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October 26, 2005I remain underwhelmedI have never gotten the appeal of Hillary Clinton. I GOT the appeal of her husband, and his intelligence was quite evident. With Hillary, we keep hearing she’s intelligent - and we certainly see she is cunning - but cunning and cleverness are not intelligence, and Hillay’s much-vaunted intelligence doesn’t seem readily apparent to me, at least not from any of her speeches. I always come away from reading her or hearing her thinking…”she just said a mouthful of nothing - buzzwords, catchphrases - there is no there, there; this woman is an illusion.” Take this recent speech. In fairness, since I don’t have the whole text before me, perhaps every remark of hers reported here needs deep context in order for it all to have meaning. But I suspect not. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused the Bush administration of squandering the balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility that she said her husband created as president. Tell us what you’ve been doing in the Senate please, instead of - still - riding your husband’s coattails. And maybe we could talk about the 30% discrepency between the economic figures put out by his administration, and the adjusted numbers which the GAO put out shortly after he left office? Boy, I wish I’d saved that in my hard-drive, because you can’t google it anymore… The New York Democrat, who has been talked about as a potential presidential candidate in 2008, also said during a speech at an Atlanta synagogue she thinks the U.S. government should rethink its policy in Iraq. Clinton said she doesn’t support a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq nor does she support leaving our troops there for an open-ended period. Instead, she said the U.S. should encourage the Iraqi people to take more control of their security and let them know American troops won’t be there forever. Please explain how any of what you said differs in any way from our current policy, particularly as to the of training the Iraqi people in matters of law-enforcement and security, as we encourage them to form their own government. Please explain how we have not told Iraq we wouldn’t be there forever? “We need a much stronger commitment to the underlying values of America,” Clinton said, adding that the U.S. needs to follow the rule of law in setting its foreign policy. This must have been taken seriously out of context, because this means nothing. What underlying values of America are we talking about? Whose values? Yours? Mine? The same values upon which we were founded, or the new ones that suggest we take our constitutional cues from foreign legal findings and precedents? How did the US NOT follow the rule of US law in its foreign policy? Which “rule of law” are you actually talking about, Ma’am, US law, or the Rule of Law being invented over at The Hague? Clinton was equally outspoken on the economy. She told several thousand spectators that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was able to balance the budget while at the same time creating 22 million jobs. But she said that fiscal responsibility has been lost of late. “Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, that’s all we’ve done the last four years,” Clinton said. “This has been the only time in history that our president has taken us to war and cut taxes at the same time. It doesn’t add up.” Please elucidate for us when specifically in your term in the US Senate you have voted to cut spending. Anywhere. We’ll wait. Clinton said it’s difficult to deal with free trade and currency issues in countries like China when we are borrowing billions of dollars from them to handle our deficit. “It’s hard to ask our banker to be accountable,” Clinton said. Yeah…it was hard to ask North Korea to be accountable when we handed them nuclear materials. Hard to ask China to be accountable when we handed them our technologies. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Accountability? Asked about Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, Clinton said she’s eager for the Senate confirmation process to be played out. She did say there is one question she thinks Miers should be asked. “Please tell us one thing you disagree with the president on,” Clinton said to loud applause from the crowd. Which reminds me…when Sen. Clinton ran for her first term, some wondered what she had actually “done” to merit the seat. We kept hearing, “oh, she’s an advocate for children!” But there was no actual citing of her ever - actually - having done anything. In almost 6 years as a legislator, she has gotten only 20 bills through and more than a few of them were “feel good” bills. Sen. Clinton is arguably the most influential Democrat in the nation and certainly in the Senate. I remain underwhelmed. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/10/26/i-remain-underwhelmed/trackback/ 13 Responses to “I remain underwhelmed” |
October 26th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
[...] Buster goes Andrew Heyward Resigns UK is losing itself piece by piece An Unexpected Complication Outrageous photo manipulation A riddle, an enigma The left wets itself in glee… “Tell the Truth About JoeWilson” America Thanked. WH Press Ignores WMD intel pre-dated Bush Rosa Parks, RIP Milbank/Pincus write wrong Witchy Cotillion Conservative choices to rule the world Tolerate us ad nauseum, please… Kissing and making up? I’m Rich! I’m comfortable! Why do we do this? Our Lady of Good Counsel [...]
October 26th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
Link should just be http://www.wsbtv.com/politics/5158295/detail.html
October 26th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Clintonian Doublespeak runs in the family
The Anchoress has a good post up about Hillary Clinton. Read the whole thing.
But this one particular quote stuck out:
Clinton said she doesn’t support a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq nor does she support leaving our troops there for …
October 26th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
Sublime- and then some.
Your assessment is right, I think. Hillary is more of a ’strategic’ thinker, as opposed to an analytical or original thinker.
