“Optimism pays” are the concluding words of Bob Bartley’s going away speech, and it is certainly true he has just given us his own optimistic first take on his 30-year tenure as editor of the Wall Street Journal.

I’d like to be charitable towards this piece. All the evidence suggests that he is a genial and personable fellow, who has honorably served the Republican cause in the marketplace of ideas all these years.

But that does not mean that the ideas he fought for are any good. And sometimes, the battles he chose damaged the credibility of the Journal—as with the decade-long Whitewater/Foster conspiracy theorizing.

But nobody has a perfect track record in the harsh light of hindsight. This is why it would have been perfectly OK for his valedictory speech to have been more explicit about where he now thinks he was wrong.

Granted, on some issues it is possible to agree to disagree:

I am indifferent to the minutiae of the arms race in the 70s, and while I think mutually assured destruction worked just fine (unlike Bartley), it is not as if we had a controlled experiment to try other approaches.

Likewise about economic policy in the 80s: Supply-side economics came at the cost of unsustainably huge budget deficits that cost the Republicans a presidency. And it is a policy the republicans are not about to try again, eventhough they now have every opportunity.

But then, in the 90s, I think Bartley mishandled the entire Clinton Presidency. And he still doesn’t know it:

President Clinton’s sin was the same as President Nixon’s: not the burglary but the lies, not the sex but the lies.

Last I checked burglary was a crime but not sex, even the extramarital variety. It’s just outlandish to continue to suggest that Clinton’s crimes are anywhere near the severity of Nixon’s. And that is why the American people didn’t support Clinton’s ouster, not because

Without the public passion aroused by the [Vietnam] war, judges and journalists and opposition politicians would never have had the stomach to unseat a sitting president. In normal times, this is not something the electorate would allow. The electorate takes the optimistic view.

Then there is Whitewater. Bartley doesn’t mention Vincent Foster, and it is a telling ommission, because it was the recurring theme of the opinion page in the 90s, one that endeared it to the orthodox among the believers, but which lost it the middle ground (let’s call them the rational readers). Bartley’s speech would have been a good occasion to admit that yes, it was all tilting at windmills; and yes, had he jettisoned the Foster obsession early on he would have had more influence to bear on issues that matter more.

But he is absolutely right about one thing. Things today are better than they were 30 years ago. And you don’t have to be an optimist to see that. But I also believe that many of the problems in 1972 were self-inflicted (let’s say 3 out of 4: stagflation, Watergate and Vietnam, but not communism, which with hindsight was a paper tiger anyway). Today’s terrorism is not a self-inflicted problem. But pollution risks becoming one in the coming decades. And unless the journal changes its tune on this issue, it will make sure it does. When it comes to the environment, there is no reason to believe optimism pays.

[Thu, Nov 21 2002 – 09:52] Matthew (www) (email) for a more charitable–and historically astute–account of bartley’s speech, take a look at this piece in the new york sun.

[Thu, Nov 21 2002 – 11:19] Kim oh silly us. yer right stefan. i think we should call together collin powell and condolezza rice and paul o’neill and donald rumsfeld and tell them to forget about the economy and war and instead decide whether or not anyone gets to ride their snowmobiles in yellowstone. i can’t believe i never thought of that.

[Thu, Nov 21 2002 – 14:50] Charles Kenny (www) (email) Just to annoy Eurof, I’m going to partially agree with Kim on this one. Sort of. I’m not sure I buy the line that “When it comes to the environment, there is no reason to belive that optimism pays.” Since Malthus if not prior, people have suggested that we would at some point reach an environmental limit with nasty consequences for our quality of life. As of yet, they’ve been wrong (see the Club of Rome predictions from the 1970s, for eg).

Most improvement in the quality of life worldwide over the past 200 years has been due to technological change –better use of resources– not increased use of resources. So they are ‘sustainable’. This is not to deny a vital role for government in ensuring that our quality of life is preserved in a sustainable manner, merely to say that the record so far is that, by and large, governments have managed that. So maybe optimism pays.

[Fri, Nov 22 2002 – 07:04] eurof (email) don’t quite see why i should be annoyed, charlie pig. i’m by inclination an optimist, and even if we’re screwed anyway and can’t do anything about it, why be morose during your final moments? so i sit with the optimists.

but optimism doesn’t have to mean complacency. also, better use of resources doesn’t mean that the resources don’t get used. and just because something hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t. no, i am an activist-optimist.

with that in mind, i would like to propose a solution to our species’ environmental problems that mr bartley and the editorial board of the WSJ could agree with, one that has inexplicably escaped them, which would chime well with the Journal’s pro-business, pseudo-libertarian views as well: legalise cannibalism.

On future posts I will outline the benefits of such a programme. Basically put: too many people reproducing too quickly, destruction of habitat for agricultural use, removes big-government restraints on enterprise and free trade, creation of new export markets etc., and new, interesting tasty treats. The answer has been in front of us all the time, sometimes even in our living rooms. I look forward to your comments.

[Fri, Nov 22 2002 – 07:34] joachim is there anyone in particular that makes your mouth water john?

[Fri, Nov 22 2002 – 08:11] eurof (email) oh, i wasn’t thinking of eating any of my friends! i know where they’ve been in the most part so no way! no, i was thinking of lumping people into vast anonymous amorphous blobs and culling selected categories. We could have a debate about which ones, but let’s go with the WSJ on this at first, so we could eat democrats, environmentalists — mmm, organic! –, euro-weenies, palestinians, arabs generally, the taleban, and of course, the poor and foreigners. we could hog-roast bill clinton at a $1m a head republican fund raiser, even.

[Fri, Nov 22 2002 – 08:45] Jezza Mmmm, can I come to tea Eurof? I’m not too fussy about what I eat, but I’m not having Indian unless its free range.

[Fri, Nov 22 2002 – 10:47] eurof (email) jezz, it’s all pretty much free range, except for the McCriminal fast food product line which i envisage as cheap snacks for people on the go, and for use in institutional catering. It’s an elegant idea that will make many of our prisons more like self-sustaining profit centres.