Losing after winning
Didn’t a bunch of us do whatever we could to help Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton? I distinctly remember the California state party conventions; and watching Phil Donahue’s movie about the returning vet who fought in her war and who now can’t walk, think straight, or get an erection, and intercut into that movie scenes of Hillary so passionately advocating for that war; and my making phone calls and sending emails and sending money for Obama; and noting here and everywhere that her “experience” equals the following accomplishments: 1. holding months of secretive, Cheney-like meetings about health care, leading to a cumbersome and unintelligible mandated health-care system that no one could understand and that had few supporters, and which failed, 2. getting elected senator from New York off the strength of her husband’s name, 3. running a badly managed campaign for President, in the process lying about her accomplishments and flying through untold millions of dollars with ultimately nothing to show for it — except her new position as Secretary of State.
Say what you will about her, she’s got tenacity.
But diplomacy? Uh uh.
As for Obama, perhaps he’s taking his own comparisons to Lincoln, with reference to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” too seriously. Lincoln populated his Cabinet with former rivals; soon to be seated at Obama’s table: Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Richardson. (To quote Meat Loaf, two out of three ain’t bad.) Who will head up NASA? Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO, so maybe him.
Even after wanting so desperately for her not to be president, I like to think that Hillary Clinton will rise to the occasion and somehow show unsignaled strength in diplomacy and judgment. But at the moment, this feels like losing a presidential election after winning. One potential out to all this: There’s still a full seven weeks left for Bush/Cheney to devise some method of staying in power. Maybe Cheney’s nighttime rereading (and rewriting) of the Constitution has led him to decide that because he’s not part of the executive branch, he’s got no obligation to leave.