
 |
|
Nov. 25, 2009
JWisdom.com: No God … No You!
Know God, Know You! with Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (8 minutes)
Nov. 24, 2009
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist
with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 3, 2008
4 Tishrei 5769
The curtain on the last act
By
Suzanne Fields
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Newspaper accounts of past presidential campaigns nearly always reveal the singular moment when the public finally decided who should prevail on Election Day. A foolish remark, a speech not made, an inability to catch an unexpected swing in the public mood. It's often less that the winner fired the silver bullet than that the loser forgot to duck. Only the hindsight of the historian actually determines the fateful moment.
The greatest surprise in modern times was Harry S. Truman's upset of Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. Polling was then an "infant science," but common perceptions got it wrong, too. You couldn't find anybody who thought Truman could win. What is recalled most clearly in retrospect is that Harry Truman's "give 'em hell" speeches were full of fire and passion, and the Dewey speeches were dull, drab and dreary. He was forever caught, in the memorable description of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, as "the little man on the wedding cake."
Truman loved politics. Dewey didn't. "Lay it on," cried the men and women who crowded close to the railroad tracks on the Truman whistle-stop tour. The correspondent for New Yorker magazine described Dewey as arriving at rallies "like a man who has been mounted on casters and given a tremendous shove from behind." You couldn't keep Truman out of the ring; Dewey wanted to hover above the fray. Truman was hot. Dewey was cool. No candidate since has so snatched unlikely defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
I thought of that race when I read Fred Barnes' description in The Weekly Standard of John McCain as the warrior and Barack Obama as the priest (or the professor). These labels were first applied to Teddy Roosevelt (the hero of San Juan Hill) and Woodrow Wilson (who had been president of Princeton). A century before that, Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, was the warrior against John Quincy Adams, the "priest" of 1828 and Old Hickory kept his shrewd hand hidden behind the curtain against haughty and mannered Adams. "If my country wants my services," Adams said, as if everybody recognized his eminence, "she must ask for them."
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson revealed sharp contrasts as warrior and professor. Ike was president of Columbia University, but everybody knew him as the general who managed the landings at Normandy and led the allies to Berlin. Adlai was the first "egghead" eloquent, witty and cool. Americans wanted the warrior, not the egghead, and Ike won by a landslide.
Style counts, but events can blow style away. This year the warrior McCain is tested and the professorial Obama is not, but we're a different country now. McCain is the man we believe will hang tough in tough times, but there's a yearning, especially among young voters who have never known tough times, for the cooler man who suggests "idealism," even if the "idealism" is fantasy. The financial mess reveals neither man a profile in political courage.
McCain the warrior resembles, at least a little, Truman, and must keep moving to where the action is, but the action seems to have passed him by. Obama the priest (or the professor) sounds clueless, offering cool words without substance. The warrior's cries to "remember the surge" sound like echoes from distant history, and how soon we forget that Obama would sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-il without first figuring out what he or they might say.
McCain's famous temper and his angry view of the threats against us are counted as risks, but Obama's naive view of the world seems far more dangerous. The conventional wisdom holds that the economic crisis favors the naif because he's for change, whatever that tells us about what he would change (and nobody, certainly not the nabobs of the media, seems in a rush to ask).
The great American public has just about a month to decide whether the times call for a warrior or a priest. Huey Long, who invented the modern campaign, was called the pitchman of "a circus hitched to a tornado." H.L. Mencken called a campaign "a cross between a revival meeting and a hanging." Ronald Reagan likened campaigning to show business: "You have a hell of an opening, you coast for a while, then you have a hell of a closing." The curtain is up now on the last act, and we're waiting for that "hell of a closing."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|