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Thread ID: 19891 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2005-08-30
2005-08-30 15:07 | User Profile
Antiwar.com Columnist Jude Wanniski Passes Away
I woke this morning to terrible news: [url=http://antiwar.com/wanniski/]Jude Wanniski[/url] is dead of a heart attack. He was 67.
Jude was one of the leading ex-conservatives who had turned antiwar, and hard-core antiwar at that. His writings had been among the strongest antiwar articles featured in conservative publications. Earlier this month, Jude wrote [url=http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=4533]a wonderful article urging people to support Antiwar.com.[/url]
Jude coined the term "supply-side economics." Along with economist Arthur Laffer (of the Laffer Curve fame), Jude shaped modern-day conservative economics and influenced leaders including Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. He was author of the 1978 book [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895263440/antiwarbookstore]The Way the World Works[/url]," named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century by the editors of the National Review. At the heart of the book is his 1978 discovery of the cause of the 1929 stock market crash, a discovery that vindicates the classical economics, which had been blamed for the crash and the Great Depression.
He was one of the true conservatives who refused to abandon his principles when world events and the neocons brought pressure to bear.
We at Antiwar.com mourn the loss of Jude: we will miss him a lot. Posted by: Eric Garris on Aug 30, 05 | 6:58 am [url]http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2326[/url] [IMG]http://www.antiwar.com/photos/perm/jude.jpg[/IMG] I will miss the "Memo on the margin". R.I.P.
2005-08-30 15:31 | User Profile
R.I.P.
I liked reading his commentary, especially over the last 1-2 years.
2005-08-30 15:38 | User Profile
I'd sort of wondered whatever happened to 'Memo on the Margin'. You didn't see it, or see it cited, much these days. Perhaps his health had been failing for a while, though I'd like to think his fatal heart attack struck him out of the blue without a lot of prior suffering.
No question Jude was a moral, and moderate, man. He even cultivated a relationship with Farrakhan towards the end, which surprised many but seemed oddly apropos to his conciliatory style. RIP, Jude.
2005-08-30 15:40 | User Profile
His last column.
Memo To: Gary Hart From: Jude Wanniski Re: The Leadership Vacuum.
As you know, Gary, I did publicly announce my vote for Sen. John Kerry in last year's presidential election, even though I had earlier in the year characterized him as a "cardboard candidate." Now and then, when he wasn't programmed by his campaign consultants (mainly Bob Shrum), Kerry was not bad. Too often, though, I thought of him as a fellow who gathered his team around him every morning and asked them, "What do I think today?" I truly wasn't unhappy to see him lose, because I never did trust him to get it right in the Oval Office. For President Bush to win narrowly was the best outcome, I reckoned, as he might make a mid-course correction in foreign policy and turn away from the Neo-Con Cabal that led him, and the nation, into this new Vietnam-like quagmire.
So I was delighted to read your Wednesday op-ed in the Washington Post, "Who Will Say 'No More'?", challenging your fellow Democrats to put aside their pollsters and focus groups and consultants and take on the war directly. My guess is that President Bush is still being snookered by the neo-cons who occupy key posts in the Vice President's office and Pentagon, and in G.O.P. intellectual circles. As long as no serious Democrat is out there making enough noise that the President has to ask, "What's this all about?," he will go on kidding himself into thinking he's on the right track. He still thinks he is promoting "democracy" when all he is promoting is more carnage. Once he announced last week that he thinks we have to "honor" the fallen dead by sending more young American men and women to their deaths, I concluded he has come to the end of the string of feeble justifications for the war.
Now Mr. Bush needs Republican leaders to come forward, singly or in groups, to tell him his public support is ebbing away and he must wrap things up in Iraq. But those GOP leaders are just as chicken as the Democrats, fearful of being accused of "cutting and running." No, as you argue in your op-ed, it is the Loyal Opposition that has to take the lead. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat, last week took the first step in calling for a hard timeline for withdrawal of all U.S. forces. But we all know it is Hillary Clinton who has to get out front – yet she seems already to have asked the pollsters, consultants and focus groups – and decided we must "stay the course." We can't expect any better from Sen. Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations, because he, too, is a victim of his own complicity in getting the nation into the war. Both Hillary and Joe are disserving the nation by urging the President to be more resolute in prosecuting the war – when they know full well, cynically well, that he cannot do that. They are cardboard politicians.
