Hillary Clinton: The Asterisk President
If Hillary Clinton goes on to win the nomination and the Presidency, I think historians should seriously consider putting an asterisk next to her name as the "first woman President." If you are a lover of civil rights and woman's rights, you cannot help but be dismayed at how the first woman President will be made. Yes, there are those who will say "but she disciplined him" and "She pushed him" and it is true that behind every good man is a good woman, but frankly there are many good people who never had this kind of support.
She wants to project strength but she wins by tears. And not tears for the mutilated victims of Darfur or the thousands killed in a war she wholeheartedly supported, but tears over her own political fate. Her emotions were genuine, but they were genuinely about her and her dreams and not this country. And when "the boys" treated her as one of their own, she cowers in fear behind her menacing, purple-faced husband who has to ride to her rescue.
And when those men even question her right to simply be crowned President, that bullying husband shakes his reddened fingers in rage at the audacity of some Southern fried lawyer and uppity negro to step in the way of their grand plan. What message do you think a teary-eyed woman President hiding behind a chest thumpin' husband/formerPresident sends to Kim Jong Il or Osama Bin Laden? When Iran's saber rattles and challenges us and calls her a harlot, will Bill Clinton shake his finger in their face as well? Say what you will about George W., but he never had to have his father stand up to defend him.
If Bill Clinton is going to trade his "elder statesman" status for the role of alpha attack dog so be it. If this will be his third term (which he seems to be suggesting) then lets resolve old issues from Bill Clinton's second term shall we? What about that eleventh-hour pardon of Marc Rich? What about the pardoning of the Puerto Rican terrorists? And who influenced all these pardons? How many more women were held up in his love-shack of a White House? What happened to the Buddhist Monks and what influence will the Chinese government have over you?
Why were you disbarred for five years from the Arkansas Bar and fined? What about all those donors to your Presidential library? And while we are on the subject, why were you and your "co-President" wife so paralyzed in 1997-1998 that you allowed Bin Laden to run free and attack America repeatedly? Was it because while you were seeing which 21 year old intern you could cigar, America's most dangerous enemies were plotting and planning? Was it because while you were reliving your baby boomer youth running the Playboy Mansion, you kept your eye off the ball?
And how many Democrats in the House and Senate did you enter with in 1992? And how many were gone by 2000? Did you leave the Democratic Party in better shape than how you found it? Given we lost both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, I'm guessing not. After just winning back the House and Senate after 12 years in the wilderness, do we really want to roll the dice! And when the next scandal hits and we find ourselves trying to sort out the Clinton martial mess as we did 10 years ago, will you call back on those of us you shunned and questioned? Will you call back on us to defend you and her despite you calling us "false hopers" and living on "fairy tales?"
Hillary Clinton is unworthy of the title first woman President because so many others are waiting in the wings who rightfully deserve it. Janet Napolitano for one. A husbandless woman who scraped and crawled her way to the Governor's Mansion of Arizona after being Attorney General. No famous last name for her to rely on. No glass ceilings broken by the hammer of a husband.
Or Christine Gregoire. Another woman who had to fight against actual glass ceilings to win as Governor of Washington. Or Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii. Or Kathleen Selebius, Governor of Kansas. Or Senators Blanche Lincoln or Patty Murray, sneaker walking-soccer moms who hit the pavements and put in their blood, toil, and tears to scrape to the top and win fame and power in their own right.
And in who's right will Hillary become President? Not her own. This is her husband's purple faced, in-your-face victory. Simply put, if she can't win on her own, if she can't campaign on her own, then surely she cannot govern on her own.
She wants to project strength but she wins by tears. And not tears for the mutilated victims of Darfur or the thousands killed in a war she wholeheartedly supported, but tears over her own political fate. Her emotions were genuine, but they were genuinely about her and her dreams and not this country. And when "the boys" treated her as one of their own, she cowers in fear behind her menacing, purple-faced husband who has to ride to her rescue.
And when those men even question her right to simply be crowned President, that bullying husband shakes his reddened fingers in rage at the audacity of some Southern fried lawyer and uppity negro to step in the way of their grand plan. What message do you think a teary-eyed woman President hiding behind a chest thumpin' husband/formerPresident sends to Kim Jong Il or Osama Bin Laden? When Iran's saber rattles and challenges us and calls her a harlot, will Bill Clinton shake his finger in their face as well? Say what you will about George W., but he never had to have his father stand up to defend him.
If Bill Clinton is going to trade his "elder statesman" status for the role of alpha attack dog so be it. If this will be his third term (which he seems to be suggesting) then lets resolve old issues from Bill Clinton's second term shall we? What about that eleventh-hour pardon of Marc Rich? What about the pardoning of the Puerto Rican terrorists? And who influenced all these pardons? How many more women were held up in his love-shack of a White House? What happened to the Buddhist Monks and what influence will the Chinese government have over you?
