THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, March 9, 2020 |A
Wings Over
‘One World’
The Idealist
By Samuel Zipp
(Belknap/Harvard, 393 pages, $35)BOOKSHELF| By Roger Lowenstein
I
f isolationist slogans such as “America First” drive you
to despair, “The Idealist” might be the book for you.
Imagine a time when a failed presidential candidate
became a hero to millions for promoting internationalism.
And not internationalism of the muscular Cold War variety
but a dovish “interdependence.”
It happened in 1942. Wendell Willkie, the Republican
nominee in 1940, had been thumped at the polls by Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Two years later, with World War II raging, Willkie
set off on a 31,000-mile goodwill trip to the Middle East,
Africa, the Soviet Union and Asia.
Traveling on his own dime, as FDR’s “private citizen number
one,” Willkie met heads of state, the leaders of colonial
populations, Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek and, in exile in
Beirut, a prickly Charles de Gaulle. From Baghdad to Chong-
qing, the hail-fellow-well-met
Hoosier was greeted by
thunderous crowds. Dispatched
by FDR to give “pep talks” to
American allies—and coax
neutrals into the Allied camp—
Willkie ended up delivering a
very different message.
The war was being waged
not only to defeat the fascist
powers, he said, but to abolish
colonialism. America should
stop ignoring “the peoples of
the East.” The Iraq Times saluted
him as the “ideal democrat.”
American correspondents ate it up—
not just his message of “one world” but
his informal strolls through old Baghdad, his
tête-à-tête with Marshal Stalin, his decision to escort a
young andeager shah of Iran on his first airplane ride.
After 49 days, he returned home to a Willkie boom.
Letters and speaking invitations poured in. His book about
his travels—“One World” was the inevitable title—sold 1.
million copies. A presidential rematch seemed preordained.
In “The Idealist,” Samuel Zipp, a cultural and intellectual
historian at Brown University, has captured Willkie’s “brief,
blazing moment,” a little-remembered interlude when
America was at war but already worrying about the postwar
order. Younger readers, dismayed by today’s various
nationalisms, may be comforted to learn that isolationist
and internationalist impulses—like so much else—are
cyclical phenomena. And Mr. Zipp stresses that inter-
nationalists come in two stripes—assertive nationalists
(think Teddy Roosevelt) and global idealists.
Willkie was definitely in the idealist mode. Born in
Elwood, Ind., in 1892, the son of progressive lawyers, he
idolized Woodrow Wilson. By the 1930s, belying his “aw-
shucks” manner, he was a New York corporate lawyer and
the chief executive of Commonwealth & Southern, a utility
holding company. Then FDR—whom Willkie had voted for
in 1932—took aim at the utility industry, trying to bust up
holding companies and creating a government rival, the
Tennessee Valley Authority. Willkie was suddenly the point
man in a ferocious battle with the New Deal.
Henry Luce drummed up a Willkie movement, and the
Republicans tapped him in 1940. Willkie ran as a free-
enterprise liberal while rejecting the isolationism popular
on his party’s right. In some ways, he was more liberal
than FDR. Hesupported a federal antilynching law; the
Democrats, with their Southern bloc, didn’t dare.Seven months after Pearl Harbor, when not much in the
war was going well, Willkie floated the idea of a world tour.
FDR, wanting to showcase American unity, said yes. The trip
took guts. “Planes of the era,” Mr. Zipp tells us, “were big
metal shells that rattled and pitched and hummed in the
wind.” Willkie often flew within range of enemy fire.
What catalyzed Willkie’s sense of purpose was the
realization that people across the Arab world were more
interested in ridding themselves of British and French
protectorates than they were in defeating the Axis. Willkie
called for America and Britain to live up to the Atlantic
Charter, which asserted the right of “all peoples” to choose
their government. As Willkie generated headlines, sparks
flew. Roosevelt deftly sidestepped questions about whether
Willkie spoke for him. Winston Churchill was furious.
