The other night, my dear friend L. wrote:
Beth / You just have to begin reading Andrew Sullivan's blog regularly. He is obsessed by Hillary, having started, like you, as a Clinton fan. He writes brilliantly, and he is so angry! L.
Sullivan's current piece in The Times Online is a perfect example of how right he gets the political moment in which we're living.
And L. is right about me, too. For decades, I was a starry-eyed Clinton fan -- in Arkansas and after they moved to the White House, even when they started out making dumb mistakes once Bill was inaugurated -- like the gays in the military, for one example. Many Clinton supporters, especially gay ones, were mad at the time that they had been sandbagged with the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Bill had promised in his campaign to allow all citizens, despite their sexual orientation, to serve openly in the military -- and then made this compromise in 1993 after he was elected. My late brother was gay, and I wasn't happy that my new and beloved Commander-in-Chief had sold out gay men and women. But I thought he was choosing bigger battles down the road. I figured he might need some of the clout he would've had to give up, and I forgave Bill for sacrificing the dignity and rights of gay Americans and for not living up to his promises. I thought he had to play the written-in-stone Washington games or his presidency could go the way of one-term Jimmy Carter, whom I happen to admire. But now I believe I was wrong not to hold Bill accountable.
We Clinton lovers were skipping down the yellow brick road with our young, dynamic president, even after the big (Hillary bungling health care reform) and small (Travel Gate) mistakes were made and all the scandals started. We were united against the right-wing Republicans who were on the attack. We cursed Kenneth Starr, as he took some good Americans and our country down his autocratic path. (Shame on you, Hillary, for allowing your campaign to compare Barack Obama with that man.) We fought for Bill and Hillary.
In the old days, I never thought the Clintons were greedy. But I've been disabused of this notion -- as well as many others concerning the former president and current senator. It seems apparent that their greed is more for power than money--though they have plenty of that now. According to a rather bizarre website called www.thememlingindex.com, they had $35,000,000 by 2006. Whether that particular number is accurate or not, they definitely have a hefty bank account, more than enough. And where did it all come from? Not just from Hillary's and Bill's enormous book advances.
Why don't the Clintons want to be transparent about their money trail? Unless they have something to hide, why shouldn't they be happy to come clean and give the press and public a look at their tax records -- as well as more of the documentation that hasn't been released from his library? Hillary is panting for presidential power. She can just taste it. Why not be -- startling, now, for a Clinton -- open?
But greed is not ever open. Greed is secretive, conniving, self-protective. Hillary has revealed herself willing to take down anyone who gets in her way now -- including the Democratic Party and the American people -- rather than lose to the gifted, capable, and charismatic Obama with his democratic grassroots support. In Hillary's Rovian speeches and commercials, she is spreading seeds of fear among the voters -- because of her own fear of losing this race. Unfortunately, what this highlights is a lack of integrity, vision, and leadership -- a Bush-like disrespect for the office she is trying to win.
When Bill Clinton was president, I took up for him and Hillary. I pointed my finger in Chris Matthews' face at a Town Hall Meeting in Little Rock, telling him that I was sick and tired of the press going after Bill Clinton and the down-and-dirtiness of Arkansas politics, when the shark-infested waters of Washington were far worse -- and he and every other Washington beat journalist knew that. They were all being disingenuous -- including about how shocked they were about the possibility of Clinton having had sex with Monica Lewinsky. They knew congressmen and senators having affairs was run of the mill on Capitol Hill -- and if they didn't, they were blind, deaf, and dumb. I looked Matthews in the eye and said that Washington journalists should have to live in Middle America six months of every year in order to qualify for the other six months in Washington. They were part of the problematic system. And about that, I'm still sure.
Now I feel the same way about the Clintons. Bill ought to try being more like Jimmy Carter. And Hillary? Hillary needs to lose her entourage and machine and go to some little village in Africa where nobody, gasp, knows who she is, and spend a few months helping some poor and/or battered people who need basic human rights or infrastructure help. Maybe she could remember that kernel of herself that wanted to make a difference more than grabbing the golden ring of power.
