Whither the Campaign Intellectuals?

Just before Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009, I wrote a post about the disappearance of the White House intellectual, a peculiar, semi-official position that John F. Kennedy created for Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and that continued in various forms during the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford presidencies, before being silently eliminated by Jimmy Carter, never to be revived again (at least so far).

Of course, while Presidents since Carter have not designated a single "intellectual in residence," they have certainly involved themselves publicly and privately with intellectuals, both as sources of policy and political ideas, and (in their more public engagements) as a way of refining and burnishing their political brands.   Despite receiving a lot of support from intellectuals as intellectuals in 2008, and even prompting James Kloppenberg to write a book (much discussed on this blog) on Obama as an intellectual, Obama has not made as much of a show of involving intellectuals in his White House as many of his predecessors have.*

Like White Houses, presidential campaigns often involve intellectuals, both behind the scenes as sources of ideas, and publicly as surrogates and as embodied promises of what the American people might expect should a particular candidate win.  But this year, such figures seem conspicuous in their absence, at least from the campaigns' public faces.


In the past, both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have made the support of intellectuals and the adoption of their ideas an important aspect of their campaigns. In 2000, John McCain adopted the rhetoric of what was known as "national greatness conservatism," a neoconservative vision of America-in-the-world that in many ways eventually became embodied in the policies of his primary opponent, George W. Bush. As a candidate, however, Bush was more closely associated with Marvin Olasky and the idea of "compassionate conservatism."  Bill Clinton, in 1992, adopted the centrist, "third way" rhetoric associated with thinkers like Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck.  And Barack Obama, in 2008, assembled an array of intellectual supporters and advisers, including, among others, Lawrence Lessig, Cass Sunstein, Samantha Power, and Austan Goolsbee, whose places in the campaign suggested to many that Obama was not only interested in intellectuals, but that he might become one of the tiny handful of presidents who have been  intellectuals in their own right.

This year, however, neither the Romney nor the Obama campaign seems very interested in the conspicuous display of intellectuals or their ideas.  The most obvious explanation for the change involves not a change in the place of intellectuals in American life or politics in general, but rather the nature of this year's presidential race. Unlike 2008 (or 1992 and 2000), this year's election features an incumbent. As Nate Silver recently noted, Romney, like most challengers in such races, wants voters to see this election as a referendum on Obama.  And as we saw a couple weeks ago at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, the heart of that imagined referendum is the economy, framed by Ronald Reagan's famous question from 1980: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"  This is not a question that requires the (real or symbolic) presence of intellectuals to answer or highlight.

In contrast, as we saw in Charlotte last week, Obama wants voters to see this election as a choice.  But the nature of that choice is framed in stark terms by Obama's 2012 slogan: "Forward." The implication, made explicit in a number of Democratic National Converntion speeches, is: we want to go forward; they want to go back.  Like Romney's framing of the election, the choice presented by the Obama campaign does not especially require sophisticated ideas or their human signifiers.

There are, of course, ideas connected to these two campaigns: the RNC emphasized individualism ("We Built This"); the DNC, a kind of mild communitarianism (we are at our best when we work together).  But each of these sets of ideas is being sold as both common sense and utterly, traditionally American. Neither message has the complexity (or pseudo-complexity) or air of innovation (or pseudo-innovation) that would be helped by an association with one or more intellectuals.

In the past, presidential candidates have linked themselves to intellectuals to seem youthful and innovative (JFK), sage and sophisticated in policy matters (Nixon), or simply to lend an air of gravitas to a candidate who might otherwise be dismissed as a lightweight (George W. Bush).  But these are not the challenges facing this year's candidates, each of whom, in rather different ways, has to struggle against attacks that suggest that he's somehow out-of-touch and not like the American electorate.  The symbolic function of intellectuals is not much help in such a situation.

But I suspect that candidates in the future will, once again, find themselves in political situations for which a visible brain trust will seem like a solution, and then the campaign intellectuals will reappear in force.

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*  One partial exception was Obama's dinner with historians that Tim Lacy and I wrote about back in 2009.