Willkie was at his most courageous when he noted that
European colonialism had a disturbing racial echo at home.
Ahead of his time, he declared: “The moral atmosphere in
which the white race lives is changing.” But his reports were
tinged by wishful thinking. He was naive to see a sectarian
Iraq as ready for modern statehood; he soft-pedaled the
authoritarian nature of Turkey. In the Soviet Union, he
sentimentalized the staged glimpses he saw of ordinary life.
He described Stalin as a “simple man, with no affectations.”
In China, Willkie was duped by Chiang, who was in fact
more a corrupt strongman than the great statesman
Willkie suggested.
Like many people with a good cause, Willkie overstated it.
While he was right to condemn “narrow nationalism,” his
assertion that America should explain what it was fighting
for rang hollow with many Americans, as if defeating Germany
and Japan were not sufficient. His crusade for “inter-
dependence” wasultimately quixotic—too close to world
democracy. FDR more wisely introduced the era of multi-
lateralism with a big-power structure at the United Nations.
Mr. Zipp acknowledges Willkie’s naiveté, but his portrait
is a friendly one. When, in the Soviet Union, Willkie
enthused over plans for a massive hydroelectric project on
the Volga, Mr. Zipp explains away the irony that Willkie had
launched his political career in opposition to state electric
power in America. And his criticism of Willkie’s support for
free trade feels politically freighted. He argues that trade
was “likely to benefit American interests far more than
those of the smaller nations.” Has anything done more
than trade to create “one world”?
Mr. Zipp sees Willkie’s vision as timeless, but “The
Idealist” is mostly a cautionary tale. By early 1944, Willkie
had become a polarizing figure, and prominent supporters
had peeled away. A presidential bid flopped. In his short
time remaining, Willkie, who died later that year at age 52,
discovered that the public preferred enlightened self-
interest over mere goodwill.Mr. Lowenstein is the author of “America’s Bank: The Epic
Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.”Dispatched by FDR to give wartime pep talks
and coax neutrals into the Allied camp, Willkie
ended up delivering a very different message.Woody Allen’s Life Story: Canceled
T
he Hachette Book Group
announced last Monday
that it would bring out
“Apropos of Nothing,” a mem-
oir by Woody Allen, in early
April. CEO Michael Pietsch
told an interviewer that the
publisher “believes strongly
that there’s a large audience
that wants to hear the story
of Woody Allen’s life as told
by Woody Allen himself.”
There was also a noisy au-
dience that didn’t—and that
didn’t want anyone else to
hear it either. Last Thursday
Hachette employees staged a
walkout to protest the book,
and on Friday Hachette
dropped it.
“The decision to cancel Mr.
Allen’s book was a difficult
one,” said a spokesman for
the publisher. “At HBG we
take our relationships with
authors very seriously, and do
not cancel books lightly. We
have published and will con-
tinue to publish many chal-
lenging books.”
My own interest in Woody
Allen is approximately zero. I
used to find him funny, but
the prospect of wading
through “a comprehensive ac-
count of his life,” as Hachette
put it, fills me with gloom.
Hachette had nonetheless de-
termined that many readerswould be interested in Mr. Al-
len’s life story. They simply
forgot to check with the femi-
nist commissars to see if he
passes muster in the age of
#MeToo.
He doesn’t, owing to an ac-
cusation that is more than a
quarter-century old. In 1992,
amid an ugly and public ro-
mantic split with actress Mia
Farrow, he was accused of in-
appropriately touching their
adopted daughter, Dylan Far-
row, then 7. Connecticut StatePolice referred the case to the
Yale New Haven Hospital
Child Sexual Abuse Clinic,
which concluded that “Dylan
was not sexually abused by
Mr. Allen.”
