SOMETHING(S) ABOUT HILLARY

9/8/15

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.   She is hyper-competent and therefore entitled to the office.   Her country’s needing her would be more obvious if the benighted masses were not so utterly incapable of knowing what’s good for them, which provides further evidence of how badly her country needs her.  

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?

OBAMA’S EXCELLENT SYRIAN ADVENTURE: THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER GETS BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS ENEMIES?

9/2/13

President Obama has finally done the right thing regarding the ghastly situation in Syria.

He may have looked more indecisive than the Dane himself in doing so.   Further, he may be doing so for the wrong reasons; a lot of people think the President is seeking Congressional approval of military action against Bashar Assad only as a ruse for changing his mind once again.   All this doesn’t matter.  We can’t count on people’s good motives; Francis of Assisi long ago vacated this mortal coil and there are few decent replacements.  We can only count on people’s actions.   And, regardless of his motivations, the President has finally done the right thing and gone the Constitutional route in asking Congressional approval before sending American blood and treasure on yet another foreign adventure with dubious, yet frightful, potential consequences.  In so doing, Mr. Obama has reversed the approach of every post-War president, with the possible and ironic exception of Richard Nixon, in committing American firepower, money, and troops to combat, which has been, effectively, I am the State.

This circuitous, stumbling in the dark path to righteousness has come at some cost to American credibility.   In his alternating red lines, expressions of outrage, and admonitions to caution, Mr. Obama has displayed more flip-flops than will be seen on the Jersey Shore this Labor Day weekend.   As Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University put it, the President

“…is becoming a laughingstock in the eyes of friends and foe alike.”

While it is hard in the Middle East, or anywhere, for that matter, to distinguish friend from foe (Was it Kissinger, Metternich, or Richelieu who said “Countries don’t have permanent friends; they only have permanent interests?), Mr. Inbar has a point.  Mr. Obama could have saved himself, and this country, a lot of humiliation by saying early on, and unequivocally, that the U.S. has no interests in Syria sufficiently salient to commit American resources and kids to the conflict.   (See 8/27/13’s  SYRIA:  “WE (WILL) GET FOOLED AGAIN!” for only my latest expostulation on why getting involved in yet another Middle Eastern centuries old irresolvable sectarian conflict would be ruinous, or worse, for the United States and the world.)   But the President, as is his wont, blew that opportunity.  

More importantly, if it took an embarrassing to the point of pain Hamlet act on the international stage on the part of the President to finally get him to do what no president since Roosevelt has done, i.e., abide by the Constitution in committing American troops to conflict, that is a small price to pay.

Will the President be able to persuade the Congress to go along with this latest Bushite adventure for who knows what reason in the Middle East?   Or will he suffer the type of heaven sent humiliation that the clear-headed British Parliament sent to the starry-eyed David Cameron?

First, while things can change rapidly and political predictions are thus always perilous, the odds are not good that the Congress will give the President the nod he ostensibly seeks.   Mr. Obama must persuade not only those Congresspersons with the good sense to stay as far away from Syria as one does from a rabid dog; he also must also mollify the likes of Senators John McCain and his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham, who seem to have visions of mushroom clouds, and generous payment of IOUs to the “defense” industry, once again dancing in their febrile brains.   One can only hope that the Republican impulse to oppose anything that Mr. Obama proposes will override the GOP reflexive equation of militarism with patriotism and that they will thus join the Democrats, and the libertarian oriented corners of the GOP, to slap Mr. Obama’s hand and save us from another quagmire in the cradle of civilization.

Second, one does get the impression that the President is secretly hoping that Congress will not go along with the Bushite militarism that has led Mr. Obama and his team to ostensibly flak for another folly in the Middle East.   This will enable the President to avoid conflict, blame it on Congress, and breathe a heavy sigh of relief.   The nation ought to join him in that sigh should that be the outcome of this entire fiasco.

THE LEGEND LIVES ON FROM THE TEAMSTERS ON DOWN OF THE BIG GUY THEY CALL JIMMY HOFFA

6/18/13

The FBI is once again digging around for Jimmy Hoffa, this time in Oakland County, Michigan and at the behest of aging Detroit Mob boss Tony Zerilli.  Mr. Zerilli was underboss of the Detroit Mob at the time of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975 and so is in a position to know what happened to James Riddle Hoffa.

So far, the feds have found concrete slabs on the property in which they are digging, but no remains of Mr. Hoffa.  Digging will resume tomorrow.  Remember, however, that 38 years have passed since Mr. Hoffa went missing, so one wonders what could be found…or what could be gained from finding whatever that might be.

At any rate, I thought it was a good time to reprint a piece I wrote last Fall…when local authorities in Roseville Michigan were digging for Mr. Hoffa.