That suits her political ambitions well. She knows what to say and how to say it, and reach as many people as possible. She is shrewd enough to sound original- as she did in her ‘too many abortions’ speech- but more importantly, she knew she was saying what a lot of people wanted to hear.
She has- and always will- leave the analysis and original thinking to others.
Remember her healthcare commission? They thought, she pitched.
October 26th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
“Clinton said it’s difficult to deal with free trade and currency issues in countries like China when we are borrowing billions of dollars from them to handle our deficit.
“It’s hard to ask our banker to be accountable,” Clinton said.
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“Yeah…it was hard to ask North Korea to be accountable when we handed them nuclear materials. Hard to ask China to be accountable when we handed them our technologies. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Accountability?”
And don’t forget that the Clintons asked “America’s bankers” for campaign contributions as well.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
I think Hillary has been at minimum a decent Senator. She is way better than either of the Democratic Sentators from my state (Murray and Cantwell) in my opinion. Granted, that is damning with faint praise…
Still I think she has been pretty good on the war issues, better than mainstream democrats and certainly I would trust her more than Gore, Kerry or Dean with the countries national security.
October 26th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
[...] The Anchoress is not particularly impressed with Senator Clinton, especially when it comes to her new tough talk on federal spending. Clinton was equally outspoken on the economy. She told several thousand spectators that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was able to balance the budget while at the same time creating 22 million jobs. But she said that fiscal responsibility has been lost of late. [...]
October 26th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
Hillary and Bill - a match made in politics.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
If I hear the dems talk about balanced budgets under Clinton one more time I will scream. Bill gets elected and puts the smartest woman in the world in charge of a program to change healthcare which is a major part of the federal spending and also a sizeable chunk of the countries GDP. She is barely stopped from giving the country the biggest federal spending increase in the history of the country. She is stopped by the Republican Congress and the Health Care Industry who are vilified. They lose the Congress to the Republicans who come in and force Billy to acknowledge the “era of big government is over” like it was his idea when we all know it is because the Democrats no longer control spending in the House. Welfare reform he twice vetoed is pushed through and he has to sign or face defeat for his second term and he winks a promise to the left to mend the welfare reform if elected. Billy also has a rolling economy that is a carry over from 12 years of Republicans in the White House promoting and pushing deregulation and taking some of the burden off of those who make our economy go despite tax increases of the weak Bush and Clinton. I can not think of a single thing this so called smart man and woman did to make the 90’s economy go except get out of the way in fear.
But if Hilary runs, don’t expect her to get any tough questions or agree to any interviews where she might be challenged. Don’t expect the press to do their job as the fourth estate. And God forbid any Republican challenger actual enter her space to challenge her in any way for she will be a poor woman being picked on by some beligerent male unless we see Condi running.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:22 am
If the goal is to understand Hillary’s popularity, I’m afraid that rational analysis won’t get us there. (Which is not to say we shouldn’t try as you have done nicely here, Anchoress.)
Looked at instead through the lens of *identity* (as in, for example: “I like to think of myself as a moderate, practical liberal who would vote for a woman for president”), she is THE obvious flag-bearer.
And more begets more, no matter how that erroneous set of impressions started. That is, she surfs off the manufactured conventional wisdom about her political ascendency, aided and abetted by an adoring media… no news there.
Thomas Sowell has an excellent column this week about this phenomenon. (See: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2005/10/25/172897.html).
He doesn’t mention Hillary, but I believe the same logic applies: her popularity stems from narcissistic group identification on the part of a certain class of voters, not on any analysis of the efficacy of her time in the Senate or the fairness or consistency of her claims.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
[...] It doesn’t change the fact that she’s done little-to-nothing in the senate, that she did little-to-nothing in the vast period of time before that. (Oh, I forgot, she was an aaaaaadvocate!) It doesn’t change the fact that she flops around like a star gymnast performing on uneven bars of entitlement and expectation with enormous help from her team and her coaches in the press, who never, ever let her fall. [...]
February 20th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
[...] Yes, she got covered in Life Magazine in the 1960’s - she was a guest on Johnny Carson’s show, too - but why? Carson lived in the UN building, back then, did someone meet him in an elevator and say “you should have this girl on your show?” Who? And again, why? In the 1960’s Hillary Rodham was one more make-up-allergic feminist saying all the same crap everyone else was saying. There was nothing remarkable about her. She was no Steinem, and no Friedan - neither witty nor particularly provocative. And yet she was being pushed to the fore and called “brilliant,” etc. But she didn’t pass the bar in DC and she went to Arkansas where she was the wife of a policitian and a boutique attorney. I don’t get her. I will never get her. I remain underwhelmed. [...]
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
[...] back when I was a liberal, I always found Mrs. Clinton to be rather less impressive than the gushing media narratives of the past 15 years would have it, but she seems to be in a [...]