by Mark Steyn
Still, if I had to guess, “crying all the way to the bank” isn’t a bad way to put it. Like Liberace, the Queen may have been “hurt” by some of the beastly things that have been said about her; but, on the big day, she came through: Her electoral validation may be a long way from the divine right of kings, but it’s also useful ammunition against careless post-monarchists in her realms. The snubbed Australian media keep harping on about the electoral divide—between young upscale educated urban republicans and old poor rube hick monarchists—but the interesting aspect of the royalist victory is how widespread it was: On Tuesday, it emerged that, as votes continued to be counted, the sole pro-republican state—Victoria—had tipped back to the Queen’s side. The only two large polling centers to plump for the republican cause were the national capital, Canberra—like Ottawa, a company town where the company happens to be big government—and London, England, where 60 percent of expats are supposed to have voted to dump the Crown. If the Republic of Oz needs the votes of Earl’s Court bedsits, it’s in bigger trouble than it knows.
For Canadian republicans, the Australian referendum has several lessons. First, it’s a rebuke to the “inevitabilist” theory of history. Secondly, it’s a telling defeat for the “minimalist” republic—the idea that you simply change the Governor-General’s title to President, and life goes on as before. The defeated republican forces now say that next time the question should simply ask whether Australians want a republic per se and leave it until later to work out whether it’s going to be the Václav Havel model or the Saddam Hussein model. The devil is in the details—and to demand that the electorate reject an actual specific monarchy in favor of a vague, unspecified republic is as absurd as asking them to vote for a monarchy and assuring them you’ll let ’em know afterwards whether they’ll be getting Elizabeth II, Emperor Bokassa, or Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.
Some republicans who support a directly elected president recognized this and joined forces with monarchists to defeat the system on offer: a republic whose head of state would be decided by the politicians. The official republican movement mocked their more principled colleagues for forming an “incoherent” and “contradictory” alliance with Good Queen Bess’s diehard forelock-tuggers. In fact, there’s nothing incoherent and contradictory about it. This was an important victory for western society’s real silent majority: those people who dissent from the notion that career politicians should carve up all the most visible offices of state for themselves. Some of this silent majority are monarchists; some believe in a directly elected president; a large proportion are just average contented folks who aren’t obsessed about politics. But they have far more to bind them to each other than they do to the establishment republicans who believe that the presidency should be just one more gift in the ruling party’s box of baubles. If Australian voters tell us anything, it’s that a political state isn’t enough. At heart, most of us are romantic enough to demand more—either the mystique of monarchy or the rawer form of democratic politics in which a man must embark on his campaign to win the highest prize by pressing the flesh in the Elks Lodge. Constitutional monarchy and a U.S.-style presidency don’t have much in common—except insofar as, either way, you find yourself sitting next to me come early November—but both speak to something larger in a nation’s sense of itself.
For my own part, I’d argue that the Royal Family comes into contact with a far wider range of ordinary Canadians than the Liberal cabinet does. By “wide range of ordinary Canadians,” I mean, of course, me: I’ve been to dinner at the Palace, whereas that deadbeat PM at Sussex Drive1 has never once invited me over. His grudging defense of the Crown was typical. What’s extraordinary about the Australian vote was that Her Majesty won not just against the avowed republicans but also against her supposed defenders, a far more slippery crowd. For decades, Jean Chrétien and his Commonwealth confrères have been republicanizing their countries by stealth—here, a Royal crest off a mailbox; there, a forgotten politician to replace her on a banknote—until the visible symbols of the monarchy are removed from daily life. Her Majesty should take courage from her victory in Australia and decline to let herself be inched off the throne by the governing elite: There would be no better time for the Queen to embark on a campaign to bypass the Trojan horses in her various viceregal branch offices and connect directly with ordinary people throughout her realms. She won down under, she could win here, and she should let M. Chrétien know that she knows. To paraphrase Tony Blair, she is the People’s Queen now.
