Shot and a Chablis
By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hillary "Shot-and-a-Beer" Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what's so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as "I seem, therefore I am."
Clinton spent the weekend bashing Barack Obama for not seeming to be enough of a regular guy -- not for any actual deficit of regular-guyness, mind you, but for giving the impression that such a deficit might exist.
The former first lady, whose family has made $109 million since her husband left the White House, then made a show of demonstrating that she's actually just a regular gal. The point wasn't really to convince anyone that she, Bill and Chelsea commute between their two lavish mansions in a five-year-old Ford F-150 pickup with a gun rack and a "Jesus Rocks!" bumper sticker. Her aim was to prove to the nation -- or at least to Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana -- that she's better at feigning regularness than Obama.
This is how we pick a president?
This whole sideshow began when Obama committed what she portrayed as the apparently unforgivable sin of trying to describe the resentment felt by some working-class Americans, venturing that "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."
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hillary "Shot-and-a-Beer" Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what's so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as "I seem, therefore I am."
Clinton spent the weekend bashing Barack Obama for not seeming to be enough of a regular guy -- not for any actual deficit of regular-guyness, mind you, but for giving the impression that such a deficit might exist.
The former first lady, whose family has made $109 million since her husband left the White House, then made a show of demonstrating that she's actually just a regular gal. The point wasn't really to convince anyone that she, Bill and Chelsea commute between their two lavish mansions in a five-year-old Ford F-150 pickup with a gun rack and a "Jesus Rocks!" bumper sticker. Her aim was to prove to the nation -- or at least to Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana -- that she's better at feigning regularness than Obama.
This is how we pick a president?
This whole sideshow began when Obama committed what she portrayed as the apparently unforgivable sin of trying to describe the resentment felt by some working-class Americans, venturing that "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."
(Continued here.)
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