Posts

29-8-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I know that going from Madeleine Albright to Omarosa Manigault may be a steep shift (I did not say decline) though her book “Unhinged” is very interesting (how British of me) at many levels. It could be a memoir of a colourful TV reality star turned political activist but it is not. It is a rehabilitation attempt book cum preemptive Trumpian shield from a loyalist who either grew genuinely disappointed and/or sought revenge for her ultimate Trumpland treatment, which makes it valuable to read if one focuses on why she says what she says and how she does it. It is actually quite an enjoyable read and I dare say, against all expectations, actually well crafted and rather fluid. To be sure, O’s book is not about policies (beyond those related to the African-American community she focused on) but more about DT’s (or DJT’s as she would write) style and behaviour which are defining features of his presidency and clearly as a way to get back at him for having been disappointed and/or dismissed. O’s book is in the high critical tradition started with journalist Michael Wolff and followed by insiders like Jim Comey and now Sean Spicer. As she stayed in the Trump WH before being pushed out, it is hard to know whether she really objected with so many of DT’s wrong features as described in her book or she was mad at being dismissed, hence the tell all book.

While O tells us about her very poor background in the “projects” – something that is also meant to offset the image of the nasty TV reality star we know (well, those who watch this type of entertainment) – she focuses on various key periods which are her early and long – 12+ year – Trump history mainly with “The Apprentice”, the 2016 campaign and the White House up until her forced exit by Chief of Staff John Kelly assisted by the WH legal team on rather dubious grounds (if we believe O – as she would have transgressed WH car transportation rules). She clearly wants to portray herself as a good person, who just seized the American dream to propel herself out of poverty to the riches and of course with a clear focus on improving the plight of all African-Americans on the way. And she now decided to tell the world how her former mentor was a terrible person.

Interestingly we learn that O was very involved in White House matters way, way earlier having worked there in the last year of Bill Clinton (describing her role as “mid-level staff” which is to the say the least “remarkable” at age 25 then!) and then joining Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000. O is actually a registered Democrat (interestingly at the time so was DT). Apparently, many accounts say she was not very good at any of the roles she had for Bill and Al, something she does not mention in the book (having said this, these accounts may be DT-driven too so one should be cautious in our age of easy news). The fun part on the political angle of things is that O worked hard to being part of the Hillary campaign in 2015 but was forgotten for another lady out of doing a favour for a congressman close to HC, making O ultimately rooting for her old boss and against the “swampy” manoeuvring she felt victim of. She tells us that she also joined his campaign team all the more easily as she felt DT was a lost cause with no hope of winning, which looks a bit too rearview mirror easy even if the odds were long at the time.

In 2003, she found in DT a father she lost too early and while making a great TV career with national reach, joined a cult where loyalty was the key driver, making her a very faithful cheerleader and, as time went by, a partner of DT, never questioning his shortcomings. She saw many objectionable traits of DT, notably in relation to women over the years that she never, admittedly, challenged as he was just “like that” (his relationship with Ivanka made her very unsettled, with DT’s wandering hands and claims he would date her should she not be his daughter, though apparently O tells us the first daughter was playing on that trait to manage or control her father). It is clear that O fills her book with the bad aspects of DT that she otherwise clearly found very manageable over fifteen years, creating a terrible image of the President. Faithful no more…

She was the only African-American on the presidential campaign team that was led by white men (and Kellyanne Conway at some point) and in charge of the African- American outreach. Her goal was for DT to do better than Mitt Romney in 2012 who had attracted 6% of the African-American vote (in the end, DT got 8% while HC got far less than Obama had achieved). She wanted to run the Office of Public Liaison (OPL) part of the Executive Office but Reince Priebus who had run the Republican National Committee (wanting DT “out” after the Hollywood tapes, something that would stick) and now, as Chief of Staff (we almost forgot) in charge of “roles” in the early DT White House did not think she made the cut so gave her a communications role at the OPL (focused on African-Americans), which she finally accepted (she really wanted in). O describes her daily schedule of meetings in the Reince galaxy at the WH including all the tenors from the times including Ivanka, Jared, Bannon, Kellyanne Conway (a future nemesis she always likes to beat hard on) and the A team. She sees DT two to three scheduled times a day and in fact many more times due to his Trump Organisation’s legacy of the open door policy and “his need to fight loneliness and to see familiar faces”.

That section on the WH is part O’s memoir, part attacks on DT (which would never had been aired before her dismissal). We learn that DT does not read and he is “just side of the functionally literate”. O stresses unequivocally that DT “has never read from beginning to end any piece of legislation, policies even some executive orders that he has signed” or that advisers “spoon feed” him five to ten bullet points notes about legislations, forgoing any discussion of their complexities. There is little doubt that even if true these statements are there to hurt or to show what could come next, like with the famous tapes including the N word and many other things (as an aside and regardless of DT, that O would tape these meetings and conversations is also educational about her true personality for whom the loyalty she talks so much about may have been purely tactical). DT would “struggle with complex documents or complex briefings” and the senior WH team knowing he is the messenger, not the writer of the message would rely on his charisma and make excuses for his faults in true cult fashion. O gradually seemed to have felt that she was not considered core as she was asked to take the blame supposedly for mistakes of others like Kellyanne Conway, “the chameleon”, who becomes one of the chief villains in O’s book (a status not hard to achieve when seeing her in action, but a common feature of many in the Trump WH if one is to believe O). She goes at length about DT’s lack of impulse control and the team’s problems to control and tally his tweets, which have become the stuff of legend and start losing their impact even if they help change the level of the acceptable political discourse and hence general civility (based on a number of live experiences, I believe DT’s poor communication style has had an impact on how many Americans feel they can behave and communicate in society). We learn that one of the erratic aspects of DT would be when he would correct one of his most terrible earlier tweets as his team would work on managing its fallout though without telling the team. We also learn that not one – “not a single one” – top person in the WH agreed with DT’s firing of FBI Director Comey on loyalty grounds. She insists upon DT’s mental decline which she says she was able to notice as having known him for years and noticing his many lapses in the WH (also lambasting the WH doctor Ronny Jackson “who would go on to declare an obviously obese, sleep-deprived man in excellent health”). She also dwells on the Don Corleone loyalty expected by DT from all his staff while he treats them as he wishes. She tells us about DT’s dismissive, critical and mocking behaviour toward some of the staff, especially with Sean Spicer, the first Trump WH press secretary and communications director nicknamed “the spokesman from Men’s Warehouse. Cheap and tacky”. There are some expected savoury tidbits as when Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci having just been fired after only a few days in the job goes into a cubicle and starts crying “like a girl” (again if we believe O).

It is clear that her race and the fact she was the only senior black woman in the Trump WH was a key issue for O, making us know that she felt like being the “token black” in Trumpland (even if there was Ben Carson as HUD Secretary). Certainly the “token black lady”. It would appear that she genuinely worked hard to ensure better race relations and improve the conditions of black students, particularly at black colleges (she received a Master’s degree from Howard in DC, a beacon of “black college” education which she is deservedly very proud of). That latter mission where she tried working with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (Blackwater’s Erik Prince’s sister en passant) and her for-profit education mission seems to have rattled O. In addition the dramatic events in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017 are reported by O with a personal angle and clearly shook her to the core as an African-American and the official in charge of OPL communications in relation to African-American matters – one feels that this event may have dampened her loyalty to DT given his response to the tragedy (as an aside and more generally O seems to have been conflicted between her image of the “strong black woman” – her words – which served her well in reality TV and also drove her to the WH and her perceived continuous offenses in private on the part of most senior white male staffers dealing with a senior African-American woman though knowing that she could not defend herself adequately lest she passed for an “angry black woman”).

It is really difficult to know whether O is a genuine person, so much she is a TV reality one and whether she really believes in the causes she advances in her book. She was, given her background, the odd duck in the WH team but then there have been many others, who if they had a more formal, elitist education and background, would not be considered top tier among civil servants or politicians, as if the word “expert” was definitely out, allowing for other “managers” to come in and work as if beliefs were facts. Her account of her time with DT, during the campaign and at the WH is definitely interesting if only from a sociology point but smells of revenge and unwittingly depicts a shark tank, well beyond the usual norms of politics. That a faithful TV reality star and partner got a role at the WH says everything about the nature of the Trump WH. That she, unwittingly or not, took what looks like her revenge the way she did, adding to what most observers would know and have read from others “leavers”, does not add much to our understanding of the current workings of the WH but reinforces the feeling we have for this WH. That she accepted to work for DT while being so offended by so many aspects of his presidential style and stayed does not show great spine but is what one would expect – she really enjoyed working at the WH and would have probably stayed much longer if not pushed out. If anything the book is an extension of TV reality and O is indeed very good at it. When all is said and done, the prevailing feeling is that it is indeed a book about revenge and as DT would say, accurately for once, also about betrayal if we accept that Trump made O as she writes herself.

If I may say, I am not dedicating this book to anyone out of fear of offending but it does not mean it should not be read. I was hesitant to add to O’s royalties but decided that it is always educational to do such an exercise and trying to understand what goes in their minds. As Ed Luce wrote in the FT recently, 90% of Republican voters (not the independents) still support DT in spite of “all” we know about him. This is the true enigma. Why do good people – and most Republicans certainly are – still support DT after all we have read from a variety of people, his lack of dignity for the role, style, behaviour, tweets, not to mention erratic, ill-thought policies and lately the McCain flag controversy that says it all? This is the baffling point which the current state of the economy, unemployment level and stock market cannot explain given the harm done at so many levels and the future at stake.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Serge Desprat- 29th August, 2018 (Prague)

21-8-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I wanted to tell you about two books from Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton and a personality whom we know well and is always very engaged in the defence of Western liberal values. She is 81 years old now and still very active, having written a recent book on “Fascism” that depicts her fights for democracy worldwide as part of her long mandate (in another time for U.S. diplomacy and leadership) and “Prague Winter” about her childhood in Prague and also London as a Czechoslovak child born in 1937 (in Smichov, my very neighbourhood), something that some people (not us of course) do not realise or have forgotten but is a key aspect of whom she became and she is.

“Prague in Winter – A Personal History of Remembrance and War – 1937-1948”, published in 2012 narrates her life in Prague (based on family accounts that she researched in the nineties and later) and in London during the war before returning to Prague in 1945 and then finally going to America in 1948. She was not just a Czechoslovak child like any other. She was born Marie Jana Korbelova, the daughter of Josef Korbel, who was a senior Czechoslovak diplomat, working as the right end man to Jan Masaryk, himself the son of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the founder and first President of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Jan went on to become Ambassador to London during the Munich Agreement, (I recommend you the great 2017 movie “Masaryk” with top Czech actor Karel Roden in the lead role), then part of the London-based government in exile during the war and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1945, only to fall from his window at the ministry in the Bohemian defenestration tradition after the Czech Communists won the parliamentary elections in 1946, setting the stage for a long and dark journey. Josef Korbel, his main aide, who had gone to be Ambassador to Yugoslavia after the war, then emigrated to America and taught International relations while settling his family in Denver. The University of Denver’s school of foreign policy is now named after him. One of the strange aspects of MA’s story is that she had not realised by the age of 59, when she became Secretary of State, what her true roots were and that she was actually Jewish (having been raised a Catholic and having converted to Episcopalianism for her marriage to Mr. Albright in 1958). MA only discovered this rafter defining fact while traveling to the country of her birth in her role of top American diplomat, which led to the writing of her book. “Prague in Winter” that became a personal journey into her Jewish roots as well as into totalitarianism in her country of birth and gradually all of Central & Eastern Europe. One part that is especially gripping is the period of 1945 to 1948 when all was still possible for the future of Czechoslovakia which then went into the post-war Communist and then Stalinist camps, following the local Communist party win and gradual takeover of the young, reborn, democracy following the Nazi occupation. There are great accounts of this period and I also recommend little-known Boston University’s Igor Luke’s “On the Edge of the Cold War – American diplomats and spies in postwar Prague”. The American legation in Prague was always a place with interesting game changers such as George Kennan, who became famous for his “Long Telegram” from Moscow in 1946 and was actually stationed in Prague in 1937. The period before the fall in 1948 was indeed one of intense activity by American diplomats in Prague to try to keep Czechoslovakia from falling for the then highly popular Czech Communist Party basking in the key role of the Soviets in defeating the Nazis. Of note in today’s debate about immigration, MA became a U.S. citizen only in 1957. One criticism, echoed by the late Philippe Kerr, back in 2012 was that MA did not have in her book a word of thanks for Britain, which while arguably tainted (like France) by the 1938 Munich agreements, ensured that MA and her close family were rescued and did not end up in Theresienstadt or Auchwitz like some other family members. The book is a first hand account of a period not well known by most unless one lives in Prague, though with memories vanishing or not wanting to be triggered locally. It is a must read for lovers of history, particularly about the onset of the Cold War. I also recommend you the excellent “Iron Curtain – The crush of Eastern Europe 1946-58” (2012) by Anne Applebaum, the well-know commentator of that period and also spouse of Radek Sikorski, the former Polish Foreign Minister in the Donald Tusk government from 2007 to 2014, also in a different time for Poland.

“On Fascism – A Warning”, which was well reviewed in the FT earlier this year, is about MA’s experiences dealing with totalitarianism while being Secretary of State and afterwards. This is also based on exchanges with her students as she went on to teach international relations at Georgetown University after her role in the Clinton Administration. The book deals with the main question that is: “Can it happen here?” and is of course linked to the rise of populism and the attacks against Western liberal values and our democratic system. She focuses on Europe and America looking at the needed ingredients allowing the rise of fascism which she sees as economic, social and political chaos as in the case of interwar Germany and Italy with their high unemployment and left and right wing gang battles in the street (developments when incivility takes root in the political discourse) that lead to despair for the citizenry of these countries. MA looks at parallels with Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela, Viktor Orban’s economic backdrop in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gradual suffocation of democracy in Turkey or Vladimir Putin in Russia which, even if he was desired to restore order and dignity, also benefitted from a country having lost half of its economy in the 1990s. She thus sees problems being opportunities for fascists and other anti-democrats. She also mentions the connivence of the conservatives who always think they can control fascism and can use its popular support to achieve their own goals. She hopes that Democrats and Republicans will work together, worrying that Trump’s isolationism, protectionism and fondness for dictators are weakening America’s ability to solve international challenges (which may no longer be a goal), while deepening divisions among allies and strengthening anti-democratic forces. In the end, MA remains hopeful, looking at Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela as guides who did save their countries when they were going through immense and irreconcilable challenges in their own times. She feels strongly that we need to recognise history lessons and should never take history for granted. As she says: “The temptation is powerful to close our eyes and wait for the worst to pass, but history tells us that for freedom to survive, it must be defended and if lies are to stop, they must be exposed”. It is clear that MA also writes thinking much of Trump and the direction taken by America on a number of key topics. She would also advises, like me if I my say, that those who like Trump because of a low unemployment rate and good economic growth, all of which are temporary and the result of many factors, not to think that style and values no longer matter in the way freedom, democracy and indeed the indispensable country should be conducted.

I dedicate this note to Bert, born Hubertus in the low countries, Yale Law School graduate and a great globalist who has done so much for impact investing in emerging markets from his great firm and with his amazing team in DC, the latter which I also salute chapeau bas.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Serge Desprat- 21st August, 2018 (Washington, DC)

12-8-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I wanted to tell you about something I will work on when and if in Strasbourg (the European Parliament).

Cyber warfare and cyberthreats are omnipresent in our lives and a key issue for government, military and business communities not to say society today. These asymmetrical warfare and threats allow for “enemies,” whoever they may be, to inflict losses and disrupt far larger organisations than they are and for a very cheap cost. Cybersecurity is now an essential component of protection of not only our financial and strategic assets but also of our very Western liberal way of life like in the context of our democratic electoral process.

As you know, I have been a founding investor in the UK’s Cyber Essential Direct (CEDL), a start up, chaired by Lord Blunkett, formerly Home Secretary to Tony Blair and set up to assist the SME sector in the UK, but also internationally to cope preemptively with cyber risk. As such and while I can barely turn on my laptop as the 19th century man I always will be, I have become quite enthralled by cybersecurity tales over the last two years, helping me understand the geopolitics of the field and feeling a bit more part of my era (on this latter point, one does not need to be a tech expert, to study the dynamics of cybersecurity very much like those liking the matter of submarine warfare do not need to know how to pilot a sub).

With this in mind, I would like to recommend a short book “Cyber Wars” by Charles Arthur, a freelance journalist and former Tech Editor at The Guardian, the UK newspaper where he covered related topics such as Wikileaks and Anonymous amongst others. His book does not require any tech knowledge or cybersecurity expertise and is a great introduction to the field focusing on the major cyberattacks and the hacks we all have heard of over the last few years. This well-crafted book is mostly focused on the business targets of cyber attacks though these may emanate from governments or directed or abated by them. There is also a useful summary page after each case study, also comprising helpful tips for the reader’s own usage in case she may find herself dealing with similar situations in her daily life.

The main cyberattacks covered are as follows:

• Sony Pictures

How North Korea exerted punishment on Sony Pictures in 2014 for a satiric movie, “The Interview” involving Kim Jong-un

• Anonymous attacks/HB Gary

How Anonymous, the activist network, hacked into HBGary, and destroyed a leading cybersecurity company for revenge

• John Podesta and the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign

How a presidential campaign was derailed by Russian “patriotic” agents (for some) and likely “led” by Russia (for others)

• TJX

How adopting new technologies, a natural development, led to serious customer problems for TJ Maxx, a major retailer

• Ransomware

How malware can take over computers and threaten harm unless a ransom is paid

• TalkTalk

How teenagers infiltrated the systems of a major internet provider to then call its clients to fix problems from its supposed call centres

• Mirai

How the “Internet of Things” is not really safe, making our daily lives at risk

CA goes into the future of cyberwar offering very interesting viewpoints on a matter which is in constant evolution.

I would like to make a few comments, seemingly pell-mell, aimed at touching upon some key features of cyber threats and cybersecurity. It is fair to say that while we often hear about the attacks against Western institutions, be they public or private, the West also can be found on the offense and taking preemptive strikes against governments and entities, particularly in relation to China, North Korea, Russia and Iran to name a few. China was definitely the main culprit of cyber attacks in the past and this before all the publicity given to non-governmental “Russian patriots” being involved in interfering in elections in the West as often claimed and always publicly disavowed in the cases of the U.S. and French presidential elections of 2016 and 2017. Cybersecurity is now a major segment of offense and defence for governments, big and small, given the dynamics of the matter. Large corporations have taken the threat very seriously (notably banks whose payment integrity is essential but also energy companies and those involved in running the power grids that is one of the weakest link of our vital infrastructure) and are now ensuring that their supply chains, involving many thousands of SMEs, are appropriately protected, diminishing the risks of “own goals” by following the likes of Cyber Essentials guidelines promoted by HM Government in the UK and, increasingly, Commonwealth. One interesting feature of cyber warfare is that when the enemy has been penetrated, that victory is often not heralded as one waits and takes advantage of that enemy not knowing it has been compromised, an approach often taken by the West while parties attacking the West are more focused on disruption, ransom or theft and dont’t care whether they are caught as long as they reach their primary objective (some that can be hard to pin down precisely in terms of impact, like with elections, as opposed to when banking account or credit card numbers are accessed and stolen for profit). Cybersecurity is a complex area which requires attentive analysis, which the book, while; giving an easy-to-read tutorial, helps achieving.

We can’t be safe and the only way to be would be not to use email and unhook our computers, which is the conundrum of our times. Cybersecurity can help readiness, reduce losses whatever their nature, but is a constant fight where the defence struggles catching up with the offense, the latter which benefits from cheap asymmetry.

If any of you or the companies you work for or with wanted to know more, I would be happy to put it touch with John Lyons, the founder of CEDL, who would expertly and efficiently guide you on matters cybersecurity (without going into heavy marketing, I would recommend for example to all my PE friends that they should make sure their investee companies are preemptive about cyber attacks as they could end up feeling the pinch).

I actually dedicate this book note to John and Steve, partners not only in thought but also in the active defence of our values.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Serge Desprat- 12th August, 2018 (Prague)

9-8-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I wanted to share briefly with you a book close to a topic I often write about, “liberalism” but this time taken from the other side (which I have not called “dark” as the beauty of Western liberal values is that there is nothing like a good and respectful debate regardless of the strength of opposing beliefs). There is thus a book called “Why Liberalism Failed” which is a good capture of its theme written by Patrick J. Deneen, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, the famed Indiana university, not only glorious for its football team but also the alma mater of President Joshua Bartlett in “The West Wing” (whom by the way would never have followed PD in his stance). PD is a Rutgers graduate, having being an Associate Professor at Princeton and a frequent contributor to The American Conservative blog. The American edition has a nice cover with the image of an antique Greek pillar showing its age and probably, let’s wager, uselessness in PD’s mind, though this is good communication and fair game. This is not a light book and it is much focused on concepts inherent to liberalism and its opposites, even if PD gives us many live examples, mainly from the American landscape, to make his case.

It is interesting to note that PD was published as part of the politics and culture series at Yale University Press (YUP), that is not the kind of place where one would think he would be but then it is not surprising they would adopt a fair-minded approach. YUP believes that self-government, what is the West including of course the U.S., is increasingly ailing globally and has entered a crisis of legitimacy, with no agreement on the best treatment. It has failed a growing number of people, not delivering its historical promises, with various key symptoms being noticed such as unequal wealth distribution, institutional decay, loss of trust in authority at all levels and among citizens, polarisation among those wanting open and closed societies with new political tribes and a redefinition of political landscapes arising. This premise led to PD’s book that puts the blame of the legitimacy crisis on liberalism itself, something that runs contrary to those of us who believe that we should keep promoting liberal values that made us “who we are” in order to relaunch our democratic system. His approach is scholarly and much focused on the philosophical foundations of liberalism and the developments that according to him make them failed. PD argues that liberalism needs retirement and cannot be reformed as its original sin, centred on the Kantian elevation of individual autonomy, was inherently wrong, something that the passing of time has shown. PD’s radical and disruptive critique of liberalism comes after Marx and Foucault on the “left” and Nietzsche or the Catholic Church on the “right”, among others. It is obviously coming at a turning point in the West with the rise of populism and major developments such as the election of Donald Trump or Brexit.

PD believes that the demise of liberalism started ten years before Trump or Brexit, creating a ripe environment for these developments. He felt that the “inherited civilised order” derived by family and community values and crafted through religious and cultural norms, would gradually vanish through the influence of the liberal social and political state in spite of a rising opposition of the people, who are no longer benefitting from a liberal system, in turn potentially leading to authoritarian illiberalism. PD adds that the people want increasingly a strong leader to take back control over cultural norms, political habits over a bureaucratised government and a globalised economy that have now grown remote from them. He stresses the energy spent on mass protests rather than self-legislation and deliberation faulting liberalism to have created its own nightmare and not being able to correct its course. He quotes my once neighbour, Vaclav Havel, who stated that the remedy can only be found first in the polis – lives shared with a common purpose and not the system first (“A better system will not automatically create a better life. Only the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed” as stated in The Power of the Powerless).

PD takes a 500 year historical journey into liberalism starting with the Enlightenment, making it clear that all really started 250 years ago with the American liberal experiment that is now coming to an end. He explains the historical bases of liberalism represented by a limited government devoted to securing individual rights within a free-market economic system. Political legitimacy is based on a social contract ratified by fair and free elections. Key words are limited but efficient government, rule of law, independent judiciary, responsive public officials and again fair and free elections. However he stresses that 70% of Americans (his book is focused on the U.S. and its “experiment”) believe that their country is going in the wrong direction with 50% of them believing that the past is best. Public trust in institutions has markedly declined. Future generations for the first time will be less prosperous than the previous ones. Cynicism is running amok. Elections are seen as evidence of a rigged system. The political system is broken. The social fabrique is fraying with the widening gap between the “wealthy haves” and the “left out have nots”, this being enhanced by geographic divides (the two coasts and the heartland in the U.S. and London vs. the Rest in England). The hostile divide between the faithful and the secular people (religion seems key to PD in terms of providing societal norms). The promises of liberalism have been shattered as the liberal state expands to control many aspects of life while citizens feel powerless in front of a rootless globalisation. Rights can only be secured by wealth and status, the liberal system favouring a new meritocracy based on generational succession.

For PD liberalism has failed not because it fell short but because it was in fact true to itself, achieving not its stated objectives but what was always in store, producing ruins as being its very successes. In other words, instead of promoting greater equity, multiplicity of cultures and beliefs, human dignity and expanding liberty, PD feels that liberalism fostered inequality, uniformity and homogeneity, material and (again) spiritual degradation while undermining freedom. PD believes that America is at the end of the natural cycle of corruption and decay that limits the lifespans of all human creations, including its biggest one which is liberalism (in other words, all things come to an end). Liberalism is one of three “isms” (with Fascism and Communism) that took center stage and the only one left standing after 1989, while the one with the claim to legitimacy is in fact insidious as it does not sell itself as an ideology but as an invitation more than a coercion to enjoy freedom, pleasure and wealth.

The failures of liberalism are exemplified in four distinct yet connected areas which are i) politics and government; ii) economics; iii) education; and science and technology. Looking at these four sectors, PD makes the main points as follows:

• Politics: Citizens revolt against their own governments which they elected, the “establishment” and the political class, feeling too much distance from them. Government is deemed to be an entity separate from the will of the people and constraining the very rights of conscience, religion and association. Government is too big and Orwellian in nature for PD with unsurpassed capacities for surveillance and control of movement, finances, deeds and thoughts, while the people, being actually lost, ironically and perversely demand more intervention from the government.

• Economics: Civic unhappiness is mirrored in economic discontent as citizens are reduced to being “consumers”. They can buy everything and increasingly so but consumerism does not erase economic angst and unhappiness of over-anxiety. All the while PD recognises that there will likely always be inequality in society, especially at the geographic level and this, increasingly, globally (with a gap between metropolitan elites and rural populists, very much as described by Gideon Rachman in the 1st August issue of the FT). Similarly PD believes globalisation will not stop and is an inevitable process as “the wages of freedom are bondage to economic inevitability”. 

• Education: The rising generation feels forced to adopt an economic and political model they fear, making them cynics about their future and being part of an order they despise. They play the game, but without joy or love, as they have no choice, feeling (en)trapped. They have to become “meritocrats out of a survivalist instinct”. Advanced liberalism and elite universities are eliminating liberal education and    reducing students, citizens in the making, as followers of a system “sifting the        economically viable from those who will be mocked for their backward views on trade, immigration, nationhood and religious beliefs”. Universities focus on practical learning outcomes with the only goal to make students immediately employable.

• Science and technology: Students are encouraged today to study a STEM discipline (science, tech, engineering and maths) as the greatest tools of liberation from various forms of bondage and effectively to “control or master nature” finding its roots in Francis Bacon arguing that “knowledge is power”. PD believes we hold the  incoherent view that science can liberate us from some human limits. He feels that we are too used to follow science on issues like climate change, ignoring that “the crisis is the result of longstanding triumphs of science and technology”. PD believes that tech and its multiple tools make us prisoners instead of liberating us, foregoing  long simple reading and meditation that we can no longer afford due to tech addiction. Connecting tech de facto makes us alone together.

PD goes in more details in these four areas in six chapters which are: Unsustainable liberalism; Uniting liberalism and statism; Liberalism and anti-culture; Technology and the loss of liberty; The new aristocracy; and The degradation of citizenship.

These chapters are very rich in arguments about PD’s demise of liberalism and are indeed worth reading.

PD of course offers in his last chapter a raft of recipes to correct all the ills created by liberalism which I will let you read and fit his very conservative nature and tendency to go for “small is beautiful”.

Not so fast, Pat…

Clearly we are not on the same page, even if I feel PD is not wrong (for me) on all issues (like some of Trump’s policies could be agreed with, if never his style). While the point here is not to make a counter argument to PD’s, I would like to throw in some less sophisticated though fact-based realities to his well argued but somewhat dry academic postulate.

PD’s approach strikes as being very scholarly with the likely objective of giving credibility to his arguments, even if at times conveying a sense of artificiality to his reasoning, as if wanting to provide his captive audience, who badly needs a rational basis for their destructive stances, with some academic veneer of respectability. While well argued scholastically, PD’s book seems detached from reality today while claiming to be so close to the “real people” and what they feel, as if our world not upholding all the tenets of ancient Greece or all of the fundamentals of the Founding Fathers were proof enough that we were doomed and that liberalism should be sent to the dustbin of history. This feel-good populist tutorial as to why we are so wrong about the world we live in – a.k.a. liberalism – feels a bit easy even if well argued on the surface, though with too many self-evident truths lacking in depth evidence. “All things come to an end” is easy and again simple as a message. Who could argue? PD’s book is an answer to a rising scream of the left outs and discontents for change and a demand for alternatives, not knowing how to evaluate what they could be (he tries hard for them) and wanting simple answers to complex questions they at times don’t fully see nor grasp, so much the existential anger is a driver.

