The London Times on Hillary Clinton

[OJR]

Whether one agrees or not, the following is quite well written.

At least this Brit can see through the facade!

Subject: The LONDON TIMES ON HILLARY CLINTON

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 22:46:06 -0500

While I am trying to curtail my participation in the politics that

seem to infect every aspect of our lives, and have many, many times

promised (at least to myself) to delete and not forward any grenades

tossed out in the dirty game that it is, some times you just got to say

"what the ...!".

I don't know what the editorial leanings of the London Time are; I'm

sure the libs think is a fascist rag and the neocons believe it to be

edited by Karl Marx. Regardless, take it any way you want to. This

actually did appear on the "Comment" pages of the London Times (I

checked it personally on their website - January 26, 2007 edition) under

the title shown below written by Gerard Baker.

The vaulting ambition of America's Lady Macbeth

Hillary Clinton's shameless political reconstructive surgery:

You can measure the scale of an American president's troubles by

the number of skutniks he deploys during his State of the Union address.

Every year during his big set-piece speech to Congress, the

president will digress from the main thrust of his remarks to offer

fulsome praise to some member of the audience in the gallery. This

person will have been carefully selected in advance by the president's

speechwriters as an exemplar of some virtue and placed there for the

purpose. The television producers will have been alerted in advance so

that at the right moment, as the president talks about the heroics of

this American Everyman, he or she can rise self-consciously and receive

the praise of a grateful nation.

This now obligatory part of a constitutional ritual is called a

'skutnik' after the name of the first person so honoured. One January

evening in 1982, Lenny Skutnik, a government employee, dived into the

freezing waters of the Potomac River to rescue a victim of a plane

crash. Two weeks later, during his second State of the Union address,

with the US mired in recession, Ronald Reagan had

Mr Skutnik sit in the gallery and paid a moving tribute to his

heroics.

This week, for his penultimate State of the Union, Mr Bush had a

veritable galaxy of skutniks - soldiers, military people, a firefighter.

Whatever you might feel about the wisdom of Mr Bush's Iraq policy or the

feasibility of his plans to wean Americans off petrol, you can't help

but stand and cheer the good works of a decent person.

But there was something unusual about this year's constellation

of ordinary American heroes, beyond the sheer numbers. Usually the

skutnik is a presidential privilege. But so intense already is the

competition for the 2008 presidential race that others have muscled in.

And so Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had a skutnik of her own.

She arranged for the son of a New York policeman, sick with lung cancer,

to be there. As it happened, the man's father died that day, and the

son's grief became a sad and very visible coda to the event.

This little incident, the skilfully choreographed exploitation

of a human tragedy, the cynically manipulated deployment of public

sympathy in service of a personal political end, offered a timely

insight into the character of the politician who this week launched the

most anticipated presidential election campaign in modern history.

There are many reasons people think Mrs Clinton will not be

elected president. She lacks warmth; she is too polarising a figure;

the American people don't want to relive the psychodrama of the eight

years of the Clinton presidency.

But they all miss this essential counterpoint. As you consider

her career this past 15 years or so in the public spotlight, it is

impossible not to be struck, and even impressed, by the sheer ruthless,

unapologetic, unshameable way in which she has pursued this ambition,

and confirmed that there is literally nothing she will not do, say,

think or feel to achieve it . Here, finally, is someone who has taken

the black arts of the politician's trade, the dissembling, the trimming,

the pandering, all the way to their logical conclusion.

Fifteen years ago there was once a principled, if somewhat

rebarbative and unelectable politician called Hillary Rodham Clinton. A

woman who aggressively preached abortion on demand and the right of

children to sue their own parents, a committed believer in the power of

government who tried to create a healthcare system of such bureaucratic

complexity it would have made the Soviets blush; a militant feminist who

scorned mothers who take time out from work to rear their children as

"women who stay home and bake cookies".

Today we have a different Hillary Rodham Clinton, all soft focus

and expensively coiffed, exuding moderation and tolerance.

To grasp the scale of the transfiguration, it is necessary only

to consider the very moment it began. The turning point in her

political fortunes was the day her husband soiled his office and a

certain blue dress. In that Monica Lewinsky moment, all the public

outrage and contempt for the sheer tawdriness of it all was brilliantly

rerouted and channelled to the direct benefit of Mrs. Clinton, who

immediately began a campaign for the Senate.

And so you had this irony , a woman who had carved out for

herself a role as an icon of the feminist movement, launching her own

political career, riding a wave of public sympathy over the fact that

she had been treated horridly by her husband.

After that unsurpassed exercise in cynicism, nothing could be

too expedient. Her first Senate campaign was one long exercise in

political reconstructive surgery. It went from the cosmetic - the

sudden discovery of her Jewish ancestry, useful in New York, especially

when you've established a reputation as a friend of Palestinians - to

the radical: her sudden message of tolerance for people who opposed

abortion, gay marriage, gun control and everything else she had stood

for.

Once in the Senate, she published an absurd autobiography in

which every single paragraph had been scrubbed clean of honest

reflection to fit the campaign template. As a lawmaker she is

remembered mostly, when confronted with a President who enjoyed 75 per

cent approval ratings, for her infamous decision to support the Iraq war

in October 2002.

This one-time anti-war protester recast herself as a latter-day

Boadicea, even castigating President Bush for not taking a tough enough

line with the Iranians over their nuclear programme.

Now, you might say, hold on. Aren't all politicians veined with

an opportunistic streak? Why is she any different?

The difference is that Mrs Clinton has raised that opportunism

to an animating philosophy, a P. T. Barnum approach to the political

marketplace.

All politicians, sadly, lie. We can often forgive the lies as

the necessary price paid to win popularity for a noble cause. But the

Clinton candidacy is a Grand Deceit, an entirely artificial construct

built around a person who, stripped bare of the cynicism, manipulation

and calculation, is nothing more than an enormous, overpowering and

rather terrifying ego.

[Texan_Til_I_Die]

Re: The London Times on Hillary Clinton

Yep, that last paragraph pretty well sums up my opinion of HRC.

[wtnhunt]

Re: The London Times on Hillary Clinton

[ QUOTE ]

But they all miss this essential counterpoint. As you consider

her career this past 15 years or so in the public spotlight, it is

impossible not to be struck, and even impressed, by the sheer ruthless,

unapologetic, unshameable way in which she has pursued this ambition,

and confirmed that there is literally nothing she will not do, say,

think or feel to achieve it .

[/ QUOTE ]

There could not be any more accurate characterization of Clinton than that right there. Think the only reason she has stuck with Bill is because she is power hungry and I feel for no other reason that she has put up with him other than her own political ambitions. Had she had half a spine, she would have dumped his sorry tail back when she learned about all his affairs outside their marriage, but she is too consumed with the power to give it up, and I agree that she will try and do whatever she has to to get back in the white house.

[EKYhunter]

Re: The London Times on Hillary Clinton

Good read. I hope and pray that she does not get the democratic nomination. I wouldn't vote for her for dog catcher.

[TreeStandBowHunter]

Re: The London Times on Hillary Clinton

Although my dislike for HRC goes far beyond this forum, I would have to ask how credible this source is. I see a lot of rhetorical/fallacies in there and plenty of bias. I try not to believe everything I read especially if it comes from the media.

I know HRC is the wrong choice but I want to know for the right reasons, not political bias from some British newspaper. But yeah, Hillary cannot get elected in 08'!

[stevebeilgard]

Re: The London Times on Hillary Clinton

good read. we all know where hillary stands on the issues. or stood. or will stand. or maybe stood. or could have stood. or thought she may stand. lol