Don Imus voiced it best during Bill and Hillary's unsavory exit from the White House when they were busy looting the residence of expensive gifts and furniture while dispensing get-out-of-jail free executive pardons to well-connected cronies and family members. The talk-show king asked his listeners, "What a hideous, shameless couple. Why can't they just go away?"
As if life could be so simple. It's like asking Hollywood not to make a remake of "Poseidon Adventure" or trying to convince moviegoers that Stallone's fifth "Rocky' sequel will be better than all its predecessors.
A highly developed sense of pathological self-love animates the Clinton couple. Their co-dependent personality disorder suggests that each must seek out a continual resupply of adulation and admiration from toadies, supporters, and bootlickers. Their insatiable thirst for approval is more than Narcissus's reflection played out on a global stage; it's a permanent character flaw that one day should get its own separate entry in DSM-IV.
So, what makes the rest of us, especially those in the blue states get so beet-red in the face at the prospect of Hillary setting up house at 1600 Pennsylvania? Why is she such a lightning rod for liberal animus? Why is the left's invective for her the kind usually reserved for King George the Incompetent?
One can easily point a divining rod to her aloof demeanor. Or how about her I-know-what-is best-for-you didactic posturing? Or is it that toothy Chesire cat smile of hers that's forced, inauthentic and frosty?
Bloggers on the left, fired up by Daily Kos's gate-crashing hooligans, are busy mobilizing for a post-Dean digital coup d'etat that will erase the Clinton legacy for good.
And how about what's going on inside those Manhattan Democratic clubs that's raising such a storm of distaste for the junior Senator? Or Susan Sarandon's snub?
I ask, "Is there, Hillary, a vast leftwing conspiracy now out to get you?"
The toxic fallout of a Hillary cloud hanging over the upcoming Democratic presidential race is bi-coastal, with the miasma seeping inland to purple states like Colorado, where a third-party independent political organization called Unity08 was recently launched in Denver.
Meanwhile, the right is split right down the the middle about HQ--the Hillary Question. John Podhoretz and Newt Gingrich consider her a formidable 2008 presidential contender. But never underestimate the Republican Party's duplicity in the age of Rovian ruthlessness. They're only pretending they want the former First Lady to be the frontrunner.
She might be Murdoch 's Moloch, but she will always be the gift that keeps on giving for GOP campaign contributions and get-out-the vote far-right hysteria.
Have other women political leaders on the world scene been treated with such contempt, confusion, dread? Margaret Thatcher? Indira Gandhi? Golda Meir? What special qualities did these three women have that Hillary lacks?
After the fearlessly uncompromising Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci interviewed Meir, she later wrote that it was like sitting down with her grandmother. She was emotionally touched by the Israeli matriarch's warmth, humility, and kindness.
Hillary is the type of bloodless politician who wouldn't dare let a reporter like Fallaci come within a city block of her handlers.
Because, only one step removed from her loyal inner circle, Hillary is all about image control--how she strives to block from nosy public scrutiny any scraps of truth about her own character and core beliefs. Unlike Reagan's Teflon shield which deflected criticism, she's been reverse-engineered with Stealth technology; her real self won't ever show up on radar.
Consider several cringe-inducing moments from her past. Exhibit A for Adultery: when she demurely held hands with her hubby on "60 minutes" to dispel allegations of bimbos and Bill that had erupted into a titillating press frenzy during the 1992 presidential campaign. Any behavorial psychologist well-schooled in body-language could have sniffed something phoney and contrived about this scene of marital bliss.
Exhibit B for B.S. Did any of us really buy her explanation how she parlayed $1000 into $100,000 in the Chicago's commodities market within one year?
Exhibit C for Cockamamie: All those Whitewater billing records miraculously appearing in the White House residence?
Okay, okay. You say she handled herself with great poise and dignity throughout the Monica media maelstrom. There's another way to look at this drawn-out spectacle: she had made a Faustian pact long ago with Bill's devil of a libido and her own political ambitions.
Personally, I date my complete, never-look-back revulsion with Ms. Clinton to something she said in late '98. This was a period when special counsel Kenneth Starr was being his pit bull best with his seek-and-destroy investigations, while the President was occasionally lobbing missiles at empty Al Qaeda training compounds in Africa and Afghanistan. The Administration was also enforcing Iraq's no fly zone. (Late night comics always had fun with that one: he should have been enforcing his own no-fly zone). Anyway, Saddam was acting up again in December, so it was time to keep him in check. An intensive bombing raid in northern Iraq was called, though the international community complained that the United States was killing innocent civilians.
Around this time, I happened to catch something Hillary said during a televised press conference: "In honor of the Moslem religious holiday known as Ramadan, the U.S. will refrain from a continuation of bombing Iraq." Without specifically mentioning it, she left open the possibility that the bombing would commence right after the holiday break. She also mentioned Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa, to cover all her multi-culti bases.
And that's when my distaste for her solidified. In her conflation and self-justifying way, she was trying to make herself look noble and appealing to all sides: I am a friend of Arabs (no bombs!); we are in a quasi-war against Iraq (sanctions and more bombs!)
Viewed in this split-screen context, it's easy to see why, during the Bush II era, she cast her lot as a pro-war hawk. The decision was an exercise in simple geometry: squaring up the base, post 9/11, for the necessary triangulation pointing to 2008.
Unlike Kerry who lost voters via his convoluted explanations of why he voted for the war he was later against, Hillary is more skilled in the art of opacity and sophistry. They taught her well at Yale Law.
If it comes to pass, the Clintons' Second Coming requires looking to Yeats for poetic interpretation. Moving beyond the widening gyre of her multiple political gyrations, will the Democratic Party fall apart if she's the nominee? Can the center really hold for the committed centrist?
She reminds me of a criminal defense attorney who has made a lucrative career by defending rapists, murderers, pedophiles, and serial killers; she will never question her client if he's actually committed the crime, but she will provide the best defense money can buy.
That kind of amoral, legalistic gamemanship seems to affect more than just her non-opposition to the Iraq War. She must be the only Wellesley grad in history who wants to outlaw flag burning. What a long, strange trip it's been for the class valedictorian whose senior thesis was on leftist organizer Saul Alinsky.
In some respects, she's like the Verbal Kint character played by Kevin Spacey in the film "Usual Suspects" The ultimate changeling. The political chameleon.
She's even been quoted as saying, "I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat." And now, she's turned into serial aisle-crosser in the U.S. Senate, co-sponsoring legislation with the likes of Bill Frist and Lindsay Graham. No wonder Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asked the other day in total exasperation, "Do we know what she believes? Hillary, help us. Who are you?"
Kint has a line in "Usual Suspects" that goes, "The greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
Who said anything about a "he?"