Schadenfreude 101

Last week I violated one of my own blog rules: I wrote on a political subject.

Usually I avoid politics like I avoid boiled cauliflower, but I think one and all would agree that this political season has been just too entertaining to pass up. I never paid any attention to the primaries before, did you? But this primary season has been more exciting than some general-election seasons I've known.

On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton's campaign is starting to look like Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937.

For those out there whose knowledge of history extends back no further than the Monica Lewinsky scandal (that would be everyone in the country under 35) I'm referring to the day the Hindenberg went down.

Just six or seven months ago, Hillary was using expressions like "When I'm president." On the front page of yesterday's Washington Times, at a campaign rally in Texas, there was a picture of her looking much less cocksure. In fact she has the expression on her face of a poker player who's just laid the deed to her house on the table because it's all she has left to bet with, and suspects her opponent has drawn to an inside straight.

Obama. A skinny, smiling newbie no one had heard of a year ago, is outmaneuvering the savvy and ruthless Team Clinton. Who'da thunk it?

The GOP side has been scarcely less interesting. Last summer, Rudy Giuliani was the undisputed front-runner for the Republican nomination, while John McCain's campaign was wheezing on its deathbed, unable to raise two nickels.

Now Giuliani's gone, and McCain's gained so much momentum that the New York Times, the official newsletter of the Democratic Party, has gotten frightened enough to try a sleazy sex-scandal hatchet job on him. Meanwhile McCain's only remaining challenger, Mike Huckabee, reminds me of no one quite so much as Tex Cobb when he fought Larry Holmes, staying on his feet only because he was too stupid to fall down.

My friend Jim Provenza and I never argue. We've known each other for 41 years and counting, and I think the last argument we had was when we were in the sixth grade. How long ago was that? Lyndon Baines Johnson was president, that's how long. (For you under-35s, LBJ ((1908-1973))was President of the United States from 1963 to 1968, and no, that wasn't before Pearl Harbor. Oh, sorry. Pearl Harbor was when the Japanese attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941, drawing the U.S. into World War II...oh, what's the use? Go back to watching VH1, you morons.)

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Jim and I never argue. That might be surprising to some, because Jim is an ardent liberal and I'm just as ardent a conservative, and we're living in an age in which political discussion is routinely conducted on the level of, "I hope you get cancer and die, you low-life, scum-sucking piece of dog vomit!" God bless the anonymity of the Internet, huh? But Jim and I pre-date the Internet by quite a few years, and our political conversations are always affable. I think we've gotten to the point where we know we disagree, so we just shake hands and take it from there. Also there's no anonymity here. You don't call someone you love like a brother, someone who stood up as best man at your wedding, someone who sat next to you at your mother's funeral, a low-life scum-sucking piece of dog vomit.I'll leave that to the VH1 crowd, who by the way couldn't write that nasty sentence without misspelling at least three words.

Jim and I have been having some very interesting e-mail exchanges this winter, precisely because this political season has been such a roller derby. Jim likes Obama. I liked Giuliani; since he dropped out I've become more of an observer than a participant. I might vote for McCain, but only because I think there just might be an outside chance that he might make Rudy G. attorney general or homeland security czar, giving Rudy a leg-up to run again in 2012, when McCain, if he becomes president, will be 75 and I would hope ready to step down.

Our discussions have been even more affable than usual, Jim's and mine, because Jim just happens to be one of those Democrats who is sick to death of the Clintons and wants to see them gone. Needless to say, I've always loathed the Clintons. Giuliani had a reputation for being a relatively liberal Republican, so Jim, if he had any objections to Rudy, soft-pedaled them in his discussions with me.

And on my side, Jim's enthusiasm for Obama has provoked little objection for the screamingly obvious reason I just mentioned. I loathe the Clintons.

We conservatives are in a very odd position indeed this year, as baseball spring training gets started and we begin making plans for St. Patrick's Day. It's generally conceded on the center-right, where I stand, that if the general election were held tomorrow, John McCain would have a much better chance of beating Hillary than he would of beating Obama.

But somehow that's not enough to make most of us hope she pulls out of her nose-dive and grabs the nomination. There's just too much finger-licking schadenfreude in watching Barack Obama bring down the Clinton Zeppelin.

Don't get me wrong; I think Barack Obama would make a terrible president. He'd be another Jimmy Carter, the worst president of the 20th century. Totally, utterly useless. So far Obama has given me no reason to feel otherwise. His whole campaign so far has been like a concert of the old seventies rock band Kiss. Take away the dry ice, the flashing lights and the wild costumes and there wasn't much to Kiss -- they were just another bar band.

By the same token, once you get past all the generalities about hope and audacity, there isn't much to Obama except his grin. On policy matters, (and you have to look at the record because his speeches don't say anything) Obama is just another old-style lefty-liberal, not much different from Hillary herself. He promises the same snake-oil that the Democrats have been selling since Vietnam, to wit:

1. Government is good and free-market capitalism is evil.

2. The best military strategy is surrender.

3. Creators of wealth are bad, greedy people. It is the right and proper function of government to confiscate and redistribute wealth to whoever government decides should have it.

4. America is a bad, racist, imperialist country guilty of little but crimes against humanity, and therefore has no right to criticize Fidel Castro's or anyone else's regime. All of the world's problems are bad old America's fault.

If these are your core beliefs, Obama is your guy. Or Hillary.

But these are not my core beliefs. For one thing, I can't help but keep asking myself this question: if America is such an evil, racist, imperialist, homophobic, misogynist, ageist, able-ist, species-ist, intelligence-ist nightmare of horrific oppression, why does so much of the world keep trying to come live here, sometimes at the risk of its life? I don't recall anyone ever risking his or her life to get into Castro's Cuba, (although plenty of Hollywood celebrities have made the arduous, dangerous journey there on private jets to kiss Castro's ass) but I can recall plenty of people risking their lives to get out of Castro's Cuba. I repeat: if America is as evil as both Hillary and Obama's more glamorous supporters assure us it is, (while balancing glasses of Pinot Grigio in their hands and slices of brie on their paper plates) why do so many people want to come live here?

No answer. I thought so.

Still, as I've said to Jim more than once this winter, given the choice of spending the next four years looking at Barack Obama and spending them looking at Hillary Clinton, there's no choice. Give me Obama. And the bottom line is, I suppose, that if I have to look, day after day after day, at the smiling mug of some politician, I much prefer his smile to hers.

Okay, well, if we're going to have a campaign that's all style and no substance, we might as well be honest about the particulars: this one comes down to smiles. He smiles like one of your lodge brothers serving up pancakes at a Rotary Club breakfast. She smiles like Bela Lugosi looking at somebody's jugular vein. I wrote to Jim just last week that if Obama didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Why? Because it's bad enough that Bill and Hillary Clinton think they're entitled to anything they want. They have also, up until now, seemed to assume that getting anything they want should also be easy. That's too much. That's intolerable.

Give her what-for, Barry. Wipe the smirk off that vampire's face. We'll worry about your vision of turning America into Sweden later.

I may not be lovin' this, but I'm sure as hell likin' it.

Oh, before I forget. For you under-35's, schadenfreude is a German word meaning "taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others."

German. That's the language they speak in Germany, which is a country in Europe, which on the map is that big thing on the right side of the Atlantic with a thing sticking out the bottom that looks like a boot. Got it?

Huh boy.