The Election: I. Hillary Clinton

This article is the first in a four-part series.

As Senator Clinton herself has often noted, she’s one of the most scrutinized and dissected figures in modern politics. Now, I haven’t the impartiality to evaluate her without prejudice, the scholarship to provide genuinely original historical insight, or the terseness to do so in only a few hundred words, so, to sidestep her sweeping biography entirely, I shall say only that of all the candidates, her historical legacy has already been most firmly secured. She’s famous, clever, wickedly ambitious, and on top of all that, her campaign seems to be in the final throes of a noisy demise. How could one possibly lead off a discussion of the election with anyone else?

She has carved out a niche for herself as the “experience” candidate, rhetoric that has been related as similar to Yoko Ono claiming that she knows what it’s like to be a Beatle. None of the major candidates, of course, have ever had any significant executive experience, a fact which itself isn’t exactly Q.E.D. – there are more than a few examples of individuals who without any executive experience whatsoever have presided admirably at 1600 Pennsylvania. But cheekiness aside, she does have a point; one principle with which everyone must surely be in accord is that the presidency is very much a job apart from that of a senator. Eight years of immersion in the environment, even if only by proxy, does certainly suggest that her baptism won’t be quite as fiery. (A bitter partisan might add, “Hillary Clinton does know where the bodies are buried,” but I wouldn’t.)

Clinton also drags alongside her the heaviest set of burdens. She is widely perceived as a conniving, carpet-bagging lesbian with no sense of humor and a titanic sense of entitlement – an eclectic set of assertions which are part truth, part exaggeration, and part fiction entirely. (And in addition, perhaps betray more about the perceiver than the Senator herself.) The most grievous insult is that she is “unlikable,” an insipid ad hominem whose hurtfulness is matched only by its vagueness, and the most dim-witted insult is that she is “unelectable,” a circular contention which has inexplicably managed to become a piece of its own evidence. And this is not even to mention the impact of Hillary’s most fervent and visible surrogate, mixed as it might have been.

But most importantly, will she win?

It doesn’t seem likely. The circumstances surrounding the Democratic nomination are grim: Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in both pledged delegates and the popular vote, and although Clinton maintains a lead of her own in unpledged delegates, these so-called “superdelegates” are party elites who are unlikely to directly contravene the wishes of their own constituents. Meanwhile, Florida and Michigan, due to deliberate procedural violations, had their pledged delegates removed from the contest months ago, and their reinstatement would have restored hundreds of additional delegates and been a boon for her, but over the last week, both nullifications were reaffirmed. This leaves less than six hundred pledged delegates remaining until the convention, most of them split relatively evenly between the two candidates. Even under the most absurdly generous scenario, she is unlikely to ever regain the lead.

The most suitable description for the situation comes from the nomenclature of the sports world: to secure the nomination, she would have to “back in” due to a critical Obama misstep, and one on the order of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, not Jeremiah Wright. But as unlikely as a victory might be, we should have learned, à la Paul Tsongas, that one mustn’t ever make the mistake of discounting the Clintons.

The Stupidity of Matt Drudge

Last July, the major British news organizations and their affiliates collectively became aware of a tantalizing piece of intelligence, one which under other circumstances may have proven to be the year’s singular news story: the flamboyant and fun-loving Prince Harry – now a much-celebrated officer in the British Armed Forces – was going to be deployed to Afghanistan, and would be commanding a squadron of troops in the war against the Taliban.

I have always been a passionate republican, and one with strong reservations about nation-building campaigns, yet I cannot help but get a lump in my throat at the dignity and poetry of this beautiful narrative; a gallant young prince, braver but less handsome than his brother, battling on the frontlines and in the trenches with his comrades against an kingdom of tyranny. But for sensible and self-evident reasons, the Ministry of Defense demanded a media embargo on any live coverage, offering in exchange the opportunity for a comprehensive exposé after the completion of his tour. The story would not go forever untold, they promised; only until the young royal’s safety could be assured. Reasonable enough, right?

A voluntary media blackout of this scale and scope is a rarity in the competitive arena of the free press, and we should take great care not to place the blame for what eventually transpired at the feet of the entire profession; the embarrassing and disgraceful debacle was largely the result of one man’s greedy attempts to place himself at the forefront of investigative journalism. The rest of the networks, in spite of themselves, restrained their sensationalist impulses and kept quiet.

The worldwide embargo was first violated when New Idea, an oblivious Australian women’s magazine, printed a short and obscure article about it, and Berliner Kurier printed some unsubstantiated speculation, but the situation only became unmanageable for the Ministry of Defense when Matt Drudge posted a piece about it on his tabloid website.