The Catholic Mind Of Rick Santorum

While I've been engrossed in other minor matters over the past few days, I've been fascinated with the sudden rise of Rick Santorum's Republican presidential bid over the past few weeks. As a Catholic I'm supposed to be treating Santorum's campaign with respect because of his pro-life credentials, his general family values, and his espousal of subsidiarity. Although I attend to these issues and more when I evaluate my candidates, as an intellectual historian I also look at their long arc of development---the things that seem to occupy their minds and hearts as well as their public political personae. With that, today I want to meditate on the Catholic mind of Rick Santorum, as well as what one might call the "Romanization of the American culture wars." As our new contributor LD perceptively quipped at our Facebook page yesterday, "Come for the current events; stay for the history." Indeed.

One could do worse in analyzing Santorum's thinking than starting with a primary source: an essay penned by the candidate himself and published on January 20, 2012 (hat-tip to Ethan Schrum for pointing me to this). These two pieces have a lot of meat in them (both containing deeper issues on which to ruminate), but I'm going to stick to Santorum himself today. What follows is an interlinear, but non-exhaustive, breakdown of the ten-paragraph piece (links, bolds, and underlines mine):

In 1977, Peter Berger and the late Richard John Neuhaus published a now-famous essay, “To Empower People,” which argued that “mediating structures” such as family, church, charities, and neighborhood associations are essential for a healthy civil society.* I entirely agree, and as those who have followed my career will know, I attempted to develop these ideas throughout my time in the United States Senate and in my own 2005 book, It Takes a Family. I believe passionately that the family is the basic building block of society, and that in contrast to President Obama’s immense sums of borrowed money being spent on entitlement programs and his undermining of charities and religious liberty, we can and must do far better—here in South Carolina and throughout the country.

Neuhaus is of course famous for many things, not the least for being a confidant of, or at least an inspiration to, President George W. Bush. Here Santorum is trying to go a little deeper---trying to capture something of the spirit Tocqueville observed about American society. The first sentence of this piece, however, has been cribbed from the publisher's blurb for a collection of essays edited by Michael Novak titled To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (not coincidentally promoted at the American Enterprise Institute's website). As a post-World War II emigrant intellectual from Austria, Berger is someone who ought to get more attention here at USIH, especially since James Davison Hunter was apparently one of Berger's students.

My problem with this paragraph is its maxim that "the family is the basic building block of society." It's true---as far is it goes---and Catholics return to this principal over and over again, but many treat it as if it's the end of the story. Even conservatives, especially politicians, who espouse "mediating structures" often de-emphasize those structures in favor of talking about "family values" in the context of the Culture Wars. I agree with Andrew Hartman that this talk is sincere and not merely a Republican political canard. The language captures something fundamental---that it is related to an identity crisis, instigated by own ongoing lack of adjustment to modernity, that underlays so much of the late twentieth-century's incarnation of the Culture Wars. Even so, the Catholic overlay given by Santorum, as well as by Cathoolic intellectuals, is that we can solve the question of the meaning of America by simply communicating better with our fathers (heavenly and earthly), mothers (ditto), sisters, and brothers. The rhetorical focus is on blood family and our Church-going compatriots rather than our self-made tribes, ethnic groups, and, strangely enough, larger forms of identity that bind together America as a nation. Indeed, if we followed Santorum's, Neuhaus's, and Berger's advice to an extreme, American culture would be more Balkanized and local than it already is---perhaps more than it ever was in the nineteenth century. It's this anti-globalism that differentiates Santorum from Romney as much as anything. ...Returning to the essay...

I am running for President because I believe in practical, constitutional, and limited government that respects the rights of ordinary citizens and makes room for local communities to thrive because real people who know one another support one another. In my tradition we call this the principle of subsidiarity: the idea that whenever possible, reform should happen locally because people closest to the need have the most invested in the solution. From its first day in office my presidency will restrain the overreach of Washington by giving space for civil society institutions like congregations, families, businesses, charities and community organizations to flourish—acknowledging that the kind of solidarity that exists in local communities is far stronger and more effective than taxpayer-funded subsidies from Washington bureaucrats.

