The Other Half of the Hillary Crying Story
Every pundit has missed half of the Hillary crying story. For five days I have watched, listened and read as every pundit this side of Simon Cowell has offered their analysis on Senator Clinton's "breakdown" this past Sunday in New Hampshire. Where's the rest of her?
Yes, she was exhausted, probably felt picked on, and as a result, revealed her softer, more human, more likable side.
But she also gave voice to an emotion not related to self that is felt, however buried, by many Americans. In the midst of her comments she said, "I see what's happening. We have to reverse it." There was a catch in her throat, her voice wavered and she spoke with an almost mournful quality. There, just for that briefest of moments, were the tears of sadness, regret and vulnerability that lie beneath the surface when we speak of the Bush years in a more dispassionate manner.
To have this shock of recognition supplied by a candidate running to succeed Bush was, ironically, it's own shock. And, quite a welcome one. Mostly, increasingly, "change" is on the agenda. But for all the desire we have for a better future -- in fact, precisely because we yearn for that future -- it is not advisable for us to turn the page on the past just yet. And while there is huge value in inspiring words that move us about possibilities and hope, there is also value in words that move us in recognizing damage.
This is especially necessary post-Bush, a man whose greatest accomplishment has been to conduct a presidency so horrific that one's natural response is to dissociate. It started with Florida in 2000 when the concept of stealing an election was so without precedent, so brazen, and confronting it so unlikely to offer closure, let alone success, that even those who were horrified quickly turned the page. From there the crimes went on. "Scandal fatigue," -- a grossly inadequate term -- set in.
Even when this president departs the White House for his faux ranch in Midland, the Constitution will still be gutted and the soldiers will still be dying. Along with hope, sadness will be a necessary part of what brings change. And the candidate who truly feels that sadness will be most likely to bring it.
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Hillary wasn't sad about this country. She was sad about the state of her campaign, and that's what made her cry.
Oh, so she wasn't crying in appreciation of all those people who help keep her hair looking nice every day. Thanks for clearing that up.
Tears measured to mililiter and timed to the milisecond. That ranks with Nixon's Checkers speech and Bill's 'I did not have sexual relations.
This spin still is in profound denial - as many male media commentators are - and as long as the denial continues - there will not be the "blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted.
Yes, we should have been mourning all along the horrors of Iraq and the damage caused by the Bush years. Before the rush to judge Clinton - where has the media been on the outrages of the Bush years and getting us into war. Repentence is the first step of change, and yes, repentence requires sincere sorrow for the culpability of the media to drag Americans into this war.
As a male member of the media that has dominated the news for the past 7 years and longer, look at yourselves before you judge Hillary Clinton.
Too many of culpable male journalists just don't get it when it comes to offering any understanding and insights into Hillary Clinton, and definitely haven't repented the complacency which gave us the Iraq War.
Before there is change, there must be repentence, before there is repentence, there must be genuine sorrow and remorse.
I'm waiting...
And with all of that bubbly inspiration that the obamaniacs have felt, I wonder what they have done recently as a result of it?
I am not in church, so please Obama...st
Yet another article where a Hillary supporter tells us oh so subtly not to fall for that flim flam man selling hope. I find it ironic that when people talk about Hillary as an antidote to Bush, they presuppose that most of us have lived under a rock for the last fifteen years. The last two Presidents have had scandal plagued administrations that prevented any substantive changes/im
Ohh . . . please.
Hillary’s personality is only worth maybe five points.
She’s still in big trouble, and here’s why: Everything that could break for her in New Hampshire did, and she only won by three.
Clinton gained from two things in the Granite State – playing dirty and looking soft.
Bill recycled a lot of negative attacks in N.H. that long had been debunked in Iowa, but the midden still was fresh for fouling the air in another state. There was Obama’s alleged wavering stance on the war, his (non) hypocracy in voting to fund it, his support for the Patriot Act (which he actually got changed) and the rest.
Obama’s press office was lazy, riding high on triumph, and wasn’t dilligent enough about rapid response or counter-punching from the stump. Once they saw the Clintonistas rerunning the same old plays, they should have made a fact sheet for journalists listing the attack lines being shopping from state to state with the campaign’s long-standing responses. They could have titled it “Running on Empty,” and no journo would have been able to relay what the Clintons said without a disclaimer.
That was the biggest factor. With only a few days before the vote, Billary went lawyer, working fast and furious to raise reasonable doubt. Obama played dumb, or maybe he thought he already won those cases, so he never cross examined and never called his own witnesses. That left voters asking just enough questions to make a difference.
Then Hillary infamously got her girl on. She was woman, and we heard her roar at the debate, then she followed up and cried us a river. We’ve all heard a lot about watery eyes being her watershed moment, but if that’s true, she’s already ridden the wave as high as it can go; that bump only comes once.
Obama was eroding her lead in polls for some time before Iowa, and that’s continued even after N.H. Clinton did her best there, but it was barely good enough. Now she’s likely go 1 and 3, and with three strikes, she’s out.
"I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it." Glad to see someone's finally focusing on the most revealing part of what Hillary actually SAID during this "moment". But this statement refers as much to her seeing what's happened to her chance to become president being eclipsed by Obama, whose leadership gifts so outshine hers. She just can't compete with him -- as a true Leader, who must have the ability to inspire. And she also knows that anything she does to try to obstruct him will be held against her. Her better angel knows that she shouldn't try to bring this man down. So she's been checkmated by fate, by history. That's the true story behind those tears, in the wake of his first victory and the excitement it unleashed. It's a tragedy for her.
