"Obama Trip Could Push Rock-Star Persona to New Heights" gushes the headline on Drudge.

There seems to be no end to Obama's hubris which is both feeding and being fed by the fawning sycophants of the media who in their fevered minds have morphed a presidential election into the millennial reconstruction of America's racial history, a way out of a self-imposed and suffocating white guilt that consumes their sense of well-being and disrupts the quiet enjoyment of their collective wealth and privilege. 

An esteemed colleague, Virginia Patriot, asks me how I can contemplate voting for John McCain even though I share with VaPat his deep concern that open borders and the invasion of our Southwest by economic refugees of Mexico’s failed government is an act of cultural suicide. Many believe that a presidential candidate who says he will seal the borders and expel the invaders can and will seal the borders and expel the invaders. The American presidency, alas, is far too meager an instrument to accomplish either.

How does a president articulate a closed border policy against both the public’s addiction to cheap service labor and the ruling class lust for its potential voting power? These economic refugees are here in the first place, and by the tens of millions, not only because of Swift Armour and Lennar Homes, but because of every roadside diner in America that employs a Mexican line cook, every woman who gives her children over to the Mexican nanny, and every proud American homeowner whose immaculate green lawn is the result of Mexican gardeners. Most all of us bear some degree of culpability in creating the conditions that cause millions of Mexican peasants to flee the economic basket case to our south. 

A year ago, 70% of the American electorate rose up angrily to stop the federal government from a total giveaway of unearned American citizenship, and yet both parties are already back trying to do it again. We blame the political leadership entirely and exonerate ourselves, yet we send them mixed signals, and in the muddle of message, both parties not surprisingly see opportunity.

This is a nation of a hundred million or so voters divided into two political camps who hate each other’s guts. We demand that our parties rise up and deliver a knockout punch to the other side and salt the earth afterwards, yet no matter how hard they try, no matter who they put their money and muscle behind, the divided American public refuses to grant one party dominance over the other. Election margins are razor thin; the public keeps returning the same mix of battling boobs to office and everything we do as an electorate seems to ensure political gridlock  

It is little wonder then that the frustrated leadership of both parties looks at the tsunami of undocumented and non-aligned Mexican humanity roiling through every city and state of the nation and yearns to harness it. Republicans hope these conservative family-value Catholics will break their way, and Democrats see a vast new source of working class consumers of government services breaking theirs. Both parties drool salaciously over a bulge of population so huge it could smash political deadlock for generations to come. They’re like junkies staring at a brick of black tar heroin.

Most of this season’s national presidential candidates articulated some sort of a “path to citizenship.” Those that tried to make illegal immigration central to their campaigns were ignored both by the parties and the electorate. A couple of those failed right-wing candidates now want to reenter the process outside the purview of the national party, but these were never candidates whose positions taken as a whole interested more than a few quirky percentage points of the conservative electorate.

To vote third party at this point is to wail in protest towards ears that will not hear; who will ignore the noise, yawn, and go on to divide the spoils. Ron Paul is never going to be President. Neither is Bob Barr. The president is either going to be John McCain or Barack Obama. That’s America’s choice this year. For me and as regards immigration, I will look first at the bigger picture of which party’s political philosophy I want to preside over the rebirth of America from the smoldering ruins of the failed Bush presidency, and only then at which party I want to continue battling to keep it from selling out our birthright. 

The unanswered question concerning the millions of Mexican economic refugees in our midst is ultimately not about who is president but about our national schizophrenia on the issue. It will not be resolved by an election, but by a long and painful process of coming to grips with our addiction to their nearly indispensible usefulness. 

The entire American press, both print and broadcast, has told us ad nauseum since Indiana that Barack H. Obama IS the Democratic nominee.  The drumbeat has not let up since.  Obama!  Obama!  Obama! 

The Romans at least had the foresight to place a slave on the chariots of returning conquerors to whisper in their ears that all fame is fleeing.

Hollywood has no such sense of irony.

Hollywood celebrity is a mercurial achievement that bears little relation to demonstrable talent. Notwithstanding the pretensions of fawning sycophants like James Lipton, there's nothing all that tricky about acting. It is a skill set wildly over-rewarded given its commonness and hardly the equivalent of mastering the violin. Success in the field is too often a matter not of hard work and sacrifice,but of pure dumb luck or nepotism.

Can we blame people then whose footsteps are cushioned on carpets of red, and whose appearance causes total strangers to rise to their feet, cheering and weeping in frenzied adoration, for believing to some degree in their own magical powers? As pampered nobles whose every word and gesture is fawned upon, and who perhaps occasionally are dogged by a disquieting sense of undeservedness, there often evolves in movie stars a desire to do something "meaningful" beyond mere acting with their celebrity. What more logical way to pacify this urge than to take up a popular issue and to focus their involvement with it as they would devour a new script, by finding the best way to be the center of attention? As spokespersons for any number of causes, Hollywood celebrities can stand self-righteously behind feel-good liberal prescriptions, ensuring themselves plenty of notice, all the while championing their causes with little inconvenience to either their busy schedules or majestic lifestyles. It has become for most an irresistible vanity.

