November 25, 2015

"What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama — yet again—a central part of our own politics?"

Wrote the late Christopher Hitchens in January 2008, quoted in this morning's NYT in a review of a new collection of some of his essays. (The book is "And Yet...") From the review:
It’s a shame Mr. Hitchens isn’t here to comment on Donald Trump’s political moment. He saw in the ideas behind Ross Perot’s candidacy some of what he might have distrusted in Mr. Trump’s, that is the idea that “government should give way to management.”...
Yes, "management" — I was just saying that's Trump's "stock one-word answer to queries about how he'll do something he says he will do." So I dug up the old Hitchens essay. Here. It's in The Wilson Quarterly. The Wilson Quarterly? Egad. Woodrow Wilson. That name is mud this week. And the Hitchens essay is "Bring on the Mud/Mud-slinging in politics is a time-honored American tradition. But is there anything so bad about throwing a few political barbs?" It's not mostly about government as management, and the whole thing is on such a high level that I want to weep for our loss:
When asked, millions of people will say that the two parties are (a) so much alike as to be virtually indistinguishable, and (b) too much occupied in partisan warfare. The two “perceptions” are not necessarily opposed: Party conflict could easily be more and more disagreement about less and less—what Sigmund Freud characterized in another context as “the narcissism of the small difference.” For a while, about a decade ago, the combination of those two large, vague impressions gave rise to the existence of a quasi-plausible third party, led by Ross Perot, which argued, in effect, that politics should be above politics, and that government should give way to management. That illusion, like the touching belief that one party is always better than the other, is compounded of near-equal parts naiveté and cynicism.
By the way, the phrase "his name is mud" goes back to 1823:
1823   ‘J. Bee’ Slang 122   Mud, a stupid twaddling fellow. ‘And his name is mud!’ ejaculated upon the conclusion of a silly oration, or of a leader in the Courier.
But some people like to tie the phrase to Samuel Mudd, the doctor who treated the leg John Wilkes Booth broke. Whether Booth broke the leg when he jumped onto the stage in Ford's Theatre is a separate question and one question too many for this post of many questions.

24 comments:

Sharc said...

Sometimes stream of consciousness works for a blog entry.

traditionalguy said...

We are all made out of mud. Our flesh is a mixture of 65% sea water and a waxy alcohol called Cholesterol with a small calcium component and a few trace minerals breathing in O2 and breathing out CO2, until the funeral industry recombines us or our ashes back into plain mud.

So Hillary really is just a bag of mud seeking money to have a tempoary power over the other mud.

Laslo Spatula said...

I have to admit: I am loving how fast the rocks are tumbling down on Woodrow Wilson.

If only the buildings with his name would do the same.


Bring back the Guillotine.

I am Laslo.

Meade said...

Roger Mudd.

khematite@aol.com said...

Columbia University political scientist Wallace Sayre, a long-time student of government bureaucracy and management, used to remark that "Business and public administration are alike only in all unimportant respects."

More famously (but less relevantly here), he also used to say that "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law


Laslo Spatula said...

"It’s a shame Mr. Hitchens isn’t here to comment on Donald Trump’s political moment."

Indeed.

Also a shame he isn't here to comment on the latest stages of the Clinton American Trauma. Kinda like the title of this post.

Shame he isn't here in general.

And to add to the Woodrow bashing: he had -- as the the first American motion picture to be screened at the White House -- "The Birth of a Nation."

But only because "Mandingo" wouldn't come out for another sixty years.

Bring back the Guillotine.

I am Laslo.

Bob Boyd said...

“government should give way to management” is practically the definition of Wilsonian Progressivism.

"(a) so much alike as to be virtually indistinguishable"
Ironically, this is the sentiment that drives Trump's support. Expressing concern about it gets people labeled extremists and wackos by both parties.

Is Trump like Ross Perot? Yeah, kinda. He's also kinda like Jesse Ventura.

Sebastian said...

"Government should give way to management" -- expert management, by the anointed for the benighted -- is the essential Prog impulse.

vza said...

"It's not mostly about government as management, and the whole thing is on such a high level that I want to weep for our loss"

THIS.

