'Politics': Pundit's ProgressBy Richard Brookhiser
Published July 4th 2004 in New York Times
When I picked up this book, I hoped I would find a description I have remembered, almost word for word, since I last read it, in Hendrik Hertzberg's coverage of the 1988 presidential campaign in The New Republic. It's here, on Page 192. ''Richard Gephardt . . . puts me in mind, unreasonably to be sure, of an earthling whose body has been taken over by space aliens. I keep expecting him to reach under his chin and peel back that immobile, monochromatic, oddly smooth face to reveal the lizard beneath.'' As a senior editor of National Review who was also covering that campaign, I wished I'd written that.
''Politics: Observations & Arguments'' (which will be available next week) is a collection of almost 40 years of articles. During that time Hertzberg served a stint at Newsweek, two at The New Republic as its editor and two at The New Yorker, where he is now the featured writer of the opening Talk of the Town piece. His observations pour out of journalism's top drawer. As Pat Robertson speaks, ''self-satisfaction seems to bubble up in his body, and when it bubbles up to mouth level, his voice gets gurgly with suppressed chuckles and the corners of his mouth stretch out as if his smile was shooting its cuffs.'' Delegates to political conventions ''wear funnier hats than they do in the Supreme Soviet, but their scope for discretionary decision making is more limited,'' and the ''only remaining function'' of conventions ''is to be the pretext for a gigantic press Woodstock.'' He writes about a candidate's aides: ''I call them 'minders' rather than 'handlers,' the usual term, because the part of the candidate's person they substitute for is the mind, not the hands. Perhaps someday we could have a political campaign in which this pattern is reversed and the staff does the handshaking while the candidate does the thinking.''
The journalistic observer treats politics as a serious carnival, or a vulgar drama -- history happening, pace Marx, as tragedy and farce simultaneously. The tools of his craft are conviction, experience, affection and malice, all wielded under deadline pressure. The observer's lightness of touch gives his prose bite; his prejudices and his knowledge of elections past give it ballast; the daily grind supplies his material; speed gets the job done. The result may not be Aristotle, but what editor would send Aristotle to Iowa?
Hertzberg brings the same skills and stance to his writing about the news
media. As befits the traditionalism of journalists, he is fondest of old forms, like big-city tabloids. In ''Topless Tabloids of Gotham,'' he says the best tabloid writing is ''as direct and riveting as a ransom note.'' He is sharpest on late-20th-century media and the plankton they feed on. ''The
year 1968 marked the emergence of what has been called (if only by me) the expectorate -- the congeries of political reporters, consultants, pollsters, commentators and loiterers who decide how a candidate is expected to do, and who declare afterward that this or that candidate has done better or worse than expected.'' Blogging appeared on Hertzberg's watch, though he doesn't get around to observing it here.
Such pieces, which form maybe a fifth of this book, belong to a tradition
of political color commentary that includes H. L. Mencken; his former copy boy Murray Kempton; A. J. Liebling; William F. Buckley Jr. (in ''The Unmaking of a Mayor''); Norman Mailer (''Miami and the Siege of Chicago''); Hunter S. Thompson (''Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72''). These writers have much to tell about individual politicians and slices of American life, but paradoxically they are not dependable guides to politics, their (and Hertzberg's) nominal subject. Mencken wrote that Franklin Roosevelt was ''the weakest candidate'' at the Democratic convention of 1932. At the end of ''The Earl of Louisiana,'' Liebling realized that he had misunderstood Earl Long, the politician he was covering. One day, during the 1984 election cycle, I drove Murray Kempton into Des Moines from the airport. He told me how much he had liked the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and how much he had disliked the former presidential candidate John Anderson. I smiled, but after all, John Anderson had never murdered anyone, or any thousands, which should affect our likes and dislikes. Journalistic observers can teach us many things, but not necessarily what they offer to teach, or what we expect to learn.
The bulk of ''Politics'' consists of arguments: comments on issues of the
day; assessments of major figures, including Jimmy Carter, whom Hertzberg served as chief speechwriter. These pieces, with one cluster of exceptions, are bland, bullying and dogmatic. I found myself worrying whenever I agreed with one of them (who knows, maybe the drug war is actually a good idea). Boring to read, they seem as if they were boring to write. Introducing a section called ''Wedge Issues,'' Hertzberg calls capital punishment ''an easy call.'' So, in his judgment, is the drug war, as well as laws against flag burning and sodomy. ''Why isn't everyone simply against all three, end of story? Abortion, affirmative action and pornography,'' he goes on, ''present somewhat more complex moral challenges, but it is baffling to me how a person of good will, after examining these issues with care, could conclude that it would be either wise or good to criminalize the first, abolish the second and abridge civil liberties in order to extirpate the third.'' So Hertzberg doesn't bother to examine them with any care.