Liberalism to put it simply has been behind the massive historical rise in GDP we know especially in the West, the empowering of many, the lifting off poverty of millions if not billions, the best answer to tyranny, indeed the right of vote for all in many countries (sadly not all) but also the American civil rights achievements, and peace in Europe for 75 years…The list of achievements is too long here and you get the drift. It is very easy to forget these. We are all getting richer as a group and GDPs keep growing. That there are disparities (with the famed one percent getting richer) and some feel left out and forgotten by growth is undeniable. However, that liberalism can and will be perfected (like say the European Union to my British friends) is clear. While having been a bulwark against tyranny that is so easily forgotten, liberalism can be perfected as it is based on humanity that is imperfect (think of me) but can always redeem itself. Liberalism has always been a work in progress that is adaptable to ever-changing times as we, the citizens, shape through it, our destinies.

Elections should actually not be seen by liberalism’s haters as rigged given DT’s and the Brexit wins (a FT reader and Brexiter shared recently his belief that democratic decisions should be upheld, thus backing a very liberal concept even if one can argue in that case that democracy can also allow voters to change their minds two years and thousands of facts later). Democracy keeps producing unhappy voters as they are rarely happy as a state of being, with a gap between promises and reality even if the system works well incrementally (Macron, while bringing much needed improvements to the French Republic, is at a 32% satisfaction rate one year later). Big government which is the main target of PD is there to stay as it is hard to believe that national, not to mention regional issues or the Moon conquest could be dealt with by small Phalansterian communities, which if charming in nature, would have little clout to effect real and durable change on major issues.

PD’s views on education, while interesting, are a bit simplistic. Liberal education, which rightly needs to be fought for, is far from dead and still allows students to know “how to think” leading them to a vast choice of avenues in further education or the job market. PD should read Fareed Zakaria’s “In defence of a liberal education” as while they share the same view as to its importance, Fareed also focuses on why there is the world “liberal” in liberal education. The decline in liberal education may have been a temporary matter and clearly has been noticed with steps being taken even if there are great market needs for STEM graduates. I can only think of the many young college graduates with a History major I know and whom I struggle to debate with so much their thinking have been crafted by the best, and by the way many of them are also going into and much desired by strategy consulting (the “investment banking” of today for grads) in what would be an upside down way for PD. Meritocracy, another enemy, is also about hard work, not sheer money or roots – or “generational succession” and even today, regardless of financial considerations, allowing more or less all to succeed particularly in well-endowed elite U.S. universities if they work for it. And yes, one’s background matters. And yes, parents want their kids to succeed and if they come from good universities, they will be more likely than not to wish their offsprings to follow their paths (which does not mean that so-called “legacy” is great and it should not be left out, which in practical terms it is by and large the case judging from many irate parents I know). And let’s be clear, as Churchill could have said, selection is the fairest of all the unfair tools at our disposal. There are less slots in elite institutions than they are talented candidates and admission committees often follow their “reason that reason can ignore”, making it like a black box as to why Julie is in and not Max. And even looking more broadly at the whole spectrum of higher education, not everybody is gifted for it so trade schools should be re-emphasised, also as there is a great need for special tradecraft and many people would reach a satisfied professional existence if following that path. Finally not everybody in the world can make it to and at university as there are circumstances that fate gives us that one cannot overcome – but again the nice idea in some quarters that university should be for all actually means it would be for no one (lowering standards, like what may have happened with the French “Bac” at the end of high school some years ago made for happiness with a piece of paper but frustration later as both universities and the job market naturally reacted, showing for the former a staggering percentage of first year students not being able to go further and being lost on an unclear path). We live in an imperfect world though one where liberalism has allowed a large number of students to learn how to think as well as, if they chose to, to learn a practical trade and contribute to a growing society. At the end of the day, education, even in a competitive liberal world, is the single most important passport that parents, if they can, should focus on early on for their children, this at every level and regardless of socio-economic conditions, so they are best prepared for what is life.

PD’s views on science and education can resonate in part. Tech can indeed bring a sense of efficiency while it does destroy many things that makes our lives, some of which many of us would argue should likely not be sacrificed on the altar of progress and evolution. Amazon comes to mind. While it is hard to negate science and the advancements it has given the world at large, it is true that some aspects of the tech revolution can be of concern in terms of lesser interaction and thinking, focusing on the medium and not the substance. One does not need to hate liberalism to agree with the “Alone Together” as Sherry Turkle, the Harvard-trained and MIT professor did a few years back. However it is hard to follow PD on science and climate change as if something called fact-based rationality was in the way. If we cannot use science to assess climate change, would the tea leaves do?

I was not sure Yale should play that “fair” in pushing forward such an articulate yet quite dangerous piece of thinking that unwittingly or not lends credibility to populism, something it is dead set against value-wise. However once again, the approach of liberalism in its opening the debate to its would be destroyers is its inherent strength and guarantor of success, if citizens can understand fully the stakes of the game.

To be fair, PD does not attack everything linked to the Western liberal world and liberalism as we know it. One can agree with him on many of the ills but not on his views that liberalism needs to go to the graveyard. Liberalism can be constantly improved, which many if not all of the other applied philosophies and programmes of easy answers to complex problematics, however attractive and soothing, cannot provide.

I wish you an enjoyable and focused read (as it can be arduous at times), believing that the opponents to liberalism should be heard (and they certainly are today) and their philosophy known also so it can be fought equally fiercely with facts and not just scholarly tenets.

I dedicate this book note to Michael and my dear friends who felt that “whom should govern us” was the key issue, with their heads saying “yes” and hearts “out” on that key June question, hoping that all goes as well as it can (for all) next year and beyond, though hoping even more that the sovereign people can indeed revisit the matter given the “facts” they now should know better.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Serge Desprat- 9th August, 2018 (La Bernerie en Retz)

1-8-18

Dear Partners in thought,

As we are in mid-summer, I wanted to go back to novels but still keeping the international affairs feel to these book notes, I decided to go the spy novel route. One of the best spy novelists today in my book (pun intended) is American author Daniel Silva who since 1996 has nearly written a book a year, the last 18 focusing on Gabriel Allon, the now legendary Israeli “Office” agent (read Mossad). DS publishes his book every year in mid-July and just released “The Other Woman”, which is the 18th book of the Allon series. To me DS is the new, though less with an axe to grind, great John Le Carré to whom he resembles greatly in his ability to project the world of intelligence, mixing strategy, tactics, atmosphere, tradecraft, services interactions and indeed sheer action, the latter which is always a by-product of the story and not its main focus (in other words, the Allon series is for the thinking man and woman, who “also like” some action along the way but are more into the “hunt”). His latest novel “The Other Woman” particularly shows DS’s strong reliance on intelligence history with a focus on one of the most famous 20th century British spies (I will say no more but his mix of fiction and history is especially unique and credible, this in his dealing with all the major intelligence players globally).

DS went squarely away from the traditional CIA, MI6 or fictional intelligence service hero. Instead he chose to depict the adventures of Gabriel Allon, a veteran agent of the Israeli external intelligence service and also a top art restorer, giving us a very original blend of hero. Allon is working with a tightly knit team comprising well-depicted characters all of whom have grown with us over the last 20 years (I confess I started reading DS back in 1996, even corresponding with him on details of his pieces, giving him then some needed guidance on France). Not surprisingly he was a journalist with UPI and then joined CNN, with stints in the Middle East, which explains the wealth of his story crafting, attention to details and historical accuracy that is topped up by a great writing style making reading the Allon novels a real pleasure for the eye and the mind. Selecting the Mossad (well, The Office in the books), entrusted to protect the interests of the state of Israel, was not easy so much the intel service is unsurpassed and the country always “different”, to treat with care, especially today given its current premiership and some of the policies of Israel, which may not make it the most popular country in all quarters globally. However DS, never taking a strong side on policy matters has kept stressing the reasons why Israel always benefited, especially early on and in the West, from much support and admiration, partly driven by guilt, partly by respect for its many achievements, often alone against many. DS is a Catholic by birth, converted to Judaism (as he married Jamie Gangel, then a well known CNN reporter), who went deeply into Jewish matters as shown with his board membership of the Holocaust organisation in New York City.

Gabriel Allon, his main character, is a “Sabra” whose first language is German and was raised a secular Jew in the valley of Jezreel. His mother, Irene, is an Holocaust survivor from Berlin while his Munich-born father (not much mentioned) would die in the Six-Day War in 1966. He is a fluent speaker in many languages (helpful in his trade). His grandfather was a well known Expressionist painter from Berlin passing his talents to Irene before being killed at Auschwitz in 1943 while his mother kept the tradition and bestowed Gabriel with very special skills that will make him an art restorer. He comes out of art school in 1972 to be part of one of the Munich massacre revenge hit teams, hired by Ari Shamron, a putative father, to go after Black September terrorists. He will then live as Mario Delvecchio in Cornwall as an art restorer, leaving his Office past behind. His life however is changed when his family is victim in turn of a revenge terrorist car bombing in Vienna in 1991. He will then come back to work at the behest of Shamron and Western intelligence leaders in need of his particular skillset and experience, until he becomes head of The Office in 2016, having been one of its most senior members and souls. Of note in Judaism, the archangel “Gabriel” is the guardian angel of the State of Israel and is often “sent” by God, also at times to deliver His wrath, which is befitting Allon’s profession and origin.

Allon, although a fictional character (though is he?) operates in a world where leaders are who they are in real life even if never named by DS (In the latest opus, we know the American President is a departure from the standard White House leadership while the Israeli Premier is dealing with personal financial matters risking derailing the longest tenure of a PM since David Ben-Gurion). Allon and his team project teamwork and professionalism, facing many foes ranging from Middle Eastern and Iranian terrorists, to bad Russian oligarchs, to elements in the Russian SVR (my profuse apologies to all my Russian friends part of the network though I am sure there must be good Russian spy novels where the Westerners act as baddies), to neo-nazi organisations, shady Swiss bankers and rogue Vatican outfits, while working closely with the CIA, much with MI5 and 6 and even the French DGSE, very much part of the Western team. There is an element of continuity as the characters grow with the books over the years. Allon, whose three main residences, depending on the story, are Venezia, London and today Jerusalem, is also an art restorer with art as a key theme being often the initial focus of the stories, at times quite deeply ensconced into the international intrigue, with the looting of art pieces during WWII being often visited.

I know many of you, like me, have been fond of the recently departed Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels. I think Silva has the same authorship quality even if his hero is more of a hero than Bernie could ever be (indeed a anti-hero if there was ever one, though possibly explained by his German nationality and background role in Nazi Germany even if not a Nazi himself) and does not ask himself existential questions as you would expect from an efficient Mossad leader. However the art dimension gives Gabriel some humanity which may equate that of Bernie’s conscience in hell on earth.

DS’s books, published about once a year since July 1996, are as follows:

The early books

The unlikely Spy (1996) – Early 1944 before D-Day. A female German intelligence sleeper agent will try to know where the landings are planned. A game of cat and mouse is on with the fate of the war at stake. This novel made DS but he was still searching for his “genre”.

The Mark of the Assassin (1998) – Michael Osbourne, CIA, investigates a plane bombing off Long Island and risks everything to uncover the truth. DS tries to find a way and has the will for it.

The Marching Season (1999) – Michael Osbourne, retired from CIA, comes back to work on rescuing his U.S. Senator father in law in line to be the next Ambassador to the Court of Saint-James’s. This will end the literary career of Osbourne with DS focusing next on something he “feels” more about.

The Gabriel Allon (“GA”) series

The Kill Artist (2000) – Gabriel Allon, Israeli art restorer living in England, comes back from his retirement from intelligence, to assist his former boss, the legendary head of The Office, Ari Sharon, to hunt for the killer of the Israeli ambassador in Paris, who is also GA’s nemesis. GA who was part of one of the Munich 1972 teams that went after the killers of Israeli athletes and paid a terrible price years later for his involvement is going to settle some accounts once and for all.

The English Assassin (2002) – GA now works part-time with The Office though is framed for a murder he did not commit in Switzerland, getting involved in the matter of looted paintings during WWII and dealing with a secretive elite group of Swiss bankers and businessmen determined to protect the reputation of Switzerland at all costs, leading to fierce developments.

The Confessor (2003) – GA investigates the murder of Jewish scholar Benjamin Stern in Munich and, doing so, gets involved with The Vatican and his new Pope who wants to candidly shed light on the role of the Church during the Holocaust, prompting some strong feedback from the conservative wing of the Vatican that will defend the reputation of the Church at all costs.

Death in Vienna (2004) – An Israeli-run Holocaust research office in Vienna is destroyed. GA gets involved in the dark world of Nazi war criminals and neo-nazi organisations that protect them, finding some very personal reasons to go after the culprits. The Vatican gets involved again, together with Langley, confirming some post-war odd friendships of circumstances, and a hunt leading to Argentina ensues, while GA needs to deal with a professional killer sent to stop him.

Prince of Fire (2005) – The Rome Israeli embassy is bombed, leading GA to take a fuller role at The Office, working with a team that will be seen in later books. The team finds out that a descendant of Palestinian warlords, now a carefully reconstructed renowned French archeologist, may be the leader of the Rome bombing and other terrorist attacks.

The Messenger (2006) – GA uncovers a plan to kill the Pope, which drives him to investigate likely terrorist suspects among Vatican staff and infiltrating the network of a terrorist financier, leading to the man behind many terrorist activities and the plan against the Pope. It turns out that the main target also involves another major world leader.

The Secret Servant (2007) – GA goes to Amsterdam for a routine mission of purging the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who was also an asset of Israeli Intelligence and discovers a conspiracy festering in the city’s Islamic underground targeting the American diplomatic community.

Moscow Rules (2008) – GA is approached by the editor of Moskovsky Gazeta about imminent threats to the West and Israel where a well known Russian arms dealer may be involved and senior members of the FSB play on all sides.

The Defector (2009) – GA continues his Russian adventures, trying to rescue a kidnapped Russian defector who sets him on a lethal course with the Russian arms dealer of Moscow Rules.

The Rembrandt Affair (2010) – GA and his team seek to recover a lost Rembrandt painting whose previous owners have included both Holocaust victims and terrorists. The book is focused on art theft and its links with terrorism and related activities.

Portrait of a Spy (2011) – A pair of bombings in Paris and Amsterdam have erupted while GA is unable to stop a third attack at Covent Garden. GA will face the new face of terror in an American-born cleric of Yemeni descent, once a paid CIA asset. GA will need to work with the art collector daughter of an arch-enemy who can traverse the murky divide between radical Islam and the West.

The Fallen Angel (2012) – The book is mostly set in Italy with GA helping Monsignor Luigi Donati, the Pope’s private secretary with a murder case that is troubling the Vatican given its location beneath Michelangelo’s dome in St. Peter’s Basilica. The story taking its roots in the art world leads to a smuggling art network with links to terrorists planning a major attack with apocalyptic consequences.

