Interview: Victor Davis Hanson on the 2012 Presidential Election
Another interview taken from the 2012 National Review Cruise, as Victor Davis Hanson dropped by on Saturday to discuss the election, the culture, and the dissipated state of California. During this wide-ranging 13-minute interview, recorded poolside in the “Monte Carlo” cabana of the MS Nieuw Amsterdam as she sailed back to Fort Lauderdale, FL, VDH discussed:
● How both sides of the aisle are trapped in their own media cocoons.
● Are conservatives “Going Galt” by tuning out the pop culture?
● How the left is living on the fumes of California’s great wealth, which they inherited, and then squandered.
● What causes a culture to lose faith in its future?
● How the news media became America’s equivalent of 1984′s Ministry of Truth.
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VDH sounds a lot more reasonable in person, than in his columns here in which he indulges in layer after layer of partisan wit and veiled diatribe against Obama’s folly. I suppose that he knows what the red meat folks here want, but the interview shows that he can be so much more reasonable and balanced. It’s as if his job here is to get the choir to sing out, “Amen, brother!” but catch him on a cruise or a mountain climb and hear that mellifluous voice, he is actually enjoyable.
I thought it was hilarious that Hanson unironically recommends a working class Republican candidate from the decks of a posh cruise ship in the Caribbean.
well … cruises are not so posh, unless it’s on your own ship.
What a contrast between VDH and the Republican Ruling Elitist Jim Geharty.
GehartyRove’s conclusions are that the election was no big deal and Romney should have pandered better (i.e., never make the 47% comment). In other words, we need a slicker effete salesman who will never ever say anything that might offend anybody.
VDH’s conclusions are that California will gradually self correct as more and more of the 53% leave the state, and that republicans need candidates that aren’t obviously effete salemen. (I seem to recall that there were some pjm commenters who warned quite vocally that Romney was the perfect candidate to be demonized. Oh wait, I was one of those. That, of course, is exactly what happened, even though it appeared for a while that he had blunted the attacks.)
Personally, I think the tipping point has been reached. Obamacare is the death knell, but there are many other reasons. But since the struggle must continue on the slim chance that the colorfully named low-information-voters (i.e., idiots and fools) might realize that the golden goose is 98% cooked, VDH’s advice to pick somebody who isn’t a mush-mouthed East Coast liberal would seem to be a good approach.
The GOP is complicit in voter fraud:
http://judicialview.com/Court-Cases/Civil-Procedure/Democratic-National-Committee-v-Republican-National-Committee/10/201975
Wow, and it happened only 30+ years ago, what a spectacularly relevant find that is!
If it wasn’t such a dirty joke on us and our children, you’d almost laugh at a political party like the GOP, facing the abyss, which nonetheless refuses to permit its candidates to utter the word “socialism.” You did notice that small omission, RIGHT? And so the truth is inescapable and obvious. For decades, the RNC has aided and abetted the decimation of American greatness. How many weary times must this simple fact be pointed out? DEMOCRATS DRINK HUMAN BLOOD, AND REPUBLICANS WIPE THEIR LIPS. Face up to this ugly reality. Start thinking Third Stream. We need a new party, one with the guts to fight back against a slo-mo civil war We The People are losing.
They don’t allow the use of the “S” word because for the most of the last 60-yrs, beginning with Ike’s acquiescence to The New Deal and refusing to get into a big fight over repealing most (or any) of it, the National GOP has, with its “Go-Along to Get-Along” policy, been the party of Socialism-Lite.
Ike? Try Hoover, the father of the New Deal. Or Teddy Roosevelt, another “progressive”.
Save Coolidge, Harding and Reagan.
You do, eh? Then stop crying for someone else to produce one for you, get off your lazy parts and build one.
And quick, before it’s made illegal.
proreason:
I never realized it was demonizing and my apparently being a low-information voter that caused me to not vote for Romney.
This middle aged middle class educated white male gun nut thought it was Mitt and his party’s denial of my gay sister and sister-in-law’s civil rights that did it.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Joseph:
Gay marriage is primarily a state issue – either supported or not objected to by many Republicans, who in my state also supported marijuana legalization. Republicans were prominently featured in pro-gay marriage ads. Somehow none of that registered with you.
You are certainly entitled to promote gay marriage to front burner status over the economy and other national issues. Perhaps you felt Obama’s record has been acceptable in those areas.
Your comment, however, seems to indicate that emotion trumped reason in your case.
“…emotion trumped reason in your case…”
which would seem to make him an all-in Progressive.
Let’s review:
The country’s credit has been downgraded.
No budget has been passed since 2008, but spending has exceeded federal tax receipts by 1 Trillion each year.
The national debt is 6 trillion higher than when Little Lenin took office.
A US ambassador has been killed and raped.
The Middle East is in chaos after obama “reset” our foreign policy.
40% more people are on food stamps.
Unemployment is over 8% (by official measures), 20% by many measures.
10,000 other atrocities.
Yet you proudly voted for obama.
I would say that “low-information” when applied to you is a hilarious euphamism.
There are no “civil rights” to force others to go along with anyone’s pretense that a same-sex sham marriage is a real one, among other perversions.
Let’s review: “Gay” is a politics. “Homosexual” is a chosen lifestyle. “Same-sex attraction” is a temptation and temptations can be resisted.
Don’t grouse that “I don’t get it”, Corlett. I don’t buy it.
It took 70 years for the Soviet Union to disintigrate, so don’t count on one- or two- election cycles for the situation to become so bad that it will begin the self-correction phase. Obama has Michelle, and two daughters. We might not see the proverbial change in our lifetimes.
Get a grip FWO, that was 1981, thirty-one freakin’ years ago! What does that have to do with this interview? I thought progressives are about moving forward but its seems you are stuck in the era of Big Hair. Obama won by a small margin, but he still won, but it’s not enough, you continue to cry foul about something that happened over three decades in the past. The RNC got caught in New Jersey in 1981 but the DNC and their ally, The New Black Panthers got a free pass in Philly in 2010, where’s the justice? Want to explain that one? Please try to stay on topic, Dr. Hanson was commenting about the state of Mexafornia. White people are now the minority in my state, do I now get minority status and all the free liberal perks that come with it? No, you say, because I’m an old white male and my kind are responsible for all the ills of society. How about my kids and grand-kids, are they entitled? Race over reason,the mantra of multiculturalism means death by diversity. You just made Dr. Hanson’s point. Thank-you for your input, now go back to “I Love the Eighties”, when this country had it’s last great President, Ronald Reagan. Today’s newly re-elected occupier of the White House was in Pakistan at that time as a college student. What was he doing there? Would you try to find some Facts Out on that Will and get back to us?
Seems that it’s still binding.
The only Republican candidate that can connect to the working class id Sarah Palin.
Wrong,there are two candidate who can win in 2016 and can connect to many diverse groups give messages to all Americans treating everyone the same for a change. They are Palin and Rubio. Either one can win. I like the idea of Palin getting out the vote for House and Senate candidates. No one can do it better.
Once you meet Marco you realize he is the “man” for the job has all the necessary qualifications and could get the job done.
VDH is even more entertaining in person than while reading his writings. His suggestion that we pick ourselves up, dust off and resume the battle is positive but may not represent reality. Our apprehensions about the direction the ship of state is going may not be solvable. Unlike the Titantic that struck an iceberg, the ship of state has continued to build higher and higher decks that now threaten to capsize the entire country.
There may not be another Republican president until the primary job is one of selecting who is allowed into the liferafts.