The Wall Street Journal - 23.10.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, October 23, 2019 |A

The National

Palate

American Cuisine

By Paul Freedman

(Liveright, 451 pages, $39.95)

BOOKSHELF| By Rien Fertel

S

tep aside, apple pie, your time has passed. Today, a

new set of foods anchor American tables, a bountiful

buffet of tacos and ramen, kimchi and craft whiskey,

Impossible Burgers and Nashville hot chicken, oat milk and

CBD-infused sparkling water. Right now, there’s no food as

American as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

“Notwithstanding the difficulty of identifying it,” Paul

Freedman writes in his history of the national palate, “there

is an American cuisine.” In “American Cuisine: And How It

Got This Way,” the Yale University history professor and

culinary scholar eschews the banal, dish-centric narrative

of countless similar titles to propose a grand theory of the

American appetite. As in Italy or India, where most every

town can claim at least one

local specialty, regionalism,

he argues, determined how

Americans ate until the late

19th century. Since then, a

contradictory but compatible

relationship between standard-

ization and variety has defined

American cuisine. In these

modern times, for example, you

can eat or drink anything you’d

like, as long as it’s pumpkin-

spiced.

Long before it became a

favorite flavor of millennials, a

pair of proto-pumpkin spice

mixtures appeared in Amelia Simmons’s

“American Cookery” (1796), generally

considered the first American cookbook, alongside recipes

for a cranberry-sauce tart and roast turkey. On their way to

becoming staples of the Thanksgiving table, those dishes

characterized New England cooking, America’s first and, in

Mr. Freedman’s estimation, “first forgotten cuisine.” But

other regional staples, including baked beans, brown bread

and jonnycakes—a specialty once held in such high esteem

that the Rhode Island legislature came to blows after a

failed attempt to codify an official state recipe—have

largely disappeared. “A strictly regional dinner,” one early

roving restaurant critic wrote in 1955, “is becoming a thing

of the past.”

Even in the South, the land that gave gumbo and barbecue

to the world, culinary nostalgists resisted the disappearance

of regional recipes. Decades of cookbook writers, restaurant

owners and product advertisers resorted to racist Mammy

stereotypes and other cornpone caricatures to evoke the

old South. Later, more enlightened Southerners employed

the myth of local exceptionality. “We know we are South-

erners because we do eat possum and grits and okra,” the

North Carolina chef Bill Neal noted. “When we no longer

eat these foods, we no longer will be Southerners.” He

wrote these words in 1990, long after eaters gave up on

possum, squirrel and other critters that once thrived in the

Southern larder. Still the myth persists. Among the roughly

30 recipes included in Mr. Freedman’s book is one for

baked raccoon, published in a rural Tennessee Baptist

church community cookbook just last year.

The 20th century saw manufacturing and monopolization,

middle-class mobility and the demise of the family farm

lead to what Mr. Freedman calls “triumphant uniformity.”

In 1905, for cite one example, the Department of Agriculture

cataloged 14,000 varieties of apples grown over the previous

century. By the 1960s supermarkets sold more or less three

kinds: McIntosh, and golden and red Delicious.

Post-Depression Americans demanded pabulum, and

manufacturers responded with frozen TV dinners, frozen

juice concentrate, frozen fish sticks “without that fishy

taste.” Madison Avenue-tailored jingles, cartoon characters

and celebrities marketed foods that doubled as nutrient-

delivery vehicles. Kellogg’s Sugar Pops were “sweeter and

the taste is new, they’re shot with sugar, through and

through!” Wonder Bread helped “build strong bodies eight

ways,” which proved enough until the 1960s, when four

more ways were discovered. The American predilection for

predictability led to the chainification of supermarkets,

restaurants and fast-food franchises. The rise of Piggly

Wiggly allowed the proliferation of Whole Foods, Howard

Johnson’s gave way to the ubiquity of McDonald’s.

In one of the book’s most fascinating chapters, Mr.

Freedman argues that though so-called ethnic restaurants

might promise infinite variety, they instead provide the

comfort of familiarity. From sea to shining sea, Thai,

Japanese and Mexican menus deliver few, if any, surprises.

Chinese buffets are rife with Chinese-American inventions

like chop suey. Ditto for spaghetti and meatballs in marinara

sauce and eggplant Parmesan—American creations all.

In the third part of “American Cuisine,” Mr. Freedman

rushes to cover the past half-century in less than 100

pages, resulting in an ultimately underwhelming

conclusion. Perhaps blame the 1970s, a transformative but

confusing culinary era that the author resolves to label as

“magical.” That’s one way to describe a decade that gave us

affordable microwave ovens and time-sucking slow cookers

(originally invented to accommodate Jewish Sabbath

regulations), but also Chez Panisse and the Egg McMuffin.

