Judging by the way the pundits, pollsters and politicos are talking, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee for U.S. President in 2016. Don’t even bother to vote. It’s already over; she wins. I seem to recall she was inevitable as the 2008 nominee, too. Before the Democrats nail their colors to the mast with her, it might be a good idea to ask, “Shouldn’t we nominate a liberal instead?”
Hillary Clinton is the great white hope of America’s feminists. She’s “The One” who will break the glass ceiling. I believe America has overlooked some fine citizens who could have served in the Oval Office solely on the basis of gender, e.g., Pat Schroeder and Ann Richards. But having a woman president is not the same as having the right woman as president. I lived in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, and she managed to do to British industry what Hermann Goering and the Luftwaffe could not. Britain would have been better off had she NOT become prime minister.
So, let’s just review Madame Clinton’s record for a moment.
She spent six years, from 1986 to 1992, on the board of directors of Walmart. Now, there’s nothing wrong with serving on the board of a company. However, Walmart is a rabidly anti-union entity that destroys local businesses wherever it opens. Madame Clinton stated at a 1990 shareholder meeting, “I’m always proud of Walmart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else.” In 2008, while running for president, she refused an ABC news interview about the matter, but she stated she no longer shared Walmart’s values (did she give the money back?) and stated that unions “have been essential to our nation’s success.” How very convenient.
Madame Clinton is green only in the sense that money is too.
She botched health care in 1993 with a pro-business approach called “managed health care.” Recall that President Clinton put her in charge of the project. There were Democratic majorities in both the House (258 out of 435 seats) and in the Senate (57 out of 100). She got nothing passed. How the hell do you fail like that? Well, propose a system that puts an extra layer of bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor in a feeble attempt to reduce costs, and you’re well on your way. She failed because she let the insurance companies write her bill.
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Her pro-corporate attitudes spilled over into her tenure as Secretary of State, too. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will bring dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the refineries on America’s Gulf Coast. It threatens the Ogallala Aquifer and is an environmental problem otherwise. Because the pipeline crosses an international boundary, the State Department, which she led for years, could have stopped it. The pipeline is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Madame Clinton is green only in the sense that money is too.
She is either more socially conservative than she wants to let on, or she has a habit of grandstanding. Neither trait recommends her. Take her time as New York Senator, for example. When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that flag burning was legitimate political speech, she said, “I am surprised and offended by the decision of the Appeals Court of the 9th Circuit and hope that it will be promptly appealed and overturned.” Anyone on Fox News could have said that.
In 2002, when the same court held the words “under God” (which were added to the Pledge of Allegiance 62 years after it was drafted) to be unconstitutional, violating the separation of church and state, she wrote, “I believe that the Court has misinterpreted the intent of the framers of the Constitution and has sought to undermine one of the bedrock values of our democracy — that we are indeed ‘one nation under God,’ as embodied in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” Try to find “God” in the Constitution. The word isn’t there.
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As for marriage equality, she has come out in favor of permitting it. It would be unfair to condemn her for the actions of her husband who signed the odious Defense of Marriage Act and implemented the horrible Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the military. However, Madame Clinton only backed marriage equality a year ago. She wasn’t with the movement until late in the game. Only when a majority backed it did she announce a more egalitarian position.
In foreign affairs, she has quite a reputation from her time as Secretary of State (although I am hard-pressed to think of a single accomplishment of hers in that time). Yet, have we forgotten that this is the same Hillary Clinton who voted for the War in Iraq and who voted for the un-American Patriot Act? Indeed, she voted for the latter twice despite the fact that it damages American liberty without protecting the country.
Like her husband, Madame Clinton is a little on the slick side. She claims 35 years’ experience in public service. Arithmetic suggests a lower figure. Born in 1947, she graduated from Wellesley in 1969 and got her JD from Yale in 1973. She then worked at the Rose Law Firm until 1993 (with breaks to campaign for her husband and to have their daughter). Up to that point, I see no public service. From 1993 to today is 21 years. Maybe she misspoke (again).
Madame Clinton won’t even call herself a liberal. She has said, “You know, [liberal] is a word that originally meant that you were for freedom … that you were willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual. Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned up on its head, and it’s been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government … I prefer the word ‘progressive,’ which has a real American meaning.”
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I prefer the words “Rockefeller Republican” to describe Madame Clinton. I will not vote for her. I will not donate to her campaign. I’d rather have a liberal.
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