Curious George said...

" Meade said...
Roger Mudd."

That fucker was in on it too!

Smilin' Jack said...

"his name is mud"

'Mud', starring Matthew McConaughey as the title character, is an excellent movie.

traditionalguy said...

Mud is good for History. Civilization started when the first Temple/House could be constructed far from the Rocks they had been using before "down by the Rivers of Babylon."

The Hanging Gardens came next with great Landscapers called the Meades.


The hard mud made in squares THAT WERE baked in the sun could be stacked up higher and higher until the Romans started using arches.

Rome was all brick at first until Caesar Augustus started doing Rome in quarried marble. That means Caesar Augustus was the first Donald Trump of history, but not the last. Wait until he gets ahold of the White House.

Brando said...

"But only because "Mandingo" wouldn't come out for another sixty years."

I went through the trouble of seeing "Mandingo" on Netflix if only because of that line in the "Kentucky Fried Movie"--"...more offensive than 'Mandingo'..."

Not a good movie, but far as I could tell it wasn't offensive to its black characters but rather to the white characters, who were uniformly awful people.

Biff said...

I miss the old Wilson Quarterly. There was a time when the WQ was reliably the most interesting high-brow publication, with truly diverse intellectual perspectives. I was a regular subscriber for many years, but they lost me when they went to an online-only model.

cubanbob said...

Yes, "management" — I was just saying that's Trump's "stock one-word answer to queries about how he'll do something he says he will do."

Show me which candidate isn't saying that.

Ambrose said...

I haven't read the NYT piece and I do not intend to, but is it not a little disingenuous to take a deceased conservative's criticism of the Clintons and project a disapproval of Trump?

Brando said...

"I haven't read the NYT piece and I do not intend to, but is it not a little disingenuous to take a deceased conservative's criticism of the Clintons and project a disapproval of Trump?"

It certainly is--far as I know Hitchens never had much to say about Trump (who wasn't in politics when Hitch was alive) but he had plenty to say about the Clintons, who he had pegged from the start.

But I note that Hitchens was no conservative--he just got pegged as one because he was an avid supporter of the war against Islamism (and he was a committed atheist) and called out the Clintons for what they were. But then, there is room for a principled man of the Left to understand Islamism as a threat, and to see the Clintons as the corrupt villains they are. He was one of the more respectable figures of the Left, and even where you disagreed with him he was well worth reading.

Sam's Hideout said...

I wonder if the reviewer knows that Donald Trump has previously run for President in 2000 for the Reform Party, i.e. a political party founded in 1995 by Ross Perot and others after Perot's failed run for president in 1992.

JPS said...

Ambrose:

"is it not a little disingenuous to take a deceased conservative's criticism of the Clintons and project a disapproval of Trump?"

Hitchens was frequently scathing toward those on his own side; he broke with the mainstream left on the Clintons, and on the threat of militant Islam. He quit The Nation, saying it had become "the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden." But he never was a conservative.

Ambrose said...

It has been noted to me that I was incorrect to label Hitchens a "conservative." Noted. I do think my point is still valid. The NYT writer presumes to know what Hitch would today think about Trump (and surprise, they agree).

Kirk Parker said...

Isn't it cute that Ambrose thinks Christopher Hitchens was a "conservative"?

CWJ said...

"...with great Landscapers called the Meades."

I saw what you did there.

Guildofcannonballs said...

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2573

The song detailed is "My Name is Mudd" by Primus, an American rock group.

"There's an old story that the expression derives from Dr. Samuel Mudd, who unwisely took pity on Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Mudd treated the broken ankle Booth suffered in his leap to the stage of Ford's Theater; for his trouble, he was sentenced to life in a federal prison. But Mudd isn't being commemorated in "his name is mud." The phrase first appeared in print in 1820, 45 years before Lincoln's assassination. It probably originates in another obscure bit of English slang -- "mud" was an eighteenth century equivalent of our "dope" or "dolt" and was used through the nineteenth century by union workers as a rough equivalent of "scab." (thanks, Mike - Storyville, United States)" -- From the article

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

government should give way to management....

Sounds like Herbert Hoover; fascist.