Great Minds Think Alike?

I have always loved Camille Paglia's columns on Salon.com, and it was a shame when she took a several year hiatus a couple of years ago. She is one of the few columnists out there today that can effortlessly combine social and political commentary in the same piece of work. She's also one of the few prominent, liberal voices that has consistently criticized the Clintons for being complete sell outs to the progressive agenda, especially when it comes to putting action-to-words on feminist issues.

So imagine my delight when I saw her latest column entitled "Queen Hillary's Disruptive Court". Nice to see I "beat" one of my favorite authors to the punch by about 12 hours! She does make some very nice points that I neglected to mention, such as the comparison between what our political system calls debate vs. the truly great oration and debate required in the British Parliamentary system. I have long thought that we could have solved another Clinton political problem if we had been governed by a parliamentary system. Rather than go through the drama of impeachment in President Clinton's final years, he simply would have been requested to step down and been replaced by Al Gore. Think how much more traction Gore would have had in 2000 if he had his own record to run on, rather than the baggage of Bill's bimbo eruptions. There's no guaranteeing Gore's snickering during debates and wooden delivery style wouldn't have canned his presidential aspirations like they did in 2000, but perhaps Bush would have had fewer opportunities to score easy points talking about "taking a steam cleaner to the Oval office" and had to put his record up against Gore's.

We Don't Need to Replace King George With Queen Hillary

After 7 years of an imperial presidency, where the administration has shown contempt for any law or reasonable check on its authority, you would think those seeking to replace King George and his cronies would be a bit more open, forthcoming, and engaging with the American electorate and press. But it seems that we are getting just more of the same from the presumptive Democratic front runner that everyone can't wait to crown Queen of this nation. And if she is to be Queen, does that mean our version of Prince Phillip can continue being just as big of a misogynist as the real Prince is a racist and just keep getting away with it? But I digress...

In recent weeks we have all been reminded of the ruthless political machine that is Team Clinton. This behavior should come as no surprise - the Clintons are the definition of power hungry, with Hillary taking the cake from Bill. There is only one reason a woman stays married to a man who habitually cheats and then lies to her about said affairs - unadulterated love of power. How sick of a commentary on this nation and the feminist movement that the first Queen of the United States can only get elected by swallowing all respect for herself, her daughter, and women in general and put up with a husband that has no intention of honoring his wedding vows.

But as disgusting as that may be, it is only an explanation for Team Clinton's latest behavior. Over the last several week's Hillary's campaign has either been caught planting questions in the battleground state of Iowa, engaging in an all out campaign to silence those who disagree with them, or attempting to intimidate a moderator of a Democrat debate. I am not naive enough to believe that spin and message management doesn't happen. Those are normal political processes, and need to take place in this day and age of "gotcha" journalism. But Team Clinton's actions go well beyond spin - they involve co-opting the media and choking off the citizenry's already limited ability to ask tough questions we all deserve answers to. More importantly, what should we expect of Hillary when she faces a really tough audience with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, or any other "friendly" leader? Perhaps they will just read of the teleprompter notes her press secretary draws up for them.

We all have contributed to this kind of behavior by politicians. The electorate's and press' insane desire to have the perfect politician that doesn't offend a single interest group has led to more scripted, wooden, uninspiring politicians with each presidential election. But if we are to move on from the failure that is the Bush presidency, we need to expect leadership that embraces honest answers to honest questions posed by a free and open press and electorate. We already have started our third election cycle where at least one of the nominees for president will have been determined before single primary vote is cast - all due to the size of her bank account and the fact that she kept the same last name as her husband-in-name-only. Do we really need one more reason - rigged election coverage - to feel like our democracy has been short circuited?