Clinton, McCain: Irresistable and Unstoppable

“He who is not against us is for us,” the Gospel of Mark observes. This is as succinct a statement as exists of the stealthy and smart presidential contest already under way between the junior senator from New York and the senior senator from Arizona.Of 300 million Americans, startlingly few don’t know who Hillary Clinton and John McCain are, and even fewer are against both of them, which, after Mark, means that we are overwhelmingly for them. As a couple, they are already in royal purple. As rivals, we approach a smash-up that will match Lord and Lady Macbeth.An appetizing new book, “The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008,” from two veteran White House watchers, Mark Halpern of ABC News and John Harris of the Washington Post, overflows with advice to the start-up candidate for the presidency, and it elucidates the electioneering of Bill Clinton and George Bush. But the heart of the book is celebration of the fact that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain are irresistible and unstoppable.Messrs. Halpern and Harris identify dozens of what they call “Trade Secrets” to be heeded by a presidential campaign, such as “Beware the Internet’s low bar for scandalous news,” or “Do not try to be a serious presidential candidate and a talking head at the same time,” or, my favorite in the book because it is both simple and ironic, “Being nice helps you win presidential campaigns.” They are also keen to identify what they call the “Freak Show,” which is the public collapse of decorum in the canvas so that it is considered clever partisanship to speak poisonously, behave dishonorably, and blame-shift like Fagin to win. However, each time Messrs. Halpern and Harris follow their experience to recount the do’s and do nots of a sinewy campaign, they qualify their remarks when speaking of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain. For example, in praise of President Bush’s preparation for 2000, Messrs. Halpern and Harris confide, “And if you are reading these words and plan to run in 2008, you cannot begin to imagine how far behind you are now compared to where Bush was in 1999. (With the usual exceptions of the Gentleman from Arizona and the Gentlelady from New York, if they make the race.)”This consistent exceptionalism for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain challenged me as I read, and I began to see that for Messrs. Halpern and Harris, the nomination is over and we are in the early stages of a struggle that will recast our national politics. Rules are for everyone else who has Potomac fever, such as Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg, Newt Gingrich, Senator Biden or the new fad, Senator Obama. Indeed, this book is especially for rookies like the junior senator from Illinois, who makes an unforced error by hinting at his candidacy while he is a talking-head.Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain are not mortal, predictable, coherent candidates. Senators Clinton and McCain, with their radioactive negatives and cautionary pasts, might actually be the way to displace the “Freak Show” that discredits us. Mrs. Clinton twangs like an untamed shrew — she is anti-transparent, anti-maternal, anti-meaning. She is married to a fidgety Falstaff and related to truants as brothers. But all these flaws, because they should have wrecked her ambition, make her triumphant: See her once hit the stage, and you see what rock star meant in 1969.Mr. McCain is impulsively contrary: He has lived a fast-moving life of violent risk and bad luck that should have buried him nine times. Not only is he energetic but also he wants to lead the Republican Party that he enjoys bashing and burning. Senator McCain cannot not bait the Bush White House, he cannot not goad the most potent elements of the right wing, and he cannot not confuse the media that wants to mythologize him. In sum, Mr. McCain could take the platform holding President Ahmadinejad’s hand and we would wait to hear this yarn before we judged.“He who is not against us is for us,” the Gospel observes, and that may be the only way we can choose between the superbly skilled and engaged Senators Clinton and McCain over the next 25 months. The Constitution insists they can’t both win. This guarantees that, after they individually dispense with their rivals like mayflies, their final clash will exhaust our republic. And the president-elect will be the one of them who has fewer against him or her right up to the last hour of the polls on the day we vote.Mr. Batchelor is host of “The John Batchelor Show,” now on hiatus.

Clinton, McCain: Irresistable and Unstoppable

Clinton, McCain: Irresistable and Unstoppable

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