newyorker--2020-11-13--The Kremlin Prepares for a Biden Presidency

This election cycle is a different story : ten days after the election and six days since Joe Biden was declared the President-elect , the Russian state continues to be muted in its response .
Vladimir Putin has yet to send the usual pro-forma congratulations to Biden .
“ We believe it would be proper to wait for an official announcement , ” Putin ’ s spokesman said , referring to the Trump campaign ’ s various legal challenges lodged with U.S. courts .
Few politicians are making the rounds to gloat on state television about how things are turning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mood in Moscow is partly a function of accumulated disappointment and fatigue with Trump and all that his Presidency failed to deliver , as well as a gathering certainty that , however bad relations are now , they aren ’ t likely to get much better with Biden in charge .
The story of the Russian political élite ’ s failed dalliance with Trump is a relatively simple one .
“ The hope came from the fact that Trump was not a product of America ’ s traditional political corporation , as you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a nouveau riche in the political sense , ” Andrei Klimov , the deputy chair of the foreign-affairs committee in the Federation Council , Russia ’ s upper house of parliament , said .
“ He defeated this corporation and , in so doing , many of its ideas on the wisdom of intervention , a unipolar world , and so on.
” Trump represented a transactional style of politics , with little emphasis on things such as multilateral institutions or alliances , let alone values and human rights .
What wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The prospect of Trump as the American President was a welcome turn of fortune , leaving Putin and those around him with a feeling of “ hitting the jackpot in a casino , ” as Tatiana Stanovaya , the head of the analysis firm R.Politik , put it .
“ It wasn ’ t exactly clear what would come of it , but there was a feeling of possibility all the same—that we have to try and use this opportunity.
” Trump acted , as expected , as a destructive force , harming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Kremlin—but he proved utterly incapable of delivering on anything on the positive side of the ledger .
There was no grand deal—as a number of Russian policymakers briefly allowed themselves to imagine—in which relations would improve , Russia would be brought out of the doghouse , and Ukraine-related U.S. sanctions would be lifted .
If anything , the lingering questions surrounding Russian interference in 2016 and Trump ’ s refusal to confront them meant that the President ended up hemmed in politically , forced to go along with increasingly far-reaching sanctions against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years went by , Trump ’ s short attention span and unpredictable zigzagging made a strategic approach to Russia-U.S. relations impossible .
And , when he did act , his mercantile approach to geopolitics led him to favor policies that were opposed to Russia ’ s interests , as in the case of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline , which was meant to bring fifty-five billion cubic metres of Russian gas each year to Germany and onward throughout Europe .
Trump , like previous U.S. Presidents , pushed Germany and other E.U @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; he wagered that Europe would then have no choice but to import American liquified natural gas .
“ There is not a single person left in the Russian élite who thinks we can achieve anything of substance with Trump as President , ” Stanovaya told me .
Hence the dampened enthusiasm for Trump this time around .
In addition , the Kremlin was watching the same polls as everyone else : Trump ’ s chances didn ’ t look all that good .
Officials and political advisers began steadying themselves for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the combined effects of the coronavirus pandemic , a fall in global oil prices , a suffering Russian economy , and a decreased appetite among the population for foreign-policy adventurism—the so-called Crimea consensus , which gave a boost to Putin ’ s popularity after the 2014 annexation , had long lost its appeal—led to a “ certain caution , a lack of desire to take risks , the feeling that it ’ s better not to provoke , ” as Andrey Kortunov , the director of the Russian International Affairs Council , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up at the unpleasant center of U.S. domestic politics after the last election may have been a factor .
“ We can only guess , ” Kortunov said , “ but we can imagine a certain recommendation from on high to not create any more pretexts for being accused of interference .
‘ Let ’ s not set ourselves up.
’ ” ( To what extent Russia did try and exert covert influence on the 2020 election remains unclear , but so far there have been limited reports of the kinds of interference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 contest . )
And so , perhaps , the idea of a Biden Presidency ended up looking like not the worst option for the Kremlin—or , at least , didn ’ t produce anything like the frantic dread with which many in Moscow awaited a Clinton victory in 2016 .
Biden represents a return to a familiar status quo ante : relations will be bad and largely unproductive , but they ’ ll have an aura of reassuring familiarity .
The systemization and ritual of bilateral relations , even if they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many Russian foreign-policy professionals , and , as for the siloviki , the hard-liners from the security services , a more confrontational relationship with the U.S. isn ’ t an entirely bad thing , in that it gives them a potential argument for greater autonomy and influence with Putin .
In any case , the wager on Trump and the politics of personality has revealed its limits .
“ Relations with Trump were personal , based on chemistry and emotions , ” Stanovaya said .
“ Whereas with Biden you aren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but , rather , with a whole system.
” Throughout his career in the Senate and as Vice-President , Biden positioned himself as a standard-bearer of the center-left school of foreign policy which sees America as vocal , energetic , and present—a superpower with superpower responsibilities .
In 2018 , Biden co-authored an article for Foreign Affairs laying out a tough Russia policy , arguing that the U.S. should not cede to Russia ’ s “ sphere of influence ” in the post-Soviet space and be prepared to enact more muscular sanctions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ must agree to impose meaningful costs on Russia when they discover evidence of its misdeeds.
” During the campaign , Biden spoke of restoring the U.S. leadership role in NATO and returning an emphasis on democratic values to American foreign policy .
Many of his advisers served in government during the Obama Administration and were left with a sour taste for Russia from Putin ’ s behavior on their watch , from the annexation of Crimea to interference in the 2016 election .
“ It ’ s not just rational ; it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a high-ranking Western diplomat in Washington told the Financial Times , of the Biden camp ’ s distaste for Russia .
None of this is lost on those following along in Moscow .
“ I can ’ t say that the people who were victorious are our friends , ” Klimov , the Russian senator , said .
“ But they are known entities .
We understand who they are and what they will do.
” More sanctions against Russia are likely under Biden .
Meanwhile , the U.S. is sure to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Syria , two hot spots from which it effectively retreated under Trump and where Russia sees its own influence as paramount .
Some sort of standoff over Belarus—where protests continue , following the contested reëlection , in August , of its longtime dictator , Alexander Lukashenka—is likely , even inevitable .
Russia has backed Lukashenka , not so much to keep him in power but to make sure that , if he exits , it happens on Russia ’ s terms .
Trump essentially ignored the issue , whereas Biden has said that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Just about the only cause for optimism in Moscow is arms control—the New START treaty , limiting each country ’ s nuclear arsenal , is set to expire in February , and Biden has said that he will prioritize its extension , which could produce a productive dialogue with Russia in the early days of his Administration , however narrow .
At this point , Putin , now awaiting the fifth American President of his more-than-twenty-year rule , seems to have grown set in his suspicion and cynicism , sure that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very positive from a new U.S. leader .
“ He ’ s come to believe that you can ’ t reach a serious agreement with the United States about much of anything , ” Fyodor Lukyanov , the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and a well-connected figure in Moscow foreign-policy circles , said .
“ Whatever he has tried to propose , whether on cybersecurity or missile defense , has been greeted with a reaction of ‘ Yeah , come on , what a bunch of nonsense , ’ from the American @ @ @