You know I have long admired your political instincts, and most certainly have never seen you as a "cardboard candidate" when you were either seeking the Democratic presidential nomination or making noises like you might enter the fray. Along with California's Jerry Brown, you have been one of the few high-profile Democrats to take seriously the supply-side economics I've espoused and which elevated Ronald Reagan to his eight spectacular years in the White House. This is another way of saying that you should take on the role you have outlined in your op-ed for some unnamed Democrat. Throw your hat in the ring for 2008 without giving it another thought, or taking a poll. Go on the Sunday talk shows, write more op-eds, and make the case for an exit from Iraq, and see where it leads. As long as you don't try to get yourself to the White House, but to stop the useless deaths of our fellow Americans, you can make the difference it will take to achieve that end. If, by happenstance, it also leads you to the presidency, that would be okay with me. But the primary goal is what you have described so elequently in the op-ed that follows. Stick to it.
Who Will Say 'No More'?
By Gary Hart Wednesday, August 24, 2005; A15
"Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to push on," warned an anti-Vietnam war song those many years ago. The McGovern presidential campaign, in those days, which I know something about, is widely viewed as a cause for the decline of the Democratic Party, a gateway through which a new conservative era entered.
Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn't jump on any stove, hot or cold, today's Democratic leaders didn't want to make that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and – as the Big Muddy is rising yet again – now find themselves tongue-tied or trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.
History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.
But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."
To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."
Further, this leader should say: "I am now going to give a series of speeches across the country documenting how the administration did not tell the American people the truth, why this war is making our country more vulnerable and less secure, how we can drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents and outside jihadists and leave Iraq for the Iraqis to govern, how we can repair the damage done to our military, what we and our allies can do to dry up the jihadists' swamp, and what dramatic steps we must take to become energy-secure and prevent Gulf Wars III, IV and so on."
At stake is not just the leadership of the Democratic Party and the nation but our nation's honor, our nobility and our principles. Franklin D. Roosevelt established a national community based on social justice. Harry Truman created international networks that repaired the damage of World War II and defeated communism. John F. Kennedy recaptured the ideal of the republic and the sense of civic duty. To expect to enter this pantheon, the next Democratic leader must now undertake all three tasks.
But this cannot be done while the water is rising in the Big Muddy of the Middle East. No Democrat, especially one now silent, should expect election by default. The public trust must be earned, and speaking clearly, candidly and forcefully now about the mess in Iraq is the place to begin.
The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war. The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating "Stay the course" even when the course, whatever it now is, is light years away from the one originally undertaken. The truth is we're way off course. We've stumbled into a hornet's nest. We've weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began.
Who now has the courage to say this?
The writer is a former Democratic senator from Colorado.
é 2005 The Washington Post Company
2005-08-30 15:42 | User Profile
I heard him on the radio yesterday. I believe this is the last interview he gave. [url]http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/index.cgi?2005-08-29-Charles[/url] I think he is on in the second hour.
2005-08-31 00:35 | User Profile
The WSJ shows it's true colors again. No mention of Wanniski either yesterday or today, so far as I can see. Perhaps they have updated - but for a guy who was SO instrumental in advancing their economic beliefs...i think he may have even worked there.... why no mention?
Oh that's right: he opposed the war. Bye-bye Jude, you didn't toe the company line.
2005-08-31 01:31 | User Profile
Jay,
It is with deep sorrow that we share the news of Jude Wanniski's sudden passing Monday afternoon. The political economist died of a heart attack at the age of 69.
After coining the phrase "supply-side economics" in 1976 as an editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, Wanniski wrote his seminal book The Way The World Works. Named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century by the editors of the National Review, the book revealed Wanniski's discovery of the cause of the Crash of 1929. His lucid reporting that the U.S. Senate's floor votes on the Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation coincided day-to-day with the October 1929 financial market collapse was the first persuasive explanation of that pivotal event, and began the rehabilitation of classical economics that Wanniski dubbed "supply-side" to distinguish from the "demand-side" Keynesian and monetarist theories.
