End of an Era
- 01.07.2008 - 10:53 AMThe Obama wave, which has been building for months, reached the proportions of a tidal wave after Iowa. It is now about to submerge, sink, and drown the Clinton campaign, and with it, the Clinton era will come, finally, to a close.
The Clinton years lasted from 1992 to 2007. In the early days of January 2008, a young, graceful senator from Illinois, liberal and likeable, with only a few years of experience in the U.S. Senate, stood up to Hillary and Bill Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine and ran rings around all of them. Every effort to try to derail Obama came back to hurt them. Just this morning Senator Clinton told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Obama “is a very talented politician” but “if he’s going to be competing for president - and especially to get the Democratic nomination and go up against whomever the Republican put up - I think it is really time to start comparing and contrasting him as I have been scrutinized for all of this year.” Obama’s response on the same program? “I find the manner in which they’ve been running their campaign sort of depressing lately.” That is quite a clever response: short and true and devastating. Senator Clinton came across as peevish and angry during Saturday’s night debate.
I have said before that to watch Obama v. Clinton is to be reminded of watching Ali v. Foreman. The de facto knockout blow is about to be delivered tomorrow in the snowy streets of New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton certainly won’t drop out after her loss; she will stagger on but prove unable to stop Obama. And to watch the Clintons’ rage and desperation grow in the last days of this campaign will not be pretty. They will lash out at everyone, including Obama, the media, her own campaign, and maybe, eventually, each other.
This is a couple not known for their grace or for holding lightly to their grip on power.
There are many things to say about the deeper meaning of this moment and what its passing will signify. Suffice it to say that it will be good, very good, for us to say farewell to the couple that brought you Carville, Begala, Blumenthal, and Ickes; the “war room,” the use of private investigators, and attacks on women like Dolly Kyle Browning, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Kathleen Willey; impeachment for perjurious, false and misleading testimony to a grand jury; contempt of court findings; the promiscuous smearing of those whom they viewed as threat to their power; the charges of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and assurances that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”; and so much more.
On the eve of the New Hampshire vote and all it will mean, it’s worth recalling the words of the late, great Michael Kelly:
The lie at the heart of the vast and varied lie that is Bill Clinton’s defense is that lying is a victimless crime – and something that properly exists as a moral concern only between the liar and his maker and a few people immediately affected. But this is not so. Lying corrupts, and an absolute liar corrupts absolutely, and the corruption spread by the lies of the absolutely mendacious Clinton is becoming frightening to behold.
After she loses, Hillary Clinton will remain in the Senate, of course, and Bill Clinton will continue to make millions through his public speeches. They will not completely disappear from the national scene. But their days as a Democratic dynasty, and their center-stage role in American politics, are about to end.
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January 7th, 2008 at 11:23 AM
As a conservative who agrees with most of what a publication like Commentary has to say, I am mystified by the rage inspired in some people by the Clintons. In fact, Hillary Clinton strikes me as much the most appealing candidate on the Democratic side; I would rather see a President Giuliani or McCain, but I suspect that Hillary would be considerably tougher on the Islamists than Mr. Obama, and less likely to look on business and profits as evil. That her husband has engaged in gross sexual misadventures is unappealing, but I’m not sure why this makes the Clintons so undesirable - surely it’s better to have a personally compromised Hilary in power than a sincere, squeaky clean Obama who would pile on the nanny state entitlements and debase the entire country before Islamofascism in the cause of “peace.”
January 7th, 2008 at 11:57 AM
You know, he may have a point.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Of course, to find Hillary’s candidacy unappealing is not to find Obama’s candidacy appealing in any way. Quite the contrary, he is likely to be another Democratic Trojan Horse, a smiling “uniter” like Jimmy Carter who carries inside his generation’s mutations of viruses such as Brzezinski or an Andrew Young. Experience is not hereditary and Obama has little of it.
However, I believe that Peter’s obit is a tad premature. First is the fickle factor. Last spring, McCain was already being embalmed for his cheerleading of the amnesty bill. As the saying goes, look at him now. Moreover, as Obama shifts from bottom to top rail in this race, the limelight is likely to become the surgeon’s lamp—all the little lesions, anomalies, contradictions, and so forth, will be moved to “above the fold.”
