The Ministry Of Truth

I am not instinctively a fan of the Clintons.  Bill is undoubtedly an excellent communicator but his judgment – political and ethical – too often appears questionable to consider him a great politician.  Nobody’s ever going to convince me that being gobbled off by a young woman and then “pleasuring” her with a cigar is anything other than inappropriate behaviour in the Oval Office.

The Minister’s Wife is rooting for the junior senator from New York when I can’t imagine a more foolish choice of candidate if the Democratic Party has anything other than a death wish in November’s US General Election.  Clinton is so abrasive that she cannot even command the majority support of her own party, let alone the country.  To pitch such a divisive figure into a fight against a relative moderate such as McCain is risible: 12 consecutive years of Republicanism is more than the world should have to bear.

That said, the Minister harbours significant doubts about the capabilities of the junior senator from Illinois, though they are largely on the grounds that anybody who actually wants to become President of the United States of America should be barred from standing.  Obama is certainly an excellent orator but – like the Neil Kinnocks and Charles Kennedys of this world – visibly wilts when he is cornered about details: he has yet to better Clinton in any of the seemingly endless series of debates that have taken place over the past six months.

Clinton’s success in the Ohio and Texas primaries yesterday was grounded in her campaign’s recent negative campaigning against Obama.  Without that, she lost 11 states on the bounce.  Once she adopted that tactic, she took three of the four states on offer yesterday.  Her message now seems to be: “he’s got no track record so you can’t trust him.”

I don’t like negative campaigning – like Posh Boy Dave’s approach to Opposition, it offers obstruction without proffering an alternative – but to quote Nancy Botwin: “Oh, glass-house-dwelling person…!”

Senator Clinton does have a track record.  She should be judged against that track record.  That track record is not desperately impressive.

Despite apparently being the cleverest little girl in her class, she failed the District of Columbia bar exam.  As a result she moved to Arkansas with her husband-to-be, became a tutor at the state University and then worked as a private practice attorney for a firm in Little Rock, specialising in intellectual property and family law (not the most obvious legal bedfellows).  She was appointed a partner in 1979.  Throughout, she remained an activist within the Democratic Party and became First Lady of Arkansas when Bill Clinton was elected Governor.

Some might say a conflict of interest arose where the State of Arkansas was a client of the law firm in which the First Lady of Arkansas was a partner – indeed, that charge became a major part of the Whitewater controversy that dogged Bill Clinton’s first term as President and saw Hillary become the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.

Some might say that a partner of a law firm with major clients such as Wal-Mart and TCBY should know better than to become, simultaneously, a member of the board of directors of, er, Wal-Mart and TCBY.

I couldn’t possibly comment.

When her husband became President, he appointed her to chair a task force on healthcare reform.  Despite both chambers then having Democratic majorities, the task force’s recommendations failed to receive enough support within Congress even to qualify for a vote.  By her own admission, this failure was in part down to her own political naivety.

While a senior at Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary Rodham wrote a thesis entitled “There Is Only The Fight…”: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.  Student Hillary received an A grade for her thesis, the subject of which was the modus operandi of radical activist Saul Alinsky.  When Bill Clinton came to national prominence, the thesis became of interest to his political opponents.

In the first weeks of his Presidency, the White House requested Wellesley College not to publish or show the thesis to anyone.  Wellesley College complied with this request, passing a new rule in its constitution restricting access to the thesis of any sitting President or First Lady.  The very making of this request made the thesis all the more attractive: after all, why would the White House seek to suppress a document unless its content would be politically damaging?  After Clinton left the White House, the thesis came back into the public domain.  It proved a damp squib, containing nothing of political sensitivity.  Even her own political science professor at the time and a regular Clinton donor, Alan Schechter, was moved to comment:

The more you hide something, the more people will want it.  It was a stupid political decision.

In 2000, an Independent Counsel found that there was substantial evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in the firing of White House Travel Office employees and that she had made “factually false” statements, though there was insufficient evidence to prosecute her.  A series of other investigations into her behaviour and potential conflicts of interest were held during her husband’s eight-year Presidency; while none of these made further criticisms, it is hard to conclude that she is anything other than a lightning rod for controversy.

Having become a Senator, she voted in 2002 for the invasion of Iraq; she was still so supportive of Dick, Don & Dubya’s Iraqi Adventure in early 2005 that she co-sponsored legislation to increase the size of the US Army by 80,000.  By year end, however, she began the long backtrack that culminated in the admission a few days ago that if she could withdraw that 2002 vote, she would do so.  By 2007 she was voting against Dubya’s “Surge” and for a bill directing him to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (a bill he veoted).

