The curtain was lowered this afternoon on an opera that lasted a year longer than Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, as Senator Hillary Clinton, the formerly inevitable nominee, finally conceded her family's historic throne to the political apprentice from Chicago.
With a cast larger than D-Day, passion more intense than Oberammergau, more twists than a pretzel factory and a cost bigger than the GDPs of 19 countries, Clinton and Obama battled to a finish foretold by no pundit.
The world's most intelligent woman, with more allies and a quarter-billion dollars to spend, the one most likely to succeed, failed. The Canticle told its readers on April 12, 2007 that Mrs. Clinton would not win the party's nomination, that her 30 point poll advantage would not add up to victory.
Analysts will argue the causes of her loss, they were many. Unquestionably, she was most responsible for the several paths she walked.
Her political future, if any, cannot be known. But for the moment, she and her family are off stage center, and we're better for it. These 17 months have been prelude. Let the curtain raise again. Let the show begin.
In connection with a possible offer to Hillary Clinton to smooth her withdrawal from the race, London's Telegraph is reporting on possibilities for Cabinet members in an Obama administration.
The Telegraph quotes "senior members in the Obama camp" as confirming that Mrs. Clinton will be offered Secretary of Health and Human Services, with specific authority to steer a nationalized health plan into being.
The paper also reported that John Edwards is "seen as a likely Attorney General" and Joe Biden is a "leading contender for Secretary of State." No word yet whether it'll be Bill Ayers or Bernardine Dohrn as Secretary of Defense. Though both have experience, as a woman she may have an edge.
Just two months after pledging lasting loyalty to his pastor and friend and claiming ignorance about the beliefs taught at his church of 20 years, Senator Barack Obama has resigned from the Trinity Church after continuing concerns over its racist and Marxist teachings.
In March, just before videotapes surfaced of a number of Pastor Jeremiah Wright's sermons, Senator Obama commented
I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial.
Videotapes of a number of Pastor Wright's sermons, as well as sermons by others, show congregation members cheering wildly as speakers described Senator Hillary Clinton as racist, called for God to damn America, blamed the government for infecting blacks with HIV and espoused a medley of black liberation and Marxist attacks on class.
In remarks to the press on Saturday, Senator Obama seemed to blame the press for his need to quit the church.
A reporter for The Chicago Tribune is writing a book on Barack Obama titled The Savior.
With that, who needs a church?
UPDATE: Mark Steyn commented this morning at National Review Online
As one of the early trailblazers for the Rev Wright put it, greater love hath no man than to lay down his friends for his life. In among all the usual presidential ditching of inconvenient associations, I can't think of anything to compare with Obama's dumping of Trinity.
What Obama did today may have been politically necessary. It was certainly politically expedient. And it is yet one more blow to Obama’s image as a different kind of politician. In fact, as we’ve learned over the last few months, Obama appears to be a Chicago politician through and through. When he perceived a threat to his self-interest, he cut his ties to first his pastor and then his church, both of which he had expressed familial love and fidelity. This whole episode is deeply unattractive, even as it is deeply revealing.
No word yet whether the Obama's daughters, who have presumably been listening to this for their entire lives, will also be leaving the church.
We've become a bit jaundiced about miracles; modernity often seems to conflict with our ability to believe. This may change, though, as the election unfolds. Never before have voters had the opportunity to evaluate and possibly elect a major-party candidate seemingly so comfortable with the mantle of miracle-working savior as apparently is Barack Obama.
Right off the bat, Senator Obama pronounces as risen a number of our fallen heroes.
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.
Here is the video of his complete speech in Las Cruces, NM on Memorial Day.
Of course, perhaps it's entirely normal and expected for a Chicago politician to see dead potential voters in every audience, sort of a Daley machine twist on the movie The Sixth Sense. Or, maybe the deceased the senator said he saw were residents of the seven extra states he says he's toured during the primary season.
Or, maybe he actually does see them. At some point we need to start accepting that he really does mean what he says.
The most interesting aspect of the speech, however, was its mediocrity. Self-centered, yes, but all of his speeches are stuck in that rut. This one, though, was completely flat. Flat in theme, flat in tone, flat in delivery.
I wonder why? Is it possible that the senator can't manage a patriotic subject? The flag lapel pin helps, though.
It's official. According to a former first lady and current party leader, members of the Democrat Party hate women. Worse, Democrats in greater numbers hate women more than do Republicans. In fact, according to Hillary Clinton enough Democrats are sufficiently misogynistic so as to deprive her of their nomination, which were she to receive it would be enough for gender-neutral Republicans and independents to elect her the first female president.
"The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head," she said. "It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists."
Donald Boudreaux points out in The Wall Street Journal the inescapable logic of her position
Interviewed earlier this week by the Washington Post, Sen. Clinton said the polls show that "more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman [than] to vote for an African American." This gender bias, she grumbled, "rarely gets reported on."
So a woman who holds degrees from Wellesley and Yale – who has earned millions in the private sector, won two terms in the U.S. Senate, and gathered many more votes than John Edwards, Bill Richardson and several other middle-aged white guys in their respective bids for the 2008 Democratic nomination – feels cheated because she's a woman.
