Thursday, February 10, 2005 :::
 
Two posts for today--scroll down for actual punditry in print by A Mind That Suits. The promised appreciation of a fallen colleague--on the theme "Angels Unawares"--is proving a little difficult to get right, for reasons that will be obvious whenever it appears. Virtue is so very hard to write about.

Now, the first of two for the day:

A Mind That Suits is pleased to introduce a new blog--Dr. Curmudgeon--put together by some old friends, some of whom are very well placed. Which is why they are anonymous. For you Allen Drury fans out there, the post reproduced below is by a political operative whose insightfulness so impressed Al that, after getting the usual round-up from his then-less-pudgy-and-not-quite-so-balded nephew would ask, "What does (Dr. Potomac) think?" The contributors are all first rate, as are their posts.

As soon as he remembers how to link without deleting his own blog, he will add Dr. Curmudgeon to his list on the right.

But attend to these brilliant insights, anent the good doctor from Vermont.

Praising Dr. Dean

Dr. Potomac must thank the Ombudsman for raising the important point of Dr. Howard Dean, erstwhile presidential candidate and governor of Vermont, and soon to be Chairman of the oldest political party in human history. The reason for Dr. Potomac's silence on this topic is simply that he is of two minds.In one mind, he's sees the logic of it perfectly. Dean is the closest thing that exists to a genuine populist figure in the Democratic Party -- if one can imagine a a popular base made up entirely of the academic, environmental and feminist elites of the country. He was able to raise $40 million dollars for his presidential bid (not since John Connally has so much political money been spent to so little political effect) through innovative use of Web-based campaigning. That is the kind of political entrepreneurship that has been entirely missing among the Democrats for 30 years or so and which was starkly missing in the John Kerry campaign. (John Kerry, true to his parsimonious New England heritage, managed to save $9 million of the funds he raised, and boy does he has some 'splainin to do.) From the rank-in-file standpoint, Howard Dean might not be a good candidate but he could very well be an excellent chairman.The above explanation assumes, of course, that the Democratic party is still on the rails of reason. A second, more plausible, explanation is that they really are just batty. Dean, as he did on the campaign trail, is the chairman of those reduced to spittle-flecked rage by the Bush presidency. Peter Beinart's call to purge the Dean/Michael Moore wing of the party, brings to mind the famous Leninist formulation, "Kto, kovo?" Translated into our context this means roughly, "Just who's going to purge whom around here?" The reason Dean has waltzed into the chairmanship is that the Deniacs are the permanent Democratic party as opposed to the Democratic party that assembles quadrenially in the cold, Iowa night to launch a frontrunner. One expects the owner to mind the store. It is Howard Dean's party. Everyone else just has to live in it.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 4:25 PM


0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.