Mail Call: ‘Politics as Usual’

Gap in Rhetoric and Actions
As concerned citizens, we are feeling very guilty. According to Robert J. Samuelson, my wife and I, who are retiring this year from (between us) 80 years as teachers, are sucking money away from "poorer young and middle-aged workers" ("Presidential Double-Talk," March 16). Our retirement income will be somewhere near his definition of the "well-off elderly" ($125,000 per year). We have been steadily committed to our work. We've raised three productive and responsible children, lived frugally, bought houses no larger than we could afford and invested heavily in savings plans. Now, apparently, we constitute a threat to "the public interest." What did we do wrong?
William Campbell
Detroit, Michigan

The standard presidential four-year term of office should be reduced to four months. That, apparently, is the maximum tolerance limit for the pundits. President Obama has served two months in office and is already judged to be incompetent. After all, the stock market peaked at 14,164 on Oct. 9, 2007, and has gone downhill ever since, but Obama has failed to restore enough confidence to drive it back to that level. He has failed to put people back to work, cut the deficit, end the wars or embrace his Republican opponents. His time is up. Who's next?
Kenneth Lee
raytown, missouri

thank you for robert j. samuelson's March 16 column. As a liberal-leaning, open-minded reader I appreciate the fact that you included an article that is objectively critical of the new administration and the candidate that I supported. I could get this perspective from various conservative media, but it's much more convenient to get it from the usual source of ideas that typically confirm my beliefs: newsweek. I am surely not alone in supporting this administration while wanting to understand its initiatives through the eyes of those who have valid alternative approaches to how the country can continue to improve. This article was what I believe loyal, patriotic dissent should be: hard-hitting and well thought out.
Doug Sweat
Dallas, Texas

Making Do With Lots Less
Not many articles in newsweek make me laugh out loud. Steve Tuttle's "The Frugal Family Guide" (March 16) was one of them. While my parents weren't quite as economical as his, it still brought back many memories of growing up just like him. Perhaps more of us should try pulling on some frozen underwear, suck it up and learn to appreciate what we have, not what we'd like to have.
Emilie Ormond
Smithfield, Virginia

Steve Tuttle's article about his thrifty parents truly hit home. As a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I remember watching my grandmother in the kitchen, washing and drying gallon-size plastic bags and smoothing out aluminum foil. I waited patiently as my grandfather carefully opened birthday and Christmas gifts with his pocketknife, the paper folded and stashed away for another use. I will never forget the look on my grandfather's face after Thanksgiving dinner several years ago, when my cousin threw the turkey carcass in the trash. Didn't she know she could make soup out of that?! They, too, were frugal, but not cheap. They were so generous with birthday and Christmas gifts, family trips and contributing to a down payment for a first home. I learned a lot from them. We all should.
Angie Dimitri
Danville, California

Upside to the Economic Downturn
Thank you to Sharon Begley for her March 16 article "The Recession's Green Lining." Having worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in developing countries over the years, most recently in El Salvador, I have seen firsthand how big foreign companies exploit workers for low wages, exploit the land and contaminate the environment, because there is no regulation or enforcement of laws. We hear about poor working conditions abroad and environmental ruin, but to see it up close sensitizes you in a very lasting way. Although I have thought about how the global economic state will likely cause the closure of these dirty factories, I find myself not stating what Begley courageously did--that there are positives to the economic downturn. The demand for cheap goods at whatever cost to the environment and human life and dignity might just be changing.
Mary Welge
Blairstown, New Jersey

The Ties That Bind
Stryker McGuire misses the point of the Anglo-American "special relationship" between Britain and the United States ("An Island, Lost at Sea," Feb. 23). It's not about whether it is or isn't "almost entirely foreign to American ears." It is about four areas of joint trust and mutual respect: military, intelligence, diplomatic and nuclear. Recently on British television an expert explaining that the accidental collision between the British and French nuclear submarines came about because they didn't know the other was in the area. He observed that only the United States and Britain keep each other informed about the whereabouts of their nuclear subs, describing it as a very deep secret, not generally shared even with other NATO allies. It isn't time to "move on" from the special relationship, but it is past time for media commentators and pundits to quit picking at it, focusing on the trivial, and realize that it's there, it's deep and it's lasting where it counts.
Robert Worcester
London, England

