[In the following essay, Toman examines Heller's satirical treatment of the American neoconservative political program in Good as Gold.]

Stephen W. Potts says of Joseph Heller's Good as Gold that “this satire shoots very wide, as with birdshot, aiming broadly at politics as an institution rather than at particular practices of the near past or the present.”¹ The criticism itself shoots wide, for neoconservative thought as it developed in the United States through the 1960s and 70s is the specific target. In The Neoconservatives, Peter Steinfels identifies important principles, at least four of which are objects of Heller's satire: (1) “neoconservatives refuse to put responsibility for the present situation heavily on the shoulders of governing elites”; (2) they view government as “the victim of ‘overload.’ Attempting too much, it has naturally failed”; (3) they tend to feel that, since incessant, impossible demands upon the government doom it to repeated failure and consequent loss of authority, “the authority of government should be shielded by dispersing responsibility for this failure as much as possible”; and (4) they espouse “the theory of unanticipated consequences.”²

Let us briefly examine each of the four points with respect to the novel. While Heller may agree with the neoconservatives that there is a failure of authority, he does not exonerate the ruling elite. In Good as Gold, the president naps and writes his book. The members of the Committee on Education do not even attempt to accomplish anything. Though Gold's morality leaves much to be desired, that of Kissinger, Andrea (in her capacity as government official), and Ralph leave more. In a further elaboration of this first principle, neoconservatives believe the loss of faith in institutional structures “is primarily a cultural crisis, a matter of values, morals, and manners” (p. 55) and not something spawned by the behavior of men in power. But, as can be shown, the Gold family, a constituent part of the culture neoconservatives blame, has a firmer grasp upon socially beneficial values and morals, if not manners, than any of the novel's governing elite.

Secondly, in Heller's view, rather than being burdened by overload, the government is remiss in accepting too few responsibilities, as is suggested by the satirical presentation of a state legislator's attempt to withdraw aid from education.³

On the third point, Steinfels quotes Daniel Moynihan: “Diffusing responsibility for social outcomes tends to retard the rise of social distrust when the promised or presumed outcome does not occur” (p. 64). Heller does not enter into the specifics of the neoconservative program here. (One technique neoconservatives suggested was the interposition of a market system between government policy and its actual implementation so the market could absorb the blame in the event of failure and add credence to government excuses.) But he does capture the essence of the evasive maneuvers in Ralph's tactics. Evasions on the part of government officials are not new, yet the public discussion of effective techniques (Moynihan's comment appears in his 1973 volume, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income) tends to legitimize as a worthwhile government attitude what ordinarily would be viewed as irresponsibility.

The notion alluded to under point four was argued forcefully by Irving Kristol in the introduction to On the Democratic Idea in America: “The unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences” (quoted in Steinfels, p. 99). The position provides neoconservatives with a theoretical basis from which they respond to opponents' humanistic demands. In effect, the argument runs as follows: “In the first place, things won't work out the way that you liberal reformers envision them so, since you may even realize this, you had better inquire into your own motives [understood: “which are either naively impractical or self-interested”]; and, secondly, since the results of government intervention are counterintuitive, you had best leave matters to experts.” When Bruce Gold, abandoning his former liberal beliefs and adopting neoconservative opinions for the power their espousal will bring him, writes “Nothing Succeeds as Planned,” he contributes precisely the intellectual support that the conservative government needs to justify its lack of social involvement.⁴

