First, via nenya_kanadka, a sad and beautiful post by Mira Furlan apropos Michael O'Hare's death about all the Babylon 5 cast members who have died by now. (In the middle of being moved, I had an eerie moment of recognition, because I know the German children's rhyme Mira F. remembers.) Really, universe, lay off the rest of our cast for a while, will you?

Secondly, since US politics affect the rest of the world so much, of course we're following the election campaigns over here with baited breath as well. And lo, there was much relief about Obama's performance in the second debate. I don't think even our conservatives want Romney. This would be because a German moderate conservative in most cases qualifies as a leaning-to-the middle liberal in the US, and vice versa. Also Romney's trip abroad in the summer was one giant facepalm after the other and brought back memories of the unmissed Dubya. However, we don't get to vote, so of course journalists fill their columns with speculations about the general American state of mind and what exactly Americans want from their Presidents.

I'm tempted to pull a Joss Whedon and declare there is a difference between what they want and what they need. Or even between what they think they want and what they actually want, and I mean that bi-partisanly. For example, I think if you'd ask members of either party about traits their ideal president should possess, I think here's what both Republicans and Democrats would agree on: he (for it's still a he in most people's imaginations) should be an uncorrupted outsider to Washington politics, solidly married to his first and only wife and so faithful to her that he sees even the occasional lustful thought about other women as a fault, naming faults in a crisis instead of indulging in euphemisms and lies, oh, and a good Christian because that's still a specifically American must. Now it occurs to me that within living memory, there actually was such a paragorn. This would be Jimmy Carter, aka the one Republicans still use to beat up Democrats with and Democrats for the most part are still busy distancing themselves from. (And not just them. I remember reading our chancellor of the 70s, Helmut Schmidt's, memoirs, in which he declares he had far more respect for Nixon than Carter; Schmidt is a Social Democrat.)

Again, looking at Presidents from both parties and broadly speaking, it seems to me the most popular were the ones who made people feel good about themselves. Unless their decisions were so catastrophic that even the hail-fellow-well-met-aren't-we-great! factor doesn't cover it anymore, hence Reagan still being a party saint whereas Bush the Younger seems to be the Republican Carter, aka the one his own party tries to pretend doesn't exist. And the eternal phoenix act of Bill Clinton. Mind you, there are other factors at work in all those cases, I know, but still, imo this is one. I mean, even Maureen Dowd, who used to disdain both Clintons (hence her being the likely original for the journalist in Political Animals and greeted No Drama Obama with "an adult, at last!", admitted to missing Clinton's unabashed "loves to be needed, needs to be loved" style even before the Democratic convention when she wrote in this article, comparing Clinton with Obama:

When the diffident debutante ended up in the deserted AmericInn’s lobby in Iowa Falls on an icy Saturday night with reporters and a few six-packs, he did not seize the opportunity to seduce, as Bill would have. Clinton probably would have chatted with one reporter about Gabriel García Márquez, another about economic philosophy and a third about prowling the Arkansas backwoods to find antique cameos for Hillary.

Barry, for his part, looked around with dazed distaste and scurried up to his room.

Post-convention, and several weeks later, the articles marvelling about how the 2008 situation, when Obama to the (non-Republican) media was the refreshing new hope and both Clintons the tired old has beens who should just go already, reversed itself so completely that "why can't you be more like Bill?" appears to be an ongoing subtext, have been coming a plenty. Some choice quotes from the latest one:

(In 2008) Seated on a stool next to Clinton, Obama wore an impassive expression, as if he were being endorsed by a Kissimmee town councilman—or a former president whose vaunted rhetorical gifts were inferior to his own. “He thought it was fine,” recalls a senior Obama adviser. “We were all watching on TV, and we thought it was fine, too. But by then, nobody cared that much. We were all just so far past the Clintons.”

Four years later, two words leap to mind: As if. Today, Hillary Clinton is the most popular member of Obama’s Cabinet, and her husband is not only his greatest but most tireless political ally. This past September 11, the Y-chromosome Clinton was in Miami, ripping Mitt Romney a new one over Medicare. Since then, Clinton has campaigned for Obama in New Hampshire and Nevada, raised money for him in Boston and with him in Los Angeles—and there is more to come. A TV ad with Clinton making the case for Obama’s reelection has run 16,000 times in swing states across the country. Another, featuring a clip of Clinton’s address at the Democratic convention, almost gives the impression that he is Obama’s running mate. Then there is that speech itself, which another top Obama adviser tells me flatly is “the most important moment of the campaign so far.”

and:

Last time around, recall, Obama’s candidacy was based in part on the consignment of Clintonism to the dustbin of history. But now, with Obama running unabashedly as the inheritor of that creed, Clinton is reveling in seeing his legacy restored to what he regards as its rightful status: a restoration that will mightily benefit his wife if she hurls herself at the White House again in 2016. Speculation on that topic is rife within the Clinton diaspora; no one has a clue as to whether or not Hillary will run. But, equally, no one doubts that her husband dearly wants her to—mainly because, among members of the tribe, he can’t shut up about it.

Clintonism isn’t the only thing being rejuvenated here, however. What’s taking place is the revivification—and the ­Godzilla-scale enlargement—of Clinton himself. In 2008, a not insignificant number of white liberals and African-Americans assailed him as, if not a racist, a race-baiter; he was battered and bruised, scalded and scarred, mired in self-pity. But in 2012, he has emerged as the Democrats’ own Dutch: revered by his party, respected so much by the GOP that it dare not cross him, sanctified by the great heaving middle.

Again, there are lots of factors for this reevaluation - Hillary's professionalism and loyalty to Obama as Secretary of State (defying all "she'll stab him in the back" predictions), nostalgia for the Niineties (budget surplus, and in the American perception no wars - Germany perceives it a bit differently, what with Bosnia being not that far away from our doorstep) - but it seems to me a lot of the complaints really go back to the feel good factor rather than actual difference of achievement. (As the above quoted article also states, there are a lot of parallels between the first two years of Clinton and Obama.) Obama's coolness was refreshing after eight years of Bush's all-emotion-no-brains and before that Clinton's emotions-and-brains-but-self-indulgence-again-and-again, but now until the second debate the constant refrain was "show more emotions! Show that you care!"

(Unless, of course, you're a woman. I still remembver all that business about Hillary crying, or not, in the Democratic primaries.) Politics and show business really are twins.