The Dish

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Gary Hart gives The Book a thumbs-up, more or less.

Despite being new to the scene (although he did serve three terms in the Illinois State Senate), Obama casts himself in the role of a political veteran, using phrases like "the longer I served in Washington" (less than two years) and "the more time I spent on the Senate floor." But his particular upbringing gives him special insights into the transition of American politics in the 1960s and ’70s from debates over economic principles to a focus on culture and morality, and into the divisiveness, polarization and incivility that accompanied this transition.

 

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Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan sketch in more detail about their plan for Baghdad:

Of all the "surge" options out there, short ones are the most dangerous. Increasing troop levels in Baghdad for three or six months would virtually ensure defeat….  The only cure is to maintain our presence long enough either to root out the hiding enemy or to defeat him when he becomes impatient. A surge that lasted at least 18 months would achieve that aim.

It goes without saying that Juan Cole thinks the idea is doomed from the start. What’s the most depressing part of his list of "10 myths about Iraq"? Perhaps this:

The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad.

Meanwhile the NY Review of Books is running a long article by journalist Christian Caryl on how the country looks from ground level:

We have little impression of Iraqis as people trying to live lives that are larger and more complex than the war that engulfs them, and more often than not we end up viewing them merely as appendages of conflict.

Her thoughts on the courageous Iraqi blogger, Riverbend are an especially interesting mix of praise and criticism:

It is also the mistakes of the young Baghdad woman, her limitations, that make her narrative worth reading. The daughter of an upper-middle-class family, she is a progressive Muslim and an idealistic Iraqi nationalist, intent on demonstrating to her American readers the high level of Iraq’s cultural and economic development. And yet she is also distinctly oblivious to some of the darker sides of Saddam’s regime. "Some would say that they [the Kurds] had complete rights even before the war," she notes at one point, in a characteristic moment of blindness (she has apparently never heard of the poison gas attacks Saddam’s regime staged against Kurdish civilians). "The majority of Iraqis have a deep respect for other cultures and religions," she argues elsewhere. She decries American policies that seem to her aimed at dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian communities, and makes a great point of emphasizing the mixed Sunni-Shia origins of her family.

As the story progresses, though, reality begins to catch up… Riverbend reminds me of those Soviet patriots who failed to understand the events that ushered in the final agony of the USSR. Many of those who lived well under the system were unable to see its crimes for what they were, making them dismissive or uncomprehending when the once-oppressed began to express their own political demands.

[Picture: Todd Pitman/AP]

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That book choice struck a chord with this reader:

I retired in June from a long stint of public high school teaching in California.  I taught in many subjects, but primarily history for my first twenty years or so and thinking back, Terkel’s "Working" was one of the most exciting sources I ever used teaching anything.  Such a wonderful collection of folks so absolutely in their voices – and such compelling and thoughtful reflections!  If I were teaching still, I’d find ways to use it and the Michael Apted "Up" series, from seven to forty-nine. What a treat to read the reference to the fireman, which I remembered verbatim.

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From George. W. Bush’s statement:

On Aug. 9, 1974, he stepped into the presidency without ever having sought the office. He assumed power in a period of great division and turmoil. For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we need him most.

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Willie Nelson, Lone Star songsmith, performs "I Never Cared For You" on tour in Amsterdam. It’s almost note-for-note the same version he delivers on that terrific CD,  "Teatro".

The vintage clip of "Night Life" is also worth a look, just to see him looking so scrubbed and tidy and respectable. That was a long, long time ago.

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We bought our youngest son, Anand, a train set for Christmas. (I’m desperate to have a go on it once all this blogging is out of the way.) Rummaging through the box, I just discovered a slip of paper bearing the all-important warning:

ATTENTION. The train may de-rail if the speed is too high. So please slowly increase the speed adjusting knob of train controller to prevent the train coming off the tracks.

