A Modern-Day Greek Drama

David Brooks: Gail, do you mind if I talk to you about death? There were two deaths this week that are on my mind in very different ways, but somehow both take me back to classical Greece.


Gail Collins: David, one of the reasons I love conversing with you is that you are a person who can say “… but somehow both take me back to classical Greece” and sound totally normal. So fire away.
David Brooks: The first death is Richard Holbrooke’s. To be honest, I still don’t comprehend that he is gone. Thinking about him being absent is like driving out to Colorado and finding the Rocky Mountains are gone. His zest and energy were so voluminous that it doesn’t seem physically possible that they would just disappear.

Holbrooke was a boy wonder early in his career and he always retained that aura. He was so boundless, he seemed perpetually 27, and I was stunned to learn that he was 69 as his fatal illness struck.

Gail Collins: I’ve heard a lot of people say “… and he was only 69.” As an aside, can I point out how lucky we are to be living in an era when dying at 69 can be regarded as untimely? I’m still under the influence of that William Henry Harrison biography I just finished writing. He was 68 when he became president, and while it was a terrible shock when he died a month later, during the campaign people seemed stunned that he was actually capable of walking and taking nourishment. And most of his 10 children had already predeceased him. But enough about William Henry Harrison. Tell me your thoughts about Richard Holbrooke.

David Brooks: I want to dwell on the nature of his ambition. Holbrooke was completely besotted with public service and with having a prominent role in the great game of policymaking. George Packer captured this beautifully on his New Yorker blog in his tribute to Holbrooke:

He did many things besides work in government, but that work was so core to his being and happiness that, once he started his new (and nearly impossible) job, it was as if a pilot light inside him had suddenly burst into flame: his eyes had a new gleam. He harbored a dose of skepticism about the Afghanistan war, but he worked tirelessly for success, to the obvious detriment of his health. In a sense he gave his life for his country.

Gail Collins: Yes, it’s a shame that so many people these days regard government as an evil. Not that I’m thinking of any particular names.

David Brooks: Holbrooke’s life puts me in mind of the distinction between ambition and glory. These days, glory-seeking has a bad odor, but in classical days, and certainly in the 18th century when this country was founded, people took a different view.

Being ambitions was selfish, but yearning for immortal glory was noble. The person who yearned for glory was willing to sacrifice for his country and for some larger cause. It was unrealistic to expect people to be self-abnegating, but the enlarging for glory could overrule the narrowing interests of ambition.

Gail Collins: I think there’s a nervousness that the quest for personal glory can drive the country into places where it shouldn’t go, particularly on the invading-other-countries front. But the drive to attain a great and lasting peace is of course a different matter altogether.

David Brooks: Holbrooke’s personal aspirations were so tightly interwoven with his aspirations for his country it was impossible to tease them apart. He openly sought high office, and never hid his desires (or anything else), but that was because he wanted to lose himself in the larger cause.

Gail Collins: I’m happy to join you in sending a tribute to Richard Holbrooke. But you said you wanted to talk about two people who’ve just died?

David Brooks: The second death I wanted to mention is Mark Madoff’s. Here, I confess I have mixed feelings. Of course one feels terrible for the suicide victim himself. I find it possible to believe he didn’t know about his father’s schemes. He did turn the old guy in, after all. Moreover, he left a 2-year-old in the next room, which suggests a seriously deranged state of mind.


Gail Collins: The 2-year-old in the next room part was where he lost me. What kind of person leaves a suicide note saying, in effect, “I love you and oh, somebody better check on the kid.”


David Brooks: And yet am a I rotten person for thinking some proper retribution has been inflicted upon the old man?

Gail Collins: Wow, David. Didn’t think you were going there. But continue.

David Brooks: Bernie Madoff endangered his family and his friendships for money. He inflicted untold pain on thousands of people. Somehow there is cruel justice in the fact that the shocks of his crimes should reverberate back on him in this way. He has to live with the knowledge that he caused his son’s death.

Gail Collins: O.K., I can see where you’re going now — back to the Greeks, right?

David Brooks: Yes, this too is Greek, because in those old tragedies, pain would course through families; and the sons, as the unavoidable saying goes, would pay for the sins of their fathers. Those old plays presumed that the universe is essentially just, and that there are moral laws and filaments so that evil eventually leads to evil.

Gail Collins: It sounded very profound when Sophocles wrote about it. But I have the terrible feeling that in our era, it’s been boiled down to “Everything happens for a reason.” I would love to see a statistic on how many times people in reality show competitions say that. Is it really possible to believe there’s a cosmic purpose behind getting kicked off the island in “Survivor”?

David Brooks: I’m not so sure we can be so confident of that. But crimes do tend to impose rippling waves of pain.

Sorry to be such a downer. Next week I’ll get back in the holiday cheer. Promise.