[ by Charles Cameron — comparing presidential candidates, here and there ]
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The ability to compare and contrast is an amazing business — you can get online tutorials in how to do it, and it even shows up in xkcd:
Compare and contrast is a basic human activity, in fact, closely allied with choice, and IMO can be crafted into a very powerful engine for understanding — if we first clear away the tangle of other thoughts with which we generally surround it, focus in on it, and use it to probe our assumptions and generate our creative insights…
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In that spirit, then, let me pose my compare and contrast question for the day.
Compare and contrast:
The first quote presents one of Mr. Morsi‘s actual statements — hand-picked for scary — and there’s even a MEMRI video clip to prove it. The second is admittedly far more vague; it’s from a New York Times piece assessing and guessing at Mr. Romney’s likely foreign policy, which doesn’t actually quote him in any detail — instead, it lays out the basis for current speculation.
What I’m really trying to get at here, though, is how we read Mr. Morsi’s words — and my quote regarding Mr. Romney is in this instance mostly a foil, a way to suggest that at home, we don’t imagine what a candidate says is necessarily what he intends.
So my question, really, boils down to this: how ready would you be to agree that Mr. Morsi may have been making election promises in the full knowledge that he could not, would not, or might not even wish to keep them?
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Different people will put different weights on Mr. Morsi’s campaign statements and those of Mr. Romney. There may be some interesting patterns to be found in the demographics of those differences.
I for one certainly don’t imagine that both Mr. Romney and Mr. Morsi would keep all their campaign promises to the letter if elected — but then neither do I imagine they would necessarily both deviate from their promises to the same extent under the pressures they, respectively, are under. And as I have indicated, I expect that different outside observers will bring different assumptions and expectations to their evaluations of the likely degree to which each of these men will / would if elected adhere to or deviate from their promises.
The pressures and constraints the two men find themselves under will differ — their respective most basic fears and ideals will very likely differ considerably, too.
And we ourselves, to the extent that we compare and contrast them, will do so from different angles — and come to different conclusions…
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So: realistically and without prejudgment, how would we compare and contrast the element of what the NYT writer nicely called “political rhetoric” in these two cases?
How seriously should we take Mr. Morsi’s calls for shariah, for jihad, for “our most lofty aspiration” — death for the sake of Allah?
