The Crossed Pond

Normally I’m not one to read The Weekly Standard, but I was persuaded by DA Ridgley at Postive Liberty to give one article a go: Andrew Ferguson’s scathingly delicious synopsis of the various books by current presidential candidates. If you simply accept that anything The Weekly Standard publishes will be nakedly partisan (and this article does not disappoint) then the article itself is quite enjoyable. Andrew examines the historical precedents of ghostwritten and opportunistically timed campaign books, and excoriates the latest offerings from six of our Executive Office wannabees. Some highlights:

Joe Biden:

His legendary self-regard becomes more impressive when the reader sees it in typescript, undistracted by the smile and the hair plugs. Biden quotes at great length from letters of recommendation he received as a young man, when far-sighted professors wrote movingly of his “sharp and incisive intellect” and his “highly developed sense of responsibility.” These qualities have proved to be more of a burden than you might think, Biden admits. “I’ve made life difficult for myself,” he writes, “by putting intellectual consistency and personal principle above expediency.”
Yes, many Biden fans might tag these as the greatest of his gifts. Biden himself isn’t so sure. After a little hemming and hawing–is it his intelligence that he most admires, or his commitment to principle, or his insistence on calling ‘em as he sees ‘em, or what?–he decides that his greatest personal and political virtue is probably his integrity. Tough call.

Hillary Clinton:

Like Castro, like Ceausescu, like many other politicians, Mrs. Clinton prefers to be photographed surrounded by schoolchildren, an image that suggests either a kid’s birthday party or a hostage situation, depending on your point of view. …

Its a funny line, I’ll give you that. But it sounds so like one of the ludicrous draft titles for Jonah Goldberg’s mythical and ever changing book (Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussilini to Hillary Clinton). Seriously now. After rehashing the authorship controversy surrounding It Takes a Village, 10th anniversery edition: (Barbara Feinman is generally accepted as the actual author, and was supposedly promised significant writing credit, but received none) we get:

We are left, unhappily, with the book itself, turgid and sanctimonious. It remains what its author called it in a speech a few years ago: “At best a mediocre political tract on the virtues of governmental responsibility in the raising of children.” I’m quoting Barbara Feinman, of course, not Mrs. Clinton. Anyway, the episode is worth recalling, and Village is worth keeping at hand, as another instance of the creepy, and often self-defeating, pettiness that marks every phase of the Clintons’ public life.

Now that is something Andrew Sullivan could get behind given his near hourly (anti)HRC posting.

Mike Huckabee:

“I’m a conservative,” he writes, who believes in “lower taxes, less government, personal empowerment, personal ownership, and personal responsibility.” His book is the work of a buttinski, however–a busybody in overdrive. There is no sphere of other people’s lives that he doesn’t have elaborate theories about how to manage.

Its a good read, but the clear bias is distracting. Andrew is at pains to demonstrate the moral equivalence or outright depravity of the democrats, while the republicans are merely boring or wrong on policy.