An Independent Candidate?

As I said to the Washington Post, the effort (of which I’m a small part) to recruit an independent presidential candidate is chugging along, and “these conspiracies for the public good are time and labor intensive.” So it’s nice to take a break from this cause to write this newsletter, and to discuss a few other things.

 

Like the week in baseball. On Saturday May 7, Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon, 42-years old and a 19-season major league veteran, hit his first career home run (watch it here). Then on Wednesday the Nats’ Max Scherzer became only the fourth pitcher in major league history to strike out 20 batters in nine innings, along with Randy Johnson, Kerry Wood and Roger Clemens (who did it twice!) (here’s Scherzer’s last strikeout). And then this past Saturday David Ortiz, the Red Sox’s aging slugger (who’s having an incredible season), hit his first triple in nearly three years (watch that here). So tell me: If all these things could happen within a week in 2016, is a path to victory for an independent candidate so impossible?

 

Oops–I was supposed to be taking a break from that…

 

Well, we did take a break last Monday to attend the Manhattan Institute’s 16th annual Alexander Hamilton dinner, honoring Bruce Kovner and Harvey A. Silverglate (here are some photos). It was a lovely evening (even though black-tie!), and I had lots of interesting discussions with conservative thinkers, activists, and donors about the political situation and various possible independent candidates.

 

Oops–there I go again…

 

Well, moving to the halls of academe: Later in the week, I attended (some of) a first-rate conference hosted by the MIT Benjamin Franklin Project on “Mastery of Nature: Promises and Problems.” It featured papers by such luminaries as Harvey Mansfield, Peter Thiel, Mark Blitz and many, many more (you can read a bit about the conference here). The papers are to be published relatively soon in a book edited by the conference organizer, Bernhardt L. Trout, professor of chemical engineering at MIT, and for those interested in such things, there will be much to read and ponder in that volume. I’ll keep you posted on that. Meanwhile, though I can’t say I diligently attended all the panels, it was good to catch up with many old friends from the world of political theory, and it was interesting to get their thoughts on the American scene, on possible independent candidates, and…

 

Oops…

 

In the meantime, Andy Zwick, the executive director of the Foundation for Constitutional Government, and I took advantage of Peter Thiel’s and Mark Blitz’s being in Cambridge to film a “Conversation” with each of them. I thought both very interesting, and we’ll be releasing them in the near future. Meanwhile, I should remind you to take a look, if you wish, at the newly released conversation with Harvey Mansfield, which marks the tenth anniversary of his important and provocative book on Manliness (you can order the book here).

In the conversation, Mansfield offers his account of manliness and its importance as a permanent, though problematic, feature of human nature. He explains how liberal political philosophers and liberal society have often been suspicious of manliness, details the consequences for our politics, and discusses contemporary efforts to transcend manliness through the creation of a gender-neutral society. Interesting stuff.