What Hillary Clinton needs desperately is a Sister Souljah moment vis a vis her husband Bill.   Feeling vulnerable to being cast as an ultra-liberal in 1992, Bill himself seized an opportunity to suggest otherwise when soul singer Sister Souljah said of the interneceine Watts riots “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”  Clinton rebuked the African-American musican.  The fact that Jesse Jackson and other prominent liberal blacks criticized Clinton for this stand solidified his credentials as a centrist.  Since then, any politician who strategically reprimands an apparent ally is said to have had a Sister Souljah Moment. 

Hilllary established her credentials as a centrist years ago.  What she needs to do is signal voters that she’s strong enought to keep her husband from over-meddling should she be elected president.  To do that Hillary needs her own variation on Bill’s Sister Souljah Moment.  By that I mean a dramatic and public rebuking of Bill over some specific issue. 

Another way of accomplishing the same thing might be to pledge right now that if elected president she will appoint Bill … amabassador to Iceland.

Does Bill Clinton’s conduct during the current campaign help us understand better why Al Gore kept him at arm’s length in 2000? 

While on a long drive I found myself listening to an interview with R & B singer Bettye LaVette that I might not have heard otherwise.  Lavette is a great talker.  Much of what the 61 year-old soul singer talked about was a decades-long interlude when her career was going nowhere, due in particular to a 1972 album that Atlantic Records chose not to release, then “lost”.  (Fortunately its master was eventually found & the record finally released on another label.)  This interview was interspersed with excerpts of LaVette’s latest album, Scene of the Crime.  At first my ears said “This woman’s voice is shot.  What’s she doing still recording songs?”  Then I listened more closely to a mesmerizing song delivery that could no longer fall back on technique.  Its grit, feeling, and depth dialed direct from long experience.  The songs of an older LaVette were far more powerful than those they played by her younger self. 

I’ve noticed this recently with a number of other older singers, most notably Johnny Cash on the Cash Unearthed CDs he recorded shortly before his death.  This singer’s once-dynamic voice was a whisper of its previous self.  However, accompanied only by his guitar, Cash sang from within with a poignance that is almost painful to listen to.  The same thing is true of Ralph Stanley on his eponymous Ralph Stanley album, his acappella songs in particular.  Charlie Louvin is another older peformer who has recently given us the benefit of his experience, if not the singing he was once was capable of, on his Charlie Louvin album.

Most recently I’ve been hearing interviews with Levon Helm, the onetime Band drummer, and excerpts from his Dirt Farmer album.  In Helm’s case throat cancer adds another dimension to his story and his voice.  For years he couldn’t sing at all, and could barely speak.  After helm’s voice finally returned, he gave a riveting portrayal of an old blind man pleading to be shot in Tommy Lee Jones’s underrated movie The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.  Dirt Farmer itself has earned deservedraves.  The way Helm sings today is harsh, almost grating, at first offputting but ultimately gripping in the same way that Cash, LaVette and so many other older singers grip us with their candor.   

A Russian writer once explained her constant anxiety by saying that she “had no skin.”  Anything worth knowing about her was out there for others to see.  The same thing is true of these singers. 

Candor sure beats craft. 

Adding to the idea that the punditocracy was blinded in New Hampshire by its own frame of reference, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center has suggested that one reason pollsters like himself were so wrong there is that they didn’t talk to enough of the less-educated voters who favored Hillary (43% of those who never attended college went for her, 35% for Barack).  Kohut pointed out that less affluent, less educated voters are less likely to participate in surveys than wealthier, better educated ones.  An unfortunate racial dimension is that the former group may include white voters who are hesitant to vote for a black candidate, but wouldn’t say this to a pollster.  Kohut concluded by referring to “the difficulties that race and class present to survey methodology.”  Amen.  Overall I think we haven’t paid enough attention to the fact that journalists, commentators, pollsters and the like tend to come from a well educated, relatively affluent demographic and have trouble grokking a less privileged group with whom they have so little contact, let alone regard.

Class is the great unspoken in American life. 