Four years ago, dozens of deputies in Russia’s parliament greeted the news of Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton with a round of applause. A few popped a bottle of champagne together. The head of RT, the state-funded television network, said she was so happy that she felt like driving around Moscow with an American flag in the window of her car. Russia’s political class felt pleased with the result and hopeful that the new American President would prove conciliatory, if not downright advantageous, to Russia’s interests.
This election cycle is a different story: ten days after the election and six days since Joe Biden was declared the President-elect, the Russian state continues to be muted in its response. Vladimir Putin has yet to send the usual pro-forma congratulations to Biden. “We believe it would be proper to wait for an official announcement,” Putin’s spokesman said, referring to the Trump campaign’s various legal challenges lodged with U.S. courts. Few politicians are making the rounds to gloat on state television about how things are turning Russia’s way. The subdued mood in Moscow is partly a function of accumulated disappointment and fatigue with Trump and all that his Presidency failed to deliver, as well as a gathering certainty that, however bad relations are now, they aren’t likely to get much better with Biden in charge.
The story of the Russian political élite’s failed dalliance with Trump is a relatively simple one. “The hope came from the fact that Trump was not a product of America’s traditional political corporation, as you might call it—he was strong-willed, idiosyncratic, a nouveau riche in the political sense,” Andrei Klimov, the deputy chair of the foreign-affairs committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said. “He defeated this corporation and, in so doing, many of its ideas on the wisdom of intervention, a unipolar world, and so on.” Trump represented a transactional style of politics, with little emphasis on things such as multilateral institutions or alliances, let alone values and human rights. What wasn’t the Kremlin to like?
The prospect of Trump as the American President was a welcome turn of fortune, leaving Putin and those around him with a feeling of “hitting the jackpot in a casino,” as Tatiana Stanovaya, the head of the analysis firm R.Politik, put it. “It wasn’t exactly clear what would come of it, but there was a feeling of possibility all the same—that we have to try and use this opportunity.”
Trump acted, as expected, as a destructive force, harming American influence and credibility—a net positive for the Kremlin—but he proved utterly incapable of delivering on anything on the positive side of the ledger. There was no grand deal—as a number of Russian policymakers briefly allowed themselves to imagine—in which relations would improve, Russia would be brought out of the doghouse, and Ukraine-related U.S. sanctions would be lifted. If anything, the lingering questions surrounding Russian interference in 2016 and Trump’s refusal to confront them meant that the President ended up hemmed in politically, forced to go along with increasingly far-reaching sanctions against Russia passed by Congress.
As the years went by, Trump’s short attention span and unpredictable zigzagging made a strategic approach to Russia-U.S. relations impossible. And, when he did act, his mercantile approach to geopolitics led him to favor policies that were opposed to Russia’s interests, as in the case of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was meant to bring fifty-five billion cubic metres of Russian gas each year to Germany and onward throughout Europe. Trump, like previous U.S. Presidents, pushed Germany and other E.U. states to cancel the energy project; he wagered that Europe would then have no choice but to import American liquified natural gas. “There is not a single person left in the Russian élite who thinks we can achieve anything of substance with Trump as President,” Stanovaya told me.
Hence the dampened enthusiasm for Trump this time around. In addition, the Kremlin was watching the same polls as everyone else: Trump’s chances didn’t look all that good. Officials and political advisers began steadying themselves for a Biden victory. At the same time, the combined effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a fall in global oil prices, a suffering Russian economy, and a decreased appetite among the population for foreign-policy adventurism—the so-called Crimea consensus, which gave a boost to Putin’s popularity after the 2014 annexation, had long lost its appeal—led to a “certain caution, a lack of desire to take risks, the feeling that it’s better not to provoke,” as Andrey Kortunov, the director of the Russian International Affairs Council, explained. The fact that Russia ended up at the unpleasant center of U.S. domestic politics after the last election may have been a factor. “We can only guess,” Kortunov said, “but we can imagine a certain recommendation from on high to not create any more pretexts for being accused of interference. ‘Let’s not set ourselves up.’ ” (To what extent Russia did try and exert covert influence on the 2020 election remains unclear, but so far there have been limited reports of the kinds of interference operations uncovered in the wake of the 2016 contest.)
And so, perhaps, the idea of a Biden Presidency ended up looking like not the worst option for the Kremlin—or, at least, didn’t produce anything like the frantic dread with which many in Moscow awaited a Clinton victory in 2016. Biden represents a return to a familiar status quo ante: relations will be bad and largely unproductive, but they’ll have an aura of reassuring familiarity. The systemization and ritual of bilateral relations, even if they have a negative tone, is preferable to many Russian foreign-policy professionals, and, as for the siloviki, the hard-liners from the security services, a more confrontational relationship with the U.S. isn’t an entirely bad thing, in that it gives them a potential argument for greater autonomy and influence with Putin. In any case, the wager on Trump and the politics of personality has revealed its limits. “Relations with Trump were personal, based on chemistry and emotions,” Stanovaya said. “Whereas with Biden you aren’t so much establishing relations with a person but, rather, with a whole system.”
Throughout his career in the Senate and as Vice-President, Biden positioned himself as a standard-bearer of the center-left school of foreign policy which sees America as vocal, energetic, and present—a superpower with superpower responsibilities. In 2018, Biden co-authored an article for Foreign Affairs laying out a tough Russia policy, arguing that the U.S. should not cede to Russia’s “sphere of influence” in the post-Soviet space and be prepared to enact more muscular sanctions. Western countries, the article argues, “must agree to impose meaningful costs on Russia when they discover evidence of its misdeeds.” During the campaign, Biden spoke of restoring the U.S. leadership role in NATO and returning an emphasis on democratic values to American foreign policy. Many of his advisers served in government during the Obama Administration and were left with a sour taste for Russia from Putin’s behavior on their watch, from the annexation of Crimea to interference in the 2016 election. “It’s not just rational; it’s also very emotional,” a high-ranking Western diplomat in Washington told the Financial Times, of the Biden camp’s distaste for Russia.


newyorker--2020-11-13--What My Ninety-Two-Year-Old Mother and Her Cohort Have Taught Us This Election

Five years ago , when my mother was in her late eighties , she volunteered for Hillary Clinton ’ s Presidential campaign .
Most days , she drove twenty minutes to an office park in Virginia Beach and made phone calls for four or five hours at a stretch .
Hillary was her candidate—not because she was a woman on track to make history ( my mother isn ’ t sentimental that way ) but because years before , when Clinton was considering a run for the Senate , my mother heard her speak at a fund-raising dinner and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , yes , warmth .
My husband , a 2016 Bernie surrogate , could not persuade her to change her allegiance .
She was “ all in for Hillary.
” The 2016 campaign marked a turning point for my mother : it was the first in decades in which she did not go door to door , urging strangers to vote for whichever candidate she happened to be supporting .
( One year , that candidate was my uncle , a progressive Democrat , who was running a quixotic campaign for Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York .
Needless to say , he lost . )
She said she was finally too old to be a door knocker , a task that she was very good at because , over the years , she had acquired the ability to talk to anyone , anywhere .
Still , her biggest campaign triumph was pulling up at a rally in suburban Connecticut , where we lived at the time , with a huge Jimmy Carter sign atop her Oldsmobile 88 , and getting a shout-out from the actor Paul Newman .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ kept her campaigning for the next forty years .
Both my parents were dyed-in-the-wool Democrats , members of a local activist group pushing for reforms in the Party , but they recognized that American democracy did not work without a loyal opposition , and they sometimes voted for Republicans .
The polarization that now characterizes our shared political life had not yet taken hold , and the concept of a moderate Republican was not anathema to either the Republican Party or liberal Democrats .
Our corner of Connecticut was represented—and represented well—by two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Senate , and Stewart McKinney , in the House .
They , and their fellow-travellers , had some gravitational pull in their party , and that was a good thing .
When I turned eighteen , I registered to vote as a Democrat .
Then I wrote to Representative McKinney and told him I ’ d done that , and asked for a summer job .
He brought me on as an assistant to his press secretary .
And , although that experience cured me of any desire to work on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the political give-and-take necessary to meet the needs of constituents .
Today , as we watch Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Joe Biden ’ s victory and encourage spurious claims of voter fraud ; when we hear reports that McConnell , if he retains his leadership position , will block Biden ’ s Cabinet appointees if he deems them too radical ; and when only four sitting Republican senators have reached across the aisle to congratulate the President-elect , we are seeing irrefutable evidence that McConnell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in governing .
It is difficult to see how a two-party system works when the animating ideology of one of them is nihilism .
Actually , that ’ s not true .
We have empirical evidence from the past four years : it works nominally , but that is all .
Unfortunately , democratic norms are not automatically revived by the election of a Democratic President , though it ’ s a start .
On November 8 , 2016 , my mother went to the Clinton campaign office for her last shift .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ her morning coffee calculated that Hillary had an eighty-five-per-cent chance of winning the Presidency .
( The paper likened her chance of losing to an N.F.L .
kicker missing a thirty-seven-yard field goal . )
Everyone in the office was giddy , my mother told me when she got home that afternoon .
The young people she ’ d worked alongside for months urged her to come back that evening for a watch party and victory celebration .
“ I ’ m not going , ” she said .
“ He ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I thought that she was hedging her bets so as not to jinx it .
But , for months , she ’ d been telling me that most of the young and middle-aged women she was calling ( and who she assumed were white ) told her that they were voting for Trump , or at least that they would not be voting for Clinton .
“ I don ’ t get it , ” she often said , but , on the night that those sentiments mattered , she did get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watched Trump glide into office .
My mother is a first-generation American .
Both her parents came to this country from Europe , at the turn of the last century .
She was born a year before the Great Depression and came of age during the Second World War .
Hers was the generation that planted victory gardens , bought war bonds , and sent loved ones abroad to fight Nazism and fascism .
They had a more visceral understanding of what was at stake in 2020 than many of us did .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The idea that their lives would be bookended by racist , authoritarian strongmen was almost unbearable .
( Though Trump still carried seniors nationally , a post-election report from the Brookings Institution notes that there was “ less Republican support among older segments of the population ” than in 2016 ; among white people aged forty-five to sixty-four , support for Trump fell nine percentage points from 2016 .
There were no exit polls of nonagenarians , as far as I can tell . )
The pandemic—and Trump ’ s politicization of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with my mother to celebrate her birthday , and that she could not attend her granddaughter ’ s wedding .
Her book group went on hiatus , her mah-jongg crew was sidelined , and the municipal gym where she walked the track most mornings shut down .
The isolation has been extreme , but she ’ s not complaining , nor are her friends .
I suspect that their youth prepared them for behaving in the public interest .
Their generation may be the last with a lived experience of comity , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may yet turn out to be instructive to the rest of us .
When I posted , on Twitter , that my ninety-two-year-old mother had waited two hours to cast a ballot during Virginia ’ s early voting , the tweet received more than forty-four thousand likes .
The overriding comments were of thanks .
Many people cast this election as the most consequential of their lives .
They said that they were voting for the future—for their children and grandchildren , for the health of the planet , for the survival of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us with relatives and friends of a certain age , we were also voting for them .
Read More About the 2020 Election • William Barr is the one Administration official with the power to stop Donald Trump and his attempted coup .
• Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden has been elected the next President .
• With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election , Republicans are looking to strategies that might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polls and in court .
• We have to talk about what happened under the Trump Presidency and how we can prevent it from happening again .
• If 2020 has demonstrated anything , it is the need to rebalance the economy to benefit the working class—and there are many ways a Biden Administration can start .
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

