Hillary’s nemesis

David H. points out that notwithstanding Barack Obama’s pleasant qualities that make even conservatives have a positive reaction to him, he is a leftist and supporter of partial birth abortion and would be serious bad news for America as president.

Granting David’s points, what accounts for Obama’s appeal and even fascination for at least some conservatives? It is this. At the very moment when a Hillary nomination had seemed all but assured, and, given Republican troubles, even the hideous possibility of a Hillary presidency had seemed highly likely, a challenger to Hillary appeared out of nowhere who is both her exact opposite and her better, and in every way one can think of. Let us count the ways:

• Hillary is shrill. Obama is pleasant and easy going.

• When not being her shrill, real self, Hillary is the most artificial of humans. Obama is natural.

• Hillary’s entire being seems constructed of lies. Obama is direct and seemingly honest.

• Hillary is totally unable to engage in the back and forth of debate and carefully restricts herself to “managed” communication (except for those times when she lets her real, angry self show). Obama makes smart, rational, and non-packaged arguments, e.g., his lively and effective rejoinder to Australian PM John Howard.

• Hillary frequently conveys deep anger at America and hatred of conservatives. Obama is a man without resentment against America and he is a rarity among Democrats in not seeming to hate conservatives.

• Hillary only comes across well at events that are structured around her as the “Queen.” Obama comes across well in a variety of situations.

• Hillary carries extremely negative baggage, including, ultimately, the fact that her election would bring Bill Clinton back into the White House. Obama carries no baggage.

• Hillary advertises her candidacy by saying that she would be the first woman president. Obama he says he will be a president who happens to be black.

• Hillary pushes being a woman, as when she says she knows about bad evil men. Obama says there are two ways to talk about race, in race specific terms or universal terms, and that he would be universal.

• Hillary’s marriage is an empty shell. Obama seems to have a genuine marriage and family life.

So, conservatives, looking at these two candidates, and thinking that there is a high likelihood that a Democrat will be elected president in 2008, naturally have the feeling that Obama, whatever his leftism, would be far easier to take than Hillary.

—end of initial entry—

N. writes:

A lot of Americans really, really want to see a normal black man as President (which excludes Sharpton, Jackson, etc.) if for no other reason than to exorcise the ghost of Jim Crow, to prove to themselves that the country isn’t racist, and so forth. This is part of the appeal of Obama, IMO, just as it was part of the appeal of Colin Powell a few years back.

Now if I have to have a Democrat President, and all I get to choose is Hillary! or Obama, I would choose the former. The reason is simple: based on his very skimpy voting record, Obama would likely champion many of the same bad policies that Hillary! would, and in a much smoother and more non-confrontational manner. He would be a more effective liberal, and therefore more dangerous.

Gintas writes:

Hillary means the GOP establishment could prop up a cardboard cutout of a yellow dog and the mainstream GOP voters, in a panic, would vote for it. The reality is that the GOP would put forward someone worse than a cardboard cutout of a yellow dog, someone who can bring in some “centrist” votes, the Reagan Democrats, the Hispanics, the Blacks, SDS, whatever.

I need you to tell me why I’m wrong, because I can’t think anything but this when I think of Hillary running.

Gintas writes:

Maybe it’s the fear that Hillary winning would show us that we’re worse off than we imagined at our darkest moments. I suppose if it’s true we’d be better off knowing it than being deluded.

So maybe we shoud root for Hillary to run. It would be a “State of the Nation: Are we Sunk Yet?” vote.

David H. writes:

I thank you for your response to my question about Obama. The points you make with respect to his popularity among the non-left are, in my opinion, quite accurate. Also, I do agree with N.’s point that (far too) many Americans want to “get past” Jim Crow and prove they’re not “racists,” so in at least some of the cases it’s not Hillary as the motivating factor.

I can speak only for myself, but given that both would be a previously unimaginable disaster for this nation, I begin to wonder whether it might not be better for the harpy to win, if we have no other choice. Hillary would be at least as bad as Barak Obama, but (as you so correctly point out) without the pleasantries and facade. She is who she is, a virulent feminist, a man-hater, a destructive leftist. Obama does not come across as hateful, but the policies he supports—the same championed by Hillary—are simply vile. With him we will not have the fierce denunciations of the neocons (who would hesitate, or at least pull punches, out of fear of being labelled “racists”), we will not have the desire from many on the right to investigate any wrongdoing (with Hillary it’s a guarantee) and if Obama plays his cards right, it will be very hard for the true right to oppose his judicial nominees (If he never shows any hatred of conservatives, if he is cordial and professional, how will his opponents be seen when they stonewall or marginalize his appointments—who will unquestionably be die-hard leftists? Remember, the neocons are liberal “conservatives” and their liberal credentials, such as their fanatical dedication to equality, will be important to them—as is their image). The Democrats who have been driven into the opposition by the very lunacy of the Hillary allies could easily be lulled back into the left-marching machine by such a pleasant-appearing person as Obama.

