The liberals and many feminists-by-cause are falling all over themselves to see Hillary Clinton be anointed - ah, I mean elected, the next president. I don’t hear any of them explain what causes Hillary would espouse because quite simply Hillary doesn’t yet know herself what her platform would be, at least from a visionary standpoint. She has hinted that she would be more aggressive on the international stage and would thus distinguish herself from the current golfer - I mean, commander - in chief. But that’s not what the Liberal Left wants to hear from her. What they want from Hillary is a Helen Ready “hear me roar” type of candidacy with which she will try to accommodate them.
Here’s the problem, though. Arguably, Hillary has not distinguished herself as a U.S. Senator or Secretary of State and her dereliction of duty with regard to Benghazi speaks for itself. Furthermore, her appearance in front of the Congressional hearings was remarkably absurd when she declared that it didn’t matter how Ambassador Stephens and the 3 special forces personnel, were killed there.
Hillary is not a stranger to fiction. A respected journalist by the name of William Saphire back in 1996 called Hillary a congenital liar for her testimony in the Whitewater hearings. Hillary was not afraid to cast aspersions on all those who said that Bill Clinton was lying regarding the Monica Lewinsky affair, when she declared that it was all a “right wing conspiracy”. Personally, I don’t think that a president should have to go through a civil suit about sexual harassment during his term but for Hillary to claim a right-wing conspiracy about the facts showed simply how brazenly she was willing to lie. Besides Benghazi and her defense for the Lewinsky affair, is her hallucination about walking under sniper fire on her arrival to Bosnia in 1996. As far as her judgment goes; in Sept of this year, Hillary at a national energy conference declared that climate change is “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.” Apparently Islamic Jihad in the form of ISIS, Alquaida and Iran’s nuclear production come second to that.
I am far from a Hillary expert but from what I did read I know that when Hillary and Bill were contemplating marriage to each other they both acknowledged the great sacrifice for Hillary to give up her law career for Bill’s political ambitions. The nation observed how much of a raw nerve it struck in her when her critics questioned how overactive she was in 1992 with policy issues such as health care when she exclaimed “I suppose I could have been some woman sitting home and baking cookies”.
I consider myself a feminist and I believe that women can accomplish anything intellectual that a man is able to. There are plenty of women scientists and world diplomats to speak of but when it comes to Hillary Clinton - I just don’t see any exemplary qualities at all. In fact I see someone who has a real difficulty just being comfortable in their own skin. I believe that because she is a product of the 60’s under Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan’s influence, she is someone who never really forgave Bill for following him on his career path to the detriment of her own. Even though she has gotten to be a U.S. Senator and a Secretary of State, I believe that she won’t be fulfilled until she evens out the score with Bill and becomes President just as he was. Then she will have purged from her system all that rage, you know, the type of rage that made her throw lamps at Bill. You might be asking why necessarily does it have to be a rage based on a frustrated rivalry - well, because it couldn’t be for his philandering - that was a conspiracy made up by the right wing!
I was watching Ken Burns biography about the Roosevelts when I was struck with what a real feminist icon was and should be. Eleanor Roosevelt was orphaned at ten and grew up with an abusive mother and an alcoholic father. Yet as first lady she was unassuming - humbly and steadfastly doing such monumental work behind the scenes.
She was a great advocate for unemployed women and youth traveling extensively to visit relief projects and observing working conditions. She opened up a great dialogue with women with a column she wrote in a woman’s magazine, receiving 300,000 letters which helped shape her husband’s New Deal agenda. She was very active in the civil rights movement upon which she was very successful in shining a light. During WWII, Eleanor did what she could for European refugees including the Jews who were fleeing the Nazis. During the Japanese internment, because she came to believe that they were unjust, she went and let herself be photographed among them. From 1945 to 1953 she served as Harry Truman’s Special Ambassador to the United Nations where she helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that she stood behind as she traveled all over the world in an effort in its implementation. She was busy writing and lecturing until she died in 1962 even while suffering for the last 2 years of her life with anemia and tuberculosis. Eleanor Roosevelt was an iron lady just as much as Margaret Thatcher but in those days women didn’t have to “wear the pants” to prove that they were powerful. They just were. I think Hillary tries too hard to “wear the pants”. Hillary has quoted from Eleanor Roosevelt “ if you’re going to be involved in politics you have to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros”. There’s much she could learn from Eleanor’s example but the least of which is how to emulate a rhinoceros!
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