It doesn’t say whether I have to hire an official to walk in front and wave a red flag

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Great minds think alike, and all that… John Judis, author of a biography of William F. Buckley, among other titles, has put together his own selection of choice tomes from yesteryear. It’s a long list, and it’s firewalled, but here’s a taster:

Several books are personal touchstones that have shaped the way I think about American politics. Herbert Croly’s "The Promise of American Life" is high on the list, but so is David Riesman’s "The Lonely Crowd". I am still something of neo-neo-Marxist in my overall outlook, but Karl Lowith’s book, "Meaning in History", was among the first to shake my faith…

I have written two books on American foreign policy, but I still feel I don’t know the subject–perhaps because I have little first-hand knowledge of the world outside the United States. I was raised in the Wisconsin School, but on foreign policy, I prefer others to Williams himself, notably Walter LaFeber’s "The New Empire "(about the development of American expansionism in the late nineteenth century), Carl Parrini’s "Heir to Empire" (about America’s attempt to supplant Great Britain after World War I), and N. Gordon Levin’s "Woodrow Wilson and World Politics." The best one-volume biography of Wilson is August Heckscher’s little-known book, which never even went into paperback. The most powerful case for realism is Walter Lippmann’s "U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic", which he whipped off in the summer of 1943.

His comment about foreign travel reminds me that, in an ideal world, America and Europe would swap pundits and commentators for six months every couple of years. That way, we might find a way to speak the same language.

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Is universal health care firmly back on the agenda? Ezra Klein makes the case in the LA Times:

The U.S. healthcare system cannot, in its current form, go on forever, or even for very much longer ‚Äî employers can’t afford it, individuals can’t handle it and the country’s conscience won’t countenance it. And change may come sooner than most think. Across the country there are unmistakable signs that the gridlock and confusion sustaining our sadly outdated system are coming to an end and that real reform may finally emerge, possibly even starting in California…

As for the British model, all I can say is that I’ve had very mixed experiences, as have most of my friends and acquaintances. Yet I ought to stress that my eldest son, who has a heart condition, has always received excellent care from the NHS.

For a little more perspective, I recommend this 2005 piece by the Fox News journalist David Asman. His wife suffered a stroke during a trip to London, and was treated at London’s Queen’s Square before being taken back to the US. As he followed her progress, Asman had a chance to consider the strenghs and weaknesses of both systems:

When I received the bill for my wife’s one-month stay at Queen’s Square, I thought there was a mistake. The bill included all doctors’ costs, two MRI scans, more than a dozen physical therapy sessions, numerous blood and pathology tests, and of course room and board in the hospital for a month. And perhaps most important, it included the loving care of the finest nurses we’d encountered anywhere. The total cost: $25,752. That ain’t chump change. But to put this in context, the cost of just 10 physical therapy sessions at New York’s Cornell University Hospital came to $27,000–greater than the entire bill from British Health Service!

There is something seriously out of whack about 10 therapy sessions that cost more than a month’s worth of hospital bills in England. Still, while costs in U.S. hospitals might well have become exorbitant because of too few incentives to keep costs down, the British system has simply lost sight of costs and incentives altogether.

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My favourite Dylan-blogger has been listening to the singer’s festive radio show. I enjoyed these lines from Mr D’s script:

This week, we start being heard in England. So, we want to wish everybody a very merry Christmas, and for the duration of this show, anytime I use the world "humor", "color" or "favor", I’ll be adding an extra "u."

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Over at Cinematical, they’re mulling over the largest turkeys of the year, "Basic Instinct 2" chief among them, and inviting readers’ suggestions. Having been burned many times in the past (the hype business seems to be getting worse and worse) I’ve become a very reluctant cinema-goer. I’d really rather watch at home. But I did venture out to see "Casino Royale", and was duly punished. I really should have taken the advice of my colleague, Cosmo Landesman, and given it a miss. Unfortunately, as a hard-core fan of "Goldfinger", I fell for the claims that this was a return to the golden era. No such luck. Daniel Craig is very good, though. "The History Boys" was an even bigger dud. (I say that as a long-time Alan Bennett admirer.) I’m amazed to see it getting such good write-ups in the States. Proof that the concept of the snob hit never dies?  One other recent let-down  was the French thriller, "The Page Turner", which attracted the kind of breathless reviews that slightly pretentious, under-nourished French films invariably get.

Meanwhile, my expat American friend, Jo, has been going on so much about how she loathed "Children of Men" that I was thinking of suggesting therapy. Yet it’s one of Cinematical’s picks of the year. I think I’ll play safe and wait for the DVD. On the brighter side, I enjoyed "The Queen" and "The Squid and the Whale", not forgetting the harrowing but excellent German film about the ill-fated anti-Hitler campaigner, Sophie Scholl. (I think it was actually released at the end of 2005, but I caught it late at my local art-house.)