The exceptions are Hertzberg's remarks about electoral reform. Perhaps
because this is an intellectual frontier, explored only by lonely wonks,
Hertzberg digs in, analyzing term limits, gerrymandering, proportional
representation and the Electoral College. This could become prime real
estate. The most dramatically screwed-up presidential elections in early
American history -- those of 1800, 1824 and 1876 -- were complicated
affairs in which the popular vote was unknowable, either because state
legislatures picked many presidential electors or because of rampant fraud. For all the long years when the only runner-up in the national popular vote who had prevailed in the Electoral College was Benjamin Harrison (who beat Grover Cleveland in 1888), Americans could shrug. But George W. Bush's victory over the national popular vote winner, Al Gore, in 2000 raised everyone's hackles, pro and con (Hertzberg calls Bush's election a ''coup d'etat''). If this year's election should produce a third victory for a loser of the popular vote, the calls for change will be deafening.
So we bump along with Hertzberg, reliving our past, sometimes delighted, sometimes annoyed; many strangers on long plane flights are worse. Then comes 9/11, and something happens to our Virgil. In his first piece written after the attack, when Lower Manhattan was still smoking, he offers this credo: ''The scale of the damage notwithstanding, a more useful metaphor than war is crime. The terrorists of September 11 are outlaws within a global polity. . . . Their status and numbers are such that the task of dealing with them should be viewed as a police matter, of the most urgent kind.'' This is the prism through which he will see all later events. Why is it so defective? Like many wars, the war on terror is a new kind, but it is still a war. Al Qaeda used the Taliban regime of Afghanistan as a host body; America and its allies had to bring it down. Elements of Pakistani intelligence and the military had been colluding with the Taliban; America's reaction, and two assassination attempts, concentrated General Musharraf's mind. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and the Saudi response to this fact has been spastic; Washington has tried, arguably not hard enough, to get the Saudis' attention.
The post-9/11 world we live in is not one of crime-fighting, but of
war-making and war-threatening. We can expect the fighting to be long and intermittent, with coalitions breaking and re-forming, popular support
waxing and waning. Occupations, like that in Iraq, may prove to be as
bloody as attacks. Hertzberg served in the Navy stateside for two years
during the Vietnam War, yet he seems to understand little of this. He
wishes the war hadn't happened; therefore, except for our own blundering, it hasn't.
Hendrik Hertzberg is amusing, insightful and stubborn. His time has passed. Not, alas, ours.
Richard Brookhiser is the author of several books, including ''Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution.''
''Politics: Observations & Arguments'' (which will be available next week) is a collection of almost 40 years of articles. During that time Hertzberg served a stint at Newsweek, two at The New Republic as its editor and two at The New Yorker, where he is now the featured writer of the opening Talk of the Town piece. His observations pour out of journalism's top drawer. As Pat Robertson speaks, ''self-satisfaction seems to bubble up in his body, and when it bubbles up to mouth level, his voice gets gurgly with suppressed chuckles and the corners of his mouth stretch out as if his smile was shooting its cuffs.'' Delegates to political conventions ''wear funnier hats than they do in the Supreme Soviet, but their scope for discretionary decision making is more limited,'' and the ''only remaining function'' of conventions ''is to be the pretext for a gigantic press Woodstock.'' He writes about a candidate's aides: ''I call them 'minders' rather than 'handlers,' the usual term, because the part of the candidate's person they substitute for is the mind, not the hands. Perhaps someday we could have a political campaign in which this pattern is reversed and the staff does the handshaking while the candidate does the thinking.''
The journalistic observer treats politics as a serious carnival, or a vulgar drama -- history happening, pace Marx, as tragedy and farce simultaneously. The tools of his craft are conviction, experience, affection and malice, all wielded under deadline pressure. The observer's lightness of touch gives his prose bite; his prejudices and his knowledge of elections past give it ballast; the daily grind supplies his material; speed gets the job done. The result may not be Aristotle, but what editor would send Aristotle to Iowa?
Hertzberg brings the same skills and stance to his writing about the news
media. As befits the traditionalism of journalists, he is fondest of old forms, like big-city tabloids. In ''Topless Tabloids of Gotham,'' he says the best tabloid writing is ''as direct and riveting as a ransom note.'' He is sharpest on late-20th-century media and the plankton they feed on. ''The
year 1968 marked the emergence of what has been called (if only by me) the expectorate -- the congeries of political reporters, consultants, pollsters, commentators and loiterers who decide how a candidate is expected to do, and who declare afterward that this or that candidate has done better or worse than expected.'' Blogging appeared on Hertzberg's watch, though he doesn't get around to observing it here.
