Koi nhu* ba` Hillary cu~ng bi. tra ta^'n bo+?i Vietcong
- From: DangCSvietnam <DangCSvietnam@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 09:40:12 -0700 (PDT)
Kho^ng tin thi` tho^i
FWD:
Opinion
An Exceedingly Strange New Respect Noemie Emery
Mon May 5, 9:18 AM ET
Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 013, Issue 33 - 5/12/2008 -
'Strange new respect' is the term coined by Tom Bethell, an unhappy
conservative, to describe the press adulation given those who drift
leftward, those who grow "mature," "wise," and "thoughtful" as they
cause apoplexy in right-wingers, and leave their old allies behind.
But no new respect has been quite so peculiar as that given by some on
the right to Hillary Clinton--since 1992 their ultimate nightmare--
whose possible triumph in this year's election has been the source of
their most intense fear. Lately, however, a strange thing has
happened: A tactical hope to see her campaign flourish--to keep the
brawl going and knock dents in Obama--has changed to, at least in some
cases, a grudging respect for the lady herself. Actually, they may not
have changed quite so much as she has (who knows, perhaps merely
changed in her image and tactics), but the Hillary of May 2008 is
radically different from the Hillary of two months ago, much less the
one of last year, or of eight years back. And this one (at least till
the nomination is settled) has some traits the right wing can love.
First of all, she is tough. Boy, is she tough. Next to John McCain's
torture and FDR's polio (or John Kennedy's terrible health and PT-109
put together), she has arguably been through more harrowing times than
any major contender in history. Hillary may not have been tortured for
six years by the North Vietnamese, but her marriage to Bill could have
seemed the equivalent, and surely her life since the start of this
year has been torturous in the extreme. One of the problems that
conservatives had with Hillary before this is that she often seemed to
be playing the victim, trying to use unearned power, looking for outs
and excuses, trying to have things both ways. As first lady, she
seemed to think that she and Bill had both been elected and she had a
right to half of his power, which she used, sometimes misused, but
didn't want to answer for. When criticized, she tried to evade the
accounting by saying she was only the wife.
She campaigned hard and diligently when she ran for the Senate, but
she was elected largely as a reward for her personal suffering, and
she had behind her (which Al Gore resented) the full force of the
White House publicity and patronage organization and an overwhelming
advantage in funds. Again, she was a diligent senator, but the only
reason she entered the 2008 race as the Democratic frontrunner was the
presence of the machine built up by her husband, the web of backers
and donors and favors a two-term president has at his disposal, and
the president himself, thought at the time to be a master campaigner.
She was invincible. She was inevitable. She was proceeding unperturbed
to a largely unearned coronation. But that was then.
Fast forward two months into the new year and into the contest, and
suddenly all this was gone: Barack Obama had the Big Mo and the huge
cash advantage, Bill Clinton had become a distinctly mixed blessing,
and old "friends" and backers had run for the hills, fleeing the ship
that they assumed to be sinking and jumping onto the sleeker new
frigate nearby. Each day brought another instance of treachery and/or
self-preservation. Old allies deserted, the press now assailed her.
The Kennedys, who once fêted her and her mate during happier days on
the Vineyard, bestowed their fraying prestige upon her opponent. Obama
was the new JFK, the new RFK, or, some even implied, the messiah. She
was the obstacle, the impediment, the residue of past scandals; the
woman who was in the way.
One observer once said that the main importance of PT-109 in the life
of John Kennedy was that it was the only time in his life (until he
was murdered) when the power and wealth of his father couldn't help
him at all. Hillary in February 2008, after Obama's stunning string of
10 victories, was like JFK in the water--everything she was used to
relying on had proved to be useless, except that in her case the
people around her kept trying to hold her head under, insisting it was
for her, and of course for the party's, own good. In these dire
straits, Hillary channeled her inner survivor, and, like John Kennedy,
became a Gut Fighter writ large. She fought her way to an island,
dragging her crew mates behind her, fed them on coconuts, and sent
word for rescue. And then it came. "This one's for you!" she cried out
to her base in hard-pressed Ohio as she pulled out the Big One, to
their riotous cheers.
