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Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Resenting History

When Abraham Lincoln decided to run for a second term in the midst of the Civil War, he used a homespun analogy that nearly everybody could relate to: “You don’t swap horses in the middle of a stream.” In 1864, after all, people still rode horses to go places. Often they had to take their horses across streams, and all knew perfectly well that a stream was no place to be swapping horses. Later, in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt revived the same image, in order to justify his bid for an unprecedented third term as president. Even though by then most people were driving automobiles, the analogy still had an impact.Both Lincoln and FDR had the gift, so necessary for success in democratic systems of government, of offering simple and homey analogies to justify their policies. But the same gift can be used to attack one’s political opponent as well, as Hillary Clinton demonstrated last Sunday in Iowa. In essence, Senator Clinton declared: The war in Iraq is Bush’s mess, and it is his job to clean it up before I become President and have to do it myself.

More precisely, Senator Clinton argued that it was Bush’s “decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy.” That is, the Iraq war is Bush’s mess. “We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office.” That is, we expect him to clean up his mess. Bush has said that this cleaning up the Iraq mess was “going to be left to his successor,” namely, Senator Clinton herself, a prospect which explains the Senator’s final outburst, “I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.”

And why shouldn’t she resent it? Would you like to wake up one day, find that you are the President and that it is up to you to bring stability and order out of the chaos and bloodshed in Iraq?

The moral punch of the Senator’s underlying analogy is obvious. We can all grasp it just as readily as Lincoln’s compatriots could grasp his conceit about swapping horses in the middle of a stream. If someone else has made a mess, it’s his job to clean it up—not yours or mine. For example, if mom comes home one day and finds that her sons have been playing paintball in the dining room, it’s their duty to clean up the mess they’ve made—not mom’s. Nor could we blame mom for being resentful if, despite the obvious right and wrong of the situation, she ended up, as she often does, with the task of removing the splattered paint all by herself. Indeed, it is possible that Senator Clinton’s analogy will have an especially potent appeal to women voters, since women have traditionally been assigned the thankless task of cleaning up the mess their men folk and boy folk leave in their wake. What woman can’t say, “Been there, done that?”

There is, however, a problem with Senator Clinton’s analogy—a problem so serious that it forces us to wonder if she genuinely understands the nature of the office that she is currently seeking, and to see what I mean let us go back to the case of Mr. Lincoln.

When Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President, he inherited a mess in comparison with which Iraq pales to insignificance. The states in the Deep South had already left the Union. The previous President, James Buchanan, had not lifted a finger to keep the vast majority of Federal forts and arsenals from falling into the hands of the new Confederacy. Buchanan’s position was that the Constitution did not allow for states to secede, but at the same time, neither did it allow the Federal government to use coercion to keep them in the Union against their will. So what to do, except to do nothing?

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Clinton Corruption - Anything that goes around

 It’s official.  This week, Hillary Clinton threw her hat into the ring of contenders for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.  Now, the American people will take a long, hard look at Hillary’s record as they weigh her candidacy.  And any discussion of Hillary Clinton’s record begins and ends with her alleged crimes and ethical transgressions. 
 
Since its inception, Judicial Watch, of course, has been pursuing both Hillary and Bill Clinton, launching numerous investigations and lawsuits.  In fact, according to Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson, “Thanks in no small part to Judicial Watch, Hillary Clinton may be the most investigated person in the history of the Republic.”  (I’ll take that as a compliment.)  This effort continues today with our investigation of the records at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.  But here is just a partial summary of Clinton scandals that are relevant to Hillary’s candidacy, as so many questions remain unanswered:
 
Bribery and Extortion:  According to sworn testimony in federal court, Hillary Clinton devised a scheme to sell public, taxpayer-financed trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions to the Democratic Party and the 1996 Clinton reelection effort.     
 
Filegate:  In the early 1990’s, the Clinton White House violated the privacy rights of their perceived political enemies by “stealing” over 900 FBI files of the Reagan and first Bush administration staffers, and using the information to destroy their credibility.  Judicial Watch sued Hillary Clinton in federal court over this scheme, as she evidently was its mastermind. 
 
Pardongate:  In the last days of his presidency, former President Clinton granted 140 pardons and commuted 36 sentences.  The pardons were for individuals who had paid large fees to Clinton associates.  Hugh Rodham, brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, accepted $400,000 after successfully lobbying his brother-in-law for clemency for two felons.  Anthony Rodham, Hillary’s other brother, has also been accused of illicitly brokering another pardon deal. 
 
