Saturday, while having a perfectly pleasant cup of coffee with a couple of Clinton supporters, I found myself really lashing out at the tone and tactics of their candidate's campaign, and in particular, the antics of the Big Dawg himself. Each time I would mentally tell myself to tone it down, one of them would then invoke a classic Clintonian justification or rationalization to justify the campaign -- Obama needs to toughen up -- and besides, he wasn't so pure either, etc. -- and I would feel the anger rise again. So why am I so irritated with the Clintons and why do so many people in the liberal community seem to share that anger?
I've been mulling this over for the last day or two, and I think it comes down to this -- the sense that with the Clintons, it's always about them, and with Bill, in particular, it's always about him. No cause, no loyalty, no party or position supersedes their personal political needs. And it's hardly time for this adolescent world view to come to the fore.
All presidential elections are important, given the enormous power that any American president wields in the areas of foreign policy, judicial appointments, and control of the machinery of the federal bureaucracy. (One of the most infuriating things I've experienced in observing politics was the media's portrayal of the 2000 election as an inconsequential affair between candidates with putatively little ideological distance between them -- we know how that turned out.)
But I think all would agree that the 2008 election looms especially large. For the first time in a generation progressive political forces may have the chance to grab the machinery of government and to do so from a position of strength. There is an enormous opportunity to make this a transformational election, to build on certain demographic and generational changes in the electorate, which when coupled with the unpopularity of the incumbent, and the disarray and contradictions within the Republican Party, could create the conditions for a resounding victory.
In other words, something far bigger than the Clintons is at stake here. Anything that damages the prospects for victory of the ultimate Democratic nominee, any tactics that diminish enthusiasm for the general election effort will be seen as an enormous betrayal in a moment of rare opportunity. In other words, it's time for Bill Clinton to grow up, to stop acting like a combination ward healer and vice-presidential attack dog, and focus on using his gifts for something bigger than his own self-aggrandizement.
