Running on the "I Don't Know" ticket would be a kind of "The Best and the Brightest" (if you're familiar with Halberstram's Vietnam Era book) in reverse then.
Many attributed the title of his book to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1822, others to an 1811 hymn by Reginald Heber. I, myself, like the citation from the letter by Junius as published in the PublicAdvertiser (a kind of precursor to the "Tea Party") on February 7, 1769, and I quote: "To have supported your assertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ransom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest characters (meaning still the present ministry) to take a single right step, for the honour or interest of the nation."
Of course, Halberstram, himself, says that the attribution is to a line in an article he had written about the Kennedy Administration. The phrase referred to President John F. Kennedy's "whiz kids" – leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration – whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam, often against the advice of career US Department of State employees.
Running on the "I Don't Know" ticket would be a kind of "The Best and the Brightest" (if you're familiar with Halberstram's Vietnam Era book) in reverse then.
ReplyDeleteMany attributed the title of his book to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1822, others to an 1811 hymn by Reginald Heber. I, myself, like the citation from the letter by Junius as published in the Public Advertiser (a kind of precursor to the "Tea Party") on February 7, 1769, and I quote: "To have supported your assertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ransom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest characters (meaning still the present ministry) to take a single right step, for the honour or interest of the nation."
Of course, Halberstram, himself, says that the attribution is to a line in an article he had written about the Kennedy Administration. The phrase referred to President John F. Kennedy's "whiz kids" – leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration – whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam, often against the advice of career US Department of State employees.
Ever onward! Ever upward!!