The Unavoidable Obsession with Hillary Clinton's Dead End

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

The exposed hobbies of Eliot Spitzer served at least as a musical rest in our national cacophony of the quixotic. For 48 hours we collectively labored to imagine, in a kind of cost-benefit thought experiment, the professional joys of a $5,500-an-hour working girl versus the sure disappointment of a mere $3,500 expended.

Alas I, for one, was unsuccessful in this experiment, in view of the carnal reality that the essentials are generally available in most any downtown for about 20 bucks.

Nevertheless underneath it all and now back on top with a vengeance is the political news that is virtually all race, gender, disputatious Democrats, apologies, race, gender, race, resignations, race and disputatious Democrats, rather than what lies ahead. Thank you, Eliot, for the respite, however brief -- yet we're back to the cacophony.

Some say the open disputes are a good thing; that it's so nice we can finally have this much-needed "national debate," whatever the hell that means, about race and gender. But it seems to me there's something else a trifle more pressing right now, like averting another four catastrophic years of neoconservative nincompoopism and domestic idleness.

After all, it's not that racial and gendered divisions won't still be with us in 2009. How about we just pick up then where we should leave off now, only to leave it again in 2010 as unsettled as it has been for hundreds of years in this nation. Other duty calls.

Yet the execution of that duty is getting shoved aside as we unprofitably wallow in the tactical fascinations of a preposterously quixotic campaign. It's all race, all gender, all disputatiousness and all Hillary as we follow with immoderate interest her newest inventions in trying to capture the uncapturable, to hoodwink the unhoodwinkable, to bamboozle the unbamboozable.

The numbers shall obtain, be they Obama's lead in pledged delegates, the popular will, number of states won or his consistent polling advantage against John McCain, not to mention all of these in one basket. Hence the unbamboozable -- the amassing alliance of superdelegates needed to nail this thing down -- will, in the long run, not be deterred. Just examine the numbers and you'll see that this race was effectively over weeks ago.

But there's another "yet," and it is this: There are in politics, as in physics, no absolutes. So there's that fraction of a one-percent chance that Hillary could, after all, pull some indiscernible rabbit out of some miraculous hat and beat the unbeatable odds. Gov. Spitzer may have a better chance of an evening out alone this week, but the slimmest of a possibility is nevertheless there.

So we wallow in the tactical fascinations, in all the inventiveness of Hillary's trying; for the reigning news coverage makes the virtually impossible seem almost plausible. It's a great story; a real horse race, right? Well, it is, but only if one perishes the numbers -- indeed, perishes the reality of it all.

But like in testing a sore neck -- something else we know will eventually go away on its own accord -- we can't help ourselves. We get sucked into this wasteful obsession because of Hillary's sheer pluckiness. Which is, in a word, a sight -- one that some root on for understandable reasons, and others try their best to bring into realistic focus with reams of corrective clarity.

But her damn-the-insurmountable-odds pluckiness just won't go away, so neither will our obsession. Meanwhile, however, the airing of far more profitable analyses suffers -- but this too is understandable, since there's that nagging sore neck to attend to.

For example I have wanted to cast a thought or two about this piece that appeared in the New York Times: "On Signature Issues, McCain Has Shown Some Inconsistencies in the Senate." The headline is vastly charitable, but for now the more important point is that the piece appeared 11 days ago, and I have yet the time to plumb in writing its progressively profitable depths.

Eleven days consumed by wasteful infighting, stomping on fires and indulging in our national obsession with Hillary's Hail Maryisms. Because whatever else it is, it's news, the chief topic of conversation and that's what topical writers write about.

And it's consuming us all, to John McCain's immense benefit.

As my inbox would prove, more than a few in Hillary's camp have defensively protested that she has the right to persist. Their doing so befuddles the bejesus out of me. Of course she has the right to persist. No one questions that.

The far more pertinent question is, at what cost-benefit? And that's as mystifying as the unimaginably delectable difference between a $5,500 roll in the hay and a miserly $3,500 good time.

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THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter