Here’s an item for Guinness World Records: After what seemed like 1,001 Democratic primary debates, and all the time she spent with him in Senate meetings and caucuses and fundraisers and the Green Rooms of countless television studios, Hillary Rodham Clinton could not come up with one -- not one! -- anecdote to commend Barack Obama to the American people. Instead, she said that Obama, like she, supports health care.
Then, of course, he notices that he might be, um, wrong. . .
Okay, more than health care. He wants to “rebuild the middle class” and “promote a clean energy economy” and fight for equality, “from ending discrimination to promoting unionization” -- a phrase that future generation will no doubt quote -- and "help every child live up to his or her God-given potential” and, of course, get the troops out of Iraq. But about the man himself, she was silent.
The last sentence is really dumb. Really, really dumb. Of course, Richard Cohen is really dumb, as he proves as we continue . . .
This is not an insignificant omission, like the failure to mention Obama’s support for nuclear non-proliferation and the stand he has taken on ethanol. Most sentient members of the human race are by now pretty familiar with Obama’s ideology and his political positions, even when his positions are all over the place. We know, too, that he was against the war and that Clinton was initially for it, but that she had since reversed herself -- but not apologized -- and that they would now both pull the troops as quickly and as prudently as possible.
But we still have not taken the measure of Obama: What sort of man is he? He is famously the man from everywhere, which means nowhere. He has a great and moving personal story, but he seems to withhold something -- to not need you as much as you need him. This is the essence of charisma: a cold love that goes only one way.
This is unbearably stupid. Really really bad. Please send Cohen somewhere where he has no access to a typewriter or computer.
Ugh.
