Joe Miller: America comes into the country

As one more interested in beginnings than endings, this morning I Googled “Joe
Miller” before I went to Obama’s Iraq speech and was delighted to see this
headline from the Los Angeles Times: “In
Alaska, Sen. Murkowski concedes to ‘tea party’ candidate Miller.”

Because history has a tendency to begin again where it ends. As it did in the
mid01970s when Howard Cosell interviewed John Lennon at halftime at a football
game. At the end he said, “I’ve got to go, John. I’ve got to interview the
Gipper.” John Lennon said, “Who’s the Gipper?”


Soon all would know. And soon all will know Joe Miller, who, with backing from
Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, just won the GOP primary in Alaska.

If “Mad Men” ever gets to the mid-1970s, one of the mini-cultural awakenings that
they love to uncover will be the publication of John McPhee’s Coming into
the Country, about Alaska. As Wiki says, McPhee
“travels through much of the state with bush pilots, prospectors, and settlers,
as well as politicians and businesspeople who each interpret the state in
different ways.” It was then a very Emersonian phenomenon and the best among us
had already travelled to Alaska. Some, like my more adventurous and industrious
friends, to work on the pipeline at Prudhoe Bay. Congress and punditry might
pick up a copy. Like so many things in the mid-’70s it echoes today. McPhee’s
great book presented Alaska as a door in the American psyche that was about to
open. Today it opens.

As President Obama said last night, “It is time to turn the page.”

Visit Mr. Quigley’s website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.