2004 IS ANOTHER TITANIC ELECTION | 2004-10-30
The first article here was one of my "Man With A Memory..." pieces.
In every other "Man With A Memory" article I have started by quoting what people are saying and then ridiculing it by talking about real history. This time I repeated the usual line, "This is the most important election in our generation."
Regular readers would naturally expect me to make fun of this statement.
But there is nothing ridiculous about it. I have been through fifteen presidential elections, and not one of the close ones was any more important than this one.
Let me repeat Henry Kissinger's statement in this context: "Presidential politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
If someone says that X's rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic was more important than the other fourteen times those deck chairs were rearranged, who has the right to laugh at him?
Political professionals have every right to say that their rearrangement of the deck chairs is the most important, as long as they do not insult anybody who makes deck chairs.
They must also recognize the importance of those whose expertise and hard work made those deck chairs possible. They must also recognize the expertise of those who arranged those deck chairs in the first place.