Question (partial): I would like to get your feedback on the subject of those who end up in Hillary's orbit. Can you conceive of a strong, leader-type male ever working under her? An alpha, if you will. And if the answer is no, then why do you think that is?
The men you always see under her are to a person passive-aggressive, sadistic, mean, little, petty beta-male pieces of work who would not naturally succeed in a common male-type hierarchy. By that I mean an environment that values straightforward achievement rather than the darker political arts.
Answer (partial): You have succinctly expressed one of the most unsettling aspects of Hillary Clinton's character and modus operandi. There is a strangely static and claustrophobic quality to the fiercely loyal cult she has gathered around her since her first lady years.
I agree that the male staff who Hillary attracts are slick, geeky weasels or rancid, asexual cream puffs. (One of the latter, the insufferable Mark Penn, just got the heave-ho after he played Hillary for a patsy with the Colombian government.) If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say Hillary is reconstituting the toxic hierarchy of her childhood household, with her on top instead of her drill-sergeant father. All those seething beta males (as you so aptly describe them) are versions of her sad-sack brothers, who got the short end of the Rodham DNA stick.
The compulsive war-room mentality of both Clintons is neurosis writ large. The White House should not be a banging, rocking washer perpetually stuck on spin cycle. Many Democrats, including myself, have come to doubt whether Hillary has any core values or even a stable sense of identity. With her outlandish fibbing and naive self-puffery, her erratic day-to-day changes of tone and message, her glassy, fixed smiles, and her leaden and embarrassingly unpresidential jokes about pop culture, she has started to seem like one of those manic, seductively vampiric patients in trashy old Hollywood hospital flicks like "The Snake Pit." How anyone could confuse Hillary's sourly cynical, male-bashing megalomania with authentic feminism is beyond me.
Whoa! You don't often see even Republicans lashing out this strongly! I suppose Paglia unleashes on Clinton for the same reason that I unload on my Republican representatives more forcefully - I hold them to a higher standard. Still, it's fun to witness. Her description of Clinton is eerily accurate, too.
Remember the Bosnia sniper flap? Hillary lied about a past trip to Bosnia (to show she was ready to lead the country), saying she had to duck and run to avoid sniper fire when in reality there was a nice welcoming ceremony complete with a girl who presented her with flowers. Apparently, Bill Clinton now wants in on the lying action. ABC reports that Bill gave two speeches yesterday, and in both of them he defended Hillary's lies about the Bosnia trip. In the space of about seven paragraphs between the two speeches, he himself lied -- or should we say 'mis-spoke' -- eight times. Check out the story for the details, but it's clear that both Clintons just seem to have an adversarial relationship with truth.
Victor Davis Hanson goes around the world with Barack Obama, describing how Obama might improve upon the foreign policy mistakes that George W. Bush has made. Some of the more amusing excerpts:
Let's start with India. Indians poll pro-American by wide margins — due no doubt to America's unnecessary coddling of the world's largest democracy. If Sen. Obama acts on his complaints about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to India and institutes his anti-NAFTA preferences in U.S. trade relations, India may finally receive the tough love it has been needing. After all, didn't President Bush give away the nuclear game with India? Perhaps a President Obama will back out of existing agreements in order to ensure that India does not receive advanced nuclear technology. (In recompense, they'll have little reason to complain, relatively speaking: Sen. Obama has suggested the U.S. should preemptively invade our ally Pakistan in order to hunt down Osama bin Laden.)
Anti-Americanism runs rampant in Europe. Under an Obama administration, should we expect friendlier governments than Sarkozy's France or Merkel's Germany? Perhaps Obama might cancel that provocative missile-defense system in Eastern Europe designed to stop an Iranian nuclear guided missile — a welcome end to the saber-rattling of George W. Bush's cowboy diplomacy.
Or will Sen. Obama try to save American jobs by nullifying contracts with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. to provide refueling tankers to the U.S. Air Force? We can be sure that he will embrace the emissions-reduction targets set in the Kyoto accords — in that way, he will encourage Europeans to do the same, since their repeated failures in meeting their promised reductions must surely be laid at Mr. Bush's feet: the EU has been waiting for America to show the way. Perhaps Sen. Obama could regain EU goodwill by pressuring Europeans to drop agricultural subsidies — and eliminate our own — and so give former third-world farmers a break. That would be liberal change I could believe in.
Will Obama's fast-track pullout of Iraq — and his willingness to sit down, without preconditions, with the mullahs of Iran — assure stability in the region, and win the confidence of our Arab allies? Sens. Obama and Clinton have both written epitaphs for the surge: Why, then, continue a failed policy? Once Americans are out of Iraq by mid-2009, Iraqis themselves — as Afghans, Cambodians, Somalis, Rwandans, and Yugoslavs have done before them — can work out their differences on their own. And since we were always the gratuitous targets that created terrorists ex nihilo, no doubt Dr. Zawahiri and President Ahmadinejad will move on to other Great Satans, once they see that those provocative American GIs have turned tail and fled their neighborhoods.
Since it is self-evident that the absence of another 9/11-like attack here at home was a fluke — and had nothing to do either with Guantanmo, the Patriot Act, wiretaps, the destruction of al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, or the annihilation of Wahhabi terrorists in Iraq — President Obama will be free to shut down all such legally dubious homeland-security measures. All that will reassure Americans and Europeans that those efforts were both unnecessary and antithetical to our values. There never was, and won't be, any danger of another 9/11.
Presently the United States does the world's heavy lifting under a Texan who says "nucular." But soon it may well be charmed and mesmerized by a smooth-talking icon who raises trade barriers, leaves the Middle East to the Middle East, gets tough on China and India, relaxes relations with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, while redefining existing ones with Pakistan — and says to Europe, "We're right behind you!" Let's hope it will be as pleasant to see the results as it has been to listen to the utopian rhetoric.
Yes, this article is very sarcastic and/or satirical, but he raises some good points about what Obama's foreign policy might do in the future. Food for thought.
Next, I have a few things to say about John McCain. At times, he seems like he's in good shape for the November general election, especially as Clinton and Obama flail away at each other. His national security and integrity are solid, and he seems to have a decent draw with Independents and non-conservatives, both Rep and Dem. But, just when I think he may be gaining some momentum, he goes and does something stupid. Take, for example, the statement he made that Barack Obama is 'absolutely' qualified to be President. WHAT?? What kind of a brain-dead moron is he?! He goes on to say that he's even more qualified, but it's awfully hard to step forward after you've just shot off your own foot.
Or how about when he called for cooperation between the Democrat and Republican party if he becomes President? While that sounds all fine and dandy, you have to read between the lines here. McCain has already secured the Rep nomination, so he has no more need of the conservative Rep base (which is good, because he still hasn't secured it and isn't likely to). What he's doing with this suggestion is appealing to Dems and Indies. He knows he'll have to pull a huge number of them to his side in order to win the White House because he is going to have to make up for not even carrying his own base. So, what's the logical conclusion? He isn't going to be moving more to the right, as he assures us conservatives; he's planning to move more to the left. This is no surprise to anyone who knows John McCain, but for conservatives this should be a major warning sign of struggles to come.
I have no idea who is most capable of winning in November. All I know for sure is that all three candidates suck (McCain is admittedly less sucky than the other two), and that we are guaranteed at least four years of frustration, struggle, and liberal insanity running amok. Buckle up and get ready.
There's my two cents.
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