. . . until the New Hampshire primary.
Here's a joke from Jay Leno, by way of Pollyticks, that neatly presents the paradox of Hillary Clinton:
Vice President Cheney lashed out at Hillary Clinton the other day. He said on CNN that he doesn't believe Hillary would be a good president. I can understand that. I mean, his administration has raised the bar so high.
There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton would be a better President than George W. B. She's savvy, smart, and experienced. She can attract millions of campaign dollars and spend them wisely. She's a shrewd political tactician who could outmaneuver just about anyone the GOP could throw at her. She knows a great deal about--and has generally good positions on--health care issues and defense issues, two of the most significant matters of the day.
So why am I not more excited about her candidacy?
1. She seems to privilege calculation over conviction. I have a hard time, for example, believing that she thought going to war with Iraq was a good idea, and yet she voted for the resolution authorizing it. I have a hard time believing that she really thinks it's a good idea for the government to attempt to regulate the content of websites, video games and movies, and yet she has repeatedly taken actions in the name of protecting the children to do just that. She has taken these and other positions after sticking a wet finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.
2. On the issue of Iraq, she has an almost Bushian aversion to admitting that she made a mistake in backing the war. Even now that she says that had she known then what she knows now she would have not voted to authorize the war, she is still taking no serious steps to stop it.
3. Her campaign thus far seems far more personality driven than issue driven. Check out her campaign website and you won't find a section called "issues" or anything similar. Want to know where she stands on Iraq, on abortion, on the PATRIOT Act, on gay rights, on Afghanistan, on health care, on taxes, on federal spending, on energy? There's not much there.
4. Perhaps this is unfair to her, but I am not comfortable with the idea that the Presidency of the United States is a family affair. Seeing the office swing back and forth from the Bush clan to the Clinton clan makes me feel like we're living in the Egypt of the pharaohs, the China of the dynasties, the Haiti of the Duvaliers, the North Korea of the Kims, or the LA of the Bloods and the Crips. A republic and a democracy shouldn't work that way.
In the early 90's, I was teaching at a two-year college in Massachusetts and had a wonderful student named Alex. Alex was conservative and shrewd. When I asked him who he was going to vote for in 1992--George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton--he surprised me by opting for Clinton. I was surprised, and asked why. Alex thought that Clinton was the more genuinely, classically conservative candidate in the race. He turned out, I think, to be right. Bill Clinton balanced the budget, declared an end to the era of big government, significantly cut welfare programs, upheld the right of the military to discharge homosexuals, and pushed through NAFTA and other free trade agreements. These are hardly the actions of a liberal (even though some of them were correct).
I am amused, therefore, when I hear rabid conservative commentators describing Hillary Clinton as some sort of uber-liberal. She's not; such comments merely illustrate how much the political center of gravity has shifted rightward since 1980. Hillary Clinton, like her husband, is a fairly centrist Democrat. I'll take that any day over the kind of reactionary Christianist leadership being peddled by the GOP. Still, I'm not at all convinced that a Clinton presidency would bring about the significant, substantive and specific changes that our country so desperately needs.
Comments