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Hillary W. Bush
At first glance, you wouldn't think there was much the same about Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Presidential resident George Bush, other than the fact that they both have approval ratings well south of the Mendoza line. On the face of things, they seem like polar opposites.
She was driven from early adulthood to over-achieve on her way to greatness. He was driven by daddy's limo from an extremely late adolescence to greatness' doorstep. She's a mainline power junkie. He's a recovering alcohol junkie. She went from being a Goldwater Girl and President of the Wellesley Republicans to being a moderate Democrat. He went from being a goldbricking pilot and head cheerleader at Phillips Andover to being a Born-Again Conservative Republican.
But the similarities are also very striking. Both owe their shots at the Presidency to being related to recent Presidents. If George Bush were just plain George Smith, he would never have been elected dogcatcher. (If he were George Bailey, Clarence would never have gotten his wings.) And if Hillary Clinton were still Hillary Rodham, she might be deeply ensconced on K Street as a lobbyist, but she'd never have had a sniff of Pennsylvania Avenue, at either end.
Both build inner organizations based on loyalty as the overriding virtue. The vaunted secrecy and loyalty of George Bush's inner circle may actually be eclipsed by that of the group known as "Hillaryland." This cohort, composed exclusively of people - mostly women - who worked for either or both Clintons during their White House years, is noted for its fierce, protective loyalty to Hillary. Just as in the Bush White House, that loyalty trumps competence, as is seen by the choice of Maggie Williams to be campaign manager, despite the fact that she's never run any campaign nor yet any enterprise of this scope and complexity before.
Apparently being a First Lady's Chief of Staff magically confers unrelated experience just like being First Lady does.
Both Clinton femme and Bush fils maintain a stubborn insistence that they are winning when they are, in fact, getting their asses royally kicked by scrappy insurgents. Both expected a cakewalk in their respective enterprises - one to be greeted as a liberator, the other to be acclaimed as his heir apparent. When that didn't happen in Iraq, or in this campaign, "victory" just kept getting redefined: WMDs morphed into Saddam morphed into Democracy just as delegate count has morphed into popular vote has morphed into the "important" states.
If real goalposts moved as much as these metaphorical ones, a football field would be just twenty yards long.
At the bottom of it all is a sense of entitlement, arrived at by different varieties of hubris. Bush's exaggerated belief in his own self-worth stems from being the privileged scion of a privileged family tracing its roots all the way back to the Plymouth Colony. Clinton's father was the son of immigrants, and hopped a freight to get to Chicago for his start. Hers is a sense of personal entitlement, rather than familial. Meritocracy versus Aristocracy.
In their differences, as in their similarities, we find that Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush are two sides of the same coin.
Sunday, a friend of mine pointed out an article in the Chicago Tribune that was written in anticipation of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the U.S. In relevant part, it reads:
"A central theme of Benedict's Papacy has been his argument that reason without faith leads to materialism and selfishness, while faith without reason leads to fundamentalism." (h/t Junie Sinson)
This is the crux of the Clinton/Bush dichotomy. Hillary's "me first" and "anything goes" mentality is due to having reason without faith. She triangulates unmercifully, repositioning herself wherever she needs to be, secure in the knowledge that wherever she is, she's right. She can rationalize anything in service to herself.
Bush, on the other hand, has a deep and abiding faith in his rectitude. Having chosen a path by whatever passes for mentation with him, he follows it blindly to its end. He has no need to rationalize it to himself or to anyone.
Hubris, whatever its origin, was often the hamartia, or fatal character flaw, which doomed the protagonists in Greek tragedy. In their most damning similarity, the contrasting hamartia of Clinton and Bush led them each to make the same tragic mistake in 2003. Bush pushed for war with Iraq because he believed beyond all reason that it was the right thing to do. Clinton voted for Bush's war because she selfishly reasoned that to vote against it would hurt her chances of becoming President regardless whether the war was right or not.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little bit of faith can be more so. But a lack of either is deadly.
