Laurence, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair have a 3-parter on her that supports this view. Part 1 appeared yesterday. Part 2 is out today. The first article on her begins with these words:
“Hillary Clinton has always been an old-style Midwestern Republican in the Illinois style; one severely infected with Methodism, unlike the more populist variants from Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa.”
It is well not to have illusions about Hillary or any other candidates for office. They are very ordinary people. Hillary’s trip through the political landscape had many turns. Here are only a few of the earlier steps that the article mentions:
“Hillary was a Nixon supporter.”
“She battled for Goldwater through the 1964 debacle and arrived at Wellesley in the fall of 1965 with enough Goldwaterite ambition to become president of the Young Republicans as a freshman.”
“The fraught year of 1968 saw the Goldwater girl getting a high-level internship in the House Republican Conference with Gerald Ford and Melvin Laird, without an ounce of the Goldwater libertarian pizzazz.”
“She left the suburb of Park Ridge and rushed to Miami to the Republican Convention where she fulfilled a lifelong dream of meeting Frank Sinatra and John Wayne and devoted her energies to saving the Party from her former icon, Nixon, by working for Nelson Rockefeller.”
“By now a proclaimed supporter of Gene McCarthy, she was appalled, not by the spectacle of McCarthy’s young supporters being beaten senseless by Daley’s cops, but by the protesters’ tactics, which she concluded were not viable.”
“…So far from being an exaltation of radical organizing, Hillary’s assessment of Alinsky was hostile, charging him with excessive radicalism.”
“If any one person gave Hillary her start in liberal Democratic politics, it was Marian Wright Edelman who took Hillary with her when she started the Children’s Defense Fund.”
It is my impression that Hillary Clinton has no special gift for leadership in practical politics, in the moral arena or in spiritual matters. Her career is littered with blunders. However, she clearly has drive, planned her future and seized opportunities. But does that or other such qualities qualify her or anyone to have huge power? Like every one of the current Republicans competing for the nomination in that party, there is absolutely no reason why I would ever want to have her be my “social leader” or “political leader” or lawyer or anything else. I certainly would never want to have her or any of them or anyone else for that matter wielding the kinds of powers now employed in Washington. It simply makes no sense. I pray for her and the rest of them, that a measure of Grace and Light touch them.
7:05 am on April 14, 2015
