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One of America's most interesting novelists is also a conservative--and a crafter of powerful political rhetoric and commentary.

Novelist Mark Helprin, 54, is one of the brightest lights in American letters. His fiction includes A Soldier of the Great War, the story of an old man who imparts his life's wisdom to a young boy; Winter's Tale, a fairy-tale about New York City; Refiner's Fire, a semi-autobiographical adventure about a young man serving in the Israeli Army during the Yom Kippur War; and Memoir From Antproof Case, about an investment banker/bank robber from the World War II generation.

In 1996, Helprin made his public debut as a political speechwriter, crafting Presidential candidate Bob Dole's Republican Convention cri de coeur and powerful resignation from the Senate. I will run for President as "a private citizen, a Kansan, an American, just a man," said Dole, via Helprin.

In recent years, Helprin has been most visible as a writer of political commentary, particularly for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But he has just returned to novel writing. TAE associate editor John Meroney interviewed Helprin on his farm in rural Virginia.

TAE: In October 1997, three months before Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was made public, you were calling for his impeachment in the Wall Street Journal. But the fact is, President Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of practically any president in history.

HELPRIN: And during impeachment it was much higher.

TAE: So what happened?

HELPRIN: I believe that had Trent Lott and the other Republican leaders decided to pursue the impeachment case without prejudice--to have had a real trial and actually go where facts led them--Bill Clinton would have been convicted. Perjury, obstruction of justice, destroying evidence--that's sufficient for impeachment. But the heart of the matter was that he took campaign contributions from Communist China and transferred secret technology in return. The Lewinsky fight was the answer to the President's prayers, because she sidetracked attention away from other issues.

TAE: So do you blame the Senate Republicans?

HELPRIN: Perhaps it was a matter of temperament, and Lott and the others didn't want to rock the boat. They didn't want the political risk involved in a principled stand. Plus, remember that the White House had six hundred raw FBI files on Republicans. My guess is that this material had tremendous value in damping volubility among the opposition.

TAE: The public punished Richard Nixon for his crimes but excused Bill Clinton for his. What happened between 1974 and 1999 to change the country's expectations of propriety in public officials?

HELPRIN: Millions of little things. People feel powerless to stand up against eroding standards; we let them pass, and don't speak out. Standards about propriety, truth-telling, and oaths are changing.

Once, when I was in Israel, I was robbed on the street of everything I had, including my passport. Like a fool, I was also carrying my birth certificate and they stole that, too. In terms of the modern twentieth century identity, I was stripped naked. I went to the American Embassy for help and told them I needed a new passport because without it I couldn't get any money wired to me and would have to live on the street for two weeks. The people at the embassy said they could issue one if I were able to get another American I knew to swear to my citizenship. The problem was, I didn't know any Americans over there at all.

I went out in the waiting room and there was another American, like me. I knew he was an American, he knew I was an American, just from the way we talked. So he said, "Let's just tell them we've known each other for five years. You're obviously an American, and you know I am, so what's the harm?" And I said, "It's that we have to swear to the Constitution with our hands on a Bible and in front of the American flag--it's our word." And he said, "Well, so what? It's true, isn't it? We're both Americans." I said, "We'd be lying under oath, and you can't do that." I lived on the street for two weeks.

TAE: Are you certain that wasn't a young Bill Clinton you encountered?

HELPRIN: The fact that Clinton got away with impeachment put the imprimatur of the whole society on his kind of behavior. I just read recently that 70 percent of high school students regularly cheat, and don't understand that it's wrong.

TAE: Do you ever think about running for politics yourself these days?

HELPRIN: One has to do a lot of socializing in politics. I have tremendous trouble dealing with social situations such as cocktail parties, so-called "coffees," and dinners. Also, I'm not good at remembering people's names if I meet someone in a group--again, not a plus for a politician. I also like tranquility.

TAE: So you're not suited for politicking. Is writing political commentary your substitute?

HELPRIN: I suppose. There's appointive office, and had Bob Dole won the presidency in 1996, I must say I was expecting to get the Embassy in Wallis and Futuna. (laughs) My wife, though, told me I'd get cufflinks. (laughs)

TAE: Do you think we're losing some unique qualities in America by all watching the same television, shopping in the same stores, eating in the same restaurants, no matter where we live?

HELPRIN: In 1961, when I was fourteen, I was on a cross-country bicycle trip and pulled into a roadside store in probably the tiniest town in Oklahoma. I asked the guy who worked there if I could use the telephone. It wasn't a pay phone so I offered to give him the money for making a long distance call. He asked where I was calling, and I told him New York. He looked at me really funny and said he'd never heard of New York. Now, maybe he was joking, but I don't think so.

TAE: The country seemed a lot bigger back then.

HELPRIN: Yes, and each region had its own unique cuisine and products. Once, when I was in San Francisco, I walked into a store and asked to buy a soda and the owner wanted me to explain to him what that was. In San Francisco then, they called it a phosphate. In Boston, they called it a tonic, but pronounced it tawhnic. When I lived in Seattle, they called an ambulance an aid car.

It's ironic that the diversity fad has happened just at the moment when there's more homogenization than at any other time in history. So maybe the diversity movement is a yearning for a golden age when places and immigrant groups really were different. The child of a Vietnamese boat person becomes a universal American in about eight years. When I was growing up as a Jew in New York, I wasn't the same as a Methodist from Arizona, or a Lutheran from Minnesota. Maybe diversity is about salvaging something younger generations never really had. Being homogenized sure makes the infinite spaces we once had seem a lot smaller.

TAE: One common theme in your novels is love and romance. Has today's culture distorted a young person's appreciation for such things?

HELPRIN: It's blown everything apart, like a hand grenade. The structure on which romance is built has been attacked and destroyed, on the grounds that it's inequitable to women. Feminists argue that traditional romance is oppressive and antiquated. Chivalry, tenderness, and frothy romance are all frowned upon, even outlawed. In their place is another structure that's totally politicized.

TAE: Where do people turn to be inspired about love?

HELPRIN: Unfortunately, young people's introduction to this has been almost exclusively from the point-of-view of Los Angeles pornographers. Their introduction to sex has been with the raunchiest and grossest stuff. Only after they've been exposed to that are they supposed to date and go to a dance. Not only have things been coarsened, but the order has been reversed. Look, my first exposure to sex was when I had it. (laughs)

TAE: The popular culture certainly doesn't celebrate your experience.

HELPRIN: It sure doesn't. My daughters and I were recently listening to music. They like me to play them the antiquated things called records. They'll ask, "How do you make it so the needle goes in the right cut?" I was playing them some beautiful songs from a Broadway musical, wonderful romantic stuff. And I realized that their generation is programmed to have contempt for it because it's too soft, gushy, and dorky.

TAE: So what advice would you give single people about romance?

HELPRIN: Well, I've come to believe that the best place to meet a woman is in an emergency: earthquakes, fires, sinking ships, and attacks by enemy armies.

TAE: Just because you don't like cocktail parties?

HELPRIN: No, because in struggle people form the deepest bonds. That's what happens with men in combat. And when it happens between a man and a woman, it couldn't be better.

TAE: Which begs the question: How did you meet Mrs. Helprin?

HELPRIN: The first time I saw her she had a butcher knife in her hand, ready to kill me.