29 January 2008

Goodnight Moon



Facing an unstable economy and an unfinished war, I watched the President start his final State of the Union address last night with a certain pugnacious nonchalance. I was drowsy there is a lot going on. There is a meteor headed for a close pass to the Earth; the scientists tell me not to panic, and I must acquiesce.

The moon is serene out there in the darkness, looking down on an East Africa dissolving into violence, Cape to Cairo, burning down the last of Cecil Rhodes great dream, and that barely intruded on the address.

It did not seem to faze anyone else. Crisis overload overseas, perhaps, and since Iraq is not an active embarrassment at the moment, we are gazing inward. Barack Obama walked in to the House Chamber, slim and elegant, flanking the rotund Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Red State that is dominated by Blue Boston. With little Caroline, he has jumped on the Obama bandwagon against the Clinton machine.

I will always think of her as little, though my eyes are rheumy now, and she is fifty-one.

Paybacks are a bitch, as they say, and they are most profound in the political arena. The repudiation of the Billary machine by the Camelot icons is scathing and appears to bring the old establishment firmly in line behind Obama as the next Paladin of Change.

So much will be clear after Mitt and John duke it out in Florida tomorrow, and the de facto national primary is held next Tuesday.

Still, the rehabilitation of the youngest of Joseph Kennedy's kids as a secular saint is remarkable. The equation of his brother JFK and Barack, with Ted's moonlike face hanging over it all, is too bizarre for words.

I remember how in love we were with JFK, despite the concern over his religion, and the fact that he got a free pass on his dalliances, which were well known to the press around him.

Maybe that is why Hillary looked so indomitable last night. She is at her best in adversity, representing the revolutionary wing of the Boomer Generation. The end of the sixties was so much more raw and savage than the beginning.

The reaction to all the political killings, and the violence of the war in Southeast Asia scorched the political ground, The Clintons were typical of us then adopting the mantra of Brother Malcolm, another martyr, that change would come “by any means necessary.”

Strange that it should come to pass that Teddy would end up being the symbol of change, the serene moon over the Capitol. It seems that with enough money and chutzpah you can overcome anything.

Not enough of the former and an overdose of the latter is what apparently is going to do in Hillary, if you asked me this morning, laboring with the sea anchor of the larger-than-life former President. There will be some great new scandals when we get to that over the funding of his Presidential Library down in Arkansas, but we will have to see if any of that nastiness is going to be necessary.

In the glimpses of Hillary that I recall as my eyes began to close, as if the President was reading the old children's story “Goodnight Moon” to a hall of inattentive children.

“Goodnight Mouse, and Goodnight House. Goodnight to the old woman whispering: “Hush.”

I thought Hillary looked alert and tough, not at all ready to nod off, or go silently into the night. The cameras lovingly cut to both the Democratic candidates as the President did his feisty address from the front of the Chamber.

He is foursquare against earmarks, I recall that vividly, now that there is not a great deal he can do about it. The two would-be Presidents were doing their best to convey with body language the grand schemes they will be outlining from the rostrum when their time comes.

The Times this morning yawned that there was nothing new in the address except Recession, and War and Taxes.

As if there was anything else to worry about.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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