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The Question of Hillary Clinton's Guilt-By-Association Tactics
For several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been distributing literature and disseminating incendiary notions -- which figured significantly in Pennsylvania, and are now central to the candidate's message in Indiana and North Carolina -- assailing Barack Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, the radical, violent organization responsible for bombing several government buildings in the early 1970s.
In their debate in Philadelphia, after moderator George Stephanoplous had raised the question of Obama's relationship with Ayers, Hillary Clinton elaborated on the subject, seeking to add to its significance:
SEN. CLINTON: ...I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about.
Whether this is 21st century McCarthyism--as argued by several important commentators not publicly allied with Obama -- among them Stanley Fish in the New York Times (who has written several admiring columns about her candidacy) and Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker -- is a matter readers will have to decide.
Whatever name it is called, Hillary Clinton, perhaps better than any contemporary political figure of our time, knows the insidious nature of this kind of guilt by association, for she (like Bill Clinton) has been a victim of it herself over a political lifetime.
Precisely because she knows the destructive power of such assertions and how unfair they can be, she has sought for a quarter-century to hide and minimize her own activities, associations, student fascination, and personal history with the radical Left. Those associations -- logical, explicable, and (her acolytes have always maintained) even character-building in the context of the times -- are far more extensive than any radical past that has come to be known about Barack Obama.
Which raises the question: Is the Clinton campaign's emphasis on the Ayers-Obama connection significantly different or less spurious than the familiar (McCarthyite?) smears against Hillary, particularly those promulgated and disseminated by the forces she labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s?
Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has (at least so far as this reporter and biographer has been able to determine) consistently rejected the ideological rigidity of the radical Left and -- especially -- the notion of revolutionary violence as a means of political change in contemporary America, despite claims to the contrary by the VRWC. Like Obama -- and John McCain for that matter -- she has valued her friendships with individuals who figured in the Left-wing and anti-war movements of the 60s and Vietnam era. And like Obama and McCain, she has never wavered from her belief and faith in establishment politics, within the two-party system.
But her past associations -- and her evasions about them -- may tell us much about the formation of Hillary Clinton, both as a product of her youthful time -- the sixties and seventies, when radical student movements and the anti-war movement were a hugely potent force on campus and in American politics generally -- and as a presidential candidate. The facts are fairly simple:
In the 60s, as an undergraduate at Wellesley, she exhibited an academic fascination with the Left and radicalism; rejected more extreme forms of political protest and violence as a student leader (there is no evidence I know that Obama has ever done anything but the same); wrote her senior thesis on the radical Chicago community-organizer Saul Alinsky (whose best-known philosophical mantra was, "Whatever works to get power to the people, use it."); and then, during the 1992 presidential campaign and White House years, insured that the thesis was locked up in the Wellesley archives and unavailable to reporters.
At Yale law school she embraced some leftist causes she perhaps wishes she hadn't today (the Black Panthers' claim that they couldn't get a fair trial, more about which later); worked in the most important radical law firm of the day -- Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, in Oakland, which represented the Communist Party and defended the Panthers in their murder trials; and became associate editor of an alternative law review at Yale which ran stories and pictures depicting policemen as pigs and murderers.
In her 2003 "memoir," Living History, Hillary mentions not a word about her role in the Panther trial in New Haven--during which she directed Yale law students monitoring the proceedings for evidence of government misconduct in its prosecution of the Panthers accused of murder. "It meant going in and out of the Black Panther headquarters to obtain documentation and other information," a classmate told Donnie Radcliff of the Washington Post, quoted in Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady For Our Time. "Hillary's job was to organize shifts for her classmates and make certain no proceeding went unmonitored...[for] civil rights abuses..."
As for her summer at the law firm, Hillary's one-sentence mention of it in Living History gives the impression that Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein might as well been handling postal rate increases, rather than defending the Panthers, members of the communist party, and accepting cases that mainstream lawfirms were afraid to take -- particularly civil liberties cases -- in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. "I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland California, and he soon said he would like to go to California with me."
That is the total verbiage expended on so formative an experience, and the lasting -- but distant friendship -- she maintained for the next twenty-some years with Bob Treuhaft and his wife, the muckraking journalist (and, like her husband) former communist party member Jessica Mitford.
