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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 4, 2008 / 26 Teves, 5768

A modest proposal for a little smoke

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Well, obviously a good night was not had by all, but Iowa can finally retreat once more into the shadows of the cornfield. All that's left is the usual chorus demanding something better than a slog through snow, ice and apathy.


Iowa, so the chorus goes, is not "representative" of the nation, and of course it isn't. But neither is New Hampshire, next stop on the vaudeville circuit.


There aren't many Hispanics, legal or otherwise, in Iowa or New Hampshire, nor enough blacks to suit the pundits. Nor enough gays, but too many evangelical Christians, and more than enough old wives to tell tales on Rudy Giuliani. There aren't enough Mormons to please Mitt Romney or enough Baptists to satisfy Mike Huckabee. Only a semi-vast population of white folks stretches across the fallow cornfields like an endless blanket of snow. But white folks are not in fashion this season.


This frustrates the political scientists, ever ready with a pithy quote to state the obvious. It's good news for reporters, consultants, pollsters, advertising salesmen and others ever ready to poke a stick in the fire, just to stretch out the process. The public, concerned with more important things — Britney Spears, her naughty sister, the NFL playoffs and the latest dispatches from the Hollywood divorce courts — appears to be bored as usual, waiting for October. Fixing all this would be easy, but it's never going to happen.


We could dump the caucuses and primaries, which have given us candidates like George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, John-Francois Kerry and Bob Dole, and even a president like Jimmy Carter. The old system, of hard-eyed pols, some of them hacks, taking their cigars and bourbon and retiring to hotel suites to settle on the candidates, actually worked pretty well. The conventions produced respectable candidates and entertained everyone, even those who stayed home and listened to the radio. The smoke-filled room, much derided in civics textbooks, nevertheless produced, for starters, the likes of Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and Harry S. Truman.


We were a more robust country then, and there was never a more riotous convention, or one with a more lasting result, than the Republican convention in Chicago in 1860. Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad, prevailed on his client to dispatch trains to collect delegates, and as the trains rumbled through the Midwest, the Lincoln men lived up to the letter of the word "party," consuming thousands of cigars and gallons of booze. Passionate if not always politic, they threw competing delegates off the train. Nobody was offended. Many were angry and spoiling for a fight, but nobody thought to engage a lawyer to exact revenge. Lincoln, prevailing in the fog of smoke and abundant spirits, thus showed his mettle. We couldn't have had the Civil War without what the delegates wrought in Chicago.


Almost as portentous was the Democratic convention in 1944 in Chicago, the only sensible place to hold a convention in the days when conventions actually meant something. FDR was on his way to the coronation of a fourth term, and threw open the choice of a candidate for vice president because he wanted Henry Wallace dumped but didn't want to do it himself. Wallace would have been a likely choice of the Democratic left of our own times. The Democratic "center," as defined at the party's high tide, wanted Jimmy Byrnes of South Carolina. The grubby left insisted on Wallace, or William O. Douglas, the leftmost justice of the Supreme Court. The smoke-filled room at the Blackstone Hotel at length produced Harry Truman, the grandson of a Confederate soldier from Missouri. He was Southern enough and liberal enough, and his uncommon common sense would eventually make him an icon for nearly everyone. He wouldn't have a chance in a Democratic primary today. Of course that's only conventional wisdom.

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