Campaign Finance Scandal:  Hillary Clinton’s campaign failed to properly disclose more than $2 million in contributions to her New York Senate 2000 campaign.  Hillary’s National Finance Director, David Rosen, was indicted for his role in the scandal (though later acquitted after the Bush administration watered down his prosecution by keeping Hillary Clinton out of his criminal trial).  And in response to a complaint filed by Judicial Watch, the Federal Election Commission fined Senator Hillary Clinton’s fundraising operation $35,000 for failing to accurately report the contributions. 
 
Clinton Sex Scandal and Character Assassination:  Hillary Clinton personally orchestrated media campaigns to slander the women who had allegedly been sexually and otherwise abused by her husband.  One such woman, Gennifer Flowers, was subjected to a vicious smear campaign orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and carried out by former Clinton administration aides James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.

I could go on and on: cattle futures, perjury on the Travel Office firings, hiring private investigators, selling policy to communist Chinese generals and their agents, Whitewater, Vince Foster, and all the rest.  Hillary has been angling for the presidency since her corrupt husband took the oath, and certainly before then.  Their crimes have all been means to keep and obtain power.  So we can expect more of the same in a Hillary candidacy.

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Larry Sabato: ‘Cold, Aloof Persona’ Hurts Hillary

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls in the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 is “far more fragile” than commonly believed, according to respected political pundit Larry Sabato.

Sabato – director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia – acknowledges that it’s still too early to predict with any certainty who will win the Democratic nod.

But he writes in his “Crystal Ball”: “[Clinton’s] fairly consistent lead in the polls is far more fragile than most observers appear to realize. Democrats undeniably like and respect her, but they also sense that she will have a difficult time winning in November, absent an irresistible Democratic tide.

“Her cold, aloof persona, combined with the dozens of major controversies that have enveloped her since the 1980s, are off-putting to a significant slice of the electorate, including the critical independents and moderates who produced the 2006 Democratic victories . . .

“Do Democrats need to burden their campaign of restoration with Clinton scandals, old and new?”

Sabato also raises this question: “Should only two families supply all the U.S. Presidents between 1989 and 2017? This is the American Republic, not a banana republic.”

As for the two leading “non-Hillary” candidates, Sabato writes that Sen. Barack Obama “lacks broad experience” and “has never been tested,” while former Sen. John Edwards “has about as thin a record as Obama, and can be considered yesterday’s man.”

However, Sabato opines that if the war in Iraq is still being waged through 2008, and is “still as much of a policy disaster as it is at present, the Democrats will have to try hard in order to lose the presidential election.” 

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Hillary Flattered By Haters

Sen. Hillary Clinton knows some people hate her, but considers it a “perverse form of flattery” by opponents who see her as a “worthy adversary.”Talking at length to a rapt crowd in a comfortable house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last weekend, Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she knew she had that effect on people, even before she married former President Bill Clinton, because she believes in “standing your ground.”

“In part because I’m a woman doing it,” she said, “and part because I was part of a political couple that was very much committed to Democratic progressive politics.”

“In a perverse form of flattery, people who opposed us took us seriously and decided it was important to go after us,” she said.

Read Entire Article Here

Hillary’s Understandable Contradictions

Hillary Clinton’s many contradictions aren’t hard to understand once you realize her need to suppress her natural instincts and policy preferences because they conflict with her lifelong presidential aspirations.

For the most part Hillary is not personally conflicted: She knows precisely what she wants. But her personality characteristics and the circumstances in which she finds herself force her to walk a tightrope between warring constituencies and to project a double-mindedness that is wholly inconsistent with her innate ideological certitude.

These themes were on display this past weekend as Hillary began her presidential campaign in Iowa. From the issue of her gender, to her kaleidoscopic positions on the war, she was trying to thread personal and policy needles to make herself attractive to Midwestern voters without triggering any more blue-state liberal landmines in the process. (Hollywood moguls have already sent her a message by hosting a fundraiser for Barack Obama.)

In the past, Hillary has vacillated between righteous indignation at any expectation that she should be home “baking cookies” and her acquired awareness that she must not go too far and project herself as cold and heartless.

So it was no surprise that in Iowa she reflected a bit of both sides: On the one hand she wore her gender on her sleeve in telling her audience she faced a “double standard” as a female candidate. In the next, shameless breath, she instructed them to look beyond “stories about my clothes and hair” to help her make history.

(Excerpt) Read Entire Article Here

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