Reacting to Kerry's coy convention: Why did Kristol turn bright red?

Kerry's proposal to refrain from accepting the nomination at the convention has been characterized as a trial balloon, so the reaction on the Sunday morning news analysis shows is important. I was struck by the contrast between David Broder on Meet the Press and William Kristol on Fox News Sunday, because Broder was thoroughly negative and Kristol was expressing approval. (These are verbatim quotes, thanks to TiVo.) Here's Broder:

I have to say that we used to blame Republicans as being the party where money really drove everything. It's the Democrats that are allowing money to drive everything. They moved up the primary campaign dates so that they could have more time in the Spring to raise money. Now they want to move back the nomination time so they can raise more money in the Fall. It is ridiculous! They are destroying institution after institution of political significance by this preoccupation with chasing money.

Here's Kristol, beginning to make a point:

The money is not unimportant. ... I think the networks would cover it. I think they could do this, and I think they're more serious about this than people realize. ...

Brit Hume jumped in here and said that the media and the campaign reformers would never let a Republican get away with such a devious maneuver. There would be marches, candlelight vigils! The camera at this point shows Kristol again, and Kristol has turned bright red! Kristol always appears so affable and calm: what's going on there? Kristol continues that he's talked about this over lunch with a senior Democrat "close to" the Kerry campaign:

What strikes me is they are serious about winning. They think for 20 years, the Democrats have sort of played by the rules, and the Republicans have been tougher than they, and they're not going to do that this time, and they also have this notion that this isn't an ordinary campaign. [Hume's laughter is heard.] What's so funny?

Hume:

This is so howlingly an artifice, bordering on fraud, that for us ... to play along with it and talk approvingly about how this shows how tough they are...

Kristol regroups and tries to make an elaborate point (which he garbles to some extent):

I was struck in this lunch by the degree to which they are serious about McCain. I mean, McCain has said he won't do it. I don't think he will. But they are serious about it and they have the sense that they can run a normal campaign ... But they want to try to think of ways to sort of change the dynamic, and I think, you know, Republicans can kind of sit back and smirk that Kerry's a flip-flop [sic] or that it's going to be awkward to say "I'm not quite accepting the nomination yet" and it's going to devalue the other Democratic nominees [sic] when they float the McCain idea. Underestimating these guys' willingness to win and willingness to take a little bit of ridicule and make some bold decisions to win would be a mistake, my Republican friends.

So does Kristol approve of the nonacceptance maneuver? Kristol, it seems to me, is not thinking in those terms. His focus is on what the Republicans need to do to win and he thinks, it seems, that Republicans are being too smug. They "sit back and smirk" and rely on the usual jokes about Kerry flip-flopping (just as some Democrats sit back and and amuse themselves with their Bush stereotypes). In Kristol's view, it seems to me, the nonacceptance maneuver is not worth criticizing as another example of Kerry's fence-straddling, it is a reason for the Republicans--Kristol's "Republican friends"--to get much more serious themselves about really fighting to win. I think he turned bright red because he's exasperated with the smug, self-indulgence of Republicans.

Original intent, dysfunctional democracy, and American Idol.

Kate Aurthur, writing in tomorrow's NYT, wants to correct the injustice that is American Idol: "[T]he votes have been so capricious, and have pushed the show so far from its stated purpose — to find the best unknown singer and make him or her a star — that even the panel of judges has disavowed the results."

I'm used to original intent arguments in Constitutional Law, but apparently Aurthur thinks there's some original intent that ought to govern TV shows. Like the usual original intent believer, she thinks she knows what the true intent is. She asserts: "all that matters is the voice." Really? I thought it was (to use the judge's expression) the "total package." She'd like to eliminate the people's vote and have only judges, as if some purer realm could be reached if we relied on judges. Put things in the hands of the judges because democracy is dysfunctional: that sounds like Constitutional Law too.

But why should anyone think a TV show should achieve justice? Half the fun is seeing the voting go haywire for one reason or another. The people who vote are expressing their love through excessive phone dialing. Note that they aren't voting against anyone. La Toya wasn't voted off, like the most interesting characters on the early seasons of Big Brother. Voting people off would be dysfunctional: Clay would have been voted off. La Toya left not because she was interesting, but because she was too cool and reserved to induce enough people to engage in overeager love-voting. So even if you want to engage in misplaced interpretive methodology, the show actually does achieve its original intent and the voting is not a dysfunction in need of judicial correction. The intent is to find an "idol," someone to love, and the voting method is a test of love.

Clintonisms.