"The reason she came to us," Treuhaft told me [the quotation is in my biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman In Charge] "the only reason I could think of, because none of us knew her, was because we were a so-called "Movement law firm at the time. There was no reason except politics for a girl from Yale" to intern at the firm. "She certainly... was in sympathy with all the Left causes, and there was a sharp dividing line at the time. We still weren't very far out of the McCarthy era."
And might not still be, to judge from the 2008 presidential campaign.
In the 1980s, Jessica Mitford visited the Clintons at the governor's mansion in Little Rock. She and Treuhaft had left the communist party in 1958, years after the revelation of Stalin's murderous crimes, but -- Jessica Mitford wrote in her memoir, A Fine Old Conflict, she quit "not primarily over some issue of high principle, but because it had become dull....boring. Rather like London's debutante circuit."
When Jessica Mitford died in 1996, Hillary Clinton wrote Bob Treuhaft a lovely condolence letter from the White House, characteristically filled with the kind of heart-felt personal touches that the senator's friends have always remarked upon.
Which, of course, no more raises the question "Is Hillary Clinton a Stalinist?," or a communist sympathizer, than "Is Barack Obama a Weatherman?" or a weatherman sympathizer, because of his association with Bill Ayers.
Aside from the candidate herself, her prime-most abettor in pushing the Bill Ayers-Weatherman-Obama line is, inevitably, Sidney Blumenthal, who has also been distributing many other questionable allegations about Obama he has plucked from and disseminated to, at times, of all places--organs of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
As in the Clinton White House, where he was the archivist of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy's plots, Blumenthal is no independent operator. He maintains an ongoing personal and strategic dialogue with his patrons, Hillary and Bill Clinton.
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One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery (witness their fight against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and excesses). The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association--of which the Bill Ayers allegations are but one example: see Louis Farrakhan, or a comparatively-obscure African-American writer and perhaps -- communist party member named Frank Marshal Dixon, whom Obama knew in high school in Hawaii -- is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying. Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped, judging from Hillary's triumphant and collegial senate years, that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics when the Clinton Presidency ended in 2001 and the Right-wing threat to the Clintons' tenure in the White House had abated.
"The sad irony," noted Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "is that these are the same [guilt-by-association] attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women. But 'The Man From Hope,' while seen as less honest than Bush or Bob Dole, bet that issues and uplift were more important to voters than his character. He won...."
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"Shame on you, Barack Obama," said Hillary Clinton in Ohio, asserting that the Obama campaign had misrepresented her health-care plan.
Shame indeed.
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Carl Bernstein is, most recently, the author of A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, published in paperback in 2008 by Vintage, and a CNN political analyst.
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The rag radio/MSM phenomena took off after 9/11. It really is getting old, no matter how spicy the ladies look. But what will replace it? Why can't I just get the Discovery channel, the Weather channel and the History channel? Hope Obama can fix this problem. Why must I buy the whole cow when all I want is a sirloin or two?
Has no one else thought that this is a positive for Billary, i.. helping see the Panthers get a fair trial? I guess I"m too leftie for America.
Obama 08
It is a positive for me as well. Unfortunately, it's more than negated by her hypocrisy in using these abominable smear tactics against Obama. Unconscionable.
Her answer to the question by Bill O'Reilly of, What do you think about Rev. Wright ?
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"Well, I'm going to leave it to up voters to decide."
She's going to leave it to voters to decide what she thinks about Rev. Wright?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ISWUXT9V6g
Hillary does not want to talk about the war.
It is her Achilles heel and she knows it.
she didn't want to listen to the experts when it came to her war vote. she wouldn't even read one page of it because it didn't give her the political cover she needed to run for president later on (08).
and now.. she won't listen to the experts about this stupid gas tax holiday... because?
THAT is Hilary R. Clinton
it will never ever be about you... the american... the voter. it will always always be about her.
What is that... a racoon on Carl's head?
