Beacon Street Journal

Since Hillary and Obama share the same ideology and, for the most part, the same policy prescriptions, the debate last night in Philadelphia broke no new ground in terms of drawing distinctions between the positions of the candidates. Both railed and inveighed against the usual bogeymen with typical Democratic Demagoguery: ”special interests”; unscrupulous oil companies, whose obscene “windfall” profits need to be appropriated (one wonders: have Democrats missed the inexorable petroleum-hungry industrial rise of China and India?); heartless insurance companies; the machinations and housing crisis-induced manipulations of “greedy” Wall Street (no doubt Hillary will apply her acumen acquired through some home-grown avarice trading commodities futures to help the nation address this problem). 

The debate was noteworthy only in the sense that it solidified the glaring weaknesses of each of the Democratic contenders. 

By default, Hillary was the winner.  Her response in the debate to the Bosnian sniper fabrication defines completely the shortcomings of her candidacy. What she offered as an explanation was perhaps the most circuitous, long-winded, pathetic and evasive answer ever given in any of the previous debates. Hillary stammered endlessly, bobbing and weaving, grappling with some sort of explanation wherein she could dispel the fact that she is, in the words of William Safire, a congenital liar. All of the Clinton signature and trademark defects were on full display: the circumlocutions, the incessant spinning, the exaggerations, the attempt to defend the indefensible, the parsing, the evasiveness. What possible additional damage would have accrued to her candidacy had she simply said, “I didn’t tell/or I stretched, the truth?  The spectacle of her response was so painful to watch, that in a moment of strained mercy, I wanted to reach through the screen, shake some sense into her and shout: Stop! Please, STOP! But Hillary, the indefatigable, pre-programmed robot plodded incessantly on…

Herein lies the essential truth of Hillary’s character to which recent polls attest: she could no more have given a sensible and meaningful response to the voter’s Bosnian question than could Pavlov’s dog stop salivating at the ring of the bell. Her answers to other questions throughout the night were consistent with her essential disposition. Her craven attempt to reconcile her recent fondness for second amendment rights with her previous and well documented advocacy for gun control. Her promise of the finest health care for all but no new taxes for anyone. 

Her debate performance merely reinforced the notion that, with Hillary, what you see is what you get. She did not dispel any of the doubts about her character that have, from the start, plagued her candidacy. Her principal goal last night was to knock down Obama a notch or two, and in this endeavor — aided by the uncharacteristically tenacious moderators —she succeeded.

Although Hillary’s performance could hardly be characterized as stellar, Obama fared even worse, only because he had the most to lose. His recent fall from grace off the lofty perch upon which he has been placed was purely a result of self-inflicted wounds and hubris, and his dismal performance last night guarantees only that he will descend even further. As his evasive and non-responsive answers to questions posed on both the Jeremiah Wright and the “bitterness” controversies make clear, his campaign has adopted the “distraction” defense. Last night, we saw a professorial, argumentative and clueless Obama, for clearly, not only is he is unrepentant on both scores, but, he also feels supremely confident in the virtue of his more “nuanced” position. Many viewers must have reeled at his comparison of his friendship with a domestic terrorist to his friendship with a fellow pro-life senator. My sense is that this demonstration of contextual collegiality will be lost on most voters. Last night, Obama drew a line in the sand: he made it clear that voters are owed no further explanation about his voluntary associations with various nefarious and noxious characters. Come April 22, we shall see if Pennsylvanians are in accord with this view.  

The New Messiah was quite visibly perturbed at having to rehash his standard, and to him, exhaustive and definitve response to the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Some journalists were similarly dismayed that the ABC moderators would even ask Obama these questions. The gall of Charlie Gibson…Don’t they know that with his stirring speech on race in Philadelphia that Obama has conclusively answered these questions? As he responded with a certain smugness to a question about Jeremiah Wright, “Charlie, I’ve already answered that…” His attitude seemed to be: How dare these moderators not join in the exultation of other members of my adoring media flock and declare the matter closed!

Sorry Obama, questions about Wright, William Ayers and your derogatory and dismissive comments on small town America aren’t “distractions”, they are revelations. Revelations about your character; about your fundamental beliefs; about your political philosophy; about your fitness to lead, and ostensibly to unite, those who don’t subscribe to your doctrinaire liberalism in all of its political, cultural and moral manifestations. Criticisms about your judgment and voluntary associations aren’t “distractions” (Obama campaign synonyms: “divisive”; same “old politics”; “wedge issues”) from real issues, for many voters, they are real issues and, to date, you have not addressed them in a satisfactory manner. 

As obliviousness as Obama was to the consequences of his derogatory comments about Middle American values, he was positively stunned by the questions on the capital gains tax. As intimated by Charlie Gibson, for purposes of electability, 401(k) nation may take a very dim view of his proposal to double the capital gains rate. When Charlie Gibson pointed out that revenues have increased in the past when the capital gains tax has been lowered, Obama had a deer-in-the-headlights look about him. He didn’t quite know how to respond to this ineluctable fact. Reflexively, he answered that his proposed increase was justified, as it was an issue of fairness. It was classic big government liberalism: using the tax code as a tool for the redistributionist schemes of the Democratic Party.

Although his dismal debate performance helped tarnish his halo even further, it was enlightening in one respect. For, the mystery of the message of Change from the Anointed One can now be revealed: the flock must come to Obama’s Liberalism and then, and only then, can we all be united.