Diatribes of Jay: Reihan Salam

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Rarely does this blog see reasons for optimism in a pundit or media maven, let alone one who styles himself a “conservative.” Most of them fall prey too easily to deliberate distraction, or, in the so-called “conservative” realm, serve as blatant propagandists. The last pundit to inspire my optimism was David Leonhardt, a left-leaning commentator with an incisive mind and extraordinary understanding of quantitative economics, who now runs the New York Times’ opinion page and newsletter.

Yet here I am, writing about a conservative thinker whom I never heard of before this month. His name is Reihan Salam.

Salam sports a long string of writing and thinking accomplishments. I became aware of him when, for the last two weeks, he replaced David Brooks opposite Mark Shields in the PBS News Hour’s weekly review of political events.

I hope the replacement will be permanent.

Don’t get me wrong. I like and admire David Brooks. His “aw shucks” manner makes his sometimes fuzzy conservatism endearing. More endearing still is his open and absolute disdain for Donald Trump and his realistic worry that Trump as president will destroy Brooks’ own political party, if not our democracy.

But disdain is not a solution, and Brooks and Shields have become too cozy and comfortable. They obviously like each other, and their mutual desire to show it belies the ongoing crisis of our presidency and our democracy. Shields has a slight edge on Brooks in specific facts, but I rarely learn much from their dialogue that I didn’t already know, besides occasional reports of the attitudes of important newsmakers. Like the establishments of the two parties they represent, Shields and Brooks resemble tired warhorses who can’t see beyond old struggles to new horizons.

Salam exudes new ideas from his pores. He’s a true libertarian—a man raised in a Muslim household who reportedly supports gay marriage and legalizing prostitution and illegal drugs. Yet at the same time he reportedly favors curbing alcohol abuse with higher taxes, reducing urban gridlock with congestion taxes, and advancing social mobility in cities by means of less restrictive zoning policies.

My admiration for Salam has nothing to do with all this, which I learned only upon investigating his background for this essay. What struck me most was his unique and refreshing view of Donald Trump revealed this Friday.

Salam is a brilliant and articulate speaker well acquainted with nuance. He, too, is appalled (perhaps too facilely) by Trump’s incompetence, inconsistency, and constant blunders. But unlike most establishment figures in both parties (with the GOP mostly off the record), he doesn’t think the sky is falling on our democracy.

Trump’s Helsinki fiasco, Salam believes, has had a useful unintended consequence. It has motivated both paralyzed Democrats and the Republican establishment, which has generally been supine to Trump, to take a much harder line on Russia. As background, Salam noted late-2017 legislation that lets Congress impose sanctions on Russia without the President’s consent, which, Salam said, the president himself signed. Salam didn’t say whether Congress has or ever would use this legislation, but at least it shows that our lie-addled nation is not totally without checks and balances.

There were other ways in which Salam justified faith in the durability of our institutions. Among them was the contrast between Trump’s fawning over the brutal dictator Kim and Kim’s complaint, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit, of “gangsterish” demands by the US.

Salam’s own personal story is also proof of America’s resilience. His parents were born in Bangladesh, and Salam was born in Brooklyn. Through Stuyvesant High School, Cornell and Harvard (as an undergraduate), Salam worked himself up to the heights of the “conservative”—and therefore now the ruling—establishment in one generation. In a moribund GOP riven by discord, sycophancy to the rich, and blind faith in simplistic ideology, he seems to serve as one of the GOP’s key idea men.

Salam is no superman. Perhaps conscious of his brains, he’s too strident and overbearing, and he needs to tone it down. And he seems to ignore the risk that the bad might drive out the good in Trump’s Administration, as in the cases of most dictators’—a catastrophe I have feared, if not predicted.

But it was refreshing to see a man full of new ideas that our propaganda-war-weary pols and pundits seem incapable of thinking. It was even more comforting to see such a man justify (with facts, not just faith!) confidence in the resilience of our institutions, even (perhaps especially!) in the face of a buffoon-president like Trump.

Only time will tell whether Salam can justify my excitement at the prospect of original analysis. But for now, I want to see and hear more from this guy. He’s a commentator who provokes thought, not just choosing sides. Both his personal story and his new analysis inspire confidence in our national capacity for renewal.

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Diatribes of Jay

21 July 2018

Reihan Salam

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