Class Day (June 9, 2023)
Welcome to Home & Away. Some weeks the challenge of producing a newsletter turns out to be finding enough interesting topics to comment on. This is most decidedly not one of those weeks. To the contrary, I feel there are at least ten pounds of sugar to squeeze into a five-pound bag.
Here at Home I want to start with a column by Bret Stephens in the New York Times, one derived from a speech he delivered at the University of Chicago’s Class Day. The talk and the column are something of an homage to Bob Zimmer, who for fifteen years led that university according to the principle that campuses ought to be safe spaces for speakers to speak rather than for listeners to feel comfortable. Bret argued that “a serious education is impossible except in an environment of unfettered intellectual challenge — an environment that, in turn, isn’t possible without the opportunity to encounter people and entertain views with whom and with which you might profoundly disagree.” Ideally the Chicago Principles will be renamed the Zimmer Principles and adopted by colleges and universities across the country.
My only quibble with Bret’s beautifully-crafted remarks is his emphasis on self-censorship. Don’t get me wrong: I understand that it is all too real, especially in highs schools and colleges. But in my experience, the type of group-think that is most dangerous is not so much when people fear saying something but rather when it does not even occur to them to think or question something. Assumptions that are deeply and widely embedded can be dangerous things as they can all too easily get us to discount data and evidence that do not fit the prevailing construct.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential field is growing by the day. This week alone there were three new entrants: former vice president Mike Pence, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum. They join Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, a few others…and, of course, the frontrunner, Donald Trump.
That the field is as large as it is helps Trump in multiple ways. He is the best known and his presence reduces the oxygen available to others to make their case. He also defines the race in many ways as the other candidates are constantly being pressed to say how they stand in relation to him and his policies. Quite a few of the primaries are winner-take-all, which also positions him to do well as his base appears to be solid, leaving the others to divide the ABT (Anyone But Trump) vote. A plurality rather than a majority might well be enough to put him over the top in many states.
The biggest unknown remains the same, namely, whether and how his chances for the nomination will be affected as his legal problems mount. The next shoe will drop Tuesday, when the former president is formally arraigned in federal court on criminal charges relating to his unlawful retention of classified documents. So far, several of his Republican rivals are criticizing the Biden administration for what they claim – without any proof whatsoever – is the weaponization of the Department of Justice; it will be interesting to see if and how reactions evolve when the indictment is made public and we learn more about the documents themselves and what may have motivated Mr. Trump to hold onto them. The only thing I am sure of is that I will have more to say on this in next week’s edition.
CNN got a lot of attention this week, but not the sort any business should welcome. There was a long profile of Chris Licht in The Atlantic and a shorter piece in the New York Times about Jeff Zucker. Neither emerged better for the coverage. (The only person who did was Licht’s trainer, whose business I expect is booming.) Within days Licht joined Zucker as a former head of CNN. Somewhat lost in all the fuss over persons and personalities, though, is the fundamental question of what CNN needs to do to prosper regardless of who is in charge. This is far more important than determining who will replace Licht once the interim troika arrangement comes to an end.
Two options exist for a mature business such as CNN. Either you do the same things as the competition but do them differently, or you do different things. This holds no matter whether Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav decides to keep CNN for the long run or sell it. It is not obvious how CNN can out-Red Fox News or out-Blue MSNBC. The real question, then, is whether it can differentiate itself by being centrist and doing a better job of covering the country and the world in a serious fashion that earns it a reputation for being the go-to place when it is important know what is going on and why it matters. If this sounds a bit like CNN going back to its roots, then maybe it should.
As for Away, Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s speech in Helsinki on June 2 did not get anything close to the attention it deserved. It was long and thorough and contained what some will judge to be clever lines, such as, “The Kremlin often claimed it had the second-strongest military in the world, and many believed it. Today, many see Russia’s military as the second strongest in Ukraine.”
But overall I would question the wisdom of the speech. Most consequentially, it ruled out a “ceasefire that simply freezes current lines in place and enables Putin to consolidate control over the territory he’s seized. And then rest, re-arm, and re-attack - that is not a just and lasting peace. It’s a Potemkin peace. It would legitimize Putin’s land grab. It would reward the aggressor and punish the victim.”
