Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Sullivan on Clinton

Andrew Sullivan has reservations...

The character issue is really about having a president I can trust, whose words are connected to what he or she actually believes, and a president who can move us past the hideous and growing polarization of the past two decades. The words that come out of Clinton's mouth are like round, honed pebbles on a beach of public relations and focus groups. She has got it down, and it's smooth and round and aesthetically pleasing. But I don't believe it or even hear it except as a series of ever shifting calculations. I know some of this is inevitable in politics. But it has come to drain our political discourse of real meaning and clarity. And the crafted populist soundbites of Clinton's newest, Eva Peron-style campaign ad sound as empty as they may well be effective. She has taken professional politics to a newly homogenized blur of blather. We need plain English.

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