In Part 1, I wrote that although Senator Bernie Sanders was offering the American people moonshine (Please see note 1 below), socialist nonsense and a discredited “the government will pay for everything” philosophy—and many people, especially the young, are swallowing the lollypop and baying for more—it is difficult to dislike the grandfatherly virtual communist from Vermont who wants to turn the United States into a European socialist democracy.
The latter is a flawed model with almost no economic growth and one in which generations of young people can’t find jobs.
But what about Hillary? Can anyone actually like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
Does Anyone Actually Believe Her?
Her problem is that she has as little believability as her husband, former president Bill Clinton. But unlike Bill she lacks any of his roguish charm or political skills that made him popular. The latter included a self-serving pragmatism that allowed him to turn on a dime; to go, at one point in his presidency, from being Mr. Big Government to a man who disingenuously howled, “The era of big government is over.”
And yet he convinced many people at the time.The latter is a key phrase in Bill Clinton’s remarkable and sordid history.
Unfortunately, Hillary, who began her presidential campaign this time having as few press conferences as possible and talking in nebulous generalities as much as possible, doesn’t have Bill’s remarkable political/flim-flaming skills.
Look Out for the Negatives
So despite leading Comrade Sanders in the Democratic party presidential race, Hillary’s negative polling ratings remain unbelievably high. They are almost as bad as republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
Why?
Many people, even some who support her, instinctively sense her shallowness. However, the Clintons have many buddies in the mainstream media who insist she is brilliant.
One is a former Clinton administration official and now ABC News anchor who interviewed presidential candidates continued to keep close connections to the Clinton’s foundation. Another is CBS morning show host Charlie Rose. In an argumentative interview with Bernie Sanders, Rose recently insisted that she was highly qualified to be president.
Based on what?
She was Secretary of State under President Obama. Indeed, when asked about it, Clinton goes into her standard “I’ve travelled millions of miles” as secretary of state routine. But what did she accomplish in that office?
Where’s My Prize?
Her reasoning is tantamount to a journalist who says he or she has written thousands of articles so he or she deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Yes, she had a job—as did George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld—but what did he or she accomplish?
What we can say is that American State Department officials died—perhaps needlessly—on her watch in Benghazi in Libya. They died in a terrorist attack after State Department officials had warned her that security was lax.
In the wake of the attack Secretary Clinton didn’t even acknowledge that it was a terrorist attack. Later, in a Congressional investigation, it was established that Clinton was told months before the attack that more security was desperately needed at State Department offices in Libya.
It’s not My Job
Clinton essentially told Congress that it wasn’t her jurisdiction; that someone else handled security. (But wasn’t she Secretary of State? Did the buck stop with her?). Under intensive questioning she finally said “what does it matter?”
What does it matter?
It matters a lot to the families of the State Department officials who died. It matters a lot to personnel who are today stationed at dangerous embassies around the world. Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history.
Learned Nothing. Forgot Nothing
Owing to the surprising success of Senator Sanders, Hillary Clinton now finds herself moving to the social democratic left as is much of the Democratic party is today. She has neither learned from the mistakes of Libya nor the mistakes of big government; of a creeping socialism that takes over more and more of the economy in so many nations (including the United States) without anyone mentioning Karl Marx. One can call this “a socialism without doctrines.”
Hillary Clinton wants the job of president. Eight years ago she wanted it but accepted the consolidation prize of Secretary of State, which president Obama gave her to keep her from stirring up trouble outside of his administration.
She didn’t become Secretary of State because she speaks multiple foreign languages, has devoted herself to a life-long studies of international affairs or has established her expertise with respected tomes. The appointment was made on the same political basis on which President Obama later appointed political ally Caroline Kennedy as ambassador to Japan (Please see note 2 below). Today Hillary Clinton wants to be president.
Your Stake in This
And—whether you are a State Department official working abroad or a taxpayer or small business owner groaning under the persistent taxes and regulations that make your life miserable or a young person who can’t find a job because American economic growth rates could soon be approximating those of most of anemic Europe—you should think seriously about the consequences of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Hillary Clinton, the same as most career pols both republican and democratic, is in it not because she actually believes in a set of principles that values liberty and individual freedom. She is in it for one thing: She wants the job because it represents ultimate power, something she and her husband drool over.
But, then again, so do a number of republicans. We’ll begin dealing with them in our next segment on GregoryBresiger.com
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Note 1: Little things say a lot about pols. Of course, pols like to pretend they’re just like the rest of us and ride public transit. Indeed, they often like to lecture us on the virtues of public transit and public education, although they and their relatives rarely use either.
Senator Sanders, who grew up in Brooklyn a long time ago, just came to New York to campaign and took the perfunctory subway ride. He said he knew all about subways, having lived part of his youth in the borough of Kings. They use tokens on the subways, he explained.
Wrong.
We haven’t used tokens on our wretched state run subways in decades. We use chip cards. I suppose Senator Sanders actually believed that he could use a token and probably also thought the rattling subway would take him to Ebbets Field so he could see the Dodgers. They left here at the end of the 1957 season and now play below the palm trees in LALA land.
However, Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York and supposedly a veteran rider, didn’t do much better with her subway experience. She kept swiping and swiping with her Metrocard and couldn’t initially gain entrance to the House of Horrors called the New York City subways.
Note 2: Caroline Kennedy knew nothing of the language and problems of East Asia. When asked about problems between China and other nations in the region she said at her Senate confirmation region that she “would have to study up on it.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time a president appointed a political ally to a sensitive post that deserves a man or woman of considerable expertise and language skills. President George Herbert Walker appointed Robert Strauss, a lawyer and career political wheeler-dealer, as ambassador to Russia at a critical time.
Strauss was a talented pol. But he had zero qualifications to be ambassador to Russia, as it was struggling to escape from its Soviet past. (Incidentally, the first Bush and Clinton administrations were times of of disastrous U.S. policies that are the cause of many of the problems we face today. Despite warnings, the U.S., insisted on expanding NATO right to the doorstep of Russia. I ask you: Suppose Russia included Mexico or Canada in an alliance hostile to the U.S.. How would we as Americans feel? Today we are on the verge of a new Cold War).
I understand why presidents often pay off political debts by appointing buddies as ambassadors. Many times you need their political help to get elected. The Kennedys backing Obama against Clinton came at a critical time in 2008.
However, these political debt appointments should not be to major countries such as Russia or Japan. They call for men and women who have expertise, not political hacks or people whose qualifications are “friends of Bill” or friends of George.” Those are inappropriate recommendations. One might as well put Bill Clinton in charge of an Ethics department.
