Tuesday, September 27, 2011

More From Nixonland

As Perlstein is describing the 1972 Democratic National Convention, in Miami:

The new politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle--an antipolitics.  But in the real world politics without equivocation or compromse is impossible.  Thus an unintended consequence for the would-be antipolitician.  Announcing one's inflexibility sabotages him in advance.  Every time he makes a political decision, he looks like a sellout.  The reformers fantasized an open politics, in which all points of view had time to be heard.  That meant that the Tuesday session adjourned eleven hours after it began, at 6:15 a.m.--a fortunate thing, cool-headed democratic strategists decided, terrified over what this all looked like on TV.

Sound familiar? 

3 comments:

  1. "unyielding principle", sounds good when you just say it out loud, teeter on your toes with your arms crossed and grin, but it doesn't work too good when put into practice.

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  2. Let's hope that holds true, D., and the "Tea Party" self-destructs.

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  3. Kevin,
    Excellent post. Did you ever find that novel "Saigon" that I wrote you about?


    Kennedy - I have been to Dealy Plaza - Sis lives in Dallas - Go there and I swear you come away with this eerie knowledge that things aren't just what you read in the Warren Commission Report. I will always believe that there was a second, if not a third, shooter on
    that day in November.
    Johnson, the Mob, the Beard, the CIA: who knows or will ever know?

    Bests,

    Sarge

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