The Real ‘60 Minutes’ Revelation. By Michael Tomasky. The Daily Beast, January 29, 2013.
Tomasky:
I can
actually see, to some extent, the point of conservatives’ complaints about the
Obama-Hillary 60 Minutes interview.
It was softbally, and Steve Kroft’s
one real question—to Clinton, about whether she felt any guilt or remorse over
Benghazi—she totally didn’t answer. But here, conservatives, is what you are
missing and what you need to reckon with. Americans—except you—like these two
people. Most Americans look at the pair of them—this black man who is still
remote in some ways and this so-familiar woman who is now aging before us and
allowing herself to look just a little frumpy—and feel reassured. Most
Americans are cheering for them, and hence, most Americans probably wanted a softball interview. We have
thus passed an important portal in American politics: Democrats are now the
regular guys. Conservatives are the weirdos.
. . . . . . . . . .
Obama
and Clinton talked, in other words, like mature adults, and they sold it as
genuine because it was genuine. And I’d contend that it made most people
watching feel something like: Well, these are very smart and self-assured
people, and they’re mostly pretty likable, too, and agree or disagree with this
or that decision they make or action they take, I feel like my country is in
pretty good hands with them. And yes, to invoke the hackneyed litmus-test
question—I’d drink a beer, or a pinot, or in HRC’s case a shot of Crown Royal,
with them. To everyone but right-wingers, that was the vibe Sunday night—a
victory lap, and a victory lap that no one begrudged them.
They’re
the real Americans now. It’s not that they have changed, but that America has.
The measures for real Americanism are no longer clearing brush, hunting elk,
hopping on top of various animals, dropping one’s g’s (in speech, I mean), and
speaking in intentionally ungrammatical apothegmatic frontier “wisdom.” The new
measures? Not completely sure yet. But we do have now the collective
realization that those were fake measures—some Harvey Mansfield–inspired
Potemkin Village of “real America.” Also, the collective realization that it’s
probably on balance not at all a bad idea for the president not to be “just
like us,” which was the folk wisdom of a decade ago, but in fact a little
smarter than most of us.
The
Republicans? It’s not just the extreme ideology. Of course it’s that, but it’s
more. The whole shtick is old. Where once the Middle American ear may have been
soothed by that low Cheney rumble belching out its grave assessments of the
world situation, today it is accosted by all those caliginous Southern accents
warning of socialism and collapse, and thinks: will these people ever shut up?
Georgia Congressman Paul Broun told The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that Obama “upholds … the Soviet
Constitution.” On any given week, I could fill a whole column, or two, with
such nuggets. Enough already.
While
Obama and Clinton were speaking, so was Paul Ryan, to a conservative gathering,
where he said: “There are two ways to respond to defeat: Either you can deny
it, or you can learn from it. I choose to learn from it. The way I see it, our
defeat is all the more reason to lay out our vision with even more
specifics—and with a broader appeal.”
What
he’s saying there, and throughout the speech, is that the GOP isn’t going to
change its stripes a bit. “Broader appeal” means I suppose better (read: more
dishonest) packaging for a bunch of reactionary policies that Americans don’t
want.
Conservatives,
you can call me and others like me all the names you want, and you can whine
about the evil CBS all you want. But Kroft and his network were actually in
touch here with the pulse of the country, which wants Obama to succeed and
Hillary to go have a nice long rest (and, maybe, get ready for 2016).
Meanwhile, even Roger Ailes has gotten sick of Sarah Palin. Get the picture?
Obama and Clinton: The 60 Minutes Interview. 60 Minutes. CBS News, January 29, 2013. Also find video here, here, and here.