I have ongoing HOPE that Hillary Clinton will concede this Primary process SOON. After pandering to poor Americans with meager pennies per gallon, Hillary seems to have no one but the Clintons interests in mind. Do the Clintons assume that Americans are really so gullible that they will put their hopes for economic solutions in the hands of someone who panders relentlessly? Unfortunately they are probably right in their assumptions. We want to believe and we want to hope that the Clinton team that seemed to make all of the right economic moves during eight years in the White House will be able to work their magic again.
Please Indiana and North Carolina...let Obama win today so that the Clinton family can go back to making money for themselves - and leave us alone!
We need the Obama TEAM in there.
The wacky Rev, the real estate scammer, the flag stomping terrorist.
At the risk of repeating myself people.
Character is not an issue!
Character doesn't matter to us.
We care about big words. Words like "hope" and "change".
BHO '08!!
What about Vincent Foster? And she LIED abot that in court. gee, I knew this woman had a lot of dirty BAGGAGES. If she is the nominee, the Republicans will massacre her. How come this took so long to be NEWS????????????
For the first time I am no longer proud of my country, I am a American ,born American, I have watched on the sidelines while this country was literally given away piece by piece. Now after hundreds of years this country had a chance to set the record straight. In my opinion this country failed to do this. Certain people in this country are bigots and racists. There is no reconciling with these people, there is no communicating with these people, they are who they are RACIST and RACE BAITERS. The first terrorist in this country where WHITES terrorizing BLACKS in the night wearing WHITE BED SHEETS, NOW THERE ARE NO SHEETS, thats the difference .....Rev. Wright was RIGHT! Naw...naw...naw...naw...
i know how you feel.
i have such a hard time believing we are THIS racist. but.. the proof is playing itself out in this election cycle
An anecdote: old friend of mine lives in No. Carolina and we were debating about the merits of the two Dem candidates. I'm all about Obama, but he was on the fence, until Rev. Wright did his loud thing and Clinton fanned that fire. My friend voted by mail the very next day (quick! Before you can change your mind!) for Clinton. He said "I may seem progressive, but in the end I'm just a guy who grew up in Detroit in the 1970s".... meaning that he grew up watching and fearing black activists. That appalled me. Clintons insidious manipulations of latent racism in our country is disgusting and cynical... and worse... IT WORKS. I sent my friend videos of Rev. Wright's brilliant speechifying, but that did nothing to counteract his fear. I said to him "I guess it depends on what scares you most... some rightfully angry black activists or a candidate who says that she'll "obliterate" Iran ... and he made his choice. And all I can think is that he represents the voters who are falling for Clinton's cynical political maneuverings. How depressing.
Whis is this article not doing headlines? This should be posted plain and center on the Huffington Post.This article reinforces my opinion of Clinton-that she will do anything to win the election and that she is the biggest hypocrite of them all and I hate hypocrites! If she becomes the nominee, for the first time in my life I will not vote in the general election as a personal statement against her divisive, fear and smear campaign.
It's time to weigh in on the litany of "if it's taken from Obama, I'll never vote for the Democratic Party again" whining.
First, as a small and considering the swarm of bots (employing the identical language like the Stepford electorate they seem to be) they're up agains, extremely courageous as well as intelligent posts put it: Obama has nothing to "take."
Second, how about this? If the nomination is "taken away" from the first possibility of the eternally and universally maligned and oppressed female gender, I will never vote Democrat again.
Now, how about multiplying my statement by a number equal to the Stepfords? Simply because we're tired of being arm-twisted and smeared by tools?
Guess what, Stepfords, you will have won and completely deserve YOUR McCain, YOUR hundred years in Iraq, YOUR failed economy, YOUR fascist state, and YOUR continued oppression of women as well as blacks and every other minority.
Congratulations!
In poll after poll more Hillary supporters say they won't vote for Barack Obama than vice versa. Numbers don't lie, son, just your candidate.
I HOPE YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT
HILARY THE LIAR...
Those polls are about as accurate as the polls that said Hillary was going to win the Black vote circa Dec. '07. They don't take into account the emotions of Black voters. Right now, Blacks say they will vote for Hillary if Barack loses, but if Hillary were to win the nomination without the most delegates, the most popular vote or the most states (even if you counted MI and FL this would still be the case) the Black community will get up in arms like you wouldn't believe.
