Gore Vidal Supports Barack Obama



(image via vanderbilt)

And it all comes full circle. Our gadfly Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, who has lived through one-third of the history of America and chronicled its entire breadth is actually supporting a Presidential frontrunner. And that is quite a feat for someone so skeptical that his prose at times seems laced with acid.

Melvyn Bragg of The South Bank Show, who last interviewed Gore Vidal twenty years ago, interviewed the great American writer last night on ITV1 in thr UK. Granted, Gore Vidal, one of the last literary lions of postwar America, is something of a literary crank. That doesn't make him a bad person, necessarily. He still has interesting things to say. Especially on the subject of Senator Clinton of New York, who, in 1994, visited the great author ("Scrittore") at his old house in Ravenna, Italy. The local papers wrote, "Lady Clinton nel paradiso di Vidal." At the time Vidal wrote in his memoir Palimpsest (via Florence King in NR):

"The Clintons are now under attack because they would improve a society that is a heaven for, perhaps, one-tenth of the people and a hell, of varying degrees, for the rest. I doubt if he will survive his first term. He will experience either the bullet or a sudden resignation, and then cousin Albert, the Cromwell of Washington's Fairfax Hotel, will be Lord Protector."

But it was not to be. And the political seduction, as oftentimes happens with the Clintons, didn't stick. But how could it? Vidal has been seduced, politically, by the best. From TimesOnline:

"At 82, Gore Vidal has reached an enviable position: he is an influential man of letters, a political activist, a scion of the New World aristocracy and a friend of the powerful and famous, including the Clintons.

So what does he think of Hillary Clinton’s stated intention to fight on to the bitter end for the Democratic presidential nomination? The reply is instant and searing: 'I think her strategy is more or less insane.'

"...During the Clinton administration, Vidal admired Bill’s understanding of the poor and of black people. His devotion to the Clintons has now been laid aside, however. By clinging on to her campaign, waiting for the small chance that Obama will make a terminal mistake, Hillary has crossed a line, he believes.

As for Obama, Vidal has taken time to warm to him. '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.'"

More here.