Thus Barbra Streisand advises her devotees to hang their laundry out to dry instead of using the electric machine in order to save the planet, though no fly-by of her magnificent Malibu palace has ever revealed a single white panty fluttering in the bracing ocean breeze. Thus George Clooney scowls and preaches angrily to mankind about its lack of commitment to Darfur, only to interrupt his tirade to go film another brainless movie while out on the plains of the Sudan a thousand more Africans die. And thus Leonardo di Caprio spends tens of millions of dollars on a "green" condo on Riverside Drive and fancies himself a beacon of eco-righteousness, though the real trick would be showing his girlish fans how to live greenly on a doublewide budget.

Surrounded only by their sycophants, and hidden behind thick estate walls guarded by burly men in black, the vapid celebrities of Hollywood preach, preen and prattle. Though their dilettantism is obvious to all outside the treasured enclave, their hangers-on and colleagues will never speak to them of the emptiness of most of their gestures or of the rampant hypocrisy that frequently accompanies their impassioned moments of political involvement.

Pity somebody can't find a slave for movie stars to ride alongside them in their limos and whisper in their ears that not only is fame fleeting, but Hollywood political activism is hooey.

Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday, March 18, on the subject of  race relations in America is seriously off topic for a man who had been heretofore doing a jim dandy job transcending racial politics.  It speaks volumes about the dark underworld ruled by Mrs. Clinton that Obama has been manipulated into becoming a black candidate for president rather than simply a candidate.  But regardless of the triumph of traditional Democratic racial politics over Obama’s message of change and unity, a disturbing question has been raised.

In furtherance of a lifelong aspiration to political office, the young Mr. Obama joined with the powerful 10,000 member Trinity United Church of Christ back in the 1980s while still an organizer in the local Democratic ward. After a time, he sees that there is no no real future in community organizing and goes off to earn the most prestigious law degree in America – doing so with distinction.

Returning to Chicago, Obama,a self-described agnostic, reconnects with Jeremiah Wright’s ministry. The youthful politician seeks office, and affiliation with a powerful black church in these wards is essential to that goal - Politics 101. He wins a seat in the Illinois legislature and from that position is chosen to give a keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston. Without his affiliation with the Trinity Church of Christ, none of this would have ever happened. He owes his very candidacy today to that early bit of shrewdness.

He is able to parlay his stunning reception at the convention into a successful run for the United States Senate in 2004. (Yes, he is still that young and inexperienced, folks.) This would have been the perfect moment to jettison Jeremiah Wright - the moment any seasoned politician suddenly gaining national recognition and seeking higher office would have chosen. Such a politician would have broken with the dangerous and demagogic reverend quietly, surreptitiously, with warm handshakes all around and sincere promises of continued discrete support for the reverend’s church. Obama, for some reason, did not.

The rock ribbed conservatives, those who guard its purity like temple priests with attitude, have lost perspective. They have come to think that the Republican Party is conservatism, and so they rage ceaslessly against those Republicans who are not with them 100%. Now they threaten menacingly to see to it that GOP is “punished” for the sin of John McCain. They promise to vote third party or even cast their votes for the other side, an act of madness by those who have seemingly forgotten that political gain in a democracy is not about absolutes, but about compromise, fortitude, the illusion of congeniality, and above all patience. Alas, the ultra conservatives have become so overcome with anger that they may return from washing their hands of today’s GOP to find the wind whistling forlornly in the trees and a huge empty space where a vibrant and welcoming tent once stood.

Though nobody elected anybody to be the Keeper of Republican Purity, internet blogs are rife with anonymous posters who puff up their chests and hold forth, sometimes viciously, on what a “true” Republican is. Once they have described such a creature, they hurl damning insult at those who fall short and polish the whole thing off by throwing what they perceive is their most wounding barb “RINO!” (A Republican in Name Only) at the targets of their disgust.

But here is the great irony: everyone is a RINO!  Being Republican is a self-defined identity. The GOP is a vast and unwieldy collection of tens of millions of individuals whose vaguely similar political instincts cause them to come together from time to time to try and elect people to office. That is its sole purpose. Republicanism is a rubric under which many different beliefs collect.  For every problem there are a hundred “Republican” ways to solve it. 

The GOP is best and most easily defined by what it opposes, and as its nemesis mutates, so does the party. It is a target sensitive ideology, not a fixed philosophy. I challenge anybody to find cogent similarity between the bellicose and militaristic Republicanism of Abraham Lincoln and the passive laissez-faire brand practiced by Calvin Coolidge. There is none.

