Hillary: Between Barack and a Hard Place

First, please pardon my long hiatus from posting - it's been a crazy couple of weeks, but there's been plenty to talk about, so I hope to catch up.

Second, credit my clever wife with the title of this post, which she came up with a couple of weeks ago. But even with Hillary's Ohio and Texas* wins, it still holds. (There's an asterisk next to "Texas" because it now appears that Obama's votes in the caucuses in that state, which came in late, have pretty much negated Hillary's win in the primaries there.)

To wit: Hillary has resumed her argument that Michigan and Florida should count, once again lobbying to change the rules in the second half of the game (Obama should just yell, "Scoreboard! Scoreboard!"). And she's jawboning the superdelegates as well, saying they should vote to reflect how the voters in their states would have voted if they had known then what they know now: "New questions are being raised, new challenges are being put to my opponent. Superdelegates are supposed to take all that information on board and they are supposed to be exercising the judgment that people would have exercised if this information and challenges had been available several months ago." Huh?? (This, of course, assumes that the average voter is exercising judgment when he or she votes anyway.)

In fact, Hillary's such a good lobbyist, I'm beginning to think that's her true calling anyway. She should think about that - she'd get to stay in Washington, and she'd make a lot more money. Of course, she'd miss out on those taxpayer-funded perks and junkets, and on the opportunity to swipe more of the White House china. Plus, she wouldn't get to sit in that big chair in the Oval Office (the one her husband sat in when ... ahhh, never mind).

She has other skills a lobbyist needs, like the ability to connect with her prey - er, audience. When she was stumping in Ft. Worth, Texas, I noticed she dropped her "g's": "... givin' a speech ... missin' in action ... runnin' for the Senate ..." It was reminiscent of when she suddenly developed a Southern accent while speaking at an Alabama church. Or conjured up tears in a coffee shop full of women.

Then, in an Ohio speech (the "g's" were back for this one), the meter and rhythm of her phrasing sounded exactly like Obama's, as though her handlers sat her down and said, "Okay, Hill, people are responding favorably to Obama's speeches, so let's break them down, and see if you can't copy the style ... maybe you'll lull the voters into thinking they're hearing his message."

As for her content, one of her Ohio speeches just before the primary attempted to deflect the idea that she's almost out of the race: "I'm just getting warmed up!" My thought was, "Yeah, just like a Thanksgiving turkey - and before long you'll be 'done'". Even her supporters are copying Obama's campaign. At her victory speech in Ohio, the Hill-raisers were chanting "Yes she will!", echoing the Obama camp's ubiquitous "Yes we can!" cheer. I agree; yes, she will ... do anything, say anything, to get elected.

Now, on to Obama. I recently re-connected with an old friend, one with whom I used to have many a political conversation. He made an excellent point. Noting that Obama boasts of having grown up poor, raised by a single mother and his grandparents, put himself through school, worked hard, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, as it were, became successful, and then shared his success by using his time and talents to help others less fortunate than himself.

My friend's point was that Obama's living proof that the American Way works, and that his story is more reminiscent of the traditional conservative view of providing opportunity and leaving it up to the individual to make the most of it, versus the less conservative view that holds that the government should provide for our needs. If the current system is working for guys like Obama, why all the calls for change?

As for McCain ... I just can't get over the whole Keating Five thing. For those of you that don't recall, Charles Keating, primary owner of a big S&L in Arizona called Lincoln Savings, was doing more shady things than you could shake a stick at back in the S&L crisis days. The regulators began investigating Charlie, who was a big campaign contributor to McCain and four other Congressmen. Said Congressmen called the regulators on the carpet and told them to lay off the investigation. They didn't, Lincoln went belly-up, and Charlie did some time. It's just hard for me to imagine that McCain wouldn't still practice the time-(dis)honored Washington tradition of doing favors for any special interest that greases his palm.

So, what's a voter to do? Close your eyes and push a button. Then go home and cringe.