Frank Rich’s new column is sure to piss off a lot of people. They should be pissed. Pissed that they’ve fallen behind and politically speaking may find it hard to get back up.
Given the dividing line separating the two Americas of 2008, a ticket uniting Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton might actually be a better fit than the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket,” despite their differences on the issues. Never was this more evident than Tuesday night, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain both completely misread a one-of-a-kind historical moment as they tried to cling to the prerogatives of the 20th century’s old guard.
All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.
Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.
Yet even as the two establishment candidates huffed and puffed to assert their authority, they seemed terrified by Mr. Obama’s insurgency, as if it were the plague in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” Mrs. Clinton held her nonconcession speech in a Manhattan bunker, banishing cellphone reception and television monitors carrying the news of Mr. Obama’s clinching of the nomination. Mr. McCain, laboring under the misapprehension that he was wittily skewering his opponent, compulsively invoked the Obama-patented mantra of “change” 33 times in his speech.
Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. “No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically,” he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking “to the 1960s and ’70s for answers.”
Rich nails Clinton and McCain like only a fellow Boomer could, but he also understands Obama’s appeal to Americans who aren’t flush with profits from a Wall Street gone made with ponzi scams.
Six out of 10 Americans do want their president to talk to Iran’s president, according to the most-recent Gallup poll. Americans are sick of a national identity defined by arrogant saber-rattling abroad and manipulative fear-mongering at home. Mr. Obama closed his speech on Tuesday by telling Americans they “don’t deserve” another election “that’s governed by fear.” Of the three candidates, he was the only one who did not mention 9/11 that night.
Remember Rudy 9iu11iani? Yeah, I think America is tired of 9/11. But not jaded. If we were truly jaded, Lileks’ gussets column would be funny instead of being in terrible taste (the bridge collapsed ten months ago, not six years and ten months ago like the WTC). Today’s Times runs a respectful article about the new bridge going up. Then again the Times isn’t flogging Tim Pawlenty’s new primary cause, which can be summed up as “let’s not talk about the bridge.”
Republicans have turned into a cynical lot, laughing at death and applauding tragedies. Michael Gerson, one of the pricks who wrote Bush’s speeches, uses this week’s column to talk about what an evil fuck Joseph Kony of the Congo is. Gerson’s last employer of note, George Bush, has had over seven years to deal with Kony, and ignored him and every other dictator on the planet not named Saddam.
But a black asshole in Africa is, I guess, potentially embarrassing in some way to Barack Obama, at least in the one-handed dreams of Michael Gerson. But Gerson is also quick to point out all of Kony’s abducted child brides. Maybe Gerson’s just trying to take some of the heat off his polygamist buddies out West? Thank God the WaPost saw fit to give this guy a column or all of this would fall on Dana Perino to explain.
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All the people whose opinions you don’t value chime in at the Times to tell us why Hillary lost: Mark Penn, Mark Halperin & John Harris, Christine Todd Whitman, Heather Wilson, Bob Kerrey, Jane Swift, Carl Bernstein and Michael Kinsley, as well as a few whose opinions I do value: Ana Marie Cox, Michelle Cottle, Doug Wilder, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.
At any rate, the forces of Hillaryism defeated, the world returns to the way things have always been, and women around the country resume their former position.
Or, do you think — as I do — that Hillary’s run had very little to do with women, and everything to do with Hillary Clinton’s need to be President? Women have lost nothing with her defeat, and would do well to stick her in the same dusty closet as Betty Friedan and other feminists who’ve outlived their movement.
And who knows? Maybe some day I’ll have my own Hillary running, someone who backs labor in a real and meaningful way. Like John Edwards or Dick Gephardt. Yeah, they lost, but labor didn’t go away, and neither will the cause of women’s equality. Social justice is bigger than just one candidate.
I just remembered to flip on the TV while the pundits were still out and Diane “I never met a corporation I wouldn’t take a boatload of money from” Feinstein whining about Clinton’s defeat. Stephanapoulous is, of course, egging her on, pushing the Veepstakes issue (Feinstein counters with RFK).
OK, TV’s off now. One minute of that dreck is about all I can take.
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Huckabee Heimlichs NC Lt. Gov. Pittenger; Pittenger later sends Mike a nice bouquet of flowers and a box of candy with a note asking when he can see Mike again.
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Toles on what S.U.V. really stands for.
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Another aftershock in China, and 7 dead in Tokyo stabbing spree.
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Tild’s at the National Conference for Media Reform. Here’s her take on Bill Moyers (but, according to my email, her big thrill was talking to Duncan “Atrios” Black for a few minutes between sessions). The video clip, btw, is 39 minutes long, but great content for a Sunday morning.
Paul Schmelzer has more, and it’s fairly juicy.
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