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Mark Steyn on Hillary
. . . Where did the magic go? Well, the show got miscast. I wrote a decade ago that Hillary was like Margaret Dumont to Bills Groucho Marx. He goes around leering at cocktail waitresses, waggling his eyebrows and his famously unlit cigar. And Hillary would stand there seemingly oblivious to the subpoenaed dress and DNA analysis and all the rest: In double-acts, the best straight men (or women) are the ones who appear never to get the joke, and that was Hillary in the late Nineties, standing on stage alongside Bill night after night with her rictus grin and droning in the robotic cadences of that computerized voice in your car that tells you to fasten your seatbelt that I. Am. So. Proud. Of. My. Husband. And. Our. President. Bill. Clinton.
But you cant recast: You cant put Margaret Dumont in the Groucho role. In their heyday, the Clintons ran a thuggish operation fronted by an ingratiating charmer. Now the charming facades gone, and the backroom thuggery is ineffective. The Clinton campaigns letter to Nancy Pelosi suggesting that she might like to reflect (if you know what we mean) on her call for the super-delegates to support the winner of the popular vote (ie, Obama) was notable not for its menace but for its clumsiness: Few sights are more forlorn than an enforcer who can no longer enforce. The Clinton letter reminded me of Elena Ceausescu still trying to pull the dont-you-know-who-I-am routine even as the firing squad were taking aim.
But on she staggers. Even if she cant win, she can deny victory to Obama, and to her party. As they say in showbusiness, its not important for me to succeed, only for my friends to fail.
Posted by: Mike 2008-03-31 |
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=235624 |
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