Whig Out

“joy has been tempered,” he says, by having to cover candidates who are programmed by fundraisers, poll-takers, and media consultants. He is not enraptured by today’s journalists, either. Germond and I are of a dying breed of reporter who after the day’s activities on the campaign trail “regularly drank too much” instead of going to our rooms to type up notes. During infrequent visits to campaign planes of the late ’90s, he reports, “I have seen much less poker and drinking, and the womanizing, if any, has been reasonably well concealed.” Cell phones, white wine instead of whisky, and early-morning jogging characterize contemporary reporters, and “a lot of them eat salads from room service, believe it or not.” Worse yet, from Germond’s outlook, this new breed of reporter views covering politics as a stepping stone to “managing editor or something equally Rotarian.” I hope those earnest young men and women read this book to discover how a great reporter operated—and had fun doing it. NR

RECENTLY in these pages, John O’Sullivan highlighted the tradition of Tory conservatism (“Types of Right,” Oct. 11). That tradition holds that “government is the art of managing the state” and regards the job of the politician as fundamentally reactive, “to deal with problems as they crop up.” While O’Sullivan notes that the U.S. does not have much of a history of Toryism, he suggests that the GOP is now starting to think along Tory lines, and casts George W Bush as a leader in the Tory mold. In American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding, Gary Rosen reminds us why few American conservatives ever went down the Tory path. Rosen’s book, which began as a Harvard dissertation, is lively, intelligent, and cogent.

“joy has been tempered,” he says, by having to cover candidates who are programmed by fundraisers, poll-takers, and media consultants. He is not enraptured by today’s journalists, either. Germond and I are of a dying breed of reporter who after the day’s activities on the campaign trail “regularly drank too much” instead of going to our rooms to type up notes. During infrequent visits to campaign planes of the late ’90s, he reports, “I have seen much less poker and drinking, and the womanizing, if any, has been reasonably well concealed.” Cell phones, white wine instead of whisky, and early-morning jogging characterize contemporary reporters, and “a lot of them eat salads from room service, believe it or not.” Worse yet, from Germond’s outlook, this new breed of reporter views covering politics as a stepping stone to “managing editor or something equally Rotarian.” I hope those earnest young men and women read this book to discover how a great reporter operated—and had fun doing it. NR

RECENTLY in these pages, John O’Sullivan highlighted the tradition of Tory conservatism (“Types of Right,” Oct. 11). That tradition holds that “government is the art of managing the state” and regards the job of the politician as fundamentally reactive, “to deal with problems as they crop up.” While O’Sullivan notes that the U.S. does not have much of a history of Toryism, he suggests that the GOP is now starting to think along Tory lines, and casts George W Bush as a leader in the Tory mold. In American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding, Gary Rosen reminds us why few American conservatives ever went down the Tory path. Rosen’s book, which began as a Harvard dissertation, is lively, intelligent, and cogent.