Robert L. Bartley - He left the world better and freer than he found it ~ WSJ.

Wall Street Journal readers and writers lost a friend, a mentor and an inspiration yesterday with the death at age 66 of our columnist and Editor Emeritus Robert L. Bartley. We take it as more than a little consolation that he was the most consequential editor of his era and left the world both better and freer than he found it.

A Bartley Sampler

A few excerpts from a 40-year career.

Thought for Conservatives
Editorial, Nov. 12, 1964

So far conservatives have not inspired greater support chiefly, we think, because they deal too much in abstractions and too little in specifics. . . .

The current order does raise specific questions about liberty. Can concern over high taxation and frequently imbecilic business regulation really be lightly dismissed? How much does Government policy abet the tyranny of some labor union leaders over their followers and the public? With the growth of Government, haven't we all become entangled in an often arbitrary bureaucracy which rules what part of our income we may keep, decrees where we may travel abroad, decides which young men will devote two years to the military, tells how large a crop a farmer can plant, and looks very carefully at what a businessman spends for lunch?

Containment in Vietnam
Editorial, April 29, 1965

Whatever the result in Vietnam, we are at least showing the Communists that aggression isn't always cheap. . . . The decisive question seems not so much whether containment is certain to succeed in this instance, but whether it is a goal important enough to justify continued effort and risk. . . . Many mistakes have been made in our Vietnam policy, and it would be unrealistic to assume the U.S. necessarily has to resist communism in every nook and cranny it might appear. Yet, as a basic approach and as an investment in our own ultimate security, containment still seems the sensible choice.

Wars of Gradualism
Editorial, July 28, 1967

The cardinal lesson of Vietnam . . . is to avoid the use of force as long as possible, to weigh the national interest with excruciating care before sending troops abroad. But that lesson has an important corollary. To wit: If you nonetheless sometime decide there is no alternative to military intervention, do all you can to intervene with overwhelming force and speed.

After Mao
Editorial, Nov. 14, 1967

A new generation of pragmatic leaders . . . might put primary emphasis on developing China's own economy.

Arms, Peace and the Soviets
Editorial, July 17, 1968

The actual chance of achieving an arms control agreement . . . is better served by maintaining our preparedness. . . . For if we convince the Kremlin that the absence of an agreement forces us to counter or match its innovations, it may see that new nuclear weapons are a waste of money and effort. Then the Soviets may agree to arms control, not because they are good guys but because they want to end a pointless drain on their own economy.

The Collapse of Liberalism
Editorial, Oct. 14, 1968

In our time, liberalism has come to mean dependence on the powers of central government to solve nearly all problems. This has stemmed from a view of man holding that any evil he displays is merely the result of his environment, and that his innate good will be released by the simple step of giving him ample money, housing and other worldly goods. Thus, the liberal creed has come to demand an almost religious "commitment" to using the government to uplift the poor; not so much as a way to help the unfortunate, but as an answer to all the problems of mankind.

The Quiet Majorities
Editorial, Dec. 4, 1968

Today the difficulty is not so much a lack of good intentions on either side [of the racial divide] as it is finding the means and the courage to live up to the intentions that already exist. . . . In challenging Americans to live up to their good intentions, it's well to stress what those intentions are: That very few Negroes want to tear down American society; most want to join it. That only a few whites want to keep blacks from joining; most want them to become partners.

The Nation United
Editorial, Aug. 7, 1974

We believe that the new Oval Office transcripts released Monday provide ample evidence for President Nixon's impeachment, conviction and removal from office. . . .

Throughout the Watergate episode we have gone to great lengths to give the presidency the benefit of any doubt. We have recorded our moral revulsion at the acts involved, and insisted that the legal processes go forward. But we have stressed that a President's removal would constitute a massive institutional precedent, and an unfortunate one in an era of governmental instability throughout the democratic world. Thus we have argued that so grave a step should be taken only when the evidence is clear enough to leave few doubts and few divisions. That time has come.

Down With Big Business
Editorial, April 18, 1979

The business giants have rather equivocal interests in free enterprise. They always have the option of doing everything left-handed and backward, if that's what the government wants . . .

This is of course a caricature of big corporations, their executives and their motives. But it is a caricature drawn to highlight an impulse that we do think accounts for otherwise inexplicable parts of their attitudes toward free enterprise. Historically, capitalist economies have prospered through competition, innovation and particularly a sensitive price mechanism transmitting unimaginably efficient signals for less production here and more investment there. If you freeze the system you will lose its thrust toward progress. But in many ways, GM's life will be easier. So don't look to big business for unequivocal defenses of capitalism. We guess that's up to the folks at XYZ Bumperlight Lens.

