A Philosopher on the American Election

Before too much time passes, I thought I'd post a somewhat recent interview on PRI's The World with French philosopher, journalist and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy about his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Lévy was apparently a student of Derrida and Althusser, two of the leading French structuralists, and one of his more recent books was American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, which I haven't read but remember for being savaged by Garrison Keillor (though Lévy was interviewed on The Daily Show around the same time - not universally panned).

Seen any other philosophers muse or opine about the election? Just by glancing at Brian Leiter's blog, one can see he's had a lot on the election; one post that caught my eye a while back was this one, which simply linked to two op-ed type pieces on Obama's campaign strategy at this point. Although at least in this post, Leiter didn't put his own two cents in, I found it interesting that the guy nevertheless found some credibility in the pieces, neither of which really discussed the elephant in the room - race - nor possessed the common sense that anything Obama (or Biden) says about McCain or Palin will be scrutinized (in the sense of misconstrued and belabored).

Anyway. The Club's next discussion will be on Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-prize winning feature in The Washington Post Magazine, "Pearls Before Breakfast," with a reading on aesthetics for good measure.