It was the golden age of food writers, like Edna Lewis,

Calvin Trillin, and Jane and Michael Stern, who hit the

road to discover what foodways the nation was in danger

of losing and what its people stood to gain by reclaiming

recipes of old. But it was also the decade when Gerald Ford

called eating “a waste of time” and unvaryingly shoveled

down an all-American Oval Office lunch of cottage cheese

topped with onion slices or tomato quarters and dressed

with A.1. Sauce, followed by a scoop of butter-pecan ice

cream.

Mr. Freedman’s study ends with a look at food in the

year 2020 and beyond. After touching on meal kits and

faddish Filipino fare, he writes of “the disastrous present

reality and future danger of climate change and the growth

of economic inequality.” But he neglects to mention how

the changing climate has already begun to alter how

Americans actually eat, ushering in plant-based and lab-

grown meats, hyperpersonalized microbiome diets, less

seafood, less grain and more nutrient-rich renewable

resources like—gulp!—algae. Pass the pumpkin spice.

Mr. Fertel is the author of “The One True Barbecue” and,

most recently, “Southern Rock Opera.”

A history of food in the United States,

from regional styles in New England and

the South, to the ascendancy of McDonald’s.

The Hillary-Tulsi Fault Line

W

hy would Hillary Clin-
ton attack the 11th-
place Democratic pres-
idential candidate, currently
polling at 1.2%? In an interview
last week Mrs. Clinton said the
Russians have “their eye on
somebody who is currently in
the Democratic primary and are
grooming her to be the third-
party candidate.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Ha-
waii replied on Twitter: “You,
the queen of warmongers, em-
bodiment of corruption, and
personification of the rot that
has sickened the Democratic
Party for so long, have finally
come out from behind the cur-
tain.” The Clinton-Gabbard
spat illuminates the underlying
conflict between the grass-
roots progressive left and the
centrists who still dominate
the Democratic Party’s leader-
ship and donor class.
Democrats want to avoid a
repeat of 2016, when enough
progressives didn’t vote for

Mrs. Clinton to keep her from

winning. Beating Mr. Trump is

all that matters, the blue-no-

matter-who corporatists insist.

Progressives reply by asking

how that worked out in 2016.

One nearly invisible Demo-

cratic fault line concerns the

president. Progressives don’t

like Mr. Trump and disagree

with most of his policies. But

there is important common

ground. Like the president,

progressives favor economic

nationalism—putting Ameri-

can workers first and bringing

back high-paid manufacturing

jobs. They also want to end the

post-9/11 forever wars, close

overseas military bases, and

avoid new wars of choice.

Whereas centrist Democrats

ranted about Russia like Joe

McCarthy, many progressives

welcomed the prospect of

warmer U.S.-Russian relations.

They also hoped for the best

when Mr. Trump held talks

with North Korea’s Kim Jong

Un. Centrists denounced them

as appeasement.

Curiously, Mr. Trump’s with-

drawal of U.S. troops from Syria

brought lockstep condemnation

from Democrats. Mr. Biden

called this abandonment of the

Kurds “the most shameful thing

any president has done in mod-

ern history in terms of foreign

policy.” (What about the Iraq

war?) Elizabeth Warren allowed

that “I don’t think we should

have troops in the Middle East,”

but added, “We have to do it the

right way, the smart way.”

House Democrats voted

unanimously for a resolution

opposing the pullout from

Syria. Ms. Gabbard was absent,

but she too criticized Mr.

Trump’s decision as precipi-

tous. She also called the subse-

quent Turkish attack “yet an-

other negative consequence of

the regime-change war we’ve

been waging in Syria.”

Opposition to Mr. Trump’s

pullout may not be as wide-

spread as the candidates imag-

ine. In a Rasmussen poll, 55%

of Democrats (and 69% of Re-

publicans) agreed that “it is

time for us to get out of these

ridiculous endless wars, many

of them tribal, and bring our

soldiers home.” The pollster

didn’t identify the speaker of

those words—Mr. Trump.

Democrats may be setting

themselves up for a loss by be-

ing so disciplined in opposing

the president. When progres-

sive votes are vital for victory,

attacking the president for try-

ing to leave a smaller footprint

in the Middle East isn’t a

smart move.

Mr. Rall is a political car-

toonist and author of “Francis:

The People’s Pope,” the latest

in his series of graphic novel-

format biographies. He is an

occasional contributor to Sput-

nikNews.com.

By Ted Rall

Their feud could

foretell trouble for

Democrats in 2020.

