Turandot
In what might seem to have been a desperate attempt to take my mind off the forthcoming Iowa caucus (but was in fact merely the result of having season tickets to the Met Live in HD performances), we spent Saturday afternoon at a local movie theater watching the Met’s Turandot. It was of course a welcome distraction from Iowa–and more than a distraction, because it seemed to me an excellent production (soprano Anita Hartig’s performance as the slave Liu was particularly memorable). Indeed, though I’m more a fan of Rossini and Donizetti than of Puccini, the afternoon might cause me to reevaluate my anti-Puccini bias. In any case, there’s a rebroadcast of the performance in selected theaters this Wednesday evening. I recommend it if you have the time and the taste. And it will be a distraction from pondering the meaning of the Iowa results!
In ten minutes of Googling about Turandot before heading off to it, I was reminded that opera is a melodramatic form, and that the stories around opera are often amusingly (but sometimes movingly) melodramatic. For example, Puccini died on November 29, 1924; when news of his death reached Rome during a performance of La Bohème, the opera was halted, and the orchestra immediately played instead Chopin’s Funeral March. What’s more, Turandot was at that point unfinished–though it was soon completed by Franco Alfano, and that complete version is the one everyone’s heard for 90 years. But at the first performance of Turandot in Milan on April 25, 1926, conducted by the great Arturo Toscanini, Toscanini ended the performance in the middle of Act 3, laying down his baton and announcing to the audience, “Here the Maestro laid down his pen.”
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Mansfield on politics
Speaking of maestros and pens, let me call your attention to a two-part essay by Harvey Mansfield in the fine magazine, City Journal. Mansfield’s topic is “Our Parties,” with Part I on “The Democrats: How Progress became Drift,” and Part II on “The Republicans: Party of Virtue.” And as an introduction to these challenging but very rewarding pieces, or as a tide-me-over until you have the leisure to read them, I’m happy to present a new conversation with Harvey Mansfield. In it, Mansfield considers our two major parties, the ideas behind them, and the qualities that often go with being a Democrat or a Republican. Mansfield argues that the Democrats are the “party of progress” — and that progressivism may be headed for a crisis. Mansfield calls the Republicans the “party of virtue” and suggests the challenges that brings to the GOP.
I do think this conversation is awfully enlightening as to the state of our politics and the deeper currents animating the events around us, and that you’ll find it worth taking a look at. And then you can set aside considerably more time to read and reflect on Mansfield’s articles themselves!
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At last, Iowa
Okay, I’ve avoided Iowa long enough. Here are a couple of thoughts:
The final Des Moines Register poll on the GOP side had Trump at 28 percent, Cruz at 23 percent, Rubio at 15 percent, Carson at 10 percent, Paul at 5 percent, Christie at 3 percent, and Bush, Fiorina, Huckabee, Kasich, and Santorum at 2 percent each. Here’s one way of looking at those results: 40 percent of Iowa Republicans are supporting someone who’s never held elective office; 43 percent of Iowa Republicans are supporting one of three first-term senators; and only 11 percent of Iowa Republicans are supporting any of five candidates who include two who won the Iowa caucuses before, and three respected governors. In the past, Republican primary voters have valued the credentials of having governed and/or having had political experience. But not in 2016. There’s never been a year when governing or experience has paid off so little.
Who knows what will happen tonight ? Not me. I do tend to believe momentum and message trump organization and ground game. So I think Bernie Sanders is likely to defeat Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side (Sanders trailed 45-42 in the final Des Moines Register poll, but his vote had increased in each survey). And I suspect–contrary to interest and to my wishes–that Donald Trump will prevail (perhaps quite easily) among GOP caucus-goers.
On the other hand, if you tend to respect the wisdom of crowds (and I do), the results of the prediction market run for us by our friends at Consensus Point based on your responses to the last newsletter point in a different direction. Here are the predictions of the market consisting of those of you who chose to respond last week:
So maybe it will be Cruz? Or could the 1-in-16 (7 percent) long shot, Rubio, come in and surprise everyone?
On the Democratic side, there’s one particularly interesting finding from the prediction market: TWS participants gave Hillary only a 47 percent chance of being the Democratic nominee.
Anyway, enough speculation. We’ll have results tonight (and we’ll be analyzing them as they come in–and in the hours and days afterwards–at weeklystandard
Sometimes.
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
