I learned more from Bill Clinton about "is" (namely, to avoid using it like a semantic plague) than I did from Mr. Dickerson's apologetics. In fact, I would advise Mr. Dickerson to adopt the general-semantics E-Prime (English without the "Is") program for at least a few essays before presuming that he knows the first thing about the unconcious projection of unexamined metaphysics made possible by that little grammatical gremlin in all its inflected manifestations.
To the present specific point about Bill Clinton, however, Dickerson does seem to understand (when he wishes to) that contemporary context provides the subconscious associations upon which linguistic utterances depend for meaning. The Clintons -- especially You-Know-Her -- have a deserved reputation for sandbagging calculation. For example: take You-Know-Her's waiting for Barack Obama to announce his candidacy first before jumping in to the contest herself immediately afterwards, in effect crying out: "Me, too! I want to be president, too!" (This tends to remind audiences of the talking Donkey in the movie Shrek jumping up and down for attention in a crowd, shouting "Pick me! Pick me!") Beginning a race by letting the other horse out of the starting gate first, somehow seems to have early on become the "second best" meme of You-Know-Her's "always coming from behind" campaign. In fact, and quite ironically, the dreary repetition of the noun phrase "comeback kid" has resulted in the noun "kid" assuming the same verbal attributes once employed by Jack Paar (the first host of the Tonight program) when he would say to his audience: "I kid you, not." In chess, once White gives away its first-move advantage to Black, the loss of initiative usually leads to checkmate. I kid you not, kid.
For a more significant example of calamitous calculation, though: consider You-Know-Her's craven decision to authorize and indulge a known Texas stud-hamster's vaquero vendetta against a tinpot dictator in non-threatening Iraq -- when 23 other Senators and 133 Congressmen had no trouble whatsoever seeing through Gulf of Tonkin II in the Bay of Goats. Buffaloed Girl calculated on the side of mob-vengeance jingoism. She calculated that mean old Republicans would not call her nasty names like "weak" if she proved "all tough and stuff" by weakly caving in to their crude browbeating. She calculated wrong. Everyone knows it. Senator Obama has every right and duty to remind us all of that, implicitly or explicitly. You-Know-Her requires PUNISHMENT as an object lesson not PROMOTION to higher levels of Peter Principle incompetence. And after all, Senator Obama never claimed that as a politician he would not use the truth to his advantage. Only in John Dickerson's America would this tactic seem strange and unscrupulous.
One can multiply examples, but the previous two ought to serve for present purposes. Leaders invite others to "follow me." Sandbagging opportunists command: "After you." The American people have recognized the difference between Barack Obama's "risky" leadership and You-Know-Her's "safe" opportunism; and this recognition becomes more deeply rooted in the present campaign context every day.
To pick semantic nits, though, since Dickerson seems to like that sort of thing: notice that we can use the substitute nominatives "You-Know-Her" and "Buffaloed Girl" because we presume with some confidence that most people know precisely whom we mean by those designations. In a similar way, everyone knows that the present primary campaign still has THREE extremely well-known candidates. To mention only the TWO most lackluster of them, as Bill Clinton does -- in a seemingly innocent, offhand way -- does indeed try to insult-by-purposefully-ignoring the OBVIOUS, UNMENTIONABLE OTHER GUY who just happens to lead the two aged also-rans in all metrics worth mentioning. I do this kind of semantic substitution myself, every time I employ "You-Know-Her" instead of the pretentiously-suggested-first-name-familiarity of a person whom I do not know and who does not know me. Everyone knows whom I mean, yet I do not have to offer that person free advertising by using her own preferred brand name for herself.
At any rate, Mr. Dickerson makes all the allowances he wishes for subliminal "lizard language" when disingenuously suggesting some sort of semantic innocence on the part of a recognized lizard like Bill Clinton. I would differ, of course, in ascribing some competence to Bill Clinton in the semantic arena, since he seems to have gotten himself impeached for ineptly bungling so many of his frequent attempts to both say and not-say at the same time. In truth, he seems something of a rube at the swiftboating sewer-sailor art, despite whatever reputation for "evil" that Mr. Dickerson wishes to accord him. Senator Obama's campaign has had no difficulty at all in forthrightly pointing out the "lizard language" innuendoes implicit in the Clinton camp's desperate dialectics. I have every confidence that they will remain vigilant and prompt in their deconstruction of the Geriatric Old Poops grandpa and grandma Clinton and their swell new Republican idol, great-grandpa McBomb. Their old and obsolete kind of "love" no sane country needs, wants, or can afford.
