A Little Love for Hillary
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Hillary
I’m not the most qualified to write this post. I’m not a big Hillary Clinton fan. In fact, I renounced both Clintons for their tactics earlier in the campaign. But dang it all if I’m not starting to feel sympathy for the woman. She can’t move a muscle without someone calling her a phony or a racist or , you know, pretty much evil. I think many of her opponents need to calm down and look at this from the human angle.
First, her tumultuous, who’s-at-the-wheel? campaign is very understandable. Have you ever been in line for a promotion and then, after everyone assures you you’ll get the job, a younger and less experienced colleague gets the position instead? I don’t care who you are, that’s hard to take. And for Clinton, it’s happening in brutally slow motion.
Also consider this: in 2004 she opted not to run for president. She chose instead to let others have their shot, earned herself more experience and won a validating second term in the Senate. She played by “the rules.†Barack Obama could have done the same, but he didn’t. In effect, Clinton looks like a chump for thinking there were rules to play by. She waited four years just to get told she’s been around too long.
Then there’s the experience factor. She spent eight years privy to the daily operations of the executive branch. That should be a big plus. She knows things about running this nation that the rest of us can only guess at. Sure, she was “just first lady†but, come on, she lived and breathed the daily pressures of managing this nation even if she wasn’t personally in charge. She knows what she’s in for and, to top it off, she went out and acquired bonus legislative experience.
We can argue that Obama is just as or nearly as experienced as Clinton but, really, that requires us to believe Hillary Clinton was doing nothing more than planning dinner parties and hanging drapes for eight years. Does that remotely sound like the Clinton we know? No. She was certainly engaged and even if all she did was observe, that’s very valuable. What’s the first thing surgeons do when learning to operate? They observe. It’s a key to success.
Finally, we keep hearing how the nation is done with the Bush/Clinton dynasties. Why? Because George II has mucked things up so much that we now think Hillary Clinton will screw things up too? Sure, the Clintons play by a similar set of divisive rules that the Bush’s play by but, really, she’s being punished for the eight years of strife that has been George W. Bush while not at all being rewarded for the eight years of peace and prosperity (minus the distracting little sex scandal) that was Bill Clinton.
I know we expect our leaders to rise above the human elements. But Hillary Clinton has been caught in a vice grip of bad circumstances. We should not at all be surprised that her campaign has been less than smooth. Now, do I believe or support everything I wrote above? No, I wrote it from Clinton’s point-of-view. I’m still of the opinion that the Clintons trade in a particularly nasty form of politics that sullies every good thing they accomplish. But I am weary of seeing the woman treated like a cancer. She could/would make an excellent candidate for the Democratic party.
Call me sentimental – I voted for Bill twice, you know.
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March 12th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I appreciate how you must have struggled emotionally to write this – however this is the same type of meaningless misdirection stuff the Clintons have been throwing out for years. The rules only exist as far as they serve the Clintons – far be it from them to follow the rules however. I applaude your ability to TRY and write something balanced regarding frau Clinton – but I just can’t (won’t) come around. I tried to like her last year because I want to see a woman in that office – but it just won’t work. Oh, and I think she didn’t run in 2004 because a focus group told her and Bill (because they never can be separated) they wouldn’t win – no other reason. I must be getting weak or something but I am starting to believe that things are so bad in government right now that inexperienced, bounce the incumbent type politics can be a beautiful thing. “Throw the bumb’s out, let the new kids have a chance”.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Now you’ve done it Alan. You’ve blown your cover. You are clearly part of the vast right wing conspiracy that would would rather run against Clinton because she is so beatable. Everybody knows that Obama would win in a landslide against McCain. You are obviously shilling for McCain here, in an attempt to get the weaker opponent, and probably working under direct orders of Karl Rove. BTW – say Hi to Karl for me. Tell him I am waiting for my next instructions.
Take shelter immediately! – Obamite SCUDS incoming!!! 3-2-1 …
[fyi - I only voted for Bill once.]
March 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
mw — Rove says stop revealing our evil plans. And, let me guess, you voted Perot one of those years.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Saying Hillary Clinton should be President because she was First Lady is kinda like saying the wife of a neurosurgeon should be able to perform an operation.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
No matter her experience, it is her judgment and management deficiencies that concern me.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
There is no sympathy in politics. Let me make one thing clear. I did not go into this against Hillary. If anything I was very proud of her. And then her arrogance took over in this race.
Her experience is bunk. You are calling her 8 years by proxy in the white house experience? It is not commander in chief experience. Neither Obama, McCain, or Clinton have that. Her husband does. It’s being brought to light now that all of her experience is bogus. She even went as far as to claim that she brought peace to Northern Ireland. She has basically gone to 80 countries around the world and played tea party. She has no actual credit where she has done something as first lady that equals to foreign policy experience.
