posted by Damozel | I remain bemused by the atavistic fear which Hillary apparently provokes in certain of her fellow Democrats. She strikes me as an adroit politician and certainly as mistaken on one or two key points, but also as someone sufficiently pragmatic and with a sufficient grasp of reality to work toward the center and on behalf of the nation.
Is it just the backwash from Bill and all that residual Billary-fear, or what? I guess I ought to understand it: those eight years of peace, progress, and prosperity were indeed, in retrospect, a national nightmare. Who cares about balanced budgets? I mean, the man lied to the American people about a blowjob! In the Oval Office! (*As the Southern Lady said, "I just cannot forgive him for doing that in there."
But that was him; this is her. Why are people so (excuse the expression) down on her? What do people, particularly Democrats and particularly female Democrats, see in her to so unsettle them?
Consider, if you will, cultural maven Camille Paglia's assessment:.
Despite her problems with projecting a consistent or even human character, Hillary has certainly proved thus far that a woman can play in the big league in American electoral politics....In the two major debates thus far, Hillary has projected mental alertness and speed, as well as a wide-ranging knowledge of public policy. For many Democrats like me, however, Hillary's history of prevarication, rigidity and quasi-divine sense of election is profoundly unsettling. And who exactly would be running the government -- that indefatigable buttinski, Bill Clinton? Spare us! But Hillary's intricate experience with the Washington bureaucracy makes Edwards (toward whom I've been leaning) and Obama (whom I may shift to) look like shaky tyros...
Salon, Don't Run, Al! [emphasis mine]
It's nice that Paglia's apparent awe and terror are tinged with admiration. In the same article, she says:
But the TV pundits who rushed to proclaim Hillary the winner of the second debate were off by a mile. Hillary excelled in the first half by the greater specificity of her responses, but her gains were nearly wiped out at one point by her bone-chilling mirthless chuckling (like a sound effect for the Blood Countess in a horror film).
In the second half, when everyone was seated, she overplayed her hand and began to intrude and domineer. The men sank into passive torpor. What was surfacing in Hillary was the old family psychodrama of the bright, brittle, high-achieving daughter contemptuously outflanking her befuddled, resentful, mediocre brothers at the dinner table. It wasn't a pleasant sight -- and all too reminiscent of the bullying Rosie O'Donnell compulsively hogging the spotlight on "The View."
But then of course, you read Obama-supporting Hollywood doyenne (thanks, Joe Klein!) Arianna Huffington's summary of HC's performance and shake your head in wonderment at Arianna's very different take on her performance:
She came across as more comfortable in her own skin, and more natural and less programmed than in the past. And she exhibited an effortless charm that those close to her often rave about but that the public rarely sees. She even scored two of the biggest laughs of the night with her zinger about Dick Cheney's diplomatic skills, and her use of Barry Goldwater's "shoot straight" line about gays in the military.
She was particularly effective in achieving her campaign's foremost objective: blurring the differences between her and her opponents on Iraq. "The differences among us are minor," she said of her fellow candidates. "The differences between us and the Republicans are major. And I don't want anybody in America to be confused."...
The Huffington Post (4 June 2007), Why Hillary Clinton Was the Winner of the Democratic Debate (emphasis mine)
So where are we? Hillary is:
- inhuman
- quasi-divine
- a "blood countess," which I am going to presume is a literary reference to Bram Stoker or Swinburne or Goethe or an obscure Pre-Raphaelite painting
- bone-chilling and mirthless
- an arrogant over-achiever who "intrude[s] and domineer[s]," bullying hapless men into "a passive torpor"
- a vampire who sucks all the energy out of her male competitors
- Rosie O'Donnell
- comfortable in her own skin, now that she's given up wearing Bill's
- an android who has been reprogrammed to seem "less programmed" and/or "effortlessly charming"
- Bill Clinton's sock puppet
- Bill Clinton's brain
Are you scared yet? I know I am. Turns out she's Scylla, Charybdis, Rosie, Medusa, Circe, Medea, Kali, all the harpies, the Eumenides, Clytemnestra, Geraldine, the talking mannequin from The Outer Limits and the nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH all rolled up into a single package! (How did Bill Clinton dare, I wonder? Or did he, in the immortal words of Basil Fawlty, have to sew them back on?)
But that's not the whole picture. Like all dominant females, she allegedly has a hidden side, and a March 2006 by Arianna Huffington strips away her many, many terrifying masks to reveal what lies beneath:
TIME: Do you think Hillary Clinton is frightened of anything? If so, what?
AH: She is clearly frightened of losing. You can smell the fear on her. It wafts around her like a cheap perfume: Eau de Don't Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances Down the Toilette. As a result of her fear of losing and the soul-sapping tyranny of trying to please and placate everybody, she's become more processed than Velveeta. You can almost see every word that comes out of her mouth first being marched through the different compartments of her brain — analyzed, evaluated, and vetted by each of them. What will the consultants think of this? How will it poll? Will working women between 25-35 in eastern Ohio think it's okay? Her fear has caused a complete disconnect from who she really is and what she really thinks — that is, if she even knows anymore.
Time Magazine, Arianna Huffington, 10 Questions for Arianna Huffington
It's true: being an enigma wrapped in Velveeta could certainly make a woman feel fearful, particularly when she is six to twelve overlapping and inconsistent archetypes rolled into one. I don't doubt that she scares herself. I don't believe for a moment that she is afraid of losing. She's been in the game for too long.
I realize that Republicans despise her. I think this is very unfair. They've had eight years to dismantle Bill Clinton's failures. It's time to give the Clintons a turn. Consider, for example, this prescient article from The Onion, dated 17 January 2001:
"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."
Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years....
On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.
But why do Dems join in the chorus of voices seeking to demonize Hillary? If she could reverse even some of Bush's truly remarkable achievements, would this be so terrible (at least for Dems?)
In any case: Don't we owe her a turn before we hand the baton over to Jeb Bush (Bush v.3.0)?
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