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But if Republicans want another Reagan, they should recognize that he didn’t come from nowhere, and work on their farm team. – Glenn Reynolds. I am not quite sure about the expression “farm team”, but I am assuming that is an Americanism. I agree with the general sentiment, for all of Reagan’s drawbacks. There is no one on the political right in the English-speaking world who comes close to the Gipper. That is a shame. August 29th, 2008 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
 So what might shift contemporary impressions of President Bush? I can only speak for myself here, but something I did not expect was the discovery that he reads more history and talks with more historians than any of his predecessors since at least John F. Kennedy. The President has surprised me more than once with comments on my own books soon after they’ve appeared, and I’m hardly the only historian who has had this experience. I’ve found myself improvising excuses to him, in Oval Office seminars, as to why I hadn’t read the latest book on Lincoln, or on – as Bush refers to him – the “first George W.” I’ve even assigned books to Yale students on his recommendation, with excellent results. “Well, so Bush reads history”, one might reasonably observe at this point. “Isn’t it more important to find out how he uses it?” It is indeed, and I doubt that anybody will be in a position to answer that question definitively until the oral histories get recorded, the memoirs get written, and the archives open. But I can say this on the basis of direct observation: President Bush is interested – as no other occupant of the White House has been for quite a long time – in how the past can provide guidance for the future. August 27th, 2008 | 58 comments - (Comments are closed)
[M]aterial prosperity enables people to develop morally as well as intellectually. It provides the very basis through which individuals can begin to live like humans and not act like animals. – Neil Davenport, in the course of a sp!ked piece that neatly demolishes David Lammy’s barmy theory that British teenagers stab each other because they want to be rich. Lammy’s article is more wide-ranging in its insanity than Davenport allows. He ends up advocating compulsory social service and apprenticeships for all as a cure for gangs. August 24th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We live in a world where Ben Affleck won an Oscar and Robinson didn’t. Where’s your god now?” Dirty Harry’s Place, talking about the late, very great Edward G. Robinson. August 20th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Never brush your teeth if you’re dressed in black. Don’t trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Always put the shower curtain inside the bath. Life is forever teaching us lessons, and here’s another that I learnt last week: it’s impossible to be mates with celebrities.” August 19th, 2008 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
My dad was a newsagent, I went to state school, I’m Asian, I work in the city and I earn loads of money. I do it so my parents and future children can have something close to the only kind of life Toynbee has ever known. Me explain my position? How about she explains her right to speak for the poor? – Peter Hoskin singles out that comment by Raj Chande on an excerpt from Polly Toynbee and David Walker’s book entitled Unjust Rewards August 9th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Men do not like tits because they buy Zoo. Men buy Zoo because they like tits. – mr eugenides comments on Michael Gove’s aside about men’s mags in this August 6th, 2008 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I thought I’d begin by reading a sonnet by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.” August 5th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The moment that a policy “war” is declared these days, you can guess it’s doomed to gradual failure. August 4th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We all know that politics is a con some of the time. It has begun to feel like politics is a con almost all of the time.” Well, some of us have never thought much of politics in the first place, certainly not politics as a professional job. July 31st, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Weren’t the eighties grand? Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes. The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment brokers who lived a simple life in tune with money. Every wristwatch was a Rolex. Every car was a Mercedes-Benz. A fellow could romance a gal without shrink-wrapping his privates and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of America and General Motors. Women wore Adolfo gowns instead of dumpy federal circuit court judge robes. The Malcolm who mattered was Forbes. Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadn’t even soloed on her broom. What a blast we were having. The suburbs had just discovered Martha Stewart, the cities had just discovered crack. So many parties and none of them Democratic…Back then health care was a tummy tuck, not an inalienable right. If you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley.” July 26th, 2008 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
I often wonder how different individual lives in Britain would be if alcohol had never been invented. Just imagine all the couples who would never have got together without a little encouragement. All those unsent text messages and undeclared intentions. Can you imagine dancing, let alone pulling, in a sober club? – Iain Hollingshead, Twenty Something: the quarter-life crisis of Jack Lancaster July 25th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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