She has pulled some of the dirtiest tactics in this campaign. She threw her own party member under the bus to a republican. That should have earned her an expulsion from the democratic party. But to quote Geraldine Ferraro, She “is lucky” that the democratic party is made up of some the biggest pussies in politics. And that’s my on damn party.
She has said one thing after another. She doesn’t live to the standards she sets. She is one massive hypocrite. She accuses Obama of the same things she herself is guilty of on this campaign. Like demanding that Samantha Power should be fired for calling Hillary a monster, but then refusing to fire anyone from her own campaign for worse remarks thrown at Barack. It’s simply outrageous the things she has said and done.
She has ruined herself. And she has no one to blame but herself.
And don’t point me out as someone who needs to calm down. I might swear in my blog entries, but this woman has pissed me off passed the point of no return. She is pure trash and her slash and burn politics have effectively divided the democratic party. And Barack Obama who has lived up to his standards, is being dragged down because he has to answer to her ridiculous claims and charges against him.
There are no sympathies to someone who is “me first, everything else can wait. ” She so driven that she has become a danger.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hillary and Bill Clinton have made a significant issue about how the press is treating Hillary unfairly in their hyper-critical reporting on her and their “softball†reporting on Barak Obama. Hillary maintains she has been fully investigated by the media and Barak hasn’t! As the Tony Rezko trial begins in Chicago, Clinton and her surrogates are linking Obama to Rezko and the media is speculating about whether Obama will be called to testify as a witness in the case. Obama has always admitted he received $85,000 in contributions from Rezko which Obama has now donated to charity rather than keep. Yet the civil fraud trial of Bill Clinton for defrauduing Hillary’s largest donor in 2000 into giving her campaign more than $1.2 million, pending in Los Angeles courts since 2003, is now preparing for a November, 2008 trial. The discovery that is now proceeding after a February 21 hearing, and the pending trial, have NEVER been announced by the mainstream media. Hillary was able to extricate herself as a co-defendant in the case in January, 2008 after years of appeals to be protected by the First Amendment from tort claims arising out of federal campaign solicitations she made. Her abuse of the intent of California’s anti-SLAPP law after the California Supreme Court refused to dismiss her from the case in 2004 is emblematic of her contempt for the Rule of Law. Hillary will be called as a witness in both discovery and the trial according to the trial court Judge who so-advised Hillary’s attorney David Kendall when he dismissed Hillary as a co-defendant in 2007. A subpoena is being prepared this month and will be served personally on Hillary, along with Chelsea, Pa Gov. Ed Rendell, Al Gore and other well known political and media figures. Yet the media has refused to report about this landmark civil fraud case- brought by Hillary’s biggest 2000 donor to her Senate race, regarding allegations that were corroborated by the Department of Justice in the criminal trial of Hillary’s finance director David Rosen in May, 2005. That indictment and trial was credited as resulting from the civil suit’s allegations by Peter Paul, the Hollywood dot com millionaire Bill Clinton convinced to donate more than $1.2 million (according to the DOJ prosecutors and the FBI) to Hillary’s Senate campaign as part of a post White House business deal with Bill. The media – except for World Net Daily- has also suspiciously refused to report on Hillary’s last FEC report regarding her 2000 Senate campaign, filed in January 30, 2006. In a secret settlement of an FEC complaint by the plaintiff in Paul v Clinton, Peter Paul, the FEC fined Hillary’s campaign $35,000 for hiding more than $720,000 in donations from Paul, and it required Hillary’s campaign to file a 4th amended FEC report. In that report Hillary and her campaign again hid Paul’s $1.2 million contribution to her campaign and falsely attributed $250,000 as being donated by Paul’s partner, Spider Man creator Stan Lee, who swore in a video taped deposition he never gave Hillary or her campaign any money. Lee did testify to trading $100,000 checks with Paul to make it appear he gave $100,000 to Hillary’s campaign (admission of a felony) but none of that has been reported by the “overly critical†media! Where is the outrage from Obama that the press is engaging in a double standard relating to his possible role in the Rezko trial and his refunding the $85,000 contributed to his campaign by Rezko- which Obama has always admitted taking. The media makes no mention of Hillary’s role as a witness in Bill’s fraud trial for defrauding Hillary’s largest donor- and Hillary’s refusal to refund the $1.2 million she illegally received from Paul, which she has denied taking from Paul ever since the Washington Post asked her about Paul and his felony convictions from the 1970’s before her first Senate election in 2000? Visit Hillcap.org for videos and info.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Alan, I think it is safe to come out of the shelter now.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I’m a 64 yr old middle class Republican who has never voted for a Democrat.
I will cross party lines to vote for Obama. I would cut both hands off at the wrist before I would ever pull a lever, or push a button for a ticket with the name Clinton on it.
If Hillary get the nomination, McCain wins, it’s that simple.