The English Girl (2013) – The mistress of the British PM is kidnapped in Corsica, prompting Sir Graham Seymour, Head of MI6 to request the assistance of GA in what is a delicate matter. GA starts working with a colourful Corsican crime boss and Christopher Keller, a new recurring character, former SAS officer believed dead in Iraq. All is not what it seems.

The Heist (2014) – Once again, this book is focused on the recovery of stolen art. GA is in Venice restoring a Veronese and will rescue an old friend, St. James’s art dealer, Julian Isherwood, unwittingly in the grips of Italian justice for being at a grisly murder scene. The dead man is a former British spy doubling as an art trafficker having dealt with one Caravaggio too many. Another hunt where shady Vienna bankers, Marseilles and Corsica criminals abound.

The English Spy (2015) – An iconic member of the British Royal Family is killed when a bomb explodes on her yacht. British intelligence asks GA to investigate, leading to targeting Eamon Quinn, a master bomber and mercenary. Christopher Keller, joins anew the ride in what they will find out they face old enemies.

The Black Widow (2016) – GA is now expected to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service though on the eve of his promotion a massive ISIS bomb detonates in Le Marais district in Paris, killing an old relationship of GA. Enters Saladin.

House of Spies (2017) – GA is still on the hunt for Saladin, shadowy ISIS mastermind, four months after the deadliest attack on American soil since 9-11. He will soon go to Southern France where terrorists share the company of art dealers and models in Saint-Tropez.

The Other Woman (2018) – GA is about to organise the defection of an SVR agent in Vienna when he is killed with a set up to make the world believe The Office and GA did the deed, making him and New Russia engaging in an epic, final struggle, where a KGB mole of old, still in place, stands at the doorstep of the ultimate power.

You will discover alongside Gabriel Allon a cast comprising regular “friendly” characters who indeed grow with the books. Some of the key ones are Ari Shamron (legendary, on and off, now retired head of The Office, Polish-born from Lviv); Julian Isherwood (né Izakowitz, St. James’s art dealer and GA’s often partner and main link to that other world); Eli Lavon (Head of the Watchers at the Office and professor of biblical archeology); Chiara Zolli (now Allon, retired Venice-based Office agent); Uzi Navot (Ex-head of Paris station and Western Europe, then DG of The Office prior to GA in 2016); Christopher Keller (ex- SAS officer presumed dead, resurrected and now part of MI6); Mikhail Abramov (Moscow- born special forces officer at Sayeret Matkal and one of GA’s enforcers); Yaakov Rossman (Office head of special forces); Rimona Stern (Shamron’s niece, ex-IDF Intelligence Major and Iran nuclear specialist); Dina Said (Head of research, the encyclopaedic memory of The Office); Graham Seymour (cautious Oxbridge educated head of MI6, having had an extensive intelligence career in the defence of the realm); Adrian Carter (longtime deputy director of operations now head of clandestine services, CIA – Langley through and through); Paul Rousseau (Pipe-smoking head of the counter-terrorism section of Alpha Team, French DGSI); Don Orsatti (crime lord, from some remote location with high walls in Corsica); Sarah Bancroft (Engaging CIA case officer, in an on and off relationship with Abramov). One point which is amusing is that GA has never been a young guy, being around since 2001 so the maths are a bit on the tough side here though he seems to be permanently in his late 50s which, being 58 myself, I find eminently acceptable and reassuring. When one reaches that noble age, one obviously stops getting older.

Just so you know, if I may be facetious and as I am sure you were wondering, like DS I am a born and raised Catholic, quite secular these days even if applying many of the faith’s principles (except the other cheek). However, we never know our roots too well, and quoting my better half’s very witty grandfather, himself from the Jewish faith having married Catholic Sophie in a second wedding for both: “Well I don’t know whether Serge is Jewish or not but I only have one question…Ashkenazi or Sephardic?” As it turns out, I discovered only a few years back that my maternal grandfather was such as a result of a post-war re-marriage and that my real grandfather was a a sculptor who died at a young age in 1943 (ok that is quite short and there would be no female bloodline, but…). Maybe I am GA’s forgotten brother after all? 😉

I dedicate this note to Ron, a thinking leader among leaders and one of the most private and caring men I have been fortunate to know. I also dedicate this note to Alain, the “real thing”, a patriot who inspired me so much as a young man. Stay well, cousin.

I wish you all a great read and wonderful escape in the dark world of contemporary espionage with an unusually differentiated flavour.

Warmest regards, or should I say Shalom!

Serge

Serge Desprat- 1st August, 2018 (Prague)

22-7-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I would like to tell you about another book while giving you some personal context as to why this one.

When I was a teenager growing up in Paris in the 1970s, I had a natural attraction for that country far away that I only knew through the movies and made me dream: America. Nothing represented this vague but powerful American dream as the Kennedys, that Boston political dynasty of whom we knew only the beautiful aspects in an age of other media. I like to think that my first memory as a child, even if dreadful, was that of JFK’s assassination in Dallas when I was three years old in the middle of a dinner with my parents and friends, though perhaps I crafted that memory to fit my later bond. When I was 20, my first trip to America was to Harvard so I could improve my deplorable English language skills, a place I am sure I primarily selected for its link to JFK and RFK. The brothers had a knack to enthuse with their one liner like “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” or “I dream things that never were …and say why not” reflecting nobility and leadership by example befitting that American aristocracy and limits constantly pushed further embodying what America should be for me.

In the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles assassination of RFK, which marked many, cross-generation, as America at the time was going deeper into Vietnam and through a soft civil war of its own, I would like to recommend you to read “Bobby Kennedy – A Raging Sprit” from Chris Matthews, the well-known MSNBC “Hardball” presenter and Kennedy biographer. CM wrote this book to “commemorate” at this juncture but also, unsurprisingly, “in the hope that our country can find its way back to the patriotic unity he (RFK) championed”. The fact that I was also in Boston and Cambridge, MA in July is of course not foreign to my wanting to remember and discover.

One of the nice features of the book, that reads very well, is CM reminiscing about his parents and himself about the era, watching the various Kennedy developments that he narrates in his book. His Catholic Irish American roots were also another element of closeness with the Kennedy saga at the time and help us understand the historical stint of “discrimination”, still floating at election time, and the impact of Al Smith’s 1928 defeat in the Irish American psyche. He was also part of the “Movement” generation in the late sixties, expecting to go to Vietnam after his draft deferment, though ending up in Africa for the earlier JFK-created Peace Corps, then working as an aide in Washington, eventually for Tip O’Neil, the veteran Democratic legislator from Boston, before joining the media world where we have known him over the years. While most of us will know about RFK as Attorney General in JFK’s team, the book unusually sheds light on his early years, his role in the McCarthy “red” hunt and the years after Dallas, – making appear as less of a liberal than we remember – while providing insights on the particular Kennedy family dynamics.

Going back to CM’s appellation, “Bobby” was fourth generation Irish-American from Boston, the fifth child and third son of his large family led by patriarch Joe Sr (Joseph P. Kennedy) who had married Rose, the daughter of a former Boston Mayor, John “Fitz Honey” Fitzpatrick. Joe Sr had gone to Harvard, class of 1912, establishing the family as a prominent one (he was in his own words, the youngest President of an American bank at age 25) though still not included in the Boston elite world run by the WASP establishment of the Cabots, Lodges and Lowells, due to his Irish “off the boat” heritage. This Irish origin would have a big impact on Bobby, who felt it the most in his family generation, feeling vividly the meaning of discrimination (in the late 19th century, shops would have job offers in Boston with “Irish need not apply”) and would lead the family to migrate down to Bronxville in the vicinity of Manhattan for 12 years to more fully benefit from their status in society. Bobby went to many schools, unlike his brothers Joe Jr and Jack (JFK) who stuck with Choate, the Wallingford, CT-based elite boarding school. He suffered most from a lack of love and support from his father who much preferred Joe Sr as the future family leader, being the eldest son, and Jack also as the two were seen as tougher individuals than Bobby, who would look for approval from him all his life. Unlike his father, Bobby was also interested in helping the “forgotten” (we’d say the left-outs today), be they from the black minority (as seen later in the civil rights fight), white miners from the Appalachians or farmers from Kansas. He saw it as the duty from the members of his privileged class to help the less privileged ones and not squander their wealth on futile matters. While his father and then Jack were the two most important family figures for him, Bobby could not manage to be close to the latter much due to the eight year age gap and the fact that Jack and Joe Sr were away at boarding school nine months of the year, prompting his mother Rose to make up for the neglect displayed by his father. Bobby found in his Catholic faith, the strongest in his family, the moral rectitude that guided him all his life and also defined some of his key, highly principled, political fights, like that against Communism as the Cold War took hold (that also explained his role with Joe McCarthy and his famed subcommittee) in later years.

When young, Bobby, like the whole family, followed the steps of his father’s career, the latter that was now heavily influenced by politics. Joe Sr who backed Republican Hoover in the 1928 elections against his roots and historical party affiliations, went back to the Dems backing FDR as the safest choice to “preserve my own interests” in 1932 during the financial crisis of the times. As a close ally of FDR and while he did not get his rewards quickly, he was nonetheless appointed as the first Chairman of the new SEC in 1934 (the thinking being that as one of those responsible for the crash, he would be able to know how to prevent the next one), then Chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission in 1937 and in the late thirties, while aiming for Secretary of the Treasury which FDR rejected, he finally obtained, after much pressuring of the President, the Ambassadorship in London, taking the whole family with him across the pond. This post defined Joe Sr in inglorious terms and ended any hope he would have of a subsequent senior political career, having a very adverse impact on the whole family and deeply wounding young Bobby. As the war was looming, Joe Sr became a lead Appeaser (more Chamberlain than Chamberlain) in relation to the Nazi territorial demands at a time when America was officially neutral. He was recalled by FDR after two years, becoming then de facto a voice for America First, close to famed (Transatlantic!) flyer Charles Lindbergh, and against any U.S. intervention in the war, the latter that became unavoidable after the December 1941 surprise Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor U.S. Navy base and Pacific Fleet. Both Joe Jr and Jack went to war as officers, Joe as a bomber pilot, Jack first in Army intelligence in DC, then in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater where his team rescuing exploits with PT 109 became legend and eventually paved the way for what was not thought yet as a political career. Joe Jr was the one destined for politics, with Joe Sr preparing the grounds, though the former was consumed with family redemption and flew mission well beyond his quota, turning down leaves, to meet death over France during a very perilous mission targeted at a Normandy V2 missile base. Jack then became the anointed Kennedy to lead the family to an even greater future. Bobby, who had started college at Harvard, wanted to fight but was too young and was sent to Officer Training in DC on the recommendation of Jack who thought him too young and unprepared to join the fight, something that Joe Sr engineered, also to keep him away, against any of his son’s expected urges, from the battlefield. WWII ended in Europe and then in Asia before Bobby could fight which marked him deeply, feeling like a failure, making him getting released from officer school following a direct approach to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, joining in early 1946. Being his usual bold, Bobby enlisted as a regular seaman (I wonder about Dad’s reaction back in Hyannis Port), joining the new U.S. Navy destroyer named after his lost eldest sibling: USS Joseph Kennedy Sr. While serving he wrote his best friend about his Southern shipmates that ” possessed a lot of something a lot of guys at Harvard lacked” (writing to his parents in a more diplomatic that he was “certainly meeting people who had a different outlook and interests in life”), reminding some of us who did our military service of similar, useful feelings. Back at Harvard, Bobby went straight to his junior (third) year and seemed to focus on football, an unlikely activity for someone of his frame where he mixed with “real guys” who were at Harvard primarily due to their football prowess (including Ken O’Donnell, another hard-nosed Irish American who would end up going on to work with JFK at the White House, leading the Irish pack while Ted Sorensen led the “Intellectuals”) and were from the wrong side of the tracks but all veterans. This experience, which was an integration process for him and a way to get the fatherly respect he craved (he would never surrendered on the field, always getting back up), cemented his interest in American society as a whole, well beyond his socially-secluded Beacon Hill and Hyannis Port, leading to his future profile as a politician.

Upon graduation, Bobby went on to graduate school, not at Harvard, as he rejected the family tradition (even if none had gone to graduate school), but at UVA (University of Virginia) Law School in Charlottesville. Upon graduation and while marrying old relationship Ethel (having first dated her sister long ago), he went on to join the Department of Justice, an association that would stick, to work on a major fraud case. In the meantime, his brother Jack, who had won a Boston seat (where Harvard is also located, but full of working class voters) in Congress on the back of good looks, charm, family money and a great war record was in Washington with many freshmen veterans, like Californian Republican Richard Nixon (with whom he shared a seat on the Housing, Education & Labor Committee and already engaged in a debate in the Spring of ’47 on the Soviet Union like in a prelude of the 1960 presidential race). While he was suffering from then a severe case of Addison’s disease (he was given the last rites three times before the White House), Jack was fulfilling his father’s family master plan, which he naturally liked very much, with all siblings being unwittingly shadowed by his successes. In 1952, Jack decided to run for the Massachusetts Senate seat held by an older war veteran who had relinquished briefly his seat to fight: Henry Cabot Lodge, a Boston Brahmin who was running for reelection (interestingly both their grandfathers had fought for the same Massachusetts Senate seat in 1916 with the WASP winning). As the campaign was faltering, in part as its manager could not handle Joe Sr and his desire to be “involved”, Ken O’Donnell, previously introduced to Jack by Bobby, planted the seeds of the idea that the latter should help the former in managing the campaign. At that time, Jack did not really follow what Bobby was doing and vice versa, while Bobby was keen on crusading against fraudsters. In the end, family ties prevailed and Bobby, initially grudgingly, got involved in the world of politics, also mutating into what people described as a “hard-driving, take-no-excuses street fighter”, the man who was doing the bad things for Jack, sheltering the candidate in the process. This first step into the political arena, crowned by a hard fought victory for Jack (given Lodge’s longstanding representation and wide popularity, also a a veteran who unusually had relinquish his seat to fight), changed Bobby while enabling him to find a path to fight to redress the wrongs he perceived in society.

In spite of his father’s pressure, Bobby, having had a taste of it, did not want to enter the political arena as feeling neither interest in public speaking nor backslapping and despising opportunists and self servers (one of whom being Lyndon Johnson, Senate minority leader and Jack’s ever nemesis, though in his case daily due to the fact that a younger LBJ was present in the Oval Office when FDR sacked Joe Sr, making fun of the event with his own network, something Bobby could never manage to forget). Thoughts of Bobby in the Governor’s mansion in Boston for 1954 were equally dismissed. Bobby just “didn’t like politics”.