Heller not only disparages the neoconservative program but also attacks the tendentious motives of the neoconservatives themselves, particularly, it would seem, those of Irving Kristol. Heller's ever-inspiring, Presidential-dinner-remembering Lieberman resembles Kristol, whose efforts as a publicist cause Steinfels to dub him the neoconservative “standard-bearer.” “If Horatio Alger had written about intellectuals instead of newsboys, Kristol could have been one of his heroes. Irving, the Editor; or From Alcove No. 1 to the President's Dinner Table” (Steinfels, p. 81).⁵ Like Kristol, and like many of the New York Jewish neoconservatives (see Steinfels, pp. 25-30), Lieberman began his political life with socialist ideas. Lieberman is implicated in a scandal involving government support for the supposedly independent journal he edits, and the background of a similar episode from Kristol's career provides a prototype. Kristol had been the founding editor of Encounter, one of the journals sponsored by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom and dedicated to counteracting “‘mendacious Communist propaganda’” (Steinfels, p. 29). In the mid-60s, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that the Congress, and in turn the journals, was supported by the CIA. In Heller's novel, Lieberman defends his acceptance of dubious funding by claiming that he changed his political position before governmental backing. (Steinfels, too, acknowledges that this order of events may have been the case with formerly Marxist neoconservatives.) But Heller's point, demonstrated by Lieberman's intellectual drooling over his past closeness to the centers of power (symbolized in his oft remembered dinner at the White House), is that having once fed at the public trough, it is difficult to assume again the diet necessitated by independence. And there are further similarities between Lieberman and the neoconservative “standard-bearer.” Kristol, like Lieberman, is capable of changing his mind (against Nixon in 1968, for him in 1972) and, like Lieberman, was rewarded for his support with a White House dinner invitation. In 1972, a report circulated that Kristol was being considered for an appointment as “‘a broad gauge advisor on domestic policy’” (quoted in Steinfels, p. 89), a position that Lieberman hopes for. Lieberman is in favor of “repressive police actions when necessary” (p. 44). During the campus unrest of the 60s Kristol advocated restructuring universities along principles of riot control: “It is clearly foolish to assemble huge and potentially riotous mobs in one place … We should aim at the ‘scatteration’ of the student population, so as to decrease their capacity to cause significant trouble” (quoted in Steinfels, pp. 88-89). Especially interesting from a literary standpoint are the excesses of thought and language shared by Kristol and the fictional Lieberman. Steinfels describes a sampling of Kristol's assertions as simplified versions of complexities, exaggerated, unqualified (p. 100); Gold and Pomoroy often deprecate Lieberman's ideas (especially pp. 162-64, 167-68). And Kristol's use of language can be comically inaccurate, as Steinfels' “sic” indicates: “The corporation is ‘an utterly defenseless institution … literally [sic] up the creek without a paddle, alienated and friendless … the essence of flabbiness … picked on and bullied so easily’” (p. 95; Steinfels is quoting from On the Democratic Idea). Compare this use of “literally” with one of Lieberman's during a lunch with Gold and Pomoroy:

“I know how flexible you can be,” Pomoroy accused sardonically, and Lieberman colored. “I saw your name in the papers again at another one of your fucking fascist dinners. My imagination fails me,” Pomoroy went on with as much wonder as reproof. “What goes through your mind when you sit there listening to those anti-Semitic speakers. What do you think of?”

Lieberman lowered his eyes. “I do my multiplication tables,” he answered shyly.

“Do you applaud?” asked Gold.

“No,” answered Lieberman. “I swear, I literally sit on my hands through the whole meal.”

“How do you eat?” inquired Gold.

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“Then why did you say literally?” said Pomoroy.

“Don't words mean anything to you?” said Gold.

[p. 164]

Another prominent neoconservative who helped to shape the cultural style Heller attacks is New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom Steinfels characterizes as the “professorial politician.”⁶ His glibness has similarities to Gold's. “The careful reader of Moynihan's published essays is always stumbling across instances of deft evasion, retouched shading, and personal promotion that clash disturbingly with the image of the man of knowledge in politics he has projected for himself and others” (Steinfels, pp. 115-16). This description of Moynihan's writing recalls Gold's ability to slant the same speech toward either a liberal or a conservative audience (p. 43).

The Neoconservatives, brought out in the same year and by the same publisher as Heller's novel, reads almost like A Reader's Guide to the Satire in Good as Gold. Steinfels' book could not have influenced Heller, but both authors drew on similar sources. Heller had a file of clippings from the New York Times relating to the neoconservatives.⁷ Heller has said that his political ideas are developed through informal discussion and newspaper reading (not through doctrinaire political essays),⁸ and he had ample opportunity to follow the careers of prominent neoconservatives in the Times. Kristol published his “Memoirs of a Trotskyist” in the January 23, 1977, issue of the New York Times Magazine. His article, “Basic Principles of Riot Control,” also originally appeared there on December 8, 1968. Moynihan was profiled five times in this same magazine between 1965 and the publication of Good as Gold (and appeared on Time's cover twice). Kristol's public support for Nixon and his dinners at the White House were prominently reported in the daily Times (29 Jan. 1972; 5 Sept. 1973). Another of Heller's and Steinfels' common sources was Commentary, where, for example, a symposium, “What Is a Liberal—Who Is a Conservative?” was published in September of 1976. Kristol's “Why I am for Humphrey” appeared in the New Republic, 8 June 1968. And Heller could easily reach back into his political memory to events such as the scandal involving CIA financing of journals like Encounter (reported in the Times in 1966 and confirmed by an ex-CIA agent in The Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967).

