Clue: It’s singular, not plural

The rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN next week will apparently not include any American politicians. This is a great pity — and a great opportunity lost — because the Iranians and the world at large can only conclude that American public officials have no interest in confronting the radical government in Tehran — despite its determination to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe out the Zionist entity.

For this particular piece of bad news we can thank Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the organizers of the rally, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It was either Obama or Clinton who decided that Clinton could not possibly share the stage with Sarah Palin, after the organizers very sensibly invited her to speak. Sadly, it was the organizers who then backed down to the Obama/Clinton bullying by disinviting Palin. Obama and Clinton both deny that the Obama campaign had any role to play in Clinton’s decision to drop out, but one would have to be very naive to believe them. For their part, the organizers have come up with more explanations than I can keep track of, and look more like chumps every day.

So how come Hillary took the gas? Her stated reason is both absurd and revealing: the presence of Sarah Palin at the rally, she claimed, would have made the rally a “partisan event.” Even though I’ve been teaching political science for thirty years, I looked up the definition of “partisan”, just in case my advanced age has made me forgetful. Here it is, from Webster’s: “a firm adherent to a party, faction, or cause, or person; esp: one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.” The definition of “bipartisan” drops the scolding and gets to the point: “of, relating to, or involving members of two parties” — as in, “Sen. Clinton and Gov. Palin Deliver Bipartisan Message to Iran,” the terrific New York Times headline we’ll never get a chance to read.

We’ve heard much from Barack Obama about his hope to bridge the partisan (as in “blind, prejudiced”) gap in this country, reaching across party, race, gender, age, and astrological sign. We’ve now seen what Obama really means by “bipartisan,” and it’s not what Webster means. It sounds more like Jesse Jackson’s famous, cheeky definition of “justice”: “Just Us.”

This disgraceful incident reveals something else as well. Democrats are terrified of Sarah Palin, and it’s not just because she has single-handedly revived John McCain’s chances of being elected President. They are afraid of her because her very existence is a standing rebuke to the smarmy posturing that has passed for thought in the Democratic Party for the past thirty years. Hillary Clinton has said that she is troubled by abortion and wishes it were legal but rare. Sarah Palin makes that stand look pathetic. Clinton and Obama have both said that they want to talk Iran out of its nuclear ambitions. Palin will tell the truth that the Democrats will never admit, even to themselves: all the talking in the world won’t change the government of Iran, or slow its nuclear program by so much as an hour. Clinton and Obama profess the deepest sympathy for ordinary Americans and their struggles to get by. Unlike them, Sarah Palin IS an ordinary American, and she could care less for their sympathy and their hand-wringing. Clinton and Obama have labor leaders on their side. Palin will put an actual member of a labor union — her husband — into the Vice President’s mansion. Obama and Clinton are “pro-Israel”; Palin hangs an Israeli flag in her office and dares anyone to object.

In a campaign filled with enough surprise, drama, comedy, and intrigue to last a lifetime, this flap over the Iran rally will quickly fade from memory. But it is one of those moments that political junkies savor: like the “universe in a grain of sand,” such moments open sudden vistas on the campaign’s deepest meanings, and force candidates to reveal who, and what, they really are.

In this case, the revelation isn’t pretty. Obama and Clinton are willing to squander an opportunity to oppose Iran in order to avoid being seen with the Republican candidate for Vice President.

It makes you wonder: Who are they more afraid of?

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