Three Kings

I watched Larry King host CNN's Super Tuesday coverage last night and found three things oddly enjoyable:

1. Mo Rocca's observation that Rep. Marilyn Musgrove, R-Colo., sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, "was incredible in 'One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' I thought she was great."

2. The way in which Tucker Carlson was squirmishly not amused by Rocca's commentary, but seemed to be biting his tongue because he realized he couldn't object without looking like a humorless jerk, and anyway it's Larry's show and Larry clearly is delighted with Rocca's humor. I sometimes find Mo a bit precious, plus he has a Leno-esque tendency to pull his punches when he's got someone on the ropes. But his steadfast refusal to take Carlson as seriously as Carlson takes himself was fun to watch.

3. Carlson's unhealthy obsession with Hillary Clinton. Here he is speculating on Kerry's choice of running mate:

I don't know why John Kerry wouldn't ask Mrs. Clinton to run. I mean, by all accounts she's beloved in the Democratic Party. She's tough. I don't know. One is always hearing about how competent she is, how great she is, how much people just adore Mrs. Clinton and how loyal she is to the Democratic Party. And that last point is obviously true. She is loyal to the Democratic Party. So I don't know why she would turn it down if asked and I don't know why he would not ask her. ...

I've got nothing at all personally against Mrs. Clinton. I want her to run. ...

I think it would be interesting. I mean, more to the point I think it would be a really interesting ticket and I must say I'd like to hear John Kerry explain why she wouldn't be his No. 1 pick. She seems obvious to me. Why wouldn't he pick her? Why would he just pick some senator you never heard of, a safe choice who's going to help carry a state. Why not her?

I don't know that I've heard any of my liberal or Democratic friends eager for Kerry to pick Clinton as his running mate. Yet we hear this from conservatives like Carlson all the time. It's ... odd. Kind of monomaniacal.

Normally, when one party is eager for a member of the opposition to run, it's because they have all kinds of secret dirt on that person. But Hillary Clinton is one person we know -- in exhaustive detail with a decade's worth of footnotes -- that her opponents have nothing with which to attack her. So why are they so eager for her to run? Is it just the hope that she would motivate the base core of their party ("base" here has, of course, two intended meanings) -- the part that loathes ambitious females? Or is it something else?

UPDATE: In retrospect, I should have labeled this post "Larry, Squirmy and Mo," although perhaps it's better that I didn't.

Comments

[praktike]

Picking Clinton would be foolish. It's clear he's going to pick a hawk.

[praktike]

Then again, what about the other Clinton?

[drieux just drieux]

Mo Rocca is another case of why getting a PhD may not be as useful to your future job opportunities as your parents tried to tell you it would be.

Tucker's Emotional Crisis with Hitlary is that she was ever so polite as to bring him a cake made in the form of a shoe for him to comply with his own assertion that he would 'eat his shoe'. The other side of that problem may well be the core admission that the President will not be able to win by running on Kerry's Record, and will have to try to win by showing some other side of his clear and compelling, grave, gathering, and growing WhatEvers...

[eristick]

Does it drive anyone else nuts that folks like Carlson refer to her as Mrs. Clinton and not Senator Clinton? I'm not the kind of person that thinks that it should be insulting to a Ph.D. to be addressed as Mr. instead of Dr. by the drycleaners. However, we are talking about Hilary Clinton, the elected political figure here, not Hilary Clinton, the homeowner or Hilary Clinton, a customer at the carwash.

As for the habit of tossing Clinton's name (either of them) into any presidental election discussion, I think perhaps they've simply fetished the name to such an extent that they have elevated it to permanent PeeWee-style word-of-the-day status. Clinton! Aaaaaaaagh!

[drieux just drieux]

The only 'rational' defense that can be put forward for carlson's choice of language is that he holds that the office of marriage is more important the the office of state. But that then runs into the problem with why any of the married senators are denegrated by being called Senator foo rather than Mr. Foo. Unless of course one adopts the usual interpretation that folks like Carlson are engaged in the sort of "male bashing" that is a part of the culture that considers males less important, and hence why they must register for the draft...

[mark]

He should look at her history and her friends. She wants soooo to be president sooo badly that it just may "kill her" or him...hmm.....

[Nell Lancaster]

Picking Clinton would be foolish. It's clear he's going to pick a hawk.

Um, she is a hawk. And with extremely high negatives that would motivate the Republican base, kill any chance of carrying any of the south, and make it very hard for the Democratic wing of the Democratic party to mobilize with enthusiasm. I can't imagine a worse pick.

But thanks for thinking of us, Tucker! And, by constantly obsessing about it out loud, for making it less likely that Kerry would make such a big blunder...