Posted on 03/09/2008 12:32:50 PM PDT by COUNTrecount
March 9, 2008
The Clintons, a horror film that never endsAndrew Sullivan It’s alive! We thought it might be over but some of us never dared fully believe it. Last week was like one of those moments in a horror movie when the worst terror recedes, the screen goes blank and then reopens on green fields or a lover’s tender embrace. Drained but still naive audiences breathe a collective sigh of relief. The plot twists have all been resolved; the threat is gone; the quiet spreads. And then . . .
Put your own movie analogy in here. Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction – whoosh! she’s back at your throat! – has often occurred to me when covering the Clintons these many years. The Oscars host Jon Stewart compares them to a Terminator: the kind that is splattered into a million tiny droplets of vaporised metal . . . only to pool together spontaneously and charge back at you unfazed.
The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win. And these days, in the kinetic pace of the YouTube campaign, they are like the new 28 Days Later zombies. They come at you really quickly, like bats out of hell. Or Ohio, anyway.
Now all this may seem a little melodramatic. Perhaps it is. Objectively, an accomplished senator won a couple of races – one by a mere 3% – against another senator in a presidential campaign. One senator is still mathematically unbeatable. But that will never capture the emotional toll that the Clintons continue to take on some of us. I’m not kidding. I woke up in a cold sweat early last Wednesday. There have been moments this past week when I have felt physically ill at the thought of that pair returning to power.
Why? I have had to write several columns in this space over the years acknowledging that the substantive legacy of the Clinton administration (with a lot of assist from Newt Gingrich) was a perfectly respectable one: welfare reform, fiscal sanity, prudent foreign policy, leaner government. But remembering the day-to-day psychodramas of those years still floods my frontal cortex with waves of loathing and anxiety. The further away you are from them, the easier it is to think they’re fine. Up close they are an intolerable, endless, soul-sapping soap opera.
The media are marvelling at the Clintons’ several near-death political experiences in this campaign. Hasn’t it occurred to them how creepily familiar all this is? The Clintons live off psychodrama. They both love to push themselves to the brink of catastrophe and then accomplish the last-minute, nail-biting self-rescue. Before too long the entire story becomes about them, their ability to triumph through crisis, even though the crises are so often manufactured by themselves. That is what last week brought back for me. The 1990s – with a war on.
Remember: Bill Clinton could have easily settled the Paula Jones lawsuit years before he put the entire country through the wringer (Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment alleged to have occurred while he was governor of Arkansas).
Recall: Hillary Clinton could have killed what turned out to be the White-water nonstory at the very outset by disclosing everything she could (the scandal centred on a controversial Arkansas property deal).
Consider: the Clintons could have prepared for primaries and caucuses after February 5 – so-called Super Tuesday, when 24 states held their presidential nomination vote – as any careful candidate would. They chose not to do any of these things. Not because they are incompetent. But because they live to risk.
Politics is also their life. They know nothing else. Most halfway normal people in politics could at some point walk away. Reagan seemed happy to. Not the Clintons. In the words of the American-based British writer Christo-pher Hitchens, these are the kind of people who never want the meeting to end. Hillary Clinton will never concede the race so long as there is even the faintest chance that she can somehow win.
They endure all sorts of humiliation – remember the taped Clinton deposition in the Ken Starr investigation (in which Clinton admitted to the inquiry headed by the far-right prosecutor that he had had an “improper physical relationship” with Monica Lewinsky)? Hillary’s dismissal of the Lewinsky matter as an invention of the right-wing conspiracy? – because they know no other way to live. They have been thinking of this moment since they were in college and being a senator or an ex-president or having two terms in the White House are not sufficient to satiate their sense of entitlement. Even if they have to put their own party through a divisive, bitter, possibly fatal death match, they will never give up. Their country, their party . . . none of this matters compared with them.