Jude Wanniski pioneered modern supply-side economic theory and developed its practical application as practiced today. He founded Polyconomics, Inc. in 1978 to advise corporate and financial strategists on the impact political and economic events would have on capital markets and on domestic and global economies. Mr. Wanniski's advisory was supplemented by 40 years of earned trust from hundreds of eminently informed individuals in industry and government throughout the world. Skeptical of the forecasting prowess of purely mathematical models, his theory questioned whether mechanical models' doors of perception could fully see what one enlightened human mind can see and interpret.
Mr. Wanniski's clients spoke of him as "One of the great contrarians of his time," "uniquely provocative," "uncompromising," and consistently providing "independent and perceptive views of the monetary, fiscal, and geopolitical environment...having refined the necessary ingredients of classical and behavioral economics to reasonably predict outcomes."
On Wanniski's passing, his mentor, colleague and friend Robert A. Mundell, 1999 Nobel Laureate, observed "It is a great loss."
In his introduction to the fourth edition of Mr. Wanniski's seminal book, The Way The World Works, author, Robert Novak states, "Nobody else, I believe has accomplished what Jude Wanniski has without institutional sponsorship, without formal political or financial power, and with merely will and brainpower...he has not only described but also changed the way the world works. If the doors of power are locked, his ideas have penetrated nevertheless."
In that same 1998 edition, Mr. Wanniski writes, "America stands alone at the top of the world's power pyramid. America has never been better poised than now to become a Good Shepherd. I have tried to use to the fullest the graces and gifts God has given me. I cannot squander those gifts, nor can I let them lie dormant. The Way The World Works was the consequence of my determination to use the gifts that I have received as a child of God living in America, on behalf of all my fellow men. I did not write this book twenty years ago with the expectation that twenty years hence the rich would be richer and the poor, poorer. And they are not. We are all the richer in the accumulation of wisdom that has been added to mankind's stock of knowledge, about how to create wealth and how to destroy it, how to create hope and opportunity and how to stamp it out."
Mr. Wanniski was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan from 1978 to 1981, and designed the Reagan tax cuts that propelled the U.S. economy out of stagflation and led to the great stock market boom that followed. As an advisor, he counseled Democrats as well as Republicans, pro bono, and developed pro-growth strategies for several governments. He believed in the collective wisdom of the electorate. "The electorate, being wiser than any individual in the society, is society's most precious resource. It is the job of the politician to try to divine what it is the electorate wants."
Mr. Wanniski appeared frequently in the broadcast and print media, and wrote daily commentary at Wanniski.com and weekly analysis for Polyconomics clients. He also presided over "Supply-Side University," which has more than 3,000 registered students from around the world. Mr. Wanniski held a B.A. in political science and an M.S. in journalism from UCLA.
May he rest in peace.
Those who would like to share remembrances of Jude and express condolences to his family are welcome to do so by email at [email]webmaster@polyconomics.com[/email] [url]http://www.wanniski.com/[/url]
2005-08-31 03:03 | User Profile
I am not a big fan of Libertarians, but Wanniski was an interesting man and a man of peace.
2005-08-31 21:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]I am not a big fan of Libertarians, but Wanniski was an interesting man and a man of peace.[/QUOTE]
I share your skepticism towards Wanniski's economics, but on matters of foreign policy his analysis was usually on the mark. Some of his columns were as good as anything at Antiwar.com or Paul Craig Roberts at deflating the lies and agitprop of the neocons and the Bush administration.
He will be missed, especially in a world where the Bush sycophants outnumber those with the courage to say that the Emperor Has no Clothes by something like 1000 to 1.
2005-09-01 17:18 | User Profile
Yes, he will be missed.
2005-09-02 02:06 | User Profile
Waninski devoted much effort toward what he called "the reconciliation of blacks and jews". That amounted to getting Abe Foxman to admit that Farrakhan isn't an "anti-Semite". Needless to say, the races remain unreconciled.
He also publicly called Charles Murray a racist after the release of "The Bell Curve". His claimed that Tiger Woods' success in golf, that most intellectually rigorous of sports, proved that there is no correlation between race and IQ.
His clientele (universities, institutional investors, foundations) would have dumped him if he ever said anything controversial about the youknowwho.
I liked his essays about classical music. They're a good read for someone new to that subject.
I think he had a kind heart, but his wishful thinking compromised his work. "The Creature From Jekyll Island" is a better read for someone who wants to know The Way The World Works.