George Will Reviews "Nixonland": Quick Thoughts

1) Will says the most important thing to know is that I'm a condescending liberal. For me the fascinating thing is that I think I'm a better critic of liberal condescension in the 1960s and '70s than he is. It's just that—there's no way to sustain the argument that liberals are condescending now in anything like the way they were then. (When Reagan's campaign for governor began, Esquire said there was "rejoicing at Lassie for President headquarters"--can you imagine such patronization now?) But in the end, the deified "liberals are condescending" trope is the only way a conservative like Will knows how to talk about liberals; Whatever the actual facts on the ground, he's still stuck in the frame bequeathed to us by Nixon—which, of course, is the point of the book, which he admirably reinforced.

2) He appends a strange and gratuitous list of my "errors." One is that there were not, as a I claim, tanks at Kent State. I welcome Mr. Will's input as to how to identify the hulking, armored tracked vehicle depicted on page 200 of James Michener's Kent State: What Happened and Why. He can answer care of this blog.

3) Once here, I hope he joins the Facebook group.

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