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Walter Watts
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The Last Debate
« on: 2008-05-21 20:04:26 » |
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The New York Times
May 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Last Debate
By MAUREEN DOWD
“What do you want? Please, Sweetie, would you just tell me what you want?”
“Don’t Sweetie me, Twiggy. You know what I want.”
“Besides that, Hillary. Seriously, you don’t want your delusion to put John McCain in the White House. Or maybe you do. You have no shot. I’m 60 delegates away from nomination nirvana. You should stop stalking me. I come down to Florida for a victory lap and you follow me down here and call for a recount. Look what that did for Al Gore. If you show a shred of common sense and take a powder now, the party will put you on a pedestal.”
“Pedestals are for losers. You’re on a pedestal. I’ve never been a loser. I refuse to lose. I won the West Virginia and Kentucky derbies, and I’m not going to end up like Eight Belles.”
“Hillary, you’ve been a great candidate, better than your train-wreck campaign. You’re Churchillian in your indomitable tenacity. You’ve inspired women all over the country. In fact, you’ve inspired some of them to hate me. But now it’s time for you to try to muster a gracious exit.”
“Forget it, Bones. Once Harold Ickes works his dark magic on the delegate rules to count Michigan and Florida, I’ll have the popular vote. And then the superdelegates will grovel back. They know in their hearts that they don’t want to go on a blind date with a guy who’s going to be BFF with Cuba, Hamas, Iran and retired Weathermen. You can bet your white turban that I’m not raising the white flag.”
“Like hell you aren’t, sister.”
“Sexist!”
“Racist!”
“Speaking of whites, you can’t win without them. And if you think your Secretary of Hairdressing, John Edwards, is going to help, you’re more delusional than I am.”
“Hillary, when are you going to realize that these whites you consider your pawns are so sick of the Republicans that they’re going to vote for anybody who has the ‘D’ next to their name, and it’s going to be me. So cool it with the White Fright. Now what do you want? Debt relief?”
“Bill and I don’t need your Netroots arugula moolah. We don’t need your stinking $20 donors. We’ve got Burkle, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and Kazakh uranium loot on tap.”
“Settle down, Hillary. What if I let you write the health care plank in the party platform?”
“Wow, you’re so-o-o generous. Can I also write the plank on switchgrass?”
“I switched from grass a long time ago.”
“Listen, rookie, we’re gonna have to share this thing.”
“Fine, you can have the 3 a.m. shift on the White House switchboard.”
“Oh, you’re so witty with all your stupid rallies with 75,000 people and spending $100 million on ads to promote one puny word: Change. I’ve made sacrifices in this campaign. While you’ve been fake-eating and losing weight, I’ve had to stuff myself with all that greasy working-class junk food and chase it with Boilermakers.”
“What about me? I’ve come from nowhere, with a single mother on food stamps and a funny name.”
“Oh, you’re so inspiring. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”
“Don’t mock Michelle. I would be polite and ask you to be my vice president, but you’d accept, just the same way Lyndon Johnson sandbagged Bobby Kennedy, so I can’t. You and Bill are just too much drama for me. Bill is off-the-charts crazy.”
“Tell me about it. But he’d be way over on Massachusetts Avenue, a completely different ZIP code than the White House. And Cheney built that underground bunker there, so we’d always have someplace to stash him. If you don’t put me on the ticket, I’ll signal my faithful to vote for John McCain. He’s more fun than you, anyhow.”
“Hillary, I don’t trust you. And Michelle hates your guts. Look, the Senate is a wonderful place. I enjoyed my two months there. You’ve never made the most of the experience because you were so busy using it as a launching pad.”
“Back at ya, Skeletor.”
“Can you stop talking, Hillary? Is that even possible?”
“No, I won’t, Mr. Never-Convened-Your-European-Affairs-Subcommittee. I don’t want to go back. It’s boring. And why should I work with all those self-hating, so-called feminists who stabbed me in the back, like Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar?”
“Look, Hillary, a few years back in the Senate helping me move my world-changing agenda will help you repair some of those relationships. In Barack Obama’s Washington, there will be no more game-playing, mud-slinging or back-stabbing.”
“Hey, Señor Appeaser, there’s another primary in 2012. Bill and I are already gearing up for it.”
