The View From Marin County - "Avoiding Dynasties"

(All's well in Marin County, as Bad Hat's aging Chief Political Correspondant pontificates on the situation of the world as we know it.)


Dear Ass Hat,

Okay, here we go with what I was worried about in regard to a Clinton campaign, in short, that there is something of an anti-Clinton industry that has been lurking in a large dark cave for six years, waiting, waiting, patiently for their party to call on them once again. These troglodytes recall, as though it was yesterday, all of the moves that worked so well against the Clintons last time. If you will recall, the Clintons were not only very popular with the African-American community, they were the darlings of an odd collection of Chinese gentlemen in bad suits who seemed to not always have the personal resources to gather the sorts of donations that they were bundling and passing on to the President. In a number of instances they had to try to explain where those funds really came from, although they had not been quite as forthcoming when the donations were made. Oh, and the Clintons had not appeared to be particularly curious about it all, since hey, a buck is a buck, right? Or, as the French so elegantly put it, "Money has no memory" by which they mean that clean money and dirty money both will buy the same amount.

Whatever good or bad you can say about us Americans, we are nowhere near as cynical about government as the French. It is possible, actually, that there is no one on the planet who is more cynical about government and politicians as the French. As proof of that I offer the sudden divorce of President Sarkozy of France, on the grounds that his glamorous wife thinks that being First Lady is "not her style" and oh, by the way, she may be moving to New York to live with her lover. Meanwhile there is a national strike of transportation workers and talk of barricades. They loved Sarkozy last spring, now they realize he is just another right wing creep, and to cap it off, his wife has decided that also.

On second thought, the French aren't cynical, they are fast learners. Can you imagine how different our country would be if Laura had made a similar decision a half year into President Bush's first term of office? One woman could have changed history. But I digress...

Here we go again. More donations from dodgy Chinese donors. Been there, done that. You would think, with as much money as they have coming in, that the Clinton campaign would be very careful about accepting maxed out donations from people who live in poor neighbors and have Chinese surnames. It is not a question as to IF the campaign is going to get called on it, so much as when and by who:

I spoke the other day with a bright and really well-connected Republican lady who worked in the CIA for many years, then was in the Clinton White House as a part of an agency. She said several things (a) she found Hillary Clinton a dreadful person to work around, and (b) she thought that she may have been one of the few people that the President did not hit on. I felt that I was hearing the opening lines of the 2008 campaign, if Hillary is nominated. It was the same old soap opera, with a side of terrorist threat.

I am no fan of Hillary Clinton because I am a believer in avoiding dynasties. Second acts in political families rarely live up to the accomplishments of the first act. It is statistical nonsense to think that in a country of three hundred million the best candidate would be the spouse or son of a former President. And then there is that Clinton-bashing industry. They are already up to speed on the Clintons, so why make it easy for them? The GOP will be gunning for whoever the Democrats nominate. The Republican lady passed along a terrible story of John Edwards' affair with a blonde cinematographer who made some web shorts for his campaign. The story appeared in the National Enquirer, but she commented on how quickly the story had been dropped, which she found "highly suspicious". Or else everyone found out it was nonsense and backed away from it.

I assume that Edwards is not that dumb, but this apparently will be the story line of the Get Edwards effort: he was having an affair with a blonde filmmaker while his poor wife sat at home dying of cancer. Oh, that brute, that cad! The French would probably elect him by acclaim for being that much of a hound, but we are not French, are we? Part of the story is that Elizabeth Edward's cancer is far, far worse than the Edwards are letting on and she is likely to die soon, at which point John Edwards will run away with the blonde cinematographer... who has a website on which she paints herself as a nut case. If Edwards was dumb enough get involved with her, he does not deserve to be elected dogcatcher, but I'm not buying it. But this is the sort of mudslinging we will be in for, so get ready. The Republican approach is to sling as much mud as possible, in the belief that at least some of it will stick in the minds of voters. It has worked for them in the past, it is not working so well this campaign cycle because everyone is sick of them and they keep getting caught doing creepy and corrupt things. Actual events tend to trump unsubstantiated rumor.

In other news this week the Iraqi government told us that they will not permit the United States to keep permanent military bases in their country. I can't quote the exact language, but what the Vice President said (I am not making this up) was something close to, "No way, no, a big fat no, N, O, no". And after all that we've done to them! What an ungrateful people those ignorant Iraqis are! Can you imagine how much the US has wasted in building mega-bases that we now can't use? When those bases are given back to the Iraqis there will be a flood of journalists to photograph and catalog what the US had started to build, and was forced to abandon. It will not be pretty. Or else we will have to overthrow the Iraqi government and install one which is more sympathetic to us. Or, maybe instead we should just attack Iran in order to clean their dirty holocaust-denying clocks and scare the Iraqis into obedience at the same time. Hey, that would work, right? What? The Joint Chiefs think it is a dumb idea? Oh phooey.

As Representative Pete Stark said this week, "This President just likes to blow things up".

Arthur