www.WrensJournal.blogspot.com

Election Day
Micheal Kinsley
New York Times

...Recent elections have seen the rise of self-styled militant moderates, following the flag of white-horse candidates starting with the businessman Ross Perot and continuing, so far, through Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Business and the military are two fertile breeders of excessive self-confidence, but the only essential qualification for a white-horse candidate is a total lack of experience in running for or holding elective office. And the only essential requirement for white-horse voters is to be, like Howard Beale in Paddy Chayefsky’s movie “Network,” “mad as hell” and “not going to take this anymore.” It is not essential to know why you are so mad, or what exactly you’re not going to take.

The militant moderates drove “Crossfire” off the air after the comedian Jon Stewart appeared on the show and declared it was “hurting America.” A Tocqueville-type outsider examining the condition of American democracy at this moment might well raise an eyebrow over the growing power of unelected television comedians to set the political agenda. But this complaint is on no one’s list. Just don’t get your militant moderate started on TV evangelists, though...

For a charmingly recherché complaint, check out “Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America,” by Dana R. Fisher. Fisher, who teaches sociology at Columbia, is upset about the professionalization of grass-roots campaigning, which he believes has sliced the bottom rung off the political ladder and keeps inspired young people from entering politics and pointing it in a more salubrious direction. In fact, many aspects of politics that used to be volunteer work — not just dialing telephones or licking envelopes, but making strategy — are now businesses...

Michael Kinsley is American editor of Guardian Unlimited (guardian.co.uk), the Web site of The Guardian of London. His column appears in The Washington Post and Slate.