A New Mandate

I haven't had the internet at home for a couple of weeks, which has been a strange and fortunately temporary experience.  All my web-based activities have come courtesy of my iPhone and the Apple Store's wireless network, both of which are handy but not exactly ideal.  I should be up and running at home soon, but I thought I'd post a quick note about election watching parties in London.  I've heard of lots of little ones, and a few big ones, the most noteworthy being the convention-themed night at the East Room, in Shoreditch (£125 per for dinner, drinks, pancakes, coffee, and coverage 'til 9am), the meat-sweaty gathering at the Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge (£25 for dinner, coverage, and a bite to eat in the morning), and finally the bizarre night club-cum-newsroom experience at the infamous Yates Wine Lodge in Leicester Square (£35-100 for food, booze, a mock election, merchandise, and coverage).  A lot of pubs and restaurants will doubtless have their TVs tuned to the election, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a place to join in on the collective breath holding as the American electorate heads to the polls.  For those voters who have somehow remained undecided, I offer the following excerpt from the November 3rd issue of The New Yorker and its feature on Chuck Hagel:

For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin’s lack of experience is her willingness – in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden’s long Senate career, for example – to belittle the notion that experience is important.  “There’s no question, she knows her market,” Hagel said.  “She knows her audience, and she’s going right after them.  And I’ll tell you why that’s dangerous.  It’s dangerous because you don’t want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life.  You want to always strive to define standards up.  If you start defining standards down – “Well, I don’t have a big education, I don’t have experience” – yes, there’s a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard.  But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don’t count in a complicated, dangerous world – that’s dangerous in itself. 

“There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings,” he continued.  “And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters – pro-choice or pro-life.  Important issue, I know that.  But, my goodness.  The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue.  And interestingly enough, that is one issue that stopped John McCain from picking one of the people he really wanted, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge.”