For Kohut’s commentary see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/opinion/10kohut.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=kohut&oref=slogin 

David Brooks thinks Barack took the Starbucks vote, Hillary that of Wal-Mart.  This could help explain why members of the media got it so wrong going in.  I mean, how many of them ever talk to Wal-Mart types, let alone hang out with them?  If your own demographic frame of reference is so heavily skewed toward that of one candidate - Obama in this case - you’re bound to give him or her an edge in your fore-casting.  (Remember how astonished Pauline Kael was by Nixon’s landslide re-election in 1972?  She didn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon.)  New Hampshire talk show host and onetime Democratic legislator Arnie Arneson makes a related point.  According to Arneson the Wal Mart voters who favored Hillary are avid consumers of talk radio (not NPR).  Ever since Hillary’s misty-eyed episode in a Portsmouth diner, right-wing talk show hosts have pilloried her as a dangerously weak-kneed wimp.  Arneson believes that the many undecided female Democrats who heard this talk were outraged and flocked to Hillary’s defense in the voting booth.  If that’s true, it’s yet another example of how the media’s class bias limits its news judgement. 

When I was growing up my parents subscribed to the house organ of the Consumers Union: Consumer Reports.  This group and its publication regarded itself as a tireless advocate for the rights of everyday consumers in the face of nefarious corporate practices.  Over time the magazine upscaled along with its readership  I didn’t realize how much until I began reading the current issue (February 2008).  Just in time for Valentine’s Day they rated eight brands of chocolates.  These sported names such as Candinas and La Maison du Chocolate.  I hadn’t heard of a one.  What really caught my eye, however, was the price of these products.  The cost of each box ranged from $42 to $97.  Consumer Reports has come a long, long way. 

Charlie Gibson is by far the best of the three network news anchors: humane, measured, well-spoken.   But Gibson really stuck his foot in it during last night’s Democratic debate at St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire when he estimated that a couple on Saint Anselm’s faculty probably earned $200,000 between them.  The incredulous guffaw that rippled through the audience tipped Gibson that he was off a bit,  by as much as $100,000 I’d guess.  The problem here is not so much that ABC’s anchor got his numbers wrong.  The problem was his casual assumption that those outside coastal media centers are in the same basic pay bracket of folks he knows within these enclaves.  This suggests why media figures like Gibson have been so indifferent to the plight of America’s strapped middle classs.  They’re barely aware it exists.   

For seven evenings during the past two weeks I’ve been mesmerized by Ken Burns’s World War II series on PBS.  Despite all that I’ve read about that conflict during the past half century, Burns succeeded in giving me new perspectives and fresh information, as well as incredibly moving moments.  Some of the most moving took place at the end when veterans described their struggle to re-join civilian life after spending so much time in the midst of horror.  We know about that problem with regard to Vietnam vets, and now those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but have found it convenient to assume that those who fought in “The Good War” didn’t suffer post-traumatic stress  Burns’s subjects disabused us.

Another unusually moving moment involved a veteran talking candidly about hearing the nightlong screams and moans of a mortally wounded comrade, wishing he’d hurry up and die so he could get some sleep.  The next morning he realized that it was his best friend – shot by accident – who’d spent the night dying.   This subject, a Latino, was one of three whom Burns added to two segments under pressure from Hispanic and American Indian groups.  That decision has been derided by some, but the results not only didn’t degrade this series, they enhanced it. 

The amount of color footage Burns incorporated was a bit of an anomaly.  After watching so much black-and-white film of World War II it’s hard to shift gears and perceive that conflict as taking place in color.  But this is a broader phenomenon awaiting another post: the degree to which we think of the world before mid-century as being a black-and-white world, with color only entering the picture around, say, the Korean War.     

I had a few problems with Burns’s work.  Was good film footage in such short supply that he had to re-use some clips two or three times?  And was it really necessary to have sonorous music constantly in the background? 

But these are nitpicks of little consequence.  I don’t share the concern expressed by some that Burns didn’t give his material enough historical context, nor cover adequately the many other countries involved in World War II.   That wasn’t his purview.  Burns set out to present that war from the perspective of Americans who fought in it and those they left behind.  He accomplished this mission magnificently. 

I don’t care for Al Gore.  His manner is too pedantic, too patronizing, as if he’s addressing a class of sixth graders and is trying to speak very slowly and enunciate with great care to make sure they get what he’s trying to say.  Nonetheless, Gore is my top choice for our next president.  He is simply the most experienced of our potential chief executives, most thoughtful, and with a proven capacity for leadership.  Does anyone doubt how much better off our country and our world would be if he’d been given the victory he won in 2000?

