The Great Gate of Kiev is a
striking piece of music by Mussorgsky, and must be differentiated from the
rapidly emerging narrative of Kiev-Gate, which is not so great. Yes, I reluctantly return from the
sun-drenched plains of philology to the murk of the political arena. This essay is all jealousy and sour
grapes. It involves Ukraine, and
specifically my missing out on the gravy train of scuzzy Ukrainian money that
has been enriching so many of my fellow citizens. Ukraine, or as we used to say in the very old
days “the Ukraine,” now an
independent country, is that large part of the dissolved Soviet Union that was
once called the “breadbasket” of the old Russian heartland, the place where
Stalin and Krushchev, in refounding the agrarian economy on sound socialist
principles, bumped off all the “millionaires and billionaires” of the day
(i.e., the kulaks, some of whom owned
as many as two pigs) and starved
several million people to death. I am no
Soviet expert, but I did have to look into all of this while writing about the
Ukrainian defector, Viktor Kravchenko, one of the important authors I dealt
with in The Anti-Communist Manifestos.
Kiev-Gate is a rapidly developing
story, but here are the principal players so far. I’ll begin—solely for purposes of dramatic
contrast--with my only strong card, Marie Yovanovitch (Princeton class of 1980),
former Ambassador of the United States to Ukraine, an honorable professional
who got canned for being honorable and professional.
Next comes Paul Manafort (former
chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign, current prison inmate), perhaps best
characterized as greedy, meretricious, and felonious. Then we have former Vice-President (and
current presidential candidate) Joseph Biden, whose curiously jovial
incompetence is in this instance somewhat marred not by any criminality, as
suggested by Trump, but by a suspicion of disingenuousness deployed in favor of
his son Hunter Biden, Washington lawyer and sometime expert consultant in that
branch of the olive oil business known as natural gas. Then you have the principals: Donald Trump,
who has behaved like a Mafia thug; Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani,
once mayor of New York, whose public statements have been incoherent to the
point of borderline insanity; and Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine,
who may by now regret moving from theatrical comedy to that form practiced by
politicians.
As I assess things, the current
Ukrainian flap involves outrageous behavior by Donald Trump, sleazy behavior by
Hunter Biden, and dumb behavior by Joe Biden; it recalls earlier criminal
behavior by Paul Manafort, formerly Trump’s campaign manager and now an inmate
in prison, where, perhaps on holidays, he may be allowed to wear his
Ukrainian-financed $15,000 ostrich leather sports jacket. However,
the current episode as it is being revealed is so obviously damaging to Donald
Trump that folks don’t seem to notice that it is not really very good for Joe
Biden either. I don’t know whether there
are any actual olive trees in Ukraine, but the olive oil business is clearly
thriving there. Lest my reference be
obscure, I refer to memorable testimony before a congressional investigating committee made by Frankie Pentangeli in Part
2 of The Godfather. The aspect of the olive oil business most
relevant to our emerging story seems to involve natural gas monopolies,
pipelines, exclusive franchises, and the potential legal liabilities of the
oligarchs who have appropriated them.
These are matters that require a lot of expert advisors, or
“consultants”—and not just any old consultant either. Some journalists have hinted that on the face
of things, Hunter Biden lacked the expertise needed to advise oligarchs about
gas pipelines and such, but that is all nonsense. This man had been, probably for more years
than he could remember, the son of a prominent American career politician, and
one who had at length arrived at a mere heartbeat’s distance from the
Presidency itself. And that is the kind
of expertise likely to be useful in the olive oil business. Any random engineering graduate of Georgia Tech or the Bauman Moscow State Technical University
can bring you up to date on pipe specifications. This needs something special. This needs Hunter Biden.
Now, look, I’m a civil
libertarian. Live and let live. It is not technically illegal to be named
“Hunter Biden”. In fact, “Hunter Biden”
would be a great name for a character in a Fitzgerald novel, Amory Blaine’s
roommate perhaps. But if your father’s political persona is that of Joe Sixpack
from Scranton, PA, the name may raise just the slightest degree of cognitive
dissonance. On the other hand, “Hunter”
may be preferable to “Fredo”, another literary allusion likely brought to mind
by the circumstances.
In my part of the socio-cultural
landscape, where political opinion generally runs all the way from A to A’, I
have for the past four years struggled to maintain a broader view. All attempts to enforce fair-mindedness,
however, have been overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of our President’s
behaviour. Common or garden variety
Washington sleeze, while often odiferous, cannot compete with constitutional
high crimes and misdemeanors. As this
post is being published Nancy Pelosi has announced a formal “impeachment
enquiry”. That’s a serious step, and
certainly one she has been reluctant to take before now. The promise of the White House, for what it’s
worth, is to release a full transcript of the telephone conversation between
Presidents Trump and Zelensky that has been at the center of the speculative
outrage. Have your whistle ready at
hand.
As in Shakespeare’s history plays,
the most poignant villains are the hangers-on and henchmen. Giuliani is not a man without
accomplishments. He was an effective
comforter-in-chief to his traumatized city in 2001, since which time his speech
has consisted primarily of tripartite sentences featuring a noun or two, a verb
with luck, and the indispensable phrase “Nine-Eleven”. In this he is now being imitated by Joe
Biden, except that Biden says “Barack Obama,” or, when really closing in for
the kill, simply “Barack”! But whereas
Biden merely sounds foolish, Giuliani is truly demented, his speech both
violent and incoherent, not to mention mendacious of course. One supposes that his assigned task was to
transmit to Zelenksy an offer he could not refuse, but it is possible that he failed
to transmit one he could even understand.