DIGGING FOR JIMMY HOFFA…AGAIN

9/27/12

The cops are digging around for Jimmy Hoffa again.  Police in the Detroit suburb of Roseville, Michigan are reportedly conducting tests around a driveway in that town looking for the body of the late Teamsters leader.   This particular bout of Hoffa searching reportedly comes in response to claims by a late stage cancer patient who saw fit to clear his conscience by reporting that he saw what could have been people burying a body under the driveway around the time of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township in 1975.  

This, of course, is not the first time that law enforcement officials in some jurisdiction or another have searched for the body of Mr. Hoffa who, popular rumor has it, is actually buried in the end zone of the old Meadowlands, which is one of the few places that hasn’t been searched.  In fact, when my brother-in-law Tim decided to put a very nice pool in the backyard of his Long Island home, I counseled him to call, say, the Suffolk County Police, or maybe the feds, and tell them that he had heard rumors that Mr. Hoffa was buried in his backyard.  After the authorities had dug up the backyard and found nothing, I advised him to say something like

“Sorry for your trouble, boys.  No need to fill the hole back in; I don’t want to put you to any more trouble.”

Tim could have thus saved plenty of money on the pool installation,   He did not follow my counsel.  His loss.  But I digress.

As an amateur student of the American Mob, I have long been intrigued by the Hoffa case.  In fact, when I lived in the Detroit area in the early ‘80s, I made it a point to dine at the Machus Red Fox just because that is the point from which  Mr. Hoffa disappeared.  It wasn’t much of a sacrifice; it was quite a good place, but, again, I digress. 

Mr. Hoffa was the president of the Teamsters from 1957 until, technically, 1971.   But he was convinced of bribery and of misuse of Teamster funds in 1964 and finally went away in 1967, when he appointed his old pal Frank Fitzsimmons acting head of the Union.   Mr. Hoffa formally resigned as head of the union in 1971 and Mr. Fitzsimmons formally assumed the role of Teamsters president.  Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hoffa was pardoned by Richard Nixon, supposedly (probably, okay, definitely) in exchange for a Teamster endorsement of Mr. Nixon’s reelection.  But a condition of the pardon was a prohibition on union activities for Mr. Hoffa until 1980, the date on which his sentence would have ended were it not for the pardon.   This condition reportedly (probably, okay, definitely) was inserted at the behest of Mr. Fitzsimmons and those who were reportedly (probably, okay, definitely) running the Teamsters at the time   Why?   While Mr. Hoffa played ball with the Mob, especially regarding loans from Teamsters pension funds for, among other things, Vegas casinos  (loans, by the way, which proved money good and at least modestly profitable), he was not controlled by the Mob and could say “No.”  Mr. Fitzsimmons, on the other hand, was little more than a Mob puppet who didn’t dare say “No” to the people who were keeping him in his lucrative sinecure atop the Teamsters. 

So the Mob was very comfortable with Mr. Fitzsimmons and wanted to take no chances on a return of the powerful and headstrong Mr. Hoffa.  The result was the disappearance of Mr. Hoffa in 1975, while he was plotting his return to power through Local 299 in Detroit.  The prime suspects in the disappearance of Mr. Hoffa have long been the late Tony Jack Giacalone, a Detroit mobster, and Tony Pro Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamster official who just happened to be a capo in the Genovese family.  There are, of course, other theories about why Mr. Hoffa had to go, mostly centering around possible testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (Former Chicago Boss Sam Giaconda’s meeting his untimely demise about the same time provides grist for that particular mill.), but the most plausible explanation for Mr. Hoffa’s death was his efforts to upset the apple cart, or apple truck, at the Teamsters.

So what?

This recent bout of digging for Mr. Hoffa give me an excuse to ask a question that has always troubled me about the Hoffa case:  why did the Teamsters and the Mob, without whom the then leadership of the Teamsters did little of much import, press for Mr. Hoffa’s release from jail, even with the accompanying restrictions on his union activity?   Did they honestly believe that Mr. Hoffa, a tough, resourceful, power hungry, but nonetheless effective for the members union guy was just going to say something like “Okay, fellas, I’ll just stand aside and let a pygmy like Frank Fitzsimmons do your bidding with my union; after all, that’s what the law says I have to do”?    While the Mob, broadly speaking, has never been as omniscient or omnipotent as popular enthusiasms would have you believe, the guys who run it are not stupid.   Wouldn’t they have been better off keeping Hoffa in jail until 1980, when he would have been 67, not old but older than 58, and Mr. Fitzsimmons, or some successor, would have been more entrenched and hence harder to unseat?   I know all about union brotherhood considerations and the promises made to Mr. Hoffa to try and get him out, but when money, and especially so much money, was at stake, the people who were in charge cared little for such relatively minor considerations.

We know why Nixon pardoned Hoffa.  But why did the Teamsters make the deal that led Nixon to pardon Hoffa?   This question has intrigued me since…about 1975.