I will, from time to time, post my thoughts on the 2008 presidential race, the first of which is this: It is troubling to me that someone like Hillary Clinton can not only be taken seriously as a candidate for president, but that, in her own party and in the media, she is considered to be the front-runner. I defy even her most ardent supporters to answer the simple question: What does she stand for? I challenge them to tell me what her guiding principles are, apart from a greed for power; what her beliefs are, except self-aggrandizement; what truth she represents apart from that truth which Hamlet realized, namely, that 'a man (or woman) may smile and smile and yet be a villain.'
I have some knowledge of the career of Richard Nixon, and I can state that not since Nixon have I witnessed such an adroit and prolific liar in American politics as Hillary Clinton. I will give one small but telling parallel of examples. In speaking once to a group of Irish-Americans, Nixon claimed that his wife Pat was an Irish woman 'born on Saint Patrick's day.'
In fact, she was born on March 16, which is the day before St. Patrick's day, as anyone could easily have discovered. Likewise, in speaking to a group from New Zealand, Hillary Clinton declared that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand-born conqueror of Mount Everest. Hillary Clinton was born in 1947, six years before Hillary climbed Mount Everest, at a time when he was still an unknown bee keeper with a passion for climbing. Exactly the same kind of lie told for exactly the same reason: to impress and ingratiate herself with the audience before her.
Yet, like Nixon, Mrs. Clinton assumed she could get away with such a pointless and obvious lie. In her we see the same arrogance and the same impulse to lie as we did in Nixon. And like him, the media and the political ideologues have forwarded her as their front-runner.
But far more serious than the lie about her namesake are such unresolved matters as her role in the Whitewater scandal, the mysterious death of her law firm colleague, Vince Foster, the Rose Law Firm scandal itself, in which she clearly lied about her knowledge of the whereabouts of the firm's financial records, the firing of the White House travel staff, and her comical lie about her reaction to Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, as reported in her memoir. Her posture that she was the only person in her circle who did not know that her husband was a lying, cheating hound forever banishes any claim that she or her cult may have of her alleged high degree of intelligence.
I would also like her supporters to answer another simple question: Is Mrs. Clinton married or not? That her marriage continues to exist is as open a sham as any that has ever been paraded in public. She and her husband have not lived together for years, and, by all accounts, he continues to philander, she continues to be aware of it, yet they maintain the charade of a marriage purely for purposes of political gain. To abuse marriage in this way is part and parcel of their public behavior and their personal values. To remain 'married' solely to appease public opinion is a disgrace to any couple, yet it is standard procedure for this pair.
Beyond all this, however, remains the fact that Mrs. Clinton, by any analysis of her career, is a socialist at heart, and that she would, if given the power, attempt to impose her own brand of socialism on America (as she did during the closed health care hearings). This would be a disaster not only for the nation's economy (as evidenced by the fact that socialism has not only failed everywhere it has been tried, but that is has often proved to be a hideous nightmare), but for the nation's spirit as well, since socialism kills the human spirit of desire, enterprise and the striving after personal excellence.
Yet, despite all this, she remains the left wing of the Democrats' bleary-eyed hope for the future, dead as it is to reason, dispassionate discourse and faith in the dignity and strength of the individual. One can only hope that, if Mrs. Clinton is nominated, she will be defeated so soundly as to take down with her the churlish ideology that produced her, and free America once and forever from its elitist thrall.
