Hillary Clinton may be the Titanic of 2008. She is widely regarded, and rightly so, as smart and ambitious. These are fine traits but they often come as a package deal with arrogance and a refusal to admit error. Clinton has a very lengthy history of refusing to admit when she’s wrong – her conflicting and outright deceitful statements concerning her votes on Iraq being only one example — and blaming others for her mistakes, unattractive qualities for the voting public.
To hear many Republicans speak one would think that the outcome of the 2008 presidential election has already been decided. Since Hillary Clinton is likely to be the nominee for the Democrats and Republicans are running in part on the unpopular Bush record and without an incumbent, the result is a foregone conclusion.
But is it really?
If we give this question some careful consideration, an assured Clinton victory in 2008 becomes much less likely. As strong as Clinton may be in some facets, she is also extraordinarily weak in other crucial areas.
For example, Clinton is touting her experience as a key point in selling her candidacy. When we stop to consider what that experience actually is the reality is far from impressive. Aside from a minor role on the Nixon impeachment committee, Clinton's resume is fairly sparse. Her record as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas suggests she was a fairly weak litigator who was regularly the lowest billing partner.
As First Lady, Clinton only presided over one major policy initiative, a catastrophic failure to essentially nationalize the American health care system. Although Bill Clinton regularly praises his wife for the advice she gave him during his eight years as president, it's impossible to tell how effective that advice was – especially considering the number of abortive policy initiatives that he was responsible for.
We are also told that Clinton is widely loved by Americans but again the evidence doesn't seem to support that contention. While Clinton is generally admired – particularly by women – she is not well-liked. One poll suggested that over half of Americans would not vote for her under any circumstance.
And her support among women may be a mile wide but an inch deep. While her support among young women is strong, many older women – notably those who came of age during the so-called sexual revolution – are less enamored of her for sticking by her husband during the Lewinsky scandal and betraying feminist principles.
Clinton's well-known and reoccurring ethics issues are also a large liability. The latest fundraising scandal involving Norman Hsu is illustrative of a long pattern of cavalier attitudes towards the law. Time and time again we have seen both Bill and Hillary Clinton behave as if there is "no controlling legal authority" – as Al Gore once famously put it during another fundraising scandal – over their political activities.
Clinton herself may be her greatest liability. She is widely regarded, and rightly so, as smart and ambitious. These are fine traits but they often come as a package deal with arrogance and a refusal to admit error. Clinton has a very lengthy history of refusing to admit when she's wrong – her conflicting and outright deceitful statements concerning her votes on Iraq being only one example — and blaming others for her mistakes, unattractive qualities for the voting public.
Let's, however, for the sake of argument wipe away all of these stains and give the Democrats the dream team they clearly desire, a Clinton-Obama ticket. Clinton, they argue, will bring in the young female vote and Obama will carry the black vote.
This lands them precisely in the same position they enjoyed in 2000 and 2004. While Obama will likely pull in more black voters than either Gore or John Kerry did, and Clinton will attract more females than either charisma starved predecessor, Democrats know that the secret to winning is to attract white males and the southern vote.
Does a freshman senator from Indiana and a two-term New York senator really add those two groups to the Democratic column? Any election featuring a Clinton-Obama ticket will likely make it uncomfortably close for Republicans, but it is hardly a guarantee of Democratic victory.
Finally, one must consider a variable that Clinton cannot control and that is who Republicans nominate. Ignoring the respective merits of the individual candidates, something Republicans can't even agree on, it is hard to argue that Clinton would have an easy time against the universally popular Rudy Giuliani, the surprisingly strong Mitt Romney or the Reagan channeling Fred Thompson. Simply put, the caliber of opposition that she will face next year far outstrips the meager talent she is running against now.
None of this is to suggest that Clinton cannot win. She is, of course, a formidable candidate who is raising record amounts of money – mostly legal, smart, and very popular among certain segments of the American electorate and defining herself against the Bush record. The idea, however, that she is unbeatable and anyone running against her will be playing the role of a modern Barry Goldwater is mistaken. Rather than the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Clinton may be the Titanic of 2008.
First off- Obama is from Illinois.
Second- Hillary- Obama may be a dream for some Democrats, but not the educated ones. One of the reasons sitting Senators do not become Presidents is because of the ability to trace voting records. These two would be a popular choice but most liberals in the know realize how weak they are in foreign policy matters, executive accomplishments, and the ability to break the South. Honestly; one of the hopes of a VP is to grab an otherwise in play state. The dems have been pathetic at it, not realizing to this point that we live in a Republic. Maybe that is why Hillary wants to end the electoral college? Edwards couldn’t gain South Carolina, Gore couldn’t take Tennessee; what in the world are Obama and Hillary going to flip to the Blue side? Hillary’s only chance is a strong Dem in a state like Florida or Ohio. A moderate that appeals to masses with foreign policy attributes (General Wesley Clark) may help her as well.
Either way- the GOP has the arsenal to defeat her; I couldn’t imagine a more vulnerable person than Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton is known as the wife of Bill Clinton. Her biggest accomplishment is not divorcing the slickest politician in our lifetime. Her one realm of experience, as First Lady, simply proves that she is so focused only on the Presidency that she would rather stay married to a cheating, lying, rapist than injure her chances of becoming POTUS. She is an embarrasment to women nationwide- and to herself; she most likely hates him more than anyone on Earth. She can’t leave however; without Bill she is nothing.
Martinovich says “Hillary Clinton … is widely regarded, and rightly so, as smart and ambitious.”