Enough with the Bushisms and Kerryisms. Let's collect Clintonisms. I'm overhearing a TiVoed speech CSpan ran yesterday--Clinton is out and about promoting his book--and I hear the following proclamation:

"I am a convicted Democrat!"

Most of Clinton's speech, though, is amazingly fresh and compelling, especially after hearing so much Kerry and Bush. Clinton's reemergence as an author will draw a lot of attention away from Kerry and from everybody else, and from current events to the events of the 1990s. I'm not complaining. Let the best speaker be heard. Presumably, he will try to help Kerry, but his appeal is so dramatically stronger than Kerry's that it's hard to predict how well that will work.

Kerry's coy convention.

So John Kerry may have to act coy at the Democratic Convention and just hear that he's nominated and give a big speech about how he's honored to have received the nomination and leave out the big exciting "I accept your nomination" line. This is because, under campaign finance law, upon accepting the nomination, he takes on a $75 million spending cap.

Why did the Democrats schedule their convention 5 weeks before the Republican convention? The Democrats weren't fools. They just assumed their candidate would have submitted to the spending caps that apply to the primary season and would want to get to the $75 million earlier rather than later. But since Kerry opted out of the primary caps, what was predicted to be an advantage became a disadvantage, and now Kerry's looking for a way out.

It does seem that Bush and Kerry should both start with the same amount of money at the same point in time. But then does Kerry get an unfair advantage by having his convention at an earlier point? Does the convention do something important to elevate the candidate in the public's eyes?

We know there is always a bump in the candidate's popularity rating after the convention. But is it better to have the early bump or the later bump? It's surprising really that anyone watches the conventions. But then again, I'm surprised people watch commercials. Or read the campaign mail. Yet apparently they do, because look at all that money that is spent on this low quality human communication. It would be better to watch the junkiest reality TV show than to consume this drivel. And we are expected to pay vast sums of tax money to produce this nearly worthless communication, and the candidates have to craft their campaigns to satisfy the law that comes along with the money, and we are expected to take into account whether this crafting is too sleazy as we judge a candidate's worthiness for the Presidency.

So now, instead of talking about the substance of issues that Kerry will affect if he becomes President, we need to waste a lot of time talking about what we think about a big nominating convention with a nonacceptance speech. So I hope Kerry does try to pull this coy maneuver, because it will help teach people to ignore the conventions. It might even make them reconsider their support for campaign funding and the complicated regulation that comes along with it.

UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this. (It produced an Instalanche that jammed the Sitemeter, so I'll have to check my "score" later.) Ideoblog also has linked, and I especially like the line "It depends on what the meaning of 'accept' is," especially since I was just wondering (see post just above this one) how well Kerry is going to do juxtaposed with Clinton.

FURTHER UPDATE: And thanks as well to Lucianne.com. Here I was expecting a quiet little Sunday, and suddenly all the Lucianne fans are here. Welcome, go ahead and look around.

Rainy afternoon mail: "Ann, please BREAK THE SEAL."

It is pouring rain again here. I need to get out of the house--must get supplies--but I would be drenched just getting to the car. My hedges are all overgrown from all this rain, and then with more rain the hedges are wet, and I can't get to my car without being well-swiped by wet hedge leaves. So I'm going through my mail.

I received a letter in the mail from the city telling me I need to hire a plumber to replace my lead service line. (Wouldn't it be easier to just drink bottled water? Are you kidding? You can't have lead pipes!)

And I got a letter from the Republican Presidential Task Force trying to get a donation by pretending to care about my opinion so they can set the Republican platform. This time they've made a big deal out of the fact that the survey is in a sealed envelope. It's an "official document" by the way. And it's in "a secure envelope to protect the integrity of [my] vote." (What's secure about a sealed envelope? [ADDED: I mean, the whole set of papers was already in a sealed envelope. What's the point of an envelope within the envelope except to play with my mind?]) Get this: "If for some reason you cannot participate in this crucial Survey project, please sign the outside of the secure, registered envelope--WITHOUT BREAKING THE SEAL--and return it to me [Senator George Allen] immediately so we can attempt to find another citizen to represent your district." The Republican Party never tires of sending me bizarre mail like this, seemingly in an effort (achieved long ago) to convince me they think their supporters are narcissistic idiots. So I represent my district, do I?

I saw in the paper today (somewhere) that Bush has already spent over $100 million on his campaign. But isn't most of the money just spent trying to get more money? Anyway, according to this letter my money is "urgently needed" because the Democrats have over $400 million "from liberal billionaires like George Soros, from personal injury trial lawyers, from Hollywood elites and from Big Labor to finance their scorched-earth strategy." (What scorched-earth strategy? Trying to win elections?) They need me to "help level the playing field" because "the Democrats' momentum is surging." Ugh! I hate the tone of desperation. Can I be on a special mailing list for people who want to hear reasonable arguments?

