John McCain seems to believe that he is channeling Teddy Roosevelt these days.
Edmund Morris writing in the NYT has taken actual historical utterance of TR and applied them freely but with some wit to questions of today's Presidential campaign. These are excerpts below.
Theodore Roosevelt, Pundit
By EDMUND MORRIS
Published: October 27, 2008
Q. Mr. McCain has always prided himself on his independence. At least, until he began to take direction from chief executives and retired generals —
A. But the signs now are that these advisers have themselves awakened to the fact that they have almost ruined him.
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Q. Does his vow to give Joe the Plumber a tax break remind you of Reaganomics?
A. This is merely the plan, already tested and found wanting, of giving prosperity to the big men on top, and trusting to their mercy to let something leak through to the mass of their countrymen below — which, in effect, means that there shall be no attempt to regulate the ferocious scramble in which greed and cunning reap the largest rewards.
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Q. Should we condone the huge severance packages paid to executives of rescued corporations?
A. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will come only from those who are mean of soul.
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Q. (re-Obama) There’ll be Joe Biden to counsel him, of course. Assuming Mr. Obama can keep track of what he’s saying.
A. (laughing) You can’t nail marmalade against a wall.
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Q. Talking of foreign policy, what do you think of Mr. McCain’s choice of a female running mate?
A. Times have changed (sigh). It is entirely inexcusable, however, to try to combine the unready hand with the unbridled tongue.
Q. How will you feel if Sarah Palin is elected?
A. I shall feel exactly the way a very small frog looks when it swallows a beetle the size of itself, with extremely stiff legs.
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Q. What’s your impression of President Bush these days?
A. (suddenly serious) He looks like Judas, but unlike that gentleman has no capacity for remorse.
Read the whole thing at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/opinion/27morris.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
2 comments:
Been around to a few blogs where
'Joe the Plumber' has been beatified as the fount of all reason. When these nice folk are
given a list (largest ever) of the 62 Nobel Science laureates who have endorsed Obama, the reaction is somewhat less than rational...what gives?
I think it may be because we have more faith in our ideologies than in our realities.
John Gardner once said:
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
From: Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961)
So when we split ourselves into them and us, like we have over the past four decades,ideologies will take us down.
Our trouble is compounded by stupid and greedy plumbers as well as shoddy philosophies of greed. Be they of the elect, of the elite, of the effete, or of the elemental; true believers only believe their truth, and that is where we are.
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