Sarah Sands: To win, Hillary needs to kill Bill
- From: jose <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 07:08:12 -0800 (PST)
To win, Hillary needs to kill Bill
Sarah Sands
Obama was the 'change' candidate in Iowa, and won. As the 'experience'
candidate, the former First Lady needs to distance herself from the
very thing that has helped create her
Strategists for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign have come to
dread the rustle of conversation among the back rows of audiences
during the final lap of her speeches. I feared that her husband,
standing behind her as she took to the podium in Iowa, might be
stifling a yawn as he thrust out his jaw. Hillary's voice has been so
decontaminated of tell-tale feeling that it flatlines.
By contrast, Barack Obama's victory speech had the lyricism and
potency (although not the radicalism) of Martin Luther King. Bill
Clinton's advice to his wife has been to bring "joy" to her campaign.
Obama's speech was an ode to joy, accompanied by boisterous applause.
Hillary's performance could have been an advertisement for senior
health care. The line-up behind her - General Wesley Clark, Madeleine
Albright, Bill Clinton - was impressive but dog-tired. Her husband
suddenly resembled the sort of Hollywood star who hobbles on to the
stage at the Oscars to receive the lifetime achievement award.
Early in the campaign, Hillary's strategist, Mark Penn, did some focus
groups among women voters. White suburban women were the most hostile.
They described her as " threatening and unwomanly", "ruthless and
greedy for power". Penn concluded that Hillary's personality was "
just too big a mountain to move" and that her campaign therefore
should concentrate on issues and competence. Hillary's stately
progress, bolstered by a polished election machine and establishment
funds, seems invincible, so long as she is kept away from voters. This
is what appears to have gone wrong for her in Iowa. Suddenly political
pedigree and clout counted for less than an outstretched hand.
To see Hillary lose on emotional intelligence must have wounded Bill
Clinton greatly. Didn't the sly old entertainer long to push her aside
and win back the audience with his bashful charm? Yet he is as
constrained as she. They are each other's political soulmates or two
drowning swimmers who can't cut themselves free. Obama played on this
with all his cunning sweetness. He thanked his wife, Michelle, "love
of my life", "the rock of the Obama family", knowing that Hillary
could not mention her husband by name without raising all the dust of
their marriage. The name Clinton is so potent with conflict that it
has been banned from the campaign.
The woman whose refusal to take her husband's name alienated her from
traditionalists and whose submission to it infuriated feminists, has
now ditched it altogether and appears only as Hillary. Obama, healer
of the nation, showed no mercy towards his rival's wounds. He said
that his campaign stood for change against the stale status quo,
ordinary people against those with money, hope over fear,
reconciliation over division.
Does anyone in particular come to mind as an establishment candidate,
backed by big money, polarising voters and promising to weather the
storms of a dangerous world? Finally Obama obliquely addressed the
greatest charge that Iowa is a political blip of no consequence which
will be wiped out by New Hampshire. This, he declared, was "a defining
moment in history: ... this is the moment when it all began", when
Hillary's momentum juddered and failed.
A particular idiosyncrasy of the female reaction to Hillary is that
women prefer her when she is down. The height of her popularity
followed her public humiliation by her adulterous husband. It was this
tide of sympathy for a woman betrayed by her husband that allowed her
to run as New York Senator. There was another spasm of support for her
after the other presidential candidates dealt roughly with her during
a televised debate. Her campaign team were quick to brief that six men
against one woman did not seem a fair fight. Once it looked as if Iowa
was going to turn out as badly her campaign team raised the woman
question again. Surely women voters should show solidarity towards
Hillary in New Hampshire after watching her on the ropes in Iowa?
Wouldn't that be the right thing to do?
The problem with summoning the female vote is that it remains so
ambivalent towards her. It is not merely a divide between modern women
and surrendered wives. It is feminists particularly who wrestle with
their feelings towards Hillary. They wince when she talks about her
long record at the White House, because she was never elected to be
there.
