Interview with the Werewolf

Preface
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

The white Tanzanian son of a brown Indian father and a brown Indian mother, Sarang Gopalakrishnan spent most of his college years boning up on hard science, immersing himself in the literature and poetry of the British Isles, and completing his transformation into an quasi-aristocratic anti-Victorian (think Bertrand W. H. Orwell; he developed the accent – optimized for his kind of poetry – in high school). He won a prestigious Watson Fellowship for his audacious proposal to study Remoteness in Russia, but alas, the wings of hope were not enough to carry him through this perilous undertaking (Russia being dangerous and racist). After purposefully flubbing his interview to become a quant at a major hedge fund (in part because he could not bear such an ugly job title), he began stripping to pay for his career as a full-time reader of political commentary and part-time pundit. He moonlights as a grad student in theoretical physics. In his words: “Though I was born in India and went to school in Tanzania, my first language is English and I think of my ‘home literature’ as that of the British Isles, with all its connections to Norse, German and Romance literature.... I grew up in cities with large suburbs and hinterlands, and the small towns of western Massachusetts are almost contiguous; I would like to know how it feels to live in towns around which the countryside is blank for hours, and where winters are preternaturally harsh.” I am confident that I speak for all of us when I say that I hope Sarang gets his wish.

Fittingly, Sarang inspired me to try my hand at poetry (the latter is a clerihew):

Deep within the bowels of Merrill*
An ossified lemur sits
He found Auden while still feral
Now he talks like the Brits

*Amherst College science building

Sarang
Is never wrong
Only joking
Or provoking

Reactions to Sarang’s punditry have been decidedly mixed, ranging from “Sarang doesn’t know shit” to “Sarang is a frighteningly good political commentator.” Today’s interview will help you decide. Without further ado, it is my great honor to present prolific polymath, cynical communist, gibbering gibbon – our next presidential debate moderator, Sarang Gopalakrishnan!

Interview
Me: Do you think the presidential election will stay close?

SG: No. I don't know which way it'll swing.

Me: Why do you foresee a swing?

SG: If Palin comes across as remotely competent, I suspect that McCain will win fairly comfortably.

Me: Really? Because of her, I take it?

SG: Yes. I don't really see what there is stopping them. The undecideds don't care for Obama.

Me: You don't think debates, policy, and other substance will make a difference?

SG: Not a huge difference, no. Palin is a good idea from the point of view of the veep debate, since Biden can't shred her without condescending.

Me: Man, I hate democracy.

SG: Yes.

Me: I'm moving to China.

SG: On the other hand I'm looking forward to her fucking up.

Me: Yeah, that would be awesome.

SG: In which case, like, you have an old guy and Reese Witherspoon on the ticket, in which case Obama coasts to victory.

Me: Yeah, I mean, just looking at competence – judgment, intelligence, temperament, policy – it's a laughable matchup.

SG: Well, there's one guy I like on both tickets together and that's Biden. Obama strikes me as not that interesting or appealing. McCain is personally better, but his policies are terrible and his war-hero shtick is grating.

Me: What do you have against Obama?

SG: Obama is not very funny, not very sharp, not very good at anything. I liked his race speech in March, but that was really the last moment that I found him at all appealing.

Me: Do you think Hillary would've run away with the election?

SG: No, Hillary would've struggled in different places.

Me: I haven’t heard that many of Obama’s speeches. I also liked his race speech a lot. I take it you weren’t a fan of his DNC speech? I thought it was quite good; it did what it had to do and had some very good lines.

SG: The DNC speech was OK. But he ain’t no Lincoln.

Me: Then again, who is?

SG: And he isn’t funny.

Me: Right.

SG: Like, that's my biggest problem with Obama: he lacks sharpness.

Me: He's a bit stiff, but what do you mean by “sharpness?”

SG: At some level the guy is fundamentally stiff and unappealing. “Sharpness” not as in intelligence, just as in edge; he lacks edge. Hillary had plenty of edge, at least towards the end, and I liked that. McCain has edge too.

Me: I think I know what you mean. Obama needs to get edgier. He should hire Werner Herzog as a debate coach.

