Yesterday's post about Hillary's refusal to accept defeat got me thinking about the reasons that I'm not supporting her in this election. One of the most important reasons that I'm not throwing my hat in to Hillary is because she is a Clinton.
I voted for Bill twice and hell, I even invited him to my wedding many years ago. Bill Clinton was the first person I voted for in my life, having only become a citizen before the 1992 election. I thought he was a great President, mainly because of his efforts to expand opportunity to more people and his work to establish peace in many conflict regions around the world. I even listened to his entire autobiography, all fifty plus hours of it, during my commute a few years back.
For a long time Hillary Clinton was on my 'List of Five' (see the Friend's episode - and yes, the list was laminated). Along side Madonna, Sharleen Spiteri, the Spice Girls (all of them, at once), and Angalina Jolie, Hillary was one of those people who I wouldn't mind sharing a hot tub with. This was eight years ago folks, when she was on her way out of the White House as First Lady. I felt that Hillary needed a good night's company in the arms of yours truly to buck up her spirits after Bill's misdeeds. So, you can't say that I don't like the Clinton's.
Not everyone likes the Clinton's, most people in my part of Texas (Tom DeLay's old district) have this feeling that Hillary is the evil Sith lord behind Bill. They despise her to the point that that when I revealed Hillary on my list of five, they would go into apoplectic fits, red faced and incredulous. As a topic in conversation in Texas I have heard that Hillary and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright were secret lovers, that Hillary was selling secrets to the Chinese and that Hillary had Vincent Foster killed. All of which are egregious lies of course.
These same people, who when not damning Hillary for causing male pattern baldness, would often talk with earnestly about God and Jesus to me mistaking my distance from religion as a lack of experience with churches and not the opposite. How hypocritical they were then when they tut-tutted about the Monica Lewinski scandal and then damned Hillary again for sticking with Bill through the ordeal; which I considered to be a very Christian thing of her to do.
Years later Hillary's candidacy is driving these people nuts. They wonder how people can even think to vote for her. Their hatred of Hillary is so string that the GOP could nominate an Arab homosexual who wants to solve the world food crisis by letting people eat aborted fetuses over her. I speak with no hyperbole here, in my part of Texas this is how things are.
It is this hatred for the Clinton's, and absurdly for Hillary, that would prevent Hillary from doing the single most important task of the next President; holding George W. Bush and his administration accountable for all the laws that they have disregarded and their abuses of power. The rule of law has to be upheld. We can not let Bush's crimes and trampling of the Constitution go without punishment if we hope to prevent his kind of Presidency from ever happening again, and we do want that.
Hillary doesn't have the political capital necessary to go after Bush because she is a Clinton. The media will find a willing audience for the accusations that Hillary is only interested in taking a pound of flesh from the party that was responsible for the attacks on Bill and her during Bill's years in the White House. Any accusation of the GOP's corruption or the illegal actions of the Bush administration, no matter how solid the facts, from a second President Clinton won't have the traction needed to move them through the legal system. The pundits will claim her a failure for not being able to let the past go and that will be the story of her Presidency.
I believe Barak Obama has the communication skills necessary to muster even the most cynical GOP devotee behind a call for accountability for Bush's crimes. Hell, even John McCain would have more luck prosecuting George W. Bush and his administration than Hillary would, but I'm still not going to vote for him.
My misgivings about her refusal to suspend her campaign aside, were Hillary Clinton not a Clinton then she'd make a wonderful President. Were she not immediately following the criminal presidency of George W. Bush, she's make an excellent President. Now is not the right time for her.
We need someone who can hold Bush accountable and be a strong leader. Only Barak Obama has the political capital and the leadership skills necessary to heal our country.
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More on this subject from the press:
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Hillary's Political Baggage > Hillary's Political Capital
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