Hillary is mad, McCain a Fool

Gore Vidal Hillary is Mad McCain a Fool

Gore Vidal, FirstPost.co.uk

The American writer Gore Vidal has launched a withering attack on the Republican presidential candidate John McCain - "I've never met anyone in America who has the slightest respect for him" - and says he prefers Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, despite his friendship with Bill and Hillary, claiming her never-give-up strategy is "more or less insane".

"I'd always rather liked her," said Vidal, talking to Melvyn Bragg for Sunday night's South Bank Show on ITV. "She's a perfectly good lawyer... But this long campaign, this daily search for the grail, has driven her crazy."

Vidal said it had taken time for him to warm to Obama. "I liked the idea of him, but he never managed to get my interest. I was brought around by his overall intelligence - specifically when he did his speech on race and religion." In Vidal's opinion, "he's our best demagogue since Huey Long or Martin Luther King".

Asked whether Obama has a similar charisma to that of John F Kennedy, whom Vidal knew because he was related to Jackie Kennedy, the writer responded: "I never believed in Jack's charisma," adding that JFK "was one of our worst presidents". He said Obama was better educated than Kennedy and would come to the presidency with real experience as a senator. "Jack never went to the office - he wanted the presidency and his father [Joseph Kennedy] bought it for him."

Vidal, who has recently returned home to the States after spending 30 years living in Italy, was asked by Bragg whether Obama could beat McCain in November. "You could beat McCain!" he replied. He called the Arizona senator a "goddamned fool" who enjoyed the privilege of a private school education and managed to come bottom of his class, and then "smashed up his airplane" and became a prisoner of war as a result, an incident he has been busy trying to parlay into his being a war hero.

"[McCain] was on television talking about mortgages," said Vidal, "and it was quite clear he does not know what a mortgage is. His head rattles as he walks."

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