As of today, polls show Hillary Clinton slightly ahead of Barack Obama among Democratic voters, with Obama gaining ground slowly as voters get to know him, and more closely scrutinize Hillary Clinton, the candidate with more name recognition. It remains to be seen if he can catch up, but Hillary's popularity is puzzling for one reason: she is an extremely divisive figure.
Even her most ardent supporters would have to agree that Hillary Clinton is divisive. In fact, some of her supporters, I believe, take great delight in that. They think she is divisive because she is a fighter, and after eight years of Republican attrocities, they want to line up behind a fighter.
I don't think the candidate herself wants to be divisive. I would imagine that a presidential candidate wants to attract as many voters as possible, so divisiveness is not something she embraces. Even as she has a reputation for being tough, Hillary Clinton is a woman, a wife, a mother, and a human being who believes in helping the less fortunate. So I have to think she has a soft side that secretly wants to be liked, or even loved, as a good and decent person and a candidate whose heart is in the right place. Her semi-tearful moment prior to the New Hampshire primary sent that message quite clearly, even if it isn't clear whether the moment was spontaneous or calculated.
Yet, in spite of what she might desire, Hillary Clinton is and will always be a divisive figure. It is important to acknowledge why this is so, and what it might mean both in the general election, and in an imagined Hillary Clinton presidency.
Hillary Clinton has a history as the wife of a president who was impeached and who, before her husband's Monica Lewinsky moment was acknowledged, claimed that both she and her husband were under siege by a "vast right wing conspiracy." Now many of us felt at the time that there was, and still is, a strong right wing attempt to defeat Democratic politicians, although the use of the word "conspiracy" was not a wise one in that it was an attempt to make her and her husband look like victims, and displayed an unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of their failings.
The Clintons were divisive figures long before Monica, however, in that they came to the White House with an agenda that was never intended to bring their opponents on board. Their arrogant and clumsy overreach in several areas (eg. gays in the military, health care) is partly why the Republicans took the leadership of the Congress in 1994, just two years after Bill Clinton was inaugurated.
Hillary Clinton's divisiveness may have begun during her husband's campaign when she said she wasn't a "Tammy Wynette stand by your man" kind of wife, but that divisiveness blossomed during the Health Care initiative, which was her project. It was then that she earned a reputation as a fighter who did not know how or was unwilling to work with her political opponents to reach her objective of universal health care. As a result, the Congress has been unwilling to return to the question of universal coverage, leaving millions and millions of Americans uninsured for the past fourteen years. That's an enormous price to pay for someone's arrogant and divisive behavior.
Hillary Clinton is divisive for a second reason: because she is such an obvious power hungry politician, and in this election, a consummate divide and conquer one. In Karl Rove fashion, she and her strategists seem willing to cobble together a slim majority by pandering to Hispanics and women and tossing African Americans aside, as they did in North Carolina. So even if she shares a tearful moment with voters, and even as she sounds brilliant on the issues, behind the scenes she is a consummate politician who knows exactly where the Democratic votes are and how to manipulate them in her favor.
One more thing makes Hillary Clinton divisive. She is still married to one of the most divisive figures in recent American politics and, if elected president, will bring him back into the White House. Anyone who doubts the divisiveness of Bill Clinton need only remember his behavior of the past few weeks, using racial innuendo and heavy handed attacks against his wife's opponent. It has even been reported that one of the things that convinced Ted Kennedy not to endorse Hillary was Bill's outrageous behavior.
If the former president's behavior can divide Democrats, how much more can it divide the country in the general election, or if by some miracle Hillary becomes president? In those few weeks after Iowa, Bill Clinton nearly demolished her candidacy with his arrogance and outspokenness. If he can cause that much damage in the campaign, what might he do once he is back in the White House? In a general election, I suspect voters will decide they don't want Bill Clinton's narcissistic ego and unchecked appetites distracting his wife and scuttling her agenda, and so the ultimate risk of a Clinton candidacy is that she would hand the White House to John McCain and the Republicans.
