John Kenneth Galbraith

Holds Court at Brookline Synagogue

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

BROOKLINE - Last Wednesday evening, a capacity crowd at Brookline’s Kehillath Israel synagogue took in decades of wisdom, in all areas, from renowned economist and Cambridge resident John Kenneth Galbraith. Still commandeering, still vociferous, the mighty Galbraith (at 93, “in good health but on a leash by the medical profession,” he joked), who advised FDR, JFK, and has been a longtime, ubiquitious figure in economic, academic and political circles, sat (still 6’6’, he can), fielded questions and disseminated thoughts on several historical epochs as well as pressing issues of our day. “You’re in danger of a good deal of reminiscing tonight,” he cautioned, to no complaints.

Galbraith, Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard (with 45 honorary degrees worldwide), was U.S. Ambassador to India during the Kennedy Administration, deputy administrator in the Office of Price Administration under FDR, director of the 1945 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, and was awarded the 1946 Medal of Freedom. He’s authored over 20 books, edited Fortune magazine, and was president of the American Economics Association, among other honors and distinctions.

The questions at KI, fielded by Rabbi William Hamilton, were eclectic and pointed. “Do you see a similarity between the events of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor?”

“We’ve had time to look at the tragedy of 9/11 with some clarity,” he answered. “It was not Pearl Harbor, but a well-placed exercise of a distant and very small minority. The result was very dangerous, very disagreeable, very cruel and very distressing. But it was not like the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Not having a clearly identified enemy, we to some extent had to admit one,” he continued: “’Terrorists’, used to describe a force not clearly identified with any country, to serve as an enemy. “With Pearl Harbor, the only question was how it affected the course of the war in Europe. I went home that terrible weekend, thinking that the Japanese attack was a design for diverting power away from Hitler and the U.S.; on Monday came the relief – Hitler declared war on us.

“When I was interrogating the high Nazis, there was a young translator there with a mind of his own – something you don’t expect in war – who took Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop by surprise when he bluntly asked, ‘why did you declare war?’

“’We had the tripower agreement with Italy and Tokyo,’ he responded. ‘We were obliged.’ ‘Why did you pick that treaty as the first one to honor?’” the translator pressed.

“Even Ribbentrop was distressed!” Galbraith chuckled.

When asked if there was a similarity between the Cold War Commitment to using troops and the situation today, he stressed that there was always a great difference in wartime between those who sought direct military responses and those who sought more restrained approaches. “I spent a substantial amount of time in opposition to our military operations in the Vietnam War,” he proudly stated by way of personal example.

“In 1961,” he explained, “JFK sent me there, and I realized it was hopeless. I had some doubts, which I won’t go into even today, about the talents of some of our people in charge,” he confided, to laughter among the crowd.

“I seconded the nomination for Gene McCarthy’s campaign,” he recalled. And he crossed Michigan Ave. to the thousands of student protestors, where he urged them not to confront the police or the National Guard. “They’re armed, and you’re not,” Galbraith told them. “You can speak, and they can’t.”

The National Guardsmen? “They’re draft dodgers the same as you are!” he announced.

“Could I have a word with you, Sir?” asked a guardsman, who surprisingly told him “I just want to shake your hand. That’s the only nice thing that’s been said about us all day.”

“I knew then that the war was coming to an end,” said Galbraith.

“The most important thing is the provision of resources to hungry people,” the lifelong humanitarian pronounced. He related a charming anecdote about FDR’s hasty agreeing with advisor Harry Hopkins on this, and then, telling Eleanore she was perfectly right (he was originally called into government service during the Great Depression crisis).

Galbraith plugged his new book “The Economics of Innocent Fraud.” Ever the outspoken rebel who some would say unabashedly exposes the truth, he discussed, with his undeniable fiscal expertise, the realities of recession and the Federal Reserve’s rate adjustments. “11 times in the past 15 months, and at least 10 had no perceivable result.” He chided that the Fed’s status “owed greatly to the theatrical skills of the head of the Fed, whose voice is a subject of conversation, but without any practical effect.”

“Nobody approached FDR,” he said in retrospect. “But the most charming and loveable was JFK,” who, with his wife Jackie, represented, in his opinion, “two of the most agreeable and intelligent people ever. JFK’s instinct was to be favorable; hers was to be judgmental,” he continued, with a tale of how Douglas MacArthur (implied but not named by him) was shunned by her when he dared appear at the White House in a sport coat. Eldest son Joe Kennedy, who died in a plane crash, was “everybody’s, and my, prized student.”

Enron? “Over the years, I have emphasized the extent to which the management of a great corporation has become a self-contained enterprise in itself. They have taken power away from the shareholders and have invaded the public sector in energy, defense and environmental matters.”

He delightfully compared the “Fifth Amendment Communists” he and his colleagues in his early Harvard years encountered with today’s “Fifth Amendment Capitalists” of Enron and the like.

“In these last few decades, one has to say that in this country, we’ve covered a very broad range of dubious conduct,” he tongue-in-cheeked.

Railing against the “uncontrolled power of management” (which can be responsible, and often is, he interjected), he boasted, without a trace of arrogance, that “Enron is a remarkable justification for the wisdom and foresight of Galbraith.”

The Middle East? “There is a difference between the war Israel is waging and ours,” he said. “There can be no doubt that the problems faced by the citizenry of Israel and elsewhere in that area are far greater than anything here in Brookline. I feel far more depressed by the situation in Israel.” Again, he stressed the difference between those seeking resolution by conflict versus by nonconfrontation. “I am committed, and always have been,” he proclaimed, “to a policy of peaceful discussion and negotiation.”

When asked about his greatest challenge, it was a no-brainer. “Catherine Galbraith and I have faced framily problems which were deeply sorrowful. The death of a son was on a level beyond anything I’ve ever had to contend with.” But he told the audience that his life had been “astonishingly happy,” and hoped his wife felt the same.

Paraphrasing John Maynard Keynes’ theories that in 75 years, economists would become “innocuous citizens, on a par with dentists,” he quoted the gravestone of a cleaning woman in England, “Don’t weep for me, don’t cry for me never, I’m going to do nothing, forever and ever.”