Reviewing Anne Norton's hostile book on the Strauss set, Clifford Orwin knocks down more myths about Wolfowitz's part in the conspiracy to destroy the world as we know it:
He's absolutely crucial to Norton's case because despite her huffing and puffing about Straussian influence in Washington, he remains the only supposed Straussian (and [Allan] Bloom student) to achieve real importance as a policymaker. But is he much of a Straussian, or a Straussian at all?
I've known Wolfowitz for four decades. Yes, Bloom impressed him at Cornell, but he also kept his distance from Bloom, as he did during his graduate years at Chicago, too. Wolfowitz is no ideologue, and neither "Straussian" nor "conservative" begins to describe him. For most of his life he was a Democrat, and he has always looked up to such fighting Democratic liberals as Truman, Acheson, Scoop Jackson, and Sam Nunn.
I'll readily admit that I supported the Iraq war and still do. I regard the recent successful elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the hopeful stirrings among the Palestinians, as welcome vindications of it. But I don't support it as a Straussian. A pro-war stance is one for which Straussianism is neither necessary—are Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ignatieff, Paul Berman, and Joseph Lieberman all Straussians now?—nor sufficient. My admittedly unscientific survey suggests that roughly as many of my Straussian friends and students opposed the war as supported it. They were wrong, but Straussians are as free to be wrong as anybody else, and I don't deem them any less Straussian for our disagreement on this matter.
