Most surviving likeness of the New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872) are either caricatures or photographs taken in his later years. In political cartoons, he is often depicted wearing tiny spectacles, a top hat, and a voluminous overcoat with bulging pockets (one of his sartorial trademarks). In the post-Civil War photographs, Greeley is plump and sports a fringe of white beard, a little like Santa Claus but with beady eyes. Continue reading
Who can stand the sexist attacks on Hillary’s speaking fees?
The questions aim to make voters aware that, while not in office, Hillary accepted huge fees for speaking to audiences that included big banks. Like many effective campaign tactics, however, questioning the legitimacy of her fees also serves other, less-than-creditable ends. The questions implicitly cast aspersions on Hillary Clinton’s essential worth, on her value as a veteran stateswoman, and on the integrity of the speaking engagements themselves. The issue is a classic ‘dog-whistle’ tuned to the frequency of the envious and chauvinistic.
The underlying assumption? Something must be wrong because Hillary couldn’t possibly be worth that kind of money. Thank god Hillary is running for office! She’s giving us an opportunity to express our resentment toward women who defy social norms and out-perform men. How dare she make that kind of money in one day?
What’s clear from Secretary Clinton’s responses is that she doesn’t feel guilty. She doesn’t feel implicated in the banks’ decision to pay up to hear what’s in her heart and brain. Thank goodness she isn’t apologizing for the very legitimate demand within the business community to learn from one of the nation’s most experienced leaders.
But Hillary, for the sake of all women struggling against their own glass ceilings, you must go a step further. You must assert that your experience and perspective on American politics are unique, and that, in the eyes of the market, you deserve your fees.
You might lose the anti-capitalist vote, but you’d win the gratitude of millions of American women who are tired of being treated as though they can’t possibly be worth as much as a man.
A new year begins, bumpy with the legacy of all the months and years preceding. On the brink of the presidential primary season, we see patches and hazards ahead that bear the marks of the candidates, their penchants, and those of previous presidential administrations. We advance in a world filled with drones, guns, bombs, hotheads, and uncompromising minorities, some of these made more fearsome by government missteps or inactivity.
The deeds and failures of our political leaders and America’s most powerful citizens shape the society we must make our way in. As we careen into January, it befits us to acknowledge the best and worst of 2015:
Biggest winner
Barack Obama, who achieved most of his agenda for 2015.
Biggest loser
Every state that has refused to expand Medicaid.
Worst politician
Rahm Emanuel, narrowly beating out Benjamin Netanyahu.
Best politician
It’s still Bill Clinton.
Most overrated
Scott Walker, once touted as the ideal GOP candidate.
Most underrated
John Kerry, America’s best statesman since Kissinger.
Most stagnant thinker
The US Congress.
Most original thinker
The creative team behind NASA’s Mars Rover.
Best political theater
Pope Francis addressing Congress.
Worst political theater
Paul Ryan’s beard.
Worst lie
That Carly Fiorina is qualified to be president.
Best photo-op
September’s blood moon.
Capitalist of the year
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, now owner and invigorator of the Washington Post.
Turncoat of the year
Ted Cruz, now excoriating a justice he once admired.
Worst political scandal
Chicago’s cover-up of police misconduct.
Worst idea
That the US should wage war against ISIS in the Middle East.
Best idea
That everyone living in the US should have a legal status.
Boldest political tactics
Donald Trump’s.
Best government dollars spent
Investments in NASA that brought us closer than ever to Mars and Pluto.
Biggest government waste
Most of our military involvement in the Middle East.
Honorable mention
The swansongs of John Boehner and Joe Biden.
Enough already!
Obamacare repeals.
Sorry to see you go
Good-bye to the open out-cry trading pits of Chicago!
Destined for political oblivion in 2016
Marco Rubio, who has foolishly burned his bridges to the Senate.
Destined for political stardom in 2016
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. She is a prime pick for VP.
Image: Ethel Rundquist’s cover illustration
for the January 1916 issue of Vanity Fair, from this source.