The patterns are staggeringly unaltered. Last Thursday The Washing-ton Post ran an article reporting on the almost comic divisions within the Clinton camp: how chaotic the planning had been, how much chief pollster Mark Penn hated all the other advisers, how even in the wake of a sudden victory most of the Clintonites were eager to score rancid points off each other.
The secrecy and paranoia endure too. Releasing tax returns is routine for a presidential candidate. Barack Obama did it some time back. The Clintons still haven’t – and say they won’t for more than another month. Why? They have no explanation. They seem affronted by the question.
When you look at the electoral map if the Clintons run again, you also see a reversion to the old patterns of the 1990s – the patterns that cynical political strategists such as Karl Rove and Dick Morris have been exploiting for two decades. The country – scrambled by the post-baby-boomer pragmatism of Obama – snaps back into classic red-blue mode, with the blue areas denoting Democratic-leaning states around the edge and true red Republican states in the heartlands.
The Clintons are comfortable with this polarisation. They need it. Even when running against a fellow Democrat, they instinctively reach for it. Last week, in response to the Obama camp’s request that they release their tax returns, Clinton’s spokesman called Obama a new Ken Starr. For the Clintons, all Democrats who oppose them are . . . Republicans. And all Republicans are evil.
And evil means that anything the Clintons do in self-defence is excusable – even playing the race card, and the Muslim card, and the gender card, and every sleazy gambit that the politics of fear can come up with. This is how they have arrested the Obama juggernaut. It’s the only game they know how to play.
One is reminded of the words of Bob Dylan: “And here I sit so patiently / Waiting to find out what price / You have to pay to get out of / Going through all these things twice.”
Another Clinton presidency would give Limbaugh a lot of easy fodder to talk about. I think with Obama at some point he’s eventually going to get nailed for a racist sounding comment. It’s in Rush’s self-interest for a Clinton win.
What if Obama gets a Senator Wellstone gremlin? I’m not sure how that would play out. There’s a lot of global warming on airplane wings these days. Obama’s wife has too much of a victim’s chip on her shoulder to take his political place.
Carrie reaching out from the grave.
And yet he--and every other Democrat who professes to hate Hillary--will vote for her in November.
what about “ Downfall” Hiliary in the bunker, her hand shakes with rage, blaming her Generals for her defeat. She screams at them” I will never surrender, you hear me, never Surrender” Then she looks into the eyes of Huma, and sadly announces” All is lost”
A Hillary victory may assist in ameliorating the federal budget deficit with the return of furniture not nailed to the floor they absconded with during the waning moments of what is the second Democratic failed presidency in a row. (Carter was the last Democrat to serve as president from 1976-1980 before Clinton.)
Nor will three terms, or four. There's a Supreme Court gown in Hillary's closet awaiting its time - that is, except for Senior Sentaor from Massachusetts, the only lifetime sinecure in American politics. Had her husband not been disbarred there'd be one in his closet as well. He isn't done, he will simply shift his venue from the domestic to the international, joining his fellow Undead Democrat Carter as a sort of minister plenipotentiary to spread American goodwill, and presumably cooperation, with the burgeoning international ruling class that infests the halls of the UN and the EU.
Sullivan ascribes their recent behavior to one of risk indulgence, but I am more of the opinion that it is one of flamboyant public relations, the sort of cliff-hanging storyline that makes for the sensational press that they crave, and that has served them so very well up until now.
For quite some time I have been of the opinion that a joint ticket between her and Obama would be a formidable one, but I no longer can envision a stable coalition between either of these brobdingnagian egos or, more to the point, their respective teams. These two have been playing politics as war to the knife for their entire careers and the sort of coalition that requires subordination is going to be extremely difficult for them. In that sense they're not very good politicians, actually, but then they've never had to be.
They will be if either one of them gets elected. And I don't think either one is up to it, individually or in a team. Especially as a team.
I’m done with Rush forever because of that.
Hannity has surpassed him as THE conservative radio host. His piece on Obama this weekend is a gem. Don’t miss it, evryone!
Obama and his connection to Farrakhan; Obama and his connection to domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and her boyfriend...sensational stuff!
