from my blog, Basie!
This week, there is another interesting piece in The New Yorker, this one on John Kerry and the Democratic National Convention. My take on it in a moment, but first, the week's best cartoon:
Click here to order the cartoon.
Articles in
The New Yorker are almost always extremely well-written, and the commentary piece by David Remnick--"
Conventional Warfare"--is a perfect example of this. Remnick begins as such, enticing a history-buff like myself to read further.
"There's a case to be made that it hardly matters how eloquent or effective John Kerry was at the Democratic National Convention last week. What matters infinitely more is that George W. Bush is the worst President the country has endured since Richard Nixon, and even mediocrity would be an improvement. Indeed, if one regards the Bush Administration's sins of governance--its distortion of intelligence in a time of crisis, its grotesque indulgence of the rich at the expense of the rest, its arrogant dissolution of American prestige and influence abroad, its heedless squandering of the world's resources--as worse than the third-rate burglary and second-rate coverup of thirty years ago, then President Bush is in a league only with the likes of Harding, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan."
Remnick goes on to write about how in a time of "Bush Bashing" featuring a plethora of books detailing the fatal flaws of the current administration, a concerted effort was made last week to ensure that almost all attacks on the President were non grata at the podium of the Democratic National Convention. He writes that this came from "a lesson learned from Conventions past---it is easier to decry divisiveness when you aren't displaying it."
Remnick then writes of a key quality all politicians must have to be embraced by the electorate (again in a way that excited a history-lover like me): "The attempt to establish authenticity is a universal in politics--Yitzhak Rabin had it, Shimon Peres didn't; Eisenhower had it, Stevenson didn't--and it has long been a particular burden for Democrats, who, since 1968, have routinely been cast, by their opponents, as the party of white-wine-swilling weaklings."
The author then says that Kerry's authenticity comes from the military experiences and leadership thereafter; this is why the topic was so frequently presented during the four days of the Convention. Additionally, Remnick opines that this is part of what made Kerry's acceptance speech so effective.
Overall, this was a very interesting piece and I recommend you read it.
check out my political blog, Basie!