 |
|
December 2, 2014
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish
April 18, 2014
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
April 14, 2014
Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
April 11, 2014
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Silence is much more than golden
Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
April 9, 2014
Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
April 8, 2014
Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
April 4, 2014
Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
John Ericson: Older Women: Save Your Heart, Prevent Stroke Don't Drink Diet
John Ericson: Why 50 million Americans will still have spring allergies after taking meds
Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
April 2, 2014
Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
Frank Clayton: Get happy: 20 scientifically proven happiness activities
Susan Scutti: It's Genetic! Obesity and the 'Carb Breakdown' Gene
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Feb. 14, 2008
/ 8 Adar I 5768
Howlers, Whoops And Miracles: Which Party Is More Strange?
By
George Will
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
With metronomic regularity — the rhythm may arise from some strangely shared metabolic urge, which may explain the mystery of their marriage — the Clintons say things that remind voters of the aesthetic reason for recoiling from them. Aesthetic considerations even cause many Republicans — a coarse commercial breed, they are notoriously insensitive to higher things, but they are not immune to the repulsive — to hope, against three decades of evidence, that Democrats can be sufficiently sensible to nominate Barack Obama, even though Hillary Clinton would be more vulnerable to John McCain.
Last week, in his 10-thumbed attempt to prevent his wife's Louisiana loss, Bill Clinton said that Obama has made "an explicit argument that the '90s weren't much better than this decade." The phrase "explicit argument" was an exquisitely Clintonian touch, signaling to seasoned decoders of Clintonisms that, no matter how diligent the search, no such thought could be found, even implicitly, in anything Obama has ever said. In his preternatural neediness, Clinton, an overflowing caldron of narcissism and solipsism, is still smarting from Obama's banal observation, four weeks ago, that Ronald Reagan was a more transformative president than Clinton.
Then in Virginia on Sunday, his wife, true to the family tradition of "two for the price of one," contributed her own howler to the growing archive of Clintoniana. She said she is constantly being urged to unleash her inner Pericles: "People say to me all the time, 'You're so specific. . . . Why don't you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up?' "
It must be wearisome. But surely people are "all the time" pestering her about being so substantive. It is a stronger word; she should tweak her fable in future tellings.
| FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER |
| Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. |
|
Strangeness is a bipartisan commodity at this point in the political season. Both parties' contests are being colored by idiosyncrasies.
Democrats, who consider equality the value before which the virtuous genuflect, worry that their nomination might be settled by "superdelegates," who are more equal than others. These are august people (officeholders, party officials, former luminaries) who, although no one voted to give them the job, get to vote at the nominating convention because liberals believe that if they fine-tune the world's rules with this or that wrinkle, everything will come out just right.
Many Republicans think that, come what may, things will come out the way Providence intends. Daniel Webster said "miracles do not cluster," but Webster did not anticipate Mike Huckabee, whose campaign manager is, evidently, G-d. Two months ago, Huckabee said he rose in Iowa because of divine intervention (the power that propelled him there was not "human" but the one that fed the multitudes with two fish and five loaves). On Saturday, as he was winning the caucuses in Kansas, where many Republicans think Darwin should go back to Missouri where he came from, Huckabee said that the arithmetic is daunting (he must win almost all the remaining delegates to stop McCain) but he shall persevere:
"I know people say that the math doesn't work out. Folks, I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those, too."
Although some of his supporters defend him against the accusation of sincerity, it is not unfair to assume that Huckabee, who has made his piety integral to his politics, means what he says. There is appealing clarity, but also a whiff of lunacy or charlatanry, in the theory that the Author of the Universe is writing his campaign story. "The world," wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "is charged with the grandeur of G-d." The world, perhaps, but the Republican delegate scramble?
Maybe Huckabee hopes that his credentials as a potential running mate for McCain will be strengthened if he achieves a (strictly speaking) providential victory in the Texas primary. McCain might, however, prefer a vice president who is less directly guided by Providence. And McCain will not long be amused by Huckabee continuing to offer himself as a vessel into which conservatives pour their disapproval of the inevitable.
McCain wants conservatives to take "yes" for an answer — yes, yes, yes, make the president's tax cuts permanent, secure the borders, find more judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito (judges who would nibble to nothingness McCain's signature achievement, the McCain-Feingold campaign regulations). McCain wants them to take "yes" for an answer quickly, so he can get back to courting independent voters who might decide who becomes president.
Unless G-d decides. Or "everybody all whooped up" does.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
George Will's latest book is "With a Happy Eye but: America and the World, 1997-2002" to purchase a copy, click here. Comment on this column by clicking here.
Archives
© 2006 WPWG
|
|
Columnists
Toons
Lifestyles
|
