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I’ll preface my comments by saying that no candidate on the GOP side has stirred my interest and, by philosophy, no candidate on the Democratic side could possibly reflect my worldview.

Nevertheless, I can honestly say that I’m very glad that Hillary Clinton went down in flames. She doesn’t have the temperment to be president of a large organization, much less of the United States, and neither her political experience nor intelligence can make up for an isolated and autocratic character that I see as deeply marked by frustration, rigidity and Boomer self-righteousness. Imagine a liberal Richard Nixon in drag, but without the foreign policy vision, and you have a good picture of what a Hillary Clinton administration would be like.

Iowa isn’t the last nail in the coffin of her campaign but I’ll be pleased if it’s the first.

Of the major candidates in either party, I find that when faced with political or strategic choices, Hillary Clinton has the worst political “gut” I’ve seen in a long, long, time. Case in point, Hillary on any future role for Bill Clinton in a Clinton II White House:

“I think he would play the role that spouses have always played for presidents,” said Clinton, in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “He will not have a formal, official role, but just as presidents rely on wives, husbands, fathers, friends of long years, he will be my close confidante and adviser as I was with him.”

The candidate said having [ former] President Clinton participate in National Security Council meetings “wouldn’t be appropriate,” and in a crisis situation – like the one faced by President Bush this week after the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – President Clinton would not sit in on discussions with his wife’s national security team.”

On the surface, a politically smooth and no doubt heavily wargamed response; yet in substance, an answer that is remarkably stupid and demonstrative of candidate Clinton’s deep personal insecurities. Yes, yes, let’s bar the best – correction, by far the best – qualified person from the room during a national security crisis. I’m well to the political Right but I’d sleep a lot better at night during a Hillary administration if I knew that old Slick Willie was on hand to say to the HillaryCollective ” Well…ah’m jest saying here that, if we did that…the markets might crash and Putin’s people are going to go ape and…and…and”.

I tend to take all Clinton political statements with a grain of salt but there’s probably more than a ring of truth here that Hillary fears being seen as dependent upon or overshadowed as president by her much more popular and politically talented husband. I say “talented” rather than “experienced” because Hillary’s political experience is actually very considerable but her inherently atrocious political instincts tend to prevent her experience from being adequately recognized. It is evident to me that, as much as I might not care for her as a personality or politician, Hillary has learned from that experience and polished her skills with tremendous self-discipline – but where she longs to go at any given moment tends to be politically counterproductive to her own interests.

In this, Hillary is not unlike the hapless Seinfeld character George Costanza, for whom no well-intended gesture ever failed to misfire horribly and this was a central premise of the show. Even George himself eventually became aware of this self-destructive pattern and tried to rectify it:

“George : It’s not working, Jerry. It’s just not working.

Jerry : What is it that isn’t working?

George : Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but … I was perceptive. I always know when someone’s uncomfortable at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every of life, be it something to wear, something to eat … It’s all been wrong.

( A waitress comes up to G )

Waitress : Tuna on toast, coleslaw, cup of coffee.

George : Yeah. No, no, no, wait a minute, I always have tuna on toast. Nothing’s ever worked out for me with tuna on toast. I want the complete opposite of on toast. Chicken salad, on rye, untoasted … and a cup of tea.

Elaine : Well, there’s no telling what can happen from this.

Jerry : You know chicken salad is not the opposite of tuna, salmon is the opposite of tuna, ‘cos salmon swim against the current, and the tuna swim with it.

George : Good for the tuna.

( A blonde looks at George )

Elaine : Ah, George, you know, that woman just looked at you.

George : So what? What am I supposed to do?

Elaine : Go talk to her.

George : Elaine, bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women.

Jerry : Well here’s your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them.

George : Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.

Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do

something!

( He goes over to the woman )

George : Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice that you were looking in my direction.

Victoria : Oh, yes I was, you just ordered the same exact lunch as me.

( G takes a deep breath )

George : My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.

Victoria : I’m Victoria. Hi.”

