Time will tell on the impact of Jeff Flake's address. But he said things of great importance about the dangers we face with the self-absorbed "many standing ovations!" man who holds the highest office in the country. - gwc
The Senate Was Touched by Greatness Today: In Praise of Jeff Flake - Lawfare
by Benjamin Wittes We are no longer used to great Senate speeches. The Greatest Deliberative Body on Earth has long since given up anything a thinking person would confuse with deliberation. The Senate speech, once form of storied oratory, has withered as the body itself has degraded. It's partly the fault of C-SPAN, which made possible the address to an empty chamber, the confusion of an actual audience with a television audience—the idea that a Senate speech was a vehicle for national dissemination of talking points, rather than a means of persuading one's colleagues of things one truly believed. We don't expect real ideas to come in Senate speeches, actual emotion to be associated with this form of political communication. Today a Senate speech is expected to be an actor's rendition of what a Senate speech once was—Senator So-and-So playing Mr. Smith playing a senator. And then rises one Jeff Flake and delivers not merely a great speech but also a genuinely important one, perhaps the single most important address given on the Senate floor in my memory. This speech will be remembered not merely for its eloquence and its moral correctness but also for its intellectual content and its courage at a particular moment in time. Here's the speech, which I urge people to watch in its 17-and-a-half-minute entirety:
The Senate Was Touched by Greatness Today: In Praise of Jeff Flake - Lawfare
by Benjamin Wittes We are no longer used to great Senate speeches. The Greatest Deliberative Body on Earth has long since given up anything a thinking person would confuse with deliberation. The Senate speech, once form of storied oratory, has withered as the body itself has degraded. It's partly the fault of C-SPAN, which made possible the address to an empty chamber, the confusion of an actual audience with a television audience—the idea that a Senate speech was a vehicle for national dissemination of talking points, rather than a means of persuading one's colleagues of things one truly believed. We don't expect real ideas to come in Senate speeches, actual emotion to be associated with this form of political communication. Today a Senate speech is expected to be an actor's rendition of what a Senate speech once was—Senator So-and-So playing Mr. Smith playing a senator. And then rises one Jeff Flake and delivers not merely a great speech but also a genuinely important one, perhaps the single most important address given on the Senate floor in my memory. This speech will be remembered not merely for its eloquence and its moral correctness but also for its intellectual content and its courage at a particular moment in time. Here's the speech, which I urge people to watch in its 17-and-a-half-minute entirety:
No comments:
Post a Comment