A Sign That The Apocalypse Is Nigh

At the risk of bad taste (never a problem for me), I wonder if William F. Buckley was reading Rich Lowry's take on the Clinton-Obama debate this week when Buckley dropped dead at his desk. Obamania in National Review? What a time, what a time. If this is (fair & balanced) astonishment, so be it.

[x National Review]
What an Amazing Turnabout
By Rich Lowry

Who would have guessed three months ago that Hillary would be the desperate out-of-sorts underdog nipping at the ankles of the cool, in-control frontrunner, Barack Obama, in what is probably the final Democratic debate? I certainly wouldn't have. Obama had an answer to everything and at times was amused at Hillary's haymakers. Is it possible to throw a picayune haymaker? If so, Hillary threw them tonight — over fliers, getting asked questions first, Obama's neglect of subcommittee oversight hearings, the difference between "denouncing and rejecting," etc. This is what a politician who simply can't find anything that works is reduced to. What Obama did all night was brush her off, without (for the most part) seeming arrogant. He was in command, his stature enhanced by his standing in the race and by Hillary's ineffectual attacks. It was entirely possible to imagine him on a stage with John McCain, and more than holding his own.

[Rich Lowry, a 1990 graduate of the University of Virginia, where he edited The Virginia Advocate (campus newspaper), is known as one of the youngest and most influential conservative commentators and analysts in the country. He joined William F. Buckley's brainchild, National Review, in 1992 and has been the magazine's editor since 1997.]

Copyright © 2008 National Review

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RIP: William F. Buckley, Jr.

In my romantic youth, I flirted with the conservatism espoused by William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk. In fact, I cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) in 1964. My tattered record as a political philosopher and a presidential voter are no credit to Buckley. However, in recent times, Buckley wanted no truck with The Dubster because Buckley was no lockstep supporter of a POTUS just because that officeholder was a Republican. In that animus for The Dubster, I was in good company. If this is a (fair & balanced) ave atque vale, so be it.

[x NPR]
William F. Buckley, Conservative Bulwark, Dies
By Scott Neuman

William F. Buckley Jr., the man regarded by many as the father of the modern conservative movement, died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.

The leading commentator and author was famous for his erudite — some would say arrogant — style in writings in the magazine he founded, the National Review, as well as his PBS television show "Firing Line," which ran for more than two decades.

The cause of death was unknown, but his assistant Linda Bridges said he had been ill with emphysema.

Buckley founded National Review in 1955, declaring that he proposed to stand "athwart history, yelling 'Stop' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it."

He and his magazine are credited with revitalizing the American conservative movement, long in the political wilderness, and with the rise of right-wing thinkers, many of whom wrote for the National Review and eventually became key players in the Reagan revolution.

Buckley ended his tenure on "Firing Line" in 1999, telling the audience that he'd "just as soon not die onstage." Five years later, he relinquished control of the National Review, citing health concerns.

Despite his unassailable conservative credentials, Buckley never shied away from standing up to the right when he thought it was wrong. In 1965, he denounced the ultra-conservative John Birch Society as a lunatic fringe. As recently as 2006 in an interview with CBS News, Buckley said President Bush was not a true conservative and criticized his administration's focus on the war in Iraq.

"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology."

He said the Bush administration had become "engulfed by Iraq" in a way that prevented it from entertaining "perspectives … with respect to … other parts of the Middle East, with respect to Iran in particular."

Among Buckley's other interests were music, wine and sailing, which he extensively chronicled in his 2004 "literary autobiography" Miles Gone By.

His wife Pat Buckley died last year. They had been married since 1950. Their son, Christopher, is a satirist and author of Thank You for Smoking, which was made into a movie in 2006.

[Scott Neuman is with NPR, National Public Radio, in Washington DC.]

Copyright © 2008 National Public Radio

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The Cobra Bites The Hillster (And Mike Peters Ain't Far Behind)

The Hillster can't take much Mo. Maureen (Mo to her friends and The Cobra to her enemies) Dowd is on the hustings in OH. Never a Clintonista, Mo Dowd looks askance at The Hillster's current campaign. The Cobra isn't alone. Mike Peters of The Dayton (OH) Daily News has been having a field day at the expense of The Golden Couple.

Click on the image to enlarge/Copyright © 2008 Mike Peters

Click on the image to enlarge/Copyright © 2008 Mike Peters

[Mike Peters joined The Dayton Daily News in 1969 after service in the U. S. Army (1966-1968). He received the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons in 1981. He also started drawing the popular strip, "Mother Goose & Grimm" in 1984.]

If this is (fair & balanced) truth to power, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Begrudging His Bedazzling
By Maureen Dowd

A huge Ellen suddenly materialized behind Hillary on a giant screen, interrupting her speech Monday night at a fund-raiser at George Washington University in Washington.

What better way for a desperate Hillary to try and stop her rival from running off with all her women supporters than to have a cozy satellite chat with a famous daytime talk-show host who isn’t supporting Obama?

“Will you put a ban on glitter?” Ellen demanded.

Diplomatically, Hillary said that schoolchildren needed it for special projects, but maybe she could ban it for anyone over 12.

Certainly, Hillary understands the perils of glitter. The coda of her campaign has been a primal scream against the golden child of Chicago, a clanging and sometimes churlish warning that “all that glitters is not gold.”

David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said the senator seemed “dumbfounded” by the Obama sensation.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.

Voters gravitate toward the presidential candidates who seem more comfortable in their skin. J.F.K. and Reagan seemed exceptionally comfortable. So did Bill Clinton and W., who both showed that comfort can be an illusion of sorts, masking deep insecurities.

The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can’t turn on her own charm and wit because she can’t get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she’s pea-green with envy.

After saying she found her “voice” in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the “Saturday Night Live” skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC — a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist — are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Hillary and her top aides could not say categorically that her campaign had not been the source on the Drudge Report, as Matt Drudge claimed, for a picture of Obama in African native garb that the mean-spirited hope will conjure up a Muslim Manchurian candidate vibe.

At a rally on Sunday, she tried sarcasm about Obama, talking about how “celestial choirs” singing and magic wands waving won’t get everybody together to “do the right thing.”

With David Brody, Hillary evoked the specter of a scary Kool-Aid cult. “I think that there is a certain phenomenon associated with his candidacy, and I am really struck by that because it is very much about him and his personality and his presentation,” she said, adding that “it dangerously oversimplifies the complexity of the problems we face, the challenge of navigating our country through some difficult uncharted waters. We are a nation at war. That seems to be forgotten.”

Actually it’s not forgotten. It’s a hard sell for Hillary to say that she is the only one capable of leading this country in a war when she helped in leading the country into that war. Or to paraphrase Obama from the debate here, the one who drives the bus into the ditch can’t drive it out.

[Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary (about the Lewinsky Scandal and the Clinton impeachment), became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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