Such pieces, which form maybe a fifth of this book, belong to a tradition
of political color commentary that includes H. L. Mencken; his former copy boy Murray Kempton; A. J. Liebling; William F. Buckley Jr. (in ''The Unmaking of a Mayor''); Norman Mailer (''Miami and the Siege of Chicago''); Hunter S. Thompson (''Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72''). These writers have much to tell about individual politicians and slices of American life, but paradoxically they are not dependable guides to politics, their (and Hertzberg's) nominal subject. Mencken wrote that Franklin Roosevelt was ''the weakest candidate'' at the Democratic convention of 1932. At the end of ''The Earl of Louisiana,'' Liebling realized that he had misunderstood Earl Long, the politician he was covering. One day, during the 1984 election cycle, I drove Murray Kempton into Des Moines from the airport. He told me how much he had liked the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and how much he had disliked the former presidential candidate John Anderson. I smiled, but after all, John Anderson had never murdered anyone, or any thousands, which should affect our likes and dislikes. Journalistic observers can teach us many things, but not necessarily what they offer to teach, or what we expect to learn.
The bulk of ''Politics'' consists of arguments: comments on issues of the
day; assessments of major figures, including Jimmy Carter, whom Hertzberg served as chief speechwriter. These pieces, with one cluster of exceptions, are bland, bullying and dogmatic. I found myself worrying whenever I agreed with one of them (who knows, maybe the drug war is actually a good idea). Boring to read, they seem as if they were boring to write. Introducing a section called ''Wedge Issues,'' Hertzberg calls capital punishment ''an easy call.'' So, in his judgment, is the drug war, as well as laws against flag burning and sodomy. ''Why isn't everyone simply against all three, end of story? Abortion, affirmative action and pornography,'' he goes on, ''present somewhat more complex moral challenges, but it is baffling to me how a person of good will, after examining these issues with care, could conclude that it would be either wise or good to criminalize the first, abolish the second and abridge civil liberties in order to extirpate the third.'' So Hertzberg doesn't bother to examine them with any care.
The exceptions are Hertzberg's remarks about electoral reform. Perhaps
because this is an intellectual frontier, explored only by lonely wonks,
Hertzberg digs in, analyzing term limits, gerrymandering, proportional
representation and the Electoral College. This could become prime real
estate. The most dramatically screwed-up presidential elections in early
American history -- those of 1800, 1824 and 1876 -- were complicated
affairs in which the popular vote was unknowable, either because state
legislatures picked many presidential electors or because of rampant fraud. For all the long years when the only runner-up in the national popular vote who had prevailed in the Electoral College was Benjamin Harrison (who beat Grover Cleveland in 1888), Americans could shrug. But George W. Bush's victory over the national popular vote winner, Al Gore, in 2000 raised everyone's hackles, pro and con (Hertzberg calls Bush's election a ''coup d'etat''). If this year's election should produce a third victory for a loser of the popular vote, the calls for change will be deafening.
So we bump along with Hertzberg, reliving our past, sometimes delighted, sometimes annoyed; many strangers on long plane flights are worse. Then comes 9/11, and something happens to our Virgil. In his first piece written after the attack, when Lower Manhattan was still smoking, he offers this credo: ''The scale of the damage notwithstanding, a more useful metaphor than war is crime. The terrorists of September 11 are outlaws within a global polity. . . . Their status and numbers are such that the task of dealing with them should be viewed as a police matter, of the most urgent kind.'' This is the prism through which he will see all later events. Why is it so defective? Like many wars, the war on terror is a new kind, but it is still a war. Al Qaeda used the Taliban regime of Afghanistan as a host body; America and its allies had to bring it down. Elements of Pakistani intelligence and the military had been colluding with the Taliban; America's reaction, and two assassination attempts, concentrated General Musharraf's mind. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and the Saudi response to this fact has been spastic; Washington has tried, arguably not hard enough, to get the Saudis' attention.
The post-9/11 world we live in is not one of crime-fighting, but of
war-making and war-threatening. We can expect the fighting to be long and intermittent, with coalitions breaking and re-forming, popular support
waxing and waning. Occupations, like that in Iraq, may prove to be as
bloody as attacks. Hertzberg served in the Navy stateside for two years
during the Vietnam War, yet he seems to understand little of this. He
wishes the war hadn't happened; therefore, except for our own blundering, it hasn't.
Hendrik Hertzberg is amusing, insightful and stubborn. His time has passed. Not, alas, ours.
Richard Brookhiser is the author of several books, including ''Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution.''
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.