First, I should establish my anti-Hillary credentials. On Booman’s Hillary Clinton Thread, I emerged as anti-Hillary as anyone. I said that I found her insenscere and inauthentic and that I hated her, characterized her as a Lady Macbeth, and said that I would vote for a Republican that is more against the occupation of Iraq than she is instead of her for president.
A main problem with her that I have had is that she has always struck me as inauthentic, as I noted in that thread. But now I am getting the sense that she might be finding her voice.
I was struck by remarks she made in Iowa yesterday:
“I’m not ready to concede that we shouldn’t take a tough negotiating stance to figure out whether there can be some movement,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters here today. “We need to change the approach of the White House, which means you’ve got to stand firm and say, `We don’t expect you to veto something that represents the will of the American people.’ ” (NY Times)
As she traveled through Iowa, Clinton said she had launched a petition drive through her campaign Web site calling on Bush not to veto legislation now pending in Congress that, for the first time, would establish deadlines for the U.S. involvement in Iraq. “Mr. President,” she said, “don’t veto the will of the American people.”
Clinton took a sharp line against the administration in the current standoff over Iraq policy, accusing the president and Vice President Cheney of questioning the patriotism of Americans who call for an end to the U.S. involvement there.
“It is time for us to get them [U.S. forces] out of the middle of this sectarian civil war, and it is time for the president and the vice president to quit impugning the patriotism of people who don’t agree with them,” she said during a breakfast reception on Tuesday at the home of former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack (D) and his wife, Christie.
During a question-and-answer session there, she accused the president of damaging the United States’ image around the world as a result of his unwillingness to work with other nations to solve problems.
“We need a president again who understands life is not simple,” she said. “You can’t just point your finger or wave a magic wand and expect everybody to do what you want them to do. We’ve got to get back to that patient, persistent diplomacy, making friends and allies.” (Washington Post)
There are two things about her remarks that I find interesting. First, she is not strategizing about what we should do once Shrub vetoes the bill: she is telling him that vetoing it would be the wrong thing to do. Since men are so much into power games and contact sports, this kind of approach doesn’t seem to have occurred to any men in Washington.
Second, she implies that Shrub thinks that you can “just point your finger or wave a magic wand and expect everybody to do what you want them to do.” In other words, she is mocking Shrub. That’s a good thing to do, but I haven’t heard any of the other Dem presidential candidates mock Shrub recently.
The reason Hillary has come across to me in the past as inauthentic is that I got the impression that she was a woman putting on an act meant to show that she could be like a man. But in the remarks I have just quoted, she definitely comes across as a woman, and that kind of woman that many men find attractive—a haughty one.
So if she directs her haughtiness at Shrub and his enablers and stops directing it at the netroots, I think I would find her more likable.
I should make it clear that I am not distancing myself at all from the apparent consensus at the BT that a Hillary Clinton presidential nomination would amount to a defeat for us, given that Hillary, like her husband, are DLC. What I am saying is that, given Obama’s pre-emptive capitulation to Bush on the Iraq war funding bill, we should drop any illusions we might have had that Obama is a more acceptable candidate for us than Hillary is.
When it comes to the three front-runners, Obama’s gaffe combined with Hillary’s catty remarks have made Obama drop to the bottom of my list.
Also let’s not forget that Obama enthusiastically supported Lieberman when he was challenged in the Connecticut primary by Ned Lamont. Whereas Hillary Clinton came out in support of Lamont, once he had won the Democratic primary. So she put Connecticut’s Democratic voters above Lieberman, despite having endorsed Lieberman in the primary.
I think that what that shows that whatever failings she might have, Hillary is receptive to voters’ wishes. As far as I know, Obama never did anything to help Lamont, once he had won the primary.
Yes, she is. Although she is not as combative as Edwards, who claims Congress should send and resend the same bill until it is signed, she has assumed a resolutely oppositional posture. And do not forget Obama’s horrible performance at the SEIU forum on health care at UNLV. Perhaps Hillary is finally shedding the carapace.
I started to reply to this comment, but the reply grew.
Mightily.
Now a stand-alone post.
Hillary Clinton. Eleanor Roosevelt’s revenge.
See ya…
AG
And what is your reaction to Bill Richardson’s decision to legalize medical marijuana in New Mexico? This also grabbed my attention.
I watched yesterday Richardson’s appearance on The Daily Show from last week. (I had downloaded in using Bittorent.) He seemed OK to me. The marijuana thing didn’t come up, so it is news to me.
Of course, legalizing medical marijuana is the only sane and compassionate thing to do. (The position of the federal government that marijuana has no medical use is absurd, given that we now know that there are cannabinoid-specific receptors in the brain.) Richardson’s decision to legalize it suggests at the very least that if he came to Washington, he would not be pursuing business as usual.
Hillary starts to look better.
But what I like most is your noting that she is mocking Bush. We need our Presidential candidates to do this.
From Obama we don’t get that. It would clash with his lame themes of ‘unity is the answer’ and ‘the Dems have problems just like the Repubs do’.
The other, technical thing about Hillary is that she has to keep her voice under control. She should stay to her true way of speaking — slow, measured, and low key — and stop shouting and raising her voice. I think she’s trying to cure her robotic/unemotional/inauthentic problem, but shouting just makes her voice exceptionally grating. She should settle on a ‘boring, intelligent expert’ image, which is what she really is, rather than high-energy inauthenticity.
I think you’re spot on about the voice thing. I would have liked to see a video of her saying the things I quoted, to see if they sound as good when she says them as they do on paper.
Hillary’s not my first choice…nor my last. To me, she, Obama or, in fact, any of the Democratic candidates would be preferable to any of the prospective Republican candidates, and any of them would be a dramatic improvement over the corrupt and inept George Walker Bush.
As one of my senators, am reasonably pleased with the way she’s served us in Washington thus far, with some notable exceptions (i.e. giving Bush the green light to needlessly invade Iraq, all for no good reason and all based on lies, even when all of the evidence clearly showed that at the time). Voted against her in last year’s primary, and voted for her in November against her lame Republican’t opponent.
If the primary election were being held today, my vote would most likely go to either Edwards or Richardson.
Having said all that…my take on Hillary…she is not anywhere near as horrible as people love to make her out to be…either those on the far right who just seem to automatically despise everything about her or those on the left who find her…insincere. She doesn’t seem any more insincere to me than most other professional politicians. Having met her in person, she is actually quite an engaging person. Shrewdness is not a weakness in politics. On the contrary.
I stopped reading at “Since men are so much into power games and contact sports…” Surely you can criticize this administration without invoking silly generalizations about an entire gender, can’t you?
Knee-jerk political correctness is so last century. Anyway, obviously I had American men specifically in mind, so I wasn’t generalizing about what you call a “gender”.
Many in the netroots have the opinion that the top 3 Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are miles apart on a lot of issues. As the race emerges we will see more of the leadership style and experience of each of the candidates. With the recent Obama capitulation on Iraq we see that Clinton may be to the left of Obama on issues (and vice versa.)