Hillary Clinton on assassination and why do we run for President this way?

I'm going to take a break from your regularly scheduled banal blog posting and take a point of personal privilege to talk about politics for a moment.


As people bicker over whether she is really contemplating Obama’s death as justification for continuing in the race or whether the analogies were historically accurate, I’m going to propose a different theory. She initially made the statement way back in March when Mark Penn still held full sway over the campaign and every soundbite was triangulated and tested and polled. I suspect that they first trotted out this analogy for two reasons - both to argue that the nomination has lasted through June before and to plant the question in the minds of super delegates as to whether they really want to endorse a candidate who just might be killed before the convention.

Since she used the analogy twice afterwards but eliminated the assassination reference, my suspicion is that within the campaign they decided it wasn’t the right message, or it didn’t end up testing well or it was too risky to use more than once. But now months later she’s exhausted, she’s answering the same questions for the hundredth time and the first message came out of her mouth. Not with malice aforethought, not as an indication that her soul is dark and contemplating all of the possibilities, but as an honest mistaken reference back to the Kennedy analogy that for whatever reason had previously been abandoned.

Which brings me to my larger question which is why do we tolerate politics the way it’s run today? Because when you get down the question she was asked about why people want her to quit the race, her basic response was that she didn’t know, she finds it curious, she doesn’t understand, blah blah blah, keep talking, say stupid thing, blah blah blah. But none of it is the truth. She knows exactly why people want her to get out of the race and she doesn’t find it curious, she just disagrees. She can’t say that though because for some reason, we don’t tolerate the truth in politics today.

Take Obama’s response as another example - he takes her at her word that she meant no offense, he’s not bothered by it, move on. None of that is the truth either. He knows exactly why she said it, I guarantee that if he’s not bothered by it, his wife sure is, and you can bet that there were a few moments of glee in the Obama headquarters when they realized how much damage this story was going to do to her campaign. But he can’t say any of that either.

When you take a good look at what any of the candidates are saying on any given day, it’s clear that they aren’t saying much of anything they actually believe. When Senator McCain sarcastically says he admires what Senator Obama has accomplished for being such a young man, what he really means is that he can’t stand the guy and yes, the dislike is very personal. Why can’t he just say that, that in their personal dealings, he found him untrustworthy and not genuine and that’s his honest opinion. Why pretend affinity that doesn’t exist?

I know this is the way politics has always been played but with the 24 news media and the pundit class, somehow it seems all the worse because now we have an entire industry that exists for nothing more than to blather and analyze the nonsense that comes out of the candidates’ mouths. In the meantime, there are actually really important issues that will affect all of us that no one seems to have any interest in talking about. Maybe they’ll get around to those issues when the election is over.