Reject SALT Now
Editorial, Sept. 11, 1979

The discovery of Soviet troops in Cuba suddenly threatens to become the straw that breaks the back of the strategic arms treaty. Yet the only surprising thing is that anyone should be surprised. Didn't everyone know that the Soviet Union is engaged in a world-wide geopolitical offensive under the umbrella of its massive military build-up? And isn't it equally clear that the debate over SALT is really a debate over whether or not the U.S. will acquiesce to this imperial drive?

Chappaquiddick and Credibility
Editorial, Nov. 6, 1979

The death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island is a cross that Senator Edward Kennedy has borne for a decade, and in this he deserves the sympathy of any feeling man or woman. All of us have weaknesses and all of us make mistakes, and fate could turn many of them into ghastly tragedy, as it did for the Senator. The death is a private matter, and the rest of us need pass no judgment.

There is another aspect of the Chappaquiddick affair, though, on which we are fully entitled to pass judgment, indeed on which we are required to pass judgment as the Senator prepares to ask for the nation's highest office. For his ability to function as President depends no little on whether the nation feels he is a man it can trust to explain his actions fully and frankly. Without this trust national leadership is ultimately impossible, as more than one recent President has painfully learned. Voters forgive flaming personal misconduct forthrightly confessed, but are troubled by suspicious explanations. Rightly so, for the bonds of trust are always a legitimate issue.

Death of Reason
Editorial, March 27, 1980

Barring a redemptive miracle, the United States Senate today will sacrifice the nation's future security to its own unslakable thirst for revenues. It will give final approval to the massive, falsely labeled, "windfall profits tax." . . .

The oil revenues tax . . . will combine with raging inflation to run the American crude oil production industry into the ground. It will solidify OPEC's grip on oil prices, leave us politically and militarily exposed from further dependence on imported oil, drain huge funds out of the savings/profit pool needed to stimulate investment and productivity, and increase the incentives for inflationary money creation. To find a similarly destructive single piece of legislation, you have to hark back to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which helped throw the world into the Great Depression.

John Maynard Domenici
Editorial, April 16, 1981

The Reagan theory is that to achieve a balanced budget you need both expenditure reduction and economic growth; surely recessions do not cause balanced budgets. Further, the theory goes, you can stimulate growth by incentive-boosting tax cuts while fighting inflation and thus reducing interest rates through tight money. . . .

The administration theory is so far only a theory, of course, but who has a better one? If Senator Domenici takes his big deficit estimates on the floor they will be used to whittle back tax cuts and the theory will never be tested. We will be back in the same old rut of trying to balance the budget three years hence by allowing inflation to raise taxes. Surely this is not what the voters thought they were buying by electing Mr. Reagan, giving Republicans control of the Senate and making Pete Domenici chairman of the Budget Committee.

Star Wars Works
Editorial, June 25, 1984

The technological arguments against [missile] defense are mainly foils for the underlying philosophy that has dominated our strategic deployments and arms-negotiating strategies for a generation -- the notion that defense is bad, that it is good if each side can destroy the other entirely.

The Reagan Legacy
Editorial, Jan. 19, 1989

As Ronald Reagan leaves office, the nation still has not quite taken his measure. Even his critics like the guy, and even his friends often sound disappointed. Someone ought to say that his is likely to prove the most epochal presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt's.

Not the least of Mr. Reagan's accomplishments is how much the nation has forgotten. He took office in the very shadow of a hostage crisis, remember? Remember gasoline lines? Remember double-digit inflation and interest rates twice today's? Remember Watergate? Remember Vietnam? As Ronald Reagan hands over the reins tomorrow, the first President since Eisenhower to complete two terms, he leaves quite a different America.

The New Orthodoxy
Editorial, Oct. 5, 1990

The economic ideas expounded in these columns have shared the blame, and sometimes even the credit, for the economy of the 1980s. But now, despite the apparent difficulties of selling its budget agreement, the Bush administration has joined the Democrats in endorsing quite another set of ideas. It appears that the economy of the 1990s is likely to belong to someone else. Good luck.

On to the Elbe?
Editorial, Feb. 21, 1991

The only logical conclusion of events so far is that Saddam must go. His removal from Baghdad -- by death, flight or, preferably, capture -- is the sine qua non of international peace and security in the Gulf. If this can be accomplished by liberating Kuwait and promoting a coup, so much the better. But there is also much to be said for doing directly what must be done. As the likely battle develops, we would hope that the offensive would not stop at some Elbe in the desert simply because that fulfills the immediate military mission. The first political goal is to remove Saddam from military command and political power, and we hope our commanders would not pass up any opportunity they have to get that job done.

