Annunziata, , f i Bird, George’Black, Robert L. Borosage, Stephen F. Cohen, Slavenka Drakulic Thomas Ferguson, Doug Henwood, Max Holland, Molly Ivins, Joel Rogers, lrkpatrick Sale, Robert Scheer, Herman Schwartz. Ted Solotaroff, Gore Vidal, Jon Wiener, Amy Wilentz; Edrtorraf Board: Norman Birnbaum, hchard Falk, Frances FitzGerald, Phihp Green. Elinor Langer, Deborah W. Meier, Toni Morrison, Michael Pertschuk, Elizabeth Pochoda, Neil Postman, Marcus G. Raskin, David Weir, Roger Wilkins. Editor at h r g e , Richird Pollak.

Manuscripts: Address to “The Edtor.” Not responsible for the return of un- sohcited manuscripts unless accompanied by addressed, stamped envelopes. Unsolicited faxed manuscripts will not be acknowledged unless accepted.

EDITORIALS.’

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\ *

Many Nixons And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ. And seem a saint when most Iplay the devil.

W Richard III

hat becomes a legend most? Over the course of dmost fifty years in public life, Richard Nixon created an extraordinary wardrobe of political costumes: the “respectable Republican

cloth coat:’ the gaudy uniform of an imperial President, the executioner’s hood, the felon’s stripes, the statesman’s man-

tle-and now, most marvelously, the shroud of a saint. Old Nixons were succeeded by countless new Nixons following one another down the decades in dizzying parade. If he was a devil in disguise, the disguise was perfect.

Nixon’s unending dissimulations practically provoked the . new discourse of psychohistory, which so titillated scholars

in the 1970s and suggested a way of understanding Nixon as a phenomenon of mind rather than a practitioner of politics. That academic conceit follows Njxon into the obituaries: All that we have witnessed in his career, from the persecution of Alger Hiss through the six-plus crises to his self-rehabilitation after Watergate, were products of an unloving mother,, a d$- class6 upbringing, self-loathing, social awkwardness and psy-

652 ' The Nation. May I d , I994

chological repression. Tales of his batty behavior in the final days of the White House-praying on his knees with Henry

, Kissinger, gnawing frantically at a childproof aspirin bottle in the middle of the night-describe the Nixon legend best. . I ,The habit of removing Nixon from'history and.placing.him in a purely psychological dimension has led commentators to the most outrageous estimations of his genius. In fact he was an intensely political President whose actions and policies have had as great an impact on American life and world his- tory as any 'of .his presidentid peers. If he had a principal talent, it was a certain sense of the geopolitics of his age,lwhich cambe ennobled as visionky only in comparison with the low standardtof: his.predecessors and successors. 1 :;y i : I

:\$hat sense ,led him 'to an understanding that the :eadl of &erica's dominance of the global game of power'ivas"in sight. :The enervating 'experience of Vietnam and the co'inci- dbrit rise of a ' rejuvenated Japan and Western Europe de- manded' a,downsizing of imperial commitments that'is Still underjway. It required an end to'the war in'Indochina; reduc- tions'in military expenditures (dl six Nixon budgets hadsub- Stantial defense cuts) and, hn overhaul of US, relatioris with the' Soviet Union and China-at the very least. Nixonwas hardly the only one in public life to grasp those realities; but

' he wps the one whd grasped them and happened to be at the nation's helm.

His most critical response was a kind of coup he staged on the global economy in '1971 by devaluing the dollar and' ef- fectively scrapping the system of monetary relations that had been in effect since the end of World War 11: (The so-called Bretton Woods structure had been devised in large' part by Keynes, and it was Nixon's bold "shock"'that led him to de- cldre-to most Republicans' horror--"We are all Keynesians

' now:') But) fearful that devaluation would lead to-inflation ,(themby threatening his re-election as well as imperiling G.O.P. bondholders), Nixon topped the shock with wage and price controls. He offered nothing to replace the ever-expanding' cbld war militaiy budgets that had fueled the American econ- omy since the end of World War 11: The ensuing mess greatly accelerated the machinery of decline that has caused' much misqry and from which, it is fair to say, America will never recover-not to the level of pre-Nixon prosperity.' '

