WASHINGTON -- There has always been something delusional about
the Clintons' project to make Hillary this country's next commander
in chief. Start with the balderdash, so frequently exuded through
the media, that she is, along with her husband, a "rock star."
Well, they left the White House like rock stars. They trashed the
place.
Yet Hillary, a physically unprepossessing lady on the far side
of middle age, is not a rock star. Agreed, when she and her
bodyguards enter a room she turns a lot of heads, but so does a
roadside automobile accident or the clumsy waitress who just
spilled a warm plate of fettuccine alfredo on a customer. Why have
members of the press insisted on claiming that Hillary is a rock
star and, more preposterous still, that she is possessed of
"charisma," notwithstanding that she is a pedestrian campaigner
with a tin ear for politics?
For that matter, why have members of the press insisted on
claiming that the former Boy President is a political genius? The
Democratic Party went into decline almost everywhere throughout the
Republic while he was bemanuring the White House. Truth be known,
when Boy Clinton began campaigning for her, her prospects darkened.
The stubborn minority of journalists who have remained undeluded by
the Clinton legends and aware of the Clinton record recognized the
impending danger. All through the spring and summer I was asked on
talk radio and television whether I thought Bill would be active in
Hillary's campaign and if so whether he would be an asset. Usually
I expressed doubt on both counts. As I point out in my book on his
retirement and his attendant designs to return to the White House,
The Clinton Crack-Up, Hillary's staff has
always been uneasy about the presence of her big lovable lug on the
campaign trail. Anyone who might bother to contemplate his record
as a campaigner would recognize that he is poison when he campaigns
for others. In 2004, of the fourteen fated Democrats he campaigned
for, twelve lost.
Delusional too are Hillary's boasts that her "experience" is
superior to that of Senator Barack Obama. Actually, the less said
about Hillary's experience the better for her. Now, after this
week's primary defeats she is introducing her "experience" theme
again by boasting that as president she will be "ready from Day
One." She capitalizes "Day One." Is she telling us that
upon entering the White House she will again fire the apolitical
employees at the travel office? Or is she promising a "Filegate"
hullabaloo with her opponents' FBI files turning up in White House
offices? Will there be billing records appearing and disappearing?
Will she preside, as she did in the early 1990s, over a "War Room"
to handle Whitewater? Whitewater is old news Hillary. Get over
it!
For Hillary to stress her political experience is about as
reckless as it was for the last Democratic presidential candidate
to stress his war record, knowing that it included easily accessed
film of his appearance before Congress denouncing the Vietnam War
and blatantly lying about his comrades' combat behavior. Candidate
Jean-Francois Kerry fallaciously charged his comrades with
committing atrocities and three decades later expected to be
elected president. Regarding Hillary's experience, I suspect that
the electorate is well aware of its luridities. As I noted in
The Clinton Crack-Up, when her campaign for
the presidency drew near anywhere between 40% and 50% of the
electorate were polled saying that they would not vote for her.
I noted those statistics to a mainstream journalist a few months
back and he thought I was exaggerating. All he had to do was
consult the polls.
The explanation for Hillary's collapse as a frontrunner with a
25% to 35% (chose your poll) lead over Senator Barack Obama is that
a small cloud far back in the memories of many Democrats has come
forward in their minds with every one of her campaign's blunders.
After the early bullying of Obama, the arrival of shady Asian
money, the planted questions at Obama rallies, implausible
complaints over Obama's kindergarten essays, the racist rhetoric in
South Carolina, and now evidence of voting fraud in the New York
primary those little clouds have become thunder clouds. Hundreds of
thousands of Democrats do not want to go back to the 1990s.
Perhaps historians will note what I noted not long ago. Obama
began to cut into Hillary's lead in late November. That was when he
deftly reminded voters of the "1990s" and of the quarrels of "the
baby boomers." He wanted to move on, and that meant leaving the
Clintons and their episodic apologists in the media forlorn among
the vapors of their delusions.
topics:
Barack Obama, Television, NATO
