Hagelian Dialectics

His complete Prufrockian noncommitment is online at the Omaha World-Herald

Thesis: "America stands at an historic crossroads in its history...We are experiencing a political re-orientation, a redefining and moving toward a new political center of gravity. This movement is bigger than both parties. The need to solve problems and meet challenges is overtaking the ideological debates of the last three decades - as it should. America is demanding honest, competent and accountable governance."

Antithesis: "I am here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year."

Synthesis: The house is on fire, and I intend maybe to do something new about that later this year.

Hegel held that all being is in fact rather a species of becoming; Hagel seems to hold that non-becoming is just as newsworthy as becoming, so ultimately whether he runs or not turns out to be equally inconsequential.

He did betray a part of his thinking in his rather shaggy and slapped together statement ("America stands at an historic crossroads in its history"--as opposed to an historic moment in its algebra or social studies?) when he digressed:

"We are experiencing a political re-orientation, a redefining and moving toward a new political center of gravity. This movement is bigger than both parties. The need to solve problems and meet challenges is overtaking the ideological debates of the last three decades - as it should. America is demanding honest, competent and accountable governance."

In addition to implying that the current Republican administration is dishonest, incompetent and unaccountable, Hagel also feeds speculation (including my own) that his ultimate trajectory, if ever he succeeds in pushing the moment to its crisis and actually making a decision, is out of the Republican party into a fringe party or independent campaign of debatable political impact.

I also wait with interest to see whether the hullaballoo within the media last week occasioned by this non-announcement costs him any of the media sympathy usually accorded to Republicans who attack the party platform in the subsequent coverage by reporters who enjoy a quick weekend in Omaha for a non-story perhaps less than I do.