Posted on 10/09/2008 10:50:33 PM PDT by AZLiberty
I spent two hours with historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson yesterday discussing the election and the candidates, the war and the world.
The podcast of hour one is here, and of hour two is here.
I rarely post an interview transcript on the front page, but to encourage you in its reading, here it is:
HH: A very special two hours ahead, a prolonged conversation about the state of the election, the state of the parties, the state of the world, the state of the war with historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson. ... Victor Hanson, welcome to the studio. I’ve probably talked to you a hundred times, a couple of times in person, but never in the studio. It’s good to have you here.
VDH: It’s good to be here, Hugh.
(Excerpt) Read more at hughhewitt.townhall.com ...
Here's some red meat, however:
HH: Victor Hanson, let’s talk a little bit about John McCain. As I watched last night, I shared a frustration with many conservatives that he did not articulate arguments. He almost simply referenced them as though the American public should know of which he spoke, should have the same frame of reference. And I thought to myself, this is very frustrating, but on the other hand, it’s very noble. He just assumes the American people understands what he’s talking about. Did he make a huge error in doing so?
VDH: Well, my problem is incrementalism, that incrementally, he seems that he gains ground on Obama because people in their natural states would prefer his approach. And he’s not by nature mean-spirited or disingenuous. So he doesn’t like to go negative. He assumes people have a certain level of common knowledge. But the problem is that events are overtaking him. The headlines about Wall Street, Fannie Mae, the whole Washington-New York in pretty much a cesspool, and so what happens is Obama shoots ahead because of the events of the day. And you said it a moment earlier when you said it was time. If we had eight more weeks of this campaign, and the focus on Obama, I suppose, McCain could catch up. But he’s going to have a great deal of trouble catching up unless he decides to be much tougher, to draw distinctions between the Obama of Chicago, the Obama that voted the most liberal Senator in the U.S. Senate, the Obama who had a particular view of the world. It’s no accident when Obama’s wife, I don’t want to pick on his wife, but when she serially says that she has no pride in the United States until her husband ran, or she’s mad at the United States, or this is a mean country, all of that is, is just a reification of the type of people they met, the type of conversations that were going on, the type of worldview they had. And that has to come out, or McCain is going to lose. And he’s going to have to tell people this is the biggest contrast since McGovern-Nixon in ’72, culturally, socially, politically, economically. We’ve got a European socialist who believes in statism and collectivized health care, high taxes, entitlements, and we have somebody who doesn’t. We have somebody who believes in world governance and deference to the United Nations, and utopian pacifism, moral equivalence, multiculturalism, oppression studies, and someone who doesn’t. But if he’s not going to walk the American people through that labyrinth and tell people very simply that if you vote for my opponent, the following is going to happen in your lives. And if you don’t, this is what’s going to happen if you vote for me. He needs…he needed to say in five seconds Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are not the entire problem with the economy, but they were the catalyst that started this, and here’s why, because greedy people on Wall Street piggybacked on the assumption that the federal government would back bad loans. Why did they back bad loans? Because Barack Obama and Barney Frank and this whole group of Democratic apparatchiks, under the guise of political correctness, lent money to people who had no business borrowing it, and who walked away from their obligations. And that caused a chain of events that now we’re supposed to think discredited capitalism. And he needs to tell people how that started. And if he can’t, then he’s going to be into this, you know, gecko and Wall Street did this, and this is typical greed, and this is, it’s not going to work for him. If he gets into that paradigm, the Republicans will be just blamed for not believing in regulation or statism, and he’s going to lose. He needs to get back to what caused this meltdown in the very beginning, and that really disturbing circular process where somebody from a Democratic administration is given a plumb sinecure, and that person, to keep his job, gives money from that quasi-public institution to the Congress, who oversee it, and then cooks the books so that he or she and their friends can take multimillion dollar bonuses. And once that’s established at a trillion to two trillion dollars, then the ever-ready profitmongers in Wall Street see that, and they see the guarantees, and then they start to participate in it.
WOW! Is he available to run for president on short notice?
I'm uncomfortable with the use of the word piggybacked and Barney Frank in such close proximity. It makes me feel...dirty.
Hugh, I like your show, but don't you think you protest a bit too much? :)
You're one of the Country Clubbers.
1. Really rich liberals don't mind taxes because you can take half or more of their income and it doesn't affect them and then they point to their taxes and say they care for the poor, thus enhancing their liberal credentials.
2. The underclass is getting fatter on entitlements, wants more and more from the govt. and is moving into the lower-middle class.
mark
Yes. Things need to be said in a dramatic way. Unfortunately, the purists in the party destroyed those with a strong voice, Giuliani and Romney. So all we get to hear is this quivering little voice, “My friends, I can reach across the isle.”
Thank God at least for Sarah. And may God have mercy on us and help us find a way, quick.
Victor Davis Hanson is an American treasure.
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