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This is as accurate as anything in this posting. Collis has a lot in common with Ann Coulter. It is ridiculous, but so is the blog by Collis.
Barack Hussein Reagan?
Obama voted for President Bush's class action bill that made it harder for victims of pollution and other corporate malfeasance to be compensated. Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers.
Obama voted for President Bush's 2005 energy bill that included massive oil, coal, and nuclear subsidies,
Obama voted to allow credit card companies to raise interest rates over 30 percent
One of Obama's first votes as a senator was to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her integral role in pushing the now-debunked propaganda about Iraq's WMD.
Just as Ned Lamont's antiwar primary campaign against prowar Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was gaining momentum, Obama endorsed Lieberman and actively campaigned for him against Ned Lamont.
Progressive? Maybe in Saudi Arabia.
Excellent post there !
Keep it up.
They don't Hilary Bush-Lite for nothing.
ABC.
Barack Reagan-Lite. Same empty suit fantasies.
In American elections I always, ALWAYS voted Democrat, both on state and federal levels.
This is going to be first time I considering skipping the election.
If Obambi wins nomination: I am out.
Reason: these kind of bilious Stalinist attacks filling up Huffpo pages.
Let's see how quickly the Obambi crowd starts begging for Democratic voters to come out in November.
I will answer you by quoting this blog:" You can rationalize anything in service to yourself."
keep your eye on the ball .
you're fighting mccain, supreme court, iraq, deficits------you are chewing your tail!
hold your nose and vote for the flawed, loathsome democrat the process has created.
then work on the process.
d
Aaror, i suspect you're not a Democrat anyway, but joining the bandwagon of the politically correct so it matters little.
Magister,
If Clinton wins nomination, I am out. So we cancel eachother out.
Four more years of cheney as shadow prez, here we come.
I'm tired of the hardcore Hillary fans who yell, "Sexism!" whenever anyone tells them something they don't want to hear about their candidate. She is not being picked on by the bad guys, and she has shown she can take care of herself just fine.
I have seen similarities between Bush and Clinton, too. What frustrates me most about them is their arrogance and their conviction that they know what's better for the country than anybody does. Don't like the war? Too bad. Continuing a pointless and brutal war is good for you! Don't think Hillary Clinton should be president? Too bad. Hillary knows best, and she'll shove herself down our throats until the convention.
It is clear this posting has no connection with reality.
That was great! I prompted me to read some of your other columns, and they're spot on, too! Please keep up the good work.
Suffice it to say, this post is free of anything factual, with one exception.
It is a fact that Ms. Hillary was a Goldwater Girl, but as many folks do she gained some education and experience and changed her political ideology. Growth is a nuanced idea, something Obama supporters cannot understand. Working for George McGovern was not an indication of a person being a "moderate" Democrat, but a very liberal Democrat. How Collis finds any similarity in Ms. Clinton's political transformation and George W. Bush remaining a Republican is goofy.
It is terribly misogynistic to believe Ms. Clinton could not have gone far as a politician without her husband's influence. And I believe Geraldine Ferraro got into a bunch of trouble for making a similar statement concerning Obama. In other words, Collis is revealing himself to be a woman-hater by making his calim about Ms. Clinton and the impossibility of her running for President without Bill.
And in this campaign Obama has been guilty of anything goes in his approach to his attacks on Ms. Clinton. Calling her a liar for factual statements she made concenring her own health care plan. Obama also had his campaign manager blame her for the death of Benazir Bhutto. Obama injected race into the election. He has been dishonest.
Bottom line, Ms. Clinton has nothing in common with W and to try to make such an argument is a sign of a weak argument and another dishonest attack on Ms. CLinton.
BubbaC33:
Sometimes truth hurts!
The truth, however, is something no Obama supporter knows from first-hand experience.
I don't think it is misogynistic to claim that her senate seat was somehow related to being a former first lady; actually, I thought that was sort of self evident. Maybe she could have run somewhere else, and she most certainly would have been successful at something, but to suggest that her husband played anything but a huge role in her current success and position is delusional.
