Clarity, Please

I really like Peggy Noonan, she is so often so perceptive. But sometimes she really falls off the logic train. In this column she does both at once.

She identifies, as I have, the difficulty of a Republican campaign against a Black Democrat. No matter what you say, you'll be called a "racist" by somebody. Whites are gun-shy. Barack may very well win by default. (Please note: the same would NOT be true against a Black Republican.)

The hysterical joy Republicans are taking in the "slow deflation" of Hillary's campaign is the sad, short-sighted, thrill of instant gratification, unaware of the looming monsters hiding in the shadows of the future. The joy of seeing Hillary lose will be cut short by the true terror of an Obama campaign.

I think Republicans, being generally clueless, genteel boobs, incapable of learning a political or cynical lesson no matter how forcefully they are beaten with it about the head and shoulders, and are inherently unable to play the political war game as effectively as Democrats... actually believe Hillary is particularly "evil" and "mean". But she is not. She's a typical soulless, Liberal politician. Why this myth has grown up that she is particularly or uniquely cruel, heartless, low, dirty, ugly..I've never understood. There has not been a Liberal running for office in the last 4 decades that hasn't used low, ugly, mean, lying tactics to win. You could look it up.

I have heard about the "Clinton Machine" since Bill was President. We were constantly told that it would eat Obama alive—or any other potential rival; that Hillary's goons will bury him—or any other opponent.

Did the Machine get stalled somewhere? Did it's battery die? Is it in the shop? Is gas too expensive to run it?

Disappeared into thin air.

Was it just a manufacture of the imagination of the hate-Hillary Talk Show hosts making conversation; making controversy; making money?

I'm not suggesting Hillary doesn't have a "do bad" department, just that it's no worse than any other Liberal Democrat's campaign, maybe just a little more effective. It's politics. And she's unusually good at it.

And Republicans really hate that, don't they? 'Cause, generally speaking...they're not very good at it.

Understand, this is not to disparage Republicans. They have LIVES. They create, produce, contribute, support, labor, love, pray, build, employ. They're too busy with real life, real love, real families, real faith to need the artificial rush & fury, the furor & fever of politics as a lifestyle or a religion.

Republicans are just not wired with a messianic mission to wield power over others—which really is the whole point of politics, after all. They just want to live their lives in the way they see fit, left pretty much alone by other people, and by government. They don't want to control everything. They aren't rabidly seeking Utopia, or interested in coercing everyone else to adopt their particular version of it.

And that makes them lousy opponents of the fire-breathing, true-believers who are bound and determined to bend the entire human race to their will, by whatever means necessary, and no matter who or what else gets sacrificed in the process.

It's the Christians and the Lions all over again.

OK. Let me get back to the point. Peggy has real issues with Hillary. It's starting to look like a cat-fight. She just can't leave it alone. I mean, she wrote a whole book about it already! I know one needs to confront evil and all that, but damn, this is starting to look like an obsession.

And I'm starting to get my feminist dander up here. Hillary is a hard, fierce, tough campaigner. That is not inherently bad—even in a woman! What's bad is what she is campaigning to accomplish. Let's not confuse the two.

The South Carolina "debacle" was no such thing. Bill spoke the simple truth. That people feel the need to get hysterical about it does not change that fact. That Peggy Noonan finds it convenient to use the absurd accusations as further "proof" of the unscrupulousness of the Clintons, does not make it true...nor does it make Noonan look particularly perceptive. She completely drank the "racist" baiting Kool-Aid. So easy to do when you embrace, nurture and feed an abiding, gratifying hatred for an opponent.

Hillary has loaned her campaign $5 million of her own money. (Ignore for the moment the question of how the hell Hillary can even have $5 million of "her own money".) Noonan uses that fact to demonstrate that Hillary is almost certainly going to lose; that she is desperate, that support and donations are drying up.

On the radio this morning, I heard quite a different explanation. (Remember, she's raised a lot of money recently, just not quite as much as Obama.) It was suggested that the "money of her own" was a tactical move which worked. It made a lot of people who support her become concerned and send in some cash. Hillary's campaign raked in more than $7 million in donations since she announced that personal loan—according to a local Talk Radio

I really don't know which is true. I do find it hard to believe that Hillary's hard core supporters are prepared to abandon her for the upstart contender. But the larger point is that jumping to the conclusion that it "proved" something Noonan very much wants to be true, makes her analysis of anything Clinton highly suspect.

I get that she's not a news reporter, but an opinion writer. But still, like so many other Party Operatives, lately she more often brings cloudiness rather than clarity to important issues.

We are not going to win if we cannot recognize truth...even when it's not useful in trashing our enemies. If we don't, we're no better than they are, and equally deserving of defeat.

The Gunslinger