Is Rush Out of Touch?
David Frum's true conservative voice is sorely needed at this time in our nation's history ("Why Rush Is Wrong," March 16). And even though Frum and I, a lifelong Democrat, would disagree on many issues, I find myself strongly allied with him on the need to reform the Republican Party's intellectual and moral core. By incisively dissecting Rush Limbaugh's diatribes for the inflammatory and counterproductive rhetoric that they are, Frum has called on conservatives everywhere to turn away from the politics of alienation and demagoguery. I hope he proves successful.
Paul Brewer
Grand Rapids, Michigan

When Rush Limbaugh and other Conservatives say they want the country to succeed but Obama to fail, they are being either disingenuous or irrational. This is not a race between competing economic recovery programs. Obama's is the only game in town; if it doesn't succeed, the country is condemned to privation and misery. Hoping that Obama fails is synonymous with hoping the country fails; the two are inextricably linked.
Gary McKinley
Iberia, Missouri

I listened to Rush from his program's inception through midway through George W. Bush's first term. I then tuned him (and Sean Hannity) out and started reading books and editorials written by both conservatives and liberals. And the most amazing thing occurred--I started to think and reason for myself. How liberating!
Garrett Lindahl
Erie, Pennsylvania

David Frum points out that most Republican leaders since the 2008 election realize that the vast majority of Americans are in no mood for Limbaugh's hot-air politics as usual. Limbaugh is out of touch with theearnest concerns of hardworking people. This emerging divide between the flame-throwingradio personality and the more moderate GOP is long overdue. Limbaugh, theconservative movement's poster child for obstructing political consensus building, has met his match in the new Obama administration. Many in the GOP are beginning to distance themselves from Limbaugh's arrogance and hubris. His latest buffoonery stems from his public wishes that our new president fail in his efforts to solve our nation's financial crisis. Limbaugh has now embarrassed many patriotic Republicans, who once considered him their spokesman and titular leader.
Mitchell J. Fine
El Dorado Hills, California

I am a liberal, but David Frum's "Why Rush Is Wrong" really struck a chord. Our country, and the Democrats, need a vital, creative Republican Party to offer competitive alternatives to the liberal agenda. I am afraid we will all suffer if Frum's call for a revitalized Republican ideology is ignored. I am at least as amused as anyone by the hole the Republicans are digging for themselves by allowing the public to see Limbaugh as their representative face, but this can't be good for anyone, except Rush and the stations that carry him.
Dave Mollen
Union, New Jersey

By highlighting Rush Limbaugh in your magazine, you, like much of the media, are encouraging the very behavior you purport to deplore. With the critical problems facing this country, the comments of this hypocrite (have people forgotten his drug use while he railed against drug use by others?) are nothing more than a sideshow. Left alone, the story would have quickly died, which would have been a big favor to the many people in this country who really don't care what Limbaugh has to say.
Erika Giles
Mercer Island, Washington

David Frum skewers the grandiose populist pomposity of Rush Limbaugh well, but he should take that beam out of his own eye first. The circumstances that allowed Rush to pose as the conservative godhead are the creation of Frum himself, and the others who have coarsened politics life in the U.S. over the last 25 years by sidelining environmental and regulatory concerns, demonizing opponents and creating conspiracy theories that culminated in the Roman spectacle of the Clinton impeachment. And let's not forget Karl Rove. I hold no brief for any U.S. politician, but as a British Liberal Democrat (and proud to be both), I think they're all too right wing, incapable of consensual policymaking, needlessly divisive and overly obsessed with a failed free market. Frum paints a picture of conservatives as practitioners of a cargo cult, desperately repeating the same mantras long after the last plane flew away. A simpler way to recover ground is to rebuild manners and civility toward your opponent.
Adam Walker
Durham, England