Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Only New York Can Save Us

The New Yorker:

If a five-foot-seven divorced Jew with a nasal whine is taken seriously as a Presidential candidate, it would at the very least diminish the power of faux symbols in our political life; and a Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg race would so thoroughly explode the Sun Belt’s lock on the White House that an entirely new kind of politics might be possible, in which evolution is not at issue, no one has to pretend to like pork rinds, and the past tense of “drag” is “dragged.”

In order for politics to become less about faux symbols it is first necessary for the press to spend all its time discussing the candidacy of a man who has said he has no interest in running. It is necessary, in a sort of dialectical turn, that the road to a substantive politics passes through a period of horse race journalism.

The truly stunning part is the idea that if Clinton wins, we will have an entirely new kind of politics. Let me say it loud and clear, kids: If Hillary wins, two families will have run this country for at least twenty-four straight years. We might as well have a monarchy.

4 comments:

Shawn said...

I don't know what the deal is with the anti-Southern linguistic sentiment. Some of us that have a different standard past tense for "drag". The association they are making isn't warranted or necessary.

Shawn said...

er, that should be "Some of us just have...".

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure a Hillary victory wouldn't just make explicit what's been implicit in American politics for the last century. What about the Kennedys or the Rockefellers?

Justin said...

You may be right about Hillary just being confirmation of what's already present rather than a real change in the way things work. I think it's still farcical to talk about how special a Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg ticket would be.