I rarely lose sleep over politics, but last night, after the Texas and Ohio primary results were in, I found myself tossing and turning over Hillary's "W" factor. That's Dubayou...not for woman, but for the mentor in mean spirited politics...and his genius band of Wiley and Vicious Negators, she's had over the past eight years.
I know that American's have had to numb-out to go through each day spending billions of dollars on a destructive and deadly war in Iraq when we can't (read aren't) building bridges and schools or providing disease care or all the other basic human needs that aren't being taken care of in the United States of America right now. But how numb are we? Can we really stand by while Hillary Clinton tells Barack Obama with a wistful tone in her voice, as she gently takes his arm, how honored she is to be on stage debating him, at the same time she turns around and drops a canned line like "change you can zerox" or her newest dismissive barb. "I have experience and he has a speech he gave in 2002". She's done vicious, mean, nasty, catty, obnoxious things...that may be par-for-the-course in traditional politics, but haven't we been talking about changing that?
The vast experience she frequently and questionably flaunts includes getting hip to the way back-stabbing, ruthless politics is the ABC's of life in Washington. Is this the kind of experience we can embrace? Do we want our first woman president to succeed because she can seamlessly emerge as one of the "Old Boys" I don't. Sure she's smart, and sure there are questions about Obama and some of his associates. There's dirt to be found on any politician who's ever made it as far as either of these two candidates. That is one reason I'm never running for president. I did inhale, and there are at least 18 other reasons. I have been told by friends who are working on the Obama campaign that they are under strict orders to "not to go negative" at any level.
What a sucker huh? He won't go negative. Well good, let's smash him with innuendo. Let's do all the things we've been criticizing the Bush administration and it's hateful cronies for doing to any perceived "enemy" for years. Lets pick open every scar, every questionable judgment and make a really big deal out of them, out of context if we can. Let's appeal to fear and insecurity and repeat a thousand times that he can't protect us. As if anyone can really protect us.
I'm sad that our first woman candidate for President has felt it necessary to practice "old boy" politics at its meanest and slimiest, and I'm sure I haven't "seen anything yet"; I know it will get worse. I might be accused of holding Hillary to a higher standard of niceness because she's a woman. I think I do, and that's all right because that standard of meanness is ruining the world, and it is time for a change.
Let's not look back too much. Hillary certainly couldn't withstand too much scrutiny. I certainly have some unanswered questions about things I've been hearing about Obama...like what exactly was said about NAFTA, despite his explanation that what happened has been misrepresented. Nobody has a lot of experience "doing right" by American working people. It calls for acts of creative and political genius. Let's let people admit their mistakes in judgment, and hear where they are now, today in moving forward creatively to improve life for the tens of millions of Americans who deserve better as they are suffering in todays economic, social, "health care" and educational quick sand.