Obsessed with Politics

I feel much this way, minues the exclamation points and the telly. For the first time in ages, I am captivated by politics.

I'm thoroughly hooked by the campaign, turned into a one-subject news junkie. I have only to see the names "Obama" or "Clinton" atop an editorial or news article, or hear the phrase "Campaign 2008" on television, and I am gone, as lost as an adolescent boy reading his first pornographic novel. I cannot seem to get enough print, television, chat or highly repetitive schmooze on this subject. What's the attraction?

I keep up with world events, the money markets, miscellany, but the campaign has me by the proverbial throat.

I don't find it easy to imagine how anyone outside her immediate family could find Mrs. Clinton, in her bouncy campaign persona – Hubert Humphrey in drag – appealing.

Well, much as I don't like the New York Senator, that image never occured to me.

More easily imagined is Mrs. Clinton at the start of a new day, slipping into yet another pants-suit, stepping into the makeover room, plastering on that frozen smile, and taking three deep breaths before hitting the bricks in the hope of coming across as more sincere than a Brian Williams necktie – while doing her best impression of a deeply caring person.

Pree-cisely.

On the New York Times op-ed page, I read Maureen Dowd only when she writes on my obsession. Scorn is Ms. Dowd's specialty; she has only to open her laptop and black toads fly out. A Clintonologist of longstanding, she earned her chops bashing Mr. Clinton, and is now palpably happy for the opportunity to be trashing his wife.

And the Dowd can bash.