Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Obama, Clinton and Sleaze:
Why This Time is Different

You can just hear the right-wing noise machine begin to fire up at the thought of the Obama/Blagojevich nexus. Whitewater! Vince Foster! Oh, thank you God!

Well, we're surely going to have to put up with a few weeks of this. But I don't think it's going to work the same way this time that it did for Clinton and her's why: Clinton looked like sleaze; even though he was totally in the clear on virtually every charge leveled against him (exception: zippers), still --what with the cute smile and the slippery, evasive answers--it always seemed like it might be true.

Politics is, after all, a world where might-be's count for a lot. Gerald Ford tripping over "free Poland" stuck because he seemed dumb as a box of nails; of course he was nothing of the sort. George Bush baffled at the checkout counter was an unfair cop but it looked right. I'm even willing to bet that J. Danforth Quayle is smarter than you would infer from the fact that he can't spell potatoe potato.

I don't know that Obama is going to make a great president, or even a very good one. For all of our sakes, I sure hope he does (and I think he just might). I don't know what his weak spot might be. But whatever he is, he's not Bill Clinton; I think maybe the wingnuts are fighting the last war.

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