Sunday, September 30, 2007

A Quarter Century of HIllary?



Just how much Hillary Clinton can America bear? Eight years as activist First Lady, eight more as Senator Clinton, and now the prospect of eight long years as President of the United States? Can America stand 24-unbroken years of Hillary in their faces? Can anyone? That's the premise of a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times in which she really brought focus on the unease a lot of people feel about Hillary Clinton:

As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: “She’s never going to get out of our faces. ... She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone.”

An earlier generation had the entwined political dynasties of the Roosevelts and the Kennedys. Now, as Nancy Benac of The Associated Press wrote on Friday, 116 million Americans — nearly 40 percent of the nation — “have never lived when there wasn’t a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.”

Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar. But then, without nepotism, W. would be pumping gas in Midland — and not out of the ground.

I don't think dynasties serve any democracy well. Prime Minister Ben Mulroney? No - Mulroney, Trudeau, Bush, even Clinton - one is enough. This is especially true for America today, a country desperately in need of political rebirth. It wasn't just George w. Bush who created the mess that the US finds itself in today. Hillary Clinton's congress also has to shoulder its share of the blame.

4 comments:

Oldschool said...

might have missed this, probably wasn't in the NY Times . . . . Pelosi's congress . . . approval rating 15% . . . . that's less than half of George's . . . wow!!!
GOP will win it all in 08!

Anonymous said...

I think she's terrific, smart, experienced and has every right to run. Should she stay back just because of her husband?

Silly nonsense.

With the mess the US is in right now - the job will be difficult and some American experts are saying it will take 50 years to get over the mess Bush created. Not a good time to take a chance with someone with little experience that's for sure.

The Mound of Sound said...

Smart and experienced, yes? Principled? I'm not so sure. I think opportunism is a much more powerful guiding force to Hillary Clinton than principle. I'm also pretty leery of some of the support she's been attracting in her 8-year old campaign.

Anonymous said...

40% of the US population was born after 1988?

That is hard to believe.