Dearest David,
I suspect you put out that Bradley item as bait. But because of your sweet sign-off, and because the weather’s so nice, and because several friends have called worried about how much we squabble, and because that Bradley mourner in “The Fray” made me feel bad, I won’t rise to it. I will now pull a McCain, and change my mind mid-campaign.
I didn’t see him deliver the farewell address, but I just read it. Actually, I don’t think it’s half-bad. It begins well, with a rare self-deprecating joke. And while the “new politics” he talks about is not really new, it’s important. He’s right, that Gore has to account for his role in a politics corrupted by money. And he’s also right that in times of prosperity we tend to forget the less fortunate “A president is president of all the people, wealthy as well as poor, but a president must listen more closely because the voices of those who have been less fortunate are not as loud and insistent as those who have been more fortunate.” The man may be awkward, and distant, and a patrician, but I can’t argue with that.
I take a break from my kinder and gentler breakfasting to point out a brilliant notebook item in my alma mater, the New Republic. It’s about an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal I meant to write about Monday but which slipped my mind, so I’m glad they (he, Hi Jon) took it up. The Op-Ed was by Mark Helprin, author and Republican speechwriter “known for penning lyrical odes to the warrior virtues,” writes TNR. Helprin’s running theme is the nobility of the brave soldier, and he used to it to great effect when he wrote a farewell speech for Bob Dole. He should, by his principles, support McCain, but as it happens he doesn’t, so the principles bend. Now, it seems, the greatest virtue is party loyalty. “Betrayals,” he writes about McCain, “are hard to square with honor.” Of all the mysteries of this race, the conservative’s visceral loathing of McCain will always confound me. Is it really only because the press liked him so much?
Well, you can’t answer, since we’ve reached the end of our dialogue. I had hoped we would at some point get away from politics, and talk about food, the Walker Evans exhibit, Bernhard Schlink, anything else. But alas, primary week was our unlucky draw.
Here’s to a lifetime of breakfasts.
Yours, faithfully,
Hanna
P.S.–I promise.