Has Hillary changed, or was this the way she always was, and I couldn't see it?
Yo, Andrew Sullivan, what do you think?
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Then President Clinton struck up his friendship with the former President Bush and both of the Clinton's voices were silenced in criticizing the current administration. I kept asking their friends in Arkansas why neither would speak out against going to war in Iraq when the 9/11 conspirators were mostly from Saudi Arabia. I asked why she would vote for banning the burning of our flag. I kept asking when she voted for Kyl/Leiberman. Always the same answer. Her negatives are so high and she has to be acceptable to the middle for her run for President. Like a loyal Clintonista, I was disappointed but was trying to understand and as a woman, I wanted to see a woman as President in my lifetime. I still want that, but over the last year I have come to realize that it CANNOT BE HILLARY.
I changed my lifetime voter registration as a Democrat to Independent last year. Not just because of the Clintons, but because the spineless Democrats that now serve Arkansas and the rest of our country and it makes me weep to this day. They all took an oath to protect the Constitution and they failed miserably.
Now in 1 short month my disappointment has turned to hatred of them both. South Carolina was just the start. I don't need to repeat your words above. You understand. I'm glad I'm not alone.
P.S. I still won't read Andrew Sullivan. Bush/Cheney should be impeached and Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid are spineless.
And as for andrew sullivan's piece of trash writing, I am surprised that such a misogynist piece even got published. Maybe to balance out, huffpo should also provide liks to all the right wing nasty articles about Obama.
In other words, he's a sniveling hypocrite, and his latching onto Obama is just the newest costume in his conversion wardrobe. If it requires this sort of toxic attack on the Clintons, Andrew's up to the challenge.
Sorry, Andy. Ya' dance with who brung ya'. You may fool some of the newbies, some of the time...
I criticized Sullivan's over the top antics at Clinton below. But he has been consistent on torture (in fact he has been very good on torture) and has never pretended he did anything but make a mistake on Iraq.
Richard Cohen has been more embarassing with his attempts to launch a moral crusade against anyone who supported the war (other than himself).
Unlike Sen. Clinton, one of the targets of his acid vitriole, whose vote for the Joint Resolution was framed in explicitly cautious language (if you can put down your Obama placard long enough to read it) --
http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=233783&&
-- Sullivan, an opinion maker in the press, was an unrestrained, IDEOLOGICAL, and wet-panties cheerleader (read: in full "Will Ferrell" mode) for both Bush AND the invasion of Iraq. He already had ample access, at the time, to both the facts, doubts and unanswered questions that led many of us to aggressively oppose the criminal Iraq debacle, but he chose to plunder forward. THAT'S who he is -- not a penitent who regrets his choice but a culpable offender, shamed by the CONSEQUENCES of his collaboration, who now seeks to reinvent himself.
The sublime irony of Sullivan's subsequent handwringing over the additional disgrace of U.S. torture of detainees, however shamefully felt, is lost only on those who, like Sullivan, never saw it coming from the thugs he so happily enabled.
Sullivan just might be the LAST person on the planet Earth in a position to smear the Clintons.
Sullivan seems to be trying to make the case that the Clinton's injected this kind of politics into American discourse, as if the Clintons at their worst have ever equalled his hero Reagan's use of the Southern Strategy.
So opponents of Clinton can take solace in the vitriol he sprays at her. But ultimately he is arguing for Obama as a return to Reagan style politics. And it is hard to imagine anything worse than Obama being a return to Reaganism. Fortunately I don't believe he is. Michele Obama's comment about being proud for the first time was a statement that she sees Obama as repudiating Reaganism and what has followed. But one needs to be burying oneself in the schadenfraude of Clinton abuse to miss the nonsensical premise that underlies it in Sullivan's version.
BUSH-CLINTON-CLINTON-BUSH-BUSH=20 years. Tell me how the average American has prospered during that time. Name 10 people you know that are rearing a family on 1 reasonable income?
more of the same, insanity - doing the same, expecting a different result.
