Rick Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker, and former editor of The New Republic and a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. For TPM, he opines on stupidity, venality and political insanity.
Meritorious Achievement in the Crazy
Michele Bachmann is the diva of ditz. She’s the Callas of Crazy, the Dietrich of dissimulation, the Garbo of Garbage. It’s not just that she cites invented facts when the real ones are ideologically inconvenient. That’s just standard Republican procedure. It’s that the whole gestalt in which the nonfacts are embedded is comprehensively bananas.
One can only marvel at the artistry of it: the glassy steadiness of the smile; the mesmerizing vocalization, flat yet oddly musical, like Frances McDormand in “Fargo”; the surprising subtleties of coiffure and wardrobe; the extreme makeup, which goes right up to the edge of (yet never crosses into) Tammy Faye Bakker territory; the dozens and dozens of foster kids; the ostentatiously antigay husband, as giggly and childlike as an overfed Pee Wee Herman. The Bachmann persona superbly complements the Bachmann worldview, a strain of megachurch Christianist ultraconservatism in which a sanitized past must pass through a satanic present in order to reach a Rapturous (for believers only) future.
Against this, that collection of sweaty males had no chance.
Best Election Gaffe
Technically, the obvious winner in this category falls short of classic gaffehood because it does not, strictly speaking, meet the criterion dictated by Kinsley’s Law of Gaffes, which states that a gaffe occurs when a politician inadvertently says something true. But that’s taking the Law too literally. Rick Perry’s “Oops” spectacularly confirmed a truth: Rick Perry’s utter cluelessness.
This was a gaffe for the ages. Has a single syllable ever before sufficed to turn a promising political career instantaneously to dross? “Oops” will be a prominent feature of election-time gaffe reels for generations to come. It will be remembered long after Perry himself has been forgotten—forgotten, that is, for everything except “Oops.”
Most Outrageous Fib Issued By A Politician
A highly competitive category. For me, it’s Kyl over Bachmann by a nose, for two reasons:
(a) The possible consequences of the lie. Defunding
Planned Parenthood would not only impose
gratuitious suffering and inconvenience on millions
of vulnerable women, it would also produce a large
increase in unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, in
abortions.
(b) The innovation of lying and then claiming that the
lie was OK because it was not intended to be true.
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
Newt, natch.
Chutzpah has long been a Gingrich trademark. Without it, neither his greatest accomplishments nor his most massive fails would have been possible. But the degree to which it has been corruption- based has increased dramatically, to use a favorite Newtonian adverb. Vowing to include in every speech an attack on Clinton’s sexual indiscretion with an office subordinate while himself carrying on an affair with an office subordinate was an impressive exercise in hypocrisy-based chutzpah, but it is overshadowed by his forays into corruption of a pecuniary nature.
Many people thought that Newt could never top his 1997 personal best, when he was forced to pay a $300k penalty and became the only Speaker ever to be reprimanded by the House for ethical depravity. Many people were wrong. What takes the cake—and the Golden Duke—has to be Newt’s million-dollar-plus payday as a Freddie Mac “historian” combined with his strident demands that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd be jailed for supposedly destroying the economy by supposedly pushing that selfsame agency to be too solicitous of the underprivileged.
Best Scandal—Local Venue
Scott Beason looks like a winner to me. His behavior transcends human weakness, ascending to the level of inhuman weakness.
Best Scandal—Sex and Generalized Carnality
Sadly, Weiner.
Best Scandal—General Interest
Gladly, Cain.
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