My Friend the Twit

Frank Rich in the Times:

Nowhere, perhaps, is the gap between the romance and the reality of the Internet more evident than in our politics. . . .

Frank Rich, "Facebook Politicians Are Not Your Friends," New York Times, 10 October 2010.

Dick Cavett on the Mosque

Dick Cavett, "Real Americans Please Stand Up" New York Times, 22 August 2010.

I remain amazed and really, sincerely, want to understand this. What can it be that is faulty in so many people’s thought processes, their ethics, their education, their experience of life, their understanding of their country, their what-have-you that blinds them to the fact that you can’t simultaneously maintain that you have nothing against members of any religion but are willing to penalize members of this one? Can you help me with this?

see also, Frank Rich, "How Fox Betrayed Petraeus," New York Times, 22 August 2010.

Republican Faux Populism?

Frank Rich in the New York Times:

That Republican leaders can pass off deceptive faux-populism as “pitch-perfect populism” is in part a testament to the blinding intensity of the economic anger and anxiety roiling the country. It also shows the power of an incessant bumper-sticker fiction to take root when ineffectually challenged — and, most crucially, the inability of Democrats to make a persuasive case that they offer anything better.

Frank Rich, "Palin's Cunning Sleight of Hand," New York Times, 14 February 2010.

On the rhetorical difficulties of contemporary populism, see also James Surowiecki, "The Populism Problem," The New Yorker, 15 February 2010.

Photograph: Ed Reinke/AP

The Bush Crusade

GQ released today the cover sheets from a dozen or so of the top secret private intelligence briefings hand delivered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to President Bush in the early days of the Iraq War. The GQ slide show is here.

It is astonishing to think that those in charge of the war were indulging in these messianic fantasies.

" . . . your right hand will hold me fast, O LORD."

Frank Rich writes in this morning's New York Times that, "Until there is true transparency, revelations of the unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip."

Frank Rich, "Obama Can't Turn the Page on Bush," New York Times, 17 May 2009.

Maureen Dowd appears to be convinced, in a change of heart, of the same point, and now urges a full investigation. She has also been won over to the view, in circulation for some time and increasingly well documented, that torture was practiced by agents of the United States not so much to prevent further terrorist attacks as to knowingly force false confessions that would link Iraq to Al Qaeda, and thus justify the Bush war in Iraq. Dowd writes, "I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism."

Maureen Dowd, "Cheney, Master of Pain," New York Times, 17 May 2009.

President Obama is no doubt in a difficult position -- and in fact in some ways in conflicting positions, needing to earn the trust of the defense and intelligence establishments, and yet to be faithful to the demands of justice and truth. We will never know everything about what happened, or who was responsible, and even as we know more and more we will never be entirely able to agree on the politics and the policies of the Bush administration, nor to purge ourselves of the pain inflicted in our names.

But we should at least be able to learn enough to lessen the chance that this will happen again, and that will take factual investigation and moral reflection, not simply an assertion that it's time to move on, or that uncovering more evidence would damage the propaganda position of the United States.

The Rhetoric of Government Action

Frank Rich argues that the rhetorical effects now sought by the Obama administration, and crucial to the national well being, can be found only by going beyond the rhetoric of "outrage" into much more specific verbal rhetoric and the rhetoric of visible, public action.

To get ahead of the anger, Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable. His administration must start actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.

Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. We need to understand why some of that money was used to bail out foreign banks. And why Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were “immaterial,” nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers’ cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the “retention” jackpots. We must be told why taxpayers have so little control of the bailed-out financial institutions that we now own some or most of. And where are the M.R.I.’s from those “stress tests” the Treasury Department is giving those banks?

That’s just a short list. . . .

Rich's essay is an interesting analysis of the rhetorical effects of words and "actions," and of the rhetorical importance of timing, or kairos.

Frank Rich, "Has a 'Katrina Moment' Arrived?" New York Times, 21 March 2009.

Rich on the Debate and the Polls

Frank Rich in today's New York Times:

The stimulus bill is only a first step on [an] arduous path. The biggest mistake [President Obama] can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama’s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.

Frank Rich, "They Sure Showed That Obama," New York Times, 15 February 2009.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

The Palin - McCain attacks that have stimulated such frantic rage at their rallies in the past two weeks have been compared to the tactics of Joe McCarthy, and we have been reminded by some commentators of the moment in the Army-McCarthy hearings when Joseph Welch issued his famous rebuke.

The exchange is in text and audio at AmericanRhetoric.com, which also shows these images, among others, from that moment.

Bob Shrum has compared the McCain-Palin rhetoric with the handbill of John F. Kennedy circulated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, the day he was shot and killed by an assassin.


In today's Times a useful analysis by Frank Rich of the McCain-Palin rhetoric, with further links to recent incidents at their rallies. Rich writes, "The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder."

Frank Rich, "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama," New York Times, 12 October 2008.

Rich's column is accompanied by this image by Barry Blitt, which captures some of the many layers of association, menace, and triumphalism of the campaign --

Barry Blitt - New York Times - 12 October 2008

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