This fact (if it be a fact) reveals a hitherto unknown, ugly truth about the Democratic Party. The alleged bastion of modern liberalism, toleration and diversity is full of (to use Mrs. Clinton's own phrase) "people who are nothing but misogynists." Large numbers of Democratic voters are sexists. Who knew?
But here's another revelation. If Mrs. Clinton is correct that she is more likely than Barack Obama to defeat John McCain in November, that implies Republicans and independents are less sexist than Democrats.
It's tempting to take Obama's words at face value. Tempting, but impossible. The Senator contradicts himself depending on his audience. One day, speaking in the small towns of Pennsylvania, he touts himself as a constitutionalist who understands and respects the values of the miners, assembly line workers, farmers and shopkeepers who hang on his every word.
The next day, mingling with the chardonnay and brie crowd of Marin among the Democrats too wealthy to live in San Francisco, he entertains his peers with a verbal caricature of the folks in flyover country.
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Those people are not like us, not like Marin, or Chicago.
Can you imagine next week, when he's back in St. Marys or Jamestown or Greensburg?
I was out in La-La land last week, sipping a brew with the upper crust. They're a little different there, sipping wine with their pinkies out, scooping fish eggs and cans of peas. Clinging to their hopes for change, looking, searching for their opportunity to pay more in taxes so that you can have clean clothes, so that together we can help lead you to a better land, pry you away from your religion, your guns, your ant-tip-path-ees.
The arrogance of both thought and word is breathtaking. It's second only to his ignorance, to his belief that small town folk discovered religion, guns and individual self-interest in the last ten years. Obama, just another SFO Democrat.
Leave it to The New York Times, which has its problems these days. The paper seems to be newly addicted to third-person, passive openings, as it reports penumbras of concern, first amongst John McCain's former staffers, now voiced by Barack Obama's supporters.
According to The Times
There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?
In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.
The solution, of course, is simple. Lock up the left-wing loonies for the duration of the campaign.
Every attempted assassination of an American president or candidate during our lifetimes, with the possible exception of one, has been made by an individual to the political left of his or her target. Given Senator Obama's position on the extreme left of our political spectrum, his risks are low. There just aren't that many people—the potential actors in such a nefarious deed—to his left. Those few who do reside on the left edge of the bell curve are also likely less functional, as most who display one such extreme difference from the rest of society suffer as well from others. It's not the risk that drives the discussion of this morbid subject, it's the victimology of his adherents.
I've watched Meet the Press for more than half of its life. This is the first time out of approximately 1,500 shows that a presidential candidate looked, sounded and impressed as though he already holds the office.
Take a few minutes and watch to see what a serious candidate, discussing real ideas, real platforms and real issues really looks like. Click through to watch the entire show.
Fred Thompson is most impressive. It's is incredibly impressive and strangely comforting to actually watch a candidate think through the question before thoughtfully framing the answer.
Peggy Noonan remains one of the best wordsmiths in our language. She honed her edge as a speechwriter for Reagan during her adult formative years, always gentle, often pointed. In her Wall Street Journal article The Man Who Wasn't There, Peggy captures three critical but previously unremarked observations about Fred Thompson.
First, Peggy says that no matter the semantics, Fred is already a candidate.
He is running a great campaign. It's just not a declared campaign. It's a guerrilla campaign whose informality is meant to obscure his intent. It has been going on for months and is aimed at the major pleasure zones of the Republican brain. In a series of pointed columns, commentaries and podcasts, Mr. Thompson has been talking about things conservatives actually talk about.
What a refreshing approach. Instead of 30-second soundbite answers to questions that interest no one but Chris Mathews, Sen. Thompson is thinking, then talking, about the issues that the Republic primary voters actually care about. As a stand-in for Paul Harvey—I wonder how many candidates tried out for that job!—Fred Thompson has practice condensing thoughtful observations and opinions into short but clear and complete statements that resonate with listeners.
Second, Fred Thompson and his apparently non-existent staff are playing the Internet with skill and rhythm of which others can only dream. By achieving viral status on the 'net, Thompson has harnessed the power of thousands of individual communicators effectively supporting his effort, including many who are not yet backing his candidacy. One needs look no further than Thompson's video reply last week to Michael Moore's taunts. Through viral replication, more likely voters have seen this 38-seconds of non-PC direct talk than have seen paid advertising by any of the formal candidates.
The effect, as Noonan observes,
These comments and opinions are being read and forwarded in Internet Nation. They are revealing and interesting, but they're not heavy, not homework. They have an air of "This is the sound of a candidate thinking." That's an unusual sound.
Third, Fred Thompson is comfortable within his skin. He has the bearing of a leader. He is a true conservative, of the non-hyphenated one-word variety, with a kindly persona. In his first Hollywood acting job, he was recruited to play himself, a role his directors say he has never left. What you see is what you get, from both the actor and the politician. This stands in stark contrast to the reality and the perception of the rest of the field, especially its present leaders, who seem preoccupied with their needs to stand tall on islands of polls.
The field of announced candidates verges on tiresome without satisfying. The professional politicos have flocked together, rushing to announce, rushing from speech to speech, rushing to scripted debates.
While the potential candidate leads his own parade, marching to a different drummer, collecting more supporters with every step.
