My Own Private Hillary (Mary Lyon) - Democratic Underground

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Wed Feb-27-08 10:02 AM
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My Own Private Hillary (Mary Lyon)

by Mary Lyon, From The Left -- World News Trust

This campaign has me feeling as though I'm totally schitzo. I'm a two-headed monster. No -- double that. It's not merely Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting on my shoulders, battling each other for my head, my heart, and my vote. There's also a second war raging within my own head and heart. It's me versus me, and I'm guessing Hillary is struggling with much the same conflict. It's tearing her campaign and her public persona from stem to stern, and it's leaving me feeling as overloaded as the Coen brothers at the end of Oscar night.

Hillary Clinton doesn't seem able to decide which Hillary she wants to be. Neither do I -- about her or about myself. The media in the last few weeks has covered her mainly from the "can this campaign be saved" standpoint. What should she do to reverse what appears to be an increasingly inevitable pro-Obama trend? Should she go negative or positive? Swords or olive branches? In one venue she's reaching out to shake his hand, noting how honored she is to share the stage with him. In another she's shaking a fistful of papers at him like some strident school-marm and hollering "shame on you, Barack Obama!" As of the Democratic Debate in Cleveland, Ms. Congeniality returns, with measured arguments and renewed gentility. He's consistent. She's up and down and sideways. It's making me a bit seasick.

I don't know which way to go, either, Madame Senator. I think I can sense that fire roaring in your gut, the indignation over what you've witnessed over the past seven-and-some miserable years. The progress you and your husband achieved amid great adversity during his presidency has been turned on its head by the arrogant, deceitful wrecking crew that stampeded in after the two of you left the White House. And now, you're seeing the Invincibility Cloak you wore a year ago rendered thread-bare. I can guess how earnestly you believe that you have the ultimate skills to bring to the ultimate job, and how you yearn to contribute them. You genuinely want to do good. It must be awfully hard to take the high road, especially when so many of those surrounding you must be telling you to go scorched-earth. Most of the time any more, I want to go that way, too. To borrow from your spouse -- I feel your pain.

What the battering of the Bush regime has left me with is a deep, roiling anger. It actually goes farther back than that. I've watched since the Reagan era as the Republican juggernaut has gained momentum and gradually shifted the tectonic plates of American politics for the worse. We've been shoved, as a nation, farther toward the strident, the negative, the combative, the hostile, the regressive, the in-yer-face. Perhaps that's why Hillary's fiery campaign persona seems to be so off-putting. Maybe in a small way it's symptomatic of what ails our nation on a larger scale. As a liberal, the viewpoint I hold so dear has been painted with poison, demonized and marginalized -- for far too long by now. Newt Gingrich's little book of words and phrases that he handed out to all his GOPAC pals during the '80's in order to win the language wars and manipulate public perception has done its job alright. It's gone way beyond vilifying my political party to the point of repackaging ME, too, as a bad guy. Gingrich and his friends didn't have me in mind, certainly, but the effect has been the same. I've watched the devolution, and I've taken it very personally.

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