124 Sussex Drive is the official residence of Her Majesty’s Canadian Prime Minister, at that time Jean Chrétien.
CELEBRITY CAESAR
Syndicated column, June 9, 2012
QUEEN ELIZABETH II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee a few days ago—that’s sixty years on the throne. Just to put it in perspective, she’s been queen since Harry S. Truman was president. For the most part, her jubilee has been a huge success, save for a few churlish republicans in various corners of Her Majesty’s realms from London to Toronto to Sydney pointing out how absurd it is for grown citizens to be fawning over a distant head of state who lives in a fabulous, glittering cocoon entirely disconnected from ordinary life.
Which brings us to President Obama.
Last week, the republic’s citizen-president passed among his fellow Americans. Where? Cleveland? Dubuque? Presque Isle, Maine? No, Beverly Hills. These days, it’s pretty much always Beverly Hills or Manhattan, because that’s where the money is. That’s the Green Zone, and you losers are outside it. Appearing at an Obama fundraiser at the home of Glee creator Ryan Murphy and his “fiancé” David Miller, the President, reasonably enough, had difficulty distinguishing one A-list Hollywood summit from another. “I just came from a wonderful event over at the Wilshire or the Hilton—I’m not sure which,” said Obama, “because you go through the kitchens of all these places and so you never are quite sure where you are.”
Ah, the burdens of stardom. The old celebrities-have-to-enter-through-the-kitchen line. The last time I heard that was a couple of decades back in London when someone was commiserating with Sinatra on having to be ushered in through the back. Frank brushed it aside. We were at the Savoy, or maybe the Waldorf. I can’t remember, and I came in through the front door. Oddly enough, the Queen enters hotels through the lobby. So do Prince William and his lovely bride. A month ago, they stayed at a pub in Suffolk for a friend’s wedding, and came in through the same door as mere mortals. Imagine that!
So far this year, President Obama has been to three times as many fundraisers as President Bush had attended by this point in the 2004 campaign. This is what The New York Post calls his “torrid pace,” although judging from those remarks in California he’s about as torrid as an overworked gigolo staggering punchily through the last mambo of the evening. According to Brendan J. Doherty’s forthcoming book, The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, Obama has held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents’ reelection campaigns combined.
This is all he does now. But hey, unlike those inbred monarchies with their dukes and marquesses and whatnot, at least he gets out among the masses. Why, in a typical week, you’ll find him at a fundraiser at George Clooney’s home in Los Angeles with Barbra Streisand and Salma Hayek. These are people who are in touch with the needs of ordinary Americans because they have played ordinary Americans in several of their movies. And then only four days later the President was in New York for a fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, the only man on the planet whose evolution on gayness took longer than Obama’s. It’s true that moneyed celebrities in, say, Pocatello or Tuscaloosa have not been able to tempt the president to hold a lavish fundraiser in Idaho or Alabama, but he does fly over them once in a while. Why, only a week ago, he was on Air Force One accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi en route to a fundraiser called Barack on Broadway.
Any American can attend an Obama event for a donation of a mere $35,800—the cost of the fundraiser hosted by DreamWorks honcho Jef
frey Katzenberg, and the one hosted by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and the one hosted by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, and the one hosted by Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, and the one hosted by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Thirty-five thousand eight hundred dollars is a curiously non-round figure. Perhaps the ticket cost is thirty-six thousand, but under Obamacare there’s a two-hundred-dollar co-pay. Those of us who grew up in hidebound, class-ridden monarchies are familiar with the old proverb that a cat can look at a king. But in America only a cool cat can look at the king.
However, there are some cheap seats available. A year and a half ago, big-money Democrats in Rhode Island paid $7,500 per person for the privilege of having dinner with President Obama at a private home in Providence. He showed up for twenty minutes and then said he couldn’t stay for dinner. “I’ve got to go home to walk the dog and scoop the poop,” he told them, because when you’ve paid seven-and-a-half grand for dinner nothing puts you in the mood to eat like a guy talking about canine fecal matter. And, having done the poop gag, the President upped and exited, and left bigshot Dems to pass the evening talking to the guy from across the street. But you’ve got to admit that’s a memorable night out: $7,500 for Dinner with Obama* (*dinner with Obama not included).