Nixon was not always the reactionary bogyman that many' dnce believed: His domestic policies in areas of social welfare and the environment were often more liberal than his succes-, sors'; but of course he faced a Democratic'Congress and an enraged citizenry. And then he bombed and bullied his way

, _ ,

m WHAT WE LIVE WITH

1 ,TODAY BECAUSE OF NIXON

at Buchanan, MIRVed missiles, Diahe Sawyer#, P 20,180 names on the Vietnam Wd, G. Gordon Lid- dy, He& Kissinger, the E.P.A., David Gergen, WilJih Safire, the Khmer. Rouge, William Rehnquist, August0 Pinochet, M.I.A.s, the War on Drugs, Woodward and 5

Bernstein, John McLaughlin; -gate. DAVID CORN

, + ,

b , ' ,' , I , . L ' ' I < .,

I .

through Cambodia and.,Chile and slaughtered Americans and Vietnarhese. The point of his Sino-Russian gambits was to play off one against ,the other while keeping ultimate control. He didn't end the cold war anytmore than Reagan did, 'd- thougii both take-and are given-the credit. - l . II - p i , - .

Richard Nixon was, at the end as at the beginning, a mon- ster of a million disguises. But so are they all monsters; it's just the disguises that change. ANDREW KOPKIND

n April 23'1 was'awakened early,in the morning by a call from BBC radio; Richard MiIhous Nixon had met his terminal crisis peacefully in t h ~ night. 'Sternly the progrim's host told me that both for-

mer Prime Minister Edward Heath andXenry (never to be fofmef, alas) Kissinger had referred to thetajrty-seventh Pres- identmas a '$towering-figark" I said'to thethost that the'first would have had a fellow feeling for another leader driven from office, while Kissinger's only claim to our attentiorwas his years in service as Nixon's foreign poliw'vaIet. Otherwise, Henry would now be just another retiredsclioolteacher, busy at work on Son of Metternich. 1 1 ,'

So. John :Kennedy and Richard Nixon (Congress, class of 1946) are now both gone-paladin and goblin, each put back in the theatrical box of discarded puppets and, to a future eye (or puppetmaster), interchangeable. Why not a new drama starring Tack Goblin and Dick Paladin? In their politkal ac- tions they were more alike 'than not if one7takes the longest view and regards the national history of their day as simply a classic laboratory example of entropy doing its merry' chilly thing:In any case, as I wrote in 1983, "We areNixon; he is us."

Much is now being made, among the t e h for a man whom only a handful of Americans of a cer;tain"age remember, of Nixon's foreign policy triumphs. He went to Moscow and then dktente. He went to Beijing and then:saw.,the Great Wall. Other Presidents could have done whai,he did, but none dared because of-Nixon.'As pictures of Jolinson and Mao come on the screen, one hearshthat solemn b'aiitone: '"1 am not ,say- ing that ,President Johnson is a card-carryihg Communist. No. I am not'even saying that his presence on that wall means that' heis a'communist. No. But I question . '. .!' .As N@on had been &signed the part os€ the Nixon+ there was no'other Niion to keep.him from those two nice'excursions, 'ostensibly in search of peace. I , 1

After I heard the trumpets and the drums, and watched ourt remaining kibrarians-the high emeritus rank that we bestow on former Presidents (a witty one because now no one does a whole lot of reading)-I played a film clip of Nixon in his vice presidential days, For some reason the sounkltraclc is gone: A silent movie. An official banquet? of some sort. Nixon re- 1

members to smile the way people do. Tlien a waiter approaches him. with a large,' corruptly sticky dessert. At that moment, Nixon leahs over to speak to his partner on the left, frustrating the waiter's effort to serve him. The waiter moves on. Nixon sits back realizes that his dessert has been given to the man on his right. He waves to the waiter, who does-not see him.