The chest thumping Republicans who have bestowed upon themselves the red robes of the Inquisition are, at this moment in time, its arch conservatives. The most right leaning of them, owing primarily to the illusion of genuine access they have felt under perfidious George W. Bush, have come to believe themselves the heart and soul of the party, the curial overlords of its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They have subsequently become intemperate and sanctimonious in their attempts to purge “their” party of its perceived heretics.

The road to ideological purity is an inward journey through ever narrowing concentric circles. One arrives at absolute purity in the company ultimately only of oneself and a very few fellows. In their single-minded drive to rid the party of its moderates and compromisers, the arch conservatives have mistaken that final circle of ideological purity for the same center ring where the ponies leap and the elephants dance. Long before they have driven the so-called RINO’s from their midst, they may find the whole Republican tent has up and moved to a more congenial place where it can set up again with its flags happily snapping in the breeze, welcoming all those who seek to win American elections by defeating Democrats. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Mrs. Clinton has devoted her adult life to furthering the career of her charming and charismatic husband, serving as his supporter, enabler, and eminence grise. She has suffered public humiliation because of his serial infidelities. She has repressed her highly competitive and testicular personality to play devoted wife, mother and First Lady, and when called upon, she has bedeviled his enemies, carried his water, and deferred her own ambitions.

She has spent the past decade planning and scheming to succeed him in the Oval Office, manufacturing her artful “35 years of experience” slogan in an attempt to infuse her candidacy with suitability. Her every waking moment, her every move has been designed to bring her to a place where she would be bathed in an aura of inevitability, both to her party and to the nation. For several months there, she held in her hands what she had worked so assiduously to cultivate, only to have it snatched from her by legions of younger voters uninterested in her struggle and captivated by the elusive, ineffable celebrity of Barack Obama. She has been trumped by American Idolatry.

Obama enjoys the male Clinton’s gifts of geniality and charisma and has ridden them to the top of the charts. Now his fame has grown to such a state that women swoon at his appearance, a sure sign that the Democratic base has come down yet again with a case of teenage female sexual frenzy. He is fast becoming Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Kennedy and the Maharishi all rolled in one, and he is beginning to leave poor Mrs. Clinton fuming in the dust.

She has obviously devoted hundreds of hours to studying the issues and problems of the nation, investing significant monetary assets of her campaign on focus groups and internal polling to tell her what to say and what new government goodies she should offer voters for their support. But even after all that, too often now the wonkish Mrs. Clinton finds her artfully crafted words drowned out by the cacophony that Obama’s platitudinous “hope and change” stump speech engenders wherever he appears.

Though Mrs. Clinton challenges him to detail all the miracles he promises, Obama blithely ignores her and continues to rise inexorably in both polls and delegate count. No wonder she is flailing and foundering, going from one clumsy attack to the next, trying all the while to appear gracious and conciliatory. It’s a hopelessly awkward posture for one such as she, and you feel the urge to avert your eyes anymore when she appears on camera.

Mr. Obama should never cease watching his back. Though the press is quick to declare him the frontrunner and to instill him with inevitability, it was only a few weeks back that Mrs. Clinton was so imbued.

He has attracted a huge following of the young and dewy-eyed. So fresh and untried are they their every thought and utterance seems surrounded by quotation marks. Their phrases, their ideology and their hopeless naiveté speak of the academy and not of the streets. They have no idea just how ugly Democratic street politics can get.

So while their candidate continues to enthrall them with wonderful, youthful and meaningless words – words like “hope” and “change,” so easily displayed on giant LCD screens and stenciled onto glossy blue signs – Mr. Obama’s acolytes had best bone up on some additional vocabulary:  words like “machine,” “brokered convention, “floor fight,” and “credential battles.”

They need to quickly grasp that great liberal platitudes like “Let Every Vote Count” will be turned into a short stabbing weapon when Mrs. Clinton’s thugs come to the floor insisting that Michigan and Florida be seated and counted.   They need to comprehend the long history of Democratic machine politics with its great tools of patronage, bribery and blackmail. There is not a “superdelegate” whose skeletons are unknown to Mrs. Clinton, or whose need for money, power, patronage or downright legal cover is not clearly articulated in detail in her files. This is not a woman who will be stopped by the mere will of the Democratic base – she will rule, or scorch the earth trying.

Look at the audience at a Hillary event. Watch when the camera pans the crowd to see the living definition of the word “grim.” Her supporters do not love her because she is Hillary, they cling to her because she is Woman and this is their final and best chance to matter on the planet Earth. Their aging angry visages lined with decades of battles with men, dour in countenance and furious at being challenged by a competing Democratic constituency at the very moment of triumph, these harpies are not about to yield to callow youth brimming with enthusiasm for a political rock star of little substance. These women and their leader have an agenda, and this creaky antique Feminism will not be denied by some vapid American Idol like Barack Obama. These are the post-menstrual mothers of the nation, half Cindy Sheehan and half Mother Jones, and they will happily drown their children in blood before they will give in to their naïve vanities.