Sorry, but I find this analysis unpersuasive. I understand the logic of waiting to see what comes of the long-awaited offensive, especially as Ukraine could benefit from the influx of more capable systems it has received. And hopefully, it will lead to Ukraine regaining much of its territory currently occupied by Russia. But what would the secretary of state and the administration he works for recommend if Ukraine is unable to dislodge Russia from much of its territory during the current fighting season? What if there were a great deal of additional loss of life and destruction in Ukraine? What would give him or anyone the confidence that one or two or three more years of fighting would yield a different result? Why couldn’t Ukraine also use a ceasefire to rearm and rebuild? Why couldn’t a ceasefire be linked to new security assurances from the United States and NATO? And who ever said a ceasefire would or should require that Ukraine give up any claims to its territory or economic reparations or an accounting for war crimes?
The case for a ceasefire, as Charlie Kupchan and I outlined in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, is not that it is preferable to a just and lasting peace, but that it is preferable to the costs of a continuing war of attrition that will not give Ukraine what it seeks and has the potential to be a way-station to the sort of peace that Ukraine and its partners understandably desire.
The big development in the world of golf spans both Home & Away. Two weeks ago, in the newsletter titled “LIV and Let Live,” I wrote about the Saudi-sponsored LIV Tour, saying that Brooks Koepka’s victory in the PGA Championship made it less likely that LIV would fade away as the established and establishment PGA Tour very much tried to engineer. LIV may well fade, but not in the way many or any imagined. Its Saudi owner (the Public Investment Fund, i.e., the country’s sovereign wealth fund, run by Yasir Al-Rumayyan) is now the partner (senior partner?) of the PGA Tour.
Why did this happen? My own sense is it was all but inevitable. It is expensive to wage a bidding war for talent, and there was no way the PGA could compete with the deep-pocketed Saudis. Litigation between the two sides was proving expensive and there was a decent chance the PGA would lose out to the Justice Department on grounds that what it was doing was anti-competitive. On top of all that, once President Biden determined policy considerations would no longer allow him to treat the influential, energy-rich Kingdom and its young de-facto ruler as a pariah, it was hard for the PGA to do so. And, as already noted, Koepka’s victory in the PGA Championship and the presence of some other top golfers on the LIV Tour weakened the PGA’s hold on the sport.
There is a good deal of criticism of the PGA and its leadership for selling out their proclaimed principles for money and for contributing to sports-washing, the attempt by Saudi Arabia to use sports to burnish its image abroad. (It won’t help when commercials promoting tourism to the Kingdom or otherwise selectively depicting life in that country become a staple of televised tournaments.) There is as well the added problem with many of the players who refused to defect to the LIV Tour despite the money offered and who now feel betrayed (or, in Rory McIlroy’s words, like a “sacrificial lamb”) after standing by the PGA.
It will be interesting to see whether and how this friction with the players is dealt with. As for the bigger political issue, that stemming from professional golf establishing a close, permanent tie with Saudi Arabia, there is no way to eliminate the controversy. Nothing can be done to change the past when it comes to actions of Saudi authorities that contributed to 9/11 or the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. My sense is that the Saudi-PGA partnership won’t do much to burnish the image of Saudi Arabia abroad unless it somehow leads to significant change when it comes to the rule of law and human rights in the Kingdom. That is possible but unlikely, as Saudi leaders fear a loosening up of control on their part would be exploited by anti-modernist, religious extremists seeking to oust the monarchy. What the Saudi leadership cares about most is their image at home and their ability to show their young population that things are changing for the better. This new arrangement with professional golf is likely to do so.
This edition of Home & Away started with Class Day, and I wanted to end it with a class day of a different sort. This second example, unlike the first, but like the previous discussion, derives from golf. More specifically, it involves Viktor Hovland, a talented young professional golfer from Norway, who last Sunday won the Memorial golf tournament. His reward: $3.6 million. But none of this kept Hovland from keeping a promise to caddy the very next morning for his former Oklahoma State University teammate Zach Bauchou. In the end, Bauchou failed to qualify for next week’s U.S. Open, but it is impossible not to be admire Hovland for his commitment to his friend and his word alike. That he carried the bag weighing upwards of 30 pounds for 36 holes (some 12-14 miles) only makes what he did that much more impressive. For golf fans, it was a rare feel-good story in an otherwise unsettling week.
As always, some links to click on. And feel free to share Home & Away.
Richard Haass in the news
Monday, June 5: MSNBC Morning Joe on U.S.-China relations and the war in Ukraine (begins at 31:52).
Wednesday, June 7: MSNBC Morning Joe on PGA Tour and LIV Golf merger.
Thursday, June 8: MSNBC José Díaz-Balart on PM Rishi Sunak’s White House visit and the war in Ukraine.
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.