It was about this time that her presentation, and her persona,
underwent notable change.
After March 4, she suddenly seemed to look and sound different: She
began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle,
and so were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so
much merriment. Hillary!--whoever that was--never really cohered as a
character; her previous poses--the Perfect Wife, the Aggrieved Wife,
the Empress-in-Waiting--were all unconvincing, but in her new role--
the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious
and grim resolution--she is suddenly all of a piece. Along with her
inner JFK, she has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back
to the days when he was still "ruthless"), along with her inner
Margaret Thatcher--"No time to go wobbly"--along with echoes of the
John McCain who clawed his way out of the grave only last winter, and
the George W. Bush who just as tenaciously saved his Iraq policy--and
maybe Iraq itself--from the Democrats in Congress last year.
It is no accident that it was just at this juncture that she began to
rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base. It is a truism that
liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and
are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make
their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay
helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while
conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the
canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of
her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social
Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If
the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her
part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one
of our own.
If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has
another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The
snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the
trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the
beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections
of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits,
who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor
fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York
Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan
Chait (who inspired the word "Chaitred" for his pioneer work on Bush
hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and
still shining to her. "She should now go gentle into the political
night," he advised in January. "Go Already!" he repeated in March,
when she had failed to act on his suggestion. "No Really, You Should
Go," he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even
less likely to take his advice. "Now that loathing seems a lot less
irrational," he wrote of the right wing's prior distaste for both the
Clintons. "We just really wish they'd go away."
And what caused this display of intense irritation? She's running a
right-wing campaign. She's running the classic Republican race against
her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the
campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that
the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John
Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan--"The Bear in the Forest"--ran against
Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she's doing it with much the
same symbols.
"Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody
shirt of 9/11," the New York Times has been whining. "A Clinton
television ad, torn right from Karl Rove's playbook, evoked the 1929
stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold
war, and 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden . . .
declaring in an interview with ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel
while she were president," she would wipe the aggressor off the face
of the earth. "Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about
Obama that McCain is," Chait lamented: "He's inexperienced, lacking in
substance," unprepared to stand up to the world. She has said her
opponent is ill-prepared to answer the phone, should it ring in the
White House at three in the morning. Her ads are like the ones McCain
would be running in her place, and they'll doubtless show up in
McCain's ads should Obama defeat her. She has said that while she and
McCain are both prepared to be president, Obama is not. They act, he
makes speeches. They take heat, while he tends to wilt or to faint in
the kitchen. He may even throw like a girl.
And better--or worse--she is becoming a social conservative, a
feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for
arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling
to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances,
she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking
back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing
Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled
in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working
class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now,
she'll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or
at her posh mansion on Embassy Row.
In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved.
"Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she's morphing into Scoop
Jackson," runs one post on National Review's blog, The Corner:
She's entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her
a far more formidable general election candidate. She's fighting the
left and she's capturing the center. She's denounced MoveOn.org. She's
become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and
treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from
Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O'Reilly. The culture war
has come to the Democratic Party.
She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general
election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she,
Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them
running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours. The New
York Times and the rest of the left would go crazy. Respect can't get
stranger than that.
Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to
THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20080505/cm_weeklystandard/anexceedinglystrangenewrespect
.
- Prev by Date: Re: LichsuViet Nhandan Bolsa pha't trie^?n nail/manicure tu*` dda^u ?
- Next by Date: Dda?ng Hanoi ta o^m My~ ho^n ro^`i a(n ku*'t Karl Marx
- Previous by thread: LichsuViet Nhandan Bolsa pha't trie^?n nail/manicure tu*` dda^u ?
- Next by thread: Dda?ng Hanoi ta o^m My~ ho^n ro^`i a(n ku*'t Karl Marx
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