OPINION

In a difficult
period for
our country,
everyone is
letdownby
commentary
that relies
on stale talk-
ing points.
Channeling
Hillary Clin-
ton’s latest
podcast eruption, some pun-
dits have lately returned to
trying to keep Trump-Russia
collusion alive, so let’s go
through it again.
To give the complete
Trump quote, he said during
the 2016 campaign. “Russia, if
you’re listening, I hope you’re
able to find the 30,000 [Hil-
lary Clinton] emails that are
missing. I think you will prob-
ably be rewarded mightily by
our press.”
In other words, a wisecrack
any of us might have made
(though hopefully a presiden-
tial candidate wouldn’t) play-
ing off the insecurity of Mrs.
Clinton’s email practices as
well as the press’s hypocriti-
cal eagerness to traffic in Rus-
sian leaks.
Nor is any honest purpose
served by still pretending that
Don Jr.’s idiotic response to a
British publicist offering Rus-
sian dirt on Hillary Clinton
was anything but idiotic. It’s
not the iceberg tip of collu-
sion.
Donald Trump spent 40
years advertising himself to
the country, and the advertis-
ing was not false. Wallowing
in Russian distractions to ex-
plain his unlikely and unsuit-
able rise is to miss every-

Hillary Is a Russian Asset

thing interesting about the

times we’re living in.

Let us also put aside lazy

partisanship on the role of the

intelligence agencies in this

outcome.

How can any honest person

at this point not want to

know about the secret Russian

intelligence that James Comey

has said triggered his serial

interventions in the Hillary

case? Was this intelligence

valid? Was it just a strained

rationale for actions that were

clearly improper and may

have elected Donald Trump?

And if federal agencies

were seriously worried about

a Trump conspiracy with Rus-

sia, why choose Carter Page

to spy on? The FBI already

knew enough about Mr. Page

to know he wasn’t, as the

Steele dossier portrayed him,

collusion’s Mr. Big.

When the whole world was

speculating about Russian

hacking of Hillary’s emails,

how could a secondhand ac-

count of one such conversa-

tion between a lowly Trump

campaign worker and a Lon-

don professor be a reason to

launch an intelligence investi-

gation of a U.S. presidential

candidate?

When the press wouldn’t

report Christopher Steele’s

unsupported allegations about

Mr. Trump, Democrats tried

to exploit the FBI to get the

allegations into the media.

How can any “intelligence

community” worth the name

now not be investigating this

abuse of its own processes by

a foreign agent trying to in-

fluence a U.S. presidential

campaign?

We can understand the

commercial reward system at

work when it comes to the

press. Many journalists don’t

have minds in any high sense.

But why are some putatively

serious analysts still trying to

claim a dribble of Facebook

ads altered the election, while

refusing to acknowledge the

avalanche of innuendo on ca-

ble TV (where most voters ac-

tually got their news) portray-

ing candidate Trump as a

Putin stooge? (Failing to ac-

count for the difference be-

tween gross and net would get

you flunked out of most ninth-

grade social-science classes.)

The Trump-Russia conspir-

acy theory was self-refuting in

the first place not because of

Mr. Trump’s virtues: He can’t

keep a secret. He’s mercurial

and undisciplined. His cam-

paign was so clearly a lark

from his back pocket, not a

long-hatching plot. The Krem-

lin hardly needed his coopera-

tion if it saw an interest in

promoting the Trump boom-

let. Plus any such cooperation

would have been difficult to

hide from our foreign intelli-

gence apparatus.

At some point, reality has

to be acknowledged. Mr.

Trump was innocent, the evi-

dence was fabricated by his

opponents, and the press and

intelligence agencies in some

sense allowed themselves to

be party to this.

A new book by James

Stewart provides what might

be called the official story,

with official characters like

Mr. Comey giving their official

two-dimensional rationaliza-

tions. Missing is everything

interesting: The torrent of il-

legal leaks from many of these

same people defaming the in-

coming Trump administration.

The ranking member of the

House Intelligence Committee

claiming to have “more than

circumstantial evidence” of a

Trump-Russia conspiracy. The

top leaders of the Obama in-

telligence agencies going on

television to declare that

Vladimir Putin was Mr.

Trump’s “case officer” and

had placed him in the White

House.

Democrats may be oblivi-

ous but much of the country

noticed the self-jujitsu by

which Mr. Trump’s enemies

have turned Mr. Trump’s vices

into their own, with their

sleazy and self-defeating ap-

proach to opposing him.

Democrats would help

themselves now by shutting

Mrs. Clinton up. Her podcast

with campaign guru David

Plouffe is becoming famous

for all the wrong reasons.

Mrs. Clinton clearly wills an-

other loss for her party at the

presidential level, which she

is eager to blame on assorted

Russian “assets” (i.e., every-

body in the U.S. political sys-

tem, including fellow Demo-

crats, she finds inconvenient),

as a way to exculpate herself

for losing to Donald Trump.

Democrats trying to

revive ‘collusion’ must

want Trump back in

the White House.

BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.

