Posted by
T. Thomas on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 1:26:34 PM
At Mrs. Clinton’s presser last Saturday (“Shame on You, Barack Obama!”) she gesticulated, bellowed and wildly overacted in a hammy attempt to lampoon the near religious ecstasy of Obama’s followers. Then in last night’s debate she made a limp attempt to gain humorous traction by turning the tables on last week’s SNL send-up (“Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and get him another pillow.”) It backfired. People booed. Watching Mrs. Clinton stripped of her carefully crafted carapace,exposing both her petulance and her humorlessness makes you almost feel sorry for her. Like a talent for music, the desirable character traits of charisma, affability and humor are gifts. It is cruel to deplore their lack in another, though it is not out of bounds to mention that their absence does not auger well for the suceess of ambitious politicians.
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.
It almost makes you feel sorry for her