Burying the Clintons

Nobody in politics has more experience with funerals than the Kennedy family, and the one they threw today was a pip.



Senator Ted Kennedy endorsed Senator Barack Obama at a rally at American University in Washington, D.C. He was joined by his son Patrick, the congressman from Rhode Island, and his niece Caroline, the princess from Camelot.

News reports say Senator Kennedy was both lobbied and warned by the Clintons and their supporters not to endorse Barack Obama, and we can imagine those conversations: Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton standing chest to chest and growling in unison, "Do you know who I am?"

Yet it may be Caroline Kennedy's endorsement that finally kills the Clintons.

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she said.

Since she wasn't born during the George W. Bush administration, she just told Bill Clinton that he's no Jack Kennedy.

Very elegantly, too.

This is not the first time a woman has said something that threatened the Clintons' political future, but the old playbook won't help them now.

Imagine the Clintons trying to attack the credibility of Caroline Kennedy. Imagine Hillary Clinton picking up the phone and asking her private detectives, "Where's the stuff on Caroline?"

Imagine James Carville going on CNN and telling Wolf Blitzer that Caroline Kennedy is a stalker. That her mother spoke French. That you never know what you'll pick up when you drag a thousand-dollar bill through the Kennedy Center.

Good luck with that.

The Clinton machine may have been buried forever at that rally in Washington today.

Then again, Hillary Clinton might have a photograph of herself as a teenager shaking hands with Bela Lugosi.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Down Memory Lane with Bill Clinton", "Hillary Clinton changes the subject," and "Broken-Glass Democrats."

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