Personal Asides: Where the Clintons Go After the Obama Nomination…Carlos Hernandez Gomez an Outstanding Participant in “Shootout”…The “Catholic” Authority Robert McClory.

Where Do They Go?

Don’t worry that the Clintons will go sulk in their tent after the Obama nomination in Denver. In fact, Hillary will make a few major speeches supporting her one-time rival as will Bill. But don’t be so naïve to believe that the Clintons…to whom political rise is everything…don’t understand that an Obama election would spell “fini” to her dreams. If Obama can translate the cult-magic to his presidency he should be a shoo-in for renomination. That takes care of eight long years and by that time Hillary will be too old…68…to make a run even if her health stays tip-top.

Rather as only a Civics 101 student would deny, the only chance Hillary has is for Obama to lose to John McCain. McCain will be 72 if inaugurated and depending on his health may very well decide to pack it in for a second term. The chances diminish that he would seek a second term since the pressure is being put on his campaign now to name a vice presidential nominee who will be far younger. But vice presidents standing in their patron’s shadow don’t usually make it. Any McCain term will be seen as a kind of third term for George W. Bush anyhow, because McCain is so adamant about justifying and winning the Iraq War.

The thing for the Clintons to do is to pray…pray real hard…that McCain wins. I don’t know if the Clintons are a praying lot but I do know that they are not above manufacturing events to wag the dog. It is important that they have a cover, however, that both of them be publicly on the record through speeches and appearances to favor Obama’s election. In 1968 with the odds turning slowly toward Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and his campaign manager John Mitchell cooperated very closely with my old boss, Walter Judd and Mme. Anna Chennault to convince the South Vietnamese leaders not to accept the LBJ proferred peace negotiations which would be a long-shot effort to end the war. South Vietnam’s decision not to play that game dropped a bomb on LBJ’s hopes and any hope Humphrey had to win.

Anna Chennault was a private individual who had connections but made most of the connections in South Vietnam—but she was not…and is not…a figure of power. An ex-president of the United States is. With all his invaluable connections, Bill Clinton needs to do one thing while being careful not to let his fingerprints be detected. He could encourage a modified “threat” of an international imbroglio long about October that would draw public attention to the two candidates, Obama and McCain. Obama’s weak suit is lack of experience and a hazy, indefinite approach, a kind of naïve Jimmy Carter approach to negotiations, echoing the Rodney King plea: “Can’t we all just get along?” A realistic attitude in contrast to that could tip the balance in a close race. Who it would be is immaterial but don’t imagine it would be terrorists. It could be a classic looming explosion such as the Falklands grab by Argentina in 1982 which triggered the Brits’ dashing to glory in a version of “The Empire Strikes Back.” The role that the Bush administration would play is non-essential since the attention would be on Obama’s views and reaction.

If that doesn’t work in the campaign, you can bet that Bill will be behind the orchestration of other events to define the contrast between the hard-bitten female senator from New York and what he hopes would be a wishy-washy inconclusive and weak attitude of President Obama. If you don’t believe the Clintons are up to that device you probably thought the same of Richard Nixon’s non-involvement in the South Vietnamese refusal to go to the peace conference in 1968.

Carlos Hernandez Gomez

The brilliant legal and political correspondent of CLTV made his debut on my show last night with Tony Peraica and made a great contribution. We’ll have him on again.

Another “Catholic” Authority.

The Chicago “Sun-Times’” Andrew Hermann wrote a so-so piece of triviality for yesterday (Sunday’s) paper that could have been done on deadline, a slipshod, slap-dash piece of no profundity purporting to show the changes in the Catholic Church in Chicago and relying on John Powers (no, not THE John Powers who is president of the “Chicago Daily Observer’ but the author of “Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” an exercise in triviality which became a play parodying old-style 1950s nuns. Hermann’s piece was so bad and without much research corroboration he had to rely on two old aging warhorses of the Catholic Left—one, Fr. Andrew Greeley, of course who is a regular columnist there in charge of burnishing up the Democratic party by using the Church’s misbegotten decision to ordain him so he can pose in his clerical collar as he does his boilerplate…and one Robert McClory who came to us in the Hermann version as a thoughtful eminence grise of Catholic thought. Greeley the phony we know; McClory the phony some may not know. He is a vicious critic of the Church who was a priest and left it—something newspapers are loath to admit.

I got after the “Tribune” some time ago and they agreed to publish McClory truthfully by saying he is an ex-priest. McClory objected vehemently. I am sure Andrew Hermann knows McClory is an ex-priest and has an axe to hone on a huge liberal, nihilist whetstone for all the fancied wrongs the Church did to him during the short span of time when he served. But truth in journalism requires he be identified. That the “Sun-Times” did not and allows no views to permeate their copy aside from the dissident Greeley who has disagreed with vital Church teaching for decades and the virulent ex-priest McClory with no identification shows how jocularly the paper takes examination of details. Greeley and McClory are haters of authenticist Catholicism and far more betrothed to the political Left than any other cause.