1 May 16, I994 The aNatio~. 65 3

Now the Nixon face is beginning to resemble that of the third English king of his name. Eyes-yes, mere slits-dart first left, then right: The coast 3s clear: Ruthless Plantagenet-king, using his fork likema,b’roadsword, scoops up half ‘the dessert on his neighbor’s plate and dumps it on his own. As he takes hkfirst taste of thedessert, there is aradiance in his eyes that I have

I never seen before or since. He is happy. Pie in the sky on the plate at last. R.,I..P., R.M.N. : ’ GORE-VIDAL

One Last Hurrah’ ’~~ ‘ H ard ast,it may be forrliberalS to accept,, Pichard I Nixoh:was a better President thanmost:’ On dor amestic’policy hemwasa centrist, not at all’givento

J ~ dism@tling the welf- state,Ias were Reagan dnd Bush. Yes, there mw&’the:divisive Southern cainpaignl strategy, but as President ,hC!issued the first Executive 0rder.enforcing equal opportunity-irk federal employhent; he extended that guarantee to state’ and’local government’when he signed the airiendment to the 11964 Civil-Rights Law. ’, . ‘ I8

’ I , On foreign policygNixon’s was a voice of reason not only. compared :with themRepublican hawks but with the cold war liberals, John Kemedy and Lyndon Johnson included. Nixon was the,fiEst,cold-war President to challenge,the notion that Communism wasinherently monolithic, expansionist and ide- ologically unyielding. ’ .

True, the Sino-Soviet dispute vias evident by the end of the I 1950s, and Comrnunistvrevolutions (as opposed to satellite governments imposed by the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe) were always nationalistic. Any rational observer ‘could have seen that the Chinese and Vietnamese Communists were at odds ‘and predicted that a Vietnamese victory would be fol- lowed by increased tension and even, fighting ,with. China. Similarly, how difficult-was it to figure out that the ,Cuban Revolution was;atresponse to U.S. imperialisminthe Carib- bean and not theqesulhof Soviet machinations? 1 , : , . ~

‘But the men who ‘made foreign policy for, Kennedy-and Johnson’werenot rational. Kennedy gave us the Bay of Pigs, brought us. to the. brink’ of nuclear disaster .with the missile crisis and -1aunched:the Vietnam.War,with the lie that U.S. “advisers” had been sent there to carry out+‘flood relief?’ And it was L.B.’J. who sent a half-million troops to Vietnam’ andunleashed the B-52 carpet bombing on the absurdpremise- that we were battling international Communism in Vietnam.;

The carnage escalated dramatically in, 1964 ,when Johnson launched American bombers in retaliation for an alleged at-

d , tack by.North Vietnamese PT boats,on American ships ih the Gulf of Tonkin. Thanks to documents releaqe,d twenty years after the fact, we now know what Johnson’ knew all along: The attack had never occurred. The consequences of that de- ception were far more serious than those of Nixoh’s lies about Cambodia, terfible as they were. And it was Nixon, along with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong negotiators: whaended the war thatLthe Democrats had started.. , 7 -

* Obviously the eady Nixon deserves much of the blame for. poisoning American politics by the red scare. But beginning, with his service in the Eisenhower Administration, ‘Nixon

I ’

begando reverse comse: &President he made detente with the Soviets and-:the opening to (China the key planks of his foreign.policy., I 3- , ‘ , , - , . , ,

Henry Kissinger is often-given credit for the historic open- ingto China because of; his-back-channel negotiations., But the recorckis clear,.thatit was Nixon who first acknowledged that bhe true, government ,of, China was in Beijing and not Taipei. He advanced this .notion.in,an article in Foreign Af- faitsin. 1967, before he, met Eissinger;, , ’’,, I -, I , o : r

