Camile Paglia on the 08 Election

From “”Hillary’s Race against Time,” by Camile Paglia

Obama is certainly a darling of youth, the wave of the future. If he has failed thus far to reach working-class whites, it’s because he’s a dewy and somewhat reserved newcomer on the national stage. Ruggedly stumping Hillary, warts and all, is a known commodity. Obama’s effect has been heaviest on the information class — journalists, academics and white-collar professionals chained to computers and surfing the Web all day. He’s been a flickering media phenomenon for everyone except attendees at his electrifying mass rallies. What’s militated against Obama is simply time. The more he is known, the bigger his gains.

Hillary, her shrill voice much improved and lowered through brutal overstrain, has certainly gained confidence and performance skill on the campaign trail, but I still don’t trust her. The arrogant, self-absorbed Clintons have shown their unscrupulous hand to all who have eyes to see. Yes, Hillary may know the labyrinthine flow chart of the Washington bureaucracy, but her peripheral experiences as a gallivanting first lady scarcely qualify her to be commander in chief. On the contrary, her constant resort to schmaltzy videos and cheap entertainment riffs (“The Sopranos,” “Saturday Night Live”) has been depressingly unpresidential. Is this how she would govern? All that canned “softening” of Hillary’s image would have been unnecessary had she had greater personal resources to begin with. Her cutesy campaign has set a bad precedent for future women candidates, who should stand on their own as proponents of public policy.

Would I want Hillary answering the red phone in the middle of the night? No, bloody not. The White House first responder should be a person of steady, consistent character and mood — which describes Obama more than Hillary. And that scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it’s 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest”? And why is Hillary sitting at her desk in full drag and jewelry at that ungodly hour? A president should not be a monomaniac incapable of rest and perched on guard all night like Poe’s baleful raven. People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.