A political lesson

In 2008, Mau­reen Dowd, a writer for the New York Times, ana­lyzed why Hillary Clin­ton lost out to Barack Obama in the demo­c­ra­tic race for president.

Dowd wrote, “[Hillary Clin­ton] has ignored some tru­isms of pol­i­tics that her hus­band under­stands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Con­sis­tency beats flip­ping. Bedaz­zling beats begrudg­ing. Con­fi­dence beats whin­ing.” (NYTimes, 27 Feb 2008)

Whether Dowd’s assess­ment of Hillary Clin­ton is accu­rate is debat­able. But I was reminded of some com­posers I’ve met who have had enor­mous suc­cess: Paul Moravec and Chen Yi and Jen­nifer Hig­don, for instance, truly fol­low this non-whining, con­fi­dent way of life. It might seem hard to live every day this way, but com­po­si­tion careers are about more than com­pos­ing; pol­i­tics counts, too.