[Broken link originally of Spy Magazine cover of Hillary as dominatrix]
Of course, there are the headliners, themselves. First and (at last) foremost, there's Hillary. Never really out of the spotlight, having parked her political career in a senate seat, a perfect platform to do a bit of damage control here, a bit of political horse trading there. Seeing to it, for example, that the Democrats ran a sure-fire loser in 2004, lest she have to wait too long to make a run for the White House herself.
And then, too, there's "our Bill." Tanned, rested and ready for... well, for the Big Show, for another chance to play in the World Series or Super Bowl of politics. As was always the case, what Hillary really cares about is the power, but what Bill cares about even more than power is politics, itself. Put differently, what Bill cares about most is the game; what Hillary cares most about is the score. Tell the truth, who doesn't want to see the master player of our age back on the field of dreams?
But our two stars aside, how long has it been since we read of Susan McDougal in her stylish orange jumpsuit or Monica Lewinsky in her stylish blue, well, you know; Web Hubbell or Vince Foster thumbing through the odd stack of FBI files sitting on a coffee table in the Rose Law Firm; Dick Morris or Gennifer Flowers? God, how we've missed them all! Alas, some are gone forever, but there'll be more. There'll be more. Attracting and then, as need be, disposing of colorful second bananas, bit players and one-episode walk-ons is mother's milk to the Clintons -- they are our Arkansas Sopranos and we hunger for more episodes.
Already, the familiar refrains, the set pieces of stage business are being rehearsed. The Clintons' response to the new books?
The Clinton camp hopes to brush off the books as mainly rehashing old news. "Is it possible to be quoted yawning?" asked Philippe Reines, her Senate spokesman. If past books on Clinton were "cash for trash," he added, "these books are nothing more than cash for rehash."
Old news! Yes! It's just like deja vu all over again, isn't it? Oh, the memories!
But seriously, folks (as the comics say), here's why Hillary Clinton will be our next president, painful though it is for me to write those words. Yes, she has extraordinarily high personal negatives; yes, Barack Obama currently enjoys much positive press and, yes, so long as he doesn't declare his candidacy, so does Al Gore. But much of Obama's currently favorable image derives from his being a charismatic cypher. Already he has begun to fumble a bit on the campaign trail and if there is any damaging information to be revealed, any weaknesses whatsoever to be exposed or exploited, rest assured the Clinton camp will get the job done.
Frankly, I think Gore is too happy in his current role as media darling to run again. Indeed, I think he has come to believe he can be more effective as a private citizen promoting his Global Warming agenda than he could be as president, and that may well be right. Gore never cared as passionately for political office as he has for environmental issues, and it shows. I'd explain why Edwards is an even bigger cypher than Obama, but why bother?
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is, without question, the most ruthless office holder in contemporary American politics. She's Dick Cheney in drag, if pantsuits count as drag. And our man Bill, a sui generis force majeure in American politics if there ever was one, is Karl Rove's political equal any day. Besides, the Clintons' front men are right, it is all old news, at least for now. If there was a shred of evidence that Hillary was performing satanic rituals or that Bill was considering a sex change operation or that Chelsea had picked up a crack habit the American Spectator would have been all over it in a New York minute. We really do know all the bad stuff about Bill and Hillary, including even the rarely false bad stuff. What other candidate still in the running can that be said about?
Finally, say what you will about Romney or McCain or Giuliani or the seven dwarfs, no Republican candidate can both secure the nomination and run far enough away from the negative baggage of the Bush Administration to win in 2008. It can't happpen; it won't happen.
On the other hand, losing the White House could be the best thing that could happen for the Republicans, who desperately need to free themselves from the neoconservative shackles of the Bush era, Iraq especially included. It is, after all, an accident of history that Bush became a wartime president and thus a strong president. Neither he nor his various lackeys, henchmen and underlings could have managed to drag the Republican party into the profligate pork addicts and empire building warmongers they have become in the past six years had it not been for 9/11. In a sense, that may have been the greatest damage the terrorists managed to inflict.
I don't say that with any partisan agenda. I dislike the Republican Party as much as the Democratic Party and have supported Republicans in the past only insofar as I saw them providing needed counterweight to the excesses of the Democrats. Historically, they have, between the two of them, represented too little difference politically for my tastes. Still, at least once upon a time it could be said that the difference was that the Republicans let you keep your money and property in return for controlling your private life while the Democrats did the opposite. Now they have converged to the point where both would equally steal our freedoms and our wealth, quibbling only over the details. For the good of the nation, one party or the other must literally reform. As it is at least temporarily in the ascendancy, that party won't be the Democrats for now.
A Republican Party that abandons and rejects the Bush era can regain Congress even as it loses the White House. And nothing would do more to make that happen than seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton sitting in the Oval Office.
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SPECIAL CLINTON NOSTALGIA BONUS: A Clinton era flash from the past -- the late, great Michael Kelly's I Believe.
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1 comment:
That was incisive.
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