February 27, 2008
Et tu, MoDo?
Maureen Dowd, the liberal columnist for The New York Times -- but then I repeat myself -- dipped her quill into a poison-filled ink pot before setting down to pen her latest screed on Hillary Clinton.
The coda of her campaign has been a primal scream against the golden child of Chicago, a clanging and sometimes churlish warning that “all that glitters is not gold.”
David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said the senator seemed “dumbfounded” by the Obama sensation.
She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.
Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.
Voters gravitate toward the presidential candidates who seem more comfortable in their skin. J.F.K. and Reagan seemed exceptionally comfortable. So did Bill Clinton and W., who both showed that comfort can be an illusion of sorts, masking deep insecurities.
The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can’t turn on her own charm and wit because she can’t get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she’s pea-green with envy.
After saying she found her “voice” in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.
Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.
By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.
Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the “Saturday Night Live” skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.
“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC — a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist — are giving Obama an easy ride.
Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.
Ouch.
You know things are looking bad when you've lost the Times' Queen of Mean. But Dowd does seem to understand Clinton a whole lot better than the candidate herself.
As someone who wants Clinton to clinch the nomination for reasons previously stated, I'm unhappy to see her doing so poorly.
But it's very difficult to resist taking just a little bit (okay, a whole lot) of pleasure in seeing such a smug politician with a colossal sense of entitlement whinge and whine about not being given what's rightfully hers.
To borrow a quote from a favorite fem-film of the '90s -- and one Hillary apparently hasn't seen in a while -- There's no crying in baseball!.*
Actually, I like A League of Their Own; it could be the last time I watched something -- anything -- with Rosie O'Donnell until the credits rolled.
Posted by Mike Lief at February 27, 2008 07:02 AM
| TrackBack
Comments
The Democrats are about to nominate an individual who has documented ties to Farrakahn and members of the Weathermen, a black 70's terrorist group that declared war on the United States. Hillary Clinton has only herself to blame for shying away from taking Obama to task on his radical leftist and counter-culture ties.
Posted by: Regis at February 29, 2008 01:37 PM