The Clintons: above the law
Commenter “clarityseeker” has a question for me about the Clintons:
What is it that drives them to “feel” above the law, and to operate on the premise that they need not adhere to norms, social standards, much as the rest of us do?
My speculative answer—
The Clintons have always been powerful people, even when young. As early as college and law school they were widely considered to be brilliant and charismatic, both in different ways. Recall, for example, that Hillary was chosen to give a commencement speech in her graduating year at Wellesly, a very unusual honor. The main speaker was Senator Edward Brooke, but she stole his thunder:
Clinton, then just Hillary Diane Rodham, was chosen by her peers to be the first student speaker to deliver a commencement address at Wellesley College. Clinton electrified 400 of her peers at the women’s liberal arts college with a fiery speech that captured the young generation’s disillusionment over President Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.
…Brooke spoke first and suggested the anti-war protests sweeping across college campuses were a poor way of exercising students’ constitutional right to assemble, saying “coercive protests” would discourage support from people empathetic to their cause. Clinton, who had led demonstrations against the Vietnam War on campus, wasn’t afraid to take a moment to go off script and respond to Brooke’s speech.
Life magazine did an article that featured her; the whole thing was somewhat like the fuss made when Obama was chosen as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Husband Bill was a star in school too. He was twice president of his class at Georgetown, for example. Then later, Rhodes Scholar. Suffice to say the accolades came early and they were numerous.
Can you imagine the power these two people felt when they united forces in marriage? Remember, also, that when Bill became the governor of Arkansas he was only 32, and the youngest governor in the country.
Of course, being a person with a record of early achievements doesn’t mean you will consider yourself above the rules that govern the little people. Nor do I think this happened right away with the Clintons (although Bill was always that way as a sexual adventurer, and the more he got away with it the more immune from consequences he felt). But as time went on, the combination of brains, people fawning on them, and the gaining of more and more power over time must have fed the feeling that they were immune to the usual rules for public servants.
The most important thing of all was that they got away with it. The more a person gets away with, the more impervious he/she feels. The pinnacle of all of that was what ought to have been the nadir: the Lewinsky scandal. Bill Clinton was finally caught and exposed and what happened? Essentially nothing, although it was embarrassing for a while.
My hunch is that the Clintons’ primary motivation has never been money, and initially money really didn’t enter into it very much at all. It was only slowly that money became a big part of it, and then that element grew in importance as the Clintons became very accustomed to their lavish lifestyle.
I submit, therefore, that it is somewhat rational for the Clintons to believe they are above the law. Events so far have proven them correct, haven’t they?
It is the ‘purity’ of their intent that justifies their entitlement. All that they have done is for us.
“Professional liberals [today’s ‘progressives’] are too arrogant to compromise. In my experience, they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They’d double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it.” – Harry S Truman, 1970
They have, indeed. In spades. In every way that counts.
Free pass from the media means never having to say you’re sorry. I don’t even want to think about what Obama’s gotten up to that we’ll never know about. The stuff we actually know about, and goes under- or mis-reported is bad enough.
I don’t even want to think about what Obama’s gotten up to that we’ll never know about.
People didn’t even know 1% of what the Left was up to in 2008. Have they broken 51% yet by now? Actually, no, they have not.
I wonder sometimes if they dance around the part where luck runs out. Always scrambling for another fix. I guess they try not to think that there is always some truthful explanation required, sooner or later.
Neo, exactly. As Sen. Moynihan phrased it, the Clintons have defined deviancy down. They keep getting away with it, so why stop? Not unlike President Obama. Impeachment was just a bump in the road, and they were shameless enough, and adept enough, to flip that around to become an insolent defiance on behalf of their party and partisans.
When Watergate and Nixon’s implosion happened, I irritated some Nixon defenders and opponents by saying the country got what it deserved, because it tolerated a political leadership class that eventually went that far astray. Unfortunately, every so many years the country again drops its standards and reaps what it sows.
I’m hopeful that the pendulum will swing, and 2016 will see a repudiation of sorts. Read up about the 1920 election and the aftermath of Wilson’s disasters, and gain some hope. After all, President Obama is clearly the worst President since Wilson. Jimmy Carter can rest easily now, and maybe James Buchanan’s ghost sees hope of moving up in the ranks a little.
As moral, ethical and cultural norms degrade, standards fall. The longer it goes without correction the more it becomes the norm. The banksters and moneyed interests got away with making one killing after another. The back scratching, quid quo mo’ has been going on for some time now. It is the norm. The public is not unaware but inured — that’s how you get away with it. If the facts, the empirical evidence, overwhelms them, they are, nevertheless, not without senses. They know not evidentially, they know osmotically that something is critically wrong but there’s not a damn thing to be done about it.
Who was the ancient Greek bloke (name escapes me just now) that wished to be buried upside-down because that had been the state the world was in?
Leona Helmsley, net worth $8 Billion:
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
It’s for the children.
IMO, we are approaching global financial collapse. When? Nobody knows, but it is on the event horizon as a can can be kicked only so far. The clintonistas, banksters, the rogue soros, and others of a similar ilk can pick flesh from the carcass but eventually there is nothing left but bare bones. It is coming… prepare as best as you are able. And no, only blood kin are welcome to my family’s rally point in northern Minnesota.
This a perfect example of why a conservative or libertarian leader is the preferred choice or lesser evil. When the left-wing is established as a pro-choice or selective cult, it is nearly impossible to hold them accountable for their actions.
The Clintons do not “feel” above the law. They are in fact above the law.
They are like every Dem pol the law itself.
Make no mistake, even the ones who are prosecuted are the ones they decide to get rid of themselves.
America is no longer America.
The Country is lost. Face it. There is no way to get it back except for the way it was won in the first place.
That’s the reality. This pretending is starting to get painful.
Shrillary has been blathering about ‘sexual assaults on women’ lately. Right? MSMs see No Parody-Paradox-Irony and thus none have had the idea to ask her,”What does your husband say about this? Sexual assault?? Missus Clinton, have you run this by Billy the Rapist??”
I agree with what Neo says, but Geoffrey Britain’s first sentence is a big part of it, too. They believe themselves to be on the secular equivalent of a mission from God. They’re so very much in the right that it’s ok and even obligatory for them to break rules in the service of the cause.
Hey, even daughters* of low level Democrat/Progressives were getting away with murder, so why would what Bill and Hillary did raise accountability?
*the professor who shot up the U of Alabama faculty meeting, Amy Bishop, only for us to discover she most likely murdered her brother as a teenager in Massachusetts but it was covered up due to her mother’s Democratic Party connections.