The Discerning Texan

Over on the Democratic side, meanwhile, they’ve got a woman, a black, an Hispanic, a preening metrosexual with an angled nape – and they all think exactly the same. They remind me of The Johnny Mathis Christmas Album, which Columbia used to re-release every year in a different sleeve: same old songs, new cover. When your ideas are identical, there’s not a lot to argue about except biography. Last week, asked about his experience in foreign relations, Barack Obama noted that his father was Kenyan and he’d been at grade school in Indonesia. “Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations,” he said, “is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia.” When it comes to foreign relations, he has more of them on his Christmas card list than Hillary or Haircut Boy.

Senator Clinton was gleefully derisive of this argument. “Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of ten prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face,” she remarked dryly. “I think we need a president with more experience than that, someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in.” As to what “experience” Hillary has, well, she’s certainly visited Africa enough to acquire plenty of venerable African proverbs (“It takes a village”, etc), even if no African has ever been known to use any of them. When I mentioned on the radio how much I was enjoying the Hill/Barack snippiness, I received a lot of huffy e-mails from Democrats saying, oh yeah, well, how much foreign policy experience do Romney or Giuliani have? Sorry, but you’re missing the point. On the GOP side, the debate isn’t being conducted on the basis of who was where in Grade Four.

To be sure, John Edwards is said to have been hammering Hillary on her Iraq vote, but this is an almost surreally post-modern dispute. Five years ago, Senator Clinton’s Iraq vote was exactly the same as Senator Edwards’: They both voted for war. The only difference is that the former stands by her vote while the latter has since ‘fessed up and revealed he was duped, suckered, played for a sap by George W Bush. Bush is famously the world’s all-time biggest moron but that’s apparently no obstacle when you’re seeking to roll the Democratic Senate caucus. Anyway, Senator Edwards is now demanding Senator Clinton repudiate her Iraq vote and concede she’s as big a patsy and pushover as he is. And this is apparently what passes for “toughness” on the Democrat side. Judging from the number of “North Country For Edwards” signs that have sprouted in the first snows throughout the White Mountains in recent weeks, it may even have some traction on Primary Day.

Let me ask a question of my Democrat friends: What does John Edwards really believe on Iraq? I mean, really? To pose the question is to answer it: There’s no there there. In the Dem debates, the only fellow who knows what he believes and says it out loud is Dennis Kucinich. Otherwise, all is pandering and calculation. The Democratic Party could use some seriously fresh thinking on any number of issues - abortion, entitlements, racial preferences - but the base doesn’t want to hear, and no viable candidate is man enough (even Hillary) to stick it to ‘em. I disagree profoundly with McCain and Giuliani, but there’s something admirable about watching them run in explicit opposition to significant chunks of their base and standing their ground. Their message is: This is who I am. Take it or leave it.