Strange dream in a strange town
I’m staying at a hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf with my family through Sunday. San Francisco, being very San Francisco, always gives me strange and interesting dreams. Last night before finally turning in I was reading an appreciation of Timothy Geithner in The New Yorker; I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the main thrust is that Geithner and the Obama administration took the right steps in saving the U.S. economy — and are now paying the price for it. Says Geithner: “We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public.” This gives succor to my fear that Tea Party bottom feeders are going to get elected in November.
In my dream, I’m at a State Department function having a discussion with a senior official. I’m telling her that I supported Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary not just because I liked him and his views, but because I couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton. “She was running on experience. But what experience did she have?” I asked. “Not much more than he did in the Senate. Before that? First Lady.” Then I went on to say that on top of that, I just didn’t like her: she seemed brittle and humorless and overproduced and, worst of all, entitled — as though this presidency thing was supposed to be hers, and who was this guy to try to steal it away? Then I went on to tell this state department official that I had to give Clinton credit, though, because she was proving to be a good Secretary of State. But wasn’t getting much credit for her accomplishments. (You see the tie-in with the article I was reading before bed.) She smiled and nodded and then I woke up. And then I realized two things:
- That this hadn’t really happened — it was just a dream.
- That the woman in my dream had been Hillary Clinton.
Here’s my feeling when you’re in one of the most glorious cities in the country and you’ve been having a dream about Hillary Clinton: It’s time to get up and get out into the day. So that’s what I did.