Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Hillary

Kathleen Parker has some thoughts about Hillary, and what she is really up to. Note this new Zogby Poll: McCain would beat Hillary, 54-35%.

Discussions - 2 Comments

Ms. Parker to the contrary, Hillary’s see-no-evil bargain with Bill is highly relevant to her public character.

Thanks for posting this link. I hear quite a bit about Hillary Clinton from various sources with differing degrees of closeness to her. Healthcare was her Dardenelles, obviously, to use an analogy to Churchill. One reason I’m impressed with her is that she come to political maturity through some very tough experiences and missteps. If she runs for the nomination, she may well need to shift gears from what the author of the linked article portrays as a chamelon-like attempt to play to each audience; somehow it’s an inferior substitute to Bill Clinton’s ability to emotionally tune in to each audience and identifying with something in their felt experience. She will need to be comfortable with her own style and nature--she’s a more cerebal, introspective, distant kind of being than Bill--not COLD but her realm a feelngs is more of an inner realm that gets publically expressed after having been refined by intellect and calculation. That doesn’t mean that she need be less "presidential": it is just a different presidential style.
About anger, I don’t know. I think that her rage against the media about Lewinsky etc. was genuine: do not underestimate the depth of the love, passionate love, between her and Bill, and the frustration at being morally judged and second-guessed in public as to how to her handling the difficult side of one of the great American romances.
Conservatives of a moralistic stripe will easily underestimate, or view cynically, that marriage--and at their peril, because its strength is one of Hillary’s important assets if she choses to redefine herself in a presidential role. Just as it was one of Bill’s.
There are lots of voters without deeply entrenched party allegiances who long for president who can make them feel good about being American in today’s world. As much as I admire McCain, my gut political instinct tells me that he doesn’t really have the capacity to make those people feel that way. Hillary has a shot at it--but that doesn’t mean that she is there yet. She still needs to evolve as a statesman true to herself. But she is a fast learner, and what she has already had to cope with suggests that she is capable not only of survival but of self-knowledge.


best,


Rob

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