Gore Vidal

[Gar Lipow]

Budge Typed:
>Buchanan's appeal?  Why the populist impulse, of course. Gore Vidal is also a populist although his impulse is obviously 'left', not 'right'.  Although I'm not always sure
what 'left' and 'right' are when dealing with populism.  I do admire
Vidal's work a great deal and have read a huge portion of it, but
something about his 'populism' always
make me a little uncomfortable.  I can never quite put my finger on what
it is, but ... sometimes I hear a bit too much Buchanan when listening
to V.

I think you have good long term instincts.  I have always had the
impression that what Gore Vidal is a humanitarian social democrat. That
is he favors capitalism, albeit a demilitarized, constrained capitalism.
He would like to see a very small military, and very little U.S.
involvement abroad, strong social democratic policies -- including
single payer health, child care, nationally funded eductation and old
age pensions, and a strong vital business sector to provide the
prosperity to pay for all this. He was also the first to popularize the
Milton Friedman invented flat tax as a "left" idea. Jerry Brown stole
the idea of this as a progressive rather than right wing reform from
Vidals campaign against him. (I think partly this may a vague instinct
on his part that progressive social spending under capitalism is only
possible with a regressive tax system.)

Gore Vidal also underwent at least one period where he was very worried
about China as likely to supplant our empire in the long run. 

On any issue on which we are likely to actually fight in the two decades
he is likely to be on our side. Given his age and health that means we
can pretty much ignore any differences as irrelevent...