Today is the last day of primaries in the Democratic contest for the presidential nomination, and it looks like Hillary will be out of that contest this week. It is possible that she will stay in formally in order to be able to challenge the Michigan and Florida apportionment of delegates, but whether she gets out or stays in, the reason would be the same — trying to configure the circumstances in such a way that she is asked to be the vice-presidential candidate, an offer she would take in a New York minute.
On a political level, Obama would be ill-served by such a choice. It would not be a combining of their respective strengths, but rather a pooling of their negatives. It is hard to imagine Hillary delivering to Obama any state that isn’t already his, and it is very easy to see them each losing various states for the other one.
On a personal level, “personal” here referring to the interests of Douglas Wilson, Obama would be ill-served by such a choice. I have had it with Hillary and would like her to go away now. Popping up in an occasional news cycle as the senator from New York, with high entertainment values when delivered in small doses, kind of like Henry Waxman does now, would be all right with me. But her cackle laugh on the news every evening would not be good for my sanctification.
On a personal level, “personal” here referring to the interests of Obama, his wife, and his two little girls, my counsel would be against it. The reaction of Michelle should be something like, “Let me think about it, no.” Does anybody think it would be a good idea to put someone with such cavernous ambition in a position where the only thing between Hillary and the most powerful office in the world would be Obama’s continued good health and/or reputation? I’ll bet that Michelle has seen a bunch of those videos that were floating around in the Clinton years — concerning Vince Foster, Ron Brown, and a number of late others. And Michelle need not make any specific allegations or accusations to simply behave like an insurance company here and say that she doesn’t like the statistics and risk factors.
But this brings me to the main point I wanted to make today. The idolatries of partisan politics are nowhere plainer than on subjects like this. American politics isn’t beanbag, and never has been. Assassinations have figured largely in our history, and skullduggery, depending on the congressional district, has been an art form. If American politics is a democratic religion for you, then there are a lot of shabby surprises waiting for you in any study of the underside of American politics.
While the scandal is hot, use of it divides along partisan lines. “Of course, and of course not.” Then, when all the principals get old and die, and the scandal starts to morph out of current events and into history, it gets safer and safer to state the obvious. Who takes up sides anymore on the Teapot Dome scandal? Who might lose a teaching position at a major university for saying the wrong thing about it? The next most likely candidate for this kind of morphing is the real story behind the assassination of JFK — now that Lady Bird Johnson has passed away. Just a prediction based on a hunch. Watch for some major books on the subject in the next few years.
During the Clinton years, there was nothing that conservatives were not willing to entertain as evidence of a murderous conspiracy on the part of the gummint. And the liberals would say, “The idea . . . how dare you insinuate that our elected servants . . .?” You name it — Waco, Oklahoma City, Foster, Brown — it was all out there. Then Bush got elected, and there was nothing that liberals were not prepared to believe him capable of, up to and including the deliberate murder of 3,000 Americans in the attack on the World Trade Towers. And the conservatives would say, “The idea . . . how dare you insinuate, etc.”
As I have pointed out before, conservatives pound on Jeremiah Wright for saying that the government kills black people this way, when all conservatives know that the actual government policy is to kill black people that way. Now Wright may be a nutjob for saying that Bush personally mans the death ray in the White House basement, the one that is killing all these black people, but Wright is not outlandish for maintaining that our government is capable of killing off black people. He is a kook because of the tactics he insists are being employed. But he is not a kook for maintaining what everybody really knows, and would have to admit if the question were posed the right way. If two men are arguing about what price a hooker charges, one maintaining that she charges by the hour and the other that she charges by the evening, the debate is not about her character.
If Obama is elected president, it will be amusing in excelsis to watch everybody switch again. The conservatives who waxed indignant during the Bush years over any allegation of any conspiratorial perfidy whatever will all of a sudden be fully prepared to believe anything again. And leftists of various stripes who have been thundering prophetic jeremiads will all line up in a row, like so many baa-lambs. Just watch. Want to get the liberals to shut up about the dangers of American empire? Vote Obama.