Tom Chatfield
Samuel Huntington: the most ordinary of intellectual rarities
Since his death on Christmas eve, academics and amateurs alike have been debating the significance of Samuel Huntington, whose Clash of Civilizations (1996) has been a shibboleth for public intellectuals and politicians ever since its publication. In our latest edition, Eric Kaufmann, a fellow at the Belfer Centre, Harvard, argues that Huntington was an iconoclast to the core, and one whose estrangement from the elite on both sides of the political debate placed him, in fact, far closer to the “normal” of American opinion than almost any of his critics. Which doesn’t mean he was right about everything: but which can help us understand his legacy as a force for good in “arguing for a less overbearing America.”
James Crabtree
And the result is in
It’s endorsement season in America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his commanding poll lead, Obama has to date matched his favour with wavering voters with a knack for tempting skeptical editors. The running tally shows the Democrat ahead 179 – 60 in major editorial endorsements. This is interesting, for a number of reasons. Such liberal bias is relatively recent. A reliable source told me a while back that until Bill Clinton, LBJ in 1964 (in the aftermath of an assassination) was the only postwar Democrat to gain more endorsements than his Republican opponent. This changed with Kerry. Now Obama has a handy lead. Such a situation makes the decision of right-leaning publications more intriguing. Some are predictable. Few can have been surprised by last week’s lengthy Obama hagiography in the New Yorker; it also would be a stretch to describe the Guardian’s endorsement as coveted. Others are more interesting. The Financial Times for instance, sometimes a swing endorsement, came out for Obama.
Were Prospect to endorse candidates, ours would clearly be hotly anticipated. Our studious neutrality in such matters, however, means the The Economist is perhaps the most interesting decision. The magazine—socially and economically liberal—would like to endorse a socially-liberal republican. It would probably have liked the 2000-era McCain, but instead gave a hearty endorsement to Governor Bush. It has recently run a fairly tough editorial line on Obama, criticising his positions on trade and the economy in particular. And its editor, John Micklethwaite, wrote a (very good) book in which he predicted the long-term ascendency of American conservatives, a notion which has perhaps been slightly undercut by the recent implosion of that movement. The decision is one which I have a small insight into, as a former Economist intern. Under the previous editor, Bill Emmott, a poll was taken of the Economist’s hundred or so editorial staff. (In 2004 this was said to overwhelmingly favour Kerry.) This informed the decision, but ultimately the choice was for the editor alone. In 2004, in a rather woosterish editorial, Emmott sided with his staff and went grumpily for Kerry. What of this year? Obama’s lead, his self-evidently superior candidacy, and the need for newspapers to side with a winner, give three strong reasons to suspects an Obama nod. I’d be surprised if they don’t. Nonetheless, the Economist’s political staff tends to be more right-wing than its ordinary writers, its editor is a thoughtful, principled centrist conservative, and the magazine has traditionally taken a hawkish, McCain-ish foreign policy line on Iraq and Iran. Perhaps there is room for a very minor October surprise after all.
UPDATE: reliable sources tells me that the decision is made; in news unlikely to much bother the swing voters of rural ohio, the editor announced to his staff meeting this morning that Obama will, this Thursday, be able to count The Economist among his official backers. With back to back endorsements for Kerry and Obama, perhaps we should see it as a Democrat-leaning newspaper after all?.
Erik Tarloff
Before last night’s debate began, there were two questions dominating public discussion: First, will McCain come out swinging? And second, is there any way he might be able to alter the dynamics of the race?
The second question was always inherently a little fatuous, the journalese equivalent of a noisy promo for an otherwise dull television cop show. Sight unseen, one knew the answer: No, John McCain will not be able to alter the dynamics of the race with this one debate performance, regardless of how skilful. The final debate is inevitably going to be the least-watched, and the least likely to affect anyone’s perceptions of the contest. Even a thoroughly ignorant, hidebound American voter has been living with John McCain for over eight years now, and with Barack Obama for almost two. We’ve seen their speeches, we’ve watched them being interviewed, and before last night we had already seen them debate each other twice (and their primary opponents innumerable times). The impact of even a decisive debate victory for McCain — no matter how such a thing is defined — was likely to be minimal. In the first debate, such a phenomenon could arguably have made a significant difference, but not in the third, especially not when Obama was widely judged to have won debates one and two.
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