By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, September 03, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s second race for the presidency is only
about a quarter through, but she already seems to be causing general fatigue.
The lurid revelations about the Clinton Foundation proved
that it was not so much a charity as a huge laundering operation. Quid pro quo
donations from the global rich and powerful fueled the Clintons’ jet-setting
networking.
In between political campaigns, the foundation provided
sinecures for out-of-work Clinton politicos. This is hardly proof of Hillary’s
grass-roots progressivism.
Then came Clinton’s e-mail fiasco. No one knows how the
current investigation of her alleged misuse of e-mail accounts, servers, and
classified information will end up. But most people accept that it was an
unnecessary and self-induced scandal, brought on both by her paranoia and
habitual expectation of being exempt from the law.
ABC News just disclosed that ex-president Bill Clinton
sought huge speaking fees from foreign governments (well over a half-million
dollars per talk), while Hillary was secretary of state. Unfortunately, some of
his proposed speaking deals involved odious regimes like those of Congo and
North Korea. This year, Hillary herself routinely charged universities $200,000
to $300,000 for brief talks — after decrying the cash-strapped status of
indebted students. What will the Clintons not do to make money?
All these imbroglios raise more issues. Was Senator
Barack Obama, largely a political unknown at the time, really all that
unstoppable in 2008? Or did Hillary simply blow a 30-point lead in the polls
because then as now she proved a lousy candidate?
Can’t Hillary Clinton turn voters’ attention to her
recent stewardship of American foreign policy?
Most of what happened on her watch as secretary of state
is better forgotten: the destruction of a self-reliant Iraq, the rise of the
Islamic State, chaos in Libya, failed reset with Russia’s Vladimir Putin,
disaster in Benghazi, the alienation of Israel and moderate Arab nations, and
Iran’s ascendant.
Instead of hailing her foreign-policy tenure, Clinton is
now attacking her critics.
Clinton just blasted her Republican opposition, some of
whom want various federal agencies to cite undocumented immigrants who broke
federal law, and then process them for deportation before hearing their applications
for amnesty. She misleadingly equated that position with wanting to “literally
pull people out of their homes and their workplaces, round them up and, I don’t
know, put them in buses or boxcars, in order to take them across the border.”
Is it wise to tar critics with the infamous imagery of
the Holocaust, in which Jews were rounded up, put in boxcars and sent to death
camps?
After all, Clinton’s own prior positions on immigration
were akin to those of many of the Republicans she now attacks. Here is what
then-senator Clinton asserted in 2003: “I am, you know, adamantly against
illegal immigrants.” Note her use of the personal “immigrants,” rather than the
abstract “immigration.”
Last week, Clinton compared Republican opponents of
abortion to “terrorist groups” who “don’t want to live in the modern world.”
But such ad hominem attacks on free expression are
exactly what Clinton once denounced. “I’m sick and tired of people who say that
if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not
patriotic,” she said in 2003, ironically during the George W. Bush presidency.
Clinton’s serial meltdowns may bring Vice President Joe
Biden into the race. The only other serious Democratic alternative to Clinton
at the moment is 73-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders. He is not registered in
the party whose nomination he seeks.
Clinton’s derailment has given breathing space to
Republicans. Otherwise, they would be panicking that erratic showman Donald
Trump has hijacked their party and might lead it to a meltdown in 2016.
Both parties face crises — though there are more viable
Republican alternatives to Trump than there are strong Democratic choices, at
least for now. And whereas the upbeat Trump would probably agree with — or even
welcome — charges that he is an egomaniac, Clinton would hardly accept the
equally common impression that she cannot tell the truth.
Hillary’s latest troubles reflect a quarter-century of
Clinton habits that transcend time and space.
Both Bill and Hillary seem to have always believed they
should be exempt from the law. Both seem needlessly tawdry in their avarice.
Their cover-ups often prove even more damaging than their indiscretions.
Bill was always the far better speaker and political
schmoozer than Hillary. And now Hillary is proving — again — that she prefers
slandering accusers rather than refuting accusations.
Are Hillary’s first four and a half months of campaigning
a glimpse of the next 14?
If so, the Democratic party — and the country — are going
to be utterly exhausted.
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