“You’re not likeable enough, Hillary.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Walter Watts
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MoEnzyme
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Re:The Last Debate
« Reply #1 on: 2008-05-22 17:39:48 » |
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This would certainly be Rush Limbaugh's political wet dream. Given the lowered tone of rhetoric in the last primary round, I think Hillary is seriously considering a graceful exit with serious agenda negotiation position. Possibly a Kennedy Johnson type of ticket? I think it's a question that can only be answered by two people, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'm betting they will prove themselves better behaved than the Republicans would fantasize. They share many mutual admirers. Lots of significant Obama backers are former (and mostly still current) friends and allies of the Clintons. Bill Richardson being the most obvious example, despite James Carville's "Judas!" hyperventilating hyperboles. These two candidates also have much more in common on the issues than other previous primaries, so if the chemistry can happen at all I imagine that it most likely will.
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Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Fritz
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Re:The Last Debate
« Reply #2 on: 2008-05-22 18:15:15 » |
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Quote:| [Walter Watts]The Last Debate |
Quote:| [MoEnzyme]hyperventilating hyperboles |
A treat to indulge in your posts gentlemen.
I thought you might like this Canuk view from one of our tabloids
Cheers
Fritz
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Columnists/Van_Dusen_Lisa/2008/05/21/5625916-sun.html
Behind enemy lines
By LISA VAN DUSEN
In the course of this interminable presidential primary campaign, foreign policy has been mostly relegated to fleeting debate exchanges and occasional flare-ups over whether to bomb northern Pakistan, the appropriate pronunciation of Medvedev or the relative value of an opponent's Hamas endorsement in purple states.
The three remaining candidates, knowing that the economy has overtaken every other issue and that there's a delicate threshold above which too much foreign policy talk becomes the rhetorical equivalent of windsurfing as campaign kisses of death go, have tended to keep talk of elsewhere to renegotiating NAFTA (which won't happen) and national security, which is how foreign policy gets translated into something American voters care about, as the 3 a.m. phone call issue.
(Iraq, really being about flag-draped coffins, is a domestic issue posing as a foreign policy one).
But President George W. Bush's speech before the Israeli Knesset last week, in which he slagged Barack Obama as an appeaser for advocating negotiations with U.S. enemies, inadvertently put foreign policy in the spotlight in a way that might end up giving those of us elsewhere a much better sense of how the next president feels about America's role in the world.
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Mr. Bush said, adding that such behaviour should be called what it is, appeasement, throwing Nazi appeasers in, just in case anyone missed the reference.
The gist of Bush's slam against Obama (telegraphed to reporters by his staff as just that and later dismissed as a figment of Obama's campaign-addled ego) was that he's a terrorist-coddling, diplomatic girlie-man, a charge levelled for his position that the U.S. may want to talk to Syria or Iran rather than threatening to obliterate them based on hypotheticals.
That Bush identified people who might talk to Syria as appeasers before the Israeli parliament at a time when the Israeli government is talking about talking with Syria might have explained the uneasy shifting in the audience. Then again, if President Bush knew the difference between appeasement and diplomacy, he wouldn't have invaded Iraq.
From his cooked-up casus belli for that war to his thwarted appointment of the congenitally un-diplomatic John Bolton as United Nations ambassador to his naming of his communications aide Karen Hughes as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy at the State Department (a non-Arabic speaking Texan woman in charge of winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide), Bush has expressed his frat-boy contempt for diplomacy so many times that it's a wonder he still gets invited anywhere.
As America's power has consolidated over the past three decades and especially since it won the Cold War, the notion has spread in some quarters in Washington that the United States doesn't need diplomacy because its overwhelming military leverage is understood by every belligerent and potential belligerent in the world.
The anti-diplomatic prelude to the invasion of Iraq, including the contempt shown for the UN in Colin Powell's dog-and-pony show before the Security Council, which he later called a "blot" on his record, was only the most catastrophic product of that attitude.
Having the world's most formidable arsenal at your disposal shouldn't be treated as a substitute for diplomacy. Bush has reminded us that the president of the world's most powerful country shouldn't be an amateur at talk, especially if he wants to deploy it strategically.
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Walter Watts
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Re:The Last Debate
« Reply #3 on: 2008-05-23 19:19:35 » |
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Quote from: MoEnzyme on 2008-05-22 17:39:48
This would certainly be Rush Limbaugh's political wet dream. Given the lowered tone of rhetoric in the last primary round, I think Hillary is seriously considering a graceful exit with serious agenda negotiation position. Possibly a Kennedy Johnson type of ticket? I think it's a question that can only be answered by two people, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'm betting they will prove themselves better behaved than the Republicans would fantasize. They share many mutual admirers. Lots of significant Obama backers are former (and mostly still current) friends and allies of the Clintons. Bill Richardson being the most obvious example, despite James Carville's "Judas!" hyperventilating hyperboles. These two candidates also have much more in common on the issues than other previous primaries, so if the chemistry can happen at all I imagine that it most likely will.
