
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 16 , 2012/ 22 Adar, 5772
Last man standing: This week it's Rick Santorum
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Another week, another GOP presidential primary to note before moving on to the next inconclusive one. And so it goes on the long trail a-winding to exhaustion or Tampa or both.
This week congratulations go to Rick Santorum, I guess. He's this week's non-Romney, which is a kind of revolving trophy. Newt Gingrich had it for a fleeting moment after the South Carolina primary and has been hanging around the campaign trail ever since. No matter how many times he's asked to leave. Like a guest at a party who just won't go home. All his presidential campaign has proved to date is that, as South Carolina goes, so goes Georgia. He represented a congressional district there a couple of decades and political ages ago.
Oh, the man's still got a thousand ideas a minute, and there's even a winner in there somewhere, but, unfortunately, you've got to go through the first 999 to get to it. Meanwhile, the whole Gingrich for President enterprise consists of little more than a well-financed ego trip -- a thousand variations on Look at Me! Look at Me! Which is a sure sign not many people are looking.
When I look, all I see is another Harold Stassen. He wouldn't go away, either. A perennial presidential hopeful long after any such hope had faded, Mr. Stassen seemed to have taken up running for president as a kind of retirement activity. And, at that stage, he was about as convincing as his bad red wig. At least he stayed busy.
George H.W. Bush, aka Bush 41, had this way of stringing cliches together in telegraphic succession ("the vision thing"). He also used to talk about the Big Mo, meaning political momentum. Rick Santorum now has emerged from two Southern primaries -- in deepest Mississippi and Heart-of-Dixie Alabama -- with what might be dubbed the Little Mo. Whatever little it consists of, the odds are somebody else will have it next week.
This year The Little Mo tends to be passed around like a bottle of Crown as the GOP's presidential race more and more comes to resemble a 1920s-style marathon dance contest. It seems to be run on the same theory: The prize goes to the last couple of contestants standing, who'll be left to hold each other up, maybe on the same disjointed ticket, a la Reagan-Bush or Kennedy-Johnson.
But how sustain interest in this nigh-endless contest till then? Another name for those old dance marathons was walkathons -- for obvious reasons. At the end, the final contestants weren't so much dancing as dragging each other around the floor, like the last survivors crawling out of some disaster that refuses to end.
Week by week, this presidential race transmogrifies into a presidential schlep. Like the kind of Broadway show that never makes it to Broadway but is stuck in Philadelphia or maybe Poughkeepsie, where a new team of writers has been called in to save it, and the understudy and leading man keep changing places in hopes of something magic happening. It doesn't.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul is still backstage lurking. Like a little old man who runs a dusty antique shop in the middle of an otherwise busy block where the occasional visitor can see period pieces from the turn of the century -- the last century. Wind up the old music box in the window and hear populist themes circa 1898 -- the charms of isolationism, the beauty of the old gold standard, a medley of sentimental tributes to a perfect past that never was ... but business is always slow.
Politics and showbiz are not entirely dissimilar enterprises, which is why some of us gluttons for ennui find ourselves following every twist in this year's repetitive plot. Even as the theater grows emptier every performance. And all look forward to the highlight of the show: when the curtain falls. If it ever does.

How restore the sense of elevation that great drama affords when the country is stuck with this weekly game of musical chairs? For that, we have to look not to our politicians but our poets, thinkers, fabulists. To a writer like C.S. Lewis, who left us this reliable standard, this sure guide to go by when judging the passing hurlyburly of politics, and maybe even rise above it:
"It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time."
Maybe those simple words of C.S. Lewis's -- like all genius, simple -- will afford some perspective and even guidance as we go on to the next presidential primary and the one after that and the one ... till the tumult ceases and we are left with our own thoughts. And duties. And satisfactions. For it is the little things that may turn out to be the great ones, the lasting ones.
Paul Greenberg Archives
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.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/home/jwreview/public_html/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|