Two examples can serve to emphasize the way in which Steinfels' careful discussion helps clarify the satire in Good as Gold. The first involves Steinfels' analysis of a Moynihan rationalization, similar to some of Gold's and to some that Ralph offers to Gold. When Moynihan, a Democrat, joined the Nixon Administration, he countered public surprise by the following statement:

When the only President we have asks me to come work for him, I am pretty much disposed, on the terms he asked it, to do anything he asks. … I was doing what any person ought to do. You don't decline to serve the President of the United States in an advisory capacity, under almost any circumstances—that is, if you've got the internal fortitude to advise him as you really see it. On what grounds would you say, “No, I will not advise the President”?

[quoted in Steinfels, p. 131]

Until Gold realizes that achieving his aspirations will not be worth the personal cost and does turn down a presidential appointment, Moynihan's statement represents arguments that Gold has been advancing to himself. Steinfels almost-New-Critical analysis of Moynihan's statement allows us to understand Gold's justifications as only rationalizations.

The question is put as though, barring the case of Nazism, there is no reply. Yet Moynihan must know that the answer is not at all obscure, though it might require some distinctions in that easy glide from “advise” (the occasional trip to Washington, the drafting of a position paper) to “work for” (full-time identification with the Administration) to “do anything he asks” (John Dean? or merely promising not to resign over disagreements). If one estimates that an Administration for whatever reason, is unlikely to enact the policies one favors, and is in fact apt to strengthen the policies one abhors, then one lends one's talents and energies to the opposition, one retains the privilege of criticizing freely, and one builds the foundation for the election of a different Administration more likely to enact the desired measures.

[p. 131]

The politics of Ralph Newsome and the president are not what Gold's have been, yet Gold's rationalizations can seem as convincing as Moynihan's. Steinfels' criticism gives us a firmer perspective on Gold's reasoning.⁹

A second example can be pointed to in Steinfels' criticism of Kristol's “law.” Steinfels argues from the authority of the Ford Foundation that the theory of unanticipated consequences is bunk. The Foundation proceedings were reported in a special issue of The Public Interest (Winter 1974) for which conference directors Eli Ginzberg and Robert M. Solow served as guest editors. They reproduce the following conclusion.

There are sometimes unintended and unwanted side effects; and some public programs simply don't work. But there is nothing in the history of the 1960's to suggest that it is a law of nature that social legislation cannot deal effectively with social problems.

[quoted in Steinfels, p. 224]

The dismissal places Gold's “Nothing Succeeds As Planned” (Heller's parody of the theory) into perspective.

Both Steinfels' and Heller's critiques are self-contained, but while the analysis supports the fiction, the fiction reciprocally illumines the analysis. Steinfels notes the opportunism and self-promotion of neoconservatives. Such attributes are difficult to demonstrate though because they involve personal motives for which there is ordinarily only circumstantial evidence. In addition, while such basically ad hominem arguments may be effective rhetorically they do not promote the tone of objective analysis that Steinfels cultivates. Heller's novel does perform a convincing job of exposing the presumed self-interest of neoconservatives.¹⁰

Notes

1. From Here to Absurdity: The Moral Battlefields of Joseph Heller (San Bernadino: Borgo Press, 1982), p. 58.

2. The Neoconservatives: The Men Who are Changing America's Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 55, 58, 64, 65. I am grateful to Christopher P. Wilson for directing my attention to sources that have broadened my understanding of Good as Gold’s satire.

3. Good as Gold (New York: Pocket Books, 1980), p. 154. All further page references are to this edition.

4. See two passages from Good as Gold: “‘God, Bruce,’ Ralph began, ‘I can't tell you how you're boggling our minds. If nothing succeeds as planned and you really present such a strong argument—then the President has just the excuse he needs for not doing anything’” (p. 76); and “Ralph was in earnest. ‘I'm told [the President] already has a blowup of your proverb “Nothing Succeeds as Planned” on a wall of his breakfast room right beside a quotation from Pliny. It's a daily reminder not to attempt to do too much”’ (p. 121).

