LITTLE ROCK — WHEN, oh when, will the silly season be over? It’s been going on since before winter, and it’s the middle of July already. The latest sympton is still another outbreak of the on-again, off-again, now-on-again crush that the press has on Condoleezza Rice. Well, maybe just a crush on the copy she provides. The dog days are coming and the chattering class is getting a little desperate for things to speculate about. Condi talk helps fill the gap.
Condi Rice was providing the copy like crazy last week when she was being talked up for vice president on this year’s Republican ticket. Even though the presumptive nominee for president-Mitt Romney-has yet to announce his choice of a running mate, and Ms. Rice herself was doing everything in her power to dampen all such idle speculation, which is getting idler every day. How dare she play aloof? We the press have spoken even if we the people have yet to show the slightest interest in a Romney-Rice ticket. And neither has Ms. Rice.
No matter. Who does Condoleezza Rice think she is? Her own woman? Doesn’t she know that what the press likes to do the mostest is chase people around, snapping photos and yelling questions? Most of us Deep Thinkers in the news business and obsession have always had a secret yearning to be paparazzi anyway. Mr. Cruise, were you surprised by the divorce papers? Over here, Ms. Hilton! Hey, guys, Alec Baldwin is at the restaurant down the street, and I hear he’s slugging photogs! Let’s go!
The airwaves and websites were full of this “news” late last week: Condi Rice was on Mitt Romney’s short list for the vice presidential nomination! How short? Five, ten, twenty, a hundred names? But she’s definitely on it, according to sources. Maybe not reliable sources, but there’s no need to go into detail. Let the games begin.
Condi! Condi! Condi! Over here! Smile for the camera!
The victim of all this reporting came out Friday to say she wasn’t interested. Again.
No matter. It was on Drudge, man. She was the new front-runner in the Veep sweepstakes. She was being vetted! As if a former secretary of state and national security adviser had never been vetted before. Look at it this way: She’d provide the oomph that Mitt Romney lacks. And conservatives everywhere would rejoice.
Except, of course, for the ones that wouldn’t. Condi Rice is supposed to be pro-choice, not pro-life, according to one nasty rumor, and there was some groaning in GOP ranks about Mitt Romney’s needing to shore up his conservative bona fides, not undermine them. One rumor can beget a whole ream of speculation in this business.
At least we had some politics to talk about in the middle of a hot, boring summer. No matter how poorly sourced. So let’s turn on Fox and get to All Condi All The Time.
Bill Kristol, he of Fox News and the Weekly Standard, son of the late great Irving Kristol, had Ms. Rice down as the front-runner for the No. 2 spot. Didn’t the candidate’s wife, Ann Romney, just say that her husband might consider a woman for the ticket? That clinches it. After all, there are no other women in the GOP, right? (South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, anyone? Michele Bachmann of Minnesota? New Mexico’s Susana Martinez? The junior senator from New Hampshire, the fast rising Kelly Ayotte? Take your pick of those and more.)
Even good old Juan Williams slipped into cliché: Putting Condoleezza Rice on the ticket would be (sigh) a “game changer” for Mitt Romney. What, not a master stroke, a breakthrough and a knock-out blow, too?
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece on the rumors. ABC News was all over it. So were news-based websites like Politico. But you have to wonder how anyone who’s ever heard Condoleezza Rice lecture would think she’d enliven the Republican ticket. She’s a perfectly respectable lady with a lengthy résumé in academia, the State Department, and all the right bureaucracies, but she’s much more likely to produce yawns than cheers. How sum up a Romney-Rice ticket? Dull and duller?
If it’s new life, a dramatic story, an independent spirit, and a powerful speaker the Republicans are looking for in their vice president nominee, they could scarcely do better than Marco Rubio, junior senator from Florida-a crucial state-and embodiment of the American dream.
For some strange reason, Condoleezza Rice seemed to think just denying any interest in the vice presidency would be enough to end the talk. Silly girl. A few weeks back, she told CBS News: “There is no way I would do this. I didn’t run for student council president. I don’t see myself in any way in elected office. I love policy. I’m not particularly fond of politics.”
Not particularly fond of politics? Just generally?
So . . . you’re saying there’s a chance?
Hold the presses!
YOU WANT more proof this is the silly season? The Wall Street Journal carried another column last week about Mitt Romney. It was about his daring to be photographed on a jet ski.
We read the column twice. And we’re still scratching our heads.
What, exactly, is wrong with a jet ski? A favorite cousin has one and on occasion will even let other folks play around on it in a favorite Arkansas lake. But the Journal’s columnist said some editors were likening it to John Kerry’s windsurfing off Nantucket Island in 2004.
Oh, please. These people could use a basic sociology course. They’ve got their class markers all wrong. Windsurfing is for the cool, suave and fashionable. Jet skiing is for good ol’ boys and girls. Jet skis, folks in these parts get. Windsurfing, we don’t. Think of jet skis as some popular imported beer, a little on the expensive side maybe, but that’s what your cousin keeps in stock. Windsurfing is more like a wine you can’t pronounce from a country you’ve never heard of.
When, oh when, will the silly season end?
Answer: Wednesday, November 7th, 2012. It can’t get here soon enough.
Until then, strength.
And, oh yes, avoid those clichés like the plague.
Editorial, Pages 10 on 07/17/2012