League of the Over-Articulate

The "Axis of Evil" man has found his soul mate. Michael Gerson, George W. Bush's oratorical muse, is now in love with Bobby Jindal, who "has the ability to overwhelm any topic with facts and thoughtful arguments--displaying a mastery of detail that encourages confidence...with the world-changing intensity of a late-night dorm room discussion."

Others saw the Louisiana governor's response to Obama last night differently. Andrew Sullivan called it "tired, exhausted, boilerplate" and even the Fox News folks "panned" it. But Gerson recognizes a fellow wonk when he sees one--a "hall-monitoring, library-inhabiting, science-fair-winning class president" from high-school days.

The problem with such over-articulate nerds as Gerson and Jindal is that their fluency with words is too often disconnected from what everyone else would call reality.

Gerson could give Bush the "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" metaphor when there was absolutely no evidence that Saddam Hussein was anywhere close to having a nuclear weapon, just as Jindal can now prate, "The way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians."

As Barack Obama is making brains popular again with the American people, it's important not to confuse rhetoric alone without the kind of emotional intelligence needed to connect facts with feelings, understanding with empathy.

As Gerson has been demonstrating in his stint as a Washington Post columnist after Bill Kristol's disastrous year with the New York Times, the bar for brilliance is set low in the Neo-Con world. Next to them (and Sarah Palin), Jindal may indeed be of more imposing intellectual stature than he showed last night.

The Bush-Obama Language Barrier

The man who coined "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" to justify Bush's push into Iraq thinks Barack Obama has not gone far enough to distance himself from the hyperbolic language of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In today's Washington Post, former White House speech writer Michael Gerson says Obama's oration yesterday "fell short in significant ways" of separating himself from "a dangerous man" who has told lies about the US government.

Wright's claim that the AIDS virus was invented as a means of genocide against people of color, says Gerson, creates "an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories," in contrast, of course, to President Bush's scientifically grounded opposition to stem cell research.

In the 2004 campaign, Gerson had Bush railing against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in belaboring schools with No Child Left Behind yardsticks as cover for attacking teachers unions that were supporting Democrats

Now, he asks, how can Obama associate himself with a "political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans?"

If Gerson doesn't know the answer to that question, the voters may explain it to him and his former employer in November.

Conservative Blessing for Clinton?

Michael Gerson, my favorite Evangelical columnist, writes approvingly today about Hillary Clinton as “the most religious Democrat since Jimmy Carter,” citing “her Methodist upbringing as a formative experience, with its emphasis on ‘preaching and practicing the social gospel.’"

Gerson, alarmed by Rudy Giuliani’s iffy pro-life conversion, may be grasping at ecclesiastic straws here, pointing out that Clinton “participates regularly in small-group Bible studies and is familiar with the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer--the theological heroes of mainline Protestantism (and of some stray Evangelicals like myself).”

Sen. Clinton may be surprised to learn how much she has in common with George W. Bush’s favorite speech writer, in light of the fact that she wrote her senior thesis about an non-believing Jewish radical, Saul Alinsky, in what most would consider her “formative” years.

Gerson’s subtext here is clearly a warning to Giuliani to get more fervent with promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade.

Hillary as a darling of the Religious Right? Gerson had better start looking for a needle with a very big eye.

SexScience: Doping Out Desire

A new study from the University of Texas has discovered 237 reasons why people have sex. This may come as a revelation to the benighted who always thought there was only one major incentive for people who care for each other--because, to paraphrase Willie Sutton about banks and money, that’s where the mutual pleasure is.

Not so. Turn-ons include the desire to burn calories, express gratitude, enhance one’s reputation, get revenge on a rival, keep a partner from straying, cure headaches and “feel closer to God.”

The last may explain another study that finds evangelical teenagers start sex earlier than their mainline Protestant peers, an upsetting conclusion for Michael Gerson, President Bush’s pious former speech writer, who disputes the headline, “Evangelical Girls Are Easy.”

In any case, all this weighing of motives for what used to be called the act of love may produce new ice-breakers at singles bars and even some insight into a generation born long after the widely heralded death of romance.

But men and women who value the closeness that comes with commitment will find the lists, the self-absorption and the statistics—as well as those who compile them--more than a little silly.

W the Centrist: Right-Wing Robotspeak

If Wikipedia did not indicate that he had a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 39, there would be no reason to believe Michael Gerson exists other than as a code name for a right-wing robot programmed to manufacture faith-based non-sequiturs unburdened by logic or facts to sanctify George W. Bush, for whom it served as a speech writer.

The latest is this week’s assertion that both parties are abandoning the centrism of Clinton and Bush. George W. Bush? Centrism? The machine that ground out “Axis of Evil” and “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” just keeps spewing rhetorical rubbish.

The only interesting question about all this is why the Washington Post is printing these pre-recorded messages, the first of which last month upset Republican Congressmen opposing Bush’s immigration initiative by comparing them to 19th century nativists.

This week’s conflating of the past two Presidents riled Joe Klein into asking a question on his Time blog about how Gerson’s current opinion of Clinton as a centrist gibes with the Republicans’ impeachment.

“I'd ask him,” Klein wrote, “if he'd acknowledge that it was Republican political consultants, talk show hosts, freak-pundits like Ann Coulter and leaders like Newt Gingrich who were the pioneers of the rhetorical poison now afflicting the extremes of both parties.”

Save your breath, Klein. Machines don’t do dialogues.