Thursday, March 01, 2007

Wednesday in Washington

It's nearly midnight here in Washington and I'm exhausted as I type this. I've just come back from a dinner held by the Anglosphere Institute at the Metropolitan Club. It's the sort of place where you just happen to stand next to Henry Kissinger at the urinal. Which I did. And no, I didn't. The dinner was in honour of Andrew Roberts - the second time I have heard him speak this week. And he was good enough to give a different speech tonight. Which was nice.

I was sat next to Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court after Robert Bork failed to get through the Senate witchhunt approval process in 1987. Ginsburg withdrew his nomination after the press wrote about him smoking a joint at university. Also sat at my table was Robert Bork's wife. I remember the Bork hearings well as they were happening during my first ever visit to the States in the summer of 1987. On my other side during dinner was a delightful lady called Beverly Danielson. I never did discover what she did, but whatever it is I am sure she does it with supreme elegance.

This morning I spent four hours in the new 18 Doughty Street Washington studios interviewing Fred Barnes from the Weekly Standard & Fox News, former Thatcher speechwriter John O'Sullivan, who is now Editor at Large for National Review magazine, Nile Gardiner from that Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and David Norcross from the RNC and the Romney campaign. It was a bit of a marathon, but a great experience. Later on in the day we got a 15 minute interview with Mark Steyn too, so all in all we reckon we did well today.

I also discovered a fantastic clothes shop in Union Station where the shirts were about half the price compared to the UK. I binged. I admit it.

In the middle of all that I recorded my Channel 4 News podcast in ITN's Washington studio. It was about the US presidential campaign blogs, the best of which is undoubtedly Barack Obama's.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you remmeber to pay any tax due on those shirts when you return to the UK ;))

Anonymous said...

Don't know how things are between you and your (our) Maker but this is what your charming dining companion gets up to in her day job:

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.d.htm

In my case I think I'd have taken evasive action...

indigo said...

Respect to Chuck Unsworth.

Iain, do your shiny new contacts Never Mention The War? You know, the one that has claimed more than 3,000 young American lives and going on for a million innocent civilian Iraqis who were no threat to the West, not to mention the millions and millions displaced Iraqis and thousands of Americans coming home maimed and traumatised? For nothing.

Is Seek God Beverly in favour of repeating upon Iran the "success" that is Iraq? Did she mention how she felt about the US arming Israel free, gratis and for nothing, or about the human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli government?

Hope you ate with a long spoon at that dinner.

Anonymous said...

But Iain, compared to Bork, Cameron and the Cameroons (of which I presume you are one) look like whinging lefties. Are you as socially conservative as Bork? If you were to be nominated for my constituency I'd want to know.

Anonymous said...

The wide-eyed tone has worrying implications mate. Dont go native, they are all idiots remember.

indigo said...

Roll up, roll up, get your tasty "Jesus Avoids Republicans" t-shirt here

Anonymous said...

John McCain's black? (Gasps!)

Jeremy Jacobs said...

Did you get any news ties Iain?

jailhouselawyer said...

I think he is too busy organising his ties with America. I thought Dave had stated that it was time not to be tied to America's apron strings so much?

Anonymous said...

Did you find out why Colleen Graffy won't marry me ? (remember that's why we sent you over there )

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

When is 18DS running the Steyn interview? No sign of it on the 18DS website.

Iain Dale said...

Og, we hope to run these interviews next week and the week after.

Anonymous said...

Iain,

Welcome to Washington! I have been meaning to post. I live in DC and read your blog daily. I hope you are having a great time in our city. You came just as the weather was getting nicer. Enjoy your stay. (I think you are brilliant and hope a great constituency selects you.)

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

These comments are almost all stupid - I was expecting something intelligent -is this turning into Guido Fawkes - get deleting Mr Dale!

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Hmm..Washington office eh..? Good to see that you will be keeping tabs on the US Treasury and their offshoots in the IMF and World Bank.

When will you be spreading your world view a little wider by opening an office in Baghdad.

Instead of wasting your time with the neo-cons, go and see the film 'Iraq in Fragments' instead, and get a grip of what is really going on in the world, and what US policy really means for people at the sharp end of it.
http://www.iraqinfragments.com/

Kissinger and his cronies just want 'total spectrum dominance' for the US. It would be bad enough if they just wanted a Starbucks in every town. But they are well advanced in their plans to take control of Iraq oil reserves, whilst doing nothing to reconstruct the country. Take off those rose-tinted blinkers, Mr Dale, and realise what those yanks have planned for Iran as well..

Anonymous said...

What's with all the deleted comments? Unless they are all advertisments, leave them up so we can decide on the sanity or lack thereof of the posters. The Henry Kissinger incedent reminds me of the Simpsons episode where he visits the power plant and drops his glasses into the toilet:

"No one must know I dropped them in the toilet -- not I, the man who drafted the Paris peace accord."

Peter from Putney said...

Tell us Iain, please, that you haven't invested in any more of those God-awful lumberjack Ben Sherman rejects.

Anonymous said...

Iain, you are an unashamed namedropper.....! But it's very good to hear what you are up to.

David Lindsay said...

Does this Anglosphere Institute wish to maintain the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish economic, social, cultural and political identity of the United States, including their strongest possible economic, social, cultural and political ties with each and all of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and any other country which, by freely choosing to have the same Head of State as any of these and to use the English language, freely chooses to identify as integral to her whole people's own the Christian heritage common to, and determinative of, American, British, Irish, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand identity?

Does it wish to maintain the West African slave-descended economic, social, cultural and political identity of the United States, including the closest possible economic, social, cultural and political ties between them each and all of the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, together with any other country which, by freely choosing to have the same Head of State as any of these and to use the English language, freely chooses to identify as integral to her whole people's own the Christian heritage common to, and determinative of, both African-American (and thus of all American) and Afro-Caribbean (and thus of all Caribbean) identity?

And does it therefore favour the closest possible economic, social, cultural and political co-operation, both within the United States and throughout the world, between the people of West African slave descent and the people of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish descent, on the basis of their shared economic, social, cultural and political Christian heritage, including their shared English language and their shared blood ties?

Or does it simply favour the pursuit of the American Radical Right agenda now expressed as neoconservatism, despite the strongly anti-British roots of the American Radical Right, which originated in the belief that there was an Anglophile elite network operating in the same way as, but much better-placed and therefore more pernicious than, the pro-Soviet American Communist Party of the same period?

Anonymous said...

"Take off those rose-tinted blinkers, Mr Dale, and realise what those yanks have planned for Iran as well.. "

Hopefully total destruction?

I am pleased Iain mocks the way Robert Bork was hounded during his nomination period. Whatever one thinks of his views some of the things being said about him were gross distortions.

David Lindsay said...

" "Take off those rose-tinted blinkers, Mr Dale, and realise what those yanks have planned for Iran as well.. "

Hopefully total destruction?"

Really, No Longer Anonymous? The most notable thing about the ghastly duo of Bush and Ahmadinejad is that they are both on the way out, Bush because he has to be (and because no serious Presidential contender, not even Bomber Clinton's erstwhile Co-President", has the slightest intention of pursuing his foreign policy agenda), and Ahmadinejad at the hands of the electorate (if he lasts that long). Don't worry about them. Either of them.

Jackart said...

I once stood next to Sir Garfield Sobers in the urinal. Yes I did.