Another Listening Tour?!?!

Back in the summer of 1999, when I was a young pup interning down in Washington, D.C., I distinctly remember Hillary Clinton's utterly ridiculous and insulting "listening tour" of New York. At the time, longtime Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was retiring, and at the urging of several powerful Democrats, the First Lady decided to run for the seat. The only problem? She did not live in New York, and had never resided in the state for any extended period of time. To finesse this, Clinton and her people concocted a listening tour of the Empire State, whereby she would go across the state just talking with and listening to New Yorkers to "decide" what to do.

Naturally, this was all a pretext, as her run was a done deal, and her tour was a way to ease her into the contest without ruffling too many feathers and in order to get around the biting allegations that she was a carpetbagger coming from all corners across New York and the nation.

I have to admit that at the time I was disgusted with the whole thing. Never a fan of Hillary, I thought it ridiculous that she would move into the state and then be able to be its United States Senator (ah, how naive I was when I was 19!). I found her tour a joke and an embarrassment, an insult to any rational person's intellect.

A big fan of Rudy Giuliani back then (I have always respected the pre-9/11 Rudy; anyone who claims he did not help clean up New York City does not know what they're talking about, but that being said, I have always hated post-9/11 Rudy which is a farce and a bunch of crap), I even considered backing him, and wearing one of those "Hillary No" buttons that the College Republicans proudly brandished. As he was considering a Senate run too, Rudy went on his own listening tour, but of Hillary's homestate of Arkansas! I still vividly remember the frontpage of the New York Daily News, showing Rudy with a hilarious goofy grin and dark Yankees jacket with the headline "Arkansas Here I Come"; in fact, I have it saved in our attic back home.

In the end, I did vote for Hillary, not so much because I loved her at the time, but because Rudy dropped out because of his prostate cancer diagnosis (though, to be fair, I think he knew he was going to get creamed by Hillary), and I was never backing the awful Rick Lazio and child-like Rick Lazio. Still, despite my vote for her, I never warmed to her listening tour, and to this day I think it was absolute nonsense.

I bring up all these old stories of my youth because today I am reading that Caroline Kennedy is now going on her own listening tour of upstate New York as she prepares for her inevitable appointment to Hillary's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. While I did not see this tour coming, I probably should have. And I hate it just the same.

Who in God's name would buy this garbage? Caroline Kennedy probably has not been upstate in her life. If I had a dollar for every trip she's taken to Buffalo, Utica, Oswego, and Watertown, I might have 16 cents. This trip is every bit as insulting as Hillary's less than 10 years ago. I realize that this is her way of easing into a job she probably is not the most qualified for just as it was for Hillary back in 1999, but that does not make it any less silly. The entire spectacle just makes me queasy, to be quite honest. Sure, I think that the appointment makes a great deal of sense for Democrats on a national/public relations scale, but I am more and more irritated by the whole thing as it directly conflicts with my desire for some shred of fairness in the political process.

A "listening tour"?! Who is she kidding? Well, when she is on the Senate floor in a few months, I guess it won't really matter much.