Five years ago, when my mother was in her late eighties, she volunteered for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Most days, she drove twenty minutes to an office park in Virginia Beach and made phone calls for four or five hours at a stretch. Hillary was her candidate—not because she was a woman on track to make history (my mother isn’t sentimental that way) but because years before, when Clinton was considering a run for the Senate, my mother heard her speak at a fund-raising dinner and was impressed by her intelligence, humor, and, yes, warmth. My husband, a 2016 Bernie surrogate, could not persuade her to change her allegiance. She was “all in for Hillary.”
The 2016 campaign marked a turning point for my mother: it was the first in decades in which she did not go door to door, urging strangers to vote for whichever candidate she happened to be supporting. (One year, that candidate was my uncle, a progressive Democrat, who was running a quixotic campaign for Congress in a conservative Republican district in New York. Needless to say, he lost.) She said she was finally too old to be a door knocker, a task that she was very good at because, over the years, she had acquired the ability to talk to anyone, anywhere. Still, her biggest campaign triumph was pulling up at a rally in suburban Connecticut, where we lived at the time, with a huge Jimmy Carter sign atop her Oldsmobile 88, and getting a shout-out from the actor Paul Newman. This was in 1976. It probably kept her campaigning for the next forty years.
Both my parents were dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, members of a local activist group pushing for reforms in the Party, but they recognized that American democracy did not work without a loyal opposition, and they sometimes voted for Republicans. The polarization that now characterizes our shared political life had not yet taken hold, and the concept of a moderate Republican was not anathema to either the Republican Party or liberal Democrats. Our corner of Connecticut was represented—and represented well—by two such Republicans, Lowell Weicker, in the Senate, and Stewart McKinney, in the House. They, and their fellow-travellers, had some gravitational pull in their party, and that was a good thing.
When I turned eighteen, I registered to vote as a Democrat. Then I wrote to Representative McKinney and told him I’d done that, and asked for a summer job. He brought me on as an assistant to his press secretary. And, although that experience cured me of any desire to work on the Hill, it was a hands-on education in the political give-and-take necessary to meet the needs of constituents. Today, as we watch Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory and encourage spurious claims of voter fraud; when we hear reports that McConnell, if he retains his leadership position, will block Biden’s Cabinet appointees if he deems them too radical; and when only four sitting Republican senators have reached across the aisle to congratulate the President-elect, we are seeing irrefutable evidence that McConnell’s Republican Party has little interest in governing. It is difficult to see how a two-party system works when the animating ideology of one of them is nihilism. Actually, that’s not true. We have empirical evidence from the past four years: it works nominally, but that is all. Unfortunately, democratic norms are not automatically revived by the election of a Democratic President, though it’s a start.
On November 8, 2016, my mother went to the Clinton campaign office for her last shift. The Times she read that day with her morning coffee calculated that Hillary had an eighty-five-per-cent chance of winning the Presidency. (The paper likened her chance of losing to an N.F.L. kicker missing a thirty-seven-yard field goal.) Everyone in the office was giddy, my mother told me when she got home that afternoon. The young people she’d worked alongside for months urged her to come back that evening for a watch party and victory celebration. “I’m not going,” she said. “He’s going to win.” At the time, I thought that she was hedging her bets so as not to jinx it. But, for months, she’d been telling me that most of the young and middle-aged women she was calling (and who she assumed were white) told her that they were voting for Trump, or at least that they would not be voting for Clinton. “I don’t get it,” she often said, but, on the night that those sentiments mattered, she did get it. She stayed home, and watched Trump glide into office.
My mother is a first-generation American. Both her parents came to this country from Europe, at the turn of the last century. She was born a year before the Great Depression and came of age during the Second World War. Hers was the generation that planted victory gardens, bought war bonds, and sent loved ones abroad to fight Nazism and fascism. They had a more visceral understanding of what was at stake in 2020 than many of us did. They had seen men like Trump before. The idea that their lives would be bookended by racist, authoritarian strongmen was almost unbearable. (Though Trump still carried seniors nationally, a post-election report from the Brookings Institution notes that there was “less Republican support among older segments of the population” than in 2016; among white people aged forty-five to sixty-four, support for Trump fell nine percentage points from 2016. There were no exit polls of nonagenarians, as far as I can tell.)
The pandemic—and Trump’s politicization of public health—meant that we could not be with my mother to celebrate her birthday, and that she could not attend her granddaughter’s wedding. Her book group went on hiatus, her mah-jongg crew was sidelined, and the municipal gym where she walked the track most mornings shut down. The isolation has been extreme, but she’s not complaining, nor are her friends. I suspect that their youth prepared them for behaving in the public interest. Their generation may be the last with a lived experience of comity, though the mutual-aid groups spawned by the pandemic may yet turn out to be instructive to the rest of us. When I posted, on Twitter, that my ninety-two-year-old mother had waited two hours to cast a ballot during Virginia’s early voting, the tweet received more than forty-four thousand likes. The overriding comments were of thanks.
Many people cast this election as the most consequential of their lives. They said that they were voting for the future—for their children and grandchildren, for the health of the planet, for the survival of democracy. But, for those of us with relatives and friends of a certain age, we were also voting for them.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-11-13--The Long-Term Damage of Trump’s Antidemocratic Lies

That ’ s precisely what happened , of course .
Trump has also empowered an army of lawyers to gin up accusations of voter fraud .
Attorney General Bill Barr , breaking with Justice Department precedent , has ordered his underlings to investigate any allegations of irregularities that are “ clear and apparently-credible.
” As the vast majority of elected Republicans have failed to denounce these alarming developments , some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that Trump and his cronies are trying to stage a coup .
On Thursday , I spoke with Brendan Nyhan , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the founders of Bright Line Watch , and asked him whether he subscribed to the coup thesis .
“ I think that is wrong , ” Nyhan said .
“ What I would emphasize is precisely what we have been talking about pretty much all the time : the concern is democratic erosion.
” Democratic erosion isn ’ t something to be minimized or taken lightly .
It refers to the gradual undermining of democratic norms and democratic institutions , which ultimately can prove fatal to democracy , and it ’ s something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been issuing warnings about since shortly after Trump was elected .
“ Democratic erosion happens in a slow and piecemeal process , ” Nyhan said .
“ Joe Biden will almost certainly still be sworn in as President , but democratic erosion can still take place .
.
.
.
The peaceful transfer of power is the core of democracy.
” Writing in the Washington Post earlier this week , Erica De Bruin , a political scientist at Hamilton College who is the author of the book “ How to Prevent Coups d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argument .
Although the measures that Trump and Republican officials have taken to undermine the election “ are enormously damaging , they do not constitute a coup , ” De Bruin writes .
The real danger , she argues , is that Republicans “ are violating the norms we rely on to ensure peaceful transfers of power , undermining trust in our electoral process and conveying to their supporters the poisonous notion that Democrats , as a rule , can never win power legitimately.
” Although it seems likely that Trump will eventually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in office , nobody should underestimate the damage that he is doing and the dangers he is fuelling .
In repeatedly making unfounded claims about the election , he is creating a false narrative , which , in years to come , could well become a Trumpian version of the “ stab-in-the-back ” legend that some German generals promulgated after the First World War .
According to that baseless narrative , which many right-wing extremists , Hitler included , subsequently seized upon to undermine the fragile Weimar Republic , Germany ’ s soldiers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the battlefield—they were betrayed by civilian politicians .
In Trump ’ s equally fictitious narrative , he didn ’ t lose the election : his opponents stole it by stuffing mail-in ballots , throwing out Trump votes , and engaging in other nefarious tactics .
On Thursday , Trump tweeted about an utterly unsubstantiated story from the pro-Trump One America News Network , which claimed that software provided to local governments by the technology firm Dominion Voting Systems deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide .
( “ There is no evidence that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , changed votes , or was in any way compromised , ” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , which oversees election security , said in a statement .
“ The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.
” ) Although Trump has amped up his fake-history project since the election , some of the foundational work for it was done before the 2020 campaign began , and he was far from the only one responsible .
For more than a decade now , Republicans intent on suppressing the minority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voter fraud .
Trump picked up and amplified these claims .
At a rally , in September , he told his supporters , “ It ’ s a rigged election .
It ’ s the only way we are going to lose.
” On the eve of the election—after almost four years of exposure to the President and to media outlets and social-media accounts that support him—Trump supporters already subscribed to a counterfactual version of reality .
A survey that Bright Light Watch carried out in October found that seventy-eight per cent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voting in U.S. elections by noncitizens was common , and seventy-eight per cent of Trump supporters believed that there was widespread stealing of , or tampering with , ballots .
Trump ’ s statements since the election have added to the misinformation .
A Politico and Morning Consult poll published earlier this week found that seventy per cent of Republicans now say that they don ’ t believe the election was free and fair .
Whether that many Republicans really think this way is immaterial .
Bearing false witness to things that aren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passage in many extremist groups , and today ’ s Trump-dominated G.O.P .
certainly qualifies as one .
The failure of many Republican leaders to repudiate Trump ’ s false claims is perhaps the most alarming thing that has happened since November 3rd .
“ We depend on the bipartisan affirmation of the results to help the losers accept the legitimacy of the election , ” Nyhan said .
“ Instead , we are seeing the opposite.
” Ultimately , Trump ’ s fake history could prove more insidious and lasting than an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to announce tomorrow that he intends to stay in office and order the U.S. military to recognize him as the rightful President , it seems highly improbable that the generals would heed his call , despite the fact that he has just fired the Secretary of Defense and appointed new civilian leaders to the Pentagon .
In all likelihood , any effort to usurp the Constitution would be over quickly , and Trump could end up facing charges of treason .
By claiming that the Democrats stole the election from him , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , he is creating something more durable : a rallying cry for his most vehement supporters , and a foundational myth for future recruits to Trumpism .
Some of Trump ’ s backers on the alt-right are organizing a “ Stop the Steal ” demonstration in Washington , on Saturday .
According to a Washington Post story , those planning to attend include Alex Jones , the Infowars conspiracy theorist , and Enrique Tarrio , the chairman of the Proud Boys .
With anti-Trump rallies also planned for the same day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be violent clashes between the rival demonstrators .
This summer , Trump cheered on supporters of his , who rode into Portland in pickup trucks and fired paintballs and pellet guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators .
He seems unlikely to stay quiet this weekend .
With both Axios and the Washington Post reporting that Trump has told associates he is going to run again in 2024 , there may well be four more years of demonstrations and bogus assertions that a great injustice has been done .
“ It ’ s easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping that claim going through 2024 and denying the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency , ” Nyhan told me .
“ To be clear , it is probably going to be a relatively small group of Americans who believe the most extreme versions of those claims .
But it ’ s one that is especially important to the way the Republican Party and the conservative-media universe work .
That relatively small group can distort the actions of élites and do a lot of damage.
” Trump is also setting a precedent , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , it would have been unthinkable for a sitting U.S. President to refuse to concede after being clearly defeated in an election .
In the country ’ s two-hundred-and-forty-three-year history , such a thing has never happened .
Now that it has , what will transpire if some future election is considerably closer ?
“ We could have leaders with authoritarian inclinations who are more competent than Trump , ” Nyhan noted .
Read More About the 2020 Election • William Barr is the one Administration official with the power to stop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden has been elected the next President .
• With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election , Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court .
• We have to talk about what happened under the Trump Presidency and how we can prevent it from happening again .
• If 2020 has demonstrated anything , it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefit the working class—and there are many ways a Biden Administration can start .
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

