Hillary Clinton and the Lord of the Flies

Hillary Clinton is the Lord of the Flies

I swear as every week of this primary campaign grinds on I start to feel more and more convinced that Clinton's winning strategy is some weird screwed up contemporary version of William Goldman's Lord of the Flies. You will recall that Goldman's book was pretty much an allegory about individuals trying to create a utopian self-governing society. Proper English school boys, stranded on a deserted island attempting to self govern and “elect” the most popular and worthy of their clan to lead them to greatness.

Life on the island is far from idyllic what with the warring factions, abusive rule at the hands of Mr. popular and finally the system collapses blaming the weak and marginal members for failing to live up to the expectations of the elite. It’s all very grim.

I can’t get that book out of my mind every time I think of the state of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It seemed like only a few news cycles ago that Clinton was ready for her coronation as the leader for the next 8 years and all those pesky Democrats would fall in line, hold up the ermine robe and hand over the tarnished scepter this November.

Except Barack Obama buggered that plan for her, and that started the Lord of the Flies strategy, presumably for lack of any other back up strategy. In Clinton -land, people’s heads started to roll, Bill was reigned in before he got too far out of control and HC made sure to distance herself from all this sordidness.

When memos about Obama’s stand on NAFTA and the “Is he / is’nt he” a Muslim question started to “leak”, HC flicked them away, refusing to be forthright on 60 minutes and laying blame on all those nasty minions that would be ousted in due course. All along HC flirting with the race card, downplaying election math, phoning herself at 3AM, and finally the Orwellian double speak of foreign policy experience based on a lunch with the IRA.

Now the Flies campaign takes a new turn as HC fails to condemn Geraldine Ferraro’s comments that Obama wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for his race. Ferraro, who seems to think she needs to get back with the media spin in a big way, appears to play the patsy for the self appointed leader. The bitter and judgmental Ferraro falls on her sword the next day defending her self and refusing to back down on her statements.

For Hillary Clinton, her minion has done the job, as she appears demurely calling Ferraro’s comments regrettable and making a passing, almost lackluster attempt at apologizing. Except it’s not an apology, it all smells of a set up and Ferraro, with her insignificant role on the campaign finance committee is the perfect patsy. It’s like Geraldine is dragged back into the limelight only to be trotted out for abuse – pretty much the realization she must have had after she got off the phone with Walter Mondale.

I feel sorry for Ferraro. She’s like Piggy the fat kid in Goldman’s book. Piggy has his glasses broken, he has to grunt like a wild boar to the assembled masses, humiliated and eventually is reduced to a quivering mass of broken dreams and bitter resentment to the self appointed elite. At the end of the book, the clan degenerates into chaos and anarchy – the social experiment failed and the elite broken and bitter.

I sort of have this dream of the Clinton campaign heading in that direction, crashing and burning and collapsing in a gigantic angry glorious heap of back room deals, cynical fear based politics, gossip and innuendo. In my dream, I wake up in a cold sweat with that same final image of Hillary and Bill lashing their life rafts together, leaving the flames of the campaign island behind and sailing into the sunset………