Back in the 60s I noted a change in the nature of politicians. No one else understood what I was talking about, as usual.
I put it this way: If a Strom Thurmond or even a Hubert Humphrey were lost for two weeks on a trip and gave a press conference, they would hold a press conference at which they would speak off the top of their heads.
If a New Type politician was lost for two weeks, a Lott or a Dukakis, eh would hole the press conference until he had read over the newspapers and seen the latest polls.
On talk shows, media people always say, “The question is whether he will screw up during the campaign.”
These same media types then bitch about how both sides are so negative. They wonder why the public is not interested in a candidate’s program but only on the dirt.
They just SAID that the campaign IS the dirt. The campaign IS the screwups.
If you want to make a LIVING as a reporter, you send your editor what he wants to PRINT. When he hands out a paper droning on abut some policy initiative, you are thinking about how to use the question time to get him to screw up, to say something Jesse Jackson or NOW can declare is Evil.
“Professional” has only one meaning: You get PAID.
For a “professional journalist” a campaign is the screwups, not policy.
The changeover from the Ole Stroms to the new Lotts came largely because of the simple fact that campaigns meant less and less each time. People elected Strom or Humphrey because they MATTERED, and when Ole Strom or the Ecstatic Frog said something stupid it was just entertaining.
Strom was fighting integration and Humphrey was putting civil rights platforms into the Democratic Platform. Harry Byrd was fighting every expenditure and liberals were pushing whole new areas of taxation. Nobody was going to give up those critical matters over a silly remark.
Today in terms of real policy the only difference between Obama and Clinton is, IN FACT, the color of the skin. Every dime that can REALLY be spent is being spent, every tax that can in real politics be taxed is BEING taxed.
“Civil rights” and every other critical non-fiscal issue is decided it the courts, not in the White House or in Congress. All that is LEFT to vote on is looks. All that is LEFT to report on is verbal screwups.
#1 by AFKANNow on 06/19/2008 - 11:20 pm
Yet – and this is part and parcel of the power of widespreaad color television – see Strom and Humphrey in the context of their times, and see why neither would last for five minutes today.
Thurmond dealt with the First Great Depression by working, and working more, in ever more valuable jobs and professions; he dealt with WWII by enlisting.
Humphrey’s family all but lost their family business, apharmacy in South Dakota, during the end of the Roaring Twenties. They moved, and stayed in the drugstore business, seeing the First Great Depression as it played out on the Great Plains. Humphrey always want to teach college, and didn’t qualify for WWII for medical reasons. He taught college in DC during the war.
Thurmonds’ life story is quite impressive; Humphrey, that of a man who knows One Big Thing, and ran the table with it.
Both spoke for the tremedous sectional differences that were in place in America, even in 1948 – this, before widespread television.
“Professional journalists” – another archaic “profession” in the day of the blogosphere – are now providing entertaining commentary on the entertainment, as people see the major trends as being pretty much locked in place, and changes only occur on the margin. REAL political changes, take place because a Federal judge says so; the politicians then hide behind his dress.
Ever wonder why the transformational political decisions from the Federal judiciary come, at least as seen by the public, from the men, particularly older, White men?
The Indoctrination of the Self-Proclaimed Greatest Generation seems to have worked; they respond damn near automatically, like beaten dogs…
#2 by Pain on 06/20/2008 - 7:09 pm
I heard a re-broadcast the other day of politicians from the 60s and 70s. What great voices they had. Today, politicians sound like the whiney snivelers they are, thus making our job easier.
#3 by mderpelding on 06/20/2008 - 8:38 pm
If you are worried about Strom Thurmond and Hubert Hunphrey and about the past you are all ready superfluous to today and tomorrow. All the wise sages pontificate upon how those who fail to study history will repeat history. A perfect Conservative viewpoint.
Do you really know how to interpret history?
How about this…
A series of events that were a total surprise to their contemporaries because their contemporaries were looking to past events for guidance.
Yesterday is over. All of the great heroes of the past have one thing in common.
They are dead.
Children need their elders to tell them what to do.
Mommy government.
Daddy patriarch.
We are evolving.
Get over it.