Obama and his supporters take comfort from the fawning pronouncements of circus performers like Chris Matthews and Charlie Gibson at their peril. There is NOTHING inevitable about Obama and there will not be until the head is cut off the Gorgon and buried - a task not easily accomplished as Perseus learned. I wonder if Obama understands the peril he is in – it is clear his young devotees do not: they are given to singing too loudly, dancing too happily and foolishly thinking their own rapture infectious and not just annoying to those who have to listen to it.

Tens of millions of voters alive today have no idea who Jack Kennedy was. For them, JFK’s name just captions the portrait of a handsome vibrant man in an exclusive list of 43 names; distinctive primarily for being in the forlorn subset of those murdered in office.  Vast segments of the population have no idea of what it felt like to live in America under his administration.

The Obama/Kennedy Show this week was targeted at those who can and do remember. The Camelot Gambit has one purpose only:  to utilize the vast nostalgia for the Kennedy years to target and siphon off Hillary’s loyal core of support.  Poll after poll shows the only genuine enthusiasm for her candidacy coming from the millions of women who were in their teens during or shortly after the Kennedy years.  They mourned John, lost their virginity, mourned Bobby and Martin, turned on, tuned in and dropped out during the Summer of Love.  Then the New Age dawned. They bought beaded curtains and herbal teas, took LSD, hiked braless in Big Sur, communed with the Maharishi, smoked a lot of reefer and got laid even more during the early 70s.

But as soon these women started hitting their 30s a sense of betrayal began seeping in alongside all the carefree fun.  Suddenly, it dawned on them that the drugs, the rock and roll, the men pretending to be sensitive and counterculture and the whole damned Age of Aquarius was pretty much just a big goof to get their pants off.  They realized that so much of that idealistic blather had been used to get sex and then to shut them up. They got angry and got feminist.  Some became Lesbians, but mostly they just got royally ticked off.  Now in the early 21^st Century, most have reached that stage in life where they are jaded and sick to death of feeling manipulated by men.

Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, a woman wronged, a woman who seems to have no use for men or sex, who is a tad on the dikey side; a woman, like them, of a certain age – but powerful, hostile to male dominance, and within reach of the biggest prize on Earth.  They cling to her like mildew to wet laundry. The only way forces favorable to Obama can peel away that loyalty is to appeal to the abiding nostalgia we all have for our youth and innocence. Politically, the nostalgia of older women is anchored to their loving and idealized memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Still, this ploy could never work except for the general distaste among Americans for the sleaze and nastiness of the Clintons.  One suspects that even among her most ardent supporters there is the unspoken wish she were somebody else.

The Camelot Gambit, whether successful or not, will be over and done with soon enough.  Media people, misunderstanding the short-term nature of the stratagem, foolishly blather on about torches being passed and the nouvelle New Generation.  Pay no attention; that’s just the typical overcooked Malt-o-Meal that comes gushing out of the average cliché-ridden news person’s mouth today.  They don’t get that this is just an interesting ploy by the Kennedys to try and take out the trash once and for all. 

It could work.

Thousands of pundit-hours and gallons of printer’s ink have been devoted to figuring out how the Clintons would try and derail Mr. Obama.  Mostly the guessing game as played among the media blatherati had to do with what dirt the Mr. and Mrs. would be able to dig up on Obama, and how they would use it. 

Never in the wildest dreams of anchor or analyst was it imagined that the crime, the unpardonable indiscretion, the Clintons would use against Mr. Obama would be the color of his skin.

An AP story dated Jan. 26, reports that “Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as ‘the black candidate,’ a tag that could hurt him outside the South.”  What a shabby piece of dissembling.

Mr. Clinton, America’s “first black president,” spent last week scurrying around South Carolina blaming his wife’s impending defeat on the participation of black voters.  At the same time the campaign kept her safely tucked away elsewhere where she could issue shocked disavowals of his nasty race baiting should it become necessary.  Now in a spectacularly tin-eared performance, the former president paints Mr. Obama’s triumph in South Carolina as reminiscent of Jesse Jackson’s dead-ended success there in the 1980s, and dismisses it as some sort of “black” thing.

It is not a little instructive to remember how Mr. Clinton devoted the last couple of years of his administration and the several since leaving office trying to personally define a legacy that could survive the scrutiny of history. Now he seems willing to throw it all away in service to the couple’s single-minded obsession to regain power.  For that prize, they risk both his presidential reputation and the very fabric of the Democratic Party.  

At long last, the Clintons have no decency left.