Thursday, March 06, 2008

Reliving The Clinton Fatigue

Andrew Sullivan has a post on his blog that goes a long way to explaining part of my sense of exhaustion and near revulsion at the thought of another Clinton term in the White House. The situation of the country is too dire on a number of fronts to have citical time, effort and political capital - to the entent Hillary would have any - eaten up with the endless drama that is part and parcel with Bill and Hillary Clinton. I can't say it any better. Here are highlights from Andrew's post (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/reliving-the-ps.html):
It's Bush-Cheney all over again, but less disciplined, more narcissistic, more cynical. And this campaign, in retrospect, has exhibited all these patterns. The press is marveling at the Clintons' near-death political experiences in this campaign. Doesn't it all feel creepily familiar? It's funny, isn't it, how these two characters, long steeped in politics as a way of life, still manage to create psychodramas on a regular basis.
At the core of this is their totally dysfunctional relationship. We - even those like me who really do believe in the privacy of public figures - learned over eight years that you cannot ignore this dynamic, because they have put it into the center of the public square. That is why you can confidently predict that the marital dramas will not be over either. If you think there is not another sex scandal to drop, to create another psychodrama, you are a more hopeful person than I am. The Clinton pattern is to gain some momentum in the polls or the campaign before triggering such a scandal themselves. As soon as they feel success in their wings, they self-sabotage, because they need that kind of drama to have meaning. And the story is so compelling to by-standers - we are all rubber-neckers in the face of the car wreck that is the Clintons' story - that we will be yanked around indefinitely by this crap. I can't believe we are flirting with going through all this again and again and again.

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