The facts are somewhat
murky. The state attorney de-
clined to pursue the case, de-
spite announcing that he had
“probable cause” to do so. A
judge denied Mr. Allen’s claim
for custody, cast doubt on the
Yale report, and wrote that
“we will probably never know
what happened,” but Mr. Al-
len’s behavior was “grossly
inappropriate.”
Dylan, now 34, has periodi-
cally revived the charge
against her adoptive father,
whose biological son, Ronan
Farrow, has led the charge.
Mr. Farrow has also been a
leading #MeToo journalist,
whose recent book, “Catch
and Kill,” was published by
another imprint at Hachette.
“Your policy of editorial in-
dependence among your im-
prints,” Mr. Farrow wrote in
an email to Mr. Pietsch lastweek, “does not relieve you of
your moral and professional
obligations as the publisher
of ‘Catch and Kill,’ and as the
leader of a company being
asked to assist in efforts by
abusive men to whitewash
their crimes.”
But there are no crimes,
not even charges against Mr.
Allen, only allegations. As the
world saw during Brett Ka-
vanaugh’s confirmation hear-
ings, the principle of “inno-
cent until proven guilty” has
been replaced with “innocent
until accused.”
As for Hachette, it is happy
to publish “challenging”
books, but only within the
ever-encroaching boundaries
of political correctness. Tres-
pass on that orthodoxy and
watch the capitulation begin.
As Groucho Marx is supposed
to have said: “These are my
principles. If you don’t like
them—well, I have others.”Mr. Kimball is president
and publisher of Encounter
Books.By Roger Kimball
A publisher yields to
the mob and drops a
‘challenging’ book.OPINION
Happy 20th
anniversary
Tuesday to
the Nasdaq
index peak of
5049 back in
2000, zenith
of the dot-
comera.Af-
ter observing
our current
beer-head
frothy market for months, I
was an idiot for thinking I
could hold off until today to
write a warning column. The
market always trades to max-
imize pain. So, ouch.
Time waits for no one. One
thing I’ve learned investing is
that for every stock there’s
this invisible arrow pointing
to some moment, some time
in the future, that markets fo-
cus on to evaluate it. That
time horizon isn’t published
anywhere; it’s something you
feel, an equity duration. Typi-
cally, it’s 12 to 18 months.
Euphoria drives that arrow
out years. Beyond Meat was
selling at 20 times 2020 reve-
nue, Apple stock boomed even
with flat-ish iPhone sales, and
Tesla stock did Icarus-like fig-
ure eights close to the sun.
But Nasdaq and the entire
market have done so many
daily ascents and drops and
barrel rolls since their peak
Feb. 19—it’s now a coronavirus
roller-coaster market. Why?
Because uncertainty can col-
lapse time horizons to months
or even tomorrow.
Remember, a stock’s value
is the sum of all future prof-
How to Read the Myopic Market
its discounted back to today.
It’s dependent on profits,
growth and risk. Investors es-
timate future profits and
growth rates, but risk? Again,
you can’t look that up any-
where—it’s just a feeling
based on interest rates, com-
petition, world events and
more. Beyond Meat seemed
to be priced for five years
out. Risk is in the eye of the
beholder. So investors use a
shorthand: A price-to-earn-
ings multiple that provides
some hint to how far out the
market is looking. In May
1999, Yahoo’s P/E multiple hit
1,062!
Twenty years ago, we had
this new internet thing, a
loose Federal Reserve, AOL
juicing startups in exchange
for IPO shares, and momen-
tum investors, or momos.
Like ants to a lollipop, mo-
mos crawled into dot-com
stocks, pouring in price-in-
sensitive money that at-
tracted even more momos.
George Soros’s hedge fund
might have been the last one
in. After the Federal Reserve
flooded the world with dol-
lars to mitigate the nonexis-
tent Y2K threat, it pulled
back in early 2000 and mar-
kets reversed. Momos became
nonos. After 9/11, when time
horizons collapsed from years
to months, Amazon’s stock
had fallen 94%, to $6.
