The Spectator's Notes

25 April 2009

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

One of the things to admire in America is its Victorian quality. American Ideals and Institutions (see above) are celebrated without embarrassment. And people still build in a style intended to reflect the importance of institutions. Whitman College, within Princeton, looks late-Victorian, with its court of grey stone and mullioned windows, but it was commissioned in 2002, from the architect Demetri Porphyrios. The best bit of Whitman is the hall. It is mediaeval in style, including an imposing fireplace, but strong and simple and grand — not a silly pastiche, but an expression of confidence.

A similar spirit imbues the Metropolitan Club in Washington, at which I stayed. Founded in 1863, it is as old as many of the famous English clubs, and resembles them. But American clubs are subtly different. They snap to attention more. Just after arriving, I was sitting in the coffee-room, and my mobile rang. I guessed that it was not allowed, but answered it quickly to ask to ring back later. As if from nowhere, a smartly dressed oriental porter emerged and smilingly placed into my hand an elegantly printed card which explained that ‘The use of electronic devices is prohibited in dining and public areas of the Clubhouse’, and urged me to retire to the Correspondence Lounge. So much politer than the disorganised shushing that would happen in London.

In my bedroom, the maid had left the radio playing, as maids often do. But the channel she had chosen was C-Span, the station devoted to verbatim recordings of testimony before congressional committees etc. In this case, a speech to a pro-life dinner by the chairman of the Republican National Committee was burbling into the room. For this politics-crazed capital, it is like airport-lounge music, designed to make no demands and create a relaxed mood.

I had asked Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Fed, if he would see me. He refused, explaining that he had to do jury service. There must be something right with a nation in which the 83-year-old former head of the most powerful central bank in the world has to join 11 fellow citizens to do his civic duty.

The Washington Post reported a speech by the extremist Pakistani cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz at the Red Mosque in Islamabad: ‘...he called on a crowd of chanting followers to spread the crusade for Islamic law across the country’. I don’t think so.