Andrew Sullivan "expressed relief" Sunday night to journalist Jeff Greenfield "that he wasn't forced to cover the recent controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails." Added the scribe: "I couldn't imagine blogging the next election. I will not spend another minute of my time writing about the Clintons. Period. Or the Bushes."
Although I'm in accord with Sullivan's weariness over yet another Clinton-incubated Clinton controversy which somehow became (Clinton controversies always do, by Palace Guard design) a sinister plot hatched by mysterious forces, I can't imagine not blogging the next election. I haven't any ideas on what I'll do in 19 months — more on that momentarily; plus, the impoverishment of blogging gets to be even more tiresome than the Clintons — but throughout the next 18 months I'll belch at least a half-million words on the greatest, most exhilarating, most depressing show on earth. And probably piss off or permanently alienate every last reader in the process.
Ideologically I'm something of an odd duck, in that I both detest ideology and subscribe to socialism's (what little is left of it, that is). This puts me outside the tribal allegiances that most political blogs feel compelled — often for financial reasons, also — to honor. Consequently, I've no more of a sis-boom-bah attachment to Hillary Clinton than I possess for Jeb Bush. They are both, in my opinion, yesterday's hacks of impeccably calculated worldviews and invigorating only in their gaffes, although I'll say this much for the conservative: when it comes to breaking with party orthodoxy, he's gutsier than the liberal. That confession pains me, in that it announces the death of creative and derring-do liberalism, the closest thing there is to my admitted muddle of conservative-progressive democratic socialism.
Which brings me back to 19 months from now. After 18 months of amused, cyberprinted observations on Hillary's managerial blunders and self-made controversies and political banalities, can I tolerate four more years of it? Not to mention four more years of yawn-provoking Republican obstructionism of even her yawn-provoking banalities? Such, I gather, is the weariness that Sullivan feels, and I share. Even the intense polarization of the 1850s sectional crisis had an end to it, whereas American politics today seems hopelessly, eternally stuck in a standoff. I should stress it only seems that way; this will come to an end, but it'll take a couple decades, I fear, and we're only about halfway through.
Still, there's no way I'd miss the next 18 months of our quadrennial circus — the greatest show from hell. Untold campaign mismanagement, suspected scandals, real scandals, faux scandals, sincere gaffes, insincere clarifications, staff squabbles, partisan warfare, media machines gone wild, right-wing turmoil, left-wing turmoil, centrists snoozing, fake offenses taken, mountainous mole-hilled kerfuffles, encomiums to motherhood, uncourageous blatherings about courage, interminable vows of toughness, endless bows to exceptionalism, the stench of corrupting and immeasurable cash, scratchy B&W 30-second mendacities, and promises made that will never be kept — nor harbor any intentions of doing so.
Miss that? I don't know what Sullivan is thinking. Maybe he just is.