Meanwhile, white women who make up Hillary's most dedicated base are the main ones who are saying that they wouldn't vote for Barack. But I have three words for them "Roe versus Wade." A vote for McCain has a real possibility of being a vote against Roe v. Wade considering the current makeup of the court. Are we to really believe that these staunchly democratic women will actually pull the lever in favor of the candidate that may end women's reproductive rights out of nothing more than spite that their preferred candidate didn't win? I don't think so. That would really be betraying the sisterhood.
Polls are not real numbers. If Barack Obama is denied the nomination having won every measurable category, the democrats will lose their only real voting base--African Americans. Blacks will probably not vote for McCain, but many will abstain from voting for Hilary. Which means, kiss a Dem win goodbye.
I am very much bothered that Clinton is using guilt by association as a tactic, and even more bothered that it seems to actually affect a segment of our population. It doesn't say much for our country that our citizens can't see this for what it is.
Can you imagine if Barack would use that tactic against Hillary?
There is so much material...
Thanks for some thoughtful reportage. It is just unthinkable that we are offered so much and promised so much in an executive (Obama) and could somehow get stuck with a candidate like her, totally lacking in authenticity and conscience. More worthy of a mob boss than a president.
I am outraged at Bernstein LYING. First, as ANY person on the left at the time knows Charles Garry was the Panthers lawyer. Second, to equate the ENTIRE left as the SAME as the Weathermen is slanderous to us and simply mimics the RIGHT WING liars. The law firm she was with was standard ACLU in character. He also forgets that the CPers were FORMER members of the CP. Ayers is a NOT so former member of the Weathermen and was barred from an educational conference because of his violent views.
I have NO problem with Ayers IF he had said he was wrong and was sorry for his mistakes, but to say on 9/11 that he did NOT do ENOUGH bombings is beyond the limit.. I would be outraged if McCain sat on a board with a NAZI who said that Hitler did not kill enough Jews Hell, I remember it was a scandal if a politician was a member of a country club that had no blacks. Obama's tolerance of such a terrorist is too far for me to consider voting for him. What he should have done is to tell the board that if Ayers stays, I GO. THAT is called principle. Too bad he has none..
Ayers didn't kill anyone and never planned to kill anyone, so you equating him with Hitler and the Nazis is an insult to all Jews. Why does everyone have to toss Hitler around like he was an average criminal?
Plus, Obama was 8 years old when that happened. Ayers served his time and for 40 years has been a decent member of society.
Lastly, Hillary assisted in wal-mart, communist and black panther trials, supported more gun control laws, NAFTA and don't ask, don't tell. And is a gross panderer and LIAR!
I cannot believe this person is so stupid. First Ayers most certainly DID plan to kill LOTS of people. The townhome that was blownup had a bomb that was designed to KILL lots of GIs at Ft.Dix. The weathermen DID kill three guards in the robbery that they did. Ayers did NOT serve a day in jail or even brought to trial since there was so much government misconduct and they could not use the evidence against him. I did not compare him to HItler since I said that if McCain served on a board with A Nazi, NOT Hitler or even a German Nazi, but an American Nazi.
I would hope that you will call Obama a liar since I have heard HIM say he is in favor of universal health care, but if you pin him down and look at his web site he says the opposite. She did not take part in any trials of communists since THERE WERE NONE at that time. I am also outraged that defending clients is seen as somehow endorsing or being part of the defendants parties. THAT is SO RGHT WING it is obscene! GO BACK to the GOP and your Bircher buddies.
Try reading the job she had with the Panthers trial.
"Hillary mentions not a word about her role in the Panther trial in New Haven--during which she directed Yale law students monitoring the proceedings for evidence of government misconduct in its prosecution of the Panthers accused of murder. ...... "Hillary's job was to organize shifts for her classmates and make certain no proceeding went unmonitored...[for] civil rights abuses..."
The article in the NYT was published ON 9/11. A coincidence - unless you think Ayers and NYT had inside info on the attack.
Ayers has repeatedly tried to correct the misquote. He said/meant that he was sorry he didn't do more to stop the war. NOT that he didn't do "more bombings".
