The great game

It is far from the usual Light Reading fare, but I cannot resist the opportunity to link to two major pieces published this week by my dissertation advisor David Bromwich. In general, I have been extraordinarily lucky in my teachers; but perhaps I learned more from David Bromwich than from almost anybody else, not just in terms of an abiding obsession with the writings of Edmund Burke but by virtue of a language for talking about the connections between thought and intellectual temperament and character that I rely upon very heavily in daily life.

The first is at the LRB, on Obama's delusion ("His way of thinking is close to the spirit of that Enlightenment reasonableness which supposes a right course of action can never be described so as to be understood and not assented to"). The second is this NYRB review of Taylor Branch's Clinton book:

Maybe Clinton in his final year in office spoke more easily; in any case, the narrative has a sharper focus now, and the anecdotes fall into a characteristic rhythm:

The president was eating a bowl of bran in January. He said Bob Squier, the campaign consultant, never had a colonoscopy in his life. They diagnosed him six months ago, and he died today at sixty-five. The end comes on quickly if you don't catch it early. "I always eat bran when a friend dies of colon cancer," Clinton said.