Two historians, Michael Kazin and Thomas Sugrue, have tackled the issue of subsidiarity in recent pieces about Newt Gingrich, Saul Alinsky, and President Obama. Just last week I referenced those pieces (point #4) at USIH. Gingrich accidentally and indirectly denigrated subsidiarity by trashing Saul Alinsky. Apparently Gingrich was unaware of the Alinsky's links to one of the great Catholic cosmopolitan thinkers of the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain. Maritain found a way to support both subsidiarity and international human rights, while also respecting personhood and the political process. I don't foresee Santorum referencing Maritain anytime soon in campaign speeches (despite the former's enthusiasm for natural law, which as Molly Worthen reminded us does connect with Thomas Aquinas). But at least Santorum has not rhetorically ruled out the connection, the possibility, for liberal Catholics who lean right and may be unhappy with Obama.

Wikipedia offers two entries for subsidiarity---one with a kind of secular bent, and oriented toward European politics, and the other focused on the Catholic teaching of subsidiarity. I linked to the secular one in the excerpt above, but the Catholic one applies as well. Here are the first few lines from the Catholic-oriented entry:

"The principle of subsidiarity was developed by German theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning.[2] His work influenced the social teaching of Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno and holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. Functions of government, business, and other secular activities should be as local as possible. If a complex function is carried out at a local level just as effectively as on the national level, the local level should be the one to carry out the specified function. The principle is based upon the autonomy and dignity of the human individual, and holds that all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, should be in the service of the human person."

The best discussion I've seen of Catholic subsidiarity in intellectual history is Jay Corrin's excellent transnational study, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame Press, 2002). I first wrote about Corrin's book here (about two-thirds down the page), and have long had plans for an extended retrospective review. In the post you get a taste---Corrin's book receives just a summation in a single paragraph. [Two asides: (a) If someone from Notre Dame Press is reading this, get that book out in paperback! (b) On my long-planned review, I have twenty-some note cards filled, front and back, with thoughts on the book.]

Returning to Santorum...

In the last three years, the current President has added more to America’s deficit than the collective total of all prior presidents—and this comes at tremendous cost to our children and grandchildren, and it is not working. Unemployment continues to exceed the promised “8 percent” he told us his whopping $787 billion stimulus package would guarantee. But even more problematically, Mr. Obama’s policies have made far too many of us less resilient, less responsible and less free. Food stamps usage has increased by 41 percent since the President took office. More than 1 in 7 U.S. adults—and an astonishing 1 in every 4 children—today receive food stamps. The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program received billions in additional annual spending. Subsidized housing, the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) and the numbers of children born out of wedlock—are all up. As a father this breaks my heart. This should not be.

This is, to say the least, a very one-sided definition of freedom. First, it is not the assistance that makes people "less resilient, less responsible and less free." Indeed, this assertion is inconsistent with existential Christian theology and philosophy which would assert that freedom begins with a state of consciousness about one's own responsibility for her/his relationship with God. Not that Catholicism has ever been exceedingly friendly to Christian existentialism. Is there, by the way, a historical theological-philosophical study out there of Catholic existentialism, or of Soren Kierkegaard's influence on Catholic thought? My point here is that there is nothing in Catholic theology, including the principal of subsidiarity, that necessitates an inverse relationship between government assistance and less resilience, responsibility, or freedom. Only Catholic ideologues like Father Coughlin assert this absolutely.

Returning to Santorum's essay (though the intellectual returns are diminishing)...

I will address this issue of father-absence and family-strengthening head-on, because doing so makes sense both culturally and economically. Today, more than 25 million American children, at least 64% of African Americans and 36% of Hispanics, live in father-absent homes. Research tells us that low-income children without a father at home are five times more likely to remain poor. Children growing up without a dad are 2-3 times as likely to become teen parents and engage in criminal behavior: for these young people, economic realities follow cultural-relational realities, not the other way around. We need courageous fathers; that’s what moms want and America’s children need.

