I do not support Hillary Clinton's potential run for the Presidency. For a number of reasons but primarily because I think she is the least electable potential candidate. But if Crazy Marty Peretz keeps this up, I may have to rethink:
I have a question I've been reluctant to ask. Do the Clintons have any friends who aren't really rich? Maybe just a few, for old time's sake. But, as I read the clips about them, they consort largely, and maybe only, with zillionaires and very high-pay Hollywood types. It is not an axiomatic vocational hazard of politicians. Let me take Gore as an instance. He and Tipper have musician friends and professor friends and artist friends and just plain worker friends and farmer friends, for sure. Not that they don't mix with computer magnates, as well. But the Gores are rooted in ordinary life--in real, even quotidian activity. For example, he actually writes his own books. Believe it or not, it's true. The indulgent wealth that surrounds Bill and Hillary is, I am sure, corrupting. And that corruption--of taste, of moderation, of what is essential--cripples the soul and distorts life itself.
This crazy man married an heiress and he writes that? Sheesh.
The funniest thing of all though is his all consuming love of Al Gore. Don't get me wrong - Al Gore is one of my top two choices and more than anything I would like to see him run. But it is so bizarre to see Marty Peretz, NeoCon extraordinaire, still so enamored of Gore. Gore has become everything he detests. But his blind love for Gore makes him write drivel like this:
Hillary and Co. prepared for Mark Warner and John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack and the really impossible--no, deluded--dreamer John Kerry. She probably had a strategy against Gore, too. She was confident and contemptuous. And then, suddenly, she found herself running against a latter-day Martin Luther King Jr.
There was no way to see Barack Obama coming. And, damn it, he is a picture of America's future, black and white. African father. Columbia. Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review, no slouch he. Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, greater evidence of his brilliance. Supple in mind and bearing, evoking energy and thoughtfulness. Ah, yes, his most important public quality: He is comfortable in his own skin. She is not. Oh, is she not! What could Hillary possibly say against him? In the Democratic Party, it is still difficult to honestly criticize an African American. You can't even say a bad word about Al Sharpton, even though you can't say a truthful good word about him, either. But what, for heaven's sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing.
The man is nuts. And yet I feel comfortable if Gore gets in the race he will find a few bad things to say about Obama, don't you?