Better Than Deserved

David Frum, who somehow still bills himself as a "former speechwriter for President George W. Bush," wrote a piece for Wally's "Weekend Journal" section (is that the Parade Magazine of the Republican press?) about political conventions and their supposed declining significance. As somebody who just finished short pieces on Grover Cleveland, I don't think they've been very significant for a while now. Frum attempts, in a clumsy way, to paint conventions as empty, meaningless exercises in showmanship and stagecraft (rather than, one presumes, his more favored "smoky back room full of crooked honchos, cutting deals and selling out constituencies in order to get their guy's name on the ballot"). He even obliquely references the days before the open primary and seems to pine for them -- really now, Frum, should you be throwing those violets at tyranny's grave?

But all that matters little. The article itself is a clunky gloss on misbegotten ideas, sure, but the fatal flaw lives in the byline: by David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Frum is still quite proud of his career putting words into the mouth of a malevolent retard.

If he wants to claim that politics has become spectacle, and therefore is empty and without meaning, then culprit number one is David Frum. Fuck you, Frum!