I'm not qualified to speak about this point in relation to social science and American intellectual history. I wonder if Santorum is working from research within the conservative tribe, by Charles Murray no less, on the so-called breakdown of the working-class male work ethic over the past 30-40 years? Anyway, it's clear that Santorum prioritizes culture over economic drivers. It's a very Catholic way of seeing the world. Santorum sees a conservative-liberal dichotomy: liberals believe that work availability engenders a work ethic, conservatives believe people are the way they are (e.g. working-class whites are now lazy and overprivileged, won't accept retraining, and jobs hence should be outsourced). But Catholic conservatives like Santorum believe that if we can change the culture, the economy will grow again. Hence conservative Catholics believe that the Culture Wars will literally pay in the long run for America. ...Returning to the essay.

As president I will support state and local funding options that strengthen marriage and support for low-income families so that dads are incentivized to support their children and be involved in their lives. I will not attempt to “transform” faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government, but will instead look to devolve resources to states, much as I did in 1996 in reforming welfare. And put wind behind the back of great charities like the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities which have been discriminated against by liberal courts, regulators, and now the Obama Administration.

So, Santorum doesn't want to make "faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government," but he'd be happy to make them arms of the state government to recreate America's Christian "moral establishment" at a more local level? He needs to read David Sehat's study of what happened when that was the case. Check out the four reviews in our round table on David's book (here, here, here, and here), as well has his response. ...Back to Santorum's essay.

The Obama Administration only makes it harder for generous Americans to help those in need, even though Obamanomics has resulted in 1 in 6 Americans being in poverty. Obama has proposed limiting deductions for charitable giving, for those Americans who are large givers which United Way estimates could cost charities between more than $4 billion a year, larger than the operating budgets of of the American Cancer Society, World Vision, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, and the American Heart Association combined. President Obama has also worked to define “religious employers” in ObamaCare so narrowly that it’s doubtful that Jesus Christ’s ministry would even qualify.

It's hard to take seriously a paragraph anchored by the incendiary political rhetoric of "Obamanomics" and "Obamacare," but I'll give it my own Catholic analysis. Whether one agrees the his reasoning or not, Santorum's political point about the religious employers-contraception debate must have had political legitimacy because the Obama administration modified their policy. I don't think it's wrong to measure that kind of legitimacy in relation to actual actions. There were many religious leaders who feared the long-term implications of religious institutions being forced to deliver health care that conflicted (potentially or really) with moral teachings. The administration therefore gave way (though some Catholic bishops, and probably Santorum, felt the administration's move is still inadequate).

Beyond that I'll make only one observation: Isn't it interesting how Santorum has made our economic and cultural situation dependent on long-range cultural and political problems (i.e. family breakdown and federal overreach), but also largely blamed those same problems on policies enacted over only three years by a Christian president who supports responsible fatherhood (and with one full year, and counting, of those policies refracted by a Republican House and gridlocked Senate)? ...Back to the essay.

Moreover, his Administration stopped Catholic Charities from their long-standing partnership with government to help women who are victims of sex trafficking because they do not support abortion, just vulnerable women being abused. Is that caring for the least of these, respecting the free exercise of religion, or is that playing to the extreme left to the detriment of women? Many on the left care more about being politically correct and imposing their agenda than caring for those with HIV or kids that need adopted. They didn’t stop there. They told a positive marriage program to help teenage girls that they could talk about marriage just not abstinence. So marriage is OK just not fidelity.

I'm not qualified to speak on either the Catholic Charities-sex trafficking or teen abstinence program issues. But I can say anecdotally that I've not seen any poll numbers that support the notion of raped and abused women being forced to keep the resultant babies. On this point abolitionist pro-lifers, Catholic and otherwise, are strongly at odds with American culture.

