Witty & Insightful©
Today, political campaigns are the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises.
Teresa Heinz-Kerry
1993
The Nation has commentary on this subject:
In 2004, the election could be a testing ground in which to clarify the stark choices facing this country. But where is the millennial equivalent of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, Truman's Fair Deal, and Johnson's Great Society? Don't these times cry out for an electoral system that nurtures big debates over large issues?In a word, no.
These times cry out for new episodes of Queer Eye, for CNN/NYTimes InstaTrac™ Polls, for a major popolitical debate over the fact that 12-year-old boys find President Bush boring. We no longer look for stand-back-and-take-stock-of-things political books or even journals; we go for the substance-free quick-and-dirty world of the blogosphere. I wouldn't look for substantive thought in America ever again; the greatest philosophical minds come when a nation is young. Plato at the begining of the Greek/Roman states, before they were the Roman Empire. Hobbs and Voltaire before the British were an empire, and Jefferson and Robert Ingersoll were from the first centuries of America; today our political thinkers are Al Franken and Bill O'Riley.
