Jude Wanniski, the one-time supply-side guru and lead adviser to Jack Kemp, is following his new hero, Louis Farrakhan, deeper into the fever swamps of American politics. For the last year, Wanniski has been trying to sell Farrakhan as a misunderstood political leader whom Republicans should be warming up to, and not the paranoid, anti-Semitic hatemonger that Farrakhan's words and deeds show him to be.
As is often the case with such sales jobs, Wanniski keeps a straight face because he first managed to con himself: He is, on the evidence, an enthusiastic convert to Farrakhanism. Thus during the showdown with Iraq, Wanniski has been bombarding the political class with memo after memo urging appeasement -- and, indeed, making the case for Saddam.
One example should suffice: "I do not believe Saddam is a demon, nutcake or madman. . . . I don't think of heads of state as good guys or bad guys. They are the products of their times, their cultures, and their people's needs and concerns. To me, evil is ignorance. Hitler and Stalin were greatly evil in the enormous ignorance of their attitudes and behavior."
It's hard to know which is worse in this statement: the intellectual vacuity or the moral obtuseness.