Perhaps twenty years from now we'll be back to good sense, good manners, and wit. Ronald Reagan could make us laugh … intentionally, I mean.
Margaret Thatcher spoke good sense in properly grammatical sentences. Richard Nixon was well-read and sometimes said things that made you think. Has our public sphere always been this mediocre? Shaw plainly thought it was so a hundred years ago but I'd swear I can remember better times. For an hour and a half there on Tuesday I watched three guys talking, none of whom said anything interesting or original none of whom, to the best of my recollection, has ever said anything interesting or original. For sure it hasn't this year in these United States. Democracy does not bring forward the brightest and best. Writing about Baldwin a few months ago, I called him " Britain's Coolidge." Like Coolidge, however, Baldwin was regarded as something of a nonentity by the intelligentsia of his time-especially by those, like Shaw, who were of the opposite political persuasion.Īnyway, we take Shaw's point. That was actually an unfair slight against Baldwin, who was an intelligent and capable man. One of George Bernard Shaw's many indictments of democracy went something like: "Democracy is the system where twenty million people are asked to choose the bravest, wisest, and best among them to be their leader, and they choose Stanley Baldwin." End quote. Not: "What a loathsome reptile that one is!" Nor: "What on earth does the damn fool mean by that?" Only, time and again, the thought: "What a bunch of second-raters." Trust me on this.Īnd that was the thought that kept intruding as I watched Tuesday night's debate. The people who run our public affairs are, with very occasional exceptions, not very smart. I've hobnobbed with very seriously smart people: world-famous physicists and Fields Medal winners also with prize-winning historians and other luminaries of the academic humanities. It was always the case at some point, as the event wore on and the cigars burned low and the ice diminished in its bucket, it was always the case at some point that I found myself thinking: "These guys aren't very smart." President, although one of them did include an acting U.S. None of those events included an acting U.S. In my forty years of hanging around on the fringes of the worlds of power and influence, I have, a few times, found myself in a roomful of real movers and shakers with seriously impressive job titles in government or the media. Yes, I watched Tuesday's Presidential debate and yes, I'm going to be sniffy and snobbish about what a chore it was to sit through the wretched thing. Well, let me start with that.Ġ2-Second-rate debate. My mood wasn't improved by Tuesday's Presidential candidates debate. A depressing prospect and I'll admit honestly, I'm depressed. Then we look set for another four weeks, at least, of wrangling over vote counts. This is your grimly genial host John Derbyshire with news of the hour.įour weeks this coming Tuesday to voting day, ladies and gents.
And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners. (Not many dead.)ģ4m31s Happy 60th birthday, Nigeria! (And good luck for 60 more.)Ġ1-Intro.
(Pity he didn't kill the app.)ģ3m25s Small war in the Caucasus. (What took so long?)ģ1m24s The Twitter killer. (A politicians' disease.)Ģ9m03s Execution in Indiana. (Kaus takes a bite at it.)Ģ6m34s First Couple get the virus. (Shavian cynicism.)ġ4m08s What is white supremacy? (A thought they can't think.)ġ9m33s More on meritocracy. ("Fine people"? Really?)ġ1m36s Democracy's balloon.