I was the best advocate for private sector charitable activity and giving incentives in Congress for many years, taking on those who wanted to restrict freedom and civil society, and successfully passing several provisions into law that enabled the donation of food to the hungry, good equipment to volunteer firefighter companies, and large IRA contributions to faith-based groups, education, and other charitable groups. I will continue to be an advocate for the little platoons of faithful servants who help their neighbors all around our country.

Now for the big finish...

It is time to stop rewarding bad behavior via government handouts that have unintended consequences, and to instead respect hard work, family, and local civil society institutions (like the hundreds of congregations, private hospitals, and grassroots community organizations throughout South Carolina) that make our country truly great. When the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville visited our land 200 years ago, he said that our political associations “form only a detail in the immense picture that the sum of associations presents here”—and that those associations are “essential for defending liberty from State tyranny.”

Saturday's primary election is an opportunity to send a clear message to the current president that freedom is back. We do not want a European-style welfare state; we want freedom to be neighbors to our neighbors. We want the federal government to focus on keeping us free and standing for our values and interests around the world. With your help, I will defend our country, restrain federal spending, restore the honor of marriage and family, while respecting civil society which forges local solutions to the challenges we face in America.

Line one from the first paragraph above is a standard talking point of the post-1960s New Right. It is also one of the three points from Albert O. Hirschman's 1991 book, The Rhetoric of Reaction: the perversity thesis. In a nutshell, the helpful hand of the mid-century welfare state only results in a decrease in the real welfare of the recipient via spiritual degradation. I don't get the pivot here to Tocqueville beyond the association already made above to subsidiarity. It is an anachronistic association in that Tocqueville was unaware of how voluntary associations would work in a post-industrial, globalized industrial-financial state.

I don't mean to say that references to Tocqueville in 2012 are useless, but rather that they have to be done carefully. And that care must also be used in relation to romantic medieval visions of village subsidiarity that dominated the thinking of late nineteenth-century thinkers like Chesterton, Belloc, and others who influenced early twentieth-century American Catholicism. - TL

Saul Alinsky, Newt Gingrich, And The Culture Wars---Conducted Transtemporally

A couple of years ago, in a "Tim's Light Reading" entry, I mentioned Saul Alinsky. At the time I expressed some surprise upon learning that Alinsky maintained a thirty-year correspondence with the French Catholic neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain. I have three subsequent observations: (1) Have I really been putting up "light reading" posts that long? Wow. Then again, yesterday was this blog's fifth birthday. (2) I'm _still_ amazed that Alinsky and Maritain kept in touch that long. (3) That post is the _only_ mention before today of Alinsky here at USIH. Today I am going to blow out (3) in a big way.

Why? Newt Gingrich, of course! He's our recent bete noire, between the weblog and our USIH Facebook page. I can give you three guesses, but you'll see Gingrich-Alinsky link in the following passages from this story (bolds mine):

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Nearly 40 years after his death, Saul Alinsky's name is back in the news, peppered throughout presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's speeches.

A native Chicagoan, Alinsky was "the father of community organizing," said Sanford D. Horwitt, author of Let Them Call Me Rebel: A Biography of Saul Alinsky."

"He invented community organizing … this very unique form of political action," Horwitt said, adding that Alinsky believed the goal of organizing people was to give them power.

It's that "community organizer" moniker that Gingrich is attempting to use in comparing Alinsky to President Barack Obama, who first came to Chicago as a community organizer practicing Alinsky's model, according to historians.

After winning the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday, Gingrich referenced Obama's "Saul Alinsky radicalism," painting it in a negative light. ...

"Newt realizes this is just an act, saying Alinsky is a dangerous radical. Gingrich is enough of a historian to know what Alinsky was about," Horwitt said. "This is something that he is feeding to a part of the conservative right."
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And the article goes on to recount the parallel between this and Tea Party enthusiasts continually reminding us of the links between Obama and another piece of radical living history, Bill Ayers. Politicians really are good at the guilt-by-association game.

But who IS Saul Alinsky? Here's your introduction to him from the rest of the article above (links that follow are mine):

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Born in January 1909, Alinsky grew up on [Chicago's] West Side, studied criminology at the University of Chicago and worked in state prisons before deciding he could make a bigger difference at the community level, said former Washington Post reporter Nicholas von Hoffman, who wrote Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky.

