Peggy Noonan, always a formidable writer and sometimes a formidable thinker, makes this point about a Barack Obama weakness:
His youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered,
been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling
back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear
from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to
his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.
I’m not sure I buy the second part. Many white Americans won’t vote for a black man. It’s that simple. Her first point is well-made, and frankly is a problem for most at the top echelons of American society now that meritocracy is dead. A Harry Truman couldn’t become president now. And the days are largely gone when a son of the elite, such as Jack Kennedy, served in combat alongside his fellow citizens of all walks.
Which brings us to John McCain. Noonan says slyly he should promise to be a one-term president. "For many in the middle it would be a twofer," she writes. "You get a good man, for
only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He’ll be better
older." This is her partisan side clouding judgment. McCain is seasoned and has suffered. But to what end? To promise a continuation of the disastrous policies of his callow successor, and the general ideological tilt by the elite untested theorists on the right? To burnish a temper that is legendary and unsettling? I’ve been beaten around the head by life enough to be not merely skeptical, but scared of this man.
There’s more in the stack. Read on.
–A rite of passage for any teen growing up in old Phoenix was to drive with boyfriend or girlfriend up Arcadia to Valle Vista on Camelback Mountain and kiss above the vast jewel of city lights. That will be no more if property owners succeed in closing the street to non-residents. Another thing that made Phoenix distinctive will be lost.
Old Phoenix was a relatively egalitarian city, especially if you were an Anglo. I grew up poor but went to public schools with the children of the city’s elite. Views were the property of everyone. That’s all changed, symbolized by that oxymoron, the "gated community." Now Willo is gated off — the Willo Soviet ("neighborhood association") would like to close the whole thing. And this is a city neighborhood. Why not close off Camelback Mountain? The current "city" is among America’s most divided and segregated, especially by money and class. The transient super-rich and the growing underclass are poison for civic culture. It’s a heartbreak and bodes ill for the future.
–It took the University of Arizona forever to name a dean to the downtown Phoenix medical school. Now he’s resigned, after UA changed his title to vice dean. This reflects the long-standing issue that Tucson didn’t want to yield much control to the Phoenix campus. Many at UA med school didn’t want to be in Phoenix at all. This is yet another setback to the downtown biomedical campus, which should be far beyond its still embryonic condition.
Across the world, competitors are moving at speed while Phoenix pokes along. The cheer-leaders keep waiting for the sprawl machine to cough back to life to save things. With record foreclosures and people mailing in their house keys to lenders, it’s going to be a long wait. Oh, wait, an amusement park amid the ugliness of Eloy, accessible only by freeway, that’ll save Arizona in the 21st century. (I’m sure Mayor Gordon is trying to get the theme park in the Opportunity Corridor, near the thriving W Hotel).
Few seemed to grasp the opportunity to have a medical school, research, T-Gen, a teaching hospital, nursing and pharmaceutical colleges, and private bio and pharma companies — all in the dense proximity that encourages creativity, innovation and cures. It could have allowed a leap forward, and included significant bio blue-collar jobs, as well. It is apparently not to be, because paralysis means failure in the global economy.
But the D’backs are winning, so all is right with the world.
(Better late than never…)