While Republicans are battling over who will stand for them in Election 2016 and lead the future of the party, Democrats across the country are lining up under one banner:
Ready for Hillary
It’s time for Republicans, Democrats, and all unaffiliated Americans to ask a simple question:
Hillary who?
The obvious answer? The former first lady under President Bill Clinton, adolescent in the White House during the 1990s, who took credit for the mature, adult policy decisions of the Republican Congress from 1995 until his timely departure in 2001.
A deeper response: Chicago native, student of radical communist ideologue Saul Alinksy, who tried to implement a single payer health care system in the early 1990s, who has been running for President for eight years.
Yes, she sought the highest office in the land in 2008, and lost by slim margins in key battleground primary states. The politics of identity defeated the gamut behind gender. Next year, Democrats want to please the feminist impulse in their left flank.
Recent polling from major and minor media puts former First Lady Hillary ahead of all other potential Republican contenders, including Establishmentarian Jeb Bush. So, Clinton is the Democratic Party's best shot at winning, supposedly. She can win, and a lot of people would vote for her. Whether she is worthy voting for brings up another set of questions.
Why would she be a worthy leader? She has a momentum of support in the blogosphere, and the polling props her up for the long-term win. But why would she be a good President? Every citizen in this country deserves an answer to this question, because the United States has suffered for eight years under an immature executive, with no prior experience, who won because of his superior campaigning/community organizing, plus the telegenic burst of support from Big Media and disparate celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Hollywood.
What do people see in Hillary Clinton? The man behind her: William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, and the eight years of strong economic growth and relative international calm. At least, many Democrats, believe, Hillary can bring up the brand as Bill did.
Or did he?
In a post-election 2014 column, Washington Post columnist George Will reminded his readers that Hillary Clinton is a drag, a bridge to the past instead of a pathway to the future. Let us not forget that under Bill Clinton, Democratic numbers nationally decline. Under Obama, those numbers of have worsened. The Clinton name protects Bill from the prying eyes of a drowsy media, but not his party from the fallout of her unknown character and lack of political skill. As the leader of her party, how would Hillary help the Democratic ticket?
Many of Hillary Clinton's supporters cite her prior record of experience, including her tenure as junior Senator from New York, then Secretary of State under President Obama.
Let us recall that another Democratic President, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, had one of the most comprehensive governmental resumes in US History: Congressman, US Senator (in the days when legislatures appointed them rather than election by the popular vote), foreign diplomat, and Secretary of State), Buchanan has been tagged one of the worst executives in US History, as well. A complete creature of Washington mores (if any), the dithering "doughface" executive pandered to Southern slave interested, then did nothing as the country violently divided toward the irrepressible Civil War.
Hiding behind legal restraint and decisive inaction, Buchanan was an ineffective executive. Already the former Secretary of state is hiding behind private emails and erased servers.
Once again, what has Hillary Clinton accomplished to make her a worthy President? What character traits has she displayed to prove her leadership capabilities? Aside from "Three AM" phone call commercial against Barack Obama in 2008, plus her vote for the War in Iraq, what other legislative, policy, or even moral record can she run on?
Perhaps her past activism as First Lady would reveal her presidential potential.
She stood by her husband, even as repeated reports indicted Bill for numerous affairs, even cases of sexual assault and rape. As a US Senator, she passed little remarkable legislation, and nothing which limited the federal government to enacting basic, enumerated mandates. Again, she voted for the War in Iraq, then tried to hide or run away from this vote.
As for her tenure as Secretary of State: the Middle East is embroiled in terrorist genocide, with ISIS colliding across weakened member states. Ukraine is divided, with Russian aggression having seized Crimea and looking to take the East part of the former Soviet satellite. Then there's the deaths of four diplomats at Benghazi, Libya.
Following her current departure from public life, she avows that businesses do not create jobs, she claims that she was dirt poor when she left the White House, and she can't operate more than one email account at time. Inarticulate, incoherent, and apparently incompetent, she has presented no clear policy details on a Presidential run, let alone a Presidency.
So, the question which every Democrat, and every American should ask about Hillary Clinton's purported Presidential ambitions:
Hillary Who?
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