Can't have it both ways - okay for Republicans, not okay for Democrats.
Sullivan is interesting to read on some topics, and occassionally makes a reasonable objection to Hillary Clinton (but then her campaign has made that too easy). But he too often takes an ordinary thing she has done and portrays this as if it is a sign that they are evil. (She argued she would make a good president that just shows how obsessed the Clintons are with themselves). So on this one subject he has become somewhat cartoonish. Although apparently he can provide some solace to people frustratred with the depressing nature of the Clinton campaign. But I would not take him as a serious critic of her.
Odd, that. I would have thought that your revulsion would have precluded your die-hard support, without needing Mr. Sullivan's laser beam of insight.
Permit me my skepticism of your sincerity.
Take the "gays in the military" example. Clinton promised something that, as it turned out, he could not deliver; as president, his powers were not absolute, and in the long run, he had to compromise. There's no evidence he was trying to snooker people, it's just that he hadn't realized the limits of the office.
And Obama is running on changing the tone in Washington. Well, that means he can make all the promises he wants about things he wants to accomplish and things he would like to do, but bulding a spirit of bi-partisanship means compromise, and lots of it, so a lot of those things aren't going to get done, or they'll get done in the "don't ask, don't tell" styles. The Republicans are not just going to fall to the glory of his rhetoric and suddenly abandon the knife-fight they've been waging for the last 20 years. Even if they become even more of a minority party, they can still gum up the works pretty badly.
(As to the money issue, that's just a non-starter. "Greed" would be making scads of money but not turning around and giving anything to society. With that kind of money, Bill Clinton does not need to be running a global philanthropic organization and Hillary Clinton does not need to be Senator, much less undertaking a brutal year-long presidential bid. They could be sipping Mai Tais on a beach somewhere. They probably don't have to work another day in their lives.
And unlike Reagan and the two Bushes, the Clintons did not come into office independently wealthy. Their earnings were fairly paltry for most of their working lives, particularly for two Yale Law graduates. Hillary Clinton became "a corporate lawyer" and a Wal-Mart board member to supplement their income and put away some money for the future; it's also how they got caught up in Whitewater. As a former President and First Lady, they have some earning power as speakers and writers -- who among us would not take that opportunity?)
The other is a question of how far one goes to triangulate. The Clintons could have won the fight on gays in the military, but they were afraid they would be too weakened. Maybe that is a reasonable political calculation. It was a fight they were right on originally and wrong on with Don't ask don't tell. But it was not the most important issue around. Had they won on health care it would have been a bigger deal. But the question then becomes whether they went too far in adopting conservative causes. Why was Hilary supporting a law banning flag burning? Why was she using her time in the White House as first lady as support for the importance of removing Saddam from power at a time when he was a paper tiger? A President Clinton will be attacked by right wing radio. And to date her reaction to being told to jump by right wing radio has not been to say go to hell, but rather to say "You're too late, I already jumped higher." That is not what we need in a president right now. Particularly when the most important order of business for the next president will be the difficult task of getting us out of Iraq.
You Obama fans are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Sad. I'm a lifelong Democrat and can recognize that Hillary is a power hungry wrecking ball that will destroy my party if it lets her. She's already crossed the line and then lept clean over it. Enjoy your trainwreck. Down ticket party members are just dreading having to try to win DESPITE Hillary being at the top of the ticket. Dems will lose the Senate and House seats. All because you don't realize she's poison.
They need prosecution and sentencing. They need to serve hard time. They don't need understanding, and we'd be insane to imagine there's any benefit to ourselves in cooperating with them. And until a democrat in office surpasses the malign behavior of Bush and his cabal, I for one will never even so much as consider voting for a republican for any office in the land. Enough is enough.
Nor is Hillary a poisonous power hungry wrecking ball intent on destroying the party, just because you or the Republican Mr. Sullivan says so.
And thanks for the wake up call. But some of us have been up, showered, dressed and already smelled the coffee.