It's Smart To Be Dumb
Massa honey:
You know, of course, that the free-floating envy we regular folk have for
you political reporters is all about the post-event kickback session in the
hotel bar. We imagine that the lubricated and informed nature of your skewering
is just better than ours. What political junkie wouldn't give anything to hear
U.S. News and World Report , say, tell the Baltimore Sun that for
a guy who's been marinated in money, Dubya seems particularly beset by plural
articles and singular verbs. I really am waiting--maybe the next debate?--for
someone to ask him what caused World War II, and for him to tell us it was
Lust, Avarice, Sloth, Happy, and Doc. Dean Acheson book or no Dean Acheson
book, the guy clearly doesn't know from history.
To show solidarity with you, I watched the whole encounter, larded up as it
was with odd rules. Even if they all meant what they said--or even wrote it--a
president simply cannot do everything he wants, and can't do anything by
himself, so who really cares what gets said there? It's all just
blah-blah-blah. The only useful byproduct, perhaps, is that we get to see who's
uncomfortable with concepts, or who oughta' be given a pulpit.
After a while, I couldn't even make myself listen. Do you think I have
A.D.D.? McCain was the only one who came across as smart, informed, and
seemingly unscripted, though even he, in the wrap-up, seemed a little bit on
autopilot. Maybe all candidates--both parties--could just stipulate that they
plan to be good, fair, more, better. The impressions I came away with were that
Keyes works the plantation metaphors for reasons unclear to me. I already know
he's black. Bauer looks like a toy ... a doll whose name I cannot for the life
of me remember. And Bush ... well, he just seems like some lucky sum' bitch who
was whisked out onto center stage, no rehearsal necessary. (This is assuming,
of course, one imagines it lucky to wind up in the presidential race.) Not to
be fixated or anything, but Bush finessed the Dean Acheson book challenge. The
problem is that I haven't read that book, so I don't know if they caught
him out or not. And I want to know. Do you know? Maybe they could put a truth
squad up there when these guys go at it.
Since I was invited into no bar after the "debate," I read the New
Republic , which, strangely, gave me an overview of some of what I had just
seen: In this election year, it's smart to be dumb. Anti-intellectualism plays
well and equates with "character." Oh, brother. Anyway, come on out of that
desert. And don't forget orrinhatch.com.
xxM.
