ESL American Politics

Bush and Perot engage in preoccupied banter during Clinton's soliloquy.A student today was telling me about the recent awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Japanese scientists and a scientist from Purdue, and it led into a discussion of Indiana and how that state fits into American electoral politics.  This in turn devolved into a gross oversimplification of the whole American scene.

We discussed the geopolitical history of the United States from roughly the time of the French and Indian War up until the U.S. Civil War as defined roughly by maintaining the balance of power between northern states with interests in manufacturing and industry and southern states interested in agriculture.  When we discussed the westward expansion, I maintained that this distinction between southern "slave states" and northern "free states" was very much preserved, and forms the basis from which much of modern American geopolitics has come.

We skipped over the Gilded Age and mentioned the New Deal only in passing as primarily concerned with the size, scope, and responsibility of the government before moving on to the Reagan and post-Reagan years as primarily defined by incoherence (although future political historians may be able to overgeneralize about the present as I have here done about the past) since Reagan's Big Tent.  I made her look up the word "incoherent" in her electronic dictionary.

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Hitting Em Where it Hurts

That progressive organizations are going after the finances of public figures who criticize Obama shouldn't surprise anyone.  It started with pressuring advertisers to pull out of Glenn Beck's program, and now three people have lost their jobs after groups suggested there was a conflict of interest given their comments.  Philosophically it makes sense, there has been a concerted effort at misinformation and scare tactics from the right and the left learned bitter lessons from the way Bill Clinton was treated.

However, the practice lends itself to the talking point of left taking away freedoms - no matter that the First Amendment doesn't guarantee freedom from the consequences of saying stupid things - and it heightens the vicious tribalism of both the left and right.  In the long run, actions like these are counterproductive, because it only prompts a heightened response from the other side.  I'm not naive enough to say that everyone should just start playing fair, but it is possible to be tough, honest, and honorable.  On the other hand, it isn't progressive politicians engaging in tough tactics, progressive movement groups do what they will. 

The Other Side of Bill Clinton

I haven't picked up The Clinton Tapes yet, and odds are I won't ever because 600+ pages is a lot, but this interview with the book's author (who's known the Clintons since the early 70's), Taylor Branch, speaks to a reality more complex than the standard portrait of a greatly talented man whose flaws nearly undid him.  While his reputation for obfuscation makes me wonder if anyone can really find the objective truth about him, many of the details are fascinating.  This one in particular is really upsets the applecart of my perceptions (even if it's a little tawdry):

It was interesting to read your descriptions of Bill and Hillary. Halfway through the impeachment trial, the doorman at the White House refused to let you in because they were making out in a hallway.
Well, that only happened once. I don’t know if their relationship is romantic, but it’s not cold... there’s warmth there. There’s communion. They would hold hands. How much eroticism is in there, I have no idea. But it was striking.