People are asking what I think of the GOP race. I think the GOP lacks a strong candidate and that any analysis failing to factor in the entertainment value of the debates is seriously flawed.
The candidates are in a phase of competition now being referred to as the ‘virtual primary.’ This is rather insulting to voters, because the virtual primary doesn’t involve any voting. Instead, the media scrutinizes other measures extraneous to the democratic process to report on how candidates are supposedly faring, consulting betting pools, Nielsen ratings, fund-raising tallies, and public-opinion polls. By these measures, Donald Trump and Ben Carson are leading, and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are said to be gaining. Figures like Jeb Bush and John Kasich are said to be fading, to the point of being on ‘life support.’
Significantly, however, none of the fifteen remaining GOP candidates has dropped out since Scott Walker ended his bid on September 21. Many commentators had predicted a rash of drop-outs from among the supposedly trailing candidates come November 1. Yet, for now, all the candidates have chosen to stick around, possibly sensing that the supposed front-runners are unelectable and that the state-by-state primary votes will check the speculative nonsense of the virtual primary.
If, in fact, Republicans vote en masse to make a character like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, or Marco Rubio their nominee, it will spell another stage in the decline of the GOP. Old-style Republicans who believe in collaboration and the preservation of tradition will begin drifting away, looking for a way to regain their rightful preeminence as a political force. Go-it-alone candidates like Rubio and Cruz and fringe candidates like Trump and Carson do not enjoy the support of the party mainstream. (See David Brooks’s op-ed in the New York Times on October 13, which elicited a deluge of assent from readers disappointed in the direction of the GOP.)
In the meantime, we are witnessing proof of the entertainment value of politics. We can’t resist the cattle-call debates, because let’s face it, they’re damn good TV: ‘good’ in the sense of being unpredictable, juicy, and tangentially relating to matters of momentous seriousness. These are the very elements that define great drama. The debates have a circus-like atmosphere and are analyzed in the same performative terms that the commentators would apply to a boxing match or a new theater production.
The televised competition among the GOP candidates is entertaining, fantastical, and engrossing. The possibility of an outlandish figure like Donald Trump becoming president presents a wild challenge to our collective political imagination. Notwithstanding his red ferret-like face and ridiculous blond comb-over, Trump demands that we take him seriously. He plays a wild card, rudely blustering and defying political convention. His behavior, seen in purely dramatic terms, delivers a catharsis that many disaffected Americans find refreshing. Trump also embodies attributes that citizens long to see in a political leader: certainty and a conviction of being competent to ‘reign.’ His style is the antithesis of candidates who are ruled by dweeby advisors and focus-group wisdom.
Trump’s intrusion into politics gives us something to ponder: for, were this particularly entertaining figure to become president, the effect on our political culture would be profound. Yet my sense is that Americans don’t want cartharsis every day. For now, Trump and the other candidates supply a unique form of entertainment–one that will dwindle in significance as audiences turn into voters and go to the polls.
It occurred to a photographer traveling with William Taft during the 1908 presidential campaign to take this picture of the people of De Witt, Nebraska, running to catch up with Taft’s slowing train. Taft, a Republican and then vice-president, was running to succeed Theodore Roosevelt. It was the hey-day of the whistle-stop campaign, which Roosevelt had taken to new extremes. In an age when newspaper was the nation’s reigning mass media, seeing a leading politician in person was rare and precious. In a small town, the visit of a future president generated universal excitement.
The image registers photography’s growing ability to capture the spontaneous action of everyday scenes. Despite the movement of the crowd (and the train), the camera captures the running townspeople and the setting with remarkable clarity. A woman in an enormous hat smiles while shielding her eyes from the sun; the flags’ stripes flap crisply over others as they run; in the distance, a retreating train billows exhaust. A decade earlier, such a photograph would likely have been an impossible blur.
Technical advances had widened the scope of photography, which in turn began comprehending more of the scene: not just frozen dignitaries but the living, breathing citizens they aspired to lead.
Image: from this source.