This column first appeared on Huffington Post.com. Comments not included here.
By Beth Arnold
Months ago I said that Hillary was beginning to remind me a lot of George Bush, and my husband looked at me a little askance (though no more). It was that arrogance she projected, especially in debates, that every other candidate was less savvy, less knowledgeable, less entitled to be president -- but especially to her biggest rival, Barack Obama. It was that smirk on her face that was beginning to look more and more like W.'s. It was that attitude of "my machine is going to run you all down and smash you, because no one can beat Bill Clinton. And I'm riding in on his tail."
Besides all the Clinton "friends" (where is tax evader and illegal oil runner Marc Rich these days?), who had been whipped willingly (or not) into line to support her candidacy, Hillary had a bunch of old white women signed up to be outraged at other women who didn't want to vote for her. Women whose only goal seems to be getting a woman elected -- period, end of story. Not that there's anything wrong with getting a woman elected -- but if we're building the egalitarian society we want to live in, there should be more. If we really want equal rights, then we should think equally about who would make the best president. And in these worst of times that we Americans have endured over the last seven years, I see part of the job of our next president as letting loose a canon of sweeping change. (Yoo hoo, you Democrats in Congress who have voted like Republicans, I'm talking about getting rid of you.)
And frankly, Hillary didn't vote the wrong way just one time. She's had a hell of a run at voting like and with the Republicans. If followership is what she considers leadership, then she is not what our country needs.
Her highly paid spin-doctors, who have had their ups and downs, manufactured the core of her whole campaign on 35 years of experience that she never had. Okay, life gives us all experience, but this is not what she claims. She's wiping out the 15 or so years she worked for the distinguished (and haulers-in of big lawyerly income) Rose Law Firm, sitting on boards and the like, though she also participated in the Arkansas public good and went through campaigns with Bill while she was there. In Wikipedia, Hillary is said to have been "considered a 'rainmaker' at the firm for bringing in clients, partly due to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections." Of course, there were her years as First Lady. How should they count? Should we see if Nancy Reagan wants to run as well? She surely was as influential with Ronnie as Hillary was with Bill.
There has always been much to admire about Hillary Clinton (Notice, fellow feminists who are screaming about others not voting for Hillary, that she dropped her Rodham maiden name for political expediency -- first for Bill's and then hers), but it wasn't her vast experience as an elected official. Because she never was -- until she was elected to the New York Senate. What was that, seven years ago?
And I'm sorry, but that journalist's question about Chelsea's parents pimping her in some weird way was so what. Pimping is the name of the political game, isn't it? All you too politically correct people go ahead and get all up in arms, but when you dig into all the dirty tricks the Clinton campaign has done -- for one example (if true and this is par for the political course), releasing that photo of Obama in the African garb to the bottom-feeding slime ball Drudge Report -- it's far worse. The fact that Chelsea is an accomplished 28-year-old and is out campaigning for her mother makes her a party to the whole shebang. She's a big girl. She's well-educated. My guess is she can take care of herself while she's working for her hedge fund. But those Clinton spinners spun that one well. Poor Hillary again.
What is the big whine of the Clinton campaign saying she gets treated so unfairly while Obama doesn't? The press and public seem to love it when she uses those feminine skills she tries to hide most of the time. She complains about this press double standard, and suddenly the press, which apparently is incapable of discerning the difference between spin and news anymore, is in a discussion about whether or not Hillary is being treated unfairly by them. Oh yes, the press is bad for covering the Hillary stories that stare them in the face. She deserves their sympathy for all her ill treatment. Poor Hillary. And the public responds with their votes. She cried before New Hampshire, and they voted for her then, too.
She loses a string of primaries and caucuses, and they feel sorry for her -- and vote for her again. Poor Hillary. Do you think this works the same way for the male candidates?
Yes, in some ways, Hillary has had an uphill battle because she's a woman, but she thought she was going to be carried all the way to the top in the wake of the organization Bill Clinton built and by the citizens who held him in such high esteem, though those are getting fewer and fewer by the minute.
Like many of Hillary's votes in her brief Senate career, her whole campaign hasn't seemed to come from her heart or soul -- her authentic self -- but from the logistical god of what could best get her elected. She and her team made some big tactical errors here. The vote for the Iraq war being Number One.
Last week Bill Clinton, Mark Penn, and other of her handlers were being blamed for Hillary's gigantic fall from grace. (Never is poor Hillary blamed for her own mistakes.) Like Bill Clinton didn't have a gigantic green light to do and say probably most if not all of what he did. Hillary was preaching her scorn of Obama's campaign of hope and inspiration, which the United States of America so desperately needs. And now Mark Penn and the others have won the day with Hillary's commercial squarely hitting on the scaredy cat American public's fear, which was easy enough to take from the Bush/Rove book.
When I've watched the Hillary Show the last couple of weeks and seen the desperate venom in her eyes and voice, it reminds me of the image of her husband as he stood before us and sincerely blasted, "I did not have sex with that woman."
Here we could go again.
If Hillary worms her way into the Democratic candidacy, we better get used to saying President McCain. She will never win.
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This article initially appeared at HuffingtonPost.com. Comments not included here.