SG: Ha. Yes, I guess crispness is another word for it. Old Grizz is going to eat him up in the debates, I think.

Me: Really?

SG: I don't look forward to this. Obama’s a lousy debater.

Me: It's weird, because he seems to get it (how to frame arguments, how to connect with people), and he was apparently a good professor (which is of course different from being a good presidential debater, but still relevant).

SG: His innate flaccidity comes through. I mean, McCain might not be great either.

Me: Yeah, I saw that flaccidity, especially in the early debates.

SG: Maybe McCain won't do that well. But against Hillary, Obama was terrible.

Me: McCain is kind of an idiot, right? That’s not game over, of course, but it’s got to hurt.

SG: No. I mean, McCain is less of a walking cliché than Obama, at least if you give him space. I don't agree with him on anything but the guy is basically cool. He has solid literary and cultural tastes.

Me: Aside from ABBA?

SG: Yeah. He's a Roddy Doyle fan and knows Bashevis Singer well. McCain's well-read and well-informed except about policy, which he doesn't know much about. But, like, nor does Obama, really. It's telling that he's not very good at being passionate about policy as Krugman pointed out.

Me: Hmm.

SG: And I think that's his fundamental narcissism showing through: Obama's primarily interested in Obama. Like anyone else whose first book is an autobiography.

Me: So you think a lot of the flaccidity is because he doesn't fully get the policy? What about the cases where he's clearly right and it's pretty straightforward (e.g., the war, as opposed to healthcare plan nuances)?

SG: Oh, I think he sort of gets it; the guy's smart. He just isn't that passionate about it. Kind of like McCain, whom also I take to be basically smart.

Me: Incidentally, how bad of a candidate was Kerry? I basically didn't follow that election. But I saw his DNC speech, which I thought was surprisingly great (I had low expectations).

SG: I was following it near the end. He also lacked crispness. Yes, apparently it was the best thing he ever gave. I missed it. I remember the ‘04 debates. Kerry sounded waffly. He wasn't actually waffling. But, like, the reason the flipflop thing stuck was that he sounded indecisive. “I am, uh, firmly in, uh, support of the president's decision to go to, uh, war.”

Me: Man, why can't the Dems manage to pull through?

SG: Dunno. It's partly that the liberal elites are such a large part of the primary base. And they're not very good at connecting with anybody else. I mean, I'm policy-wise completely in line with the liberal elite. But, like, I don't get their political preferences either.

Me: The mind wants what it wants.

SG: The Obama thing for instance. Guy's flaccid. Always has been. Delivers speeches that are elaborate tissues of clichés.

Me: Who doesn't?

SG: Oh, lots of people. Many of them just deliver the clichés upfront. I mean, I think Obama's a crap writer as well, and this is part of the problem.

Me: I haven't read his books, but his speeches are well-written.

SG: I mean Dreams from My Grandfather's Son.

Me: Hmm, my friend thought the writing was surprisingly good, though the book needs better editing (everyone apparently acknowledges this, including Obama implicitly in the preface).

SG: Yes, it's a cluttered and weakkneed prose style. Hard to do that stuff well, but Obama doesn't have what I'd consider a compelling style. And this, I guess, goes back to his lacking edge.

Me: You think it's just a fundamental personality trait?

SG: Yes. He's subtle, you see, and subtlety is a great thing. But you need to balance it with a good feeling for outlines.

Me: Yeah, I always tried to do that in debate and moot court. You don't want to sound superficial, but you have to hit the big ideas early and hard.

SG: Yes, and I don't think he does that very well. It's too bad.

Me: Did you see the Rick Warren interviews? I didn't.

SG: I saw bits of them. People's reaction there tracked my feeling all along.

Me: How was Obama?

SG: He waffled. McCain was corny but to the point. At some level this was inevitable, I should say. I mean, the audience was 80% Republican, so Obama couldn't state talking points and McCain could.

Me: Why do you think Obama built up a lead and then lost it?

SG: I have no idea. It wasn't that big a lead.

Me: I'm afraid our time is up. Thank you very much for your insight, Sarang.

SG: My pleasure [mumbles].