That Peter’s analysis of Clintonian “morality” is spot on, few would doubt, and I would rather choose absolute obscurity (a wish likely to be granted) than be written about in the way that the Clintons likely will be once their 360 degree fraud machine is dissected in a less partisan atmosphere by future historians. However, to make the foregoing point another way, as Obama’s rise is offset by resistance, the question of his ultimate electability will at some point surface. Is Obama appealing to mainstream America? If a McCain—a squeaky clean guy in his own way—takes the Republican nomination, does Obama have what it takes to win? Or will the Democrats conclude that they need a serpent?
January 7th, 2008 at 12:25 PM
BigM,
What on earth makes you think Hillary Clinton isn’t at least as big a Nanny State advocate and promoter as Obama? Her whole history is structured around it; her entire belief system is based on it. Her stupid Christmas ad in Iowa reeks of it (”Here’s National Health Care. . . Let’s see, where did I put Universal Pre-K? Oh yes, here it is. . . .”). So please, give me a break on the Nanny State rap. Hillary is deeper into it than just about anyone else.
Her position on the Islamists is probably something along the lines of, “As long as they support me, I don’t care what they do anywhere else.” Remember her famous stage appearance with Suha Arafat, where she sat silent and uncomplaining while Arafat publicly accused the Israelis of all manner of infamous crimes, and then got up and exchanged cheek-kisses with Arafat? Hillary Clinton is a globalist who thinks United States sovereignty is secondary and due to come to an end anyway. She was complicit in her husband’s transfer of American space technology to the PRC, and for MONEY–ever heard of Loral? Bernie Schwartz? Johnny Huang? Mochtar Riady? I could go on, but you get the picture–or you should. If you don’t, you need to open your eyes.
Michael Kelly had his finger on the Clinton pulse. This is not the first time I’ve had occasion to miss him terribly. His insights were invaluable when he made them, and they continue to be pertinent.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:02 PM
I agree with BigM’s assessment of Hillary’s undoubtedly superior approach to the Islamists, but for me that’s not enough. Michael Kelly’s comments are exquisitely apt: this woman’s first instinct is to lie and, as many have observed, she often lies even when there is no need to do so. Sooner or later, in circumstances none of us can foresee, that horrid character flaw is likely to redound very strongly to the nation’s detriment. And the catalogue of her husband’s sins extends far beyond sexual misconduct: he lied, and continues to this day to lie, about much of what he did or did not do.
Try to imagine a Hillary administration. What voice would the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, or the National Security advisor have in that administration? How could we be assured that an appointee or a nominee was actually chosen by the president, as opposed to the spouse (and haven’t we seen that before)?
I for one am sick of them, and believe they have very seriously harmed this country. I’d prefer that the stake be driven through her heart here and now, and then we can take our chances on keeping a naive Obama from being the commander-in-chief.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Free at last, free at last!
Thank you Barack, we are free at last of this mendacious, power-hungry couple!
January 7th, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Chelsea. Does she have Bill’s people-pleasing facility and Hillary’s ruthlessness? She has been groomed by the two most political people in the United States. If I were a fundamentalist, I would start looking into the traits the AntiChrist would hold.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:03 PM
Only slightly appropos to the thread, why is Barack Obama suddenly qualified to be President when in 1988 Dan Quayle was supremely unqualified?
January 7th, 2008 at 2:20 PM
OTOH, however unappetizing, Hillary is a known quantity. Obama’s got a great smile and youthful charisma; however, I have no idea what kind of president he would be and I find his church deeply disquieting. Below are quotes from the church’s ’s own materials, which are about one step short of Louis Farrakhan territory. In a sane America, this web page alone would sink Obama’s candidacy.
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from http://sweetness-light.com/archive/barack-obamas-church-ultra-left-and-afrocentric
Trinity United Church of Christ
About Us
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization . God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.
Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered.
…
Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”
Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.
Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:
Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.
Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us”…
January 7th, 2008 at 2:41 PM
What a joke. SO MANY journalists saying it’s ALL OVER for Clinton, all based on two HIGHLY unrepresentative states.
Got news for ya, since you either forgot or never realized this in the first place:
Most of the rest of the country DOSEN’T CARE what’s happening in IA or NH.
Watch and remember me saying this when it happens:
Obama will LOSE in most other caususes… pretty badly.
Don’t let it come as a surprise because apparently many in the press have gone into denial. Reality setting in shouldn’t be too much of a shock, LOL
what a joke.
I guess there’s nothing else to write about.