Apart from being
friendly to each other in the past, what do Hillary Clinton, the leading
Democratic Party presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, Hillary’s
counterpart in the Republican Party, have in common?
Both are leading in
the polls, and both are flawed candidates; Mr. Trump because he’s a shallow
thinker, however entertaining, and Mrs. Clinton because both her distant and
recent past are pockmarked with irregularities.
Judging from the
crowds flocking to Mr. Trump’s corner, one would never guess that he is a
one-man Barnum and Bailey sideshow. Mrs. Clinton, having nailed down an early
lead in the polls, is determined to hang on to it by the skin of her teeth. She
has so far successfully maintained an “invisible” presence. The less she says,
the better; the more Mr. Trump says, the better. People are unconcerned that
Mr. Trump finds it difficult to put together a coherent sentence, so long as he
continues on his profitable path of pumping himself up, like a giant political
pufferfish, and denigrating the spineless Republican political class that appears
to have been co-opted by the near irresistible collegiality that serves as a protective shield and a binder yoking together the time-serving
politicians of both parties who really
ought to be hurling thunderbolts at each other.
The Republicans have
a strong reserve bench of potentially successful presidential candidates, some
of whom are approaching the White House from outside the usual incumbent box.
Carly Fiorina has all the virtues Trump supporters like without Mr. Trump’s
numerous disadvantages: She is a businesswoman, highly intelligent, and her
core conservative backbone is in working order. The same may be said of Ted
Cruz, a thorn in the side of time-serving, politically co-opted, dry-as-dust
Republicans. Rand Paul is a Constitutionalist of rare metal, and Marco Rubio, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, may be the Mohammed Ali of the New Republican Party. Who needs Trump?
Before the
appearance of oddly flashy socialist Senator Bernie Sanders from the People’s
Republic of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton appeared to have a lock on the Democratic
Party nomination. Ethical and political problems have for the past quarter
century hovered like clouds of doom above the Clintons, dispersed, in Bill’s
case, by a combination of political chicanery, a charming bad-boy personality
and lower than usual expectations. Bill Clinton’s vices and virtues are not,
however, Hillary Clinton’s vices and virtues, most of which spring from the dislocative
60-70's. The times, prophet and prescient philosopher Bob Dylan promised us
in the Clinton’s heyday, “they are a’changing.” And they HAVE changed – not for
the better. The wreckage is all around us; and, some people have concluded, the
60-70’s generation is part of the flotsam. Marco Rubio’s formulation is revolutionary:
“Yesterday is over.”
Though she is
yesterday, it is not clear yet whether Mrs. Clinton is over. She has high
hurdles to surmount. Mrs. Clinton appears to have used a private server to
circulate top secret information, and the Clinton Foundation may be in part a
laundering service to speed foreign money in the Clinton’s direction. Will the
younger generation – overtaxed, over-regulated, indebted up to their ears,
broke and jobless – be willing to pass the torch BACKWARDS to the spawn of the
60-70's generation? Like Prometheus bound to his rock, Mrs. Clinton and Mr.
Sanders are tied to their formative years. Is it possible to put new wine in
such worn wineskins as Mrs. Clinton, who will be 69 in 2016,
or Mr. Sanders, the elder of the
two? Remember, the 60-70's years are not a time span only; they are a frame of mind,
a way of judging the world, and as we judge, so do we shape the future.
All the members of
Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation are in the tank with
Mrs. Clinton – friends will be friends – as is Governor Dannel Malloy, who
while stumping for Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire let loose a whopper. Mrs.
Clinton’s e-mail tar pit, Mr. Malloy told the group, was overblown, an attempt
by enemy Republicans to tarnish a sterling reputation: “They don’t tell you the
prior two Republican secretaries of state kept their email system the same
way.”
Not true, noted
Factcheck: Neither Colin Powell nor Condoleeza Rice made use of private
servers. In the background, Benghazi continues to throb. For anti-war
Democrats, Benghazi is Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s Iraq. The Obama
administration overthrew a dictator, the intolerable Muammar Gaddafi, who in the recent
past appeared to have acceded to American demands to rid his country of weapons
of mass destruction. Terrorists who destroyed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens, the personal representative of Mr. Obama,
likely were aware that the compound was being used to transfer weapons through
Turkey to anti- Bashir Assad insurgents in Syria. The subsequent withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq soon created vacuum in northern Iraq now filled by ISIS,
Islamic extremists who regularly behead innocent civilians and Christians.
At some point, all
these difficulties will become an issue for Mrs. Clinton. Indeed, recently Mr.Obama has aspersed his Vice President, Joe Biden, with compliments taken by
some as an invitation to Mr. Biden to throw his hat into the presidential
campaign ring. Unlike Connecticut’s major Democratic politicians, Mr. Obama
appears to be hedging his bets.
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