The similarities between Bush and Clinton are numerous, and I am glad someone is finally pointing them out for a large audience. I have been pointing them out to anyone who will listen. My bottom line is, if it comes down to McCain or Clinton in November, I won't vote. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, I didn't vote for him in 2004, and he's the only candidate in 2008 I see no point to even showing up.
Since we're engaging in silliness...
Let's compare Obama to Hitler:
Hitler and Obama: insiders who claimed to be outsiders.
Hitler and Obama: inspired fanaticisms.
Hitler and Obama: newby politicians.
Hitler and Obama wrote books that made little sense.
Hitler and Obama: skinny effeminate men with dumbo ears.
Hitler and Obama share the gift of gab.
Hitler and Obama: both droned endlessly about hope and change.
You wrote a lot of words, but not a single one proves Ms. Clinton has anything in common with W. Why? Because she does not share a thing with W.
What was misogynistic is the idea a woman could not run for president without the coattails of a famous husband. Ms. Clinton is smart enough and experienced enough to accomplish great things all on her own.
Nepotism does not belong in a campaign for the presidency of the United States because if it's there, the presidency becomes a monarchy. Just like the Bush years.
Neither is empty promises wholly divorced from reality as delivered by Obama. It';s only a question of time before he begins to promise 40 acres and the mule.
Or Obama's modern version thereof: Free Section 8 apartment and and subsidized bus pass.
I can see the Hillary / Bush parallels ......
But the person that comes to mind for me, is Mitt Romney.
Both share a similar disingenuousness.
Both share similar health care plans.
Both talk out of both sides of their mouths.
Both live by Washington lobbyists, pollsters, slogans and spin.
And most of all, both share a most heroic memory, employed for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.
Democrats are sitting at the exact same spot the Republicans were 8 years ago. They were tempted by the promise of returning to a previous administration by way of someone with the same name. Disgusted with the current president and his lying, bringing disgrace on the country, the option of a real partisan seemed perfect. It was a way to make a statement that the former was better than the current. The perfect condemnation to President Clinton. Now Democrats have been offered a similar way to condem W Bush, what better way than with another Clinton. The problem for her is that they were also offered a better solution, an opportunity to rise above partisanship. A chance to go for a REAL uniter. Thankfully, the Democrats will take the high road, although it's been pretty close. I think the majority of people are ready for a real change.
very good article..thank you.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who sees a problem with Hillary's penchant for secrecy and valuing loyalty over competence. Those things in moderation are not a problem. Loyalty, especially, can be admirable. But when both are combined and extreme, as in the case of Bush, it leads to making very bad decisions because if information doesn't go out, no feedback can come in. Likewise, secrecy and a shortage of feedback allows incompetence to go undetected for a very long time to the detrement of us all.
Even if Hillary hadn't managed to shoot herself in the face over and over again with the lies she's told and been caught telling, these two traits of secrecy and valuing loyalty over competence alone would have been enough for me to look elsewhere for a candidate.
Her healthcare plan is an apt example of exactly this cronyism/secretiveness problem. She populated her task force with old pals rather than known experts, and then they plotted in secret (what they said and did is STILL secret, even though we taxpayers paid the bills). Afterwards, she took more money from lobbyists for the same big self-interested healthcare corporations that lied about and killed her plan than did any other candidate.
Her loyalty was to her pals and to her corporate donors, with the result being that we still don't have any decent healthcare policy, and almost a decade and a half have gone by, and during this whole time, the big healthcare corporations--emboldened by her failure and her greed- have been price-gouging us and disallowing legitimate claims for health-related services.
AND feeding the Clinton coffers. If you dare to hypothesize any connection between Clinton's failure and her corporate contributions, she will send somebody here to call you a "hater."
