Not With a Gun to My Head

The following is part two of a three-parter on the choice confronting liberal and progressive citizens in 2008. The original, slightly modified, version appears in my regular column in this week's Chester Village News.



With Iowa and New Hampshire less than a month away, I still find myself scratching my head over the presidential field. So far, my main achievement has been to identify one candidate for whom I could not – under any foreseeable circumstances – cast my ballot.

Senator Hillary Clinton.

I write this at the risk of offending. The valid aspirations of generations of American women have – for many – become wrapped up in Senator Clinton’s candidacy. Woe betide the man who speaks ill of her.

But I’ll take that risk, because it’s not Senator Clinton’s gender that bothers me.

It’s her character – and her last name.

The Clintons – Bill and Hillary – seem to me to embody everything that has gone wrong with American liberalism. Simply stated, whatever principles they started with have become entirely subordinated to their unquenchable ambition. They will do whatever it takes to win high office – and having won, to hang on.

As a result, they – and their allies – have nearly completed the decades-long process of neutering the Democratic Party as an instrument of progressive government.

At least since the rise of Ronald Reagan, Democrats have been playing the political equivalent of a “prevent defense” – which, as every football fan knows, too often prevents winning.

Witness Mr. Clinton’s two terms. True, he balanced the Federal budget – an admirable achievement. But he fumbled health care reform in his first year – and never tried again. He did nothing serious about Social Security, immigration, or the environment.

Indeed, despite remarkable skills as a communicator, he never – after his first year – mounted a serious effort to rally public opinion on behalf of any major, progressive policy initiative.

As I see it, Mr. Clinton enjoyed being President more than exercising the powers of the presidency. To understand how little he used these powers, one need simply compare Mr. Clinton’s presidency with that of his successor – a man with a fraction of his intellectual and rhetorical gifts, but possessing an unshakeable will.

From my perspective, Mr. Clinton’s presidency was a holding action – a waste of eight years. And his most unforgivable failure – one in which his First Lady was fully complicit – was his refusal to resign after the Lewinsky scandal.

Had Mr. Clinton resigned, Al Gore would have become president – with two years to establish himself, shake off the taint of a scandal in which he played no part, and set a new course.

Given the closeness of the 2000 election, it’s inconceivable that a President Gore would not have defeated Governor Bush – in which case, much that has gone so badly wrong over the past seven years might have been avoided.

Yet, even after it became clear that the scandal would, at best, reduce Mr. Clinton to the lamest of ducks, the Clintons clung to office. In so doing, they failed their party – and their country.

In my view, this failure is sufficient justification for rejecting Senator Clinton’s candidacy. Still, in fairness, I’ve watched for signs that a second President Clinton might be better than the first.

I’ve seen none.

Senator Clinton supported the resolution authorizing President Bush’s invasion of Iraq – and waited until public opinion turned against the war before cautiously speaking against it. Even today, she has made clear that she expects to keep American troops in Iraq at least through her first term as President – which essentially means she would have neither the money nor the political capital to advance her domestic agenda.

Senator Clinton has supported President Bush’s escalation of tensions with Iran – an unnecessary confrontation which will likely result in serious, unnecessary blowback.

She has offered only the feeblest criticisms of the President’s violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights, and the constitutional separation of powers.

In short, she has sedulously avoided any expression which would limit the powers of the office she hopes to win – a disturbing portent. From her behavior, Senator Clinton strikes me as the most cold-bloodedly ambitious person to seek the Oval Office since Richard Nixon.

That said, good friends have asked the obvious question: If 2008 came down to a choice between Senator Clinton and some arch-conservative Republican, wouldn’t you have to vote for her?

Nope.

As a student of History, I like to think long-term.

True, electing Senator Clinton would deprive the GOP of the White House.

But it would also commit the US to at least another four years in Iraq. That, in turn, would mean additional hundreds of billions – funds better devoted to health care, education, alternative energy and a decaying infrastructure – being poured down a rat hole.

Electing Senator Clinton would also assure her campaign for re-election in 2012 – virtually guaranteeing that no truly progressive candidate would appear on the ballot before 2016. And, given the balance between the two parties – and the consequent trend of alternating decades in power – a Clinton victory might well mean waiting until 2020 or 2024 for another shot at a genuinely progressive presidency.

Life’s too short – and the crucial issues are too pressing.

Thus mindful, I can justify electing a Republican to deal with the mess his party made in Mesopotamia – and devoting my efforts to electing a true progressive in 2012.

And if Senator Clinton is the nominee, that choice will become far easier.