And here’s an even better deal, for those who, despite the roaring economy, can’t afford even $7,500 for non-dinner with Obama: The President of the United States is raffling himself off! For the cost of a three-dollar non-refundable online application processing fee, you and your loved one can have your names put in a large presidential hat from which the FBI background-check team will pluck two to be ushered into the presence of their humble citizen-executive. How great is that? Somewhere across the fruited plain, a common-or-garden non-celebrity will win the opportunity to attend an Obama fundraiser at the home of Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the British-born inspiration for the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I wish this were a parody, but I’m not that good. But I’m sure Sarah Jessica and Anna will treat you just like any other minor celebrity they’ve accidentally been seated next to due to a hideous faux pas in placement, even if you do dip the wrong end of the arugula in the amuse-bouche.
If you’re wondering who Anna Wintour is, boy, what a schlub you are: She’s renowned throughout the fashion world for her scary bangs. I’m referring to her hair, not to the last sound Osama bin Laden heard as the bullet headed toward his eye socket on the personal orders of the President, in case you’ve forgotten. But that’s the kind of inside tidbit you’ll be getting, as the commander-in-chief leaks highly classified national security details to you over the zebra mussel in a Eurasian-milfoil coulis. For a donation of $35,800, he’ll pose with you in a Seal Team Six uniform with one foot on Osama’s corpse (played by Harry Reid). For a donation of $46,800, he’ll send an unmanned drone to hover amusingly over your sister-in-law’s house. For a donation of $77,800, he’ll install you as the next president-for-life of Syria (liability waiver required). For a donation of $159,800, he’ll take you into Sarah Jessica’s guest bedroom and give you the full 007 while Carly Simon sings “Nobody Does It Better.”
There are monarchies and republics aplenty, but there’s only one 24/7 celebrity fundraising presidency. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Kim Cattrall, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or Laverne and Shirley, or the ShamWow guy. . . . I wonder if the Queen ever marvels at the transformation of the American presidency since her time with Truman. As he might have advised her, if you can’t stand the klieg-light heat of Obama’s celebrity, stay out of the Beverly Wilshire kitchen.
THE FOOTSTOOLS OF CAMELOT
National Review, October 5, 2009
I WAS OVERSEAS when Senator Edward Kennedy died, and a European reporter asked me what my “most vivid memory” of the great man was. I didn’t like to say, because it didn’t seem quite the appropriate occasion. But my only close encounter with the Lion of the Senate was many years ago at Logan Airport late one night. A handful of us, tired and bedraggled, were standing on the water shuttle waiting to be ferried across the harbor to downtown Boston. A sixth gentleman hopped aboard, wearing the dark-suited garb of the advance man, and had a word in a crew-member’s ear, and so we waited, and waited, in the chilly Atlantic air, wondering which eminence was the cause of our delay. And suddenly there he was on the quay, looming out of the fog. He stepped aboard. The small launch lurched and rocked, waves splashed the deck, luggage danced in the air, and the five of us all grabbed for whatever rail was to hand as the realization dawned that we’d been signed up for a watery excursion with Senator Kennedy.
This was Ted at his most ravaged, big and bloated, before his new wife (also in attendance) had had a chance to get his excesses under control. One of the recurring refrains of the weeks of eulogies was his apparently amazing affinity for “ordinary people,” as if this is now in itself an impressive achievement for a United States senator, who after all can’t be expected to have the same careless ease with the common run of humanity as, say, one of the more inbred late Ottoman sultans. But Ted, we were assured, was great with “ordinary people.” Not that night, he wasn’t. He stood in the center and glanced at us, awkwardly, in the way of celebrities who find themselves outside their comfort zone, and aren’t sure the “ordinary people” know quite what the rules are. I assumed he’d offer a casual, “Hey, sorry for keeping you waiting,” and then the roar of the motor would have prevented further conversation. But he said nothing, which, given that the other passengers were his constituents, struck me as a little odd.
