Thomas Kuhn Quotes
Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed., University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 158.
Alluding to the practice of advisors and handlers scripting and packaging presidential candidates for conventions and debates:
In 1989 Russia held contested elections for the first time since the 1917 revolution. Numerous incumbent party leaders lost.
She was referring to the Administration of George W. Bush who had justified his Iraq War policies on intelligence claims that were false. The initial war effort was very successful, but the occupation was very poorly managed and there were many American and allied casualties—the stream on fire. Bush apologists claim that the President had been given faulty information by the CIA and he had no intention of misleading the American people.
It was found so later. Hundreds of abnormal substances in the dust in the air. See {641048} for the premature official statement after 9-11.
At that time the Presidential nominee had influence but could not unilaterally determine who his running mate would be as the Party Conventions—especially the Democratic Party Convention—was wide open. The candidate joked in this quotation, but the party leaders were very unhappy with such an open convention and after the 1972 election which they lost handily, the rules were changed to give party leaders more influence. By the 21st century, the primary elections had all but made the party conventions a quaint celebration and no serious decisions were made by the party leaders or the party delegates.
“This” referred to the money to finance the Truman Doctrine of containment of aggressive Communism. There was already a Red Scare in the nation and Vandenberg realized that the only way his Republican Colleagues and the Conservative Democrats would appropriate the money was if there was public demand, and exaggerating the communist menace would scare the country sufficiently to move Congress. Truman took Vandenberg’s advice. On March 12, 1947, Truman delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress and did “scare hell” out of the country. The money for the Truman Doctrine came fourth.
While Abraham Lincoln set the precedent for independent Presidential action in a national political crises without much reliance on Congress, this was where Roosevelt established the precedent of unilateral action in financial crises.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.
