What does it mean that the planetary leader flipped a coin about its new directions yesterday–and the darned thing landed on its edge. And it’s still spinning there today. It was Gore on the exit polls, it was Bush at 2:30 this morning. The networks called it Bush; so did the New York Times before stopping the presses. The Vice President himself called to congratulate the governor of Texas, and then the Bush surge in Florida boiled down next to nothing.
And here we are in a gridlock that’s partisan, regional, generational and visceral with racial, maybe spiritual, and surely emotional dimensions down to the right and left sides of millions of voters’ brains. So what does it mean for prescription drugs, estate taxes, school reform, oil drilling in Alaska, abortion choice, the Supreme Court in general, the new economy and the financial markets underway this morning that hate uncertainty above all. What it all means-whatever ‘it’ is–is this hour on The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Alan Wolfe, professor of Sociology at Boston College, author of “One Nation, After All”
Anna Deavere Smith, playwright, activist, professor at NYU, and author of “Talk to Me”
Edmund Morris, author of “Dutch”
William F. Buckley, Editor of National Review
George Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics at Berkeley and author of “Moral Politics.”