’ ..@ixon,was avisionary,,alonBRhe lines of Woodrow,Wilson. But’instead .of pro,jectlng.fa, messianichole for: the United StatesfNixon understood:the.‘flimits of,power,”2s he-referred I

to the emerging muLtipolar.wrld in the speech outlining the’ ~

YNkw Doctrihe({ (Yes, he’continued ,to play oWmany deadly ’ sideshows df, the old cpld.,war; including murder in Cambodia and ;Chile, but-as.George‘McQovern once told :me,”::In deal-, ing with the two majo.r.’Communist powers, Nixon probably had aiketter.resor6 t h m ahy Prpident since World War,Id.’‘ . i&h~ @id. his. many detractors hother. to notice, that,rNixon con&im@d,to;support a more rational policy long’after being I

hounded from.office, In ,1983, when,the Reaganites were in the.grip,of nuclear warfighting hysteria, Nixon distanced hini- self froLm thei’r approach with his book Real Peace, in whic,h ,

he trashed the-dlqctrine ,of winnable nuclear warr and wrote I that peace was “the only option.” As I reported in ,the Lhs Angeles Timesafter I, interviewed Nixon, the former Rresi- dent, ‘‘urged the. VnitedStates and the Soviet Union to share research,on ‘stir wars’ missile systems because otherwise, such defepsive systems could fuel fears that they might be used as a *shield’ fqr a nuclear, first strike.” He added, “When you have 10,000, of these damned things, therg, is no defense.” , ,fll this was overshadowed by Watergate,, which revealed a

mentality all too. willing to sabotage the spirit of democracy, but nq more so @an Lyndon Johnson’s persistent lying about, Vietnam or Ronald Reagan’s stonewalling on Iradcontra. Every,modernPresident # _ , “ , has used the claims ‘of nationa1,se- I

c$tx tosustajn @self% ofQce,,and democracy be d y e d . Was.N+On reagy,the.worst? , , . ,

1 We bL@h-thermembry OS other Presidents by stressing the@ ach&vements,onc,e.they.,ar,e gone. Kennedy is remembered, for, the Peace corps^ and,Jobson for civil rights. Nixon’s b-g the, -, b,ack . 1 1 , ,of:the - . ,cold ,war”was no less an achievement.

I L . : ; . j <. . . ‘ I : ’.: - 1 . -_; ” * ,, , , . ROBERT SCHEER

Credibility’ Trap “We couldn’t’,believe he said that. We were really shocked.” So remarked a senior National Security C o i i d staff member two days after Secretary of StatesWarren Christdplier’s testimony to a Sen- .ate subcommittee defending the Clinton policy

in Bosniaby citing the need to’f‘viadicate United States leader- ship” and ,maintain the “credibility? of -U.S forces. ‘

Christopher had openly embracedlrhe preferred argument of,the neoconsewatives: The United States must act tough’in the present conflict-even if the conflict of the moment isnot

654 The Nation. May 2 6 .I994

vital to U.S. strategic interests-to show it can be tough in an- other conflict down the road. (Conservatives split-on the cred- ibility front. Senators John Warner and John McCain, both ardent Pentagon champions, don’t want to risk a single U.S. soldier for the Balkans; House minority whip Newt Gingiich rants for a show of will.) Whenever foreign policy leaders mention “credibility,” alarms ought to sound. Several admin- istrations sent 58,191 Americans to their death and killed mil- lions of Vietnamese to prove they had spine and could keep a’ commitment, even a lousy one. Now creeping credibilityism is animating the White House thinking on Bosriia.

This is what so disturbed some N.S.C.-staffers. Except for the uniformed officials of the Pentagon, there are few dbves in the decision-making circles of the Administration-. ,But among those Clintonites who want to intervenelin BoSda for humanitarian reasons (let’s try to stop the one-sided war) or out of geostrategic concerns (Iet’s try to prevent the rise of a fascist state in Europe and end a conflict that threatens to destabilize the region), there has been a concerted attempt to avoid talk that harks back to Vietnam. Christopher blew it- and in adopting the language of Clinton critics,’he showed how susceptible to pressure the White House is. What stings the White House is the sort of criticism that Democratic Sen- ator Joseph Lieberman recently expressed on the Senate floor: “We are in a situation . . . where a third- or fourth-rate mil- itary power . . . makes the United States look timid and weak. . . , We need to find here a resolve.”

