Understanding Hillary

In spite of not writing here recently, I am still tracking the campaign closely, and even though it seems apparent Hillary has lost the nomination, I am still trying to figure her out as a person. I am reading last year's "A Woman in Charge", by Carl Bernstein, and am up to the point where Bill has decided to go ahead with his 1992 run for the White House, and he and Hillary go on "60 Minutes" to address questions of his sexual wanderings.

John from Phoenix has just posted a response to my February 28 posting of "The Fleeting Audacity of Inevitability", wherein I addressed the apparent failure of the Hillary Clinton campaign. His thoughtful comments always stimulate me to respond. Because our current exchange is appended to an article from over a month ago and is likely to be overlooked, I have decided to reproduce it here.

Tom,
I did not respond to this because it annoyed me so much. But since you haven't posted anything for a while, I'll make a couple of comments:

1. Do you not feel comfortable with Hillary because she is cuckold? Or do you not feel comfortable with her because she made a rational assessment of her life and career and decided she would do better by standing by her man? I would like to put Bill's puerile indiscretions outside of rational political discourse, but that appears not to be possible. Who cares if Hillary stayed with Bill because she loves him? That question makes me gag and is appropriate only for soap opera viewers. What is important for Hillary and what is important to the citizens of this country is how she handled a crisis in her life. That reflects on how she would handle national and international crises. I think she did very well.

2. Because we all agreed that a black man would be chosen before a white woman does not imply that that is the correct moral choice. It merely reflects the perceived male bias of the American electorate by the three people who responded. Personally I identify with the women suffragists who were outraged that former male slaves got the right to vote long before women of all color who helped create this country did.

3. To suggest that Bill Clinton would deliberately undermine his wife's campaign is silly. Of course he wants her to succeed. The battle you suggest will come later after she is elected. Will she or Bill rule? I bet on her ruling.

4. The wishful thinking about change without substance is pathetic. The elections of John Kenney and Ronald Reagan come to mind. The former was neutral and the latter harmful to the US. Let's give professionals the job that they are trained for. Obama is not trained and Clinton is. It is simple as that.

John from Phoenix

My response:

1. Hillary married Bill for love and for the power she expected him to make available to them through politics. She knew he had a wayward libido, but she calculated that into her decision to marry him. Apparently she miscalculated the extent of his wandering urge, but when it threatened to derail the power train, she vigorously joined in the war against the derailers, which included personal attacks on the various women with whom he dallied. Staying in the marriage through his various affairs was her business, but purposely misleading the voters, when Bill was running for President, about the extent of his problem and the possibility it would come up again was unfair to the electorate. I share the view of the majority of voters, that Hillary is calculating and not quite trustworthy. How one handles the foolish sexual affair of a spouse pales by comparison with how one would handle an international crisis. Rather than giving Hillary credit for handling Monicagate, I fault her for fooling us (and herself) into ignoring the warning signs.

2. American voters seem more prejudiced against African Americans than against women. At the highest elected level next to the Presidency, the US Senate, there are several women, but Barack Obama is only the third African American Senator since Reconstruction. The Presidency may be different in the eyes of some Americans, because of the Commander-in-Chief role. Having some women rise in the military and serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff would help overcome that. African Americans and women were both denied the vote until the US Constitution was amended, first for African American male voters following the Civil War, and then finally for all women in 1920. Both amendments came in their time, after long struggles to obtain them. Victims of unfair discrimination succeed best when they unite, even if it means recognizing that the time to end one form of discrimination may come before another. We may soon elect an African American President, and in time we will elect a woman.

3. Bill and Hillary are a team, and electing her brings him along. That is bothersome to many voters, like me, who do not want Bill back in the White House, even if he is just the spouse and she is the one with the final say.

4. I am not sure how one trains to be a professional President of the United States. We do not have such a program. We also do not seem to agree on who were our best Presidents, at least among the more recent ones. Presidents seem to spend much of their time in office reacting to developments, sometimes rather unexpected, sometimes perhaps partially fabricated. The agenda proclaimed on the stump often morphs into a more ideologically driven wielding of power and then settles in to become a combination of practical politics and siege mentality. There is no other job in the country that comes even close in preparing one for the Presidency. Sometimes, like now, voters want a change, and they look for a candidate who appears more trustworthy and less likely to morph into a power hungry ideologue, one who will be guided by practicality and cooperation, rather than by obstinacy and defensiveness. That is the longing into which Barack Obama has tapped.