Wsj Interview David Foster Wallace
A WSJ interview with David Foster Wallace on the occasion of the publication of McCain’s Promise, a repackaged version of an excellent article he wrote in 2000 about following McCain’s campaign for two weeks. He gets into the current election a little as well:
The truth—as I see it—is that the previous seven years and four months of the Bush Administration have been such an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate that it’s very difficult to imagine how a self-identified Republican could try to position himself as a populist.
(thx, bill s.)
Comments (8)
Yikes, what a shallow, child-like observation from someone who I generally presume to be very intelligent. The obvious answer to that question is that not all Republicans are George Bush. Republicans weren't in power for the last eight years, George Bush and his Republicans were in power. To paint an entire party with one brush, while potentially appropriate while voting, is not at all appropriate when you discuss whether an individual party member's beliefs are 'populist' or not. Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chaffee are in the same party as George Bush. Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are in the same party as Hillary Clinton and, until recently, Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller. A party does not define its members' beliefs, it merely sets murky outermost boundaries of beliefs with no requirements for inclusion or requisites for exclusion. If you say you're in a party, you're in that party... the party has no standing to say otherwise. If McCain announced that he was a Green Party member tomorrow, but held the exact same beliefs, would DFW have the same objection? Either he's a populist based on his beliefs, or he isn't, but his party affiliation has no bearing on that determination.
I haven't read the article, so I assume this was just an unfortunate pull-quote.
And now I'm off to the bank! Damn taxes. I'm voting McCain.
PS. I don't in fact know who I'm voting for.
Or is he just talking about the situation from a PR point of view? I suppose that would make more sense, but it's still kind of silly.
Ok, really off to the bank now.
Yeah, he was talking about it from a PR point of view, and from that perspective it makes sense. Whether or not it's fair to associate all Republicans with Bush, the American public seems to have decided, based on the result of early elections so far, that the party and its members as a whole bear responsibility. I would agree: there are very few examples of Republicans who stood up to the Bush administration. Even Newt Gingrich seems to think that it would be a good thing for the party as a whole to lose the upcoming election.
Lincoln Chaffee should have run in the primaries.
I wouldn't even say it's appropriate when voting. Not that it's hard to see why people feel that way.
I dunno, I sorta feel that it's appropriate. The actions of a party as a whole nearly outweigh any action an individual legislator can take.
I liked the bit about smiley faces at the end of the interview.