If I send them enough money I get to be a "Platinum Member" and then I can get three things: "a ceremonial American flag" (as opposed to what? a functional one?), "a distinctive lapel pin" (not just any lapel pin... and just assume I wear a suit and have lapels), and, my favorite, "an embossed membership card" (oh, "embossed," that's what will push me over the line here).

If I don't break the magic seal, they want me to sign the envelope and mail it back to them in a postpaid envelope. Great way to drain away your campaign funds, paying for the return mailing of bogus "official" documents. I suppose somebody thinks imposing a sense of obligation is going to increase the chance that I'll do the survey, which will increase the chance that I'll give them money. If I really hated them, I'd put over an ounce of papers in the envelope and mail it to further drain their funds. But I'm one of those moderate, undecided types, so I do nothing.

Madison on a bicycle racing day.

State Street was blocked off today for USCF national championship racing.


Strangely makeshift safety was provided by duct taping old mattresses to various poles and things that bicyclists might slam into. Nobody slammed into anything, but the mattresses made you keep thinking about it.



Some nice street musicians were playing:



And they were encouraging generosity with an image of Gandhi:



Surrealism was visible, surrealistically, through door glass:



More cheerful artistic manifestations could be seen:



And one rock idol from the past advertised her upcoming visit, loomed over by the neon image of another rock idol from the past whom we will forever miss.

My experience with the comments function.

One of the downsides to having comments on a blog is that you may end up with lots of entries with zero comments and that makes your site look desolate. But I find it funny that there is one entry that got comments: this one. I think it says something about human nature that commenting was activated by the combination of a familiar children's story, politics, and the problem of what constitutes an analogy.

Marijuana and website ugliness.

Why are all the websites dedicated to the legalization of marijuana so ugly? The ones concentrating on medical marijuana like this one, this one, and this one might be trying to send a message of disassociating themselves from recreational use. But it is certainly possible to design a simple and elegant website that conveys a serious and scientific image. The websites that advocate legalization more generally are also amazingly ugly. See here and here. These groups too may want to present a serious, policy-oriented image: their arguments are all about the wastefulness and oppressiveness of enforcement efforts, certainly not the aesthetic pleasures of drug use. That last link is to Norml, and it looks very sober indeed. (Scroll through their "comics" section here.) I'm sure in the early days of Norml their materials were much livelier and frankly psychedelic. I see why it's not a good political strategy to do that anymore, but do they have to be so ugly?

Stanley Fish and the good old ivory tower.

Stanley Fish, in an op-ed in today's NYT, says the search for truth should be the university's only mission. Our job as academics, he says, is to interpret the world, not to change it. He's disagreeing with people who assume it is the role of academics to "consider civic responsibility as an explicit and important aim of college education" (former Harvard president Derek Bok) and "provide students with the knowledge and commitments to be socially responsible citizens" (the Association of American Colleges and Universities).

The idea that universities should be in the business of forming character and fashioning citizens is often supported by the claim that academic work should not be hermetically sealed or kept separate from the realm of values. But the search for truth is its own value, and fidelity to it mandates the accompanying values of responsibility in pedagogy and scholarship.

Performing academic work responsibly and at the highest level is a job big enough for any scholar and for any institution. And, as I look around, it does not seem to me that we academics do that job so well that we can now take it upon ourselves to do everyone else's job too. We should look to the practices in our own shop, narrowly conceived, before we set out to alter the entire world by forming moral character, or fashioning democratic citizens, or combating globalization, or embracing globalization, or anything else.

My university is openly dedicated to the opposite notion, so dedicated to it that for a long time we've called it "The Wisconsin Idea":

The Wisconsin Idea shows the concept of a preeminent research university functioning as an ivory tower to be hopelessly outdated and wildly inaccurate.

Now, what Fish is most concerned about, however, is academics engaged in partisan politics, especially if they subvert the search for truth in the process. But he's probably taking his desire for a return to the ivory tower too far. Some of us would enjoy the ivory tower only too much, and there is plenty of self-interest on the part of academics who want to return to it. But the search for truth? Yes, let's do that again.

Getting old, with Nick Hornby.

