This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Jon Sanders, Research Editor and Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation.
During their bitterly contested primary campaign of 2007 and early ’08 for the Democratic nomination for president, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in racial and gender politics and dirty tricks previously unthinkable by Democrats – well, at least when facing other Democrats.
The ugliness of the primary campaign would have passed from media acknowledgment altogether once the GOP opponent was chosen, had their rancor not inspired famed Democrat composer Moscow Berlin. He immortalized it in his musical “Hillary, Get Their Guns.”
The rip-roarin’ finale captured the campaign spirit with a catchy little number full of feisty give-and-take between the heroine and her rival, as they sparred over the ginned-up issues of the day, such as who has it tougher in America: Clinton as a white woman or Obama as a black man; whether it was proper for Clinton’s supporters to point out Obama’s admitted drug use and cast aspersions on his Muslim middle name and early schooling; and how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil-rights work paled beside President Lyndon Johnson’s act of signing the Civil Rights Act.
Here now is the tune that’s captured America, “Any Change You Can Make”:
Clinton: If you think you’ve had it tough, I’ve had it tougher
Sexism’s tougher than racism here
Obama: No, it’s not
Clinton: Yes, it is
Obama: No, it’s not
Clinton: Yes, it is!
Obama: No, it’s not
Clinton: Yes, it is! Yes, it is! (sniffles)
Clinton: Gloria Steinem says girls’ lives are harder
Blacks have it easy compared to us girls
Obama: That’s just dumb
Clinton: It’s for real!
Obama: Race is real
Clinton: No big deal!
Obama: Now that’s just —
Clinton: Glass ceiling! Glass ceiling!
Obama: I heal racial tension with each Oprah mention
Clinton: I got Barbra Streisand lending me a nice hand
Obama: I can give us hope and change
Clinton: But can you change change?
Obama: Huh?
You’re deranged
Obama: Your silly stimulus plan, I can outspend it
Clinton: Show me your policies, man, I’ll outdo you
Obama: No, you won’t
Clinton: Yes, I will
Obama: Tax credits?
Clinton: Middle class!
Obama: Pension boost?
Clinton: Got that, too!
Obama: Free health care?
Clinton: It’s in there!
Obama: It’s a tie
Clinton: I really try (sniffles again)
Clinton: I just hope voters know you were a druggie
You were a black guy on drugs, it is true
Obama: Lame attack!
Clinton: It’s a fact!
Obama: Take it back!
Clinton: Not a chance!
Obama: It’s a hack!
Clinton: I step back!
Obama: Let’s step back!
Clinton: Ever since third grade you’ve sought to be president
During your radical Muslim school days
Obama: In third grade?
Clinton: Madrassa
Obama: In third grade?!
Clinton: Name’s Hussein
Obama: You’re insane
Clinton: Kindergarten, also
Obama: I can talk about the issues while you are getting tissues
Clinton: I can cry my way to winning because it tugs the hearts of women
Obama: I can beat the GOP
Clinton: With no third party?
Obama: Sure
Clinton: Whatever, smarty
Obama: Any change you can make I can make more of
Hope is audacious, fits me like a glove
Clinton: It does not
Obama: Dr. King!
Clinton: LBJ!
Obama: Are you nuts?
Clinton: You called me slut!
Obama: What? I did not, I did not!
(Devolves into argument, ad-libbed, while TV reporters and hosts excuse and overlook the candidates’ increasingly barbed language.)