Watching the Democrats these past few weeks doing everything
possible to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I found myself
asking this question: Do the Clintons hunt in pairs like those
Velociraptors in Jurassic Park?
I mean, come on. Obama, stares intently at Hillary, watching her
every move, on guard against every conceivable stratagem. Then,
WHAM! Bill cold-cocks him, whups him upside the head, right out of
the blue, and pivots to chew out a couple of members of the press
corps to let everybody know what’s what. He still is the Big
Dog.
Blind-sided by Bubba, Obama staggers, regains his footing, only
to be gut-punched by the Senator from New York with charges that he
consorts with, nay, provided legal representation for a slumlord in
Chicago, the very one Bill and Hill posed with in the courtesy
photo which appeared on Drudge’s website recently! The former
President comes back around for a real stomping of the junior
Senator from Illinois. And what was that fairytale crack all about
anyway?
Obama is caught in the Clinton corner of the political
equivalent of a Texas tag-team match. Hillary works him over a bit.
Then Bill jumps in the ring and gets his licks in while Hillary
waits her turn to work him over one more time. They even claim,
with straight faces, that Obama is a fan of Ronald Reagan. It is
truly a thing to behold.
I cannot make up my mind if Bill and Hillary are performing this
duet consciously or not. Maybe we just have a rogue ex-President on
our hands.
“Bill Clinton: ‘Screw It, I’m Running for President,” read the
January 23 headline of the satirical daily, the
Onion. Maybe the jokesters over there are on to something.
Bill needs the action, the fix. Vicarious thrills may not do it for
him anymore.
And just as Hillary stood by her man through the Gennifer
Flowers fiasco, she now claims to be very proud of her “passionate”
spouse.
Over at the Economist, the Lexington columnist (January
24) observes that, while the Democrats are on the
verge of a historic choice between the first black man and the
first woman as a presidential nominee, everybody is talking about
“A certain 61-year-old white male with a habit of waffling on about
the old days, falling asleep in public and turning puce when
crossed.” Even worse, President Clinton “has downgraded himself
from global statesman to political hatchet-man.” Double ouch. Is
this what Howard Dean over at the DNC had in mind for this election
season? Don’t think so.
Certainly, Obama’s solid victory in South Carolina might be the
beginning of the end of an effective attack role for Bill Clinton
in Hillary’s campaign. But you can never count him out.
Interestingly, my Democratic friends are becoming very unguarded
of late in expressing their reservations regarding the Clintons,
disparaging one or the other, sometimes both. Whether these are
long-suppressed feelings or just the emergence of a political
self-preservation instinct, I am not sure.
A Republican office-holder in my home state of Missouri related
to me his conversation with a former Democratic Mayor of St. Louis
some months back. His Honor said the Democrats would win the White
House in 2008 with anybody but Hillary Clinton. Maybe good
can come from evil, if you get my drift.
Damn, this is an interesting election. The Republicans have put
on a real show and promise to keep the primary interesting down to
the wire. But this attempted mugging of Barack Obama by the
Clintons is worth the price of admission.
