Don't run, Al. Don't!
Despite numerous polls claiming that registered Democrats like myself
are happy with their current field of presidential contenders, the Gore boomlet
betrays subterranean tremors of doubt. After two major televised debates by both
parties, only a Pollyanna on helium would believe that any of the top-tier
Democrats will definitely be able to defeat a leading Republican like Mitt
Romney or Rudy Giuliani.
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Right now, the Democrats' best hope may be for the Republicans to veer
right and nominate an erratic aging boy like the seedy Newt Gingrich or a
Hollywood caricature of vintage 1910 American small-town life like the
phlegmatically pithy Fred Thompson, whose homespun act feels tired and looks
tired.
So, Fred Thompson is a sluggish, but tersely cogent caricature as he reflects average American citizens who Ms Paglia finds tiresome in all aspects while Giuliani and Romney are the top tier candidates for Republicans. Oh, and Newt is an erratic aging boy who is seedy which is a Paglia calling kettle black moment.
But the TV pundits who rushed to proclaim Hillary the winner of the
second debate were off by a mile. Hillary excelled in the first half by the
greater specificity of her responses, but her gains were nearly wiped out at one
point by her bone-chilling mirthless chuckling (like a sound effect for the
Blood Countess in a horror film).
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For many Democrats like me, however, Hillary's history of
prevarication, rigidity and quasi-divine sense of election is profoundly
unsettling. And who exactly would be running the government -- that
indefatigable buttinski, Bill Clinton? Spare us! But Hillary's intricate
experience with the Washington bureaucracy makes Edwards (toward whom I've been leaning) and Obama (whom I may shift to) look like shaky tyros.
I am jealous that she thought to define Hillary as a Blood Countess sound effect. Paglia may lean herself to Obama, which I think unlikely and contrived, but she has made me lean towards Thompson.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" which makes my kettle call the briar patch home.
