David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
Good morning Dearheart,
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StumbleUponWoozy Wednesday. A surfeit of R.W. Apple, a double portion from David Broder, several bushels of Bradley and McCain eulogies. I ate so much news analysis for breakfast that I may have damaged my colon. Call Katie Couric!
The great unfairness in today's coverage: The punishment of John McCain. Yes, of course, Senator Hero has gotten a free ride from reporters till now, but today's criticism is wrongheaded. Maureen Dowd sings the theme: McCain destroyed his once-promising campaign by becoming bitter and aggressive about Bush. Instead of sticking to his noble principles, he ruined himself with personal attacks and growing aggrievement. Not fair, I say. McCain may have lost, but he ran as good a campaign as I have ever seen. Facing unbelievable obstacles--a huge cash shortfall, total opposition from his own party establishment, a popular rival, and the hatred of the conservative core of the Republican primary vote--McCain managed to bankrupt Bush, shake that establishment to its bones, and come within a hair of knocking off the crowned nominee. It was a sublime performance. The story of Super Tuesday is not that McCain blew it, but that Bush nearly did.
Speaking of Bush, the Times' top story notes that he "struggled to contain a satisfied grin" during public appearances last night. I saw his interview with CNN: He lost that struggle badly. He was grinning so broadly I thought he might eat the camera. The Super Tuesday win has brought the Bush Smirk back: If I were one of his advisers, I would lock him up in a room and make him read stories about the dead bichon frisé until he's overcome with sadness. Only when that smile has been wiped off his mug for good should he be allowed in front of a camera.
How long do you think till vice-presidential speculation starts? What the heck, let's start it now. For Bush's running mate, I predict a young Catholic northeastern Republican: maybe Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, maybe Gov. Tom Ridge of the same state. Or, if Bush is really bold, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a McCain ally, but the party's most impressive youngster. As for Gore, I am at a loss. He should pick a woman, but there aren't any really strong women candidates. Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is not quite seasoned enough. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson is tarnished by the Lewinsky scandal. Perhaps Washington Governor Gary Locke, who could be the first Asian-American elected to national office? Your thoughts?
But enough about the most important presidential campaign in a generation, let's talk about us. While you were devouring the papers' Super Tuesday coverage in bed this morning, I did something that reveals my fundamentally frivolous and self-centered soul: I logged onto the New York Observer's Web site to see what the imperturbable Gabriel Snyder wrote about us. Perhaps our desperate pleas moved the sweet-tempered Gabriel: His "Off the Record" column is almost sympathetic: "Slate readers are being treated to an exchange between Hanna Rosin, a religion reporter for the Washington Post, and David Plotz, Slate's Washington bureau chief, who is also Ms. Rosin's husband. And so the tone of the email between the two has swung back and forth between pillow talk and wonk-speak." That isn't so bad, is it?
One other Super Tuesday point: Did you catch the catchy new term that Al Gore coined during his acceptance speech last night (of course you did, you were sitting on the couch watching CNN with me when he said it). Political language is larded with terms to describe interest groups: "the disabled," "minorities," "senior citizens," "the uninsured," "the needy," etc. Last night, Gore demanded tougher gun controls to keep firearms away from "children, criminals, the unstable ..." The "unstable"--what a sharp and evocative phrase! I hope it sticks.
Love,
Ms. Rosin's husband
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Highlights from The Fray:
Obviously I'm biased, and in mourning, but Hanna's outburst about Bill Bradley [see Wednesday's entry] still seems to be a bit much...it's pretty hard to exit one of these races with any grace and dignity, and I think my guy's doing a pretty dang good job of it. Regarding "you just lost, nobody liked you" - Bradley picked up a fairly consistent 30% of the vote nationwide, but many more didn't hate Bradley but they simply thought Gore was the better candidate. Could you imagine if Gore hadn't gone through a primary? Six months of getting killed in the press every night by the GOP? And certainly Bradley did raise a number of issues that the veep wouldn't have prioritized--including universal health care, race relations, and, yes, campaign finance reform.
--Sad Bradley Fan
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[And see Thursday's entry where Ms Rosin responds: that Bradley mourner in The Fray made me feel bad.]
The Breakfast Table asked [see Tuesday's entry] why science reporters haven't written articles explaining the reason TRW and other contractors have such a hard time making a workable missile defense. The short answer (I'm a correspondent for Science magazine, which I assume makes me a science reporter) is that they have written such articles, and the reason that the contractors are having such trouble is that the task is extremely difficult. It's like shooting a bullet at a bullet, only much, much harder. Longer explanatory analogy: I once saw Pief Panofsky, the Stanford physicist who helped negotiate the test-ban treaty, talk about this subject in Cambridge. He asked the audience to imagine some nutty guy who liked to drive into his garage by hitting the garage-door opener at precisely the right moment so that the door flew open exactly as he rolled in. If you think about it for a moment, you can see that this is quite like flying into the path of a missile at exactly the right time so that you hit its forward section -- it's a matter of split-second timing. Now imagine that you are doing this at thousands of miles an hour. Now imagine that instead of a regular car, you are driving a jet-powered car, which shudders and shakes and has to be constantly course-corrected just to stay in a straight line, which of course must be factored in to your garage-door opening. Now imagine that the garage is moving, too, and it's jiggling through the air just like you are. Now imagine that you have to make a whole lot of the crucial decisions when you are miles away and can't even get a good look at the garage. Now imagine -- Panofsky went on like this for a good while, and in the end pretty much convinced everyone in the audience that the ABM treaty was a good idea primarily because it would prevent nations from spending billions of dollars to build systems that simply could not work. Or, rather, that it was supposed to do that -- I guess we're doing it anyway.
--Charles C. Mann
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You asked {Tuesday's entry] what TRW stands for.
Two brainy guys formed Ramo-Woolridge in Los Angeles and showed up on the cover of Time in the late 1950s. Soon after, the big successful machine shop, Thompson Products, acquired them. I don't remember if they named their company Thompson-Ramo-Woolridge, but if they did, they soon changed it to their italicized monogram, TRW.
--Thomas Tersigni
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I love this word, "ironists," as in "committed Democrats and ironists all" by Hanna [See Tuesday's entry]. As for me, I try to live without irony, but sometimes my shirts are just too damned wrinkled, especially the cotton ones. And "canicide!" Fabulous.
--Tim K.
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Plotz has a dizziness accumulated only from his great rareness in common folkish observations without realizing that greatness comes from all around him and manifests itself only to those who are not so encumbered as he obviously is in his own importance and cowering adjectives self learned and looking for a target that is worthy of his very dubious talents and one that is not likely to object as he reads much more worthy...stuff.
--bill schwarz
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To hell with Gabriel Snyder--more domesticity please.
--Jim Crowley
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