David Broder Again Writes About Clinton Marriage -- Less Than A Week After Vowing Not To
November 15, 2007 -- 8:02 AM EST // //
Wow, that didn't take long. David Broder, in a chat with readers last Friday:
New York: Will you and the media ever apply as much scrutiny to the Giuliani marriages as you have done to the single Clinton marriage?David Broder, in his column today:David S. Broder: I plan to leave both subjects alone.
No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependence of their political and personal partnership.Now, Broder can write about whatever the hell he wants, as far as this blog is concerned. And the question of how Bill might impact a Hillary Presidency is in some ways a legit one.No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.
It is a difficult question for any of the Democratic rivals to raise. But it lingers, even if unasked.
But what interests me here is the level of outright denial we're seeing at play. The inability of Broder and other pundits not to return to the topic of the Clinton marriage -- as Broder did here despite suggesting a week ago that he wouldn't -- is really almost neurotic at this point, like a bad nervous habit or a facial tic. No one watching Chris Matthews spew spittle flecks on MSNBC can doubt this. Yet they'll never acknowledge this obsession or admit that they would never spend anywhere near the same amount of time on the marriage of any Republican Presidential contender.
But there's actually more to it than this. I submit that your pundits are in the grip of an almost desperate desire to see voters reject the Hillary candidacy principally because of Bill and nothing else. Broder, for instance, keeps telling us that this will happen one of these days, you just wait. Two months ago he wrote that Bill's role in a Hillary Presidency was something "the country will have to ponder." Today he again tells us that "the country must decide whether it is comfortable" with it. It just doesn't matter that the same voters whom Broder is famous for spending so much time talking to have told pollsters again and again and again that they are comfortable with this and see it as either a non-issue or a positive.
How to explain this weird yearning for the voters to see Bill as Hillary's albatross? Maybe it's just that pundits keep hearing other pundits say this and just mindlessly repeat it. Or maybe a return by Bill to the White House would represent some kind of defeat for the pundit establishment. In the late nineties your pundits were deeply invested in the priggish conviction that Monica-gate would convince voters that Bill was thoroughly unfit for the Presidency -- but voters roundly rejected this view, and continued to reject it for years after. Now we're in round two, and this time, by golly, the voters really will see that the pundits were right -- they'll finally realize just how bad Bill was for the country.
These are admittedly crude explanations. But I can't come up with anything better.
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