comment #1

TVMCCA says ...

Given the way ESQUIRE is now, it's not surprising they were oh-so-cautious.

I remember the magazine in the summer of 1980 sounding the alarm about Ronald Reagan. Didn't work, but at least they stuck out their editorial necks before the conventions.

comment #2

admiralmpj says ...

For an Editorial, it spent an awful lot of time accusing Obama of dithering on his definition of change. Ummm, Esquire? They're called stump speeches. Might want to listen to them.

comment #3

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

Last June or July - 2007?

Jeff, time to stop thinking in terms of the election and thinking in terms of Obama's first 100 days. Every extra electoral vote he gets strengthens his hand when it comes to his policies.

Some of us are in it for the long haul and are already looking to 2012. Not to mention the next major round of Capital Hill elections in 2010.

comment #4

TVMCCA says ...

Thought this paragraph especially powerful:
This year it's more than enough because we are not all in that enterprise together anymore, and we have not been for some time. For seven years, for the purposes of deceitful war-making and constitutional vandalism, the president chose to preside over "the base," and the devil take the common good. For several years, before the war soured, and New Orleans drowned, and he meddled grotesquely with how a woman's family in Florida chose to allow her to die, and mocked the very institutions he was to protect, this was praised as the height of political acumen. The incompetent president and his wolfish advisors were encouraged and enabled in their various schemes and praised for their cleverness into the bargain. Anyone who questioned what was going on -- any member of what was once memorably described to writer Ron Suskind as the "reality-based community" -- was of no consequence, their voices ignored, their concerns as foreign as those of a tribesman in New Guinea.

It's a lukewarm endorsement, but a surprisingly thoughful and well-written one.

I just fear that Hillary/Bill will try for a 2012 grudge rematch, regardless of Obama's first-term accomplishments.

comment #5

admiralmpj says ...

Deathtongue's gotta point.

comment #6

NotImpressedYet says ...

Do people still read magazines? I haven't picked up an issue of Esquire in at least five years. Yawn.

I like the shout out to Ron Suskind in it though. I still remember that Sunday Magazine article of his that the editorial references - in particular, this paragraph that I felt compelled to look up and read again just now:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

That sent shivers up my spine at the time and still does. I get the sense that today McCain's trying to create some new realities of his own, but luckily the American people aren't falling for it the way we did back in '04.

comment #7

MDOC says ...

Esquire? Come on is this news.? "For Winter 2008 slacks and Obama are in, they look great in a wool jacket." Call me when Rolling Stone makes their endorsement, better yet wake me up when MTV decides. I can never predict which way they are going. How about The Advocate, have they weighed in yet? I just can't even speculate on who they will endorse. How about Jet? I heard they are going McCain.

comment #8

Luke Y. Thompson says ...

Maybe Rolling Stone will let Peter Travers write their endorsement, in which case I expect to hear that both candidates give bravura, Oscar-worthy performances. Also that Bob Barr is smart and stylish. And Nader is one of the year's best candidates.

comment #9

Gordie Lachance says ...

Not Impressed-

I read magazines all the time. So do other people who actually leave the house.

comment #10

NotImpressedYet says ...

Gordie, why be a dick?

I used to read plenty of magazines, and had subscriptions to Harpers, Newsweek, The New Yorker (and OK, for a year or so, EW).

But that was ten years ago. When you can get most of that stuff online, why buy the hardcopy?

Although I do miss seeing a rolled up mangled copy of The New Yorker in my mailbox every week...

comment #11

dangovich says ...

When you can get most of that stuff online, why buy the hardcopy?

For the bathroom.

comment #12

JapAdapters says ...

I'm reading this thread on the can.

comment #13

Som12H8 says ...

Wells, if the race had been really close by now, I think you would have seen this endorsement in another light. It's sometimes a good idea to hold back these kind of things until the election is closer.

comment #14

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