Review: Tension City by Jim Lehrer

Tension City, by Jim Lehrer (2011)
[Cover image courtesy of PBS.org]


For people who follow presidential debates, Tension City is both wonderful for its insights on the process and tiresome for its focus on the "key debate moments" that we have heard about many times through the years: George W. Bush looking at his watch, the "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment, Ford on Soviet influence in Europe, sweaty Nixon, etc.

So why did I like it? Two reasons:

1. Jim Lehrer has moderated more debates than anyone else, and his unique perspective from the moderator's chair gives insight that one rarely sees or hears about in all the discussion and punditry of presidential debates.

2. I listened to this book as an audiobook, narrated by Lehrer himself and including actual audio from the moments in debate history that he refers to throughout the book. That alone makes this a brilliant piece of nonfiction, because you can't read a quote and get the tone and tenor of the moment that is the most important aspect of how a statement is PERCEIVED in a presidential debate.

So it's a fantastic book when listened to in audio form, but otherwise just a good book about presidential debate history coupled with the view from the moderator's chair if you're reading it in print.

4 Stars.

Paradigm shift: Apparently the only way things change anymore

Political discourse about the U.S. economy and the government's role in fixing it seems to have coalesced around the gulf between the party of the wealthy (Republicans) and the party of everyone else (Democrats).

Frustrated by the absolute vehemence of wealthy conservatives to defend any perceived controls on "job creators" (i.e. rich, profit-driven corporations), I made a graphic:

I think a lot of younger people like myself, who don't yet have a bunch of amassed wealth to defend against the clutches of government, believe in fairness and redistribution to some extent, and that a measure of a good society is how well it helps those at the bottom of the economic pile.

The fact that the GOP seems to work so hard to prevent this from happening really makes it seem like the old wealthy conservatives who don't want anyone taxing them more (while still of course demanding that they get all the Medicare in the world, regardless of whether they need help paying for medical expenses or not) are just fundamentally uncaring.

Entrenched beliefs are hard to change, and I'm not in the business of teaching old dogs new tricks, so I came to the frustrating if ultimately satisfying conclusion that, given time, the selfish old people will die out while young and compassionate people will hopefully take those qualities into their golden years.

And maybe when the next generation (my generation) starts running things we'll do so with more of an eye toward making more of our people comfortable instead of protecting the interests of the already wealthy.