Ten days after the election, Donald Trump is still skulking around the White House, claiming that he was cheated. This shouldn’t surprise anybody who watched him during the campaign. He repeatedly claimed that the vote would be fraudulent, and, at one point, he suggested that Election Day should be delayed. In October, Bright Line Watch, a monitoring organization that was set up in 2017 to monitor Trump’s threats to U.S. democracy, surveyed hundreds of political scientists about their expectations for the election and its aftermath. Many of the respondents predicted that Trump would declare victory early on, attack the “blue shift” caused by the late counting of mail-in votes, and refuse to concede.
That’s precisely what happened, of course. Trump has also empowered an army of lawyers to gin up accusations of voter fraud. Attorney General Bill Barr, breaking with Justice Department precedent, has ordered his underlings to investigate any allegations of irregularities that are “clear and apparently-credible.” As the vast majority of elected Republicans have failed to denounce these alarming developments, some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that Trump and his cronies are trying to stage a coup.
On Thursday, I spoke with Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist who was one of the founders of Bright Line Watch, and asked him whether he subscribed to the coup thesis. “I think that is wrong,” Nyhan said. “What I would emphasize is precisely what we have been talking about pretty much all the time: the concern is democratic erosion.” Democratic erosion isn’t something to be minimized or taken lightly. It refers to the gradual undermining of democratic norms and democratic institutions, which ultimately can prove fatal to democracy, and it’s something that Nyhan and other political scientists have been issuing warnings about since shortly after Trump was elected. “Democratic erosion happens in a slow and piecemeal process,” Nyhan said. “Joe Biden will almost certainly still be sworn in as President, but democratic erosion can still take place. . . . The peaceful transfer of power is the core of democracy.”
Writing in the Washington Post earlier this week, Erica De Bruin, a political scientist at Hamilton College who is the author of the book “How to Prevent Coups d’État,” made a similar argument. Although the measures that Trump and Republican officials have taken to undermine the election “are enormously damaging, they do not constitute a coup,” De Bruin writes. The real danger, she argues, is that Republicans “are violating the norms we rely on to ensure peaceful transfers of power, undermining trust in our electoral process and conveying to their supporters the poisonous notion that Democrats, as a rule, can never win power legitimately.”
Although it seems likely that Trump will eventually accept that he can’t stay in office, nobody should underestimate the damage that he is doing and the dangers he is fuelling. In repeatedly making unfounded claims about the election, he is creating a false narrative, which, in years to come, could well become a Trumpian version of the “stab-in-the-back” legend that some German generals promulgated after the First World War. According to that baseless narrative, which many right-wing extremists, Hitler included, subsequently seized upon to undermine the fragile Weimar Republic, Germany’s soldiers didn’t lose the Great War on the battlefield—they were betrayed by civilian politicians.
In Trump’s equally fictitious narrative, he didn’t lose the election: his opponents stole it by stuffing mail-in ballots, throwing out Trump votes, and engaging in other nefarious tactics. On Thursday, Trump tweeted about an utterly unsubstantiated story from the pro-Trump One America News Network, which claimed that software provided to local governments by the technology firm Dominion Voting Systems deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide. (“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees election security, said in a statement. “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”)
Although Trump has amped up his fake-history project since the election, some of the foundational work for it was done before the 2020 campaign began, and he was far from the only one responsible. For more than a decade now, Republicans intent on suppressing the minority vote have been making false claims about voter fraud. Trump picked up and amplified these claims. At a rally, in September, he told his supporters, “It’s a rigged election. It’s the only way we are going to lose.”
On the eve of the election—after almost four years of exposure to the President and to media outlets and social-media accounts that support him—Trump supporters already subscribed to a counterfactual version of reality. A survey that Bright Light Watch carried out in October found that seventy-eight per cent of respondents who approved of Trump believed that voting in U.S. elections by noncitizens was common, and seventy-eight per cent of Trump supporters believed that there was widespread stealing of, or tampering with, ballots. Trump’s statements since the election have added to the misinformation. A Politico and Morning Consult poll published earlier this week found that seventy per cent of Republicans now say that they don’t believe the election was free and fair. Whether that many Republicans really think this way is immaterial. Bearing false witness to things that aren’t true is a rite of passage in many extremist groups, and today’s Trump-dominated G.O.P. certainly qualifies as one. The failure of many Republican leaders to repudiate Trump’s false claims is perhaps the most alarming thing that has happened since November 3rd. “We depend on the bipartisan affirmation of the results to help the losers accept the legitimacy of the election,” Nyhan said. “Instead, we are seeing the opposite.”
Ultimately, Trump’s fake history could prove more insidious and lasting than an actual coup attempt. If he were to announce tomorrow that he intends to stay in office and order the U.S. military to recognize him as the rightful President, it seems highly improbable that the generals would heed his call, despite the fact that he has just fired the Secretary of Defense and appointed new civilian leaders to the Pentagon. In all likelihood, any effort to usurp the Constitution would be over quickly, and Trump could end up facing charges of treason. By claiming that the Democrats stole the election from him, and that the mainstream media went along with it, he is creating something more durable: a rallying cry for his most vehement supporters, and a foundational myth for future recruits to Trumpism.
Some of Trump’s backers on the alt-right are organizing a Stop the Steal demonstration in Washington, on Saturday. According to a Washington Post story, those planning to attend include Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys. With anti-Trump rallies also planned for the same day, it’s possible that there will be violent clashes between the rival demonstrators. This summer, Trump cheered on supporters of his, who rode into Portland in pickup trucks and fired paintballs and pellet guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators. He seems unlikely to stay quiet this weekend.
With both Axios and the Washington Post reporting that Trump has told associates he is going to run again in 2024, there may well be four more years of demonstrations and bogus assertions that a great injustice has been done. “It’s easy to imagine Trump and the conservative media keeping that claim going through 2024 and denying the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency,” Nyhan told me. “To be clear, it is probably going to be a relatively small group of Americans who believe the most extreme versions of those claims. But it’s one that is especially important to the way the Republican Party and the conservative-media universe work. That relatively small group can distort the actions of élites and do a lot of damage.”


newyorker--2020-11-13--Nation Celebrates Full Week of Trump Not Talking

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ( The Borowitz Report ) —The United States is celebrating a full week of Donald J. Trump not talking , Americans have confirmed .
From coast to coast , Americans are savoring their freedom from Trump ’ s utterances for the first time since 2015 .
“ As much as I wanted Trump to lose , I had no idea that losing would make him stop talking , ” Carol Foyler , who lives in Pittsburgh , said .
“ I feel like I ’ ve won the lottery.
” Tracy Klugian , who lives in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ecstasy .
“ I want to celebrate Trump not talking , but I guess I ’ m afraid to , ” she said .
“ He ’ s been quiet for a week , and I don ’ t want to do anything to jinx that.
” But Harland Dorrinson , a resident of St. Louis , felt that an occasion as momentous as Trump being silent for a week “ must be honored.
” “ I believe that we ’ re living through an important moment in history , ” he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Where were you when Donald Trump stopped talking ?
’ ”

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (The Borowitz Report)—The United States is celebrating a full week of Donald J. Trump not talking, Americans have confirmed.
From coast to coast, Americans are savoring their freedom from Trump’s utterances for the first time since 2015.
“As much as I wanted Trump to lose, I had no idea that losing would make him stop talking,” Carol Foyler, who lives in Pittsburgh, said. “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
Tracy Klugian, who lives in Minneapolis, was more guarded in her ecstasy. “I want to celebrate Trump not talking, but I guess I’m afraid to,” she said. “He’s been quiet for a week, and I don’t want to do anything to jinx that.”
But Harland Dorrinson, a resident of St. Louis, felt that an occasion as momentous as Trump being silent for a week “must be honored.”
“I believe that we’re living through an important moment in history,” he said. “Someday, people will ask, ‘Where were you when Donald Trump stopped talking?’ ”


newyorker--2020-11-14--Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, as E-mailed by Your Passive-Aggressive Co-Worker

Not to be that guy , and most of this is totally not a big deal , but I just wanted to take a moment to communicate my disappointment with a few things I ’ ve noticed occurring at the Church lately .
Unless everyone feels differently , I think there may be some stuff we could look into changing around here to make this space a bit better for everyone involved .
Again , these are just a couple of thoughts I had , so no pressure at all .
So the whole plenary-indulgence thing is something I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a while , and if no one else has an issue with this , I ’ ll shut up about it , but is this really something we should be doing ?
Lord knows I ’ m not perfect , but doesn ’ t it sort of defeat the purpose of the whole forgiveness-of-sins deal ?
I mean , I ’ m no expert on the subject , but I thought the Scripture was pretty clear on this .
Can someone back me up here ?
Seriously , I don ’ t mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but we might look into changing our policy .
I understand wanting to get the new St. Peter ’ s built , but have we considered having a bake sale ?
It concerns me that we ’ re maybe not serving the public by letting the wealthy buy their way into Heaven , but I don ’ t know .
While I ’ m on the subject , maybe we should go over the whole forgiveness-of-sins thing ?
Last I checked , Jesus hasn ’ t returned , so I think that falls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forbid we actually do our jobs , right ?
LOL JK .
But returning to the subject , repentance shouldn ’ t be an easy , empty apology .
If that were the case , they ’ d let any schmuck into Heaven , and we ’ d all be out of work .
Good works are nice and all , but maybe we ’ re a little too focussed on them ?
If I were to , say , kill a bunch of people and then give a few coins to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m sure it would be appreciated , but it doesn ’ t really change the fact that I killed a bunch of people .
While I ’ ve got you , we also need to talk about the whole charity thing .
I ’ m looking it over , and it seems like no one is particularly concerned that the aristocracy isn ’ t giving to the poor .
I mean , do we want the masses to view us as a corrupt institution interested solely in consolidating wealth and political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re about , let me know , but I ’ m pretty sure we ’ re supposed to be in the business of saving souls and helping the poor .
I ’ m not saying there ’ s going to be a schism or anything , but I ’ m not not saying that , either .
FROM : Martin.Luther @ vatican.org TO : All Vatican Staff Subject : Following Up Just circling back to suggest that you maybe take a few minutes to ask yourself if you ’ re a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer ’ s yes , let ’ s work together to make this a less corrupt Church .
I just want us to want to be better , is all .
Sorry if I ’ m the asshole here .

