Hillary Contra Obama – In Five Acts (unabridged version)

March 5th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest

Hillary Contra Obama – In Five Acts
Act I, Scene I: Enter Clinton, stage right, wearing coronation robes—grand, radiant, inevitable. In the beginning the thought of not winning no more occurs to her than the thought of being a peasant occurs to a queen. The audience knows as soon as she walks onto stage how brittle these great expectations can be—that she’s set up for a fall, that the tragic seed of the unraveling exists in the rigidity of the expectations. When there is just the slightest hint of resistance to these expectations, things do indeed begin to unravel.

Act I, Scene II: Clinton, early morning on the misty battlefield—she has turned in her robes for armor. After the near-coronation, Clinton will show us that she can fight for what is rightfully hers. And so she lets loose the dogs of war.

Obama is variously a drug dealer, ambitious kindergartener, pro-lifer, naïf, Reaganite, fairytale, niche candidate for African Americans, entertaining rhetorician incapable of real work, assistant slumlord, turban-wearing foreigner, and plagiarist. Minor policy differences on healthcare are turned into bitter feuds. She sets up a “fact hub” website that is largely a series of shrill, petty, and often questionable accusations—“Only the Obama Campaign is Encouraging Out-of-Staters to Caucus in Iowa”; “Sen. Obama Rewrites History, Claims He Hasn’t Been Planning White House Run”; “Sen. Obama Falsely Claims Hillary Called For A ‘Reality Check’ On What the Nation Could Accomplish.”

Finally, there is the campaign’s primary theme: Obama is without substance. The election is about “talk versus action” and “actions speak louder than words.”

Act II: Clinton, soothsayer and scold, Tiresias to our Oedipus. The fundamental premise of her campaign narrative has now undergone a natural decomposition from inevitability into deflationary righteousness. As the more “experienced” candidate, it is obvious that she is the best candidate, and everyone knows it. Even Obama enthusiasts acknowledge this in their heart of hearts—they just have to be reminded of it. She must ward us off our instincts the way bourgeois parents discourage their children from becoming artists, to protect them from themselves. She is the cautionary realist to the idealists, asking us in an aside, a rare moment of comic relief, “can we just have a sort of a reality break for a minute?” We are reminded of the stakes, the “stark choice.” We need to “get real”; “we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.” The world is a dangerous place after 9/11, and terrorists could be emboldened by the softer candidate— we need someone who is “ready to be commander in chief” “on day one.”

Because de facto inevitability has degenerated into doomsday prophecy, the campaign’s narrative never advances beyond its initial reversal—positivity has become its glaring lacuna. Clinton fails to advance arguments in her favor beyond the claim that the election is an obvious choice between experience and charisma, action and words.

Act III: Hillary, dawn, in nun’s garb, exhausted and beleaguered. Here the focus is on the delusion of Obama’s supporters. It begins with linguistic passivity—a way of indicating objective detachment, as if Clinton had no stake in the election beyond her fear for our safety. “So I think we have to be very, very clear,” “this is about a decision”; “I think it’s fair to say that really the most important decision is who would be the best president on day one.”

And here the campaign narrative really becomes a meta-narrative: it’s not about differences between her and Obama, because that question is a settled component of the theme of inevitability. The meta-narrative is about why voters are being swayed by words rather than deeds, why they are not making their decision in the manner of a human resources department, why they are deluded. A preference for Obama can be interpreted only as voter ignorance or as a failure to appreciate her substance: “I know there are comparisons and contrasts to be drawn between us, and I think it’s important that voters receive that information”; “we won’t achieve unity or fulfill our dreams by running away from honest discussion and debate.”

But above all the interruption of her inevitability is result of unfairness—not everyone is being “held to the same standards,” “held accountable.” The appeal to unfairness becomes a plea: “we’re asking [you] to compare our years of service,” “that is all we’re asking.” Her plea comes apparently only from a sense of what is good for us, as bitter a pill as it might seem to swallow: “Because it’s not just about my opponent and myself, this election is about you.” The communication of self-pity and martyrdom reaches its peak: “maybe because I understand how difficult this job will be and how lonely it is in the Oval Office”; “some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some us know what we will do on day one and some of us haven’t thought it through enough.”

Act IV: Clinton, the day after, in the garb of a mechanic. Now the attack on rhetoric is enhanced: words are opposed to work: “Others might be joining a movement. I’m joining you on the night shift, on the day shift and I’m asking you to join me to shift America into high gear again.” The election is about “picking a president who relies not just on words but on work, on hard work.” Clinton is “in the solutions business.”

Here are the ideas behind this rhetorical disaster (night shift, gear shift, etc.): first, that because Obama is achieving his victory rhetorically, he is achieving it effortlessly, and so undeservedly. The second is that Obama’s entire career must reflect this effortlessness: he hasn’t gotten where he is with hard work. The third is that his presidency will be the same: Obama won’t be a hard worker.

Act V, Scene I: Enter Lady Clinton, sleepwalking with a taper, unhinged. After all these tactics fail, there is a final meltdown, in which a schizophrenic collage of all these themes is yawped ever louder. First there is the incongruent juxtaposition of conciliation and attack—she is “honored” to be on the same stage as Obama and yet his campaign is about “change you can xerox.”

Then there is a reversion to self-pity and martyrdom—the “hits” she’s taken are nothing to the travails of ordinary people, and by implication to the hits that they will take if she is not elected president. Obama’s campaign uses “tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook.” The scolding reaches a shrill crescendo: “shame on you Barack Obama.”

Finally, the condescension to Obama supporters over their delusion becomes anger and outright mockery: “let’s have a real campaign; enough with the speeches and big rallies”; “maybe I’ve just lived a little long … you are not just going to wave a magic wand … I could stand up here and say, let’s get everybody together, let’s get unified; the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect.”

Act V, Scene II: A cave. A boulder has been moved to reveal its mouth. It is empty.