Monday, November 05, 2007

HILLARY CLINTON

Has Hillary Successfully Deployed the Victim Card?

I'm a little bummed that John Podhoretz has left the Corner. But he's now blogging at the Commentary site, and contending that rather than a whiny misstep, Hillary Clinton's campaign's charge of "the Politics of Pile-On" has worked for her by shifting the debate: "In its immediate aftermath, the debate was seen as a referendum on her policy slipperiness, and one in which she did not come off well. Now, however, the discussion of the debate has become something quite different."

He spotlights this insane quote from a Hillary backer over at the New Republic, "Oh, and for you Obama and Edwards supporters, remember the story about the man who didn’t stand up to the Nazis when they came for his neighbors."

Is Hillary going to be able to turn her lead answer into gold by playing the victim card? My first instinct is to say no, but as time goes by, I begin to wonder if I've completely lost my touch with the non-political junkie public (or at least the ones that answer pollster's questions). I'll admit, I don't get Hillary's 50 percent approval rating (with a 46 percent disapproval).

I think that even if I were a liberal on policy issues, I would be wary of Hillary Clinton. The rise of the Norman Hsu scandal, from the same operation that had the Chinese fundraising scandal in 1996, would suggest to me that this woman doesn't learn from her mistakes. (And why on earth would these stunts like bundling from nonexistent donors in Chinatown be worth the risk? Is there any chance that Hillary Clinton's campaign might find itself short on cash between now and Election Day 2008?)

If I were upset about NSA eavesdropping, I wouldn't be able to support a woman who did the same as a private citizen in the 1992 campaign. (See “Her Way”, the biography of Hillary Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., page 93).

I'd be appalled that the same couple that decried the politics of personal destruction hired "a private investigator who proposed 'to impeach [Gennifer Flowers’] character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.'" (Her Way, page 94.)

If I were upset about an executive branch assuming too much power without oversight, I'd be wary about a third term for an administration that allowed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate opponents of its projects and "demanded that they turn over their personal diaries, petitions and phone messages, and threatened them with $50,000 fines."

Yet the Democrats, after years of loudly proclaiming the importance of a leader tolerating and even appreciating dissent, are hell-bent on nominating a candidate who has aimed to crush it through much of her career.

So maybe the public will see her as a victim in all of this. I've placed my last bet on the public's scrutiny of the Clintons.

11/05 02:50 PMShare