[Alex]
Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Dashing around the city, trying to organise matters for the holidays and all the rest of it. Have nagging fear that I’ve forgotten something quite important. Too late now.
Clearly, Hillary Clinton continues to inspire conversation. For my part I’ve never understood the wild enthusiasm Hillary attracts, nor the vicious (vile, even) hatred she inspires among so many on the right. Yet, to judgeby the classic journalistic "source" – taxi drivers – Hillary is what the people want to talk about. In the last 24 hours alone, two Edinburgh taxi drivers have asked me if she can really win the White House.
I don’t think Bill will be too much of a problem, despite what Dick Morris and others migth vae one believe. The Clinton scandals may look tawdry but they’re trivial compared to what we’ve seen these past five years. My friend Garance Franke-Ruta has a useful post reminding us why political husbands tend to be more problematic for female candidates than wives (even Teresa Heinz, as she has now, I think, reverted to calling herself) are for male politicians:
Even today, husbands frequently become issues in women’s campaigns in ways they don’t in those of male candidates (see: Pirro, Jeannine), because political husbands are more likely than political wives to have had independent careers and finances that can be investigated. Sure, times have changed since [Geraldine] Ferraro ran in the veep’s slot [in 1984], but it seems pretty clear that the husband of any woman who runs for president will become an issue one way or another, and certainly will be the subject of indpendent and close scrutiny. The one advantage Bill Clinton would have in such a situation is that he has already been so thoroughly investigated, and subjected such great scrutiny, that the bar for opinion-changing news about him is pretty darn high. Plus, if any political husband in America knows how to ride out negative media attention, it’s him.
My own suspicion, tentative though it is, may be that Hillary’s problem is a dynastic one: is this republic really ready to share the Presidency between two families from 1988 to, potentially, 2016? Isn’t that ultimately actually quite un-American? Or doesn’t it at least run contrary to a fondly cherished American myth that this is not an aristocratic country?
Meanwhile, Marty Peretz seems delighted by the rise of Barack Obama – largely because, well, he isn’t Hillary…
There was no way to see Barack Obama coming. And, damn it, he is a picture of America’s future, black and white. African father. Columbia. Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review, no slouch he. Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, greater evidence of his brilliance. Supple in mind and bearing, evoking energy and thoughtfulness. Ah, yes, his most important public quality: He is comfortable in his own skin. She is not. Oh, is she not! What could Hillary possibly say against him? In the Democratic Party, it is still difficult to honestly criticize an African American. You can’t even say a bad word about Al Sharpton, even though you can’t say a truthful good word about him, either. But what, for heaven’s sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing.
The Dish 