The Patient Wet Hen

Hillary Clinton, our favorite wet hen in a pantsuit, is taking a beating in the press because – as the story goes – Little John’s pick as sacrificial veep candidate gives him the front-runner status in 2008.

Did you ever go fishing? Sometimes you let a fish take the line out, knowing full well the hook is set and you can end this game anytime you want. Hillary’s silence is worthy of Bass Fishing with Rupert (Tuesdays at 8:00PM).

It’s received a bit of press that both Little John and Big John are statistically more liberal than Hillary and Ted (make yourself useful, get me a drink) Kennedy. For Big John, the statistics mean something – he’s been in the Senate since 1985. Little John was 35 years old and two years a partner in someone else’s law firm at that time. He joined the Senate fourteen years later. Little John’s statistical sampling is rather thin. All the quick thinking he displays on issues of first impression to him cannot change the nature of the thin ice upon which he skates. (A Jethro Tull musical interlude may be appropriate here.)

He will also be unemployed come January 2005. Four years with nothing to do can change a man, can make a man angry – look at Gore. I can bear his speeches better if I picture him chained to a redwood tree surrounded by loggers, chainsaws buzzing and darting towards him, spittle flying as our hero swears the bad guys will have to cut through him to get to the tree, and admiring fans resting on blankets in the shade with picnic lunches of macrobiotic shakes and vegan sandwiches touching each other warmly.

Both Hillary and Little John were practicing attorneys. But having been one, I can say without fear of contradiction that there is a wide chasm between corporate attorneys and tort attorneys. Suffice it to say that there are good and competent (as well as bad and incompetent) lawyers in every field. That written, corporate attorneys need to live with their mistakes as deals are negotiated and contracts are signed, and then the client comes back with a “help me understand” look on his face and a story about a contract being breached without apparent recourse. Tort attorneys can accurately say, “juries do funny things,” and move onto the next case. Baseball fans: Corporate attorneys rise in their field by increasing their on-base percentage; tort attorneys by smacking the home runs. This difference leads corporate attorneys to be better suited for running motion picture studios, and tort attorneys for being part-time actors/part-time food service industry employees.

The press is in love with Little John for one reason: they want the dem ticket to win and Kerry cannot do it. Perhaps the love affair will end before November, but I doubt it. The press has nowhere else to go but W.

But Little John as a threat to Hillary? The most he can hope for when she is done with him is a big tip.