From the late David Halberstam’s 1991 book, The Next Century:
My favorite story is of Art Buchwald lecturing to a large group of CEOs, right after Reagan’s second election. “How many here voted for Reagan?” he asked, and virtually every hand in the audience shot up. “And how many here,” he continued, “would let him be CEO of your own company?” Not a single hand went up.
(I wrote for Mondale during that campaign. A few days before the defeat we all knew was coming, a co-worker asked of nobody in particular, “You guys know what democracy is? It’s that form of government in which you give the people what they want, and you give it to ’em good.”)
What do you have to be like to write for a candidate?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on May 11, 2007 11:43 PMYou have to be suave, handsome, brilliant, charming, supremely literate, and able to take rejection.
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on May 12, 2007 8:04 AMI think he was paraphrasing H. L. Mencken who said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
Posted by: Steve Sorensen on May 12, 2007 10:16 AMWhat about disagreements with the candidate on principle?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on May 12, 2007 1:52 PMPrinciple! Are you mad?
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on May 12, 2007 2:16 PMThe winning side would have paid you much better.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on May 13, 2007 1:46 AMBuchwald demonstrated, in one fell swoop, why America is swirling down the toilet. It made my hair hurt to read that.
Posted by: Bendra on May 13, 2007 12:11 PMOf course you're right, Martha. But what about principle?
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on May 13, 2007 2:50 PMWell, you picked Mondale over Reagan for some reason, no? Principle had nothing to do with it?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on May 13, 2007 11:53 PMI give up. Maybe I do have a principle or two, way in the back of my closet.
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on May 14, 2007 9:34 AMBut writing for a candidate demands wholehearted morally inflected belief in the rightness of one's work mixed with cynical self-censorship. Yes, it takes the same combination to write for any major newspaper, but the candidate situation seems like it would sharpen the paradox. So how the hell...?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on May 15, 2007 1:08 AM