IF HILLARY CLINTON CAN’T STAND UP TO TIM RUSSERT, HOW’S SHE GOING TO DO AGAINST AHMADINEJAD, PUTIN, KIM JUNG IL AND OTHER WORLD LEADERS WHO POSE A PROBLEM FOR THE U.S.A.?
IF HILLARY CLINTON CAN’T STAND UP TO TIM RUSSERT, HOW’S SHE GOING TO DO AGAINST AHMADINEJAD, PUTIN, KIM JUNG IL AND OTHER WORLD LEADERS WHO POSE A PROBLEM FOR THE U.S.A.?
By
Ken Eliasberg
Continuing with last week’s theme—i.e. Hillary Clinton’s pathetic performance in the recent Democratic debate, and her need to have her husband come to her rescue because the boys were picking on her—I urge you to take a good look at what’s happening here. Why? Because this is Hillary revealed—not a strong capable, honest and forthright candidate, but an arrogant, overbearing, and dissembling weakling, hiding behind her husband (who, by the way, is also a pathetically weak, sorry excuse for a man). The attack on Russert—i.e. that he is “swfitboating” this poor damsel in distress—is so typically Clintonian in that whenever they screw up it’s someone else’s fault. In this case they were deprived of the opportunity to focus their wrath on their bete noire of choice—i.e. that vast right-wing conspiracy—because Russert, as previously noted, is a credentialed and highly respected member of the Mainstream Media (MSM). And they looked petty and foolish in trying to discredit him. But that’s not my point here. Russert has revealed a fault line far more telling than Hillary’s clumsy fielding of a hard ball question. What’s that? That Hillary can only play hard ball when she’s throwing the ball; she is completely incapable of catching one. Hillary only looks good when she’s fielding “soft ball” questions, and when the MSM is either falling all over her in praise of a very modest effort on her part or, worse yet, papering over a less than modest effort. Russert’s question, which really wasn’t very tough, was the first question that she has received that even remotely resembled a difficult question. And she stumbled badly.
Slick Willie tried to pull this chestnut out of the fire by suggesting that immigration is a tough subject and cannot be handled in a “sound bite” manner. Wait a minute. These debates are all sound bites; this isn’t a meeting of the Council on Foreign Affairs where topics are aired out in a quasi scholarly manner. This is a Q & A format where things move along at a rapid-fire rate. Secondly, the question was simple and required only a simple yes or no answer. Granted, the answer might require a somewhat lengthy explanation, which Mrs. Clinton could have provided in another setting, but the answer itself was routine, and she didn’t provide one because she did not want to offend anyone. You see, Mrs. Clinton’s specialty (as well as that of her husband) is to try to be all things to all people (or, in her husband’s case, to be all “thongs” to all people—just kidding, folks). Her specialty is looking presidential while saying as little as possible—typically, nothing at all.
It is clear by now that the Clintons are incapable of admitting any responsibility for any transgression, no matter how minor or how obvious. It is also clear that, when caught, Hillary—through her surrogates to be sure; in her words, you never want to leave finger prints for finger pointing purposes—will play the gender card, i.e. the mean boys are picking on me. Folks, this ain’t no Maggie Thatcher. This is a woman who piggy backed her way to the top by riding her husband’s coattails as far as they would take her; I was tempted to say a woman who slept her way to the top, but, in the case of the Clintons, I’m not sure that Hillary has been on his dance card since the conception of Chelsea (and that’s really insulting since almost every other woman in town has been on that card). I assure you that Thatcher would not scream for her husband to protect her because the “boys” were picking on her.
Peggy Noonan, who I greatly admire, captured the distinction in a Nov. 9th column for Opinion Journal entitled, Things Are Tough All Over—But Mrs. Clinton is no Iron Lady. In talking of Margaret Thatcher, Noonan observed:
“She was a leader. Margaret Thatcher would no more have identified herself as a woman, or claimed special pleading that she was a mere frail girl, or asked you to sympathize with her because of her sex, than she would have called up the Kremlin and asked how quickly she could surrender. She represented a movement. She was its head. She was a great figure, a person in history, and she was a woman. She was in it for serious reasons, not to advance the claims of a gender but to reclaim for England its economic freedom, and return its political culture to common sense. Her rise wasn’t symbolic but actual. In fact, she wasn’t so much a woman as a lady.”
And, while Hillary might argue that she didn’t put Bill up to it, I can assure you that if she didn’t want it to happen, it would not have happened; it is clear by now who wears the pants in that family, and it ain’t Bill (indeed, more often than not, he can be found without his pants on). He will, however, play a significant role in this election. Why? Because he is not just the sizzle in this political meal—he’s the entire steak. Hillary has all the charm of a psychotic komodo dragon that hasn’t eaten in about 3 years; Bill will have to do all the personality heavy lifting (and by now it is clear that he can charm your pants off—at least that appears to be true in the case of Democratic women).
The Clintons present another problem—one for which they never quite found a solution in their first time around, and that was their two-for-the price-of-one slogan. It didn’t work out then and it won’t play now. Why? Because this is a union that is deeply troubled at best and completely dysfunctional at worst. And the country seems ill disposed to buy into it. Bill Clinton, who Time once labeled as “the Lebido in chief” (before he became the rapist in chief), will always suck up all the oxygen in any room in pursuit of his narcissistic needs, and that will leave us with the feeling that Hillary, left to her own devices, just can’t get the job done.
Ms. Noonan makes another point in contrasting Hillary with Maggie Thatcher, and that is this:
“A word on toughness. Mrs. Clinton is certainly tough, to the point of hard. But toughness should have a purpose. In Mrs. Thatcher’s case, its purpose was to push through a program she thought would make life better in her country. Mrs. Clinton’s toughness seems to have no purpose beyond the personal accrual of power.What will she do with the power? Still unclear. It happens to be unclear in the case of several candidates, but with Mrs. Clinton there is a unique chasm between the ferocity and the purpose of the ferocity. There is something deeply unattractive in this, and it would be equally so if she were a man.”
The point of this, as the coming year will make clear (and I intend to help that clarity along), is to demonstrate that Hillary is 80% hype, 20% her husband, and 100% unqualified to serve in any leadership position, let alone one as critically important as leader of the most powerful country in the world.