Welcome back to D.C., Ralph!
I’m impressed that you can still use the legal pad for composition. I won’t even ask how your words magically assumed electronic form—I am enough of a veteran of Team Nader to be able to guess. Through decades of disuse my handwriting has atrophied to total dis-functionality. Not even I know what it says any more. Mike Kelly, the Atlantic’s editor (this is my segue to mentioning that the Atlantic won three National Magazine Awards yesterday), was saying recently that the skill that would most immediately improve journalists’ lives and work was shorthand. I realize that there are lots of ways to end the sentence, “The thing that would make journalists better is …” Still, he’s right. Maybe it’s not too late to learn.
Hey, on the priests, my initial bet was “two generations from now” for a shift from all-male celibates. That takes us to 2050, more or less. Let’s hope we’re both around to see who’s right then.
We’re nearing the end, and I have a long list of things I’d ideally like to ask you about. (For later reference: the great Washington Post piece about the fraud of college-admission “waiting lists,” plus related pieces about rising college costs; another very good Post piece about the telecom fiasco, which is affecting the rest of the economy and which the Federal Communications Commission might try to deal with, if Michael Powell were so inclined; the ever-mounting scandal of brokerage firms, like Merrill Lynch, misleading their clients, which matters more and more as 401ks replace company pensions; a genuinely funny New York Times story about “rescue rats”; the struggle over one of the two most senseless weapons on the Pentagon’s current wish list, the Crusader—for details on the other senseless project, the F-22, check the current Atlantic; and so on.) But I want to skip ahead to one big point, in hopes you can say something about it before we close.
It turns out that Nick Lemann’s New Yorker profile of John Edwards is where we should have started this discussion. It’s very good, as you would expect, and it establishes a number of obvious-when-you-think-about-them but important points. For instance: that the race for the Democratic nomination is officially underway, as of the Florida convention last month; that Gore is going to run, based on his speech there; that Gore’s simple name-brand presence carries surprising weight; and that Edwards’ chances are based on combining the best parts of the Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton models of winning the presidency. Carter was the fresh-faced moderate from the South, whose lack of a long record let people read various hopes into him. Clinton was the naturally talented political phenom. We’re familiar with each man’s problems—the point is, they established models of how Democrats could win.
But the surprising part of this portrayal of Edwards, which as the journalists say can “frame” discussion of him, is Nick’s argument that he’s planning to run … as a plaintiff’s lawyer! Now, he actually is a plaintiff’s lawyer; that’s where he made his fortune. But rather than trying to explain this away or turn it into a twist—John McCain, war hero, running as man of peace—he actively embraces it. Nick’s theory is that in the South, “liberalism” really is expressed by plaintiff’s lawyers. This is where the little man makes his stand against the big corporate interest, this is where people stand equal before the law. It’s Norma Rae even more than Erin Brockovich.
So, my question to you is: If he’s the nominee, will you support him? Will you work for him to get the nomination, reasoning that Greens and Democrats together are more likely to win than either on its own?
Just curious, but genuinely curious.
See you,
Jim
