Late last week Nixon gave a speech to recent college graduates, and as we thumbed through the text of the speech a few things caught our eye:
First were Nixon’s attacks on people who are defined by “the mindset of ideology,” a thinly-veiled attempt at rationalizing how he turned his back on his fellow party members. Shame on those Democrats for being ideological rather than opportunistic - maybe he was trying to enlighten his audience that self-interest is more important than principle. It’s not particularly clever or sneaky that the new non-ideological Nixon just happened to be born the moment Democrats got a big thrashing in an election.
A less important but humorous part of the speech was how he kept riffing on being a ‘global citizen’ (echoing Obama’s controversial 2008 citizen of the world proclamation). The new graduates he was speaking to probably were probably more interested in finding jobs, but he probably wanted them to see the big picture about how all of us here on spaceship earth need to transcend such silly things.
Finally – an observation: it always seems like the politicians who contribute least to political discourse are always the ones most likely to complain about it and then end up doing nothing. Not exactly the most constructive way to approach a problem.
Comments