Can someone explain to me why the NYT saw fit to print what looks to be the longest op-ed of the year on the subject of looking for good rock music to listen to as you get older and older? That is, I think that's the point of this seemingly unedited ramble by Nick Hornby. Is some high editor on the Times related to a member of the rock band Hornby is promoting in his piece that whines: Please let me be the new Jon Landau proclaiming that I saw rock 'n' roll future. (It's name, conceivably, is Marah.). Here's a snippet:

Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. (And not all young people are lucky enough to be young. Think of those people at your college who wanted to be politicians or corporate lawyers, for example.) I'm not talking about the accouterments of youth: the unlined faces, the washboard stomachs, the hair. The young are welcome to all that — what would we do with it anyway? I'm talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invincibility, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated these feelings, and now that I'm older it stimulates them, but either way, rock 'n' roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn't need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it's only now and again?

Oh, come on, isn't this drivel, devoid of any original thought? (Other than that hope might feel like chlorine, that is.) Surely, it could have be edited down! It's not exactly overflowing with ideas. Are they just so pleased to get a piece by Nick Hornby? Is there some sense that Hornbiness necessarily entails a flood of verbiage? It seems to me that if your problem is that you're getting old--he's turning 47--going all longwinded is not the best way to try to recapture youth, especially if the subject you've decided to blabber about is how old you're getting and how you remember how things were when you were young and oh these young people today, etc., etc.

Censorship as kindness.

Speaking of art and The New Yorker, Gawker has been covering the story of an art exhibit at the offices of The New Yorker. It was supposedly an exhibit of censored art, but then the curators of the exhibit had a couple of the pieces removed as too offensive to be suitable for the exhibit. It seems pretty amusing: they censored the censored art exhibit. One piece they removed was an acrylic painting of Osama Bin Laden, another, which you'll see if you click on that link, is a rather untidy assemblage of dirt, bottles, coconut shells, and a skeleton. The creator of the skeleton piece wrote:

The explanation I was given for the last minute removal was that the management did not want to expose disturbing images and ideas to employees and visitors who thought they were coming to a "place of business", that, unlike visitors to an art gallery, their guard would be let down and they would be ambushed. I found this to be a hypocritical perspective coming from a magazine that sandwiched a photograph of a naked Iraqi prisoner being tortured between a cartoon and an article about knuckleballs.

So, in other words, if a general interest magazine provides a mix of writing and imagery, some very heavy and some light, it gives up the right to be selective about what sorts of large physical objects are left about in its hallways? Looking at the photograph of the piece, though, I see a more salient point. I think they were being rather kind to the artist by telling him this is simply too disturbing to have in the hallway of an office building. That left him his pride and gave him some outrage he could use to fuel further art production. He's responding to the reason they gave him when they broke the news to him that this thing would have to go. But look at the piece. Isn't it more likely that what was really on their minds was not objection to any shocking message, but a harsh judgment that this is an embarrassingly bad work of art that will detract from the rest of the show?

Horrific varnishing.

Calvin Tomkins writes in The New Yorker about efforts to restore the great Picasso painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The restoration is largely a matter of undoing previous efforts at restoration and returning it as close to the state it would be in if people had never taken any steps to try to preserve it. The primary restoration mistake had been to apply layers of varnish. This is a good metaphor if you ever want to argue against trying to solve perceived problems: a new alternative to "the cure is worse than the disease" can be "don't varnish a Picasso." Varnish not only doesn't provide much protection, it ruins the look of a well-painted picture:

Varnishing provides a more or less homogeneous surface. Picasso and Braque were after something else, a contrast of textures in contiguous areas of the painting which would enliven the surface and convey a new sense of depth. ...

[The restorer Michael] Duffy, a boyish-looking man who appears unfazed by his responsibilities, walked up close to the painting and indicated the vigorous, cascading brushstrokes that are now visible. “It’s that sense of somebody touching the surface that I think is greatly retrieved,” he said. Duffy dreamed recently that he came into the studio and saw that a corner of the picture had peeled back. “It was as if the figures were trying to come to life.”

(The New Yorker never fails to tell us what everybody looks like. What the hell difference does it make if Duffy's "boyish-looking"?)

Tomkins notes that Picasso did not varnish his own paintings. But that point should be made much more strongly. Picasso hated varnish. I can't locate this anecdote on the web, but I read it long ago and it made a great impression on me. Someone had acquired a painting by Cezanne, and everyone was raving about how wonderful it was. Picasso would barely even look at it and was quite disgusted. His angry comment was "Where is the hand of great Cezanne?" Varnishing had destroyed the painting. You could no longer see the brushstrokes, the life of the thing. And today, when you go to the museum, most of the paintings are underneath layers of varnish, giving them a vile, shiny surface that is not what was intended. You may as well stay home and look at photographs of some of these things, because the works themselves have been laminated. It doesn't matter so much in the case of paintings of artists who tried to create a slick surface and used varnish themselves to smooth over the brushwork, but even then, it is bad for there to be any more smoothing and slicking than the artist chose for the painting. Varnishing is really horrifically ugly.

