Hillary: a profile in non-courage?
Some of you who have always thought Hillary Clinton to be nothing but an opportunist entirely ruled by ambition may laugh cynically at what I’m about to say: I’ve been disappointed in her ever since she became Obama’s Secretary of State.
It’s not that I’ve ever thought very highly of her. But I did believe she retained a smidgen of integrity. I’ve been surprised (yeah, laugh at me again) at how easily she seems to have slipped into the role of being nothing more than Obama’s willing handmaiden.
During her presidential campaign she seemed to have a grip on the fact that the United States stood for something—for example, speaking out against tyrannies such as we’ve seen the last week or so in Iran, and speaking up for the rule of law in places such as Honduras against those such as Zelaya who would go against its constitution.
And she sold whatever was left of her self-respect so cheaply, too. Secretary of State, presiding over Obama’s muddled “I never met a dictator I didn’t like, or a human rights violation I couldn’t wink at” mentality? Who would want that job? Is it merely a stepping stone to something else, or an end in itself? I could understand far better why, as First Lady, she stayed with her husband through personal ignominy and betrayal, than I could understand her behavior now. Her ties to Bill were much closer, and her ambitions greater, than they could be now vis a vis Obama. After all, I figured, she can’t run in 2012, and by 2016 she’d be sixty-nine, fairly old for a presidential campaign (as we learned from John McCain).
But now I learn that there’s trouble in the paradise of the Obama Cabinet, at least if you credit this story. Did Hillary push Obama to be tougher on Iran during the aftermath of the Ahmadinejad victory? And did he diss her by failing to inform her before he actually (belatedly) came out and finally did a version of what she’d suggested? And, if so, who leaked the story to the press, and why?
I never credit much of anything that Dick Morris has to say, especially as a prognosticator. So take this with a whole saltlick rather than a grain. Back in February Morris wrote:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is finding that her job description is dissolving under her feet, leaving her with only a vestige of the power she must have thought she acquired when she signed on to be President Obama’s chief Cabinet officer….
The power of the secretary of State flows directly from the president. But Hillary does not have the inside track with Obama. Rice and Powers, close advisers in the campaign, and Gen. Jones, whose office is in the White House all may have superior access. Holbrooke and Mitchell will have more immediate information about the world’s trouble spots.
So what is Hillary’s mandate? Of what is she secretary of State? If you take the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan out of the equation, what is left? One would have to assume that the old North Korea hands in the government would monopolize that theater of action. What, precisely, is it that Hillary is to do? The question lingers.
It continues to linger. Is there any possibility of this prediction (also from last February) coming true?:
Pundits all across the political spectrum will soon be counting down the months—not years—until Hillary Clinton leaves the administration citing areas of foreign policy in which the Obama administration has not only ignored her advice, but has left her out of the deliberations.
Her decision to leave will probably come some time after next year’s elections, if somehow she can stomach staying that long…If Obama’s “stimulus” legislation bombs, as many financial experts expect, 2011 will probably be the beginning of a successful second run for president by Hillary Clinton, at least in the primaries.
Although I have trouble following (or even imagining) the Byzantine workings of either Clinton, this just doesn’t make sense to me. If Clinton challenges the sitting president of her own party in 2012, I would assume she’s toast, persona non grata with Democrats, the people to whom she must appeal to win the nomination—unless by that time Obama is polling numbers that resemble George Bush’s in 2008.
Otherwise, to resign and speak out against Obama’s foreign policy would be to fall on her sword for the sake of the country. That’s something I don’t see Hillary doing, although I suppose stranger things have happened on this earth.
It surprised me as well when she took the job as sec of state. But I thought she felt (and I am sure she was promised) she would have a major hand in shaping foreign policy. Why she would have believed that I am not sure when there was so much evidence already of Obama’s willingness to throw people under the bus.
I think she was offered the job to give Obama some “international street cred” and to put a muzzle on her as well as get her out of the senate.
I continue to say there is brilliance around Obama (I don’t think he has it personally) when it comes to the Chicago-style or Tammany Hall style politics. I think the trouble will come when Obama starts to really believe he is the one running the machine.
It would take much much lower WH approval ratings and a virtual shipwreck of an administration, I imagine, for Sec. Clinton to resign, much less publicly differ or distance herself in any way. Opportunism, not principle, is the bottom line for the whole lot of ’em, imo.
We have to remember, Hillary and Bill are consummate operators. I have hopes we are starting to see the middle game with Obama. The press is having an awake moment with Helen Thomas, people are coming out against Obama’s domestic policies and he is an international diplomacy nightmare. But all the foreign relations stuff has been his. Hillary is bidding her time and is now coming out as being ahead of the curve. Perhaps we’ll hear how she tried to get the administration to come out in support of Honduras’s actions? All the while being a loyal front man for Obama’s failed policies.
Who better than Hillary knows how badly healthcare can smack you? Who in the administration was the first to move to give benefits to gays? Who knows what happens when the press finally starts reporting on your hubris and imperial style?
Obama will be force to fire Hillary at a moment that reveals him as a poor prospect for re-election.
She’s playing a waiting game, I suspect, figuring that the Messiah will screw the pooch and she can challenge him in 2012.
But first she had to demonstrate her Dem bona fides by joining the Administration, and (she thought) keeping herself in the limelight. Meanwhile, Obama’s handlers made her, in essence, in charge of “special projects,” that graveyard of corporate executives.
