In the spirit of the potentially feel-good nature of the Situation, here is a heartwarming story in the Times about Jon Favreau, Obama's 26-year-old head speechwriter. It's a fluff piece, no doubt. But it highlights the freshness that runs throughout the Obama campaign. (Favreau works with two other writers, ages 26 and 30.)
And the article also reignited my interest in a huge Hillary Clinton dig at Barack from New Hampshire: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." To my knowledge, we haven't yet conquered this statement on the blog, and I want to open it up for discussion. I get what Clinton is saying, that there is a difference between talk and action. But is that difference a real one? (And what, by the way, makes prose more active than poetry?)
Admittedly, this is a bit philosophical for a Saturday night, but Solon and I have been lobbing it back and forth for days. In theory, I think we all would submit to some degree to the actively heuristic nature of speech. BUT--and this bothers me a bit--Hillary has made a decent case for the need for concrete action that is separate from arousing speech. (Leaving out, of course, what has been read as her quasi-racist statement on Johnson as the doer and King as a mere poet.) I do think, though, that a little more poetry in the White House might not be a bad thing.
So which is it, poetry or prose? Or are they the same thing, as we want to believe?
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