Drudge is a creepy little person with whom everyone should be no more or less than peripherally aware. He first gained notoriety for technically being the first to break the news on the Lewinsky scandal – causing Newsweek to dump their own more thoughtful exposé – and has since made a reputation for himself as the most shameless journalist in the blogosphere. There is little doubt that he knew what he was doing was wrong: his unapologetic defense stems entirely from the fact that he wasn’t technically the first to break the embargo. (A curious justification, certainly, juxtaposed with his statements describing the report as an “exclusive.”) But why would anyone believe in the sincerity of his responses, anyway? This is the same man who once falsely accused Sidney Blumenthal of domestic abuse, and then retracted it after the innuendo had already reached saturation, and who more recently torpedoed the reputation of CNN reporter Michael Ware with demonstrably false allegations, based on information entirely from an imaginary source.

To Prince Harry, I doff my cap; I daresay he could teach some of our elected officials a thing or two about personal responsibility. But as for Drudge, a wretched and treasonous egomaniac who has only once significantly turned out to be right, the question should not be “Should we continue to give him journalistic relevance?” but rather, “Should we ever offer him parole?”

The Week In Review

It’s extraordinary to have a week actually worthy of its own coverage, isn’t it?

The New York Philharmonic became the first American music group in over half a century to perform in North Korea, an event which, of all developments, is surely the most uplifting. Although programming “An American In Paris” and “From the New World” onto a concert with an audience of prominent communists might have been a bit bold, we couldn’t have sent finer ambassadors. After all, Détente was once born in earnest over a few games of ping-pong; why can’t it begin again over Gershwin and Dvořák? (The cynic should immediately reply, “Because Wagner was the opener.”)

Of even greater international significance, of course, is the rekindling of the old feud in the Balkans between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs. For those unaware, a little over a week ago Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, an act of self-determination the majority of the West supported, but to which a few important nations have submitted objections. (In brief, they stem from self-interested concerns over setting a precedent, which could leave them vulnerable to internal separatist movements.) This distant skirmish, presently banished to the wasteland of Southeastern Europe, may well escalate into a international battle royale over the very nature of state sovereignty.

But because proximity is the only American criterion for awareness, siphoning attention away from all of this has been a mindless dialogue on the retirement – or rather, the abdication – of the zombie Fidel Castro in favor of his brother, Raúl. While the general question “When did leadership of any kind of republic become an inherited position?” might be both relevant and valid, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be gulled by the media’s heat-seeking flashbulbs; post-USSR, this little event is of practically zero historical significance.

Now, let’s be distinct; the liberty of the Cuban people obviously is important, and the case has always deserved more thoughtful consideration than it has gotten. In fact, given that now all the original egos of this little war are out of the picture, it’s de rigueur to at least temporarily suspend our Cold War era assumptions and reexamine the situation in modernity. But is this what has happened? Of course not. Actual discussion of the logistics of new diplomacy has been meager in comparison to the masturbatory antics of the media, who have mostly prattled on about aborted anniversaries, the ends of eras and the younger Castro’s “momentous decision.”

The reality is more complicated, frustrating, and sobering; in exchange for any hope of relations, the United States has continued to insist on a laundry list of concessions from Cuba, beginning with the wholesale abandonment of state socialism in favor of liberal democracy. Cuba, of course, has always responded by both rejecting Washington’s implicit mandate for oversight and demanding total autonomy with their objectionable internal affairs as a prerequisite for negotiation. Neither side has the inherent desire for compromise or the need for capitulation, and both have a significant amount of national pride at stake. So why, may I ask, are we continually so surprised at the depth of this particular stalemate?

Perhaps because no one realizes just how little effort has been made; on her 2005 short list of “outposts of tyranny,” Secretary of State Rice singled out Cuba – while omitting without apology ghoulish Saudi Arabia and others – and John Bolton accused the island nation of harboring weapons of mass destruction, a statement which doesn’t require (but surely benefits from) a witty postscript. Meanwhile, Raúl has deliberately made clear that he has no interest in reprising Mikhail Gorbachev; on the contrary, it’s business as usual in Havana, with Castro even proposing before the National Assembly that “[they] include Fidel” on important decisions, a resolution which, to no one’s surprise, passed unanimously.

In other words, don’t expect for either Havana or Washington to blink. This “end of an era” business is nothing more than a frivolous cliché, and it shall take much more than evocative rhetoric to soothe the dysfunction.