You know, it occurred to me yesterday that, if Clinton does ultimately lose this nomination, it can be chalked up to the fact that we don’t really have any kind of storyline about her in our heads. Almost all successful candidates and parties manage to craft a storyline, for instance here’s an exaggerated version of John McCain and Barack Obama’s storylines that we all know on some level.
In 1839, John Sidney McCain was born in the Panama canal with rifle in hand not by a Caesarian section, by a McCainian section. He spent the ensuing century in a POW camp, where he died for our sins, and was awarded a senate seat for doing so. He has since then been a maverick, helping write McCain-Feingold, and in 2000 ran for president and was unfairly denied. In 2008 he somehow won the Republican nomination and nobody is really sure how. He had cancer at one point but bit it out with his teeth like he would do to a varmint.
Some time in the seventies, Barack Obama was born to parents with Kenyan roots, Kansas roots, Indonesian roots, black roots, white roots, Muslim roots, Christian roots, Jewish roots, and roots in whichever state the next primary is held in. He became president of the Harvard Law Review, a civil rights attorney, an organizer, a professor of law, a state senator and a former cocaine user, in no particular order. In 2002 he spoke out against the Iraq war and in 2004 he spoke at the convention, unfortunately giving him the reputation of “The next Harold Ford.” About a year and a half ago, he started running for president and beat all the big bad wolves to get to where he is today. He likes fluffy things and happiness.
On the other hand, Clinton has run her entire campaign as the “known quantity” with the least stuff widely known about her of any of the candidates. Here’s the cryptic storyline she’s created for the public.
35 years ago, in 2001, Hillary Clinton began a lifetime of undefined public work after 65 million dollars and marital connections with the president made her into a New York citizen. In 2006, she began running for president, and deserves your vote because her husband says so.
I mean seriously, I know it, but how well known is her service on the board of wal-mart, good fortune with cattle futures, volunteering time on the McGovern campaign, serving on the Children Defense Fund and the Carnegie Council on children, her time as a professor, etc? These things are all less well known than Obama’s time on the harvard law review, McCain being in a POW camp, etc. And once you get to her actual senate career, can anybody name anything substantial she’s accomplished in the senate? Besides getting elected with no record and as a non-resident of NY? Even as a political buff I can’t.
If this campaign fails, and it looks more and more like it will, people not having context of a storyline of her life will be the unsung reason.
Tune in at about 11:30 or so to find out what the Texas and Ohio results mean, and that’s a Muse.
You forgot Hawaiian roots…..and maybe grey roots.
Is there a reason it says 1839…that looked like a joke for a second, “oh yeah he’s old” but dang, that is OLD.
Yeah, I’m assuming that’s a typo.
It is a joke, not a typo…Obama was born before the seventies also, and 2001 wasn’t 35 years ago.
Well I’m sorry but those jokes were lame.
Very funny and insightful.
Jo – so sorry to hear about your grasp-the-satire deficit.
Kathy – so sorry to hear that you were born without a proper sense of humour. To compare this tripe to satire is truly a mockery to humour everywhere.