What’s wrong with Hillary Clinton?

January 16, 2008 at 9:28 am (Democratic Party, Democrats, elections, United States, voltairespriest)

Since writing my recent article supporting John Edwards in the Democratic primary race, a number of people have asked me why my arguments (which centre around the election of a Democratic president galvanising more radical change by opening up a space to that party’s left) would not simply hold true for any Democratic candidate. Those on the left who don’t think I’m wrong even to advocate a Democratic vote point out that whilst Edwards would be the preferable nominee, his name not being on the ballot paper doesn’t completely change the underlying process. Even Hillary Clinton’s election would surely be politically preferable to that of, say, Mike Huckabee. Further, it would be supported by a  majority of the US working class, and would mark a decisive break with the Bush era.

Yet I think there is a difference, and one which goes beyond the obvious fact that Edwards’ political stances are well to the left of Clinton’s. Unfashionable though it is on today’s left to mention such things, I think there is an issue of character that would prevent me from advocating a Clinton vote.

It’s not only me who suffers with a deep unease when it comes to Hillary Clinton. Christopher Hitchens (who admittedly has a rather odd political relationship to the Clintons) has an excellent article in the latest Slate magazine which explains the point in eloquent fashion. He begins with a small but telling anecdote from 1995 when, after meeting him, Clinton announced that her mother had named her after Sir Edmund Hillary. Of course, the only problem here is that Clinton was born in 1947 and Hillary’s name-making ascent of Mount Everest was in 1953. When challenged on this rather obvious fact, Clinton spokespeople palmed off the inconsistency on to Hillary’s mother, claiming she had made it up to inspire “greatness” in her daughter. In fact, as Hitchens points out:

For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her “greatness” (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done.

For me this certainly rings true of Clinton’s “emotional” moment in the New Hampshire primary. This is one of the most establishment-driven Democratic candidates in that party’s history, with a campaign so vicious that aides keep drawing attention to Barack Obama’s youthful drug use whilst the campaign publicly denies responsibilty. If you think for a second that that the Clinton campaign would be unaware of such tactics, read James Carville and Mary Matalin’s book “All’s Fair: love, war and running for President”. It’s straight out of the spinner’s playbook. To go from this to “sincere striver tears” stretches my credulity beyond endurance, albeit not it would seem the credulity of New Hampshire’s electorate.

Hitchens goes on to detail Hillary’s role in helping Bill Clinton to recover from scandals by, he asserts, covering up her husband’s extra-marital sex life and thus placing him in her political debt. Hitchens believes that Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky et al were telling the truth, and that the Clintons used their political machine, private detectives and federal employees to besmirch these womens’ charaters and to shut them up. If this is the case, and particularly if Juanita Brodderick (the woman who alleges that Bill Clinton raped her) is telling the truth, then the facade of feminism around Hillary Clinton’s candidacy melts away like so much ice.

This is all not to mention the many issues with Clinton’s vote on the Iraq war. On the question of the war itself Hitchens agrees with Clinton’s vote, whereas I would disagree. Where he and I would both criticise her however, is in her inconsistency since. When questioned on the issue, Clinton uses the tortured phrase “If I knew then what I know now” to suggest that she would not vote to authorise the war if she could take that decision again. Note the difference between this and John Edwards’ straight-out recantation of his own vote, which states quite clearly that it was the wrong thing to do and that he made a mistake. From Clinton’s phrase, one is drawn to wonder what it is that she “knows now” that would change her vote – is she referring to the devastation that the war has brought about, or to the war’s unpopularity in the USA?

In sum, there is something about Clinton that simply leaves me uncomfortable, which goes beyond the insincerity one expects of all those who are involved in electoral politics. I’ll leave the final word to Hitchens:

Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.