Criticize Clinton the Right Way
by Troy Carter ‘08
Staff Writer··································
“She’s too calculating and manipulative.” I’ve heard: “She just wants power.” Even one of the high school freshmen in the class I’ve been student teaching was willing to throw in her opinion, “She’s a snake pretending to be human.” Of course, let’s not forget the tried and true argument against Hillary Clinton: “I can’t stand that she stayed with Bill after the whole Monica thing.” After all, as I’m sure we all know by now, “if she can’t control her husband, how can she be expected to control the country?”
Since becoming the seeming front runner in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, somewhere around November 3rd, 2004, Hillary Clinton has been subjected to a degree of public scrutiny and criticism that is unlike any that any presidential candidate has ever seen before. This is not because she has fallen under more intense scrutiny than any other candidate, but because of the nature of the attacks against her. After all, no one has ever accused a male presidential candidate of being too ambitious or being too sensitive to be president. Clinton has been forced to answer ridiculous questions and endure biting personal criticism in her White House bid and the American media should frankly be ashamed of their treatment of her to date. Recently, MSNBC commentator David Shuster accused Clinton of “pimping out” her daughter Chelsea for support, a charge which no one has made against the male candidates, all of whom have their wives and families campaigning for them.
Americans have chosen the most asinine criteria to evaluate Clinton as a presidential candidate; they evaluate her not on her record or her politics, but instead on her gender and an imagined emotional frailty. In my estimation, this is a true tragedy… especially since there are so many valid reasons to criticize Hillary Clinton.
In their zeal to create a fiction in which Hillary Clinton is a manipulative witch trying to seize control for her own nefarious purposes, Clinton detractors have rushed straight past the real reason to keep her out of the White House: she represents the same old Washington status quo, has run a campaign funded by special interests and stands little chance of winning the general election in November.
At a time when America’s approval rating of its sitting president is low and its approval of congress is lower, it should come as no big surprise that “change” has been a major buzzword surrounding the 2008 Presidential election. While Hillary Clinton has claimed to be a candidate with the experience to bring change, she really has yet to distinguish herself from the Washington establishment she’s been a part of for 15 years. Despite promises of change, Clinton is an icon of a gridlocked Washington defined by special interests and partisan hackery.
Perhaps the clearest case of this can be seen in the hypocrisy of Clinton’s own campaign. During her tenure as first lady, Clinton’s major issue was the push for national healthcare--Hillarycare as it has been often labeled. Her plan, defeated then, has been resurrected with her new campaign. What has changed, however, is that this time around the special interest groups that prevented a change in the status quo are now the ones funding Clinton’s campaign. In a primary race where two of the three strongest candidates in the Democratic field refused money from federal lobbyists, Clinton sticks out like a sore thumb as being a part of the Washington establishment she assures voters she’ll work to change.
Finally, the only reason any progressive needs to criticize Clinton is that she’s not going to win the election in November. Operating under the assumption that John McCain will be the Republican nominee, a Clinton-McCain race would most likely spell heartache for Democrats. John McCain pulls strong support from independents while Hillary Clinton polarizes the right wing against her while only appealing to the base of the Democratic Party. A Clinton nomination would appear to be the most surefire way for the Democrats to have a repeat of 2004 and once again snatch electoral defeat from the jaws of victory.
Let us not then continue to set social progress in this country back by disguising our paranoia about a female president with news stories about “Hillary’s fashion faux pas” or “Clinton cries in diner” and instead band together, as civilized human beings, Democrats, Republicans and independents, and give Mrs. Clinton the criticism she deserves.
Back to Top
Dude, Where’s My Movement?
by Ross James ‘09
Political Editor··································
John McCain’s recent emergence as the far and away frontrunner for Republican presidential nominee begs further scrutiny of the man who would be President. McCain’s history details that of one who has done just about as much as any Republican to divide the Party. Rockefeller ‘moderate’ Republicans are at odds with the conservative rank and fi le that make up the party base on many issues germane to the Reagan legacy of small government, low taxes and big stick national security. No, conservatism isn’t dead by any stretch of the imagination insofar as little things like ‘truth’, ‘facts’, and ‘decencys’ have to have some place to go, but John McCain is certainly a shift towards that dark abysmal, solution-less place known as the left.
John McCain believes in big government solutions to issues that can be solved more efficiently and less costly to the public by non-government intervention. McCain thinks that myths like man-made global warming can be curbed with acts like McCain-Lieberman. An act he pushed twice that would cap carbon emissions and “cost the average U.S. household at least $600 per year by 2010, rising to at least $1,000 per year by 2020” (via Hearland.org). He pledges now to continue the Bush tax cuts, but he initially opposed them. He also believes in the curbing of free speech as demonstrated in his disastrous McCain-Feingold bill, in which private organizations and individuals alike are limited as to what type of broadcast advertisements they can run, when they can run them, and what they can say in them. Last time I took a gander at the ol’ Constitution, it said “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”, but hey, who reads that old thing anymore.
McCain has also repeatedly claimed to be a conservative but habitually kicks conservatives when they’re down. If not for an all-out mutiny by the public over amnesty for illegal aliens, McCain-Kennedy would have passed, legitimizing millions of people whose first act in this country was to break our laws. Also, quick note: any conservative who tries to rationalize with Ted Kennedy or censure-monger Russ Feingold is not to be trusted easily. As if McCain didn’t have enough to worry about when it comes to conservative credentials, the top-secret program leaking, leftist agenda pushing, New York Times comes out and endorses him; do I need to go into why that’s a bad thing for a supposed conservative?
There is, however, a stark reality that must be faced in this coming election. McCain has two strong points; his record, minus opposition to the Bush tax cuts, is fiscally sound and he is as tough as they come when defending our national security (except when asked to pour water onto terrorists’ heads). Can we really trust these next four years to be in the hands of a guy who will ‘hope’ that all our problems will go away (B. Hussein Obama) or a member of the Clinton crime syndicate (Hillary)? In the next four years it is likely that a showdown could come to fruition between the U.S. and a radicalized, nuclear Pakistan or nuclear, already radicalized Iran. Who do we really want making the calls, an Illinois senator with just barely more national security credentials then the average political junkie, a New York senator whose building block of experience is being first lady, or a Vietnam vet who was for the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq and who all along called for the strategy that is now working, the successful troop surge.
I believe in the innate good sense of the common American to make the right choices for themselves and their family, regardless of what McCain manages to damage domestically over the next four years. What really counts here, however, is our defense at home and abroad. We have not been hit by a terrorist attack in the six and half years since 9/11 and Iraq and Afghanistan have never been more important than they are now. Hillary Clinton and B. Hussein Obama are not strong enough to stand down radical fanatics, John McCain is. For all his shortcomings, he is strongest in an area where we need a leader to be strongest, in a dangerous and significant time for our country. If he needed to have only one truly conservative stance, he picked the most important one to have.
Back to Top