But she's a political animal and she wants this too much, as does Bill. And neither of them knows how to fight with grace. So she took the opportunity (it's not that the tears were fake but that she seized upon them to broadcast her message -- deliberately turning from the questioner to speak to the camera) to say, Look, we have to reverse this momentum.
Soon afterward she told a Fox reporter that Obama was comparing himself to JFK and MLK because they gave good speeches (Obama never said any such thing) but that inspiration isn't enough: it took a president, like LBJ, to make Martin Luther King's dream a reality, by enacting civil rights legislation. This is outrageous. (There are more than 500 comments on this story in the New York Times blog where it was reported.) Either she just DOESN'T GET IT or she's just following some misguided script. She may just have been emotionally exhausted. In any case, this shows that it's possible for Hillary to easily lose her moral compass: she (and Bill) must win, at any cost. She has lost any respect I ever had for her, and this was considerable.
I think the Clintons might have been good people at one time, but, not anymore! They are turning into two old dried up bones, trying to recapture their youth. Instead, now, they are just 2 power hungry greedy caricatures of their former selves.
Mr. Solomon,
The tears are real, but you must be joking. You actually think that Ms. Clinton was crying because she suddenly saw that America was heading in the wrong direction, and that it needed to be reversed????
Are you kidding me??? Most of us Americans have known for +4 YEARS that the country was headed in the wrong direction. And she shows her leadership and foresight by realizing that NOW, and people are "touched"??? NOW, conveniently on the day before the NH primaries in which she has already been slated to lose by 10 points, her 2nd defeat in 5 days?
What do you think is the more realistic version: that she was more upset about the direction of America... or more upset about the direction of her campaign??? Which one needed more immediate "reversal", as she put it??? Talk about believing in "fairy tales".... "My heroine Clinton, after 35 years of tearlessly working for change, after 5 tearless years of the Iraq war, finally sheds tears because she sees what's happening, and we need to reverse it... on the day before the NH primaries.
This is your take on the tears???? I am incredulous that so many people can believe so much ... from so little.
What impressed me about Senator Hillary Clinton’s moment of vulnerability was not the tears, but the genuine moment in which she spoke from her heart. I do not experience Hillary or her husband as being authentic much of the time. They both appear more often than not to calculate their position politically.
But what I heard in her voice were words of her simple truth. She spoke what was on her mind with her fatigue and perhaps a resignation that she was losing the primary. She told those women why she, not only was running for the presidency, but why she has chosen a life of public service.
But Senator Clinton also implied that she was ready to take on the presidency on day one whereas others [namely Senator Obama] have “not thought that through.” I that she and her campaign has been most unfair with Obama, painting him as this young rube who lacks the necessary gravitas to be president. President Clinton has been particularly egregious in his attacks.
They do this, I believe, because they are vulnerable on the issue of judgment. We elect a president to make sound decisions. God knows what events and problems will arise in the future for the president to respond to. We know that they will be different than today’s. Experience has its place, but there are qualities that are even more important if a president is to make sound decisions, i.e., integrity, wisdom and courage.
I think that both Senators Clinton and Obama have qualities to be good presidents, but at this time in history, I believe we need the qualities of a leader who has the appreciation of other’s ideas and concerns to work well with all kinds of people, the integrity to make the right decisions and the courage to ask of us American citizens to sacrifice our own particular individual desires for sake of the nation. In a word, a president who can inspire us, like a JFK or a FDR. I believe that Barrack Obama could be just that kind of president.
To me, of boomer age, but not boomer mentality, that "catch" in Ms.
Clinton's voice when she spoke about what has happened and what has been lost would most naturally find resonance with my generation and older is because we DO KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN LOST.
The reason the youth vote doesn't get it and isn't as "just plain angry enough to spit" is because they can't remember what a a great nation this country was during and after WWII
Most of the youth vote knows only an America that is/was frustrated by VietNam and the splintering of our culture during the 60's and 70's
I take it very personally when I think of what has happened to our reputation these past years, and you can't lay it all on the feet of george bush.
But if we don't rise up to reverse it we are on the down side of this great nation.
That is what I heard in her voice and I think that is what brought so many out to the polls to support her.
That enui can't be felt by the youth following obama and unless he speaks to that, he will not prevail.
We need a national catharsis - first comes the pain of the past seven years and the horror of the next one when B,Buuush (sorry, I have a hard time speaking his name), then the recognition of our tragedy that affects every part of our lives, then the gnashing of the teeth, then the weeping, then the recognition of how much work we need to do to make things right again. Oh, the many, many stages of grief!
Here is Aristotle's definition of tragedy:
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. (Poetics 1449b.24)
Okay, okay, so you had to read it three times to understand it. See, we really do need to start using our heads again.
Lyn LeJeune- The Beatitudes Network-Rebuilding the Public Libraries of New Orleans, The Beatitudes and the New Orleans Chronicles, and "When Ignatius J. Reilly Worked at The New Orleans Public Library and I Went Crazy at the Port-O-Call" at www.beatit
This was a kind, thoughtful post. But judging by the spewing invective most people have posted in response to it, I think the ability to post anonymously brings out the worst in people. If all HuffPo readers are as vitriolic and hysterical as their comments, I am grateful that I can keep a safe cyber-distance.
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