Column: "Hillary Clinton v. The Clinton Skeptic"

Friday, 11 January 2008 - 802 words

On the one hand, one cannot rightly blame Hillary Clinton for her mini-breakdown in New Hampshire. For almost as long as she’s been a candidate for president, Senator Clinton has gone substantively unchallenged and remained a dominant frontrunner, cherished by her party and throngs of strangers everywhere she spoke.

Then came Iowa and the shellacking at the hands of Barack Obama. Clinton’s carefully scripted off-the-cuff remarks and meticulously crafted distortions of current events didn’t appear to be helping anymore; every tried and true campaign stratagem seemed to become a perfect disaster, and when the fear of failure got to be too much, perhaps it occurred to her that the New Hampshire primary was coming precariously close to mirroring her own marriage: Someone younger and better looking was standing in the way of what she wanted, and there was nothing she could do about it. When it finally got to be too much, she broke down a little. And it saved her campaign.

On the other hand, skepticism should always be the fallback position when it comes to the Clintons. Likely that Senator Clinton doesn’t open her eyes in the morning without first wondering how it might impact her poll numbers. There is no earthly reason to believe that a woman who hasn’t displayed a spontaneous reaction in fifteen years suddenly found her emotional center – one day before the New Hampshire primary, which she was primed to lose badly – and decided to show everyone, as a means of conveying her resolute earnestness.

Had (then) First Lady Clinton, in the midst of explaining how a right-wing conspiracy was responsible for her husband’s serial infidelity, so much as batted an eye, or paused to blink, or wiped a phantom tear from her eye, perhaps one could reflect upon that display and take the New Hampshire stage show seriously. As it was, her bulldoggedness kept her from anything other than a forward assault, and with our knowing how Mrs. Clinton later reacted to Bill’s further dalliances (minus the conspiracy jive, add lamp throwing), it becomes even harder to believe Candidate Clinton is prone to choking up when reflecting upon the country’s potential.

Not convinced? Then take into account Senator Clinton’s batting practice at the expense of Access Hollywood last Sunday, wherein Maria Menounos subjected the senator to such hard-hitting questions as: “Do you have, like, regular woman problems?” “You’re alone on a Saturday, you don’t have any work to do: What do you do?” and, “Do you watch any reality shows?”

Of particular interest to Clinton skeptics, this gem: “Everyone is talking about Saturday’s debate. And you were criticized for getting angry; more people say angry and defensive. And it seems as though when a male candidate gets upset or voices their opinion, it’s okay. And now we’re seeing a female up there for the first time in a long time, and, and … or, ever. Are you – it seems like it’s not okay for a female. Do you – how do you express your emotions without tuning people out?”

This should have come as a shock to Senator Clinton, who not long ago took great pains to establish the fact she wasn’t being attacked because she’s a woman, but because she was ahead. “Well, I am passionate about what I believe,” Clinton replied, “and I am passionate about this country and what we need to do to change what is happening. And I know that you don’t get change by hoping for it, or demanding it. You get change by working hard to bring people together. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. And I want people to know that about me, and to know that I’m a fighter. You know, you can’t be a president who just says, ‘Oh, send me to the White House and everything will be wonderful.’ That’s not the way the world works. You want to be able to count on somebody to make the changes that they said that they will bring about.”

(For those of you keeping score, that’s “change” four times in one paragraph. And by the way, those of you taking such incalculable delight in President Bush’s problems with the language ought do yourselves the favor of attempting to diagram a few of the above sentences, and enjoy some giggles.)

The skeptic says: Something in the question about emotion finally underscored for the Clinton campaign the senator’s lack of reputation for pointless feelgoodism when compared to Senator Obama; when you’re a liberal, pointless feelgoodism matters. Worse having come to worse, it was decided that Clinton should break down slightly on Monday, lest the voters forget that Clinton is more than aware of what it means to undertake the solemn task of being president.

If it weren’t so brilliant, it would make the skeptic sick to his stomach.