Originally published elsewhere on May 10, 2008. Can I backdate this in the blog. We'll see. (I voted for Obama)
That is insulting. Lots of people who were becoming adults when Kennedy was in the White House know this cast of characters first-hand, not from civics class. Hillary always was one of the most competent, classiest acts in American politics. We kidded each other at the time that she would have made a better President than Bill. We KNOW who Hillary Clinton is, and we also remember trying to warn people about Carl Rove before the Shrub's first and second terms. Flagrantly immoral politics, considering that there might be such a thing as limits to how underhanded a major candidate should be in a modern democracy . Rove may not have invented the wedge issue, but he took it to spectacular heights. There was no political act so dirty he considered it beneath him. Wholesale character assassination, destruction of professional reputation through lies: business as usual. If he could get away with it he did it.
"Wedge issue": some inconsequential difference that can be blown up to overwhelming dimensions that just happens to divide us along convenient lines for a politician. Does anybody really think homosexuality threatens the institution of marriage? What monstrous inconsequential crap, except that it bought us a team itching for unprovoked war and so terrible at their jobs that you cannot bring up even one aspect of the whole bloody affair they they have not incompetently fucked up. Liars and incompetents. It's going to take eight years, the next presidency, just to unwind what they have done.
Nixon was a piker next to some of these guys. These folks are arguably guilty of crimes against the state as well, but they are sophisticated enough to have a much better handle on the press and the judiciary. Sophisticated enough to have the Supreme Court make the call in 2000 and pass over the Presidential candidate that had the most votes. Politics they know. Competence in almost any other arena they would not recognize if it bit them.
And the revered Mr. Reagan? Reagan was the ultimate big picture guy whose brain was so fried at the end he could hardly get through "hello" without cue cards. You can fool most of the people most of the time if you are a decent enough actor and a genuinely nice guy. "Fried" is not a nice way for an older fellow to describe advancing Alzheimer's, but I'm feeling pissed, not nice.
People say Barak reminds them of Kennedy. It's not necessarily a favorable comparison. I sure hope he does better than that. Kennedy was Camelotty glamour all right, but he took us the closest we ever got to nuclear winter and thought picking up the pieces of the Vietnam war from the French seemed like a good idea. I hope Marilyn was actually a good lay. His inaugural is a masterpiece of oratory as I'm sure BO's will be too. Remember that thing in civics about the Cuban Missile Crisis? If you don't, you should learn about it.
We've been burned by a generation of leaders that first marched 60,000 of us to death in Southeast asia for fucking NOTHING. Well, not absolutely nothing, we died for their pride. They just couldn't admit they'd made big mistakes. Sound familiar? Are you going to be as pissed about Iraq.? Time will tell. What do we have to show for VietNam? Little Saigon? Bitter, you bet.
Cleanup leader, that's Hillary. Barak would have been smarter to wait until she cleaned up the slate for him, wait until 2016, but it didn't come down that way. So now he gets to turn his inspiration to the ugly, dirty job of putting the country back on the road again.
So we elders are not stupid. We've been duped before, repeatedly, uncomfortably, and by some of the best. We kind of like a known quantity after all that.