Photograph from Getty
FROM: Martin.Luther@vatican.org
TO: All Vatican Staff
Subject: A Quick Note
Not to be that guy, and most of this is totally not a big deal, but I just wanted to take a moment to communicate my disappointment with a few things I’ve noticed occurring at the Church lately. Unless everyone feels differently, I think there may be some stuff we could look into changing around here to make this space a bit better for everyone involved. Again, these are just a couple of thoughts I had, so no pressure at all.
Yours in Christ,
Marty
FROM: Martin.Luther@vatican.org
TO: All Vatican Staff
Subject: Plenary Indulgences
So the whole plenary-indulgence thing is something I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while, and if no one else has an issue with this, I’ll shut up about it, but is this really something we should be doing? Lord knows I’m not perfect, but doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose of the whole forgiveness-of-sins deal? I mean, I’m no expert on the subject, but I thought the Scripture was pretty clear on this. Can someone back me up here?
Seriously, I don’t mean to be a dick about this, but we might look into changing our policy. I understand wanting to get the new St. Peter’s built, but have we considered having a bake sale? It concerns me that we’re maybe not serving the public by letting the wealthy buy their way into Heaven, but I don’t know.
Best,
Martin
FROM: Martin.Luther@vatican.org
TO: All Vatican Staff
Subject: Re: Plenary Indulgences
While I’m on the subject, maybe we should go over the whole forgiveness-of-sins thing? Last I checked, Jesus hasn’t returned, so I think that falls on us. I mean, God forbid we actually do our jobs, right? LOL JK.
But returning to the subject, repentance shouldn’t be an easy, empty apology. If that were the case, they’d let any schmuck into Heaven, and we’d all be out of work.
Thanks,
Martin
FROM: Martin.Luther@vatican.org
TO: All Vatican Staff
Subject: Good Works
Good works are nice and all, but maybe we’re a little too focussed on them? If I were to, say, kill a bunch of people and then give a few coins to the Church and clean up the mess, I’m sure it would be appreciated, but it doesn’t really change the fact that I killed a bunch of people.
While I’ve got you, we also need to talk about the whole charity thing. I’m looking it over, and it seems like no one is particularly concerned that the aristocracy isn’t giving to the poor. I mean, do we want the masses to view us as a corrupt institution interested solely in consolidating wealth and political power? If that’s what we’re about, let me know, but I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be in the business of saving souls and helping the poor.
I’m not saying there’s going to be a schism or anything, but I’m not not saying that, either.
Regards,
Martin Luther
FROM: Martin.Luther@vatican.org
TO: All Vatican Staff
Subject: Following Up
Just circling back to suggest that you maybe take a few minutes to ask yourself if you’re a part of the problem? If the answer’s yes, let’s work together to make this a less corrupt Church. I just want us to want to be better, is all.
Sorry if I’m the asshole here.
Martin Luther


newyorker--2020-11-14--Herman Mankiewicz, Pauline Kael, and the Battle Over “Citizen Kane”

