EDITORIAL: Political Zombies: The Living Dead Walk Among Us
No creatures are more strange than politicos who just can't come to grips with the fact that no one is buying what they're selling. You see, a lifetime's worth of ego has gone into making each of them believe that they are the people's true messiah, that their ideas are the only really right ones.
So when the people start to ignore them, vote against them, or otherwise
reject them, denial becomes all-powerful. They disbelieve pollsters,
newspaper editorialists, news reports, even their own family members.
This doesn't make their public relations problem go away, or any of their
other very real difficulties.
In fact, it makes their inevitable crash all the worse. Reality has a way of being very tough on these wayward souls.
Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill, are the weirdest political zombies stalking the political landscape these days, looking for friends anywhere, anywhere! Now they will descend upon West Virginia, telling ardent Democrats how they're just like them, how just by telling them what they want to hear, they will bring back the good old days of the Clinton 90s.
But no one wants to wake the sleepwalkers. Hillary is done now. Her loss in North Carolina sealed her fate, and everybody knows it but the Clintons and a few stragglers. Even the Clintons know it, have known it for weeks, but they've apparently decided that, if Hillary can't get the nomination in 2008, then Obama can't win in the fall.
That's how they are. And that's why they've been rejected by the public.
Next up is Mike Garrison, WVU's President, who continues to deny
that all of the incredible national and statewide negative fallout over
his administration's handling of Governor Manchin's daughter's faux
MBA has had any negative effect on WVU.
This is akin to saying that the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't raise the ground temperature a bit in those Japanese cities in 1945. The damage has been the worst public relations for WVU in history, with the latest Associated Press report showing up even in U.S. News and World Report this week. We wonder what their "Best College Guide" will have to say about all this next year.
Nobody believes Garrison's spin, of course, but likewise, he doesn't believe what everyone else in the world is saying about his need to resign from his position. The public has said it over sixty different ways on his own blog on the WVU website. (see: www.wvu.edu) The faculty has said it in an overwhelming vote. Big donors are saying it. But the zombie walks forward, with his good friend, Governor Joe Manchin, whose daughter started this whole mess, propping him up at every turn.
Why is the Governor doing that? What is Garrison hiding that protects
Manchin? Did the young WVU President and Friend of the Manchins
make a few phone calls to Governor Manchin before the big decision
came down to award Heather an MBA she didn't earn?
We may never know, but what is certain is that Governor Manchin has been touched by the zombies and looks like he's becoming one of them, too, as he looks longingly for that great prize, the U.S. Senate seat of Robert Byrd.
Manchin may win this year for re-election as Governor against underfunded opposition. However, the public will not soon forget this shameful treatment of WVU by Manchin, Garrison, and WVU Board of Governors Chair Steve Goodwin who are all trying to ignore the voice of the people on this.
A certain former Governor named Caperton is waiting in the wings for that great Democratic primary to replace Byrd. Joe Manchin may just have to enjoy being a caged bird in a gilded cage in the Governor's Manchin, er Mansion, as he sees a Democrat with less dirt under his nails wave to an appreciative audience in that primary for Byrd's seat.