Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I went to bed Wednesday night, October 5, believing that there was a reasonable chance that, when I awoke, Philip Roth would at last have won a Nobel Prize in Literature. This was a mistake. The first problem was the scheduling. The Prizes are usually announced over the course of a single week, one announcement per day, and in the 'natural' course of events, the Lit Prize would have been announced after each of the 'hard sciences' on the list" medicine, physics, chemistry, had had its turn in the spotlight. So, that would have been last Thursday. Unbeknowst to me, though, the Lit panel had announced back in September, before I was paying attention, that it was taking longer than usual to make its decision, and that it would not bestow its prize this year until the Thursday after everybody else had bestowed the others. Maybe they're tired of always coming in the middle, after the hard sciences, before the Huge Publicity events of Peace and Economics. M...

Back in 2007, as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and several others were maneuvering in anticipation of the Democratic Party's upcoming presidential primary campaign, Alfred Knopf brought out a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein, A WOMAN IN CHARGE, about Hillary's life. Here's a fascinating passage, describing the inner workings of the Clinton administration in early 1994. "Many of Bill Clinton's top aides felt that Hillary was impatient when listening to their criticisms [and that Ira Magaziner was acting as her bulldog]....Magaziner infuriated the president's aides when they learned he was meeting privately with the Clintons in the White House residence and urging them to make important decisions without consulting either the [health care] task force or the economic team. Hillary's stature with Bentsen and even her old friend Shalala was deteriorating. "The president seemed caught between his wife and his advisers. More often...

In the wake of the whole let's-not-default escapade, I don't see Cruz as   the   nominee of the Republican Party in 2016. He might be   a   nominee, though, in a fractured-party context. In much the same way that the Democrats had three nominees in 1948. Cruz would be a Henry Wallace type figure.   The Bush family remains powerful in the Republican Party and I think they'll back somebody. This could mean Jeb, portrayed above, but if he doesn't want the job (and he   might   be rational enough not to want it) it'll mean some family associate. The Bushie to be named later (TBNL) will be the Henry Truman type figure in my '48 analogy.   There may also be an outlier, a regionally-limited figure who nonetheless wants a spot at the table, like Strom T. in the 1948 Democratic context. In the 21st century Republican context, though, the regional outlier will be a northeastern Republican who will be open to the charge tha...

It may be (unless a leader of unexpected stature and skill shows up soon) that the GOP will go the way of the Federalist Party in the near future. They'll do decently in the midterm elections of 2014, when only the hardcores show up to vote anyway. BUT they could splinter so badly in the run-up to 2016 as to give Hillary Clinton a cakewalk. And if that happens, the splintering will worsen until there is no opposition party to speak of, just as there was not when the Federalists fell apart. The feelings in the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" weren't especially good, though. One has to hope that Democratic Party dominance won't last and will have the consequence (as it eventually did in that context) of a splintering within their own ranks. The Whig Party came about because through the course of Monroe's 8 years large chunks of the Democratic Party decided they couldn't abide the consequences of their triumph, and they walked. So ... Hillary wins as...