"This is nuts! It's just crazy to me." That was David Gergen's assessment of the Bush administration's failure to use diplomacy to confront the looming Iran nuclear crisis (he is clearly far more unplugged in Davos than he is on CNN).
We were wrapping up our early morning panel, taking a look ahead at the key economic and political issues on America's horizon. Our fellow panelists were Nicholas Kristof and Jay Nordlinger. Paul Laudicina moderated.
Gergen started off the session by evaluating Bush's State of the Union on the two criteria Aristotle said are essential to a great speech, logos and pathos (logic and emotion). He thought the problem with the speech was that it was light on pathos. I thought it was light on pathos, too -- but utterly devoid of even a wisp of logos.
Amid much pessimistic speculation about the myriad problems facing us -- Iran, North Korea, China, a growing hostility to America throughout the world -- Gergen offered a sliver of sunshine, saying that he sensed "a cracking of the ice" on the domestic political front, with progress on the horizon on immigration, energy policy, and health care. As Exhibit A he cited the number of Republican House members who voted in favor of the Democrats' 100 Hour agenda.
He called Bush's foreign policies "misguided as hell," but based his hope on the fact that "One of the things America has always been reasonably good at is self-correction. I think that no matter who replaces the current administration, we will undertake that process of self-correction." This prompted Laudicina to recall the words of Winston Churchill who once proclaimed: "America will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities."
I took the opportunity to wish that Gergen, Kristof, and Nordlinger (who shares my passion for Maria Callas, if not my politics) would help accelerate the cracking of the ice by calling on the media to stop presenting so many issues (especially Iraq) using the outdated right/left, red state/blue state framing.
Other panel highlights: Nordlinger saying that the president thinks of himself as "a consensus man" who "believes he's working for something larger than his latest approval rating" -- and cautioning that with two years left in Bush's second term "it's a little early for lame duckery." And Kristof speaking eloquently and knowledgeably about the "coming storm" in U.S./China relations, and calling the notion of a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities "a horrible idea."
There was also an interesting discussion of the current state of black politics on both sides of the aisle, prompted by a question from social activist and HuffPost blogger Van Jones, and a look at the changing role of religion in American politics (and the longing for a redefining of what morality actually means in a political context), prompted by a comment by another HuffPoster, Rev. Jim Wallis.
Davos Tidbits:
I went down to the media annex to see if I could locate a power plug adapter (I brought along half a dozen but left them all in my hotel room), and it was like making the trek to the sixth ring of hell: down into the bowels of the Congress Center where the main parts of the Forum take place, then out into the frigid air, and down an icy makeshift corridor. I'm not sure what this says about the standing of journalists in Davos, but I'll definitely remember to bring along a plug adapter tomorrow.
I crossed paths with Jeff Jarvis at the inaugural meeting of the Davos International Media Council and he told me that he'd posted some video of Tuesday night's Bloggers' Nightcap. Check it out here.
It's been lightly snowing all day, a dusting that has left Davos looking post card beautiful. Here's the view from my room:
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