She’s positioned herself to the right of the Messiah so that at the appropriate point she can make a “principled” exit, aka swimming away from the SS Obama as it goes down by the stern, as she probably figures it will go.
To put it conversely, if she thought Obama was going to make a go of it, she’d have been better off staying in the Senate, where she could have more job security (a couple terms as Senator >> longevity of any Secretary of State) and not risk getting her chain yanked by Obama.
Her decision only makes sense if she figures Obama’s going to crash and burn, and she’s positioned herself to pick up the pieces (to mix my metaphors).
Hilary endured an emotionally abusive relationship for decades and seems to have a knack finding such relationships. It’s a common pattern and I have sometimes wondered just what her family was really like when she was growing up.
I’m with Occam here. I think Hillary is playing a quiet waiting game.
When Obama hits the rocks with his crazy economic policies and dangerous appease-your-enemies-and-screw-your-friends foreign policy, Hillary and her team will be around to pick up the pieces.
“And she sold whatever was left of her self-respect so cheaply, too. ”
We have been here before. Any woman (or man for that matter) that would put up with becoming the most publicly humiliated woman in the world back in the salad days of Monica…. Has. No. Self. Respect.
No surprise here.
The S.S. Obama isn’t going to go down by the stern, she’s going to roll over to port so hard she capsizes.
Like you, I was impressed by Hillary during the campaign. In fact, she wiped out a decade and a half of my not being able to stand her. (I blamed the Clintons and the liberal women who thought Bill could do no wrong for driving the final nail in the coffin of what I thought feminism was supposed to be.) I felt a sense of identification with her battles and admired her grit. I hoped she was one of those women who gets to a certain age, steps out of her husband’s shadow, and comes into her own.
I’m afraid, however, that I was much quicker than you to write her off again. Once Hillary was willing to wink and nod at the distasteful little Favreau dust-up, I figured she was in fact the person I’d thought she was for all those years. It’s a shame – I liked the candidate Hillary much more than I expected – but her disappearing into Obama’s Administration didn’t surprise me after that. As Louisa May Alcott reminds us, “Trifles show character.”
As for her future, it beats me. I know there are still people out there who are rabid supporters but how she gets from where she is to running for President is beyond my imagining. Still, I wouldn’t count her out. I may not think well of her in general but I do think her grit is quite real.
Chuck–
She had a domineering father– that’s one clue at least.
Even though I don’t particularly like Hillary, I know I definitely preferred her over Obama if and when that fateful phone call came through at 3 o’clock in the morning. The fact that, like it or not, she has “a pair” I saw as a definite plus. And I believe in my heart that her conception of America is much more traditional (and patriotic) than Obama’s, which is a good thing. So I, too, have been surprised that she has turned into such a wallflower/Obama yes-man. I honestly can’t believe she believes everything she’s been saying lately. And if she does, I wonder what vet they sent her to after she was sworn in.
kcom, I agree.
Eighteen months ago, I’d have rather ripped out my tongue with pliars than say I wished Hillary were President.
But now, God help me, I wish she were.
She probably thought that heading up the State Department was a fair consolation prize. It must be frustrating to be in a job that used to be important but which your boss is making more irrelevant every day but there’s not much that Hillary can do right now. Obama’s approval ratings are high and resigning from State would only earn her enmity from the Dems at this point. She would be portrayed as an ungrateful spoiler by the MSM. Let’s hope she’s waiting for an opportune time in which to express her lack of confidence in Obama’s foreign folly-cy, er, policy.
Remember back during the campaign when everybody laughed when Hillary claimed foreign policy expertise because she had visited foreign capitals with Bill, and the funny claim about getting shot at in Afghanistan? That whole idea just vanished. Poof!
There are several people in the Obama administration who one would think would be the grown-ups. Larry Summers, Christina Romer, even Hillary, Robert Gates. Richard Epstein remarked that Obama had to be very much in control. Yet at U.of Chicago never made any attempt to write a scholarly paper, or participate in staff discussions.
I find it fascinating how many conservatives are trying to figure Obama out. I remember a lot of Presidents, but never one that was so puzzling or so difficult to grasp. Can you think of any previous candidate who would have tolerated the “deification,” the haloes, the worshipful songs? And did he appoint Hillary only to keep her busily under wraps? It’s a puzzle.
You hit the nail on the head. I suspect as was pointed out by yourself and in other comments, that she will leave the administration if it looks like it’s policies are tanking. A consumate opportunist. She can then say, “I tried”, she can also point out more flaws and weaknesses, as only an insider can.
As for democrats rejecting her, they will jump a sinking ship so fast you won’t even know what happened. They will attach themselves like barnacles to any floating boat and Hillary will be looking pretty good about that time. Because she’ll be the only viable alternative. I’ll bet that they will not try to once again go with a total unknown (think Jimmy Carter).
Recall precedent for a Dem challenging a Dem incumbent: Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the nomination in 1980, and God knows Kennedy was never persona non grata in the Democrat Party either then or now.
The key will be Obama’s performance. If he’s generally accounted to be a weakling and a loser (i.e., a dusky version of Carter), Hillary need only precipitate a row with the Administration, leave it on a matter of “principle,” then challenge the Messiah.
If Dems think that Obama will lose, they’ll jump ship to Hillary in a heartbeat. White Dems anyway; black Dems will doubtless go down with the ship.
The tricky calculation for Dems then is how to minimize long-term damage to the party – stick with a loser, and lose, but keep the brothers happy, or jettison the loser, maybe win-maybe lose, and infuriate the brothers, perhaps permanently.