My proposal for a more invigorating, oxygenated, breathable 2016
presidential election: Hillary announces that under no circumstances will she be
running, on condition that Jeb Bush says the same, though maybe Hillary could demand
the Republicans throw in — or rather, out — Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and a draft
pick to be decided on — [sic] undrafted — later. I'd say Hillary is a fair
trade for at least three of them since she clogs up democratic futures, prospects,
and possibilities at least three times as much.
Imagine what it would be like minus these crusty,
formidable, immensely well-funded and insanely boring frontrunners. Maybe we'd
have Elizabeth Warren v. Rand Paul. You can't deny it would be interesting.
Compare, for a moment, the kinds of debates they would have — a passing game,
to use a football analogy, as opposed to the yawn three yards and punt affair
it would be between Hillary and Jeb et al. Electorate assumptions would be
challenged, including, possibly, even some of my own. Besides that, it would entertain.
(Just between us, I think she'd kick his ass, tear him a new one, as the saying
goes, something like 43-12., assuming such a score is possible.)
Let's extrapolate and take it further: Hillary is out along with
the commensurate heavies of the GOP. So maybe it's Bernie Sanders v. Rand Paul,
or even, and not by any stretch to equate the two, Bernie Sanders v. Oliver
North.
Further: Wolfkowitz, are you busy, wouldn't you like to run
for president on the neo-con ticket? David Frum would write your speeches. Way
things are going, you could name Bibi Netanyahu as your veep and he might have little
choice but to accept, since with the slightest geo-political luck, Bibi will be
out of a job by then
I jest and yet couldn't be more serious. Hillary is
stifling. Stifling is what she's does, her forte, her art. As for Jeb, well,
enough already with that bunch: Jeb is unlikely to be as bad as his brother but
that's saying little. No president in the history of the United States has ever
been as ruinously damaging to the world and this country as GW. That said, here
we are.
If it does come down to Hillary v. Jeb (Chris, Marco, Ted)
that will make me very sad. It would depress me the way it depresses me to see
as clearly as I can't but help seeing that Putin's reign in Russia recapitulates
Stalin — the grip of the security apparatus and its cadre, the ongoing and increasingly
precise and murderous suppression of dissent. The recently assassinated Nemstov
is Putin's Trotsky, if you will. All who oppose Putin's reign are, if you will,
Trotskyites, portrayed as agents of a foreign power, devoted to undercutting Russia.
Wreckers. Putin can't avail himself of communist sloganeering but Russian nationalism,
fortified with doses of religious Orthodoxy, works just fine for him.
He's even more dangerous as his oil revenues go down,
leaving him mostly war to run on.
But back to Hillary v. Jeb (Chris, Ted, Marco, etc.) If it
came to it, I'd vote for her. She's the tip of a different iceberg. Stultifying
and stifling as she is, in the end, in American electoral democracy, such as it
is, it's icebergs that matter.
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