Craziness

The Cheney/Bush government announced that it has promised to provide Saudi Arabia with enriched uranium, thereby giving the prospect of nuclear proliferation a major boost. At the same time, it has stepped up its saber rattling towards Iran – targeting its (perfectly legal) uranium enrichment program. It bears mention that the semi-feudal, obscenely rich Saudi state rules over a land awash in terrorists of the kind the Cheney/Bush government ostensibly opposes – to the point of waging “war” against them (or their methods; that part has never been clear). Saudi Arabia was the birthplace of most of the 9/11 terrorists and, of course, Osama Bin Laden. Meanwhile, Iran has not initiated wars against its neighbors in centuries, and none of the 9/11 terrorists came from there. Moreover, there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear program under way; quite the contrary, there is good reason to think that it does not. The real question is why it doesn’t, since Iran’s need for a nuclear deterrent is genuine -- being surrounded by unfriendly and overtly hostile nuclear powers: India, Pakistan, Russia, Israel and, of course, the United States.

No awareness of this craziness registers in the public remarks of Barack Obama or, needless to say, Hillary Clinton. Clinton, especially, salivates at the thought of war with Iran, much like John McCain, her alter ego. But then what would one expect of a Democrat more than usually intent on winning the hearts --and wallets -- of the Israel lobby?

This is all the more reason why it is also crazy, at this point, for anyone not in the thrall of Obamaniac illusions, to applaud the nauseating niceness Obama and his supporters are lavishing upon the Clintons. The Obama campaign’s position is at least understandable. Recent primaries, especially those in West Virginia and Kentucky, show that racist attitudes are still virulent enough to spell trouble for their candidate in November, at least in some parts of the country. But why would anyone not militating for Obama also heap praise on that wretched family? No doubt, there are Hillary enthusiasts out there who can make trouble and must be appeased. But most of the pundits who shape what passes for public discourse in this country have never liked the Clintons very much. Why do they find Hillary’s unwillingness to throw in the towel so admirable? Here is a particularly ludicrous illustration from the May 20th Washington Post. To be sure, Richard Cohen is a silly man and a dreadfully inept “thinker.” But swooning over Hillary’s “toughness” is over the top, even for him. Hillary is not tough in any admirable sense of the term; she’s childishly obstinate. Perhaps she appeals most to the elderly, but her staying in the race at this point is infantile. A Freudian might well deem her behavior borderline narcissistic.

More serious pundits than Cohen – Tim Russert, for example, during the coverage of the election results from Kentucky and Oregon on MSNBC – claim that the Clintons are “positioning” Hillary for something, they know not what. It has even been suggested that she could be the next Ted Kennedy – a liberal “icon” in the Senate. That’s crazy too. Kennedys are glamorous and tragic figures; Clintons are sleazy. Kennedys, Ted anyway, genuinely are liberals; the Clintons, Hillary and Bill, are rank opportunists. The tragedy is that Bill Clinton will never be brought to justice for his actionable offenses – his crimes against the peace and against humanity in Iraq, Yugoslavia and elsewhere – and that the Clinton family will never be made to pay for the political harms it has done. How much “credit” Hillary can take for completing the “Reagan Revolution” and preparing the way for George W. Bush is debatable, but it is beyond doubt that she set the cause of universal health care coverage back a generation, while permanently marginalizing the eminently sound idea of single payer, not for profit, health insurance.

Therefore, lets do what we can to quash the niceness. Lets do what we must to get the Clintons out of our public life. That would not nearly suffice to do Clintonism in, but it would be a start. Were it somehow to happen, the Clintons would no doubt spend the rest of their lives enriching themselves, rather than wallowing in the infamy they deserve. It’s a galling thought. But it would be a small price to pay for seeing the backs of them.

The Wrecker

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton will win big tonight in Kentucky and Barack Obama will win well enough in Oregon to assure him a majority of pledged delegates. By all accounts, the Clintons will then just keep on going – through the three remaining primaries (Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico) and maybe beyond – not for any principled political reason (unless accommodating second wave feminists counts as a principle), but for their own psychological reasons, reasons of no interest to anyone except perhaps themselves.

Richard Nixon’s historical criminality, like his own inner torment, had a certain Shakespearean quality. He was a great villain. Bill Clinton’s villainy – in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia and elsewhere – was considerable but only a pale approximation of Nixon’s. He is a much less interesting figure too: not tragic, not sublimely evil – just base and petulant. His wife follows in the mold, maybe even ratcheting up her husband’s petulance and certainly his baseness. She’s more tiresome too. The world, the country, and especially the Democratic Party would be well done with both of them. Unfortunately, that won’t happen any time soon. Even as her campaign crashes, Hillary will still be the Senator from New York, and Bill will still be the money machine he’s turned into thanks to his political “friends.” Barack Obama, like other Clintonized Democrats, is hell bent on “appeasing” that dreadful family. No chance, therefore, that their party will turn on them, even to the extent that, to its everlasting shame, it has turned on Jimmy Carter for daring to state the obvious about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Liberal Democrats are a sorry lot. When Ralph Nader campaigned for progressive but not especially radical policies – for what was essentially an up-dated New Deal style program – they fell on him tooth and nail. They are still after him; trying now, as much as in 2000, to stifle his and other progressive voices. Their methods haven’t changed: they concoct legal obstacles to ballot access, then they see to it that the media ignores their candidacies. If that fails, as it did to some extent in 2000, they move into full-scale attack mode, hauling out their biggest liberal guns. With Obama, unlike Al Gore, fooling many of the people all of the time, they’ll probably not need to go that far this year. But even as they recognize how utterly hopeless and harmful the Clintons’ quest for personal power has become, they will continue to cut that family all the slack in the world. Hillary is a wrecker, something Nader never was. Nevertheless, should the Democrats somehow manage to lose this year, he, along with other genuine progressives, will be blamed for wrecking --and she wont. This column, by Eric Alterman, The Nation’s most Clintonian commentator illustrates the phenomenon perspicuously. It should be remembered that Alterman was among the most dedicated of the liberal Nader baiters.