MauryTHINKS

“Because it is a long, horrifying process to run for the nomination, candidates often like to have fun on the campaign trail. And a couple of days ago Hillary Clinton while she was flying on her private campaign jet, pretended to be a flight attendant. But that’s not all. She was so convincing that Bill actually hit on her”

— David Letterman

Perhaps I have been too hard on Hillary Clinton in recent columns, especially accusing her of staging that semi-human crying moment after her loss in Iowa. In fairness, I guess I would cry too if I had to spend eight months and $80 million dollars in Iowa in the winter with nothing to show for it. If indeed Hillary was showing genuine emotion for the first time, and one that did not involve throwing a lamp at Bill Clinton, then I apologize.

There must be pressure running for president when you want the power as badly as she does. I, myself, know such pressure as I once mounted a campaign to be elected to head up outreach charity efforts for my scrap- booking club. It was a bitterly contested campaign that often strayed from issues and got personal. I tried to take the high road by focusing on my ideas for change, chief among them my desire to teach scrap booking techniques to the homeless. My opponent was less known, but, as you would imagine, considerably more likable. Down the stretch of the campaign, and out of desperation, I played the race card. It turns out that the race card does not work near as well when both candidates are white. I lost.

The campaign stress got to me. The experience was daunting, having each day to face the very real possibility that there are homeless people out there who will never come to know the joy of scrap booking. Like me, Hillary cried in New Hampshire not for herself but for others — the people who do not realize just how much this means to her.

Hillary knows that with a recession looming, any Democrat thrown up there now is going to win. If they do not win in 2008 the way Bush and the GOP have fumbled their opportunity, then they will never win the presidency again.

Aside from spending like Democrats and pursuing a busy buttinski social agenda, the Republicans have shown that they are not good administrators of government. After missing signs and not being able to coordinate the FBI and CIA to avoid 9/11, they allocated $5 million dollars and one month to investigate intelligence failures afterward. And just by way of measuring their priorities, the GOP spent $42 million and four years investigating Bill Clinton’s dalliances with a willing intern. No wonder the GOP will spend the next eight years on the bench.

So what do we reasonable moderates do now? We have to choose between the least of two evils. Pretty boy Edwards (the absolute worst of the contenders) is all but out. He will soon be packing his hair care products and heading back to his 30,000- square-foot North Carolina home and the one of the “two Americas” that he prefers.

That will leave us Obama and Hillary. In reality, Hillary is more of a known quantity, and Obama is much more likable. His voting record, despite all his “bringing the nation together” rhetoric, is 100 percent down the liberal lines. Hillary, like her husband Bill, has no real idealism that burdens her; also, like her husband, she is only beholden to one ideal, her own thirst for power. Given that, she probably will be the most centrist of the Democrats and will govern in the least destructive fashion while the Republicans are in their political power time-out chair.

Maybe when she gets elected, Hillary Clinton can pursue the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. I just hope she addresses the one that exists between the two government bureaucracies called the CIA and FBI, and then we might be safe.

Brace yourself, folks, for one more head fake at socialism and nationalizing one seventh of our economy with socialized medicine. The Democrats, who begrudge the accomplished, traffic in envy and play to the fears and the worries of the less-educated, are soon to be in power.

And blame no one but the Republicans, who had their chance at power and blew it by not being true to their stated principals.