Walter Kirn’s problem with crowds

After two days of laughing out loud, crying out loud, and thrilling release—after four years crouching in the shadows of conservative rage—liberals woke up this morning to discover that author Walter Kirn felt disoriented at the Democratic National Convention.

In his piece “Slouching Towards Charlotte: The Alienating Spectacle That is the Democratic Convention” in The New Republic, Kirn confessed how little he liked Michelle Obama’s sweet renderings. He found he was alone, even among his press colleagues. Instead of turning to Hunter S Thompson’s favorites, he wrote quietly about his alienation.

“To disagree with the conventional wisdom even as it’s being born around you—and even as you’re trying with all your might to anticipate and even shape it—is a profoundly disorienting experience. It makes you wonder if you were there at all, or if there even exists a there to be at. Ideally, a convention would be a ground zero of factuality, an objective reality in a shifting universe of spin and opinion and second-order commentary. But the further you get inside one, I’m discovering, the more deliriously lost you feel, particularly to the self that you came in with. How does one both enter the group mind and stay inside one’s own mind? It’s a challenge.”

He’s getting next to no sympathy in the social media. That’s fine; he can get back at the herd—and make millions more—by writing another funny, filmable novel.

What’s funny is that Kirns’s piece is causing offense simply because his expectations were too high. He allowed himself to sound naive about American politics, much like that other author who was the star at the Democrat’s last convention in Denver.

An American political convention is what Washington would be like if its responsibilities, its experts, the laws of science, the lessons of history, the loners, and the snobs (like that homebody Barack Obama) left town.

The ground zero of a political convention is almost exclusively about promiscuous and easy emotions. It’s a pseudo-event and can reasonably be judged by the rules of any other spectacle. The decisions have already been taken, and being away from decision-making makes most people, including most people in politics, happier.  

Ann Romney’s desperate family drama

(Note: This blog believes the candidates' wives should not be “off limits.” Unlike policy positions, Mitt Romney doesn’t switch wives. What his wife thinks and chooses to say are helpful in figuring out who he really is. Certainly, she is as revealing as the politician he eventually picks as his running mate.)

Three times over the last week—to Republican audiences and, once, on national television—Ann Romney has repeated the following story about their big decision.

“I said I only want to know one thing and that is, Mitt, if you get the nomination … can you fix it? I need to know, is it too late?”

“Has America gone over the proverbial cliff and we don’t have time to turn things around. I need to know whether it’s worth all this … He said no, it’s getting late, but it’s not too late. And with that I said, that’s all I need to know … if you can fix it, you must do this.”

Click on: www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75517_Page3.html#ixzz1sxpO0Ji4

Ann Romney could have been confused about the “proverbial cliff” the first time she told the story. After all, she’s only her husband’s principal advisor on labor markets.

Mitt could have been talking about Greece. Alternatively, the whole conversation could have taken place four years earlier—before the financial crash of 2008 rather than during the slow recovery on Obama’s watch. Yet her speech text remained unaltered through the week.

Still, even after correcting the dates, doesn’t the entire conversation seem false and just too precious? Like a bible story pasted up on green felt?  

You could imagine Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, or, say, Abe Lincoln choosing to reply: “Yes, it may be too late for America, but I can’t hang around here for the rest of my life.”

But could you imagine Michelle asking Barack Obama—in the midst of the Iraq War and during the financial collapse of 2008—whether the US presidency was worth all the bother?

Finally, doesn’t the image of that ghastly cliff clash slightly with the promise of an across-the-board 20 per cent income tax cut?

The story could work, however, as a joke. When two Republican empty-nesters have a family talk about whether it’s too late for the husband to fix it, it’s rarely about a debilitating Democratic in the White House.

Romney has taken on new writers; he'd better be careful.