Anticipating Republican One-Upmanship

Fasten your seat belts, folks, it's SupercalifragilisticexpialiTuesday, that bloated day of primaries at the end of which an old man with anger management problems will finally get the all-but-confirmed Republican nomination he's coveted for nearly eight years. It's a nomination he's wanted so badly that he stood by and allowed the campaign of a man who did get it in 2000 to trash his wife and child -- and then stood by that very man as the latter proceeded to destroy everything he touched.

On the Democratic side, the picture is far less clear. Barack Obama has been closing on Hillary Clinton in late polls, and if he has a strong showing today, watch the Democratic race get even nastier than it's been thus far. For me, sitting here in New Jersey, the fact that for the first time in my lifetime, the New Jersey presidential primary actually matters is a mixed blessing at best. John Edwards is still on the ballot, as are Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, but without Edwards having a reasonable shot at reaching the 15% threshold for delegates, to vote for my first choice seems wasted.

The choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is not one I anticipate making joyfully. Clinton's campaign seems longer on specifics, even when they're specifics that I don't like and that are politically suicidal, like garnishing the pay of low-wage workers to pay for health insurance. Obama is inspiring, but his insistence on "a new kind of politics" doesn't take into account the way Republicans operate when their power is on the line. Is he really that naïve, or is he just carrying concealed until he can see the whites of their eyes? Barack Obama's is a candidacy of confidence and faith, and my faith these days is somewhat lacking. That's not to say I won't make that leap, because the thought of having to live the Clinton Dramas all over again makes me want to take to my bed, but I wish I could hit that button more joyfully today than I will.

Before the State of the Union address, the inimitable Tweety started rhapsodizing about Condoleeza Rice being mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate on the Republican side:

OLBERMANN: Let's pick up on the point that I interrupted you at at the start of the hour; the idea that we may have just seen a vice presidential candidate walk in.

MATTHEWS: Condoleeza Rice, despite the difficulties of this foreign policy, including the war which is immensely unpopular -- a very small number of Americans like the war in Iraq or the decision to go to war in Iraq -- Condoleeza Rice has escaped largely unscathed by that. People really like her, she's likeable, and impressive. And I have to think given the ethnic, you know, excitement - let’s call it American excitement about Barack Obama. If he doesn’t make it to the nomination a lot of people on the Republican side might say, well why don’t we try do something to offset that and take advantage of the hope of having an African American at a high level of government.

It's as if presidential politics were a poker game: "I'll take your black guy, and raise you a black WOMAN!"

But I wonder who these people are who "really like her." I'm sure she's charming on the Washington cocktail party circuit, which is no doubt who the "people" are to whom Matthews is referring. I would hope that those Americans who don't nibble cocktail weenies with members of the Bush Administration remember things like this:

Of course the fact that Philip Zelikow was the Administration's mole on the 9/11 commission, charged with making sure the Administration bore no blame in the final report, shouldn't have been news to anyone, despite the news coverage this week of Philip Shenon's new book about the Commission. It also shouldn't shock anyone that, as Shenon describes in the book, "Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president. Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action." National Security Advisor as groupie -- yup, that's what we want in a dangerous world -- a vice presidential nominee whose entire record in the previous administration comes from her crush on her boss.

If Condoleeza Rice has emerged unscathed from her record of horrific incompetence, it's because of the media's reluctance to criticize her. But there is no amount of gilt-edging that you can put on this woman that's going to make her pass muster as anything other than a harbinger of the Bush family tentacles extending beyond George W's disastrous presidency and into the next one. I have no doubt that Rice is an intellegent woman. Whether her inexplicable love for the dubious charms of George W. Bush have made her do stupid things, or if it's just misplaced ideology is anyone's guess. But to set her up as some kind of one-upmanship device in the event of a black Democratic nominee is not only the same kind of affirmative action against which Republicans have been ranting for decades, but the worst kind -- the kind that would put a Washington talking head's idea of "ethnic excitement" above the appalling ineptitude of her track record.