By Jonah Goldberg
Saturday, October 10, 2015
I overslept yesterday morning — accursed bartender! Why
did you over-serve me!?
When I awoke from my slumber at 7:12 a.m. in my New York
hotel room covered in blood that wasn’t my own, my first concern was, “Do I
have time to write this ‘news’letter?”
Speaking of time, by the time you read this it will be
later than it is now. Damn you, unidirectional nature of the time-space
continuum! How much cooler would it be if you were reading this during the
Renaissance?
Somewhat more relevantly, by the time you read this, the
House Republicans may have unified around a new speaker.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Bwaaaahahahahahaha!”
But it could happen. Also, if vests had sleeves, Joe
Biden would have an easier time figuring out which hole his head is supposed to
go through.
‘Crisis’ of the
House Divided
Some folks in the GOP are freaking out like Lancelot in Excalibur when he wakes up naked next to
Guinevere and sees that Arthur has left his sword between them. “The King
without a sword! The land without a king!”
Yeah, yeah, I know: The reference is a bit obscure. All
of the good pop-culture references are in the hotel minibar and they are
outrageously expensive. “Thirteen dollars for a Godfather quote! Are you kidding me!?”
For those of you who missed Excalibur, shame on you. Deduct ten points from your lifetime nerd
score. But also: The point is that people — particularly Beltway people — are
acting as if the speaker of the House plays a much larger role in our lives
than he really does. The speaker without a gavel! The House without a speaker!
Where’s Lloyd Bridges to lament that he picked the wrong week to stop sniffing
glue?
But, seriously, start asking your friends who don’t work
in politics how much they really care about the speakership. No doubt you know
some political junkies who are interested or even invested in this (or maybe
that’s you). But most normal people don’t care that much about the position. You know why? Because that’s normal.
I think Ramesh makes a good point when he advises calm
(Ponnuru’s gotta Ponnuru). We still have a speaker of the House. His name is
John Boehner. And whatever you think about him (I personally think he’s been
treated somewhat unfairly), you have to appreciate the fact that his job is
harder than most people realized. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t see so many ambitious politicians wetting themselves
like the rookie fighter standing in front of Russell Crowe in Gladiator at the mere prospect of taking
the job.
(Pro tip: Don’t google “gladiator pissing” videos in a
hotel restaurant. The results are not the sort of thing you necessarily want
the tourists from Omaha in the next booth to see on your screen. Or maybe you
do?)
I’m not imputing fear or cowardice to Paul Ryan, or
really to anyone in particular. From everyone I’ve talked to, it seems like he
just doesn’t want the job for honorable reasons, though he may be compelled to
take it for honorable reasons as well. See National Review's
editorial for more on this. My point is that given the extent of
dysfunction in the GOP right now, it’s just not a very desirable job. That’s
weird man (not to be confused with Weirdman, the most disturbing superhero
ever.)
I could write at great length (“You’re telling me!” — The
Couch) about the root causes of this dysfunction, but I’ll save that for
another time. The simple fact is that this dysfunction exists. Right now the
GOP is like a messed up family at Thanksgiving dinner. Even the most innocuous
comments and actions are treated as rubbing salt in old wounds. “‘Pass the
mashed potatoes?’ I’m sick of your bulls**t! You never came to my school play!
I had a solo in West Side Story!”
I got a lot of grief for my column suggesting that New
Gingrich should serve as a caretaker speaker. And I get the objections. But
even if you don’t want Gingrich — though I honestly think we could do a lot
worse — I think the case for a caretaker speaker makes a lot of sense. If Paul
Ryan is cattle-prodded into the job, it seems to me he should do it under the
condition that he gets to go back to Ways and Means in 2017. Yes, it could work
out horribly for him. But it could also work out great. If done right, he could
collect a lot of chits that could be redeemed when he pursues serious tax
reform. In fact, that might be the key to a Ryan speakership: Find a single
unifying policy vision that unites the caucus and put off the other arguments
until after the presidential election. But what do I know?
Pantsuit Agonistes
In my column today, I write that Hillary Clinton is
little more than “political ambition in a pantsuit.” The single most
predictable response from liberals so far in my e-mail and Twitter feed is:
sexism! Apparently “pantsuit” is the new bloody shirt of patriarchal
oppression. I call shenanigans on this.
Aside from her lying and abandoning all but the pretense
of having any actual convictions, pantsuits are Hillary Clinton’s trademark.
She even has a line of shwag dedicated to pantsuits. The late boxing writer
Bert Sugar wore a fedora everywhere he went. He was never seen without it. If I
wrote, “Bert Sugar was a boxing encyclopedia in a fedora” no one would think
twice. If every time I went on TV I wore my spaghetti colander codpiece, lefty
writers would be entirely in their rights to say “Goldberg is a jackass in a
codpiece.”
RELATED: Flip-Flops Show Hillary’s Long on Ambition,
Short on Principles
A more substantive — but equally wrong — complaint is
that Hillary Clinton is being held to a sexist double standard when people —
i.e., me — point out her naked ambition. This has a superficial plausibility.
Carly Fiorina, for example, is often derided as too ambitious when she’s no
less or more ambitious than anybody else on the GOP debate stage. Nancy Pelosi,
I’m sure, has gotten similar treatment. But there’s a difference between the
Nancy Pelosis and Carly Fiorinas and Hillary. The former stick to their
principles and convictions far more than Clinton does. Pelosi willingly lost
control of the House to get Obamacare passed. Contrary to a lot of nonsense you
hear from Fiorina’s critics, she stayed conservative when she ran for the
Senate in California. Bernie Sanders is stealing Hillary’s thunder because he
sticks to his principles. Yes, all politicians trim their sails to the
political winds to one extent or another. But Hillary Clinton operates like she
lost her mast. Or something. I’m not very good at nautical metaphors.
In this she is every bit a Clinton. Jesse Jackson once
said of Bill: “There is nothing this man won’t do. He is immune to shame. Move
past all the nice posturing and get really down in there in him, you find
absolutely nothing . . . nothing but an appetite.”
Hillary Clinton was secretary of state for four years and
she did little to nothing of consequence — well, nothing of positive
consequence — beyond prepare for a job she felt entitled to. Yeah, she flew a
million miles. But as I’ve said before, if you had a travelling salesman who
racked up a million miles without closing any sales, he wouldn’t get the set of
steak knives at the end of the year.
Indeed, one of the funniest aspects of her flip-flop on
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is that TPP was one of the few things she
could plausibly take credit for. The day
before Clinton came out against TPP, Anne-Marie Slaughter was on NPR
touting the trade deal as one of her biggest accomplishments. No wonder her
defenders want to rally around the pantsuit battle flag.
Hillary Clinton reminds me of Ted Kennedy, and I don’t
just mean the comparable driving skills. When Ted Kennedy was asked why he
wanted to be president, he couldn’t answer the question. He was a Kennedy. He
felt entitled to the job and it never occurred to him to formulate a reason
beyond that. His rambling reply to the question “Why do you want to be
president?” killed his bid for the job. Ever since, it’s been political
consulting 101 to make sure your client has something to say when asked that
question, and I’m sure Hillary could offer up some perfectly serviceable
pabulum if required to. But it seems obvious to me that her real answer would
be closer to the Kennedyesque one. She feels entitled to the job. It’s her turn.
Replace “because I’m a Kennedy” with “because I’m a woman” or “because I put up
with all of Bill’s crap and I deserve my shot” or “because there’s nothing else
for me to do.”
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