A Few Choice Words

Bill and Hill at the White House, January 2009

B: Another tough day, darlin’?

H: I signed the order for Frank Rich’s execution and cancelled my first press conference. Then that creep John Kerry called and I had to listen to his whining about not being made Secretary of State. A mend-fences lunch with Rush Limbaugh, then off to a meeting with another suck-up, Howard Dean, and a doctor’s appointment to deal with my post-election stress disorder. I say, fuck them all. I told Mandy, “Thank God we’re back here and I can sink my teeth into my agenda.”

B: Remember my old saying, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Why don’t I do the next press conference? We’ll play Get the Press and I’ll have Carville cook up some barbs for Tim Russet, Wolf Blister and the rest of them scumbags.

H: I am so goddamn tired of bridging off their stupid questions to get to my campaign points. How many times did I have to fend off snide comments about you and move on to health care and heating oil? The whole thing about Ronald Reagan was a big fairy tale.

B: I know, you were taking all the heat while I was on the stump having fun tweaking Obama. I wonder, are black people’s skins thinner than whites’?

H: Hmm . . . you never made it with a black chick, did you? Or did you?

Rethinking Edwards, Obama and Clinton

Clinton and her proxy husband play good cop-bad cop and manage to offend almost everybody.

Obama may be winning over more blacks, but is losing Latinos and white women. He's having trouble fielding the First Black President's jibes.

Edwards appears more than ever to be an opportunist, a phony populist.

Don't ask me for help: I voted for Dick Gregory ('68), McGovern ('72) and Ralph Nader ('00).

Fred Thompson’s South Carolina Moment

Last night we watched the strangest moment in a strange campaign. Was he quitting, trying to inspire his backers . . . or just being Fred? The speech regurgitated the major Republican clichés that have defined the party’s doctrinaire thinking for many a year now. Fred is good at cliché-making, which may be the secret of his success, such as he’s had.

First came the obligatory thanks to family and supporters: “My friends, we will always be bound by a close bond because we have traveled a very special road together for a very special purpose.” If you can be bound by a bond, I suppose that’s true. Thompson went on to explain America:

We live by any measure in the greatest country in the history of the world, and it’s every generation’s obligation to do its part to make sure it stays that way. It got that way because of strong, consistent conservative beliefs that founded this country. . . . Our Founding Fathers had it right right off the bat, they understood the wisdom of the ages. They understood that our basic rights come not from any government but from God.

They understood that a government big enough and powerful and centralized enough is big enough and powerful enough to take anything away from you. Now the rule of law is the norm everyone wants to emulate, especially the proposition that judges will follow the law and constitution and not make it up as they go along.

Based upon the value of a market economy of free people doing free things in a free economy unafraid to trade with their neighbors. Based upon the notion that we don’t tax and regulate our people to death, we don’t spend money we don’t have, and we sure don’t borrow money against our grandchildren’s future.

It’s the kind of country that’s let a small town boy from Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, grow up knowing that if he behaved himself and pretty much played by the rules, he had a chance to achieve the American dream.

Imagine Barack Obama saying that.

When I grew up it wasn’t all about dividing up the pie and rich versus poor and boss versus employee and all that kind of stuff. It was about making the pie bigger and going out there and enjoying a free country.

. . . When we’ve stood for those principles, when we’ve stood strong the way many of us had an opportunity to in 1994 when we came to town, and were able to pass welfare reform, five major tax cuts, balance the budget four years in a row, stand tall for the second amendment, stand tall for the rights of the unborn—people haven’t changed their minds about those things. We need to convince them we haven’t changed our minds about ‘em either [big applause, “Fred, Fred, Fred”].

My friends, we live in the country that sacrificed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other countries in the world combined.

In World War II alone the US lost 418,500 (military and civilian) or .3% of its population. The Soviet Union lost 23,100,000 or 13.7% of its population.

We are proud of that tradition, it’s a tradition of honor, a sacrifice for the greater good, and most Americans aren’t called upon to shed their blood.

They certainly aren’t, as the volunteer army can attest.

But we’re called upon from time to time to make our own sacrifices, we’re called upon from time to time to make our own contributions. And, my friends, that’s what you’ve done, that’s what you’re doing. And I’m so proud to stand with you in that regard.

In some quarters it may not be a stretch to compare campaign support to shedding blood for one’s country. But don’t tell that to Mike Huckabee, who had South Carolina stolen from him by Fred Thompson last night.

Well, by tomorrow, we may not have Fred to kick around any more.

Open Letter to MSNBC News Executive Phil Griffin

(12/20/07): Is Hillary Clinton trying to kill Obama in his crib? Are we watching a dark campaign carried out by surrogates to stop Barack before he catches fire? Let`s play Hardball! Good evening. I’m Chris Matthews. The Hot Topic tonight: Is the Hillary Clinton campaign trying to obliterate Obama`s candidacy, not just beat it but strangle it in the crib before there`s any chance he catches on? That`s our Hot Topic tonight.