Von Hoffman, who before becoming a journalist worked alongside Alinsky from 1953 to 1962, said Alinsky fought for fair working conditions, affordable housing and any cause that "boiled down to one thing: organizing people so they have a decent shake."

Alinsky's tactics included tying up bank teller lines with volunteers repeatedly exchanging a $100 bill for pennies and vice versa as a way to protest banking institutions, said John Kretzmann, professor at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy. Another involved Alinsky's followers threatening to occupy all the bathrooms atO'Hare International Airportfor an entire day. The threat alone granted Alinsky a meeting with then-Mayor Richard J. Daley, Kretzmann said.
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And here's more from "Professor Wikipedia."

A significant portion of the entry derives from a 1972 Playboy magazine article (24, 403 words!), conducted a few months before Alinsky's death and reproduced here. Here are a few nuggets from the Wikipedia entry, mostly from that interview*, with brief commentary, both humorous and serious:

1. Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius."

You'd think that Gingrich would appreciate Alinsky's focus on ideas. Then again, as Ben Alpers reminded us via two funny quotes from Frank and Krugman, the rigor behind Newt's ideas are often suspect. [BTW: Check out this post by long-time USIH blog friend and S-USIH founding member, Julian Nemeth, on Buckley, Gingrich, and Republican victimhood.]

2. Because of his strict Jewish upbringing, he was asked whether he ever encountered antisemitism while growing up in Chicago. He replied, "it was so pervasive you didn't really even think about it; you just accepted it as a fact of life." He considered himself to be a devout Jew until the age of 12, after which time he began to fear that his parents would force him to become a rabbi. "I went through some pretty rapid withdrawal symptoms and kicked the habit ... But I'll tell you one thing about religious identity," he added. "Whenever anyone asks me my religion, I always say—and always will say—Jewish."

It appears Alinksy had a Tony Judt-ish-type relationship with his religious/ethnic identity. [BTW #2 related to PhD Octopus: Check out this post by David Weinfeld on Judt.]

3. Contrary to the Chicago Tribune article above, Alinsky was an undergraduate major in archaeology. But then there's this confusing passage from Wikipedia, apparently derived from the Playboy interview: After attending two years of graduate school he dropped out to accept work as a community organizer for the state of Illinois as a criminologist. Hmm...

4. Alinsky's work as a community organizer attracted the attention of Adlai Stevenson: His early efforts to "turn scattered, voiceless discontent into a united protest aroused the admiration of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, who said Alinsky's aims 'most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and dignity of the individual.'"

Getting praised by Stevenson in the Forties probably wasn't the kiss of death in relation to anti-intellectual/anti-Egghead associations. That wouldn't occur until the 1950s, I believe.

5. When asked during an interview whether he ever considered becoming a Communist party member, he replied: "Not at any time. I've never joined any organization—not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

So isn't it ironic that Gingrich, whom Alinsky would've no doubt called "intellectually constipated," is holding up Obama as a president that follows the ideology of a figure who despised ideology to the point of avoiding organizations he himself organized? Isn't it interesting to see the Culture Wars conducted transtemporally, or is this Gingrich living history in ideas? Consult with LD's recent post on "Big Ideas," particularly the parts on David Armitage, to make whatever sense you want of my last question.

6. And this: Alinsky described his plans in 1972 to begin to organize the white middle class across America, and the necessity of that project. He believed that what President Richard Nixon and Vice-President Spiro Agnew called "The Silent Majority" was living in frustration and despair, worried about their future,

and ripe for a turn to radical social change, to become politically-active citizens. He feared the middle class could be driven to a right-wing viewpoint, "making them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday." His stated motive: "I love this goddamn country, and we're going to take it back."

Was Alinsky unknowingly forecasting the arrival, on the wings of the New Right, of that famous presidential hero of American Western films, Ronald Reagan? - TL

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*I don't have the time, right now, to read the whole book interview