Topic category:  Other/General

January 8, 2008 was a great night for the Comeback Coot, Senator John McCain, the grizzled veteran who thinks he should have been elected President in 2000 and is owed election now, and the Comeback Pantsuit, Senator Hillary Clinton, the Ice Queen out to become the second President Clinton.

Their victories in the New Hampshire primaries were impressive.

Senator Clinton is on track to be the Democrat presidential nominee. The media will not deliver the nomination to Senator Obama, much as they would like to do so. The Democrat Party is not THAT reckless quite yet.

In Senator McCain's case, however, it looks like a last hurrah. In 2000, he won the New Hampshire Republican primary by 18 points. This time, "the President of New Hampshire" won by 5 points, after coming in fourth in the Iowa Republican caucuses and going unnoticed in the Wyoming Republican caucuses.

These days Senator McCain rightly describes himself as older than dirt and more scarred than Frankenstein. The scars are not off-putting in a President, but Senator McCain is 71 and older than his late father when his father died, indications that his presidential campaign is now fueled by unrealistic ambition.

Unlike Senator McCain, Senator Clinton is not too old to be President, or visibly scarred. in addition, she's not quite as dangerous as rookie Senator Barack Hussein Obama or former one-term Senator John Edwards, her chief rivals for the Democrat presidential nomination.

Unfortunately, Senators McCain and Clinton lacks presidential temperament.

Thomas Sowell on Senator McCain:

"John McCain trails the pack in the temperament department, with his volatile, arrogant, and abrasive know-it-all attitude. His track record in the Senate is full of the betrayals of Republican supporters that have been the party's biggest failing over the years and its Achilles heel politically."

"McCain's betrayals include not only the amnesty bill but also the McCain-Feingold bill that violated the First Amendment for the illusion of 'taking money out of politics.' His back-door deal with Democrats on judicial nominations also pulled the rug out from under his party leaders in the Senate.

"The White House is not the place for a loose cannon."

All patriotic Americans respect Senator McCain's military service, but, instead of instilling confidence, a McCain presidency in 2009 would make people nervous (albeit not as nervous as another Clinton presidency, or an Obama or Edwards presidency).

Senator Clinton's public display of emotion shortly before the New Hampshire primary may have assured her victory, but it also prompted Dick Morris to publicize why he believes she lacks presidential temperament and he made a persuasive case. Mr Morris did not realize that the incident would bring Senator Clinton a short-term boost, but, like Senator Obama, Senator Clinton will suffer from actual scrutiny.

Mr. Morris:

"Americans are warmed when a politician is moved to tears by the plight of someone else. But they get turned off when it is their own plight that the public figure bewails. Pity for others is positive. Self-pity unforgivable in our politics. We want a president who will not go to pieces when the missiles start flying.

"And, on Monday, in the snows of New Hampshire, Hillary Rodham Clinton failed the test."

Senator Clinton, long perceived as an Ice Queen in public, did not "go to pieces" when she choked up, momentarily, however, and her public display of emotion from which she quickly recovered (if it was real instead of feigned) redounded to her short-term benefit and helped her come back to win the New Hampshire Democrat presidential primary by taking back the women vote from Senator Obama (he won it in Iowa).

Mr. Morris opined that Senator Clinton choking up not only was genuine, but also was evidence of lack of presidential temperament and explained the basis for his opinion.

That basis is much more disconcerting and should be generally known.

Mr. Morris:

"Others say that the tears reflected genuine emotion and sorrow for the diminished future prospects of America now that it would not have Hillary Clinton to lead it into the future. Wrong again. Even she is not that arrogant.

"The real reason was that her frustration at not being able to control events boiled over and metastasized into tears.

"I know because I saw it once before in 1994 after the Democrats lost Congress due, in large part, to her failed health care reform initiative. A few days after the election, she sobbed to me over the phone that she was 'bewildered' and that 'nothing I do seems to work out.' She confessed to being 'totally at a loss' and not to grasp why 'nothing is working.'"

That should be very distressing news to thoughtful voters, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent.

As Mr. Morris explained:

"Hillary is a control freak....The essential equation for her is that if she disciplines herself sufficiently and prepared arduously, she will prevail.

"But when she doesn’t, she is at sea. She becomes frustrated by her loss of control and doesn’t know where to turn. She has great faith in gurus and chooses them carefully. But once she invests her faith in one of them, she follows their lead to the end of the earth. But if she doesn’t achieve her objective, if the guru’s instructions prove flawed, she is at a loss as to what to do and she becomes very emotional.

"A person who never bends, she sometimes breaks."

The thought of a President Hillary Clinton "lost, awash in self-pity and confused by failure" won't keep her from winning the Democrat presidential nomination, but it should keep her from being elected if she runs against the presidential hopeful with stellar executive experience in business as well as government, Mitt Romney. (Unlike all of his Republican rivals, the former Governor of Massachusetts has been running a national campaign and competitive in Iowa, Wyoming AND New Hampshire.)

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.