These are my thoughts and impressions, an I am very open to debate on who might be less dangerous; God willing this will be an academic exercise and neither will ever ascend to power (but while I’m engaging in wishful thinking, God willing neither McCain nor Giuliani will either!).

However I am not so easily convinced that Obama is untainted by racial hatreds or anti-Americanism, or that he will have no baggage. His membership in the TUCC is an alarming sign, as is his voting record in Illinois.

S. writes:

I know politicians from personal experience far better than most if not all of your correspondents, 4 1/2 years working on Congressional staff, and work in two campaigns, including Reagan’s as a paid researcher in 1984.

Believe me, most of them (not Reagan) are righteous frauds; many suffer from serious personal insecurities that drive their egomania.

You can judge NOTHING about such a person from their personal impression on TV. Nothing.

What I do know is that only an irresponsible egomaniac would think that after two years in the Senate, and before that service only in his State Senate, he is fit to be president. He’s another Jack Kennedy, who at least had 7 years in the Senate when he ran for president.

And look at the record, not the calculated impressions these frauds purvey on TV. The focus placed on personality is an example of the degradation of our democratic politics.

I believe the comments by your correspondents are quite naive. And I do speak from ample experience with these characters.

John Hagan writes:

I’m not surprised to see Obama’s Pastor is an anti-Semite, conspiracy nut, and a hater of whites. Let’s see if Obama distances himself from the the guy he claims to be his spiritual father.

[Obama’s pastor wrote:] In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just “disappeared” as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns.

LA replies:

John, This is kind of a standard black sentiment. In the context of the way most blacks think, this is pretty mild.

I’m not saying that this is not a legitimate issue to raise with BHO. If he’s so tight with his pastor, he needs to explain where he comes down on this idea that whites are oppressing all the non-whites of the world. If that is Obama’s view, what would he do about it as president?

Mark J. writes:

Like N., I’d prefer Hillary to Obama for the same reason. But I have a bad feeling about the election of either one of them, for another reason: once someone other than a white man is elected President, it may be a long time before another white man wins, if ever (since I doubt the United States itself, as we know it, will survive long once whites are no longer the majority). Once someone other than a white man has been in the office for a few years, it could easily seem reactionary to go back to electing white men again. Notice how the Secretary of State hasn’t been a white man since Warren Christopher left at the end of Clinton’s first term? The “first female Secretary of State” having been selected, and then the “first black Secretary of State”, the office seems to have become an affirmative action post. In highly ceremonial or publicly visible positions, it seems to me that once a woman or non-white holds the post it often becomes a sort of unwritten rule that the position should continue to go to women or non-whites as a public demonstration of the virtue of the organization.

On a different topic, in another post you mentioned the British conviction of a Muslim protestor as a positive thing. Frankly, I don’t want the government cracking down on Muslim obnoxiouness. The more obnoxious they are, and the sooner and more intensely, the better it is for us. The worst possible situation is for the Muslims to stop ringing alarm bells with their aggressiveness and focus on quietly immigrating and reproducing. It helps us when they behave badly. We haven’t had a terrorist attack in this country for over five years and because of that we’ve slipped back into a 9/10 mentality. Besides, I suspect the British prosecution was not truly a sign of their government waking up to a danger, but was instead a calculated move by British liberals to appear tough. Purely done for P.R. purposes.

David B. writes:

My view is that Obama would be much worse for us in a political sense than Hillary. If Hillary won the Presidency, the dittoheads and Beltway Right would oppose her strenuously. They have “gone along” with GWB’s liberalism. When Hillary does it, at least they will be against her. With Obama, opposition will be seen as “racism,” and some so-called conservatives will hold their fire. Hillary could well spark the Serious Right we don’t currently have.

I agree with the poster who says that we can’t put much stock in how a politician appears in public. It is strange for a Presidential candidate to have such a lack of credentials as Obama. JFK had been a DC political figure for 14 years. His age (43), more than his time in office was considered a handicap at the time. Many politicians run for President because of their own ego. Carter and Nixon are examples of this type, and I have a feeling Obama is as well.

LA replies:

Not disagreeing with David’s main point, but why does he put Nixon of all people in the class of those who had no qualifications and ran only out of ego?

