What will $10 million buy?

Of Bile and Billionaires

By FRANK BRUNI, NYT

WASHINGTON

NOW we know what, in today’s warped political economy, $10 million buys you: a hit job spectacular not only in its cynicism but also in its idiocy.

As Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg reported last week in The Times, a politically agitated billionaire (these days, there don’t seem to be any other kind) was considering forking over that much for an advertising campaign that would have dusted off the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and tried to fashion him anew into a noose for Barack Obama.

But while such a campaign would have been eaten up by many established Obama opponents already bloated with hostility toward him, it would have nauseated most swing voters, who are poised to decide the presidential contest of 2012. Beyond which, these voters have had three and a half years of Obama’s actual presidency, as opposed to his bright promises and others’ dark prophecies, to decide whether he’s a closet black radical, as the advertising campaign would have insinuated, or a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,” which is how it would have described his self-presentation in 2008.

A moment’s pause and a measure of sorely needed levity are in order, to contemplate what a metrosexual Abe Lincoln might look like. Tidier beard, for sure. Better manscaping all in all. Maybe some mole removal. Lose the top hat. Less Potomac, more Provincetown.

(More here.)