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HILL’ or NIL

Politics is not mother’s milk! Despite the Kabuki dance the Obama ballet is mounting with potential vice-presidential nominees, Hillary Clinton is Barack’s only hope of overcoming John McCain in November. It has been my opinion from the get-go that he would have been much better off had she gotten the nomination. In that way, he would have become a very attractive adjunct to the ticket, as well as to have been in the cat-bird seat, positioned for White House access for a sixteen-year stretch. Be that as it may, still, his election depends upon the deep commitment of the Clintons.

I have heard it repeated over and over that, should Barack choose Hillary, he would be violating his promise of “change,” and breaking with the past. Balderdash! Any damn fool can hold to his basic principles as he is being hauled away to the garbage dump. Good! You’re still pure—but your bleakin’ purity is being stained by the bleakin’ landfill! In the first place, that ain’t politics. Next, Barack IS a politician. If he were not a damned good politician, we would not be talking about him today. Do not forget the slew of smart, seasoned opponents whom he defeated handily. So, let us discard all of these ethereal, pie-in-the-sky contentions.

Those of us who were around in 1960 were aghast when John F. Kennedy chose Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. LBJ was the last one on everybody’s list—including Johnson’s. They had contested fiercely for the nomination, and the mutual antipathy was palpable. As a result, the Johnsons and Kennedys had become the Hatfields and McCoys. Of course, we are still talking about politics. JFK needed Texas, and LBJ needed the power rush. Case closed.

(A side issue: There was such fierce animosity against Kennedy emanating from Texas that, when I heard of his planned trip to Dallas on November 22, 1963, I remembered how he was regaled on his visit to San Diego, and wondered why he wanted to subject himself to the venom of that Dallas snake pit. Of course, it did not turn out that way. His demise came from a wholly unexpected quarter.)

Now, “Barack-Clinton” does not seem so impractical, does it? Even the, “What-to-do-about-Bill?” question is not too daunting—when considering the alternative. Apart from the activities of the “first guy,” there is the matter of vetting the Clinton income for embarrassing Arab business entanglements. Even that can be overcome. This is still politics, “the art of the possible.”

While we are not exactly dealing with the Hatfields and McCoys, yet, there is tension enough for the Clintons to become troublesome if they are left hanging, empy-handed. LBJ had a crude way of expressing the idea of “keeping your friends close and your enemies closer”—“Ah’d rather have ’em on the inside of the tent, pissin’ out, than outside, pissin’ in!”

DUH-uh?!