Years later, I saw him again, in action at the Senate. Well, not in “action.” It was the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and for some reason the Emirs of Incumbistan had been prevailed upon to come in on a Saturday for the proceedings. Under the convoluted trial procedures, members of the Senate had to submit questions to their respective party leaders, who then passed them to the Chief Justice, who then read them out. So the pages were run off their feet ferrying lethal interjections from lead Democrat saboteurs Tom Harkin and Patrick Leahy up to the Minority Leader Tom Daschle. The page had barely dropped off Senator Harkin’s question when the wheezing, heaving senator from Massachusetts called him over. From up in the gallery, I thought, “Ah-ha!” I was there to cover the trial for various British and Commonwealth newspapers, and, as Ted Kennedy’s the only senator any foreigners have heard of, his contribution to date had been disappointing: He had spluttered to life in the preceding weeks only to cough Mount St. Helens–scale eruptions across the chamber. He declined to cover his coughs. Indeed, he gave the vague sense of assuming that’s what the rest of the Democrat caucus was there for. I remember Blanche Lincoln shooting him a disapproving look after one Niagara of saliva came her way.
So, on this Saturday afternoon, his unexpected contribution to the trial would clearly be a major part of my coverage. What devastating interjection, I wondered, would he be springing on the prosecutors? The page padded silently over to the senator’s seat in the back. Ted whispered to him, and the page made his way to the end of the row, then worked his way along the row in front, squeezing past senators until he was directly facing Ted’s desk. He then dropped to his knees—which, as it turned out, was the nearest the Clinton trial would ever get to a re-staging of the acts at issue. But instead he leaned under the desk and adjusted Ted’s footrest by an inch and a half. The senior senator from Massachusetts seemed satisfied, and the page was squeezing his way back past the other senators when Ted motioned him to return. Ignoring a frantic Pat Leahy waving some critical note for Tom Daschle, the page reversed course, squeezed past Senator Graham of Florida yet again and dropped to his knees to move Ted’s footrest another smidgeonette. He then rushed off to pick up Senator Leahy’s note. Senator Kennedy didn’t thank him.
I have been received at Buckingham Palace, and over the years I’ve also met the Queen of Spain, the Queen of the Netherlands, and various other Royal personages. And I can’t imagine any of them demand
ing of their footmen what Ted Kennedy did. But then they’re only Euro royalty, not Massachusetts royalty. “At the end of the day,” said Evan Bayh of his colleague, “he cared most about the things that matter to ordinary people.” This was, observed many a eulogist, his penance for Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne—or, as the Aussie Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair put it, “She died so that the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act might live.” This, of course, is the classic trade-off of monarchical societies throughout the ages: The sovereign’s industrial-scale exercise of his droit du seigneur with whatever comely serving wench crosses his path is mitigated by his paternalistic compassion toward the humblest of his subjects.
Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old.
Time to mothball the Camelot footstools? I hope so.
VIII
SEPTEMBER 12
HISTORY’S CALLING CARD
The Daily Telegraph, September 22, 2001
ON WEDNESDAY I FINALLY SAW “Ground Zero.” For those of us who’ve watched the endless TV replays of that second plane slamming into the tower again and again and again, what’s most chilling about the scene in real life is how settled, how established it seems. I was in Oklahoma City six years ago, and in the days afterwards the Murrah Building looked like what it was: a big office block with a huge hole in it, something familiar that’s been ruptured. But here you can no longer discern what the normality was before it got disrupted. It looks, in our terms, like a huge version of a New Jersey landfill that’s gotten a little out of hand. Or, in a broader historical context, like the latter stages of the Germans’ long siege of Stalingrad. Not the opening rounds of a first attack, but the vast accumulated detritus of a long, ongoing war—which, in a sense, is what it is. People are busy at the site, but the urgency has gone. The thousands of flyers posted by wives, husbands, parents, and children are still up, but the word “MISSING” has slid from a long shot to a euphemism.