It’s Greek to Us

I didn’t read the Democrats’ 1984 platform, but they’ve got me morbidly curious about it. They have been crowing about how much better the 1988 version is: less than a tenth as long (at 3,500 words, down from 40,000 in 1984), a lean, mean rhetorical machine that has pared away the excesses and the appeals to special interests. Not to mention unseemly ideology.

“Common-sense politics has given us a short statement of principle all Democrats can run on in November,” exults Paul Kirk, the party’s national chairman. “Brevity is the soul of victory,” says Ted Sorensen, the principal draftsman, renowned as the author of the most famous Democratic speech of the last generation, John Kennedy’s inaugural address. (Only Republicans quote it now.)

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Joseph Sobran

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I didn’t read the Democrats’ 1984 platform, but they’ve got me morbidly curious about it. They have been crowing about how much better the 1988 version is: less than a tenth as long (at 3,500 words, down from 40,000 in 1984), a lean, mean rhetorical machine that has pared away the excesses and the appeals to special interests. Not to mention unseemly ideology.

“Common-sense politics has given us a short statement of principle all Democrats can run on in November,” exults Paul Kirk, the party’s national chairman. “Brevity is the soul of victory,” says Ted Sorensen, the principal draftsman, renowned as the author of the most famous Democratic speech of the last generation, John Kennedy’s inaugural address. (Only Republicans quote it now.)