Today’s market madness
features fewer IPOs, but the
loose Fed and momos are
present and accounted for.
Tesla’s stock hit $969 on Feb.- Not coincidentally, Tesla
became the largest holding,
bumping Apple, on the SoFi
stock-trading system, which
is mostly young (and now un-
derwater) investors. Pure mo-
mentum (and a short
squeeze).
For money-losing compa-
nies like Uber and Lyft, their
stocks are priced for the
imaginary day when they’ll
rein in oversize marketing
costs and show “normal”
earnings. WeWork’s implosion
reduced the market’s appetite
for huge earnings extrapola-
tions, so lossy tech valuations
came in months ago.
The coronavirus has been
the sword of Damocles hang-
ing over markets lately. The
virus threatens to expand ex-
ponentially, with almost end-
less 14-day incubation quar-
antines. China’s economy is
probably down double-digits
in the first quarter. Flights to
infected regions have been
curtailed. Outbreaks are mul-
tiplying in the U.S. Everyone
knows this but is waiting to
see if the outbreaks will be-
come a pandemic. The uncer-
tainty is killing stocks and
commodities.
Spending will soon shrink(with the exception of every-
one buying 10-year supplies
of Purell and Campbell’s
Soup). Apple and Microsoft
were the first signs of trou-
ble. Some things will roll over
and may not come back:
Higher-than-a-kite cannabis
stocks are down 70%.
That invisible arrow that
normally points out 12 to 18
months has been pulled in.
It’s almost as if we’re reading
the news day by day to figure
out whether a pandemic will
mean years of down earnings
or if corona will flame out
and leave a quarter or two of
earnings glitches.
Is the market cheap yet?
Apple stock is selling at 21
times the average estimate of
$13.51 in 2020 earnings. The
S&P 500’s P/E ratio is about- Then again, 10-year Trea-
sury yields dropped below 1%,
which has happened, uh,
never. So old valuation mod-
els are worthless.
For a hint about what mar-
kets will do, try to grasp that
invisible arrow’s time hori-
zon. My guess is that they’ll
yo-yo until earnings growth
is comfortably assured. A
coronavirus vaccine could be
a first clear sign. Another
would be the rate of change
of U.S. virus cases, or rather
the second derivative—when
the rate of change of the rate
of change goes negative, that
might be when markets head
north again. Keep your dry
powder ready, but choose
stocks for the next cycle, not
the last one.
Today’s stock swings
reflect the shortening
of investors’ timeline
for predicting growth.INSIDE
VIEW
By Andy
Kessler
Bernie Sand-
ers has rea-
son to wish
he’d never
visited Alan
Gross six
years ago
when Mr.
Gross was a
political pris-
oner in Cuba.
Mr. Sand-
ers recently praised Fidel
Castro’s literacy program but
insisted that he never sympa-
thized with the Cuban dicta-
torship. That’s not how Mr.
Gross remembers the Febru-
ary day in 2014 when the
Vermont senator stopped to
see him during his Cuban de-
tention.
The story is worth retell-
ing because it goes to the
heart of who Mr. Sanders is
and why his bitter class-war-
fare rhetoric frightens even
Democrats. The latter became
evident in the South Carolina
primary, when Mr. Sanders’s
rival for the Democratic nom-
ination, Joe Biden, made a
dramatic comeback that
rolled on through Super
Tuesday. An endorsement of
Mr. Biden by South Carolina
Rep. Jim Clyburn was a sign
of the spreading fear that Mr.
Sanders’s hard-left ideology
makes him unelectable in No-
vember.
Mr. Sanders has tried to
refine his definition of social-
ism so as not to scare people.
But he has two big problems.
First, he hasn’t effectively
distanced himself from his
long admiration of the Castro
regime. Second, his efforts to
style himself as a peddler of
benign Swedish-style social-
When Bernie Met Cuba’s American Hostage
ism run headlong into the
fact that the Swedes had to
abandon the idea because it
was wrecking their country.