In February 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, a close friend of the Kennedy family as part of the Catholic Irish-American clan, started his hunt to unearth Communist sympathisers in the wake of the Alger Hiss “scandal”, denouncing on the way “the most treacherous…those bright young men born with silver spoons in their mouths…”. Of relevance to Bobby, who had developed some hatred of FDR’s late foreign policy leadership and whom he saw as responsible for gifting Central Europe to Stalin (Why did we fight the war?), McCarthy was structuring his crusade in a fight between communist atheism and Christianity, something that was bound to resonate deeply and did. Then the Korean War erupted when the north sent 90,000 troops down South that year and seized Seoul, prompting UN resolutions and the dispatch of Douglas McArhur and American troops only five years after WWII, directly making the case for hunting the “Reds” at home more vivid. On the back of a Republican sweep, Joe McCarthy became head of the Committee of Government Operations and thus its Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations that could investigate anything it wanted, including whether there were spies and traitors in the midst of the U.S. government. Bobby had much respect for McCarthy, which was mutual, also due to clan-like Catholic Irish American-based family ties and as the latter was close to Joe Sr and had indeed dated sisters Eunice and Pam in the past (on Eunice’s later wedding day, he sent an engraved gift stating “From the one who lost out”). Seventeen years his junior, Bobby was enthused about working for one of his father’s friends while fighting the good, black and white, anti- communist fight. While he was angling to becoming counsel to the sub-committee, the job went to contemporary Roy Cohn, a Columbia Law whiz kid and son of a judge, who became McCarthy’s infamous enforcer and whom Bobby, who ended up being a mere assistant to the Committee’s general counsel, never liked personally, also due to his expeditive investigation and interviewing methods with suspects literally dragged down in front of the sub-commmitee with little regards for damages to careers and lives regardless of any proof of actual guilt. Bobby kept on working with McCarthy out of respect and belief in the mission but also as he felt that the latter was also the subject of bigotry and early roots on the wrong side of the tracks, features he felt vividly about. Bobby nevertheless ended up resigning in late 1953 as he could not go on with the subcommittee’s methods which he felt were not reflecting American values even if he felt that the purpose of its fight was noble and necessary.

Bobby then went on to work for the former President Hoover Commission to promote the efficiency and economy of the Federal Government of which Joe Sr. was a member and likely helped get him a role with. He was quickly back on the McCarthy Commission as it was decided that counsels should originate from both main parties and not just represent at the time the Republicans. Bobby, who felt he could play a role fostering more fairness in its methods, then became the Democratic Counsel on the subcommittee he had quit before, working closely again with McCarthy but being able to deal with Roy Cohn, at times “very physically”, from a status of equals. McCarthy went into a feud with the Army on a case related to one medical officer suspected of being a communist sympathiser that put him on a collision course with the Undersecretary of the Army Robert Stevens, whom he vowed very directly to him to destroy. Ultimately this fight was one too many with Stevens in turn releasing files about the preferred treatment Roy Cohn would have engineer in strongly pushing for his supposed “boyfriend”, a matter that was handled with all the ways of the prevailing times (the terminology “gay” would come later). The fight went on with McCarthy who was subsequently censured in December 1954 by the Senate for his methods, losing his political clout (also in the American opinion, previously having reached great poll heights), going into depression and heavy drinking, coming several times to Committee hearings drunk and finally dying of liver collapse in 1955. Of note, the colourful Wisconsinite at the time of his demise was still respected if not admired at the personal level by both Jack and Bobby, the latter who went “confidentially” to his funeral mass in DC, showing the bonds of friendship and that of the Irish clan. Jack and Bobby liked the “tumult” in the man and his rebellious spirit that led him, finally, too far. (As an aside, Roy Cohn went on to work eventually with and for DT as his personal lawyer – pre- Michael Cohen – in the 1980s though it can only be a “fun fact”).

Joe Sr. now wanted Jack to go the next steps, offering in 1955 to LBJ to fund his run for the Presidency in 1956 against an Ike reelection as long as Jack was on the ticket, an idea that LBJ dismissed outright. Instead Jack went on with his idea to be on the ticket with Adlai Stevenson who would have another go at the top job though in the end chose to let the Convention select the VP. In the end, five men competed for the VP slot, with Jack initially ending up second behind Estes Kefauver, a Senator who had gained national fame in his televised hearings against organised crime in 1950 and would ultimately secure the nomination against a late-coming anti-Catholic drive that was fatal to Jack in the primaries. Bobby ended up campaigning for Adlai Stevenson whom he thought had great qualities at the beginning but could not decide anything during the campaign, not relating to his audience like with coal miners in West Virginia where “he was taking above the heads of people”. In the end, Bobby voted for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket so despondent he had become, preferring to stick once again to values he though they would best defend. Late in 1956, Joe Sr. and Jack agreed that 1960 would be Jack’s time and that Bobby, as his top enforcer, would be his campaign manager. In the meantime, Bobby went on to work as Counsel on the Senate’s Rackets Committee where he went against the Teamsters, whom sister Pam, thought was another word for mafia, such the reputation of the labor union organisation had been well established in the minds. Bobby’s targets were David Beck, the Teamsters President and Jimmy Hoffa, the man who was seen as the future of the Teamsters and ran it all. Hoffa was subsequently entrapped by a sting operation where money was given to a Government informant in exchange for intelligence on the government plans and Hoffa was indicted, leading to a criminal trial in 1957. He got off against all odds as the jury was swayed by a testimony (apparently indirectly bought by the Teamsters) from boxing champion Joe Louis who vouched for Hoffa and the fact that the case was based on what was successfully demonstrated reasonable doubt, a verdict that hit Bobby who could not accept such an escape from a just punishment in his black and white world world (making the defense lawyer remind him that the white hats don’t always win). Bobby went on after Hoffa, whose internal status had grown with his court win, and while “getting” David Beck, could not secure a conviction against Hoffa with the two actively duelling very directly during the hearings, this for three years running (Hoffa would be convicted during two trials in 1964, sent to jail in 1967 and then physically (being) “vanished” in 1975, and declared officially dead in 1982. Good movie with Jack Nicholson, “Hoffa” in 1992).

As the 1960 presidential race was profiling itself, Bobby went to LBJ, the two being natural enemies by then albeit from the same party, to ensure that LBJ would not run against Jack, would do nothing against his run and would not support another Democratic candidate. While LBJ agreed to all three points for tactical reasons, he was mulling supporting Adlai Stevenson for a third run, the latter which fizzled out. His lieutenants, including John Connally, then Governor of Texas, started to make statements about Jack’s Addison disease and the risk associated with a President affected with it, a subject that was addressed by the Kennedy camp and did not stay in the news long. As the LBJ support had vanished, Jack was not surprised to see him throwing his Stetson in the ring. Jack would eventually win the nomination, overcoming the Al Smith Catholic syndrome after having clinched states like Protestant Wisconsin in the primaries. Thinking about his ticket, he thought LBJ could bring in the South and balance his own Northeastern patrician profile even if his charm and war record would help nationally. Bobby was adamant for Jack not to chose LBJ due to his poor relations with organised labor and his own distaste for the Texan but in the Jack prevailed in one of the most difficult issue to manage among brothers. JFK-LBJ would face Richard Nixon-Henry Cabot Lodge, the latter, also a ticket balancing act, having lost his Senate seat to Jack eight years earlier. There were a few debates, including the one where Nixon “sweated” too much in a new age of television and while Ike started to make rousing speeches supporting Nixon, his VP, it was too late. However the result was very much closer than anticipated by the Kennedy camp with Jack getting 34,108,157 votes against Nixon’s 34,108,157 though with no electoral college surprises like in 2016, prompting Jack to think that the Catholic and Irish roots might have not totally disappear as factors for many voters. Bobby was seen as a major driver of victory when Jack offered him a copy “The Enemy Within” that he’d written with the ironical inscription “For Bobby – The Brother Within – who made the easy difficult”…while Jackie added “To Booby – who made the impossible possible and change our lives”. Bobby went to become Attorney General, which was not an easy call, given the nepotism issue (see today, knowing that 1961 was even worse for such a case), but Jack was adamant about having Bobby by his side and (unlike in the 2017 case) he had shown a clear knack for the top DoJ role in his good fights against the teamsters and assorted mafias, while preserving the rule and spirit of the law.

JFK dealt with two major topics during his presidencies (Cuba – bay of Pigs and nuclear standoff – and the Soviet Union – Sputnik, Berlin) and two nascent matters which LBJ would be involved with (Civil rights fight and the Vietnam War escalation). We all know those key moments that showed JFK flat-footed by his intelligence team (Bay of Pigs), showed extreme leadership (Cuban missiles crisis and its nuclear standoff), the New Frontier and “the man to be on the moon” (post-Sputnik) and Berlin (its wall and “Ich bin ein Berliner”). In all these major events, Bobby was close to his brother, assisting him in the decision-making, also true to his belief that cabinet members should contribute well beyond their sphere of competence, getting David Halberstam to write his famed 1972 “The Best and the Brightest” (also showing they can make mistakes, this with the ease of the rearview mirror, like for Vietnam) and the mythical spirit of Camelot as was described the JFK White House. In mid-1963, the Catholic Diem brothers, ruling South Vietnam since 1955 and a 90% Buddhist population, were slaughtered in a coup with the rise of a military leadership taking over with the North showing increasing plans to reunify the country by force . JFK would not have the time (literally) to deal with this development, which the DC establishment, remembering Korea, wanted to stop by any means, including military. In the meantime, Dr. King was in the news to champion the nascent civil right movements which would later see him dealing closely with Bobby, the latter who was increasingly involved in that fight as Attorney General (exemplified by the well known case of the enrolment of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi, Ol’ Miss, triggering a violent clash between U.S. Marshals and then White Supremacists but winning the day – or actually the night then). The Dallas assassination on 23 November 1963 was a terrible shock to Bobby already a “brooder who carried the agony of the world” by nature, who lost a brother but also a raison d’être so much his life had been focused on making things happen for Jack. He eventually would leave the White House, not feeling close to LBJ, its new occupant, in spite of their deep-seated, mutual hostility having been kept in check for public affairs reasons. One event of the first year of Jack’s Presidency that marked both brothers was the stroke of Joe Sr that incapacitated him fully. At this stage and while they rushed back to Hyannis Port, there is a feeling that Joe Sr., post 1960 election victory, had stopped being a major factor in the evolution of the lives of both Jack and Bobby, who had reached a stage where their omnipresent father and Deus ex-machina could no longer dictate, least influence the course of their own future. The stroke just confirmed a gradual vanishment in the sunset, with the brothers being now focused on running the Western world.

While he was not a natural politician, not wanting to play the game and time and time again putting principles ahead of politics and partisanship, he nevertheless decided to go for the junior New York Senate Democratic seat in 1964, knowing he would come in as a carpetbagger and admitting it in meetings. Funnily at the time, younger brother Ted was the senior senator of Massachusetts, having taken the seat from Jack, who had won it in 1952. Bobby was a Democrat in the Senate though not part of its liberal faction, especially on foreign policy matters, while he was increasingly very progressive on domestic affairs going even more deeply in the defense of downtrodden Americans he kept calling the forgotten, be they white or blacks at the time. He was very involved in the lunch of Bedford-Styvesant rehabilitation project in Brooklyn in early 1966. It was a real challenge for him to decide whether to run for President in 1968, not that he did not want to exert retribution regarding LBJ but as Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was taking the lead on the anti-war front, a subject that was also evolving for Bobby, an erstwhile cheerleader for full engagement, and where he finally expressed its strong opposition as a war morally wrong, focusing on principles as well as inefficiency. He felt that he had no room to get in, which changed when LBJ decided to not go for another mandate, officially preferring to focus on the conduct of the war (unofficially as McCarthy was to trounce him 2-to-1 in the Wisconsin primary, also getting fixated on Bobby’s potential run, knowing that it would create a strong following based on the Kennedy mythical aura). While getting in late in the primaries, Bobby won a series of them, being at a rallye when Dr. King, MLK, was shot dead, strengthening his resolve and being faced with a dual message on the need to unify America while enforcing law and oder in face of the race riots that ensued the assassination. His primary journey, also marked by his only defeat in liberal Oregon, culminating in the fateful victory in California and that tragic June post-election result night at the Hotel Ambassador. CM does not go into Bobby’s assassination (many books, particularly on this sad 50th anniversary, have and we remember the pictures of he fallen hero in the hotel lobby with his eyes, fully open, but not seeing anymore) as he did not go into Jack’s in Dallas, preferring focusing on their accomplishments and lives rather than the grim details of their demise.

Bobby was very different from Jack. As Arthur Schlesinger, “Intellectual-in- Residence” at the JFK White House elegantly put it: “John Kennedy was a realist brilliantly disguised as a romantic; Robert Kennedy, a romantic stubbornly disguised as a realist.” Bobby was whole and a stern fighter while Jack, still majestuous, was more at ease with what would we know today as the “swamp” and its trade offs. Bobby gradually became RFK against all odds (and maybe due to his father he needed to prove something) as he dutifully followed his older brother’s career and to a great extent managed the key parts of his political life while he was campaigning but also being the uber confident to Jack, the one giving him the unvarnished truth, as Jack wanted. After Jack died, Bobby felt it would never be fun as it once was, regardless of whether he became President while deep down he needed his own Bobby he never found in spite of close friendships like with Ken O’Donnell and others. His is a story of moral rectitude, empathy for the forgotten, upholding defining values as well as class and personal duty above any personal ambition – probably why he marked so many and his example resonates all the more in 2018 and with the American leadership we know.

His story is that of a President that never was but could have been. We will never know whether he would have been a game-changer for his times. However it’s no wonder why 50 years after the Hotel Ambassador, people write about him and the “dreams” that never came through.

Coming back to 2018, the comparison between the message of RFK, even if it was idealised by us, and that of Steve Bannon and its “Movement” set out to disrupt the forthcoming EU parliamentary election is absolutely amazing. Whilst dealing with a likely collusion in their own election, the U.S. Administration is planning in its National Security Advisor to influence elections in Europe and promote anti- European Union parties that would fulfil DT’s dream of not dealing with Europe but in the end smaller countries. I am without words and an orphan. What cannon does not get is that America is not a country, it’s a state of mind and while stealing its dream he reduces it to a mere country which will be increasingly irrelevant.

I dedicate this note to Anne, the truly amazing lady I met at Thunderbird, epitomising my American dream, and thought I was part of Camelot so Boston-preppy I was on that intro day. I would like to say more but I will stop here.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Note: As an aside, it is astounding to realise that of the eight children of Joe Sr and Rose, five died before their times and in terrible circumstances: Joe Jr., Jack and Bob but also daughters Rosemary (years later following the lobotomy she was subjected to by Joe Sr. to improve her “condition”) and Kathleen or “Kicks” who had married a British Lord who died in the war and then died in 1948 in a plane crash of her own. There is a distinct Greek tragedy feeling attached to the Kennedys, something that Jack’s son, John-John, sadly confirmed when piloting his own plane which crashed en route to a Marha’s Vineyard family wedding in June 1999, killing him, his wife and sister in law on a flight he should not have taken but, in true family tradition, wanted to beat the odds. Interestingly, Rose, their mother and grandmother, lived to reach the great age of 104, passing away in 1995. One can only think of the traumas she must have endured as a mother.

