Looking out for Hillary

LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson

I recently heard a commentator say Hillary Rodham Clinton had spent her life in public service. Shortly thereafter, I read an article in which Alan Patricof, a Clinton fundraiser, stated, “She and Bill were both government servants all of their life.”

So, one message promulgated currently by Clinton supporters is the wannabe’s awesome record of service that speaks grandly to qualification. That is understandable, but let‘s not get carried away. There is service and self-service.

It is more accurate to say HRC has been involved in politics all her life, but one can be so implicated without being elected to a plethora of offices. Hillary was only elected to one full term as a New York senator and two years of a second term before being appointed Secretary of State in ’09 by Obama, whom she emulates politically and philosophically.

Here’s a sidebar but important: Hillary wasn’t from New York when elected senator; it’s just New York law doesn’t demand a period of citizenship as a qualifier. The reason the Clintons established residency was a career move more than a drive along the scenic road of public service.

Self-service before service.

Clinton is an enigma. She was raised a conservative and even worked for Republican candidates in her early days. She left the Republican Party in 1968, a pivotal year in social politics. She once described herself as a “conservative of the mind and a liberal of the heart.”

That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it was still true. Today, Hillary is a liberal of the mind and heart and the conversion has been as complete as it gets.

That doesn’t mean her rhetoric won’t hint of moderation. She will say what she wants heard, but her loyalty to the causes of the Left are eternal and shaped by Saul Alinsky’s principles for achieving power and by the Bill Clinton/Barack Obama presidential models.

Hillary graduated from Wellesley College in 1969 and Yale Law School in 1974, a time of radicalism across American campuses and conversion to Left-leaning dogma. She embraced it quicker than a submariner seeking love in a house of ill repute.

In 1977 she co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Today she supports abortion as a reasonable answer to inconvenience. How can a person be pro-abortion and pro-child at the same time?

Clinton has proclaimed herself a champion for the middle class, but this woman has never felt the limits of middle class life. She has lived well within a peculiar set of wealthy liberalism, and her compassion for working folks living on a budget is as decorative as John Kerry’s hair.

Middle class empathy wasn’t evident at exclusive Wellesley or Yale, or as a First Lady. A privileged lifestyle conflicts with claims of paycheck-to-paycheck understanding. Tones of authenticity are missing in speeches.

When one is married to a governor and later a president, I don’t see that as being a public servant qualifier. Isn’t it being a spouse?

Furthermore, I don’t think the Left respected Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush as public servants, so let’s not give unearned points to Hillary for being hitched to Bubba.

During the time Hillary was First Lady (1993-2001), she weathered scandals including Whitewater, the Vince Foster business, Travelgate, and the Lewinsky fling, a permanent stain on the Clinton name.

It is surely from these controversies that HRC learned to handle unpleasant public responses to seedy political and personal behaviors. She has become a master of brush off, cover-up, and blame shifting. Those skills aren’t redemptive or desirable, but they are absolutely there.

I would settle for honesty, a virtue missing in Alinsky doctrine.

Speaking of which, you should know that as a senator, HRC supported George W. Bush’s military action in Iraq and Afghanistan following the attacks of 9/11, but as soon as political opportunity appeared–public impatience–Clinton became shifty.

In that fashion, Hillary could be a patriot first, supporting her president amid initial public support, and then critic as soon as the going got tough. Politically, it was the best of both worlds as engineered by a master politician. That shift helped set the table for her run at the presidency in ‘08.

Let’s be careful of Hillary Rodham Clinton and all spurious claims to a lifetime of public service. Let’s look closely at the record and all behaviors before giving credit.

Don’t equate political ambition with warm and fuzzy intentions.

Keep in mind all those on the Left are agenda servants first.

Larry W. Anderson’s novel, I, Eugenius, is available at Maryville Daily Forum.