Something in the way

he speaks, attracts Ralph Nader like no other candidate:

Mr. Nader said what struck him about Mr. Kerry was not so much what he said but "the way he says it," adding: "That's important. You don't want to have someone with a squeaky voice."

That's a bit odd but there are several ways to interpret it.

Theory 1: Nader really does enjoy the deep, sonorous voice. In this theory, he's also impervious to tedium and doesn't mind a heaping dose of verbosity. (Bonus feminist analysis: "Squeaky voice" is code for female. Those who go for authoritative-sounding voices are, intentionally or not, going to discriminate against women.)

Theory 2: Nader caught Kerry's "way" meme. Kerry is forever explaining what he would do as President by saying he'll do things in a different way. What will he do in Iraq? Maybe the same thing as Bush, but the way he will do it will be much better. Ask him for substance, and after some distracting introductory verbiage, he'll move toward what looks like an answer and it turns out to be another abstract reference to his way. So Kerry has a way about him, a way to make you think you know what he's planning to do and to believe he's competent by repeatedly saying the word way. Now, he's got Nader saying it.

Theory 3: In meeting with Kerry, Nader got a sense that Kerry was going to work with him and adopt some of Nader's positions. Kerry didn't say so, but Nader could just somehow tell. Other Nader statements support this theory: he said that Kerry was "much more open" to meeting with Nader than Gore had been. Nader joked that "[The difference between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gore] is the difference between a spruce tree and petrified wood... Gore was petrified wood. He was stiff as a board, he didn't want to have these kinds of meetings." In this theory, the "squeaky voice" add-on is another Nader-style witticism, and the real message is that Nader came out of the meeting believing Kerry was pliable and would yield to the influence of Nader. Here's more along those lines:

"[W]hen people in town halls applauded him talking about getting tough with corporate power, he responded .... Gephardt didn't ...The more he cuts the reins of his advisers, the better he's going to do ... His own instincts are less cautious than Bob Shrum's. And after a while, you should be able to follow your own compass."

This means Kerry has leftward leanings that show in private but that his aides are suppressing. But we can't trust Nader's compass readings. Theory 3 is what I think Nader meant, but maybe he is wrong to think that Kerry's wooing him really means that Kerry actually believes in Nader's positions, when in fact Kerry has plenty of other motivation to humor Nader. Nader's statement is mostly just more evidence of his own narcissism. Working with Nader, which Kerry seems to want or need to do, is going to be a bit tricky.

Colorful convergence.

Bicyclists converged on State Street today.

I'm seriously considering

deleting my auxiliary blog, House of Althouse. For one thing, the free copy of iBlog I downloaded from Mac.com is telling me it has expired and now I need to buy it. I don't remember it being offered as a temporary thing. I could buy it, it's only $20, but this is giving me a chance to look back on my little experiment and think about whether I want to continue it. The main point of having the other blog was to experiment with iBlog, and I used my most frivolous material for that experiment. With iBlog, the entries appear on an internal page, so one feels freer to write a long entry. I like some of those entries, like The Mystery of the Saucer and the discussion of the spelling of my first name, which I never would have written that way over here. (I could have used the material, but it would have been much shorter.) On the other hand, I felt some pressure to toss an idea over there every day so it would remain fresh, and I don't really need any more feelings of obligation. Also, Blogger did that big update--though that didn't really change anything significant for me. But iBlog isn't all that much more convenient to use. So I'm leaning toward not buying iBlog and allowing the fall of the House of Althouse.

Nauseating weight loss methods.

Now you can buy a $400 device to attach to the inside of your mouth to disable yourself from taking large bites of food. According to the AP report "The ... chief executive [of the company that makes the device] says he lost 14 pounds simply by wearing it off and on over five months." (Nice research efforts AP!) For $400 you could pay someone to carp at you to take smaller bites. I'll bet many families have kids who would enjoy carping at their parents like that through the meal. I'm trying to think how I'd feel if I went out for a meal with someone and realized--maybe from their slurred speech--that they were wearing that bizarre, ultra-thick retainer as a way to lose weight. Answer: nauseated!

That reminds me: nausea is a great weight loss method. I think you could make millions if you could come up with a pill that makes people just nauseated enough to not want to eat anything. Not enough to ruin their day, but just ever so slightly nauseated! It would be much neater and more elegant (and cheaper) than bulimia.