The pundits and the pols have
been scratching their heads for weeks, or months, over the popularity of Donald
Trump and Bernie Sanders, populists from opposite ends of the political
spectrum. Why, the pundits ask, would a
public that is fed up with the establishment pols be so attracted to two
non-establishment pols? The bar over
which one must jump to become an officially recognized pundit must be awfully
low, but I digress.
This navel-gazing on the part
of the punditocracy came to a heretofore head this weekend on the talk shows
that the pundits follow in order to know which mewings to echo or reflexively
denigrate, depending on their nominal world view. One such notable, utterly dumbfounded that
the benighted electorate is not flocking to the preferred candidate of the
media establishment, Hillary Clinton, offered the sage insight that Mrs.
Clinton’s problems with such things as her private e-mail account and the
Clinton Foundation “obscure her message.”
Hmm…the allegations directed
against her, and, more saliently, her horrific mishandling of those allegations,
don’t merely “obscure” Hillary Clinton’s message; they expose her message for
the precariously wispy reed that it is.
What is, after all, Hillary
Clinton’s message? It is certainly not
an ideological message, or at least not an ideological message that can be easily
or publicly distinguished from those of her Democratic challengers. No, Mrs. Clinton’s message is that she is
supremely, indeed uniquely, qualified to be president of the United States
Hillary’s having dropped the
ball on the e-mails and joked about serious investigations thereof does not
“obscure” this message. No, these
missteps and pratfalls directly contradict this message. If Hillary Clinton cannot properly manage
her own feckless finagling, her image of competence, the very reason for her
being, in her mind and those of her fervent followers, the obvious choice for
president, falls apart.
On related notes….
Perhaps yours truly is being
too glib when he states that Hillary’s only message is that she alone is
qualified to be president and that anyone who cannot see that is somehow
mentally or morally impaired. There are
two other unspoken aspects of Mrs. Clinton’s message, the “wink and nod” facet
of Hillary’s continuing lifelong campaign for the presidency.
The first is that, if Mrs.
Clinton has any ideology at all, she is to the right of Bernie Sanders and
Martin O’Malley and thus is an electable Democrat because she is capable of
winning the middle. This message, of
course, is never to be spoken of in the heat of a Democratic primary season,
any more than the message that a Republican is to the left of his opponents and
therefore can win “the middle” is to be uttered in the context of a GOP primary
season.
The second unspoken component
of Hillary Clinton’s message is that putting her in office would return us to
the halcyon days of her husband’s presidency.
As much as many people with whom I agree on most things don’t want to
admit it, Mr. Clinton, despite his many, er, peccadilloes, was one of our great
post-war presidents, certainly if his presidency is considered from the
perspective of peace and prosperity, which is, understandably and justifiably,
the whole ball game for most people and certainly for that vast “middle” everyone
seems to be courting. That Hillary
would be a Bill redux is a powerful message and, if it were true, would be a
very good reason for plenty of people to vote for Mrs. Clinton. But this message, too, cannot be spoken out
loud; the “watch me roar” crowd, supposedly a big part of Hillary Rodham’s
constituency, would never brook such a sexist message.
And one more thing…
Hillary Rodham Clinton is
often compared to Richard Nixon, usually in the context of disregard for the
law and propriety when such piffles get in the way of the all consuming goal of
getting the anointed one elected. There
is doubtless something to this analogy.
Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Nixon have (had) credentials that would
seemingly make her (him) an obvious choice for president. She (he) failed the first time around, but
only because the American public was temporarily anesthetized by the siren song
of a young, dynamic, “different” kind of candidate who ultimately turned out to
be far less compelling, “different,” or competent than the electorate’s naïve
hopes had led them to believe. Once the
voters sober up, the thinking of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Nixon goes
(went), they will return to the obvious choice.
But there is one more point
of similarity between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Nixon: both are about as likeable as cornered rattle
snakes. Likeability may not make one a
good president, but likeability certainly helps one become president. Mr. Nixon overcame his omnipresent
similarities to the bad guys on The Three
Stooges to become president. Can
Hillary do the same?
Further, the same
“qualities”…the paranoia, the shiftiness, the amorality….from which he had to
divert the public’s attention in order to become president ultimately became
Mr. Nixon’s undoing. Will those same
shared qualities contain the seeds of the demise of a second President Clinton?
