Last night, in the middle of the craziness that is producing live television, we all stopped for this exchange with Nicolle Wallace. She served as White House communications director under President George Bush and worked as a senior adviser to the McCain/Palin ticket in 2008. She also recently published a political novel called It's Classified -- featuring a candidate for vice president whom Rachel described as "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."
Midway through the interview, Rachel asked if she had any advice for Ms. Palin about getting into the 2012 Republican race. From the transcript:
NICOLLE WALLACE: She'd have to play by some of the normal conventions. And I think that will enrage her base of supporters. But the truth is the times are too dire to run as the man or woman for the right or the left.I think that was the difficult lesson Obama learned and the price he's paying for pushing an agenda that appealed maybe too much to the left. People don't like that.MADDOW: The left do not feel like they've gotten a lot.WALLACE: I mean, he has the constitution to govern the whole country and he has missed an opportunity to do so with his policies. So, my advice for anyone, particularly for her -- and she has a whole nest of problems that would, you know, that she'd have to confront. But the first one would be to resist her most partisan and most polarizing instincts because that would make her the wrong candidate for the moment.MADDOW: Does she have anything to offer beyond that?WALLACE: Look, you know, I was inspired by her to write a book about someone who was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. So don't ask me.
I guess that would be the "clef" part of roman a clef. Below, straight out of the Saturday morning cartoons, the yummy chocolatey taste that's a healthy part of a great breakfast.