A Tale of Two Op-Eds
In today’s New York Times, Caroline Kennedy writes an op-ed in favor of Obama, and Frank Rich writes a highly critical op-ed of “Billary”. Kennedy likens an Obama presidency to that of her father’s, and she makes a strong case that a President’s job is to first and foremost inspire, rather than run the tangled bureaucracy of the federal government. There’s something intangible about Obama that can be sensed but not described, and Kennedy comes the closest to putting those qualities into words.
Rich devotes the first half of his column to Bill Clinton’s supposed maniacal tirades from this past week. He falls into a trap that all members of the mainstream media have fallen into: the notion that people really care if Bill Clinton gets a bit ornery when defending his wife, or that he may have had some Arabs help fund his presidential library. The truth is such things are really a media creation (prodded on by the right-wing media in Drudge and Fox News).
But Rich does bring up a few good points towards the end of his column. He points out, very correctly, that Hillary (and Bill) are and will be a media obsession if Hillary is the nominee. Claims that “Hillary has been vetted” are not actually true. Bill is not going to fade from the spotlight any time soon. And because of that, the right-wing media, and thus the mainstream media, will spend all their time guilty of the same red-faced, half-truthed ranting against Billary that Bill Clinton is currently being accused of. The media just can’t help itself.
It’ll be awful for our politics, and by extension, our country. We simply can’t fight the same tired, fruitless political battles of the 90’s and this decade so far. It has resulted in an absolute mess. Obama offers us an escape from all of that. Joe Biden was right: Obama’s the candidate who’s clean.