I think this may be hard on Hillary. Benazir Bhutto came to power
through her father. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina took
over from her husband, just as Eva Peró* once did. No one can question
Hillary Clinton's intelligence, her application, her will. She is
perfectly qualified to be president. It is just that she has had her
turn. If it were the co-presidency that she once claimed, then eight
years is constitutionally the limit. Obama skewered his rival on
Friday with his talk of change. While she was politically adept enough
to have appointed herself the candidate for change by the time she
reached New Hampshire, her credentials are really based on baby boomer
nostalgia. As Barbra Streisand longingly sang it: "The Way We Were".
Obama's win in Iowa came on a sea of first-time voters. It was the
young rising up against the old. The reason that Hillary has to look
back is that she must avenge and restore her husband's legacy. He left
the White House with a wounded cry of rage and self-pity. His wife was
as furious. They inexcusably denied Al Gore their whole-hearted
support because he understandably tried to distance himself in his
election campaign from the lewd vices of his predecessor.
The couple are still in a vortex of unfinished business. Newspapers
speculate about the fragility or falseness of their marriage but it is
the sincerity of it that concerns me. They are wholly bound to each
other by a much stronger bond than fidelity - it is a shared political
purpose. They live it and breathe it.
In Sally Bedell Smith's thoughtful biography of the couple, For Love
of Politics, the author sets out Bill Clinton's priorities for the
2000 election campaign, fought on behalf of the Democrats, let us
remind ourselves, by the Vice-President Al Gore. She writes that Bill
Clinton "wanted to airbrush his image for posterity, to fulfil
Hillary's ambitions, to gratify his immediate need to be loved and
admired and to secure a foothold for a return to the White House,
albeit as a junior partner to his wife."
I am sure Clinton was not politically treacherous enough consciously
to will Gore to lose, but his defeat was nevertheless convenient,
making space for Hillary's long-term ambitions. Frankly, Clinton has
not spared Gore's feelings in the past. When Clinton first came to
office in 1992, he was asked whom he needed in the room to make big
decisions. He answered without hesitation: " Hillary." Al Gore joked:
"When people ask me what it's like being number two at the White
House, I tell them she seems to enjoy it."
Hillary was undoubtedly a tough and clear-thinking adviser to her
husband. Not just because she had his interests at heart. More
powerfully, she had their interests at heart. The beam of purpose lit
up the White House. Imagine the rawness of her misery when Bill risked
not merely their marriage but their co-presidency.
Obama's call for change makes things very difficult for Hillary.
Should she, as Gore tried to do, now distance herself from her
husband? Bill's role in her campaign was tentative at first, but
Hillary has had to call on the genie of his charm. Recently the bumper
stickers have grown more confident: "Vote Hill, Get Bill". Hasn't he
been her greatest advocate? Out on the stumps, his big hands clasp the
crowds, he looks into their eyes and tells them what a wonderful wife
he has, with the bitter-sweet certainty of someone who has betrayed
her. Yet my favourite quote from Iowa was the voter who said of Bill's
praise of Hillary: "It's like my mom saying how great I am."
Of course Bill Clinton's support for Hillary's presidency is built on
love and guilt, and perhaps even a youthful deal. He reportedly said
to his friend the journalist Sidney Blumenthal that "trashing me is
fine, if it helps Hillary". This may be the moment for Hillary to cut
the cord and test whether she can survive on her own. In New
Hampshire, Hillary is just ahead in the polls. She must show herself
as more than a political construct or a marriage. Hillary Clinton
needs to be bigger than the sum of her history.
.
- Prev by Date: A Clinton dynasty? Please no!
- Next by Date: John Edwards: The Rise Of The Politics Of Envy
- Previous by thread: A Clinton dynasty? Please no!
- Next by thread: John Edwards: The Rise Of The Politics Of Envy
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
