A Blog in Honor of Super Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, Slate had an interesting video about how Hillary Clinton was like Tracey Flick, the overzealous, uptight gunner from Tom Perotta's novel Election and Alexander Payne's 1999 film, which I absolutely love. Election is a satire about the American election process represented within the microcosm of student council elections within a Nebraskan high school. Tracey Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon in the film, is a type-A neurotic - you knew her in high school - she was on the field hockey team, student council, Spanish club, NHS, and the choir. She was bound for Harvard, but no one really liked her all that much. Teachers were annoyed at her know-it-all attitude as she aggressively waved her hand when a teacher asked question, and she also grade grubbed. Below is said video:



Anyway, Hillary is compared to Tracey Flick, and I completely agree with this analysis. She shows very little emotion and speaks about policy with a robot-like efficiency. She's that girl in high school who was valedictorian, and the teachers continually spoke about her brilliance. However, when you talked to her, you realized she was dry as toast. She didn't have a compelling personality or an ounce of creativity but could churn out lab reports and English papers with a machine-like diligence.

In contrast, Barack Obama is the popular football star in high school. He was that kid who came from an unstable background, but he had that Midas touch. It seemed like everything came to him with such ease. He got decent grades without trying, and he had this great, sparkling personality. Everyone slapped his back after the big football game in the hallway. All the teachers swooned whenever he talked in class because he was so cute! And to top it off, while others were seething with jealousy over Barack's charmed life, he was protected from the evil eye because he was such a nice guy and not an ass tool in the slightest. Now of course, this may not be at all how public high schools in small town America are like, because I went to Carlisle, where there were no clear-cut dichotomies between popular and the uncool, but it is my artistic attempt to approximate what public education offers.

Anyway, choosing between Barack and Hillary is ultimately a reflection of one's personality. Are you going to choose Barack and be sucked in by his charisma and continual affirmations of "transformative politics," and blatantly ignore the fact that he has had a mere four years of experience in the U.S. Senate? Or are you the high school minority who realizes that Hillary, despite all her prickliness, is a capable politician, but can't win the hearts of people due to her lack of charm? And sadly (or maybe happily?), I am a typical high schooler at heart, and I can only see Barack's star power with his exotic Indonesian primary school education, and I see Hillary as that sad loser in those ugly, ill-fitting power suits and her cutthroat willingness of doing anything to get to the White House.

--By Mariam, who thinks that Huckabee looks eerily like Kevin Spacey.