Anyone who thinks a Hillary Clinton general election campaign would not be filled with reminders of her husband's peccadilloes, her willingness to forgive him, and his ultimate impeachment, is living in an alternate universe. The Republicans say they know how to run against Hillary and they are storing up their ammunition, waiting for the fall campaign. I think we should take them at their word.
I can see it now:
Commercials attacking her for her inability to see reality when her husband was having fun in the Oval Office;
Commercials attacking Bill Clinton for being so engaged in the scandal that he took his eye off of Bin Laden;
Commercials pointing to her "experience" in things wives don't want to experience;
Commercials showing the victory party on the White House lawn after impeachment.
It will go on and on. The Republicans have reams of videotape with Hillary and Bill Clinton doing and saying things that will remind voters of things they'd rather forget. It won't be pretty. And when Hillary's "flip-flop" on the war is highlighted, and her past is compared to McCain's war hero past, she won't win.
As we go to vote on Tuesday, we need to ask ourselves, no matter how much we may like a candidate, can he or she win? Hillary Clinton's divisiveness must give us concern.
We also need to determine not only if this is the right person to be president, but if this is the right person for this time? Some may look at the differences between Clinton and Obama and calculate that she has more experience on the national stage, and that is true. But is that enough? After eight years of a tumultuous Clinton presidency, no matter how good the economy may have been, and eight years of a tumultuous Bush presidency, the country is hungry for something new. They're just not yet sure who offers that, which is why the voters are still so uncertain for whom they will vote in just four days.
Hillary and Barack both look like someone new, but aside from her gender, Hillary is not a new kind of candidate, while Barack, race aside, is indeed new. Voting for her would be going back to something that we may remember fondly, as we compare it to the disastrous Bush years, but we forget at our peril how divisive the Clinton years were, and how that divisiveness meant that much of the Clinton agenda failed or had to be seriously modified to please Republicans. We also forget how serious distractions can be in the White House. Without the distraction of Monica and impeachment, for instance, might we have managed to stop Bin Laden? That isn't to leave the Republicans off the hook for their politically calculated actions, or to say Bill Clinton deserved impeachment. But if he had been acting as a president, rather than a philanderer, in the Oval Office, he would never have given them an opening.
Throughout this primary season, one thing has become obvious to me. There are going to be huge problems when the spouse of a former president becomes president herself. No matter how talented or brilliant, that spouse is going to have a problem like no other president. How does the new president both pursue her agenda and still protect the legacy of her spouse? How does her spouse, once the most powerful person on the planet take a back seat? Or does he? And if he doesn't, are we really electing him for a third term? Human nature and marriage being what they are, will there be conflicting loyalties between that to spouse and that to country? And beyond that, when that spouse was impeached because of bad behavior, no matter how trivial it may have seemed to some, how can we trust that the bad behavior will not return? The best way to predict future behavior is to look at past behavior. We should have known that when we voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Many warned of his sexual misconduct, but we overlooked it, and it ultimately became a terrible distraction.
We can't afford another distracted president. We can't afford another divisive president. We must turn the page on the Clinton and Bush dynasties and inject new blood into the White House.
If, in spite of all the problems with a Clinton candidacy, we choose her as our nominee, I fear we will have lost the best opportunity we have to rescue our country. Hillary Clinton may be a good person and a brilliant politician, but that is not what we need now. Even if she is the right person, she is the right person at the wrong time, which means she is the wrong person.
That is the primary reason I cannot vote for her, no matter how much I admire her intelligence, her ambition and her accomplishments.
Like so many others, I believe we need someone who can inspire, who has a vision, who brings us together, who has no history of scandal or brutal divisiveness. We need someone who will not be distracted by a larger-than-life ex president and spouse. We don't just need a candidate from a different party, we need a different kind of candidate, one who can move us in an entirely new direction.
Hillary Clinton may say she is that candidate. She is not.
