Jonathan Chait begins his assault on Westen's New York Times op-ed in this way:
Westen is a figure, like George Lakoff, who arose during the darkest moments of the Bush years to sell liberals on an irresistible delusion. The delusion rests on the assumption that the timidity of their leaders is the only thing preventing their side from enjoying total victory. Conservatives, obviously, believe this as much or more than liberals. But the liberal fantasy has its own specific character. It is unusually fixated on the power of words. Before Westen and Lakoff, Aaron Sorkin has indulged the fantasy of a Democratic president who would simply advocate for unvarnished liberalism (defend the rights of flag burners, confiscate all the guns) and sweep along the public with the force of his conviction.
I recommend reading Chait's entire piece, not as an endorsement, necessarily, but because Westen's op-ed has received significant attention in the last 24 hours, and Chait's piece is a smart counterweight.
Chait's central critique is that Westen mistakenly rests his entire op-ed on the fantastical idea that rhetoric – that the stories our leaders tell us – have a central power in shaping public opinion (and, in turn, the policy that can then naturally follow).
It's the same fantasy upon which Sorkin built The West Wing – a fantasy that, Chait argues, is highly compelling as a narrative, but woefully inaccurate in real life.
Here, let Chait say it:
Westen's op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president in the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science. In Westen's telling, every known impediment to legislative progress -- special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion -- are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech.
Chait goes on to take Westen's facts to task, accusing him of wildly misrepresenting the circumstances around which FDR rose to power and the reasons for Obama's true struggles with regard to policy making. But I don't want to focus on that in this piece. You can read Chait.
What I'm most struck by is this: as a writer, as a storyteller, when I read Westen, all I did was nod my head. His words felt, emotionally, true. They felt powerful. The felt inventive.
After reading Chait, I realize that some of my deep emotional connection to what Westen wrote was, well, rooted in emotions. As a writer who believes (as I must) in the power of words to be transformational, in the power of narratives to be explosive in their effects, I wanted to believe Westen. In fact, while reading, I was rooting for him. Just as I rooted for President Jed Bartlet in The West Wing.
But was rooting for him in essence rooting for the fantasy, as Chait claims?
I don't have the answer to this question, yet. But for the first time today, I'm considering it.
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Author's Note: to clarify, since it seems that some view this diary as a rejection of Westen and a championing of Chait, it is neither (as stated in the diary itself).
Instead, this is meant as a thought piece - a space in which I am allowing for myself and all of us to consider both perspective.