It’s a tactic that Hillary Clinton might do well to consider.

One of the numerous interesting people I met at the Boyd 2007 conference seminar was Gustave Reininger, a producer of movies and television crime dramas, with whom I shared a few drinks at the Quantico Officer’s Club and exchanged colorful stories about Chicago history. It was, as I recall, a very enjoyable conversation.  At the time Gustave had mentioned a number of film projects that he was working on; now one of them has moved closer to fruition.

Corso: The Last Beat, which is due out in 2008, comes on the heels of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s totemic bestseller, On the Road and like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise, the lead figure, the Beat poet Gregory Corso ,is on an existential quest:

“The “Beats” are back.  Ever “cool”, ever “hip”, this poignant, humorous film will introduce today’s youth market to the inner circle of the American Icons of “the Beat Generation” – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Gregory Corso. “The Last Beat” follows Corso, the most colorful of them. After the death of Allen Ginsberg, his best friend, Corso goes “On the Road” to rediscover himself as the “Last Beat.”

Many of my students have been Generation Y/NetGen/Echo Boomers. While more cheerfully self-confident than the Silent Generation and less megalomaniacal than the Boomers, whom they match in demographic size, they share with these postwar-coming-of-age generations a collective yearning for identity, for a meaning larger than themselves.

This film may strike a cultural chord.

(Hat tip to A.E.)

AL GORE’S DEFINING MOMENT

Generally, I avoid commenting on primarily political stories but this one merits an exception.

Former Vice-President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, in conjunction with UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Regardless of what one thinks about Mr. Gore as a politician or of his heavily propagandistic but Oscar award winning film, the Nobel Prize represents the capstone of one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American politics since Richard Nixon.

It is true that Al Gore did not self-destruct after his razor-thin defeat in 2000 ( yes, give it up, he lost) quite the way Nixon did when he lost the California Governorship in 1962 back to back with the presidency in 1960 but neither did ” the New Nixon” of 1968 reach such illustrious heights. Americans with Nobels are rare; Americans with Peace Prizes are the most exclusive circle of all. Many conservatives are quite upset at this development and are venting, some of their complaints have my sympathy but their sense of timing does not. They are spitting into the wind right now and to the extent that anyone outside the movement conservative choir is paying any attention, bitter anti- Gore jeremiads only serve to alienate moderates.

For once, I can say the Bush administration struck the right political note with a simple gesture of congratulation to a former adversary enjoying a moment in the sun, without getting too excited about it. If anything, given recent decisions by the Nobel Committee to honor Communist frauds and terrorist kleptocrats, we should be relieved that the Peace Prize this year went to Al Gore and not, say, Kim Jong Il or Robert Mugabe. I’m the first not to confuse Mr. Gore with Andrei Sakharov or Aung San Suu Kyi but even I must concede he is a qualitative moral improvement over Yasser Arafat by many orders of magnitude.

Much speculation (i.e. wishful thinking) exists as to whether Gore will now jump into the race for the Democratic nomination for president. That would be fun to watch but I doubt that will happen as it would require that Gore extricate himself from around $ 100 million dollars of VC enterprises that he is deeply involved in, so as to compete at a complete organizational and financial disadvantage with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Why accept those headaches and fritter away his newfound political capital when as the Democratic Party’s star elder statesman and counterweight to the Clintons, Gore is a ” must-have” insider for a new Democratic administration ? That’s a lot of clout to throw away on a last-minute vanity campaign.

Mr. Gore is enjoying his moment but in all probability, this episode represents his peak.

A GLITTERING EYE ON RICHARDSON’S NEW REALISM

Dave Schuler has a superb examination about Governor Bill Richardson’s major foreign policy essay in the Harvard International Review.

I can applaud the serious effort by Richardson, a former high level diplomat, to address foreign policy in a thoughtful way, even though I agree with Dave that many of Richardson’s proposed solutions do not logically address the strategic trends he identifies ( thought they probably appeal to regular, middle-class, Democratic activists if not the wackiest of the wingnuts).