Serge Desprat- 22nd July, 2018 (Prague)

20-7-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I wanted to tell you about David Frum’s “Trumpocracy – The Corruption of the American Republic”, as it is a well written book – probably the best of its kind – with deep insights about the ills of the Trump leadership, but also because DF, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is actually a Republican of the unquestionable conservative flavour of the intellectual W.F. Buckley kind. DF’s background thus makes for a very unusual read and his account of its voyage into the Trump Presidency all the more interesting. For those familiar with the classics, his book is an articulate study or rulership, dealing with DT’s exercise of power and neither his charming personality nor its few debatable early “results” (good and bad), and has an ancient Greek philosophical ring to it, hence its overall title. It is a study of how DT gained power, has used it and why it has not been really checked yet. I would personally see rulership, persona and style linked in the case of DT but understands that DF wanted to look at “facts” in a world where they are indeed debatable and distorted at will.

Having made the point that the period 1975-2000 marked a rise of democracy around the world and the subsequent one its decline globally, DF made the point that the U.S. were not concerned with that latter trend until the latest presidential elections and DT’s victory in 2016. Hoping back in 2015 that DT could be the wake up call that the Republican Party needed, DF decided to write a book that was published in early 2018 to dissect the inner democratic problems brought by the DT win from the ventage point of a clearly alarmed conservative, thus part of voters who would have naturally backed the Republican candidate in 2016 (The FT’s Edward Luce, father of the topic of “The Retreat of Western liberalism”, made a very useful multiple FT Weekend review of key books dealing with the matter, including DF’s right at its publication. For the sake of the originality of my note and while I thoroughly enjoyed Ed’s review, I did not go back to it when writing it, so all similarities are based on likely shared analysis).

DF’s focus is not on the fear that DT could overthrow the Constitution, but borrowing from French philosopher Montesquieu, whom the Founding Fathers studied closely, that he could paralyse governance stealthily, accumulating the subversion of norms and inciting private violence to radicalise supporters. DF stresses that DT operates not by strategy but by instincts, sniffing his opponents’ vulnerabilities with smears like “low energy”, “little” “crooked” or the famous “fake”, focusing on his discovery that Americans resent each other more than they cherish their shared democracy. DF also tells the story of those who have enabled, empowered, supported and collaborated with DT and without whom DT would be left isolated and indeed helpless. He stresses that there was already a natural, uncivil landscape ready to accept DT’s messages long before he came to power. He talks about indifference and incompetence dealing with major crises. He reminds us that some of DT’s ideas at the beginning of the campaign appeared fresh and balanced like with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) reforms, tax cuts and middle class empowerment, leading some voters, especially conservatives, to believe in a healthy wake-up call. He covers the disastrous and self-wounding impact he has had on world affairs and America’s 75 year relationship with its allies. He goes into the real resentments of many Americans, so called left-outs, who were aptly channeled and ensured a DT win while others who should have, did not vote, both segments ensuring a DT win. Finally he would like Republicans and Conservatives to be able to open a debate about DT and his impact on American democracy beyond partisan politics – and he finishes on a hopeful note, stressing the importance of civic engagement.

DF focuses on key features of his study of rulership in twelve chapters, which I will cover broadly.

In Pre-existing Conditions, DF stresses that DT did not create the environment where constitutional democracy was broken as the rules of the game had been already broken some years ago. He dates the last time when rules worked to the defeat of George HW Bush to Bill Clinton when the former graciously congratulated the latter and called for all Americans to support his winning rival as the new President. The victory of George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000 which was cemented by the Supreme Court marked the shift to a different discourse and environment in American politics. rather than bargains and compromises, all-or-nothing politics emerged as the order of the day. As DF states, DT did not create the vulnerabilities he exploited as they were waiting for him, largely built by the irresponsibilities of the elites, the arrogance of party leaders and the insularity of the wealthy, many of whom donors.

In Enablers, DF explains that DT would have been alone and could not have made it without the support of various key stakeholders such as i) a conservative entertainment propaganda complex; ii) fellow candidates for President who thought they could use him; iii) a Republican Party machine that submitted to him; iv) a donor site who funded him; v) a congressional party that protected him; vi) writers and intellectuals who invented excuses for him; and vii) millions of rank-and-file Republicans who accepted him.

In Appeasers, DF talks about Jeb Bush who was the presumptive winner with all the party apparatus behind him and the largest financial backing ever but who crated within seven weeks of launching his campaign. He goes through the early loneliness of DT and the opposition of virtually all the tenors and key donors of the Republican Party, only to find them changing their mind as DT gradually secured the nomination, rationalising their backing as DT being a better choice than Hillary Clinton, the latter that would be an “unthinkably catastrophic outcome”. Fox News that was relatively ambivalent if not hostile about Trump initially (Megyn Kelly, the then future of the network before “leaving” it post-election, becoming DT”s nemesis after her attacks centered on his treatment of women) became a stalwart supporter though would start paying this in 2017 in lower viewer ratings.

Incidentally it would appear that even key Republican leaders, all of them but Mike Pence trying his best to defuse a very embarrassing and unprecedented situation in modern American presidential history can experience second thoughts when confronted with DT’s communication at the Helsinki joint press conference and his kind handling of Russia and its leader at the end of his summit with President Putin on 16th July (to be noted on a Reuters-Ipsos poll still 71% of Republican supporters still approved of DT on this matter while 55% of all Americans disapproved).

In Plunder, DF mostly talks about corruption in the US (actually only 18th on the Transparency International’s corruption index) giving examples of cosy deals having involved Newt Gingrich and Tom Daschle, both leaders of the House at different times and from different parties. We see that DT became the first President and in fact senior “politician” to refuse to disclose his tax returns, a practice instituted by George Romney, Mitt’s father and then Governor of Michigan, in 1968. The focus is on DT and his family, including the Kushners, who hold records in spending public money to sustain their life style (each Mar-a-Lago jaunt costs at least USD 3m – the cost of the carts for security running at USD 60,000 a year, while the Kushner family ski trip to Aspen in May 2017 cost USD 300,000 to the taxpayers), making the overall spending of DT in one year equivalent of what Obama spent in eight. Nepotism in the DT age is obviously well covered by DT. It actually makes for fun reading if one can forget the significance of such behavior that DT’s supporters are either not aware of or not interested in focusing on. The subject of conflict of interest, unwitting or not, is very clear with the Trump hotel in DC having seen much increased occupancy from foreign visitors since DT’s elevation, but also DT’s business team working hard on a license for Trump Tower Moscow until January 2016 while Jared was in ultimately stopped negotiations with Chinese insurer Ambang to refinance the 666 building on Fifth avenue with its owner very much wanting to meet the President and Chinese investors being promised “investor visas” in a New Jersey property whose marketing was run by his sister. DF makes a very easy case for a very co-mingled way between public funding and private interests in the Trump family. The ethical safeguards set up by the extended Trump family are derisory according to DF, who shows an endless list of conflicts of interest which put DT as a record holder for “firsts” of what not to do for a President in many years. Last areas reviewed by DF are the sackings and delayed appointments of US attorneys, including the highly “unusual” personal DT interview of the one for the District of Columbia with potential criminal jurisdiction for his staff and himself. Lastly, nepotism, which is an art form at the current White House, goes through amazing public examples such as when Ivanka replaced her father at the G20 table in Hamburg in 2017. The conflict of interests problems experienced by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross last week only stresses the common feature of the Trump Administration and its strange rapport with money and business interests.

In Betrayal, DF covers the meaness with which DT can denigrate or embarrass close advisers at any moment for any reason. DF gave the example of Sean Spicer, then Press Secretary and a devout Catholic, who was not put on the list to meet the Pope while others, far more junior, staff were. DF goes into DT’s habit of appointing deferential, servile individuals to work around him as key features going along with unquestionable loyalty. DT hates criticism (unsurprisingly) and expects huge amount of flattery (also unsurprisingly). He prizes fulsome tributes from his staff such as “I am privileged to be here – deeply honored – and I want to thank you for your commitment to the American workers” (SecLabour) or “It was a great honor traveling with you around the country for the last year and even a greater honour to be here serving on your cabinet” (SecTreasury) and quite a few other memorable quotes which other Presidents, notably GW Bush, for whom DF worked, would hate. DT embarrassed H.R. McMaster, the most admired soldier of his generation, by changing the script of his NATO speech in Sicily in May 2017 forcing him to live with it and defend the changes as perfectly fine and expectable. Those working for DT need to live through the betrayals of their own principles. Quoting Thomas More, DF stresses “the point where crossing a line, even an arbitrary one, means letting go without hope of ever finding yourself again”. What is the most surprising is probably the high risk that young staffers take in working with and for DT given the stigma that is going to be attached to their name and career long after their service, and which explains te relative dearth of young quality staffers at the top of the Trump Administration. Another feature commented by DF is the rise of the “Mini-Trumps” around DT, who incidentally are no band of brothers and easily turn on each other, also given the unhealthy environment at the White House. These Mini-Trumps, who show total obedience and display grotesque flattery to their leader, are exemplified by Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, the very brief Communications Director – read Edward Luce’s Lunch with the FT, one of the most incredible pieces of the genre – or Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary: “He’s got perfect genes. He has incredible energy and he’s unbelievably healthy” to describe a President he sees as very engaged on multiple fronts all the time while actually DT is clearly known for poor work ethics, little attention span and clear problems with obesity, bad diet and a dogmatic refusal of exercise. All entering the Trump Administration for non selfish motives would sooner or later find themselves betrayed by a President who demands loyalty in its most servile form but never returns it.

In Enemies of the People, DF deals DT’s relationship with the news media which is a key focus for him. Of DT’s 770 Tweets in his six months of Presidency, attacks on the media were the largest topical segment with 85 Tweets, usually stressing FAKE NEWS. CNN, The New York Times and NBC News, but also The Washington Post (and Amazon given Jeff Bezos’s ownership) are the main targets. The attacks are focused on news media that are critical of his actions and policies and as such are not so much “his enemies” as they are those “of the American people”. DT holds the record for the most untruths based on various organisations dealing and ranking such features, the exact list of which, for the main ones, we will remember. His close team does not hesitate to threaten the press like with Kellyanne Conway DT’s favourite enforcer, tells Meet The Press’s Chuck Todd that unwelcome questions would provoke some unspecified reprisal and “a rethink of our relationship”. DT simply enjoys a world where media is reduced to “the sycophancy of Fox News & Friends” and “Hannity”. DT’s approach is to delegitimise accountability journalism by framing it as partisan. DT is unequivocal as he speaks unlike a politician, usually very directly which is perceived as clarity and frankness by supporters, which however is not the same thing as being honest. DT lies without qualm or remorse and if necessary will lie about the lie itself. As DF states, he lies blatantly to assert power over truth itself, his main objective being to feed his message to his core supporter base. DT also incites violence when addressing supporters in his rants about some of the news media, such as “I truly don’t think they like our country”, touching a key trigger point of his base, at times whipping the crowds at rallies into fevered chants like “CNN Sucks” and leading attendees to shout epithets at targeted reporters. DF finally goes into the matter of Russian-originated fake news modus operandi and infrastructure, which may have benefited DT during the campaign even if the subject of collusion is still under investigation.

In Rigged System, DF goes into some of the reasons the 2016 results were what they were, well beyond the vagaries of the Electoral College system and the 2.9 millions more votes for Clinton, most of which were “illegal votes” according to DT though he did not press the matter. The matter of illegal votes is a perennial issue in American politics and simply relates to the fact that individuals move from state to state from birth, college, jobs, marriages and that the voter registrations sometimes stay unchanged, making them able in theory to vote in several states. It looks like, whether this matter should be fixed, it would be quite unpractical and would require incredible efforts for people to vote in several states on election day, though on-line voting and mail voting may create some leeways. It is thus hard to think that elections could be swayed by a massive multiple vote conspiracy. On the other hand, one of the strange changes of the 2016 section compared with the 2012 one is for DF the massive decline in participation of African-American voters, whose ethnic group share of the vote went from 65 percent in 2012 to 58 percent in 2016, which is the steepest decline of voter participation for any ethnic group in American election history. While the absence of an Obama they would feel naturally close to and the presence of a Clinton they might not all relate to is an undeniable fact, it would seem that the surge of Republican victories at the state and local levels during the Obama period (Only seven states out of 50 were controlled by Dems in 2016) may explain the shift due to a substantial rise of changes in voting procedures, the most important since the Reconstruction post-1865. Republican states went through a change in early voting, weekend voting and online voting that had an impact on those voters, especially in minority groups, who did not control their working time as well as others or were not tech-savvy or following the rule changes. DF is then covering the targeting of those responsible for what he calls the “rigged system”, notably against ordinary, working class, Americans, pointing to the likes of financier George Soros, FED Chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as the main “agents of global special interests robbing the working class, stripping the country of its wealth and lining the pockets of corporations and political entities” (It should be noted that The Anti-Defamation League made a quick and concerned statement about the anti-semitic undertones of DT’s attack, which in many ways was strange when knowing DT’s strong closeness to Israel, Jerusalem embassy and all, which perhaps is another example of erratic behaviour and spur of the political moment, the main objective being to send a message to his core base). DF finally deals with the investigated Russian involvement in the 2016 elections through various means of hybrid warfare as well as the rise of open display military style outfits intimidating involved citizens and voters at events like in Charlottesville in August 2017, resulting in an ISIS-style lethal car-ramming onslaught, or more simply at the voting booth in some “conceal and carry” states and locations. While condoning political violence, DT often encouraged supporters to adopt tough behaviour dealing with political opponents at rallies or law enforcement in their dealing with criminal suspects. While the American economic system might feel “rigged” against Trump supporters, the American political system of 2016 had in important ways been rigged in Trump’s favour.

