November 7, 2007--President Rudy
A year from today many will be crying in their beer about how Rudy Giuliani managed to get elected president when the day before Hillary was leading in all the national polls.
Some will claim she suffered the same fate minority candidates face—that folks will say one thing to the pollsters so as not to look prejudiced, but once skulking in the privacy of the voting booth will give in to their biases. In this case, “There’s no way I’d vote for a women to be commander in chief.”
Others, me included, will say she lost because she ran an ineffective campaign; whereas Rudy not only made people feel that he would protect them but also ran as a happy warrior who projected energy, humor, and a sense of personal authenticity.
We will say that it all began to unravel for Hillary about a year earlier during and after the debate among Democratic candidates in which her opponents for the first time effectively challenged her. Looking back, we will claim that the tide began to change less because of her equivocations about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants but more because of the way she and her husband reacted to that challenge. She still managed to win the nomination, but what happened then set the stage for Rudy’s campaign against her.
Her immediate reaction to doing poorly in the debate was to shout foul—all those men piled up on me. But four days later, after it became clear that playing the gender card this way (even though the “piling up” metaphor was from sports) had backfired, she said what she should have said in the first place—“The reason I was ‘attacked’ was not because I’m a women but because I am doing so well. In fact,” she added, “I not only can stand the heat in the kitchen, I am also very familiar with kitchens.”
And while Barack Obama was putting his human side on display on Saturday Night Live, Rudy up in New Hampshire was doing a little stand-up routine of his own. He had his audience in stitches when he did a very funny imitation of Hillary not able to make up her mind about drivers licenses, concluding by saying, “If she thinks this is a gotcha situation what will she do when she has to deal with Ahmadinejad?” Touché.
Then, to make matters worse, Bill Clinton out in Nevada, compared what happened to Hillary in that debate with the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry. To quote him, “Why am I saying this? Because I had the feeling at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again.” (My italics.) In addition to this being untrue and stupid, his racing to the side of his wife only served to remind voters that she’s just a poor defenseless woman who needs her big-strong husband to come to her rescue. The next thing we’ll hear from him is that he doesn’t stay home baking chocolate-chip cookies.
Pouring gasoline on the fire, one of Hillary Clinton’s spokesmen denied that the erstwhile First Laddie was making the very comparison he was in fact making. Without shame, Jay Carson said that the former president was not connecting what his wife’s Democrat opponents said about her to the Swiftboating of Kerry but rather to what Hillary’s Republican opponents said about her debate performance. Sort of—It depends on what your definition of Swiftboating is. How much better it would have been if Carson had simply said, or better yet Hillary herself, “My husband misspoke last night. I was not Swiftbaoated by anyone.” End of story. (See NY Times article linked below.)
Also, looking back to November 2007, we will take note of the fact that even social conservatives more and more began to throw their support to Rudy. Most notably, in the spirit of anyone-but-Satan-Hillary, Pat Robertson came out for him—which you can see right now if you check the NY Times website. This in spite of the fact that Rudy’s been married at least three times, has children who won’t speak to him, in Bernie Karick had a crook for police commissioner, and didn’t flip-flop during the campaign about his support for gays and abortion.
So, on Election Day 2008, a majority of voters pulled our levers or punched our chads for Rudy. And on January 20, 2009 he will be inaugurated.
Some will claim she suffered the same fate minority candidates face—that folks will say one thing to the pollsters so as not to look prejudiced, but once skulking in the privacy of the voting booth will give in to their biases. In this case, “There’s no way I’d vote for a women to be commander in chief.”
Others, me included, will say she lost because she ran an ineffective campaign; whereas Rudy not only made people feel that he would protect them but also ran as a happy warrior who projected energy, humor, and a sense of personal authenticity.
We will say that it all began to unravel for Hillary about a year earlier during and after the debate among Democratic candidates in which her opponents for the first time effectively challenged her. Looking back, we will claim that the tide began to change less because of her equivocations about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants but more because of the way she and her husband reacted to that challenge. She still managed to win the nomination, but what happened then set the stage for Rudy’s campaign against her.
Her immediate reaction to doing poorly in the debate was to shout foul—all those men piled up on me. But four days later, after it became clear that playing the gender card this way (even though the “piling up” metaphor was from sports) had backfired, she said what she should have said in the first place—“The reason I was ‘attacked’ was not because I’m a women but because I am doing so well. In fact,” she added, “I not only can stand the heat in the kitchen, I am also very familiar with kitchens.”
And while Barack Obama was putting his human side on display on Saturday Night Live, Rudy up in New Hampshire was doing a little stand-up routine of his own. He had his audience in stitches when he did a very funny imitation of Hillary not able to make up her mind about drivers licenses, concluding by saying, “If she thinks this is a gotcha situation what will she do when she has to deal with Ahmadinejad?” Touché.
Then, to make matters worse, Bill Clinton out in Nevada, compared what happened to Hillary in that debate with the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry. To quote him, “Why am I saying this? Because I had the feeling at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again.” (My italics.) In addition to this being untrue and stupid, his racing to the side of his wife only served to remind voters that she’s just a poor defenseless woman who needs her big-strong husband to come to her rescue. The next thing we’ll hear from him is that he doesn’t stay home baking chocolate-chip cookies.
Pouring gasoline on the fire, one of Hillary Clinton’s spokesmen denied that the erstwhile First Laddie was making the very comparison he was in fact making. Without shame, Jay Carson said that the former president was not connecting what his wife’s Democrat opponents said about her to the Swiftboating of Kerry but rather to what Hillary’s Republican opponents said about her debate performance. Sort of—It depends on what your definition of Swiftboating is. How much better it would have been if Carson had simply said, or better yet Hillary herself, “My husband misspoke last night. I was not Swiftbaoated by anyone.” End of story. (See NY Times article linked below.)
Also, looking back to November 2007, we will take note of the fact that even social conservatives more and more began to throw their support to Rudy. Most notably, in the spirit of anyone-but-Satan-Hillary, Pat Robertson came out for him—which you can see right now if you check the NY Times website. This in spite of the fact that Rudy’s been married at least three times, has children who won’t speak to him, in Bernie Karick had a crook for police commissioner, and didn’t flip-flop during the campaign about his support for gays and abortion.
So, on Election Day 2008, a majority of voters pulled our levers or punched our chads for Rudy. And on January 20, 2009 he will be inaugurated.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:15 AM
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