Experience, Likability, Good Judgement and "Change, change, change"

Papa Clinton has been a popular headline recently, attacking the fellow Democratic nominees on behalf of his wife. Aaaand we're beginning to see the typical Clinton image-placing that got good ol' William in office. In other words, we're moving away from issues and into intangibles, where the Clintons hope to fight their rivals (mainly Barack Obama) on their own turf - empty platitudes.

So - what's important this time? Is it experience? Bill's been attacking Obama for his lack of experience in the senate, but senatorial experience sure wasn't important in 1992. Is likability the most important intangible? Hill's campaign seems to think so.

My favorite Clinton angle? Change, change, change. If being seen as a "change agent" is so crucial to the presidency, why isn't Vermin Supreme a frontrunner? I'm sure he'd change the country a fair bit.

Change, change, change. What does that mean? Makes about as much sense as Obama's "Hope" platform. On the Republican side, we don't even know Huckabee's and Romney's platforms. As far as I can gather, Huckabee wants to "make everything better", and Romney never actually thought he'd be running for the presidency and now finds himself in the awkward position of backtracking. Were Romney nominated, I wonder if Hannity would call him out on this flip-floppery.

Actually, I think we all know the answer to that. Hannity could escape from intellectual dishonesty and double-standardism if he'd just admit that changing opinions, in and of itself, is not a sign of dishonesty, unless you live in some neo-con Bizarro World where you somehow managed to come up with all of the right opinions the first time and quaint "information" is a mere distraction.

Tangents aside, in a country where a candidate with good judgement is only a priority for some 1/4 of America's voters, something like this had to happen. And each presidential election is only going to get more generic and more calculated. Because that's what we want, it's what we deserve, and it's what we're going to get.