In pondering the Clinton foreign policy crew’s response to such rhetoric, it’s usefuI to dredge up one’notable episode from the past of National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. Flash,back to Vietnam. In the spring of 1970, President N&on

. ordered a secret invasion of Cambodia by U.S. troops. Before the action began, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger asked several key aides to critique the plan. Lake foresaw the invasion as a disaster that would prompt more ugly protests at home. (The invasion did lead to antiwar demonstrations,

b including the one at Kent State University, where four’students were shot and killed by the National Guard.) The day before Nixon was to announce the incursion, Lake and fellow N.S.C: aide Roger Morns resigned. The two had contemplated hold- ing a,news conference to disclose that Nixon had drdered il- legal wiretaps and was drinking, but they held their tongues: (“I consider [it] to be the biggest failure of my life,” Morris later told reporter Seymour Hersh.) Explaining the invasion during a televised address, a nervous, perspiring Nixon @led the invasion “a test of American resolve.” The United States, he declared, must not act “like a pitiful, helpless &ant’’ in the face of a challenge.

menty-four years later, in a moment of historical slnchron- icity, Lake finds himself bombarded with “helpless giant” ac- cusations. Capitol Hill aides note that Lake is sensitive to such charges. But he has not as yet gone as far as Christopher in publicly voicing the credibility cIaptrap. Bosnia poses a gut- wrenching dilemma, but one rule ought to besacred:.No one should die or be killed for the sake of U.S. credibility..

There is an up side to Clinton’s vulnerability to outside pres- sure. He can be moved-though whether in a good or bad di- rection depends on the nature of the pressyre: (La$ year after the President ordered the bombing strike against Baghdad in

retaliation for ,the Gleged assassination attempt on George Bush, one White House aide explained the decision: “What a d you expect us to do? Sit there and do nothing, while the ’

press and others kept pounding us for doing nothing?”.) An increasing number o’f complaints about Clinton% going- nowhere po1i;dY on Haiti may be forcing a change in the Pres- ident’s position. For months, the Administration had refused to tighten the squeeze on the military junta that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Then the Congressional. Bldck Caucus and a group of litieral Democratic senators in- troduced legislation to strengthen the embargo against Haiti. A set of Hollywood liberals decried the White House. Ran- dall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, went on a hunger strike to protest tlie Clinton poli&. The news media began reporting on the human rights nightmare in Haiti (sev- eral people a day, many’known Aristide supporters, murdered; ‘faceless bodies dumped in the street). Members of Congress were arrested at the White House in a protest. At a press con- ference, Robinson called Clinton “an’accomplick’to the mur- derers’ of Haiti,” and Aristide complaineh that he received only “beautiful words” from Clinton, but no action.

The White House was beginning to face a political cost for its forcible repatriation of Haitian refugees and its lack offer- ’ vor in pressing for Aristide’s return. (The N.S.C. staff becalme nervous when they heard that 6OMinutes was airing a segment on Haiti, though the show turned oui not to be very damaging to the President.) Clinton finally re1ented;’the .White House declared it would support a full embargo on Haiti. The state- ment was a start, yet Clinton offered no details. In January, when the Administration last talked about a stricter embargo, it conditioned its support for a stronger embargo on further . political accoTodations from Aristide. But then, days after the White House announcement, Clinton canned Lawrence Pezzullo, theBtate Department special envoy to Haiti who had been pressing Aristide to compromise. Pezzullo’s removal is a signd that policy may indeed shift, It’s also a reminder that the way to move this Administration is to confront Clinton with credible threats of political discomfort. DAVID CORN 1‘

Special Issue on Brown v. Board of Education

” * 8 ,

MORE AWFUL NEWS .

A new report says movie popcorn’s bad- As big a source of fat as you could find. Its damage to your body’s even worse Than what the movie’s doing to your mind.

Calvin Trillin