Clinton Again

Now, she’s sarcastic. And this:

"I’m not asking you to take a leap of faith on me. I’m asking you to look at the record."

The record is that the senator’s one single attempt at policy implementation – healthcare reform – was an enormous failure in which her own arrogance, secrecy and paranoia derailed universal healthcare for a decade. On the most critical foreign policy decision of her career, Iraq, she was disastrously wrong. And in terms of management experience, she clearly can’t run even a campaign half-way competently. I think she’d be better off asking people to take a leap of faith, don’t you?

The Clintons’ Last Stand

Watching senator Clinton attempt to regain some lift as she paraglides into history is almost enough to evoke pity. Almost. The Clintons come with their own boundless reserves of self-pity so further reinforcements seem unnecessary to me. And I suppose they could somehow still find a brutal, soul-grinding path to the nomination. But we’ve learned something important these past couple of weeks.

Clinton is a terrible manager of people. Coming into a campaign she had been planning for, what, two decades, she was so not ready on Day One, or even Day 300. Her White House, if we can glean anything from the campaign, would be a secretive nest of well-fed yes-people,  an uncontrollable egomaniac spouse able and willing to bigfoot anyone if he wants to, a phalanx of flunkies who cannot tell the boss when things are wrong, and a drizzle of dreary hacks like Mark Penn. Her only genuine skill is pivoting off the Limbaugh machine (which is now as played out as its enemies). Her new weapon is apparently bursting into tears. I mean: really.

It’s staggering to me that she blew through so much money for close to nothing (apart from the donuts). Without that media meltdown in New Hampshire, she would have been forced to bow out much earlier. She didn’t plan for contests after Super Tuesday. She barely planned for any before that. She was out-organized in Iowa and South Carolina, and engaged in the pettiest form of politics in Florida and Michigan. Her fundraising operation was very pre-Internet. She has no message that isn’t about her and the Republicans. Her trump card – Bill – managed to foment a 27 point loss in South Carolina. The Clintons, we can now safely say, got lazy. Or rather their old and now forgotten lackadaisical attitude toward governing returned like a persistent flu to campaigning. We tend to forget that their entire governing agenda after 1994 was essentially finessing Gingrich and battling impeachment. (Their entire agenda before 1994 was successful Eisenhower economics, and disastrous Hillarycare). It’s been fifteen years since the Clintons actually stood for a coherent message, and it turns out they had forgotten that you kind of need that for a presidential run.

How did they come this close to losing this? They had all the money, all the contacts, all the machine levers, the entire establishment, the biggest Democratic name in decades, and they’ve been forced into a humiliating death-match by a first-term black liberal with a funny name. It seems obvious to me that the Clintons blew this because they never for a second imagined they could. So they never planned to fight it. Once put in a fair contest, they turned out to be terrible campaigners, terrible politicians, bad managers, useless executives, wooden public speakers. If you’re a Democrat, that’s good to know, isn’t it? All that bullshit about Day One and experience? In retrospect: laughable.

Whatever happens in this campaign, if it finally puts the Clintons in our rear-view mirror, it will have been worth a great deal. We’re not quite there yet, and the moment you feel any sympathy for a Clinton, they will use it to their own ends. But I’m enjoying the backward glance, however long it lasts. We’re nearly free of them. Nearly.

The McCain Flap

It was extremely pleasant not to have to respond in real time to the McCain story. Reading the blogosphere as a simple observer, it was, however, a little depressing to see the knee jerk partisanship. Several liberal bloggers exercised some skepticism toward the story and some conservative ones had a little Schadenfreude, but in general, it felt like a lot of people on the right were just relieved to be able to do the old Hannity-hate routine at the NYT. After this demoralizing campaign for Republicans, you can’t blame them, I suppose. But it’s still a little sad to see how much of conservatism is now a series of hate objects.

What did I think? I’m with Clark Hoyt. The implication of a sexual affair was a step too far. The story was mildly interesting and somewhat damaging without that detail, and Keller should have realized that sticking it under a file called ‘The Long Run" wouldn’t take the edge off it. So a net loss for the NYT, I’d say. Still … am I the only one wondering if this might not be the end of it? Isikoff revealed that McCain fibbed or misremembered in his blanket dismissal of the non-romantic charges, which is not reassuring if you’re a McCain supporter. The revelation of some deep grudges within the McCain circle, aired by David Brooks, is also not a good omen. And the details of all those lobbyists close to McCain does dent his post-Keating squeaky-clean image a little. There are a few loose strings here that might unravel a little more of McCain’s momentum. I don’t know if there’s more  to come. I hope there’s not. If something were to crop up proving an affair, McCain would be in terrible trouble. I hope not. We deserve a good campaign on the war, the economy, the debt and the climate.

And, besides, McCain’s a hero. I don’t know many people who mistake him for a saint.

While I Was Sleeping

A huge thank you to Peter, Reihan, Hilary, Jim, and Patrick. Peter, Reihan and Jim often blog at The American Scene; Hilzoy, whose reported, and trenchant posts graced the Dish all week, writes just as well at Obsidian Wings; Patrick, as you now realize fully, keeps me and the Dish abreast of all sorts of web goodies every day every week. I’m really really grateful. It’s not easy occupying someone else’s blog for seven days, especially this one that has an eight-year daily – even hourly – relationship with many readers. Thanks to all of you.

I had a mellow week off. I stayed a while in LA and hung with friends, then back to DC for slumber with beagles and blu-rays with husband. Sometimes, home is the best vacation. Glad to be back. What the heck happened?

Oscar Night

[Patrick Appel]

From Raymond Chandler’s 1948 article on the Oscars and motion pictures:

The point is not whether there are bad motion pictures or even whether the average motion picture is bad, but whether the motion picture is an artistic medium of sufficient dignity and accomplishment to be treated with respect by the people who control its destinies. Those who deride the motion picture usually are satisfied that they have thrown the book at it by declaring it to be a form of mass entertainment. As if that meant anything. Greek drama, which is still considered quite respectable by most intellectuals, was mass entertainment to the Athenian freeman. So, within its economic and topographical limits, was the Elizabethan drama. The great cathedrals of Europe, although not exactly built to while away an afternoon, certainly had an aesthetic and spiritual effect on the ordinary man. Today, if not always, the fugues and chorales of Bach, the symphonies of Mozart, Borodin, and Brahms, the violin concertos of Vivaldi, the piano sonatas of Scarlatti, and a great deal of what was once rather recondite music are mass entertainment by virtue of radio. Not all fools love it, but not all fools love anything more literate than a comic strip. It might reasonably be said that all art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and that if it does not it dies and is forgotten.