All Rush did was advise that registered Repubs help extend the dirt-bagging inside the Democrat party. The longer that goes on, the more the support for each will likely erode over time among casual voters, the types that decide elections.
That’s all. It’s a tactical strategy in which people who otherwise have nothing to vote for go out and vote to undercut the party they KNOW they don’t want in power.
That’s no reason to be “done with Rush forever.”
As for Hannity’s America, I’ll be watching it tonight. Maybe you could spend some time re-thinking your view of Rush. He’s gonna be on the air tomorrow saying a thousand things you probably agree with.
I disagree with almost everything that she believes in with one exception. HUMA IS HOT!
When you look at the electoral map if the Clintons run again, you also see a reversion to the old patterns of the 1990s – the patterns that cynical political strategists such as Karl Rove and Dick Morris have been exploiting for two decades. The country – scrambled by the post-baby-boomer pragmatism of Obama – snaps back into classic red-blue mode, with the blue areas denoting Democratic-leaning states around the edge and true red Republican states in the heartlands.
I agree with the ‘scorched Earth’ comment, but for Hillary it's not power per se that is the motivation. Many of the most ‘powerful’ people in the world keep a very low profile. That will never be the case for Hillary because what motivates her is pure unadulterated narcissism. She has to have the ‘gold star on the refrigerator’. She has to ‘win’, whatever that means to someone of such delayed emotional development I don't really think she has a core other than her ambition.
We all die, and if we can do some good along the way and leave the world a little bit better, AND learn to discount ourselves somewhat and acknowledge that we are all just part of the total picture, we will have led admirable and respectable lives even if we never have our picture plastered across the evening news. Hillary has never learned that. For her the ends justifies the means, and the ends is really very much about her. Sadly, for her, there is never enough ‘accomplishment’ to fully satiate people with that degree of emotional immaturity. These are the people who can't go off and live normal lives and be with their families. They can't leave the stage. I would not be surprised if Hillary encourages Chelsea to seek public office. It's another avenue to perpetuate and keep trying to satiate her own narcissism. It's actually very sad.
I didn’t cross over and vote for her and don’t know really how many Republicans actually did what Rush suggested. If they had done what Rush suggested, we would be looking at Fred Thompson as a true conservative candidate or else Romney as his next choice. No, he’s right. His audience is generally not a bunch of mind numbed robots.
Put your own movie analogy in here. Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction – whoosh! she’s back at your throat! –
Fatal Attraction was a movie that sucked BIG TIME yet was inexplicably popular and, to this day, refuses to fade into the past!
Hannity pushed Rooty real hard up until Rooty got booted; and in hindsight, Rooty was a worse choice than just about any of them.
“... felt physically ill at the thought of the pair returning to power.”
If Americas allows them to return ‘to power,’ America better get ready for a return of the same old faces that made us throw up for years — Albright, Ickes, Podesta, Berger, Davis, Begala, and so many others! No matter what we might think of Barrack Obama, he is the first to represent a real challenge to the iron fisted Clinton control of the democrat party.
Very well put......you almost make me feel bad for Hiliary. She is void of everything that makes one human, compassion, empathy, and most of all, humility.
....remembering the day-to-day psychodramas of those years still floods my frontal cortex with waves of loathing and anxiety. The further away you are from them, the easier it is to think they’re fine. Up close they are an intolerable, endless, soul-sapping soap opera.
Nailed it here.
Probably her supporters will. "Recreate '68" has all but promised to destroy the city in order to show how awful "Amerikkka" is.
"... But that will never capture the emotional toll that the Clintons continue to take on some of us. I’m not kidding. I woke up in a cold sweat early last Wednesday. There have been moments this past week when I have felt physically ill at the thought of that pair returning to power.
... remembering the day-to-day psychodramas of those years still floods my frontal cortex with waves of loathing and anxiety. The further away you are from them, the easier it is to think they’re fine. Up close they are an intolerable, endless, soul-sapping soap opera..."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.