Why were you disbarred for five years from the Arkansas Bar and fined? What about all those donors to your Presidential library? And while we are on the subject, why were you and your "co-President" wife so paralyzed in 1997-1998 that you allowed Bin Laden to run free and attack America repeatedly? Was it because while you were seeing which 21 year old intern you could cigar, America's most dangerous enemies were plotting and planning? Was it because while you were reliving your baby boomer youth running the Playboy Mansion, you kept your eye off the ball?
And how many Democrats in the House and Senate did you enter with in 1992? And how many were gone by 2000? Did you leave the Democratic Party in better shape than how you found it? Given we lost both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, I'm guessing not. After just winning back the House and Senate after 12 years in the wilderness, do we really want to roll the dice! And when the next scandal hits and we find ourselves trying to sort out the Clinton martial mess as we did 10 years ago, will you call back on those of us you shunned and questioned? Will you call back on us to defend you and her despite you calling us "false hopers" and living on "fairy tales?"
Hillary Clinton is unworthy of the title first woman President because so many others are waiting in the wings who rightfully deserve it. Janet Napolitano for one. A husbandless woman who scraped and crawled her way to the Governor's Mansion of Arizona after being Attorney General. No famous last name for her to rely on. No glass ceilings broken by the hammer of a husband.
Or Christine Gregoire. Another woman who had to fight against actual glass ceilings to win as Governor of Washington. Or Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii. Or Kathleen Selebius, Governor of Kansas. Or Senators Blanche Lincoln or Patty Murray, sneaker walking-soccer moms who hit the pavements and put in their blood, toil, and tears to scrape to the top and win fame and power in their own right.
And in who's right will Hillary become President? Not her own. This is her husband's purple faced, in-your-face victory. Simply put, if she can't win on her own, if she can't campaign on her own, then surely she cannot govern on her own.
posted by Chris at 3:26 PM
13 Comments:
A woman crying. A black man rising. A white southern man getting red-in-the-face angry... Lets not forget what that foreshadowed less than 100 years ago (see Chris' college thesis).
Whether or not the Clinton campaign was aware of this (knowing how smart they are, it's hard to believe it never crossed their minds), it's a TERRIFYING throwback, and there should be an asterisk.
It must be a bit troubling to her supporters that when Senator Clinton found her voice, in South Carolina it was her husband's. Quite apart from the Dick Morris analysis, which will surely give those who follow politics closely food for thought, this tactical decision marginalizes the importance of women in the first test of Clinton's candidacy in the southern states.
Fantastic post, Chris, thanks for articulating what so many of us think!
You should post this to mydd.com. It has been overrun by Clinton supporters who have blinders on when it comes to anything questioning her run for the Presidency. Great article.
Bravo! Bravo!
Bravo! What's depressing is how few people see all this, and how it's regarded as an extreme view. If we thought the first Clinton White House was dysfunctional, imagine Bill in the White House as Prez spouse; his personality will effectively usurp power from the vice-president and cabinet, and probably Hillary too from the looks of it, and then we basically have a president who wasn't elected (and can't be impeached). How can people think that's okay, regardless of who the person is? But yes, the greater tragedy for the progress of women in politics is that the Democratic Party put all of their resources for the past ten years into promoting this woman because of who her husband was, when it could have been cultivating several others who did it on their own, and have executive experience, like Napolitano, precisely. So when people say oh, but if not Hillary, when will we get a woman, it makes me cry.
Praise for Mrs. Gregoire should be tempered by the fact that she relied on fraudulent recounts to win her most recent election.
Perhaps Ms. Napolitano's achievements would be better left to stand alone.
Absurd, ridiculous, ahistorical, intellectually dishonest post...you've been a good boy and dutifully memorized your right-wing talking points. Obviously you've taken one too many hits off Christopher Hitchen's crack pipe.
Absurd, ridiculous, ahistorical, intellectually dishonest blog post comment...You've been a good boy (or girl) and dutifully memorized your Elvis Clinton "Woe Is Me" talking points. Obviously you've taken one too many hits off Mydd.com's crack pipe.
Thanks for this post. Over the years, I've probably racked up 100 troll ratings confronting people at dailykos with the facts of the Paula Jones case:
1. The state trooper was deposed and said that Clinton sent him to fetch Paula to the hotel room.
2. Clinton's public schedule put him in the hotel.
3. The hotel said they had provided him with a room for his use.
4. Paula's co-worker said she had been taken off by the trooper and was upset when she returned.
5. Paula said she told others at the time and they backed her up.
6. Clinton paid $850,000 to avoid trial.
7. Clinton has never given his version.
Clearly, Paula was telling the truth. That her lawyers were right wingers - so what? Who else was offering to help her? The Clinton supporting womens organizations attacked her or gave her the cold shoulder.
What kind of people defend a Governor sending a state trooper to fetch a young state clerk to a hotel room so that the Governor can demand oral sex from her?
What kind of people?
Clinton didn't summon her for "oral" sex, but for "moral" sex. He IS a gomersexual, you know.
"Hillary Clinton is unworthy of the title first woman President because so many others are waiting in the wings who rightfully deserve it."
Did you forget to list them?
Maybe if George W. *had* had his father defend him once or twice things might have been different.
Oh, wait, I'm confusing defending and advising, which I know Bill would do for Hillary.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home