Mr. Sanders’s brand of so-
cialism makes sweeping
promises of freebies that can
be had only with the surren-
der of economic rights and of
equality under the law. If the
goal is to beat President
Trump in November, that
can’t be a good proposition.
Mr.Gross,aU.S.Agency
for International Develop-
ment contractor, was ar-
rested in Cuba in 2009 and
accused of spying because he
was caught bringing satellite-
communications hardware
into the country. He main-
tained that he was helping a
small community of Jewish
Cubans connect with the
Jewish diaspora. Cuba main-
tained that he was part of a
U.S. democracy project for
the island. In either case Mr.
Gross, then 60, was engaged
in humanitarian work.
Multiple efforts to free
him from his miserable plight
over more than four years
had failed when three U.S.
senators, including Bernie
Sanders, called on him. After
Mr. Sanders’s recent inter-
view on “60 Minutes”—in
which the candidate praised
literacy gains under Fidel
Castro—Mr. Gross felt com-
pelled to share on Facebook a
few details about that visit.
He wrote that Sens. Heidi
Heitkamp of North Dakota
and Jon Tester of Montana,
both Democrats, “sat on my
right” and “Sanders, appro-
priately on my left. Heitkamp
and Tester were very engag-
ing, and both seemed to havea solid grasp on the realities
of Cuba. Sanders did not en-
gage much in conversation
until the end of our meeting
time when he said, ‘I don’t
see what’s so wrong with this
country.’ From my vantage
point then and now, Bernie
Sanders simply does not have
a grasp on reality. Period.”
Mr. Sanders denies the re-
mark.
Mr. Gross is no hard-liner.
In the past he has been criti-
cal of both U.S. policy toward
Cuba and the Castro regime.
Yet he was clearly astounded
by the lack of empathy on thepart of Mr. Sanders, who was
apparently still clinging to
Soviet ideals he held in the
1980s. The political prisoner
was finally rescued by the
Obama administration. In De-
cember 2014, it negotiated
his release in exchange for
three convicted Cuban spies
serving time in the U.S.
The socialism that Mr.
Sanders is hawking doesn’t
replicate Cuba’s police state.
But it has little respect for
minority rights. America’s
founders feared the tyranny
of the majority and empha-
sized laws designed to pro-
tect the civil rights of all—in-
cluding property rights.
Democrats seem worried
that Mr. Sanders and his
views won’t stand up tocloser scrutiny. Take the
myth of the Swedish socialist
model as a success. It has al-
ready been debunked.
If Mr. Sanders succeeds in
turning the U.S. into Sweden,
Swedish author and historian
Johan Norberg writes in a
January/February 2020 Cato
Policy Report, it would trans-
late into “more free trade
and a more deregulated prod-
uct market, no Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, and the ab-
olition of occupational licens-
ing and minimum wage laws.”
A “Swedish” America would
have “to abolish taxes on
property, gifts, and inheri-
tance” and “would still have
to slightly reduce its corpo-
rate tax.” Social Security
would go from “defined bene-
fits to defined contributions
and introduce private ac-
counts” and there would be
“a comprehensive school
voucher system where pri-
vate schools get the same
per pupil funding as public
ones.”
Mr. Norberg writes that
Sweden’s experiment with so-
cialism in the 1970s “was an
aberration in Sweden’s his-
tory—an aberration that al-
most destroyed the country.”
In the early 1990s the Social
Democratic Minister of Fi-
nance Kjell-Olof Feldt con-
cluded, “That whole thing
with democratic socialism
was absolutely impossible. It
just didn’t work. There was
no other way to go than mar-
ket reform.”
If Mr. Sanders were really
following the Swedish model,
he would be to the right of
Donald Trump.
Write to O’[email protected].Alan Gross quotes
the senator: ‘I don’t
see what’s so wrong
with this country.’AMERICAS
By Mary
Anastasia
O’Grady