In 1939 , Herman J. Mankiewicz was a forty-two-year-old screenwriter , acclaimed in Hollywood not only for the lines of dialogue he wrote for movies but for the ones he delivered in life .
In nearly a decade and a half in the business , he ’ d found success at Paramount working with Josef von Sternberg and with his friends the Marx Brothers , and at M-G-M writing on “ Dinner at Eight ” and , briefly , “ The Wizard of Oz , ” where he had the idea of filming Kansas in bleak black-and-white and Oz in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as one of the great personalities in the film business .
He ’ d migrated to Hollywood from New York City , where he ’ d been The New Yorker ’ s first theatre critic and a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table , and he carried that group ’ s spirit of cynical candor and acerbic bravado to the movie community .
In commissaries and cocktail parties , he was known for his learned insights and his unpredictable politics ( he wrote , at great risk , an anti-Hitler script in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American involvement in the Second World War , and even called himself an “ ultra-Lindbergh ” ) as well as for the style with which he delivered them .
He was also habitually drunk and wildly impolitic , known for the scenes that he made and the insults that he flung .
His work habits were notoriously dubious : a compulsive gambler , he spent ample studio time placing bets and listening to horse races ; a social whirlwind , he talked the day away in person and by phone .
He lampooned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fired from every job he didn ’ t quit .
By the summer of 1939 , he was unemployed , which is how he found himself desperately available when a twenty-four-year-old newcomer to Hollywood by the name of Orson Welles offered him a job .
Welles , prolific and precocious , had become a stage star at sixteen , a major theatre director at twenty , and , in 1937 , the co-founder ( with John Houseman ) of the Mercury Theatre company ; he ’ d become a radio star at twenty-three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for the radio broadcast “ War of the Worlds , ” the tale of an invasion from outer space , told in the form of faux news bulletins , which many listeners mistook as real .
He ’ d also made two independent films on the side .
The week of his twenty-third birthday , he had been featured on the cover of Time magazine .
But whereas Mankiewicz was a Hollywood insider , Welles was despised by the movie industry in advance , resented and derided for his youth , his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom .
He had signed a contract with R.K.O .
studio to produce , write , direct , and act in two movies , for which he , alone among Hollywood studio filmmakers , would be allowed final cut .
He initially brought Mankiewicz on to ghostwrite radio programs , but their collaboration soon shifted , and Welles recruited him as a co-writer of the first film .
Their collaboration , and the film that resulted from it— “ Citizen Kane ” —was hailed , even before its release , as one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drama about a young heir who turns himself into a newspaper mogul and national figure , building and destroying an empire of his own , it became a marker of an aesthetic and generational shift in the history of cinema , and it made Welles—and what Welles represented—the cynosure of world cinema .
Welles and Mankiewicz won an Oscar for the screenplay ( the only one that the movie earned , though it was nominated in nine categories ) , but that award itself was the culmination of a bitter dispute , only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sparked : Mankiewicz ’ s contract with Welles had explicitly denied him writing credit , yet Mankiewicz , whose career badly needed the jolt , wanted it—and , after a struggle both in the press and behind the scenes , ultimately succeeded in securing it .
Yet today , Welles remains legendary , while Mankiewicz , who died in 1953 , is unknown to all but the most attentive movie buffs .
This should change with the release , on Friday , of David Fincher ’ s new film , “ Mank , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s years in Hollywood , centered on his work on “ Citizen Kane ” and based on a script by Fincher ’ s late father , Jack , a journalist to whom Fincher had suggested the subject .
The movie , as Fincher put it in a recent interview with Vulture , is an attempt to define the very nature of Mankiewicz ’ s contribution to “ Citizen Kane , ” and to the history of cinema—and to dramatize his battle to get credit for it .
Fincher said that the original draft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ followed the argument made in one of the most famous—and likely one of the most controversial—essays ever to appear in The New Yorker : “ Raising Kane , ” from 1971 , by one of the magazine ’ s film critics at the time , Pauline Kael .
The piece , which was published in two parts and ran fifty thousand words long , attempted to make the case that Mankiewicz deserved not joint but sole credit for the “ Citizen Kane ” script .
“ Mank ” focusses tightly on Mankiewicz ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nineteen-thirties and its connection to his work on “ Citizen Kane.
” For a more complete understanding of Mankiewicz ’ s legacy , it ’ s worth also revisiting his path to writing movies , which he never much respected as an art form , and the battle that Kael ignited with “ Raising Kane , ” in which , far from merely outlining Mankiewicz ’ s crucial role in “ Citizen Kane ” and his fascinating and tragic character , she attempted , misguidedly , to elevate Mankiewicz , the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artist Welles .
Less than a year into his job at The New Yorker , which published its first issue in February of 1925 , Mankiewicz received a lucrative invitation to write in Hollywood .
He needed the quick payday , not only to help support his family ( he and Sara had two young sons ) but also to repay his gambling debts .
But he had little interest in movies and even less regard for them .
According to Sydney Ladensohn Stern , in her 2019 book “ The Brothers Mankiewicz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ You can ’ t have a literature of screenwriting because it would be like a literature of comic books.
” Yet he was good at it ; for silent films , he deployed his epigrammatic wit to create intertitles , dialogue as well as descriptive passages that needed to be brief enough to fit on the screen and be read quickly , and with his journalistic sensibility , he could both recognize a good story and fit it into a rigid format .
He sent a telegram to his friend the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps the most famous and likely the most consequential one ever sent from Hollywood , offering him a job and concluding with the fateful lines : “ Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots .
Don ’ t let this get around.
” Mankiewicz hadn ’ t hoped to remain in Hollywood very long .
Before heading West , he had arranged with Ross to keep his job waiting for him upon his return—or so he thought .
In February of 1926 , Ross , long dismayed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for that matter , with his work , fired him—by telegram—and Mankiewicz , without an immediate alternative , decided to keep working in Hollywood .
Mankiewicz , though , not only disdained movies as such but found the very nature of their collaborative and corporate work inimical to his idea of writing ; “ The producer says to you , ‘ Now in reel three the fellow shouldn ’ t kiss the girl , he should kiss the cow.
’ And then the whole picture unravels , and you can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ industrialized process was less like a writers ’ room than a game of exquisite corpse ; as Irene Selznick ( the studio head Louis B. Mayer ’ s daughter and the first wife of the producer David O. Selznick ) , explained , “ Sometimes one writer did the outline , someone else did the synopsis , someone did the dialogue , someone did the revision , someone did a complete rewrite.
” The job working for Welles was something different—it provided Mankiewicz with his first chance to write a movie without a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role on “ Citizen Kane ” was the result of some curious twists of fortune : Welles originally hired him to ghostwrite radio shows , while planning to make his first film for R.K.O.
, an adaptation of “ Heart of Darkness.
” Welles was going to play both Marlow and Kurtz , as he had done in a radio version of the novel , and his artistic idea was as extreme as anything in “ Kane ” : Marlow would never be seen , because the camera would follow the explorer ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The plan fell through because of its budget , and his next project—a mystery about a fascist plot in America , which he asked Mankiewicz to help out on—did , too .
Then , in conversation with Mankiewicz , the idea for a project about the life of a powerful person , seen from multiple perspectives , came up .
Welles and Mankiewicz ran through several possible subjects ( including the gangster John Dillinger ) before Mankiewicz suggested the newspaper magnate and politician William Randolph Hearst .
Mankiewicz knew Hearst well—before he wore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with just about everyone , he and his wife had been frequent guests at Hearst ’ s colossal San Simeon compound .
Mankiewicz and Welles ’ s collaboration on the script—which Mankiewicz originally called “ American ” ( the ultimate title was chosen by the head of R.K.O.
, George Schaefer ) —was a peculiar one .
Mankiewicz was in a half-body cast at the time , having broken his leg badly in a car accident ( he was a passenger ) .
Welles parked him in a house in the remote town @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where a nurse took care of him .
Welles ’ s associate John Houseman , at Mankiewicz ’ s insistence , was present to talk out the story .
The secretary Rita Alexander took Mankiewicz ’ s dictation and typed it up , and Welles periodically visited and often called to consult .
The battle over credit began while the movie was still in production , in the summer of 1940 , and sorting out the details is like diving into the Warren Commission report .
Mankiewicz , realizing that the script @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his deal with Welles specified he ’ d get no credit for it .
Hecht and others in his circle urged him to take the matter public—and to fight for sole credit .
For Welles , that would have been a big problem , not least because losing his writing credit might have put him in breach of his R.K.O .
contract , which specified that he ’ d act , write , produce , and direct .
Mankiewicz appealed to the Screen Writers Guild , then withdrew his appeal , out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was R.K.O .
that ultimately decided to award him joint credit with Welles .
Famously , when the Oscar was announced at the awards ceremony , the cheering at the mention of Mankiewicz ’ s name obliterated the mention of the second-credited writer , Welles .
Neither man was present at the ceremony , but Richard Meryman , in his groundbreaking 1978 biography “ Mank , ” cites the speech that Mankiewicz said he would have given : “ I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles ’ s absence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mr. Welles ’ s absence.
” When “ Raising Kane ” was published , the piece outraged Welles himself—who was busily working on movies , including “ The Other Side of the Wind ” —and caused an outcry among critics who appreciated Welles ’ s entire œuvre and among historians who knew the fuller story .
In October of 1972 , in Esquire , the filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich rebutted Kael ’ s findings with his own ten-thousand-word piece , titled “ The Kane Mutiny.
” In it , Bogdanovich demonstrated that , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to speak with Welles or anyone who ’ d worked with him on the script , or , for that matter , with anyone who might have provided a different point of view .
Bogdanovich interviewed the screenwriter Charles Lederer , a close friend of Mankiewicz ’ s , who said that Mankiewicz complained to him about Welles ’ s many changes to the script .
Welles ’ s secretary from the time , Katherine Trosper , hearing of the charge that Welles wrote nothing of “ Citizen Kane , ” told Bogdanovich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to know what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles !
” Among the other sources Bogdanovich spoke with was a U.C.L.A .
professor , Howard Suber , who claimed that Kael had cajoled him—with a promise of a book contract that never materialized—into sharing his copious research on “ Citizen Kane ” with her , only to use it in her piece , uncredited , while distorting its findings— “ After months of investigation I regard the authorship of Kane as a very open question , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that although he had done “ all the legwork , research , and interviews ” for the piece , Welles himself—a close friend and associate— “ had taken a strong hand in revising and rewriting ” it .
( In a recent e-mail , Bogdanovich said that there were “ bits and pieces that Orson added or subtracted—added , mainly.
” ) Subsequently , more impartial , and more crucial , sources for Mankiewicz ’ s life emerged .
Notably , in 1985 , the scholar Robert Carringer published a scholarly book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upon newly available studio archives .
Carringer concluded that the script bore the work of both writers—Mankiewicz ’ s work was fundamental , and Welles ’ s revisions were transformative .
Fincher , in making “ Mank , ” revised his father ’ s script to soften its anti-Welles bent .
The film he made is less interested in litigating the battle between Mankiewicz and Welles than in exploring the relationship between Mankiewicz and Hearst , and how it informed Mankiewicz ’ s writing of “ Citizen Kane.
” The pressure that Hearst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threatened to divulge salacious information about stars and studio executives , to drum up a nativist campaign against European ( mostly Jewish ) movie-industry people who ’ d fled Hitler and found work in Hollywood , and to launch an anti-Semitic campaign against the ( mostly Jewish ) studio heads .
In response , Mayer ( who was Jewish ) organized a consortium of studio heads to buy the negative of “ Citizen Kane ” from R.K.O .
and destroy it , but Schaefer , R.K.O.
’ s head , rejected their demand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Welles ; he charged that Welles was a Communist ( he wasn ’ t ) ; he used his influence with J. Edgar Hoover to have Welles investigated by the F.B.I .
Hearst ’ s movie-gossip columnist Louella Parsons , Meryman writes , contacted the local draft board to try to get Welles drafted .
( Later , he inflicted scathing journalistic revenge against Mankiewicz , too , inflating a minor accident caused by Mankiewicz ’ s drunk driving into a national scandal . )
The campaign worked : though “ Citizen Kane @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got the studios—which also owned most of the first-run movie houses in major cities—to refuse to screen it .
What saved “ Citizen Kane ” was the fervent critical acclaim it garnered at private screenings held while its release was in doubt .
John O ’ Hara wrote , in Newsweek , that he ’ d “ just seen a picture which he thinks must be the best picture he ever saw ” —and warned readers that they might never get to see it .
On May 1 , 1941 , “ Citizen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in a single theatre , and was eventually shown nationwide ; it did reasonably well in big cities but was a flop—indeed , was often not screened at all—in small-town theatres that booked it .
Despite the instant renown that the film earned Welles , its influence on his career was disastrous .
Welles was never able to work again in Hollywood with the same freedom .
To help Schaefer keep his job ( which was threatened by the controversy over “ Citizen Kane ” and , even more , by its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contract for his second film , “ The Magnificent Ambersons , ” renouncing final cut , and he paid the price—the film was mutilated by the studio , which cut forty-three minutes out of it and had another director reshoot rewritten portions .
Welles , in 1946 , told Roy Fowler , “ I came to Hollywood saying , ‘ If they let me do a second picture , I ’ m lucky.
’ They didn ’ t , and since that time I ’ ve been trying to get back to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrived with a contract to make the picture in my own way without interference.
” The only freedom he had , from that point on , came when he financed his own movies with money he earned as an actor .
Before he went to Hollywood , Welles described his work in the theatres as “ actor-director , ” and he conceived of his filmmaking the same way .
In the theatre , he had always been an adaptor of Shakespeare , or Christopher Marlowe , or George Bernard Shaw , and when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approach .
He adapted Joseph Conrad , Shakespeare , Kafka , Booth Tarkington , several pulp-fiction stories , and even a radio script involving the character Harry Lime ( which he ’ d played in Carol Reed ’ s film “ The Third Man ” ) .
Why would he not adapt Herman Mankiewicz , too ?
There was a difference , though , from a practical perspective , in making use of the raw material of a contemporary who was also a competitor for the honors of the business ( whereas the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unambiguous in one direction ) .
During the writing of “ Citizen Kane , ” Mankiewicz took to calling Welles “ Monstro ” and lampooned him for his ego ; Mankiewicz once quipped , upon seeing Welles pass by at the studio , “ There but for the grace of God goes God.
” Yet Welles ’ s earnest self-regard as an artist was ultimately one of the qualities that distinguished him from the cynical , unfulfilled Mankiewicz .
Mankiewicz ’ s own assessment of the art of screenwriting was overly harsh ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ books ) , but he was right to consider it a lesser activity than writing plays—not because movies are less significant than plays but because screenwriters ’ work is a matter of industrial necessity rather than artistic impulse .
Kael ’ s most grievous error , in her polemic , was in failing to recognize that Welles would have been Welles without Mankiewicz ; if he had gotten to make “ Heart of Darkness , ” it would in all likelihood have been as original as “ Kane , ” and , free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ d likely have been able to make a second film without losing his creative freedom .
For that matter , Mankiewicz , without the strictures of Hollywood , would likely have been at his creative heights sooner and longer .
The story of Mankiewicz ’ s movie career , no less than Welles ’ s , involves the horror built into the glory of Hollywood—the relentless power of commercial institutions to impose its practices and formulas on the art of movies .
In the short term , Mankiewicz fared better after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came out—and after Mankiewicz won his Oscar for it—his career picked up .
The most prominent movie he worked on was “ The Pride of the Yankees , ” the Lou Gehrig bio-pic from 1942 ; the one great one he wrote was “ Christmas Holiday , ” from 1944 , a film noir starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly , which features an intricate flashback structure akin to that of “ Citizen Kane , ” and which was directed—brilliantly—by Robert Siodmak , one of the great film-noir specialists ( and one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fled the Nazi regime ) .
Yet Mankiewicz ’ s bad habits caught up to him again ; he was only intermittently reliable , and his health began to fail .
As Meryman reports , wartime and postwar Hollywood also became home to a new generation of executives and producers , for whom Mankiewicz ’ s Round Table roots and journalistic tumult were more a matter of quaint nostalgia than of unquestioned admiration .
Mankiewicz , Meryman writes , was lucid about his own calamity at having done movie work only because it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few months .
I don ’ t know how it is that you start working at something you don ’ t like , and before you know it , you ’ re an old man.
” Though Mankiewicz made an indelible mark on the history of cinema , he was held back from the start by his contempt for the movies , and for the studio machinery that dictated how they were made—ironically , the very thing that Kael , in her defense of Mankiewicz , would celebrate .
In the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he didn ’ t see the movies as an art at all , while Welles made his far greater mark because he never saw them as anything but .