In America Alone, DF starts stressing through HR MacMaster and Gary Cohn, the then national security and economic lead advisers to DT in a Wall Street Journal op- ed in May 2017 that “America first does not make America alone” as if there was a need to state it. DF then goes through the many attacks against allies South Korea or Germany, initially about their participation to defense cooperation in Korea for the former or through NATO and later trade for the latter. We then go through the decline in trust of allies’ populations in DT as opposed to Obama (like 24 percent vs. 78 percent in Japan or 28 percent vs. 84 percent in Australia). We go through the business ties of DT with both Qatar and Russia and the detailed positions of DT regrading the two countries. While we know the issues at stake with Russia, we learn how a successful visit to Saudi Arabia, empowered the UAE, Saudis and Egyptians to organise a blocus of Qatar, thinking that Washington was fine with it. Similarly a visit of DT in Warsaw where he emboldened the nationalistic government with his praise of a “safe, strong and free” Poland that led it to start attacking the independent court system and clashing with the EU. We then go back to the U.S.- EU relationship, within a NATO and later trade context, remembering the traditional U.S. approach to its allies like with GW Bush stating in 2003 “Since the end of World War II, the United States has strongly supported European unity as the best path to European peace and prosperity” on the footsteps of Bill Clinton when he had declared years early that “We recognise we will benefit more from a strong and equal partner than a weak one”. DF then covers all the demonstrations of support from DT and its representatives (the latest being the new Ambassador in Germany) in support of populist movements and developments, like with Farage In Britain or Le Pen in France or again Orban in Hungary to only name a few in a long list, of which Salvini and di Matteo in Italy are the latest members. We hear Rex Tillerson in May 2017 congratulating the “Turkish people – brave men and women – (who) stood up against coup plotters and defended their democracy” (In fairness, he probably would not make the same speech today). We then realise that DT wants only one- on-one deals with countries and not deals with the likes of the EU so as to avoid “big quagmire deals that are a disaster”. DF stresses that “DT never understood that America’s power arose not only from its own wealth and its own military force, but from its centrality to a network of friends and allies”. We go through leading examples of mismanagement when DT told Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign minister about an imminent ISIS threat and the city where the US intel partner (Israel’s Mossad) had detected the threat, resulting in a great embarrassment and potential blow if not among country leaderships but likely friendly intel organisations. DF stresses the views of both Steve Banon and Chris Caldwell who saw an alignment of DT with President Putin as being natural given the latter seen as the leader for a new form of otherwise traditional form of nationalism, this time expressed against globalism (the big battle of our time for them), thus self-determination in a way populist conservatives see VP (and DT) as progressives saw Fidel Castro in another era. In sync with that ideological rapprochement, DT, while praising Putin, has clearly casted doubt on the Russian meddling invitation by the DoJ’s Robert Mueller as well as tried to promote the cooperation with Russia in Syria. DF finally reminds us of the speech of Vaclav Havel the he addressed to a joint session of Congress after the fall of “all the Berlin Walls”, stressing how America and its constitution, 200 years later, still inspired the world and the Czechs to be citizens, lamenting (DF) that government of the United States seemed today to have made common cause with the planet’s crooks, thugs and dictators against its own ideals, while forgetting friends and allies who should pay more for their defence and not run trade surpluses. In doing so he, once again, stresses that DT has been enabled, also on the international front, by individuals who “execute his whims fro crass and cowardly reasons of their own: partisanship, ambition, greed for gain, eagerness for attention, ideological zeal, careerist conformity or malicious glee in the wreck of things that they could never have built themselves”. The only redeeming feature being for DF (and I) that they will be remembered (thus creating a gradual, welcome, dampening effect in their DT zeal driven by self preservation), like the Trump Presidency and what it revealed about the American political system, long after DT retires to the great golf in the sky, even if damages could sadly have longer lasting effects than what we would want even with him no longer around.

In Autoimmune Disorder, DF talks about the leaks at the White House that have been at all time historical high since the start of the DT era and acted as a stop to some of the most crazy policy moves of DT. Leading examples of such leaks resulted in the removal of Michael Flynn, first National Security Adviser, from office and leading to his indictment; the exposition of the blabbing of DT to Sergey Lavrov about the ISIS threat and where; of the deterrence of the lifting of sanctions to Russia. The problem with the leaks is that they exposed to adversaries, like in the case of Russia, that conversations were not secure as previously thought and that surveillance methods had overcome security set-ups – stressing a common problem often found in cybersecurity, the most recent form of warfare, albeit hybrid, that while you know you have been hacked you don’t want your attacker to know about it. By outing information via leaks and when involving adversaries, the leakers drove them to change their security measures to restore confidentiality in their communication, making your own side go back to the drawing board to yet intercept information in the future. DF then underlines how the office of the President was traditionally always staffed by committed people taking their jobs very seriously but how the Trump White House has become “a mess of careless slobs” giving us a long list of examples making the point very easily. He then goes on to stress that DT has gone on to surrender himself with top military officials in his team, partly as he wanted obedience and that these men, not being politicians, are usually selected, trained and promoted to get results, there being no wrong ways to win a battle. VP Mike Pence stressed to the 2017 graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis that they “should follow the chain of command without exception. Trust you superiors, trust your orders and you’ll serve and lead well” which had a strange flavour as key message to the future U.S. Navy leadership in terms of obeying all orders, lawful or not. As stated by DF and we know, it turned out that men like Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, all first rate military (USMC) commanders and great Americans have demonstrated an appreciation of and commitment to liberal democracy exceeding that of their commander in chief, which was very fortunate and even if the principle of civilian supremacy must remain indispensable when and if the President has revealed himself unfit for office. DF finally touches upon the key but currently fraught relationship of DT with the national security apparatus (mainly but not only DoD, CIA and NSA), notably on intelligence-related matters – see DT’s 16th June Helsinki Trump-Putin press conference and later “walking back” with “would and wouldn’t” -, a wider topic which is also related by James Clapper and Michael Hayden, two former CIA and NSA Directors in their books very recently published which should be read by those of us who are interested in the matter.

In Resentments, DF covers a few resentment groups and issues that propelled DT in the White House. Political correctness was a big resentment factor triggering DT’s exasperation, which resonated with many voters who became supporters. “PC culture” was deemed by many analysts as one the key voting issues and according to comedian B.L. Hughley “probably is why” DT got elected as “people are tired of being told what to think and say”. DF mentioned another testimony from a 21 year old San Franciscan DT voter: “I am a gay millennial woman and I voted Trump because I oppose the political correctness movement which has become a fascist ideology of silence and ignorance”. For another 28 year old from San Francisco: “He was an outsider . He spoke truth about the political correctness” (If I may say, while political correctness was very useful to enshrine societal advancements at the ground level in particular in terms of civil, minority, women, gay and gender diversity rights, the PC culture may indeed have gone too far on some topics. I personally dislike the activist approach of viewing historical events with today’s lenses and values, like campaigning to rename colleges because 200 years ago the man whose name on the college porch, while an American Vice President, happened to also have been a slave owner at the time). DT was very good at focusing on these frustrations and taking advantage of them in the voting booth. The rejection of PC- culture was often combined with other resentments like those of the young white males, particularly without any love relationship (and often no job, many of whom would still live with their parents), who felt lonely and alienated in today’s America. As it is widely assumed that the millennial elected Barack Obama, Romney beat Obama by seven percentage points in 2012 among whites under the age of 30. Among white males under the age of 30, Romney beat Obama by 13 points. A 600 per cent increase was noted in the following of white nationalist groups on online media between 2012 and 2016. In 2014, only 71 percent of men aged 18-34 were employed compared with 84 percent in 1960. In 2016, 19 percent of Americans under the age of 30 smoke marijuana, twice as many as before 2008 and the Great Recession. Hillary Clinton crystallised resentment of white men with 52 percent holding a “very unfavourable” view of her, 20 and 32 points higher than those who viewed Obama very unfavourably in 2012 and 2008 respectively. Hillary Clinton was seen “as embodying the cultural transformations of the 1960s: the liberal, feminist, working-mother spouse of the first boomer President”. To many supporters among those who needed to rationalise intellectually their support, DT was the first post- religious conservative of their lifetime, not hating gays and not caring if women have abortions, the first who talked about things that matter now, even if he drew support from the alienated, including the crackpots, extremists and also racists at a time when for the first time in American history life expectancy was declining, most steeply, among American whites, who also were leading the ethnic pack in terms of male suicides and opioid overdoses. Marriage, church attendance, civic participation also plummeted along income, by 9 percent, for white males between 1996 and 2014. DT was also sent to the White House on a multiple wave of resentment focused on alienation and loneliness that he understood how to channel.

In Believers, DF shows where DT won which is not in the wealthy locations (Clinton won the counties that produced 64 percent of the country’s wealth and even the knowledge centres of the Trump states, like the Research Triangle of North Carolina). Trump won by and large most of the poorer counties nationally. Political power quickly divorced from cultural power with business leaders leaving DT’s Advisory Council for fear for their brands following the leader’s outbursts. Big Tech denounced DT’s immigration policies. By July 2017 DT’s approval rating in the under 30 age group was at 20 percent. DT polled better among those earning USD 50,000 and USD 99,000 than with those earning above USD 100,000, “a freakish outcome for a Republican” and interestingly performed better with Latinos and blacks than Romney in 2012 while performing better with union households by any Republican since Reagan II in 1984. I recommend the book by Zita Salerno and Brad Todd “The Great Revolt” to understand better where Trump won and with whom and why.

In Hope, his aptly-named and hopeful final chapter, DF stresses the importance, as we all know, of civic engagement – in the case of one reader, contacting his school board about media literacy, calling state and local legislators on key issues and embarking (for those who need) on programs of self-education in history, politics and philosophical ideals of the Republic…This recipe by the way is very valid globally (not to sing the praises of globalism) so as to counter the excesses and ways of cheap and easy populism. DF is optimistic in spite of the dark days as he sees a rise in Americans seeking “better” news sources and getting more engaged. He focuses on lying as a way of governing, reminiscent of what the Chinese went through with Mao’s reeducation campaign, which sounds eerily current and warps minds (half of DT’s supporters accepted his claim that he in fact had won the popular vote in November 2016 though in contrast 60% of all Americans, a rising figure, now reject his views about his connections to Russia). DF goes on expanding on why there is reason for hope though stressing that “liberty is actually threatened in modern democratic state, not by diktat and violence, but by the slow, demoralising process of corruption and deceit” and that “what happens next is up to you” in what can be “your finest hour as a citizen and an American”.

I believe that it is a great, at times dense, book that needs to be read and closely digested. For my part and if I may say, I think DT does not have many beliefs in anything – He was a Democrat and then a Republican – but he is first and foremost for DT and by and large his business interests, not really having wanted or believing he would get the top job, finding himself thrown into it against all odds, as if the electoral college fluke was on him (as “Fire and Fury”‘s Michael Wolff tells us likely rightly). He clearly does not have a good handle on American and Western values, which has a key impact on his rulership, and is more about the means than the ends in politics, this being amply demonstrated by his primary focus on the message to his core base that is more aimed at reassuring and keeping their votes (“Winning” being the true end – as he never lied and much wrote about it all his life) than about any substance or their future well being. He also may be hard to follow at key times, even for his supporters, like with his latest surrealistic statements for an American President at the Helsinki summit press conference with President Putin, naturally making people wonder what they don’t know about his inner motivations and landing himself deeper into very dangerous constitutional grounds.

As a French-born Transatlantic man, I do not feel yet the “very direct” and daily impact of all the DF-narrated ills of DT’s rulership, even if their effects on the world order as we have known it for 75 years are certainly real and hurtful for all including America, so I clearly would like the sun to shine again on that “city on the hill” so we all have a great, shared weather going forward.

Warmest regards,

Serge

Serge Desprat – 20th July, 2108 (Plymouth, MA)

19-7-18

Dear Partners in thought,

I wanted to depart temporarily from politics and geopolitics to address a topic that is more centred on my professional field with the unbelievable story of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. EH was the Steve Jobs-like black turtleneck- and slacks-clad blond girl-wonder, Stanford dropout, precocious entrepreneur extraordinaire, female role model who astounded the world of tech and finance with her Theranos start-up while in fact leading the biggest fraud in modern Silicon Valley history. She was a real poster “child” for entrepreneurial success, a genuine medical visionary, having gathered a senior team with years of tech experience and a board comprising leaders of our times. Bad Blood, written by John Carreyrou, a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, twice Pulitzer Prize winner and the man who uncovered the EH fraud, is a very well crafted, highly enjoyable account of this unbelievable story, which saw him awarded several top prizes in journalism. Bad Blood is a story of the ambitious (and noble) ends justifying any means and a very personal obsession to succeed at all costs combined with a tyrannic and dishonest approach to management. As an aside, it would make a great movie or mini-series, which I am sure has not escaped Hollywood or Netflix.

When she grew up in DC in an upper middle class family, Elizabeth Holmes matter of factly told her family at age 9-10 that when she would grow up, she’d be a billionaire (and in fact not the President of the U.S., as the family wondered, as he would actually marry her as she would have one billion dollars). She grew up as an intensely competitive child, piling up the little Monopoly buildings on the way and making sure all of her competition was going bust (this early real estate background being puzzling…). As she became a sophomore in one of Houston’s finest high schools, she decided to focus exclusively on her studying, which ultimately led her to Stanford and starting a chemical engineering degree. When there she worked for the lab of famed Engineering Department head, Channing Robertson, assisting one of her first future Theranos employees, Shaunak Roy, who was concluding a PhD. When her father asked EH at Christmas dinner that year if she thought of pursuing a PhD programme, she responded: “No Dad, I am not interested in getting a PhD, I want to make money”. She dropped out of Stanford in 2003 at age 19, after one year, (breaking up with her freshman boyfriend, telling him she would have no time for him going forward) having decided to found Theranos and work on a revolutionary and patented while at Stanford blood-testing patch which could not only identify diseases but would cure them, something she wisely reduced to simple patch-less micro-fluidic testing so drug companies could in turn benefit from a more time- and cost-efficient means of developing their own products. Very few Silicon Valley actors and observers had run into such an ambitious individual before, indeed reminding them of the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

EH, who possessed an incredible charisma and great, unblinking-eyed, convincing powers even at a very young age, raised initial capital (USD 6 m) from leading venture capital veterans whom she had been exposed to (like Tim Draper from famed Valley DFJ, Larry Elison from Oracle and his early 70s backer, financier Donald L. Lucas, who also became Chairman of the Board and others) and family, gathering around her a first class senior team with years of experience gained at IBM, Intel and Panasonic and having Channing Robertson on the Board. The first problem arose in 2006, three years on and at an impressive valuation of USD 165m post third round, when her CFO of eight months, who kind of worked on trust, started to query the validity of Theranos’s testing methods after a trip of EH and team to Novartis in Switzerland when the pharma company became very impressed with Theranos and its main product, wanting to secure a financial arrangement to develop a project together. As the CFO, who was responsible for upbeat sales forecasts based on product and client development, was becoming increasingly worried that investors might be misled through less than above-the-board testing demonstrations, he decided to confront EH at one of their regular meetings. EH told her CFO that there had been indeed a few hick ups with testing processes thus making the team have a ready made one just to use with investors and partners so they could avoid disappointing expectations. She also promptly added that he was not a team player and that he should leave right now – and not only the room (he would disappear, other staff speculating as to why, some embezzlement story floating around in his wake).