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Hey Mo.
Do you really think the Dems will attempt this (pair the dynamic duo up)?
That would be sooooooo suhweeeeet!
McCain might as well mail the rest of his presidential campaign in and save his and the Republican Party's money if the Dems present a unified party including BOTH Obama and Clinton (in that order) to the U.S. citizenry for election as President in November.
Walter
PS--I ain't holding my breath though man.......
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Walter Watts
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MoEnzyme
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Re:The Last Debate
« Reply #4 on: 2008-05-23 20:16:46 » |
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Quote from: Walter Watts on 2008-05-23 19:19:35
Quote from: MoEnzyme on 2008-05-22 17:39:48 This would certainly be Rush Limbaugh's political wet dream. Given the lowered tone of rhetoric in the last primary round, I think Hillary is seriously considering a graceful exit with serious agenda negotiation position. Possibly a Kennedy Johnson type of ticket? I think it's a question that can only be answered by two people, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'm betting they will prove themselves better behaved than the Republicans would fantasize. They share many mutual admirers. Lots of significant Obama backers are former (and mostly still current) friends and allies of the Clintons. Bill Richardson being the most obvious example, despite James Carville's "Judas!" hyperventilating hyperboles. These two candidates also have much more in common on the issues than other previous primaries, so if the chemistry can happen at all I imagine that it most likely will.
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Hey Mo.
Do you really think the Dems will attempt this (pair the dynamic duo up)?
That would be sooooooo suhweeeeet!
McCain might as well mail the rest of his presidential campaign in and save his and the Republican Party's money if the Dems present a unified party including BOTH Obama and Clinton (in that order) to the U.S. citizenry for election as President in November.
Walter
PS--I ain't holding my breath though man.......
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Well, me neither. I'm thinking there are actually better tickets. However, depending on how the Obamas and Clintons work together I think it could be a powerful coalition combination much like Kennedy/Johnson was in it's day. I can think of lots of ways that the Clintons (Bill plus Hillary) could be an uruly combo for Obama to have to ride herd over, but if he can manage it as number one, I think there is a lot of synergy that can be unlocked between the large overlap they have in supporters and largely shared values when it comes to most issues. Frankly I trust Obama to be true to his word. Especially in relation to the Iraq adventure that means a lot to me, which is why I support him over Clinton, but in many other ways I see little difference in their fundamental political/ideological orientation.
I won't hold my breath for it either. If there is any way to get not just a victory but a full-blown mandate which I think will be necessary to have any chance of erasing the damage of the last eight years, then I'm all for it. I think there are other ways to get said mandate, but I see a unity ticket like the Kennedy Johnson example a very plausible way to attain it.
I've watched some of the mainstream media which seems overly eager for the appearance of bad blood, but I remain unconvinced. The ways that Clinton is especially dialing back her negative rhetoric, seem to me to indicate that the possibility remains open. It hasn't hurt her lately either. Even though she remains a futile distance behind Obama, her more positive tones haven't hurt her more recent high margins in West Virginia and Kentucky. I sort of wonder if she isn't kicking herself a bit for not trying more of the positive/inspirational approach much sooner.
In any case, Obama gets it and he got it much earlier than any of the other viable candidates in either party. The only others who "got it", were long shots like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. In some respects this concerns me greatly because Obama was never a sure thing either, . . . indeed a few of us are still holding back a little breath just in case. Hillary might pull a power play we didn't expect, or some nutjob with a gun could still end it all . . . of course that's always been the risk of any head of state, but living so soon after a dreadful history of racism, lynchings, and political assinations in the US, as an Obama supporter I maintain a feeling of living on pins and needles.
In any case, it does concern me that the only viable candidate who is both charismatic and sane enough to get it comes under such fragile circumstances. This doesn't dampen my enthusiasm at all, however. Between the audicity of hope and finality of the fall, I'll choose hope any day.
p.s. I've always loved James Carville's political insight and entertaining demeanor, but I don't think he represents any sort of zeitgeist in Democratic party as a whole. Democrats as a whole tend to hold their talking heads in medium-regard at best. Rush Limbaugh is the kind of politico-entertainment-messiah who can only survive on the bloated high regards of the GOP or other extreme right-wing authoritarian audiences.
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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