Going with McCain?

Is it just me, or does anyone else have the nagging feeling that the Republicans will somehow manage to dump John McCain this summer?

I’ll be the first to admit: I have no idea how they might do it at this point. I went so far as to leaf-through Republican National Committee Rule 15(e), which sets-out the various state committee rules on the extent to which delegates are bound to the candidate to which they are originally pledged. I don’t really see an out, given Mr. McCain’s overwhelming first-ballot majority at the nominating convention.

Being Rid of Hillary

No one is looking forward to today’s announcement by Hillary Clinton that she will withdraw from the presidential race more than I. (Okay, maybe Barack Obama; but I’m a very close second.)

Ms. Clinton appalls me, and has ever since she first started running for president back in 1999, as she triangulated her way through conservative upstate New York to earn her Senate-seat-launching-pad. Or before then, during her husband’s presidency, when her delusional, ham-handed political instincts offered a precursor to the Bush-Cheney cult of secrecy, and reminded the rest of us that the cover-up is often worse than the alleged scandal. I find her to be the archetypal politician: a person who believes in nothing so much as their own accession to (or retention of) power, and who will say or do whatever is required in the service of that belief.

I loathe Ms. Clinton. But I also abhor the way in which she has been treated during her impressive (if often impressively Machiavellian) campaign for the presidency, and what that treatment continues to say about America.