At 69, Lewis Henry Lapham II is sometimes described as "the Brahmin who got away." Got away, that is, from the orthodoxies and blinkered attitudes that often go with a heritage of wealth, privilege and achievement. Lapham's great-great-grandfather was a U.S. secretary of war. His great-grandfather was one of the founders of Texaco. His grandfather was a financier and a mayor of San Francisco, his dad a banking executive. Although educated at such blue-blood breeding grounds as Hotchkiss, Yale and Cambridge, Lapham eschewed the expected life in finance or politics for one in journalism. He is, of course, best known as the highly opinionated editor of Harper's magazine. Each month, in his "Notebook" column, Lapham elegantly eviscerates a sacred cow or two, often of a Republican cast. Lapham visits Toronto tomorrow to deliver the closing address at the World Congress of History Producers (12:30 p.m. at the Sutton Place Hotel, 955 Bay St.; admission by registration only at http://www.history2004.com). He'll be expounding on some of the themes of his most recent book, Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy.
You'll be speaking in Toronto just three days before the U.S. presidential election. With so little campaign time left, are you willing to hazard a prediction of the outcome on Tuesday?
No. It's just too close to call.
Harper's had a jaundiced view of George W. Bush well before he won the Republican nomination in 2000. Do you think your "blows against the Empire" have contributed significantly to the fact that Bush again seems to face a tight election fight?
I think Harper's has had some contribution to the objection to the Bush administration ever since the man took office, but more pointedly, of course, since the war on terror and the monumental struggle against good and evil that has ensued [chuckles] By that, I'm not just referring to regime change in Iraq; it's been a regime change in the U.S. as well. And because the magazine has been fairly consistent in its opposition to this, this has encouraged others. But how really influential we've been, I couldn't say.
You recently said that, because you live in New York, and because of the way the U.S. Electoral College works, that your presidential vote is as pointless as your voting for the next president of Uzbekistan or France. So are you going to vote on Nov. 2?
Yes, I'll vote for the other offices and initiatives that are up for consideration. The pointlessness only applies to the presidential election and the failure of the Electoral College. But as long as I'm there, I'll cast a vote for Kerry. There's no sense in leaving the line blank [chuckles]
Was John Kerry the best the Democrats could come up with under the circumstances?
I honestly don't know the answer. Probably, I'd prefer to be voting for Howard Dean or even, let us say, if the Democrats had nominated him, Ralph Nader [chuckles] . . . But if there was a road not taken, it wasn't very obvious. I happen to find Dean a more appealing character than Kerry, but I don't know that much about him. I don't know that much about Kerry either, but, of course, I now know more about him than I did.
The U.S. media until earlier this year, it seems, were pretty passive in their coverage of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and the rest. Now, many parts of the media seem to be on a massive guilt trip of overcompensation. The New Yorker this week, for the first time in something like 20 presidential elections, endorsed a candidate. Any comments?
Well, I haven't read The New Yorker's endorsement yet. But, yes, the media tend to get easily suckered by the wisdoms in higher office, whatever those wisdoms happen to be. . . . I mean, they were suckered for years by the non-existent fraud of the Whitewater River; most of the media bought that. The anti-Clinton forces kept promising they'd deliver the goods and the media kept hanging in, but, in the end, they couldn't find them. It was rather like the Bush administration's determination about weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq. The major media's customary position is supine, unless they're prodded by events, unless [the content of those events]becomes so apparent that they have to get up and embrace the contrary.
If George W. Bush is re-elected, what do you think would be the hallmarks of his second term?
I think [the administration]would be assertive in its campaign for change, that is, regime change inside the United States. This would mean fewer liberties for individuals and fewer restraints on the freedom of money and property; a civil religion that would come closer to the articles of the Old Testament than to the articles of the Constitution [chuckles] You'd see increased efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade; a continued shift of political argument into the religious dimension where questions of character would come to substitute for questions of policy. More money for the military, of course . . . although I think Iraq has given them a little more than they thought they would have to deal with. The preference of American military strategists is to pick on what Theodore Roosevelt once said of Cuba, that is, "a good, safe menace." They thought Iraq would be a cakewalk. They know North Korea is not; there's a million-man army right by the demilitarized zone and nuclear weapons, too. They might be tempted by Syria or Iran, but maybe they've learned some caution over the last year or so.
Have you spoken with your fellow father-in-law, so to speak, about the U.S. election [Lapham's son Andrew married Brian Mulroney's daughter, Caroline, in 2000]
No, I haven't actually. We have both become grandfathers as of yesterday. [Caroline gave birth to a boy, named Lewis Henry Lapham III, early Tuesday.]As a result, I look forward to conversations with the prime minister on the proper education of grandsons, rather than on the intricacies of American foreign policy.
MISCELLANY
Harper's, launched in 1850, is the oldest general-interest magazine in the United States. Lapham served as the magazine's editor from 1975-81, and returned to the post in 1983 when he was given carte blanche to perform a redesign.
He authored six books of essays prior to the publication, this summer, of Gag Rule.
A passage in Gag Rule quotes a young Winston Churchill decrying the British Conservative government in the wake of the Boer War. A century later, Lapham notes, these same words could be applied to the Bush administration: "A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad . . . sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public house, dear food for the millions, cheap labour for the millionaire."