Ideas and hogwash

For Day 2 of the Washington Ideas Forum we had to go through TSA-like security screening, presumably because Rep. Paul Ryan (R-19^th Century) was first up to bat.

And presumably that’s because, as Speaker of the House, he’s third in line for the Presidency. And therefore worth more than Secretary of State John Kerry (fifth in line), who spoke later in the day, after the guards and scanners were removed.

Ryan, who is way more of a douche in person than on television, did nothing more than flap around a copy of his little pamphlet “A Better Way” (which he grandiosely refers to as a book), the supposed guide to Republican nirvana. And dodge questions, which were as softball as they come.

“I’m tired of divided government,” he sighed. “It doesn’t work very well.”

Oh, gee—ya think? That’s like an arsonist saying he’s tired of the fires.

It obviously doesn’t occur to him that he’s one of the biggest tools in the non-working government box. 

Interestingly, I don’t get the impression that he’s looking forward to a Trump presidency much more than a Clinton 2.0 presidency. He’s obviously not going to get along with either of them. And he’s certainly not going to do anything more towards building a united government than he has in the past.

(I will say that I'm glad that AtlanticLive didn't bring in Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-TheSouthWillRiseAgain (and, God help us, fourth in line to the presidency). Listening to him whine that President Obama should have told the Senate about the full ramifications of the JASTA bill—the parts where it would open the door for other countries and their citizens to sue American soldiers and others for war crimes. Because a chamber of 100 members, which includes 57 who hold JD degrees, apparently cannot understand the clauses of the bill that they not only passed, but they also voted to override the President's veto of it. Could it be that they felt they had to pass the law so they could understand it? Or could it be that they are simply an asylum of self-important loons?)  

Ryan tied for delivering the most weaselly and self-serving answers of the forum with General Pervez Musharraf, who’s no doubt one of his exemplars of how to run a united government: shoot your opponents. Musharraf, who was also served nothing but softballs (from NPR correspondent Robert Siegel—such a disappointment) cracked me up when he insisted that no one in Pakistan—not him, not ISI, not the military (who, BTW, is him—note the “General”, above), and not anyone in the neighborhood—no one knew that Osama Bin Laden was living in Abbottabad for five years.

That sealed compound with high walls, security cams and razor wire? “It could have been a drug cartel.”

Also: “There are a lot of tourists to that city.”

There were intelligent participants. I was especially interested in the discussion by Drew Gilpen Faust of Harvard and John DeGioia of Georgetown, talking about their respective institutions’ history with slavery. At one point, Faust commented that Harvard was challenged somewhat in looking out pre-19^th Century documents. DeGioia broke in to say that Georgetown has better documentation than Harvard because “Catholics keep unbelievably good records!”

I thought it also interesting that one of my tweets about the discussion on slavery brought out a right-wing troll intoning, “Slavery is over…You’re only a slave if you are a liberal!” Thus proving that s/he didn’t bother to read. Or think.

This was my first time at the Forum, although many of the people I spoke with are repeaters. I found the format somewhat off-putting: they covered a lot of territory, from Momofuku to opioid addiction, but they did it at the cost of any kind of depth. Twenty minutes of a journalist asking questions of one to three people, then whoosh—you’re off and the next one is on.

Also, there was no audience engagement—no opportunity for us to ask questions, or even to discuss amongst ourselves what we’d just heard. The pace of interviews was relentless; I didn’t even get out to the lobby for cookies yesterday, because I didn’t want to leave the auditorium. The venue, a theatre, didn’t offer the right space for people to have those conversations. I guess you’re meant to hold it in until you get back to the office to hash out the ideas.

Kind of an interesting approach. Personally, I came home yesterday and got straight into the shower, which I needed after both barrels of Ryan and Musharraf.