EH went on a campaign describing the future of preventive medicine in which drugs would be specifically tailored to individual needs thanks to Theranos’s blood- monitoring technology, stating that Theranos could eliminate 100,000 American deaths a year from adverse drug reactions. She started focusing on using as little blood as possible and avoiding needles in her experiments, partly as a long-lasting phobia and what would become a company trademark. As 2006 went on, she raised another USD 9m for a second round or so-called Series B and USD 32 m from a Series C round. While EH had received no medical or scientific training, she had developed a great vision and was able to sell it. In the summer of 2007, she took her admiration for Apple and Steve Jobs a step further, hiring several of Apple’s employees to work for Theranos, especially in the design area, including Ana Arriola who became its Chief Design Architect. Ana started also to change the look of EH and her wide gray pantsuits and Christmas sweaters to the black outfit that quickly became her trademark in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile the company kept moving forward, leaving East Palo Alto of ill repute to set up shop on the right side of the tracks.

Theranos was not just a tale of fraud. Its management culture was one of tyranny, fear and dishonesty prompted by the imperative need to keep dark secrets, with staff being fired through what could be seen as an ever revolving door policy enforced by EH (and later boyfriend and Executive Chairman, Ramesh Balwani, a.k.a. Sunny, a successful Bombay-born Valley entrepreneur, 20 year+ EH’s senior who acted after 2009 as the top enforcer at Theranos with a personal focus on staff timesheets and productivity). No senior staff could stay very long at Theranos, willingly or not, the former through crisis of conscience, the latter though periodic purges. Following the CFO, the heads of engineering, chemistry, marketing, sales, design, IT as well as the general counsel and many in their teams would be fired either as they were perceived as not loyal enough or actually because they asked too many questions about the validity of the testing processes at Theranos. EH demanded absolute loyalty from staff, this feature being an overriding quality. She would have files “built” on leaving employees, insist on the strictest belt-and-braces non-disclosure agreements and would ask her IT team to control all staff communication and ensure they knew what they were doing at all time, also making sure dinner was brought on-site so they would only leave by 10 pm every day and thus worked longer hours. Early board members like Avie Tevanian, one of Steve Jobs friends since NeXT decided to leave, having greatly supported the company, after legal threats from Theranos following his incessant questioning, including with true believer Chairman Lucas of how the company really operated. EH showed a renewed intensity in developing the business asking her engineering team to work 24-7 (which was turned down by her engineering head to his latter sorrow) and making teams compete against each other, without sharing information, so she could be the only one to have the full picture. Departments were not working together, operating in tight silos officially to enhance security, with the sales team never seeing any testing validation data before they would market the product. Paranoia was running high as EH and Sunny were strong believers in that Laboratories of America and Quest Diagnostic, the leading American lab rivals, would stop at nothing to undermine Theranos, while they barely noticed it at the time. So focused on speed to market she was, she even hired a competing engineering team to ensure that progress went faster, which it did, resulting in the head of her first team and his entire staff to be asked to leave. EH slept four hours a night, popping chocolate-coated coffee beans during the day. In August 2007, she went after former and current key employees who wanted to set up a company of their own (albeit for the veterinarian segment, judged easier) under license of the company technology, pursuing them in court and showing her extreme care for the company’ proprietary information or, as it turned out, to protect the secret of the viability of Theranos to develop a reliable testing process. Finally, while not disclosing her relationship with her number two, Sunny, she displayed tone-deaf nepotism by hiring her brother, Christian, as director of product management together with three of his Duke fraternity brothers (all aptly named “The Frat Pack”), the group benefiting from access to EH and Sunny well beyond their seniority, essentially based on the key feature of total loyalty. This approach was also combined with a pervasive lack of empathy as shown when a depressed (due to his qualms with the Theranos culture) and (as such) recently demoted head of chemistry committed suicide and EH’s first reaction was to have the in house counsel to ask his widow to send back his laptop and privileged information/or made sure she destroyed them (incidentally first concealing the death from most staff and then allowing the rumour that the employee had died from a cancer relapse).

While many discussions, leading to funding agreements with Big Pharma such as Astra Zeneca, Novartis, Pfizer or J&J entailed early testing and validation projects which in the end fizzled out by lack of concrete results, EH focused on the leaders of the grocery retail sector with Walgreens and Safeway, both old world companies that needed to reboot growth. While EH was able to enter into two potential exclusive agreements with both – Walgreens for supermarkets and Safeway for drugstores – she did not let them and their consultants (especially Walgreens’ Collaborative, a consulting firm whose task initially was to vet Theranos’ testing processes) to even have a look at their lab, which was not ready for inspection as not fully developed. Unbelievably the senior management of both Walgreens (led by Dr. J, a very colourful head of innovation and true believer in EH) and Safeway (with its CEO also swayed by EH) were too enthusiastic for a new future via healthcare to risk losing the Theranos opportunity by probing too closely testing processes at Theranos and alienating EH. Walgreens had a bad case of FoMO (Fear of Missing an Opportunity) fearing that CVS would then replace them while Safeway was pressured by stock market analysts to find a fast way to grow a stagnating business. In the end both companies came up short and in the case of Safeway with USD 250m in non-existant blood testing revenues as well as USD 100 m of store redesign costs when they set up state of the art, quasi-luxury in-house clinics throughout 2012. Theranos could not show their mini-labs or lab to any parent as all of their equipment was straight from Chicago’s Abbott Laboratories, Germany’s Siemens and Italy’s DiaSorin. Trying parallel expansion routes, EH also met four star General James Mattis in 2011, now Secretary of Defense, then the Head of U.S. Central Command to explore how Theranos could assist finger pricking blood testing to help diagnosing and helping wounded soldiers in the Afghan war theatre, a concept that was immediately strongly supported by Mattis. The discussions with the military bogged down on regulatory matters in spite of EH trying to sway the course of events her way against the views of the military medical leadership and going straight back to Mattis, the latter who retired shortly thereafter, making the project vanish without much internal support (incidentally this military link was often mentioned by EH to various parties, including her leading ad agency of past Apple glory, who had a contract of USD 6m a year, and whose team thought that this small start-up, an unusual client, was funded by the Pentagon and also understood why secrecy explained they could not have access to reports supporting its scientific claims).

On 7th September, 2013, the WSJ did a front page Weekend piece on EH and Theranos right at the time of the official commercial launch of Theranos (ten years after its set-up!) with the first wellness center cum blood testing facility installed in the Walgreens store in Palo Alto as a prelude to nationwide roll-up to be started in sunny Phoenix. Both events would be artfully used to validate the product as EH was deciding to go for another, this time very meaningful, fundraise that would value the privately-held company at USD 6 bn (with some investors then participating when they had turned down the opportunity at USD 40 m). We see two founding partners of a San Francisco hedge fund being wheeled in to a meeting with EH and Sunny, in the Theranos building, going through a security team supervised by Mattis’s connection, Jim Rivera, former head of security at the Pentagon, and being escorted everywhere including to the restroom, still with some off-limit areas like the lab facilities (for some good reasons that it is not yet functional). One of the key deciding factors for investors in addition to EH’s clear visionary leadership and top salesmanship, combined with Theranos’s supposed scientific accomplishments, is the unquestionable quality of its board of directors. In recent years, EH managed to reshuffle her board, inviting 92 year old George Schultz, former secretary of state to Ronald Reagan (who concluded the September 2013 WSJ article comparing EH to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), James Mattis following his retirement from the Army earlier that year, Henry Kissinger, former secretary of defence William Perry, former senate armed services committee chairman Sam Nunn and former navy admiral Gary Roughead. It would be hard not to be impressed with such a display of former senior officials (all fellows at the Hoover Institution at Stanford) who clearly must have done their homework on Theranos before lending their name and time as Board members in exchange for grants of stock (incidentally further validating the links of Theranos with the defense establishment). Sadly target investors were shown financial projections that were five to twelvefold higher than internal projections, something that would never cross their minds with such a great overall story, amazing leadership, prestigious board and top legal advisers, including famed David Boies, keeping watch. In February 2014, the company was valued at USD 10 bn with EH owning slightly more than half of it.

The first serious potential blow to EH and the company came from an unexpected quarter – from a young Stanford graduate recently hired named Tyler whose grandfather was…George Shultz. Tyler had grown suspicious of the quality of the mini-lab and testing processes at Theranos, had met with EH who placated him far more she would have with another employee, sending him to recheck with more senior staff. When Tyler was still not convinced, having had exchanges with the New York Health Department to double check matters, he went to his grandfather who thought EH would explain everything, which in turn was left to Sunny in an unusually less blunt but still venomous way, asking for an apology from Tyler, who in turn decided to quit. Amazingly, EH contacted George Shultz asking for Tyler to stop his vendetta “or else”, a message that was conveyed to him as he was still in the company’s parking lot by his own mother, with George still “doting” on EH, thinking he was wrong on Theranos. Meanwhile the specialist printed media were sending EH to stardom with Fortune’s article entitled “This CEO is Out for Blood” in its 12th June 2014 issue, the new valuation of the company, the ascetic and reclusive profile, and the repeated comparisons of EH to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Forbes followed suit with an article entitled “Bloody Amazing” and pronouncing EH as the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire, being pictured in Forbes 400, the issue showing the wealthiest Americans. Other articles on EH followed with USA Today, Inc., Fast Company and Glamour with NPR, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN and CBS News offering extended coverage of the new Valley girl wonder. EH was becoming truly unassailable. She was the recipient of the Horatio Alger Award with Time Magazine naming her one of the top 100 most influential people in the world. President Obama made her a U.S. Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and Harvard Medical School a fellow. She had the right profile that attracted all the attention of the time, something that she may not have looked for but she thoroughly enjoyed, judging from the frequency of her rock star interviews. What differentiated her from Marissa Meyer or Sheryl Sandberg was that EH had been a tech “founder” billionaire. From ascetic and reclusive, EH went quickly to the status of “ubiquitous celebrity”. She quickly changed her habits and image, hiring her top advertising agent to work as the company’s Chief Creative Officer on her new image and that of Theranos.

The demise of EH and Theranos was dated February 2015 when John Carreyrou, an investigative journalist at the WSJ, twice Pulitzer Prize winner and the subsequent author of our book, began to look into the whole story. The lack of peer reviewed data mentioned in more recent and inquisitive The New Yorker article seemed very suspect to him while the process as described by EH did not have the ring of a scientist or medical expert that she could not actually be and derided as “comically vague” by the magazine. He went back to the WSJ piece of seventeen months earlier, realising the impact it had had on EH’s image, company’s achievements and subsequent meteoric fundraising. He contacted various former company employees and individuals involved with Theranos, getting the impression that the technology just was not working as the world thought. Most former employees were obviously worried by their non-disclosure agreements and requested anonymity which was given. JC established very quickly through Alan Beam, the former head of the lab, all the testing process problems as if the flood of information had waited to erupt for too long even if the technical aspects required time to be digested. Management culture, style and the role of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were particularly addressed by JC’ interviewees, with some focus on the romantic relationship between the number one and number two at the company, all the while the New Yorker article had portrayed EH as a single whom the Kissingers had tried to fix up on dates, showing a lack of forthrightness with her board that might hide other key matters. Tyler Shultz was particularly eager to talk to JC, believing that in end his grandfather would do the right thing. So was Rochelle Gibbons, the widow of Ian Gibbons, the former head of chemistry who committed suicide. And increasingly, others. As it is like a detective story that is enjoyable to discover I will let you taste personally the ways JC uncovered the fraud and its many legal developments which ultimately led on 14th March 2018 to the SEC charging Theranos, EH and Sunny with “conducting an elaborate years-long fraud”. In order to resolve the agency’s civil charges, EH was forced to relinquish her voting control over Theranos, give back a substantial share of her stockholding and pay a USD 500,000 penalty, agreeing not to be a member of any public company for ten years. The SEC sued Sunny in California, having been unable to reach a settlement wth him. This set of civil remedies may seem little in relation to the magnitude of the fraud that was committed though, post-pool publication, EH and Sunny have been charged with Federal wire fraud (criminal charge) in relation to defrauding investors and the Federal Government by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California on 16th June, 2018, paving the way to potential jail time that would potentially and ultimately match the immensity of the fraud.

The most remarkable feature in this story of fraud is that it was a fraud that was orchestrated and hidden for so long and that EH was able in the meantime to attract so many talents as staff and board members without any problem and in spite of a terrible work environment and management culture. One should also remember that, while devoid of any formal medical or scientific training, EH was indeed a talented individual having identified a segment where she wanted to do good and make money as an entrepreneur, something that should not be totally forgotten. When EH started Theranos , another young dropout from Harvard this time, was also making history: Mark Zuckerberg. He would change the world, as EH wanted, but would have to deal with hubris and serious issues, prompting some drastic personal and corporate adjustments, later. Theranos is also one of the most recent and biggest story of “vaporware” or “fake-it-until-you-make it” culture that is on and off prevalent in Silicon Valley. There will be may books and studies focused on EH to ascertain whether she was under the spell of Sunny or a real sociopath having created a corporate hell on earth, as it may be more likely, who took all the decisions as she did, controlling 97% of the voting rights of the company as of late 2013, rendering the board pointless in terms of decision-making if only as counterweight.

One of the main questions will remain why nothing could be done to stop that fraud earlier even if and when many tried to blow the whistle and more importantly how and why so many senior personalities enabled it by being true believers, especially among short-sighted potential partners who needed solution for their own futures and most certainly heavyweights at the board level. Finally the Theranos story is a story of Big Tech – with a health care focus that indeed lacked the adequate tech – (which the company could have been a leader of and was briefly to some extent) and its impact on our lives and society, changing it for the better and for the worse, depending where one looks. On this Big Tech evolution I recommend that you read regularly the great articles of Rana Foroohar from the FT, today one of the best journalists and writers dealing with the many implications of tech for us. Let’s remember that it is an investigative journalist who uncovered the Theranos fraud.

Incredible story of our times. Bad Blood is a book that should be read also as it is linked to “who we are” and why, even if we are, some of us, awed by tech wonders and their makers, we need to ensure that the creation of dreams and especially staggering wealth does not involve fraud and follows best practices and behaviour, lest we see other Theranos or Uber older formula arise…It is also a question of values and about what kind of society we wish to be and our children to grow and believe in.

I dedicate this book note to Kris, a brother and a great banker, who goes through tough times and I love. Life is short and what differentiates the greats is their care.

Now I have a question: Who’s going to play EH in the movie?

Warmest regards

Serge

Serge Desprat 19th July, 2018 (Martha’s Vineyard, MA)