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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Why I'll never vote for Hillary
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| Parent(s) |
Candidate
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| Contributor | Bob |
| Last Edited | Bob Oct 12, 2007 08:53am |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Daily News |
| News Date | Friday, October 12, 2007 02:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The Washington Post correctly calls Hillary's retreat from free trade "opportunism under pressure," the pressure being the rampant and popular protectionism of her presidential rivals, particularly in protectionist Iowa. But while "opportunism under pressure" suggests (pace Hemingway) cowardice, the better description of Clintonism is slipperiness. Adaptability. Cynicism, if you like.
Note her clever use of terms. Reassessing NAFTA sounds great to protectionists, but it is perfectly ambiguous. It could mean abolition or radical curtailment. It could also mean establishing a study commission whose recommendations might not reach President Hillary Clinton's desk until too late in her second term.
The Post editorial noted "a perverse kind of good news" in Hillary's free-trade revisionism: "There's little chance that her position reflects any deeply held principle." And there lies the beauty not just of Clinton on free trade but of the Clinton candidacy itself: She has no principles. Her liberalism is redeemed by her ambition; her ideology subordinate to her political needs.
I could never vote for her, but I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her - precisely because she is so liberated from principle. Her liberalism, like her husband's - flexible, disciplined, calculated, triangulated - always leaves open the possibility that she would do the right thing for the blessedly wrong (i.e. self-interested, ambition-serving, politically expedient) reason.
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