I feel similarly about Hillary Clinton.  She’s a hard person to warm to: secretive, over-disciplined, a bit severe.  Yet Hillary is more qualified than any other declared Democrat to become our president.  Although I warm more to Obama, I’d vote for Hillary in a heartbeat.and think she’d prove to be a capable chief executive.

Is this contradictory?  Only if one puts likeability high on the presidential vita.  And we do.  With a head of government who doubles as chief of state, we want our presidents to be warm and fuzzy in the Ronald Reagan-Bill Clinton mode.  Granted that the ability of such men to win audiences was key to their leadership skills, this is only one talent among many.  I thought then and think now that Reagan’s mixed record has been given a historical gloss due to his likeability alone. The same thing is true of Bill Clinton.  Had he been a better organized, more disciplined executive, mightn’t the country have been the beneficiary?

We’re nearing the end of two terms of a catastrophically mediocre president who was often said to be the man with whom you’d rather share a beer than either of his Democratic opponents.  So what?  We’re paying a very stiff price for voting on that basis.  In the current Republican primaries, Mike Huckabee is attracting attention with his winning manner, as is Mitt Romney to a lesser extent.  Might we again end up with an appealing president who isn’t up to the job?

In England, where the head of government is not the head of state, and is chosen by parliamentarians rather than elected at large, an unusually likeable man – Tony Blair – has just been succeeded by the more sober Gordon Brown.  Brown’s flair (or lack thereof) can’t compare with that of his predecessor.  Yet he seems a capable man, an effective leader, and one with a far better take on the Iraq situation than that of Tony Blair.  Might we learn something from this example? 

At one time we had truth and lies.  Now we have truth, lies, and statements that may not be true but we consider too benign to call false.  Euphemisms abound.  We’re “economical with the truth,” “sweeten it,” or tell “the truth improved.”  The term deceive gives way to spin.  At worst we admit to “misspeaking,” or “exercising poor judgment.”  Nor do we want to accuse others of lying.  We say they’re in denial.  “That’s okay,” we say.  “He meant well.”  “What is truth, anyway?” 

The danger is that less and less distinction is made between truth and lies, to the point where they have a rough equivalence. This is post-truth.  In the post-truth era, borders blur between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction.  Deceiving others becomes a challenge, a game, a habit. Research suggests that the average American lies on a daily basis, often multiple times. These fibs run the gamut from “I like sushi,” to “I love you.” 

“Lying has become a cultural trait in America,” one pollster concluded.  “Americans lie about everything – and usually for no good reason.” 

What motivates the casual dishonesty that’s become pandemic?  Why do so many, even those with no apparent need to do so, feel a need to puff up their personal history?  This question arises every time prominent figures are unmasked as fabulists: businesspeople, politicians, journalists, scholars, judges, military officers, police chiefs, beauty queens, New Mexico’s governor, the head of the United States Olympic Committee, the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.  Branches are grafted onto their family trees.  Unearned degrees show up on their resumes.  Purchased medals appear in their display cases.  Thousands of non-veterans say they fought in Vietnam.  Scores more pass themselves off as Ground Zero rescue workers. 

We can only understand the motives of such dissemblers by examining the sea in which they swim.  Trends ranging from Joseph Campbellian mythmaking to therapeutic non-judgment encourage deception.  There is much incentive and little penalty for improving the “narrative” of one’s life.  The increasing influence of therapists, entertainers, politicians, and lawyers, with their flexible code of ethics, contribute to the post-truth era.  So do postmodern relativism, Boomer narcissism, the decline of community, and rise of the Internet. 

As the volume of strangers and acquaintances in our lives rises, so do opportunities to improve on the truth. The result is a widespread sense that much of what we’re told can’t be trusted.  From potential mates to prospective employees, we’re no longer sure whom exactly we’re dealing with. Deception has become a routine part of the mating dance.  Personnel officers take for granted that the resumes they read are padded. No wonder private investigation is a growth sector of the economy. 

Post-truthfulness builds a fragile social edifice based on wariness.  It erodes the foundation of trust that underlies any healthy civilization.  When enough of us peddle fantasy as fact, society loses its grounding in reality.  Society would crumble altogether if we assumed others were as likely to dissemble as tell the truth.  We are perilously close to that point.