Holes In His Socks

I met John Cassidy a few months ago, outside a bar in Carroll Gardens — Brooklyn being the preferred sliver of Little England in Gotham. Nice bloke, very down to earth. Somehow I suspect he'd be a little put off by the fact that among all the terrific tidbits in his New Yorker profile of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, the fact that the money man has got holes in his socks is the one with which everyone seems preoccupied. Here's what I would have highlighted, if I were, you know, a blogger or something:

Many of Wolfowitz’s critics suspect that his motive in fighting corruption is political rather than economic. “I think he was completely genuine in the notion of bringing Western-style democracy to Iraq, the Middle East, and other areas,” Dennis de Tray said to me. “That hasn’t changed. He’s still committed to that agenda, and I think he sees the bank as another instrument to achieve what I see as long-held goals. The focus on ‘corruption’ and ‘good governance’—for him, those are code words for democracy and human rights. He knows he can’t use those words publicly, because the bank’s charter says we can’t engage with politics. But he goes pretty close by saying we are not going to deal with corrupt regimes anymore.”

Even if your eyes gloss over the side note that the international lending body created in the smoldering aftermath of World War II is prohibited from using terms like "democracy" and "human rights," you might be inclined to notice two things about the head of that body: 1. He's a liberal down to his softy core; 2. He obviously did learn a thing or two from the single Leo Strauss course he took at the University of Chicago if the terms "corruption" and "good governance" have become the new noble lies for economic policy wonks.

And if you're really caffeinated when you read this piece, you'll also observe that it's remarkable for what it leaves out: the fact that qualms about third world corruption with respect to humanitarian aid don't begin with Scoop Jackson idealists but with more conventional lefty types like David Rieff. Rieff has argued, most visibly in the pages of the American Prospect, that the good intentions of popular, non-government campaigns such as LiveAid have been eclipsed by the sordid use of the money those campaigns raised. What happens to "We Are the World" dollars once they get transferred into bank accounts that tinpot dictators have arrogated as their own private property?

For one thing, bolstering the loan-for-lives ratio in an organization that's mainly kept afloat by the United States is a way of eliminating any associative guilt the United States may be charged with in a lendee’s crimes against humanity. Though I doubt that, say, denying loans to China because of its miserable human rights record will be seen by the the hard left as anything other than self-serving and Machiavellian act by Wolfowitz. He can't win. Either he's a pawn of the Bush administration, putting their Just Say No to Dictators foreign policy to work at the World Bank, or he's lining the coffers of some of the worst dictators money can and does buy.

Now what about his notorious gracelessness under pressure?

After leaving the Selimiye Mosque, we were driven to a nearby restaurant, where Wolfowitz had dinner with mayors and governors from both sides of Turkey’s border with Bulgaria, which is ten miles from Edirne. The dinner lasted several hours and featured half a dozen courses as well as numerous speeches, and by the time we boarded a Turkish military helicopter for the flight back to Istanbul it was almost ten o’clock. I sat next to Wolfowitz, who promptly nodded off. For about half an hour, we flew south without incident. It was a clear night, and the lights from remote farmhouses and hamlets were visible. Then we hit something—an air pocket, a hailstorm, it was impossible to tell. The helicopter shook violently and plunged down to the right. For a few moments, it seemed that the pilot had lost control. Looking out the window, I saw the ground rushing toward us. Mercifully, the aircraft levelled off.

Wolfowitz, who had been shaken awake, said nothing, and neither did any of the other passengers on board. Cold air was rushing in from somewhere, and Patrick English, the head of Wolfowitz’s security detail, appeared from the front of the helicopter and said that the co-pilot’s door had sheared off and fallen to the ground. We flew on, slower and lower than before. A few minutes later, English said that the pilot had offered to land at a nearby airstrip, where we could wait for another helicopter to pick us up. Wolfowitz said that he wanted to continue.

Back in 2004, when the Al-Rashid Hotel he was staying in in Baghdad was bombed by jihadist thugs, journalists like William Langewiesche of The Atlantic, had claimed that Wolfowitz yelped in fear and skedaddled before the rubble had been gone through for body parts. What then of this display of Black Hawk Paul's fortitude even when the turbulence gets rough?