Malcolm and Munich
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The comparison of President Bush to Adolf Hitler is starting to spread on the left like some sort of pandemic. There was the cover of the European edition of Paul Krugman’s book, featuring a poster of Mr. Bush in a style of mustache that somehow left itself open to interpretation as a reference to someone other than Charlie Chaplin. There was the anti-Bush television commercial with footage of Nazi rallies that was eventually yanked from MoveOn.org. There was billionaire George Soros’s book identifying both Nazi Germany and America under Mr. Bush as “Victims turning perpetrators.” There were Judge Guido Calabresi’s comments – for which he has since apologized – likening Mr. Bush’s taking office to Hitler’s rise to power.
Another example comes in a recent letter to the editor of the New York Times from an author and writer for the New Yorker magazine, Janet Malcom. Ms. Malcolm took issue with a Times columnist who had called for civility in the American political debate. “We are in a time now that is as fearful as the period after Munich,” she wrote. “Those of us who are demonizing George W. Bush are doing so not because of his morals but because we are scared of what another four years of his administration will do to this country and to the world.”
Hmm. If this is Munich, who is Hitler? Are the appeasers, to Ms. Malcolm, the liberals who are insufficiently aggressive in attacking Mr. Bush? And how aggressive should they be? As aggressive as if he were Hitler? Ms. Malcolm, after all, concedes she’s demonizing him. We gave her a call in South Egremont, Mass., in hope of getting a clearer sense of what she meant by the historical reference.
“What I was referring to was the tension in the world,” she said. “The time after Munich was a scary time and now is a scary time, wouldn’t you agree?” she asked. She declined to elaborate, saying that her letter spoke for itself.
In our own view, whatever fear has been engendered among Americans during the Bush administration’s time in office is explained sufficiently by reference to the attack of September 11,2001. That was not something that Mr. Bush did to this country but something that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies did. To the limited extent that any Munich analogies may be appropriate in the current presidential campaign, it strikes us that the Hitler mustache belongs on someone other than the president of America.
