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Dynamist Blog
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Two good articles on job creation in Sunday's NYT: Roger Lowenstein's article in the magazine on whether the president creates jobs (simplified answer: no) and Steven Greenhouse's article on the political geography of job growth. As noted on this blog months ago, Florida is booming.
On a similar note, James Dao's short Week in Review piece on the weird political effects of the concentration of swing states in the Rust Belt is also worth a glance. Best graf:
"Anyone campaigning in that part of the world is going to be torn between two worlds," said Richard Feinberg, an economist at the University of California at San Diego and a former Clinton administration official. "For a national audience, the candidates talk about economic modernism, global mobility and open markets. But in that part of the world, there is a temptation to appeal to the romanticism of the industrial Midwest, with its memories of a faded golden era when they had a virtual global monopoly."
Meanwhile, kids are looking to design for future jobs. This Sunday Styles article focuses on fashion, but everywhere I go people tell me their college-age kids are studying graphic design.
Clinton's Heart
After complaining of chest pains, Bill Clinton is scheduled for a quadruple bypass on Tuesday. After tests, it sounds like his heart was in much worse shape than his "mild chest pains" suggested. Pretty scary for a guy as young as he is.
I wish him the best and, like most people, fully expect he'll be fine. It's amazing how routine and effective these once-extraordinary operations are.
Bush Speaks
After hearing Bush compared to Reagan, Churchill, and Roosevelt all week, I was ready for him to look embarrassingly small by comparison. He did better than that. The speech was competent and at times moving. It just wasn't inspiring, at least not to me. But it wasn't addressed to me, and it seems to have done quite well, at least among the punditocracy. John Kerry made Bush look even better with his petulant and rambling midnight address. What was he thinking? Doesn't Kerry have advisers to tell him not to give poorly prepared speeches that project desperation?
The most striking thing about Bush's speech was that he not only made audience members cry but teared up himself, here: "And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers--to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride?"
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More on Mad Zell
My friend Charles Oliver, an astute observer of all things Georgian, writes:
Has Zell Miller been mad a long time? I'm not so sure. Bill Shipp, who knows Georgia politics about as well as anyone, wrote a column a few months ago where he said that it's impossible that Miller didn't figure out until 2001 that the national Democratic Party was a lot more liberal than he was.
Miller has a huge chip on his shoulder about being a "hillbilly" raised in house without running water, and he's easily offended. Witness his bizarre overreaction to the proposed CBS reality show that would update the Beverly Hillbillies.
Shipp says that once he got to Washington, Miller felt, rightly or wrongly, that his fellow Democrats were looking down their noses at him. And that's where his pique really began.
I talked to a long-time friend of Miller who said that there's something to Shipp's theory, and that the condescension Miller felt from the Washington Democrats was very real.
But he also adds that isn't all there is to it. Miller really does think the Democrats are soft on defense. From what I've seen, he probably thinks the Republicans are soft too.
I think Miller really is representative of the Jacksonian strain in American politics, and I don't regard that as a compliment.
Miller's most Jacksonian moment came after the speech, when he told Chris Matthews he'd like to challenge him to a duel--and he seemed to mean it. He's definitely a throwback, far removed different from the prosperous, satisfied (even smug) Republicans of suburban megachurches.
Spittin' Mad
That Zell Miller sure is pissed off at John Kerry--and at the entire post-Vietnam Democratic party. His speech was, as Glenn says, a pure expression of Jacksonian America, complete with unashamed accent (an accent that probably is like fingernails on a blackboard to lots of folks north of the Mason-Dixon line).
It was interesting to hear a fellow Georgia Democrat make an unqualified, and contemptuous, reference to Jimmy Carter's "pacifism": "They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace. They were wrong." I'm guessing Miller's been mad for a long time.
Where Was Cheney's Other Daughter?
The obligatory family gathering on stage after Dick Cheney's speech portrayed the vice president as the father of one daughter.
Too Faithful?
Via GoogleNews, I see that one reviewer, who apparently never read Thackeray's book, is complaining that the new movie version of Vanity Fair "lacks two major things -- somebody likable and a hope for the goodness of mankind." Duh. The novel's subtitle is "A Novel Without a Hero."
Unfortunately, I doubt that the film is that faithful. If the ads are to be believed, the movie turns that great amoral user Becky Sharp (who makes Scarlett look like Melanie) into some kind of enterpreneurial/feminist hero. Better to read the book.
UPDATE: Reader Joe Gusmano writes that you can get Vanity Fair for free at Project Gutenberg. Of course, you won't get binding with that.
Summer's Over
Andrew Sullivan has come out of the hammock and is back to blogging. And this post suggests he needs to spend a lot more time in Dallas--and Jacksonian America more generally.