Determined to reach the top

[Rigel]

By Mahir Ali

HE reached the mountain top and, presumably, saw the other side. Edmund Hillary, who died last week, was an intrepid mountaineer who, alongside Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, climbed Everest in 1953.

Before then, no one had gone all the way. The feat inevitably entailed immediate global fame. It nonetheless caused some surprise when, during a South Asian jaunt in 1995, the then first lady of the United States claimed that she�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??d been named after the renowned New Zealander.

There was something not quite right about the story. It was hampered by a chronological discrepancy, given that Hillary Rodham was already six years old when Edmund Hillary accomplished the feat that brought him renown. The story went through a few permutations before Hillary Clinton settled on the line that it was just something her mother had told her as a child, the implication being that it may not strictly be true, but at least it had entertainment value.

It could be seen as an innocuous enough fib, but to critics of the Clintons it slotted right into a disturbing pattern of prevarication. As film and music producer David Geffen, who was once close to the Clintons, put it last year: �?????�????�???�??�?�¢??Everyone in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s troubling.�?????�????�???�??�?�¢?�?????�????�???�??�?�� Another former friend, Christopher Hitchens, before he lost all credibility by barracking loudly and incoherently for George W. and the neocons, wrote a book about the Clinton White House. He titled it No One Left To Lie To.

More recently some sympathetic commentators have suggested that the former first lady�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s quest to reach the pinnacle of power is not all that different from endeavouring to ascend Everest. That�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s debatable, although it�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s true that no previous female White House aspirant has come this far in the race. What�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s less debatable is that Hillary Clinton had a near-death experience when she stumbled at the first hurdle in Iowa earlier this month.

The presidential campaign effectively got under way a year or so ago. The Iowa caucus represented the first formal step, however, in the somewhat convoluted nomination process. The Democratic and Republican party conventions are scheduled for August and September respectively, but unassailable winners could emerge as early as Feb 5, which has been dubbed Super-duper Tuesday because it features primaries and caucuses in 22 states, including crucial ones such as California and New York.

Technically, Clinton could have lost in Iowa as well as in the subsequent New Hampshire primary and still gone on to win the nomination, but the loss of momentum would have rendered that almost as hard as trying to scale Everest. She certainly didn�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t expect to come third in Iowa, behind Barack Obama and John Edwards. When polls in New Hampshire showed her trailing Obama by a substantial margin, large sections of the media began to write her off. Her camp lapsed into despondency. Almost every channel repeatedly showed images of her coming close to tears while answering a question from a member of the public. She�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s lost her nerve, carped the critics.

Evidently, this seemingly concerted media assault stirred something deep down among women in New Hampshire. They saw it, perhaps with some justification, as a mainly male chauvinist attack on one of their kind. The surge among the sisterhood delivered an unexpected victory that delighted Clinton. Although her margin over Obama was barely three per cent, it gave her a lifeline to the contests in Nevada next Saturday, followed by South Carolina a week later, and then Super-duper Tuesday.

In some states, only registered Democrats and Republicans can display a preference for presidential hopefuls in their respective parties. In other cases, it�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s more of a free-for-all. There are secret ballots in some places, while elsewhere voters have to huddle in polling booths at a prescribed time. In Michigan and Florida, the Democratic front-runners won�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t be on the party�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s ballot paper because of a dispute over timing; as a result, the state party leaderships get to choose delegates to the convention. Perhaps the hitches in this confusing process wouldn�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t matter all that much were it not the case that, ultimately, the odds are generally heavily stacked in favour of candidates who score highest in terms of corporate sponsorship, rendering the entire exercise substantially less democratic than it seems.

On the face of it, the Democrats have a distinct advantage this year: the dire fortunes of the Bush administration have shown few signs of recovery despite a concerted propaganda drive trumpeting the message that the Iraq war has suddenly become winnable �?????�????�???�??�?�¢?? a purported development for which Republican candidate John McCain is taking credit on the grounds that he had been recommending a surge for years. Not surprisingly, he takes a different approach to the looming recession. McCain, like Clinton, experienced resuscitation in New Hampshire, Iowa having gone the way of former evangelical preacher and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

The latter�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s colourful personality has extended his appeal beyond fellow fundamentalists, but he evidently lacks the funds to go very far. Other Republican hopefuls include Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith probably excludes him from serious consideration in the long run, and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who hopes to come back from the dead in Florida later this month.

The only Republican unequivocally offering a withdrawal from Iraq is Ron Paul �?????�????�???�??�?�¢?? an isolationist who also abhors all other forms of international engagement. In view of the US role in global affairs in the post-war era, that may not be seem like such a bad idea, despite its reactionary motivation, to the rest of the world. But Paul�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s hopes of getting anywhere close to the White House are about as realistic as those of Dennis Kucinich, the only Democrat whose proposed policies on the foreign and domestic fronts could indeed transform the US from the warmongering security state it has become into a gentler, kinder republic.

There could be surprises ahead, but on the Democratic side the contest is essentially between Clinton and Obama. She would appear to have the edge, although it could all end in tears, given that the Clintons inspire revulsion among large numbers of Republicans and distrust among quite a few liberals. Obama�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s appeal, on the other hand, is more bipartisan. He has been hailed by many conservative commentators, not least because he has refused to capitalise on his African-American identity, casting himself as the post-racial candidate.

In the electoral circus, amid the jugglers and the clowns, he has excelled as the tightrope walker, with speeches whose dearth of substance and gravitas is trumped by their anodyne eloquence. There can be little question that an Obama presidency would dramatically alter international perceptions of America, as well as America�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s image of itself. Could it really happen? And if it did, would it imply the fulfilment of Martin Luther King Jr�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s dream of a country whose citizens are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character?

White supremacists are no longer as visible in the US as they were in Dr King�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s day, but deep undercurrents of racism remain. In that context at least, an Obama presidency could serve as a transformative step in an appropriate direction.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.