Secretary of State Clinton? Much A Doo-Doo About Nothing
If it hasn’t been foreclosed on yet, don’t bet the family ranch that Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State, nor even have a cabinet post in the Obama Administration.
With the long, slow political-junkie orgasm of the presidential campaign fading in the rearview mirror, the ‘Pundints’ now have little to talk about; certainly they don’t find the baffling Bush Boy’s latest incoherence on the economy – “I continue to support the neocon free market policies that caused this horrible financial meltdown!” – worth examining – to do so might remind the audience of how much the Big Media Cognoscenti had to do with leading the lemmings off the cliff; the Palin Reality TV show – “Who Wants to Be a President!” also has its limits – how long before even avid dupes of Little Debbie Shortcake begin wondering why she hauls that baby around to every public appearance and detect that her political ideas are mostly an ungrammatical noun, an opportunistic verb, ‘Nothing’s my fault,’ ‘You betcha!’ and ‘God’s gonna show me the door’?
Even the three undetermined US Senate races don’t hold the BM Short Attention Span long – the vituperation back and forth is good for a brief goose, but those complicated state voting laws! The crashing economy was respectable breathless stand-up fodder for a while – “Melanie Blandstick, reporting from Wall Street, Ground Zero of our money crisis!” – but the pampered Lads and Lasses of the Golden Corporate Microphone are not employed for their intimate knowledge of the financial markets, nor much else, and there are only so many interviews you can do with ill-kempt and boring hustlers from the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, still pushing Milt Friedman’s Cap’n Capitalist Crunch cereal after the product has poisoned the country, and who’s Ayn Rand anyhow – wasn’t she the wife in “Father Knows Best”? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iran? Whoa, dude, you’re bumming my trip!
So, of course, with little they consider ‘real news’ going on, they retreat into their favorite past time – endless speculation based on sketchy evidence, as shouted through a megaphone in the Grand Canyon to insure every Big Media Mouthpiece is regurgitating the same dull incantations.
The latest prime example of this is NBC’s Andrea “Mrs. Greenspan” Mitchell floating an anonymously-sourced story last week that Obama would offer the position of Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, when the only thing that has thus far been confirmed was that Hillary flew to Chicago for a meeting with the President-Elect. For days since, the Punditrocracy has been foaming at the mouth, leaving no entrails unturned in their white-hot desire to tiresomely discuss to death the possibility of Hillary as the top national diplomat.
Using the same superior detective skills that in the past led them to deduce that the 2008 election would be about national security; that Republicans just loved Rudy Giuliani, that McCain would inevitably pick either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as his running mate; that Obama had to choose Hillary Clinton as his Veep or lose the election; that American women would mindlessly flock to the GOP after Sarah Palin’s unveiling; that Obama would have a tough time attracting working class voters in Rust Belt states; and that the Dem presidential ticket would, maybe, possibly, eke out a tiny victory in the Electoral College in a very tight race because, after all, this was basically a conservative nation – in spite of this dismal record of comic prognostication, they forge ahead, this time with the latest vapid gasper of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Lost in most of their circuitous gossip is any sort of common-sense analysis: Why would Hillary give up her powerful senate seat, and an excellent chance to be Senate Majority Leader, to serve as a peripatetic foreign service factotum in Obama’s government? The appointment would also proscribe her from criticizing him should things go sour, thereby tainting her bid for the 2012 nomination. Quick, name the last five Secretaries of State before Condi and look at what has happened to them. I think it’s fair to say the energetic Sen. Clinton doesn’t desire to live out her days lounging in academia, playing golf, or filling space on the board of some think tank or corporation, publishing occasional knotted-brow op-ed pieces in The New York Times.
The Tattlesnake – Was Wrong Edition
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain
In previous editions of The Tattler, some drunken idiot wrote piffle such as:
Well, it did happen, last Monday, and, I confess, the drunken idiot was staring back at me from the mirror this morning. (I am now hunched into a Basil Fawlty ball, hopping around with my head between my hands in disgust with myself.)
In another edition of The Tattler posted here November 18, 2008, “The Tattlesnake – Big Media Hillary Silly Season in Full Swing Edition,” I hilariously typed:
Those were, I felt, valid questions IF Sen. Clinton wanted to be president some day but, since then, I’ve checked with an Anonymous Source Close to the Obama Camp (just like the Mighty NYT!) and gathered some exclusive background that changes the picture considerably.
First off, my A.S.C.O.C. says Hillary doesn’t desire the presidency any longer. She allegedly feels that 2008 was her best shot and she hates ‘mass-market’ retail campaigning. (Hubby Bill is the political animal who loves that glad-handing stuff.) Although she likes talking to people in small groups, the speaking to large gatherings, the endless traveling, the repeated stump speeches, and the sheer exhaustion of running for president turned the fire in her belly into a bad case of dyspepsia that she never wants to experience again.
Secondly, while she liked the Senate, her ability to work on the issues that most animated her — health care, economic justice and children’s rights — was limited, and she supposedly got The Word: even with her national celebrity, there would be no jumping ahead in line – the junior senator from New York would have to wait her turn to become Majority Leader and that could take decades. (Even NY colleague Chuck Schumer is ahead of her in seniority.) Aside from that, the appointment as SoS relieved her of having to campaign for office again, and she and Obama have actually become friends since the summer and work well together. She’s willing to respect his office and policies, so there should be no conflict there, and she’s a popular figure overseas. Her keen intelligence and ability to quickly process new information are a relief to foreign leaders accustomed to dealing with the Bush-bedazzled Condi Rice.
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