Going back to Kennedy, regardless of his time in Congress prior to his presidential candidacy, his candidacy was the first in which the candidate basically selected himself to run, in which the candidacy was not an organic outgrowth of the candidate’s recognized role of leadership in his party. The next successful such candidate was Carter, and of course there have been many others who have not been successful.

Paul Nachman asked:

What is this …

“Obama makes smart, rational, and non-packaged arguments, e.g., his lively and effective rejoinder to Australian PM John Howard.”

… about?

In reply I sent him this entry which contains this:

An example of this was seen in a remarkably inapt editorial in the New York Post the other day, entitled “Barak’s Blunder.” After Australian prime minister John Howard had criticized Barak Obama’s call for a pull-out from Iraq by March 2008, Barak replied that for Howard to claim that the war in Iraq is the most important thing in the world, while Australia has only a thousand troops there, renders Howard’s position “a bunch of empty rhetoric.” The Post gleefully mocked Obama for showing himself “not ready for prime time,” whereas Obama had in fact made a smart and valid point and won the exchange. When Democrats are making better arguments than Republicans, and when the Republicans are so full of themselves that they do not even see this, something big is happening.

Mr. Nachman wrote back:

Yes, Obama won that particular point against Howard. However, to publicly say we’re going to pull out of a war by any date certain is stupid, since it gives the enemy every reason to simply lie low until then. Exception: If it helps focus the minds of feckless “allies.” However, Obama can’t be presumed to have had the latter motive in mind.

If one decides to pull out (which could be a reasonable choice), then just do it.

On this issue, Obama showed himself to be as ready for prime time as any other prominent Democrat.

You contend that Obama is more than an empty suit. Beyond his rising to the occasion with a sound bite on this gimme from Howard, please remind me why.

I replied:

On one hand, what has impressed me about Obama is precisely his ability to make rational and effective arguments where other Democrats emit useless and vicious and resentment-driven blather. I’ve seen a few instances of this, where he says sensible and sound things. American mainstream politics in general and Democratic politics in particular are such a wasteland when it comes to meaningful and cogent argument that even a small sign of it impresses me. So I have made a point about that at VFR.

On the other hand, beyond what I’ve just said, I have not yet seen that Obama has a good understanding on the substance of issues. For example, the kind of humiliating pull-out from Iraq that he and other Dems want would be very bad.

The upshot: my complimentary remarks about Obama are admittedly partial and provisional and superficial. They are not the result of looking at his whole record and politics. I’ve been commenting on certain unusual qualities of his that I find intriguing, not on him as a whole.

David B. replies to LA:

I should have put Nixon in a different category from Carter. Nixon did have qualifications when he ran in 1960 and later, but I think it was his ego which kept him in politics so long. Most observers thought he was finished after his humiliating defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. How could Nixon run again after his “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” press conference? Well, he plowed ahead and eventually won.

Even after being forced to resign the Presidency, he still kept himself a public figure. His ego convinced him that people still wanted to hear his foreign policy views and buy his books. Most ex-Presidents pretty much stay out of the public eye. Nixon wanted to stay around.

I think that Thomas E. Dewey was a man who selected himself to run before JFK. Dewey had lost a New York gubernatorial election in 1938 and was NY County DA when he ran for President in 1940 at age 38. [LA asks: are you sure?] Senator Robert Taft was the party favorite and the Eastern establishment bankers pushed through Willkie as the GOP nominee.

JFK was not a party leader but he had political factors in his favor. His Roman Catholicism was a HUGE advantage inside the Democratic Party at the time. Most of the big city bosses were Catholics themselves (such as Chicago Mayor Daley) and were happy to back him. These men were very powerful in 1960.

Another man who ran for President out of his own ego was Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver in 1952 and 1956. In 1952, he challenged the incumbent Harry Truman and defeated him in New Hampshire. Truman then announced he would not run in 1952. Kefauver was an early Southern liberal (my parents loved him) and a bigger womanizer than Bill Clinton.

LA replies:

It’s because Southern women are so beautiful. Which is also why Southerners are so religious. They must be, surrounded by all that temptation.

David B. writes:

You said, “Dewey ran for President in 1940 when he was only a prosecutor? Are you sure?”

Absolutely. Dewey was a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the early 1930s when he started his “racket-busting.” After FDR was elected, Dewey was a special prosecutor for New York state. He put away a lot of mob types, such as Lucky Luciano. The publicity fueled a 1938 run for Governor against Herbert Lehman. Dewey lost in a close race. He was then either appointed or elected New York County DA, I’m not sure which.

Yes, Dewey ran for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1940 as a 38 year old prosecutor. He was even front-runner in the polls. When Hitler conquered Western Europe in the Spring of 1940, Dewey’s age and inexperience was seen as a handicap. Willkie was “drafted” at the convention.