And if Obama is somehow elected we will have no possibility of getting decent health care, his plan is far from sufficient. It covers fewer folks than the Clinton Plan, costs more per capita, and does not provide adequate subsidies for low and no income Americans. And the only reason you think Ms. Clinton was secretive about her heath care plan is because you read it on HuffPo, which is not a reliable source of info about either of the Clintons.
Chorus: Can the real Hillary please stand up!
Chorus: Can Obama shut up and sit down?
The post is garbage and will contribute to our downfall in November. I don't see how any Hillary supporter will support Obama in the general after all the stuff that has been spewed. Good luck winning an election when only 53% of your own party supports you...
We basically had to give up on you guys after Hillary endorsed McCain's experience over Baracks.
She had plenty of opportunity during her 8 years to lead the Democrats against Bush, against the war in Iraq. She had plenty of time to speak for the African American community when the Rev Wright issued flaired up. Hillary supporters were comparing Barack to Bush and various other cheapshots from the very beginning but told us if we can't take it Barack wouldn't be able to stand the swiftboating from the Republicans. Hillary can dish it out but can't take it when there's any criticism back?
Enough is enough.
Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned the fact that McCain has more experience, than Barack, but you aren't suggesting that she should have lied are you?
What stuff? Name it and claim it. I keep seeing these weird Obama lies about Clinton posts and despite exhaustive requests and searched of my own spanning days I have yet to find a single lie Obama made about Clinton. So honestly name it, your empty assertion should be rightly ignored unless it provides details of you claim.
Obama called Ms. CLinton a liar for factual statements she made about her own health care plan, doing so to cover the lie he was telling about his own plan. Obama said Ms. Clinton was lying when she said her plan would cover more people, that his plan would cover just as many Americans. Except for the 15 million her plan covers that the Obama plan forgets to cover. And the lack of adequate subsidies the Obama plan offers, in direct contrast to the more than sufficient subsidies the Clinton plan provides for low and no income families.
Obama's campaign guru, a fellow named Axelrod, blamed Ms. Clinton for the death of Benazir Bhutto. This cowardly lie hurt Ms. Clinton and was categorically false. And it is another lie generated by the Obama campaign.
A third lie is the contention by Obama that Ms. CLinton is a racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. And Obama, who was the first to inject race into this campaign, was telling a lie and he knew it.
There are three of the many lies Obama has told. Of course no Obama supporter will believe any of this, to them spin and distortion are good tools to prevent admitting Obama is little different from W in 2000 and 2004.
You call yourself CommittedDem? As a military Mom with children and nephews in Iraq, one Son just med-evaced out of Iraq permanently, I must say your remark is a horrific insult to the soldiers praying they'll survive another day and those who have already died. Shame on you.
Well, I have relatives in Iraq, and pray that this war will end. But you do realize that by trashing Hillary daily and running around calling her a racist, a murderer, a Klanswoman etc. is not going to endear her supporters to Obama. I thought Obama was against the politics of personal destruction. Yet his supporters engage in it daily, that's why I say good luck trying to win an election when you've alienated 45% of your own party.
Hilary supporters who back solely based on her gender or race ? They can stuff their votes. They are probably the same shmucks who voted for Bush - twice !
i'm glad someone's finally writing about this. this was beautiful.
Thanks Chip. You nailed the real Hillary. The comparison with is so dead-on, it is frightening to think that she still passes for a democrat and that there are thousands out there who still support her!
This was insightful--an elegant saut right out of our country's insipid left-right dichotomy. The American public needs to learn to recognize when they are dealing with leaders that are considerate, thoughtful, open-minded, as opposed to idealogues who will do anything to get their way. The problem is, they ALL claim they can reach across the aisles, but you really have to look at their record to see if they do.
Bill Clinton was a good president because he knew how to do this. Reagan, too. Republican members of the Illinois state-house regularly praise Obama for his knack for finding common ground. But as this assessment rightly points out, Hillary and Bush are alike in at least the respect that they wall themselves off from differing opinions and attend to their agenda blindly. Why else would have taken Hillary all this time to fire Mike Penn? Simple: loyalty before sanity.
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