The Seven Fat Years
Book (Free Press), 1992

In the years just before 1982, democratic capitalism was in retreat. Its economic order seemed unhinged, wracked by bewildering inflation, stagnant productivity and finally a deep recession. The diplomatic and military initiative lay with Communist totalitarianism, which proclaimed inevitable ideological victory and could send crowds into European streets to protest efforts to offset its own shiny new missiles and tanks. Economic confusions and a sense of futility sapped the morale of the Western people; leaders talked of "malaise" in America and "Europessimism" across the Atlantic.

In a remarkably short time, all of this has been totally reversed. Today mankind affirms democratic capitalism as its role model.

The First World forged this transformation with a series of related decisions -- economic, military, diplomatic, moral. Some of them, such as the containment policy that changed Soviet society through patience rather than conquest, reach back two generations. But the keystone in so suddenly changing the world was the economic recovery that began in the United States as 1983 dawned. The trough of the recession was reached in November 1982, the expansion lasted through July 1990. From 1983-1990, we enjoyed Seven Fat Years.

Who Is Bill Clinton?
Editorial, March 12, 1992

So it now appears we will get to know, or try to get to know, Bill Clinton and Hillary. The Gennifer Flowers tank has already rumbled by. But where's the rest of them? We seem to have a distant memory of Governor Clinton riding onto the scene with talk of a "New Covenant," which had something to do with emphasizing economic growth, honest work, redesigning welfare and other lurches toward the center . . . . Then two weeks ago it turns out that the Governor's campaign is actually about "populism," with something called "the rich" being chased down to "pay their fair share." And when do we get an honest fix on how Hillary's politics fit into all this? . . .

So once again it comes to this: Is there any real reason to trust an unknown Governor when he says he's different? We'll find out eventually, and with any luck at all, revelation will come before November.

Who Is Vincent Foster?
Editorial, June 17, 1993

Still, we remain supportive when Mr. Clinton returns to [the New Democrat] campaign theme, as with Nafta. Indeed, when [Webster] Hubbell proved man enough to face public hearings on his appointment as associate attorney general, we saw no reason he should be denied confirmation. Even if we were as uniformly hostile as sometimes charged, there are larger points here. How an administration deals with critics is a basic test of its character and mores, and how scrupulously it follows the law is even more directly significant. . . . Who ensures that this administration follows the law, or explains why not? A good question. While Constitutional law may not have been the big part of the Rose firm's practice, it seems to us that a good man for the job would be deputy counsel Foster.

Giving Up on Growth?
Editorial Feature, Sept. 13, 1995

What changed in 1973 is one of the most intriguing puzzles in economic history. The most obvious economic event of the year was the "oil shock," but growth rates did not recover when the oil price declined. The other prominent event was the final collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, which explains why some of us are preoccupied with such esoterica as gold prices and fixed exchange rates.

1998 Index of Economic Freedom
Foreword, October 1997

[M]ore and more of the world has come to the conclusion that you can't fight the markets; you have to join them. The catchword of the new era is market opening -- lowering of barriers to trade, abolition of restraints on the movement of capital, the privatization of enterprises the government previously deigned to run. If you allow the markets to work freely and openly, we now (or once again) see clearly, they will serve you with prosperity and progress. Economic freedom, that is to say, bids to be the defining issue of the new era.

A Terrorist Pearl Harbor
Editorial, Sept. 12, 2001

The American approach [to violence in Israel] . . . and even more so the European one, has been to be "even-handed" between the terrorists and their victims, between our friends and our enemies. Faced with a new intifada, George W. Bush reneged on his promise to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. President Clinton begged Yasser Arafat to continue a photo-op "peace process" and allowed our defense capabilities to decline. George H.W. Bush stopped American tanks in the desert, leaving Saddam to pursue his evil designs in Baghdad. Little wonder that the fanatics conclude that America can be intimidated by a terrorist spectacle.

In this they have certainly miscalculated, just as Tojo's war planners miscalculated in believing Pearl Harbor would leave America with no taste for war.

Thirty Years of Progress -- Mostly
Editorial Feature, Nov. 20, 2002

Let me take you back to January 1972, when I took the editorial helm. This wasn't merely a troubled society, but one in the process of coming unglued. Crime rates and out-of-wedlock births were rising, and we had experienced a "long hot summer" of riots. Abroad, America was mired in Vietnam and the Communist empire was on the march. Economically, we were on the cusp of a new and dispiriting era. Huge legal and constitutional controversy lurked ahead. My career has consisted of watching these dire trends unfold, and watching this remarkable society overcome them.

A Few Final Words as Editor
Thinking Things Over, Dec. 30, 2002

Finally, I'm grateful to the support of all our readers. A newspaper, above all an editorial page, is a community venture in which the audience participates. I'll start my new venue [as columnist] by taking two weeks off, and will be back Jan. 20. So let me leave you a final thought as editor: Journalistically, my proudest boast is that I've run the only editorial page in the country that actually sells newspapers.

Updated December 11, 2003

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