In 1942, Dewey was elected Governor of New York. The GOP picked him to run against FDR in 1944. Dewey didn’t even say he was a candidate before the convention nominated him. His upset loss to Truman in 1948 is well known.

Dewey would not unbend in public. He never showed the “vinegary exuberance known to intimates,” in the words of his biographer Richard Norton Smith.

LA replies:

My first knowledge of Thomas Dewey came from my older sister and her friends, who, changing the “ay” in “Thruway” to a long “e,” would jokingly refer to the New York State Thruway, officially known as the “Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway,” as the “Dewey Thruwey.”

Gintas writes:

I am pulling Jefferson’s quote out of context, but he said once, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

David H., bless his optimistic heart, says that, God willing, we won’t face a Hillary or an Obama or a McCain or a Giuliani presidency. Well, I’m a pessimist at heart, and faced with an ascendant Hillary Clinton, I can imagine God in his justice measuring out some extra punishment on America for the sexual revolution.

My mortal mind cannot devise any better punishment than…Hillary Clinton. Behold, the bitter and twisted wrath of Liberated American Woman!

N. writes:

The old political hand, S., makes some good points about politicians, especially regarding TV appearance. I don’t watch TV much, so my impressions come from reading newspaper articles and paying close attention to legislative votes. This is why I disagree with S. about Obama.

S writes: “… only an irresponsible egomaniac would think that after two years in the Senata, and before that service only in his State Senate, he is fit to be President.” I’m in no position to judge whether Obama is an egomaniac or not; it seems to me that most politicians today have at least some egomania.

But that legislative record referred to is actually perfect for the modern political arena, because on the one hand it demonstrates “public service,” yet is short enough that there’s no real record of where Obama stands on any issue. Add to that his habit of voting “present” in the Illinois State Senate on many issues, and he is a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which any voter can write pretty much what they want.

I very much doubt that this in an accident.

Contrast Obama’s blank-slate status with that of Hillary! Clinton, who has various Senate votes plus that horrible Mussolini-style health care system from 1993. Which one is better fitted to the modern election world?

Mark P. writes:

One of your readers expressed the concern that the election of a woman or black president may have the effect of permanently locking out white men from office. I tend not to agree with this statement.

New York City experimented with a black mayor (Dinkins). After utterly failing, didn’t New York elect two white men, both Republicans? Stands to reason that a Hillary or Obama failure would certainly open the slots again.

Mark P. writes:

You wrote:

“On the other hand, beyond what I’ve just said, I have not yet seen that Obama has a good understanding on the substance of issues. For example, the kind of humiliating pull-out from Iraq that he and other Dems want would be very bad.”

The Democrats don’t want just any pullout. They want a bipartisan pullout. They want to convince the president and the Republican members of Congress to go along with them so they can never be blamed for the impending fallout. The last thing the Dems want is to be the only ones presiding over an Al Qaeda victory or, worse, a string of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil emboldened by such a victory. This is why the Democrats have passed toothless resolutions and why Obama wants a pullout in March of 2008, instead of, say, 2009 when a Democrat is safely in office.

Bush has his ego invested in the war and will probably not only not pullout, he will escalate it. The Democrats will then inherit a conflict their ideology is unsuited to handle.

Larry G. writes:

N. writes: ” lot of Americans really, really want to see a normal black man as President (which excludes Sharpton, Jackson, etc.) if for no other reason than to exorcise the ghost of Jim Crow, to prove to themselves that the country isn’t racist, and so forth.”

Obama is not a “normal black man.” He is half white. His African father was Kenyan, which puts him in a different ethnic group from the ancestors of black Americans, who came from West Africa. His ancestors were never enslaved, at least not by Europeans or Americans.

So if the idea is to elect Obama to expiate white guilt, and to be able to say to blacks, “Stop complaining. You, too, can be President if you try to be like Obama,” I don’t think it will work. The response would be that Obama is “really” white, or at least not “really” black, and therefore doesn’t count, and so we are still to blame for their failures.

I think we also tend to overlook the degree to which higher performing blacks benefited from affirmative action, either officially or unofficially.

Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice both possess innate talents, but both were also helped along by members of the Bush family. How well they performed when they reached high office, and whether they would have gotten there if they were white, is debatable. Obama, I understand, was selected by Harvard under their affirmative action program. What his real level of talent is, I don’t know.

LA adds:

Obama did not know his African father at all, who, in the time honored way of black fathers, abandoned wife and child. Obama was raised by his mother and her relatives. With the exception of the period in Indonesia when his mother was married to her second husband, his entire upbringing was presumably in a white environment.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 09, 2007 04:06 PM | Send