Antidote for winter doldrums

As an antidote to the winter blahs, the traveling cat-and-dog fight between Democratic presidential wannabes Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may not have the therapeutic benefits of perusing seed catalogs or counting the days until baseball’s spring training commences, I suppose.

But as political theater, it beats watching Dr. Phil. The entertainment quotient of the almost-daily exchange of insults between the two in their No Promise Left Behind campaigns for their party’s presidential nomination should keep the natives interested at least until next Saturday, when the other Phil, that overhyped Pennsylvania groundhog, steals the show.

The enjoyment in these quadrennial intramural hissy fits amongst politicians of either major political party is twofold. In Act One of the soap opera, the campaign grinds unmercifully onward and you have the distortions and exaggerations, the innuendoes and half-truths, the zingers and put-downs that, when delivered by experts, can become the stuff of legend.

In the case at hand, you have a “he-said, she-said” flavor that can only be a bonus as we hunker down in this long winter of our discontent, our only alternate entertainment being the sound of the furnace sucking up the last of the $3.28-per-gallon heating oil.

He said she was a corporate lawyer for an anti-union Wal-Mart, a definite no-no in Democratic politics. She said that not all that long ago he was a shill for a Chicago slumlord who is in trouble with the law, and you know what they say about birds of a feather flocking together. He said she represents the same old, same old in Washington politics, which also goes for her meddling husband and the horse he rode in on. She said he may be a fresh face, but unfortunately it’s a transparent face that is all talk and no substance. She runs a television ad accusing him of the unpardonable sin of praising Ronald Reagan, who was anathema to Democrats. He counters with an ad that essentially calls her a liar.

Act Two of the melodrama – my favorite part – features the obligatory hypocritical kiss-and-make-up scene once the campaign is over and the nomination locked up.

Here, Candidate A, who has said all those despicable things about Candidate B for the past year now proclaims that Candidate B is a great American who ran a superlative campaign. Candidate B, who went through two fortunes, a divorce and a truckload of antacid tablets while he was barnstorming the country denouncing Candidate A as the devil incarnate, now says he couldn’t be prouder of this credit to the human race for keeping things positive.

Sometimes, the postcampaign love festival results in the winner asking the loser to become his (or her) running mate, although you probably shouldn’t be in any great hurry to bet the farm that this will happen with Clinton-Obama. Despite the dream-come-true aspect that a national ticket of a woman and an African-American would present for Democrats, the candidates appear to be sincere in their loathing of one another and would make strange bedfellows, indeed.

Still, anything is possible in politics. Thus, the more headlines I see like the one in the morning newspaper earlier this week – “Clinton, Obama clash angrily in debate” – the less surprised I would be should the season-ending kissy make-up stuff lead to political nuptials of convenience. The theory is elementary, my dear Watson: The more prolonged the spat, the sweeter the reconciliation. Politics of Lovemaking 101.

The Associated Press story concerning a candidates’ debate in South Carolina on Monday reported that as Obama tried to defend his recent comments about Republican ideas and Ronald Reagan (in which he had told a Nevada newspaper that Reagan had changed the trajectory of America in a way that neither Richard Nixon nor Bill Clinton had, putting us “on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it”), Clinton interrupted and said she has never criticized his remarks on Reagan.

“Your husband did,” said Obama, who has accused the former president of misrepresenting his record.

“I’m here. He’s not,” she snapped.

And probably it was just as well, too. Bill Clinton has been somewhat of a loose cannon in his wife’s campaign of late, party elders complaining that in the ex-president’s zeal to discredit Obama his mouth tends to engage about three seconds before his brain kicks in.

Not that I would knock the man for that. As so many readers have helpfully pointed out over the years, essentially the same thing happens to me nearly every week when I sit down to write and let my fingers do the talking.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.