In 1939, Herman J. Mankiewicz was a forty-two-year-old screenwriter, acclaimed in Hollywood not only for the lines of dialogue he wrote for movies but for the ones he delivered in life. In nearly a decade and a half in the business, he’d found success at Paramount working with Josef von Sternberg and with his friends the Marx Brothers, and at M-G-M writing on “Dinner at Eight” and, briefly, “The Wizard of Oz,” where he had the idea of filming Kansas in bleak black-and-white and Oz in Technicolor. But he was best known as one of the great personalities in the film business. He’d migrated to Hollywood from New York City, where he’d been The New Yorker’s first theatre critic and a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table, and he carried that group’s spirit of cynical candor and acerbic bravado to the movie community. In commissaries and at cocktail parties, he was known for his learned insights and his unpredictable politics (he wrote, at great risk, an anti-Hitler script in 1933, yet he was opposed to American involvement in the Second World War, and even called himself an “ultra-Lindbergh”) as well as for the style with which he delivered them. He was also habitually drunk and wildly impolitic, known for the scenes that he made and the insults that he flung. His work habits were notoriously dubious: a compulsive gambler, he spent ample studio time placing bets and listening to horse races; a social whirlwind, he talked the day away in person and by phone. He lampooned and defied his bosses, and got fired from every job he didn’t quit. By the summer of 1939, he was unemployed, which is how he found himself desperately available when a twenty-four-year-old newcomer to Hollywood by the name of Orson Welles offered him a job.
Welles, prolific and precocious, had become a stage star at sixteen, a major theatre director at twenty, and, in 1937, the co-founder (with John Houseman) of the Mercury Theatre company; he’d become a radio star at twenty-three, and become infamous, in 1938, for the radio broadcast “War of the Worlds,” the tale of an invasion from outer space, told in the form of faux news bulletins, which many listeners mistook as real. He’d also made two independent films on the side. The week of his twenty-third birthday, he had been featured on the cover of Time magazine. But whereas Mankiewicz was a Hollywood insider, Welles was despised by the movie industry in advance, resented and derided for his youth, his fame, his intellectualism—and his contractually guaranteed freedom. He had signed a contract with R.K.O. studio to produce, write, direct, and act in two movies, for which he, alone among Hollywood studio filmmakers, would be allowed final cut. He initially brought Mankiewicz on to ghostwrite radio programs, but their collaboration soon shifted, and Welles recruited him as a co-writer of the first film.
Their collaboration, and the film that resulted from it—“Citizen Kane”—was hailed, even before its release, as one of the greatest movies ever made. A drama about a young heir who turns himself into a newspaper mogul and national figure, building and destroying an empire of his own, it became a marker of an aesthetic and generational shift in the history of cinema, and it made Welles—and what Welles represented—the cynosure of world cinema. Welles and Mankiewicz won an Oscar for the screenplay (the only one that the movie earned, though it was nominated in nine categories), but that award itself was the culmination of a bitter dispute, only one of the many that the movie sparked: Mankiewicz’s contract with Welles had explicitly denied him writing credit, yet Mankiewicz, whose career badly needed the jolt, wanted it—and, after a struggle both in the press and behind the scenes, ultimately succeeded in securing it. Yet today, Welles remains legendary, while Mankiewicz, who died in 1953, is unknown to all but the most attentive movie buffs.
This should change with the release, on Friday, of David Fincher’s new film, “Mank,” a bio-pic of the screenwriter’s years in Hollywood, centered on his work on “Citizen Kane” and based on a script by Fincher’s late father, Jack, a journalist to whom Fincher had suggested the subject. The movie, as Fincher put it in a recent interview with Vulture, is an attempt to define the very nature of Mankiewicz’s contribution to “Citizen Kane,” and to the history of cinema—and to dramatize his battle to get credit for it.
Fincher said that the original draft of his father’s script closely followed the argument made in one of the most famous—and likely one of the most controversial—essays ever to appear in The New Yorker: “Raising Kane,” from 1971, by one of the magazine’s film critics at the time, Pauline Kael. The piece, which was published in two parts and ran fifty thousand words long, attempted to make the case that Mankiewicz deserved not joint but sole credit for the “Citizen Kane” script. “Mank” focusses tightly on Mankiewicz’s behind-the-scenes social and studio life in the nineteen-thirties and its connection to his work on “Citizen Kane.” For a more complete understanding of Mankiewicz’s legacy, it’s worth also revisiting his path to writing movies, which he never much respected as an art form, and the battle that Kael ignited with “Raising Kane,” in which, far from merely outlining Mankiewicz’s crucial role in “Citizen Kane” and his fascinating and tragic character, she attempted, misguidedly, to elevate Mankiewicz, the company man malgré lui, over the independent artist Welles.
Mankiewicz was already a member of the Algonquin Round Table set, when, in late 1924, Harold Ross, on the cusp of launching a new magazine called The New Yorker, asked him to be its first drama critic. Mankiewicz was twenty-seven years old at the time—young in years but long in experience. Born in New York, in 1897, and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he was the son of German-Jewish immigrants; his father was a poor but fiercely striving (and, eventually, publicly recognized) scholar, a cold and harsh figure who imparted high intellectual standards on Herman, who met them brilliantly but unhappily. Herman had graduated from high school at fourteen and entered Columbia at fifteen, after spending a gap year working in a coal mine; he had served in the Marines in the First World War, worked as a reporter in New York, and then, with his new bride, Sara, gone to Germany, in 1920, where he’d quickly made his name, and his legend, as a reckless and wild wit, able to talk himself into jobs and situations that he usually left in ruins. After returning to New York, in 1922, he’d become a drama critic at the Times while aspiring, with little success, to a career as a playwright. When he joined The New Yorker, Ross hoped he could wrangle his Algonquin cohorts as well; when the others demurred, Mankiewicz offered Ross a notable word of consolation: “The half-time help of wits is no better than the full-time help of half-wits.”
Herman Mankiewicz, circa the nineteen-forties. Photograph from Corbis / Getty
Less than a year into his job at The New Yorker, which published its first issue in February of 1925, Mankiewicz received a lucrative invitation to write in Hollywood. He needed the quick payday, not only to help support his family (he and Sara had two young sons) but also to repay his gambling debts. But he had little interest in movies and even less regard for them. According to Sydney Ladensohn Stern, in her 2019 book, “The Brothers Mankiewicz,” he told his son Don, “You can’t have a literature of screenwriting because it would be like a literature of comic books.” Yet he was good at it; for silent films, he deployed his epigrammatic wit to create intertitles, dialogue as well as descriptive passages that needed to be brief enough to fit on the screen and be read quickly, and with his journalistic sensibility, he could both recognize a good story and fit it into a rigid format. He sent a telegram to his friend the reporter Ben Hecht in late 1926, perhaps the most famous and likely the most consequential one ever sent from Hollywood, offering him a job and concluding with the fateful lines “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”
Mankiewicz hadn’t hoped to remain in Hollywood very long. Before heading West, he had arranged with Ross to keep his job waiting for him upon his return—or so he thought. In February of 1926, Ross, long dismayed by Mankiewicz’s work habits and, for that matter, with his work, fired him—by telegram—and Mankiewicz, without an immediate alternative, decided to keep working in Hollywood. Mankiewicz, though, not only disdained movies as such but found the very nature of their collaborative and corporate work inimical to his idea of writing; according to Meryman, “Herman sourly described story conferences as the time ‘when the producer says to you, “Now in reel three the fellow shouldn’t kiss the girl, he should kiss the cow.” And then the whole picture unravels, and you can’t stand it.’ ” At M-G-M, the industrialized process was less like a writers’ room than a game of exquisite corpse; as Irene Selznick (the studio head Louis B. Mayer’s daughter and the first wife of the producer David O. Selznick), explained, “Sometimes one writer did the outline, someone else did the synopsis, someone did the dialogue, someone did the revision, someone did a complete rewrite.”
The job working for Welles was something different—it provided Mankiewicz with his first chance to write a movie without a studio hovering over his shoulder. His role on “Citizen Kane” was the result of some curious twists of fortune: Welles originally hired him to ghostwrite radio shows, while planning to make his first film for R.K.O., an adaptation of “Heart of Darkness.” Welles was going to play both Marlow and Kurtz, as he had done in a radio version of the novel, and his artistic idea was as extreme as anything in “Kane”: Marlow would never be seen, because the camera would follow the explorer’s subjective point of view throughout. The plan fell through because of its budget, and his next project—a mystery about a fascist plot in America, which he asked Mankiewicz to help out on—did, too. Then, in conversation with Mankiewicz, the idea for a project about the life of a powerful person, seen from multiple perspectives, came up. Welles and Mankiewicz ran through several possible subjects (including the gangster John Dillinger) before Mankiewicz suggested the newspaper magnate and politician William Randolph Hearst. Mankiewicz knew Hearst well—before he wore out his welcome, as he did with just about everyone, he and his wife had been frequent guests at Hearst’s colossal San Simeon compound.
Mankiewicz and Welles’s collaboration on the script—which Mankiewicz originally called “American” (the ultimate title was chosen by the head of R.K.O., George Schaefer)—was a peculiar one. Mankiewicz was in a half-body cast at the time, having broken his leg badly in a car accident (he was a passenger). Welles parked him in a house in the remote town of Victorville, eighty miles from Hollywood, where a nurse took care of him. Welles’s associate John Houseman, at Mankiewicz’s insistence, was present to talk out the story. The secretary Rita Alexander took Mankiewicz’s dictation and typed it up, and Welles periodically visited and often called to consult.
