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Jay’s guest today is Lou Cannon, the veteran political journalist – formerly with the Washington Post. He is renowned as a Reagan biographer. He also wrote what is surely the finest book on the L.A. riots of 1992. With Jay, he talks about Obama, Baltimore, the media, Reagan, 2016, and more. There’s a lot of experience packed into what he says.
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Great interview! Really enjoyed it and wish more journalists had Cannon’s openness of mind.
Another Reagan biographer who voted for Obama – twice yet! That’s enough for me. Thanks Jay for getting that out of the way early.
I was also annoyed that Cannon voted for Obama twice and considers him not to be that liberal.
Face it, a mainstream hack is a mainstream hack, regardless of his fame or popularity. Have a conversation about race? What?
How can we shut them up?
He lives on planet left, we are on planet right. He speaks secular meaningless, we speak the remnants of Judeo-Christianity. He sees a world without meaning, we still have the remnants of belief.
The idea that we are all one in a conversation, like the bar scene from Star Wars, is a novel fantasy.
Cannon definitely comes across as an unpolarized journalist. I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said, but, somehow, I felt that he was at least sincere in his beliefs. His voting for Obama and his statement that he would have voted for McCain in the 2012 election did not endear me to him, but I think it put him pretty close to the middle ground between Democrats and Republicans.
All in all, it was, as all of Jay’s interviews, informative and interesting. Jay possesses an amazing ability to maintain civility in his conversations. I saw this first demonstrated in a debate he participated in around the Nobel Prize. I thought his opponent came across as hostile and arrogant while Jay was witty, informed, and completely civil, an amazing contrast. It seemed to demonstrate the concept that real strength rests not in aggression, but in the restraint from aggression, a very Christian concept.
This man is obviously an idiot. I stopped listening once he owned up to voting for Obama twice. How you can respect this man whose thinking and commitment to principle is so obviously lazy and suspect, I have no idea.
I stopped listening when the guest attributed opposition to Obama to the fact that he’s African American. He was nice about it, and I thank him for that, but if he’s not going to take me and my ideas seriously I don’t feel the need to extend him that courtesy.
I nearly stopped listening with the first question. Jay asked Lou Cannon who or what is Obama, and the ensuing heming and hawing told me Cannon was afraid to answer forthrightly. But I’m glad I kept listening if only to hear Cannon acknowledge that he had voted for Obama twice, essentially, he said, because Obama was a black man. Well, I guess that makes Cannon a noble creature. Suppose I voted for a candidate because he was white. That would make me a racist, of course.
I’m a little late to the fair here, I commented on the NR site but I said essentially the same thing as others here, as soon as he said he voted for Obama twice I turned it off. I don’t care what he has to say after that.
Obama was fit to be President but not Mitt Romney?? Well, if that doesn’t discredit someone’s intellectual fitness or honesty, then I am not sure what would. I listened to the whole thing but only to listen to the various reveals concerning what middle line liberals / independents are likely thinking. Sadly, these are the same people who currently maintain a positive view of Hillary Clinton and could very well be the ruination of a great culture.
The thing to bear in mind is that Mr. Cannon is among the very best, the most fair, that are in the media. I could hear Mr. Nordlinger’s face drop when Mr. Cannon admitted he voted for Mr. Obama the second time. Mr Cannon, would– and I would say “at least” if I were letting muscle memory type for me– admit to voting on the second time. I admire and commend his transparency and honesty, even as I mourn for his judgment. “Through enough stuff up and some of it will stick,” indeed.
Fair point, but I tend to draw a line at attributing dissent to racism. There are no racists anymore, only anti-semites. Whatever else a person’s merits are, if he’s not going to treat me like a real person with real opinions we can’t have a conversation.
What was amazing to me was that immediately after saying Romney was closer to his views on a lot of things, he tried to rationalize not voting for him based on a completely subjective non-standard of “not fitting with the office”. While trying to do this he admitted that the Obama campaign and supporters were slandering Romney with “shameless lies”! True of course, but he voted for Obama?! Knowing these were lies???!!!
I almost stopped listening there but skipped up a couple of times, and gave up when I no longer cared.