5. Steinfels explains that “Alcove No. 1 was the bit of ‘turf’ in the City College of New York cafeteria that tradition had assigned to the non-Communist socialists. The Communists and their friends exercised their territorial imperative over Alcove No. 2” (p. 81).

6. Moynihan is one of many neoconservatives who have held positions at prestigious universities. Gold is not drawn from any one in particular any more than Lieberman is a “portrait” of Kristol. To the extent that the characters have prototypes, their characterization is a composite of them. Both the public sphere and Heller's private acquaintance contributed to the development, and the book's dedication to “several gallant families and numerous unwitting friends whose help, conversations, and experiences play so large a part” indicates a variety of inspirations. Among the many who contributed to the characterization of Gold (including Heller himself, who like his protagonist has been a professor of English), Kristol, as well as Moynihan, is a possibility, at least for a minor detail. Gold aspires to an academic sinecure, an endowed chair in the Urban Studies Program (p. 144). By 1970, Irving Kristol was “Professor of Urban Values” at New York University (Steinfels, p. 88).

7. Kristol, for instance, appears in one such clipping:

   Office buildings rose as spectacles where there was no lack of office space, and organizations with Brobdingnagian names were sprouting like unmanageable vines and spreading like mold with sinecures and conferments for people of limited mentality and unconvincing motive. Gold knew several by heart from pieces he had clipped:

   Irving Kristol is Resident
   Scholar at the American
   Enterprise Institute for
   Public Policy Research. …

   [p. 355]

   The newspaper quotations in Good as Gold are verbatim, according to Heller's statement to Charlie Reilly, “Talking with Joseph Heller,” rpt. in James Nagel's Critical Essays on Joseph Heller (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984), p. 180.

8. Dale Gold, “Portrait of a Man Reading” (Washington Post Book World, 20 July 1969), p. 2.

9. In his being willing to support those in power regardless of their party affiliation, Gold has turned his back to his previous beliefs, as an exchange with his family in which Gold must lie demonstrates:

   “Bruce,” Esther found nerve enough to ask at the door, while the others waited with glummest concern, “if you go to Washington, you wouldn't ever do anything to make us ashamed, would you?”

   Gold was almost afraid to inquire. “Like what?”

   Here Esther's courage failed, and others took over.

   “Like ever vote Republican?”

   “Never,” he answered.

   “Or help one get elected?”

   “Of course not!”

   “Not even if he was Jewish?”

   “Especially.”

   “Thank God,” said his stepmother.

   [pp. 118-19]

   Gold is able to justify his actions to himself, though others see his motives clearly. A boyhood friend of Gold's comments,”‘So you're going into politics in Washington and cash in big, huh?’ … ‘I look at it,’ said Gold, ‘as performing a useful service to society.’ ‘That's what I'm laughing about,’ said Spotty Weinrock” (p. 199). And when the presidential summons does arrive, Ralph uses arguments like Moynihan's to persuade Gold:

   “You have to, Bruce. You can't say no to the President.”

   “Why not?”

   “Because nobody does. You have to say yes when your President asks.”

   “Who does?”

   “Everybody, Bruce. You can't say no when your President asks. … Your President needs you. He often says you're the only person in the country with whom he feels completely comfortable.”

   [pp. 479, 482]

10. Satiric comments that are plausible in the novel include those by or about the following characters: (Lieberman) “‘I would support a war every day in the week if I knew I could eat at the White House again’” (p. 59); (Ralph) ‘“In government, Bruce, experience doesn't count and knowledge isn't important. If there's one lesson of value to be learned from the past, Bruce, it's to grab what you want when the chance comes to get it’” (p. 124); (Gold) “‘Power. Raw power. Brute, illegal power. I'll misuse it to ruin [Conover] and make his life miserable. I'll tap his telephones. I'll have the FBI ask insinuating questions about him’” (p. 267); (and Harris Rosenblatt, Secretary of the Treasury, who reassures the business community and ‘“promises to hold down deficits.’”) ‘“He doesn't actually hold them down, you understand, but merely promises to. He also looks after the financial interests of himself and his friends so they can continue to live on the level they're used to”’ (p. 222).