Obama Bests Clinton At Craft of Writing

[babylonsister]

Obama Bests Clinton At Craft of Writing
Books

By ADAM KIRSCH
Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 3, 2008


When Democratic primary voters go to the polls tomorrow in Ohio and Texas, it's a safe bet that few will be casting their votes based on senators Clinton's and Obama's merits as writers. To judge a candidate based on his or her literary ability would be as irrelevant, most people agree, as voting for the better ballroom dancer. It may be a nice talent to have, but it has nothing to do with being president. It even seems a little naïve to judge a politician as the author of a book bearing his or her name. Today, just about every candidate with national ambitions feels the need to publish a book — a memoir, a polemic, a 10-point program — but such books are not really written; they are issued, such as press releases or position papers. A senator is no more the author of his books than of his bills. In both cases, he just accepts responsibility for a document drafted by a team of experts.

Against this cynicism, however, stands the fact that the greatest statesmen — the ones who occupy the most cherished places in our historical memory — are the ones who were great writers. President Lincoln and Prime Minister Churchill, to take the most familiar examples, occupy a higher plane than the average president or prime minister, partly because of the events they participated in, but also because of the way they interpreted those events in their speeches and writings. Politics and language, they proved, do not have to be sullen strangers — or sworn enemies, as they are in the realm of propaganda that George Orwell wrote about. On the contrary, reading Lincoln's second inaugural or Churchill's 1940 speeches, it becomes clear that the political and the literary converge at the highest levels. In both fields, the ability to imagine and to communicate what you imagine is essential; and both of those tasks depend entirely on language. As long as politics is an expression of human creativity, not just a matter of administering populations, there will be a profound connection between language and leadership.

So it is not as irrelevant as it might seem to look at the candidates as authors. In fact, comparing Mrs. Clinton's books — "It Takes a Village" (1996) and "Living History" (2003) — with Mr. Obama's — "Dreams from My Father" (1995) and "The Audacity of Hope" (2006) — sheds a good deal of light on their characters, and on the reasons why they are liked and disliked. This is even — or especially — the case because the candidates' relationships with their own books are so different. To put it bluntly, Mrs. Clinton's books are patently manufactured, while Mr. Obama's feel genuinely written; as a result, hers are painful to read, while his are mostly a pleasure.

Consider them, to begin with, at the level of the sentence. Mrs. Clinton's are purposefully shorn of anything that might appear gratuitous — a surprising metaphor, a striking word choice. It is as though such verbal pleasures, which are what make a piece of writing literary, are inherently suspicious — as though any attention to the medium would cast doubt on the earnestness of the message. But if, as the saying goes, style is the man, then a text without style seems to have issued from no human mind, but from a committee or a machine. (This is not too far from the truth about "Living History." As Jason Zengerle recently noted in the New Republic, Mrs. Clinton's own contributions to the book cannot be distinguished from those of her ghostwriter and her speechwriter, not to mention editors and researchers.)

more...

http://www.nysun.com/article/72169

[aquart]

1. NY Sun=right wing rag. They can't give it away at the subway entrance.

What an interesting choice for commentary. Read it regularly, do you? Agree with it a lot?

[idovoodoo]

2. Sorry but Mr. Kirsch is an asshole.

He begins with the premise that literary ability is a poor indicator of leadership quality then expends gallons of ink to putatively demonstrate how one candidate excels to the point of deserving victory (a proposition that's idiotic on its face, being 100% subjective)

:grr: