The concern trolls circling around Bill Clinton's campaigning is just too much to bear. The Dallas Morning News wrote yesterday that "there's something disconcerting, even diminishing, about watching a former president get down and dirty on the campaign trail." I didn't know Presidential Images, even his, were so damn valuable, not even to be expended for his Wife or for the future of the Country.
Reuters reports that a pall has been cast upon the campaign:
The resurgence of the old Bill Clinton, flushing with anger and wagging his finger as he fights for his wife's presidential bid, has cast a shadow over her campaign and could mar his new image as a global statesman.
One would think that they would then cite poll data or some other tangible measurement of effect, but no, they trot out the dated Jim Clyburn comment where he speculated that "Clinton's outspoken campaign tactics may damage his reputation in the long-term", exposing the report as yet another excuse to ride Bill's jock. For the folks who complain that Edwards ain't getting enough attention from the media, well here they are, humping Bill's leg.
Oh, Reuters cites another breathless analysis:
Commentator John Gappel of the Financial Times, said Clinton had "adopted tactics that, if he does not curb himself soon, may tarnish his global brand irreparably. That would be a shame, not only for him but also for the causes that he has placed his weight behind."
A Financial Times editor. And now Peggy Noonan, who enjoys just about as much respect and credibility comes in to get her kicks. Thank God for Digby:
The punditocracy's "protectiveness" toward Obama is patronizing and insulting. And this silly case of the vapors among the villagers over the "nastiness" of the race and how its going to tear the party apart is nearly guaranteed to make him look like a weak sister, which he isn't, and his elite supporters are falling right into the trap. Watching David Brooks and Mark Shields elbow each other to get to the fainting couch about the unprecedented horror of the South Carolina campaign (which as D-Day pointed out in the post below is a complete joke) is not helpful to Obama or Clinton.
Punches get thrown. Spouses advocate. Why is everyone acting like they've never seen an election before? Oh yeah.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.
It just goes to back up my long held belief that there's more than a few comparisons one could make between a crack whore and Peggy Noonan, not to mention most of the rest of the MSM, and unfortunately a great deal of diarists here on dailykos.