Top international lieutenants Tony Blair and John Howard lead the list of the yearly departed. Who knows if those two would have lasted until this year without help from now-resigned long-time Bush den mother Karen Hughes, who had returned to Compound W back in 2005 as, get this, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, charged with fighting Islamic extremism by improving America’s image abroad. A world set straight awaits Ms. Hughes’s return.
Top Bush economic advisor Al Hubbard, whose best work consisted of whispering things in the prez’s ear like, “the entire platinum circle for tonight’s fundraiser has sold out, the least we can do is the same,” returned to private hustling. Dan Bartlett, Dubster’s counselor and main conduit for dispersing talking points to the reactionary blogosphere, rewarded all Americans by leaving his job on the Fourth of July. Bush terrorism adviser Fran Townsend announced she’d vacate the waterboard of directors after three and a half years of crushing hope among freedom-haters everywhere. This fall, press secretary Tony Snow returned to private prevarication. Even puppeteer-in-chief Karl Rove oozed out of office, leaving a slick trail from Pennsylvania Avenue to Newsweek, where he is writing a weekly column. Many of us had visions of a different kind of pen for Herr Karl.
Perhaps the most significant departure was that of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Politically eulogizing Gonzales, Bush said, “He has aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption.” No argument here.
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Ewe tube
Anyone who thinks time travel is impossible hasn’t been paying attention to the presidential-election cycle. Before people recovered from their New Year’s hangovers, candidates seeking an office in the dim future were everywhere. By early summer, they began debating. These confabs were sometimes said to be revolutionary because they employed the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube to collect questions from regular Americans, thus cutting out the mainstream media. Except for one thing: the mainstream media vetted the questions. So what we got were either inane stunt queries, included to underscore the Earth-shaking newness of this approach, or the same stupid questions the hacks could have asked more succinctly than some narcissist with a Web cam hamming it up on technology that produced video about two notches below Neil Armstrong’s viral “One Small Step” work in 1969.
After months of campaigning and saturation advertising in the early caucus and primary states (which, at last count, includes everywhere except the US Virgin Islands), none of the candidates have caught fire, although after listening to many of them speak, the idea isn’t without merit.
The American electoral process has become so fouled with what is called “campaign finance” that, in 2007, war-chest totals were reported as the actual contest. The unspoken truth of this matter is that the large of wallet had the first and only right of refusal concerning political viability. Former Alaska senator Mike Gravel was excluded from the Democratic debates because he hadn’t raised enough money. No one seemed to have a problem with this.
Illinois senator Barack Obama started slowly in his candidacy, at first attempting to liken himself to Abe Lincoln. Mercifully, the stovepipe hat and whiskers didn’t do well with focus groups, so he switched to another appeal: he was the person capable of stopping prohibitive front-runner Hillary Clinton from strolling to the Democratic nomination. He raised a lot of dough from the net-roots and began to be taken seriously. But he got plenty of cash from fat cats as well, including, as of March, according to CounterPunch, “$159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear-power-plant operator.”
Obama demonstrated his corporate indebtedness by citing “clean coal” and “superior nuclear technology” as environmental solutions. “Clean coal” is a term that proves you can put any two words together you want. Hey kids, wash up with the clean coal! And “superior nuclear technology” will lead to what? Better-organized cancer clusters?
But the fact that Obama could stop Clinton does amplify his appeal. The idea that the New York senator was the most electable Dem drove many to resign themselves to supporting her. These folks didn’t ask, why is someone who is reviled by half the country a “sure thing” in what is likely to be a two-candidate general election?
Outside of the fact that she will bring all the rabid anti-Clinton crackpots out of hiding, she’ll also drive a measurable portion of progressives into political hibernation. Clinton is feminist in name only — concerning the war she’s voted almost the straight fatherland ticket. She exudes all the sincerity of Nigerian spam. She tells us she wants to have a “conversation with the American people,” but when she’s around, she’s the only one who ever speaks. It’s too bad they can’t create a computerized debate between Clinton and the late Hubert Humphrey to see who could talk longer while saying less.