Clearly, she is smart enough to have earned a Yale Law degree, but Yale cranks out thousands of degrees, and not every Yale graduate rates a “smartest woman in the world” tribute. We know Bush graduated Harvard Business with a mere 3.6 GPA; not outstanding, but not shabby either. We have no idea what Hillary’s grades look like because she refuses to release them. If she truly is the ‘smartest woman in the world’, why be so reluctant?
We know the truly smart lawyers get snapped up by big law firms. So, where do we find Hillary just out of law school? Her first job was staff attorney for the ‘Children’s Defense Fund’, then a consultant to ‘Carnegie Council on Children’. Neither of these jobs requires outstanding qualifications so much as a willingness to work for very little. She managed to jump from that into a minor Congressional staff position throwing together impeachment documents with which to fry Nixon over his Watergate mess. Does that make her brilliant? Like the jobs doing children’s social-activist lawyering, getting a staff job working for Congress right out of law school has everything to do with connections, willingness to work at low wages, and less to do with qualifications.
While in D.C., Hillary took her bar exams … and flunked. I’ve read various opinions regarding the ease of D.C. bar exams, but I don’t really think that’s at issue. Many people flunk exams the first time, but pass on the 2nd or 3rd try. Usually, this is because people are too confident and don’t study hard enough for their first attempt. I passed my professional engineer’s exam the first try, but that was because I took seriously the need to study. Hillary tells us she took the D.C. and Arkansas exams at the same time, but again we don’t really know this to be fact. More probably, she quickly took the Arkansas exam after having failed in D.C. or knew she’d flunked without seeing her scores (trust me, you’d know). What’s the chance she moved to Arkansas and married Bill because she couldn’t cut it in D.C.? Possibly, she was “depressed” from mooning over Bill and that’s why she failed, yet someone as ‘brilliant’ as Hillary alludes she is would have known to study, would not have taken the exam unprepared, and would have passed easily.
In Arkansas, Hillary worked at the Rose Law Firm but, tellingly, did not make partner until Bill made Governor. While at Rose, Hillary specialized in intellectual property (not a whole lot of that in Arkansas) and pro-bono child-advocacy (state social services). The one area she showed real talent in this period was in fund-raising through unorthodox means.
All her adult life, Hillary has been getting good jobs only as a direct political consequence. She has no charm and hasn’t accomplished a single thing she ever set out to do except get rich and powerful; and for that she has always needed someone better positioned. She would not have made partner had Bill not been governor, she would not have made the board of the Legal Services Corporation without having scored points among Democrat Congressmen and then President Carter, and she would never have made Senator had Bill first not made President. Even her fund-raising depends on first having getting placed where she can do what both Clinton’s are so good very at. Both she and Bill have been caught time and time again taking illegal contributions that would get anyone else thrown out. They’ve survived only by getting discovered after it’s too late. Had they been caught before Bill made Governor, that would probably have been the end of it, and they’d have spent their days as relative unknowns. So, yes, she is certainly ambitions, but where has she demonstrated being more than ordinarily ‘smart’.
Not studying appears to have become a habit with her since college. She repeatedly tells us she is unaware of information she is responsible for knowing and then finding others to blame for her ignorance. Now, I’m just a dumb engineer, but I would have to suppose knowing critical information and knowing what to do with it is what separates cracker-jack lawyers (and Senators) with mere 3.6 GPA’s from their more ‘brilliant, yet perennially uninformed’ colleagues; just as it does among engineers. But, which would you hire? Edison said “Genius is one-percent inspiration and ninety-nine-percent perspiration.” I don’t doubt Hillary has aptitude, but I also doubt her intellect soars above the ordinary. She has yet to show us even that one-percent, most likely because it just isn’t there; and, by now, she can’t afford to let it get out just how ordinary she really is.
Look, the problem with Democrats is that they want to fall in love with their elected officials. Especially their president. That’s obiously not the case with this current president, but it was with Clinton and Kennedy. This is why there is such a clamoring for Obama and not Hillary. She comes with too much baggage, too much veneer thin excuses for why she wants to be president. Her shrilling is turning them off, but the softness of Obama is appealing to Democrats. It’s a political love affair from electors to electees and you can see it plain as day. It’s strange, I know, but what isn’t when it comes to the Democratic party these days and it’s kooky far left/liberal wing that is driving it. I mean, hell, we have Ron Paul, but we just treat him like our crazy uncle who keeps seeing black helicopters wherever he goes.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Obama or Hillary are in a position to possibly win the Presidency when the actual office of the President has, in terms of Cultural History, started to lose its importance. There are times when I swear that the President (whoever it is) is about one notch above your average figure-head, like the Queen of England. But that is not to say that as a figure head they couldn’t do some good, or some bad. Still, a Clinton/Obsama venture could be dubbed “The Anti-Reality Ticket” what with her inability to admit when she’s wrong and his stubborn and stupid refusal to come to terms with being half white. And even if none of their opponents can bring either of these points up, especially the last, the millions of us on the www can, and will.
If Hillary gets the nod from the democrats, regardless of whoever she choses as VP, that person in reality will only be a VVP. The real VP will be Billy. I have yet to see any of the democratic ladies in the senate to embrace Hillary as the next leader. Her tenure in the senate had been pretty quiet. There was no major bill or motion in the senate she could claim to her credit. And another factor that is going to affect Hillary is the Al Gore factor. A lot of people who supported Al Gore in the previous election may not vote for Hillary. Regardless of what is happening in Iraq, people have a memory of what happened in the white house during the Billy days, and they are going to be reminded of that by the republicans as election days near. Let us not forget that George Bush was elected not entirely due to his charisma, but because people disliked Bill and Al.