JOLLY DAYS

Hillary and Barack

Apparently Obama wasn't thinking of his gravitas problem when he gleefully accepted an endorsement from a talk show host. In a way he gets it, campaigns are showbiz. Oprah is best known as a New Age consumerist sprite: she sprinkles pop credibility, you get rich. Now we have it unadorned — the selling of the president.

Hillary pulled out Bill and her daughter/mother and has thereby proven that she is worried. Give her this: when she was interviewed by Charlie Gibson a few days ago she was very impressive. You began to wonder why people hate her so. Unfortunately she also has that Al Gore problem — she listens to her advisors too closely and they are diminishing her focus. The idiotic laughing fits, the cynical PC ingratiations — I'm just a girl attacked by all those boys. She tried to correct the latter, but it leaves a bad taste.

A recent article suggested that Obama is not Gary Hart but Jimmy Carter. Carter's unctuous paternalism would be intolerable in replay. If Obama really is like the clueless do-gooder it would be a disaster for America. The article suggested that Obama will be a moral(istic) leader rather than one of original ideas or meaningful change. Someone like Hart, who was original and bright, but pathetically flawed, might not be so bad, if you could lose the flawed part and the pathetic part.

Obama gives the impression that he was intoxicated by the early applause and wants it back, always. Obama didn't understand that at first the public was just grateful at his announced candidacy — someone who could speak in full sentences and seemed reasonable and fresh. But he has yet to have found any weight in his public persona.

Obama is being sold as good medicine. You know, a new face, a turning of the page — from the Clinton/Bush loop the country is beginning to manifest. “I would like his face to represent our country”, I heard someone voting in Iowa suggest about Obama's most appealing trait.

What about someone who could lead? How about someone who has some original ideas about the many problems the country faces? The US is desperate for real leadership. After all, these are interesting times, in the sense of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”