The battle over credit began while the movie was still in production, in the summer of 1940, and sorting out the details is like diving into the Warren Commission report. Mankiewicz, realizing that the script was turning out well, regretted that his deal with Welles specified he’d get no credit for it. Hecht and others in his circle urged him to take the matter public—and to fight for sole credit. For Welles, that would have been a big problem, not least because losing his writing credit might have put him in breach of his R.K.O. contract, which specified that he’d act, write, produce, and direct. Mankiewicz appealed to the Screen Writers Guild, then withdrew his appeal, out of fear of retribution from Hearst. It was R.K.O. that ultimately decided to award him joint credit with Welles. Famously, when the Oscar was announced at the awards ceremony, the cheering at the mention of Mankiewicz’s name obliterated the mention of the second-credited writer, Welles. Neither man was present at the ceremony, but Richard Meryman, in his groundbreaking 1978 biography, “Mank,” cites the speech that Mankiewicz said he would have given: “I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’s absence, because the script was written in Mr. Welles’s absence.”
David Fincher’s “Mank” focusses tightly on the behind-the-scenes social and studio life of Herman Mankiewicz, portrayed by Gary Oldman. Photograph courtesy Netflix
The story of Welles and Mankiewicz’s fraught collaboration was a perfect vessel for Pauline Kael’s preoccupations as a critic. She had made her name with a 1963 piece, “Circles and Squares,” savaging the film critic Andrew Sarris and other proponents of the “auteur theory,” which emphasized the primacy of directors as the creative force in movies. A lover of classic Hollywood movies and their commercial, popular appeal, she believed that the emphasis on directing led critics to overlook the inherently collaborative nature of Hollywood filmmaking, and she portrayed other critics’ principled attention to directors (including many whose work went unduly unacclaimed) as an orthodoxy in need of demolishing. In “Raising Kane,” she argued that much of what’s great about “Citizen Kane” in fact arose not from Welles but from the contributions of Mankiewicz and the rest of the cast and crew, and not from the film’s originality but from its place in, and reflection of, cinematic traditions that passed into it by way of the studio system and its veterans. After “Citizen Kane,” Kael concluded, Welles “was alone, trying to be ‘Orson Welles,’ though ‘Orson Welles’ had stood for the activities of a group.”
When “Raising Kane” was published, the piece outraged Welles himself—who was busily working on movies, including “The Other Side of the Wind”—and caused an outcry among critics who appreciated Welles’s entire œuvre and among historians who knew the fuller story. In October of 1972, in Esquire, the filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich rebutted Kael’s findings with his own ten-thousand-word piece, titled “The Kane Mutiny.” In it, Bogdanovich demonstrated that, in reporting her piece, Kael had failed to speak with Welles or anyone who’d worked with him on the script, or, for that matter, with anyone who might have provided a different point of view. Bogdanovich interviewed the screenwriter Charles Lederer, a close friend of Mankiewicz’s, who said that Mankiewicz complained to him about Welles’s many changes to the script. Welles’s secretary from the time, Katherine Trosper, hearing of the charge that Welles wrote nothing of “Citizen Kane,” told Bogdanovich, “Then I’d like to know what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles!” Among the other sources Bogdanovich spoke with was a U.C.L.A. professor, Howard Suber, who claimed that Kael had cajoled him—with a promise of a book contract that never materialized—into sharing his copious research on “Citizen Kane” with her, only to use it in her piece, uncredited, while distorting its findings—“After months of investigation I regard the authorship of Kane as a very open question,” he said. Bogdanovich wrote, in 1998, that although he had done “all the legwork, research, and interviews” for the piece, Welles himself—a close friend and associate—“had taken a strong hand in revising and rewriting” it. (In a recent e-mail, Bogdanovich said that there were “bits and pieces that Orson added or subtracted—added, mainly.”)
Subsequently, more impartial, and more crucial, sources for Mankiewicz’s life emerged. Notably, in 1985, the scholar Robert Carringer published a scholarly book about “Citizen Kane” that drew upon newly available studio archives. Carringer concluded that the script bore the work of both writers—Mankiewicz’s work was fundamental, and Welles’s revisions were transformative. Fincher, in making “Mank,” revised his father’s script to soften its anti-Welles bent. The film he made is less interested in litigating the battle between Mankiewicz and Welles than in exploring the relationship between Mankiewicz and Hearst, and how it informed Mankiewicz’s writing of “Citizen Kane.”
There’s little doubt, by now, that Mankiewicz’s Hearst connection provided the essential substance for the film; it also nearly destroyed the film before it could be released. Mankiewicz took it upon himself to provide a copy of the script to Charles Lederer, a friend and screenwriter who also happened to be the nephew of Hearst’s mistress, the actress Marion Davies. It came back to Mankiewicz with markings on passages relating to Hearst. Welles had denied that the movie was based on Hearst’s life; the set had been kept strictly sealed, and the footage wasn’t shown to anyone outside the studio. But then the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper pushed her way into a screening and reported what (rather, who) she thought the movie was about, and Hearst sprang indignantly into action, orchestrating a scurrilous publicity campaign against the movie, and exercising his considerable influence in Hollywood—especially with Louis B. Mayer, the head of M-G-M (who’d fired Mankiewicz, in 1939)—to prevent it from ever being seen.
The pressure that Hearst exerted was fearsome and monstrous. He threatened to divulge salacious information about stars and studio executives, to drum up a nativist campaign against European (mostly Jewish) movie-industry people who’d fled Hitler and found work in Hollywood, and to launch an anti-Semitic campaign against the (mostly Jewish) studio heads. In response, Mayer (who was Jewish) organized a consortium of studio heads to buy the negative of “Citizen Kane” from R.K.O. and destroy it, but Schaefer, R.K.O.’s head, rejected their demand. Hearst also had his newspapers pursue Welles; he charged that Welles was a Communist (he wasn’t); he used his influence with J. Edgar Hoover to have Welles investigated by the F.B.I. Hearst’s movie-gossip columnist Louella Parsons, Meryman writes, contacted the local draft board to try to get Welles drafted. (Later, he inflicted scathing journalistic revenge against Mankiewicz, too, inflating a minor accident caused by Mankiewicz’s drunk driving into a national scandal.) The campaign worked: though “Citizen Kane” wasn’t burned, Mayer got the studios—which also owned most of the first-run movie houses in major cities—to refuse to screen it.
Orson Welles in “Citzen Kane.” Photograph by Alexander Kahle / RKO / Photofest
What saved “Citizen Kane” was the fervent critical acclaim it garnered at private screenings held while its release was in doubt. John O’Hara wrote, in Newsweek, that he’d “just seen a picture which he thinks must be the best picture he ever saw”—and warned readers that they might never get to see it. On May 1, 1941, “Citizen Kane” was released in New York, in a single theatre, and was eventually shown nationwide; it did reasonably well in big cities but was a flop—indeed, was often not screened at all—in small-town theatres that booked it. Despite the instant renown that the film earned Welles, its influence on his career was disastrous. Welles was never able to work again in Hollywood with the same freedom. To help Schaefer keep his job (which was threatened by the controversy over “Citizen Kane” and, even more, by its financial losses), Welles renegotiated his contract for his second film, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” renouncing final cut, and he paid the price—the film was mutilated by the studio, which cut forty-three minutes out of it and had another director reshoot rewritten portions. Welles, in 1946, told Roy Fowler, “I came to Hollywood saying, ‘If they let me do a second picture, I’m lucky.’ They didn’t, and since that time I’ve been trying to get back to the position I was in when I first arrived with a contract to make the picture in my own way without interference.” The only freedom he had, from that point on, came when he financed his own movies with money he earned as an actor.
Before he went to Hollywood, Welles described his work in the theatres as “actor-director,” and he conceived of his filmmaking the same way. In the theatre, he had always been an adaptor of Shakespeare, or Christopher Marlowe, or George Bernard Shaw, and when he made movies he took a similar approach. He adapted Joseph Conrad, Shakespeare, Kafka, Booth Tarkington, several pulp-fiction stories, and even a radio script involving the character Harry Lime (which he’d played in Carol Reed’s film “The Third Man”). Why would he not adapt Herman Mankiewicz, too? There was a difference, though, from a practical perspective, in making use of the raw material of a contemporary who was also a competitor for the honors of the business (whereas the pecking order of Shakespeare and Welles was unambiguous in one direction). During the writing of “Citizen Kane,” Mankiewicz took to calling Welles “Monstro” and lampooned him for his ego; Mankiewicz once quipped, upon seeing Welles pass by at the studio, “There but for the grace of God goes God.”
Yet Welles’s earnest self-regard as an artist was ultimately one of the qualities that distinguished him from the cynical, unfulfilled Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz’s own assessment of the art of screenwriting was overly harsh (there is indeed an art to comic books), but he was right to consider it a lesser activity than writing plays—not because movies are less significant than plays but because screenwriters’ work is a matter of industrial necessity rather than artistic impulse. Kael’s most grievous error, in her polemic, was in failing to recognize that Welles would have been Welles without Mankiewicz; if he had gotten to make “Heart of Darkness,” it would in all likelihood have been as original as “Kane,” and, free from the vengeful wrath of Hearst, he’d likely have been able to make a second film without losing his creative freedom. For that matter, Mankiewicz, without the strictures of Hollywood, would likely have been at his creative heights sooner and longer. The story of Mankiewicz’s movie career, no less than Welles’s, involves the horror built into the glory of Hollywood—the relentless power of commercial institutions to impose its practices and formulas on the art of movies.