Banned from what conference, when?
Bernstein's point is that a lot of people flirted with trying to change the country in different ways at that time. When Barack met them, the couple were years beyond their Weatherman days.
My sister and brother in law were classic hippies. Lived on a coop farm and raised crops, animals and a little weed amongst the corn. They had kids and moved on. 28 years later he is not ready to retire from the 6 figure job that takes him all over the world.
Bernstein is an award winning journalist and he even wrote a book on Hillary. He is not lying, you are just trying to cover the truth.
Ayers said that he regretted "not doing enough" to protest the Vietnam War. The article was published Tuesday, September 11th 2001- but some time before 8:48 a.m. if I am at all familiar with newspaper editing or publishing. The fact that an article about Ayers was in the paper that day was pure coincidence unless the editor of the paper knew that the terrorists would attack America that day. Ayers didn't come out and say "I regret not setting enough bombs" after the terrorist attacked as you purport- check your facts man- are you mad?
What I really, really don't understand is what HRC is trying to achieve. It's all very well spouting about 'not giving up' and 'you deserve a leader who doesn't quit', but how about a leader who can do basic mathematics.
There isn't a political commentator or pollster who believes that it is possible for HRC to gain the nomination. Not 'it would be difficult, but if anyone can do it, that political pugilist Hillary can'; but simply that it is an electoral impossibility.
So once again, you have to ask why she persists.
There can only be two possibilities. First, she thinks that the Rules & Bylaws Committee (stuffed with HRC groupies) will give her the Florida and Michigan delegates. An interesting prospect to say the least, as that particular move will tear the party into bloody shreds.
The only problem with that scenario is that the party would be in meltdown, a large number of long-time Democratic Party members would flat out leave and her chances of getting Obama supporters to vote for her would be nil. Not a very positive outcome.
The second possibility is that she just wants to fatally wound the only viable alternative to herself. If Obama limps into the general election and McCain takes the presidency, she can point and say 'See, I told you he wasn't electable' (having personally made sure of that with her muck-raking campaign) and she has a free run at the nomination in 2012.
"How about a leader who can do basic mathematics"?
She is anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 votes shy of the Dem popular vote. And this without counting Florida and Michigan. And she's now to be tested in strong Hillary country.
You neglect a third "possibility" in which she wins the Dem popular vote at the DNC and loses the delegate vote.
What would you do then? Speaking of "tearing the party to bloody shreds"? Would you repeat the fiasco of 2000 where Gore won the people but Bush was given the presidency on the delegate count?
Well, just guess how Democrats who voted for her will react.
Better still, not only will this undercut your whining over the Bush "putsch," just think what a publicity gift you'll be giving the Republicans.
If it was possible that she'd win the popular vote, I'd have mentioned it. It's theoretically possible - as is time travel - but I've yet to see any pollster, commentator or political scientist say that it's actually achievable in this funny old thing we call the real world. Or are you tagging along with the Hillary dictum that anyone with an informed or expert opinion who says she's talking horsepoop is an 'elitist'?
It's a nice hypothetical response, but then the hypothetical is all that Hilary has left. You say only '300,000 to 500,000' as though it's a mere trifle, that she's likely to overtake. It's not. You know it. She knows. And you both evade the central question. Why continue a dogfight she can't win, when the only outcome is that she will damage the eventual nominee?
Her only viable back door to the nomination is a decision by the Rules & Bylaws Committee to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates. If she can swing that, she's laughing. But no one else will be.
In the past I have displayed some amount of displeasure with Senator Clinton for some of her campaign strategy against Sen. Obama and it is simply because I believe that in a family fight somethings are just taboo. This rule makes it a lot easier to sit around the dinner table at thanksgiving. That said Mr. Bernstein, I take exception to this article simply because you are attacking a family member and because you won't ever be sitting at the table at thanksgiving you owe no duty of care to any member of this family. Therefore I believe that this is the wrong forum for your article. It is not because Obama is not aware of these potentially damaging articles against Sen. Clinton but I believe that like myself, he does not believe in destroying a family member with whom you will have to break bread with sometime in the near future.
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