Crazy Heart and Crazy Idea

Finally got a chance to see Crazy Heart yesterday. I don't think it's possible to talk about the movie without comparing it to The Wrestler. They certainly are similar. I enjoyed both films immensely, but I find myself taking the unusual position of saying that while I believe The Wrestler is a better film, I enjoyed Crazy Heart more. The Wrestler just has an overwhelming bleakness to it that, while it doesn't detract from the film's merit, makes it inherently more uncomfortable to watch. Crazy Heart hits a lot of the same notes (unintentional pun) but on the whole it's just a much more optimistic film. Whereas Jeff Bridges' character seems largely indifferent to the destructive effects his lifestyle has on his body, Rourke's seems to almost actively seek out his own self-destruction. A big part of that is the differene in the subjects: has-been musicians still usually fare quite a bit better than has-been wrestlers. Case in point, given the choice who would you rather be: Tom Cochrane or Jake the Snake Roberts? In any case, Crazy Heart certainly abounds with cliches, but Bridges' performance is fantastic and he deserves the Oscar (as Rourke did last year, but hopefully Bridges will actually get it).

In other news, I've decided to embark on a mission to write a book. Specifically a non-fiction book. Even more specifically, a political non-fiction book. As long as I've watched political debates, particularly the Presidential ones, I've always been struck by the fact that we ask our candidates to exhaustively state their positions and plans on every issue we can think of and then whoever is elected invariably only gets to even attempt, at most, about a fourth of what they wanted to. So I've always wanted to read a book that examined the main issues of each Presidential campaign and then follow them through the winner's Presidency to see what progress was made. Was the issue just completely forgotten? Did legislation get introduced but then defeated? Did some major event happened that drastically shifted the nation's priorities? Well, after doing some searching I don't see any such book out there so I've decided that I'll try to write it.

My plan is that I am just going to start with one particular election and the next Presidential term and try to write that portion along with my introduction sometime over the next year. If that goes well and I'm not completely demoralized and defeated, I'll try to use that to get a literary agent and then, hopefully, a publisher. The eventual plan would be to examine all the campaigns going back to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 (I like that as a starting point since that's when debates were first televised), but we'll have to see how it goes. It's a long-shot I know but hey, the worst thing that can happen is that I spend a lot of time learning about historical politics and get some experience writing non-fiction, and that's not a horrible thing as worst possible outcomes go. I intend the book to be non-partisan, meaning that I will try to focus on just what the candidate said that he wanted to do and compare that to what the President did. I want to completely set aside the question of whether or not they "should" have done it. Unfortunately, that of and by itself is quite dry and academic. Where I think it can be made more interesting is in exploring the decisions that a President made which were not mentioned in the campaign. Were there things said during the campaign (maybe in response to a totally different question) that gave insight as to how this President would respond to this or was his response just completely out of the blue and at the whim of the political winds of the day? More importantly, are there things we should look and listen for from candidates other than their official positions that will actually tell us more about the kinds of decisions that they will make?

So in any case, it's certainly an ambitious project. The campaign I've decided to start with is 1992, followed then by the 92-96 Clinton presidency. I did this for a couple reasons. First of all, 92 was a really interesting campaign. It was the first time in 80 years where we had a "real" 3rd party candidate (in the sense that he garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote and participated in all of the televised debates). I also find H.W. Bush and Clinton to both be really interesting (I initially thought about doing the 1988 campaign but god help me I'm just not ready to devote tens of hours of my life to Michael Dukakis). Finally, I think that the 15-20 year timeframe is long enough ago that I can get some good historical perspective but recent enough that I should have no shortage of sources. I've got 5 books on the way just to give me some good base knowledge, and I'm currently in the process of going through transcripts of the 3 debates. So far it's every bit as interesting as I was hoping that it would be. So if anyone has any good book recommendations on the 92 campaign or early Clinton presidency I'd love to hear them.