Sunday, September 21, 2003

What's the Plan?

I have no idea what kind of president General Wesley Clark might make, or even what kind of candidate he'll be. He sounds good at a distance but then most of them do until we get to know them.

Since he entered the race, the thing that interests me the most is that he has the backing of Bill and Hillary Clinton. That doesn't make me like him more or less, but it seems to have an awful lot of pundits turning backflips to reconcile it with their past theories.

Hillary is very important to both Conservatives and Liberals, these days. She's important to Conservatives because she energizes their base. If you want to get right-wingers to donate money and turn out for a cause, you invoke the name of Hillary. She's important to Liberals because...well, because she makes right-wingers mad, and her ongoing career proves that all that nonsense about Whitewater, Filegate and Travelgate didn't live up to its hype.

I happen to think that Hillary Clinton will never be president; that she will get no closer to that office than Ted Kennedy did, which was never that close. But partisan activists on both sides have good reason to keep the notion of Hillary for President alive, so her support for Clark must be explained somehow. This has led to a wide array of theories...

• The plan is to position Hillary as Clark's vice-presidential running mate so they can win in 2004.
• The plan is to position Hillary as Clark's vice-presidential running mate so that the ticket will lose in 2004, making her the presumptive nominee in 2008.
• The plan is to let Clark split the Democratic party. Then Hillary will accept a draft to run for president in 2004 with Clark receiving the veep slot as his reward.
• The plan is that Hillary knows she won't run until 2008 so she'll support someone who is certain to lose this time so she won't have a Democratic incumbent next time.
• The plan is that Hillary won't run this time and maybe not next but she and Bill think that if Clark wins, they can run the country through him. And if he loses, he'll become well enough known to be her vice-presidential running mate in '08.

And there have been others...darn near every conceivable theory except that maybe she has no plans to run this time and thinks Clark would be the best candidate. I don't know if that's it but I'm amused that every possible scenario is out there except that one. But I guess that doesn't serve anyone's interests...not even the Clintons'.

• Posted at 11:26 PM · LINK

Donations Welcomed

• Posted at 2:48 AM · LINK

A Funny Man

In the late sixties, the hottest comedy writing team in Hollywood was Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, two former Mad Magazine writers who had moved on to work for shows like Get Smart and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. They had split up by the time I got into their line of work but I got to know both men individually and found them to be two of the wittiest men in a business full of witty people.

Here, on the website for Cleveland Magazine, we find a reprint of a 1976 article on Hanrahan. It fingers him as the man responsible for making his home town into the butt of so many jokes. I'm not sure he deserves credit/blame for that but the rest of the piece has some good info about the backstage mood of TV shows back then.

• Posted at 2:42 AM · LINK