When, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton broke down and cried, I felt for her. Here is an intelligent and capable person who has devoted the past six decades of her life to the insane delusion that she was chosen by God to become president of the United States. To this delusion she has literally sacrificed her life.
She married a boorish huckster whose idea of bliss was to have sex with morons, and whose idea of self-exculpation was to insist that oral intercourse is not really sex.
She surrounded herself with liars and cheats and spent every moment of her own time either scheming or covering up her schemes.
She developed not only a contempt for simple honesty but a violent temper and the conviction that it was her responsibility to rule the world – two characteristics that are sentences to a lifetime of constant pain.
She became the most unpopular person in America. When, after many years, she finally found this out, she tried to ingratiate herself with voters by acting the part of the nice, funny, easy-going gal next door. People laughed at her. She gave way to tears, or at least pretended to; and they laughed at her again. At last she achieved the victory of a few thousand votes in a tiny New England state, thus reviving her faith in the only goal of her existence, the possession of the Oval Office.
Whether she attains that goal or not, hers is a life that one must pity.
Much the same can be said about the other big-name presidential candidates. About Barack Obama, a moderately smart, moderately engaging person who has convinced himself that, by the potent magic of not being Hillary Clinton, he has dis- covered the answers to all of America’s questions. About John McCain, who was so worried that his age might make him lose New Hampshire that he went on TV to confess, in a jolly voice, that he was “as old as dirt.” And about all the rest of them. I don’t need to fill up the list.
How much would someone have to pay you to say what these people say, and act as these people act? How much would someone have to pay you to live any of their wretched lives? And of these people, one is to become the president.