Dear Phil:

Please fire Chris Matthews. Please fire him today. Don’t skewer the fewer viewers that remain. Like our patience, your ratings are wearing thin.

This is no idle rant. Matthews has tested and tormented us for years now, but his coverage of the New Hampshire primaries went beyond anything in terms of ego, pomposity, prejudice, stupidity and error. Here’s a catalog of the Matthews horrors and miscues in New Hampshire. Even his colleagues Brokaw, Olbermann and Maddow demonstrably had had enough.

If you had the misfortune to watch any of this, you’ll remember the exchanges with Tom Brokaw, wherein the sage of NBC admonished Matthews to quit complaining about the lack of good polling data and start covering real election issues, real-time.

Chris Matthews has been abusing subjects, colleagues and interviewees for years now. We have put up with his misogyny, homophilia, leering, lying, drooling, fawning, interrupting and drunken behavior. No one on the right or left can stand him. Enough, I say.

If MSNBC is to avoid cloning itself on the Fox News model or following CNN over the cliff, get rid of this scumbag.

Hillary Opens Up

Hillary Clinton provided us a narrow window through which people saw very different things. Some thought her “moment” a setup; some found it genuine; some found it egoistic. I found it absolutely genuine, and it clearly contributed to her New Hampshire victory. Which, of course, the pundits—including the loudest, Chris Matthews—missed completely.

The best politicians always take risks. How well they do often depends on how comfortable they are in allowing the audience to pierce the customary veil of political language and attitude, by speaking with candor. Obama is learning how to do that. Hillary’s candor came from frustration and fatigue, not risk-taking, though her supporters [e.g., Howard Wolfson on election night] wished she might have given us such glimpses and honesty months ago.

Maureen Dowd and lots of bloggers thought it was phony. “What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.”

I think that’s a really forced reading. Everyone recognizes how narcissistic all presidential candidates are, in this race and every race. She was not crying but seemed moved by the sense that the “opportunities” were slipping away. Her voice quavers and rises in pitch from the normally strong alto of the campaign: “I see what’s happening and we have to reverse it.”

After the moment, Hillary’s segue into campaign-speak reveals how fully immersed she is in political life. In fact, the moment was about the campaign and her sense of total commitment to it.

Here’s what blogger Fran Scoble had to say about that.

I’ve watched the video several times. I believe Hillary’s emotions are genuine and her loss of composure (or near loss) is real. What is not authentic is her rationale for her emotion. She talks about her “passion” for others briefly, then launches into a short version of her stump speech—all while allegedly trying to regain her composure. This is just the sort of thing that is costing her support. She has no instinct for the moment and she’s running against a man whose instincts are uncanny.

Well, I thought it was simply an overdue humanizing moment, and that’s much of what politics is about these days, like it or not.

[Disclosure: President Clinton praised a book of mine in the ‘90s, and I worked for and with Hillary in the Health Care Wars of ’93-94. At this stage in the campaign, I remain undecided, though I have supported Edwards. Look for another flip-flop soon.]

Matt Bai and the Iowa Caucuses

The voters delivered for Huck and Obama. Whether either can deliver for the voters remains to be seen. It does feel good to know that Iowans rejected the old politics and, perhaps, some of that tired world view of fear and negativity that has marked (in different ways) both parties.

Now all the candidates are crowing about "change." Whether it will be change shaped by cynicism or hope, who knows? Everything points to the Democrats winning in ’08, but the task of governing this country has grown immensely hard, and none of the Dems has addressed the practical issues of how to get government back on the rails. How will change prevail against the forces of entropy?

Now the Iowa caucuses (streptocaucuses, Michael Musto called them) have shown a similar kind of split in the Republican party. Voters seemed to choose Huckabee over default GOP doctrine, but whether his happy homilies will finally offer any real alternative seems to me unlikely.

Matt Bai’s wonderful book The Argument goes far to explain the recent split in the Democratic party between the progressives (including the “netroots”) and the hardcore traditionalists in Washington. Money, bloggers and some thoughtful people all have played a reformist role, but the split remains, says Bai, because no one has come up with an argument, a Big Idea that will coalesce the factions and give the party its marching music, its spirit and substance. The ideas proposed so far have been piecemeal or vague—better jobs, lower gas prices, a higher minimum wage, lower drug prices—hardly the core of a campaign.

So naturally I have a few Big Ideas around which the Dems might organize:

Moral Government. This could help codify the public's reaction to Bush and at the same time co-opt the Christian Conservatives’ narrow judgments.

National and Global Health. Are Iraq and our military ventures to prevail over caring for the health and safety of our own people? Are the forces behind environmental degradation to triumph over the necessity of cleaning up our planet?

Economic Common Sense. Citizens have a right to a government that defends and maintains their economic interest against corporate interests and exploitation in the international marketplace. Adapting to globalization (in every sense) is the challenge of the 21st century.

Hiatus ends. More blather.