Looking for Godot

In his classic play, _Waiting for Godot_, Samuel Beckett sets two men to waiting -- interminably, and probably hopelessly -- for "Godot", who will come and rescue them. Godot, obligingly, never arrives.

Now, in the modern theater of the absurd which our Presidential elections have become, our press has gone the next step, looking, desperately looking, for Godot to come and rescue them from Hillary Clinton. I can't blame them: where Reagan was frequently on-message, he was on-message because he was reading somebody else's script, and his gaffes made good television. Bill Clinton was relentlessly off-message, however brilliant he was, and so made good theater. The Bushes, father and son, are both war Presidents, and, again, war makes great ratings, making up for their respective blemishes, the father's patrician colorlessness, and the son's smirking folly.

I suspect, that the press fears Hillary Clinton. Someone who is as smart as Bill, but won't stumble, who is relentlessly on-message, but can ad lib while staying on message -- such a person will make their job much harder. They want either Bill's lack of discipline or Ronnie's unpredictability. Hillary, cheerless, hard, and driven, offers them none of that. Worse, they fear -- correctly, I suspect -- that she'll hold her political enemies responsible for their behavior, thus reducing the value of Republican Congressional sources of vitriol. She looks like a school-marm, and she's not going to be "fun". It's going to be a long dry season if she's elected.

No matter, though; this posting isn't about the press and its fears, but rather about its follies. For better or for worse, Clinton is building a strong plurality among Democrats, and, given the nation's current bent, she'll win going away in 2008 if she gets the nod. That's going to be terrible for the bottom line of the networks; they make (quite literally) tens of billions of dollars off the advertisements the election spawns, and if Clinton is a walk-away, they'll be forced down-ticket, reducing profits. Worse, news stories and other "public service events" about a contested election draw in consumers, who then stick around to watch more advertisements on subsequent shows. Since politically-aware Americans tend to be people with more disposable income (after all, they can waste time watching the political chat-up shows), their eyeballs are quite valuable.

And it is beginning to look a lot like Clinton with relatively little internecine conflict. No conflict == no primary viewers -- the only thing worse would be no conflict in the general, leading to fewer eyebal...err, I mean, engaged voters to show commercials to. So, if you're a news hound, confronted with this dreadful prospect, what do you do? Why, it's obvious; in a tradition going back to _The Maine_, you *create* a controversy.

No, I'm quite serious. Look at what's happened in the last week. First, Chris Matthews throws negative question after negative question at Clinton during the debate, hoping to catch her out. He fails outright at least 21 times out of 22; on try number 22, he tries to rope her in with a question about Elliot Spitzer's proposal to give driver's licenses to all residents of New York, ignoring their legality of residence. She actually gives a good answer, talking about the complicated reasons that it might not be a bad idea, but then refuses to either endorse or condemn the plan. Immediately, MSNBC starts trumpeting that as the "first crack" in her candidacy, and asking, in purple prose, if there's finally a horse-race. The rest of the press jumps in.

We're ginning up a controversy, yes we are, laydees and gennulmin! Cept for a small problem -- the polls come back, and the American people have responded by shrugging. No, it isn't a definitive answer, but, gosh, you know, it's not a problem with a definitive solution. It's certainly not a stupid answer.

So, what's on today's front pages? A declaration that if Michael Bloomberg jumps in, he'll create a big third party threat. Why, it's Ross Perot all over again!

Except that there's no reason to believe it's true. Mostly, it's a puff piece, again, trying to create advertising impressions, in a desperate hope that the American people will welcome them with candy and flowers. It isn't true this time, either, guys.