THE BROWNBACK / MUKASEY DIALOGUE

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Oct 20, 2007 at 01:18

Aside from my agreement with the (poorly) expressed opinions of Sen. Brownback and Mr. Mukasey, I could not help but notice, to my dismay, the evident inability of either of these men to clearly articulate their points of view. The garbled syntax and atrocious sentence construction of their brief dialogue forces the reader (or listener) to interpret in their favor what they actually 'meant' to say, rather than accept upon face value what they actually did say, which would often make no rational sense at all.

Take Brownback's last recorded sentence, for example, with my commentary in bold type: "It's just---it's troubling to a number of people and it's troubling to me that you ["you" meaning Mukasey?] see these sorts of things starting to come forward [what "sorts of things" is he talking about?] ----and in Western countries, that they move forward [whatever "they" are, or does he mean that the Western countries are now moving forward?]----that the Constitution is the law of the land and it governs all of us and the [how about saying 'and it is the basis for our judicial system'?] laws that proceed out of it that are built ["built"? how about 'were written' or 'were ratified'?]here."

Now I hate to sound like I'm nitpicking a couple of decent men who are expressing, in their own awkward way, sound ideas. But I have read quotes from 18th Century debates involving men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington whose spontaneous eloquence puts their 21st Century political descendants to shame.

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