Thursday, May 08, 2008

The Hillary Blues

I feel badly for Hillary Clinton, ...sort of. She seems to have come down with the virus that's spread throughout the US government in the 21st century - hubris.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Hubris, of course, is a creature of mythology which holds it to be followed by Nemesis.

Hubris is the toxic sludge that results from mixing arrogance with delusion. Once consumed, it leads its victims to self-destruct.

Now I blame Cheney/Rumsfeld for spreading the virus to the highest ranks of the US government. Iraq and Afghanistan today are the Nemesis to their earlier Hubris.

Let's face it. Hillary was about as relevant to the women's movement as John McCain is to the POW's presidential aspirations. Hillary was anatomically correct but I never heard her really championing womens' rights, did you? In fact it seems Hillary was, if anything, bent on appearing masculine, tough - a man, just with some internal organ and skeletal differences. She wanted to be seen as equivalent to a male president, a full-bore, always ready-to-destroy Commander in Chief. That got her into talk about "obliterating " Iran. Sorry, you don't want someone who begins by seeing that as an option. No one can tell. Circumstances could someday just get you there (but that's not even very likely) but you've already introduced this as an annihilation scenario. Sorry, Hilly, but that would've been too gauche even for Goldwater. I think we're all a lot better off without leaders constantly surfing that edge.

Obama? Is he running as a "white man"? Look, there's no question he's trying to cover that demographic but there's also no question that he's not going to compromise his message of change to get it. When Hillary reached for the draft and Crown Royal there was no longer any doubt about her conviction, her altruism. She took the crown of Queen Pander.

Hillary went to the extreme out of desperation. And it was out of her desperation that we got a glimpse at the true Hillary. Her leadership would slavishly follow the prevailing winds. There was no bottom, no shelf even where her foot would land and hold to prevent her from falling ever more inward. Once we saw Hillary, in her full hubris mode, we knew she wasn't fit for the job. Worse yet, we knew we could never trust her, no matter what, for the truth.

Goodbye Hillary. You and Bill had a damned good run.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Indiana, she woke up thinking she was Jack Layton appearing on Lou Dobbs' show and campaigned on a gas tax holiday. No wonder the Virgin Mary in South Bend thought that she went bananas.

I felt sorry for her yesterday. Today what I saw was the failed American version of Maggie Thatcher, but one who batted like a member of her beloved Chicago Cubs. Except that Steve Bartman did not cause her defeat. I can't stop laughing at her now.

LeDaro said...

Hey MoS, she does have testicular fortitude.;)
I feel sorry for her. Her comments that Obama will not get working class white votes was over the top. She needs extended vacations to recover.

The Mound of Sound said...

Yeah, it is sad in a way. The question now seems to be whether she'll go out with any grace but I suspect her money problems will decide her departure schedule. Even after the $11-million she's "loaned" to her campaign, there remain millions of additional debts she can't pay.

I read a piece suggesting that a candidate's loans to their campaign have to be repaid prior to the subject vote or they're deemed extinguished. That means Hillie will have to raise that money, plus whatever she already owes in direct debts plus what she'll need to continue her campaign, and do it before the Democratic Party convention.

You're right LD. That crack about "hard-working Americans, white people" was completely over the top and yet it spoke to the sort of candidate Hillary has been and the type of president she might just have made had this gone another way.

It'll be good to see her gone.

What I'll find interesting is what effect her campaign antics will have on the Clinton franchise. Bill Clinton has certainly been tarnished by his ill-considered comments. Will audiences still be as interested in paying huge bucks to listen to a Bill Clinton speech after this? I suspect he'll see a hit in his bookings and the fee level his dwindling fans will accept.

Anonymous said...

MOS,

We will see if the Clinton Foundation will quietly move from its Harlem address and there are any more response to him promoting AIDS research for Africa.

But I think the world will see that Bill is a fraud too. It seems that George W. Bush has given more to aid to Africa due to the priority set under Colin Powell and Condi Rice when they ran the State Department.

Will there be a day when Colin Powell can raise more money than Bill?