Political expediency?  Who knows?  It wouldn’t be the only time.  After all, down the years, Clinton has consistently backed the North American Free Trade Agreement – something her husband passed into law during his Presidency.  Yet she’s spent the past three weeks disowning NAFTA, which many Ohioans apparently believe is responsible for the state’s higher-than-national-average unemployment levels, and criticising Obama for supporting it.

A couple of weeks ago, her campaign allegedly leaked a photograph of Obama wearing traditional Somali dress while on a visit to Somalia some years ago.  Quite why this should be something worthy of leaking, I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s because traditional Somali dress looks vaguely like traditional Arab dress – and all us Rednecks know that them there Arabs are The Enemy.  Perhaps the passing resemblance to Arab dress plants the idea in people’s minds that Obama’s a Muslim (and Muslims have now supplanted the Russians as the baddies in Hollywood movies), when in fact he’s a practising Christian.  Again, who knows?  But it’s a nasty insinuation either way.

And it’s taking the piss for her to criticise her opponent for being low on detail and high on rhetoric when she delivers speeches like she did in Ohio last night:

We all know that these are challenging times. We have two wars abroad. We have a recession looming here at home. Voters faced a critical question – who is tested and ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one? And who knows how to turn our economy around?  Because we sure do need it.

…Americans don’t need more promises. They’ve heard plenty of speeches. They deserve solutions and they deserve them now.

…I think we’re ready for health care, not for just some people or most people, but for every American. I think we’re ready for an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, but every single hard-working American who deserves a shot at the American dream. I think we’re ready to declare energy independence and create millions of green collar jobs. We’re ready to reach out to our allies and confront our shared challenges. We’re ready to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan. And we’re past ready to serve our veterans with the same devotion that they served us.

Protecting America is the first and most urgent duty of the president. When there’s a crisis and that phone rings at 3:00a.m. in the White House, there’s no time for speeches or on-the-job training. You have to be ready to make a decision.

…Together, we’re going to make history. …This is America, and we do believe you can be anything you want to be, and we want our sons and our daughters to dream big. I have big dreams for America’s future. The question is not whether we can fulfill those dreams, it’s whether we will. And here’s our answer: yes, we will.

We will do what it takes, and we will once again make the kind of progress that America deserves. We’re going to protect our country and preserve our constitution. We’re going to lead with our values. We will reach out to those on the margins and in the shadows because that’s what we do in America. We break barriers, we open doors, we make sure every voice is heard. Together, we will turn promises into action, words into solutions, and hope into reality.

Tell me – where’s the policy there?

Senator Clinton has some admirable traits – she’s been a consistent activist for child welfare, education and universal healthcare – but she is one of the most flawed characters to run for the Presidency in recent years.  She polarises opinion.

The “experts” claim that, barring something weird happening, Senator Clinton will go into this summer’s Democratic Convention with fewer delegates and a smaller share of the popular vote than Senator Obama.  They say that the only way she could secure the party’s nomination would be through the weighted votes of “super delegates” inside the party.

While she’s given enough to the Democrats down the years to be entitled to call in some favours, to do so and – in the process – overturn the results of a six-month-long exercise in democracy (however arcane its rules) would lay her open to precisely the same charges of electoral fraud that accompanied Bush’s theft of the 2000 General Election.  Such a back room fix would represent no mandate at all and, I fear, backfire spectacularly on the Democrats.

In opting for McCain, the Republicans – by accident or design – are promoting a candidate with bipartisan appeal, who will make up for those Christian fundamentalists he loses by picking up conservative Democrats repulsed by some of the things Senator Clinton and her husband did when last in the White House.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, seems to be energising sectors of the American electorate ordinarily prone to democratic apathy – black men and young voters.  If Obama does prevail, he will pick up most (though not all) of Clinton’s votes; Clinton would not, however, pick up most of his – particularly now she’s running a smear campaign.

Obama is the only viable Democratic contender, however hard he is going to have to work to espouse some real policy rather than hifalutin rhetoric, however dirty he’s going to have to get his hands over the next month pointing out his immediate opponent’s many flaws, and however difficult he finds the detail.

Get on with it, Barack.  Get over it, Hillary.

Move on.