In an era of
political po-
larization,
most pundits
believe per-
suadable vot-
ers are near
extinction and
base mobiliza-
tion is the key
to victory. The
annual Public
Religion Research Institute/
Brookings Institution Ameri-
can Values survey released on
Monday suggests this view is
wrong.
Among registered voters,
29% say that they will support
Donald Trump no matter who
the Democratic candidate turns
out to be, and 40% say they
will support the Democrat no
matter what. But 29% say their
vote will depend on which can-
didate the Democrats select.
Among likely voters, the “it de-
pends” group makes up 24% of
the electorate, compared with
43% who are committed to the
Democratic nominee and 31%
who are committed to Mr.
Trump.
Because Democrats have
more “wasted” votes in solidly
blue states than Republicans do
in comparable red states, they
need more than a plurality of
the popular vote to prevail, as
they learned in 2016. Barack
Obama’s 51% majority and 4-
point popular-vote edge gave
him a comfortable Electoral
College victory in 2012.
The 2020 Democratic nomi-
nee will likely need a majority
of the popular vote to win.
Simple math shows that to
reach this majority, the Demo-

The Opening of the American Voter’s Mind

crat will need to earn the sup-

port of at least 29% of “it de-

pends” voters. Although this

might seem to be a low bar,

the PRRI/Brookings poll finds

that only three contenders

now cross it—Joe Biden com-

fortably, with 36%; Elizabeth

Warren, less comfortably, with

32%; and Bernie Sanders just

barely, with 29%. No one else

even reaches 15%. Because “it

depends” voters tend to be

less informed, their prefer-

ences may change if another

candidate attracts their atten-

tion by breaking through in

Iowa or New Hampshire.

Who are these neglected

but crucial voters? Fifty-four

percent are independents, and

61% call themselves moderate.

Only 25% have college degrees,

compared with 45% among

those committed to the Demo-

cratic nominee. More than half

earn less than $50,000 a year,

and nearly half identify them-

selves as working-class or

lower-class. Sixty-five percent

are under 50, compared with

54% of all Americans, and 23%

are Hispanic, vs. 7% for com-

mitted Trump supporters.

“It depends” voters are

hardly bullish on America’s

condition and leadership.

Sixty-seven percent think the

country has gotten seriously

off on the wrong track. Just

27% have a favorable impres-

sion of Mr. Trump, and only

33% approve of the job he is

doing. Seventy-two percent

say Mr. Trump has damaged

the dignity of the presidency,

and 66% report his personal

conduct makes them less likely

to support him. (By contrast,

67% have a favorable impres-

sion of Mr. Obama, and 70%

approve of the job he did as

president.)

Nevertheless, these “it de-

pends” voters were split down

the middle on whether Mr.

Trump should be impeached

and removed from office.

Among the likely voters in this

group, only 42% favored im-

peachment and removal, while

57% were opposed. Weeks af-

ter the news about Ukraine

broke and began spilling into

public view, many “it depends”

voters who disapprove of Mr.

Trump as both a person and a

president are yet to be per-

suaded that the facts warrant

the most severe congressional

response.

Those voters don’t espouse

the harshly partisan views

characteristic of the rest of

the electorate. They believe

that Democrats are trying to

make capitalism work for av-

erage Americans, not turning

to socialism, and that Republi-

cans are trying to protect the

American way of life against

outside threats, not embracing

racism.

For the most part, they steer

a middle course between parti-

san extremes. On the one hand,

they reject most Republican

views on immigration, climate

change, relations between the

sexes, abortion and discrimina-

tion against white Americans.

On the other hand, they believe

that the Confederate flag sym-

bolizes Southern pride rather

than racism and overwhelm-

ingly reject reparations for de-

scendants of slaves. They favor

neither sanctuary cities nor

government-provided health

benefits for immigrants ille-

gally in the country.

Underlying the self-pro-

fessed moderation of “it de-

pends” voters is a complex

blend of attitudes. Compared

with most Democrats, they

lean toward traditionalism on

religious and cultural issues

and toward conservatism on

security issues. Compared with

most Republicans, they lean

toward progressivism on

bread-and-butter issues such

as jobs, health care and higher-

education costs.

In short, these voters who

may well decide the election

don’t fit the profile of either

Mr. Trump’s most ardent sup-

porters or the Democrats’ most

fervent progressives. They are

closest to the New Deal liberals

who dominated the Democratic

Party when it enjoyed a gov-

erning majority.

It would be one of the iro-

nies of American history if

electoral reality forces the

Democratic Party to endorse

the brand of liberalism that so

many of its members scorn as

timid and obsolete. It would be

a tragedy for the country and

the world if Democrats ignore

this reality by embracing cul-

tural views that a majority of

Americans cannot accept.

Nearly one-third say

their presidential vote

will depend on the

Democratic nominee.

POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston