Do the six weeks between the Mississippi and Pennsylvania primaries feel like the longest forty days since Jesus wandered into the Judean wilderness, or is it just me? Who's responsible for the scheduling around here? March 11 to April 22? That is simply too much time for these two candidates to fill without resorting to potshots, flights of fancy, and name-calling. Our primary system isn't set up to handle this much downtime. We need a caucus or primary every ten days -- two weeks, tops -- to blow off the steam built up by the media's micro-coverage of the hand-to-hand combat between the campaigns.
Let's face it. The journey from Mississippi to Pennsylvania (with the sole exception of Obama's reluctant speech on race in Philadelphia) hasn't been kind to either candidate's image. It's turned into a political Bataan Death March, a battle of attrition as Barack and Hillary trade weary haymakers and ineffective counter-punches.
Clinton's multiple recollections of her landing in Tuzla, Bosnia after evasive maneuvers, and their subsequent scramble to avoid sniper fire on the tarmac, are not supported by video evidence. Millions have now watched her accepting flowers and strolling among the assembled honorary troops when she was supposed to be running for safety.
How far does Hillary think she has to go with this tough-enough-to-be-commander-in-chief facade? She clearly voted to authorize a war she didn't believe in as a cynical attempt to raise her perceived testosterone level for an upcoming run at the presidency. She continues to align herself with McCain as the only two candidates who have somehow cleared the ready-to-lead bar. Now this fiasco. The scary thing is, I'm not sure she doesn't believe her story. I'm afraid she sees herself as some sort of Robert Duvall figure, a Lieutenant Colonel Billory Kilgore in a pantsuit, standing tall on the tarmac, hands on hips, while those around her duck and cover, bullets whizzing every which way, as she gazes out towards the snow-capped hills surrounding the city and barks, "Charlie don't ski!"
Then there's the embarrassment of watching her cast moral judgement upon Obama for his sticking by Rev. Wright as his pastor and the man who introduced him to Christianity. Man, if there's ever been a pot living in a glass house while calling the kettle black. Who has she been hanging out with for the past thirty-seven years? I keep expecting Michelle Obama, never one to bite her tongue, to reference Paula Jones and Marilyn Jo Jenkins and Monica Lewinsky et al, and reply to Hillary's, "He would not have been my pastor," comment with, "Well, he would not have been my husband." But I guess some folks understand that certain relationships are none of their business.
Obama hasn't come through this unmarked, himself. There was a certain amount of disingenuity to the way he approached the Wright controversy. He insisted that he hadn't actually ever been in a Trinity United pew when Wright delivered any of his incendiary sermons. Only as it became increasing likely that evidence to the contrary would surface did he relent and admit that, yes, he had been present for some of Wright's controversial remarks. To his credit, he then defended the body of Wright's work and deftly turned the controversy into an opportunity to address race in the big picture, but it had to be a tad deflating to the true believers, nonetheless. He could have gotten out in front of it earlier (like when he announced his candidacy). What, he didn't see this coming? Hard to believe.
And, oh yes, almost forgotten but not gone is poor John McCain. He's spent the intermission trolling around aimlessly, like a barracuda in an empty swimming pool, looking for someone to bite. His handlers don't want him wasting any good ammunition on either Democrat right now. He couldn't do anywhere near the damage they're managing themselves. Absent a foe, he's reduced to discussing policy. Some of which, unavoidably, is domestic. And which includes, most unfortunately for McCain, the economy. A subject he has readily admitted he doesn't understand.
His confusion sometimes leaves him at odds with himself. This week, Obama and Clinton both released their plans to deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Both favor government rescue plans for homeowners that would cost in the neighborhood of $30 billion. McCain's pull-his-cord-and-hear-him-talk reaction was, predictably, "it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who acted irresponsibly." Right. Take personal responsibility, let the markets decide, et cetera, et cetera. Yet, he's firmly behind the Fed's decision to lend Wall Street firms, hip-deep in guano as their high-risk pigeons come home to roost, up to $400 billion at bargain basement rates to bail them out after they've created this mess. Classic supply-side reasoning.
McCain's trouble is, he's not Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan's peculiar genius that he could get up in front of an audience of regular Americans, the middle-class and even the poor , be it in a church parking lot or on national television, look them in the eye and sell them on his "it's morning in America" fantasy. That everyone who was willing to work hard was going to wind up rich. It's what kept him in office for eight years -- people voting against their own economic interests.
Well, I don't think McCain can pull that off. Times are rough and they're about to get a whole lot rougher. He's going to have to come up with more than Bush's tax cuts to defeat either Clinton or Obama.
Unless they finish each other off in Pennsylvania. Twenty-five more days. Jesus.
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