I see that the selling of Hillary Clinton as a politician has even reached the far distant shores of Australia. We even have have 'exclusives' with a junior Senator from New York--about how a woman should be president---as she launches her opening shot in the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Now we should not get to carried away with all this. Buddy, the Clinton's dog, gets more space in Hillary Clinton's Living History than does Australia.
To tell the truth, I am more interested in Hillary's fashion, hairstyle and makeup than the deep political insights into international politics. This not meant as put down. After all she is a celebrity, a international brand name with a huge fan club. It is meant in the sense that the aesthetics of appearance is a key to modern politics in the glare of media exposure. The Clintons were very good at aesthetics and politics, even when they were under attack from the Republicans.
They give us a quite different understanding of aesthetics and politics to the standard one of the politics of modernity in which the primacy is on the aesthetic and one then considers the relevance of politics. The question here is whether the arts play a role in moral and political education and/or corruption; whether the arts further a democratic politics or are dangerous for such a politics.
The Clintons turn this relationship around. With them politics is an aesthetics. In doing so they managed to take it away from the old discussion of aesthetics and politics that is still talking about the German fascists.
It gets even more sophisticated with the re-election of George Bush
And we have Bill's book to look forward to for those who think that a women should not president of the USA. What will he tell us about how to manage the aesthetics of politics?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 29, 2003 11:02 AM | TrackBack