At some point, you have to respect the strength of Richard Cohen's determined commitment to triviality. Having failed to write a post-testimony column on Petraeus, he instead writes one on the MoveOn.org ad, and how Hillary Clinton's relative silence on it illuminates her "character problem." And on the day after she releases an important and detailed health plan, he glides over it in order to write:
Yesterday, Clinton announced her health-care plan. Good for her. But you never had any doubt, did you, that she was going to have one -- and a plan for everything else. The issue with Hillary Clinton is not whether she's smart or experienced but whether she has -- how do we say this? -- the character to be president. Behind her, after all, trails the lingering vapor of all those gates: Travel, File, Whitewater and other scandals to which she was a party only through marriage. In a hatless society, she is always wearing a question mark.
Yep, three scandals where she was exonerated of all wrongdoing. But that's okay, because Cohen isn't accusing her of wrongdoing, just suggesting that there are "vapors" of wrongdoing around her. Vapors that leave him too lightheaded to actually care about the policy documents she's offered. Vapors of wrongdoing that would, Cohen implies, have lifted had she forthrightly attacked MoveOn.org for their ad. Indeed, her unwillingness to do so makes one "wonder...about what makes Hillary run."
Well, maybe. I'm much more interested in what makes Richard Cohen write such superficial, stupid things. What would his grandfather say?
