Noemie Emery: In praise of malaise Opinion Articles - Noemie Emery | Editorials on Top News Stories | Washington Examiner
As having had to live through the decade, I like the assessment in this paragraph:
One can't get much more apt than "a slum of a decade" as an epitaph for the '70s for at someone who "came of age" in that decade with HS graduation, college and getting into the work force as I did. Thank God for Reagan!!! The pain of the '70s was salved by the glory of the '80s.
This is a thought provoking analysis:
I might say that from my perspective "it takes a rise of the power of the MSM to create a true disaster" ... Nixon was no worse than LBJ or certainly not FDR on skullduggery ... it is just that Nixon was hated by the MSM so he had to be destroyed. Bush was hated by the MSM and although they did their best to destroy him, they didn't succeed -- which made them REALLY hate him! The "disaster" of the Bush years was primarily in both houses of congress going to the Democrats in '06 -- the slide started immediately thereafter.
BO has us set up for the kind of long term disaster of FDR proportions -- one hates to consider that we may end up hoping for WWIII to bring about an end to the BO travails as WWII did for FDR.
As having had to live through the decade, I like the assessment in this paragraph:
To most people, this was less a giant step for mankind than one of the low points in what has been justly described as a “slum of a decade,” but Hardball host Chris Matthews, a one-time speech writer for our 39th president, convened two ex-colleagues - Gerald Rafshoon and Hendrik Hertzberg (now at the New Yorker) - to commemorate and discuss the event.
One can't get much more apt than "a slum of a decade" as an epitaph for the '70s for at someone who "came of age" in that decade with HS graduation, college and getting into the work force as I did. Thank God for Reagan!!! The pain of the '70s was salved by the glory of the '80s.
This is a thought provoking analysis:
“Today, the malaise speech is being revived as a totem of Mr. Carter’s unrecognized greatness,” as Hayward tells us. “Jimmy Carter was a visionary president! If only we had listened to him!”If only we hadn’t had to listen to Matthews’s idea that presidents always “appoint” their successors by being their opposites: Hoover “created” Franklin D. Roosevelt; Nixon created a “truth-teller” like Carter, and it took a catastrophe on the level of George Bush the younger to give us the radiant presence who rules us today.“You might say he begat Obama,” he babbled to Hertzberg, “It took Bush to make us see the importance of an Obama...What do you think about a...sophisticated Obama coming in after an incurious president like Bush?”Hertzberg, of course, would be up to the challenge. “We really required a comprehensive disaster...to make Americans ready to take this extraordinary and wonderful leap of faith that they took in electing this remarkable president that we now have,” he replied.
Historically, of course, it took a disaster like Carter to make Americans take a chance on a 69-year-old ex-movie actor who cured their “malaise” in short order. Since malaise appears poised to be making a comeback, perhaps this will happen again.
I might say that from my perspective "it takes a rise of the power of the MSM to create a true disaster" ... Nixon was no worse than LBJ or certainly not FDR on skullduggery ... it is just that Nixon was hated by the MSM so he had to be destroyed. Bush was hated by the MSM and although they did their best to destroy him, they didn't succeed -- which made them REALLY hate him! The "disaster" of the Bush years was primarily in both houses of congress going to the Democrats in '06 -- the slide started immediately thereafter.
BO has us set up for the kind of long term disaster of FDR proportions -- one hates to consider that we may end up hoping for WWIII to bring about an end to the BO travails as WWII did for FDR.
