Political Speeches and other absurd rituals

I am at a national meeting of the independent colleges in Washington. One of the rituals here is a set of speeches from politicians and analysts. Yesterday we heard from Eleanor Clift and David Brooks as well as a futurist talking about 7 revolutions and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton gave a lousy speech. But it was improved from when I have heard her speak previously. Her Q&A style was excellent. She was an annointed president in this group - getting a standing ovation for almost anything. And she is clearly running for president. These college presidents fawned over her.

The futurist presented a high tech powerpoint of banalities about seven revolutions and projecting out in the future through 2025. He talked about population, technology, conflict, resources, and yada yada yada. His analysis was pedestrian and linear. Europe is collapsing in population, we are growing but Asia and Africa are growing quickly. I was reminded of Malthus - although this guy was smart enough to say that his analysis could end up either positive or negative.

Then came the two political analysts - Eleanor Clift was idiotic - she had a series of applause lines set for a democratic leaning audience. Tied all the liberal mantras together into a speech that in some ways I hope is repeated to all liberal audiences. That way they will never take over power again. It reinforced the impression that a lot of Washington talks to itself.

David Brooks, on the other hand, was interesting. He argued that in many ways American society is being bifurcated along a series of lines - not the ones that divided us a century ago but along dividers much more interesting than red state/blue state. He also argued that these stratifications are aided because one group very rarely intermixes with another. Then he gave some very good ideas about how one might bring an electorate like this together. If the democrats who were in the audience listened carefully (not ignoring his comments in anticipation of Hillary) and the ideas were disbursed well - they might have a chance to win the 2006 and 2008 elections.